Version 0.4.6 has officially left the beta branch and is now in the stable branch! We'd like to thank everyone who downloaded the beta and provided feedback and bug reports. If you'd like to join in and talk about the game or provide feedback as well, come and join the community on our discord at https://discord.gg/m9MAfrP !

Our next major update will be Hero Pack #3, introducing 3 new wanderer heroes into the fray.

You do not need to unsubscribe from the beta branch if you are currently using it, as both beta and stable branches have been updated.

Now, on to the details of the major new features from the previous stable version of 0.3.10. We previously outlined these features in a developer update, but we'll go over them again here if you missed it. A changelog specifically for version 0.4.6 is at the bottom of this post.



One of the most frequent things we've heard from players is that the game tends to involve too much "grinding" to find the appropriate skill books to level up, and to acquire the relics you most want to use. It would be much more fun to just play the game, using the various heroes available as best you can, and make progress as you go!

To address this, we've removed all the various skill book types except for Encyclopedia (which has a heavily reduced drop rate), and added a new system for leveling up skills. Heroes will instead earn skill points through 3 different methods:

• Defeating bosses for the first time to earn a Boss Badge
  
• Earning XP in battles like a traditional RPG
  
• Completing specific Hero Quests

You can then spend the skill points to level up skills, even mid-mission. This system also serves to help us level out the difficulty curve from Act 1 to Act 2, since you'll be steadily earning skill points instead of getting books in small dumps. Several bosses have received updates or overhauls to better match the new difficulty curve; some are now a bit easier, and some a bit harder.

Every hero has 3 unique quests that, when completed, award them skill points and another new feature: an Infinite Relic. Claire also has several quests tailored for her various forms.



By completing the relevant quests, hero-specific relics can now become infinite. Infinite relics can be duplicated as many times as you want for free, allowing you more freedom to bind them to any hero you'd like.

Boss relics, shop relics, and relics found only via missions will still need to be either found or crafted, but this also serves to make them a bit more special, and will allow us to add a few more of them as well.




Another point of feedback has been that the building upgrades aren't as interesting as they could be, they cost too much, and there's too many options presented at once. Now that particles don't need to be spent primarily on acquiring skill books and relics, a larger focus will be on purchasing building upgrades.

We've reduced the cost of the building upgrades in general, and reworked many of them to provide more interesting effects that add more "flavor" to various damage types or situations. In addition, instead of purchasing the buildings, they will be unlocked via a town progress bar that increases as you rescue and level up new heroes. This also further serves to incentivize trying out new heroes and completing their quests.

The Town Progress bar also unlocks other things over time, such as Time Break techs, additional reserve and bundle slots, and Skill Points for Claire.



Endless mode has also received a facelift. It will now work similarly to Singularity mode, in that each level will present a set of specific challenges, instead of simply increasing the levels of the enemies. Defeat the final challenge, and you might even find something special!

Speaking of Singularity mode, heroes in that mode will also now earn XP like they do in Chronicle. This allows for a bit more creativity when choosing your rewards after the battle, since encyclopedias won't be quite as important to take.



With the overhaul to Endless mode, wanderer hero rescues have now been moved to a new Special Missions feature. At certain times, Quinn will present Special Missions aside the main story to earn special rewards. These are short custom-crafted missions with unique encounters, leading to a reward. Right now these are all rescues of a Wanderer hero, but we have some plans for other special missions in the future.




We've also added quite a few quality of life and other requested features, such as an Auto Battle option, a Battle Log, hover info on battle icons, party menu improvements, some improved interface features specifically for mouse users, and various other little things.

The following is a list of changes from the previous 0.4.5b beta branch version.

