Endurium News

In this update we've made it so that you can equip a full set of mods on each hand individually! Colored streaks behind each mod set will help differentiate which set is on your left or right blade, provided you use different colors in each that is. Otherwise, mind the tooltips when you're equipping them.



Enemy formations will change more drastically from volley to volley, so perhaps it will suite you to have an AOE in one hand and direct damage on the other. Or perhaps try Energized Strikes on only your offhand so you can call lightning whenever you'd like but not have it go off on it's own when destroying heavy beams? You could even equip Adaptive Defenses in one hand and only use it when your kinetic barrier is down and then switch back to the hand that does not have it's endurium charge rate lowered!

All this is to be expanded upon in an upcoming patch that will add up to 4 new modules in each category, for a total of 12 additional options, all in support of some new drone types that are soon to enter the mix:



They aren't quite ready to enter the fray just yet, but these drones will have specially abilities that will make them more or less vulnerable to different playstyles. Players specializing in AoE attacks will find it difficult to overcome regeneration effects, but will find it easier to take out cluster drones. Players who fire a wave every time they get the chance will be punished by the armored drones energy shield effect while players with a fully charged Energy Tap, or Energy Siphon build will still be able to take it out in a single, well aimed shot.

We've also been aware now for some time that a bug slipped through the cracks last update that is giving players 50 to 100 times the amount of credits intended. That really sucks because most players could pretty much max everything right away and that makes leveling very uninteresting. Ah well, we're not going to take your extra credits but you might consider starting a new profile, which can now be done directly in the VR landing page. Grinding through all of the beam break levels over again can be a bit of a slog - we're working on that.

Also with this update, A public leaderboard will begin starting Friday. It will only track your highest score on any match for now, but since players have several options between Endurance mode and accessibility settings, we will be expanding this in the future to have an official "ranked match" game mode that keeps matches the same for everyone and will have a leader board for each level of difficulty.

For those getting tired of Endurium's sound track, you're now able to use your own music directly in game! Place your mp3 collection into the Music folder in the Endurium directory and enable Custom BGM in the sound settings!

You can read the full patch notes below:

Gameplay
• A full set of modules can now be equipped on each blade individually, allowing you to use a different ability with each hand.
- A colored streak behind the mod set will help identify which blade the mods are equipped on, provided you have a different color set on each hand.
- With this change, it is now once again possible to use the Blaster and Shield playstyle.
- This will also support the upcoming additional modules coming in future updates.
• Drone positioning now cycles between different formation patterns of varying spread.
- Fire rate is now determined by formation such that the wide-spread varieties fire slower and tight-clusters fire faster.
- Incoming beams now become slightly less accurate per active drone starting at 7 drones.
- Yellow pods now have a 20% chance to fire an endurium bolt instead of an electric beam.
- Damage of reflected Endurium Bolts increased by 300%.
• Removed match time requirement from achievements that don't specifically call for it.
• Endurium Barrier no longer drains Endurium when you've run out of kinetic energy. Attacks blocked by your barrier will now deal damage to your shields directly at a reduced rate that scales with your rank in Endurium Barrier.
• Reduced Shields Restored by Emergency Restore Module by 5 per Endurium level.
• Doubled Power Converter's exchange speed.
• Increased Power Converter's exchange rate from 5 shields for 10+rank endurium to 10 shields for 50+ 2.5 endurium per rank.
• Doubled the contribution that charge capacity has on Regen, bringing the total shields restored per beam to 16-25, up from 13-21.
• Reduced the time dilation of Time Slow by 10% but removed the scaling based on your shield level.
• Adaptive Defenses now grants a 50% endurium charge rate bonus while your kinetic barrier is full.
• Blaster Pistols now have laser sights when paired with Auto-Target.
• Blaster Pistol can once again be forced into Endurium Charge mode by pressing the ignition button, but retains it's previous charged-shot behavior when holding the trigger briefly (holding the trigger when all charge tanks are filled will still fire the Endurium Super-beam).
• Charged-shots from the blaster now pierce through beams.

UI
• Added profile selection to the start of VR mode. This was previously only available in the settings menu.
• Profile Select Screen now always shows the last loaded profile at the top.
• If no controller is detected within 3 seconds, game will launch with the last detected VR settings.
• Changed "Equipment" button in Launcher menu to read "Customization" to match the in-game menu, and to avoid confusion with "Equipment Modules."
• Passive modules now add relevant stats to the profile screen.

