Hey everybody,
The light is in sight! We are almost at the end of our Early Access journey with only a few updates left until we reach 1.0. We’ve really appreciated your feedback and hope that you’re enjoying the direction that When the Light Dies is heading.
Today’s update introduces a new weapon in the form of the powerful Longbow, as well as some exciting new elemental weapon upgrades to help you keep the horde in check.
Longbow Weapon
This mighty weapon fires a single arrow which embeds itself into a target before its delayed charge explodes, dealing damage to all enemies caught in the blast. This means that one well-placed shot can make all the difference when facing down a large group of enemies!
The longbow can be purchased alongside the other weapons in the main menu by spending your hard earned beating heart currencies!
New Weapon Upgrades
We have added three new weapon upgrades which can all be levelled to improve their potency. To coincide with these upgrades we have also introduced the freeze and acid status effects to make your runs feel even more varied:
Cryo Blast: Chance for bullets to inflict ‘freeze’. A frozen enemy becomes encased in a block of ice and cannot move for a short period of time.
Level 2: If enemies are frozen when killed, they explode into razor sharp icicles.
Level 3 (Damage branch): Damage inflicted on frozen enemies is increased by 20%.
Level 3 (Duration branch): Freeze Duration is increased by 0.5 seconds.
Corrosive Rounds: Chance for bullets to inflict ‘acid’. Enemies affected by acid burns gradually take damage overtime and have their movement slowed.
Level 2: Enemies inflicted with acid have their max HP reduced by 20%.
Level 3 (Duration branch): Acid duration increased by 2 seconds.
Level 3 (Slow branch): Enemies are slowed by 40% when inflicted with acid.
Double tap: 'Extra shot' chance is increased by 20%.
Level 2: Whenever Extra shot is triggered, ammo is not consumed.
Level 3 (Damage): Damage inflicted by Extra shot bullets is increased by 20%.
Level 3 (Chance): Extra shot chance increased to 30%
Try experimenting with these new upgrades in combination with the longbow (we’re personally big fans of stacking acid with piercing >:D).
Please see below for the full patch notes:
Features
- Added Longbow weapon
- Added three new weapon upgrades with two new status effects (Freeze and acid)
QoL & polish
- Updated crossbow reload SFX.
- The game now remembers your last choice for character, weapon and difficulty.
- Added Achievement notification/claim sounds.
- Updated various texts for better clarity and consistency.
Balancing
- Updated Huntsman upgrade to affect reload speed instead of attack speed.
Bug fixes
- Crossbow no longer consumes too much ammo when used with certain upgrades.
- Bullet Damage meta upgrades now increase damage by the correct amount
- Critical damage now displays correctly where it previously showed critical chance.
- Screen effects (darkness lights, freeze) now scale in all resolutions.
- Can now claim achievement rewards after restarting the game.
We hope you enjoy the new content and if you do have any feedback please do share it in our feedback thread or contact us directly on Discord.
If you have been enjoying the changes we’ve been making to When the Light Dies since EA launch, it’d be incredible if you could share a positive review here on Steam, they really do make a huge amount of difference for us!
Until next time,
PQube, Electric Monkeys & Secret Level Studios