• Fixed bug where overlapping enemy sprites were sometimes not hidden properly when taking damage
  
• Fixed Samurai's Sword Tech skills being usable at less than 100% charge
  
• Fixed town upgrades based on Boss Badge progress not applying properly to Claire's sub-forms
  
• Fixed Ka being able to use Takedown without level 3 Sabertooth on Caveman
  
• Fixed Paladin's Oaths not being swappable after being rescued in Singularity mode
  
• Fixed enemy Toxic Spores skill not being resistable
  
• Fixed Pursuer's PR3D Missile not resetting charge between battles
  
• Addressed a possible rare soft-lock issue related to taunt skill in the Big Blob boss fight
  
• Reduced the number of enemy kills needed for two of Medbot's quests
  
• Town vendor now has one guaranteed slot for non-hero relics and one for single use bundle items
  
• Fixed Forest Heart boss' animations breaking during later phases
  
• Adjusted Forest Heart boss' lost turn type spore effects to be less punishing and limited in number
  
• Kraken boss can now only summon 2 tentacles at a time instead of 3, and tentacles have a little less HP

This patch addresses some more bugs and feedback with the current beta. This will likely be the final beta branch patch before moving 0.4 to the stable branch, as the major issues with the build seem to have been worked out at this point. Thanks to everyone who has provided bug reports and gameplay feedback on the beta so far!

• Fixed skill "container" type skills not allowing the selection of subskills when affected by forced targeting effects like Taunt
  
• Fixed Jack's Rum relic's effect not showing affected attributes as green in battle status
  
• Fixed text still stating "endless loop" instead of "challenge level" in endless mode
  
• Reworked Living Snow fight somewhat to have a more even difficulty and strategic choices through the whole fight, rather than just nuking everyone in the final phase
  
• Redesigned "teleporter" ? encounters to no longer transport you across the map (this was rarely desirable, and could cause other problems)
  
• Added a new ? type encounter in Act 2
  
• Added option to view the final battle log after losing a mission
  
• Added handler for quest related steam achievements (these will be enabled when the build is uploaded to the stable branch)

This patch addresses some more recently reported bugs with the beta.

• Fixed Surprise and Initiative distortions triggering for all enemies or allies in the battle, intead of just one
  
• Snow boss' Frozen Solid skill can no longer be dispelled, since it cannot be resisted
  
• Fixed crash when using Musket skill from Musketeer's Musket relic
  
• Fixed some bugs with Giant Blob fight related to taunt and Big Slam skills, that could lead to some soft lock type issues
  
• Fixed Barbarian being able to resist his own Reckless Attack skill's effect
  
• Fixed rare crash related to Molotov and Bio Bomb skill animations
  
• Fixed Rock Beast's Rock Armor trait not showing a description on its effect icon
  
• Fixed Wensho earning quest progress during tutorial intro mission
  
• Fixed town Encyclopedias sometimes being unavailable when accessing skill training while in the portal menu
  
• Added a couple of new distortion effects

This patch addresses some reported bugs, and a couple of items related to feeback.

• Fixed bug where town progress bar could get "stuck" in certain spots at level 17+
  
• Fixed bug making "Transform" available to select in Singularity mode, leading to a crash if it was selected
  
• Fixed Angel's Holy Warriors quest showing as unlocked without rescuing the required partner hero
  
• Fixed visual bug where Pirate's sword sometimes remained visible if he was blocking and the battle ended
  
• Changed Pirate's first quest to something less difficult to find and achieve
  
• Renamed Raider's third quest, since it was the same name as one of the Medic's quests

This patch addresses some more bugs reported with the new 0.4 build.

• Fixed downed characters not animating or showing skill point + effects after they are revived
  
• Fixed Brand's Rosary not unlocking as infinite when completing his Banished to Hell quest. View his quest page again and it should unlock.
  
• Fixed crash when viewing Frozen Fist relic details
  
• Fixed crash related to Berserker's Rage distortion
  
• Fixed crash related to Battle Ready distortion
  
• Fixed crash when trying to view details on certain distortion effects in Battle Info menu
  
• Fixed skill point counter when paging through Genius forms in town skills menu
  
• Fixed quests option showing up in singularity battle menu
  
• Fixed invisible interface bug when losing a mission
  
• Fixed distortions sometimes appearing as temporary skills in character skill list
  
• Fixed a crash that could happen if you taunted an enemy with Claire and then transformed her
  
• Fixed town alerts not continuing to other pending alerts if you canceled the town level up animation
  
• Fixed bug with Stealth Generator item where it wasn't cleaning up end of battle data properly after use, leading to various other possible issues in the next battle
  
• Fixed Stealth Generator item not fully exiting the encounter if you used it in a rescue battle or other mid-encounter battle
  
• Stealth Generator can no longer be used to exit the final mission of a special rescue mission
  
• Reduced Medium Blob enemy's damage taken threshold to release its victim a bit

This patch addresses some bugs reported with the new 0.4.0 build, along with a couple feature requests.

