We’ve just released our biggest demo update yet, and we’re excited for you to jump in!
There’s a brand-new map to explore, a full meta progression system, lots of new build options, expanded difficulty settings, ranked leaderboards, major UI improvements, and plenty of fixes and polish. We hope you enjoy it and we’d love to hear what you think!
New Map: Scorched Lands
Added Scorched Lands, a completely new playable map with its own environment and enemies.
Added a new enemy roster: Raptors, Beetles, Junkers, Robot Guards, Spiders, and the Metal Golem boss.
Added new elite, miniboss, swarm, and boss encounters unique to the map.
Added new enemy abilities, including poison attacks, persistent danger zones, projectile barrages, and boss jump attacks.
Meta Progression
Added Credits, a permanent meta currency that carries between runs.
Credits can be earned from enemy drops, quest rewards, and completed runs.
Difficulty and map challenge selections now show their Credit gain multipliers.
Completing quests now makes the associated items, perks, maps, and events available for purchase with Credits.
Added a dedicated Upgrades screen with permanent improvements for:
Credit drop chance.
Dash access.
Perk rerolls.
Shop rerolls.
The number of shop offers that can be held between rerolls.
Hero Progression
Added persistent meta progression for heroes.
Heroes now gain rank progress from completed runs.
Added hero-specific starter weapon and starter perk selections.
New starter options become available at the required hero rank and can be purchased permanently with Credits.
Hero selection now displays rank, progress, available starter equipment, and tooltips.
The results screen now shows the hero progress earned during the run.
17 New Items
Aiming Module - Adds extra projectiles to non-Area ranged weapons.
Metal Detector - Generates a random small item at the end of every day.
Rapier - Strikes enemies in a short rectangle and increases the damage of adjacent weapons.
Poisoned Machete - Strikes nearby enemies and applies Poison equal to the damage dealt.
Battle Axe - Hits enemies around the hero and increases the damage of all melee weapons.
Assault Rifle - Fires a damaging projectile and has built-in Multicast.
Laser Sword - Strikes enemies in a cone, dealing damage and applying Burn.
Shuriken - Fires a projectile volley that permanently grows after every miniboss kill.
Grenade - Creates a delayed area explosion and deals increased damage while adjacent to a Fire item.
Chili Pepper - Restores Health and applies Burn to a random enemy.
Burger - Restores Health, with additional healing for every active Fire item.
Energy Shield - Increases maximum Shield, restores Shield, and improves Shield regeneration items.
Poison Snake Totem - Places an enemy-triggered Poison totem that becomes stronger next to medium items.
Mechanical Chicken - Strikes enemies in a rectangle and doubles its damage after all bonuses.
Mini Dragon - Attacks around itself and also applies Burn while a large item is active.
Turtle - Attacks nearby enemies, speeds up all pets, and gains Charge from speed-up items.
Automatic Furnace - Fires Burn-applying coal projectiles and gains Charge whenever a Fire item activates.
16 New Perks
Bounty Hunter - Grants Gold for killing elites and minibosses.
Fleet Footed - Increases the hero's Movement Speed.
Heavy Company - Increases Weapon damage while at least one large item is active.
Melee Formation - Increases melee Weapon damage for each adjacent melee Weapon.
Light Arsenal - Increases ranged Weapon damage while no large items are active.
Medium Kindling - Adds extra Burn stacks for each active medium item.
Toxic Synergy - Adds extra Poison stacks for each active Poison item.
Venomous Tempo - Makes Poison deal its damage more frequently.
Lasting Flame - Makes Burn lose stacks less frequently.
Split Shot - Adds extra projectiles to non-Area ranged weapons.
Free Rein - Reduces pet cooldowns while no weapons are active.
Small Pack - Increases pet damage for each active small item.
Daily Armament - Adds one small Weapon to the inventory at the end of every day.
Pack Vitality - Increases maximum Health while more than three pets are active.
Close Quarters Echo - Grants Multicast to melee weapons.
Overflow Barrier - Converts overhealing into an equal amount of Shield.
New Day Events & Rewards
Added Pet Shop and Protection Shop events.
Added new reward events for:
Small items.
Medium items.
Large items.
Weapons.
Fire items.
Poison items.
Pets.
Tools.
Protection items.
Combat challenge events can now award an interactable reward chest after the final enemy is defeated.
Improved shop reroll, offer-hold, reward reveal, and event feedback animations.
Rebalanced the Mob Challenge event's enemy scaling.
Difficulties & Ranked Runs
Replaced the old three-tier difficulty selection with seven modes:
Novice
Veteran
Expert
Master
Legend
Mythic
Infinity
Higher difficulty tiers are unlocked through a global quest chain and become available on every unlocked map.
Added separate completion tracking for every map and difficulty.
Difficulties now have their own enemy health, enemy damage, Credit gain, gold gain, swarm, boss, and special-enemy rules.
Infinity mode removes map challenges and the evacuation point, reduces available rerolls, and continues after the boss.
Added ranked run support and leaderboards for Infinity mode.
Added a leaderboard interface with personal run results and ranked records.
Added recurring elite and miniboss groups during extended post-boss survival.
Inventory & Shops
Added reroll buttons to regular and specialized shops.
Shop offers can now be held.
The number of held offers can be increased through permanent upgrades.
Improved extension compatibility rules.
