Moon Studios has revealed what’s next for their ambitious action RPG No Rest for the Wicked with the addition of co-op multiplayer. The studio charts a rather unique path compared to other top-down action RPGs and Soulslikes by offering persistent lands that you can share with other players.
The No Rest for the Wicked co-op update will be released in full on January 22, but here it is currently in open beta on Steam. The beta has now been extended and is scheduled to end on January 5so you’ll be able to play throughout your vacation.
So what are the benefits and reasons for using the Moon Studios approach? Well, as described in the latest dev diary, many Soulslike games have a distinct lack of multiplayer session persistence, and the shared online spaces in games like Diablo 4 and Destiny don’t really mean much to them, they’re just running around other people. But there’s something special about having clanmates to hang out with in an MMO, and No Rest for the Wicked brings it all together.
No Rest for the Wicked will allow you to transform any single-player land into a multiplayer one, making it a fully online and persistent instance of the game world. Within this you can have a maximum of four players and you can fully share this space with characters associated with the kingdom or bring in characters from other kingdoms. Being persistent, you don’t need a host player to be online, so anyone can jump in, gather materials, level up their character, buy properties, and complete main quests.
This, of course, means that you need to have trusting relationships with other players in your kingdom. The movie shows some of the madness that can happen when studio executive Thomas Mahler buys a lot of property thanks to agricultural advances, then tries to pass it on to others, and then those others get a little revenge.
For more action-packed action, Moon Studio also details how you can really work together in the game, with a frontline character, ranged builds, and healers that can be great for taking on an imposing boss together. At the same time, the enemy AI has been adjusted to better understand the player’s position, be able to react to flanking movements or demonstrate up-to-date attacks that you won’t see in single-player.
Throughout the game, sellers will now have up-to-date equipment to sell the bike in and outside of their stores. Spells have been overhauled, with higher-level items getting better results – but you now have constrained reroll options – while weapons can now deal critical damage and have random aspects that provide different stats. Slotted gems will now provide lasting upgrades, but there are now higher level gems. Exhaling (kind of like prestige an item) requires you to first completely deplete the item, increasing a random item in a specific category many times over.
All enemies can now be backstabbed in combat (if you’re good enough), and bows have been improved with a up-to-date off-hand quiver to introduce different types of arrows (such as blast and explosive arrows).
Oh, and for the demanding difficulty crazies, the highest difficulty now has more enemies than before.
The game has had a tough year, in which Moon Studios had to separate from the publisher Private Division and play solo, Mahler is having a strange moment on social media. Since entering Early Access in early 2024, progress has also been steady rather than breakneck, but with a major update earlier this year and the imminent addition of multiplayer (which will certainly be demanding to beat), the future of this game is rather encouraging.
No Rest for the Wicked is available now on Steam Early Access, with PS5 and Xbox Series X|S versions planned when they’re good and ready.
