PPE Mode (Totems), Parties, New UI, One-Click Log In, Item Power Phase 1, More!

Our biggest non-rewrite update ever... Where to begin...

Highlights:

Totems + HATED (PPE Mode)

The core idea of Totems, outside of giving us a dedicated PPE mode, was to offer endgame players a route to make the game more difficult for themselves for the chance at exclusive reward. The totems were designed with the core game feel in mind, and are not meant to increase friction or decrease cooperation, just make the same game as hard as you want it to be. In the future, you may see temporary modes pop up with a slew of fresh/less focused/wackier/more fun-inspired totems. If you can think of fun challenge mode modifiers or are sad an idea you have didn't make the core list, we'll surely be searching for many ideas for these modes.

Enabling the Totem of Isolation, seen above as the PPE Mode Totem, is also the gate for enabling the other Totems which increase game difficulty in return for increased progression bonuses.

They are as follows:

• Isolation: Gear must be found by this character. No vault withdrawals, and silver and essences are kept apart from your account. (+10%)

• Deficiency: All healing except vitality regen is halved. (+5%)

• Disease: Debuffs afflict you two tiers higher. (+5%)

• Avarice: Red and pink affixes roll twice as often. (+5%)

• Lament: Your maximum health, barrier, and shield are halved. (+10%)

• Impermanence: The escape button takes 5 seconds to invoke, movement cancels it (+15%)

By enabling all totems on a character, you grant it a special existence known as HATED (Hardcore, All Totems EnableD).

HATED characters not only get the 50% Loot/Exp/Silver boost from all the Totems, but an additional set of cosmetic effects and more:

• A special blacked/purple animated name effect in chat

• A special black/purple animated name in-world

• A special black/purple animated frame in character select

and...

• Access to an additional tier of affixes, with a black/purple animated color scheme to match the theme. These affixes will be above pink (4 affix points vs 3) and are only able to be rolled NATURALLY. They will however, be more common than pinks are in the normal pool.

We hope for HATED to be an extension of the games current and future replayability, as well as a staple mode of its own to add onto!

Parties + Party Finder

Grinding Honey Hives for EXP? Alien Axes (RIP Bearcliff)? Got friends outside of your guild you want to have a group chat with? Start a Party!

A few of the benefits for Parties:

• A private chat channel for your party

• Party Summoning / Joining that will take you directly to the summoning player, down to the TILE (stay safe out there)

• A Party HUD that allows you to see the HP/MP and current location of fellow members

• an Incremental XP Boost! Let me explain...

Per Member of your party (excluding the first one... yourself) you will get a conditional XP Boost:

• Party Members Total EXP Boost XP Boost Per Player

  2	20.0%	10.00%
  3	20.5%	6.83%
  4	21.0%	5.25%
  5	21.5%	4.30%
  6	22.0%	3.67%
  8	23.0%	2.88%

What're The Conditions?

• In the same world? Get the Per Player Boost portion of the XP no matter what. Want to go AFK for a lil bit? Come back to a lil extra glory.

• Nearby, but didn't tag the enemy yourself? Get credit as if you did anyway + the Per Player Boost. This should help any future EXP farming incentives be min/maxable through a co-operative measure, but not be so consistent or tangible enough to turn off solo or uncoordinated play.

New UI + Full Customization

The Main Game UI Has been overhauled! We've tried to create a much more modern experience, as well as migrating permanent UI elements toward the corners and out of important visual real-estate.

Hate the layout? It's Fully Customizable!

Hate it Hate it? Kinda rude, but you can also use the legacy UI for... however long we support it.

New Character Select / Create Menus

We've been experimenting with The Beyond for a long while now, but we've decided to retire it as the main route of character selection. We were inspired to return to the menu format, trying to recreate the magic we felt from the genre's origin.

Selection:

Creation:

Beyond enjoyers don't fret! It will still be accessible via the tavern if you want the visual representation of your graveyard.

Night Time Enemies in The Dominion

The Level 20 zones have been updated with new enemies, specifically for your brood-esque night jogs through it.

