The Alchemical Awakening Update is our biggest update yet, introducing a completely new biome, NINE new monsters (that will open up so many new possibilities for your teams), a new Monster Deity and more!

Watch our newest trailer:

https://reddit.com/link/1ufgxm6/video/tg1haj28rg9h1/player

Overview of the new Update

• New biome: Alchemical Woods! The new biome is an alternative tier-1 biome which can be unlocked after having beaten the base difficulty and having collected 15 monster mementos
• 9 new Monsters! All unique to play with, all beautiful, all viable new companions - waiting in the new biome, making it a total of 40 monsters in the game (not counting the shifts)
• One new Monster Type! Echo introduces a new buff, which lets you repeat support actions
• A new Monster Deity! The second Monster Deity Khepri will truly test your skills as an Aethermancer - use everything you’ve learned so far to withstand blazing heat
• Changed Difficulties! We have renamed the difficulties to "Vestiges" and there is a new, higher difficulty
• Food at the Merchant's! The Merchant now sells food items to help you on your journey

The Alchemical Woods - a new biome

Once you have beaten the game on the base difficulty and have crafted at least 15 monster mementos, Sir Tiberion will offer a new meta upgrade, which unlocks access to the Alchemical Woods for you.

Alchemical Woods is an alternative tier-1 biome - letting you choose how you want to start your run. It has a mysterious feel to it and inhabits many support-focused creatures. The alchemical environment comes with new interactables and Monsterkin to gather for Pilgrim's Rest.

Echo - the newest monster type

We are introducing a new monster type, which can mainly be found in Alchemical Woods!

Echo enables new support action builds and introduces a new buff:

That means, as long as your monster has enough stacks of the Echo buff, it will cast the support action it just used AGAIN! This strongly enables support monsters but can also make offensive teams go wild with the right buffs!

9 new Monsters

9 new Monsters are joining the Aethermancer roster with this update, making it a total of 40 monsters not counting the shifts (which is 9,880 different teams you can make, woooah)! All unique to play with, all beautiful, all viable new companions. Among these 9 new monsters you find 2 different champions for Alchemical Woods and, of course, all of the new monsters will have a shifted version, resulting in 18 new monsters to try in your team.

Ranger

Kullervo

Caduceus

Ettin

Living Armor

Snallygaster

Stiltskin

Faerie

Bronze Lion

Khepri - the new Monster Deity

Delve deeper into the Void’s inner core to uncover a broken Deity. Use everything you’ve learned so far to withstand blazing heat. Khepri is the new Monster Deity in Aethermancer that will truly test your skills!

The difficulty you choose for you run determines which Monster Deity you will encounter at the end - Chernobog or Khepri. At higher difficulties the Monster Deity is random.

This will not only be a challenging encounter with a foe wielding the sun and life itself, it will also reveal more aspects of the story.

The difficulties are called Vestiges now

We have renamed the difficulties to "Vestiges" and added a new, higher difficulty.

By changing our difficulty naming system, we have a clearer progression in difficulty as well as in the story of the game. The name "Vestige" stems from the lore in the game, as you collect the Monster Deity's Vestiges to delve deeper into the Void.

The Merchant sells food now

Food items for your monsters are sold by the Merchant now to help you on your journey.

Updated Music

More tracks in the game have been updated! The new versions use live recordings of instruments.

What else?

To read the full list of changes, head over to our Patch Notes.
Here is a brief list of other noteworthy changes and quality of life features in this update:

• Unlocked meta upgrades can be disabled now when interacting with the NPC where you buy the respective meta upgrade
• You can disable "White screens and flashes" now in the Accessibility Settings (which replaces them with grey screens)
• Small improvements of the combat inspector
• Improved in-combat menu navigation when playing with controllers
• New actions and traits for existing monster types
• More actions have VFX and SFX now (more and more will come!)
• New NPC dialogues
• A LOT of balancing changes
• EVEN MORE bug fixes

The Early Access Roadmap

Have a look at our updated Early Access Roadmap:

As you can see above, we've made some adjustments to the roadmap compared to our last update. We will be delaying the last Early Access Update, as well as the Full 1.0 Release of the game. Part of our reason is because our last two updates ended up a bit bigger in scope than we anticipated, and we want to focus on polishing that existing content more before we continue to add new content. We feel that moving these planned releases now, and letting you know as early as possible, allows us to not rush things and to avoid disappointment closer to release. It also lets us maintain our own health and well-being while working on the game, ensuring we can deliver high quality content along the way as well as plan for major console releases for the full release of the game and additional language support.

We truly believe that the current 40 monsters (80 including their shifted versions) as well as the next update will provide you with a lot of content and replayability to bridge the time until our full release and want to thank you in advance for your patience!

Aethermancer is 30% off now!

We are releasing this update right in time for Steam's big Summer sale and our biggest sale yet! So, in case you have not gotten the game yet, now is a good moment :)

Patch Notes

Find the full patch notes here

When can I play the game?
A free demo is available on Steam. It is not being updated along with the development.
Alternatively you can buy the Early access version for a fully up to date experience!

When is the game set to release?
Aethermancer released into Steam Early Access on September 23, 2025! The full release is planned for 2027.

What are the plans for the Early Access period?
You can check our Roadmap here

Will demo progress carryover to early access?
Yes, your progress carries over (although if you are mid-run your run will be ended).

What platforms are planned?
Currently we have plans for PC-Steam and Nintendo Switch (on official launch). For other consoles, we'll see!

Is this connected to the story of Monster Sanctuary?
No, Aethermancer is an original universe with new monsters to find. However, Monster Sanctuary fans will find some design similarities as we stick to our core strengths.

Will there be PvP or Co-Op?
Since Aethermancer is a Roguelite game, we plan for it to be a 100% single-player experience.

Will there be modding support?
Official modding support is not planned at this time, but the community will be able to mod the game as they like.

Why we decided to partner with a publisher.
We decided to go with a Publisher to get support with localization, QA-testing, porting, marketing and sales-management. By taking some of this workload from us, we can focus on the development of the game. The people we are working with at Offbrand are amazing, have a lot of passion and experience. Their support allows us to pursue our vision of the game and our community without compromising on quality or timelines.

So if there aren't any Yowie's in Terastae, how do they measure things?
They use Jotunn's instead.

Can I rename my monsters?
Not in the demo build, but you can in the Early Access game.

Where can we follow the development?
We'll actively post news here but if you want you can check the Links side widget for all our social links.

Who is moi rai games?
We are a small, indie game developer based in Germany with a multi-national team located in various parts of the world. Sersch started as a solo developer making Monster Sanctuary in his spare time, which led to him founding the company, running a successful Kickstarter, and now making a second game. Our team has grown to 14 people, and we look forward to bringing you another innovative monster game for you to enjoy!

Does Aethermancer have a Discord server?
yes Aethermancer Discord