Undying Brood is released, the first major content patch for Beacon! The planet’s autochthonous inhabitants take drastic action to ensure their survival. Along with new enemies, mutations, items, and levels, we’ve added Enemy Health Bars to this build after community requests to implement them. We were against having health bars in the earlier stages of development, but after testing them out they greatly improve readability of combat and help you prioritize targets more easily. If you prefer not to have them there’s an option to disable them as well.
More improvements to combat readability have been made as well such as notifiers when an enemy is strong or weak to the damage type being dealt to them and improvements to critical hit readability, along with balance tweaks to many weapons and items.
This patch took a bit longer to release than we’d hoped after some delays to focus on optimization and other post release improvements, but it’s also ended up becoming one of our largest content patches to date with more level content than any previous patch. The next couple of content patches should be a bit quicker to release hopefully. Patch 2.2 will be our next focus, including new Uncharted content and the Bestiary screen.
Undying Brood
New Enemies
- Chilopodrae - An evolved form of the Chilopod found in cavernous native areas. It charges forwards with a pair of reflective bulwarks facing forwards, knocking back anything in its path.
- Karnak - A rare large species found only on the surface of the planet, they will idle passively in the background drinking water.
- Champion Mod: Polluted - The enemy is afflicted by Prism's Pollution, causing them to burst on death and apply the Pollution debuff if hit
New Mutations
- Ballooned Flesh - A strange sense of rushing water begins to build in your lower back, as an unseen pocket of flesh begins to bulge fills with an unknown liquid. Gives +80 Health, +40 Resistance, -40 Speed, and doubles the stamina cost to dodge.
- Reflective Bulwark - An indescribable feeling descends down the length of your arm, as though the very bones are thickening beneath your skin. Melee attacks now push back enemies and reflect projectiles for a short window.
- Springy Claws - You feel an intense cramping sensation in both of your feet, as they begin to constrict themselves inward. Your dodge roll now completes twice as fast.
New Items
- Auxiliary: Nightshroud Launcher - The fruiting body of a Nightshroud plant, activating it places a Nightshroud Bouncer for you to bounce vertically off of
- Grenade: Nightshroud Bouncers -Juvenile examples of the Nightshroud plant exhibiting the same extreme elasticity present in more mature members of its species, your grenades bounce off of enemies and the world.
- Grenade: Rotneedle Popper - Small improvised devices combining the naturally-occurring Rotspore needles with a home-made explosive, your grenades explode on impact into a cluster of Rotspore Needles.
- Passive: Rotvine Ammo - Ammunition seemingly augmented with the undeveloped seedlings of the native Rotvine, your shots have a chance to root enemies in place.
- Pickup: Rotneedle Bombs - A device of unknown origin that appears to repurpose the sharp needles of the Rotspore plant into a semi-reusable explosive, releasing a large cluster of Rotspore Needles when activated. Has 3 Charges.
- Pickup: Flydrop Core - The semi-translucent internals of the Flydrop fauna, giving immediate Stamina recovery for 120 seconds when used.
- Pickup: Crab Legs - The darkly sweet leg meat taken from small crab-like animals native to the planet’s forests and streams, each use regenerates a small amount of Health and Stamina when used. Has 3 Charges.
- Pickup: Wild Feast - An apparently purposefully prepared platter of meats and fruits harvested from the local environment, it grants Health regen for 120 seconds after use
- Pickup: Quill Spears - Spear-like weapons, constructed by hand from the quills found on certain subsets of the Solus genus, you throw a large Quill Spear on use. Has 5 Charges.
New Levels
- Level 1 - Rotspore Hive Landmark - A large forest spire covered in Rotspore Fungus, tread carefully when bunches of Rotneedle Balloons are present.
- Level 2 - Untamed Sanctuary Landmark - Explore one of the last remaining Native dominated areas on the surface of Kovus-18, home to all Native species including giant Karnaks on rare occasions.
- Level 2 - Nesting Islands Landmark - A new Solus dominated area, Intestinal Cannons propel you around the egg infested spires.
- Level 4 - Irradiated Sanctuary Landmark - Polluted by Prism's industrial operations, the Native lifeforms near the Prism Vault are being driven out of their territory but still fight for what remains.
- New Act 1 Chilopod trap level tiles - Fight the Chilopods in a small cavern platform and collect either Fungi or Shipwreck loot at the end of the arena
- New Act 2 Native Loot Dungeons added - Scavenge the inner cavern of a mega spire
- Updated Act 1 Chilopod Spire Landmarks, improving the terrain flow adjusting the layout to make use of Nightshroud Bouncers for traveling
- Updated Act 1 Native Loot levels, adding more areas to scavenge and improving the combat scenarios
New Traps and Travel Mechanics
- Stormcell: Wastefall- A large barrel of Pollution created by Prism's operations is released from a drone in the sky, filling an area with a pool of Pollution for a while. Appears on Level 4 in the Polluted base weather type.
