Update 12: The Beyond Update

Today’s update is a special one! To start with, we have revamped all of the enemies currently in the game to match the upgraded art for our weapons. With a shiny new coat of paint, the starving souls of the fallen will march toward you with renewed beauty, almost making you sad to destroy such artful renditions of the Old Ones’ will. But once you see the new Bosses barreling toward you, only then can you appreciate the power Their Will can grant upon a wayward soul.

Moving BEYOND the enemies, a new Tribulation has been revealed: BEYOND!! See what we did there? ;D This new Tribulation adds a new level of difficulty for our hungry Vessels. With steeper enemy scaling, we are introducing a new challenge, and are planning updates coming to add more depth to these brutal levels.

On another note, we have removed the Transmutations, as we felt their attainment relied too much on failing runs to improve them. As a result, we have rebalanced almost every stat in the game to reflect this change in mechanics. On top of this, we have streamlined collecting Runes to be attained as soon as they are unlocked. Oftentimes collecting runes seemed to discourage experimentation, and could even make players feel cheated if they didn’t get the “right” build to survive a Tribulation to unlock them. Now, as soon as you are notified of receiving the Rune, it is unlocked and added to your Armory for the next round.

An important update to the map and how we make them has occurred as well. Previously, we used infinite map tiles that looped around on each other via procedural generation. We have decided to aim for a better player experience with curated static maps with borders. This will enable us to better tune enemy abilities and movement abilities, as well as provide more unique and interesting map gameplay opportunities. You Exterminators will also have to adjust your strategy to account for a slightly more limited travel ability in any one direction so as not to get yourself boxed in.

These changes are a large part of an even larger update. There have been rebalancing, renaming, and performance fixes aplenty to help improve the overall experience. As always, we welcome feedback in our Discord, the Steam Discussion Forums, and through your reviews. You can find the finer details of our many updates below.

Until next time, E̷̘͔̪͒͝x̷̧͎̃͛͐̈ẗ̸͚̜̲̳̀̔̒e̶̛͇̓r̶̞̓̄̉̚ṃ̵̪̈́͑̈́͠ĩ̶̧̜͇n̸͓̠͌à̵̦̪̆̎t̷̛͈̋̊̄o̷̩̓r̷̞͇̭͉̉s̴̎̆͆̚͜ͅ

Major Changes

• Updated the art of all of the enemies

• AddedAdded the Beyond Dev NoteThe Beyond is a new tribulation level, going up to Beyond 99

• Removed Transmutations Dev Note: Over the time of the development we have been going back and forth on how to change it or improve it, but it felt more like, oh I have to fail X amount of runs before I get to have fun or a good run. We made tons of balance changes to reflect this change.

• Runes no longer have to be taken to victory to unlock Dev Note: Every rune requiring it be taken to victory was overly punishing, and led to a content draught, where you were not unlocking things as often as you should.

• Maps now are a static size Dev Note: Rather than an endless empty map, we opted to change to medium-sized curated static maps

Additions

• Added tooltips to Artifact Cards

• Added Regenerate Keyword

• Added Vulnerable Keyword

• Added Magnify Keyword

• Added Quicken Keyword

• Added Reach Keyword

• Added Precise Keyword

• Renamed Slow -> Frost

• Renamed DoT -> Soul Fire

• Renamed Blast -> Explosive

• Added a visual effect for Frost

• Added a visual effect for Soul Fire

Changes Completely reworked Health and Healing, and healing artifacts

Gun Balance

• Default Health increased by 20%

• Default Rerolls 1 -> 7

• Default Banishes 1 -> 7

• Default Pickup Range: 75 -> 90

• Default Dash Cooldown 4 -> 3 seconds

• Default Aura Size: 1600 -> 3000

• Default Coil Damage: 30% -> 40%

• Dretch Bane: Min Damage -2 -> 0

• Dretch Bane: Fire Rate 400 -> 480

• Orik’s Flightline: Min Damage -2 -> 0

• Orik’s Flightline: Fire Rate 480 -> 600

• Virin’s Atomizer: Fire Rate 420 -> 500

• Madrugar: Min Damage -2 -> 0

• Madrugar: Fire Rate 600 -> 800

• Increased Knockback radius on damage taken by 50%

Soul Balance

• Soul of the Berserker: Health 3 -> 30%

Artifact Balance

• Rebalanced many artifacts, properties, and unspeakables

• Novas are now randomized in their direction

• Removed Rapid-Fire Property

• Properties are limited to 10 per round

• Fire Rate Artifacts are now standard

• DoT Tick Rate: 0.75 -> 0.8 seconds

• DoT Duration: 2.25 -> 2.4 seconds

• Slightly reduced blast radius scaling, blast radius with 1 blast radius is unchanged