Cosmetic
• Brightly lit levels now feature more vibrant beams to better contrast against their backgrounds.
• Performance has been boosted on the Projection Deck and Sanctuary maps.
• Custom BGM soundtracks can now be used by adding MP3s to the Music Folder inside your Endurium Directory and then activating Custom BGM in the sound settings menu.
• Your blades, barrier, and blaster can be charged, activated, and fired respectively when the menu is open so long as you are not aiming at the menu when you pull the trigger.
• If auto-ignite is set to On, Plasma Blades can no longer be turned off during play. This is to prevent players from accidentally powering down their blades during gameplay. Users who prefer to play one-handed can still do so with Auto Ignite turned off.

Bug Fixes
• Fixed major bug in the calculation of how many credits the player earns.
• Fixed major bug in the calculation of how many drones to respawn.
• Fixed a bug allowing Energized Strikes to activate with less than 100 endurium available, which would push your charge meter into the negative.
• Fixed Extra Charge always using rank 5 regardless of points invested.
• Fixed Customization window title defaulting to "Hilt Components" rather than "Colors and Materials"
• Fixed a bug in the Customization window preventing the player from switching back to the color pallets after editing their hilt components with both blades.
• Your laser pointer no longer defaults to your primary color while changing the vibrance slider. (this effected only the plasma types with changing colors)
• Fixed Endurance Accept button spawning duplicate UI sound.
• Fixed "Unstopable" not unlocking correctly.
• The rename profile screen better handles existing usernames, now matches the behavior of the create profile screen.
• Removed a click sound from the end of charged strike and endurium wave explosions.
• Fixed a bug causing endurium gain meter to display when killing a special beam even when endurium charge is disabled.
• Fixed MNR-120's lense pulsing when they speak.
• Fixed Blaster Pistol not affecting the Beam Drones.
• Fixed Blaster Pistol dealing minimum damage with it's Superbeam.
• Added the word "none" to the blank tooltip of the unequip module button.
• Fixed music looping from the beginning when you lose the match rather than stopping.
• Fixed Pod kill bar on the info screen not resetting until a pod is destroyed.

Some edits have been made to Endurium's achievements. Achievements for older, removed equipment modules have been removed, images have been updated to match the newer UI icons, and new achievements have been added for modules added in the Momentum update. These new achievements won't be tracked until the next patch which should land early next week.

Just a small update while we work on the new Modules and Bots.
• Confirmation screens have been added to the back button of the Customization and Upgrade menus. Rather than defaulting to reverting changes, the back button will now ask you if you want to save or cancel.

In this update we've addressed some major sticking points in Endurium's gameplay, centered around the theme of building momentum.

With the lack of a proper HUD in VR, we initially went with a system where you either had an endurium charge, or you didn't. This made it easy to tell if its time to attack or not without having to manage your ammo. However, with the creation of the Hovering Info Screen and the endurium charge floater, we are now able to lean into the "building up a charge" concept.


Here you can see a user with 150 points of endurium built up. On the left, they have 2 charge tanks with a total capacity of 200. One tank is filled and has the typical energy animated overlay, the other is at 50%. On the right, they've purchased an additional charge tank, bringing their total capacity to 300.

Users will now be able to fire off an endurium wave as soon as they have a single filled tank, effectively tripling your rate of attack. What's more, there is no longer diminishing returns on gaining endurium, so the faster the level, the faster your charge builds. Tanks are usually consumed all at once. Any un-filled tanks are left behind, which helps you build momentum as you go because that next charge won't take quite as long as the first. Damage stacks for each charge tank, so the more you've built up, the better your chances of destroying a drone out-right rather than leaving it wounded.

Furthering the concept of momentum, we're removing Shield Restore as a base effect on all Discharge Modules. Since these modules no longer all discharge your endurium, they are being renamed "Equipment Modules." While we liked the idea of needing to decide between healing yourself to keep going, or risking it on another attack and hoping you can win before taking enough damage to be defeated, we found most users felt this made the game too much of a tug-of-war, proffering to push forward so as to beat the level before tiring out.


