0.9999999 Update (0.99)

Updates

Important Changes

  • Combat Update: We've enhanced readibility ; and made changes to the combat in higher difficulties. (See Combat Readability Update section below)
  • Balance Update: We've rebalanced the game! Key updates include:
    - Difficulty: Adjustments to Co-op and to the Cataclysmic difficulty.
    - Combat & Gear: Power tuning for Gifts, Hexes, some Trinkets and Weapons.
    - Economy: Rebalanced rewards and costs.
  • Rewards Update: New rewards, new shops, new choices and updated level generation. (See Rewards Update section below)
  • Rarity Update: Rarities now use multipliers instead of bonus levels + New Gifts' special Mythic version! (See Rarity Update section below)
  • New Mechanics & Features:
    - Expanded Build Options: Added 17 new Affixes, including Ethereal Blade triggers and Katars Bleed Infusion enhancements.
    - New Magifish: Introducing the Chrono Fish (replaces the Chrono Catch Trinket).
    - Returning Gift: The Double Hits Gift returns as a new Encrypted Memory!
  • Exploration & QoL:
    - Added Fast-Return Teleporters to preserve momentum while exploring.
    - Added Camera Distance controls. (See QoL section below)
    - Added new islands to the Incubator and Sanctuary biomes.
    - Added Gameplay Tips to loading screens. Less waiting, more wisdom!
  • Memory Deck: Rebalanced. Your old decks will now be invalid and will need to be modified.
  • Visuals & UI: Updated HUD, body portraits, and unique Vortex visuals when changing difficulty at the Ark.
  • Steam Input and Nintendo Switch Pro controllers are now fully supported.
  • A new Auto Combo Accessibility Option is available. Hold to combo attack. Double tap/press to perform charged attacks.
  • Performance: Boosted overall FPS and resolved early-run/shop stutters. (See Optimization section below)
  • Warning: If you resume an ongoing expedition, under-the-hood changes can invalidate it in this new update.

Combat Update

  • Readibility:
    - Enemy Attack Previews: Added a new dynamic warning system that previews incoming enemy attack zones (customizable in Accessibility Options).
    - Player Occlusion Silhouette: A silhouette is now rendered when the player character is obscured behind enemies.
    - Enemies Timing Tweaks: A lot of enemy attacks have been tweaked to have better timings and ensure proper fairness.
    - HUD: Made 'low life' red frame less invasive.
  • New Elite Force Fields:
    - In higher difficulties some elites now spawn with a temporary Force Field that only your Alterattack can break. Other hits still hurt them, but deal much less damage.
    - How often they show up depends on the difficulty and how far you are in the run.
    - Their Force Field runs out after a while, and while it's up they're immune to crowd control.
    - The Force Field shows on the enemy's health bar, colored by level.
    - The Force Field bubble lights up when hit, fades out when it expires.

Rewards Update

  • Economy: Rebalanced all prices.
  • Rewards: Added several new rewards exclusive to Elites:
    - Transmuter: increases the rarity of an item
    - Enhanced Gift and Gear Sources: guaranteed minimal rarity and increased chances of rarity
    - Enhanced Boosts and Amplifiers: give 2 levels instead of 1
    - Enhanced Shell and Cog packs: give more currency
  • Shops:
    - There are now 6 types of shops (Gear, Gifts, Heal, Upgrade, Memonite and the main one with a bit of everything).
    - Reworked how they appear in the level and added new situations where you can choose the type of a shop.
    - Once discovered, you can now freely teleport in and out of the Hidden Shop.
    - The main shop in the last biome of an expedition now has more interesting items (including the new Transmuter).
  • Level generation:
    - Added several new situations where you have to choose between risk and reward.
    - Arenas now always make you choose a reward before starting the fight.
    - Reworked where Elites (and their related rewards) appear.
  • Payment gates:
    - Some biomes now have more chances to get costs in Health or costs in Shells.
    - Increased the level of the gear to match those in shops.
    - Added a new "Shell pack" that can be bought using Health.
  • Bosses: No longer drop a Gift Source. Instead, they drop a lot of Shell and Cog packs.
  • Chests: The amount of Cogs in chests now scales with the biome they are in.
  • Trial Chests: Replaced their reward by a Shell pack, a Cog pack and a random individual enhanced source.
  • Gear Sources: Now always give 3 choices (from 2).
  • Drops: Added a very small chance to have a mob drop Shell packs. This comes in 3 forms: standard, big and GIGANTIC.
  • Eperin's Upgrades: Removed the Buyable Boosts upgrade, as it is now unlocked by default.
  • Co-op:
    - Recycling: In multiplayer, recycling now only gives Shells to the player that recycled.

