This small patch mostly addresses some recent bug reports. Also, we've got another little teaser of upcoming Act 4 content: A new form for Claire!



This Claire is obsessed with the occult, devoting her time to the study of demons and spirits. She hopes to one day even attempt to harness and control their power. Surely nothing bad could ever come of that, right?

• Reworked Onslaught and Transcendent distortion effects to have an attribute based downside instead of skill level
  
• Fixed hero pack 3 heroes not unlocking properly when finishing the appropriate number of Singularity runs
  
• Fixed crash caused by interaction between Sense Weakness and Undeterred skills
  
• Fixed Spirit Well's Absorb Soul spell being copyable
  
• Fixed Toolbox and Novice Spellbook relic not properly selecting a random skill for Claire sub forms

This update brings the changes from the recent beta branch build (0.4.12b) to the stable version of the game. If you'd like to discuss this update or anything else about the game with us or fellow players, make sure to come on over and join our Discord!

The major change added in this patch is a new mechanic called "Instability." As a battle goes on and energy is released, instability of local space-time increases, and so does damage dealt by both allies AND enemies. Base damage has been reduced a bit across the board to go along with this change.

The main aim of this mechanic is to help make some of the longer, drawn out battles end more decisively, but it also means the early fight is somewhat less deadly and allows ramping/setup characters to shine more.



Work on Act 4 is continuing at a steady pace, and we've got another small teaser for you today, this time updating the scene from our previous teaser. Three new heroes. Who and where could they be?



There is one change from the previous beta version of 0.4.12b:

• Improved caching of UI sprite elements to reduce hard drive requests for non-default UIs and improve speed of UI generation

The following is the complete changelog from the previous stable version of 0.4.10, including changes from 0.4.11b and 0.4.12b.

• Added two new shop-only relics
  
• Added a new Training Room option to the Inn where you can beat up on invincible bots as long as you like. This option appears after you've started at least one mission in your save
  
• Added a new mechanic called "instability" that causes damage values to slowly rise over time, to help lengthy fights be more decisive as they go on. Boss fights increase this value much more slowly, since they are meant to be longer
  
• Rebalanced a few boss fights to have more appropriate scaling, health, and/or damage with the new instability mechanic
  
• Added a new default Time Break skill that resets instability to zero
  
• Added a new distortion that interacts with instability
  
• Rocker's Jam skills now scale with Technique
  
• Rocker's Whammy Bar reworked to add damage based on Power
  
• Rocker's Battle Axe damage bonus increased from 0.2 to 0.5
  
• Maelstrom's Chaos Storm now has a 1-turn "exhaustion" stage after it goes off
  
• Track skill (Assassin, Pioneer, Pursuer) is no longer resistible
  
• Monk's Chakra skill strength reduced from 1.5x Focus to 1.25x
  
• Spellblade's Spell Refraction now also copies the level of the spell it refracts
  
• Inscriber Form's elemental magic spells' base damage increased from 1x Focus to 1.5x
  
• Ranger's skills now base their damage on Technique instead of Power
  
• Pirate's plunder now only steals half turn progress and its charge cost scales per use
  
• Blizzard skill (various heroes/enemies) level 3 now hits 12 times instead of 15 at level 3
  
• Vul's Vulstaff and Winter's Gift skills now have level 2/3 effects
  
• Taunt skill lv 3 now has a chance to make opponent stumble instead of acting
  
• Gather Shadows (Dark Knight, some enemies) skill levels reworked, and can no longer be interrupted
  
• Fury distortion reworked to randomly give free attacks rather than free turns
  
• Shroom enemy can no longer use Strange Spores twice in a row, and will now use Flurry attack in between
  
• Reworked the code that handles turn loss and forced skill overrides to make them work more consistently
  
• Fixed some Break skills not appearing in Singularity mode
  
• Fixed Inscriber Form's Echoing glyph to only proc one extra time for each spell
  
• Fixed a few bugs with Big Blob that could occasionally result in a soft locked state
  
• Fixed a bug that could result in a soft lock if a hero was downed from certain turn start damage effects
  
• Fixed Jaguar's Pounce skill description referencing Ambush skill instead of Stalk
  
• Fixed Avatar enemy's Channel ability still casting a spell even if you interrupted it
  
• Fixed some calculations related to crit chance and crit damage for certain skills
  
• Fixed Holy Shield (Angel, Cleric) being able to target somebody who already has it active
  
• Fixed broken "hurt" animation frame for Doctor's Nurse summon
  
• Fixed Stasis time break description being too long for in-battle info box

This small patch includes mostly bug fixes for the most recent beta branch update. Assuming there are no other major fixes needed, this patch will likely move to the stable branch soon.

