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Striving for Light: Survival News

Update 0.9.4.3

[h2]New Features[/h2]

[h3]Condition Damage Rework[/h3]
Conditions got a complete overhaul and now work a bit different in terms of damage and duration calculation calculation. Lets first recap how the old condition damage system worked.

Old condition damage system:
You apply a burning condition which has a total duration of 3 seconds and deals 10 damage per DoT tick. If you have applied further burning stats to enemies the damage would add up. So for each burning stack the damage would be increased by the amount of your condition damage. But this is the part where it gets not so straight forward to calculate the actual condition damage because the timing on when the stacks are added play a big role. Lets say your attack speed is a bit lower than 1 attack per second you would only be able to apply the next condition stack a bit after the second DoT tick has applied the damage. So you would loose out on the +10 damage for second first DoT tick. So therefore only the last DoT tick would deal the 20 damage. After the total burning duration has expired all DoT stacks were removed which lets you start at 1 stack again.

As you can see this lead to some unsatisifying situations especially for low attack speed builds where conditons could not be applied efficiently in the duration of a condition. We therefore redesigned the condition system so that condition damage is valid choice also for low attack speed builds.

New condition damage system:
The new condition damage system allows to prolong the total duration of a applied condition. If we take the above example of applying a burning condition in the new system each additional conditon stack will prolong the total condition duration for 1 second. So if you have a bit below 1 attack per second you will as well lose out on the added condition damage on the second DoT tick but as the total condition duration is increased from 3 to 4 seconds now there will be one more DoT tick which also benefits from the added skill stack. So with this new system you can in theory pretty much keep this burning condition going forever if you always prolong the duration in time by adding additional stacks.

As this alone would lead to infinite DoT damage ramp up as the damage is increased by your condition damage on each applied condition stack we introduced a system that was present a while ago in Striving for Light and tweaked this to balance out the prolonged condition duration. For each DoT damage tick the additionally applied damage from condition stacks will be reduced by 1/3. So when you fail hitting enemies consitently the ramped up condition damage will slowly decrease again but never fall below the base condition damage value.

On more example how the damage decays on multiple applied condition stacks. Lets say you apply 3 further burning stacks all at once after the first burning DoT was calculated this will lead to 3+(3)= 6s of total condition duration. If you then dont apply further stacks this is what the condition damage for base 10 condition damage will look like:
  • 1st DoT: 10 (only one basic burning stack)
  • 2nd DoT: 10 + 2/3(3x10) = 30
  • 3th DoT: 10+ 2/3(20) = 23
  • 4th DoT: 10+ 2/3(13) = 18
  • 5th DoT: 10+ 2/3(8) = 15
  • 6th DoT: 10+ 2/3(5) = 13


We hope that this new system makes playing with conditions a lot more enjoyable and we are looking forward to hear your feedback on this new condition damage system. We might roll this system into Striving for Light if there is enough positive feedback. So let us know what you think.

[h3]Improvements[/h3]
  • Fissure distortion shader improvements


[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]
  • Choose map list now correctly scrolls to the position of the highlighted map from last run


If you encounter any bugs or issues please let us know. The best way to engage in the ongoing development of Striving for Light is our discord:

Join our official discord!

Hotfix 0.9.4.2a

[h3]New Features[/h3]
  • New in game tutorial added to the skill tree showing up when you have very low attack speed, It displays a hint that you should increase your attack speed or that you can disable skills to maintain your attackspeed. This should hint new players towards the attack speed tradeoff for most of the ability skills.


[h3]Improvements[/h3]
  • Lowest possible attack speed has been increased and is now now caped at 0.1 attacks per second (was 0.05 attacks per second)
  • Stone Turtle highlight has been improved.


Update 0.9.4.2

[h2]New Features[/h2]

[h3]Striving for Light: Survival is now Steam Deck Verified![/h3]




[h3]New Weapon Stats[/h3]
New weapons stats have been added to diversify weapon choices. These are mainly applied to all "weaker" weapons to make them a valid choice depending on your build even after new weapons are unlocked. Following stats have been added to the weapons to make weapon choice more interesting and diverse:
  • Life Leech
  • Max HP
  • Critical Hit Chance
  • Critical Hit Damage
  • Movement Speed
  • Collect Range
  • Additional Projectiles
  • Additional Projectile Multiplicator
  • Condition Damage
  • Companion Damage
  • AoE Size Increase


The weapon stat tooltips are now also dynamic in size and got an updated frame design.



All new weapon stats are listed in the balancing section below.

[h3]Extended Twitch Livestream Integration[/h3]
In the main menu there is now a new twitch icon. Whenever you enter the main menu it will be checked if there are current livestreams on twitch in the Striving for Light Categories. The number of online channels will be displayed along a red dot if there are some. Clicking on the twitch icon will open up a livestream browser giving you more information about the current live stream options. You can quickly jump to a livestream by clicking the twitch icon on the channel entry. We hope that this feature helps further connecting the community.

