Starlight Re:Volver Re:Work - FIRST MAJOR UPDATE [9/23/25]

Hello Divers!

We’re so excited to share more about the first major update for Starlight Re:Volver Early Access, dubbed “Re:Work”. We launched in Early Access to learn and grow with our community, much like online games that inspired us. While this strategy is not without its tradeoffs, we believe Starlight Re:Volver will ultimately benefit from the thoughtful feedback and quick learning cycles that this approach offers.

We launched in Early Access with rough edges and Mixed reviews on Steam. During this “soft launch” period, we took feedback and concerns seriously and are including a swath of hotly requested and improved player experience changes in this update.

Here are the high level changes this update encompasses:

Greater player counts

With this latest update, we are confident to begin promoting our game more heavily (including a Discord Quest starting tomorrow), to push for higher concurrent player counts and lower matchmaking times.

Combat Re:Work

Through our Pre-Alpha testing and in EA, we tuned our game for our most hardcore and dedicated Divers. While that helped us test the limits of our systems, it also meant our combat and decisions felt clunky, restrictive, and punishing to new players. We have completely Re:Worked the combat experience:

• Solo play is now a completely viable way to Dive, across all difficulties

• Re:Fuel has been removed: play at your pace with more viable build options

• RNG is a lesser factor for getting a peak build; an experienced player can now make any Dive work

• Cooldowns decreased across the board, including Dashes

• Enemy track & attack behavior tuned to be less overwhelming and scales to smaller group sizes

The most challenging version of Starlight Re:Volver will return in a future update as a unique game mode.

🆕‼️ Gamepad and Steam Deck support

We have progressed leaps and bounds on our gamepad support, which while not perfect, makes our game fully playable on gamepad for the first time. This is perfect timing with the recent Proton experimental update for Steam Deck, which enables support for Starlight Re:Volver.

Introducing World Conflict

With the Re:Work update, we are also unveiling the start of our overarching narrative arc for Starlight Re:Volver. The once stable balance between Nishi Island and So Mi has begun to DRIFT, and the new generation of Divers has risen to the occasion to reverse it. However, a mysterious faction seeks to let it spread… over the course of Early Access, the conflict will further unfold, culminating in the first member of this mysterious faction being revealed.

A more detailed breakdown of all the changes in this update is included at the bottom of this letter.

This was such a fun set of updates to work on, and as a dev team it’s our privilege to continue making Starlight Re:Volver into game that eventually fulfills its promise.

Thank you to all our early community members that helped make our update as good as it could be!

Until next time,

-Pahdo Dev Team

Starlight Re:Volver Re:Work Patch Notes [9/23/25]

Gameplay Changes

Main Menu

• New opening sequence

• Main menu screen and music has been updated

NIM

• Narrative update (spoilers)

  • Tears in the fabric of reality are in NIM, Dive into So Mi to stop the Drift!

  • Drift Crystals are present in our Elite Encounters, smash them to collect Star Frags!

• Fox has new, autumnal full body dekos at Counterweight

• Added early supporter dekos to the inventories of players who’ve been with us before this update

• Reduced the materials required for numerous items across the shops of NIM

So Mi

• Characters

  • Drastically reduced cooldowns on characters across all powers

  • Gave passive Mana regen to all characters

  • Increased Mana costs of powers

  • Mana from Attacks reduced

  • Increased physical attack scaling for basic attacks

• Player Count

  • Adjusted mob health, mob damage, and mob attack cadence based off of number of players in a Dive

• Re:Fuel

  • Has been re:moved from the game 🪦 o7

• Drift Crystals

  • Corrupted crystals are in So Mi, smash them for Star Fragments and to save the worlds

• No Go

  • No Go now exchanges items for Sominite

  • No Go’s offerings can now include crafting materials

• Revives

  • Players now spawn with bonus shields upon being revived

• Crystal Plume

  • Removed starting Crystal Plumes from Dives

• Healing Havens

  • If a healing fountain were to over heal you, it now increases your max health

• Charms

  • Charm category bonuses have been grouped together

    • Strength = PhysAtk + Crit Damage

    • Mind = MagAtk + Mana

    • Health = Health + Shield

    • Fortune = Crit Chance + Dash Cooldown

  • New Charms have been implemented

    • New - Bravado - Strength Common - +40% Crit Damage, reduced by -1% each time you deal Damage. Resets each Area

