Greetings!

October is here and so is the new update! Many improvements were made, and some of them are game changing, so let's talk about item balance at first:

I was quite unhappy with the state of some unique items, as they felt mandatory to have for any build, which is quite opposite of the design philosophy i had in my mind to make them build enabling, but neither best in slot or better than most items you find out of the box. As a result i've removed most of the damage augments from them especially physical damage augments on elemental base damage weapons, movement speed and luck augments on items which wasn't really designed around those. To counterweight these changes i also made luck available on all armor, and movement speed available on helmets and torso armor.

Since item randomization and the chase for perfectly rolled items is a key factor of the genre, i found it quite discouraging to have such a high disenchant cost for items at the crafting station, so this cost got significally lower, while keeping the original price for augments. As a result this should make your first augment quite cheap to be rolled of your favor, which could serve as a good base if you plan to craft a decent item.

While life and mana leeching mechanics are in the game already, their base effect is quite minimal and the bonuses for this effect wasn't really improved it in such a degree that you could build around it, so i've increased the values of these affixes.

Enemies got new tricks!

As the game evolved over the years, the player got some abilities to quickly react to enemy threat, the pace of the game got significantly faster, therefore some enemies felt slow and outdated, and the game felt easier than it was intended, so i made ranged enemies desired attacking range vary per enemy spawned, up to 2x of it was before, so you can never exactly tell when they will start attacking you, making kiting more difficult.

Shadowlings can now teleport to you every few sec after they noticed you, so better not sit on one spot for too long in battle.

Mutants got a well telegraphed ranged ability which shoots a modified version of Ice Spear at you, which not only deals high amount of cold damage, but has a guaranteed chill effect which slows your movement speed by 70% for 3 seconds, failing to avoid that can be quite punishing in many situations!

Bug fixes and visual improvements!

Since enemies can be staggered by any damage, a new unintentional phenomenon got introduced, making ignited or bleeding enemies getting staggered every few seconds because they are constantly taking damage, so i fixed this by making damage over time effects unable to cause that effect.

Thanks to the previous optimization passes outdoor levels can have an increase in visibility distance without a noticeable loss of performance. The variety of buildings on both on the inside and the outside areas in the city levels got improved, which (with the increased rendering distance) really brings the visuals together.

The particle effects of the plasma bullets got improved, and chakram also got some, which not only makes it look better, but improves it's visibility, even the smaller ones which comes off of a nova can be better tracked from now on.

Some of the assets got scaled down to make it more realistic in size, which might also have a minor impact on your gameplay as they won't serve as a good cover any longer.

As a closure i really hope these changes will make the game more interesting to play, and i hope you'll enjoy playing it!

Until next time!