Greetings, backlanders.
The launch of 1.1 was our smoothest one so far, while at the same time being the game's biggest update ever! This made us happy, but it doesn't mean there isn't stuff to fix!
Endgame Difficulty
The main motivation behind this update is adjusting the difficulty of the early endgame, especially for Regular difficulty players. Our testing both internally and on PTR was mostly focused on Veteran difficulty, and we dropped the ball a bit with the difficulty curve coming out of the campaign for novice players.
Early Abyss is now a bit more manageable than in 1.1.0, and hopefully this encourages more players who are new to the ARPG genre to get invested and take their builds to their limits!
Summon Builds Bug Fix
We have also found and fixed a couple of nasty bugs with the new Headless Doll Unique. It basically, uh, didn't make much sense, to be honest. It was giving a LOT more Summon Damage than it should in most cases, but sometimes it would give less.
We have NO intention to nerf your builds that you already have going for 1.1, so we are applying a significant buff to Headless Doll that should bring it to about the same power level as it was before this patch, in the best cases. If you are playing Summons, your damage might change a bit (either up or down), but hopefully not more than 15-20%.
This buff, however, is temporary. Headless Doll was capable of performing WAY beyond intended due to these bugs, and this buff is a way to compensate for that and make sure your Summon builds are still performing at the same level for now. But in 1.2 (est. late November) this buff WILL be reverted, so Summons can return to dealing damage more in line with the other archetypes in the game.
Chinese Localization Fixes
We have also noticed some issues with Chinese localization and fixed those! We apologized to your Chinese friends, and hope to do better in the future.
Buffs
And although we are generally very happy with the current state of Hell Clock's build variety, with basically all skills being strong in endgame and a variety of different builds being able to clear Void, we are giving a few buffs to Bombardment, Spectral Knives and Veil of Quills to get them more in line with the rest of the meta.
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Cheers!
~Mark and the Hell Clock Team
Full Patch Notes (Update 1.1.1 and Hotfixes)
Gameplay:
Spectral Knives damage scaling with Skill Levels increased from 20% to 25%
Mark of the Vulture damage increased from 170%-370% to 240%-480%
Bombardment base damage increased from 140% to 150%
Bombardment damage scaling with Skill Levels increased from 24% to 30%
Headless Doll Summon Damage bonus increased from 7.5%-11.5% to 15%-23% (this is to compensate for the bug fixes, and will probably be reverted in 1.2)
Removed the "Doctor's Lackey" endgame skill that allowed him to root players
Reduced Vulture Ranged Attack base damage by 60%
Constellations "Três Marias" tooltips now additionally display a brief description of the Fury, Faith and Discipline archetypes to help new players make more informed decisions early on;
Endgame Difficulty Scaling:
Reduced endgame Regular difficulty scaling by about 20% across the board
Reduced The Jailer damage scaling in Abyss World Tier by ~50%
Reduced The Jailer Life scaling in Abyss World Tier by ~40%
Reduced The Merchant Life scaling in Abyss World Tier by ~30%
Reduced The Starved Beast Life scaling in Abyss World Tier by ~20%
Reduced The Matriarch Life scaling in Abyss World Tier by ~15%
Fixes:
Fixed an issue where sounds would sometimes get muffled/lowered during gameplay;
Fixed an issue where sometimes Stashed items and Currencies would not reset in Ascension;
Further improvements to FMOD performance around Split Shot projectiles in particular;
Fixed a couple of Rare affixes not displaying their icons properly;
Fixed Base Damage Stat on the Character Sheet displaying your Physical Damage instead
Fixed some new Options sometimes not persisting correctly
Fixed Veil of Quills pierce not working on some enemies
Fixed Guaraci "The Sun" notable not working correctly
Fixed Ceuci Star-Mother Constellation not being unlockable
Fixed Nina`s Monster not dropping loot in endgame Act 3
Fixed an issue where Tier 8 and Tier 7 "Projectile Amount" Weapons had their base damage values swapped
Fixed Nina's Monster hitbox sometimes not interacting with Shadow Dash and Skull of the Vulture's explosions correctly
Fixed a performance issue with Feitor's Lash where framerate would degrade over time due to an object leak. We are still investigating further performance problems with Lash, but this fix is already a significant improvement
Fixed an issue where Feitor's Lash would not register hits correctly when hitting too many enemies at the same time. This fix also benefits other systems in the game such as gamepad auto-aim
Fixed an issue where Headless Doll would apply its buff using the Spell tag on Skills instead of the Summon tag
Fixed an issue where Headless Doll buff could be applied repeatedly for each relevant Skill, instead of being applied globally and only once
Replaced Ceuci's and Xango's "Elemental Damage" nodes with separate +Fire, +Lightning and +Plague bonuses for clarity and for the values to read correctly on the character sheet