    • New - Last Stand - Strength Legendary - Gain +10% Damage Amp, +5% Crit Chance, +5% Damage Reduction, and 1% Mana Regen. Quadruple these while below 25% Health

    • New - Apparition - Fortune Rare - Become Invulnerable and double your Backstab Damage for the first 10 seconds of each Area

    • New - Fight and Flight - Fortune Common - -50% Dash Cooldown for 3 seconds after taking Damage

    • New - Planted Feet - Fortune Rare - Lose a Dash Stock, but gain +25% Damage Amp and +25% Damage Reduction

    • New - Tortoise Becomes Hare - Fortune Rare - Gain +1 Dash Stock after 50 Power casts, and another after 100 Power casts

    • New - Hydra - Health Rare - Rapidly heal while under 25 Health

    • New - Stander of Business - Health Rare - +2 Flat Damage Reduction, tripled below 25% Health

    • New - Star Sailor - Mind Common - Every time you cast a Power, your next Power within 3 seconds deals +10% Damage, up to +30%

    • New - Twist of Fate - Mind Rare - Every 15 seconds, your next Power deals +50% damage. Three times per Area

    • New - Absent Academic - Mind Epic - +30 Magic Attack, but lose -2% Mana per second.

  • Cooldown category removed

  • Mana Charms slightly rebalanced

  • Chance of getting Rare and Epic Powers slightly increased for normal and hard Power rewards

  • Chance of getting Rare, Epic, and Legendary Charms increased in the later Areas for normal Charm rewards

  • Crooked Contract, Vital Spirit, and Healer of All Wounds now expire after 20 minutes

  • Vital Spirit heals: every 30 seconds → every 20 seconds

• Kendamas

  • Level 3 → Level 4 Power upgrade: 50 Kendama Points

  • Level 4 → Level 5 Power upgrade: 90 Kendama Points

• Enemies and Encounters

  • Enemy behavior refinement

    • Enemy movement in between attacks have been given additional behavior types

  • Mob counterplay windows have been improved across the board

  • Ranged enemies will attempt to path closer to the player at extreme distances

  • Armor color altered to be slightly more yellow to differentiate from the orange color of shielding

  • Trace Summoner spawns 3 Crystal Lancers at a time but has a much larger cooldown between summons

  • Knight of Pentacles AOE reduced, i-frames removed, health decreased

  • The Magician:

    • The Magician’s Damage slightly decreased

    • The Magician’s attack cooldown increased

    • The Magician’s & Page of Wands’ magic tether now shields The Magician

  • Imperial Magician:

    • Level footprint altered - 2 towers spawn on either side of the Imperial Magician

    • Magical tether from the towers now displays appropriately

    • Tower Health increased

    • Number of Page of Wands decreased

    • Towers no longer regenerate once destroyed

    • Tower shielding rate on the elite magician slightly increased

    • Maximum shield on the Imperial Magician decreased

    • Alcoves and large terrain added to provide defensive positions away from the enemy’s attacks

  • Elite Maze Encounter:

    • Reduced the number of Large AOE Mobs present

    • Scattered enemies about the hedge maze more

  • The Grand Golem

    • Updated defeat outro

• Effy

  • Reduced hitstop and jitter on each attack

  • Increased damage on charged attack

  • Dash is faster

  • All of Effy’s Attacks can be canceled into Powers or Dashes at any time

  • Attack 3 now stacks Relentless

  • Charged attack non-perfect version now has iframes

  • Extended iframes on perfect charged attack

  • Dash Attack now transitions sooner to her attack combo or to movement

  • High Striker

    • Perfect timing iframes extended to cover the lengthy hitstop of the power

      • Perfect timing Stun duration: 0.1s → 1s

      • Physical Attack Buff increased during the middle levels

  • Can’t Stop Me:

    • Now grants Invulnerability for 2 seconds after a successful parry

  • Get Pumped:

    • Damage Reduction balanced between all upgrade levels

      • Gives both % and Flat Damage Reduction. Values have been readjusted to be higher in %, lower in Flat to be less comprehensive against lower damage values and also better at dealing with higher damage values

• Kira

  • Now has three dash stocks

  • Dash moves slightly further

  • Dash Attack should be slightly more consistent to activate

  • Buffed: Raspberry, Blueberry, Summer Rain, Never Look Back, Queen’s Gambit, Heartseeker

