03/08 Skill Refresh and Balance Adjustment

Challenge Mode: Skill Re-selection

Reduce the luck factor of random skills in Challenge Mode. This allows players to focus on constructing builds that clear levels more quickly using a limited set of skills. Therefore, the skill re-selection feature has been added to Challenge Mode. (In Normal Mode, skills are unlimited across multiple playthroughs, so this re-selection feature is not available.)

Skip Tutorial

Although in Normal Mode (from the second playthrough onward) and in Challenge Mode the tutorial is automatically skipped, considering that when starting a new save file the tutorial stage still needs to be played even if it has been completed before, the "press and hold F to skip the tutorial" feature has been added to the early part of the tutorial level. (Nevertheless, we still hope that new players will play through the tutorial stage at least once.)

Skill Balancing

1. Explosive Arrow – Explosive Spread Adjusted the mechanism of explosive spread. Now, the initial spread range of the Explosive Arrow is reduced while the explosion damage itself is increased. When a player selects the upgrade for explosive spread, the spread range increases and the damage inflicted on spread targets becomes higher than that on the primary explosion target. This change is mainly intended to highlight the advantage of "Explosive Spread" against clusters of enemies in a small area.

2. Explosive Arrow – Burning and Flame Burst Attacks with the Explosive Arrow inflict "Burning" on the target, which transforms into "Flame Burst" after five instances. Since Flame Burst is overly powerful and would significantly affect the player’s willingness to choose skills, and because Flame Burst is tied to various upgrades of Triple Shot (which can rapidly stack Flame Burst due to multiple triggers), I have slightly reduced the damage of "Flame Burst" and increased the damage of "Burning." This ensures that even if players do not select the "Flame Burst Mastery" or various Triple Shot upgrades, they can still benefit from the inherent attack boost of the Explosive Arrow.

3. AddedExplosive Arrow – MeteorAdded a spreading mechanism.

4. Homing Arrow – Thunder Shield Although enemy damage in the game is generally low and players enjoy invincibility while casting skills, considering that later stages may feature enemies with higher damage, the damage reduction rate of the Thunder Shield has been greatly increased.

5. Homing Arrow – Homing Explosion Slightly reduced the damage per hit of the homing arrow, but increased the spread range and damage of the homing explosion.

6. Triple Shot – Lucky Strike Adjusted the probability of the Lucky Strike skill fully charging.

7. Lock-on Arrow – Orbital Cannon Since the Lock-on Arrow already deals damage across the entire map, and because the damage from the Orbital Cannon is excessively high (originally, Level 1 could one-shot small enemies in Stage 1 and Level 2 in Stage 2), this suppressed the appeal of other area-of-effect skills. Therefore, the damage of the Orbital Cannon has been slightly reduced.

8. Lock-on Arrow – Thunder Spear Adjusted the damage of Thunder Spear itself and modified its spreading mechanism.