Hi, everyone. Ryan here, creator of Wicked Seed.
Daybreak is now live! A big thank to you to everyone who took the time to test Daybreak on the beta branch and leave feedback and report bugs.
I started working on this update right after The Pit released in May and it has grown to be much larger than just an epilogue. Featuring adjustments to The Pit, overhauling a lot of the back end to reduce memory consumption, load times, and cut the install size by about 1/3. Not to mention localization, new weapons, costumes, and a bunch more stuff.
I will include the complete patch notes below, made up of the initial patch notes release and all subsequent updates it received while on the beta branch.
The demo has also been updated to be in code parity with the main version, taking advantage of the memory optimizations, reduced install size, additional costumes, and visual updates.
Note:
To anyone who played on the beta branch using their existing save file, please follow the steps in this post if you'd like to revert that test save file into a save file that can be continued on the main version: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2767530/discussions/0/583931105981276824/
Daybreak
Daybreak is a new addition to the story and takes place immediately after the events of the game's ending.
Daybreak uses a new save file separate from your main game save, but the costumes and weapons found within Daybreak will be added to your main game save files after completion
New Daybreak exclusive challenges have been added. The challenge points awarded for these are added to your global points total to be used in the Extras shop
3 new weapons have been added
Over 40 new lines of dialogue have been recorded
Features some changes to the encounter system, allowing you more freedom in movement with encounter blocks being used sparingly. This means you can also trigger multiple encounters at the same time if you aren't careful, or are looking to up the challenge
New Content
Localization support has been added
Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Russian, and Brazilian Portuguese are available
More languages will be added as demand grows
A new randomizer game mode, Chaos, has been added
Enemies are randomized similar to the Shuffle randomizer
All unique items (key items, weapons, armor, etc.) are accounted for, but every non-unique item is randomly distributed
All items are unknown until you pick it up
If you pick up a weapon, it is automatically equipped and the previous weapon is scrapped. However, the weapon parts and all upgrades transfer over to the new weapon
If you pick up armor, it is automatically equipped and the previous armor is scrapped. Similarly to weapons, all parts are transferred over
If you pick up an equipment part, it will automatically be added to the weapon or armor and will, if needed, remove the oldest added part
Added a new costume accessorize feature. Once unlocked through the Extras menu, it can be used to change Ella's hair color and add glasses. Hair color and glasses selection is saved on a per costume basis allowing you to quickly setup and swap between different looks. Few costumes can also toggle between costume variants which typically hide or show parts of the costume. An example being for Beach, since you can wear sunglasses now, you can toggle the visibility of the glasses sitting on her head.
Adjustments have been made to the Endless Mode of The Pit
Previously you could start at Depth 51 and just keep going until you died
Now, Endless mode starts at Depth 51, but every 5 floors will be a boss depth. If you clear the boss encounter, you can then start at that depth (similar to how the progression works normally in the Pit). The boss depths follow the same progression so depth 55 will be the depth 5 boss, depth 60 will be the depth 10 boss, etc.
Previously enemies in The Pit had increased, and scaling, defense. Due to changes in how enemy defense is tracked and calculated, this has been removed
Added 12 new costumes
Gameplay Adjustments
Animations
Ella's idle stance has been adjusted
Added a new animation to the rest area
Removed the dedicated stair ascending animation by default and increased the speed at which you can ascend stairs
For those who enjoyed the stair animation from before, you can enable it from the options menu
Improved the smoothness of Ella's "look at" animation to reduce snappy or jerky movements
Combat
Weapon swapping can now be performed more than once during an action chain. Additionally, you are now able to swap back to the original weapon that was equipped at the beginning of the action chain
When an enemy is targeted in combat you can now toggle visibility of their bestiary entry. Just like in the status menu you can check their weakness hint, completion bonus, etc.
