Welcome back, everyone!
Thank you so much for your support and feedback since we launched When the Light Dies into Early Access back in May!
Our second update is now live and focuses on fleshing out the character levelling system by introducing weapon upgrades which will modify specific weapons to create more chaos and variety during runs!
Additionally, we have added a resource pity system to reduce frustration when scavenging for resources, and, most importantly, the hotly requested auto-shoot option!
Character levelling changes and new weapon upgrades system
Our main objective for update 2 was to make runs feel more varied and fun, so we’ve introduced a new system for character levelling whereby the level up choices vary depending on the actual level milestone that you reach.
Choices now come in three flavours:
- General passives (3 rarities every level that can be stacked until an upper limit is reached)
- Weapon upgrades that apply passive effects to attacks (every 5 levels, weapon upgrades can be developed to enhance their potency)
- Active dark magic abilities (every 5 levels).
With these changes you’ll now have more decisions to make during your run which can result in vastly different builds to experiment with!
Here’s a full list of the 12 x new weapon upgrades that have been added in update 2!
Incendiary Rounds
Level 1: Chance for bullets to inflict burn
Level 2: If enemies are burning when killed, they restore temperature to the player
Level 3: Burn duration increased or Burn damage increased
Chain Lightning
Level 1: Chance for bullets to inflict shock
Level 2: The shock is passed to an additional enemy on death
Level 3: Shock duration increased or Shocked enemies have reduced defense
Plague Bearer
Level 1: Chance for bullets to inflict curse
Level 2: Enemies hit by curse AoE damage are inflicted with curse
Level 3: Curse duration increased or Curse damage increased
Duelist
Level 1: Damage while stationary increased
Level 2: Ammo has a chance to not be consumed while stationary
Level 3: Damage while stationary increased or Ammo has an increased chance to not be consumed while stationary
Last Resort
Level 1: After firing the last bullet in a magazine, fire a sonic boom in the same direction
Level 2: The sonic boom deals increased damage
Level 3: The sonic boom has increased knockback or Reduces the number of bullets in the magazine
Execute
Level 1: Enemies under a certain percentage of health take more damage (except bosses)
Level 2: Execute enemies under a certain percentage of health (except bosses)
Level 3: For each enemy executed, recover stamina or For each enemy executed, recover health
Relentless
Level 1: Each bullet fired without reloading increases damage. Reset upon reloading
Level 2: Increases the size of the magazine
Level 3: Further increases the size of the magazine or Each bullet fired without reloading further increases damage. Reset upon reloading
Mind Steal
Level 1: Recover sanity when killing an enemy with the last bullet in a magazine. Cannot trigger more than once every 10 seconds
Level 2: When mind steal is triggered, the next reload has an increased reload rate
Level 3: Recover further sanity when killing an enemy with the last bullet in a magazine or Effect can trigger more often
Life Steal
Level 1: Recover health when killing an enemy with the last bullet in a magazine. Cannot trigger more than once every 10 seconds
Level 2: When mind steal is triggered, the next reload has an increased reload rate
Level 3: Recover further health when killing an enemy with the last bullet in a magazine or Effect can trigger more often
Rapid Fire
Level 1: Each bullet fired without reloading increases fire rate. Reset upon reloading
Level 2: When reloading on 0 remaining bullets in the magazine, emit a shockwave
Level 3: Damage is increased by while additional fire rate is at 50% or aboveor Further increase the fire rate gain
Headhunter
Level 1: Each enemy killed adds 1 marker. At 20 markers, the next shot has increased critical chance and damage
Level 2: Fire rate increases per marker (reset upon final shot),
Level 3: Reduces the number of markers required or Final shot has further increased critical chance and damage
Blindside
Level 1: When firing, an additional bullet is fired in the opposite direction. Additional bullets deal 75% less damage.
Level 2: When firing, an additional bullet is fired from each side. Additional bullets deal 75% less damage.
Level 3: Additional bullets deal more damage or Additional bullets have piercing
Resource pity system
Following your feedback regarding some runs feeling unfair when you keep finding the same items over and over again, we’ve introduced a resource pity system.
This system reduces the chance of finding duplicate items in subsequent containers to a mere 20%, ensuring that you will find a wider variety of items to address your survival needs.
Auto-shoot toggle
The biggest community pain point following update 1 was the lack of an auto-shoot toggle so now, depending on your preferred play style, you will have the option to enable or disable auto-shoot in the settings menu.
When toggled on, all you need to do is simply press the fire button once to activate and once again to deactivate auto-shoot.
But that’s not all! See below for the full list of changes for update 2:
Features
- Added a setting to enable/disable auto-shoot
- Added a pity system to item scavenging to reduce the chance of looting duplicate items
- Implemented unique weapon upgrades.
- Added a reset button to remove all progress
Balancing
- Disabled the Burning Bullets constellation node due to the new burn weapon upgrade ability
- Disabled the Blessed Bullets constellation node due to the newly introduced Incendiary Rounds weapon upgrade ability
- Removed the Twin Shot and Phantom Shot passive abilities (they will be reworked into weapon ability upgrades in the future)
- Removed the Vampirism and Mental Connection passive abilities (reworked into Life Steal and Mind Steal weapon ability upgrades, respectively)
- Disabled the Silver Bullets passive ability on pistol and machine gun
- Disabled the Long Shot passive ability on pistol
- Disabled the Area Expansion passive ability on all weapons (it will be reworked into a weapon ability upgrade in the future)
Bug Fixes
- Player can now select all constellation nodes (with mouse)
- Fixed error message when killing enemies twice
- Re-enabled soul reaper item
- Fixed some tutorial level issues
- Fixed rare bug where ammo was not consumed when shooting
We hope you’ll enjoy playing around with these new systems. As usual, we’d love to hear your feedback and suggestions for future updates. You can either drop us a message in our Steam forum thread or join our Discord to submit feedback, bug reports, or chat with fellow players and our dev team!
Until next time!
PQube, Electric Monkeys & Secret Level Studios
