We have just released a patch for The Riftbreaker Closed Co-Op Beta, featuring a new biome - Fungal Swamp, and a large suite of other fixes. The full changelog is available below:

• Added a new biome to the multiplayer build: Fungal Swamp. You can now play Survival in two new scenarios - Fungal Forest and Fungal Swamp. Good luck.
  
• Reduced the size of the collision box for Walls to prevent the player's projectiles from hitting them when standing on the Heightened Wall Floor.
  
• Shard Gun and Heavy Plasma muzzles have been raised slightly to avoid collision issues.
  
• Crafted Mech Upgrades will only receive the stats listed on the crafting screen. Upgrades you find as loot are able to receive additional bonuses.
  
• Bonuses granted by mech upgrade modules are now additive, not multiplicative. Previously, if you equipped a 10% resistance bonus upgrade, and then another one, you would get 11% as a result. Now, the bonuses will add up to 20%, as one would expect.
  
• Changed the meshes for Gnerot, Krocoon, Fungor and Necrodon Omega strains to the new ones.
  
• Changed the "Host Game" button localization to "Host/Load Game" to let players know they can actually load the game via the lobby screen.
  
• Crafted weapons are now marked as crafted in the inventory.
  
• Added a new background to the lobby screen.
  
• Added some temporary emotes and animations to the ping wheel - taunt, greeting, dance, cheer.
  
• Changed the lights in Biocaches - the radius is larger, the intensity lower, and the light pillar more visible.
  
• Changed the effective radius for the Shockwave Tower from 13 to 18.
  
• Updated the Tropical Zone loading screen to feature the updated Hammerocerros models.
  
• Added more loot to Canceroth.
  
• Added healthbars to all Canceroth central cells.

• Fixed several gamepad navigation issues.
  
• Fixed issues with damage skins for several cryo Omega creatures.
  
• Fixed a crash in the Inventory System.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused Ferdonite to use a wrong color icon.
  
• Reduced the instance limit of the Shotgun bullet hit sound to prevent it from getting too loud.
  
• Fixed an issue that prevented preview sounds from playing while changing volume sliders in the Audio Options menu.
  
• Fixed several stability issues related to DX12 raytracing.
  
• Fixed some animation glitches while attacking with the Sword.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused most projectiles to be invisible.
  
• Fixed crashes that occurred when connecting to the server and restarting the game.
  
• Multiple optimizations, performance improvements and networking enhancements.

EXOR Studios

We have just released a small patch aimed to increase the game's stability on systems equipped with Nvidia RTX GPUs.

Over the past weeks, we have been made aware of an issue that causes our game to crash when raytracing options are enabled. Further investigation revealed that the increased frequency of these crashes coincided with the release of new Nvidia GPU drivers. Unfortunately, the crashes happened at random intervals and were not present on all GPU/driver combinations, which made searching for the cause of this bug especially tricky.

Today's patch fixes one of the possible issues that caused the game to crash with raytracing options enabled. However, this is not the final fix. We are still working on a comprehensive solution that will solve this issue altogether.

If you still experience crashing after this patch, please try playing with raytracing options disabled. While not a perfect solution, this will allow you to continue playing uninterrupted. We will release another patch as soon as we can.

We sincerely apologize for this issue.

EXOR Studios

As we promised last week, today we will look at all the special skills we have developed for the most powerful enemies in the game - Omega creatures. These additional abilities expand the skillset of the creatures you regularly encounter in the game beyond anything you’ve seen. The Omega skills come in all roles - offensive, defensive, and supportive, requiring you to adapt your combat style for each encounter. This article will show you all the skills individually, clearly explaining each. We will also tell you about our experience while developing them, including discovering some absolutely overpowered combinations we experienced first-hand. Let’s dive in.

First, let’s quickly recap what we know about Omega creatures and their skills so far. They are special remakes of the creatures you have seen on Galatea 37. The difference is that the creatures of this strain are much more dangerous than their regular counterparts - which is reflected in their unique appearance. Omega creatures are beefier stat-wise and can also receive additional traits. The higher the game’s difficulty level, the more abilities a creature can receive. In the game's early stages, you won’t encounter Omegas at all, or they will only receive an HP boost. However, as you progress, they will start receiving additional skills. One Omega creature at the highest difficulty level can have up to four abilities. Now that we’re all up to speed on what they are, let’s see the full list of the Omega abilities.

We used a regular Fungor as our example skill "carrier", because it is a slow unit that does not have any additional skills. This will allow you to take a good look at each skill individually.


These attacks come in various shapes and forms. The attack patterns get more complex as the Omega creatures grow stronger.

Cascade Attacks - These attacks are telegraphed by warning zones appearing on the ground. After a few moments, acidic explosions, lighting strikes, or underground rocks appear in the marked areas. On higher difficulty levels, more danger zones appear. You will have to move around a lot not to get hit!


Unless you can outheal the damage, melee weapons against Aura-equipped enemies are not the best idea.

Damage Aura - A true classic. The radius around the Omega creature is lava (or some other equally unpleasant element)! If you stand close to the creature, you will continue to receive a steady stream of damage. Attack the target from afar or find a way to outheal the damage.


Drones are always on the move and you have to be as well!

Drone Spawner - If you thought that Baxmoth drone swarms were terrifying, just wait until you see an Omega with this ability! This skill allows the creature to spawn an endless stream of aggressive drones that will happily attack you and your structures. You must never stop moving unless you want an express trip to the HQ.


This Omega has no time to waste - there are millions of eggs to lay!

Egg Spawner - This ability allows the Omega creature to spawn eggs that will hatch into full-sized creatures after a few seconds. This supplies the attack wave with a never-ending stream of cannon fodder. However, it’s not as bad as it would seem - you can destroy the eggs before they hatch.


