Hello to our community,
As 2022 comes to a close, we wanted to squeeze in one more update to help make the game a little easier for new players.
The so-called Big Boss Recalibration makes a number of changes to our current in-game bosses to make them easier for new players and also (possibly) a little more challenging for current players.
We hope you enjoy the update and we will see you in the new year!
Patch Notes:
General:
- Camera zoom in boss fights has been tweaked, so it does not excessively favour looking at the bosses, limiting the visibility of the player.
- Players can not be damaged anymore after landing a killing blow on a boss.
- Both player ships now have a slightly faster recovery after force effects, especially the Manticore.
- An active grappling hook is now always retracted when the player gets stunned.
- Dealing a killing blow to a boss now properly destroys enemies that were in the process of teleporting in.
- All UI interactions are now disabled until the screen has completely finished a transition-in effect (fade). This should alleviate any unintended button presses on the UI.
- Player interactions are now disabled until the battle screen has completely finished its transition-in effect. This should alleviate any unintended skill uses at the beginning of combat.
- The ‘meanwhile’ screen (Some time later…) present in certain events is now skippable by pressing a button.
- Malfunction’s damage over time now ticks at the end of every second instead of at the beginning.
- The Shooting Star’s item tooltip now correctly displays its energy cost.
Difficulty:
- Realm difficulty levels were sometimes raised for the wrong reasons which made life more difficult for some players. We’ve reviewed the triggers for increasing realm difficulty levels (indicated by stars on the galactic chart). This should automatically lower the difficulty of a realm (when you start a new run) if you haven’t been able to consistently clear the subsequent realm.
Note: We’ll keep an eye out for your feedback on this one and adjust in the future if needed.
Dax the Deserter:
- Dax is now less agile (turning speed has been decreased).
- Dax now lunges forward during attacks. This increases his overall attack range, but can potentially be sidestepped more easily.
- All cooldowns on Dax’s abilities have been increased.
- Quick and perfect attack animations are more telegraphed and have longer windup.
- Dax’s base damage has been increased to 7 (from 5).
- Perfect attack now deals less up-front damage (10), but applies a malfunction that deals 5 damage over 5 seconds.
- Dax is now more resistant to disorient effects and regains control faster when disoriented.
- Dax’s hitpoints per armour have been increased to 60 (up from 50).
Note: overall these changes should hopefully make the encounter easier for beginners (it’s our first boss fight after all) due to the more telegraphed and dodgeable attacks. Also, coupled with a few other general changes, it should make the fight last a bit longer for the more experienced players as well.
Due to these changes, we hope that this fight would feel much more like a proper space duel now.
Warchief M’urdu:
- The Warchief now keeps his horses on a shorter leash (number of chains reduced).
- Warriors spawned-in by M’urdu now include only one elite instead of two.
- The Warchief now has a restraining order against you (surprise addition to enemy spawns).
- The Chariot’s harness no longer has a visible health-bar, only an energy barrier bar. When you destroy the energy barrier, a timer ring is displayed instead of the health-bar that fills up until the barrier is recharged again.
- The Chariot’s Harness now tries to actively avoid situations when it can not reach the player, but the player can damage the Chariot.
- Malfunction can now be properly applied to the harness of M’urdu’s chariot.
- M’urdu’s Blast-O-Mats now can be taunted by the Manticore’s Holo-Decoys.
- The Chariot’s visual appearance got a facelift.
- Added sound effects to the sawblades of the Harness and the Chariot.
- Fixed Murdu’s ballista aiming at seemingly random locations instead of the player.
- Fixed Murdu’s ballista not acting while being stuck in an animation-loop.
- Fixed some visual inconsistencies with Murdu’s purple projectiles.
- Fixed an issue where the Chariot wouldn't change phases while being taunted by the Manticore’s Holo-decoy.
Note: we hope that by giving the Warchief’s harness better visual clues on how it behaves, conveys a clearer idea for players on how to approach this fight more successfully. We’ve also ironed out a few wrinkles in the behaviour of both M’urdu and his allies, which will hopefully result in an encounter that feels less unfair for beginners and more challenging for the experienced players.
The Endkeep:
- Animations are now significantly faster when the Keep changes from one phase to another.
- The Endkeep will always spend a minimum time in each of its phases.
- When the Endkeep changes phases, it prefers some privacy. Prepare to be pushed if you don’t respect it.
- Reinforcement bastions now spawn more Warriors and Archers, less Acolytes and no Dischargers.
- Enemies now navigate much more fluently around the Endkeep and follow the player ship more effectively.
- Gaps between Keep bastions have been closed, so enemies are less likely to be stuck there.
- Enemies are now more effective at avoiding the Endkeep’s bastions when aiming long-range abilities, or charging attacks.
- Endkeep bastions can now properly receive malfunction.
- Endkeep bastions can now always be properly stunned by area effect skills, such as the Shock Thumper.
- The damage of the Endkeep’s catapult explosions have been drastically reduced (from 20 to 5), speed of projectiles slightly increased and their stun time slightly reduced.
- Enhanced the quality of some of the visual and sound effects associated with the Endkeep. As a result it’s hopefully more clear now which parts of the keep are destructible.
- Fixed animation issues with the Reinforcement bastion being stunned while spawning an enemy.
- Fixed an issue with the tooltip display very quickly switching between targets, when the Reinforcement Bastion was spawning an enemy.
Notes: the Endkeep is by far our most complex enemy/scenery in the game thus far, and our other enemy ships had to ‘learn’ their way around it. Hopefully, we’ve been good teachers and they will provide a greater and more consistent enemy force. The keep is currently the final boss of the current content in the game, so our goal here was to make it challenging while keeping the fight as clear and fair as possible. We hope that partially denying phase-skips is a step in the right direction. Let us know what you think!