Dome Keeper News

Greetings, Keepers! We have a brand new update for you today, officially adding mod support to Dome Keeper. That’s right: Steam Workshop support is IN!

We’ve also made some tweaks and improvements here and there, including adding a “Friendly Mode” variant of Prestige Mode. It was requested by the community from people who enjoy improving their score, but found the very high difficulty of Prestige mode too punishing. “Friendly Mode” comes with a lower difficulty for a less intense run, where you just compete against your own score and those of your friends who also play that mode. We hope you’ll enjoy it! A full changelog can be found further down in this post.

Look at that mole man go!

Back to the topic of modding! We highly recommend that you head on over to Steam Workshop and check the Mole Man Keeper mod out, created by community members Ategon (music, art, code) and Leif (code). It’s really well made coming with its own tech tree and OST, and just a lot of fun. You can easily see what a different concept it is - exactly the exciting things we hope to see more of with modding!

A really neat way to transport resources in the Mole Man Keepermod!

If you like what they made, go on and join Ategons Discord server to keep up to speed with what he’s working on (like his own game Vuladune)!

That’s not all though! Bippinbits has two new team members: Raffa and Fio. Raffa already made a mod called the “Hydra Launcher”, which is a strong combat gadget that also looks fantastic, as you can expect from him. He’s already working on adding a mod for a new combat focussed mode, so stay tuned!

HAIL HYDRA!

If you want to learn more about making mods yourself, head over to the Dome Keeper Wiki:
https://dome-keeper.fandom.com/wiki/Mod_Developer_Guide
We are working on the documentation and will be expanding it in the coming days. Raffa offered to provide full time mod maker support the coming week, so if you want to get into modding definitely come to our Discord and let him support you.

[h3]Changelog[/h3]

• Added mod support via Steam Workshop
  
• Added "Friendly Mode" to Prestige. It is Prestige on a lower difficulty, where you can beat your own scores and those of your steam friends instead of competing globally
  
• Improved visuals for the Relic Hunt cables and hopefully solved all missing cable bugs
  
• Added themed cursor, which can be turned off in the options
  
• Improved Teleporter animation
  
• Improved Assessor icons
  
• Fixed some issues around monster movement, especially around drillers not slowing down or stopping on Repellent skills. Behaviour can be slightly different than before.
  
• Restructured title stage menu to make space for modding (and multiplayer eventually)
  
• Fixed Assessor spheres very rarely not pausing correctly
  
• Reverted bad Sword Dome shield battery graphics (will get new sprites eventually)
  
• Fixed assessor sphere explosion also running when paused
  
• Raised upper limit of maximum monsters per wave to 400 from 100
  
• Refactored the "shorten cycles" upgrade inPrestige, as it had various bugs and exploits
  
• Fixed Wither ability of Repellent making monsters permanently weaker if reloading while it is active
  
• Game will now save automatically only after a wave is beaten, not both before and after a wave
  
• Improved cheat detection, especially with false positives
  
• Fixed Assessor explosions having no sound upon reload
  
• Fixed Assessor explosions not pausing properly when game is paused

That’s all for this time, Keepers! We hope you’ll enjoy modding, both playing them and making your own. As always, please let us know if you experience any issues though the official : Discord: Bippinbits - Dome Keeper. 🧡

[h2]Greetings, Keepers! [/h2]
as announced earlier, today we change the pioneer pack into the Engineer Gear Pack. This is now more consistent with the Assessor and something we'd love to do with every keeper. Cameron made two new hot songs that go into it, so feast your ears!
Best thing: whoever got the pioneer pack gets the new songs for free.

[h3] Changelog V2.5.2[/h3]

• added brightness slider and accessibility option to remove vignette effect when deep in the mine
  
• fixed cheat detection marking some legit runs as cheated
  
• fixed Assessor bug on Intel 620 graphic cards, where a lot of elements went invisible
  
• improved bundle decay effect, so it gets clearer when it runs out
  
• changed Pioneer Pack to Engineer Booster Pack with two new songs
  
• updated localisation. Thank you very much everyone who helped on crowdin, it's great work!
  

In the meantime we are working on some hot new content and features. We'll have an update on that soon :)

As always, have fun and please let us know if you experience any issues though the official Discord: bippinbits - Dome Keeper.

Hey, Keepers!
If you haven't bought the Pioneer Pack yet, this is your sign to do so!

We're adding 2 new songs to the pack on June 1st and we're also increasing the price to match the recently released Assessor Gear pack. (And yes, you get the songs even if you buy it before we adjust the price!)

The Pioneer pack currently contains the Hardened Suit for the Engineer and the Vigilant Owl pet and, as mentioned, starting June 1st it'll also contain 2 new songs for the Engineer soundtrack.

These packs are meant to be a way for our players to support continued development of Dome Keeper, while also getting some cool cosmetics (and music!) in return.

Get the Pioneer Pack here: https://bit.ly/3MF3QgN

[h2]Greetings, Keepers! [/h2]
Thank you for all the feedback on the new Assessor, we are so glad you like it! You also reported a few bugs that we dilligently took care of. :)

[h3] Changelog V2.5.1[/h3]

Massively improved performance for the Assessor, especially for Mac and older hardware. There was a shader that was causing issues, and we replaced it with something more efficient.
Resource distribution for iron and water is now close to what it was in v2.4. We reduced it a bit too much for v2.5, making the game harder unintentionally. Sorry about that!
• Mineral Tree won't have resources that you cannot pick up anymore
  
• Fixed so that cobalt cave does not generate for fixed cobalt mode
  
• Fixed some tutorial icons being offset
  
• Fixed missing translation of a shield upgrade

That’s all for now. As always, have fun and please let us know if you experience any issues though the official Discord: bippinbits - Dome Keeper.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Greetings, Keepers! Today we bring you the Re-Assessor Update. In this update, we are giving the Assessor a complete rework that should make it a lot more fun to play, starting Season 4 of Prestige Mode as well as adding a new modifier to it and more!

