Soulframe, the upcoming fantasy action RPG by Digital Extremes, has totally overhauled its progression system as part of the latest Preludes alpha update. Whereas before player progress involved a more traditional skilling system, a more intuitive alternative has been integrated.

This comes in the form of the three in-game Virtues – Courage, Spirit, and Grace – which to put simply represent melee, magic, and ranged respectively. Prior to this update, you could invest points into these Virtues to build towards the kind of playstyle you want.

With the latest update, players can instead see their virtues shift automatically with each level up. In addition, they can equip a ‘Virtue Prism’ to concentrate on a particular direction for their character, which will result in the virtues shifting manually. In addition, a new armour system attaches virtue scaling to equipment, the idea being a full set of melee armour will work better with more Courage, etc.

Alongside these drastic changes to player progression, more customisation options have been added to the game. These include face, hair, and weapon customisation, all of which can be played with via the Verminia in the Nightfold hub. There are also three new weapons to unlock: the Clivers, Basker’s Wrest, and Seathorn.

Finally, there’s a new mission type in which you destroy polluting towers dotted across the map. Also, if you watched the Tennocon trailer last year, you may remember a big bear boss battle! Beating that now unlocks a more challenging open world bear boss that you can take on for tantalising rewards.

When Soulframe will leave this period of Prelude alpha tests remains a mystery, though it’s clear the team at Digital Extremes is cramming as many updates to the game as they can before a big launch event, perhaps a smart move given how treacherous the live service space is. That being said, players have been able to spend some cash early to support development, with Founders packs offering exclusive cosmetics and more.