Fellowship 1.0 Plans Put Systems Ahead of New Heroes and Pinnacle Dungeons
Chief Rebel has not announced a release date, while multi-League queueing is now part of the team's matchmaking tests.
Fellowship 1.0 is taking shape around system improvements rather than a wave of new content. Chief Rebel says the team is focusing on matchmaking, progression, crafting, seasonal structure, onboarding, and general polish. There is still no release date, and the developers do not currently plan to add new Heroes or another Pinnacle Dungeon for 1.0.
The latest Campfire Checkpoint announcement recaps a Fellowship Roundtable with game designers Will and Ambjörn. The discussion covered the most recent patch, which is already live, along with questions about the game’s long-term direction and the work leading toward 1.0.
The patch included several Hero buffs, with Meiko receiving particular attention, alongside an Aeona visual-effects fix that could cause performance to worsen during a Dungeon. Higher difficulty Dungeon chests can also award additional items after the team found that the setting for those extra drops had never been enabled. Party Chat now attempts to become the default channel when players join a party, although the developers already know that matchmaking can trigger the switch before a full party has formed.
The Meiko-focused balance pass and its other changes are detailed in our Fellowship 0.4.4.0 patch notes. The Campfire Checkpoint adds more context about why those changes were made and where the team wants to go next.
Matchmaking gets an early test
Multi-League queueing is the first small test in a much larger matchmaking plan. Fellowship currently separates players across League, difficulty, Dungeon, and role requirements. That can leave people searching at the same time without ever entering the same matchmaking pool.
Chief Rebel is considering multi-role and multi-Hero queueing as possible ways to reduce that separation. Players could eventually make themselves available for more than one role or Hero, which would give the system more chances to find a suitable Dungeon group. The team is also weighing rewards for filling underrepresented roles, joining lower Leagues, or backfilling groups.
Those rewards would need careful limits. If the best way to earn them involved manipulating the queue instead of simply helping other players, the system could create a new problem. For now, multi-League queueing is an experiment rather than a complete answer, and more matchmaking changes will follow as the developers learn from it.
Loot and crafting remain central to 1.0
Crafting is another area where the team wants to reduce frustration without removing the thrill of finding a strong item. The current system can consume a large amount of resources and leave players with gear that is effectively unusable after a poor series of rolls.
The planned direction keeps some randomness in the initial item drop, then gives players more control over the stats and variables they work on afterward. Targeted rerolling, better access to crafting resources, and bad-luck protection have already started moving the system that way, but the developers said there is still plenty of work ahead.
That work comes before any larger test of progression or resets. Chief Rebel wants the loot system to feel good before judging a different progression structure for 1.0. Account-wide Gems are also under consideration as part of a wider effort to make alternate Heroes less demanding, though there is nothing concrete to announce yet.
Pinnacle Dungeons and new Heroes will wait
Pinnacle Dungeons remain a useful high-level goal, but their production cost is high compared with the number of players who take part. The existing Pinnacle Dungeon is expected to remain available in some form, potentially as legacy content. However, another Pinnacle Dungeon is not currently planned for 1.0.
The same focus applies to Heroes. No new Heroes are currently planned for the 1.0 launch. Instead, Ambjörn and Axel are looking at the talents, abilities, Legendaries, and playstyles that players enjoy or avoid, with balance changes and possible reworks taking priority over adding to the roster.
Server stability and Dungeon flow are still being reworked
Server testing will be a major part of the 1.0 process. The team pointed to Seasonal Challenges as an example of how a small feature can create serious backend pressure when thousands of players interact with it at once. Future updates may rely more heavily on testing and could move more number-based data to the server, allowing some changes without requiring a full client patch.
Chief Rebel also wants players already inside a Dungeon to have a better chance of finishing their run before an update forces them out. Another idea would let a successful party choose another Dungeon and continue playing together without returning to the Stronghold.
A restart option is already in development, and an early version is working. The team still needs to determine how much additional UI, UX, and engineering work would be needed for that feature, as well as related ideas such as saved loadouts and changing talents or gear after entering a Dungeon.
Seasonal events and interface changes remain under review
Previous Seasonal events may return in some form. Halloween will mark roughly one year since Fellowship entered Early Access, and the team knows some players missed the original event rewards. A direct rerun would not work in every case because some old challenges relied on systems that no longer exist, but Chief Rebel wants to find another way to recognize those events.
Shorter Seasons are also being considered without requiring a completely new set of Heroes and Dungeons every six to eight weeks. Possible options include rotating Curses, Dungeon changes, altered routes, fresh Leaderboards, or softer progression resets. None of these plans are final, and the goal is to bring players back without making their earlier progress feel disposable.
Several interface improvements are on the team’s broader list, including better nameplates, friendly nameplates, scalable party and health frames, clearer boss and enemy frames, cursor scaling, improved debuff tracking, focus frames, and more cooldown information. The developers are not promising that every item will arrive with 1.0.
More targeted player surveys may also appear as development continues. Chief Rebel wants to ask players about specific systems after they have had time to use new versions of them, with possible surveys aimed at people who interacted with a feature during a test.
Fellowship 1.0 still has no release date
There is no hidden 1.0 date waiting to be revealed. Chief Rebel says the team will announce one once it has enough confidence in the plan and the game’s overall state.
The next few weeks will bring more work on seasonal structure, progression curves, lower-League onboarding, Hero balance, multi-Hero queueing, and group-finding tools that could keep players from relying on external communities to form parties. The team is also considering a Steam Free Weekend, but wants the new-player experience to be in better shape before using that opportunity.
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Fellowship
Developed by Chief Rebel
