Patch Highlights
NEW WEAPON: LIGHTNING SCEPTER
NEW ABILITY: AIR STRIKE
NEW MELEE WEAPON: KATANA
ARCANE WAND REWORK
ANVILS
NEW ENEMIES
Patch Notes
Anvil Portal (Enhancements 2.0)
- I think enhancements were a good addition to the game but they had a few issues: there wasn’t enough control over which enhancements you got and you weren’t able to target a specific mod to enhance. In this update I have added an Anvil portal reward which spawns 3 enhancement choices after clearing an island. You can then choose to enhance a specific mod from your inventory, allowing for much more targeted builds centered around one main mod. The random enhancement totem in the shop is unchanged (other than not being guaranteed anymore) as it’s a fun alternate way to get enhancements, rolling the dice in the hopes of getting something good
- Added new enhancements: Returning, Orbiting, Chipping, Growing, Endangering, Expanding, Persisting, Doubling, Booming, Tripling, Zigging, Accelerating, Spiraling and more!
- Increased enhancement limit per mod from 3 to 8
- Enhancements now work on Turrets
- You can now apply the same enhancement multiple times for stronger effects
- Salvaging enhanced pickups now gives you more crystals per enhancement (higher rarity enhancements also give more crystals)
Health 2.0
- A Regeneration Chest that only contains healing loot now spawns in addition to the guaranteed damage chest on island 1. I want there to be a nice balance between using health as a currency (on things like Spiked Chests) and being able to recover from small mistakes (like taking several hits from an easy enemy on island 1). Previously it felt a bit frustrating if you took a lot of damage early on in a biome and didn’t happen to find any health loot to recover. It’s also much more exciting when you have a smaller health pool that you can skillfully recover rather than a large health pool that just gets whittled down over time until you get eliminated unceremoniously. The danger zone is when you are constantly a few shots away from death while also being able to recover health by playing a certain way. I strongly believe that the danger zone is where the fun lies and the changes in this update will make playing especially the early game more enjoyable and consistent, rewarding skill and reducing the impact of small mistakes
- Base max health increased from 150 to 250
- You can no longer die to a single hit that deals damage greater than 85% of your max health at once. This should prevent frustrating situations where you are eliminated instantly out of nowhere. Note that this only applies if you have a max health of 10 or higher and when the One Hit challenge modifier is not active
- Max health loot has been reworked and simplified: no more hard to understand behavior when picking up Glass Cannon where future max health gains were reduced by an unknown amount! The new system makes ALL max health related loot affect one of two stats: Base Max Health and Max Health Multiplier. Hearts have been replaced by the Mango and Banana perks as I want to remove as much consumable loot in the game as possible (it’s just more fun to be able to salvage later instead of it being a one off buff)
- Regenerator now heals 4 times per second compared to the previous once per second to make it more satisfying to build into. It also heals for 60 seconds per island (up from the previous 45 seconds)
- Endurance now heals at the start of each island instead of at the end and it has been buffed to heal 125 health (up from 40)
- Slippery Slope now triggers before Endurance to allow for a nice synergy
- Grim Reaper no longer heals a % of your max health and instead heals a flat amount per elimination but medium enemies heal 2x more, large enemies heal 5x more and Elite + Boss enemies heal 10x more. This is a necessary change due to the new health system as it was just way too easy to become basically invincible on most islands with a decent max health pool and Grim Reaper
- Vampire now works the same way as Grim Reaper: healing reduced for small enemies and increased for large enemies, removing the underwhelming feeling of meleeing a large enemy and getting 3 health (you now heal 30)
- The Limited Heals difficulty modifier has been removed as it made healing perks in general more confusing (why am I not healing the amount advertised?) and could be canceled out with a single Amber Resin which made it a weak / boring modifier
- Amber Resin is now Epic rarity. Since it scales ALL healing sources it was extremely powerful compared to just leveling up one source of healing over and over so it deserves to be a rarity higher
- Added new “Healing” loot tag. Amber Resin will now only show up if you already have a healing perk (this helps reduce useless options from health chests in the early game)
- Healing Chests that spawn after clearing Elite islands have been replaced by Health chests and armor has been re-added to the Health chest loot pool
- Removed Big Hearts (it’s no longer relevant as hearts aren’t in the game anymore)
- Added a “Total health healed” stat in the inventory UI for Grim Reaper, Regenerator, Health Shot, Vampire, Scavenger and Endurance
GENERAL
- Added multiplayer revive system
- Added new weapon mod: Beam Shot: Chance to fire damaging beams along with your shots
- Added new ability mod: Time Explosion: Abilities deal more damage but damage is dealt over time
