1.9 - THE ENEMY UPDATE

Those fungal freaks are infecting more machines on New Atlas, and I do NOT want to die to a toilet, so y'all better get killin'.

Saxon operatives also discovered a buncha facilities hidden beneath the moon's surface, and they want us to check 'em out. Get to it!

>> END TRANSMISSION

Enemy Redesign

• We’ve redesigned almost every enemy! The New Atlas fungus infects machines, so it’s about time it used those machines to attack you. With these new designs we’ve also put more thought into how enemies are fractured into their different shell pieces.

• Enemy bodies bob around as they move

• Added soft limits for how many Brutes and Abominations can be alive at the same time

• Added sounds when you damage cores or shells that change depending on how much health the part has left

• Outlines on dangerous enemy parts are red

• Fixed gun arms jittering when you get too close

• Improved the behavior of the laser arm - it’s more consistent and the laser won’t get glued to you when you run away

• Fixed enemies laser sometimes firing at you forever if the enemy’s sightline to you was blocked

• Amalgamation

  • Amalgamations that spawn randomly now have less health in lobbies of 1-2 players

  • Reduced the tracking speed of the Amalgamation’s liquid flamethrower :)

• Added the Abomination Lacerator, a melee-only abomination

• Added the Antigrav Drone

• Slightly lowered the health of Optical Jammers

  • And made the outside shader look neat

  • And made the text sync to other players B)

• Added new death VFX for cores

New Exotic Upgrades

• Added new exotic upgrades to the following weapons!

  • Swarm Launcher - Guidance Array

  • Lead Flinger - Phantom Limb

  • Carver - Lockdown

  • DMLR - Concussive Wave

  • //ERROR_INFORMATION_UNAVAILABLE//

New Mission - Incursion

• Saxon has discovered unknown facilities descending into the depths of New Atlas. Fight through as many floors as you can before time runs out. The further you progress, the more Antimass Substrate you gain. This new resource is used for…

Pattern Infusion

• Once you hit player level 13, you unlock Incursion and can start gaining Antimass Substrate (which also drops from other high-threat missions).

• Antimass can be spent at the Pattern Infuser in the HUB to infuse one upgrade’s pattern into another. The more cells you remove, the more Antimass this process requires.

Prized Possession Redux

• Barrel rolling is out, Barry is in.

• Instead of rolling the power unit back to the drop pod, you now rescue Battery Barry. While holding Barry, your weapons fire faster but you move a bit slower.

Bruiser Voice

• We weren’t happy with Bruiser’s original voice, so we re-recorded all of their voicelines.

Voice Chat

• Added voice chat! We use the Discord social SDK as our voice backend, but you do not need to have a Discord account to use voice chat, and it does not need to be installed.

• Added options in the audio settings for voice volume and push-to-talk. Voice mode defaults to push-to-talk and can be changed to open-mic in the audio settings.

Upgraded Mission Select

• Mission select now encompasses the entirety of New Atlas. It’s easier to navigate, but more importantly, it’s cool.

• New Atlas also has a new shader and looks better.

World Generation

• New Moldy Tundra variant - the Sunken Highlands

New POI - Locked Bunker

• Abandoned Saxon bunkers can appear in uncharted levels. They evidently weren’t very useful to the colonists of New Atlas, but perhaps they’ll be worth cracking open.

Gif Rescue

• Switched our gif backend since Tenor is closing its public API. Using /gif in chat will now use KLIPY instead! As part of KLIPY’s free API terms, gifs now have a watermark on them.

New Player Experience

• You can click on your player level in the inventory screen to see what gets unlocked at each level

• Until you’ve unlocked all normal weapons, leveling up now provides an Armament License, which can be used to unlock weapons in any order

• Changed level-up rewards for weapons, providing better rewards sooner. Added skins to level-up rewards.

• Added Boundary Incursion to each weapon’s level 32 reward. You’ll be able to claim this even if you already got all of the level-up rewards.

Ouroboros

• Added Ouroboros Blitz, a shorter variant of Ouroboros that lasts only 13 rooms, drops double upgrades, and automatically equips any upgrades you pick up. Blitz is available after you play Ouroboros once.

• Failed Ouroboros runs correctly count as failed if you aren’t the host

• Cleansed Ouroboros upgrades now count toward your total number of collected upgrades

• Fixed a couple spots in the glass tower where enemies could clip through the floor instead of being stuck on their level

• Abomination bosses no longer jump up and down in the ledge room

Turbocharges

• Added new turbocharges for:

  • Mitosis (Swarm Gun)

  • Miniaturized Warp Core (Accelerator)

Misc

• Incoming enemy spawns are marked on the minimap

• Added special sounds when damaging & killing shells and cores

• Damage numbers pulse larger when they first appear and then get smaller

• Red crosshair damage lines are more opaque

• Fixed an issue that was messing up lighting on procedural terrain

• Fixed an issue that allowed abominations to take partial explosive damage to their unexposed cores

• Reduced health of the Devastator’s high-gravity ring

• The Blitseg’s VFX now orient to surfaces and make ripples along water

• Lingering Shocklance coils shot by other players are now faded to reduce clutter

• Lingering Shocklance coils are less tightly wound to reduce clutter

• Permeable sides of shields will now fade out at close distances so you can better see what you’re killing

• Fixed an issue where a back arrow would appear on cleanup detail gunk health bars

• Fixed enemies jittering when they pull in new parts

• Fixed an issue where eye trails from Wrangler’s Eyes Up Here upgrade would sometimes snap to a previous eye’s position

• Fixed incorrect visuals when highlighting a personal shield generator enemy part

• Fixed a bug where certain bullets would phase through an enemy’s leg if it was ragdolled

• Fixed a bug that caused the Swarm Launcher to cause huge framerate drops when it was equipped under certain circumstances

• Broken Frame modules can no longer be scrapped

• In-game friends who are playing on a different version of the game are no longer shown in the main menu

• Overhauled the skin equip UI. Hovering over a skin previews it.