Enemy defense has been adjusted across the board. Most enemies remain the same, but reduced the high levels of some enemies that led to fights dragging on if you didn't immediately go for stagger tactics
"Thorn" damage, such as the bestiary effect of the Bilegorger, has been increased and now ignores enemy defense
Skitterers will now always lose their balance when missing an attack (previously 50% chance)
Drainlings will now always be staggered when blocking their attacks (previously 80% chance)
Buster Grenades now additionally permanently lower the enemy's defense by 50%. When two are thrown, it will effectively remove the enemy's defense
A text popup, similar to "Staggered!" or "Armor break!" will now appear when breaking the flank of an enemy to better communicate when flank breaks occur
Additionally, the amount of damage the enemy suffers from the flank break will now be displayed
Adjusted the counter hit and flanking attack icons to be inline with the damage text. I also added other damage icons for bleed, flank breaks, and brutal attacks to help identify damage sources during combat
High powered ammo now additionally grants an increase to status ailment application
Critical hits now additionally increase the amount of status ailment application
Adjusted the stamina cost of weapon swapping to equal half of its stamina attack cost. This is a net positive across the board as the previous swap was a static 150
Increased the bonus damage and duration granted by the master trait for Badger
Increased the rate at which the damage is applied to enemies from player spawned acid puddles
The enemy's defense is now permanently reduced by 10% for each trigger of the acid status
Elemental status application is no longer reduced if an enemy has armor
Enemies suffer burn damage on a faster interval
When an enemy spawns during combat, it now has a short cooldown before it is able to attack
UI
Slight redesign of the enemy target UI to better organize the information. If an enemy has armor it will no longer obscure the health bar.
Phorid Spitters and Flosmonstrum can now be staggered from repeated parries of their projectiles
The amount of stagger damage inflicted when parrying the Gigantoise has been increased
Gigantoise can now be bled from continuous attacks
For enemies that can enter a block stance, their side flank is now weaker than before, giving you a way to counter their block
The Closed Casket weapon will no longer be automatically added during story progression when playing randomizer
You can now access the parts of all armor that you are holding at a Toolbench instead of just what you have equipped
A "Master Volume" option has been added to the Audio section of the Options menu
Modified the layout of the equipment parts window to accommodate the increased number of parts
Effects that restore energy will now consistently be shown as fly up text
Similarly to health, regenerative/over time effects for this will not show since that can get noisy
On the pause menu you can now check your current run's score, hits taken, times healed, stash accesses, etc.
Added a UI indicator to the interaction points for area transitions to let you know the name of the area you'll be moving to
Added a UI indicator underneath the health bar that displays the number of damage buffers you have. Damage buffers are granted by the bestiary bonus for the final boss and when using the skill "Vengeance"
Increased the visibility of the golden targets in the shooting range minigame
Visuals
Added a new water visual effect system
Improved skin and material shading
Removed or greatly reduced the heavy use of obscuring environmental fog. Additional background elements have been added to affected areas
Adjusted the lighting of several areas
A "Simulated Global Illumination" option has been added to the Display sections of the Options menu.
Due to the performance cost it is disabled by default. When enabled it helps blend light and colors better in the environment
Costumes
The costume "Relaxed" is given automatically at the start of a new game. A new costume has been placed where Relaxed could be found before
A new costume, "Summertime" has been added as a starting costume
Adjusted the default look of the costume "Midnight". The original look can be accessed through a new costume accessorize feature
Several costumes have seen an improvement in their texture resolution
Misc. Gameplay
While I am careful to add curation to randomizers, I did increase the chance for high powered ammo to be chosen as a random drop on randomizer playthroughs
Added a minimum number of high powered ammo for randomizer runs
The Randomizer_Item_List text file will now display the amount next to the item name, useful for checking high powered ammo amounts on their pickups
Interactable objects have been added to the Manor that provide hints to the solution to the music box puzzle
Some item pickup visuals have been replaced with a subtle shimmer. This change is two fold: it offers a performance improvement by reducing the amount of unique objects placed in the scene and better identifies which items can be picked up vs. which are just decoration. Additionally it should reduce the amount of "pixel hunting" needed to make sure you've found everything in the area.
Consumable and key items and are white in color
Parts show up as blue
Costumes show as purple/pink
Weapons, scrap, and knight statues will show their current item model
For those who prefer the old system of seeing the items without the shimmer, you can toggle it on in the Options under Gameplay
Increased movement speed while going up or down stairs
Ella is now hidden if the camera intersects her mesh
Added a new "Welcome to Maine" sign in the intro cutscene
Improved the depth of field calculation while in Photo Mode to better keep Ella in focus
Max held scrap has been increased from 9,999,999 to 99,999,999
The amount of experience needed to level up your expedition level now increases by 10k per expedition level
Moved a problematic encounter in Candle Rock Coast on Despair difficulty
Engineering Manuals can no longer spawn as pickups during randomizer runs
When in The Pit, entering a new room will automatically light the torch to help you track your progress on that floor
Torches can still be manually interacted with if you want to turn them off or on again
Increased the visibility of the golden targets in the shooting range minigame
Optimizations
Several large back end improvements have been made. Here are the following improvements from these changes.
