We Need To Go Deeper - The Dev Wife
It's time for our community challenge! This one is for all of you skilled players out there. If at least ONE team can get through all four layers with each player only starting with the rose, the rose will do as much damage as the Tesla gun for one week! Each team that can do this successfully, will additionally be awarded official bragging rights.

Contest Rules:
1. You may not use any bots however, civilization recruits are fair game.
2. Record the entire run, so that we may verify that the goal was achieved.
3. You may swap items in caves or shops.
4. As always, we expect everyone to be respectful and kind to one another, so no offensive player names, name calling, or mistreatment of others.

You may email your entry to interactivedeli@gmail.com, send us a link through Messenger or Steam. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to The Dev Wife, who is available via Steam or Discord. Happy diving!
We Need To Go Deeper - Nick Lives


This week you'll notice that we have a brand new cover art for We Need To Go Deeper, courtesy of the ever-talented Niko Geyer! It's a piece Niko has been brewing with us over the past while, meant to encompass what it feels like to play a typical round of Deeper in all its frantic, chaotic glory. We were blown away by the finished piece..



With that, we're throwing a download link in here so y'all can use it for wallpapers, phone backgrounds, murals, whatever it is you like to do with big digital paintings! Let us know what you think of the new art, and be sure to check out Niko Geyer's other amazing works!

Also, as a side note - our artist Nick (also the guy writing this), is currently suffering from a bad case of carpal tunnel syndrome and may be out of commission for a bit while he heals, which is why today's content drop is not an in-game one this time, and if it persists, may change what we can accomplish for next month's update. We'll have to see!
We Need To Go Deeper - The Dev Wife
Time for our weekly challenge! Calling fat cats, grumpy cats, small cats, happy cats, we're calling all cats! If a minimum of 30 people share pictures of themselves with their adorable feline to one of our social media pages, as well as follow us, we will replace the Megaladon Boss with Shark Cat for one week! If you don't own a cat, snap a picture with a friends cat, or a friendly neighborhood cat, or one of your aunt's 17 cats! You know, that one aunt who always smells a little funny? Deadline is next Friday, the 24th!
We Need To Go Deeper - Nick Lives


This week we're bringing you a new tool to add to your arsenal - The Dental Pliers! This handy fella can be used to repair both your fellow crewmates and your vessel in the right hands, but beware - dental work can be painful! It's not advised to use in a fight however, as its quite unwieldy for combat.

The Pliers will appear in the Catalog once you've hit the 4th Buccaneer subrank.



Plier Stats:

Repair: 7

Healing:1 with a 10% chance to deal friendly damage.

Damage: 7

Other Changes:

- Shotgun's pushback tweaked to be less extreme.

- Enemies all have variable pushback resistence, most notably The Time Devourer now has significant resistence.

- Fixed the error causing an early exit in NPC skins

- Fixed a null reference in PointArm that was occurring in response to syncing the arm angle on clients

- Fixed several other new null references causing Network buildup.

- Syringe now has a 10% chance to deal friendly damage.

SNEAKY PEAKY:

We have another preview for next month's update for y'all as well this week! This one is a little more fleshed out than what you might be used to given how long we've had this update's feature on the backburner:



As usual, we'll allow you to interpret this how you please in the meantime. ;)

Let us know what y'all think as always! Happy dentistry!

Extra Patch Notes 8/14/18:

- Added bandaid to combat biome skipping bug until we can figure out the root problem.

- Better logging to help us find the root problem

- Tab menu is now viewable on the loadout menu so players can see what their teammates are carrying.

- Item swap tip ripped out to be placed in a better spot in future.
We Need To Go Deeper - Nick Lives


It's time to feel dirty for August's official content update! This month we're bringing a filthy new cave type, new upgrades, full course dinners, and more!

Features



New Expedition Type: Hermit Hovels! - These filth-coated gargantuan Sea Shells have started appearing all across The Living Infinite's depths, housing within them large but friendly creatures known as...



Trash Hermits! - These oversized decapods have but one passion in life, and that's collecting trash. They love trash so much in fact, that they opt to live in it! Approaching these docile behemoths, you may be able to convince them to part with some of their excess filth, and discover that sometimes, one crab's trash is another man's treasure (or upgrade)!





Trash Items! - Not all trash is created equal, and while sometimes you'll score upgrades or valuable goods from your local Trash Hermit, other times you'll be... less lucky. These new items are all of minimum use to your team but hey! Who knows, maybe you'll find a use for that... banana peel?