Rarity Update

  • Rarity now works with multipliers. This allows for a less broken start of your Expeditions and a better scaling in the end.
  • Items that you get in the Ark and can bring into your expeditions now directly have their final rarity when you get them. This includes items from FREND and from Cuprik's forge.
    However, these items and the items that you get at the start of an Expedition now have less chance to get a rarity.
  • Epic rarity and higher give 1 bonus affix (up to a maximum of 4).
  • Rarity now unlocks through 6 steps of the Loyalty program (from 3). All Cogs previously deposited have been saved, even if you do not see them in the UI. If you use an existing save, simply go talk to FREND to progress through its new Loyalty program steps.
  • Ark: Altar: Rebalanced unlocked costs and max chances.
  • Gifts:
    - No longer have a fixed max level. Instead, they can have max values, and the max level is dynamic depending on the rarity.
    - Several non-amplifiable Gifts now have a Mythic version (meaning that they will get an upgrade only if they drop in the Mythic rarity).
    - Amplifier Stock: Drops +1 Amplifier.
    - Boost Stock: Drops +1 Boost.
    - Double Rush: Can trigger Rush 1 more time.
    - Energised Trinket: Get +1 trinket charge.

Balancing

  • Gifts:
    - Global: Gifts based on Base Damage, like Damage Scythe or Damage Pool, can now get Base damage from most applicable sources (excluding themselves). For instance, this means that SL4SH, Scythes and Burn/Bleed now work with them. The only exception is Refillable Flask that only takes Base damage from Weapons and Trinkets.