- Added new ability mod: Iron Explosion: Abilities deal much more damage but have a longer cooldown
- Added new ability mod: Targeting Explosion: Abilities that directly hit enemies spawn copies that target nearby enemies
- Added new ability mod: Split Explosion: Chance for abilities to split into 4 copies while in the air
- Added new ability mod: Accelerating Ability: Abilities deal more damage but start slow and accelerate over time
- FMJ (perk) removed and replaced with Full Metal Jacket (relic): All damage penetrates enemy armor
- Added new melee mod: Time Claws: Melee damage increased but damage is dealt over time
- Added new melee mod: Arcane Claws: Melee arcanifies enemies
- Added new perk: Elemental Specialist: Damage increased to enemies if they have exactly one debuff (fire, poison, lightning etc.) applied to them
- Added new perk: Mango: Max health increased
- Added new perk: Banana: Max health multiplier increased (this replaces the consumable banana in previous updates)
- Added new Relic: Blacksmith Ring: You can choose 2 enhancements on Anvil islands
- Added new Relic: Blacksmith Amulet: Gain 2 more anvil choices on Anvil islands
- Added new relic: Ring Of Vigor: Max health multiplier increased by 3% after clearing each island
- Added new relic: Upgrade Ring: All chests are guaranteed to contain duplicate loot where possible but the amount of loot choices in chests is reduced by 1
- Added new relic: Arcane Ring: Arcane strength and max arcane stacks increased by 250% (no downside yet until more elements are added, Arcane is underperforming a bit anyway so why not!)
- Added new greed relic: Ring Of Favoritism: If you have exactly 1 chance based enhanceable weapon mod in your inventory, it is 1000% more likely to trigger
- Added new Greed relic: Overspill Goblet: Critical hit chance is halved but also added to critical hit damage multiplier. Sharpshooter and Hot Shot now scale linearly (can go over 100%) to synergize with this which is a significant buff to critical hit chance as there used to be diminishing returns as you got closer to 100% critical hit chance
- Added new relic: Time Ring: Damage dealt over time is increased by 400%
- Added new enemy: Elite Beam Skull
- Added new enemy: Elite Landmine Limpet
- Added new enemy: Barrage Skull
- Added new difficulty modifier: Ambushing Elites: An elite spawns on the third island of each biome
- Elites and Bosses now use a new health bar with their current and max health as a number under their name
- Added a new tropical island with deep water
- Added an Auto Slide feature that makes sliding happen automatically when you land which makes the game more comfortable to play for long periods of time! You can still manually slide at any time when on the ground and can disable the auto slide functionality in the settings menu if you want
- Slide distance has been doubled
- I’ve made it so that main weapon damage calculations happen separately again while keeping the optimizations for other types of damage (things like Drill Shot etc.). This means Money Shot, critical hits and elemental damage will now roll PER PELLET on shotguns and other multi projectile weapons as well as spawn individual damage numbers which just feels way better
- Rare rarity has been renamed to Common rarity: it didn’t make sense for the loot you find all the time to be called “Rare”
- The Waves island type has been removed as it wasn’t distinct enough from Arena islands while also having a “don’t get hit” gimmick already covered by the Flawless blessing or the One Hit challenge modifier. Each island type should be distinct and this really wasn’t doing enough to feel different + wasn’t a popular choice with players
- Harvest has been removed from the portal pool and has been reworked as a blessing for Horde islands
- Added new Blessing: Harvest: Capture zones to earn bonus crystals on this island
- Added new Blessing: Knives Out: Enemies drop 5x crystals if eliminated by melee weapons on this island
- Added new challenge modifier: No Healing: Healing is disabled for this island
- Removed the Healing Enemies challenge modifier as it was more tedious than challenging
- The Regenerating Enemies difficulty modifier has been removed as it was just not fun to be spectating the last player alive as they chip away at enemies that regenerate health. I have moved the same functionality to a “Regenerating” buff that can apply to enemies if you have the Buffed Enemies modifier on
- Added new mango and banana icons / visuals
- Improved various lighting presets (like the dawn and sunset ones on the Tropical biome) to be much brighter and more colorful to match the mood
- Added enemy hit reaction animations
- Increased the visual size of most Hard enemies to make them more obviously stand out as being tanky and scary enemies
- Added skull and crab death sounds
- Added new more responsive crosshairs with consistent outlines regardless of the spread value
- Made a big visual pass on all VFX to be much less busy. For people streaming or making videos about the game this should also help with compression and generally make the game more enjoyable to play / watch on smaller screens
- Added new turret visuals
- Removed the high score system as it was more a test of patience + luck than an indicator of skill. There are better metrics to show off when you complete a run (difficulty, islands survived etc.)