New Upgrades: Hazardous Fuel and The Duplicator! - Two new upgrades have been added to bolster your offensive capabilities in the form of Hazardous Fuel and The Duplicator Ammo Mod!

Hazardous Fuel turns your fuel into a deadly corrossive substance that will trail behind your ship whenever you utilize fuel!

The Duplicator Ammo Mod is an advanced piece of tech that will, like its namesake, duplicate your torpedoes upon firing them, doubling your firepower! Warning: Duplication process may cause torpedoes to spread in different directions.



Backpacks! - When starting out in WNTGD, many of you have wondered why you can only pick one item to start with, when in-game you can carry two. This has been an unintuitive and unexplained mechanic from the beginning, but a decision we made to make mid-game choices and player progression more unpredictable and interesting, but the game hasn't done a great job justifying an explanation for this until now. We're finally addressing it along with a balance shift for the early game, with The Backpack!

The Backpack is a new player upgrade that, when equipped, allows your character to carry one extra item! This means that at the start, you can only carry the one you brought until you find a backpack! We hope this will make the early-game more challenging and team-focused, while allowing for a better feeling of player progression once the team begins finding and equipping backpacks, opening up their strategic possibilities in the process.

We know this one might feel strange at first, but if you still aren't convinced after playing around with it, we are including a new Custom Game Option that equips you with them from the start. Though we hope y'all trust where we're going with this, especially when it comes to people playing the game for the first time!



Dinner Time! - After a hard day of adventuring, your crew will now get the opportunity to end their nights sitting down together to enjoy a nice candle-lit dinner.

At the end of of every biome, once traveling downwards your team will find themselves taking a moment to breathe and rest with these new Dinner Sequences that take place in the time between biomes. We hope these brief sequences will give you an opportunity to better bond with your crew as you heal and drink elixirs together, and impress upon you the days-long journey your characters take as they voyage deeper into the trench.

Balance

- Torpedo explosions deal 5 damage and a direct hit deals 5 more damage. This should be much more fair and realistic torpedo behavior. The torpedo explosion can only damage any given damageable once, but both the direct hit and the explosion override canHIt so that two torpedoes can do their full amount of damage without needing to worry about the enemy being invulnerable for a period.
- New custom behavior biases Upgrade Crate's drops based on water layer, and currently equipped upgrades. (It's now far less likely to get another weapon swap upgrade after you've equipped one)
- New Pickup behavior ensures Civs no longer have duplicate items on sale.
- Upgrades all have a "maximum" limit, and will inform the player upon picking up if they have reached their capacity (mainly to prevent players from wondering if certain ammo mods stack when picking them up).
- Reduced gold multiplier increase per water layer to 0.25, with a max gold multiplier of 2. (layer 1 = 1x, layer 2 = 1.25x, so forth).
- We now sync the host stopwatch roughly every second.


Fixes

- Battery duping exploit has been fixed.
- Fixed mid-game joiners being unable to see carried batteries.
- Civ NPCs are now counted as crew members
- Removed old useless code which was scaling the EMP damage on bosses based on crew member count. It now just deals 50% of its normal damage against bosses, per hit (which was the original intent)
- Fixed mid-game joiners sometimes not seeing the right skins on NPC Recruits/Bots.
- Fixed steam lobby exploit to ensure that a player cannot join a game which has ended over and over for XP.
- Introduced new measures to combat cheaters.
- Fixed Safari Suit not unlocking properly once bought.
- Fixed a regression in Astar pathfinding in the exterior caused by flipping chunks.
- Fixed null references in chemistry clouds and nearly all item-based RPCs that were causing network backup.
- Fish meat should stop turning gray when dropped.

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Community



::: Player of the Month :::

The Player of the Month for June is..... Far For Fun!

Far For Fun has sent us an enormous amount of helpful logs and crash reports over the past month, and has been great about going back and forth with us when needing more information to help resolve various issues. With their help, we come ever closer to having a more stable game! Thanks for all your frequent help Far For Fun!

::: Community Highlights :::

These past few months some fun content from the community has been trickling in, mostly coming from the Official Discord - starting with a ton of memery. Here are some of our favorites!