• Added an experimental launch option to force DX12, which may provide better performance.

• Fixed data upload side objective sometimes spawning underwater

• Fixed the position an unobtainable bear collectable in the Ice Floes

• Fixed an issue with Combustive Rounds for the Accelerator where if you held R during a reload it would consume your grenade and then delete your explosive rounds

• Fixed a bug that rewarded a bunch of xp if you joined a mission right as it was aborted

• Au-Si Jackrabbit riccochet lines are disabled by default and can be re-enabled in the gameplay options

• Upgraded ambient particles for each region

• Fixed an issue where Cycler plasma bullets looked incorrect in low light

Shocklance

Micro Detonators

• Reduced the chance for Micro Detonator explosions to trigger more explosions

• Elemental explosions have no impact damage and now only deal damage from their over-time elemental effects

• Increased impact damage on non-elemental explosions:

  • Min: 12 → 40

  • Max: 18 → 44

• Micro Detonators has been insanely powerful for a long time, and we want to bring it back a bit without torching the upgrade - to keep it feeling cool we’re trying to balance it without lowering its explosion chance. We’re giving extra impact damage to non-elemental Micro Detonator explosions to make them a little more useful.

Splintered Lance

• Reduces damage by ~50%

• Splintered Lance was essentially providing a 3x damage boost, especially when combined with Notched Breakpoint for reduced spread. We tried just making it so that multiple coils can’t damage the same target in a single shot, but it ended up feeling better to give a flat damage reduction instead so that it still gives a bit of a damage boost.

Half Cocked

• Reduced max coil size:

  • Min: +110% → +57%

  • Max: +160% → +66%

• Much of the Shocklance’s superiority comes from its ability to get massive AOE sizes. Half Cocked already does a lot, so we’re lowering the coil size increase it gives from a fully charged shot.

Gearshift

• Increased post-auger charge speed by 30%

• Increased duration by 25%

• Gearshift is currently the least-used Shocklance epic so we’re increasing its stats a bit. We want the charge speed boost to feel more impactful when combined with upgrades that increase your charge time.

Ready and Waiting

• Increased passive charge rate when the Shocklance is unequipped by 560%

• Added a UI indicator that shows the Shocklance’s current charge when its unequipped

• Our goal with this change is for Ready and Waiting to allow you to fire off a shot, switch weapons, and then switch back without needing to charge it yourself. This upgrade previously had an unnecessarily slow charge speed when the Shocklance was unequipped.

Fisticuffs

• Damage boost stat is now labeled as ‘damage’ (previously was incorrectly labeled as ‘speed’)

• Increased damage boost:

  • Min: 9 → 19

  • Max: 11 → 28

Plate Launcher

Plasma Blades

• Plasma blades now deal reduced damage compared to direct hits with a plate

• Plasma Blades my beloved. The blades look too cool to reduce their size, so we’re instead making them deal less damage than direct plate hits. They’re still really good, but not quite so insane.

Damage Arc

• Damage Arc can’t be triggered by shooting your plate with another plate

• The core idea of Damage Arc is to encourage you to swap to your other weapon to shoot your plate, but the best way to use this upgrade was to throw on a bunch of plates and shoot them into each other - we hope to bring it back to that core identity by disallowing plate-on-plate damage. We’re also working on a new Plate Launcher upgrade that encourages single-plate builds :)

Nice Catch

• Reduced the damage you take when catching a plate by 50%

• The damage you take is further reduced for each extra bullet in your magazine capacity

• Increased move speed when holding your Plate Launcher by 100%

• An upgrade that damages you is always gonna be tough to fit into a build, but we’re hoping that decreasing self-damage for larger mag sizes will make it a bit more useful.

Slap Job

• Reduced spread

  • Min: 10 → 9

  • Max: 20 → 10.5

• Slap Job was like laughably unusable so we’re reducing its spread by about half.

Bouncy Plates

• Reduced upgrade size from 5 to 3 cells

Swarm Launcher

Munition Siphon

• Reduced upgrade size from 8 to 5 cells

• Increased grenade charge rate by ~40%

• Munition Siphon didn’t feel as potent as it should have so we’ve made it recharge your grenade faster and made it easier to fit into your Swarm Launcher builds.

Remote Control

• Reduced upgrade size from 4 to 3 cells

Over Extend

• Doesn’t reduce magazine size as much

  • Min → -40% → -10%

  • Max → -30% → -4%

High Caliber Pellets

• Pellets no longer automatically dive