We've come up with something new. This new bar that's glowing beneath your shield meter is your Kinetic Barrier. As you destroy beams, even the standard red ones, you'll build up an extra layer of defense. Every 3 beams you destroy will reduce the damage you take by 1, to a maximum of 10 at first level but going to 20 at max rank. Since most beams deal 25 damage, this means you can effectively block 80% of all incoming damage by going only 60 seconds between taking hits. This makes damage far less punishing, but does make taking damage repeatedly much more significant. This creates a great positive feedback loop. The better you get at avoiding hits, the better your barrier will work, effectively multiplying your personal skill gains

Players who still want to be able to heal at the press of the button will still be able to do so by equipping the Emergency Restore Module, which will now restore increasing amounts of shields as you fill energy tanks rather than relying on a Shield Restore base stat.

And that's not the only module with changes coming to it. We wanted mods to have a bigger impact on your gameplay and have gone through every one of them to make them shine as much as possible, including adding 6 new ones. From creating chain lightning with your charged strikes, plasma blasts that consume your kinetic barrier to deal damage to the beam drones, endurium wave modules that instantly fill your barrier, or consume it to deal bonus damage, or even gaining two blasters at once. There's a lot to go over, and you can read more about that in the full notes below, or in-game using the new Upgrades menu which gives each module a full page to itself that explains how they work and what its benefits and synergies are. This wont be the end to module updates either, as we have a full set of 12 more on the way, and we'll be adding the ability to equip a full set of 3 modules on each plasma blade, allowing you to have a different ability tied to the activate button of each controller, as well as a different Endurium Wave module, not to mention synergizing passives.

Finally, we've added a handful of new Plasma Blade color styles. From useful ones like blades who's color is tied to your shield level, starting green and fading to red. To snazzy ones like the Prismatic or Shifting blades that create rainbows of color in their own ways. (Yes, we did intend on releasing this patch in Pride month, but alas.) Not to leave out those who sympathize with our Morally Gray company name, we've also add a Monochrome blade that can be White, silvery, or even Black with a White glow for those users with an affinity for a certain other laser sword from a place far, far away.



As always you can join the conversation over on our Discord! We'd love to hear from you!

And we only need 5 more reviews before Steam will give us a "positive/negative" rating which would go a long way towards supporting the game!



Below are the full patch notes:



Major Changes
• Many of the new stats, modules and mechanics, can be explored in more detail in the newly redesigned Upgrade screen, which now has sub-pages for each module detailing how they work, and what benefits they offer.
• Added a new shield meter: Kinetic Barrier. Killing beams, even standard red beams, now stores up an additional layer of shielding. The longer you go without taking damage, the more resistant to damage you become. Taking any damage will reduce your kinetic barrier to 0, but damage to shields will be reduced by the amount built up in your kinetic barrier. Charge rate 0.33 per beam destroyed, to a maximum of 10, plus 1 per rank to a maximum of 20 at rank 10.
• Reduced base beam damage to player by 5.
• Removed Shield Restore as a base ability. Players can equip the Emergency Restore equipment module to regain this ability.
• Endurium required to fire an endurium wave reduced from 300 to 100, effectively tripling your base charge rate.
• Charge rate base stat removed. Charge gains no longer have diminishing returns based on the rate of special beams, allowing charge to grow faster on harder difficulties.
• New base stat: Charge Capacity. The charge wheel now starts with only 1 cell, increasing Charge Capacity grants extra cells allowing you to stack up damage if you do not get an opportunity to strike right away. As you progress to faster and faster speeds, upgrading to have even more tanks will allow you to deal massive damage all at once.
• Base damage reduced from 100 to 50. Damage per rank unchanged from 10.
• Damage no longer has an rng component. Damage now scales based on your accuracy. The closer to center you hit the drone, the more damage you will deal.
• Hitting a drone "dead center" has a chance to deal 999 damage.
• Drone armor increase per tier raised by about 20, starting from tier 3.
• Added colors to the drone targeting highlight that change in relation to its remaining health
• Added smaller drone health bar that is permanently visible below the drone once it takes damage. This can be disabled in the preferences menu.
• In order to balance the players new ability to destroy more than 1 drone at a time, 50% of destroyed drones will spawn during drone movement phase, rather than just 1.
• Added 1 second delay after the end of Sixer's assault before the drones begin firing again to give the player to line up a shot and counter• attack
• Lowered the required velocity to shoot an endurium wave by half. This will particularly help players not using the HTC Vive, as the heftier vive controllers allow for more follow-through on your wrist movements. We continue to recommend using the Vive or Vive Pro for Endurium and really, any melee weapon based VR game.
• Added an accessibility option to disable splitting beams for users with a lower range of motion.

