The second DLC for Halls of Torment, The Lost Archives, is out now on Xbox, developer Chasing Carrots announced in a post on Xbox Wire. The $3.99 expansion adds a new hall and two new heroes, the Inquisitor and the Blood Apostle, and it lands beside a free update that changes when bosses arrive and how the game records your best runs. The free update applies to every player, with or without the DLC.
Halls of Torment is a horde survival game with roguelite elements, built in the style of late-1990s action RPGs: pre-rendered graphics, dark dungeons, and a lot of loot. Each run lasts about 30 minutes. You pick a hero and survive waves of monsters, choosing abilities, traits, and items that turn a decent build into a strong one, then face a Tormented Lord at the end of the hall. Between runs, quests unlock new heroes, abilities, items, and blessings, so every attempt pushes you a little further. It follows the run format that Vampire Survivors turned into a genre, and Chasing Carrots leans on the late-1990s action-RPG look to stand apart. The Lost Archives is the game’s second expansion after the swamp-themed Boglands, and it moves the fight into a haunted library sealed beneath the halls.
The Inquisitor punishes the whole crowd
The first new hero, the Inquisitor, leans into defense and turns incoming damage back on the swarm. His kit is built around Block, Defense, and Retribution, and the DLC adds several new Retribution items to support the style. On top of that, the Inquisitor introduces two mechanics the game has not had before: Judgement and Execution.
Whenever the Inquisitor takes damage, he places Judgement on every enemy around him, and his mace triggers Executions. Judgement stacks spread between enemies until they are triggered, at which point they deal unblockable damage. Chasing Carrots frames it as a tool for killing strong enemies hiding inside a swarm, because the stacks ignore whatever is in front of the target. The game normally routes damage through the nearest monsters first, but Judgement bypasses that layer, so a Retribution build can now reach elites that would otherwise sit safely behind a wall of bodies.
The Blood Apostle spends health to hit harder
The second hero, the Blood Apostle, brings back Sacrifices, a mechanic Chasing Carrots says has barely appeared in the game until now. She trades her own health for power, and the conversion scales with her maximum health, so more health means stronger sacrifices, health recovery, and Affliction. This inverts the usual survival math, because stacking maximum health now raises her damage output too.
Two status changes deepen that loop. Affliction now jumps to the next enemy whenever a foe dies with the effect on them, so a single applied stack can chain through a crowd instead of expiring with its first victim. Both Affliction and Fragile are also uncapped now, meaning damage from elemental effects and direct attacks can climb higher than before. The Blood Apostle regains health by slaying enemies marked with Fragile or Affliction, so the health she spends on a sacrifice is paid back through her own kills.
The two heroes split the game’s defensive and offensive extremes. The Inquisitor wants to be hit, because every hit spreads Judgement and feeds Executions, so he rewards standing in the middle of a pack with a shield up. The Blood Apostle wants to keep spending health to scale damage, then win it back by killing marked enemies before the swarm kills her.
The free update changes how a run ends
The free update applies across every hall in the game. Until now, the Tormented Lords appeared after a set amount of time or a fixed number of kills. Now you can set the kill goal yourself at the Shrine of Torment, a new mode available in every hall. Chasing Carrots first tested this idea in the experimental branch as the Challenge Shrine, and the finished version is aimed at shorter runs, especially when combined with artifacts that increase the number of enemies.
There is also a Weekly Challenge, free for everyone. It rotates through the five base halls and sets a fixed challenge each week, and completing it rewards extra Torment Shards, the currency that carries over between runs. Finally, the Scriptor now keeps a record of your accomplishments, showing peak results and accumulated stats since release.
What is still open
Chasing Carrots has not spelled out timing on platforms beyond Xbox, because the post is written for Xbox Wire and only names Xbox as live. The developer also has not published a full list of new abilities, the exact set of Retribution items, or a stated end date for the weekly rotation. The Weekly Challenge is described as a fixed challenge each week, but the specific modifiers and rewards beyond extra Torment Shards are unlisted.
