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