- Added 6 new achievements and 2 new skins
GENERAL BALANCE CHANGESNote that I reached the character limit and couldn't list every single balance change: there has been a comprehensive balance pass across the entire game. I have tried to list the most interesting / notable balance changes here. If interested in the smaller changes you can see detailed patch notes from the beta on this forum post: https://steamcommunity.com/app/774801/discussions/0/596261560284901413/
- Elemental damage is now affected by the global damage multiplier
- Damage falloff no longer affects elemental damage so this is a nice buff especially for mods that create elemental areas under flying enemies like skulls as those were very ineffective previously
- Expensive Shops price increase reduced from +100% to +50%
- Eternal Punishment max health penalty reduced by 50% (so taking damage at 200 health will now only remove 1 max health instead of 2 previously)
- An arena island is now guaranteed on islands that previously only offered horde portal choices (this makes speedrunning much less luck based)
- Increased the time window that the game counts as a “one shot” elimination from 0.1 seconds to 0.25 seconds
- Large islands are now chosen for the 5th island on each biome for more variety
- Since it’s much easier to regenerate health, Spiked Chests now take 25% of your base max health instead of 40% of your current health to balance this out. The upside of this change is that you’ll be able to open any number of spiked chests on a single island
- A common ask was to make post diamond looping (Island 57+) more enjoyable by having steeper scaling to really test the limits of your build instead of steamrolling everything without any challenge. I’ve greatly increased scaling here so ideally the game will be able to keep up for longer and make late game runs more enjoyable
- Armor now clears all debuffs when broken so a large amount of fire can no longer burn through your 6 precious plates one by one
- Combo is no longer reset on the hit that breaks armor, only hits after that when you have no armor
- I didn’t realize how completely broken the key progression is if playing on Nightmare as a new player: you get 56 keys minimum on a looped victory and that isn’t counting things like double or quad keys dropping from chests. Since a new unlock at the key totem is only 3 keys, this kind of kills the satisfying unlock progression that was originally intended so I’ve made an adjustment: the +1 extra key per key pickup buff now only applies when playing Ultra Chaos (as you are likely to burn through a lot of keys) and bosses spawn 2 keys instead of 3. As a buff for long runs, keys now drop for 2 more loops since loop scaling is more challenging
- Shops are now 50% cheaper on Easy difficulty as the reduced amount of enemies made it actually quite hard to make meaningful purchases at shops especially in the early game
- Removed per player shop price scaling in multiplayer. This makes prices in solo and multiplayer consistent and should make shops feel much more fair in multiplayer runs
- Reduced Reroll Totem cost by 50% and chance to explode from 20% to 15%
- Health Rocks can now only be destroyed with melee to make it less likely for enemies to break them (this is meant as a buff to the Ring Of Healing so you can more reliably play around them). Max Health Rocks do not have this protection as they are more valuable
- There have been a lot of discussions about how discounted infinite pedestals instantly break the balance of the game since you could sell all of your existing inventory and invest into a powerful mod at a heavy discount. While fun, I do agree that this was too much: you scaled on two powerful axes at once: many levels of a good mod AND a discounted price on each of them = too much of a power spike at once. The solution is pretty simple: infinite pedestals can no longer be discounted!
