Hey everyone,
Three big ones this week: every item now has a weight, weapon and shield stats have been rebuilt, and the HUD got a serious pass.
Heads up before you read on: we had to wipe everyone's inventories with this update. More on that at the bottom.
Everything Has a Weight
Every item you pick up now has a weight, and carrying more slows you down. One point of weight is one percent slower, with no floor, so load all the way up and you will stop moving. Relics weigh 20 each, which makes the run's payday cost real mobility. Keys have a weight too. Only your fists are free.
A full bag is now an actual decision. Take the second relic and crawl to the exit, or drop something and actually make it out?
Bots play by the same rules. They weigh an item's value against its drag, refuse pickups that would slow them to a crawl, and think twice about fights they couldn't walk away from.
Weapon and Shield Stats, Rebuilt
Item stats are one consistent system now, with some new ones:
Stagger and Stagger Resist: fill a target's stagger bar and you break them out of what they're doing.
Block: shields block a percentage of damage instead of all-or-nothing. Just carrying one gives you half of that.
Targets: how many enemies one swing can hit.
Stun chance, stun duration, interrupt chance and defense power are retired. Your current stats now sit on the HUD under your health bar, and every stat reads the same way everywhere it appears.
Rarity was reworked alongside it, and what an item shows you is now what you actually got. Big perks always come with a big cost, small perks are free, and shields roll a rarity like everything else.
A Reworked HUD
The HUD got a significant pass this week:
Inventory tiles show a cooldown sweep, so the moment your weapon or shield is ready is readable instead of guesswork.
The game log moved under the minimap. New messages land on top instead of at the bottom, tinted gold and settling into place so a fresh event catches your eye during a fight.
The primary objective gets a banner above the timer, and the run clock calls attention to itself as the last minutes tick down, turning yellow with a minute to go.
Player info moved into the minimap, which frees up the top of the screen.
Connection quality is a corner icon instead of a line of text: nothing while you're fine, yellow when it degrades, red when it's bad.
Dash, attack and block are now in the shortcut list, not just emotes.
Other Notable Changes
Attack animations and cooldowns had drifted apart, so swings connected somewhere other than where the damage did. Both halves of every attack animation are now pinned to the real timers.
Interrupts are back, deterministic instead of a dice roll. Any damaging hit inside an opponent's windup cancels that swing, which breaks the old "hold attack and trade" stalemate.
Relics put an aura around whoever is carrying them, so you can see who has the payday.
The escape door has its own minimap icon.
New models for the Cursed Chalice, the Oiled Whetstone and the Storm Globe.
Bug Fixes
Fixed the match not ending when the last human died, leaving the run going with only bots left.
Fixed dropping an item onto a chest making it unreachable.
Fixed Molokhia destroying an apple or spikee pod and producing no pie when there was nowhere to place it.
Fixed bots getting permanently stuck trying to craft.
Fixed XP popups and tutorial toasts firing for characters you aren't playing.
Fixed enemies leveling up mid-fight off a killing blow, and walking forever when their AI was off.
Fixed the minimap spilling past the right edge of its frame.
About the Inventory Wipe
Weapons and shields now use an entirely new stat system, and there was no honest way to convert what you were carrying into the new numbers. Every existing item would have come out wrong or arbitrary.
So we wiped inventories. We know that stings, and we're sorry. It was a one-time cost of getting item stats onto a foundation we can build on, and it isn't something we plan to do again.
As always, please share your thoughts on Discord and follow us on social media:
https://linktr.ee/ballardgames
-- The Ballard Games Team