Mar 4, 2024

The Variety Update Part 2 (Early Access Update 8)

Crab Champions - Noisestorm

Patch Highlights

RELICS

ENHANCEMENTS

SNIPER REVAMP

NEW WEAPON: MARKSMAN RIFLE

DESERT BIOME

NEW ISLAND TYPE: DEMOLITION

INVENTORY STATS

Patch Notes

GENERAL

Added 30 Relics to the game. Relics are a new loot category that are found under Perks in your inventory. They can only be picked up once (can't be leveled up like perks) and have powerful effects such as being able to rocket jump. There were quite a few perk ideas that weren't fun to level up but were fun as a once off pickup so this loot category nicely fills in that gap.
Added new mechanic: Enhancements: In Tony's shop you'll find an Enhancement totem which allows you to randomly roll powerful enhancements on mods and perks that previously only could be leveled up in a linear way (Dagger Arc, Mace Shot, Bubble Blast etc.). This allows for a fun new layer of buildcrafting and experimentation when at the shop: choosing to buy new loot or instead going for an enhancement
Added new biome: Desert. This has now been added to the biome list per run so the amount of islands per biome has been reduced by 2: 8 islands per biome and 4 biomes per run. 32 islands for a regular victory and 64 islands for a Diamond victory. There are many more unique islands, enemies and songs planned for the desert that'll get added in future updates
Added new enemy: Scorpion
Added new evolved enemy variant: Elite Pumpkin
Added new island type: Demolition: Destroy all enemy nests to complete the island
Added inventory stats (both core stats like Critical Hit Chance and Global Damage as well as per-loot stats for certain perks like Assassin to show how much extra damage has been added by this perk overall)
Added 2 new songs
Added 4 new skins: Kaleidoscopic, Fake Gold, Vibrations and Focus
Added 6 new rank related achievements: Silver, Gold, Sapphire, Emerald, Ruby and Diamond. These correspond to your account rank which is based on the average rank of your weapons (so if you have mostly Gold weapons, you’d most likely have a Gold account rank). There have been a lot of requests to add a long term goal to work towards and while the account rank system has been in place for a while, there was no real incentive to get Diamond other than for bragging rights
Added new weapon: Marksman Rifle: A hybrid triple barreled scoped rifle
Revamped Sniper with scope, improved visuals and audio and rebalanced stats to feel more powerful. More than doubled damage and increased explosion radius but reduced fire rate. Increased hipfire spread but aiming with the scope is pinpoint accurate
Added new sounds and VFX for the Seagle
Some perks have been moved over to Relics:
1. Clearance has been replaced by the Ring Of Value: Shops always contain a pedestal that is 75% discounted
2. Repelling Dash has been replaced by the Ring Of Repulsion
3. Fast Claws has been replaced by the Ring Of Reloading
Increased base walk movement speed slightly to make traversal when not sliding feel less sluggish
As per player feedback, sliding is now more immediate (less acceleration), faster and wears off more quickly so it is much more effective as a short dodge and is more responsive in general
Added the island progression UI to the main gameplay UI so you can now easily check how far into a biome you are
Added Banana consumable that heals for 75% of your max health
Hearts now heal for the amount of max health that they give
Healing chests now contain a minimum of 2 loot choices to prevent situations where you’d get a banana with full health
Added new weapon mod: Boomerang Shot: Shots deal more damage and fly back towards you (Try lining up shots with the sniper to hit the same enemy twice!)
Added new weapon mod: Orbiting Shot: Shots deal more damage but orbit around you
Added new grenade mod: Scythe Vortex: Grenades explode into scythe vortexes
Added new perk: Orbiting Scythe: Gain a short lived orbiting scythe after each elimination
Each “Luck” perk / relic has a specific purpose to build into:
1. Rigged Totems = Totem Luck
2. Streamer Loot = Loot Rarity Luck
3. Gold Dice = Mod Trigger Luck
4. Ring Of Luck = Perk Trigger Luck (perk luck was the most broken in the early beta builds but since this is a relic and can only be picked up once, it’s now a fun power spike without completely breaking the game). This does affect critical hit chance- the only perk it doesn’t affect is Bulletproof to prevent being able to become invincible
Added a new placeholder weapon model for the Cluster Launcher
Added FX and a sound when you block damage successfully by dashing (this mechanic was quite hidden in general so now it’s more obvious when you intentionally block damage this way)