Fungor recovered all its lost HP in just one lap around the lake. However, if you keep dealing damage, the heal won't trigger.

Healing Aura - A support skill that restores the health of all enemy units in a large radius around the Omega creature. The creature endowed with this ability can also heal itself, meaning you can’t leave the fight halfway and return another day. You have to defeat it all at once.


The meteors get more powerful and accurate later in the game. However, since they don't target you specifically, meteors are a threat for your structures as well.

Meteor Spawner - The Omega creature can send a targeted meteor strike at you with this ability. There is a big difference from the cascade attacks we mentioned earlier - the meteors do not follow any pattern. You only have a fraction of a second to escape, so practice dodging!


Taking down the source of the Resistance Aura is a priority.

Resistance Aura - Thanks to this ability, all the creatures in a radius around the Omega will receive a meaningful damage resistance boost, including the big guy! This makes your targets significantly harder to take down.


How do you like chaos and a never-ending stream of cannon fodder?

Resurrect Aura - Omega creatures have been taking lessons from Necrodons. Thanks to this skill, they can revive units that have fallen in battle. If there is no one they can revive (unlikely), they will instead summon a pack of creatures out of thin air.


Shockwave will punish you for getting too close. It will also prevent you from teleporting around the map.

Shockwave - This ability triggers when you get too close to the enemy unit. It will send a shockwave pulse, dealing damage in a radius around the creature and also turning off your minimap and the ability to teleport. It is better to stay away as far as possible when you see it.


In case you're wondering - this is just a regular version of the Swarm Spawner skill. Omegas can also be surrounded by Ultra Canceroth. You're welcome.

Swarm Spawner - The Omega creature with this ability is surrounded by a swarm of Canceroth cells. They serve as additional protection from attacks and deal a fair share of damage. You have to destroy these cells before you get to the Omega. Be quick - they will grow back after a while!


You can either fight, or try to escape. Be quick though - these walls can pop up very quickly.

Waller - A creature with this ability will create walls that severely limit your movement options. You will have to break through these walls to escape or press on despite the limited maneuverability and deal with the source of the problem.

Now that you get the whole picture, you can see that Omega creatures can get more than one ability (but not multiples of one!), which can lead to some overpowered combinations. Imagine our shock when we first encountered a creature with both Healing and Resistance Auras on a Survival run. We had only reached Advanced weapons at that time. The beast was absolutely unkillable for us and ended our run prematurely. Similarly, the combination of Waller and Drones or a Damage Aura has almost halved the population of gamepads around the office. Based on the playtesters’ feedback, we preemptively excluded some combinations of Omega skills to prevent further emotional damage. We will continue making changes to ensure that Omegas remain tough but fair and beatable.

Do you have any ideas for more skills that we could use? Let us know in the comments! If you want to have a chance to fight these creatures before the official release, sign up for the Closed Co-Op Beta below. Everyone who signs up will receive access to the Beta for them and their friends before the testing period is over.

We reserve the right to contact only select participants, but we will do our best to accommodate everyone!



EXOR Studios

We told you about the new Omega Class enemies that will spice up your Campaign and Survival runs a couple of weeks ago. In a nutshell, they are more powerful strains of Galatean creatures. Not only are they more durable and deal more damage upfront, but they also come with a range of special abilities that require you to change up your strategy and find an individual approach to each of them. Fighting Omega creatures has quickly become one of our playtesters' favorite elements of the Co-Op Beta. We’re pleased with how the Omega ability system turned out. Naturally, we investigated if any other areas of the game could use it - and we think we found the perfect candidate.


The first nest you find in the game is in the Prologue mission. Although we won't be making this one any different, it portrays the issue with the event altogether - shooting at an immobile, defenseless object is not that engaging.

There are many randomized events that can take place during any Riftbreaker mission. They range from weather events to all-out assaults by enemy creatures. One such event that can happen in any Galatean biome is finding a creature nest in the wild. They can either appear alone or in a group of three. If left unchecked, the nest will keep spawning creatures that will happily eat a hole in your defenses. The only way to stop that from happening is to take a slight detour from your current plans and eliminate the source of the problem. That’s where the event has been a bit underwhelming. Creature nests are immobile and largely defenseless. Destroying them was an unrewarding formality for most Riftbreakers. We want to change that, so we decided to explore some options.


Things change a little when there are a couple of nests involved, and the difficulty level is a bit higher. Some creatures try to stop you from wrecking their homes, but they are no match for your firepower.

All biomes in The Riftbreaker have their own nest model that spawns creatures appropriate for that biome. However, some are slightly different. In the Metallic Valley, the nests take the form of an X-Morph Biofactory, heavily defended by loads of Alien Plasma and Artillery Towers. Destroying each of those defensive structures yields resources and makes the fight much less one-sided. We continued with that idea in the Fungal Swamp biome. Over there, the nests have an acid-spitting maw on top of them, also leading to much more engaging fights. We realized this made the entire event much more interesting, especially if multiple nests were involved. It made us think: what means of defense can we give the other static creature nests to make them more similar to the ones in the Metallic Valley and Fungal Swamp biomes? As an experiment, we decided to try some of the Omega strain abilities.


After giving them an HP boost and some abilities, the nests are a much bigger problem now! The ones you can see here have one ability each: one shoots fireballs from the sky, another sends bursts of lightning, and the third keeps healing the other two. While we won't be spawning the nests so close to one another, this gives you an idea of what we wanted to achieve.