WEAPON BALANCE CHANGES
- Arcane Wand reworked: it now lobs a projectile to feel a bit more distinct from the Rocket Launcher
- Arcane Wand damage increased from 20 to 25, radius increased by 20% and starting Arcane Shot level increased from 1 to 2
- Reduced recoil on most weapons- I did a lot of A/B tests and the game just feels better with less external forces moving the camera since you are already moving around and turning the camera constantly. This also reduces motion sickness and makes aiming feel more consistent
- Dual Shotguns damage increased from 6 to 8, base spread reduced by 40% and projectile range increased by 25%
- Rocket Launcher damage increased from 50 to 75 but radius reduced by 10%. This should make it more consistent in the early game especially against tanky single targets
- Blade Launcher fire rate reduced by 15% to start at a more natural feeling cadence but damage increased to compensate (the damage buff ended up increasing the DPS from about 75 to 100 DPS overall)
- Cluster Launcher base max ammo increased from 6 to 10
- Flamethrower mod trigger chance multiplier increased by 18%
- Doubled the radius of the flamethrower fire areas to more reliably hit floating enemies but slightly reduced the chance of spawning these fire areas- overall it should just feel more consistent
- Made various improvements to how Orbiting works- faster orbit and more consistent height. It also works much better with the Ice Staff and nicely floats down to ground height instead of being useless in the sky not hitting anything
WEAPON MOD BALANCE CHANGES
- Link Shot, Drill Shot, Targeting Shot, Proximity Barrage and Homing Blades can now trigger even if no other enemies are nearby as this mechanic was confusing before. It also makes Homing Blades feel way better as they homed to the original enemy anyway so it didn’t make sense to require multiple enemies to be nearby for them to trigger
- Boomerang Shot and the Returning enhancement now will return to the location that the projectile spawned rather than homing to the player that fired the shot. This means lots of interesting combinations are possible like Rocket Launcher + Boomerang Shot + Split Shot: the split shots will fly off and then turn around and rain back down on the original explosion like artillery
- Orbiting Shot and the Orbiting enhancement now orbit around their spawn locations. This makes them much more viable choices in general, not requiring you to be close to enemies to deal damage
- Ice, Fire, Lightning, Poison and Arcane Shot now all have the same chance to trigger
- Firework Shot / Firework Explosion fireworks now home towards enemies making them finally useful
- Increased Pumpkin Shot projectile lifetime and added slight homing to make it much more consistent
- Improved Homing Blade, Thorn Shot, Spinning Blade and Torpedo Shot homing logic to be much more reliable
- Health Shot no longer has a cooldown and scales the heal amount with base weapon fire rate
- Spike Strike weapon mod damage increased from 200 to 500 but cooldown increased from 1 to 3 seconds (this is a buff to the Spike Strike ability mod which uses the same spikes as the weapon mod but has no cooldown)
- Proximity Barrage projectile pattern reworked and damage increased from 50 to 75
- Homing Blades projectile count reduced by 2 but damage increased by 100%
- Ultra Shot projectile speed increased by 40%
- Piercing Wave trigger chance increased by 100%
- Accelerating Shot no longer requires Bouncing Shot before it can spawn
- Increased the starting speed and doubled the max speed of projectiles affected by Accelerating Shot or the Accelerating enhancement to make them more reliably hit targets and not feel like the range is too short
- Reload Arc added way too much visual spam so I’ve moved it to use a smaller arc of projectiles but with double the damage to compensate
- All projectile pattern mods (Zig Zag Shot, Spiral Shot etc.) now have a fixed pattern that doesn’t get larger per level as this caused them to be practically unusable even if it looked funny. This should make pattern mods a more reliable way to scale weapon damage
- X Shot rarity decreased from Legendary to Epic
- Gold Dice is now a weapon mod called Dice Shot. It's unchanged in function other than it only affects weapon mods (since there were only 2 ability mods that were chance based and both had already high starting chances)
- All Strike and Storm mods have been heavily buffed as they didn't feel Legendary
- Reduced the amount of recoil added by Recoil Shot by 75% per level and also added a max cap of 200% to keep it usable in long runs
ABILITY BALANCE CHANGES
- Rebalanced Laser Beam to be more competitive with the other abilities (much faster damage tick rate of the laser bubble but shorter duration)
- Black Hole damage tick rate doubled
ABILITY MOD BALANCE CHANGES
- Replaced Fire Turret with Wave Turret and Poison Turret with Beam Turret since any turret can be enhanced with fire and poison now
- Damage Explosion damage increased from +150% to +250%
- Crystal Strike damage increased from 300 to 400
- Energy Ring damage increased from 10 to 20
- Big Explosion movement speed penalty reduced from -15% to -3% per level
MELEE WEAPON BALANCE CHANGES
- Dagger damage range increased by 20%
- Pickaxe cooldown reduced from 6 to 5 seconds but the line explosion damage radius also reduced by 15%
MELEE MOD BALANCE CHANGES
