Ultimate abilities, Bottled XP, improved questing, and more

Questing

• Quests are now split into acts. Completing the final quest in the act will allow you to move to the next act.

• Currently there's only one act, which will culminate in a final boss of this act (which is yet to be released in a future patch). Then, act 2 will begin.

• The quest list is now shaped like a tree, which should make it easier to understand the progression path through the act.

• Quests can be completed and turned in even if the quest hasn't been unlocked yet - for example, if you manage to defeat a boss without unlocking its quest, then the quest will be completed anyway and you will be able to turn in that quest.

Village invasions

• Invasion soundtracks have been replaced with more thematically fitting music.

• Invasions last just a little bit longer.

• Some enemies during invasions have been improved, and some have been removed completely (and will be re-added after a total rework).

XP Bottler / a way to spend extra talent points

• The XP Bottler is a placeable object that can be purchased from the Merchant

• You can interact with that device to put a talent point in a bottle

• Bottled XP can be sold to the merchant for coins, as a way to make XP useful when all talents have been learned

• Bottled XP can potentially be used for crafting in the future (but not yet)

New craftable items

• DPS analyser (crafted from AI modules): can be attacked to measure your average damage-per-second. Basically an advanced training dummy.

• Portable freezer (crafted from Storm essences): freezes your slime blasts, turning them into shards of frozen slime that have a much longer range and do slightly more damage.

• Potion of ultimate power: instantly resets the cooldown of your ultimate abilities, but places a cooldown on all potions depending on the remaining cooldown of your ultimates

Special rewards for challenging mode

• In addition to more loot, defeating a boss on Challenging difficulty will now drop a boss-specific crafting station.

• These crafting stations can be used to craft all of the items that are crafted from this boss' unique drops.

• Some items will have a slightly reduced crafting cost compared to crafting them at NPCs.

• (note: Frostfire Pineapple's crafting station is currently useless)

Frozen orb changes

• Frozen orb is now considered to be an ultimate ability and shares a cooldown with other ultimate abilities.

• It no longer costs mana.

• The damage of the ice shards has been increased.

• Added an upgrade that allows the frozen orb to be hit twice before it disappears.

Annihilation ray

• Channels a powerful beam for 2 seconds that destroys all tiles in its path.

• Is an ultimate ability (which means it shares a cooldown with frozen orb).

Various tweaks

• Boss health was slightly increased, because the fights still felt way too short

• Metal Core's rockets (in phase 2) will have a smoother launch animation, but will reach a much higher velocity over time

• Storm elemental will no longer have a permanent rain of bullets on challenging difficulty, as it's challenging enough as it is

• Frostfire Pineapple's dagger attack will now give the player more time to react

• Slime Jackhammer's jump functionality works much more reliably, and the sound of jumping is a bit quieter

• Improved the visual effect of Heal ability

• Improved the visual effect of slime blast projectile explosion

• Items will now be greyed out on the action bar and will not show a placement preview if you don't have the required item in your inventory.