Hey Everyone,
Hope you're all doing well. Update 2 is now available, introducing new challenging Prime Bosses, and rare but powerful Artifact upgrades. We've also included multiple Ships/Weapon/Upgrades, alongside many bug fixes and tweaks.
Key Features
- Prime Bosses
- Artifact Upgrades (10 As of now with more to come later.)
- New Boss/Enemy/Arena
- 2 New Ships
- 3 New Weapons
- 7 New Upgrades
This is just a quick summary, the full patch notes will be listed below. Thank you for your continued support!
Castec
Additions/Changes
- Prime Bosses - These bosses are more difficult variants of each boss that have an increasing chance to spawn based on your current threat level, and require the base version of the boss to be defeated at least once. Defeating these bosses rewards you with Prime Cores, which are required to unlock Artifact Upgrades.
- Artifacts - These are a new tier of items, that are above legendary items. These are unique, un-stackable items and extremely rare, but provide very strong effects. These can be unlocked in the Artifacts menu, in exchange for Prime Cores. Prime Cores are earned by defeating prime bosses, and are also awarded once per run if you successfully beat the Octagonopus.
- New Boss/Arena/Enemy added. This arena is unlocked by defeating the Block-Buster 3 times. After being unlocked, it will be randomly selected each run as an alternate to the square arena. This arena has its own unique boss and enemy type.
- New Ship - FLASH - Active: Null-Strike - Dash in the direction you're moving and damage all enemies you pass through. Triggers all "On Dodge" effects. Passive: Every enemy hit by your ability reduces your dodge cooldown by 0.5 seconds.
- New Ship - IMPULSE - Active: Drains 25% of your current health, based on the health lost, fire up to 5 explosive projectiles at nearby enemies. Passive: Deal increasing damage the lower your health gets.
- New Weapon - Energy Blade - A fast attacking melee weapon, which fires out projectiles when at max health.
- New Weapon - Frost Spear - A medium speed melee weapon, which pierces through all enemies in a line. Applies frost on hit.
- New Weapon - Caustic Glaive - A slow, powerful melee weapon with wide arcing swings. Applies corrosion on hit.
- New Upgrade - Quicksilver - Artifact - Triggers on dodge effects both at the start and end of your dodges. +1 dodge charges.
- New Upgrade - Replicator - Artifact - Doubles all projectiles but reduces base weapon damage.
- New Upgrade - Ascendancy - Artifact - Provides permanent random stats every time you level up.
- New Upgrade - Twist of Fate - Artifact - Provides a large number of free rerolls, item locks, and banishes.
- New Upgrade - Subsistence - Artifact - Doubles all healing received when below 50% health. Restores 1 health per second.
- New Upgrade - Void Rift - Artifact - Drains a percentage of all nearby enemies health rapidly, but also drains your own at a slower rate.
- New Upgrade - Devastation - Artifact - Increases the strength and size of all your explosions.
- New Upgrade - Evolution - Artifact - Periodically adds a stack to one of your upgrades, chosen randomly.
- New Upgrade - Malleable - Artifact - Permanently reduces the experience required to level.
- New Upgrade - Order - Artifact - Rerolls all your upgrades to match your current ship tags, if their rarity allows it.
- New Upgrade - Evasive Volley - Legendary - When dodging, fire out multiple projectiles that target nearby enemies.
- New Upgrade - Cheat Death - Legendary - If you would die, reduce your health to 1. Must recharge before activating again.
- New Upgrade - Blitz Manuever - Epic - When dodging, increase fire rate and extra shot chance for a short duration.
- New Upgrade - Crisis Nova - Epic - When reaching or taking damage at low health, trigger a large explosion around you. Recharges every few seconds.
- New Upgrade - Backdraft - Rare - After dodging, fires a burning trail behind you that applies burn to all enemies hit.
- New Upgrade - Active Recharge - Rare - Reduce ability cooldown by 1 second per stack.
- New Upgrade - Full Power - Uncommon - Healing to full health instantly cools down your ability.