"Pro Mode" is a prestige mode modifier aimed towards those of you who are aiming to get the highest scores. It gives you the option to choose an order of caves and gadgets when starting a Prestige Run. This modifier unlocks when you get the achievement for winning a Prestige Mode run with a score of 1000 points or more.

Alongside this patch we have also released a Booster Pack (containing a new suit for the Assessor, a brand new pet and two new Assessor songs for the soundtrack!) that you can purchase to support the continued development of Dome Keeper, so make sure to check that out!

We are also making sure that Drillbert mode stays. We saw that you as a community really enjoyed it, so we decided to make it permanent! That means that you can now unlock Drillbert mode as you would any other type of modifier in Relic Hunt. Hooray!

Read the full change list below!

[h3]Change list[/h3]
ASSESSOR

• Got a complete rework to make it more fun and remove a lot of friction from the controls.
  
• Spheres are now shot by hitting the shoot key while moving into a direction, instead of holding it and aiming in a direction. This makes shooting feel much more fluent.
  
• Picking items up is now consistent in controls, being bound on the use key by default (as "using" often means "picking up" with gadgets and caves). The controls are automatically reset to this default, so please change as you like (but note that you should keep use and collect on the same key, ideally).
  
• Bundle is now the default mode of shooting resources. Ability to shoot single resources is gone. While it was fun, it was too unreliable and slightly redundant. To shoot a bundle, just move in a direction and press the shoot key.
  
• Rotational mining is gone. Instead you now push against the rock to remove it. This has the same gameplay, but you don't need a sphere to mine and it's less tedious.
  
• Assessor now has the option of 3 sphere abilities: reflect, split and explode
  
  • Reflection is now a stationary field that can be placed, instead of being an ability you have to time perfectly. While the old way was fun too, it didn't stay fun if you kept reflecting spheres for 2 hours.
    
  • Added sphere explosion ability, which lets spheres in your vicinity explode, removing a lot of rocks around them.
    
  • Reflect, split and explode each got one improvement upgrade in the tech tree.
• Rebalanced reload times, with a repeatable upgrade to get more spheres and a repeatable upgrade to extend the sphere lifetimes.
  
• Added a free pet and skin, in addition to the Assessor Gear Pack (which also has a pet and a skin.)
  
• Added 3 achievements for the new skills and updated the older ones.

PRESTIGE

• Started season 4.
  
• Added "Pro Mode". It's a prestige modifier aimed for the keepers competing for the highest scores. Until now they had to restart their runs often until they had their desired gadget and cave combination. To avoid this unproductive repetition, you can now choose an order of caves and gadgets when starting a run in pro mode. Pro Mode unlocks when getting the achievement of winning prestige with 1000 score points.
  
• All highscores can now be seen on the title screen. This panel can be hidden if it bothers you.
  
• Added upgrade to lower time until the next wave, to get rid of joyless waiting after you mined the whole map. Everything is sped up, including the converter, mineral tree and shield.

GADGETS

• Drillbert mode can now be unlocked as a regular run modifier!
  
• Reduced blast mining upgrade cost, increased last stage blast radius and lowered initial production time.
  
• Teleporter will now just stabilize instead of trying to float back to the position it was dropped at.
  
• Mineral Tree from the seed cave has changed root mechanics, which especially impacts prestige. Previously it was best to build a very sophisticated setup of connected cobalt for the tree to grow in. This was a ton of work and quite RNG dependent, which was no fun. Now the tree only grows roots within a radius of 3.5 tiles (fraction is important for diagonals) and can only grow one cobalt in total.
  
• Mineral tree now drops resources that are not picked up after a cycle. This way it can also work with lift or resource teleporter, and generally requires less attention.

OTHER

• Added Catalan, Estonian, Slovakian, Hebrew and Filipino as community translated languages (incomplete right now - if you want to help translate Dome Keeper into your language: check out the link in the language selection panel in the options!). Please reach out if the fonts are not great, we need some help with it (ideally with a suggestion for two fonts, one being monospaced and the other not). Thank you to everyone who helped translate it! We will have support for Arabic once we can upgrade the engine from Godot 3 to Godot 4 this year.
  
• Added button to show all relevant previous tutorials in the pause menu
  
• Rebalanced cobalt distribution across all maps. Previously it was pretty much equally spaced out, but now it gets more sparse the deeper you go, to compensate for how your mining ability gets more powerful.
  
• Added different sky backgrounds per world when landing.
  
• Achievements are now checked upon startup, so if you have something unlocked/completed but are missing the achievement, it should automatically pop up on startup.
  
• Reworked relic bomb animation (the old skull is back!)
  
• Improved handling of the laser when using a gamepad. It should now respond more directly to the stick movements.

FIXES & SMALL THINGS

• Fixed teleporter looking deactivated after keeper teleports.
  
• Sword does not try to reflect rocks anymore.
  
• Driller is reachable by longest swords again.
  
• Improved shield hud visuals, with ability duration not hiding shield state.
  
• Very slightly changed timing on when scarab switches phases.
  
• Improved some UI sounds.

That’s the whole list! As always, have fun with it and please let us know if you experience any issues though the official Discord: Bippinbits - Dome Keeper. 🧡