Greetings, Kings and Queens! This patch is the second step in our recent series of player-feedback updates. The first one focused mostly on bug fixing and optimization. This one is aimed much more directly at player experience.
A large part of that work came from thinking about earlier feedback on player agency. At one point, one of our updates took more agency away from players than we were comfortable with, and we wanted to understand exactly why. The conclusion we came to was fairly simple: agency starts to erode when players do not know what kinds of cards they are even likely to see, and when they have almost no way to influence that outcome.
Roguelikes need randomness. That unpredictability is part of the genre. But in ORX, it felt like that randomness needed a bit more structure. This patch pushes in that direction in two ways. First, it makes the elemental system more intuitive and readable in combat. Second, it gives players more control over how a run begins and develops through starting deck shaping, starting artifacts, and Advisors.
Advisors are our first answer to that agency problem. By adding an extra reward card from a specific category, they make future rewards easier to read and give players more control over the kind of build they are moving toward. We will keep watching how this feels in practice and continue tuning the system, but our current feeling is that letting players shape their starting conditions through their starting deck, starting artifact, and Advisor is a step in the right direction.
Patch Notes
Combat
- Elemental system rework.
- Element applications no longer modify your entire damage output. Instead, they now add a separate bonus damage component.
- If an enemy has resistance to an element, only the bonus elemental portion is resisted, rather than the whole hit.
- Element counters have been reworked: each element cast now contributes to its respective counter.
- Counter bonuses now follow a new progression curve, making higher counter values feel significantly stronger.
- The standard elemental ORX pool now uses four core elements: Fire, Water, Wind, and Earth, plus Neutral.
- Elemental ORX now ignore damage from their own element.
- Rare elements now appear much less frequently.
- Fixed a damage-rounding issue.
Audio
- Added 3D sound to a range of combat audio.
- Added new sound layers for large ORX crowds and mass combat.
- Battles now feature more distinct footsteps, running, crowd voices, and impacts against buildings.
- Improved sound parameter handling for camera zoom and 3D camera position.
- Fixed cases where ORX crowd and battle audio could continue playing after abandoning, restarting, or ending a mission.
- Fixed missing audio for ORX Bomber explosions.
Gameplay
- Re-introduced Advisors.
- Advisors add an extra, fourth reward card from their category.
- Each faction gets 4 unique Advisors.
- Advisors are now selected as part of the run setup.
- Reward cards added by Advisors now have their own visual badge.
- Added advisor icons to the status UI.
- Ongoing campaigns now correctly migrate to the new default advisor setup.
- Advisors no longer trigger at the start of a mission.
- Faction selection and campaign start changes.
- Added starting artifact selection at the beginning of a run.
- Your chosen starting artifact now affects your starting deck.
- Advisor and starting artifact selection now happens directly in the faction screen.
- Added new faction-specific starting artifacts.
UI / Readability
- Added elemental icons to ORX status bars.
- Added elemental watermarks to info panels.
- Improved supported font handling for Korean localization.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a case where Runemage could be fully removed and break its alternation behavior.
- Fixed the Worm getting stuck on the flag.
- Fixed broken boss outlines.
- Fixed incorrect Zeppelin outlines on the campaign map.
- Fixed Giga ORX preview issues.
- Fixed a bug when finishing a shop.
- Fixed cases where campaigns failed to load.
- Fixed boss rewards sometimes being granted only in the following act.
- Fixed the bug report form being blocked by a locked log file.
- Fixed cases where stealth could break before the intended animation.
- Fixed artifact “new” markers not clearing after viewing newly added art.
- Fixed Universal Tavern / encyclopedia log spam.
Refactoring and optimization
- Cleaned old assets out of the build.
- Removed legacy elemental-power functionality that was still referenced by the encyclopedia.
- Fixed a build pipeline issue.
- Improved stability for stationary bosses by allowing their physics position to be locked when needed.