In classic fashion, I forgot to do a post for the Early Access launch, but thank you to all my players so far, I hope you're having fun.
Today's update addresses a few bugs, but is mostly a balancing patch, there's still some work to be done there, but I think this helps bring up a few of the underperformers (and nerfs one overperformer).
Changes:
Weapons
Bladez
Scaling from bonus stun increased 50% -> 65%
Scaling from bonus damage decreased 100% -> 65%
(This is just to bring the values together, and buff the stun portion of Bladez which I'd overnerfed pre-release)
Flailing
Scaling from bonus damage and stun decreased 100% -> 75%
Base Damage at level 1 decreased 5.8 -> 5.4
A few minor visual tweaks, reduced brightness and lifetime for the ribbon effects.
(Flailing had duel issues of overperforming hugely late game, combined with dealing very slightly too much damage at early levels given its relatively high attack speed, making it a little too strong if you just wanted to sit in a field power-farming)
Hot Light
Power increased across the board slightly 20 -> 22 at max level
%Damage increases buffed 2 -> 2.2 at max level
(Again, mostly a very late game thing, but while Hot Light does very good damage, the limits of its attack pattern cause it to be a little weak late game, this helps to cement it as a weapon that scales well)
Elephant Gun
Level 5 Crit upgrade boosted to include 50% extra Crit Damage
Base Pierce Count increase 2 ->3
Level 9 Pierce Count increased 5 -> 7
Level 6 Size upgrade reduced 1.6 -> 1.4
(Elephant Gun is supposed to be used as either a targeted attack, or a way to clear the space directly in front of you while driving, but its late game size combined with the low pierce count did reduce its efficacy in that sense, so to conteract the reduced size I've buffed it a little elsewhere)
Medieval Weaponry
Bit of a rework to this one, it now fires in a burst, using charges of its "Pierce" to fire. This way if it fires into a big group it's about the same, but if it launches off into nothing there's a much better chance of it hitting something.
Removal of its per level size scaling.
Additionally, it now gains an extra 1 Pierce for every 10 damage it has (to a maximum of 10 extra Pierce). It'll probably need some more tweaking once I see how it performs late game.
Fixed a bug that let the mini-crossbows launch mini-crossbows (Great for damage, terrible for performance and game readability).
Magic Blast
Damage/Stun Values increased 9/4 -> 12/6 at base, 14/6 -> 20/11 at level 11
Size at level 2 & 8 increased 1.2 -> 1.3 & 1.4 -> 1.55
(No real notes, just a buff)
American Intervention
Base Damage/Stun increased across the board 3.5/1.5 -> 5/2.5 at base, 8.5/4.25 -> 13/6.5 at level 11
A few small visual tweaks to improve visual clarity
(Because of how its damage is calculated, the specific numbers shown here are pretty meaningless, we'll see how this unfolds in practice)
Buffs
- The "Magic" weapons (Lightning, Magic Blast, Funereal) have been added to the list for Poison, Prime, and Burst
- Poison buffs will now appear on the buff list after any weapon gains Poison, rather than following the "Add Poison" buff being used (though, due to the order of operations, in the case of Elephant Gun reaching level 2 the poison buffs will not appear until after a buff screen has been closed)
- Per Level Tempo increased .25 -> .35
- One new buff added (Power from Point of Power, gained by visiting, you guessed it, The Point of Power. This does leave the Point of Power a little, forgive me, overpowered compared to other points (it has special spawns including a boss, + the buff), but the plan is to bring up other Points of Interest over time to even the playing field)
Other Changes
Look, this is very embarrassing, and I don't know when it was introduced, but scaling from the two final row achievements was 10 times as strong as it should have been when I checked it today. So I've fixed that, but I'm not sure how many issues that change will bring in, so I'll be monitoring it.