Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow Archipelago 2026.07.13

Requires Archipelago 0.6.4 or greater.

Drop cvaos.apworld into your Archipelago install under /lib/worlds. To patch a ROM, drag the .apcvaos patch onto ArchipelagoLauncher.exe.

Couple-of-Routing-Fixes Early-July Update

Fixes

• Fixes a few to-704/728-through-713 connection issues (reported by Lily)
• Fixes the 903 upwards connection issue (I don't recall finding or fixing this and am not sure who did. Someone claim this!)

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow Archipelago 2026.07.03

Requires Archipelago 0.6.4 or greater.

Drop cvaos.apworld into your Archipelago install under /lib/worlds. To patch a ROM, drag the .apcvaos patch onto ArchipelagoLauncher.exe.

Canada Day / Fourth of July Update

Additions:

• Adds a Library-to-Forbidden-Area Button Handling option. This turns the button that unlocks the Forbidden Area from the Library into a shuffleable pickup.
• Adds friendly names to the checks (c/o @SchwartzGandhi for writing and @fenrir7732 for review).
• Adds "Oops, All Whips" and "Classicvania Movement" patch options from @Xanthus1

Adjustments

• Adjusts the ceiling/floor-breaking pickups to be progression_deprioritized_skip_balancing instead of progression_skip_balancing
• Quadruples the drop-rates of Devil, Manticore, and Curly souls
• Enables kicking out of single jump (courtesy of Xanthus)

Fixes

• Fixes the build issue reported by Fenrir
• Fixes the 814->80D logic error reported by Cringe
• ROM no longer required by host

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow Archipelago 2026.06.22

Requires Archipelago 0.6.4 or greater.

Drop cvaos.apworld into your Archipelago install under /lib/worlds. To patch a ROM, drag the .apcvaos patch onto ArchipelagoLauncher.exe.

Bug-fixing and more progression-balancing

Features

• Vertical entrances no longer get a free pass: 25 vertical entrances had erroneous reachability logic due to a flag (varying vertical portal jump) defaulting to "accepted". These were supposed to just be a flag to take a closer look for when entrance randomization happens.
• Floor/Ceiling Breakability in Logic: Hidden ceiling and floor entrances are now part of logic. This is trivial for ceiling entrances in the current rando (due to the Winged Skeleton acquisition at the start). For floor entrances it's also likely trivial, but technically you do need equipment to be able to bust the floor - this update guarantees you will when the time comes.
• Pickup-balancing: Due to a number of items entering technical progression (ceiling and floor breaking), this required updating anyway. However, there was some desire for more liberal spreads of some decent equipment early on (there was a very unlucky run yesterday). I've un-clumped some of the start-of-game pickups to try to encourage this.

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow Archipelago 2026.06.20.6

Requires Archipelago 0.6.4 or greater.

Drop cvaos.apworld into your Archipelago install under /lib/worlds. To patch a ROM, drag the .apcvaos patch onto ArchipelagoLauncher.exe.

Note given the size of this patch, for larger AP runs it's soft-recommended to use the last release (https://github.com/anonymous-heap/Archipelago/releases/tag/cvaos-apworld-2026.06.17) until this comment is removed.

The progression-balancing update (initial)

Features

• Black Panther bias now available: Have Black Panther show up in the first half of logic ~80% of the time
• Pickup-balancing: Have pickups in the game roughly scale with how long it takes to get to them in the vanilla game
  • Each pickup now has its own probability distribution controlling how likely it is to show up in a given place
    • This means you're on average more likely to continue getting more powerful equipment as you progress
    • This also means if you're routed through a difficult area at the beginning, you'll likely get better equipment
• Vertical-movement abilities balancing: Double-jump (Malphas) is now more likely to appear early on, and Hippogryph/Giant Bat are more likely to show up later
• Ancient Books: In the interest of prepping for there being non-default-3 souls for the good ending, Ancient Books are now part of logic for getting to Graham (and they appear roughly in the first third, second third, and pre 0.75 points of the game). They're not currently required to beat Graham, but it's an optional thing to go for

Fixes

• 20A->209 Black Panther Option: Removed (corrected) Black Panther as a standalone option from getting from room 20A to 209

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow Archipelago 2026.06.20.5

Requires Archipelago 0.6.4 or greater.

Drop cvaos.apworld into your Archipelago install under /lib/worlds. To patch a ROM, drag the .apcvaos patch onto ArchipelagoLauncher.exe.

Note given the size of this patch, for larger AP runs it's soft-recommended to use the last release (https://github.com/anonymous-heap/Archipelago/releases/tag/cvaos-apworld-2026.06.17) until this comment is removed.

