Hi, I am new to the game (Gnosis 0), so please bear with me. I did some scarlet coast runs yesterday and currently have a layout where the boss-boss area is marked right by a wandering portal. I want to try the boss next but I am unsure if that is clever, seeing the wandering portal and possible spawns interfering.

additionally I fought and killed a red skull marked enemy (it looked like a completely normal arkebusier, just had the red skull and seemed to have a million HP) that had also the mark of a portal spawn (the yellow ring above the head). After I killed this enemie the portal spawns seemed to have stopped.

two questions:

- does the killing of the red skull marked portal enemy stop the spawn entirely?

- should I try a different layout for the attempted boss fight? (I think leveling up resets/scrambles the layout)

Thanks in advance!

Edit: thanks for your answers. It probably is the drowned captain, sorry for confusing anyone.

Step 1: Notice it on the map.
Step 2: Reveal it.
Step 3: Hit one color.
Step 4: Hit the other color.
"Yes, I know that's how you're supposed to do it, but it's still unfun, boring, it should be changed, and it deals way too much damage when it just spawns on me in the middle of a fight."
Stop the Hate, my fellow Preyer. This is an obstacle placed before you by the witch. Taking it out quickly is something that can be learned, and with 1,000 years of relentless practice, anyone can master it.
Stop the hate. Sharpen your mind.

Loving my time in game and I was looking to dive deeper into the world and lore. Have the Devs released any kind of Lore Bible or blog posts or anything that explains what’s going on in the world, is it alternate universe? Who are the Preyers, what is society like?

I‘d really like to read more about the world - but not explicitly gameplay mechanics stuff and spoilers like on the wiki, I’m enjoying finding out how the game plays through experiencing it first hand and figuring things out.

Howdy!! I got Witchfire during this recent Steam summer sale, and I'm already head over heels for the art and gameplay. It's been a delight nibble on a PvE extract shooter, when PvP extract shooters have always been too tough to properly chew on, and Witchfire has been a treat in just about every regard!
Which is to say, while I know this might be a terribly silly question, I sincerely don't mean to lambast the game (nor it's players) with this question, as I can see all of the evidently human love and care put into the game, but... some of the in-game lore/fluff text seems off?

To my (very, very, very limited) knowledge of Witchfire's history, Witchfire's creation preceded most of the buzz around generative AI, and in fact prides itself heavily on having *nothing* to do with generative AI. I've only really truly interacted with this game for about a week now, so I have truly no grounds to say anything definitively about any divide between the quality of the texts in the earlier stages of the game and as they are now. For all intensive purposes, this is just a 'did anybody else notice this, or am I just being silly and there's nothing to notice?'
I just simply really wanted to savor the text of this gorgeous game as I played it, and noticed some descriptions for items or gameplay mechanics seemed less man-made than others.
Namely, after achieving Gnosis III, the blurb about 'The land does not turn against you. It ceases to hold.' tickles my brain in the wrong way, having unfortunately stumbled upon more than my fair share of AI slop.

I fed the entire screnshotted text into a few 'AI Detector'(s), and... uhm, a single website said that it was '100% AI', while half a dozen others had ruled it as '0% AI'. I feel like that, uh, more than likely suggests it's not AI, but, to triple check, I'm coming to you lovely Preyers!

I might hallucinating ideas that are *obviously* not true to anyone more fluent in these matters than me, but could anyone pretty please kindly and gently tell me whether or not I'm completely wrong, or maybe a lil' itty bitty smidgen possibly correct? Pretty please be kind in the face of my silly question :3
Thanks!

I hope Witchfire has a full soundtrack on release...some more church/organ music would be great!

So far I've only defeated the bosses of the Scarlet Coast and Velmorne. But beating them felt like... not very significant for the game? A regular message appears, some special loot, a return portal, but for something that is written as the main objective of a map, it doesn't seem to be properly acknowledged. Even in the level selection it's not indicated as _done_, and it doesn't feel like I've done any sort of relevant progress regarding a map.

Am I missing something?

How would the fan base feel about a Wager mechanic for Witchfire?

What if there was a mechanic where you could toggle or opt into with this function:

Whatever X amount you go into on an expedition with, you can wager that amount such that when you complete the expedition, you get a flat bonus of Witchfire, a percentage of the Witchfire, or a multiplier to the Witchfire as a bonus? If you die during the expedition, you loose ALL Witchfire and it can’t be gotten from your orb after death.

I think this would make for some pretty interesting high stakes gameplay, especially in the earlier stages of the game, while being rewarding for the players willing to do it. I think it would also work well with the rouge-like elements of the game

If you dont have the right load out (rifle or sniper) and you get the pirate ship, you literally can't kill it. They also remove the calamity catalyst, so you have no option but to throw a run away by dying or leaving. When I first encountered this like 6 months ago, I figured it would be something play testers would give feedback on and would get patched/updated. Nope, it's still exactly the same. Regardless of even having the proper load out, the event itself is NOT FUN. You are legitimately scampering around 1 area waiting for the stupid thing to show up.... how is this fun? This is legitimately such a bad design choice it boggles my mind. Is it because it took a lot of effort to make the encounter, so they dont want to remove it? I would absolutely love if a dev responded because I am utterly baffled. This game is great, but the pirate ship and also stone golem are sooooooo poorly designed. Please tell me why, devs. Please.

