This update improves combat performance, reduces work while paused, lowers image-loading overhead, and makes progression, armor changes and season-pass checkout clearer.
Performance: higher frame rates and steadier combat
Across four controlled stress-test comparisons, the final optimization pass delivered 31.5% to 79.8% higher frame rates. The desktop test build improved by 45.7% in Godfall and 75.7% in Extraction.
- Godfall — 2560 × 1440, 600 enemies: 46.1 FPS → 67.1 FPS (45.7% higher FPS)
- Extraction — 2560 × 1440, 240 enemies: 54.2 FPS → 95.3 FPS (75.7% higher FPS)
These comparisons used fixed enemy populations and six active weapons. Extraction included player movement. Resolution and combat workload were preserved within each comparison, and the 4K tests waited for relevant artwork to load.
Longer frames also became shorter.
The 95th-percentile frame interval improved from 30.6 to 19.4 milliseconds in Godfall and from 22.3 to 14.0 milliseconds in Extraction. Across all four tests, this measure improved by approximately 21% to 37%, alongside the higher average frame rates.
The percentages measure the final optimization pass against its own baseline. Earlier performance and memory fixes are also included in this update.
What changed during gameplay
- Faster enemy health-bar rendering. Matching bars reuse their rendered appearance, avoiding repeated work in large crowds. Health values, warning thresholds, colors and visibility remain accurate.
- Less repeated wall rendering work. The game reuses wall clipping information while the relevant walls, camera and display remain unchanged. Changes to gates, room geometry or the view refresh it correctly.
- Less work outside the screen. Long decorative network lines and large floor rings draw only the portions that can reach the visible area. Visible shapes, moving dashes and timing are preserved.
- More efficient Extraction effects. Fixed a glow effect from moving network packets spilling onto long route lines. Camp rings, security sweeps, chest markers and labels now respect the arena's existing glow settings and performance limits.
- Faster World CPU targeting. Removed repeated full-crowd searches from ordinary target evaluation. Out-of-range candidates are rejected earlier. Target priorities, attack range and wall checks are preserved.
- Lighter interface updates. The HUD and minimap avoid rewriting unchanged information. Menu-only unlock checks no longer run throughout every gameplay frame.
- Less repeated effect and animation setup. Ground Fault lightning and ChainPing beams reuse their paths for layered strokes. Damage numbers avoid redundant font changes, while enemy animations and asset lookups reuse existing information safely.
Visual quality
The improvements preserve character artwork, animation frames and timing, enemy counts, weapon behavior and selected rendering resolution. Health bars retain their rounded appearance and accurate health display.
The Extraction glow correction removes unintended decorative blur. Floor optimizations can produce tiny differences at antialiased edges; they preserve the visible shapes and movement.
Visual checks covered 84 displayed health-bar comparisons, 1,278 floor-effect cases, wall rendering and Code Abyss rooms, plus character preview and fallback behavior.
Pause-menu and background performance
- Pausing now retains a frozen arena image instead of repeatedly drawing the entire battlefield at the gameplay frame rate.
- Pause-menu input and the resume countdown remain responsive. Resizing or recovering the display refreshes the frozen image when needed, and resuming restores normal rendering.
- The desktop game stops requesting unnecessary window repaints while hidden or minimized. Restoring or focusing the window refreshes it immediately.
- The existing visible Steam-overlay refresh cadence is preserved.
In a three-second settled-pause test, full arena redraws fell from 1,067 to zero. Time spent submitting those arena draws fell from approximately 1,043 milliseconds to zero. Minimized desktop repaint requests fell from roughly 60 per second to zero. Menus, input and window composition still require some CPU and GPU activity.
Memory use and image loading
- High-resolution hero, armor-skin and pet preview sheets now load when needed instead of all being requested at startup. Gameplay animation sheets remain ready for use.
- Previews retain a visible matching fallback while their full-resolution artwork loads. Missing image formats fall back safely.
- Starting a run releases eligible large preview images once the matching gameplay artwork is ready. Returning to a preview reloads its full-resolution artwork.
- Default ROOT//PRIME artwork loads the 12 legacy fallback frames it needs, with the other 542 frames deferred until legacy artwork is selected. Full legacy artwork remains available.
- Leaving a run releases retained wall images, wall geometry and health-bar graphics. Graphics caches have explicit limits and recover correctly after display resets.
The initial image-loading comparison showed approximately 47% less estimated uncompressed image data: 4,193.5 MiB down to 2,220.0 MiB. Deferring unused legacy frames separately avoided another estimated 357.8 MiB of image data. These are image-dimension estimates, not percentages of total Windows RAM or GPU memory.
Nine repeated run-to-menu cycles across Warmup, Godfall and Code Abyss confirmed that the tracked wall and health-bar caches were cleared on every return. This verifies that cleanup path; it does not establish a universal memory limit for long sessions.
Display settings and resolution
- Valid saved graphics-quality preferences are preserved instead of being reset to High.
- World CPU now respects the selected rendering quality and scale.
- Applying a resolution keeps the requested selection visible while confirmation is pending. The Apply button becomes Keep during confirmation.
- The confirmation is brought into view and focused after the window shrinks, including keyboard and controller navigation.
- Display errors remain visible through subsequent display updates. Confirmed settings are retained; Revert and the 15-second automatic rollback remain available for unconfirmed changes.
Clearer progression and locked modes
- Locked mode, difficulty and destination cards can be inspected to see their requirements.
- Requirements clearly show completed and remaining steps, with a shortcut to the next required run where applicable.
- Normal and Extraction progression are explained separately. ROOT//PRIME prerequisites, earlier-tier guardian or extraction requirements, and Encryption Keys held versus needed are shown where relevant.
- Fixed an error when opening help for a locked Code Abyss tier. Existing unlock requirements remain unchanged.
Armor, enchants and inventory
- Equipment explanations now distinguish complete armor from enchants applied to eligible base armor. Complete equipment replaces that slot's base armor; it is not another stacked armor layer.
- Review Armor Swap shows the resulting character power for the proposed swap before anything is removed.
- Confirm · Swap & Enchant returns the equipped complete item to inventory with its socketed gems attached, then applies the selected inventory enchant to the appropriate base armor.
- Replacing an existing enchant is stated in the confirmation. Cancelling leaves equipment unchanged, and outdated or repeated confirmations are rejected.
- Renamed Sell Armor to Sell Upgrades to describe the action more clearly.
Season pass and store
- Purchase progress, results and errors are now visible instead of being hidden by the interface.
- Opening the pass refreshes account, balance and ownership information. Refresh account provides a recovery action.
- A balance that has not loaded remains unknown instead of being treated as zero. Checkout waits for an account read already in progress.
- Repeated clicks and simultaneous checkout options are guarded while a purchase is pending. Refreshed ownership prevents starting another order for an already-owned pass.
- Steam authorization timeouts now show an explanation and overlay guidance, clear the pending state and allow a retry.
- Opening the pass without supported Steam access explains that the game needs to be launched from the Steam Library.
The update passed 95 regression checks, including display confirmation, pause and resume, progression, armor and gem preservation, Recalibration Cube behavior, and simulated checkout recovery.