The progression-balancing update (initial)

Features

• Black Panther bias now available: Have Black Panther show up in the first half of logic ~80% of the time
• Pickup-balancing: Have pickups in the game roughly scale with how long it takes to get to them in the vanilla game
  • Each pickup now has its own probability distribution controlling how likely it is to show up in a given place
    • This means you're on average more likely to continue getting more powerful equipment as you progress
    • This also means if you're routed through a difficult area at the beginning, you'll likely get better equipment
• Vertical-movement abilities balancing: Double-jump (Malphas) is now more likely to appear early on, and Hippogryph/Giant Bat are more likely to show up later
• Ancient Books: In the interest of prepping for there being non-default-3 souls for the good ending, Ancient Books are now part of logic for getting to Graham (and they appear roughly in the first third, second third, and pre 0.75 points of the game). They're not currently required to beat Graham, but it's an optional thing to go for

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow Archipelago 2026.06.17

Requires Archipelago 0.6.4 or greater.

Drop cvaos.apworld into your Archipelago install under /lib/worlds. To patch a ROM, drag the .apcvaos patch onto ArchipelagoLauncher.exe.

2026.06.17

Bugfixes

• Deathlink: Deathlink receipt now just kills you rather than resorting to 0-HP weirdness.
• Teleports-to-home impacting Potion counts: Teleporting to home with the Skull Key was decrementing the count of Potions (for reasons related to menu-clear). This no longer happens.

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow Archipelago 2026.06.16

Requires Archipelago 0.6.4 or greater.

Drop cvaos.apworld into your Archipelago install under /lib/worlds. To patch a ROM, drag the .apcvaos patch onto ArchipelagoLauncher.exe.

Features

• Library Card/Skull Key Teleport-to-start: The Skull Key now teleports the player to the starting room (room with Mina/Hammer/Arikado).
  • Players now start with the Skull Key
• Cutscene-skipping: Games now start with the game-completion flag set. This should allow cutscene-skipping.

Logic fixes

• Rooms 803 and 80D upbound were missing Hippogryph/Bat-requirement logic

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow Archipelago 2026.06.13.2

Requires Archipelago 0.6.4 or greater.

Drop cvaos.apworld into your Archipelago install under /lib/worlds. To patch a ROM, drag the .apcvaos patch onto ArchipelagoLauncher.exe.

2026.06.13

Logic fixes

Two spots were in logic without the items they actually need:

• Inner Quarters / Chronomage: getting past the Chronomage now correctly requires the Galamoth soul (or that of Chronomage itself). Logic previously mistakenly assumed you could get through with nothing.
• The room past Graham (Dracula's Tunic, Black Panther): these two checks were assumed to be reachable just by getting to Graham's room (a legacy of targeting Graham initially as far as a release went). They now require being able to reach the Book souls as well.

Under the hood

Fixed how logic ties a room's checks/enemies to its doors: they were attached to the neighbor side of a door, so a requirement on a door crossing didn't actually gate that room's contents (which is what let the Graham room leak). They now attach to the room's own side, so door gates apply correctly. No effect on existing seeds beyond the two fixes above.

2026.06.13.2

Bugfix

Fixed issue where hard mode location access was assumed for normal mode.

Feature

Added hard mode option.

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow Archipelago 2026.06.13

Requires Archipelago 0.6.4 or greater.

Drop cvaos.apworld into your Archipelago install under /lib/worlds. To patch a ROM, drag the .apcvaos patch onto ArchipelagoLauncher.exe.

Logic fixes

Two spots were in logic without the items they actually need:

• Inner Quarters / Chronomage: getting past the Chronomage now correctly requires the Galamoth soul (or that of Chronomage itself). Logic previously mistakenly assumed you could get through with nothing.
• The room past Graham (Dracula's Tunic, Black Panther): these two checks were assumed to be reachable just by getting to Graham's room (a legacy of targeting Graham initially as far as a release went). They now require being able to reach the Book souls as well.

Under the hood

Fixed how logic ties a room's checks/enemies to its doors: they were attached to the neighbor side of a door, so a requirement on a door crossing didn't actually gate that room's contents (which is what let the Graham room leak). They now attach to the room's own side, so door gates apply correctly. No effect on existing seeds beyond the two fixes above.

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow Archipelago 2026.06.12

Requires Archipelago 0.6.4 or greater.

Drop cvaos.apworld into your Archipelago install under /lib/worlds. To patch a ROM, drag the .apcvaos patch onto ArchipelagoLauncher.exe.

Fix:

Deathlink was watching for HP hitting zero, which is a /very/ transient state of affairs. Outbound deathlink now more robustly checks whether the player is dying or the game-over screen is playing.