Over 6 months in the making, the first release build featuring the new Soul Brand mechanic is out the door!

Soul Brands are a new type of item you can find in the Tower and connected dimensions, functioning similarly to equipment in other roguelikes. Once you find a Soul Brand, you may spend a small Credits to apply it to yourself or an ally. One Brand may be applied any number of times, provided you're willing to spend the Credits.

Brands always have at least a positive effect, but may also have negative effects, or conditions that restrict their usage. Even these penalties and conditions have an upside though: each one increases the power of the Brand's positive effects considerably!

You can refine your use of this new power with new Relic Upgrades that interact with Brands: Refine Brand can increase a Brand's level (and thus its power), Scan Brand will let you swipe a copy of a Brand an enemy is using, and Create Brand will let you sacrifice demons to create new, somewhat customized Brands.

But beware: your enemies have also received this new power. Even stray demons may have a Brand, and demons wielded by enemy summoners are certain to utilize them, to say nothing of the summoners themselves.

The Tower beckons once more, brimming with new power. Good luck to you all... you will need it more than ever, now.

( Thank you to Zyalin for providing the awesome fan art used in this post! )