The Breach update for No Rest for the Wicked is an overhaul so massive that old save files just won't cut it

No Rest for the Wicked has had a bumpy ride through early access so far. While I thought the initial release was an impressive overhead blend of Diablo-ish action RPG systems and Souls-like tropes, it was held back by performance issues and limited scope, and only saw one major update after release (the Crucible patch) before developer Moon Studios fell largely silent.

I'm chalking most of that quiet spell up to behind-the-scenes shenanigans, as Moon Studios have now successfully reclaimed the rights to the game from publisher Take-Two, making this a fully independent production. And now, in what feels like a publisher-free relaunch (and first anniversary celebration), No Rest for the Wicked has gone through a bit of a growth spurt, roughly doubling the size of its world and overhauling a lot of the underlying systems in what the studio are calling the Breach update.

You can check out the (exhaustingly lengthy) full patch notes here, and get your first peek of the new stuff in the impressive trailer below. Be warned: You'll need to roll a new character to see all the new content, as changes have been made to the game from the very start.

The heart of this new update is two new regions. One is a beautifully autumnal-looking zone with heavy yellow lighting and fields of sunflowers to fight through. The other is a dense, more vertically arranged forest zone filled with bird-people and other woodland beasties. There's also a new, smaller town that provides a rest-stop for players digging into the new regions.

Old areas have also seen a lot of tweaks and improvements, and the new endgame Plague system provides extra incentives to retread old ground. That whole horrible curse-plague isn't just a plot beat now, but manifests in the world once you've finished up the new story content, turning chunks of the map a sickly purple, changing the look of the afflicted areas and populating them with tougher, mutated monsters. The plague can be pushed back by clearing out these new enemies, then beating up mutant variants of old bosses. And of course there's some loot in it for you too.

One thing that hasn't changed about the game is just how gorgeous it all looks, especially in cutscenes. Moon Studios artists—forged in the fires of the Ori series—continue to cook, as almost every shot looks like concept art come to life, and the new bosses shown in the trailer below look especially gnarly, with the plague-ridden enemies covered in all manner of horrible, jiggling growths. Blech.

As big and impressive as this update was, the response from players has been pretty strongly negative. Despite the game now supporting the latest DLSS upscaling tech, those gorgeous graphics still come at a steep hardware cost and Steam Deck players report having a rough time still, no matter how much they upscale from a blurry low-fi image.

More significantly, many were irritated by the update's high difficulty. No Rest for the Wicked wasn't easy to begin with, but a fresh wave of negative user reviews skewering it for its uncompromising challenge has led Moon Studios to roll out an emergency hotfix addressing some of the criticisms. They've managed to squeeze out a little extra performance from some of the cinematics, but primarily this update is focused on turning down the heat, lowering the level ranges for earlier zones, increasing XP gain and vastly slashing the costs of upgrading and repairing gear.

There's still a ways to go until No Rest for the Wicked is finished. The story still doesn't have an ending, and there's some major features planned but not yet implemented, such as full online co-op (and PvP), which is pencilled in for the full version. Still, if this update is any indication of what we can expect from here on, I've got high hopes for the game in its final form, even if it's going to thrash me six ways to Sunday. For those willing to suffer a little, there's a respectable 30% discount available on Steam, taking a good chunk out of its usual £35/$40 price tag.