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Larks Lay Low

What’s happening in those birdplane filled skies? Let’s talk turkey.

The long foretold moment is nearly upon us, the server wipe. But fear not, those of you with keys to the Steambirds Domain, all is not lost; your gold, hangar slots, RC storage, unlocked planes, and stored crafting materials will not be wiped. Be sure to store items you want to keep in your RC storage! What will be wiped is your planes, your Pilot XP, and scrap. So you better spend that scrap!

This wipe will be happening tomorrow, THURSDAY, so prepare yourself! (originally posted here)

Following the wipe we will be having weekend (Friday - Sunday, starting 10 AM PST) closed beta tests to keep the game in tip-top shape and make sure that everything is well tested when we finally open the servers to the world at large! If you have a key, this’ll be your chance to explore the skies before the rest of the flock arrives, and gain the knowledge you need to help the Steambirds Alliance defeat the hordes of evil cats lead by Meowza. Eventually, the weekend beta tests will become open to the public, but that’s at least a few weeks away.



In the land of patch notes, here are last week’s changes:

Art:
  • New Icons for quest items


Weapons:
  • Shotgun: -10% DPS at long range, and up to +55% DPS when fired point-blank (closer to +20% DPS at mid-range). Has not been applied to URs yet.
  • Phantom Curtain (Nerf): DPS -25%
  • Scythe of Zed (Nerf): DPS -5%. (Oh, yeah... some items have been named after the Oct Competition winners!)


Skills:
  • Hog 1A (Nerf):
    • Armor below 50%: Cooldown: -42-50%, Secondary Steam Cost: +10%
    • Armor below 20%: Secondary Steam Cost: -60%
  • Medic 4A (Buff): Now only -20% armor
  • Arc skills (Nerf): Reduced range boosts by roughly -15%
  • Blaster 2A (Buff): Now only -50% damage
  • Blaster 2B (Buff): Now only -10% armor
  • Blaster 3B (Buff): Now only -40% turnrate
  • Blaster 4X (Buff): Now only -10% armor
  • Machinegun 1A (Complete rework): Range -10%, Cooldown -21-30%
  • Machinegun 1B (Complete rework): Range +36-45%, Cooldown +10%


Other:
  • Nerfed Chariot Judge's race track damage




We’ve also had a few mini-patches since the last blog post, so if you’re not in the SBA discord and missed those details, this is all that happened since the last blog post:

Misc:
  • Bigger island: Landmass increased by +50%, setpiece boss population +35%. This is in preparation for open beta, when servers will be fuller.
  • Super Secret Base: Made non-boss versions of Omega squadron, spawns as normal enemy in.
  • The Vaults: Removed outdated warnings about X-Mines.
  • Lowered tier of Drill Sgt to fix cat skull showing bug
  • Fixed units that were talking too much in Catipede Nest
  • Added 'return home' states to non-boss Overworld enemies
  • Updated some crafting material descriptions to include instructions for use
  • Fixed chat / maneuver exploit.
  • Fixed more of the keybinding bugs.



Difficulty updates:
  • Difficulty parameters tweaked. Intended result is, brand new players find the game a bit easier, and ultra-pros should find the game a bit more difficult.
  • Negative difficulty scaling nerfed; should in theory stop giving unneeded help to veteran players with lots of skills and items.


Player class/weapon updates:
  • Skill: Buffed Old Faithful 3-A and 4-A
  • Skill: Buffed Machinegun 3-B, now adds steam instead of armor
  • Skill: Nerfed Machinegun 1-B
  • Duster spin attack: Now works with Elementals and Ultra Rares. Duster spin attack: Raised low tier damage, lowered high tier damage.
  • Buffed Engineer's turrets. Stays alive for 50% longer
  • Fire Orbs I and II: Changed color
  • Arc guns: Skills that increase arc range have been nerfed by roughly -15%
  • Engineer turret: Bullet speed increased 2x (range unchanged), turning speed increased +33%.


Boss updates:
  • Meowza: Added new attack phase "nuke strike," removed final nuke attack after death
  • Doomsday: Made it so nuke kills all minions
  • Overseer Charles: Fixed hitbox
  • Rei: Nerfed grid nodes that were dealing too much damage
  • Bomb Maker: Slight buff to armor
  • Noble Politician: Slight increase movement speed
  • Phoenix: Adjusted gun mounts
  • Buff to tutorial bosses armor, added fanfare on kill