... Oh and they drop biome-specific Specials. So. Happy farming! New Minibosses are coming next update :)

One-Click Sign-In

Create an account, or link your existing account, to Steam / Play Games / Game Center for One-Click Sign-In. No email needed!

Item Power (Phase 1) + Future Progression/Loop Synergy

(Copying the following from our Discord #teasers message on it. The format is a bit different than I write here, but conveying the whole idea together seems important... and I don't think taking the time to rewrite is worth it <3)

The first iteration of IP (Item Power) integration is upon us! it's still relatively incomprehensive, actual formulaic adjustment for abilities/armors/rings still haven't happened yet (there'll be a bloodbath when it does), but with the dawn of Parties and the Party Finder upon us we wanted a more direct way for players to be able to gauge the progression level of others as they search for people to play with. A few notes on what's seen above here:

• Instead of Tiers, IP will be shown along side an items rarity: Basic (tiered for now), Special, Unique, etc.

• Instead of Tiered comparison glowing green in bags, there will now be both base and affix-adjusted IP based comparison. (Green = adjusted/current IP better, Yellow = base/cap IP better, Red = worse in all cases) This glow will now also appear on the tooltips themselves instead of just the items for more intuitive comparison. (and means items in your inventory wont always be glowing if you're carrying Basic-Tiered swapouts)

Item Power as an actual fully-integrated system is still a ways away, and includes much more than just blanket adjustments to existing items as a new approach to balance as we've seen with weapons in the last year. It will also allow us to do away with linearly tiered items being the basis of each playthrough and item progression, allowing us to create 'Item Bases' (e.g. for archers, crossbows, shortbows, sling quivers, etc) that have a set range for each stat we can define and slot them into. so every time you create a new character that you've played before, you'll hopefully gain access to an increasingly novel playthrough experience as opposed to just going from t4 -> t6 -> so on of the same feeling bow. Item power also allows us to articulate the actual relative strength of Untiered items much more intuitively, as the gear that enemies can drop (and their bonuses for UT loot) is based off the level of the enemy that drop them. As I'll show more in future teasers, and probably a good footnote if this is the first you're hearing of Item Power or enemy levels (LV), the intention is for IP to be the first in our line of progression/game loop adjustments and overhauls that bring future-proofed balancing and difficulty in line with one another. A simple way to think about it:

• Every Difficulty is 10 Levels (Intermediate 20-29, Experienced 30-39, Advanced 40-49, etc)

• A Dungeon's Difficulty Level = The Level of the Boss Inside and the relative difficulty otherwise (e.g. River Maze is considered 25, Crypt 45, Void 38)

• Difficulty Level = Maximum Base-Loot Level, before individual item bonuses (UT items get a IP bonus relative to where they drop, affixes also adjust IP shown. e.g. All Intermediate Uniques = 39 IP, Advance Uniques get a +8 IP bonus to their drop location e.g. Isolate Touch is 53 IP)

• Far down the line with extended progression, we may also see Player Levels find their way up to being in line with IP and Enemy/Dungeon LV as well!

While the bulk of what these systems will represent is far down the road still, you'll begin to see gradual integration of these systems to make the gameplay loop feel more intuitive as the building blocks for overhauls come together. The end result will hopefully be a pretty novel, intuitive, and synergistic combination that makes the game as easy to digest and follow for new and genre-familiar players alike.

Ok, that should be the big stuff. Now for the other stuff.

Additions

• Creator Code Support

  (dev note: Content Creators will (soon) be able to apply for Creator Codes, in which use of will earn the user 10% bonus currency and the creator a small split of the net revenue. Specifics as to qualifying for a Creator Code will be released later)

• New Projectile Tech: Lasers, Slashes, Homing Projectiles, and Anchored Projectiles

• Trial Keys for Memory of Honey and Memory of Flesh!!

• The Chat UI can now cycle between Public/Guild/Party/Whisper modes, holding their current channel between chats.

• New 'Esc'ape menu that displays all buttons in one, including the Party List / Party Finder

• New Map Tab, has controller bindings for quick-village TPs

• Platform/Controller Specific Glyphs for Controllers!

  (dev note: hopefully functioning properly! i do not own a dualshock!)

