Pantheon PTR client hits Steam as hotbars merge into one 14-slot bar

Visionary Realms made the Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen Public Test Realm client available on Steam and outlined a set of hotbar and ability changes in a May 13 post accompanying the test server's second-week patch notes.

The studio said the Steam client could not be offered when the PTR launched the previous week, and that the gap has now been closed. The test build appears in players' Steam libraries as a separate title named Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen (Public Test Realm); anyone who does not see it can use the Request Access option on the game's Steam store page, which the studio said grants access automatically. The server was scheduled to come down at 7 a.m. PDT that day and return a few hours later, with no precise downtime estimate given.

Visionary Realms said its immediate focus during the first week was fixing bugs, and that it identified and repaired several issues that were breaking low-level class abilities. The server update carrying those fixes came with a character wipe, which the studio said was needed to establish a clean baseline for tuning low-level content. Remaining classes will be enabled on the test realm as they become ready and the level cap will be lifted gradually, the studio said, adding that further wipes are possible before testing concludes. It also said the Avendyr realm, the server hosting the PTR, will later be used to test planned server improvements due this year.

Hotbar and ability changes

The larger change described in the post concerns how abilities are organized. Pantheon previously sorted spells and abilities into three types, each with its own bar and slot limit: eight Abilities, six Utilities and four Techniques. The studio is removing those categories and consolidating the three bars into a single 14-slot hotbar in which any ability can occupy any slot.

Visionary Realms said the change softens the rigidity of the game's Limited Action Set design without abandoning it, because players will eventually have far more than 14 abilities available and cannot swap them while in combat, leaving loadout decisions to be made beforehand. A future blog post will cover how Techniques are being adjusted as part of the same work. Spell pushback mechanics, discussed by the studio several weeks earlier, are ready for testing and are expected to be enabled on the test realm at the next update.

Other hotbar changes listed in the post:

• Buffs no longer have to remain on the hotbar after being cast, allowing slots to be swapped out after buffing a party
• Buffs may still drop on zoning, or if the caster logs out or disconnects; the studio said this is not the intended long-term behavior but depends on unresolved server memory issues
• The auto-attack hotkey can be hidden, and does not count against the 14-slot limit
• The bar can be arranged as a single row, two rows of seven, or stacked vertically

The studio said a default UI layout will remain, but that it intends to apply the same configurable approach to other parts of the interface as they are updated. Complete patch notes were published separately.