• Fixed possible crash when trying to drop a particular item in Singularity mode
  
• Fixed bug that allowed multiple bindings of one relic to a hero in a certain circumstance
  
• Fixed bug that could cause Town Progress bar to get "stuck" when increasing by a small increment
  
• Fixed Shoot skill (various heroes) not listing Encyclopedia as a valid upgrade option
  
• Fixed third Act 1 recon mission still listing spoiler-free name even after beating it
  
• Fixed bug where quests list would appear hidden behind battle menus if using L1/R1 paging to scroll through character quests
  
• Fixed Berserker's Rage distortion applying to all allies instead of one
  
• Fixed subskill menu info not being updated when leveling up a parent skill, unless you left and reopened the skill menu
  
• Fixed bug where quests were being tracked and reported on in Singularity mode after saving and reloading a run in progress
  
• Fixed bug with Giant Blob boss Big Slam skill where it could eat an already downed ally, causing all sorts of other issues afterward
  
• Added ability to cancel/skip the town progress bar animation with the cancel button
  
• Added a small gold star icon on character select and all heroes list when a character's skills are maxed out

Build version 0.4.0b is finally here, available to download in the beta branch. This release adds a compete overhaul of the character leveling system, an endless mode rework, an overhaul of building upgrades, and many quality of life features asked for by a lot of players.

If you missed our previous developer update about this release, you can read the major details here:

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1393500/announcements/detail/3082145182492980834

Opting into a Beta branch is easy on Steam. Simply right click Time Break Chronicles in your Library, select Properties, and then click "Betas." From there you can select the Beta branch from the dropdown, and Steam will download the files for you. You do not need to enter a beta access code.

This update is designed to work with existing saves. Any unlocks you've achieved so far won't be overwritten; the methods of getting new unlocks has simply changed. However, the level up related updates are probably best experienced on a fresh save.

You might receive some new tutorial popups when loading into the save. If you were mid-run in your save, it is possible the map might reset you back to the starting node. In this case, you should just abandon the run and start a new one.

If you would like to make a manual backup of your save anyway, you can find the files at %APP_DATA%/Warrior General Games/TimeBreak on Windows. We cannot guarantee saves from the beta version will transfer properly back to the current live version, so this should be considered a one-way upgrade.



There's a lot of new content to explore in this update. We'll separate it out below, into a few categories.

• Reworked the Distortion generation code to generate distortions mid-mission instead of at map-gen. This fixes the occasional problem of running out of them on very long maps
  
• Boss icons on the map will not be revealed until you have fought the boss at least once
  
• The action menu in battle can now be hidden by holding the cancel button (B on controller or right click on mouse)
  
• Cleaned up some bugs with selecting targets via the mouse in battle
  
• The party menu now allows you to directly highlight a hero with the mouse and click on them for a context menu
  
• Removed Shift/Replace submenu when rearranging party with reserves. Rearranging now just allows you to swap between reserves and the party menu directly
  
• Fixed mouse controls not allowing nodes to be highlighted and viewed on the map, like you can do with the controller
  
• Fixed some minor issues with scroll boundaries on the map cutting off the final menu or being positioned weirdly
  
• Effect icons now have mouseover tooltips in battle, and will stop marquee scrolling if you hover over them
  
• Enemy HP is now visible directly in the enemy list when you have a "scan" type effect to view enemy attributes
  
• Metabolism Time Break now has Sleep Resistance as an added effect
  
• Added Auto battle option to battle menu. You can select one hero or all. Cancel auto battle by pressing the cancel button
  
• Added Battle Log option to battle menu, to view a log of damage/healing dealt and skills activated in the current battle
  
• Moved Defend from main battle menu to bottom of skills menu, to make it easier to find
  
• Adjusted or reworked several enemies to better match the scaling provided by new level up systems, and give a few enemies some variance from similar others
  