The "Meme Man" Tinke(L)rer:





S.S. TheYellowBullet:





Between the memery, we have gotten some new art pieces as well like this one from Wrzlprnft:



Additionally, The Lore & Stories Sub Forum has gotten some love again with some new wonderfully written Deeper-inspired fan fiction by ADcrafter and Thuzar respectively:

Darkness Falls
https://steamcommunity.com/app/307110/discussions/4/1733207382031978474/

Abyss Chronicles
https://steamcommunity.com/app/307110/discussions/4/1728701877510838293/

And finally, in case you needed more memes, cap out your day with this developer-centric retelling of Steamed Hams by Cleanworld:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/307110/discussions/4/1728701877476820979/

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As always, let us know what y'all think of the new update! Go get filthy!
We Need To Go Deeper - Nick Lives


Hey y'all! This week we're dropping a new puffed up enemy for the Prehistoric Waters biome - The Gas Fish! This fella doesn't actually mean you any harm, as they feed by relaxing and breathing plankton in through their pore-filled bodies, but should you knock into them or fire at them, they'll explode! Sometimes releasing toxins with them!



SNEAKY PEAKY

Meanwhile, we have one last little preview for the next big update coming up this week for you to MUNCH on:

We Need To Go Deeper - Nick Lives


This week we're dropping two new fabulous cosmetics in the form of the Mint Gown and the Velvet Dress! These are unlocked in your catalog at the 3rd Cabineer subrank and the 5th Crewmate subrank respectively! Anyone above these ranks should find the dresses in their catalog immediately!

We Need To Go Deeper - Nick Lives


This week's content drop may be running a little late, but now you won't be - with the new Speed-Run Timer!

As requested by the communities' most speed-hungry crews, you can now toggle an official Speed-Run Timer to track (and prove) your crews' best times to the bottom! The timer starts as soon as you START YER ENGINES, and ends as soon as the last biome's boss has been slain!



The Speed-Run Timer can be toggled at any time by the game's HOST, (and is viewable on the host's screen only for definitive accuracy) via the in-game menu. (ESC by default)





Happy speeding!
We Need To Go Deeper - Nick Lives


Hey everyone! This week we're dropping a much-needed counter balance to our recent update's alteration of the infamous Time Devourer - namely, we made it mortal! Don't get too comfortable though, because now The Time Devourer has a new trick up its sleeve with Splitters!



These nasty new foes are the smaller split remnants of their recently killed predecessor, but with all the same teeth-grinding capabilities! They can be whittled down to nothing with enough firepower, but the more you kill, the more smaller targets you'll have to track! Happy looping!

SNEAKY PEAKY

I know we didn't share much about the update last month as it was mostly fixes and very non-visual stuff, but this next month's update we do indeed have some preliminary sketches to tease! Behold:



As usual, we'll let your imagination fill in the blanks for now. ;)
We Need To Go Deeper - Nick Lives


Anchors away for July's official content update! This month is all about hardiness, sturdiness, and long-term stability. A new ranking system, menu, and a long list of 50+ overdue fixes awaits below! Drop your anchor and check it out!

Features



New Player Rank System! - Introducing Player Ranks to We Need To Go Deeper! As part of our efforts towards making meta-progression feel more satisfying, you now earn XP on your future runs that build towards earning new Ranks for your character!

Ranks show off your Deeper prowess and are shown next to your character's name in online games. As of now, there are a total of 11 Ranks to earn, with 5 sub-ranks to earn in between each, totaling at 55 potential rankings!



Ranks don't simply come with a new fancy badge, however, as we've revamped the method for unlocking items and cosmetics to now be tied to our new XP system as well, so you'll be regularly unlocking cool stuff each time you level!

Note: If you've already unlocked everything you still get to keep the things you've unlocked.



Also, DON'T PANIC. We know what you're thinking when you look at this new Gift Box on our XP screen, and to clarify - these are NOT the loot boxes your grandpa warned you about.

While the rest of the game industry may have ruined the joy of opening a digital gift, we opted for this context because it's fundamentally FUN to unlock things in gift box form, but we promise this will never be tied with any kind of micro-transaction, purchasable currency, nada. The in-game XP or Gold will not be monetized in any way, shape or form, rest assured. Everything is to be earned in-game, exclusively.



New Main Menu! - The main menu has finally recieved a much-needed facelift after getting increasingly cluttered for so long, and in doing so we got to include a lot of cool new stuff to help the community grow!

Latest News is now more prominently featured with a new rotating set of links that will direct folks to info about new Updates, Events, Merch, or Community hubs! There is also a new space for other useful links in the bottom right, and an ever-enticing reminder of your current XP progress and ranking in the upper right.

Your character also gets a moment to shine the moment you open the game now, just to remind you of your handsome self.



Sturdy Fixes Galore! - You asked, and you asked, and sometimes things slide by. This month, we decided enough is enough, and went hard at work fixing as many long-standing issues as we could. It may not be as sexy as more content, but sometimes what's underneath is just as important.