Base Module Updates
• Base targeting speed has been increased by nearly 100%.
• Removed Blade Length as a base stat, base length extended by 30%
• Removed Time Dilation as a base stat.
• Removed Reactive Shields as a base stat.

Endurium Wave Module Updates
• Auto Target now increases targeting reticle movement speed per rank.
• Returning Wave now combined with Blade Throw. Blade throw now reduces your kinetic barrier while the blade is airborne, this will allow kinetic energy to go negative, increasing the damage you take as in the previous version. But, at higher levels will only slightly reduce your barrier level is you have enough points in both Blade Throw and Kinetic Barrier. If the blade strikes a Drone while at least 1 endurium charge tank is filled, it will detonate the stored charge to damage the drone as if it were an endurium wave. Otherwise, 100% is left unspent.
• Electric Pulse now stuns drones if they aren't destroyed by it.
• New Endurium Wave Module: Energy Tap. This wave module consumes your stored Kinetic Barrier to deal bonus damage.
• New Endurium Wave Module: Splitting Wave. Wave and Size reduced by 50%, but fires 3 waves in a line matching the direction you were swinging when you released the wave. Each rank increases the number of extra thrown waves.
• Extra Charge functionally unchanged, but has been adjusted to work with the new multiple charge tank system.

Passive Module Updates
• Adaptive Defenses no longer reduces your damage. Instead, your endurium charge rate is slowly reduced to 50% proportionate to the amount of damage to your shields. Conversely, kinetic energy charge rate increased up to 200%, plus 10% per rank.
• New Passive Module: Energy Siphon. Increases critical strike chance per rank. Completely fills your kinetic barrier when scoring a critical strike.
• Force field changed to passive. Instead of reducing damage after a shield restore, it instead functions similar to Reactive Shields, granting a chance to prevent defeat and extending that invulnerability for 10 seconds.
• Energized Strikes changed to passive. Rather than granting a period of time where 1 lightning bolt strikes the next closest beam, energized strikes empowers your charged strike when you have at least 1 charge tank filled. 1 Charge tank will be consumed to send chain lightning ripping through the battlefield. This destroys beams and damages drones and bots.
• Reworked Regen Module to only replenish your shields by gaining Endurium in excess of your maximum. Regen no longer reduces your charge rate.
• Time Slow changed to passive. Works functionally like Time Dilation, but the amount that time is slowed is proportionate to how damaged your shields are. Duration increased by 5 seconds when shields are critical.

Discharge Module Updates
• Renamed to "Equipment Modules." This modules no longer discharge built up endurium by default. Instead, each works in its own way when the activate button is pressed.
• New Equipment Module: Power Converter. Press and hold the activate button to slowly drain your shields and buildup endurium charge.
• Plasma Blast changed to equipment module. Can only be activated when kinetic barrier is full and consumes your kinetic barrier. Destroys any beams in the field while dealing variable damage to drones and bots.
• Blaster changed to equipment module. Pressing the activate button now switches either blade between the blaster and plasma blade. Holding the trigger now charges the shot for bonus damage on release. Can be used to destroy Heavy beams and damage beam drones. If any charge tanks are filled, it will instead fire an endurium super• beam which deals endurium wave damage to drones.
• Endurium Barrier changed to equipment module. Pressing the activate button lowers your blade and raises a shield. Blocking beams with the shield reduces your kinetic barrier by 1. This is particularly useful against Electric beams because you no longer need to dodge them, and against Endurium Bolts due to their small size and the relative size of your blade compared to the shield's surface area. Swinging the shield can also deflect the Endurium Bolt back at the drone as the blade can.
• Making the Blaster and Endurium Barrier the same type of module removes the playstyle where the player has both at once. This playstyle will be restored in an upcoming patch where we intent to give each plasma blade its own set of 3 modules
• Emergency Restore is now the only way for the player to restore shields. Restore amount scales with number of filled charge tanks.
"• Chaos Theory. Activating grants temporary invulnerability, chance to activate one of the following effects:
-Plasma Discharge.
-Time Slowed by 70%
-Gain 50 shields and completely fill your kinetic barrier.
-Chain lighting lashes out to strike 30 targets.
-A random beam drone explodes.
-All beam drones healed or damaged unpredictably.
-Generate a continuous stream of lightning that can be directed by pointing both hands in the same direction.
-Deals 35 damage to you.
-Nothing. (Invulnerability does not activate)"

