SENTRY
Steam News 4 June 202511mo ago

Major Update 3 Beta Test (and May Dev Transmission)

Hi everyone, A beta version of Major Update 3 is now available! The new hazards and rewards feature has exponentially increased the various gameplay systems so we’d massively appreciate you letting us know your thoughts…

Update log

Full SENTRY update

The complete published notes, normalized for clean reading and source attribution.

Extracted changes

0 fixes7 additions6 changes1 removal
  • Compatibility
  • Gameplay
  • Events
  • Balance
  • UI and audio
addedA beta version of Major Update 3 is now available!
addedThe new hazards and rewards feature has exponentially increased the various gameplay systems so we’d massively appreciate you letting us know your thoughts, along with any bugs you may find.
changedTo gain access to version 0.8.26211, you’ll need to switch to a beta branch:
changedSelect “Beta Branch” in the “Beta Participation” drop-down list
addedWhen you play the new version, the most important thing to consider is that while your profile saves will carry over (i.e. all your equipment you’ve unlocked thus far), your current escape run will not – so if you’re in the middle of a run and you don’t want to lose any new blueprints you haven’t banked, reach a gate and bank them before switching to the new version.
changedHazards and RewardsThe idea is to provide greater variety and spikes to the difficulty throughout your escape runs. A personal favourite is the “Barricades” reward, which places defensive positions throughout levels for a set number of battles.

Hi everyone,

A beta version of Major Update 3 is now available!

The new hazards and rewards feature has exponentially increased the various gameplay systems so we’d massively appreciate you letting us know your thoughts, along with any bugs you may find.

To gain access to version 0.8.26211, you’ll need to switch to a beta branch:

  • Find SENTRY in your Steam library and right-click on it, selecting “Properties”

  • In the menu that pops up, choose “Betas”

  • Select “Beta Branch” in the “Beta Participation” drop-down list

  • In your Library you should see “[betabranch]” appended to the game name

When you play the new version, the most important thing to consider is that while your profile saves will carry over (i.e. all your equipment you’ve unlocked thus far), your current escape run will not – so if you’re in the middle of a run and you don’t want to lose any new blueprints you haven’t banked, reach a gate and bank them before switching to the new version.

It’s also generally good practice to back up your profile saves ahead of any Major Update, just in case you’re the one that finds an obscure bug. You can find your profile and save folder here: C:\Users[Username]\AppData\LocalLow\Fireblade Software\SENTRY\Saves\Steam[SteamID]

Hazards and Rewards

The headline feature in this update is the Hazards and Rewards system.

The idea is to provide greater variety and spikes to the difficulty throughout your escape runs. A personal favourite is the “Barricades” reward, which places defensive positions throughout levels for a set number of battles.

The rules for this new system are essentially:

  • Each boarding party has a hazard and a reward

  • These re-roll when the enemy takes over a sub system and moves onto the next

  • When you fight a boarding party, the hazard gets applied to you

  • When you beat a boarding party you gain a reward (these last either a number of uses or are one-shots)

  • If you lose a battle, the boarding party doesn't generate a new hazard (but the reward will be re-rolled)

  • The boss encounters before a gate have a harder “boss” hazard

  • When you go through a gate, your hazards are wiped

  • Some will stack, so for example if you are infected with the ‘Tight Budget’ hazard (where 25% of enemies will no longer drop scrap), this would increase to 50% if you were infected with another ‘Tight Budget’ hazard

We’d love to know your thoughts on the meta, individual hazards and rewards and any combinations that stand out – our Discord Playtesters already highlighted a bunch of particularly brutal combos which we’ve re-balanced for this version but you may find others.

There's some clearer messaging of these that we have planned, plus we have a long list of other hazards and rewards we’d like to implement. We can’t wait to hear your own suggestions!

Other Big Additions

A few other things that may interest you…

There are two new levels: Junction and Thermal Vats – the latter has a lot of lava pits waiting to consume enemies you throw into them…

We’ve implemented melee weapons: The HF Blade and Stun Stick:

The Navigator and Overview UI have been reworked. This was largely to allow the new Deploy box to contain useful information about what you’ll face in combat.

There’s a bunch of smaller changes worth calling out because previous behaviour has now changed, just in case you were wondering if that was intentional or not:

  • When blast doors are closed the enemy

Source

Steam News / 4 June 2025

Open original