[h2]Letter from the Team[/h2]
We’re excited to announce a variety of new features that we’re launching in our 2nd Gods & Relics Mid-Season Update (0.3.5). We hope you’ll enjoy them and look forward to hearing your feedback.
In addition to this update we continue to work toward 1.0 with new content and features. We will talk more about the details of 1.0 in future community posts.
[h2]Release Timing[/h2]
This patch will be released at approximately 10 am PT (UTC-8) on December 20th, 2023.
[h2]New Features[/h2]
[h3]Records[/h3]
We added a new feature called Records that tracks your best performance over time in various categories. You can review your records in a new tab in the Logbook.
Additionally, we revamped the End Run screen to expose various Records, including allowing for fun comparisons between party member performance in multiplayer.
[h3]Matchmaking Improvements[/h3]
By popular demand we updated matchmaking to allow for choosing your desired party size. With this change, you'll be able to find parties of 3 and 4 players via matchmaking if you wish. Of course, depending on how many people are in the matchmaking pool at any one time, there may be a longer wait to find a party.
In addition, we now make an attempt to group players of similar Rank. This is to avoid the situation of a new player matching with a player near the highest ranks. While waiting in matchmaking the acceptable rank difference will expand over time, so it's still possible that someone at Rank 1 will match with someone at Rank 20 if those are the only two people looking for a match, but it's less likely to happen.
[h3]Option to Partially Delete Player Data[/h3]
We added the ability to do a partial deletion of your character save data from the settings menu. Data deleted: quest progress, Victory Board progress, Aspect unlocks, Vestige unlocks, Trinket unlocks, and Trinket keys. Data kept: cosmetics, Vault Dust, Season Level, Solo/Group Ranks, and your character name. In the future we plan to provide a way to change your character name.
The goal with deleting certain data and keeping other data is to allow you to restart quest progression and gameplay unlocks without losing your cosmetics, Dust, Season Level, or Rank.
This option can be found in the "Other" tab of Settings and is only usable from the main menu.
[h3]Many new Binding Ascension VFX[/h3]
Our goal is for every Binding Ascension to have unique visuals to both make them feel exciting to use and be clearly differentiated. This update adds over 30 new Binding Ascension VFX. For one example, an electric Godkeeper spear:
[h3]Trading Cards, Badges, and Emotes[/h3]
Along with this update we are launching a pack of Steam Community items including trading cards, badges, and emotes. Here's a few samples of the available emotes:
[h2]Other Changes[/h2]
[h3]General & Quests[/h3]
With our changes to no longer having season specific quests we are continuing to do work to roll quests out with logical progression. With this update new players won't have access to the Starship book until they hit a certain point in quest progression, and other elements of quest progression have been updated to make this clear and smooth.
- Added missing NPCs to Raven villain chunk for quests.
- Improved communication about where to find the Opal Slab.
- Fixed group rank achievements to utilize the run difficulty rank instead of the individual player rank.
- Fixed bug where Chainbreaker abilities counted towards Bonk quest progress.
- Increased healing fountain heal from 10 HP >>> 15 HP.
- Fixed Trinket Rose of Rubies occasionally causing incorrect damage previews.
- Locked Starship book behind quest progression.
- Crimson Kwillfish and Brain Tuna now correctly show on the status effect the amount of stat increase.
- Renamed Rank 20 Villain Challenge Buff "Bombbastic" >>> "Blastback" due to existing Daily Challenge mutator with same name.
- Fixed certain Sea Breaches not working with Chart of Stars trinket.
- Fixed bug where Poison Dash quest wasn't progressing if you had an ascension.
- Locked Star Captain unlock quest behind unlocking the Derelict Starship book.
- Various quest fixes to misnamed Victory Board quests.
- Changed shared objectives from Bromeo and Julius quest to solo.
[h3]Vestiges, Sets, and Trinkets[/h3]
We had two goals with our Trinket updates in this patch.
First off, we wanted to raise the power level of a few underperforming trinkets by bumping up their numbers.
