COMING SOON: This update will contain new content, but also a lot of significant changes to existing things because I felt like the feel of the game was way off from where it should be.
New Character: Skye
The Cosmic Library has given you authority over Skye's restraints, allowing you to control her on the battlefield. Skye has access to a new dash ability:
Demon Cleave
Cut down enemies with the Demon Blade at the start and end of your dash. All mana is spent to enhance & repeat the effect against nearby enemies.
Knockback System Rewrite
The knockback system has been completely rewritten to be bouncier, more dynamic, and way less performance intensive. This has a bigger effect on the gameplay than you might expect.
- The old system caused runs to only ever be in a state of winning or dead, which made the game turn mostly into a math equation. Now you can properly use knockback & dashes to push through rough patches while you try to get an upgrade that swings the run back in your favor. Revives feel more useful because of this, and the game feels much more "gamey".
- When you take damage, the enemy that damaged you will be knocked back by a set distance.
Enemy Movement Changes
- Enemies are now much less likely clump into overly-tight clusters.
- Enemies are now more capable of surrounding you. This is a good opportunity to use the new knockback system to push your way through.
- The player hitbox is now smaller, making it easier to weave through crowds.
Smuggler's Shrine Change
- Smuggler's Shrines now either offer you 4 spells or 4 upgrades when completed, instead of 1 spell and 3 upgrades.
- Rerolls for Illegal Spells and Illegal Upgrades are now 2 separate buttons, making it much less expensive to find what you want.
Progression
- Drop rates for demons and charms have been doubled.
- Increases to Max Corruption now accelerate at higher amounts.
- Most difficulty options have been condensed into 1-point toggles instead of multiple points. (You should review your difficulty settings if you are playing below max difficulty)
- "Bullet Hell" Malice modifier effect has been combined with "Escalation" as a single modifier.
- "Ritual" Oblivion modifier total exp penalty on Banish changed from -60% to -50%.
- "Ceremony" Oblivion modifier total exp penalty on Reroll changed from -60% to -30%.
Balance Changes
- You now gain +2 Max Level for each point of Oblivion.
- The EXP curve has been changed: Levelling requires more EXP between levels 20 - 60, but less EXP before level 10 and after level 60. At level 80+, all levelups require the same amount of EXP. Roughly the same total amount of EXP is required to hit 125 as before (but 175 is the new 125, so hitting that will take a bit longer).
- You now must kill all elites before overtime will begin. Normal enemies still spawn during this time so you can trigger on-death effects, but EXP gems will stop dropping from them until overtime begins.
- Enemy projectiles no longer become ridiculously fast in endless, but they have higher base speed.
- Elite enemies no longer gain increasing amounts of armor.
- Corrupted Shrines no longer spawn in the first map.
- Adjusted the enemy waves of each map.
- Aura: Cybernetics has been changed to give -13% Max HP instead of +4% Max HP Reservation.
- Aura: Deathbound, Evolution: Passion and Warfare has had its Max Level bonus while Second Chance is unequipped increased from +3 to +13.
- Aura: Juggernaut now grants +20% Knockback and +7 Max HP insted of +13% Knockback and +13 HP.
- Arcane Aura: Cremation now also grants +13% Projectile Size.
- Illegal Upgrade: Dragon Chaser now also grants +30% Buff Effect in addition to summoning 7 shrines.
- Illegal Upgrade: Grim Row has been changed into an Arcane Aura.
- Illegal Upgrade: Overclock has been changed to an Arcane Upgrade. It now grants +7 Max Level, +2 Rerolls, and +1 Overlevel.
- Illegal Upgrade: The Best Defense now grantes +20% Damage Reduction instead of +13%.
- Illegal Upgrade: Brilliance has been changed to +77% Light Radius, -13% Exp Gain
- Illegal Upgrade: Upgrades that rely on stats that they don't offer themselves now only appear if you have the related stat.
- Illegal Upgrade: Nines now gives -99% HP instead of -999% HP.
- Upgrade: Defiance now reqiures the 7 Malice achievement to unlock.
- Upgrade: Second Chance now requires the 77 Malice achievement to unlock. Its cooldown is now 13 seconds instead of 7.
Other Changes
- "Brain Tease" and "Bulk Up" lesser upgrades can now appear if there are any empty slots in your upgrade list, instead of only when the list would be empty.
- The maximum number of elites on screen at once has been increased from 13 to 50.
- Spirit Shield has been renamed to Phantom Shield
Fixes
Various bug and crash fixes. Some notable fixes include:
- Fixed autoaim bug causing each shot to have a chance of firing in a random direction.
- Fixed issue where demons would be equipped/unequipped when manually levelling them up.
- Fixed issue where regular enemies could get teleported offscreen at random.
- Fixed issue where offscreen enemy culling would sometimes fail to activate.
- Fixued issue where some enemies would fail to spawn from spawn notifications.
- Save data stability improved.
Once I get a good feel for the new state of the game with the builds that people are playing on this version, I will be adding more upgrades and spells to support as many playstyles as possible.