- Added a lenient 3 second period after dealing melee damage for eliminations to still count as being melee eliminations. This makes Vampire and the Knives Out blessing work on mods like Time Claws or Fire Claws
- Ice, Fire, Lightning and Poison Claws now scale their debuff stacks differently depending on the melee weapon used. For example the Dagger is unchanged but the Hammer now deals 5 times more debuff stacks than before to compensate for the longer cooldown
PERK BALANCE CHANGES
- Increased Scavenger chance to trigger from 5% to 10% and healing increased from 25 to 40 but the pickup lifetime has been decreased by 40% as there was little reason to play aggressively to get the pickups previously. Scavenger is also now guaranteed to trigger on Hard and Elite enemies (10% as usual for other enemies)
- Removed Second Wind (increased damage when at low health). It’s not fun to have to be at low health for something to activate and it was just bloating the damage loot pool
- Gold Coating (Gain crystals when healing) has been re-added to the game but with a change: it no longer works in shops due to a few strategies that would break the game very early on with it previously
- Slippery Slope crystal gain increased by 250% but the amount of health removed at the start of each island has been increased from 20% to 33%
- Increased Toxic max poison stack limit from +25% to +40% (so it adds a nice clean +100 max stacks per level)
- High Roller is now correctly affected by the Ring Of Luck
- Removed the 2 second cooldown from Dagger Dash
- Crystal Asteroids trigger chance increased from 5% to 25%
- Paycheck crystal amount increased by 33% to be competitive with other economy options
- Removed the cooldown from Exploding, Freezing, Flammable, Electric and Poisonous Enemies perks- they should feel more legendary now!
- As it was one of the most reported overpowered perks (especially in combination with Time Shot), Critical Blast damage has been reduced from 50 to 35
- Since the meta of the game has shifted less from “never get hit” and more towards “get hit but heal back up”, I’ve buffed a few of the flawless related perks
- Performance Bonus chance for 2 chests when flawlessly clearing an island increased from 25% to 30%
- Damage Combo and Crystal Combo bonuses increased from +10% to +15%
- Vitality high health threshold reduced from 85% to 75%
- Powerslide fire stacks and damage doubled
- Lingering Fumes rarity increased from Common to Epic
- A sound and visual effect now plays whenever higher rarity loot spawns directly because of Streamer Loot. There is also now a message that pops up whenever Streamer Loot triggers as well as a stat saved in the inventory showing how many pickups it has affected this run
- Driller now only spawns loot for teammates that also have the Driller perk in their inventory which should nicely balance things out. Previously only one teammate needed to have Driller in order to spawn loot for every teammate every time it triggered which was super unbalanced in comparison to solo runs. Note that if a player that doesn’t have Driller breaks a destructible rock, the game will still try and spawn a pickup using the team’s Driller chance
- Tony’s Black Card now works similarly to Driller in multiplayer: instead of choosing the player with the highest discount, it adds up the total discount of all players combined and then divides by the total number of players that have Tony’s Black Card in their inventory
- As per community feedback, Gold Coating has also been moved to be Epic rarity. It was one of the strongest ways to balloon your economy especially with strategies like deliberately dropping Mango to heal back the rest and get extra income. I am keeping this strategy in the game as it’s a fun way to optimize your build
- Silver Lining now only triggers on damage that exceeds 5% of your max health to avoid being able to farm huge amounts of global damage by standing in low damage areas and outhealing the damage
RELIC BALANCE CHANGES
- Relic Chests now contain 3 choices
- Increased Relic Portal spawn chance by 20%
- Ring Of Reinforcement now triggers whenever you gain armor (including gaining armor from other relics), not just when you explicitly pick it up from the ground
- Hoarder has been moved from a perk (that already worked similarly to Double Vision) to be a more unique relic: You can pick up all loot in chests but can no longer drop pickups from your inventory or salvage loot
- Poison Ring now also affects the max poison stack limit
- Ring Of Rocket Jumping now only triggers when you deliberately rocket jump by exploding something at your feet- distant explosions will no longer knock you back so it’s now a much more purposeful mechanic
- Combo Ring can now only show up when you already have a combo perk to avoid bloating the loot pool
- Reworked Ring Of Healing from fully healing in shops to spawning guaranteed health rocks on each island
- Ring Of Fury rarity increased from Common to Epic
- Ring Of Wisdom rarity increased from Common to Epic and critical hit chance per island increased from +1% to +2%
- Turbo Ring was hugely outperforming other fire rate mods so it has been moved to Epic rarity and the fire rate increase per island decreased from +3% to +2% (Previously it was giving +120% fire rate after 40 islands which is the equivalent of 10 Rapid Fire mods for the price of 1. The new value gives +80% which is more in line but still powerful)
ENEMY BALANCE CHANGES