We started small, applying a moderate HP boost and one randomly chosen skill from the Omega skill set. The event immediately felt much better - not only did it take some time and actual firepower to destroy the threat, but the nest could fight back and destroy your mech if you weren’t careful. However, not all the abilities we prepared for our bosses made sense on a static object. Let’s take the ‘waller’ ability as an example. It is completely illogical for the nest to ‘wall you in’ and essentially protect you from the creatures it spawns, all the while you’re blasting your most potent weapons at it. We left in those abilities that can deal direct damage to you or buff the surrounding creatures. Thanks to this, fights became more engaging and rewarding, giving us a good reason to provide you with chances for more loot! All defeated Omega nests will have the chance to drop a fountain of resources, mods, and unique items.


More nests, more chaos! Again, this is a testing situation, and the nests won't ever be this close, but the chaos is glorious! Drones, pattern attacks, healing - they have it all. Prepare your best gear!

Next week, we'll unveil the full range of Omega creature abilities and how they work together. Some combos are so powerful that we've had to ban them from ever appearing together in the wild, ensuring fair and balanced gameplay. In the meantime, we invite you to sign up for the Closed Beta playtest. We've increased the number of invites we send out with each update, and we're eager to test the strengths and weaknesses of our game with a large player base. We promise that everyone who signs up will receive an invite before the end of the beta period. And remember, getting a key will also allow you to join our Co-Op streams, which happen every Tuesday and Thursday at https://www.twitch.tv/exorstudios at 3 PM CET. We look forward to seeing you there!

We reserve the right to contact only select participants, but we will do our best to accommodate everyone!


EXOR Studios

Today's update for the Closed Beta introduces changes to weapons and Omega creature balance, as well as new performance optimizations. Full changelog available below:

• Tweaked properties of certain weapons after community playtest feedback:
  
• Corrosive gun - higher ammo cost per shot, fewer cluster projectiles shot.
  
• Root gun - lower damage, lower fire rate.
  
• Repeater Rifle - lower damage, higher fire rate.
  
• Swarm Missile - lower ammo cost per shot, lower projectile spread.
  
• Chainsaw - decreased lifesteal and damage on higher tiers.
  
• Laser - decreased the damage factor growth ratio.
  
• Additional boss attack waves are now clamped at 1, regardles of anything - even Thanos can't change this. - "Designer code quality certified fix".
  
• Changed the Hammerocerros model to the new version we previewed a couple of weeks ago. This applies both to regular creatures, as well as the Omega strain.
  
• Changed the Krocoon Omega model to the new version.
  
• Changed the Gnerot Omega model to the new version.
  
• Omega creatures will no longer summon Octabits. We switched the summoned unit to Bradrons.
  
• Removed some overpowered combinations of boss skills based on playtests (resistance synergies, damage aura + fast melee bosses etc.).
  
• Tornadoes spawned by Omega skills will now disappear after hitting a world blocker prop, like a rock, for example.
  
• Decreased the energy usage for basic factories on level 2 and level 3 to better match their production output.
  
• Decreased the energy usage of rare element mines on level 2 and level 3 to better match their production output.
  
• Survival mode now has separate loot drop chances. We want to increase the probability of finding rare loot in a short Survival run.
  
• Increased the drop chance for higher tier weapon mods.
  
• Changed HP boost values in player upgrades from percent to flat to prevent stacking.
  
• Lower ammo consumption bonus added to the Rate of Fire Power Well.
  
• Visual effects for Corrosive Gun have been reduced in size and intensity for better visual clarity.
  
• Ion Storm visual effects have been improved.
  
• Added a warning that appears when there is a content mismatch between the player and the server caused by mods.
  
• Added a completely new Survival Mode starting screen.
  
• Added a completely new Multiplayer Lobby screen with server options.
  
• The research screen and queue will now refresh immediately after a research item is completed.
  
• The research queue will now refresh immediately after a research item is added or moved on the list.
  
• Increased the wave intermission time from 6 minutes to 7 minutes in Survival Coop at Normal difficulty (the same as single player).
  
• Increased the wave intermission time from 6 minutes to 8 minutes in Survival Coop at Easy difficulty (the same as single player).
  
• Decreased the creature difficulty level incrementation on Easy, Normal and Hard difficulty levels in Survival Mode in all biomes.
  
• The host can now pause the server from the menu. Other players will receive a popup that the server is paused. The pause menu can still be accessed when the popup is displayed.
  
• All players will now receive a notification if someone picks up a loot item that everyone can use, such as a skill, or a consumable upgrade.
  
• The time between attack waves (wave intermission timer) will now scale according to the number of players participating in the session according to the forumla: countdown_between_waves = wave_intermission_time - (( player_count - 1 ) * wave_intermission_per_player_factor ). The factor varies per difficulty level:
  
• -- brutal = 60
  
• -- hard = 40
  
• -- easy & normal = 0
  
• This means that on Hard and Brutal difficulties the attack waves will arrive sooner - one minute per player above one on Brutal and 40 seconds per player above one on Hard. There is no change on Easy and Normal difficulties.
  
• Introduced some preliminary usability fixes to the Power Jump skill. It's the beginning of a larger movement skill rework.
  
• Added Omega skills to Biofactories in the Metallic Valley biome.

• Adjusted the prediction forces for the player teleport action to prevent players from appearing in places they never intended to be in.
  
• Fixed some prediction issues with using double melee weapons.
  
• Fixed the Rate of Fire Power Well not affecting melee weapons.
  
• Fixed a problem that caused chargable weapons to shoot twice instead of starting to charge.
  
• Fixed an issue with charge weapon cooldowns that allowed players to start charging up a shot when the weapon was still on cooldown from the previous shot.
  
• Fixed mech teleportation issues caused by the prediction algorithms.
  