• Dungeons now display their Difficulty (LV) on their portal, with dynamic coloring that's relative to player's current IP

• Trades are now Accepted/Declined in Chat

• Guild Invites are now Accepted/Declined in

• Chat Party Invites are Accepted/Declined in Chat

• Remade Options Menu

• Added Search in Options Menu

• Controller Arrow Opacity

• Separate Projectile Outline/Glow Toggle

• Support for wave-based Admin Events

• Support for timed server-wide Boosts for Admin Events

Changes

• The Entire Dominion Minimap is Pre-Revealed upon load, except for Setpieces!

• All Potions gained a pooled 0.6s cooldown.

  (dev note: while we're looking to switch over to an equipped-flask system soon, a cooldown is needed to make the current content balanced closer to its intended difficulty. the ability to have 32 potions you can spam at will, and have an inconsistent experience in consumption based off your ping, was damaging beyond something that could be ignored until a larger overhaul)

• Tiered Talisman's have been overhauled again, no more group invisibility! They now focus on using invisibility to setup a dps-chunk via an aoe explosion and armor-break linger at the end of channeling.

  (dev note: it was a fun experiment, but it way overstayed its welcome. won't happen again maybe! basic talismans are pivoting to a new playstyle of invisible dive-bombing, offering the armor break debuff back + a big dps burst as they exit their targets reaches.)

• Cardiac Clock Mana Cost Increased (80 -> 95)

• What Once Was Mana Cost Increased (100 -> 125)

• What Once Was Cooldown Increased (1s -> 2s)

• Beast Release Channel Mana Cost Decrease (90mp/s -> 75mp/s)

• Major Tempest Changes pivoting it toward a strong large-mp burst damage with anchored high-damage snowflake projectiles, keeping the non-follow linger heal for now)

  (dev note: talismans are a big balancing problem, fury and empowered both will remain so in their current state as they offer a % DPS : Mana Cost relationship, which doesn't really fit in with a larger-progression-oriented balancing approach. Invisibility has been overstaying its welcome since long before group invis, and the damage output gain on top was disproportionate to their resource costs. While this is still iterative, it will hopefully bring competition back down to a place where assassins/wyrms will still take 1st places if they deserve to-- but are not handed them nearly by default.)

• Platinum Cocoon Projectiles are now anchored... and something else... look into it.

• Memory of Flesh has received a consistency pass. Phase deciding mechanics should be more intuitive and learnable, but the dungeon will also be a bit more technically difficult in return (e.g. tighter gap between slash projectiles)

• Daily Attainments are now auto-claimed! No more forgetting your free gold.

• Remade Alerts UI

• Text rendering now supports super sampling, so smaller texts should be more readable

• Players affected by Hide Players no longer show Particle/Skin/Hat Effects

• Optimized Particle Effects

• Optimized Culling Algorithm

• Contribution Loot Display Opacity Reduced (0.6 -> 0.3)

• Updated Alien Outpost's 'Signal Received' Song Mix

• Greatly Improved Accuracy of Aim Assist against faster targets

• Buffs applied by procs no longer maintain when switching worlds

• Prescient Affix no longer has a -damage modifier

Fixes

• Auto Hide Players in Combat Mode now respects Players Within Distance

• Auto Hide Objects in Combat Mode now respects Objects Within Distance

• Fixed clicking buttons in game chat when unfocused on Mobile

• Fixed clicking buttons that are outside the GameChatView

• Fixed the '/' character sometimes appearing in front of commands

• Fixed how text is rendered on Android Fixed tooltip crashes on Android

• Fixed tooltips eating Movement Input on Mobile

• Fixed rerolling text showing HTML text in discount

• Fixed Torus AOEs not rendering properly in OpenGL

• Mobile purchases that error mid purchase now self-heal

• More... This was a long update cycle and to be honest we got too deep for me to get everything.

LOOT/SILVER/EXP BOOST EVENT

So we made this system that lets us do timed boosts... Gotta test it somehow... Enjoy 1.25x Silver/Exp/Loot for the next week, in addition to your Totem modifiers. Make us regret it!

See you in the Dominion,

typ (hhm) & Dano