BALANCE CHANGES

Lots of pacing + loot balance improvements: the gap between experienced players getting easy snowball runs and inexperienced players being frustrated by RNG was too high and balance was a common complaint. There are now far fewer cases where simply being lucky will be enough to win a run, I’ve done my best to make each run feel much more consistent and power well earned instead of coming down to being randomly very lucky
The Random Islands difficulty modifier is now baked into the game by default (as the variety it brings makes the game more fun and it doesn’t actually add difficulty) and has been replaced with the new Strategic Enemies modifier: More challenging formations of enemies spawn. The main thing you’ll notice from this being enabled is medium enemies sometimes showing up on the first wave of arena islands instead of the usual small easy enemies- lots of new interesting combinations of enemies possible now. This also makes ranged enemies slightly more likely to spawn on Horde islands
Shops now only spawn on the 7th island of each biome
For simplicity, the game now only saves on the first island of each biome rather than halfway through which led to confusion and also opened up a few cheesy ways to get achievements by frequently reloading saves which isn’t the intended design
Waves islands have been revamped: there are now 5 waves total and no small enemies spawn, only medium and hard enemies. The next wave will not start until the previous wave has been fully cleared. This change makes Waves islands feel more distinct from other island types and players should be less likely to take damage from a randomly spawning small enemy and instead take it in a more fair way
It’s now less likely for both portal choices to be Horde islands
I’ve adjusted many specific enemy health pools to better match their type- in general champion enemies (sniper crab, shotgun crab etc.) have a bit more health to better match their category- previously they’d get blown away in seconds along with the regular enemies and this felt like they didn’t live up to their intimidating names. There are now much more varied and enjoyable fights past the first biome instead of aiming at the center of the island and destroying everything in 1 second (don’t get me wrong, this can still happen but just a bit less often)
Key totem cost increased back from 2 to 3 (with more biomes and more ways to get keys it’s more balanced at a slightly higher cost)
Gold Totems now cost 66% of your max health (up from 50% of your max health): it was possible to come across multiple gold totems and become extremely powerful early on- this should smooth out some of those unbalanced scenarios and make choosing to go for a gold totem a bit more impactful
Totems are very slightly less likely to appear (clumps of totems appearing at once could create unbalanced power spikes early on that were completely based on luck)
The Healthy enemy buff has been reduced from +200% health to +100% health
Enemy movement speed on ice has been reduced by 33% as there were situations where enemies could outrun you
Poison Slug explosion damage increased by 33%
Sniper Crabs now have a melee attack to prevent them choosing to snipe at very close range which made taking damage unavoidable in some situations
Grenade Crab projectile explosion radius reduced slightly
Ice Pumpkin wind up speed and damage radius increased by 25% (the previous nerf just made them a free enemy- remember you can block their attacks by being out of line of sight even if you are within their damage sphere)
Ice Pumpkins now start with 3 armor plates
Ice Pumpkin AOE radius has been reduced and they must get closer to begin attacking
Enemies now have less delay between spawning and first attacking on Nightmare difficulty (previously they’d stand around for 2 full seconds after spawning before starting any attacks)
More enemies spawn when looping (once off, doesn’t get added to per loop: it’s the same for loop 1 and loop 50)
Reduced Blocker Crab health but gave them 1 armor plate
Limpets now have a longer vulnerable window but attack twice and have a new arc projectile pattern
Slightly increased Lightning Slug movement speed
Grubs now only have 1 armor plate but move 33% faster
Elite Lightning Crab projectile hitbox slightly reduced and explosion radius reduced by 15%
All elite enemy health slightly boosted to make their fights last a little bit longer and feel a bit more dangerous
Ultra Chaos enemy dash (side jump) chance halved and regular jump chance slightly reduced
Guaranteed more ranged enemy variety (medium and hard enemy waves) to prevent cases where like 20 of the same ant spawn which is less interesting and exciting than an assortment of enemies
Fixed the XL challenge modifier not actually spawning 3x enemies- it now spawns only 2x the amount of enemies to balance as 3x would feel too overwhelming. Also to note: the Explosive Enemies modifier spawns more enemies than before as those islands usually ended super fast without much of a challenge
Regular and Blocker skulls are 25% more expensive to spawn, meaning they’ll spawn in large groups less often
An extra boss now spawns on each Boss island when looping
Ants are less likely to choose far away locations when attacking and will be more close range in general (this is to make clearing islands with a lot of ants less tedious)
Doubled the time it takes for enemies to start regenerating health when the Regenerating Enemies modifier is active
The Armored Enemies modifier now gives enemies 3 armor plates instead of 6 to prevent things feeling tedious in certain situations
The amount of max health lost when the Eternal Punishment modifier is active has been reduced from 2% to 1%
Lightning rocks are less effective as they were able to wipe entire islands almost instantly with very little effort
If playing with all difficulty modifiers enabled on Nightmare difficulty, the difficulty UI text will now indicate that by calling it “TRUE NIGHTMARE”
After lots of playtesting, many mods and perk have had slight “nudges” to their values to get them feeling balanced with all of the above changes: there are too many small changes to list here but you may notice some values being a bit different to before
Since combo can be increased to 8x with a relic, I’ve capped the max combo that affects your score specifically to 5x to prevent high score runs relying on finding a relic

