Grease your motor for this month's two-part content update! For Part 1, we have a wide variety of game-wide improvements and changes, along with a taste of this month's new biome coming in full for Part 2! Here's the full details:




Improved AI! - Friendly NPCs and Civilizations alike are all getting an intelligence boost! Here are some of their newfound capabilities:

• Door-busters: All Civilizations now have the ability to break down your vessel's doors during their attack when you try to steal from them. Thieves beware!
  
  
  
  
• NPCs don't swing in Civilization hubs unless you're being attacked or if you've upset the Civilization.
  
• NPCs are more responsive to commands.
  
• NPCs can attack enemies while reviving.

Damage Overhaul! - Introducing variable sized breaks and a new shielding system for our big Damage Overhaul!

• Variable Sized Leaks: Leaks now scale with damage dealt, meaning big biters can chomp big, fast-flooding holes into your ship, and a little bump may only cause smaller breaches.
  
• Shield Damage Absorbtion: Shields now absorb variable damage rather than an all-or-nothing solution, meaning you can tank damage more effectivly, with only the difference in damage affecting your ship when it does cut through!

New Relics! - Three new mysterious but telling relics have appeared in the Prehistoric Waters - they seem to be from a different timeline, however, from a yet unseen biome...



New Enemy: Trash Compactor! - Another taste of the new upcoming biome. Brought by The Time Traveler, this strange machine cares little about your presence, but get in its way and you'll be sorry.



Optimizations and Improvements! - Last but not least, this update is packed to the brim with a host of new fixes, optimizations, and improvements in just about every area! Every machine needs to be well-oiled, after all!

• Greatly optimized bandwidth usage across the board.
  
• Flooding/Water system optimized to be less processor-intensive.
  
• Lairs now receive item drops.
  
• Fixed hosting and lobby issues for Mac OSX users.
  
• Caught and fixed many, many, game-slowing null reference bugs.
  
• Ceiling walkers' orientation is now networked.
  
• Revolver fixed to deal the correct amount of damage when shooting rapidly.
  
• Bots no longer shoot at barnacle mines or puffers.
  
• Fixed the lock cursor toggle when pressing caps lock.
  
• Aggroed Tiki Civ stops spawning boulders when dead.

Balance:
-Bots will continue to swing at enemies even when reviving a dead player
-Bots spend more time repairing if it is a directly commanded task
-Water flooding rate is now proportional to the size of the hull breach
-All enemies increase their health and damage upon looping the game.
-Batteries now provide 5 minutes of charge rather than their previous 3.
-The Tiki civilization no longer spawns boulders after all the Tikis are dead.
-Submarine shields now charge linearly rather than step-wise, and change color/scale to signify charge.
-Reduced wall flower projectile hull damage ~25%
-Increased lion-mane jellyfish hull damage ~250%
-Reduced hull damage from individual maggots 60%
-Decreased hull damage from lamprey invaders 60%
-Decreased hull damage from Aurelian worm 40%
-Increased angler fish hull damage 20%
-Reduced angler fish and sick angler fish biting rate
-Increased angler fish swim speed 5%
-Time devourer children do less damage based on their size
-Per-breach damage from ghost pirate invaders reduced 40%
-Per-breach damage from barnacle grabbers decreased 20%
-Increased hull damage from Dunkleosteus bites 300%
-Reduced Dunkleosteus health 25% and reduced bite rate 50%
-Reduced damage from cursed oyster clusters 20-66% depending on size
-Increased volcanic turtle and shark damage 25%
-Reduced volcanic vent eruption rate 50%
-Zoomed in lair guardian fight camera slightly.
-Doubled the XP value of killing exterior enemies.
-Hull damage due to crashinig the submarine increased