Minor Changes
• Changed the method for detecting save games to make it easier to transfer profiles between PCs.
• Player profiles are now simple text files, by opening them in notepad or similar, players can give themselves extra credits, unlock all levels, or all gear if one were so inclined.
• Slightly reduced the chance for special beams per tier.
• Splitting beams now only split if struck by a melee attack.
• Increased health of the tutorial drones, but made the tutorial end after only one is destroyed.
• Added a text floater to the red beams in the tutorial that tells you to swing harder if you don't destroy a beam.
• Added a text floater to the blue beams in the tutorial that tells you to swing a second time.
• Added a laser pointer to the VR menu to give users better positional awareness when their blades are off.
• Adjusted the number of volleys the drones fire before re• aligning to scale better with tier.
• Added slight bonus credits for winning a match equal to one drone kill.
• Added a credit bonus to timed matches so that the player always earns credits when they win even if the match is only against electric drones. Bonus is equal to one drone kill per minute in the time limit.
• Adjusted the default grip position for the Valve Index.
• Tutorial updated to introduce some of the new mechanics and provides details about the infoscreen.

Cosmetic Changes
• Previous versions of Endurium used a function that scaled the ring around the player and the menu's location based off the bounds of their playspace. Until the OpenXR plugin is developed enough to fix the issues with the HTC Vive, we will be disabling this feature and using the "standard" playspace.
• Added preferences option to display a small drone health bar permanently on damaged drones.
• Improved framerate in Permafrost and Highrise.
• Re• designed the upgrade screen to have more detailed info about each upgrade in their own dedicated sub• pages.
• Plasma blade customization menu is now broken into 2 tabs. One for Colors and one for Hilt Components.
• The energy swirl effect over your blades when your charge is full now matches the color of your blade.
• Added vibrance scaler to plasma blade colors. This will scale the amount of white in the plasma trails and dims the blade's white core, letting more of the chosen color bleed into the center of the blade.
• Added new plasma blade color styles. The color slider still effects the color of your hilt components normally.
• The Chromatic plasma blade style is the default Endurium plasma blade look.
• The Prismatic plasma blade creates a constantly shifting rainbow.
• The Shifting plasma blade style constantly cycles through the color spectrum.
• The Monochrome plasma blade style creates a white blade. The vibrance slider fades the core down to grey and then black.
• The Shield• Linked plasma blade color style fades from green to red as you take damage.
• Added gold coloring to the selected hilt component highlight.
• Reversed the direction of the blade offset to make it more intuitive. Negative values now rotate the blade towards the floor.
• Re• worded the Endurium Wave infographic in the tutorial.
• Repositioned the gear unlock screen for better formatting.
• Added an option to disable splitting beams.
• Lowered the volume of beam strikes

Bug Fixes
• Fixed an issue with saving custom blade components on two blades at once.
• Fixed an issue in Beam Break mode that caused some users to unlock more gear than intended after clearing tier 1.
• Fixed a bug preventing the endurance mode intro from displaying if you upgrade your gear after completing tier 1.
• Removed an unnecessary negative sign when your aim offset is set to 0.
• Fixed a bug causing the unlock screen to show if you lose the rounds following getting the unlock.
• Fixed the Endurium Settings menu not switching its options button text back to "Beam Options" after clicking "Accept."
• Fixed the Endurance mode intro not showing if you enter the upgrade menu.
• Fixed a bug causing Sixer to grant Endurium if it's alive when the game ends.
• Fixed not being able to scorch the ground in the Firelands with your plasma blades.
• Fixed a bug causing the clock to get stuck at 0:01 at the end of timed matches.
• Fixed a bug preventing the electrified beams from inheriting the direction of your swing for its spark emitter.

Have any suggestions for more UX improvements? Join the conversation on our Discord!
https://discord.gg/VfNwHdYbmz
We have only few but passionate fans who are vocal over there, but we couldn't continue to support and improve Endurium without them so we would love to hear from you!