• Fixed mouse interaction not working in Distortion list when the list was longer than a page
  
• New "victory" music after winning the battle that better meshes with the battle theme
  
• Fixed bug where viewing the item menu with a reward selection screen could cause the reward selection choice to be lost
  
• Added Scanner item available as an enemy drop, that functions like the Scan time break
  
• Antidote item now grants poison immunity as an added effect
  
• Cleansing Water item now adds Resists as an added effect
  
• Celestial Call and Blood Contract items' granted skills now last entire mission, instead of one battle
  
• Increased Medical Drone's healing output
  
• Several item descriptions have been updated to list exact values
  
• Various typo fixes and fixes for some strings that were too long

• Added Skill Points system for leveling up characters, replacing books. Earn Skill Points via XP, by completing unique quests per hero, or beating bosses
  
• Removed all book drops except Encyclopedia. Existing books are still accessible, but will no longer drop new ones
  
• Books are no longer dropped by normal enemy encounters, and are less plentiful from elites and bosses
  
• Geodes from Singularity mode will grant fewer books
  
• Book drop rate in Town Vendor is decreased
  
• There are now single-use Bundle items available in Town Vendor that grant the party various effects for one mission
  
• Relic purchase costs in Town Vendor reduced
  
• Added unlockable Infinite Relics, which can be bound as many times as you want. Earn them by completing Hero Quests
  
• Existing copies of a relic will be broken down into soul gems automatically when you unlock the infinite relic
  
• Relic break down now gives a set amount of soul gems instead of a random range
  
• The town now levels up via a Progress bar that increases as you rescue heroes or train their skills, unlocking various things
  
• Buildings beyond the starting 3 are now unlocked via Town Progress, and are not visible until unlocked. Existing saves that have already unlocked them will remain unlocked
  
• New Time Breaks are now unlocked via Town Progress, instead of by simple rescue count
  
• Reduced starting particles on new games to 200
  
• You now start the game with one Reserve slot instead of 2, with more available as upgrades via Town Progress or building upgrades
  
• Town upgrades completely overhauled to give more interesting effects and be priced better based on available rewards. Purchased upgrades in existing saves will stay unlocked, but will receive the new bonus
  
• Wanderer Heroes are now rescued via Special Missions that unlock after beating an act, instead of being found in Endless mode
  
• Act names are no longer visible before you unlock them, to preserve some surprise for new players
  
• Recon mission names are listed as basic descriptions before you beat them, instead of giving away the boss name
  
• Rebalanced opening mission difficulties to scale better with the new Skill Point system, and mesh into act 2's difficulty more smoothly
  
• Endless mode has been completely reworked to now offer various challenges per level, like Singularity mode does
  
• Rewards for endless mode later levels are higher than non-endless mode (including XP), but significantly reduced from the previous overkill on drops it could reach
  
• Undead enemies no longer take extra fire damage by default, but there is a building upgrade to add that effect instead
  
• You can now open up the All Heroes list directly in town with the menu button (X/Tab/Middle Mouse)
  
• Selected Item bundles will now be saved and restored as the default loadout when you go on another mission

• Heroes in singularity will now receive XP and earn Skill Points just like Chronicle mode, but at an increased rate. Books are still dropped as usual.
  
• Hero unlocks now happen whenever you win a run at any difficulty, as opposed to being tied to each specific level, so you can unlock heroes even if you don't want to play the harder levels
  
• You can now choose "nobody" for your second hero if you want to, perhaps for a self-imposed challenge
  
• Difficulty 13 changed from "more bad distortions" to "reduced XP"
  
• Adjusted shop prices for singularity mode specifically, to fit better with the amount of particles you get

• Reworked Raider's skills to allow him to fit his theme better and remain useful further into the game
  
• Fixed some description errors for Witch's reagent skills
  
• Witch/Dryad's Charm skill is now a Spell instead of Attack
  
• Fixed bug with Priestess' Pray skill where the free skill granted by level 3 would sometimes remain free during her next turn
  