- Enemies no longer spawn in a boring and predictable way (one by one, easy enemies then hard enemies after), they now spawn in randomized packs which makes fights feel much more interesting and dynamic
- Rebalanced enemy spawn weights and counts for more variety between waves and to make biomes feel less linear. Also some harder enemies will show up slightly later into a biome to allow for more contrast between early and late biome spawns
- Increased the maximum amount of spawned enemies allowed at once from 45 to 50 on Normal difficulty and from 60 to 100 on Nightmare and Ultra Chaos difficulties
- Enemies no longer have a 50% resistance to elemental debuff stacks when armored (players still have this resistance)
- Elemental enemies no longer have a 25% resistance to their element
- XL totems now double the amount of enemies instead of tripling them: with the new mixed enemy spawns mentioned earlier this should mean that XL islands will still be intense without feeling tedious. This change makes XL Horde islands take twice as long instead of three times as long
- Enemy health increase per wave on Horde islands decreased from +25% to +5%. This should make XL hordes feel way more enjoyable to play instead of enemies becoming bullet sponges
- Slightly reduced the amount of bonus enemy spawns on 2x challenge islands to improve pacing
- Starfish launch attack hitbox + animation has been improved to be more consistent and fair
- Pufferfish are larger, healthier and have a larger explosion radius to help differentiate them from regular small slugs
- Pumpkin health reduced by 25% and time between attacks increased by 33%
- Shotgun Crab projectile lifetime reduced by 50% and projectile speed reduced by 25%
- Sniper Crab projectile has less gravity and slightly more speed in order to perform better at range and be more “snipery”
- Minigun Crab projectile speed reduced
- Minigun Crabs now have a spawn limit of 2
- Laser Crabs and Hammer Crabs now have a spawn limit of 4
- Ice Pumpkin attack is no longer affected by damage falloff but the attack radius is 40% smaller
- Elite Ramming Grubs deal less damage and have better telegraphing of where their AOE damage is coming from
- Elite Lightning Crab attacks have been reworked
- Elite Hornets now have a spawn limit of 2 to prevent situations where the entire ground is covered in hornet energy rings. I’ve also reduced the chance of them spawning resin hornet destructibles for the same reason
- Hornets now fly at a lower height to make them take damage from damage areas on the ground
- Removed the Healing Enemies challenge modifier as it was more tedious than challenging
- Removed randomness from many enemy attacks (I had originally designed some enemy prediction features with a range of values so that they might sometimes aim higher or lower than usual to make them “feel more alive” but I think making all enemies as consistent as possible is much better for the gameplay and skill ceiling)
- Rewrote homing projectile logic to allow for many more interesting enemy attack formations as well as smoother projectile movement when using Homing Shot or other homing mods
- Grubs no longer hide from the player which slowed down the pace when trying to clear islands fast
- Increased crystal amount rewarded for defeating elites by 300% and for defeating bosses by 200% to make them more rewarding especially in the case of those new Island 3 elites
- Decreased the chances of enemies jumping / dashing by 25% in Ultra Chaos just because it is more annoying than fun to throw a grenade and see the enemies leap 3 times in a row out of the way (this can still happen, it’s just less likely)
- Reduced the time between bursts of the Elite Fire Skull X projectile attack and changed the formation to be a vertical line so projectiles are more focused in a smaller area and less likely to carpet the entire island in fire
- Removed the Elite Ice Skull launch slam attack as it rarely hit and felt cheap when it did hit
- Reduced the speed of all enemy launch slam attacks (Starfish, Elite Fire Crab) to make them easier to dodge
- Elites and Bosses were often a complete joke and melted in seconds due to the power spike from going to the shop. To make this feel a bit more balanced and like a proper duel that tests your build I’ve moved the biome enemy health scaling back one island so the jump in enemy health that normally would happen on the first Desert island now happens on the final Arctic island and so on for the other biomes. To be clear this only affects the last island in each biome (it doesn't happen on the first Tropical Elite island for fairness) and enemy scaling is otherwise unchanged
- Limited the amount of bounces many enemy projectiles have as they could be quite unpredictable and cause cheap damage
- Fixed large grubs often performing their attacks hidden out of sight at the back of an island, slowing down the pace
QUALITY OF LIFE CHANGES
- You can now ping owned pickups (including unchosen loot in chests) to allow teammates to pick them up without you having to make space in your inventory just to remove the ownership and immediately drop the loot
- Rewrote interaction logic to never allow a portal to be interacted with while there are chests or pickups in front of you (this prevents annoying situations that could happen where you’d try to open a chest and accidentally choose a portal behind it before you took your loot!)