- New Skill - Strategic Synergy - Your first X level ups will always provide tagged upgrades if the rarity given allows it.
- Adjusted the look of cards in the co-op level up menu to improve readability.
- Added a new unlocks screen at the end of each run.
- You can now save your run by interacting with a new portal at the end of each level, this can be continued from the main menu at any time. You may only have one run saved at a time.
- Added indicators on the ship selection screen to show when higher threat levels have been beaten with each ship/weapon. A new pip is added every 10 threat levels beaten.
- Added more detailed descriptions for ships and weapons.
- Improved the way aim assist is handled for manual aiming. It is now enabled by default, but can be disabled in the Settings->Accessibility menu.
- Added an option in the to keep the stats/upgrades tabs always visible when in any menus. This can be changed via "Settings->Gameplay->Always Show Stat Tabs"
- Added damaged models for bosses which did not currently have them.
- Added multiple new SFX for boss and enemy attacks.
- Added new SFX when ability has cooled down to differentiate between player 1 and 2.
Bug Fixes
- Prevented a fatal crash on start-up by changing the way player statistics are saved.
- Fixed a bug where locking an upgrade and then rerolling could cause some upgrades to be replaced.
- Fixed a bug where the triangle enemies could increase their speed when affected by frost.
- Fixed a bug where the Combat Manuever upgrade could reduce damage incorrectly when gaining/losing stacks while it is active.
- Fixed an issue where some upgrades wouldn't function correctly if you selected them multiple times in the same level up window.
- Fixed a bug where it was possible to get stuck on the stats or upgrade lists when levelling up. (Hopefully, we haven't been able to recreate this since but please let us know if it crops up again)
- Fixed an issue where aim could snap to an incorrect angle when firing close to walls when targeting with a mouse.
- Fixed an issue where lifetime stats were not being updated unless the run was a win.
- Fixed an issue where the lifetime high score was not including your multiplier for the run.
- When using manual level ups, the icon should be correctly displayed when you have level ups available.
- Fixed a bug where the Octagonopus' rotation would snap at the start of some attacks.
- Fixed an issue where the Octagonopus was firing projectiles from missing tentacles at the wrong rotation when spinning.
- Fixed an issue where the Demolisher upgrade was not correctly applying its damage bonus to the Octagonopus in phase 1
- Fixed an issue where status effect VFX were not showing correctly on some enemies.
- Fixed an issue where the top run cards were showing incorrect ship icons.
- Fixed a bug where multiple of the same upgrade could appear on one level up screen in rare conditions.
- Fixed an issue where prime enemies were not updating their beam locations correctly on the Pyramind boss.
- Fixed an issue where it was possible to navigate to the stat/upgrades tabs as the level up menu was closing.
- Fixed an issue where the chain lightning weapon was benefiting twice from extra shot chance.
- Fixed an issue where you weren't able to navigate the ship selection screen with WASD.
- Fixed a rare crash that could occur when using any chain lighting effects.
Balance Changes
- Rerolling upgrades when levelling up now also reroills item rarities
- Spark Drive (Uncommon Passive) - Increased damage dealt from 25->35
- Combat Manoeuvre (Rare Passive) - Damage bonus increased from 10%->15%.
- Thunderstep (Epic Passive) - The damaging pool is now left at the end of your dodge, rather than the start. Radius increased from 1.5m->2m
- Splinter Salvo (Epic Passive) - No longer increases the number of projectiles fired. Now increases the damage of each shot per stack. Adjusted projectile travel speed/lifetime for clarity.
- Shatter (Epic Passive) - Damage increased from 75%->100%
- Shock (Status Effect) - Overload now deal damage equal to the amount of shock applied. This way any excess shock stacks over 100 are converted into extra damage for the overload explosion.
- Chain Lightning (Weapon) - Damage is now applied instantly rather than after a short delay for the first tick.
- Increased the health scaling on enemies from loop 3 onwards.
- Slightly increased boss health scaling in endless mode.
- Slightly decreased the hitbox of the electric walls threat modifier.