What hurts is exactly what you see — and bosses finally do what they promised ⚡
The biggest patch since the playtest went live. Seventeen boss mechanics the designer wrote into the data long ago that the engine never read. A dozen places where the game lied about where it was safe. Plus balance changes — nerfs included — and a pre-release cleanup.
⚠️ Balance changes — read this even if you skip the rest
Combat Hamster and Windmill deal less damage on machines where the game stutters. Both counted the gap between hits in REAL time instead of game time — so the worse the game ran, the harder they hit. At a smooth 60 fps nothing changes (measured DPS identical to the decimal), but on a weaker machine these two will land noticeably less.
Fan: crits no longer depend on framerate. It rolled for a crit EVERY frame, even one where it dealt no damage.
Poison now goes through armour — and that is a nerf to poison. Until now a poison tick came straight off your HP, and the armour bar could even refill while you were poisoned. The game was drawing a shield that shielded nothing.
Poison counts towards "no hit". You could lose HP to poison and still get the no-damage achievement.
Shards of splitting bosses hit weaker. The data said "50% of the original's damage", the code had 60% hard-wired. They were dealing 20% too much.
The Drying Room Witch does not hurt while she is gone. She vanished for 6 s, and her invisible body still dealt full contact damage.
The Rooftop Tomcat hurts within 60 px instead of 70 — its data always said less, the game used the default anyway.
Eight weapons stop wasting explosions on corpses. Garlic Aura, Bubbles, Fry Rain, Cap Gun Caps, Hammer, Bouillon Cube, Sock Bomb and Firecracker counted enemies that were already dead. That is a real buff in a dense crowd.
🎯 What hurts is exactly what you see
This whole section is one class of bug: the game was lying about where it was safe.
The Power Plant Stack's beam hurt ten times wider than it drew. Visible line 8 px, hit band 78. You stood BESIDE the beam and took a tick every 0.2 s. The marker caught up with the hitbox — we did not narrow the band, so the boss is no weaker.
The telegraph cone stayed put while the enemy lunged. The Carpet Rack Ghost lit its cone, jumped 196 px and struck BEHIND you. You did exactly what the game teaches — and got hit. The marker now follows the enemy.
Wide cones drew narrower than they hurt — a 180° telegraph showed up as 121°, i.e. 29 degrees on each side with no warning.
Line zones hurt up to 80 px past the visible end of the wall, and the Pavement Slider travelled 100 px past the end of the drawn lane.
The "where did that come from" arrow pointed the wrong way — for mortars and orbits it showed the boss' position instead of the point of impact. A mortar falling from off-screen had no warning at all.
Elites looked like ordinary enemies but had 25% more reach. An elite is now as big as it actually is.
Rolling boss walls could evaporate halfway across — they deleted themselves, because they shared a zone budget with ordinary monsters.
🦌 The Stag Monument stopped vanishing for 64% of the fight
A hit on a hidden boss was dropped completely silently: no number, no flash. It read as "the boss healed itself" or "my weapon stopped working". A hit that does not land now leaves a "blocked" dash.
The boss health bar was narrower than the boss and at 12,600 HP moved half a pixel per second. It is now fixed and wider, on every boss.
👑 Seventeen mechanics the engine never read
Heavy things stay heavy. Peat Behemoth, Rotten Colossus, Iron Maiden, Magma Golem and 18 more no longer get blown around by the hair dryer like the lightest thug.
The Tar Lump finally hits the ground. It hopped, landed and did nothing — even though its data had described the impact all along.
The Geyser Lord finally surfaces. Its last phase was a third round of hiding in a mound — two out of three hits came back as "blocked".
The Sulphur Cannoneer's mines actually explode. The fuse was wider than the blast, so the mine detonated outside its own damage radius.
Support arrives with an escort. The whole "heal someone else" family spawned alone, so the "kill the support first" puzzle never happened.
The Handyman's swing sets you on fire, and Jarl of the Floe drops his guard for the boomerang's flight — for that whole window you deal four times the damage.
The Market Barker charges a shot you can break. A hit during the charge window kills its deadliest projectile.
The Wax Colossus melts — shrinking and speeding up every 20% of health lost, with its hitbox shrinking too.
The Fountain Ghost is fast in its own swamp (twice as fast), the Gas Heater smokes after a salvo (a reverse telegraph: "now you can close in"), the Carbide Man has a second pattern, Two-stroke Wraiths only poison in flight, the Roof Shoveller stops running, the last Black Slagheap shard goes berserk, and the Dryer Witch actually jumps.
🆕 New boss mechanics
Legion of Scrap finally reassembles. Two surviving shards touching for 2 s merge back into one form with their health added together. It is called a Legion because it is supposed to pull itself back together — and it never did.
The Winter of the Century's arena freezes. After every phase another third of the yard turns white. The ice slows you, ticks damage and does not go away — after the third phase there is practically no dry ground left.
Cocoons stopped being decoration. The Pigeon Coop, the Pigeon Queen and the Drying Room Witch hatch their minions from cocoons you can destroy first.
The Phantom Tow Driver lies, and shoots something you can shoot back. Its fake teleport telegraphs explode, and its homing projectiles have health of their own.
The Black Slag Heap cracks the ice with its swing — three fissures run out of the ground after the wide slam.
🐾 Pets work across the whole screen
A pet's territory is now the entire visible screen, not a leash. It collects from the edge of your own magnet all the way to the edge of the frame. The old 230–270 px leash ran out halfway to the edge of the screen — and no single number could fix it, because the correct value changed with your resolution.
Loot flies to the pet instead of simply vanishing. Until now a pickup just disappeared somewhere in its radius, with no sign that the pet took it. If you walk closer, your own magnet takes priority.
🧹 Pre-release
Polish text in the English build — in the shop, on the stalls, and in twelve bestiary descriptions, including the ones that are the REWARD for beating a boss.
The same character had two different names in one session. Your neighbours' names are proper names and stay Polish everywhere; their descriptions are still translated.
The pet achievement never fired, and achievements in general never caught up with Steam if they failed the first time. Owed ones will land on your next run.
The bestiary showed armour inverted — a monster listed as "60" looked tougher than one listed as "30" while reducing less. It is now the reduction, with a percent sign.
The upgrade card understated the DPS of Garlic Aura, Fan and Carrier Pigeon — the more you had invested in cooldown, the worse the lie.
The victory fanfare would not stop under the game-over screen, a corrupted character texture used to kill the whole run, and the game is 5.2 MB smaller — the miniboss track never played, yet shipped in every download.