Complete Game Overhaul and New Content, Massive Update! v0.9

Version 0.9

New Content:

• Check out this post for a more detailed breakdown of all the major new changes (gifs included!)
• Gear! So much new Gear of every type, and a complete redesign of their stats and values.
• New Augments and Traits, especially related to the three new Universal Augments: Agile, Charge, and Channel, so that there are tons of new builds and playstyles around them.
• New Monsters and Elite versions, Points of Interest around the world, unique encounters, and just overall more varied and dynamic moment-to-moment gameplay.
• Shielding: There are now lots of ways to create, manipulate, and destroy health shields.
• More Dots! Now aside from the Corruption Element providing the "Defile" DoT, we have Ignite, Bleed, and Poison! And they all have their own unique mechanics and ways to scale!
• Polish: As I and others played through the game, I tried to compile a massive list of everything that could use some love. Wonky noises, bad particle effects, janky animations, etc. In this release I've tackled a ton of them. From small things like swapping in new monster audio sounds, to more involved processes like arrows properly sticking into environment objects and everything in between.

Overhauled Content (basically new!):

• The world has been completely redesigned, going from linear levels to a much more open style. And to encourage and reward exploration, there are powerful treasures and monsters scattered throughout each region.
• Many new monsters and improvements to old ones and their abilities.
• End-game mode Freelance has been fully reworked. Overall I'm having a ton of fun spamming them, and I'll continue to adjust and iterate on them, as well as continuously add new missions!
• Tons of balance changes, mechanical changes such as more Augments working together and updates to how they scale, and combat improvements such as more visual and auditory hit sounds, queues, etc.

Notable missing features!

• Dungeon Mode as I envision it is currently not ready! The version I implemented for this release is very similar to the old "build-a-boss" system but with all the new bells and whistles and integrated from the new Freelance mode. I may end up saving the release of the proper Dungeon mode for when Multiplayer releases, since ideally those are where both modes will really shine anyway, but we shall see!
• I could not get all the visual models of the new Body and Feet Gear implemented in time. So even though there are dozens of new powerful Gear pieces, their visuals will be a remix of current ones until I get the delivery of the new ones. All the new Head, Trinket, and Hands Gear has their new visuals though.
• Exploration Mode has been (temporarily) removed: With the massive changes to Campaign mode, Exploration mode will need a rework as well.
• In the last dev-blog post I showed off "destructible" environment objects. Due to performance issues that I have not yet solved, I did not implement these in all the regions, and I reduced their amount in the region that they're still in. Once I solve the performance problem, I'll implement them throughout.
• In the last dev-blog post I said "I *think* I fixed the dreaded ability-icon-rearrangement bug", but alas, I didn't, it has happened to me during testing. Back to the drawing board!
• Due to the new open-world structure, there are a bunch of new minor bugs I found that I'll patch up asap, such as minimap icons not going away, or the quest log showing old completed quests, etc.