Here is how it will look with a testing category:


[h3]Improvements[/h3]
  • Enemy designs got reworked to prevent the outline shader from displaying misplaced lines.


[h3]Balancing: [/h3]
  • Shortsword now grants +10 companion damage and +5% collect range
  • Greatsword now grants + 5 % crit chance
  • Dagger now grants +15% critical hit chance and +20 % critical hit damage
  • Greatsword has reduced attack speed 0.58/s (was 0.66/s) to compensate new added
  • Flail now grants +10% increased collect range
  • Magic Shield now grants +1 max HP
  • Elder Club now grants +1 projectile multiplicator
  • Spear now grants +5 condition damage
  • Amber now grants +10% movement speed
  • Sting now grants +10% critical hit chance, +10% critical hit damage, +10% AoE size increase, +10% movement speed and +10% collect range
  • Gnarly Mace now grants Life Leech
  • Light Staff now grants +10% critical hit chance and +10% critical hit damage
  • Bow now grants +1 additonal projectile
  • Throwing Axe now grants +20 % critical hit damage
  • Lightning Staff now grants +10% critical hit damage and +5% movement speed
  • Ice Focus now grants +10% incrased collect range
  • Unstable Potion now grants +10 companion damage


[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]
  • Fixed completed map difficulty tier not being saved


If you encounter any bugs or issues please let us know. The best way to engage in the ongoing development of Striving for Light is our discord:

Join our official discord!

Update 0.9.4.1

[h3]New Features:[/h3]
  • Condition damage over time effects can now deal critical hits
  • Crit stats have now been added to the build viewer for the leaderboards


[h3]Improvements:[/h3]
  • Updated SFX on double hit and clash of steel
  • Improved damage number font clarity and removed glow effect
  • Improved description of stashed light fragments to uncollected light fragments to make it clear that they will be converted to elite enemy spawn


[h3]Balancing:[/h3]
  • Trembling Ground now has -40% attack speed
  • Slightly increased enemy hp pool scaling for late endgame


[h3]Bugfixes:[/h3]
  • Fixed a crash that occurred when companions dealt critical damage
  • Fixed -1 elite spawn pool display bug
  • Fixed not unlocking chicken achievement (it now also counts the basic farmer chickens)

Update 0.9.4.0

[h2]New Features[/h2]

[h3]Manual Aim as Optional Setting[/h3]
We have added a highly requested feature: The manual aim option!

You can now switch to manual aim mode in the options menu which will let you aim all attacks manually. The attacks are still triggered automatically once the cooldown is ready so you can fully focus on your movement, aiming and dodging. We did our best to support as many input types as possible and hope that everyone will find their desired way of aiming their attacks.

These input methods are now supported for aiming:

  • aim with you mouse by simply pointing into the desired attack direction
  • aim with the keyboard arrow keys to aim left, right, top or down
  • aim with the right stick when you are playing with controller
  • aim with the XYBA buttons for left, up, right, down attack directions 


The game tutorial has been added to all maps now and is dynamically updated depending on if you have manual aiming active or not.



[h3]New Mechanic: Critical Hit Damage[/h3]
With this update we are introducing a brand new mechanic to Striving for Light: Survival. Crit Damage. Crit damage depends on two new stats:

  • Critical Hit Chance: the chance your attacks and skills perform a critical hit
  • Critical Hit Damage: the damage bonus if you have performed a critical hit


The critical hit chance counts for all of your attacks and skills. These two new stats can be increased by a new skill node.

[h3]New Base Skill Node: Critical Hit Chance[/h3]

Increases the critical hit chance and the critical hit damage of all your attacks and skills.



[h3]New Damage Number System[/h3]
Damage numbers are now coloured and sized depending on the amount of damage you have dealt. This should make character progression feel more satisfying and easier to read how much damage was dealt as damage ranges relate to the colours of the damage numbers. There is also a new crit damage number with a unique crit icon and new sound effect, which will appear once you landed a critical hit.





[h3]Improvements[/h3]
  • Increased serpent projectile brightness
  • Increased void trap projectile brightness


[h3]Balancing: [/h3]
  • Heleja has +5 % critical hit chance
  • Rogue has +10% critical hit chance and +20 % critical hit damage
  • Goladir has +10% critical hit damage


[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]
  • Fixed a bug which caused skill damage numbers to not be displayed. 
  • Fixed a bug which caused trembling ground to trigger plenty of glaring light effects which destroyed the game performance.
  • Fixed a bug with could lead to a crash or bad performance when playing the flail weapon with trembling ground attack modifier.
  • Fixes for not unlocking ranger achievement
  • Fixed wrong initial scroll value for choose map scroll list


If you encounter any bugs or issues please let us know. The best way to engage in the ongoing development of Striving for Light is our discord:

Join our official discord!