The demo's endgame used to be a stone pillar and three sliders. It is a map now. The Dark Lord leaves one behind, you shape it with the same currency you spend on gear, and a portal frame in camp opens it.
It starts with a fight, and the fight changed. The Dark Lord speaks now, eight lines from the moment he notices you to his last breath. In his final phase he winds up the Purge, a blast that fills the room, and the answer is to put something solid between you and him. So before each Purge he brings the vault down. Stone crashes from the ceiling and hurts anyone beneath it, then stays where it fell as cover for exactly one blast.
He leaves a blank page. Every kill drops a bare Dread Map with no Dread on it at all. Spend currency on it with the same click-to-apply gesture you use on gear and flasks, and it picks up modifiers. Some make packs bigger. Some make monsters tougher or their blows heavier. More modifiers mean more Dread, and the spoils grow with it: better items, more of them, more experience, more gold.
The stone portal frame in camp stays hidden until the Dark Lord falls, then glows green. Click the stones and a window opens beside your bag. Right-click a map to place it, or drag it onto the slot, and the slot shows its Dread. Nothing is spent until you press Open the Map, and you can take the map back until then. Open it and the swirl turns red.
One map lasts as many returns as you need. The red swirl leads into a fresh stretch of road made for that map. Die and walk back in, and the same map is waiting. Cast a town portal inside it and you come out at the frame. Step into the swirl again and you land where you cast, or at the entrance if you never did. It stays until you leave the game or open another map.
Dread lives in the map and nowhere else. The Graveyard and the cathedral play exactly as they always did, whichever map you opened. Inside a map, a card under the minimap lists what the Dread is doing: more monsters, more life on them, more damage from them, and what you earn in return. The old pillar is gone from the demo camp. Its job moved into the map.
Every Dark Lord kill now ends with a choice about how dangerous your next run should be. All of it is in the free demo coming in October.