• Clown's Honk skill now uses MP when it triggers, and Prank skill also costs MP
  
• Fixed Clown AI so he can use Balloon when CPU controlled
  
• Physicist Genius AI will favor healing skills when CPU controlled
  
• Fixed Claire playing the wrong sound when using Power Ballad skill
  
• Fixed Cursed's Throw Skill being able to bounce at level 1
  
• Monk's Zen Trance now increases healing as well as damage output
  
• Monk's Chakra now heals whole team instead of just adjacent allies
  
• Ranger's Cana now has some skills other than Bite. Reworked Cana trait to enable Cana more
  
• Reworked Wraith's Stasis Net, Wraith Strike, and Mirror Image skills to help her perform a bit better
  
• Og's Spear relic damage bonus reduced, but Throw Spear skill damage increased
  
• Honor Code relic changed to reduce damage taken, instead of granting +all attributes
  
• Fixed Seth's Toxin relic's effect not properly counting as a Poison debuff
  
• Fixed Hardened Stone relic not having "Boss" tag for filters
  
• Living Snow boss now grants a unique Boss Relic
  
• Added several new Vendor specific relics. These are available as drops in Singularity mode.
  
• Fixed bug with Spirit Shield (various heroes) skill that made the user take too much MP damage
  
• Fixed bug with Wraith Sword relic where it dealt too much added damage
  
• MP cost for all skills increased a bit across the board
  
• "Shared" attributes from sharing skills such as Support will no longer by multiplied by additional % increase bonuses
  
• Modified several Distortions to make them more useful
  
• Librarian Distortion has been replaced with one that buffs XP gain

We've been hard at work for a while on the next big patch for Time Break Chronicles, which is aimed at improving some of the areas on which we've received the most feedback, criticism, and feature requests.

This update started out with a smaller scale in mind, but it's now gotten pretty big, with a lot of new features and quality of life updates as well. We're finally reaching a point where it's close to being ready for release, so we're going to show off some of the upcoming new features in this update post, with some screenshots using the various available UI styles.



One of the most frequent things we've heard from players is that the game tends to involve too much "grinding" to find the appropriate skill books to level up, and to acquire the relics you most want to use. It would be much more fun to just play the game, using the various heroes available as best you can, and make progress as you go!

To address this, we've removed all the various skill book types except for Encyclopedia (which has a heavily reduced drop rate), and added a new system for leveling up skills. Heroes will instead earn skill points through 3 different methods:

• Defeating bosses for the first time to earn a Boss Badge
  
• Earning XP in battles like a traditional RPG
  
• Completing specific Hero Quests

You can then spend the skill points to level up skills, even mid-mission. This system also serves to level out the difficulty curve from Act 1 to Act 2 much more smoothly, since you'll be steadily earning skill points instead of getting books in small dumps.

Every hero has 3 unique quests that, when completed, award them skill points and another new feature: an Infinite Relic. Claire also has several quests tailored for her various forms.



By completing the relevant quests, hero-specific relics can now become infinite. Infinite relics can be duplicated as many times as you want for free, allowing you more freedom to bind them to any hero you'd like.

Boss relics, shop relics, and relics found only via missions will still need to be either found or crafted, but this also serves to make them a bit more special, and will allow us to add a few more of them as well.




Another point of feedback has been that the building upgrades aren't as interesting as they could be, they cost too much, and there's too many options presented at once. Now that particles don't need to be spent primarily on acquiring skill books and relics, a larger focus will be on purchasing building upgrades.

We've reduced the cost of the building upgrades in general, and reworked many of them to provide more interesting effects that add more "flavor" to various damage types or situations. In addition, instead of purchasing the buildings, they will be unlocked via a town progress bar that increases as you rescue and level up new heroes. This also further serves to incentivize trying out new heroes and completing their quests.

The Town Progress bar also unlocks other things over time, such as Time Break techs, additional reserve and bundle slots, and Skill Points for Claire.

We don't have any screenshots to show of this at the moment, because the interface is still a bit in flux, but Endless mode has also received a facelift. It will now work similarly to Singularity mode, in that each level will present a set of specific challenges, instead of simply increasing the levels of the enemies. Defeat the final challenge, and you might even find something special!

Speaking of Singularity mode, heroes in that mode will also now earn XP like they do in Chronicle. This allows for a bit more creativity when choosing your rewards after the battle, since encyclopedias won't be quite as important to take.