• Rocker's Jam skills now scale with Technique
  
• Rocker's Whammy Bar reworked to add damage based on Power
  
• Rocker's Battle Axe damage bonus increased from 0.2 to 0.5
  
• Fixed Vul's stances not working properly when she was taunted
  
• Training bots will now auto-revive if they are somehow killed
  
• Fixed Wizzar Drone using Fight skill on its turn
  
• Fixed Plunder not properly resetting charge between battles
  
• Fixed Rocker using Defend during Jam
  
• Fixed some Break skills not appearing in Singularity mode
  
• Fixed Fury distortion sometimes picking an empty spot to target

It's been a while since we've had an incremental patch, since we've been working away on new content for the upcoming Act 4 release, but there's enough things to address that patch a 0.4.11b was warranted. This patch addresses some bug reports and introduces some new features, content, and balance updates.

A major change added in this patch is a new mechanic called "Instability." As a battle goes on and energy is released, instability of local space-time increases, and so does damage dealt by both allies AND enemies. Base damage has been reduced a bit across the board to go along with this change.

The main aim of this mechanic is to help make some of the longer, drawn out battles end more decisively, but it also means the early fight is somewhat less deadly and allows ramping/setup characters to shine more.

We'd love any feedback on this new mechanic (or anything else) before it heads to the stable branch, so if you'd like to chat about it, make sure to join our Discord!



Since we're sure you're all excited for Act 4, we wanted to let you know we're still steadily progressing, and we're including a little teaser screenshot below of a couple of the new heroes in the environment they will have to contend with. We'll leave it to you to figure out what they might be. We'll definitely post some additional teasers as we get even closer to the release, both here and in our Discord.




Now, on to the changelog for this patch!

• Added two new shop-only relics
  
• Added a new Training Room option to the Inn where you can beat up on invincible bots as long as you like. This option appears after you've started at least one mission in your save
  
• Added a new mechanic called "instability" that causes damage values to slowly rise over time, to help lengthy fights be more decisive as they go on. Boss fights increase this value much more slowly, since they are meant to be longer
  
• Rebalanced a few boss fights to have more appropriate scaling, health, and/or damage with the new instability mechanic
  
• Added a new default Time Break skill that resets instability to zero
  
• Added a new distortion that interacts with instability
  
• Maelstrom's Chaos Storm now has a 1-turn "exhaustion" stage after it goes off
  
• Track skill (Assassin, Pioneer, Pursuer) is no longer resistible
  
• Monk's Chakra skill strength reduced from 1.5x Focus to 1.25x
  
• Spellblade's Spell Refraction now also copies the level of the spell it refracts
  
• Inscriber Form's elemental magic spells' base damage increased from 1x Focus to 1.5x
  
• Ranger's skills now base their damage on Technique instead of Power
  
• Pirate's plunder now only steals half turn progress and its charge cost scales per use
  
• Blizzard skill (various heroes/enemies) level 3 now hits 12 times instead of 15 at level 3
  
• Vul's Vulstaff and Winter's Gift skills now have level 2/3 effects
  
• Taunt skill lv 3 now has a chance to make opponent stumble instead of acting
  
• Gather Shadows (Dark Knight, some enemies) skill levels reworked, and can no longer be interrupted
  
• Fury distortion reworked to randomly give free attacks rather than free turns
  
• Shroom enemy can no longer use Strange Spores twice in a row, and will now use Flurry attack in between
  
• Reworked the code that handles turn loss and forced skill overrides to make them work more consistently
  
• Fixed Inscriber Form's Echoing glyph to only proc one extra time for each spell
  
• Fixed a few bugs with Big Blob that could occasionally result in a soft locked state
  
• Fixed a bug that could result in a soft lock if a hero was downed from certain turn start damage effects
  
• Fixed Jaguar's Pounce skill description referencing Ambush skill instead of Stalk
  
• Fixed Avatar enemy's Channel ability still casting a spell even if you interrupted it
  
• Fixed some calculations related to crit chance and crit damage for certain skills
  
• Fixed Holy Shield (Angel, Cleric) being able to target somebody who already has it active
  
• Fixed broken "hurt" animation frame for Doctor's Nurse summon
  
• Fixed Stasis time break description being too long for in-battle info box

Version 0.4.10 (Hero Pack #3) 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. 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.

