Greetings, esteemed colaborators!
Since we've added the Leaderboard feature, we've been keeping ourselves busy by balancing gloating about our scores and developing more things for this experience. So we decided to clue you in on the "more things" part and make a new patch!
We really want to improve the experience of all living souls, so we have focused most of our efforts this time into just that. While there are some really cool additions that are paving some neat ways forward, we have worked extensively into providing more smooth runs all around. I'll tell you more about some of them, but as always, full list can be found in the changelog at the end of this post!
Ever got into a situation that there is more than one awesome corporate-provided boon that you want to take and not risk depending on RNG to not lose one while choosing the other? You know, a "Oh no, my steak is too juicy, lobster too buttery, company benefits too incredible" type of things. Well, corporate greed is a-ok and incentivized around here, so we will help you being as greedy as you can afford!
With Boon Pins, you can put an official pin on a Boon you want to save for later and still have it available after a Reroll or after another leveling up if you don't pick it up. As long as you have the Pins, you can be spoiled for choice like the greedy overachiever you are!
Someone told the Management team that "employees must always feel challenged", and they took it as a goal. Due to that, new and different challenges have been implemented, with more to come in the future to make everyone's experience more diversified. Be it by proving your reflexes and aversion to physical touch in the Bloodless Gauntlet or making big numbers go boom in any damage-related one, there is something for everyone!
This. This was the reason for the extra sleepless nights working on this update. While not fancy-looking, this is the most impactful change of v0.2.2. We listened to all of the living souls feedback and how longer runs, where there were a lot of enemies, projectiles, status effects and so on were happening everywhere all the time and how it impacted FPS. So our employees have been challenging themselves and going through our infrastructure and remaking it from scratch. Now, your hardcore runs should have a much smoother experience and not look like a powerpoint presentation.
As always, this was just a quick summary of some key points of this update. For the complete info, read the full changelog below. No go on and work on reaping those souls!
Improved the Current Boons screen and the Boon Info popup
Both are still works in progress, but they should already be easier to read and navigate
Added Boon Pins
Pin a Boon during a selection to guarantee it appears in your next level-up selection (feature unlocked through the new "Pinning Interests" Talent)
Added a new Artifact: Freebie Dispenser
Grants one free Reroll during each Boon Selection
Reworked enemy spawning
Enemy pressure should now respond more consistently to how quickly you're defeating them, with fewer sudden spikes or long gaps between spawns
Expanded Office Challenges
Added the Bloodless Gauntlet challenge to the Graveyard, where you must survive a special enemy wave without taking damage
Added new Office Challenges to Whitegrave Citadel, including the Runic Damage Audit challenge, which gives better rewards as you reach higher damage targets
Some challenges can now keep outside enemies away and/or prevent you from leaving until the challenge ends
Expanded the Damage Numbers setting
You can leave them unlimited, limit them to 50, 100 or 250 at once, or turn them off
Improved performance during crowded runs, especially when many enemies, projectiles, Status Effects, VFX and Souls are active
Added global and per-weapon/spell limits for active player projectiles to prevent runaway physics and update workloads during extreme late-game builds
Excess new projectiles are skipped only while these limits are full; projectiles already active are not removed early
Long-lived player projectiles are now returned to their pools after moving far outside the visible area
Reduced projectile collision-query frequency and allocations, improved projectile cleanup and pooling, and incrementally retire inactive enemy pools that can no longer be used by the stage
Enabled multithreaded Physics2D processing
The number of Soul pickups that can remain on the map has been reduced, but their EXP is combined so none of it is lost
Reduced the required amount of souls of each milestone of Business Growth's Phase One
From 5, 15, 30 and 50k to 5, 10, 20, 30k
Increased the enemy spawn rate during Stage 03's first three minutes
Reduced enemy spawn rates throughout Stage 02, especially during its later waves
Reduced the enemy spawn rate during the most intensive late-game waves in Endless Mode
These waves can still fill the screen, but should no longer cause the extreme spawn spikes seen in longer runs
Adjusted high-level EXP progression for each stage
Leveling begins slowing down around level 70 in the Village, level 100 in both the Mine and the Graveyard, and level 130 in the Citadel
These are not level caps. Strong runs and EXP bonuses can still take you much further, but very high levels now require considerably more EXP
Added time limits to the Graveyard's Collect Souls Office Challenge
Increased the required damage for the two highest-level Graveyard Deal Damage Office Challenges
Adjusted the Citadel's Hero health so it starts lower but scales more with the player's level
Significantly increased the HP for all Heroes
Slightly increased Dark Gravastar's maximum Area Size scaling cap
Delta Paradox Gem now preserves at least 10% of base projectile speed when increasing projectile size
Increased Product Penetration Testing talent costs from 2,500/5,000/10,000 to 3,000/8,000/15,000 souls
Fixed several localization issues, including some Boons displaying localization keys instead of their descriptions
Updated Office Challenges localization in English and Brazilian Portuguese
Fixed multiple issues that could prevent Steam Leaderboard scores from being submitted
Scores now remain queued while Steam is offline or temporarily unavailable
Valid runs with very high damage or kill rates should no longer be rejected
Open Leaderboard panels now refresh after a pending score is confirmed
Fixed a visual issue on Business Growth that happened when you had enough souls to unlock multiple milestones at once
Fixed Dark Gravastar being able to pull Heroes
Fixed incorrect rewards and reward descriptions in some of the Graveyard's Kill Enemies challenges
Fixed the player getting stuck at the edge of Challenge Perimeters
Fixed damage from some Weapons and Spells being counted twice in run statistics
Fixed some projectiles and dash afterimages ignoring the VFX Visibility setting or returning to full opacity during their animations
Fixed SFX volume sometimes remaining reduced after large numbers of projectiles disappeared