- Added unique player colors in multiplayer which affect your nametag and ping to make it easier to identify teammates
- Crystals dropped by enemies in Ultra Chaos difficulty now get auto collected when the island ends if they haven’t already expired to prevent tedious backtracking
- Many improvements have been made to portal spawns preventing multiple of the same portal type from spawning (like 4x of the same Waves or Elite portal) and increasing the variety of portal choices that can appear
- Salvaging happens twice as fast to improve pacing / responsiveness
- Improved the positioning of the red energy rings that spawn from rocks to be more visible and less likely to be hidden in the ground
- Improved portal VFX to appear faster as previously it could take over a second before the 2X / Flawless icons showed up
- No more than one elemental damage area can overlap at the same time to improve visual clarity, performance and overall consistency (it was possible for enemies to layer 10 of the same damage area on one spot which resulted in players getting melted out of nowhere)
- Elemental damage areas can no longer spawn underwater
- The Mirrored Projectiles challenge modifier now works on damage over time and ability damage but there’s a minimum time between mirrored projectile spawns to prevent extreme amounts of projectiles spawning on frequently ticking damage
- You can now move backwards and sideways on ice but it still should feel slippery and hard to change directions quickly
- Glass Cannon and other greed perks that negatively impact max health now correctly restore the max health that they took if interacting with a Random Totem
- Landmines have a shorter fuse time to make them much more likely to hit enemies and be more fun to use in general
- Landmines spawned from the Landmine Rain modifier can now be destroyed much more easily and are less easily knocked around by your shots
- Added a separate ammo counter for dual wield weapons
- Added an upwards force when knocking back enemies to make it easier to knock them off ledges and generally make melee knockback a bit more consistent
- Disabled enemy ragdoll physics for now- it was lowering performance, obscuring vision and causing crashes in some cases
- Fixed ultrawide monitor field of view being too zoomed in and not positioning the crab correctly
- You can now spam the infinite pedestal much faster than before
- Rerolling the shop now has less of a delay before pickups / new prices are visible
- Improved UI text legibility by adding a consistent drop shadow. This should make it much easier to see on bright surfaces like sand, snow or the sky
- Added a Speed tag to Speed Demon and Ring Of Swiftness and made it mandatory to have at least one speed tagged piece of loot before Speed Is Power will show up
- Resin Hornet destructibles can now spawn loot with Driller
- All chance based mods now accurately show their actual chance to trigger in the inventory UI so no more guessing when you pick up Gold Dice!
- Text chat now respects uppercase and lowercase typing so you aren’t always SHOUTING LIKE THIS
- Added a sound when a chat message is received
- Exploding slugs no longer deal damage to you when eliminating them at close range in Ultra Chaos difficulty
- Entering water no longer cancels your slide- this just felt clunky and annoying. The movement speed penalty is enough by itself
- Weapon spread now resets on reloading so no more high spread right after reloading
- Added free look to the spectating camera so you can finally look around at what is going on while spectating
- Rewrote spiraling projectile logic to not completely break when under 60 FPS. It may look a bit different to before but at least shouldn’t brick builds on lower FPS anymore
- Increased the minimum distance that an enemy can spawn (including resurrected enemies) from a player to prevent situations where slugs would appear to spawn under players and make them take unfair damage
- Adjusted player spawn points to make sure that they aren’t next to barrels
- The game now autosaves on island 4 of each biome (as well as island 1 as before) to make restarting a biome after a disconnect or crash less punishing
- Crystals are now auto collected from enemies that get eliminated by fall damage in Ultra Chaos difficulty
- Crystals are now auto collected for convenience on shop islands on Ultra Chaos difficulty
- Improved Paycheck description to be less confusing (it now mentions that it is based on 20% of the current price of a Common pickup)
- Added a low ammo sound
- Improved various interactions with accelerating projectiles. Shooting the Flamethrower or Cluster Launcher with Accelerating Shot no longer results in the projectiles falling uselessly to the ground right in front of you
BUG FIXES
- Fixed enemies becoming invincible after a certain point in a run so truly endless runs are now possible
- Fixed homing barrels staying active and getting in your way when clearing an island