• Fixed an issue that allowed players to shoot at flora props with the laser and gain the damage multiplier bonus from that.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused autoaim and homing to target Baxmoth drones.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused the player to become immune to area damage after being resurrected by another player during a multiplier match.
  
• Fixed the visual interpretation of the mech movement interpolation seen by other players during multiplayer gameplay. No more rubberbanding/jumping mechs, hopefully.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused Krocoon to deal damage to players while being visibly stunned.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused Omega auras to be invisible for players during multiplayer gameplay.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused Arachnoids of all varieties to shoot their projectiles from beneath the ground. We fixed it several times over the years, but we fixed it real good this time, with a complete rework of the creature's weapon. Fingers crossed!
  
• Fixed an issue with the meteor shower event that caused it to always follow player number one.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused Bradrons to die immediately after hitting a player with Reflective armor equipped.
  
• Fixed an issue that allowed players to stagger-lock bosses with chainsaws.
  
• Fixed the German localization for "Orbital scanner not available" warning.
  
• Fixed Gnerot hand hitbox which was misplaced.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused Chainsaws to be distributed to all players if someone picked it up as a reward.
  
• Fixed several crashes related to the inventory system.
  
• Fixed issues with item sharing that caused the shared weapon to use up the original owner's ammo reserves.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused loot items and drones to inherit the scale of the creature that dropped it.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused the building menu to close during game saving.
  
• Fixed several issues that caused players to crash or lose control of their mech after reconnecting.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused attack waves to appear every two minutes in Coop Easy and Coop Normal modes.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused Omega waves to appear multiple times in multiplayer games.
  
• Fixed numerous stability issues.
  
• Introduced many performance, networking, and prediction optimizations.

EXOR Studios

We spent the past two weeks talking about the massive upcoming changes in Riftbreaker 2.0 that we are working on. The improved weapon and loot systems will give you more gameplay options than ever before and reward you for the time spent exploring the wilds of Galatea 37. However, not all updates we decide on have that kind of impact on the game. In fact, some of them are small in comparison but significantly affect the impression the game leaves on players. Today, we’d like to tell you about some improvements we’re introducing to some of your base's most commonly built structures.


A blast from the past! In this build from 2019, the upgraded buildings were marked only with a number hovering over the rooftop. It looked bad and was almost invisible in real gameplay.

We always want our game worlds to look beautiful, our enemies fearsome, and the player bases futuristic and well-detailed. To achieve that, we decided early on that buildings most likely to be placed in the base in large numbers, such as the Energy Storage and Walls, would get an individual model for each building level. Thanks to this, it was easier to identify which buildings in your base still needed upgrades. You don’t always have the resources to upgrade 50 structures simultaneously, and it is easy to forget that you missed a couple of upgrades here and there. Different models allow you to see that. On top of that, thanks to upgrades, you can see your base growing in strength over time since higher levels are usually more massive and sturdier, adding to the high detail that we strive for.


As a middle ground, we added plates with numbers that denoted the upgrade level. It worked fine, and those numbers can still be found on some buildings. Still, we could do better.

While we were correct in assuming that some of our buildings would be more popular than others, we didn’t quite anticipate just how much our players love building up their bases. You started showing us entire maps covered with dozens of storage units, solar panels, wind turbines, factories, and more. Much more. To protect such massive bases, players needed a lot of AI Hubs - and there we saw it. Fields of AI Hub buildings of various levels, some with an upgrade “number plate” on them. Buildings that do not have unique models for each level would get a plate with a number, signifying their upgrade level. While better than what we had in the VERY early days (numbers floating in the air above the building) and not ruinous to gameplay overall, we felt that it was an area where we could improve.


In the end, the most commonly built structures that are likely to appear in large numbers got individual models for each level.

We asked our graphics team to create new level models for those buildings that initially didn’t have them but were always present in bases. This includes the AI Hubs, Repair Towers, and Liquid Material Storage. Our artists happily accepted this change of pace, as the things they have been working on are truly massive, from the Omega creature models in various flavors to undisclosed endgame mega elements (which we should be able to start previewing in just a couple of weeks!). We decided to maintain the overall shape of the buildings and use the current model as level 2 - which means we have both bigger and smaller versions now. Check them out:


The new AI Hub building levels.


The new Repair Tower building levels.


The new Liquid Material Storage building levels.


Level 1 AI Hub might be a bit of a shock at first, as it doesn’t feature the prominent green light that we've become used to. Look how tiny that thing is! Level 3 was significantly beefed up, and the screens all around the structure give it a more advanced look. We used an animated texture on this model, which worked well in this case!


The Liquid Material Storage had to keep the pipe attachments in the same place, as well as the windows that showed the kind of liquid inside. That limited the options slightly. However, you can easily see the progression from Level 1 to Level 3.


Finally, the Repair Towers. Level 1 has lost a little bit of its heft. We wouldn’t leave the HQ unsupervised with only use these towers to protect it. However, Level 3 got much beefier and looks like a beacon of… repair.

We hope that these new models will give your bases a nice refresh and make the process of upgrading your HQ more rewarding. These are not the only changes you’ll be making in The Riftbreaker 2.0, but more on later. If you want to see previews of the new stuff we’re working on, tune in to our streams on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 3 PM CET on https://www.twitch.tv/exorstudios. We don’t always have complete control (or knowledge) over what kind of secret new developments decide to do a little surprise pre-reveal (which some might call a leak, but they are wrong).

See you there!
EXOR Studios

Last week, we told you about the changes to the weapons system in the upcoming Riftbreaker 2.0 update. Thank you for all the healthy discussion that took place in the comments section of that post. It’s great to see you so engaged and full of ideas to make the game a better experience. Fear not - we’re not going to sacrifice fun for the sake of mythical balance. We’ll report back to you when we have some more results from our testing. In the meantime, as we promised, we will tell you about the second massive change in RB 2.0 - the upgraded loot system.


