The Horned King Awakens · Crawling Darkness patch notes 2026.09.15-2051

New Content

Character creation. Choose your class (Berserker for now) and whether your hero is male or female, then shape the face, hair, brows, eyes and body.
Starting clothes. Heroes now begin in a worn tunic, breeches and cloth wraps instead of bare skin.
Bug reporting. Press the bug icon in the corner (or F8) to send us a screenshot with a short description of what went wrong.

The fortress monsters now appear in their true forms: Bone Thralls, Ossuary Archers, Skull Hurlers, Chainbound Executioners, Fortress Revenants, Deathcallers, Marrow Brutes and the Stitched Abomination.
Skugarth, the Horned King now fights in four waves:
- At 75% health the gates open and his garrison pours into the arena.
- At 50% health a red tide rises around the edge of the throne room. Stay close to the centre.
- Watch for the Blood Brand, a mark that follows you before it bursts, and his whirlwind.
- At 25% health he enrages and every gate opens.
Wall lamps in the dungeon are now real flame torches.
New sounds, music and boss voices throughout all four depths.

There is now a clear path up the hill to the Broken Fortress. The approach was too steep and overgrown to climb.
The fortress doorway now stands in front of the gate, and the Red Congregation cultists have moved outside the walls where you can reach them.

The Forge has been redesigned:
- Browse Weapons, Armour and Jewels in separate tabs, and compare any item with what you're wearing before you buy.
- Buy back items you sold by mistake until you leave town.
- Sell all Common items at once. Valuable items ask before they're sold.
Talking to townsfolk has a new look, with quests sorted into ready to turn in, new, in progress and locked.
Maud's Chest. Your stash now lives in a chest behind Maud:
- The stash is wider (10 columns) and can grow to 120 slots. Buy more space from Maud for gold.
- Existing characters keep all 80 of their slots and every item in them. New characters start with 40.

Remade weapons and shields with new models and new bag icons.
Weapons now sit properly in your hero's hand, and the free hand rests naturally when you carry no shield.

Snakes, spiders, wolves, rats, skeletons, goblins, bandits and rotting peasants have new or rebalanced sounds. The snake's spit and its venom splat were far too quiet before.
Skeletons now have a proper death sound, and spider webs make their own sound when they land.
The launcher has music, and it now goes quiet when you press Play.

Get the new launcher. Launchers installed before this update can't start this version. If the game asks you to sign in through the launcher and shows no Play button, download and run the new launcher from https://crawling-darkness-cdn.fly.dev/launcher/CrawlingDarknessLauncher-Setup.exe, sign in once, then press Play.
The launcher now carries the Crawling Darkness name and Skugarth's face on its icon.
Sign in with your name, email and country before you play. You only need to do this once per PC.
Downloads now recover on their own if the connection stalls.
New Patch Notes tab. You're reading it.