Patch 1.01.00 Impact Analysis - What Actually Changed

Patch 1.01.00 is the largest balance pass since the Steam launch. It shipped on 2026-07-22 with two simultaneously-active changes: the Steam Market reopened for the top three item grades, and a long list of numeric values across the Rune Tree, hero skill thresholds and the Cube were rebalanced. The same day's 1.01.01 and 1.01.02 hotfixes cleaned up the regressions 1.01.00 introduced — see the full patch entry for the raw changelog. This guide focuses on what the patch means in practice for your build order.

The single most important takeaway up front: if you specced into Elemental Resistance before 1.01.00, the actual defensive value of your build just dropped sharply. The 50-point and 60-point passives were being applied at 20% and 30% because of a long-standing display bug. The correct values are 4% and 5%. The developer noted this explicitly in the patch notes and apologised for the regression. If your build was leaning on those passives, plan to respec — see the Rune Tree Guide for the recommended re-allocation path.

What 1.01.00 Actually Changed

The patch notes are dense, so here is the impact grouping. The wiki catalog is intentionally conservative — these are paraphrased from the official Steam announcement, and every line below is anchored to a specific game system.

Real bug fixes (no build action required)

• Elemental Resistance passive values — 50-point and 60-point passives corrected to 4% and 5%. Players with these nodes should expect a defensive drop.
• Rune Tree HP Regen — 40-point passive value increased from +1/sec to +2/sec. A pure buff for HP-Regen builds.

Genuine balance shifts (build order changes)

• Base movement speed raised across the roster: 700 → 770, 750 → 850, 850 → 900. Stages that used to feel slow now finish noticeably faster; repositioning during boss fights is easier.
• Ranger Explosive Bolt basic-attack threshold 6 → 5. Comes online one hit earlier.
• Ranger Shock Bolt basic-attack threshold 11 → 8. Level 1 damage 270% → 380%, gain per level 20% → 55%. This is the single largest DPS buff in the patch.
• Knight Ground Slam basic-attack threshold 9 → 7. One node earlier in the rotation.
• Knight Crushing Blow basic-attack threshold 5 → 4. Same pattern.
• Lv.30 / Lv.60 passives — HP values raised across both tiers. Mostly benefits builds that level past Act 3.
• Decoration / Engraving / Inscription Resistance options increased by approximately 1.3× to 1.8× depending on tier. Crafting these materials now produces noticeably stronger options per tier.

Market-side changes (economy only, no combat impact)

• Celestial, Divine and Cosmic items now tradable on the Steam Market, subject to a per-account activation delay of up to one hour.
• Listing slots: still 4 base slots + the Trade Ship DLC for up to 5 extra; 8-hour per-slot cooldown unchanged.

What This Means for Each Hero

Knight

Knight wins on the 1.01.00 thresholds. Ground Slam at 7 basic attacks and Crushing Blow at 4 means the rotation now opens in the first wave of every stage rather than the second. Combined with the movement-speed buff (Knight's 850 base moves to 900), Knight feels materially more responsive in melee. Action: no build changes needed — your existing Knight build is a net beneficiary.

Ranger

The biggest winner. Shock Bolt's 270% → 380% Level 1 damage and the 20% → 55% per-level gain combine into a roughly 60–80% damage increase at typical Skill Level 5–8, which is where most players run it. Action: if your pre-1.01.00 Ranger guide ranked Shock Bolt as "the slow payoff skill," revise that judgment — Shock Bolt now leads Ranger's kit by a wide margin.

Sorcerer

No direct threshold changes in 1.01.00. The relevant shifts are indirect: the movement-speed buff helps Sorcerer positioning (the hero with the lowest base HP and armor benefits most from better repositioning), and the Cube Resistance option buff makes Decoration gems into Sorcerer's defensive layer more attainable. Action: unchanged. Re-prioritise the Cube Guide Craft section to lean on Decoration options if you have been skipping them.

Priest

Priest came out unscathed in the buff list, but Resurrection was broken in 1.01.00 and hotfixed the same day in 1.01.01. If you attempted Torment-difficulty clears during the immediate 24-hour window of 1.01.00's launch, the failures were the regression, not a balance issue. Action: no build change. The 1.01.01 fix is permanent.