Added clearer mini-tooltips for item effects.
Added a warning before applying an incompatible or irreversible item extension.
Gameplay & Balance Changes
Added a short period of invulnerability after leaving shops or events.
Toxic Flame Wand can now benefit from compatible healing and shield-regeneration extensions.
Critical Chance now applies consistently to items with a base direct-damage value.
Critical extensions can now be applied only to compatible direct-damage items.
Improved Fire and Poison extension behavior across hybrid items.
Reduced several quest requirements to make progression less grindy.
Pets now navigate around obstacles more reliably, and their cooldowns no longer pause incorrectly.
Removing or destroying a pet item now removes its pet immediately.
Fixed Fire Cloak's Fire extension interaction.
Fixed Gauntlet of Overload's Critical Chance behavior.
Fixed Portable Gas Stove interactions with Food items on its left.
Items
Noodles
Healing: 5/7/9/11/13/15 -> 5/10/15/20/25/30.
Spear
Damage per strike: 7/14/21/28/35/42 -> 5/10/15/20/25/30.
Fire Boots
Reworked from a movement trail spawned every 0.25s into a fire pool created at the player's position every 1s.
Each pool lasts 4s, has a 1.5 radius, and applies 2/3/4/5/6/7 Burn stacks. Movement Speed and Burn scaling are otherwise unchanged.
Salamander
Poison application radius: 3 -> 6 at every rarity.
Fixed the Rare value in its Poison scaling: 3/6/3/12/15/18 -> 3/6/9/12/15/18 stacks.
Alembic - reworked
Minimum rarity: Common -> Rare.
Cooldown: 3.2s -> 3.0s.
Removed its old effect, which accelerated all Poison items for 0.4/0.8/1.2/1.8/2.2/2.6s.
It now sprays a poison puddle near an enemy, applying 5/10/15/20/25/30 Poison stacks and restoring 5/10/15/20/25/30 Health.
The puddle covers a 3 x 9 rectangle and lasts 3s.
Every Poison-item activation advances Alembic's cooldown by 0.3s.
Shadow Cloak
Critical Chance bonus: 5/10/15/20/25/30% -> 10/20/30/40/50/60%.
Toxic Flame Wand
Minimum rarity: Common -> Rare.
Removed its separate direct splash-damage hit: 5/5/15/20/25/30 -> 0 damage. It now focuses entirely on applying Burn and Poison whenever another item critically strikes.
Burn and Poison remain at 1/2/3/4/5/6 stacks in a 7 radius.
Compatible Health-restoration and Shield-regeneration extensions now trigger whenever the Wand activates.
Fire Staff and Poison Staff
Added the Area classification so they are correctly recognized by Area-based shop rules, searches, perks, and extensions.
Upgrade Items
Changed the price curve for Sharpening Stone, Bullet Accelerator, Improved Poison, Improved Fire, Armor Plates, Nano Bots, Penetrating Module, Lightweight Frame, and Autoinjector:
20/40/60/80/100/120 -> 20/40/80/160/320/640.
Improved Poison
Added Poison stacks: 1/2/3/4/5/6 -> 3/6/9/12/15/18.
Improved Fire
Added Burn stacks: 1/2/3/4/5/6 -> 2/4/6/8/10/12.
Nano Bots
Added Shield regeneration: 2/4/6/8/10/12 -> 1/2/3/4/5/6.
Penetrating Module
Added Critical Chance: 1/2/3/4/5/6% -> 2/4/6/8/10/12%.
Autoinjector
Added maximum Health: 2/4/6/8/10/12 -> 1/2/3/4/5/6.
Added Health regeneration: 2/4/6/8/10/12 -> 1/2/3/4/5/6.
Perk Balance
Critical Chance, Critical Arsenal, and Crit per Level are no longer limited to Weapon-tagged targets. Their bonuses now apply to every item with a compatible direct-damage module that can critically strike.
UI, Controls & Quality of Life
Added a new run timeline that shows run progress, days, and upcoming major encounters.
Redesigned the map selection screen.
Added quest completion and newly available content notifications.
Added a low-health audio state and chromatic aberration effect.
Added an option to disable the low-health visual effect.
Added item and perk icons, tooltips, and hero progression information to the results screen.
Added the earned Credits total to the results screen.
Improved main-menu scrolling and selection clearing when screens or windows close.
Keyboard/mouse and gamepad modes now switch automatically when the active device changes.
Added broader gamepad navigation support for map selection, hero selection, shops, unlocks, upgrades, item extensions, and the forge.
Added gamepad controls for shop rerolls and held offers.
Space is now the default keyboard Submit action.
Added and updated localization for the new map, items, perks, events, quests, upgrades, and UI.
Major Fixes
Fixed severe frame drops while moving items in shops.
Fixed a Toxic Flame Wand issue after upgrading it at the forge.
Fixed several extension triggers and lower-panel visual effects.
Fixed several gamepad navigation, focus, prompt, and tab-selection issues.
Fixed tooltip visibility, values, missing symbols, and incorrect descriptions.
Fixed the Balanced graphics preset displaying incorrectly.
Fixed multiple UI layout, icon, scrollbar, selection, and sound issues.
Thank you so much for playing the demo and sharing your feedback! It genuinely helps us make the game better. We hope you have fun exploring the Scorched Lands, trying out new builds, and discovering everything this update has to offer. See you in the game!