We've got a pretty substantial update to round out a bunch of Salt Mines stuff. Most notably, your salt bank is now persistent. It no longer expires after 4 hours of server inactivity. Also we've got some further tweaks to Tianhuo and throws in general.
Pixel Lobby
Salt Mines
- The large center map has been reworked to improve traversability. One-way dropdowns have been removed and various corridors have been widened.
- The boss bear has undergone some top-level rebalancing in an effort to help the final showdown reach a conclusion faster:
- The boss bear’s base max health and scaling max health have been reduced.
- The boss bear’s health melting speed increases over time the longer they go without catching a player. This mechanic resets when a player is caught.
- The boss bear now heals more from defeating players.
- The boss bear’s movement speed has been increased and is now slightly less susceptible to ice physics.
- Dynamite chests now cost 60 salt (up from 50).
- The maximum amount of dynamite a player can carry at once is now 10 (down from 30).
- Reduced the chance health orbs spawn in salt ore before bear event to 5% (down from 10%).
- There is now a roar sound effect that plays when the boss bear spawns, and when the boss bear defeats a player.
- When a predator npc fight times out, the player always wins, regardless if the predator had a life lead.
- Fixed a bug in the salt mines dynamic music system where the “level 3” layer would start too early (at difficulty level 4). It now advances every odd level as it should.
- Fixed a few places on the map where the boss bear player could get trapped behind salt rocks.
- Fixed a rare issue where desyncs could occur during boss bear fights.
- Fixed a bug where salt ores that replenish during the bear event were yielding as if it were the first difficulty level. The ore now properly yields according to the salt scaling value reached before the final showdown phase began.
- Fixed a bug on the pixel lobby controls card where “throw dynamite” did not replace “wardrobe menu” during the salt mines preparation phase.
- Tian’s HUD portrait is now on fire.
General
- You can now run the game on the same machine you’re running a server!
- Banked salt is now persistent. It no longer resets after being logged out of a pixel lobby server for 4 hours. This means you will still have all the salt you haven’t spent if you come back, for example, a week later.
- Players can now keep and spend their banked salt across different pixel lobby servers.
- Cashmere has slightly adjusted the prices of hats in her shop.
- The shop HUD now displays your current banked salt amount in the header.
- Fixed a few typos in Cap ‘n’ Cash’s lines. (What -are- hands?)
- Cap ‘n’ Cash now have additional lines:
- When a player enters the shop already owning all the hats for sale.
- When a player tries to buy a hat they already own.
- The wardrobe menu now has sorting options:
- Alphabetical A-Z.
- Alphabetical Z-A.
- Rarity Lowest-Highest.
- Rarity Highest-Lowest.
- There are new toggles in the lobby options menu:
- Turn off the sound notification when an overworld salt chest spawns.
- Set whether or not the chat box automatically closes after sending a message. (Auto-close is enabled by default).
- Fixed various issues with lobby sound effects playing too loudly.
- Fixed a variety of bugs that could result in rare server crashes.
- Fixed an issue that caused duplicate player sprites to appear.
- Fixed an issue that causes player sprites to turn invisible.
- Fixed a long-standing issue where a player’s GGPO delay setting would, on rare occasions, not accurately represent actual delay. This was known as the “input delay” bug, and we believe it is dead.
- The Kitsune Mask now occupies the face slot instead of the hat slot.
Gameplay
General
- All characters' 6A (anti-air) attacks now get pushblocked as if they are heavy attacks.
- Throw tech window has been increased to 17 frames (previously 15 frames, as of the last patch).
- “Crouch teching” throws are now allowed, as TRM takes care of most of the issues this intended to solve.
- Throw inputs while crouching will now cause a throw to come out rather than an attack, since crouch teching is now allowed.
- Throws now scale combo damage to 50%, (down from 70%).
- Counterhit throws now properly reset JD to 0.
Tutorials
- Sections of the tutorial that talk about throws and throw teching have been updated to account for the recent changes made to throw mechanics.
- Various typos all around the tutorial have been fixed.
Velvet
- Fixed a bug that was causing Velvet’s forward tech roll to have the wrong number of hit-only invulnerability frames.
Pom
- Airbud should now always groundbounce the default amount.
Tianhuo
Tianhuo has always presented unique balance difficulties. She benefited greatly from the changes made to the universal pushblock system in ways we did not anticipate, so we’re tweaking some numbers.
- 2A now has 5 active frames, reduced from 9. (This was just an unrelated oddity).
- 2C now causes less blockstun. It’s now -24 instead of -20.
- 6A (anti-air) now causes increased blockstun vs airborne opponents, to make 6A > Volcanic crash setups a little more difficult to pull off.
- Horizontal momentum retained on Firecracker Attack (2D) is now hard capped, to prevent instances of unreactible crossups.
- Fixed a bug where Volcanic Crash could grab a pushblocking opponent.
- Tianhuo’s Master Combo Trial 2 has been replaced.
Predators
- Predator’s moves across the board now add more JDG, effectively making their combos shorter.
- All predators are now capable of being counterhit out of all attacks, instead of only from throw startup and air attacks. (Whoops!)
- Fixed an issue where predators were unable to block at the start of a fight.