Lowered the average memory usage to around half of what it was before
Greatly reduced load times
Reduced game install size from around ~31 GB to ~22 GB
Future large scale patches, even ones that touch many aspects of the game, should be more manageable in download size
Fixes and Adjustments
Fixed an issue where you could switch tabs in the Status menu during a costume change if you clicked on the tab headers
Fixed an issue where you could not create a clear file on a True Survivor play through
Fixed an issue where the "coins inserted" was improperly adjusted when inserting tin coins in the Pit instead of just rusty coins
Fixed an issue where enemy defense was not properly adjusting player damage based on your current health
Fixed an issue where certain gamepad control schemes, such as steam deck and dual shock 4 controllers, would occasionally drop d-pad and/or face button inputs
Fixed an issue where the bonuses provided by Sadist and Tactician were not working properly. In addition to their current effects, both Sadist and Tactician now deal additional damage when breaking an enemy's flank
Fixed an issue where a drawer in the Manor was not openable
Fixed an issue where the high score from the shooting range was improperly saving even if it wasn't your highest score
Fixed an issue where certain items on NG+ would not spawn properly on randomizer playthroughs
Fixed an issue where not all Ogreworms in The Pit had their additional battle information shown when completing its bestiary entry
Fixed an issue where draining the bathtub water in the Manor, but not picking up the key, could result in the key not loading back properly if you left the area or saved/loaded
Fixed an issue where you were not able to attain a max weapon upgrade level of 20 if you received any of your engineering manuals from The Pit content before picking up the 5 weapon manuals in NG+
If this does happen, or has happened, The Pit vending machine will now give out engineering manuals after it gets emptied until you hit weapon upgrade level 20
Fixed an issue where progression items could spawn in an area that is not necessarily accessible during Despair randomizers
Fixed an issue where purchasing items from the Extras shop while in the main menu and then pressing Continue would not properly update the saved data with the purchased items until a game was loaded using Load Game
Fixed a bug where stamina was not being consumed when weapon swapping
Fixed an issue where the costume's shoe type would not properly play its intended footstep sfx on some surfaces
Fixed an issue where, with certain shoe types and surfaces, two footstep sfx would be played instead of one
Fixed an issue where the XP and Scrap tallies could become very slow when playing the game with low FPS
Fixed a bug where unlocking the mastery effect for a weapon would get applied even if you didn't have that weapon equipped
Fixed an issue where some controller schemes were missing glyphs, making some UI prompts default to the incorrect action
Removed an unintentional crafting recipe of Frost Grenade + Chemical resulting in a Flash Grenade
Fixed an enemy navigation issue in the Vacant Cabin on Despair difficulty
Fixed a rare potential soft lock during combat if you perform parries and brutal attacks in quick succession
Fixed an issue where the toggle to turn off barefoot sounds was not working on certain terrain surfaces
Fixed an issue where you could interact with two interactive objects too quickly which could result in putting the game in conflicting menu states
Fixed an issue where the text displayed for trying to Unstuck in combat was incorrect
Fixed an issue where manually skipping a cutscene in the Manor could result in text not being removed from the screen
Fixed an issue where killing a splittercrab egg right as it hatches may end combat before the hatched enemy activates, resulting in an enemy that will attack you out of combat
Reduced the volume of certain BGM, namely combat music, to be more inline with environmental music so the transitions between the two aren't as intense
Fixed a bug where the mastery trait on a weapon would not be removed if you disassembled the weapon prior to unequipping it
Fixed an additional potential combat soft lock that occurred when executing a brutal attack as a new enemy was spawning
Fixed a couple cliff pieces in Sea Spray Trail that had incorrect LODs
Fixed a bug where you could get a movement speed boost on stairs in combat if you had walk toggled on prior to entering combat
Fixed an issue where the damage from the acid puddles created by the player when using the Caustic weapon part were not properly being increased by attributes that enhance elemental damage
Fixed an issue where invisible collision was being left behind by dead enemies which would impede the navigation of other enemies
Fixed a bug where certain enemy attacks would bypass the player's damage buffer
Fixed some LOD issues on some objects in Wyatt Park (Day)
Fixed a bug where you would be sent to the wrong place when Retrying after dying on an encounter under specific conditions