Crab Champions News

GENERAL

• Added 5 new Volcanic arena islands and removed the re-used tropical islands from the Volcanic biome
  
• You can now interact with key totems even after unlocking everything to start a run off with a random piece of loot (minimum rarity is Epic)
  
• Added new perk: Critical Claws: Melee critical hit chance increased
  
• Added new perk: Blender: Melee cooldowns reduced
  
• Added new perk: Iron Claws: Melee damage heavily increased but melee cooldowns are also increased
  
• Added new Greed perk: Brawler: Melee damage greatly increased but weapon damage is reduced
  
• Holding down the melee button will now melee automatically after each melee cooldown
  

BALANCE CHANGES

• Increased the minigun chance based mods trigger chance by 33%
  
• Time Shot damage increased from +50% to +100%
  
• Tony’s Black Card discount reduced from 15% to 8% per perk level
  
• Gold Dice chance increase reduced from 50% to 20%
  
• Blocker Skulls and regular Skulls are now larger and easier to hit
  
• Blocker Skulls projectile speed reduced
  
• Removed random spread on Sniper Crab shots- they lost their scariness and missed way more than intended. With the new telegraphing they should now give enough time to get out of danger before they attack and still be a dangerous force to deal with!
  
• Rigged Totems chance buff decreased from +25% chance to +10% chance (as it was very easy to break totems)
  
• Regenerator heal amount doubled and max duration increased from 30 to 45 seconds
  
• Mace Shot cooldown reduced from 6 seconds to 4 seconds and mace projectiles bounce less while also not expiring when hitting enemies so this mod should be much more useful in general
  
• Grub slam explosion attack radius has been reduced to make the hitbox feel more fair
  

QUALITY OF LIFE

• Combo is no longer lost when opening Spiked Chests, using damaging totems or falling off the map
  
• High Roller will no longer remove Key Chests even if other reward chests are removed
  
• Added a new “Weapon Effects” graphics setting option which allows you to turn bullet FX and trails down to “Minimal” for better performance and clarity especially in late game runs on lower end machines!
  
• The maximum limit of held crystals is now 4294967295 (double of the previous value) and crystals will no longer reset back to 0 if exceeding that limit
  
• Camera Shake (from explosions) can now be turned off in the settings menu
  
• Totems that drop loot now spread loot over a wider area to prevent loot overlapping and being harder to pick up a specific drop if multiple have dropped in the same location
  
• Autosaves now save the island reward type, challenge modifier, blessing and combo when continuing runs
  
• Optimized bullet FX so that late game combinations such as Arc Shot + Split Shot are less taxing on performance
  
• Energy Ring destructible rocks no longer deal damage when exploding, the only damage comes from the ring itself (so they are safe to stand on top of and explode without taking damage)
  

BUG FIXES

• Fixed issue that caused keybinds to get reset every time the game got launched
  
• Fixed issue that prevented the inventory UI from being navigable on controllers
  
• Fixed issue that would cause very high damage amounts to appear as -1 billion damage
  
• Fixed issue that would cause continuing runs saved on the Arctic biome to use Tropical biome islands
  
• Perks that increase damage will now correctly affect Time Shot and Time Bolt
  
• Made several more potential fixes for enemies spawning under the ground and getting stuck while moving (including improved enemy pathfinding accuracy)
  
• The Streamer Loot perk now only affects chests as intended- it was previously affecting every loot drop in the world which was unbalanced
  
• Improved some chest spawn locations that were spawning chests off the edges of cliffs
  
• Fixed issue where the inventory UI could be shown in the Game Over screen or when spectating in an invalid state
  
• The list of joined players now correctly updates when a new player joins the lobby
  
• Added a missing animation when firing the left Dual Pistol
  

Had a great chat with Woolie talking all things Crab Champions and game development in general!

You can watch it here: https://youtu.be/uKyeo6l_pAQ


Meeps, a talented community member has created a site that allows players to quickly find and search up info on all of the mods and perks in the game- descriptions, buffs, cooldowns and other stats are all visible in one place!

Check it out here if interested: https://crabchampions.info/wmods


That's all for now, see you in the next update! 🦀

GENERAL

• Elemental weapon mods are now chance based instead of cooldown based. This has been a heavily requested feature and I will be moving from cooldowns to chance based on many other mods in upcoming updates to allow for even more insane build scaling! The general idea is that it’s boring for a powerful thing to fire only once every 5 seconds max and it’s much more fun for a weaker thing to fire potentially multiple times a second (scaling nicely with fire rate and chance build options).
  
