With new seasons for Diablo 4, Path of Exile 2, Last Epoch, and Torchlight Infinite all launching in recent weeks, now is a busy time to release a major overhaul for your indie ARPG. But perhaps that worked in the favor of No Rest for the Wicked, the brutal soulslike twist on the format from Ori creator Moon Studios. Marked as the game’s biggest update ever, The Breach has now arrived in NRFTW, and it’s brought the Steam player count to its highest since its initial early access launch.
New No Rest for the Wicked update The Breach massively expands upon one of the most unique and interesting ARPGs around. While the perspective, movement, controls, and loot drops of NRFTW will feel immediately familiar to fans of games like Diablo, its stat system, methodical combat pacing, and tough enemy encounters bring it just as much in line with the best soulslikes. With The Breach, Moon Studios is introducing big, new, hand-crafted zones that are estimated to double the size of the main game.
On the story side of things, you’ll deal with three new quests and 17 story cinematics and cutscenes. Wands introduce spellcasting to NRFTW for the first time, while gauntlets add another option perfect for those who prefer to get up-close and personal. You can even pull off dramatic suplexes or dropkicks. Weapon scaling and status effects have also been reworked, as has the healing system, which now uses a limited number of food items per encounter rather than the old cooldown method.
Make it to the endgame and you’ll encounter a new system called Plague. This infects zones at random over time, although you can also manually unleash the Plague into an area. As the infestation increases, the difficulty of the region will ramp up, but so will the potential rewards. In order to cleanse it, you’ll need to defeat enough enemies to spawn the Plagued Boss, and then put them down to secure your victory. Killing Plagued Bosses is a good source of unique items, so it’ll be well worth your time and effort.
To further ramp up the challenge (and the loot drops in turn), you can burn specific resources to add additional corruptions to plagued areas, which add various modifiers that will apply to either the player or your enemies. Along with a wealth of new gear to discover across all aspects of the game, you’ll get to explore a completely redesigned enchantment system, including several ‘event-based’ enchantments that let you complement your preferred play style with dramatic buffs when you perform certain actions.
Want to make things even tougher? Hardcore mode is here, challenging you to complete the entire game without dying even once. Once a hardcore character dies, it will be made available to play on regular realms, so you won’t lose it forever. If you’d prefer a bit of help instead, the game’s tutorialization has been overhauled and improved, while a new, optional toggle lets you turn on hint pop-ups.
All in all, there’s a lot of reason to check in with No Rest for the Wicked, and a lot of people are doing just that. Its 24-hour peak of 12,965 is the highest that Moon Studios has seen since a year ago in May 2024, a short while after the game’s initial launch. If you’re tempted to try it for the first time, there’s even a big Steam sale discount available right now.
No Rest for the Wicked: The Breach is out now on Steam, and you can buy a copy at a 30% discount until Wednesday May 14, meaning you’ll pay $27.99 / £24.49. You can read through the full patch notes courtesy of Moon Studios for every change and addition in detail.
If you’ve yet to give this distinctive spin on the genre a try, there’s still time to enter our No Rest for the Wicked giveaway for a chance at a free copy. Alternatively, we’ve rounded up the best RPGs you need to try in 2025, so take a look through those.
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