On October 22, Nugem Studio and Tesseract Studio released Version 1.3.0 of the idle RPG *Taskbar Hero*, titled the “Halloween & Relics Update.”
As previously announced due to delays in the roadmap,
This game is a pixel-art hack-and-slash idle RPG that takes place within a space the size of a taskbar.
In early October, the development team revealed that there were delays in the schedules for the third quarter (Q3) and fourth quarter (Q4) of 2026 outlined in the development roadmap released in July, and apologized to users.
At that time, they announced that the “Halloween Update” would be released in October and the “Dungeon and Endgame Content Update” in November as content that could be delivered ahead of schedule.
This Ver. 1.3.0 update corresponds to the October portion of that roadmap. The Halloween event, Halloween costumes, and the addition of Relics and Runes—previously referred to as the “Relic Growth System”—have all been implemented as announced.
“Relics,” which boost the entire party, and limited-time event stages have been introduced
Relics are a new system that boosts the overall stats of all party members. They are unlocked after clearing the Plague Zone once, and you can gain their effects by combining Relic Chests and Relics—obtained from treasure chests in the Plague Zone and other sources—based on their matching colors.
For the Halloween event, the event stage “Pumpkin Lantern Canyon” is available for a limited time until 8:59 AM JST on November 12. Two limited-edition pets and new Halloween costumes for six heroes have also been added.
In addition, the cooldown time for obtaining treasure chests has been reduced, their drop rates have been increased, and the success rate for cube synthesis has been adjusted upward. The paid DLC “Material Warehouse” (599 yen; 539 yen at the time of writing, a 10% discount), which allows players to store materials in a dedicated slot, has also been released.
Please note that server maintenance is scheduled for October 27. Detailed timing will be announced separately.
According to previous information, a “Dungeon and Endgame Content Update” is scheduled for November, featuring four new dungeons, new skills, a level cap increase, and a new difficulty level.
The details of the Halloween update, as announced on Steam News, are as follows:
Plague Zone Improvements
We’ve improved the stage tooltips for the Plague Zone displayed in the Portal UI to show the beneficial effects available for each stage. This includes Plague Zone-exclusive drops compared to normal areas and increased drop rates for high-tier items.
We’ve added 24 new Plague Zone achievements.
Plague Zone Hell/Torment Difficulty General Chests: 5 minutes → 4 minutes
Plague Lands (Hell/Torment Difficulty) – Stage Chests: 7 minutes → 4 minutes
Plague Lands, Nightmare Difficulty: Drop rate for regular chests: 1.75 times the previous rate
Plague Lands, Hell Difficulty: General Chest Drop Rate: 2.5 times the previous rate
Plague Lands, Hell difficulty: Stage chest drop rate: 1.5 times the previous rate
Plague Lands, Torment Difficulty: General Treasure Chest Drop Rate: 3 times the previous rate
Plague Lands, Torment Difficulty: Stage Chest Drop Rate: 1.66 times the previous rate
Addition of Relics
We’ve added a Relic system that enhances the abilities of all party members.
Once you clear the Plague Zone even once, you will gain access to the Relic UI.
You have a certain chance of obtaining Contaminated Relic Chests and Contaminated Relics from chests in the Plague Zone and from Contaminated Act Boss chests.
When you offer a Contaminated Relic Chest to the Cube: Prayer Recipe, you will receive a Relic Chest of a random type.
Relic Chests have random unique stats, and the effects of those unique stats apply to all party members.
Artifact Chests of Uncommon rarity or higher have artifact slots of random colors. You can equip artifacts that match the color of the artifact slot.
Some relics have resonance effects. Equipping relics of matching colors that meet the resonance conditions triggers the resonance effect, granting special stats to all party members.
Artifact Chests can be synthesized using Cubes: Synthesis Recipes.
When you offer a Corrupted Artifact to the "Cube: Prayer" recipe, you can obtain a random type of Artifact.
Each artifact has specific unique stats, and the effects of those unique stats apply to all party members.
Artifacts have colors and can only be equipped in artifact slots that match their color.
White Relics can be equipped in Relic slots of any color.
Relics can be synthesized using the Cube: Synthesis recipe.
Cube - Addition of Tuning Recipes
New Tuning Recipes have been added to the Cube.
With Tuning Recipes, you can spend Gold to modify some of the stats of Relic Chests and Relics.
For Relic Chests, Tuning allows you to reroll the color of the Relic slot. All colors have the same probability of appearing.
For Relics, tuning allows you to reroll the numerical range of their unique stats.
The tuning cost increases each time you tune an item, but it will not increase further once it reaches its maximum value.