    - Abundance: Max value decreased to +100% (from no max value).
    - Assassinate: The Overwhelm chance bonus is now not stackable and lasts 1s (from 2s).
    - Corrosive Alterattack: Initial damage decreased to 15 (from 20).
    - Corrosive Trinkets: Initial damage decreased to 20 (from 25).
    - Countless Scythes: Max value set to 30 (from no max value).
    - Crystallize Barrier: No longer amplifiable.
    - Damage Pool: Initial damage decreased to 20 (from 25).
    - Deadly Extension: Max values increased to every 25% HP lost for standard enemies, and to every 5% HP lost for Bosses (from 10% and 3% respectively). Rebalanced amplifications.
    - Echoing Effects: Ethereal blades added to the list of effects triggering Echo.
    - Ethereal Dash: Initial damage increased to 50 (from 35).
    - Fireball: Fire rate decreased to once every 0.33s (from 0.25s).
    - Golden Health: Shells consumed reduced to 2 for each point of damage (from 4).
    - Heavy Bleeding: No longer has a damage bonus max value.
    - Intense Burn: No longer has a damage bonus max value.
    - Lucky Boost: Max value decreased to +90% (from +100%).
    - Midas: Bonus damage decreased to 3% for every 100 Shells you have, and 1% once degressive (from 4% and 2% respectively). No longer amplifiable.
    - Pool Hex: Hit frequency decreased to +75% (from +100%).
    - Protection: Max value increased to 10 kills (from 6 kills). Additionally, each rarity and each amplification reduces the kills required by 1.
    - Returning Blade: Reworked so that the returning blades now deal 125% of their original damage (from having a total damage bonus).
    - Sneaky: Overwhelm chance increased to 40% (from 30%).
    - Strong Recovery: No longer amplifiable.
    - Swift Echo: Can now be amplified up to -0.5s (from -0.48s), making the base Echo instant.
    - Upgrading Crystallize: No longer amplifiable.
  • Hexes:
    - Affliction Blast Hex: Now gives a bonus stack every level (from every 2 levels), but has a max value of 15 (from no max value).
    - Affliction Hex: Now also applies to Corrosive damage.
    - Overwhelm Hex: Max value reduced to +50% chance (from +100%).
    - Pool Hex: Now divides the size of all Corrosive Pools by 2 (from -50% flat).
  • Trinkets:
    - B-BR0: Increased base radius by 25%, increased attack speed, increased delay before losing damage on a target.
    - Chrono Catch is now a Magifish called Chrono Fish. To compensate, its radius and duration have been improved.
  • Weapons:
    - Charged Blade: Reduced critical damage for the first 2 combo hits.
  • Affixes:
    - Lowered chances of having multiple rare affixes.
    - Rebalanced scaling.
  • Boosts: Rebalanced all values.
  • Effects:
    - Burn: Now deals its damage every 0.35s (from 0.5s).
    - Goo: Enemies rotate a bit faster while gooed.
    - Scythes: Now reset at the start of a new Biome.
    - Slow: Is now degressive.
  • Crystallize health threshold lowered (15% → 10%).
  • Food: Small food now heals for 15% (from 20%).
  • Enemies:
    - Bosses: Transition phases' actions are now immune to a lot of effect (push, stun, goo, slow, freeze, breach, Gobbling Fish).
    - MushroomWarrior's AOE: size tweak + spawned with twice the delay (0.5s instead of 0.25s)
  • Enemy Stunlock Prevention:
    - Added a cooldown to Breach.
    - Breach and Shock now share a combined cooldown (being in a Breach cooldown prevents Shock, and vice versa).
    - Shock cooldowns now apply universally, regardless of the attack type used.
  • Rebalanced explosives of the Rat Village biome.
  • Level Generation:
    - When a biome can have multiple exits, those are located near each other.
    - Enemies will not spawn in the middle of little transition islands.
  • Payment gates: Health payment gates are now less frequent.
  • Drops: Changed algorithm to favor drops from unknown items in expeditions.
  • Encrypted Memories:
    - B-BR0: Switched drop locations and costs with L-S1S.
    - Bull now drops where Upgrading Crystallize dropped and for the same unlock cost.
    - Burning Trail now drops in all difficulties (rather than Cloudy and higher). Unlock cost reduced to 1 Dried Grass and 1 Tribomber Eye.
    - Chronocatch (now Chrono Fish) unlock cost increased to 5 Dark Shards and 4 Memoreaper Altars.
    - Critical Refill unlock cost increased to 5 Dried Grass and 2 Tribomber Eyes.
    - Frozen Trail now drops where Midas dropped and for the same unlock cost.
    - L-S1S: Switched drop locations and costs with B-BR0.
    - Midas now drops in all difficulties (rather than Cloudy and higher). Unlock cost changed to 5 Glowing Spores and 4 Infected Tribomber Legs.
    - Refillable Flask unlock cost increased to 5 Steam Capsules and 4 Headbanger Ventricores.
    - Upgrading Crystallize now drops in all difficulties (rather than Cloudy and higher). Unlock cost reduced to 5 Intact Bones and 4 Broken Banger Lanterns.
  • Eperin's upgrades: Rebalanced costs and unlock requirements.
  • FREND: Loyalty Program: Changed unlock order and requirements.
  • Ark: Cuprik's forge: Increased costs and cooldowns.
  • Thrift shop: The price for successive rerolls of affixes now increases.
  • Memory Deck: The Deck now has a minimum of 110 items (from 80). Weapons have a minimum of 15 (from 8), Trinkets 12 (from 8), Gifts 50 (from 35) and Hexes 10 (from 8). The Deck is now also unlocked later in FREND's loyalty program.
  • Co-op:
    - Enemy health and damage is now higher in multiplayer.
    - The Gift Slot reward now spawns 1 slot for every player present in multiplayer.