With the overhaul to Endless mode, wanderer hero rescues have now been moved to a new Special Missions feature. At certain times, Quinn will present Special Missions aside the main story to earn special rewards. These are short custom-crafted missions with unique encounters, leading to a reward. Right now these are all rescues of a Wanderer hero, but we have some plans for other special missions in the future.




We've also added quite a few quality of life and other requested features, such as an Auto Battle option, a Battle Log, hover info on battle icons, party menu improvements, some improved interface features specifically for mouse users, and various other little things.

We're hoping to finish the last bits of this update and get it out the the beta branch soon™ so you can try it out. Thanks for your patience and feedback, everyone!

This patch addresses some bug reports, feature requests, and a few overall balance updates.

• Added relic filter option to character relic screen when viewing bind options
  
• Added a couple more UI styles to choose from
  
• Relic breakdown bonuses increased to allow for more accessible crafting
  
• Rebalanced a few building upgrade prices and bonuses to either make them cheaper or more worthwhile
  
• Wine item changed from full MP restore to revive at full HP
  
• Research Lab's Drone Research level 3 now also adds an extra turn to drone lifespan
  
• Research Lab's Portal Research level 3 now extends vision to 3 spaces instead of 2
  
• Added a tutorial to remind new players about relics once they have at least 10 unbound waiting
  
• Fixed Moonbeam skill incorrectly listing power instead of focus for damage
  
• Fixed some timing bugs with showing and hiding overlapping enemy sprites
  
• Fixed some bugs with cleanup of highlight cursors when characters die in battle
  
• Fixed some minor visual bugs with custom UI display after changing styles
  
• Fixed Seth's (Lizardman) Thrash dealing poison instead of stun damage at level 2
  
• Fixed Abraham's (Vampire Hunter) Blood Trance costing HP while inactive
  
• Fixed Necromancer's Death Shroud to not be copyable by Spellblade, etc
  
• Fixed infinite counterattack issue with enemy Poison Sting skill
  
• Fixed missing "sleep" relic filtering tag on Slade's Guitar relic
  
• Fixed rare crash related to Death Shroud skill
  
• Fixed missing status icons for lv 2 and 3 of Whetstone skill

This patch addresses some bug reports and balance updates for some heroes and enemies, along with a few other things.

• Added option in game menu to select UI style for background UI boxes on that save. This is user moddable by adding styles to the custom_ui directory.
  
• Reworked Seth (Lizardman) somewhat to make him less passive and more interesting
  
• Reworked Sovras (Necromancer) somewhat to make him less passive and more interesting
  
• Reworked Jack's (Pirate) Adaptable and Plunder skills slightly
  
• Reworked Sun Seeker enemy to allow for more attack vectors when it's on the field
  
• Chivalry trait now also grants Protect skill if the hero doesn't already have it
  
• Artemis gem relic updated to grant +5 and +15% like other relics of its type
  
• Slade's Guitar relic now clears sleep counters on all enemies and allies when using a sonic skill
  
• Reduced base cost of Metabolism time break
  
• Fixed Act 3 "pollen" enemy effects per-turn stacks not being resisted by resist stacks
  
• Fixed incorrect multiplier being applied by Jack's (Pirate) rum skill level 3
  
• Fixed bug where certain skills were copyable by Spellblade when they shouldn't have been
  
• Fixed displayed hit chance values not showing 100% from Spellblade's True Strike skill
  
• Fixed bug where distortions were not assigned to the proper character on reload if those characters were swapped to reserves
  
• Fixed bug where bonus actions would cause a character to appear twice in the turn order list
  
• Fixed position of hit chance text to not be hidden behind other character sprites if they overlap
  
• Fixed crash from binding Sentinel Core relic to certain heroes or with certain relic combinations
  
• Fixed a bug with Medic's Amputate skill that could cause certain effects to not function properly after using it
  
• Fixed bug that caused Paul's (Linebacker) Zone Defense to not work properly after using taunt
  
• Fixed Smoke Grenade skill displaying incorrect description in battle
  
• Fixed crash related to Acrobatics skill when using Metabolism break
  
• Addressed bug where certain skills' charge percentage could be displayed as a negative number