  • Tell Me

    • Telegraph properly matches projectile width

      • No longer fizzles on colliding with terrain

  • Queen’s Gambit

    • Now has iframes over the brief 0.66 second windup

      • Now has 50% Damage Reduction while firing

  • Howling Crescendo

    • Can now be canceled at any time with Dash

      • Can no longer be flinched out of casting

  • Tell Me, Summer Rain, Raspberry, and Blueberry now proc charms like Celestial Intervention or Bygone Ordnance sooner after casting the Power

• Ren

  • Buster Stocks have a 4 second cooldown, unaffected by the global CDR

  • SD Sentinel

    • Details view now specifies that the Sentinel also gives a flat Attack buff of 10

      • Now active immediately upon spawn rather than waiting for the spawn animation to finish

  • SD Saint

    • Now active immediately upon spawn rather than waiting for the spawn animation to finish

  • SD Sinner

    • Now attacks slightly sooner after spawning

  • Unbreakable

    • Input no longer needs to be held to keep the shield up

  • Dragon Buster

    • Damage Amp per second increased at all levels

• Vivi

  • Basic Attack explosion hitboxes increased slightly

  • Dash is faster

  • Jellyboxing, Glutinous Maximus, and The Power of Gelship now state in their descriptions that they increase the Damage of Vivi’s Attacks

  • Glutinous Maximus

    • Damage per Jelly Stack: 0.1 → 0.2

      • Damage per Jelly Stack now exposed in details view

      • Input scheme changed to have movement controlled by movement inputs rather than cursor

      • Now automatically bounces, consuming stacks, rather than requiring another input to bounce

  • The Power of Gelship

    • Damage per Jelly Stack: 0.25 → 0.5

      • Damage per Jelly Stack now exposed in details view

  • Cation Wave: Now deals Physical Damage and scales off Physical Attack

  • Anion Wave: Now deals Physical Damage and scales off Physical Attack

• Audio

  • Social Mix updates - if you’re playing in a call with friends, give this setting a try

  • Sacred Sky mobs got a sonic makeover

  • Projectiles and AoEs are more prominent in the mix when within your proximity

  • New Golem Boss outro music stinger

• UI

  • Damage Kickers

    • Updated our Damage Kickers with new visuals

    • Damage Kickers cummulate recent damage dealt

  • Social Actions

    • Social invites now sort near chat, require hold-to-action-on to prevent accidental inputs

    • Social screen shows more info about who is in your party/who has pending invites

  • Small Quality of Life changes

    • Added area number to Chimei’s shop

    • Added NPC names to shops

    • Remove base menu for the Gear tab within the Game Menu - slots are selected by default

    • Per-Thread cursors

    • Hide cursor when using gamepad

    • Add labels to the portal rewards

    • Currency display is always visible

    • Added the Queen of Swords silhouette to the Fia’s Mirror progress bar

• Misc

  • Updated loot pickups

Bug Fixes

• Gamepad - still WIP! Report any bugs/’feels bads’ in the Discord

  • Fixed numerous issues with navigating various menus across the game with gamepad

  • Fixed an issue where players could cast powers when attempting to interact with right bumper on Lock on Mode

  • Can now accept party invites on gamepad

  • Gamepad iconography updated across all menus

  • Added setting for lock-on perspective - relative to player or relative to enemy

  • Improved Aim Assist

  • Improved behaviors of various powers to “feel better” on gamepad

• NIM

  • Matchmaking

    • Fixed bugs that would lead to bad matchmaking states

    • Fixed a bug where user’s steam display name wasn’t properly being shown

  • Shops

    • Fixed a bug where players can craft dekos they’ve already owned

  • Fishing

    • Trailer Fish can now be caught 🥳

    • Fixed a bug where Waku Waku lure / rod were not yielding the right benefits

• So Mi

  • Characters

    • Effy

      • Majority of cases where charged attack was firing unintentionally should be removed

    • Ren

      • Hana’s Melody should no longer be able to be moved around

• Encounters

  • Fixed an issue where tethers were not visible between the Imperial Magician and his towers

• UI

  • Fix items having overlap labels for amount owned and item type

  • The Queen now shows on the Area progress bar when in Fia’s Mirror

  • No longer can players craft multiple copies of accessories

  • Fixed an issue when typing A or D in the bug reporter