QoL

  • Exploration:
    - New Fast-Return Teleporters are placed at previous dead-ends to preserve momentum while exploring.
    - You directly activate them by dashing on it.
    - They open the Map automatically and select the most relevant teleporter based on your current progression.
  • Map:
    - Unvisited areas are now darker until you reach them.
    - Island icons are now displayed directly on the selectable teleporter.
    - Ziplines are now displayed on the Map.
    - Koi Koi banking fish is now displayed on the Map.
    - Minimap view distance increased.
    - Main Map / Mouse: The map can be now dragged with the left, middle and right clicks.
    - Hex sources now have their icon appear on the map.
  • Camera:
    - You can now modify the camera’s distance to the player:
    - by modifying a new slider in the General Options.
    - or by using the mouse scroll wheel.
    - Upon game startup, we also set the distance automatically depending on the real-life screen size.
  • Controls:
    - The game now fully supports Steam Input in order to be compatible with Nintendo Switch Pro controllers.
    - You can now choose to use the Nintendo Button Layout (inverted X/Y & A/B) in the Controls Options.
  • Accessibility:
    - A new Auto Combo Accessibility Option is available. Hold to combo attack. Double tap/press to perform charged attacks.
  • UI:
    - Clarified that “time played” only accounts for time spent in expeditions.
    - Improved some Gifts feedback.
    - Random Trade Hex: A message on your character now tells you when your healing is prevented, and the low-life Flask prompt no longer shows while you can't heal.
    - Improved the controller hints in menu bottom bars (icon sizes and spacing).
    - The Boost selection UI now shows your current total for its category below.
    - In the Sanctuary, the profane and blessed statuses are now shown on the player.
  • Visuals:
    - Replaced old Heal Flask icon with new one.
    - Replaced the high-difficulty insta-heal object visual with a… 'frenchier' one!
    - Bigger enemies won't shake as much we you'll hit them.
    - Alterattack: Alterattack levels now use the same colors as Force Fields (level 1 cyan, level 2 yellow, level 3 magenta) on the weapon gauges, the player marker and critical damage numbers. The Alterattack sign is also brighter.
  • Co-op:
    - Joining a game from a friend's invite is smoother (skips the intro, proper loading screens).
    - Better profanity filtering in chat and lobby names.
    - Emotes: You can now use emotes in shared menus (Gift choices, destination vote, end-of-run stats). They show over the choice you're hovering, so you can finally point at the Gift you want.
    - Lobby:
    - The "Private" session option is now called "Friends only".
    - A confirmation popup now shows when you send a Steam invite.
    - You can now see who's in a room from the room list.
  • UI: Cuprik's Forge: Updated with new button colors. Version 0.99.0.1
  • Accessibility: Attack previews: The option is now a simple On/Off toggle (was Off/Default/Full). Version 0.99.0.1
  • Localization: Updated translations, and the Chinese and Korean fonts now cover more characters. Version 0.99.0.1
  • Performance: Fewer hitches when shaders and VFX load in the Rat Village, Sanctuary and Lost Archipelago biomes. Version 0.99.0.1