Our next major planned update will be the Act 4 content release, which is currently in progress. We'll update you with more on that as we continue working on it in the future.



If you missed the original beta release announcement, you can view the details of the major changes here:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1393500/view/3120432123217347348

The following changelog outlines the details of changes from version 0.4.9b to this release, 0.4.10.

• Optimized some particle effect animations to use fewer particles, improving performance for those animations
  
• Added a particle effect quality graphics option that will further reduce particle count on various animations, to better support low video memory devices such as certain integrated graphics chips
  
• Removed second Shroom enemy in early singularity mode encounter, since it could too easily overwhelm a two hero team
  
• Fixed Secret Service Return Fire skill using the wrong amount of MP to counter attack, and updated its description to show MP cost
  
• Fixed Jaguar's Pounce skill removing buffs from user instead of target at lv 2
  
• Fixed Marine's M16 skill not resetting uses on battle start
  
• Fixed Marine's "Light 'em Up" quest to work with reworked covering fire skill
  
• Fixed Sever Soul skill animation causing a crash when used by certain heroes
  
• Fixed Woodsman's Protect skill having its spent skill points reset continuously
  
• Updated Lawbringer's skill descriptions to clarify damage type dealt
  
• Various typo fixes

This patch addresses some bug reports and balance feedback related to the recent Hero Pack release.

• Slight reshuffle of Secret Service skills
  
• Immortal and Secret Service revival skills now have a limit of 3 uses
  
• Reworked Meditate (various heroes) skill levels
  
• Marine's M16 skill reworked to have an ammo/reload system attached
  
• Marine's Specialist skill turn delay bonus decreased from 35% to 15%
  
• Replaced animation for Doctor's Malpractice skill to better match its theme and physical damage type
  
• Enemy husks at higher endless and singularity difficulties will now always have level 2 or 3 skills, based on the difficulty tier and elite status, except for a few encounters with specifically forced levels
  
• Enemy husks at the highest difficulty levels will now also have their default relics equipped
  
• Fixed handling of multiple Secret Service or Immortal characters so that all of them being downed at once still wins/loses the battle, even if you have Weight Heart or a similar skill
  
• Fixed Secret Service "Get Down!" quest not completing properly
  
• Fixed missing kneeling frame for Nurse sprite
  
• Fixed Zone Defense triggering multiple skill activations per turn
  
• Fixed Pill Bottle and Jacks Rum relics to work more reliably
  
• Fixed Jaguar being able to act during Pounce
  
• Fixed Sentinel being able to act during Forcefield channeling
  
• Fixed Doctor's Prescribe skills showing they could be leveled up
  
• Fixed Doctor and Jaguar rescue battles being skippable with stealth generator
  
• Fixed a couple of typos in new character flavor text

Build version 0.4.8b, Hero Pack 3, is now available on the Beta Branch. This update contains 3 new wanderer heroes for you to find, some new enemies to battle as you find them, and a slew of balance updates based on recent player feedback.

Steam achievements for the new heroes are not yet available, but will be added when Hero Pack 3 leaves the beta branch.

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.



There's a lot of balance changes, bug fixes, and various other things in this update. We'll separate everything out below into sections:

• Added 3 new wanderer heroes, available to rescue in special missions after completing Act 3. You may discover some new enemies in these missions as well!
  
• Added graphics quality option "HQ4X" that applies a smoothing shader, for those who like sprite smoothing
  
• Game option menu is now available to pull up in battle at any time, and contains an Abandon option

• Added a handler to make sure any skills that we have removed or replaced on a hero will have any spent skill points or books refunded as available skill points
  
• Reworked Sentinel, Blacksmith, Lawbringer, and Super Soldier to various degrees
  
• Reworked Necromancer's Death Shroud and Death's Embrace skills to work a bit differently, but provide a similar function
  
• Assassin's Dagger skill replaced with Kunai, and she now has Track skill
  
• Immortal's Adrenaline Rush skill reworked to be a one turn bonus action buff
  
• Jester's Fan of Blades lv 2 damage bonus increased from 5% to 15%
  
• Rocker's Jam skill is now a Bonus Action
  
• Cursed's Rekindle skill is now a Bonus Action
  
• Cursed's Extinguished Soul skill now makes skills cost 0 MP
  
• Marine's basic M16 skill replaced with a more interesting gadget version
  
• Fire Mage's Combust skill level 2 now applies a fire DoT debuff to enemies it hits
  
