Today, I want to inform everyone about Anemone and Frontline getting some sorely needed buffs and upcoming combat mechanics changes to provide context and clarity. The first part of the devblog is a shorter version, then we head into the details and for eager theorycrafters like me, scroll even further for the numbers.
Summary
What is changing? Releasing the next patch on May 12th.
Anemone
Lower charge cost, stronger self‑repair, tougher against foes suffering Damage over Time.
New ability to grab Taunt when the target is already bleeding from three or more DoT effects.
We intend this to make Anemone a sturdier DoT specialist that synergizes better to tank within Gelecek.
Frontline
Damage now scales with its own shield, and every hit stacks even more shielding.
Starts combat with a chunky shield, gains Shield Penetration on every attack, and gets a beefy defence boost while the shield holds.
We intend for Frontline to live up to his actual name, while still satisfyingly packing a punch.
The same patch will also tweak 2 core combat mechanics, Shield Bypass (to be replaced with Shield Penetration) and Ignore Defense (This will become a passive ability). Again, more details and specifics below.
If this where we say goodbye, I’m Ruxster, the Game Director at Solid Clouds, thanks for stopping by. For the rest of you, read further for a more detailed overview of things.
The Details
Why are we doing it? Both units have fallen behind the meta curve. Rather than dial everyone else down, we are lifting these two up so that corrosive playstyles and shield‑centric tactics feel powerful again. We also acknowledge that these units are current battle pass and upcoming recruitment rush units. Ideally we would not be touching these units around this period. However in order to support the bigger picture evolution of combat, this became a necessity. Hence I am here today, to provide you with as much information as possible so that you can make informed decisions.
One of our core goals is to ensure you can play the way you want to play, and feel powerful and rewarded for doing so. But over time, we’ve seen certain strategies fall behind as others, notably direct damage as a byproduct of power creep, continue to outpace them. This growing imbalance limits the diversity of effective strategies, and that's something we intend to address. Expect more love for under‑represented strategies in future updates.
Our focus is dominantly on lifting underused strategies up, not bringing others down. We want to enhance the tools of playstyles that have fallen behind. I want to reassure you that we are being especially mindful to minimize any disruptions to your current farming teams.
In addition to this, factions across the Starborne universe should feel distinct in theme, mechanics, and playstyle. This is something we believe we can do better, so we're taking steps to bring that back.
What is next?
Additional unit reworks are in the pipeline.
We are working on changes to how Increasing and Decreasing critical damage operates. However in order to not disrupt your teams for upcoming global events (More info Friday), these shall be delayed until early June.
Building upon these mechanical changes, you can then expect to see exciting new faction specific characteristics be introduced alongside our next major content update, Voidbringers. More info on that next week.
This is the first step toward a stronger foundation for ships, strategies and factions alike that supports deeper, more varied content, new encounter types, and challenging new game modes in the near future.
And for the theory crafters, numbers as promised
Upcoming Unit Reworks: We believe every unit should have a place within the game. Whether it be in vault runs, endgame pvp, or pushing bounty times to the limit. Anemone and Frontline are two units we believe to have fallen behind the curve, either as a limitation of their intended strategy or through being outscaled. So we are addressing them immediately. There are several other units on our radar that in the near future will also see some additional reworking.
Both unit reworks will be live next patch, currently scheduled for the 12th of May.
Anemone
Current Ability Set
Active: This unit Deals 165% Damage, inflicts Out. Dot Damage Down II and Corrosion I, both for 2 turns. Charged: (4 charges) This Unit Deals 215% Damage and, if the enemy has a debuff, applies Provoke for 3 turns and inflicts Corrosion III on them for 2 turns. Passive: This unit receives 15% less Damage from debuffed enemies. When an enemy takes Damage from a Damage over Time effect, repair 10% of the damage dealt.
Reworked Ability Set
Active: This unit Deals 140% Damage, inflicts Out. Damage Down II and Corrosion I, for 2 turns. Charged: (3 charges) This Unit Deals 200% Damage and inflicts Corrosion III for 2 turns. If the primary target has 3 or more Damage over Time effects, Gain Taunt for 1 turn. Passive: This unit receives 25% less Direct Damage from enemies debuffed with Damage over Time effects. When an enemy takes Damage from a Damage over Time effect, repair 5% of this units Max HP.