  In order for this to be balanced and considering that a 20% chance to burn enemies would be constantly applied from the minigun (due to the fast fire rate) and would barely be applied at all from the sniper (due to the slow fire rate), the base trigger chance for the certain perks will change depending on the weapon used (with fast firing weapons having a lower base chance and slow firing weapons having a higher base chance).
  
  The following mods use this system and more will follow in the future:
  
  
  • Ice Shot
    
  • Fire Shot
    
  • Poison Shot
    
  • Lightning Shot
    
  • Random Shot
    
  • Ultra Shot
    
  • Time Bolt
    
  • Triple Shot
    
  • Arc Shot
    
  • X Shot
    
  • Square Shot
    
  • Mega Crit
    
  • Split Shot
    
  • Scatter Shot
    
  • Targeting Shot
    
  • Homing Shot
    
• Overhauled the save system- there are now multiple save backups and a separate save for user settings. This greatly reduces the chance of your save file becoming corrupt (some players were experiencing a NULL bug where they couldn't move after their PC lost power while an autosave was saving) as there are now 2 extra backup saves to try and prevent that from ever occurring
  
• Increased the maximum projectile limit from 300 to 400
  
• Time Shot can now crit which should make it much more interesting and useful
  
• Added new weapon mod: Ultra Shot: Chance to fire high damage bullets along with your shots
  
• Added new weapon mod: Time Bolt: Chance to fire bolts that deal damage over time
  
• Added new perk: Rigged Totems: Chance based totems are more likely to roll in your favor
  
• Added new perk: Streamer Loot: Higher rarity loot has a greater chance to spawn from chests
  
• Changed Green Dice: renamed to Gold Dice, buffed to Legendary rarity and has a more potent effect on chance based mods and perks but no longer provides the higher rarity loot benefit that it had before. A note about wording that may be confusing: it says +50% chance for chance based mods and perks to trigger- this does not mean adding a flat 50% to all chance based things (as this would quickly break many perks), it insteads multiplies the chance by 150%. So a base chance of 20% will be 30% with the 50% extra chance buff that Gold Dice provides
  
• Improved the Tropical biome parkour island layout to have a better and easier flow
  
• Replaced 6 placeholder skins with fresh new ones: Emerald, Glimmer, Jet Black, Ruby, Sapphire and Silver
  

BALANCE CHANGES

• Reduced enemy damage scaling a bit on Nightmare difficulty especially when looping as it quickly turns into a “lose all your health on one hit” type of situation which I’m not a fan of. Don’t get me wrong- I still want enemies to be extremely damaging when looping on Nightmare but this should just make it feel like you can take an extra hit or two before the run is over
  
• Blocker Skull movement speed reduced by 25%
  
• The Unstoppable challenge (Get a win with over 10000 eliminations) elimination requirement has been reduced down to 7500 eliminations
  
• Regular melee crabs, ants and slugs are slightly larger to make them easier to hit
  
• Ice Shot is now unlocked by default
  

QUALITY OF LIFE

• Improved cases where enemies could shoot through walls on elite and boss islands
  
• Toned back some more overtuned FX such as on daggers
  

BUG FIXES

• Fixed many places where enemies could get stuck under the map. Any remaining enemies that do happen to spawn under the map should get picked up by the new anti-softlock mechanics and will get auto eliminated after a short period of time
  
• Fixed a bug that was causing the settings menu to stay active in a hidden state while the game was playing, resulting in frequent stutters as the game saved constantly
  
• Some mod and perk descriptions that were inaccurate have been updated (such as Money Is Power displaying a 1% increased in damage when it is actually a 10% increase)
  
• Fixed issue where enemies would stop spawning if players were far away from any spawn points
  

For those interested in trying new updates before they go live for everyone, you can opt in to the beta branch. Be warned, this branch will most likely be less stable and have more bugs than the main branch version so if you do decide to use it, make sure you back up your save just in case!

To access the beta branch:

1. Right click Crab Champions in your Steam library and click "properties"
   
2. Navigate down to the "Betas" tab
   
3. Select the beta branch from the dropdown
   

That's it for this update! Lots to continue working on, see you next time 🦀

It's been just over a week since Crab Champions released into Early Access and I still can't believe how amazing the community is already!