• Dev Note: Blasts with the right build could envelop the entire screen.

• Bomb: Damage 80 -> 40

• RemovedRemovedGalvanized Dart, Unstoppable Fury, Volatile Penetrator, Void Pong, Unstable Coating, and Rebounding Rounds Dev Note: Converter artifacts had two versions, one of which was just an upgrade, so we removed weaker versions, so it doesn’t require grabbing two artifacts to get the full effect of converter artifacts

Enemy Balance

• Enemy Density 60 - 420 -> 100 - 500

• Tribulation Health Scaling: 8% -> 4%

• Reduce Enemy Projectile initial speed by 50%

• Boomer: now has a visual for it’s range

• Ranged enemies now fire sooner after spawning

• Mage is now a ranged enemy and moves with a circle strafe

• Fisher now increases the speed of all enemies while alive

• Bosses can now push smaller enemies

• Bosses are now immune to Knockback

• Slime King: Health 1080 -> 1000

• Slime King: Damage Resistance: 2 -> 1

• Cyclops: Health 2400 -> 2000

• Cyclops: Damage Resistance: 3 -> 2

• Doctor now applies Poison stacks rather than doing direct damage

• Dev Note: Poison is a deal damage based on the number of active poison stacks

• Mutant: Health 3600 -> 3000

• Soldier: Health 4800 -> 4000

• Soldier: Damage Resistance: 3 -> 4

• Mimic: Health 6000 -> 2000, now scales of enemy health rather than boss health

Performance

• Improved performance impact from the map

• Improved performance of artifacts that affect all enemies

• Improved performance of many artifacts

• Improved performance of enemy projectiles

• Improved performance of ground drops

Fixes

• Fixed typos

• Fixed projectiles disappearing before they should

• Fixed Blast Damage being locked to zero with Virin’s Atomizer

• Fixed DoT Tick Rate not affecting the tick rate of DoT Damage

• Fixed Jurahi’s Daisy not working

• Fixed Slow not stacking

• Fixed Slow increasing speed instead of decreasing

• Fixed Slow stacks having a duration of 1000 seconds

• Fixed M’Trgdar’s Schemes creating more than the intended amount of projectiles

• Fixed Teklan’s Phantasm calculating projectile size incorrectly

• Fixed an error when a Coil kills an enemy

• Fixed incorrect tooltip on the main menu

• Fixed Trinkets not dropping at the rates that they should

• Fixed Zar’gat giving the incorrect amount of Aura Size

• Fixed artifacts that increase pickup range “while still” not working

• Fixed Critical Damage text in the pause menu not visible

• Fixed Dash Cooldown & coil speed tooltip showing the incorrect values

• Fixed Coil Speed showing the incorrect speed

• Fixed Redundant Generator decreasing Coil Speed rather than increasing it

• Fixed Ricochet being less reliable the more enemies there are

• Fixed Magrugar never losing stacks

• Fixed enemy projectiles sometimes moving at the incorrect speed

• Fixed Tribulation 5 Breakthrough having astronomical health scaling

• Fixed Tooltips not sizing themselves correctly

• Fixed Harrath’s Peace regenerating less health than intended

• Fixed tooltips sometimes flickering

• Fixed Aetheric Gloves not providing any healing

• Fixed M`Thrgdr’s Rebound performing the effect of M`Thrgdr’s Pong

• Fixed Edge Runner not being able to be collected

• Fixed enemies sometimes not moving towards the player

• Fixed closing strafe enemies not moving towards the player

• Fixed some artifacts giving too much soul worth