The most basic example of the new system in action. The Biocache dropped a unique item and some resources for good measure. The higher the rarity of the Biocache, the better your chances for more advanced gear and even more resources.

With all the exciting additions coming to The Riftbreaker in the upcoming updates, we have been looking for some new ways to encourage our players to explore the maps further than before. Sure, we’ve already had our Bioanomalies and Biocaches. Still, if you have unlocked all the unique items for your profile and do not need some resources, they might stop feeling rewarding after a while. After a while, when a new map opens up, most players would just complete the objectives and move on. It’s not wrong and might suit your playstyle - more power to you! However, we wanted to make exploration more meaningful, so we decided to best approach it through looting opportunities.


The weapons you find as loot have unique properties, like cluster projectiles, for example. They are tuned to be meaningful and trigger often, so that it's not just a "paper" chance for a bonus effect.

When you look at the best action RPGs, they give you plenty of opportunities to get new gear and a power spike by simply playing the game and exploring the world. Every chest you open, or monster you kill is a new chance to get an item. While most of these items are usually in the “straight-to-vendor” tier, the possibility of getting an upgrade drives players forward. It adds a new layer of meaning to the never-ending monster-slaying quest. For a very long time, we were hesitant to take this approach. “How can a Canoptrix drop a minigun? That doesn’t make any sense!” we thought. After playing through some of the most recent big aRPGs, something clicked in our heads. If a goblin can drop a halberd twice its size, and nobody bats an eye, then what’s the problem?


Unique drops are plentiful, but not guaranteed. Worst case scenario - you get a resource fountain. Biocaches are guaranteed to drop Carbonium and Ironium now, in addition to other resources.

We realized that we’ve been wrong about loot drops this entire time. It doesn’t matter if it makes sense in the real world. The game isn’t the real world - it’s a fantasy, and we should give you as many fun things to do in that fantasy as we possibly can. We analyzed loot systems in many games, both old and new, and came up with a simple version that should work for The Riftbreaker. After some trial and error, we arrived at the first version of the new system. Here’s what we came up with - but please, bear in mind that this is just an early idea, and it is likely to change a whole lot as we work on it:

• Until now, the loot pool in The Riftbreaker consisted of resource shards, a couple of unique upgrade blueprints for your gear, some additional player skins, weapon mods, and decorative elements for your base. We decided to expand the pool with actual, complete weapons - not blueprints. You can use them, you can hold on to them, you can disassemble them for resources - the choice is yours.
  
• The weapons you get as loot will be more powerful than those you can craft yourself. The rarity tier of the weapons you find will depend on your current research level, and you will have the chance to get a weapon that is one tier higher. This means that if you have access to Advanced Shotguns, for example, you can find a Superior Shotgun in the wild. It’s not guaranteed, but there is a decent chance!
  
• Looted weapons will also receive additional properties that are not available for regular, crafted weapons. We’re talking about piercing, multi-shot, cluster projectiles, homing, etc. The higher the tier of the weapon, the more additional properties it gets. We will mark the items with those extra properties in your inventory so that you remember to check them out.
  
  
  It is entirely possible to fill out your entire inventory without touching the crafting menu even once, but you have to rely on RNG to get what you want. The choice is yours!
  
  
• You will have plenty of opportunities to get new gear while exploring Galatea 37. All Bioanomalies, Biocaches, Omega creatures, underground treasures, and creature nests can drop a unique item for you. On top of that, all regular enemies have a chance to reward you with a unique item, but that will happen on a much more rare basis.
  
• Some of you might ask, “Won’t all these weapons clutter my inventory?” Well, yes, but also no! We are working on a new mass disassembly system that will allow you to get rid of the gear you no longer need on a larger scale. This system will let you select multiple items at once and disassemble them in bulk, saving you time and effort. It will also allow you to get rid of your surplus mods, guaranteeing a new income stream.
  
• This new system will apply to both campaign and survival modes in single-player and co-op. The rarities will be tweaked individually for all those modes, but you can get a decent power-up during exploration whenever you play.
  
• It is important to stress that the new weapons will not replace the existing unique loot rewards. You can still collect all the skins, decorations, and gear upgrades. We will adjust each reward type's weight individually, so it doesn’t take 1000 years to complete your collection, either.

Since Omega creatures are the guardians of Bioanomalies, you can get often get two rewards for the price of one! Here, we got a Mortar from the Baxmoth Omega, and a Repeater from the anomaly.

The purpose of the new system is to make exploration in The Riftbreaker a worthwhile investment and an exciting adventure on its own, but it’s not the only thing we’re planning. The 2.0 update will give you more opportunities to discover new areas of the planet thanks to the Randomized Mission Generator. It will let you go on new missions and set up additional outposts in the biomes you have already conquered. That will, in turn, allow you to complete the mega-endgame mega-objectives which we’re mega-working on right now. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves - all in due time.


The underground treasures also give you a chance for a unique item - and that's in addition to other loot inside. We're not removing anything for the sake of the new system!

As always, we highly encourage you to sign up for the Closed Co-Op Beta Test. We test all the latest changes on that branch, and its highly experimental nature means we are very open to suggestions and changes. This gives you an opportunity to influence what the final version of this update turns out to be. We hope you’re going to like it!

We reserve the right to contact only select participants.


EXOR Studios

We published a series of patches for The Riftbreaker Closed Co-Op Beta a couple of days ago, featuring some experimental changes in many areas of the game. Massive overhauls of the weapon and loot systems were a significant portion of these updates. These reworks are something we have been planning for a while now. The experimental nature of our Closed Co-Op Beta makes it a perfect environment to test and consult these changes with our community, whose feedback is invaluable to us. Today, we want to tell you more about this process. We will explain our philosophy behind the reworks, what the process looked like, and how we are working with our community playtesters to ensure we are moving in the right direction.


