Hello! 30XX Patch 0.36 is here a day early, and it's packed with new Power Augs, giving players a say in how their kit develops over the course of a run.
0.36 also contains a small mountain of balance changes and fixes, including several smoothness changes for Watergrav mechanics, changes to some of Ace's abilities, and changes to effects that reduce NRG cost of your abilities.
Full notes below - thanks for playing!
GAME CHANGES & FIXES:
- Added 40 new Augs in the form of Power Augs, special rewards the player can find at the end of a level as an alternative to a Boss Power.
- Bosses now drop up to 3 items to choose between - the Boss's Power, a special Power Aug that modifies a Power the player already has, or a few nuts.
- If the Power Aug that would be generated applies to a Power the player doesn't have, a special Remnant Aug will spawn instead, offering a unique passive bonus. For example, if the game wants to spawn a Power Aug for Zen Mortar, but Nina doesn't have Zen Mortar, a Remnant of Flame will spawn instead.
- Each Power has 2 Power Augs. There's one Remnant of each type. (16 + 16 + 8 = 40 new Augs!)
- In a future patch, these will likely be part of a Memory Index unlock. For now, they're unlocked by default.
- Slightly reduced Watergrav level generation difficulty.
- Adjusted Beta Frog's attack behavior. The initial shot now has a lower cap on how quickly it can move, and the acid shrapnel doesn't pop up as far when the main shot bursts. Time in between attacks also increased by 1 sec.
- Both Frog types now have an oval-shaped aggro radius instead of circular - the top and bottom of their aggro radius have been squished in, so they're less likely to be attacking while on the fringes of the screen, especially when the player is directly above/below them. (This is mostly to help smoothen out encounters where Beta Frogs rain death from super far away vertically.)
- Updated several behaviors of Watergrav's Anchor Mines:
- Anchor Mines now open their eyes from slightly farther away and close their eyes again from slightly farther than that.
- Anchor Mines' explosion radius is now lower for players (it'll better match the visual - it's less likely to hurt you), and a little more dangerous for nearby enemies.
- Anchor Mines are now vulnerable to charged attacks, which will break their chain and send them flying (perhaps into nearby enemies).
- Anchor Mines now chain their explosions - having a closed eye won't protect a Mine from its exploding friend.
- Fixed an issue where firing a large bullet at an Anchor Mine's eye would occasionally trigger the "chain" part of the hit first, incorrectly blocking the attack. This frequently happened when hitting an eye from point blank range with Nina's charged shot.
- Shield Turtle shields are now vulnerable to Anchor Mine explosions.
- Added a whole bunch (~60) of additional sound effects for enemies, repros, and interactions.
- Void Double (Ace's Penumbra Power) reworked. Void Double now projects a shadow clone in front of Ace that mimics all of his melee abilities (including other Powers) while active, and drains NRG over time until deactivated. When Void Double deactivates, the Double will throw two scythes upwards & diagonally, dealing damage based on the number of successful hits dealt by Ace while the Double was active.
- Leviathan (Ace's Watergrav Power) now scales with Ace's Power stat, as well as Sacred Defender, Rage Circuit, and Coup de Grace.
- Osafune (Ace's Deepverse Power) can now be canceled at any time during the animation by activating Osafune again.
- Dolomite Link (Ace's Clockzone Power) can also now grapple onto walls, in addition to enemies.
- Dolomite Link enemy hits now refresh Zen Ascent by default.
- Fixed a bug causing Dolomite Link to occasionally not boost Ace upwards when ending near the ground or near walls.
- Dolomite Link now recognizes when Ace grapples onto something he can't reach, and ends accordingly.
- Reworked sources of modified NRG cost and chance-to-cast-for-free into Power Efficiency, which increases how many Powers you can use for a given amount of NRG. This also brings some outlier items in line a bit - many items/abilities that provided "free" NRG were wildly powerful, sometimes trivializing the game by themselves.
- Power Efficiency lets you cast more Powers for less NRG. +50% lets you cast 50% more Powers for a given amount of NRG - +100% lets you use twice as many - and so on. (The NRG Cost of your abilities is (1 / (1 + PE%)).
- Owlhawk's Head Core now grants +33% Power Efficiency (50% when Resonated).
- Vagrant's Sonata now grants +50% Power Efficiency while in green Corruption (any Corruption when Resonated).
- Crisis Clarity now grants +100% Power Efficiency while in red HP.
