Nova Drift News

[h2]Complete List of Changes[/h2]
https://steamcommunity.com/app/858210/discussions/0/3658515990056189069/

[h2]New Weapon: Swords[/h2]
Courser, Shockwave Shield, and Shielded Constructs

Swords, Architect, Loaded Mines



Wield a pair of monomolecular double-edged swords that can slice through targets and cleave through enemy projectiles.

Sword's unique scaling interacts in unusual ways with a variety of Body Gear. Bodies that grant additional advanced constructs, or grant additional cannons, add another pair of swords. Bodies that have increased crash damage or achieve high speeds can convert those stats into damage for Swords.

Projectile modifiers affect the sparks that are created when Swords destroy enemy munitions.

Additionally, Swords are Advanced Constructs, which means they can wear your shields when modded with Shielded Constructs. Their unique property of only taking damage while attacking, as well as coming in pairs, makes them an ideal conveyor of any shield effects you have.

Finally, they have unique interactions when used with Loaded Mines and Death Blossom. Give it a try.


[h2]Super Mod Rework: Void Slice[/h2]




Void Slice makes you Blink to your Strafe destination, cutting through targets in your path. Void slice deals damage based on a flat amount added to a percentage of the enemy's remaining hull.


[h2]Super Mod Rework: Antimatter Rounds[/h2]





Antimatter Rounds has been reworked. It now causes projectiles to degenerate or destroy each other on impact. Antimatter Rounds now gives weapons uniquely colored VFX. Additionally, the stat bonuses now benefit constructs at a lesser percentage.


[h2]Buffs and Balance[/h2]

[h3]Ally Changes[/h3]



Ally and its mod tree have been updated. Ally now fires "explosive rounds" as its base weapon, which have a cone-shaped blast radius. Additionally:

• Evasion has been removed. Half of the passive attack avoidance from Evasion was moved to Ally base stats and half was moved to Outmaneuver
  
• Echo Strike has returned to the game and replaces Evasion, adding an additional, larger circular blast radius to Ally explosive rounds
  
• Outmaneuver has gained a new buff: After dodging, your interceptor's explosive rounds gain +700% rate of fire for .25 seconds
  

[h3]Blast Changes[/h3]

The Blast Radius tree has been reworked:

• Blast Radius, High Explosive, and Concentrated Blast now affect all player blasts
  
• Preexisting blast radius modifiers have been divided into new categories: Weapon blast radius, weapon projectile blast radius, and (global) blast radius
  
• Many mods now scale with the tree's global blast modifiers. This includes: Discord, Force Armor, Last Stand, Mines (base explosion and clusters), Rebuke, Force Armor, Blink, Void Slice, Purge, War Machine (missiles), Bastion (blast wave), Counterpulse, Shockwave (shield reset shockwave), Reflexive Shields,
• Warp (warp blasts), Volatile Shields, Self Destruction, Ally (explosive rounds and Echo Strike).
  
• Many of these blast powers, new and old, have received balance adjustments
  

[h3]Some other notable changes include:[/h3]

• Allowed separate key bindings for Strafe and Blink. The default binding for Blink is now "F". Strafe is still "Shift"
  
• Strafe has been adjusted to feel more fluid: It now spreads its acceleration over a short interval while strongly redirecting your motion in the direction you strafed
  
• Strafe now has a cooldown of 1.5 seconds, which is the same as Blink. (We realized that strafe was becoming near-mandatory for any hyperscoring build, and that Blink had trouble competing with its power level. To compensate for this, enemy speed scaling has been significantly reduced, which benefits all builds)
  
• Lots of buffs for Body Gear: Carrier
  
• Crash damage adjustments for many bodies
  
• Armor Stack buffs
  
• Weapon Construct changes
  
• A few new enemy encounter surprises
  
• Steam Deck improvements
  
• Myriad text improvements
  

[h2]What's Next?[/h2]
The only real obstacle to full-releasing the game is creating the final boss, and the game's ending, so that we can finally allow "Endless" mode to be disabled. However, there's still polish that we'd like to add before we call the game complete. We'd like to make at least one more update before we tackle the ending. Here are some of the things we're considering addressing next:

• Body Gear: Viper redesign
  
• Ignite and Burn overhaul / simplification
  
• Flak love
  
• Additional polish for underperforming and overperforming Mods and combos
  
• Additional ease-of-access settings, such as press-to-toggle firing
  
• Something secret...
  

[h2]Discord Upgraded! Come Hang[/h2]
We've got quite an active discord with a very chill and inclusive community. The dev team is also pretty active there. We recently opened up some new channels like #weekly-discussion, #ask-the-devs, and #feedback. The latter allows you to submit feedback to a bot that lets players upvote or downvote the suggestion. I'm also quite proud of the #game-dev-help channel, which is a space for current and aspiring developers to learn and collaborate. So... come chat with us!

[h2]Want to help Nova Drift grow?[/h2]
Steam Reviews really help! As a tiny operation, Nova Drift relies on its quality and reputation to sell, and reviews encourage the Steam algorithms to show the game to more people. Please do take a moment to fill out a short review, even if it's only a few words. It just might make a big difference.

Thanks for reading. Best wishes,

Chimeric

Dweller (Vorpal Update) artwork by Advent. https://www.artstation.com/adventzen – https://twitter.com/ZenAdvent

This update introduces new alternate bosses, updates old bosses, adds 21 new Steam achievements, a glossary, several mod overhauls, and many balance changes and fixes.