Since the last update, I've been trying to focus on the most commonly reported bugs and quality of life features to try and get the game into solid shape before starting on any major updates.



GENERAL

• Due to popular demand, locked inventory slots have returned with a few caveats. No slots are locked on Easy difficulty, 12 slots are locked on Normal difficulty and 16 slots are locked on Nightmare difficulty. The cost to unlock each slot has been reduced as it was one of the main issues with locked slots on previous builds
  
  EDIT: There is a lot of community discussion regarding this topic- some people love the locked slots, others hate it and want to just build without having to manage inventory. I think the only real solution here is to add a difficulty modifier system that lets players choose if they want bonus modifiers on their run such as locked slots. Having all modifiers active at once would be virtually impossible but letting players mix and match them without forcing a specific mechanic on them sounds like the best option here. I'm monitoring all of the feedback that's rolling in- since the game is in Early Access there will be some trial and error to find the right balance on mechanics like this. For now, all slots will remain unlocked until I add this modifier mechanic.
  
  
• Added new enemy: Blocker Skull
  
• Added new Tropical island
  
• Reworked how Combo works (it was pretty invisible / meaningless before and only affected your final score which isn’t relevant until the top 10 runs update (coming soon btw), but it now has direct use in making new build options).
  
  In short, combo starts off at 1.0x and:
  
  
  • Increases to 2.0x after eliminating 25 enemies without getting hit
    
  • Increases to 3.0x after eliminating 100 enemies without getting hit
    
  • Increases to 4.0x after eliminating 250 enemies without getting hit
    
  • Increases to 5.0x after eliminating 500 enemies without getting hit
    
  
  Once you get hit, your combo resets back down to 1.0x. The newly added perks below are designed for those that enjoy the “don’t get hit” style of gameplay without forcing it on everyone as a required mechanic and instead introducing it as a build option
  
• Added new perk: Crystal Combo: Enemies drop more crystals depending on your current combo
  
• Added new perk: Damage Combo: Damage increased depending on your current combo
  
• Added new perk: Healthy Combo: Heal when increasing your combo
  
• Added physics crowns to parkour islands...
  

BALANCE CHANGES

• Orb Launcher damage increased from 30 to 35
  
• Launcher Crabs now only fire 2 projectiles instead of 3 and also have more telegraphing before they are about to fire
  
• Playing With Power has been removed from the loot pool for now as it was causing a lot of accidental deaths. I’ll look into improving and reworking it in the future
  

QUALITY OF LIFE

• Added anti-softlock measures for enemies stuck in weird places on the islands that prevented being able to progress
  
• Fixed lightning FX being extremely bright and making it hard to see
  
• Toned back various bullet trail FX that made it hard to see when doing late game runs, this should also improve performance
  
• Touched up some of the more work in progress island visuals (like the one with all the vertical pillars)
  
• Added support for native Steam Deck resolution (1280 x 800) as well as some missing ultrawide configurations and 720p resolutions
  
• Fixed various out of map spots
  
• Improved hitboxes on many assets including trees and chests that you could get stuck in
  
• Fixed various spawn points that could make chests spawn on trees or rocks as well as some player spawn points that needed adjusting
  
• You can now no longer take damage from lava on Shop islands
  
• Fixed various difficult to understand UI descriptions to make things like the Spiked Chest cost more clear
  
• Spiked Chests now show the exact amount of health that they’ll take when opening instead of always “33” which was confusing
  
• If a Blessing is active, it’ll show up on the UI of the island (the same as a challenge modifier) instead of having to remember if you chose a flawless portal or not
  
• Homing Thorns are now red to not confuse them with the harmless crystal pickups that fly to the player
  

BUG FIXES

• Fixed an issue where aiming down on the ground beside you with certain weapons like the Rocket Launcher wouldn’t spawn projectiles
  
• Fixed an infinite key exploit (keys are no longer saved with an autosaved run)
  
• Fixed an infinite loot exploit (where laggy players could spam the drop button in inventory to drop multiple copies of the same loot)
  
• Fixed an exploit that could let players use spiked chests and damaging totems without taking damage (using the I-Frames when dashing to negate the damage)
  
• Fixed an issue where the blue collision border would persist back to the lobby after a run
  
