Malice & Greed News

MAJOR BUGFIX:
- A bug sometimes preventing runs from being started by not displaying initial bonuses has been fixed.



You can now Master Common & Uncommon skills by spending Blood Roses. Mastered skills can be equipped by any starting build that has enough potential, allowing you to create a huge variety of custom starting loadouts!

When you unlock a starting build, its skills are Mastered automatically, including its Rare skills.






Battle up to 4 waves of difficult enemies for rewards! After each wave, you can either claim your prize, or start another wave with increased difficulty and rewards.









Complete Bounties by defeating bosses on each starter build to earn more Blood Roses!






3 New Awakenings have been added, and most Awakenings that were locked behind prerequisite Awakenings have had their prerequisite requirements removed.



Extraction can be triggered on the enemy round by using Nines! This is currently the only way to do this, making it an Awakening-exclusive synergy.

Lethality can also gain extra value on the enemy round by using counterattack passives, or other triggered passive effects.


- Various bugfixes & audio / visual improvements.
- A variety of underperforming skills have been buffed.
- A variety of skills have had their rarity tiers adjusted to increase the variety offered in the Skill Mastery pool.

11 New Skills!

Note: Protean Shot is not a protagonist-only skill like the others.



The starting builds have been redesigned, with each of them getting one of the Unique skills shown above, and some other skill changes.

The crashes that started happening today related to claiming rewards are now fixed.

The Pixie Forest has been added, allowing you to modify your resistances during your run.



Combat Techniques now have their own pool of upgrades that can be offered to you through the Battle Arts option. More of these will be added in the near future.

Note: You can use combat techniques without breaking your Guard the way using a skill does - including True Strike.

EDIT: "Reinforce 2" now also has the ability "Using Skills no longer breaks your Guard."





Divine Purge now has 2 more upgrade options:




Tough Tactics is back! The new version of Tough Tactics will offer to sell you a Technique Upgrade, an Elite Skill, and a Rare Skill - but the first time you visit Tommy each run you can claim a Technique Upgrade & Elite skill for free!



A variety of new items have been added:

Arcade Token - Boss Item
Gain 7 Max HP, 2 random Potential, and a random Essence.

Black Mask - Boss Item
When your team's round starts, gain a Fading Crystal. You can no longer enter Demonform.

The Old Fog - Boss Item
When your team's round starts, gain a Fading Crystal, and all allies lose 5 HP.

Void Sphere - Boss Item
The first time an ally becomes a corpse each round, gain a Fading Crystal.

Electric Eye - Boss Item
The first time an enemy becomes a corpse each round, gain a Fading Crystal.

Double Helix - Legendary Item
Summoning allies is free.


Item Buffs:

- Steel Toe Boot changed from Common Item to Boss Item, now inflicts 3 Maim instead of 1.

- Wolf Head changed from Common Item to Rare Item, now applies 3 Enrage instead of 1.

- Severed Head now Potentiates 2 times per kill instead of 1.

- Refined Crystal now adds 2 Crystals on the first round instead of 1.

- Tesseract now brings you to a minimum of 4 Crystals instead of 2. Self-freeze builds, go crazy.

- Jordan Crystal now increases all Potentials by 2 instead of 1.

- Crash Dummy now gives you 2 free escapes instead of 1.

- Intimidating Mask now destroys 2 enemy crystals instead of 1.

- Voodoo Doll now inflicts 7 HP loss instead of 5.

- Firework now also adds Cull 15 to your first hit.

- Tactician's Map now applies Guard to all allies when the battle starts.

- Poison Arrow no longer activates when an ally uses a Hunt Skill. It now activates when an ally deals 13 or more damage, and it now also gives that damage Hunt.


Recategorized Items:

- Cursed Horn moved from Boss Item to Common Item.

- Reinforced Plating moved from Common Item to Rare Item.

- Laser Claw moved from Legendary Item to Boss Item.

- Hunter's Mark moved from Boss Item to Legendary Item.

- Crystal Ball moved from Boss Item to Rare Item.

- Filter Mask moved from Rare Item to Boss Item.


The Island Fort Event has been buffed:
The upgrades now add a Legendary Item and an Essence into the available reward choices.

While it's not quite as drastic as that, there is a notable change coming to Elites & Boss fights, to move them away from being as damage spongey.

- Enemy Buff: Elite and Boss enemies now have an escalating chance to enter Pandemonium by default, starting from round 5 (ally and enemy rounds both increase the round count by 1).

- Enemy Nerf 1: The amount of health on enemies in these battles has been reduced.

>> Previously, there was nothing actually "Elite" about elite enemies. They just had more HP. The introduction of the Essence & Pandemonium mechanics to elites instead of being damage sponges means your decisions matter more.


During Pandemonium:
- All enemy skills are efficient
- All damage taken by allies counts as Weakness (Guard & Full Brace can prevent this)
- You cannot enter Demonform until Pandemonium ends.

Pandemonium lasts 1 round.

This means you must put more care into constructing teams with synergies that combo well together in order to progress into the endgame and final bosses.

The Malice mod version still exists, which allows all types of battles to enter pandemonium, and does not limit it to round 5 and beyond.


I'm running a 35% off sale for 2 weeks, so at least you can trick a friend into also getting blasted by bosses alongside you.

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Other Balance Changes

- Black Mask (Enter Demonform 1 time without a charge) and Deva Form's Mother's Mercy (ally not destroyed on entering Demonform) have been removed, because they were ignoring costs that were put in place for an important reason, breaking both boss flow and unit economy.

- Collecting a Nirvana Key will add 1 modifier to all remaining Final Boss nodes.

- Jeff now has the Last Exhale passive. (When an ally becomes a corpse, they deal 3 Arcane Damage to a random enemy, 2 times)

- Last Exhale now has Pierce.

- Fixed bug that was causing Essence-based passives on enemies to not activate. Whoops.