A massive new update has just dropped into orbit. We’ve added deep progression mechanics, high-stakes risky choices, a shady new black market, and overhauled several cards, visuals, and coop layouts to make Project Vanguard feel better than ever.
Here is everything new in today's patch:
⚡ Main Feature: Persistent Skill Tree
Progression has been fully integrated!
Accumulate XP and level up to earn Skill Points.
Install core and specialized upgrade nodes in the Skill Tree between waves.
Spec into health regeneration, projectile bonuses, move speeds, and weapon cores to build your ship exactly the way you want to play.
💀 Cursed Relics (Risk vs. Reward)
Glowing purple relics now drift onto the battlefield during intense waves. Picking one up grants unmatched power, but it carries a permanent, run-long curse:
Void Core: Grants a massive +150% damage buff... but you leak 1 HP every 3 seconds.
Harvester's Mark: Boosts XP gain from gems by 3x... but you take 25% more damage from all sources.
Dead Star: Overdrive is always ready... but your dash module is completely disabled.
Chronoshard: Slows down time when health is critically low... but permanently cuts Max HP by 40.
Decide carefully — these relics can make or break a run!
🕵️ Shady Deals: The Black Market
Every few waves, a mysterious merchant bypasses the standard Upgrade Shop. The Black Market offers 3 extremely high-tier upgrades in exchange for high-stakes penalties rather than credits:
Trade maximum hull integrity, sacrifice your special abilities, or surrender your current XP pool to obtain game-breaking technology.
💥 Legendary Rework: Vanguard's Wrath
The legendary dash card Vanguards Wrath has been completely rebuilt to feel like a true heavy kinetic weapon:
More Firepower: Projectile speed is up (720), size scale is increased (1.8), pierce count is boosted (5), and damage multiplier is doubled to 8.0x.
Visual Juice: Kinetic rounds now spin fast and emit a glowing pink, orange, and white spark trail.
Heavy Impact: Collisions now shake the screen and trigger a heavy explosion sound with a massive 180px area-of-effect shockwave.
🔧 New Shop Feature: Nano-Rebuild
A 4th card slot has been added to the wave completion shop.
You can now select Nano-Rebuild at any time to fully restore your ship's HP in exchange for 10% of your current run points.
🎨 Graphics, Performance & Bugfixes
Seamless Sector Backgrounds: Fixed a WebGL limitation where non-power-of-two space textures would render with visible grid lines or black seam lines. Backgrounds are now dynamically converted to power-of-two canvas textures at runtime for seamless scrolling.
Cosmetic Store Overhaul: Item names, descriptions, and purchase transaction popups have been given high-contrast outlines and optimized layout alignments. This fixes text blurring and overlapping caused by the camera bloom shader.
Gravity Tether Enemy Stuck Bug: Fixed a bug where enemies pulled by drone gravity tethers would become permanently stuck or invulnerable if the drone was rebuilt/destroyed. Tethers now reset dynamically, and players can always shoot and destroy tethered targets.
Multiplayer Optimizations: Better co-op netcode budget management ensures that projectile packet size limits stay below the Steam P2P threshold to prevent lag spikes.
Launch the game, spec your skill tree, and see if you can survive the curses of the void!
Safe flying, The Project Vanguard Team