There's been a lot of testing going on lately, both in and out of the studio.

Let’s start by talking about the reasons behind these changes. The weapon system in The Riftbreaker has never been perfect. The lower-quality weapons were often underpowered, while higher tiers shredded through everything the game could throw at you. You could fire some weapons with seemingly no end, while others would run out of ammo after only a few seconds. Moreover, the weapon mod system was more complex than it should have been, with some mods being outright useless in the grand scheme of things. On top of all that, some of our guns simply lacked their identity and did not encourage players to try them out, as they were likely to already have better alternatives.


Co-Op on higher difficulty levels is going to throw some difficult Omega creatures at you. We want you to have an arsenal that is ready to tackle them.

We knew we wouldn’t solve these issues overnight, as the scope of the necessary work extended far beyond tweaking some numerical values in the weapons database. Clearly, the ammunition system, mods, and crafting also had to be improved. Based on the results of multiple gameplay sessions, we decided to examine each weapon individually and determine the proper course of action. We inspected each weapon, examined mod interactions, and asked our community on Discord for their thoughts and conclusions.


Working together is important - both when playing co-op AND developing it. This is why we pay a lot of attention to what our community has to say about the game.

One of our community members, wzysb, went above and beyond this call to action. Wzysb is a high-level player with extensive experience in strategy and action games and a deep understanding of the systems that make them run. He produced a 40-page document with his own analysis and thoughts about the weapons in The Riftbreaker. Wzysb’s conclusions offered us a different perspective and highlighted some issues we wouldn’t have considered otherwise. While we did not agree on all fronts, it was a great resource that helped us considerably.


Since we're giving Omega creatures more abilities, we can't leave our players behind!

Once we started testing in detail, we realized that the vast majority of the standard-level weapons were either fine or slightly underpowered. We boosted the weaker weapons, as we wanted to keep the damage output consistent across all variants. Please note that we are not going by DPS here, as this stat is often quite misleading. For example, the Flamethrower deals a little bit of direct damage, but the burn damage over time does the heavy lifting in its case. It is also worth noting that weapons are created with specific use cases in mind. A Lightning Gun will shred through Canoptrix and do very little against a Gnerot. Once we were happy with the baseline, we moved on to more advanced weapon tiers.


Tweaking weapon stats is not an easy task - here's just one screen of our Weapons Editor. The table goes much further, both horizontally and vertically, and each value has the potential to completely mess things up. Boy, am I glad I'm not in charge.

When you crafted higher-tier weapons, they received additional characteristics on top of their regular properties, such as piercing or multiple projectiles per burst. We quickly realized that these additional abilities had the potential to mess with the weapon’s power level by quite some margin. Certain combinations of stat rolls could double the weapon's damage output, but on the other hand, they could also increase the ammo consumption to very high levels. On top of that, the crafting screen DPS calculation would take into account the absolute worst and absolute best rolls, neither of which were actually possible, throwing the numbers off by a country mile. This situation needed some radical steps.


One of the complaints we often got was that the Corrosive Gun felt like a tool to destroy the magnetic rocks in Volcanic Zone. This is no longer true. More projectiles, more splash, more firepower will solve all your Volcanic Zone issues.

We decided to remove the extra characteristics from the craftable weapons to combat the inconsistencies. To compensate for that, we adjusted the base stats, like damage, rate of fire, and ammo consumption. Thanks to these actions, we removed the extreme outliers from the craftable range and ensured that the power level remained consistent across weapon tiers. The additional properties can still be added via mods, allowing you to still get truly devastating combinations. However, managing the power level of weapons stat-wise is not the only thing we have done.


No trickery here - this is a basic, crafted Advanced Laser, with no cheats or unlimited ammo, dealing with 40 Hammeroceroses. There is a delicate auto-aim going on to help you keep the beam on target and not lose the bonus damage.

We have also introduced some functional changes to those weapons, which didn’t see much use for one reason or another. Two great examples of this are the Laser and the Root Gun. The Laser used to grow in power the longer you managed to keep it on a single target. However, the bonus damage was immediately lost after you lost track of the creature you were firing at. We decided to change that. Now, the Laser will gain extra damage as long as you keep firing at enemies. You can switch targets freely, and as long as you keep hitting an enemy, you will retain the damage bonus. The laser is now very effective against single targets and groups of enemies. We hope you like it.


Two Superior Root Guns vs a pack of 50 Flurian Alphas. The weapon is much easier to use thanks to its high fire rate, piercing, and unlimited ammo. Perhaps a bit too good, but we'll iron that out at some point!

The Root Gun arrived in the game with the latest World Expansion but did not amass a huge fanbase. The leading cause was that the weapon utilized high-caliber ammo - a very valuable resource used by some of the most reliable weapons in the game, like Burst Rifle and Shotgun. The Root Gun simply did not deliver the same kind of firepower you could get from other weapons using the same type of bullets. To address this, we decided to take a radical step to improve its effectiveness - we removed ammo requirements from this weapon altogether and gave it a bit of a boost. This means that players can now use the Root Gun without worrying about running out of high-caliber ammo, making it a more viable alternative to other more established weapons in The Riftbreaker arsenal.


You can still do some crazy damage using weapon mods. Cluster Projectiles and a Minigun are a match made in heaven!