• Fixed issue where falling off the edge of a completed parkour island that you had enabled a checkpoint for would spawn you back at the checkpoint, stranded
  
• The Target Dummy can no longer be broken in most cases (the most insane builds will still probably manage it)
  
• Bosses should no longer spawn keys under the map or inside cliffs
  
• Fixed issue where bosses would give more keys to certain players
  
• Fixed issue where you could evaporate if you swam too far into the sea in the lobby
  
• Fixed issue where it would be possible to die when spamming interact on totems with certain greed perks equipped
  

That's it for this update! As the bugs get ironed out I'll have more and more time to put towards completely new content 🦀

Thank you all for an absolutely incredible launch! I'm blown away by the amount of people enjoying the game and have been working hard to improve as much as possible. This update adds a few new features as well a bunch of bug fixes.

Quickplay was initially working in this build but there were issues where players were loading into previously started lobbies and were going past the 4 player limit so I've had to disable it for now while I work on a proper fix.

Now, onto the changes 🦀



GENERAL

• Added backwards sliding and being able to slightly move right or left while sliding (I tested being able to slide left and right at full speed but it was way too OP and made the movement far less skillful)
  
• Added 8 new songs! (most of them are demos but will give more variation to the existing playlists)
  
• Inventory slots are now all unlocked by default- the locked inventory slot mechanic was confusing to many players and was disrupting the flow of grabbing loot so for now you can just take as much loot as your inventory can hold without having to keep stopping to figure out what to drop. I want the game to move as fast as you want and this was a definite blow to the momentum. I'll monitor and see how this change affects gameplay and may introduce locked slots in some way again in the future (such as only the bottom row of each category being locked allowing for more early game freedom)
  
• Added checkpoints to Parkour islands so you don’t have to always start back at the very start when you fall
  
• Grenade Crabs and Sniper Crabs now telegraph their actions better so you have a bit more time to react
  
• Sniper Crabs shoot with a little bit of spread so they have a chance to miss
  
• Tweaked the Speedrun challenges to be actually challenging. Speedrun I is now island 20 in 16 minutes or less, Speedrun II is now island 50 in 40 minutes or less and Speedrun III is now island 100 in 60 minutes or less. I'll monitor to see if these times are too difficult or not!
  
• Fire Shot is now unlocked by default
  

BALANCE CHANGES

• Reduced the amount of keys needed to use the Key Totem down to 3 but bosses now spawn 2 keys instead of 6 keys
  
• Auto Rifle damage increased from 24 to 28
  
• Grenade, Sniper and Launcher Crabs have had their health reduced from 800 to 700
  
• Reload Arc cooldown increased from 1 second to 5 seconds
  
• Bosses and Elites now have a 12 second cooldown in between each unique freeze applied (to prevent being able to easily cheese them with repeated freezing and them never thawing and attacking)
  
• Eagle Eye bonus damage distance threshold reduced by 50% (so it will now be far more useful especially on smaller islands)
  

BUG FIXES

• Fixed ant boss doing the same attack over and over
  
• Fixed ant boss homing projectiles bugging out and moving extremely fast if you were out of line of sight when they were fired
  
• Enemies can no longer be frozen while their spawn animation is playing as it could lead to situations where they’d slide away under the map and be impossible to eliminate
  
• Fixed portal that would spawn in a bush and be hard to find
  
• Fixed the Speedrun I challenge not being completable
  
• Stats pedestals now correctly update your progression when you unlock new weapons or loot with the key totem without having to leave and re-join the lobby
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur under specific circumstances when using a Random Totem
  
• Fixed various rare crashes
  
• Optimized the Boss Skull bullet hell attack so it should be much more performant
  
• Reduced the complexity of the lava splash FX which should increase performance / visual clarity when many projectiles and enemies are hitting the lava at once
  
• Fixed a launch pad that caused you to overshoot a Parkour jump
  
• I made a fix to Quickplay but there were numerous new bugs that appeared when enabling it so I need to revisit and make a proper fix in a future patch
  

Thanks again for playing, happy crabbing 🦀💥

2018 April 1st, the music producer Nosiestorm dropped the single Crab Rave, which became a meme sensation. Since the music video was made with the Unreal Engine 4, it's no surprise that the Nosiestorm ventured into game development, and threw the rave cabe into a shooting game. After three long years of development, Crab Champions was finally launched - on April 1st this year.

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