FrontLine
Current Ability Set
Active: This unit deals 190% Damage bypassing enemy shield and gains a shield equal to 10% of the Damage Dealt. Charged: (1 charge) This Unit deals 230% Damage bypassing enemy shields and gains a shield equal to 15% of the Damage Dealt. Passive: This unit gains Attack Up III for 2 turns after damaging an enemy with an affinity advantage bonus. When an enemy uses their charge skill, deal 80% Damage bypassing enemy shields once per round.
Reworked Ability Set
Active: This unit deals 80% Damage with additional damage equal to 60% of its current shield. This unit gains a shield equal to 30% of the Damage Dealt. Charged: (4 charges) This Unit deals 160% Damage with additional damage equal to 120% of its current shield. This unit gains a shield equal to 40% of the Damage Dealt. Passive: This unit’s attacks have 20% Shield Penetration. This unit starts combat with a shield equal to 25% of its Max HP. While shielded, this unit has its defense increased by 2500. When an enemy uses their charged skill, this unit deals 80% damage and gains a shield equal to 30% of the damage dealt. This can occur once per round. Base Stats HP: 11535 → 21042 DEF: 2924 → 3282 Crit Rate: 16% → 12% Crit Power: 98% → 90%
As well as reworking several units, we are also modifying several combat mechanics.
Changes to Shield Bypass
The following changes will be implemented for FrontLine and all Non-obtainable NPC units' next patch, currently scheduled for the 12th of May. All other shield penetration changes for obtainable units shall be implemented in the following week, currently scheduled for 19th of May.
Bypass Shield will be removed in its current implementation. It shall instead be rebranded as ‘Shield Penetration’.
Shield penetration operates as a percentage based shield bypass. For example, a unit with 20% Shield Penetration that directly damages a unit with a shield, will deal 20% of its damage to the unit's HP, and 80% of its damage to the unit's Shield.
All obtainable units that currently have bypass shields will see balance adjustments to compensate for this change, particularly in areas where shield bypass currently shines such as in the Eelun Naphula bounty.
There will also be additional units that did not have bypass shields previously, that will now obtain varying percentages of shield penetration innately.
Any unit with shield penetration will have it tied to their passive instead of abilities directly. This means that units with a reactive damage passive will also operate using the same shield penetration as the rest of their abilities.
A complete list of units impacted by this change is as follows:
Liberator
Medved
Laska
Iridium
Opal
Xcellence
Frontline
Crucialis
Apex
Luxx
Malvex
LeSabre
Curator
Sustainer
Vindicator
Guardian
Provider
Changes to Ignore Defense: The following changes will be implemented for next patch, currently scheduled for the 12th of May.
All units that currently have Ignore Defense on their active or charge shall have it removed from their active and charge abilities.
In its place, Ignore Defense shall now appear on a unit's passive directly.
This means a unit with Ignore Defense innately as part of its skillset shall have this benefit applied globally (i.e, Judge will now ignore defense as part of his passive).
Currently the only unit impacted by this is Judge. But this change adds clarity and consistency to our unit descriptors moving forward.
See you on Friday for some exciting information on the next Global Event, and then again next week to talk all things Voidbringers!
Ruxster Player turned Game Director - Solid Clouds
We have released a hotfix to Steam to address the issue with previous save files having issues after taking town side quests.
Crossplay from Steam to Xbox and PlayStation builds is temporarily disabled until the hotfix has propagated to those platforms. We will update in-game when the hotfix is live across all platforms.
Thanks again for all of the continued support and feedback! IronOak Games
Join the IronOak Games and For The King community on:
We’re back once again with yet another Hotfix! We’ve analyzed more and more of your data and made some more changes that should really help to tighten up your experience as you make your journey through Isola Sacra!
Apart from fixing bugs and some performance issues that were reported, there’s also bigger quality of life changes in here like allowing players to carry a much bigger stack size per item. We’ve also fine-tuned some of the level scaling in order to create a smoother leveling experience.
And we’re not done yet, we’re already hard at work on a bigger patch that will add more features to No Rest for the Wicked!
As always, we hope you’re having a great time exploring and fighting your way through Sacra - Here’s the full list of changes:
🛠️ Early Access Patch Notes - The Breach Hotfix 3
Hey everyone,
We’ve received some great feedback following our recent hotfixes, and we're glad to hear the experience is finally aligning with what we initially envisioned. We're constantly working to make things even better for you, so every bit of feedback truly matters.
That said, today’s update includes a few more improvements to help smooth out your gameplay!