Halloween Event
During the event period, you can enter the event stage “Pumpkin Lantern Canyon” via the Portal UI.
Pumpkin Lantern Canyon is available in Nightmare, Hell, and Torment difficulty levels, and each entry consumes one Jack’s Ticket for that difficulty.During the event period, you can obtain entry tickets with a low probability from chests in normal regions and Plague Zones, as well as from Act Boss chests; the higher the difficulty of the chest, the more likely it is to drop an entry ticket for a higher difficulty level.
Clearing Stage 3-10 on each difficulty level grants access to the Pumpkin Lantern Canyon on that difficulty. (Example: Clearing Nightmare 3-10 grants access to the Nightmare Pumpkin Lantern Canyon.)
You can obtain up to 10 Halloween Treasure Chests per entry into the Pumpkin Lantern Canyon, and defeating the boss grants you 1 Halloween Boss Treasure Chest.
Event chests have a high chance of containing Jack-o’-Candy along with equipment and materials. Jack-o’-Candy can be exchanged for higher-grade candy and equipment through prayers. However, Jack-o’-Candy cannot be traded.
Event chests are stored separately from chests in normal areas and Plague Zones, and you can store up to 40 normal chests and 40 boss chests each. (Note: Rune effects do not apply.)
If you have an entry ticket, you can set the game to automatically retry after clearing the stage.
* If you do not have enough storage space for Halloween chests, a warning will appear in the entry confirmation window. If you enter while in this state, you may not be able to obtain some of the chests. Since automatic retries will not occur while storage space is insufficient, be sure to open all chests before re-entering.
- Event Period
After the update through Wednesday, November 11, 2026, at 11:59 PM (UTC)
* Once the event period ends, you will no longer be able to enter the Pumpkin Lantern Canyon, and you will no longer be able to obtain Jack’s Admission Tickets or Jack-o’-Candy.
Halloween Pets
Two new Halloween event pets have been added.
Pumpkin Candy: Obtained by defeating 500 Jack-o'-Skeleton Warriors. (Increases gold earned from defeating monsters by 1%)
Pumpkin Ghost: Obtained by defeating 500 Jack-o'-Lantern Ghosts. (Increases EXP gain by 1%)
Since Jack-o'-Skeleton Warriors and Jack-o'-Lantern Ghosts only appear in Pumpkin Lantern Canyon, be sure to obtain them during the event period.
New Halloween Costumes
To celebrate Halloween, we’ve added new costumes for six heroes.
You can purchase each hero’s new skin via the Skin button in the Hero UI or from the Shop.
Applying a skin changes the hero’s artwork, in-game character images, and animations.
You can get a discount of about 25% by purchasing the Halloween Festival Bundle, which includes all six skins. (The bundle can only be purchased if you do not own any Halloween Festival skins.)
* If your purchased items do not apply correctly, please click the “Update Purchase Information” button in the “Shop” menu or restart the game.
Cube - Synthesis Recipe Improvements
We’ve added a “Fixed Level” option to synthesis recipes. Checking “Fixed Level” ensures that auto-fill only occurs for recipes at the specified level. (Recipes will no longer change automatically during auto-fill.)
We have adjusted the synthesis success rates for Immortal and Arcana-grade standard equipment and material items.
Probability of upgrading from Immortal to Arcana: Increased from 49.9% to 80%
Probability of upgrading from Arcana to Beyond: Increased from 33.28% to 50%
Adjustment to the minimum wait time for loot from treasure chests in standard regions
General treasure chests in all regions of Normal Zones at Region Level 15 and above: 4 minutes → 3 minutes
Stage chests in all Normal Region areas at Region Level 15 and above: 6 minutes → 3 minutes
Addition of the Material Warehouse DLC
The Material Storage DLC, which allows you to easily store materials, has been added.
You can store decorative materials, carving materials, inscription materials, crafting materials, Soul Stones, and commemorative coins in the Material Warehouse.
There is a dedicated slot for each type of material, and up to 999 items can be stored in each slot.
If you own a Material Warehouse, when you use the "Store All" function to move items from your inventory to the warehouse, they will be stored in the Material Warehouse by default.
Other Changes
Three new Offline XP Bonus Runes have been added.
Two new Act Boss XP Bonus Runes have been added.
Adjusted the XP increase for one type of Act Boss XP Reward Increase Rune: +2,000 per level → +10,000
Changed the duration of the rocks summoned by the Slayer’s Ground Slam skill: 3 seconds → 10 seconds
Added a cross-promotion banner to the bottom of the offline rewards window that appears when the game starts.
Added one cross-promotion banner to the Settings window.
Added the “Include locked items when organizing” option to the Settings > Miscellaneous page.
