Blood Settings and Veteran Shopkeeper Difficulty - Small Update v0.14.9.72

Hello shopkeepers!

This is a small update to fix a few bugs and adjust some settings based on player feedback.

New Difficulty

Many of you have told us you liked the Hardcore Airstrafer difficulty introduced in 14.9.5, which we're happy to hear. Some players have also said that they wish for some more difficulty options between Easy and Normal and between Hard and Hardcore Airstrafer.

So, in today's update, we're introducing the Veteran Shopkeeper difficulty.

This difficulty lands somewhere between Hard and Hardcore Airstrafer, where enemies will be pretty challenging, research is expensive, but you still have access to teleportation.

We also slightly tuned down the Normal and Hard difficulties to better fill the gap between Easy and the new Veteran Shopkeeper difficulty.

If you already have your difficulty configured, it won't change, even on Normal or Hard. But if you change your difficulty preset it will use the new values. If you liked the Normal difficulty previously, the new Hard difficulty will be around what feels comfortable to you.

Remember, you can always configure a custom difficulty if you would like to from the lobby settings menu at any time.

Blood Settings

This is a feature many of you have requested for some time so you can play with or around younger shopkeepers, or just from personal preference.

You can toggle the Show Blood setting in the gameplay settings.

With this setting disabled, blood VFX are hidden, and the blood splatters are replaced with footprints from the scuttle of your fight.

Improved Rune Race Checkpoint Visuals

We got some feedback that some of the rune races could be frustrating because the race checkpoints were too hard to see.
I went ahead and updated the VFX for these checkpoints to make them a little friendlier to find and run through.

I also improved the collision detection for these checkpoints while I was here, so they should feel even more fair and responsive.

If you like the rune races and the new checkpoints, please let me know!

v0.14.9.72 Patch Notes

➡️ Changes

• Added Show Blood setting to gameplay settings that will hide blood VFX and replace blood messes with footprint messes
• Added a new difficulty setting: Veteran Shopkeeper that is harder than Normal and Hard but less punishing than Hardcore Airstrafer
• Adjusted the difficulty of the Normal and Hard difficulties to be a little more forgiving
• Improved the visual clarity of the rune racing mini-game checkpoints
• Adjusted kill VFX/SFX to be more subtle
• Slightly reduced the HP of boars

🛠️ General Fixes

• Fixed an issue with Mayor Yori's quest where having multiple players working on the quest could mess up quest progression. If this happened to your group, speaking with Mayor Yori again after this patch should fix your issues
• Fixed an issue that could cause the game to lag when rejoining a lobby after getting kicked out
• Cleaned up the Start game button in the lobby for clients
• Corrected an issue with the high player count warning message
• Adjusted some of the wording and details for Mayor Yori's quest log
• Fixed an issue where NPC quest markers would not show up properly for clients if the NPC was already loaded
• Fixed an issue where the difficulty preset setting did not match the actual difficulty settings

🗣️ Localization

• Fixed an issue where some settings labels were cut off for certain languages in the menu