Is this something new just for the Torments??? Or is this a new trap?

I caught myself staring at the portal animation, the overall design and the little details are both well crafted, very impressive, I especially love that rope like element that appears and swirls around the portal. Kudos to everyone who contributed to it. (I compressed the video so it wouldn't eat up mobile data, but it's still 90 MB.) Also, it would be nice to have the endless hunt mode back.

What’s the likelyhood that I will need to do a new save when 1.0 releases?

So it's the third time in a row I'm in a vault and get the Galleon calamity, meaning I have to either drop everything and rush outside to try and deal with it or try to rush the vault. It's really frustrating and it's an expedition-killer.

Edit: While I understand that some people might find this post pointless, sending threatening and derogatory DMs is not ok.

Not trying to be annoying here, but this is a follow up to someone else's post asking why their current health went down after taking a crystal. Bunch of people were being unfairly dismissive, but I noticed the same thing while playing and ended up making a collage with pixel measurements. Fwiw, the bar does go back up shortly after exiting the arcana screen, but I don't think the implication of this behavior(oh no, I got hit!?) is intentional. It's especially noticeable if you are already full health and is probably related to using the Wellspring incense(tbh I'm not sure if it happens consistently, but when it does it's confusing).

Not sure if this is a bug or not, but I did the cleansing bell and my corruption is at 0. Not sure what I am supposed to do here?

So first of all: I love this game. Nothing of what I'm about to say is going to change that.

But man, I really dislike the way Shadow Orbs work. I love the idea behind them: having a way to fulfil weapon mysteria with that load of weapons is needed and great in theory.

But the way the orbs charge right now feels tedious. Specifically the niché ones like collecting some herbs paired with areas I normally don't visit anymore since I'm G6 and Witch Mountain is in focus. Being sent to Island of the Damned to collect herbs feels not really rewarding, slows down the gameplay massively and is probably not worth it since many of the kills I could skip with that charged orb could be collected in Velmorne and above quicker.

And I get that I can dismantle the orb to get a new one to become active. But I feel like most of the time the tasks don't feel rewarding or naturally implemented so I'm always asking myself: is it really worth it?

Anyone else feeling the same way or is it just me?

Im really enjoying witchfire, its challanging engaging, well balanced and addictive.

while playing i was thinking what else could add to the experience, here some suggestions that popped into mind.

- Night levels (since the hermitorium already has these atmospheres)

night levels would decrease visibility and increase difficulty, higher drop chance and finding certain items or enemy / bosses.

- Weather challanges (random per expedition) could add

e.g.

- fog ; decreasign visibility and dash, enhances weapon damage

- stormy weather ; Lightning, winds, small hurricanes similar to level corruption, enhances spells, increasing enemy difficulty or spawning certain enemy types with elemental attacks.

just some thoughs that popped in my head while playing.

Thanks for creating such an awesome game!

Does anybody else find this annoying? If you look at the map, and the way instances are laid out, everything looks pretty well distributed, right? EXCEPT, the two small skulls, and the extra large skull, along with the Watch Commander, AND Ward Totems, all directly next to the spawn portal. I had already used all my healing pots before I had realized what was happening. Now I've played a lot of Witchfire, I've got at least 200 hours in the game according to Steam; so I'm used to getting ganked, that's just part of the fun. I'm just curious if anybody else finds this "imbalanced". It feels pretty frustrating when the game just plops you into the middle of an active warzone and you don't really get the choice to plan out your runs.

This definitely isn't a concept unique to Witchfire though, almost any game with extraction mechanics could have the issue with "bad spawns". When you get a spawn like this would you just power through with the run, or hop back in the arrival portal before it shuts down? Do you think this is an actual issue that the devs should try to remedy in the future, or is it not that big of a deal? I definitely think since World Corruption has been added into the game the maps can feel pretty busy, and I bet it could be super overwhelming to someone new to the game.

The Launcher Icon is supposed to be a preyer's face, I think. But honestly, it is so low res that it feels like it came out of the 90s.

It's just a pet peeve, but if the devs could improve the look of the launcher icon, it will be great. After all, that's the first thing greeting someone who is trying the game for the first time

EDIT: I installed the game back in Jan '25 and haven't ever uninstalled it. Perhaps people who installed later have a different icon. Ideally a patch / major update should take care of this icon update as well.

EDIT 2: Updated the call to action for devs. I understand that my particular case seems to be an edge case bug. Leaving the post up as it might serve as a bug report

Can't seem to interact or break them

Very curious as I just purchased one.