At long last, it’s time to finally break The Siege of Khor’minos and bring peace to the kingdom beneath the stone.

This is the penultimate dungeon on the Main Story Questline, following up from A Feast For Heroes. In order to begin the dungeon, you must either talk to Calise in Khor’minos and rally the troops she requests or talk to Varena after having finished her bath house dungeon. These are two mutually exclusive paths into and through the dungeon; make your choice based on which of the girls you like (or trust) the most.

Before you do the dungeon, let me say loud and clear: this dungeon is a Point of No Return as the end of the game’s 2nd Act, and beginning it will lock you out of the Winter Wolf and Harboring a Fugitive questlines once you begin. You can’t defeat the cult and then go back in time to cripple the cult; by extension, having done (or not done) those quests, as well as Etheryn’s personal quest The Demon of Ice, will have noticeable impacts on the dungeon. Calise and Varena will both point you towards these cult bases before you begin the quest as a reminder, but I figured I’d make sure it’s here in the announcement just in case. Other quests throughout Act 1 and 2 will remain available.

0.8.23 Patch Notes:

• Queen Etheryn, Queen Nyzerrah, Chieftain Arona, Ahmri, Asgeir (or Asynja), and Lumia all have new talks unlocked after A Feast For Heroes, allowing you to recruit their factions’ fighters to aid you in The Siege of Khor’minos. These are used in…
• New minigame added: Mass Combat. If you choose Calise’s path through the campaign, you’ll be taking to the field as the commander of a rag-tag army assembled from across the Marches and marching into battle against the demons. Should you succeed (or otherwise go through Varena’s path, you’ll gain access to):
• New dungeon added: Khor’torhen Fortress! A crumbling ruin that protects one of the waterways leading into Undermountain, now occupied by the Pleasure Cult and their demonic allies en masse. This is the heart of the cult’s war effort, their home base in the Marches and their most important stronghold by far. Take it down, and the siege will break. As you’d expect from any dungeon, there’s a number of new bosses, new weapons, gear, and powers to obtain, and plenty of salacious adventure to be had. 
• Finishing The Siege of Khor’minos now locks out Winter Wolf and Harboring a Fugitive; make sure you do these quests first if you ever intend to.
• If Winter Wolf is failed, Annika will now appear once Act 3 starts and begin the invitation process to Lumia’s castle with appropriate tweaks.
• Isadora, Varena, and Katya all have updated talks after you finish The Siege of Khor’minos.
• The questlog previously stopped tracking The Siege of Khor’minos after the the first of its 4 parts; it now is properly tracked throughout the Siege, and gives way to the next Main Story Quest after it is finished.
• Kasyrra freaking out about you telling her that you’re Soulbound has been progression locked to only occur after The Siege of Khor’minos.
• Kasyrra (as fought in the Winter City) has been buffed to take advantage of higher-level features now being coded into the game.
• The Faceless Blade (as fought in the Grave of Saints) has had her Swift Sword taken away on difficulties below Dark, meaning she’s unable to softlock you into eternal and unending battle if you don’t have the damage output to match her healing. Playing on Dark, we still expect you to have good enough party composition to deal with it.
• New Busts: All the enemies in the Khor’torhen Fortress dungeon.

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A Note About What’s NOT in This Patch:

Please don’t read any further in this section if you want to avoid any possible spoilers 🙂 Come back after you’ve played the dungeon!

• There is an ending unlocked by defeating a Certain Boss within Khor’torhen Fortress. It is not intended that the average player will ever achieve this, but it is coded in just in case. In order to avoid spoiling the game’s end early (and also avoid having to rewrite anything since we still have a bit to go before the intended True End), this just results in a developer message saying good job. When version 1.0 releases, this will be updated to fork into the True Ending.
• There is another successful dungeon-end (not game-end, though) which would cause the PC (and potentially Calise) to be transported to another area (in the Coastlands) after finishing the Siege. This will just be marked on your save, and when that secondary dungeon is added in, you’ll get teleported there. In the meantime, you can continue to play your save as normal.
• A couple of important NPCs can be yeeted into your Wayfort’s dungeon; as is tradition, actual interactions with them is something we’ll get around to later. (I hear Fleep’s making good progress on the Dragon Knight from Dracia!)
• Calise suggests a few times during the events that you should talk after the dungeon finishes. Presupposing you and her are still on good terms when the dungeon ends, anyway. This event isn’t in yet; she’s due for a fairly substantial expansion soon and I’ll be saving this set of events to be part of that content drop.
• If you have romanced Varena, after the quest one of the rewards you can ask for from King Kelsaz is her hand in marriage. The event for actually acting on this didn’t quite make it in for this patch, but should be pretty soon.