Added an option to the Settings - Miscellaneous page to disable the display of text for gold earned, damage dealt, and healing received.
Added the ability to scroll through the inventory using the Page Up and Page Down keys.
We’ve updated skill tooltips to display the reduced cooldown time when a cooldown reduction effect is active. Pressing the Alt key while the tooltip is displayed allows you to view the original cooldown value.
When challenging an Act Boss for the first time, you will now advance to the next difficulty upon clearing the Act, even if Repeat Mode is enabled.
We’ve improved the system so that you can change your character selection even during the stage-clear cutscene.
We’ve fixed an issue so that stackable material items are now automatically stacked when organizing your inventory.
We’ve improved the game so that you can continue playing even if the connection to Steam is unstable or during Steam server maintenance. However, if there are issues with the Steam connection, access to the Trade Ship and Mailbox will be restricted.
We have fixed an issue where disabling the Trade Ship DLC in the game properties of your Steam Library would also disable the additional Trade Ship slots.
We have fixed an issue where camera movement appeared unnatural when moving at high speeds.
We have improved the unnatural aspects of the Ranger’s running animation.
We have fixed an issue where the background of the server item verification results pop-up looked unnatural.
We have updated the system so that if a costume cannot be purchased, the text on the purchase button now displays as “Unavailable.”
We have fixed an issue where the design of the confirmation button in the offline rewards UI looked unnatural.
We have fixed an issue where the Cube level-up effect extended beyond the Cube slider, causing it to appear unnatural.
We have fixed an issue where descriptions of special item attributes would extend beyond the display area in certain languages.
We have revised the text displayed during server maintenance to use more natural phrasing.
To improve emergency recovery support (such as for lost items) and service quality, we have added logs for major in-game activities, including currency and item transactions. Accordingly, we have revised the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy to version 1.6. You can view the full text on the consent screen that appears when you launch the app for the first time after the update.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue where the probability of a “Great Success” (resulting in a Cosmic-grade item) was not displayed during Celestial-grade synthesis.
We have fixed an issue where region-level penalties were not being applied to the EXP from offline rewards.
Fixed an issue where certain Hunter and Slayer equipment would drop even when DLC was disabled.
Priest: Fixed an issue where the "Increased Effect Range" attribute was not applied to the Sanctuary skill.
Fixed an issue where critical hits were not applied to the area damage of the Priest’s “Heavenly Wrath” skill.
Priest: Fixed an issue where the special effect that triggers a healing skill when using the "Heavenly Wrath" skill did not activate if the healing skill had not been learned.
Fixed an issue where rocks summoned by the Slayer’s Ground Slam skill could not be destroyed by the Ground Slam skill itself.
Fixed an issue where repeatedly refreshing the Steam inventory while items were present would generate invalid emails.
Fixed an issue where, in rare cases, emails that could not be received were generated.
Fixed an issue where the game screen could be moved outside the monitor’s display area while a UI window was open.
Fixed an issue where opening multiple Act Boss chests at once caused a 6002 error, preventing you from opening any more Act Boss chests afterward.
Fixed an issue where locked crafting materials could be used as decoration, engraving, or inscription materials for the Cube.
Fixed an issue where resistance values were not displayed correctly when changing the order of heroes or restarting a stage.
Fixed an issue where selecting a Plague Zone in the Portal UI and then changing the language would cause the Plague Zone to be incorrectly displayed as a locked screen.
Fixed an issue where material items of the same type locked in different slots were not recognized as candidates for auto-entry during synthesis.
Fixed an issue where, under certain conditions, the unlock button icon would not appear even though an unlocked cube recipe was available for unlocking.
Fixed an issue where the trade ship tooltip message was hidden and could not be seen when opening the Portal UI.
Fixed an issue where, if you left the stage while the Act 10 boss was using the Soul Snatch skill, the Soul Snatch souls and the soul connection line effects would not disappear.
Fixed an issue in Act 2-10 where, when the Act Boss used the Soul Snatch skill, souls were displayed without reflecting the skin information of the equipped hero.
Fixed an issue where the monster’s image would flicker during the Demon Legion Commander’s attack animation.
Fixed an issue where the text displayed when hovering over an Act Boss’s escape portal was not translated.
Fixed an issue where the stage name was not displayed correctly in the battle log window upon clearing the Plague Zone.
Fixed an issue where the cooldown display UI on the Hero screen would stop working after opening and closing the Trade Ship window.
Fixed an issue where the "Unbreakable Will" animation would apply with a delay if a Knight died while performing a Shield Charge.
"Taskbar Hero" is currently available for PC (Steam) and is a free-to-play game.