- Completing the Owlhawk Set now grants a bonus 67% Power Efficiency (totalling +100 with the Head part).
- Heavy Juice (Nina Aug) now reduces Power Efficiency by 50% (additively).
- The Powerless Curse now reduces Power Efficiency by half (multiplicatively), doubling your Power costs.
- Items that modify the NRG cost of an ability are now reflected in the cost shown in the Pause menu. This includes temporary cost reductions (like Vagrant's Sonata and Crisis Clarity). (Also, fixed Ace's Energy costs in the Pause screen displaying incorrectly.)
- Void Orbs (Penumbra enemy) now aim slightly higher when approaching players. This should cause them to get caught on low ground less often, and float closer to Nina's base firing height.
- Contractor Omega and Shopsmasher are now somewhat rarer.
- Unleash Blade now costs 5 NRG for non-Lucavi weapons. It can be activated even if Ace doesn't have enough NRG, but will deal minimal damage.
- Renewal Pod nerfed directly into the dirt. Now requires 3 kills per petal (up from 1). No longer rarely spawns Tokens.
- Renewal Pod was wildly overpowered, and has been since its introduction. There's a chance that, even at these numbers, it's still too powerful. We'll keep an eye on it.
- From its new home, deep in Terra's old dirt, Renewal Pod grumbles softly to no one in particular, plotting an unthinkable and elaborate revenge.
- Repro attacks and Dashbolt no longer damage or move Dustria's Exploding Barrels or Ace's Leviathan Technique. (This is a buff.)
- A few Repro attacks weren't correctly tagged as Repro attacks, causing them to trigger switches. This has been fixed. (No more will Reboot be the scourge of your Penumbra climb.) Repro attacks will continue to hit switches if the player is affected by Zookeeper's Burden.
- Fixed an error that could cause crashes in Clockzone.
- Updated tooltips of a few items to properly reflect post-0.35 NRG numbers.
- Aiming Gear now has a 0.25 second cooldown (up from 37.5ms).
- Rending Whirl + Crushing Void's Mega Whirl duration reduced (3 seconds, from 5).
- Jagged Bolt + Rending Whirl's enemy debuff effect increased to 2 seconds (from 1).
- Aiming Gear + Crushing Void is now only usable once in between landings (by default).
- Reduced enemy density somewhat in Gauntlet sections. Enemies in Gauntlets drop pickups less frequently. The reward for battling through a Gauntlet should be a resonant armor piece. Prior to this change, Gauntlets also served as nut & health fountains.
- Dustria Workers that find their way into Grinders will now be properly ground up.
- Level 8 of a run in Standard is now always guaranteed to spawn a Shop.
- Slightly reduced the number of nuts generated in mid/lategame levels.
- 30XX's shops result in too much player power, even without any Entropy Conditions on. We'll continue to examine the game's economy over the next few patches - in general, the sweet spot is "most players will be able to afford one shop Aug per level - two if they're lucky or find a sale".
- Soul Scrapper (Challenge Flavor) now reduces Max HP by 1 per Aug/Power (down from 2).
- Solution Gambler and Greased Fate now each cost 20 nuts to use (up from 10).
- Tweaked Crusher's detection zone vs. Dustria Workers - they'll now be arbitrarily destroyed by Crushers less often.
- Increased Watergrav Fish's vertical hitbox (so attacks are now less likely to miss).
- Fixed an issue where Autodrone's Zen Mortar fire could injure players.
- Fixed an issue where Deepverse's background could display incorrectly.
- Fixed a bug causing the character's dash echoes to partially draw over the base player sprite.
- Advanced Repair Kit value set to 35 (from 25). It'll probably become a Prototype benefit eventually.
- L'il Hoot's damage reduced by 60%.
- Seriously, what was I thinking on this one?
- Zookeeper's Phalanx damage block chance cap reduced to 30% (10% + 4% per Repro), down from 50% (10% + 8% per Repro).
- Fixed a bug causing Ultracharged shots (via Dracopent's Claw) to deal more damage than intended. The reduction is about 33%. (Normal, half-charged, charged, and ultracharged shots should deal 10, 15, 25, and 40 base damage, respectively. Prior to this patch, Ultracharged shots were dealing 60 base.)
- Fixed a bug causing persistent player effects to drain NRG if left on in between levels.
- Fixed a crash that could occur in Clockzone, usually lategame.
- Acid Mist (Watergrav effect when Acid shots hit water) lifetime reduced to 1 sec (from 1.5).