We hope it is pretty clear that the purpose of our weapons rework is NOT a nerf. It is not in the best interest of our players to decrease their firepower. The DPS stats on the newly crafted weapons will most definitely be lower than before, but that is mainly due to us correcting the calculation algorithm. The gameplay impact is negligible at best, while the weapon line-up is more straightforward for us to control. That last part is essential because The Riftbreaker 2.0 update will also include an overhaul of the loot system, allowing you to find unique, more powerful versions of weapons in the wild! We are committed to bringing you more exciting updates in the future, and we can't wait to share more details about the improved loot system in next week’s news.


You will get to know more about finding unique loot items in next week's article, stay tuned!

We hope you’re as excited about the upcoming updates as we are. If you want to try them out early, sign up for our Closed Co-Op Beta. We treat it as an experimental playground where anything goes, so you always have the chance to play with the latest developments and shape the game going forward. We encourage you to join our streams on Tuesdays and Thursdays, where we share the new developments and answer your questions live.

We reserve the right to contact only select participants.


See you there!
EXOR Studios

We've just updated the co-op beta playtest version of the game. The latest build features improvements for all weapons to adapt them to the new loot system. It also fixes multiple issues that you helped us discover. Thank you!

• Additional weapons have had their stats and properties reworked to match the new loot drop system: Charged Bomb, Crystal Gun, Floating Mines, Heavy Plasma, Bouncing Blades, Insect Gun, Cryogenic Atomizer, Corrosive Gun, Acid Spitter, Cryo Spitter, Flame Spitter, Chainsaw, Laser Sword, Flame Blade, Root Gun, Laser, Railgun. All weapons are now adapted to the new system.
  
• Unique loot item drop frequency has been reduced. The previous values were a result of a numerical typo. The frequency is reduced, but you will still get plenty of loot.
  
• We also introduced individual adjustments to loot drop probabilities for lower rarity Biocaches. You are now less likely to get a unique item from a White or Blue Biocache, but you are still guaranteed basic resources.
  
• Skills found as loot drops do not display the "unique" icon, as they cannot receive additional properties.
  
• Higher-quality Skills will now correctly replace lower-quality ones in your inventory after picking up a Skill as a loot drop.
  
• Laser beam behavior has been improved. Previously, the beam would get stronger the longer you kept it on target, but you lost the bonus immediately after you stopped shooting at the target. Now, the beam will retain the damage increase even if you switch targets - as long as you keep hitting enemies. You only lose the bonus damage if you miss completely. We believe this change will make the Laser a better weapon overall.
  
• Increased the base creature difficulty for Hard and Brutal difficulties. Players will now encounter stronger ambient and Omega creatures earlier in the game.
  
• Increased the wave intermission time for Easy and Normal difficulty from 6 to 7 minutes to match the single-player mode. This will make the game easier.
  
• Flammable Gas Vents and Geothermal Vents that are being actively mined will now be marked as used on the minimap.
  
• Buildings icons will now show up on the minimap the moment the constructions starts instead of waiting for the building process to complete.
  
• Increased the ammo consumption of the Insect Gun.
  
• Increased the base damage for the basic Sword to always be able to kill Arachnoids in one hit.
  
• Fixed the streaming integration by switching the Oauth token generation from an external website to www.riftbreaker.com.
  
• Increased the armory consumable manufacturing rate to compensate for the decreased number of armory buildings.
  
• Brought back player name labels that hover over the player pawns.
  
• Increased the radius of the Radar Size Power Well.
  
• Removed the nuclear explosion effect from Power Rod and Floating Piercer towers.
  
• Fixed issues with minimap icon visibility if the icon doesn't have an assigned "layer_group".
  
• Fixed a dead loop in Loot Container System.
  
• Fixed some issues with the display of chat messages.
  
• Introduced some additional network optimizations to the Nav Mesh System.
  
• Fixed issues with animation states of the Arachnoid Omega.
  
• Fixed an issue that prevented players from accessing the chat when the player pawn is dead.
  
• Fixed an issue that prevented players from entering the menu in the spectator mode.
  
• Removed the additional projectiles from Spewer weapons.
  
• Fixed issues with the display of Wind and Solar Power values on the HUD, including changes during weather events.
  
• Fixed issues with the Research Queue not updating in real time.
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented building explosions from damaging nearby structures.
  
• Players can now connect to the selected server by double-clicking on the server list.
  
• The 'unknown' icon on the minimap is now smaller.
  
• Adjusted some of the weapon icons to have more contrast and color saturation.
  
• Adjusted text sizes and fixed several typos in the chat box.
  
• Fixed anti-aliasing issues with the "remove research" icon on the research screen.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused the chat box to break after opening the build menu.
  
• Fixed issues with player pings not always being replicated for all clients.
  
• Fixed issues with network replication of interactive components.
  
• Fixed a crash in the EquipmentSystem when an inventory item is missing.

EXOR Studios

Welcome to 2025! We’ve had a good break, returning to work refreshed and ready to tackle the challenges ahead. As mentioned in the Year in Review 2024 article, we are focused on The Riftbreaker 2.0 - a massive, free update that will expand the game's features and give it a new level of depth. If you missed that news, give it a read, as it will give you a good idea of what our plans are this year. Starting with this article, we are coming back to our series of developer blogs, giving you a peek behind the curtain of development.

It would be a bit difficult to portray the story of this article in pictures - it would mostly be a series of photos of us in various stages of despair. Instead, we'll show you the model that caused us all this hassle, and the improvements we've been trying to implement all this time.


The Hammerocerros was one of the first creatures modeled for The Riftbreaker. The other two were the Canoptrix and the Arachnoid. The model dates back to 2018. We've learned a lot since then, so it feels a little dated, especially compared to the new creatures.