In this patch, we've focused on usability and quality of life enhancements.
One of the struggles with VR is being able to display your stats when there's no easy way to make a HUD. While your Plasma Blades can be given life-bars, the fast paced nature of the game at the higher tiers of play meant that you never have time to actually look without taking damage. Because of this, we made levels like Unlit and Black & White scale their environments with your health so it was always in your frame. But what about your Endurium buildup? We intentionally designed a system where Endurium could be one of two things, Charged or not charged, Rather than give you an ammo pool with no good way to see how much you had left.

Still, it would be nice to see how close you are to that full charge would it not?
Introducing, floating charge meters!



This little guy will pop up in moments when you gain Endurium, interpolate to your new value, then fade out before the next beam hits. That can be within a blink at higher levels, but once you get used to it, its enough to keep you aware of about how close you are to that next heal/attack.

And if you do miss it, we've also added a hovering info screen with all your important stats!



This screen can be set to hover to the left, right, or just above where the drones hover. It follows them around the room so that it will always be in your peripheral for a quick glance. It displays your current shields, charge level, and red meter fills up as you destroy drones to display how close you are to winning.

Speaking of destroying drones, the next few UI enhancements should help you do just that:



We've added a blue highlight around the drone when you're aiming at them. Depending on the angle you throw your endurium wave at, its possible to damage them without getting close enough for the highlight to appear, but that just means if the highlight is there, you can be certain that you're strike will land, provided the drones don't move while you're attacking. As you can see, we've also added healthbars to the drones, as well as damage numbers, both of which, in addition to the charge meter and info-screen, can be toggled on or off in the new preferences menu.

For those with limitations to their playstyle due to physical or play-space issues, there is also a new accessibility menu that can prevent the drones from rotating around the player, and/or make the electric beams easier to deflect so that you don't have to move quite so much to avoid them.

Continuing the theme of UI and Usability, we've changed the map-bar from a scrolling list to a sub-menu that gives you thumbnails and brief descriptions of each map. Many of the maps have similar names or themes, this should help differentiate them while also giving us a place to write out what parts of the level change in relation to your Shields.



As part of this UI pass, we've also added a splash of color to the stage select screen, as well as adding a first time launch message to guide new players on the basic flow of the Beam-Break game mode.



Stages you clear will now be overlaid with a gold texture. And that about wraps it up for this update! Next, we'll be targeting the behavior of Sixer, to make him more interesting and challenging.

Once again, I invite you to our Discord for up to the minute changes in our roadmap, and access to our test branch!
https://discord.gg/VfNwHdYbmz
If you've made it this far you probably like Endurium quite a bit, and we'd like to invite you to leave a review, we need 7 more to even get a listed rating and that would put Endurium on the map so we can't stress enough how helpful that would be!

Full Patch-Notes:
v 1.9.24
-Fixed a bug causing the Time Dilation to occasionally freeze time momentarily.
-Fixed gear equip tutorial not showing up the first time you unlock modules.
-Fixed a bug causing some players to unlock all gear at the end of tier 1.
-Improved frame-rate on most levels, particularly in the Desert and Sanctuary.
-Smoothed the menu cursor so its less jittery in unsteady hands.
-Added optional damage floaters, Endurium Charge meters, and health meters for the Drones when they take damage but are not destroyed.
-Added an optional info screen that displays your current health and charge level as well as how close to victory you are.
-Added a preferences menu that contains settings to toggle cursor smoothing, the info hoverscreen, the floating UI elements, and the slomo effect when you deflect an Endurium bolt or fire the superbeam from the blaster.
-Added Targeting outlines to the beam drones to help show when you are aiming correctly.
-Added an accessibility menu that allows users to prevent the drones from rotating left or right during their movement phase, allows for yellow beams to be deflected more so they don't need to be dodged, or enables target snapping for the Endurium Wave modules which will work like the Auto-Target module at half its level 0 range.
-Added a sub-screen for map selection that has thumbnails for each map and a brief description.
-Added more level icons to better differentiate the differences between levels in relation to the other levels in the tier.
-Added a first time launch message to the level select screen.
-Added colors to the level icons and a gold overlay for cleared ones.
-Endurance mode has been removed from the demo version.