THE BIG FIX & CHANGE LIST:

- Internal Restarting is FIXED! No more program restarts between playthroughs!
-Fixed "the infinite void" bug. You can no longer find yourself in a black abyss of truly desolate nothingness - even if you want to.
-Fixed costumes getting shifted around every time we add a new cosmetic. Ryan is a hero.
-Fixed players getting their heads stuck on low spaces even when crouching
-Players now only lose one max health on death rather than two!
-Civilization shops now offer handheld weapons in addition to their usual repertoire!
-You can no longer pick up a non-stackable upgrade. You can buy it, sure, but uh, I mean you do you buddy.
-You can no longer revive someone after walking away from their dead body. Goodbye, beloved hack.
-The sniper mod finally deals the monstrous damage it's supposed to! Check that baby out!
-Fixed shotgun and sniper mod text not appearing after picking up the upgrades
-Fixed shop cases still showing their item for sale even after being bought or broken
-The time devourer can no longer show up to ruin your day before the game loops.
-Oh, and the time devourer is no longer armored.
-Oh, and the time devourer is very much so mortal now. Kill him. See what happens. See if another just shows up immediately. Be my guest.
-Fixed relics turning gray like ragdolls.
-Fixed players being able to see beyond the loaded level space in the tactical view.
-Fixed the bug where the lair guardian could permanently disarm players
-On that note, disarming has been completely rewritten to make permanent disarms virtually impossible.
-In the same manner, locking your player in place was rewritten too. You should find yourself to be less...sticky?
-You can no longer pick up two items simultaneously.
-Fixed multiple sources of gold and items failing to properly save, and even being outright rewritten with nothing.
-Fixed missing networking on ice chunks, abomination spawners, and barnacle mines which were potentially causing packet buildup
-Networking channel settings have been changed to allow fragmented data in the channel responsible for spawning objects. This is useful for players joining mid-game who need a whole lotta data at once.
-Manowar enemy now properly appears in front of a player's face when attached their head.
-Fixed oddly laid out catalog menu items by runtime rescaling
-Fixed a bug where a player grabbed out of the submarine by a lair guardian would trigger the submarine hatch sound and do a fade to black over and over and OVER.
-Remember those weird artifacts on the health UI? How about other UI? Nick is your man and he has delivered the fix.
-Bots now only flash yellow when they've actually healed. It's a miracle, people.
-Fixed ceiling-walking enemies not falling when they're supposed to
-Fixed ceiling walker y-scaling problems
-All enemies attached to your head now scale correctly. *Phew*. Didn't want my head having any weird upside-down stuff on it.
-Removed all item and cosmetic unlocks caused by raw depth, item use, or weird weird poorly explained external stuff. Gotta use that XP baby!
-Fixed players being able to move, swing their arms, and shoot while in the loadout menu
-Players no longer fire off a packet every frame when holding the interact button next to a door. Hallelujah.
-Fixed a bug where players who had super fast hard disks would find themselves stuck in the ceiling of the Espadon. Classy.
-Fixed a bug where players would be unable to use the periscope after being brigged while on a console or in bed.
-Exterior level chunks now have double the variety at no extra cost! How? Embarrassingly simple math magic.
-As mentioned in the last content drop, all bosses now have 50% less health, and their health no longer scales with the number of crew members.
-Periscope view size reduced 10%
-Fixed the Espadon background to no longer have a teeeeeeny sliver of exterior world that you could see.
-The darkness (or lighting surface) and exterior parallax water are now big enough to accommodate the largest boss camera size without showing beyond them
-Removed a needless additional check for internet connection and confirmed that you have internet if you are able to get your public IP. This fixes the problem where players can get this "not able to connect to steampowered.com" error even after disabling UPNP usage.
-Fixed a memory cleanup bug when removing bots before starting a game
-Fixed mummy ragdoll not showing up after being killed on client machines
-Players can no longer revive multiple skeletons at once
-Fixed several visual glitches in civilizations which allowed players to see beyond boundaries or see blank background
-Grabbing multiple upgrades no longer shows the wrong text
-Increased the shot distance on the sniper modded exterior gun
-Fixed players still getting hit by higher-aimed projectiles even when they're ducking
-RESOLUTION OPTIONS EVERYBODY HALLELUJAH!
-Fixed several cases where players get stuck on sharp corners in caves.
-Particle system setup has been made much more efficient.
-Fixed a typo in the Bobby Suit description.
-Players using Discord or Steam to join a game with a different version will no longer succeed. This fixes incompatible versions with totally different networking from trying to mash together like malformed puzzle pieces until they both break.
-Fixed a particle factory error in the main power console switch
-No longer will you be shackled to the play menu if you have a public IPv4 but are still trying to get a public IPv6! This fixes a case of permanent "Waiting for public IP source"!
-Fixed a serious bug where players were never leaving their Steam lobbies in the first place. This was causing lobbies to appear full and de-list from the lobby browser even when space was available.
-Fixed a bug where players disagreed on which submarine they had actually traveled in when it came time to upload their scores to the leaderboard. Oh boy. How embarrassing.
-The cheat checker should no longer flag odd rapid changes in values that it tracks. Instead, it will now look for absurd values, which is a safer marker for cheating.
-Fixed being able to enter/leave the submarine while chatting after reaching a cave
-Fuel barrels now refill 50% of the sub's fuel meter!
-The X on the relics UI should be working again. How it fell into disrepair is a matter of scholarly debate to this day.
-Players should now have afflictions removed in the bed when at full health. We had forgotten to account for the effect of health potions when doing the math on that.