BUFFS

Base player health increased from 200 to 400 and Nightmare no longer reduces starting health: there were too many situations where I was one shot by the second biome that I’d prefer a larger starting health pool that takes longer to whittle down but also longer to heal back up
Bronze Heart max health gain increased from +50 max health to +150 max health
Silver Heart max health gain increased from +100 max health to +400 max health
Gold Heart max health gain increased from +300 max health to +1000 max health
Added more health pickups in Tony’s garden and increased the healing value from 25 health to 50 health
You now start with 1% crit chance by default (so picking up things like Critical Blast or Critical Arrow aren’t a complete waste without finding more crit perks)
Power Punch now multiplies the 200% critical damage bonus instead of just adding a flat percentage to it. Also Power Punch critical damage increased from +25% to +33%
Fixed Critical Thinking not calculating as expected, it now multiplies the final damage output after a crit is calculated instead of adding or subtracting a flat amount. The level 1 damage amount has been reduced from +50% to +33% as it’s now much more powerful. In the old patch if you had 500% global damage and Critical Thinking level 1, you’d end up with 550% damage when landing a crit. Now (even after the nerf), you’d end up with 665% global damage when landing a critical hit
Landmine Shot landmine now explodes after 1 second instead of 2.5 seconds which felt too long in most cases
The chance for duplicate loot to show up in a chest in the endgame (when looping more than once) has been reduced from 75% to 50% so there will be more chances for fresh loot
Autoloader no longer resets the Escalating Shot bonus AND will also trigger On Reload mods such as Reload Arc or Shockwave
Time Bolt and Ultra Shot now explode even if they didn’t hit anything to prevent rare cases where it looked like they should hit but instead just vanished into thin air
Heavy Hitter fire rate reduction decreased from -15% to -10%
Health Shot and Money Shot now affect all damage dealt to enemies from projectiles (including explosions) instead of only counting direct impacts which made them far less effective on weapons like the Rocket Launcher than they were meant to be
Escalating Shot now only reduces weapon fire rate by -33% (instead of -50% previously) to make it more enticing to use on weapons other than the minigun
Reload Arc cooldown reduced from 5 seconds to 2 seconds
Reload Arc and Proximity Barrage projectiles no longer knock back enemies (this sound like a nerf but is actually a buff because it keeps enemies inside of your own damage areas and stops them attacking unpredictably in mid air)
Shockwave cooldown reduced from 4 seconds to 3 seconds
Freezing Enemies, Flammable Enemies, Electric Enemies and Poisonous Enemies have had their radii doubled as they felt underwhelming as legendaries before
All “Storm” mods have had their cooldowns reduced to allow them to trigger much more often
Grenade explosion damage increased from 50 to 75
Grenade Mods now correctly affect damage dealt by damage areas such as the red area left behind by Laser Beam or the Black Hole area while active
Damage Aura damage increased from 2 to 3
Big Hearts has been moved from Epic rarity to Rare rarity
Ice Strike damage increased from 25 to 200 and ice stacks increased from 25 to 75
Fire Strike damage increased from 25 to 200 and fire stacks increased from 100 to 250
Lightning Strike damage increased from 25 to 200 and lightning stacks increased from 50 to 200
Poison Strike damage increased from 25 to 200 and poison stacks increased from 25 to 100
Crystal Strike damage increased from 100 to 1000
Increased Arcane Blast projectile lifetime from 0.66 seconds to 1.0 seconds
Projectiles that pierce can now hit the same enemy twice after a 0.1 second delay (previously they could only hit the same enemy once). This synergizes nicely with Boomerang Shot as you can get double the value for your projectiles if you line them up right
Flammable Armor and Explosive Armor now affect the enemy that was hit and not just nearby enemies
Shops were feeling a bit too expensive on Nightmare and Ultra Chaos so the prices have been reduced by 15%
Rigged Totems has had a substantial buff, previously it was only 10% increased chance which meant a 25% chance totem actually only got upgraded to be 27.5% to trigger which felt quite unnoticeable. It’s now a 25% increased chance AND no longer gets capped at 100%
Critical Blast damage radius doubled and chance to trigger increased from 6% to 15%
Reduced Spore Shot mushroom health by 66% so it should be much easier to explode them now
Spore Shot / Spore Explosion mushrooms once again deal poison damage
Fire and lightning damage now is affected by poison bonus incoming damage- new synergy?
Paycheck no longer gives a flat amount of crystals as this quickly fell off in terms of scaling. Instead it now gives 1/5th the cost of a Rare pickup each island (this value increases after each island)
Dual Pistols damage increased from 4 to 5
Burst Pistol damage increased from 5 to 6
Blade Launcher damage increased from 4 to 5
Cluster Launcher damage increased from 3 to 4
Orb Launcher damage increased from 6 to 8 (The slow projectiles often meant that it just didn’t feel good to use the orb launcher compared to other weapons with faster projectiles so this buff should bring it in line to be a more satisfying choice)
Orb Launcher projectiles now have a slightly smaller radius to prevent them getting stuck on nearby terrain instead of reaching the target
Gold max health rocks can now spawn shards that spawn multiple max health bubbles at once (similar to how it already works with regular green health rocks- stand in the venn diagram of health bubbles for max effectiveness!)