- Fixed projectiles fired in formations (like arcs) “leaning” left and right depending on the direction you were moving in. They are now aligned horizontally with your crosshair, improving consistency
- Fixed launching enemies winding up for too long and bouncing off the ground before dealing damage from the launch
- Fixed Bouncing Explosion not working properly (slow projectiles would appear not to bounce at all). This has also fixed many inconsistent enemy attacks that bounced when they shouldn’t have
- Fixed Bouncing Shot giving 3 bounces at level 1 when it should be 1 bounce
- Fixed Bouncing Shot not giving a damage bonus to weapons that deal proximity damage such as the blade launcher
- Fixed shield VFX being difficult to see on certain enemy types like Blocker Skulls
- Fixed many enemy burst attacks doing more damage than intended- enemies can now deal max one of their projectile’s worth of damage in a short timeframe (previously they could sometimes deal damage that counted multiple projectiles at once which felt like unfair damage was dealt)
- Fixed teammates being able to set off friendly landmines
- Fixed greed loot that wasn’t specifically a perk from being auto looted
- Fixed the slow motion effect that happens when a player gets eliminated only happening when the host was eliminated- it now works on all players
- Fixed Clone Explosion not having visuals for mods like Aura Explosion
- Fixed health rock / max health rock healing areas spawned from the secondary shards that fly out not giving the same amount of health as the main healing area spawned by the rock
- Fixed the Streak Shot buff being reset by indirect projectiles such as Scatter Shot or Split Shot missing
- Fixed poison stacks on enemies being limited by teammates that didn’t have Toxic equipped- the enemy will now always stay at the highest poison stack limit from all players that have hit it
- Fixed crosshair spread not updating on dual wield weapons
- Fixed enemy projectiles often completely missing if fired at you while aiming down sights
- Fixed enemies sometimes shooting at the ground below them instead of at the player
- Fixed certain mod combos (like a few levels Big Shot and Glue Shot on the crossbow) not dealing damage in some cases due to the projectile collision being larger than the explosion radius: this has resulted in an AOE buff for Big Shot on weapons with larger projectiles
- Fixed elemental damage from the fire and ice pools created by the Ice Staff and Flamethrower scaling with weapon damage which wasn’t intentional- the goal with these weapons is to spec into Firestarter and Ice Cold rather than just building into damage as usual. I’ve doubled their base elemental stacks to compensate
- Fixed Elite Barrel Skulls from not appearing in the Holdout minigame
- Fixed Homing Thorns dealing inconsistent damage (sometimes sneaking in 2 or 3 hits)
- Fixed various menus that could go offscreen on non 16:9 aspect ratios
- Fixed loot location UI not showing up if loot spawns while a player is eliminated
- Fixed Leap Of Faith not dealing fall damage
- Fixed crystals sometimes spawning that had to be manually collected
- Fixed not being able to interact or melee properly with high levels of Big Bones equipped
- Fixed Rocket Launcher not consistently exploding when aiming directly down
- Fixed Starfish flying upwards infinitely, softlocking the game
- Fixed Crystal Asteroids not working on Demolition or Parkour islands
- Fixed various awkward chest spawn locations and reduced the distance of chests from portals
- Fixed inventory slots being blocked by other UI elements at certain resolutions
- Fixed issue where non-host players sometimes didn’t save their autosave at the start of each biome
- Fixed Aura Shot resetting Streak Shot
- Fixed bouncing shot causing massive damage spikes in some cases (there were several bugs here like damage increasing exponentially per bounce on weapons like Blade Launcher or the free bounces you get from Orbiting Shot counting towards Bouncing Shot)
- Fixed Level Up sometimes not leveling up anything
- Fixed max Blender level not always dealing damage consistently with the Claw and Dagger
- Fixed boss keys and health sometimes not spawning at all
- Fixed softlock where the island would never end (usually happened on late game runs when you were eliminating enemies as soon as they spawned)
- Fixed enemies sometimes not facing the correct player when performing an attack and firing through their own bodies without turning
- Fixed Leap Of Faith dealing damage to health through armor, dealing damage on Parkour islands and rewrote the trigger condition to be purely based on how hard you hit the ground when landing rather than the previous one that could trigger at weird moments
Phew that was a lot of patch notes to write up, enjoy the update and see you soon for the next one! I plan on releasing a few smaller updates (Randomizer Mode, Ultra Chaos Modifiers, Tony) more frequently as I add things like unique pickup visuals in the coming months. Thank you so much for playing 🦀