Hunter

Hunter's Crossbow kit was untouched in 1.01.00. The Trap and Turret cadence is unchanged. Action: unchanged. Keep your existing Might + Frenzy plan from the Best Builds guide.

Slayer

Slayer's Bloodlust mechanic is unchanged. The movement-speed buff (850 → 900) helps Slayer close distance before the HP-trade window opens. Action: unchanged.

How the Cube Recipe Rotation Interacts

The Cube daily recipe rotation is unchanged in 1.01.00 — the Tier 4 Upgrade (Mon/Thu/Sun), Rune Recycle (Tue/Fri) and Tier 5 Material (Wed/Sat) schedule still holds. What changes is the value of the Craft function's outputs:

• The Decoration / Engraving / Inscription Resistance option buff means that any lower-tier Craft output now competes more seriously with the higher-tier Synthesis path. If you have been skipping Craft because its rolls felt weak, run a Craft batch at your current Cube level and re-evaluate.
• The Cube Offering recipe unlock level is still Lv.10 as of 1.00.22 — that change pre-dates 1.01.00, so if your Cube leveling plan still says Lv.20, update it.

How the Rune Tree Should Be Re-Planned

The Rune Tree's Recommended Order is structurally unchanged, but the relative weight of Branch 7 (Combat) shifted in two directions:

1. Elemental Resistance nodes lost ~85% of their effective value for anyone at 50pt or 60pt. If your Combat branch order put those passives ahead of HP / Armor, swap them.
2. HP Regen +1/sec → +2/sec is now a meaningful economy-style passive rather than a soft QoL bonus. If you were skipping the 40-point HP Regen node, reconsider it for Torment-difficulty runs where sustained HP recovery matters.

A Conservative 1.01.02 Build Order

If you are starting a fresh save under 1.01.02, the recommended account-wide progression is now:

1. Formation (hero slots) — same as before.
2. Wealth (gold economy) — same as before.
3. Growth (XP) — same as before.
4. Storage (inventory + auto-open) — same as before.
5. Repose (offline cap) — same as before; lower priority if you play daily.
6. Combat, re-prioritised: HP / Armor passives first, then Attack Damage, then Frenzy (Attack Speed). Skip Elemental Resistance nodes unless you have verified endgame content that demands them.
7. Cube (Alchemy / Forging) — unchanged.

The biggest single change from the pre-1.01.00 plan is step 6: the previous plan put Elemental Resistance relatively high because the inflated 20%/30% values made it look strong. Under 4%/5% it is a side-grade at best, and HP / Armor give bigger defensive mileage per point spent.

What to Verify Before Committing

A few numbers above paraphrase the patch notes rather than quoting verified in-game measurements. Specifically:

• The "60–80% Shock Bolt damage increase" is computed from the published Level 1 damage scaling (270% → 380%) and the gain-per-level change (20% → 55%). In-game testing at Skill Level 5–8 should land within this range, but the catalog does not yet have a verified damage-per-second figure.
• The "850 → 900 movement speed" line applies to one of the three hero buckets. The patch notes list three distinct movement-speed lines (700 → 770, 750 → 850, 850 → 900) but do not explicitly map them to heroes. The mapping above puts Knight on the 850 → 900 line based on the hero catalog's prior movement-speed records; verify in-game before assuming.

When the wiki catalog gains a verified combat-stat column or in-game measurement, this guide will be updated to quote those numbers directly.

Wrap-up

Patch 1.01.00 is a net-positive patch for most players, with two concrete side effects:

• Ranger and Knight get noticeably stronger combos without any build changes on your part.
• Elemental Resistance builds lose value — re-prioritise the Combat branch toward HP / Armor until you verify the new resistance cap.

The Cube and Market changes are additive rather than disruptive: the Craft function's outputs are stronger, and the Steam Market now supports the top three item grades. For the full source changelog, see the 1.01.00 patch entry and the companion Rune Tree Guide and Best Builds updates.