- Trap: Rotneedle Balloon - Floats idly around and bursts into a cluster of homing rotspore needles when damaged
- Travel: Rotpit Launcher - Swallows the player and spits them out, flinging them to a new location
- Travel: Nightshroud Mound - When touched bounces the player to a new location
UI
- Added Enemy Health Bars - Appear after enemies are hit and tinted to faction of enemy
- Added Enemy Weakness/Strength notifiers - Appears when an enemy is being damaged by a damage type they are weak or strong to
- Updated Debuff warning notifier to use diamond for alert effect
- Uncharted Faction Color changed from red to purple
- Updated a handful of item and mutation names
Balance
- Enemies - Raised the base health of many Small and Medium tier enemies by 10-20
- Enemies - Adjusted the base armor weaknesses and strengths on many enemies
- Enemy: Chilopod - Increased speed of roll and increased armor reflect chance
- Pickup: Emergency Override - Buffed damage and increased radius to make more useful for its rarity
- Weapons: Increased Semi-Auto Hold rate of fire
- Weapon: Impeder - Increased max ammo and added a larger explosive acid pustule fired on critical shots
- Weapon: Rotneedle Blaster - Increased max ammo, increased bullet spread and wave width, increased bullets per shot, and reduced ammo regeneration speed
- Weapon: Rotspore Repeater and Seeker - Increased homing power on both weapon's projectiles, increased rotspore explosion arm time
- Weapon: Starborn Pistol and Snowball - Increased base shot damage, decreased charge time, and decreased bonus charge bullet damage (Still the highest damage bullet in the game when charged)
- Weapon: Grenade Launcher - Reduced contact grenade damage
- Weapon: Assault Rifle and Swift Arbiter - Increased shot damage, increased max ammo of Assault Rifle slightly
- Weapon: LMG - Increased max ammo, increased accuracy
- Weapon: Sonic Shotgun - Increased wave size and wave duration, making it much more effective in close to medium range against groups
- Weapon: Laser Engine - Increased damage per second, increased damage radius, decreased max ammunition.
- Weapon: Rapture's Emissary - Increased time before initial globule explosion and reduced amount of initial clusters
- Weapon: Chaingun and Death's Door - Decreased bullet spread slightly, increased base damage, and increased max ammunition on Chaingun.
- Weapon: Flame Pistol and Spitfire- Increased flame explosion damage, reduced duration of flame pool left on impact, increased projectile speed
- Weapon: Flame Cannon - Increased damage of Flame Wave projectile, increased max distance of Flame Wave
- Grenade: Fragment - Increased damage, increased time before explode to 2 seconds
- Grenade: Tesla - Increased damage, greatly increased amount and range of tesla arcs and added visual to show enemies struck by arc
- Grenade: Rotspore Sacks - Increased damage, increased damage ticks per second, and increased cloud duration slightly
- Mutation: Palier Head - Reduced Stamina stat bonus to +25
- Mutation: Bonespike - Increased Bonespike melee damage, increased stun duration, and increased melee cooldown
- Mutation: Rending Claw - Replaced melee function with new low stamina and low cooldown melee. One-handed weapon restriction removed.
Audio
- Added new Laser Redirector Prism sounds for beam, trap, and loot variants
- Added new Prism Conveyor Belt sounds
- Increased max audio players to prevent sounds from clipping in and out
Mementos
- Added new Native mementos detailing more of their species interaction with Prism on Kovus
- Add new clone dog tag mementos
Options
- Added option to disable Enemy Health Bars
- Moved Video options to new tab
- Optimizations
- Optimized and updated more explosion effects
- Optimized lighting on more objects
- Optimized audio on many enemies and removed unnecessary idle sounds
Fixes
- Enemies latched when you fall off of the level will now die
- Fixed loading screen music cutting off shortly after starting
- Fixed Reactive Flesh Mutation breaking player statistics occasionally when the players size and stats were changed
- Fixed missing mining lasers in levels
- Fixed Chilopods not rolling off of cliff edges correctly
- Fixed hailshard drone exploding on certain environment objects
- Fixed DNA being set to critical at 100 instead of only greater than 100
- Fixed Keypad Locked sounds not playing
- Fixed Palier Crown head mutation missing from mutation drop list
- Fixed some Prism stockpiles locked by laser fences trapping the player in if bypassed with an item like the Rotspore Booster(Will now disappear if you manage to pass the laser gate)