Secondly, we modified how the four core status effect Trinkets function. Aside from giving +1 to their respective set they will now force Binding drafts to show the connected Binding (e.g. Talons of Cyn will cause Poison Vapor to appear in the Binding draft) but to balance it out these Trinkets no longer increase damage done by their respective status effects. This decision was made to give a more straightforward and consistently useful bonus.
- Updated Uncommon vestige Verdant Sprout to grant Max HP and then heal, instead of healing then granting Max HP.
- Fixed Trinket Union of the Needless granting revived player 3 Omni Damage instead of 30 Omni Damage.
- Fixed Pincushion inflicting 2 stacks of Punctured instead of 1.
- Fixed Rare vestige Inkley Map not updating stacks when picking up an orb. Fixed Inkley Map occasionally granting extra stacks with multiple of the vestige.
- Twin Fangs now correctly has the text on its status effect match the effect of the Vestige.
- Emblem of Enterprise: Increase the chance of Kwillings dropping by 30 >>> 35%.
- Dial of Fate: only can select between Burn, Poison, or Bleed damage making it a more consistent damage dealing status effect choice.
- Stone of Scholars: Magic power increased from 10 >>> 15.
- Marker of the Unbound: Reduced the amount of Binding uses required from 6 >>> 5.
- Heart of Hero: Fixed a typo in the Trinket stating it only gives 2 sets instead of 3.
- Talons of Cyn, Blaze of Brigid, Everfrost of Arcturia, and Essence of Quillion no longer apply their related status effects. They now will force their related Binding to show up in Binding drafts.
[h3]Draftable Bindings[/h3]
- Fixed Smoke Bomb ascension Cluster Bomb inflicting Shatter while having Shrapnel Smoke Bomb Uncommon upgrade instead of Shattering Smoke Bomb Rare upgrade.
- Updated Chain Lightning Uncommon augment Empowering Lightning "+20 ability power until a Binding is uesed." >>> "+20 ability power until an Attack Binding is used."
- Updated wording of Poison Vapor Uncommon augment Widespread Vapor for clarity. "Ascensions that affect a single target now affect all targets." >>> "...affect all targets in the area."
- Fixed Grasp ascension Harpoon not properly granting +100 crit damage.
- Blast, the Blink Ascension, is now correctly tagged as an Attack Binding.
[h3]Enemies[/h3]
Overall as we head towards 1.0 we're working hard on game balance, with many bigger changes coming in that update. In the meantime we wanted to increase the challenge just a little in a few areas where enemies were underpowered. To that end we increased the health slightly on very low hp enemies and also have increased the health across the board of enemies in multiplayer, especially at high player counts.
- Scaled up enemy health more in multiplayer. Slightly in 2 player, and progressively more in 3 and 4 player.
- Increased the health of many low HP enemies by a small amount.
- Fixed Inkula not spawning consistently during Villain Argolath fight in Rank 20.
[h3]Magma Miner[/h3]
- Fixed Smash Uncommon augment Wrecking Smash not stacking.
[h3]Star Captain[/h3]
- Fixed Chillazer ascension Big Game Hunter not inflicting Shocked with Epic augment Shocking Chillazer.
[h3]Chainbreaker[/h3]
- Updated Chainbreaker Binding icons to be more visually differentiated from each other to read better.
[h3]Godkeeper[/h3]
- Updated Whirlwind Epic augment Elusive Whirlwind to not consume Velocity granted if you already have stacks of Velocity.
[h3]UI[/h3]
- Fixed nodraft tag visible in ability upgrade tooltip.
- Changed the "fell behind server" error message to suggest players try offline mode if they are having problems.
- The delay between floating messages in combat has been slightly reduced.
[h3]Visuals[/h3]
- Added VFX for Spiked Status and Shocked Status.
- Added VFX to show what mode Mission Leader is in (Star Captain only).
- Fixed Radiant Market book select portal VFX.
[h3]Audio[/h3]
- Added partial Scribe VO.
- Added partial Tinkerer VO.
[h3]Engine & Other Bug Fixes[/h3]
- When playing in Steam Big Picture mode force the game into full-screen.