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Community



::: Player of the Month :::

The Player of the Month for July is..... Thor Odenson!

Not only has Thor Odenson been an active player since release, he's also been a moderator on our Discord for quite some time! Thor Odenson is quick to help others on our channel, as well as join them in online games. If you've ever taken a dive with him, you'd know that he is a skilled player and has a lot of useful insight and tactics to share. Thank you, Thor Odenson! I don't know how we'd do it without you!

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As always, let us know what y'all think of the new update! Happy ranking!

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Patch 1 fixes:
-Fixed the loading/saving problems brought on by trying to fit rank data into an old holder class. This should fix another large swath of cases where gold and depth are completely lost! Unfortunately, any save files which were damaged before this fix will not be repaired by it. This only prevents future damage from occurring to gold, depth, and rank save data.
-Fixed rank-based catalog items not showing up properly.
-Players can no longer go over the rank of captain.
-The internal restart system is drastically more tolerant to errors, including any possible from saving/loading really old versions of game files.
-Shop cases can no longer be infinitely mined for gold.
-Fixed a bug that caused the screen to go dark forever if a lair guardian destroyed the submarine.
-Switched to a much safer style of serializing game save data which does not cause the file to remain open even if an error is thrown.
-Each new game resets the seed for the random number generator to fix cases where the same first biome was seen generating over and over until application quit.

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Patch 2 fixes:
-Your resolution now defaults to the max one available on your monitor.
-Fixed the game resolution getting reset when entering the play menu.
-Fixed a problem where a bug in the first time loading resolution settings could cause them to never save.
-Removed event-specific items from the catalog.
-Removed eldritch staff from the catalog.
-Fixed incorrect rank requirements on the water pump.
-Added a hotkey (default caps-lock) to turn off hard mouse cursor boundaries.
-Mouse cursor boundaries are only enforced in windowed mode.

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Patch 3 fixes:
-Found and fixed a missing networked object which wasn't spawning on the server end and causing networking backup (this time it was the skeleton for recruited civilization crew members).
-Fixed an error preventing deletion of particle emitters when the scene changed.
-Fixed a null reference exception when using the water pump over the network.
-Fixed the bug where the tactical view could be turned on and off when chatting while using the periscope.
-Fixed a casting error when trying to access old player stats files.
-Fixed a regression allowing a fifth invisible player into a lobby.

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Patch 4 fixes:
-Fixed the sunhat appearing in the catalog even after purchase
-Made even more failsafes for getting the submarine positioned correctly after a biome change (see fix for "endless void" bug)
-Fixed a missing networked object - today it was the ghost explosion for ghost hammerheads!

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Patch 5 fixes:
-Fixed still getting gold and XP even in a custom game
-Fixed a logic error in XP progress calculations. After you finish a game for your first time in patch 5, the level up bar animation may be slightly incorrect, but this is likely getting extra experience added back to you caused by times you previously saw yourself level up but went back to the menu and found yourself at the same rank. Each game after the first should have the level up bar at the end of the game correctly reflecting the XP added.
-Fixed an exploit where players could join and leave a game over and over and get expeirence each time they leave. XP is now only given and saved at the end of a run. If you disconect during a run, your gold and depth are still saved so long as it is not a custom game. Reconnecting before the game ends will ensure you still get the full amount of XP for the entire run. It is simply awarded only once.
...