Eye of the Storm
A new hazard. Every so often a storm sweeps the whole field, and everything outside one drifting green circle takes damage until it passes. You get a warning first, and an arrow points to the circle when it's off screen. It's the first hazard that tells you where to go instead of where not to stand.
Healing on the field
Heal pods: while your ship is hurt, enemies sometimes drop a small green cross. Fly over it to heal 5% of your health. At most two lie on the field at once, and after you take one, no new pod drops for a few seconds. They don't drop in boss fights.
Repair Bay, a new planet perk: when your health drops below half, a repair kit warps in near you. Fly over it to instantly heal 40% of your health. One per stage, boss fights included.
Both are logged in the Starlog.
New mini-boss: the Clinker
Shooting it heats it up. Once it glows red it always finishes the job: it locks a lane onto where you're heading, lunges there and explodes around itself. Ignore it for 7 seconds and it lights itself. While it waits it sheds small Spalls that chase you. Planet 3 now sends exactly one mini-boss pack, never two at once and never one after another.
Two new items
Headhunter: everything you fire deals 20% more damage to elites and mini-bosses, at a small cost to move speed. One per run. Bosses are not affected.
Triage: heal pods drop 50% more often and heal 50% more, at a small cost to attack speed. It stacks. There are still never more than two pods on the field.
Mini-bosses in Endless
Mini-bosses now come to Endless and Daily. The first arrives at 2:30, then they come more and more often, one every 40 seconds by 15 minutes in. From 10 minutes two can arrive at once. Every mini-boss shows up once before any repeats.
Ships and bosses
The starter ship now flies with a half-power wingman drone from the start. Its luck gain per stage drops from 7% to 5%.
The Palimpsest lifts its pen between strokes in its first two phases, which is your window to shoot back. Its pull toward the boss is back, and its warning lines are dotted so only the ink that can hurt you is solid.
The Carrier's boss fights were about 20% too long and are corrected.
Star map
Seven new branch planets, so there are now 40 distinct paths through the map instead of 14. Every route is still the same length.
Balance
The clean-clear bonus no longer needs a perfect run. Taking no damage still pays the most, and taking one or two hits now pays part of it instead of none.
Ships that spend their own health to use their kit no longer lose the clean-clear bonus or the no-damage boss rewards for doing so.
Mini-bosses have less health, so they no longer feel unkillable for multishot, ricochet and drone builds.
Drones deal about 20% less overall: every kind fires a third less often and hits 20% harder per shot. The wingman perk is unchanged.
Pinball keeps 4 balls per copy, down from 6.
The time you are safe after taking a hit can no longer be reduced below 0.35 seconds, however many items that shorten it you stack.
Reward pylons that raise your reanimate chance now give half as much (at most 5%), matching the halved Necromancer items.
Meteors
Meteors no longer come in green, which read as friendly. They now roll orange, violet-blue, red, pink or purple per stage.
In boss fights, meteors look as big and as fast as they do on normal stages, and they no longer pop in inside the screen when the camera pulls back.
Shop
The LOCK button now carries a padlock, open or shut, so it no longer reads as the buy button. The first time you lock a card you could afford, the shop asks once whether you meant to buy it.
Fixes
A run that failed to reach a leaderboard no longer shows a position it didn't earn. The end screen now marks your standing best apart from this run's placement.
Fixed a case where one leaderboard failing to accept a score also discarded the others.
Shooting down the Murmuration's flyers now counts toward the Murmuration in the Starlog, and dying to one names the Murmuration on the end screen.
Rally now triggers when gas or other damage over time takes you below 30% health. Before, only a direct hit could trigger it there, so slow damage carried you all the way to zero first.
The Dragon drone is one per ship, as intended. A second one could be offered while your drone ring had a free slot, and its card counted your other drones ("3/1").
If you like where this is going, wishlist the full game. It helps more than you'd think.