Hero of Aethric adds a quick equipment menu to its new Hunting Sites

Gear changes without leaving the hunt

Northern Forge has added a quick equipment menu to the Hunting Site screen in Hero of Aethric, its pixel-art turn-based RPG. The studio's release notes for the update put it in plainly: players can now reach their gear from the Hunting Site screen itself. The same notes say the game's assets have been refreshed for November.

For anyone playing, it's a small change to something they'll probably use every day. Hunting Sites are a daily activity, and until now changing equipment before taking one on meant going somewhere else in the menus first. Nothing needs switching on. The menu comes with the update.

The changes come in version 3.27.4. The developer's own release log dates that app update to Oct. 30, 2026, and it is now available on Google Play.

Riftbreaks out, Hunting Sites in

Hunting Sites are new themselves. In its notes for the October 22 app update, Northern Forge says it replaced the "Riftbreaks" feature with a new "Hunting Sites" feature. The idea, according to the studio, is that players build up their standing with a guild called the King's Guard by tracking down Hunting Sites that appear each day around the world. On its beta release notes the developer lists the King's Guard as a new guild, and says "Gleaming" monsters can now be found out in the world, providing additional rewards from the King's Guard guild.

So a player returning after a break will find that Riftbreaks have gone, and the daily loop now runs through Hunting Sites and the King's Guard instead. The same October notes say Hunting Sites will no longer produce hordes for low tier players, which matters for anyone still levelling up.

Since then, Northern Forge has kept adjusting how the feature behaves through server-side changes, which don't need an app update. Those started on 3 November and have continued into this week.

A week of server fixes

The server update on 3 November made several changes to how Hunting Sites are found. According to the developer, Hunting Site visibility is no longer bound to player view distance, each of the game's Waxlight items now carries an extra Hunting Sites bonus, and the tiering has been reworked so that lower tiers get more sites.

That brought problems of its own. The studio's notes for the 4 November server update say that, in Hero of Aethric, stacking Waxlights resulted in more Hunting Sites than expected, and that sites at lower tiers had not been spawning. Both were fixed.

The most recent change, on 6 November, means Hunting Sites of your tier are now more likely to be found. That update also fixed a fault that stopped the Tier 3 Utgard Hunting Site from spawning, according to the developer.

Giants and Titans through November

The new equipment menu arrives while the month's main event is running. Northern Forge's event calendar shows Of Giants and Titans, a limited storyline about Jotunheim and Olympia, running from 2026-11-02 11:00 AM EST – 2026-12-01 11:00 AM EST. The 3 November server update also put the Giants & Titans monsters out in the open world, and added a Titan Crucible to the crafting section of the Event Hub.

Shorter boosts sit around it. The calendar lists Terra's Legacy: Natureblight from 10 to 16 November, a Lucky Event from 13 to 17 November that, according to the studio, gives items an extra 50% chance of dropping from monsters, and Wyrmhunt from 16 November to 1 December.

Convergence is the bigger change coming

All of this is happening a few weeks after Northern Forge's first games showcase. At Forge Forward on 14 October, the Ottawa studio announced Patch 4.0: Convergence, a multiplayer overhaul for both Hero of Aethric and its older sibling, Orna: the GPS RPG. The studio also used the show to release Orna Classic, a standalone return to the original Orna, and to reveal a new game called Balor.

For Hero of Aethric, the studio's announcement says Convergence will transform towns into interactive social hubs. Players will be able to see one another moving in real time, talk through an overhauled chat system, use emotes, and form parties before setting out. Northern Forge's blog adds that the patch refreshes menus and navigation across both games, including separate volume controls for music and sound effects.

Orna's world, without the walking

Hero of Aethric is set in the same universe as Orna, but where Orna uses a player's real-world location, this game is a pixel-art online RPG with a world players explore on screen. Pocket Gamer described it at its full launch in February 2023 as a sequel that takes a slightly different route from geolocation to becoming a turn-based MMORPG.

Players start by founding a home town and pick from more than 50 classes, beginning as a warrior, mage or thief. From there it is turn-based fights, loot and builds, along with guilds, PvP and world raids played alongside others. The studio promises monthly updates with new quests, features and events.

As for cost, the game is free to play. Northern Forge's Google Play listing says there are no ads and no paywalls.