Fixes:
-All enemies, pickups, cave decorations, projectiles, ragdolls, hazards, and treasure now use a distance-based method to dynamically spawn and unspawn over the network only when in near-sight radius. This drastically reduces the amount of information sent to mid-game joining players and reduced moment-to-moment traffic on the client side 50-75%.
-Bots have improved response to commands when in an expedition segment
-Baby crabs are back! Where did they even go?
-Interior enemies now correctly respond to multiple sources of damage simultaneously or in short succession by using per-damage-source invincibility times, rather than per-damage invincibility times. This means that a full crew can attack cave/civ enemies and have each hit registered successfully. Very handy!
-Exterior enemies send 50% less traffic when mildly distant from the sub, and send no traffic to clients at all when far out of range (as part of the distance-based networking overhaul)
-Fixed bot loadout items sometimes appearing incorrectly for players joining mid-game
-Exterior hazards are now generated only once per level chunk, fixing the problems where waiting a while could cause the next level chunk to be packed full of barnacle mines or volcanic vents. Also fixes hazards popping into view.
-Quadrupled the size of the acknowledgement packet buffer (reduces packet loss)
-Increased the max sent message queue size from 128 to 150, allowing slightly more messages to be buffered and thus reducing packet loss due to network backup.
-Increased the max reliable message fragment size and max small reliable message count per-packet to help condense traffic and reduce bandwidth usage due to repeated packet headers.
-Decreased the ping timeout for disconnection from 8 seconds to 5 seconds, thus reducing ~35% of the packet backup caused by trying to resend reliable messages to an unresponsive client
-Fixed a bug in the broken container behavior causing networking backup.
-Wrote a failsafe to help prevent players from getting duplicate XP from a run quickly leaving and re-joining a game.
-Fixed a problem where the revolver could not deal damage for each shot if used at its max shooting speed - now each shot registers and deals damage
-Bots operating weapons will actively try to avoid barnacle mines and gaseous fish
-Nearly all objects related to the water flooding system no longer perform per-frame physics overlap casting, and instead do a single raycast at their start or highly stagged physics overlap casting. This dramatically improves flood performance.
-Fixed a bug in the cursor locking logic when pressing caps lock
-Built a series of workarounds for hosting online games on OSX when Unity fails to get any information about network adapters on the local machine
-Fixed the stage II barnacle crab not being properly hooked up to the network manager, causing networking backups
-Interior enemies now correctly sync their scale, miniboss status, and ceiling walker status for mid-game joining players
-Fixed pirate ship debris particles not properly being destroyed, causing slowdowns over time
-Fixed Discord Rich Presence showing incorrect biome names for players in-game
-Fixed an issue in the position syncing configuration of barnacle mines and gaseous fish, causing position information to come in out of order.
-Fixed a few typos in Atlantean, Egyptian, and Lamprey dialogue.
-Added a sound effect for grounded dodge rolls.
-Fixed a null reference in the appearance setting code for bots and civilization recruits.
-Fixed an animator rigging problem in the time devourer/children
-Ghost clams and eldritch spawnlings are now properly cleaned up after exiting a cave
-Fixed the lair guardian sounds ignoring SFX volume settings
-Fixed a bug where weapons power always displayed as zero in the tactical view

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::: Player of the Month :::

The Player of the Month for September is..... GiantButtFace!
GiantButtFace, despite their name, has been a giant HELPFUL face in helping us find some important Mac OSX Networking bugs that we were able to solve in this very update! Through some good old fashioned back and forth emailing, questioning, and prompt info gathering. Thanks GiantButtFace!

::: Community Highlights :::

Person Personmans just sent us our first fan-made music piece this month, and we had to listen to it right away, and share it with y'all as well! Evoking the feeling when you are filled to the brim with leaks, this is "Breach" -

https://onlinesequencer.net/918623

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Let us know what you think of Part 1, and we'll see you soon when Part 2 comes around!

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Patch 1 notes:
-Fixed a null reference causing caves to be non-exitable if preceded by certain cave types.
-Fixed a networking error in broken doors.
-Fixed ranged weapons being able to damage submarine doors

Hey everyone! Content drops are back now that I'm (relatively) healed, starting off with an oft-requested NPC for the Infected Waters - The Barnacle Assistant, and some new lore-filled relics to go with it!




We also have a few new asset previews to show y'all for our next content update! As always, let the speculation run wild.

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!

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!

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!

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


- 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.


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.

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!




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.


- 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.



- 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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::: 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!

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!




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

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!

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!