NERFS

Laser Beam ability direct impact damage reduced from 50 to 30
Poison now wears off twice as fast
Link Shot and Drill Shot base trigger chance decreased from 3% to 2.5%
Hot Shot critical hit chance reduced from 15% to 12% (double that of Sharpshooter)
Critical Arrow now is chance based instead of guaranteed to trigger on crit (starts at 12% chance)
Sniper clip size reduced from 10 to 6 and reload time increased from 1.5 seconds to 1.75 seconds (this is due to the sniper revamp making it a much stronger weapon overall so this is more of a rebalance than a nerf)
Health Totems are less likely to spawn and more likely to explode after use
Lava now applies 3x fire stacks in the Volcanic biome (it barely applied 1 stack in the previous update which made landing in lava feel quite free and not a threat at least on the first loop)

QUALITY OF LIFE CHANGES

Improved visibility across all biomes including revamping many overly bright or distracting VFX
Hitmarker sounds are now much quieter for fast firing weapons and slightly louder for slow firing weapons instead of being constantly too loud or quiet depending on the weapon chosen
The portal countdown now only starts when the majority of players have voted for a portal to prevent situations where a single player was choosing a portal before the others were ready
Increased crosshair outline size for better visibility on Arctic islands
The pause when losing focus feature is now optional and can be disabled in the settings menu
Spectating has had a number of improvements such as being able to still see all other players and their health bars and being able to cycle through players to spectate instead of being locked on one until they get eliminated
Made several optimizations to prevent non-hosting players from getting kicked from multiplayer games when a lot was happening at once
Optimized performance heavy islands
Totems that require crystals now display how many crystals you are short by
Barrel Explosion barrels no longer get knocked around as much when shooting them so it should be much easier to line up and get them to explode near enemies
Made several performance improvements for projectiles which should help late game performance when a lot is going on
Increased the minimum distance enemies can spawn from you (this should reduce situations where enemies spawn right under you)
Added a sound when players ping
Added support for 3840x1080, 3840x1440 and 5120x1440 resolutions
Aiming field of view (FOV) now scales with the FOV setting chosen in the settings menu in order to feel more consistent across all FOV ranges
Reduced the interaction radius to prevent accidentally choosing a portal when looting chests. Also tightened up the interaction direction threshold so it’s less likely to accidentally choose a pickup to your left or right when trying to focus on a pickup in the middle
Added 8 total bananas on Parkour islands to prevent situations where not everyone would get a banana when playing in a lobby with more than 4 players :(
Driller now takes into account every player in a multiplayer match so it doesn’t matter who breaks each destructible- if one player has Driller equipped, it’ll roll for a trigger
Enemy anti-camping values have been tweaked to reduce situations where they are constantly flying at you and are hard to hit: they now fly at slower intervals but with greater speed so ideally they’ll get back to a place they can walk faster than before
Fixed Elite portal description mentioning moving to the next biome when you can get random Elite islands mid biome
Chests are now color coded to match the loot category they belong to

