There's a tradition in Arcen titles that we've had a high-ranking difficulty level known as Misery. It's not in all our titles, but most of them. If you asked me a month ago if this game would have a Misery Mode, I probably would have said no.
The thing is, in today's earlier build, I relaxed a few things in the late game that were punishingly difficult. That made most people very happy, but it made a few people a bit sad. They were very polite about it, but they liked that... "this is agonizing and takes forever, and you have to minmax like crazy, and you wonder if it's even mathematically possible" sort of challenge. To me, that sounds absolutely miserable, and that's probably true of most people reading this.
So: we now have Misery Mode. That allows me to keep those sorts of challenges in the game, for the few people who want them, while balancing Extreme Mode to be something that your average advanced strategy player can probably handle. There are no achievements tied to Misery Mode, and there won't be in the future. However, it does track which ones you've done in the game, since of course it should. As a developer, I don't want you to play Misery mode unless it calls to something deep inside you. It's not part of being a completionist -- it is actively un-fun unless you're the sort of person who inherently hears its siren call.
I'm releasing this out to everyone now so that it can get more testing from the people who want to use it. The controls related to it are in English only for now, but the actual content is in all the languages the game is in.
For most of you, you can just be glad that the truly sadistic balance falls into this alone. For those who are interested in this mode, a lot of them are clustered on the discord for the game, so if you have ways you want me to make it even more painful in this mode, I don't mind.
My main focus for the next few weeks is still going to be on Tier 3 goals for everyone, but once I'm past the content sprint, I'll be doing various polish, and can also throw in some extra horrible stuff for this mode if there are spots where that would be welcomed.
If you’ve spent time with Heart of the Machine and want to leave a review, that’d be appreciated. No need to say more than you mean, but if you’ve been meaning to write one, I’d be grateful. Steam reviews carry weight. For a project like this — developed by a single person over many years, every review makes a difference.
Honest thoughts are what matter. Whatever your experience has been, sharing it helps. It’s a powerful way to have your voice heard and contributes to how future patches are prioritized and addressed.
Thanks for reading and for playing.
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Update 57 Changelog
Balance Fixes
- Balance Implosion: Fixed an issue where players were getting 6000 extra dark matter particles and Novichok-17 if they started a new city. Players are only meant to have 255 at most, so for now I'm leaving that consistent across difficulty levels, and we'll see what happens.
- Dark Matter Storage: The storage of dark matter particles has been dropped to 255 to make it so that existing saves that were having the inflated numbers can now be re-attempted with real numbers.
Misery Mode
- A New Difficulty Level Above Extreme: This is not meant to be fun for most people. It's meant for the extreme min-maxers who like playing AI War on difficulty 10. The name of this mode is not an accident.
- The Stat Changes In This Mode: Morale and Systems Integrity are multiplied by 3.6x on misery mode, compared to the 2.8x on extreme mode (or 1.4x on hard mode). Unit squad sizes are 3.8-4.2x in Misery mode compared to 3.1-3.6x on extreme mode (or 1.5-1.8x on hard mode).
- Other Insanity: Fighting the citizen advocates requires you to defeat more of them on misery mode. Even more ships appear in Stars Beyond Reach on misery mode.
- "Peace After Brutality" Is As Brutal As Possible: In Peace After Brutality, you need 8 million fedcorp unrest rather than the 6 million on extreme. Also here, the number of squads spawning in are roughly equal to what they were in extreme mode before the nerf. Not completely correct, but... close. This is offset by the fact that you have a proper number of dark matter particles now.
- Mark 6 Mechs: The game now includes Mark 6 mechs exclusively for Misery Mode. These are 1.32x stronger on all the main stats compared to their Mark 5 counterparts. However, their armor piercing is not increased at all unless that would be lower than their armor plating, in which case it's increased only enough to cover that. In practice this means a bit of an increase for the machinist and convictor, but not at all for the other ones.
- No Achievements For This: There are no achievements for misery mode, but it does track your prior wins on misery mode in your profile. If you beat a goal on misery mode, then it also counts for extreme and hard, and gives you those achievements. Achievements for this mode would be cruel.
- Cross-Timeline Resource: A new Misery resource has been added to the game. You gain +1 for any Tier 1 goal or side goal, +2 for any Tier 2 goal (no that's not fair), and +3 for any Tier 3 goal (even less fair). This is not shown on the top bar unless you've ever gained some. The amount you've gained across timelines, and in a specific timeline, are both tracked.
Destroying Timelines
- Destroyer Lens: This new lens allows you to delete timelines that you no longer want to keep (typically this should only be done in some pretty rare cases, honestly). This costs either 1000 Aetagest, or 1 of the new Misery resource.
- Sensible Constraints: To prevent your profile from getting stuck, you need either 1100 Aetagest on hand, or 1 Misery and 100 Aetagest on hand, when you do the deletion. You can't delete the timeline you're in right now, nor can you delete your first timeline.
- Loading Saves From Deleted Timelines: After deleting a timeline, no savegames from that timeline can be loaded as part of the profile. If you copy them to another profile, then they can be loaded (usually for bug report purposes or similar).
Full notes here.
Connect with the Machine
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💬 Discord – Best place to share feedback, get direct responses, and to talk about Heart of the Machine.
📜 Reddit – Discuss strategies, share ideas, and exchange tips with the community.