⚔️ Performance:
Optimized IK Look and IK Hits
Optimized performance for The Shallows
Optimized Static rune so it no longer causes performance spikes
⚔️ Quality of Life Improvements:
Enemies no longer spawn in immediately after the Plague is cleansed in an area
Increased the drop rate of Repair Powders
Evasive Combo renamed to Pestilent Recoil
Charged Spells’ descriptions have been changed to emphasise that you should charge them for them to be fully effective
⚔️ UI:
Improved the Bounties Menu
Exiting Vendor Screens will now go back to the Selection Menu instead of exiting the vendor interaction
⚔️ Balance:
Rebalanced level scaling of areas after campaign completion:
Shallows, Mariner's Keep, Orban Glades will be Level 21
Nameless Pass, Black Trench will be level 23
Marin Woods and Lowland Meadows will be level 25
Increased the height you need to fall from to start taking fall damage
Increased Poise of Wands
All dodges now cost the same amount of stamina
Slightly reduced the damage value on “Homing Frost”
⚔️ Gear:
Quicker Input Queuing for the first attack on Hoar Frost Sickle
Fixed Gear not being able to be repaired when durability hits 0
⚔️ Loot:
Increased max inventory stacks from 20 to 99
Increased drop rate of gems
Slightly decreased drop rate and value of Fallen Embers
Gordon Tier2 now has Fruit Pie Recipe instead of Dracaena Dumpling Recipe
Rebalanced drop rates at dig spots
⚔️ Enemies and Bosses:
Slightly rebalanced Falstead Darak
⚔️ Bounties:
Increased available daily bounties from 3 to 4.
⚔️ Localization:
Improved translations for multiple items in various languages
⚔️ Bug Fixes:
Fixed crash and performance hit in Lowland Meadows
Fixed Water Channel Key in The Black Trench not spawning if player is stuck in the old bugged state
Fixed the door to the West Bridge of Mariner’s Keep closing by itself
Fixed Lara forgetting how to walk on the way to the elevator in Weeping Sisters
Fixed kickback on various 1H weapons
Fixed enemies being able to leap in from outside of the player’s camera
Fixed being able to get stuck in certain NPC dialogs
Fixed health bar not updating when Drain Health in Combat enchantment is equipped
Fixed buff icons not displaying remaining time
Fixed deformed model for Torn Colossus
Fixed elemental infusion gems being able to be exalted but not actually be treated as exalted, taking resources and preventing the item from being fully exalted.
Fixed character ledge climbing like they had one too many to drink
Fixed Masterworks background sticking to common items
Features (Dev team only) Smoke LOS impact changes for dev team testing (John / Patrick): - Smoke affects LOS at all heights above it (i.e. smoke rises) - Smoke hinders LOS (½ effect) for a unit inside a smoke filled hex looking out to other hexes - Road to Casablanca - c05: Message boxes when Victory level changes. Thanks mhsiea. (Allen)
Bugs - Montelimar crashes during AI turn Level: ‘'NoneType' object has no attribute 'surround_HexIs‘’ (Luke) - sentry - Volturno-Updated xp, made the enemy more aggressive, adjusted placement of some units.(Henk) Also resolves crash ‘For maneuvering, the battle_stance owner must be the same as the breadcrumb owner - Officer Barks - Crash involving a lack of a ‘)’ is fixed. (Allen)
In this update, we’re introducing a new feature: the Quick Cast option! If you're already familiar with boss skill ranges, Quick Cast allows you to instantly cast a skill in the position of your mouse with a single key press. We've also completely reworked Grizzly's [Frenzy] ability, which previously had very low popularity.
We’re currently focusing development efforts on the highly requested Guardian AI. Progress is going well, and we’re hoping to introduce it in the next update.
🌟 New Features & Improvements
Boss Quick Cast: Added an option for instantly casting skills in the direction of the mouse upon pressing a shortcut key.
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⚖ Balance Changes
Foxley
Max HP increased: 14,000 → 14,500
Grizzly
[Frenzy] perk rework: Move speed based on HP → Can move while using basic attacks (speed: 20% / 50% / 100%)
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🛠 Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue where stun effects wouldn’t apply if a Guardian was hit at the end of their attack animation.
Fixed an issue where players could resize the window in windowed mode.
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💡 Feedback is always welcome! Join our 5-Minute Raid Discord server to find teammates or ask any questions you may have!
Prestige levels will be added with the new season. Every level gain after level 999 will grant 1 prestige point, up to 100. These points can be used on prestige passive tree to alter your endgame mechanics.
There are 162 total points on the tree but you can use 100 of them freely. You can also reset the tree anytime without any cost.