BUG FIXES

Double Tap now shows the correct trigger percentage in the inventory and should deal damage more reliably. The only case where it won’t is on weapons that pierce- it’ll trigger on the last pierce, not on every shot (so on the Sniper this is on hitting the third enemy after piercing two before)
Big Shot no longer reduces Laser Cannon projectile size
Fixed Elite Fire Crab not having his weapon equipped
Fixed incorrect music playing for non-hosting players in shops
Fixed issue that prevented the Quickplay menu being usable when returning to the lobby after being eliminated
Fixed player names sometimes not showing up on the gameplay UI in the lobby after they joined
Fixed some effects not being properly optimized at Low graphics settings: performance should be improved if playing on Low now
Fixed bug that allowed you to pick up armor plates when already full
Fixed bug that showed enemy health bars after they had been eliminated in some cases
Fixed saved abilities and melee weapons not restoring correctly when resuming runs in some cases
Fixed Critical Thinking not applying to some damage types
Fixed the Laser Beam ability often hitting the ground right in front of you instead of your intended target
Fixed Blindfire not affecting spread on some weapons
Fixed bug that granted the Playing With Power achievement after playing the Arcade minigame when it should only be granted in the main mode
Fixed rare softlock that could happen with the Explosive Enemies challenge modifier active
Fixed enemies not taking bonus damage when poisoned from melee or Time Shot
Fixed abilities using weapon hitmarkers which played annoyingly loud hitmarker sounds in many cases
Fixed Strike mods having broken looking FX that didn’t convey the true radius
Fixed Arcane Blast not applying arcane stacks
Fixed Sturdy Totems infinite loot exploit

That's all for now but I plan on releasing some more island variations, enemy types and new songs in a bonus mini patch very soon! As always thank you for playing, I love working on this game 🦀

Hotfix #1 (Version 1999)

Difficulty scaling improvements

Enemy damage bonus when looping has been removed. There was previously a whopping +100% damage multiplier to all enemy attacks when looping from island 33 onwards which created very unfair situations where enemies would melt your entire health bar in a second, especially with fire. Enemy damage should feel much more fair and consistent when looping while still being a challenge- looping is meant to be quite difficult
Enemy spawn bonus when looping decreased from +33% to +20%
Islands 1 and 2 of a biome no longer can spawn two waves of ranged enemies back to back

These changes should make looping feel far less unfair / punishing while maintaining the challenge

Scorpion mega nerf + rebalance
Scorpion projectile damage reduced by 60%, projectile radius reduced by 33%, projectile speed reduced by 15% and removed projectile bounces. Also reworked their attack patterns to be more dodgeable and less spammy
Increased scorpion walk speed slightly: it should now feel like more of a close / medium range threat and less of a run ender

Other changes
Flamethrower buff- now starts with level 2 Fire Shot (up from level 1)
Rebalanced enhancements: pattern enhancements like Chaotic or Spiraling have less intense motion to make them less likely to miss their target. Enhancement damage increases are +50% damage other than Sticky and Damaging which are +100% (previously Damaging was at +400% which was very broken)
Splitting / Scattering bonus projectiles decreased from 3 to 2 (as it was extremely broken with some combos)
Fixed issue that would cause projectiles created by the Splitting and Scattering enhancement to apply ALL weapon mods to those enhanced projectiles, resulting in extreme damage spikes that weren’t intended
Demolition nests now scale health more with the island count as they became far too easy to destroy past the first biome
Scorpions can now spawn from red challenge crystals