Biomes & Depth (Early) — world refresh & progression
The first pass of our new biome and depth progression system is live. Runs now push through distinct layers of the underground, with difficulty and rewards scaling as you drill deeper. This is a foundations-first release to validate the new structure and pacing; expect follow-up tuning and content drops soon. ⚙️
✨ New
Completely New Biomes
Fresh underground layers with their own visuals, encounters, and pacing.
Biomes are ordered in a progression so runs feel more like a descent through a hostile world than a flat series of rooms.
Depth Progression: The More You Drill, The Deeper You Go
Each successful drill run now increases how far you can descend with unique biomes appearing.
Deeper tiers come with tougher events, higher risks, and better potential rewards.
Progress is tuned to feel meaningful but not grindy in this first pass (this will be iterated).
Balance Pass
Adjusted rewards, risks, and event outcomes to better match the new depth curve.
Early biomes are more forgiving; deeper ones scale up danger and payout.
Economy, healing, and failure penalties tuned to reduce extreme outliers.
🐛 Bug Fix Pass
Fixed multiple issues related to progression not updating correctly after deeper runs.
Resolved edge cases where events would trigger in the wrong biome or depth.
Cleaned up UI to better reflect your current depth and biome during runs.
Various stability and performance tweaks across drilling sequences.
Minor localization and tooltip fixes.
⚠️ Notes / Limitations
Content is not final: biome layouts, events, and numbers will change.
Depth curve is a first pass and is likely to be too soft or too punishing in places.
Some biomes currently share placeholder events; unique variants are in progress.
Visual and audio feedback for transitioning between depths is still minimal.
🔭 What’s Next
Biome expansion: more unique events, hazards, and rewards per layer.
Depth UX polish: clearer signaling of how deep you are, what’s coming next, and what deeper tiers unlock.
Further balance passes: smoothing difficulty spikes and reward deserts across depth.
Ongoing bug fixing & readability: better tooltips, clearer numbers, and improved feedback on why a run went well… or didn’t.
Report any odd difficulty spikes, reward dead zones, or biome bugs. Balance and depth pacing will move as we tune this new system over the upcoming updates. 🧪⛏️