[h2]Complete List of Changes: [/h2]https://steamcommunity.com/app/858210/discussions/0/3658515990056189069/

[h2]New Nemesis Bosses[/h2]
Now, each boss encountered at waves 20, 40, 60, 80, and 100 has an alternate version that may be encountered if the Challenge Mode: Nemesis is enabled. Additionally, these bosses can all be encountered "in the wild" at high enough waves.

[h3]Dweller[/h3]

Dweller is immensely tough, but shares its vitality with its minions. Pare them down and know victory.

[h3]Dreadnought[/h3]

Dreadnought will challenge your reflexes and positioning as you find a safe angle of attack and choose your moment. Each of its guns that you destroy limits its attacks and strips its defenses.

Additionally, we've given some of the older bosses (Spitfire, Scion, and Warbringer) a fresh coat of paint. Spitfire even learned some new attacks.

[h2]Guardian Overhaul[/h2]

We recieved a lot of feedback that the Guardian should better compete with its Interceptor alternative, so it has risen to the challenge. In addition to being more capable in combat, the Guardian has received upgrades to its mods.


Echo Strike has been replaced by Nanotech Dissemination, providing a means for it to redirect the damage you and your constructs receive to itself. Then, based on the amount of damage redirected, it creates a shower of power-ups when destroyed. Also, Echo Strike is now less needed since the Ally basic attack now deals innate splash damage.


Medi-Charge has been updated with a new power that allows the Guardian to also redirect self-damage from you or your advanced constructs. Fire at will!

[h2]Saturation Fire Upgrade[/h2]

Sustained-firing builds needed a little something to compete with alpha-striking builds. Saturation Fire can now reward you for keeping those bullets flying.

[h2]New Achievements[/h2]


[h2]What's Next?[/h2]

The only real obstacle to full-releasing the game is creating the final boss, and the game's ending, so that we can finally allow "Endless" mode to be disabled. However, there's still polish that we'd like to add before we call the game complete. We'd like to make at least one more update before we tackle the ending. Here are some of the things we're considering addressing:

• New Weapon Gear: Swords
  
• New Weapon Gear: Flail
  
• Gear adjustments: Specter
  
• Mod Adjustments: Ally Interceptor mod tree
  
• More mods compatible with Ally Interceptors
  
• Mod Rework: Antimatter Rounds
  
• Mod Rework: Displacement
  
• Enemy spawn improvements
  
• Visual effects iterations
  

Thanks for reading. Best wishes,

Chimeric / Jeffrey Nielson

Hello Drifters,

If you can believe it, Nova Drift launched into Early Access almost 4 years ago! We always knew the price would increase a few times as we approached full release, but for some reason we never got around to it, until now... and the time for the first increase is coming soon: January 16th to be exact. After that the game will go from $14.99 to $17.99 USD, and all other currencies will increase as well in a similar proportion.

If you are reading this before January 5th, 2023, then you still have time to get the game at 50% off, which will be about as cheap as the game will be for quite a while. If you own it and have a friend with it on their wishlist, it might be a good time to let them know!

Thanks again for the support.

-Miles @ Pixeljam

Hello Drifters!

It's been awesome watching everyone's reaction to the new update! We've been reviewing all of the feedback you've given us, especially as it relates to the challenge of the last two updates, and decided that another difficulty balance patch could go a long way to improving new player experiences and veteran grievances both. Here's what we did:

Enemy Balance Changes

• The Crucible boss now has a longer wind-up for its single burning hoop attack
  
• The Crucible boss's single burning hoop attack now ramps up its targeting over a second instead of immediately having good targeting, but also lasts a little bit longer before degenerating
  
• The Crucible boss's burning hoop attacks have a more clear indicator of the trajectory at which they will be fired
  
• Tracer spawn quantity, at the mean and especially the high-end, has been reduced
  
• Tracer orbs, when combo'd, now release 4 sub-projectiles instead of 5
  
• Tracers will no longer "exert" themselves to combo their projectiles until a certain amount of time has passed and they no longer have shields ("exert" means gain bonus cooldown when they detect a combo they could make)
  
• Reduced the cooldown bonus that Tracers gain by "exerting" to make a combo +200% -> +150%
  
• Tracer bullet damage 25 -> 12
  
• Tracer bullet "burning wake" damage -7.4%
  
• Tracers now wait an additional 0-.5 seconds before acting
  
• Hammerheads now only deal blast damage on collision while they are charging
  
• Hammerhead death clusters damage -12.5%
  
• Hammerhead initial death explosion, preceding the clusters, now deals zero damage but still knocks you away from the epicenter
  
• Champion Juggernaut shot and missile rate of fire -15%
  
• Prevented any one dynamic spawn event from creating two or more Juggernauts of the Champion variety. If it happens, one will be demoted to Elite
  
• Myrmidon bomb cluster damage -12.5%
  
• When the shooter of a Myrmidon bomb dies, the bomb's targeting decays over time
  
• Myrmidon and Cherub healing auras no longer heal themselves, just other units
  
• Champion Shredder Mine sub-spike damage reduced 14 -> 11
  

Thanks for playing!

Updated localization for Brazilian Portuguese, Traditional Chinese, French, Japanese, Korean, and Polish