Bugfixes

  • Accessibility: Toggled off Yua's Support on all existing saves to fix an issue. ⚠️ You'll just need to reactivate it if you had it activated.
  • Crashes:
    - Fixed a crash when a player left the game while the player menu was open.
    - Fixed a crash when a hit landed on an enemy already destroyed by a previous hit.
  • Softlocks:
    - Fixed a freeze with duplicate effects (e.g. Ethereal Blade trinket affix).
    - Fixed map teleports staying blocked after dashing over a gate's pressure plate.
    - Fixed map teleports staying blocked after opening a boss door.
    - Fixed the game freezing in Endless mode when a large burst of Marks was triggered.
    - Fixed being stuck on the loading screen after pressing Play with an advanced save.
  • Gameplay: Fixed losing move speed (walking slowly) after some speed buffs/snares ended.
  • Base damage: Fixed issue that was making normal hits deal too much Base damage and critical hits not enough.
  • Effects:
    - Freeze: Fixed infinite stunlock of enemies when having a lot of freeze sources.
    - Slow: Fixed Shock cooldowns failing to account for Slow status effects.
  • Trinkets: Corrosive Wake: Fixed interaction with Trinket Hex and Double Rush.
  • Magifishes: Protector Fish: Now correctly protects you from stuns.
  • Enemies:
    - Fixed enemies not doing anything if you first passed close to them and quickly went somewhere else (using a teleporter for example).
    - Fixed enemies circling around their spawn point forever.
  • Level Generation:
    - Smarter generation algorithm now removes as much empty islands as possible.
    - Fixed a lot of occurences of failed generation which could lead you back to the Title Screen during loadings.
    - Fixed rare cases where the generation would create illogical loops.
    - Fixed rare cases where a path could lead nowhere.
  • Level Design: Fixed a lot of minor tweaks in a lot of islands.
  • Secret Radar: Fixed the last secret of a level not playing its reveal effect, and some secret counts.
  • Memory Deck: Can no longer ban unknown items.
  • UI:
    - Fixed icons sometimes not appearing in tooltips.
    - Fixed DualShock controller being displayed as a DualSense controller in the Controls Panel.
    - Fixed enemy health bars being hidden when you were below the enemy.
    - Fixed Eperin's "upgrade unlocked" popup not showing during cutscenes.
    - Gamepad: Fixed the selection jumping back to the first item in the Memory Deck and Thrift Shop menus.
  • Map: Fixed the teleporter next to you being reselected when you were targeting another one.
  • Visuals:
    - Fixed some impact VFX which were not playing.
    - Fixed the teleport VFX following the player.
    - Fixed a lot of decoration popping cases.
    - Fixed readability of Fungal Swamp's AOEs.
    - Fixed purple square showing up then fading out when taking a Boost.
    - Fixed pressure plates in front of bosses disappearing once used.
    - Fixed a Rat Village rope with blinking lighting.
    - Fixed the Vortex at the end of a stage being too small.
    - Fixed borders around loading screen images.
  • Audio: Fixed having some sound emitters emitting from the wrong position
  • Co-op:
    - Fixed several crashes.
    - Shock cooldowns are now correctly tracked on the targeted enemy rather than the attacking player, preventing bypassing cooldowns.
    - Fixed Gift requirements only being checked for the first player at a Gift source, and not on rerolls.
    - Fixed the game reacting to a teammate's exclusive Gift as if you had picked it.
    - Fixed Hex choices being marked for the wrong players, or changed, on linked Hex sources.
    - Fixed doors showing two player buttons after a death.
    - Fixed the Gift selection showing a Shell icon on another player's info.
  • Map: Onsen: The Onsen icon no longer greys out when you enter its access instead of the Onsen itself. Version 0.99.0.1
  • Transmuter: Fixed icon. Version 0.99.0.1
  • Voice chat: The mute state now updates correctly. Version 0.99.0.1
  • UI: Fixed the buttons in item descriptions and in the Inventory menu. Version 0.99.0.1
  • UI: Fixed an error that could make some descriptions invisible. Version 0.99.0.1
  • VFX: Fixed the dissolve effect of ground VFX when FSR is on. Version 0.99.0.1

Optimization

  • A lot of systems have been heavily optimized to enhance the overall FPS:
    - Way more gameplay systems and entities are using culling.
    - Decoration rendering algorithms have been simplified.
    - Visuals and logics of entities have been batched when possible.
    - More data is cached to avoid re-triggering costly searches.
    - Minimap has been enhanced.
  • Fixed several early run and shop-related stutters by:
    - Using new preloading and caching approaches.
    - And cleaning a lot of spaghetti asset dependencies. (Mama mia!…)
  • Level Generation algorithm has also been optimized so it completes its task faster.
  • Gifts: Midas: Improved performance in very high Endless loops.
  • Overall, let's say we cleaned a lot of mistakes of our past selves… But there are still more improvements planned!