• Vul's Hunter and Tranquil Stance skills now add direct bonus damage instead of increasing attributes
  
• Monk's Four Pillar abilities now also count as spells
  
• Physicist Claire now gains Ageless trait instead of Regrowth from Dryad
  
• Physicist Claire's Medkit is now a swappable skill
  
• Woodsman's Power reduced slightly
  
• Shake Off skill (various heroes) is now a Bonus Action
  
• Track skill (various heroes) is now a Bonus Action
  
• Reworked level 2/3 of Bulwark skill (various heroes) to provide more consistent utility
  
• Pummel skill (various heroes) damage per hit increased
  
• Meteor Strike skill is now a spell instead of attack
  
• Lizardman's Thrash now only hits primary target with Venom Bite at lv 3, instead of everyone
  
• Witch's Dark Arts skill's added damage bonuses reduced
  
• Ranger's Eagle Eye skill lv 3 turn delay decrease reduced
  
• Ranger's Pincushion skill damage reduced
  
• Druid's Moonbeam skill damage reduced
  
• Dryad's Enchant Spear trait now caps at 5 stacks

• Reworked turn progress and chance to hit calculations for high level enemies to be normalized down to player character levels. This should help slower ramping heroes and speed/agility based heroes maintain their niche even against higher level enemies.
  
• Medium Blob enemies no longer gain free turn progress when summoned into battle
  
• Reworked Act 3 Kraken boss fight somewhat to feel a bit more fair, and have a better flow
  
• Troll enemy no longer has Swipe skill, but Wallop instead
  
• Reduced the difficulty of a couple of Act 3 Troll enemy encounters, and normalized them to be the same between singularity and chronicle
  
• Stasis Time Break is now single target
  
• Drone Parts relic now summons a random cultist drone type, based on the types you could have seen so far
  
• Master Scout Flag relic now gives 100% increased speed for first turn, instead of a free turn, but no longer increases damage taken
  
• Blitzer Speed Relic bonus reduced from 50% to 15%
  
• Reduced difficulty of Caveman's "Big Game Hunter" quest
  
• Reduced difficulty of Super Soldier's "Dominate This" quest

• Fixed Vul's White Wind skill not counting as a spell
  
• Improved Bard AI
  
• Fixed Monk's Four Pillars skill being usable by CPU controlled characters without Zen Trance active
  
• Fixed enemy Ancient Rage and Ancient Power enemy traits triggering on healing
  
• Fixed Spirit Walk skill not being usable by Inscriber Claire
  
• Fixed Oakheart relic being craftable
  
• Fixed misalignment of downed Druid sprite
  
• Fixed misalignment of Thunder Hammer sprite on enemy Viking
  
• Fixed bug where battle skill sub menus sometimes appeared behind other menus after cancelling out of them
  
• Fixed bug where enemy could use Dark Bargain on itself in certain circumstances
  
• Fixed possible crash from Acrobatics trait in combination with Metabolism break
  
• Fixed aspect skills being dispellable and possibly stealable
  
• Fixed various typos
  
• Disabled text "pop" effect on some menus

This patch addresses some recent bug reports, and a couple of balance things.

• Fixed bug where skill currency icons were not being removed when a hero with them died
  
• Fixed Bear Trap skill's trap sprite not repositioning itself when the affected character was shifted
  
• Fixed some non interruptable skills triggering interrupt visual effects even though they were not interrupted
  
• Fixed bug where Immortal did not reset his sprite's position and angle when dying inside a Big Blob enemy
  
• Fixed Necromancer's Death's Embrace level 3 not triggering Dark Bargain properly
  
• Fixed whetstone skill not properly applying bonus damage
  
• Added a check for completed Singularity Steam achievements to main menu, in case they were completed while offline
  
• Changed Wraith's Evading Capture quest to only require being in the party when a Pursuer is killed, instead of a killing blow
  
• Fixed Brambler enemy's Vine Guard "no death" icon showing up for the Brambler, even though it didn't affect it
  
• Prevent Time Break skill now grants 3 Resist, instead of only 1
  
• Redesigned Act 3 Pollen enemy skills to work more like a slowly spreading spores type effect, with more limits on their stacks
  
• Moved Act 3 Brambler encounters to late act encounter list, since they tend to be harder (except the Extreme Danger fight)

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)