Hello! Today's 30XX 0.33 patch is 30XX's second Major Update, the Abyssal Armory update! The major points of today's update are here in this update spotlight video. 30XX will also be on sale this week during Steam's Remote Play Together sale for 15% off!
Abyssal Armory introduces Watergrav, 30XX's eighth level theme! Navigate spicy gravity-flipping fields and manipulate the stage's large goo blocks to your advantage as you battle towards the agile Experiment 9, who uses his room's gravity to his advantage. Discover Nina's new Autodrone power, which lets her summon a temporary Repro that automates her other Powers. Experiment with Ace's new Leviathan power, a bomb that interacts with most of his other Powers.
Patch 0.33 also updates 30XX's Core Aug systems in a few major ways. First and foremost, we've added the new Resonant Armor - four legendary pieces of equipment that amplify your other Cores and update your character's looks as you find them. Resonant Armor pieces are earned from new miniboss encounters that occur at the end of new high-combat Gauntlet subzones!
0.33 also introduces two new Core Sets to the game - the corruption-balancing Vagrant's set, and the Repro-focused Zookeeper's set. More details on them below!
Finally, 0.33 also reintroduces the idea of Set Bonuses to 30XX - if you manage to complete a full Core Set, you'll receive a powerful bonus as long as it all remains equipped. Try them all!
I'm sure there's some balance work to do on our new sets, but our hope with this updated design is that players have now have several dimensions to consider when evaluating Cores and Armor parts - will you aim to complete a Set for its powerful bonus, pick Cores that match a piece of Resonant Armor you have, or just pick your favorites?
Abyssal Armory is our biggest update to date, and comes with lots of gameplay tweaks and balance changes. Among them is another iterative pass at Ace's Techniques and his interactions with Energy. We've done away with the Surge mechanic, and each of Ace's Techniques now have a base cost, and have had their effects and damage balanced accordingly. (Some of Ace's techniques - the critical mobility ones - are still free to use.)
Thanks for playing! Lots more in the full patch notes below.
GAME CHANGES & FIXES:
- Introduced Watergrav, the Endless Abyss! Watergrav comes with all the usual good stuff - new music, new enemies, new visuals, new mechanics, a new boss, and shiny new Powers for Nina and Ace! (We described them a bit in the above text.)
- Runs now go to Level 8! New Mega Mode runs will also spawn with 8 levels.
- Added two new Core sets, bringing the total to 6!
- Dance on the razor's edge with the high-risk, high-reward Vagrant's set, whose Core Augs cause you to build Corruption while attacking enemies. Corruption empowers your character, but pushing it too far will cause damage and a brief stun. Each Vagrant's Aug introduces an additional Corruption interaction. Power use does not trigger Corruption, making Powers a great choice while your Corruption is cooling off.
- Command your (hopefully) vast army of Repros with the Driver's set, whose Core Augs allow you to get the most juice out of your Repros!
- We've also made a few Core balance updates:
- Effects that trigger on dashing (like Oxjack's Ken) no longer consider cooldowns when used while airdashing.
- If the player has access to both Hover and Fly at the same time, they now combine into one effect (with the longer duration of Hover, but the vertical movement of Fly).
- Owlhawk's Focus (Head Core) CP cost increased to 4 (up from 3).
- Owlhawk's Talon (Arm Core) proc chance increased to 100% for Ace (up from 15%). (I thought we'd done this one awhile ago!)
- Reduced additional raw stats provided by Arm Cores by 50%. (For example, Dracopent's Claw now grants +2 ATK, from 4.) We may remove these stat gains entirely in a future patch.
- Added the Resonant Armor, new Augs that show up on your character model and boost your Cores!
- Each piece of Resonant Armor is found at the end of a new combat-heavy section in a level called a Gauntlet. At the end of a Gauntlet you'll come across a powerful Armor Guardian, a new miniboss who you'll have to defeat to get the Resonant Armor piece.
- Found pieces of Resonant Armor change your character's model. This change altered much of how we render the player character in 30XX,
- Reworked Weapon Charging:
- Characters now have a half-charge after 0.5 seconds, and a full charge after 1.5 seconds (changed from "full charge after 1 second").
- Effects that rely on charged attack activation require a full charge to trigger.
- Nina has a new projectile visual for her half-charged shot, which deals lower damage than a full charge but still pierces through enemies it kills.
- Ace doesn't currently have a visual update at half-charge, but we're working on his charged effects for a future patch.
- Added a new difficulty class for lategame chunks - "spicy". These aren't used commonly, and can start appearing on Level 7.
- Added Lore Terminals that can appear in stages, beginning to shed some light on what's going on in our world. NOTE: For the time being, these are available in English only, and won't appear when playing in other languages. This is because they contain a very large amount of text and are very subject to change - we'll localize them once they're final. (Let us know what you think!)
- Updated visuals in Highvault and Burning Temple.
- Certain non-projectile abilities are no longer defendable (by Echo Shell, Negation Pulse, or Orbital Barrier). For now, this is mostly the game's "laser"-type and "tornado" abilities.
- All damage dealt by Bosses is increased after Level 4.
- Sacred Spines now increases damage taken from Spikes & similar hazards by 2/5/9999 (down from 3/6/9999).
- Taking hits that result in more than 1 damage taken now only counts as one hit for Glory Zone tracking purposes.
- Changed several Ace Powers, and removed Surging.
- Zen Ascent and Dolomite Link left unchanged.
- Echo Shell and Osafune now cost 1 NRG. Osafune damage dealt increased to 50.
- Raijin Call now costs 2 NRG. Damage dealt increased to 40.
- Ryuusei now costs 2 NRG. Damage dealt increased to 50 (+25 per meteor stage, for a total of 100 if you fall really far while using it). Now sends the "surge sparks" by default.
- Void Double is still free while we figure out what to do with it. Also, Void Double now projects Osafune when used while the shadow is active.
- Scrap Trawler now caps at 5 stacks (down from 999), for a cap of 15 nuts per scrap.
- Added proper palette support for Player 2 in co-op when both players are using the same character.
EDITOR CHANGES & FIXES:
- Added Watergrav support to the Editor.
- Added new tiles and decoration for Burning Temple and Highvault.
- Implemented a new palette for Burning Temple and Highvault to match the game's visual clarity updates.
- Changed the graphics of some enemies and level objects to match their updated in-game versions.
- Reworked chests into "Special Items" and removed their object parameters to better represent how the game treats them.
- Burning Temple's Flame now faces upward if not in contact with a solid tile.
- Moved Burning Temple's "grass stone" and "grass roots" tiles to the Background Tiles category.
- When selecting an asset from the asset bar, favorites bar or eyedropper tool (Ctrl + click), the page that that asset is on will now automatically be selected.
- Burning Temple Chase chunks now require a Giant Rolly to be placed.
- Reworked how tiles work internally. Large chunks with lots of tiles should be more performant.
- Fixed an issue where Dustria spikes and containers would be drawn below certain decoration.
- Fixed a bug where moving a set of tiles to connect to another set of tiles, then undoing the move, would result in incorrect tiling on the other set.
- Fixed a bug where you could still select the BG/FG Tile category in simple mode using a keyboard shortcut.
- Fixed line breaks in several asset descriptions, most notably in Chinese and Japanese.