The story we want to tell you today is multi-layered and will show you the unpredictability of the game development process. As we told you a couple of months ago, we decided to introduce a new strain of creatures into The Riftbreaker: Omega creatures. They are much beefier and larger variants of regular Galatean creatures. They also come with a suite of extra abilities, such as damage auras and calling in meteor showers on demand. To make Omega creatures extra special, we decided to give them custom models that reflect their unique nature and extreme danger level.


Omega creatures are larger than their regular counterparts. This increase in size wasn't kind to the Hammerocerros. Even this big, it still looked like an amorphous blob. We decided that the Omega variant needed significant improvements.

While modeling creatures is a gratifying task and one of the most pleasant parts of a 3D artist’s job, animating those models is a complex task that involves the work of several people - a designer to come up with all the creature’s states, an animator to create the animations, and a programmer to put them all together in an Animation State Machine. Any changes made after all this work is done may generate potential bugs and require a new round of tweaks. We wanted to avoid that, so our artists would create new, enhanced versions of the existing models that could still use the same skeleton, animations, and animation state machine. It worked great for the vast majority of creatures. The problems began when we reached our good old Hammerocerros - one of the first models purpose-made for The Riftbreaker.


The first Zbrush sketches of the Omega strain. The armor on the back is much more pronounced. A pair of large horns are meant to show you that this guy means business.

Our game’s development started in 2018. Back then, we used 3DS Max for modelling, rigging, and animations. We had been using that program since Zombie Driver days (fun fact: the level editor for ZD was made entirely using the 3DS Max scripting language). When we started prototyping The Riftbreaker, we still used 3DS Max and gradually moved to Blender. While most in-game models have been created using Blender, a few of the oldest meshes are still in the 3DS Max format. You can see where this is going - Hammerocerros is one of these models. To modify this creature, we had to open the old source file.


After cutting down on the horns a little - at least the ones on the back - we put this model next to the Ultra strain to see how they compared. We liked the results, so we moved on to texturing.

In theory, Blender should be able to open a Max file and convert it to the new format, but there is no guarantee that everything will work right out of the box. At first, things seemed promising - the model and its materials were imported successfully. However, one crucial part was missing - the animation rig. No matter what we did, we could not make Blender read the rig from the Max file. This would force us to recreate the model’s skeleton and create all the animations once more, which was far more work than we were willing to accept. We had to come up with an alternative solution.


We still wanted to retain the color palette of the original creature. However, we used the colors in a more structured way, which allows you to see shapes and details with much more clarity.

Our first instinct was to fire up 3DS Max and export the model in a more compatible format. Luckily, we bought a perpetual license all those years ago (remember when perpetual licenses were a thing?), and the CD was somewhere in our storage space. We went treasure hunting, found the box, plugged in an external CD drive, and began the installation process. As you can imagine, things did not go smoothly. As it turns out, the version of 3DS Max we had access to was so archaic that it refused to work on newer systems… Windows 8.1.


Here's a high-detail render of the "regular", physical damage Hammeroceros Omega...


...and here's the fire damage elemental variant. This model receives additional particles to emphasize the 'elemental' aspect.

Up until a couple of months ago, this wouldn’t be a problem. We try to keep at least a couple of machines in our office on older hardware and software versions to test for compatibility issues, so we had a PC with that system in our office. However, when Microsoft stopped issuing security updates for Windows 8.1, it was no longer safe for us to keep it online. The machine got a slight hardware upgrade, and we switched it to Windows 10. That meant we had to find a workaround and try to run 3DS Max elsewhere. Our first idea was to set up a virtual machine with Windows 8.1 and run Max there. It was relatively quick to set up but failed just as fast - the software refused to install on a VM. We had to bring out the heavy guns.


We liked the new version so much that we decided to use a slightly more 'polite' version to replace the base strains of the creature.

We dove into our storage space once more, grabbing all the PC components that bordered on being classified as “electro-junk,” and put together a period-accurate PC to give it the best shot at working right out of the box. We constructed the grandpa-PC, installed Windows 8.1 again, and attempted to get 3DS Max running. We entered our perpetual license software key, hit enter, and… nothing happened. We tried several more times but to no avail. When we called support, they were shocked that somebody was even trying to use software this old. Upon investigating our issue, it turned out that validation servers for this program version were turned off several years ago.


Here's the full Hammeroceros family with a bit of foliage to see how they blend in with the environment. We're quite happy with the results!

All hope seemed lost. After all, it felt like we couldn’t run away from remaking the animation rig for Hammerocerros. Then, we had one last idea. What if we didn’t have to authenticate the software after all? Was it possible to use the program's trial version and export our model that way? Turns out that it was! The trial version of Max had a time limit but no functionality limit, meaning we had bought ourselves a couple of days to open all our old models, reexport them, and save ourselves from all this trouble in the future. Our saga has finally ended, and you can enjoy updated Hammeroceros family models in upcoming Riftbreaker updates.


Obligatory xkcd. The original work can be found here. Shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.

If there's one lesson we've learned from this misadventure, it's this: never let any part of your project be entirely dependent on external software. We often hear about the importance of backups and the best practice of having redundant copies. However, backups won't save you if the crucial software needed to open the files is missing. That's why we've decided that if there's a software switch in the future, we'll re-export all our work ahead of time. It's a small step that could save us from a lot of trouble in the future.


Now the other "old" creatures are asking for a rework... Should we? We've got the tools, after all.

That’s all for the first Riftbreaker blog of 2025. We hope puzzles like this won’t happen too often this year and that we will be able to focus on delivering all the promised content updates as soon as possible. If you want to receive daily updates on our progress, join our Discord server at www.discord.gg/exorstudios. You will get to see what we are currently working on and influence what the game looks like in the future.

See you next time!
EXOR Studios