Chief Rebel, the developers of Fellowship, released a new developer update with Community Director Hamish and Game Director Axel. This developer update talks about the launch of the game and the future of early access.
Table of Contents
Early Access 2025
Gameplay Stats
- 7.2 Million Hours Played
- 833 years
- 9 million dungeons cleared
- Sailor’s Abyss
- Godfall Quarry
- Wyrmheart
- 49 million player deaths
Eternal Queue
One of the major pain points since launch has been players’ ability to play the game at a high level without relying on the Discord LFG channel. Hamish mentioned this in a previous stream, and this video confirms Eternal Queue is coming as late as December 11th. If development is ahead of schedule, they will release it early if they feel it’s in a comfortable state.
They want to ensure players understand this implementation will be version 1. Once it’s in the game they will continue to develop it until it’s the Eternal Matchmaking they want.
Whispers
Whispers have been broken since the beginning of Early Access, and have created a massive bottleneck to player communication. Though it was mentioned in today’s Fellowship developer update, the fix was in today’s patch.
A Look Into the Future
Reset
Leading up to Early Access, the developers had an ambitious plan to get some new and exciting things in for the holiday, and along with that the very first reset. They realized they need more time to polish the feature they’re working on, but didn’t share details yet. Currently they’re still on track for a reset in Q1 of 2026.
What does a reset mean?
A reset will start your character off from scratch with the exception of earned cosmetics such as mounts or armor you’ve unlocked or purchased for gold. Those items will be persistent, but everything else will be gone. The reset is a healthy way for a game like Fellowship to set the foundation back to where everyone’s coming in fresh.
December Holiday Event
This holiday season will no longer come with a reset, but there will be a new event. This event will have “an effect across the board” and should be interesting to explore. We will have some “cool activities” and “cool cosmetics” coming as well.
New Heroes
From a structural standpoint, Chief Rebel is actively prototyping several heroes at the same time, whether it be feel, fantasy, visual effects or talents. They confirmed they are prototyping both a tank and a healer, and development is going well. They plan to double down on one once it’s ready to have it ready for us.
Though subject to change, the current Tank hero coming with the new reset will be a Support Tank. Both Helena and Meiko have support utility, but compared to them this new hero won’t have the same degree of control but he will have more ways to support the team or individual members when needed. His current weapon is a two-handed sword, since the game already has a sword-and-board tank. You’re going to have choices that you can make that gives you a new texture to tanking but won’t be necessary until you’re min-maxing.
A hero named Gunde was leaked earlier in early access. Though he was originally designed as a tank, they didn’t feel they hit the nail on the head with him. As of now he is currently being experimented as a damage hero.
The new healer being worked on will have ways to deal with incoming damage that slows things down, but her weakness is she doesn’t have as reliable of a kit to fill everyone’s health bars. The plan is for her to require more work to manage incoming damage but her strength is she slows things down. She will want to have a plan when damage is coming in, and will have a big payoff when you can manage to anticipate that kind of damage. Hamish also mentions some type of temporal manipulation magic. Time healer?
Pre-Season Reset
They have several items on their list they would like to have done prior to 1.0 release of the game. They hear the feedback and understand there’s still work to do in several places. One of the most important items is social tools. They are confident it will be available in Q1.
Axel discusses all the things he would like to see in the game before they officially release in 2026. Some of these things include additional weapon traits, legendaries for additional hero builds, and more things to explore with the gem system. They’re happy where it’s currently at in regards to it being an endgame system. He knows there’s several pain points with both main character farming and alt character acquisition.
They’d like to add additional set bonuses to the game. The community has given them some ideas and that gets them excited. New or updated Dungeon Curses. Of course more heroes and dungeons.
There is some things being worked on like title and various account flare. No dates but they’re exploring it and doing things visually noticeable when inspecting someone. They’d like to do more things like the trim system.
Additional dances are being worked on. No mention if these will be free or a part of their monetization model.
Goals 1.0
Adding additional heroes is high on their priority list. They feel there is so much to explore in a game like Fellowship, and what can be done when creating heroes. Having some of the crazier heroes created before 1.0 would be ideal in Axels eyes.
Axel mentions continuing to work on various reward structures. Something like changing the look of your frames when you’re inspected. There are several ideas in that realm that Axel would like to have expanded a bit. They’re working hard on social tools and will continue to develop it.
In regards to progression systems, adding new layers won’t be something they do initially because there is already opportunities in the systems they have. Axel would rather the team make improvements until those system feel right on target before they start adding complexity there.
Hamish 1.0 Goal
Aside from the obvious of more heroes and dungeons, he would like to see improvements with the on-boarding of the game. He feels like somethings aren’t being communicated to new players well enough. He’d also like to do more of the Fellowship developer updates in the future, but it could be in a different form.
