Towerborne was one of my favorite surprises of 2024. The Xbox-published action RPG boasts rewarding combat that feels like a halfway house between soulslikes and fighting games, and combines that with a satisfying mission loop in the vein of games like Diablo. Towerborne update 4 is developer Stoic’s first major patch of 2025, and it ramps up the mission variety, makes fights feel fairer, and improves your chances of finding that valuable legendary gear.
I really love the foundation of Towerborne, and it promises to be one of the best co-op games of the year, but what it needs most during the ongoing early access period is more content – more quests, challenges, weapons, gear, and skills. Stoic is hard at work on these, and the new patch introduces three additional mission types. Some of these previously existed in discovery missions, but now have fixed locations on the map, and the ‘Chance Encounter’ events will include several “new encounters and missions to discover.”
Another very welcome change is that drop rates for many legendary items have been boosted. These are typically the most powerful, build-defining gear pieces you can get your hands on, so seeing them more frequently will be nice. Loot drops generally have also been adjusted, and you’ll now see armor pieces slightly more often and weapons a little bit less, making it easier to get the upgrades you need across your entire loadout.
Enemy behavior and visual cues on incoming attacks have been polished up to “make fights smoother without losing the challenge.” You’ll much more easily be able to tell when enemies are about to recover their Break Bar after a stun, or when they’re going to enrage. Lots of individual monster types now have clearer indicators of incoming attacks, and the Flickertail, Yxil, and Gobo Brute have had some tweaks to their behavior and hitboxes to make them feel better to fight.
Balance wise, Strike Damage values have been nerfed slightly, and Umbra Strength stats on your gear buffed a little. The ‘Focus Gain when hit’ stat will no longer appear, and has instead been merged with ‘Focus Gain on hit’ into a combined ‘Focus Gain’ stat. The old versions will still work if you have them on existing gear pieces, however. Crit Damage has also been reworked and is now treated as a multiplicative rather than additive modifier, giving it the potential to stack with other damage modifiers for some truly spectacular hits.
UI improvements should make navigating the menus a little smoother, and there are some additional sound effects and warning notifications to ensure you don’t accidentally do something such as purchasing a cosmetic for an item you don’t own. Aspect storage has been upped from 50 slots to 80, and you can now access the group finder from the world map without needing to return to the Belfry hub zone.
There’s also good news for anyone who’s picked the game up recently. While it will be a free Steam game when it leaves early access, playing Towerborne right now requires the purchase of one of the founders packs. Among the rewards for buying this are monthly bonus packages – but if you’ve been missing out, Stoic says you’ll now be able to claim all the past monthly rewards, meaning no more FOMO.
Towerborne update 4 is out now on Steam. “This year is going to be a doozy,” Stoic says in its patch notes, as it looks towards the remainder of its ongoing early access.
Have a love for loot that can’t be sated? The best games like Diablo are what you want, along with the best RPGs on PC in 2025 for plenty of character-building delights.
You can also follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides, or join our community Discord to stay in the know.
Leave a Reply