Dear players,
The reason there was no update yesterday is that the dev team has been planning tuning changes based on recent feedback. Today, we are prioritizing a major performance optimization update and a major balance adjustment update.
Unlike many other games, the core of Pass the Fear's combat thrill comes from the fact that every bullet is calculated independently, and most of our triggers do not have hard limits. As players spend more time with the game, unlock higher difficulties, obtain stronger Relics, and reach the Secret Realm, more and more "absurd" builds have started to appear. We are very happy that players are experiencing the full range of our game design.
However, the problems have also become clear. Recently, we have seen more and more players reporting stuttering, freezes, crashes, and lost saves in our community, on forums, and in review sections. This has made us take the issue extremely seriously, and it has corrected one of our mistaken assumptions: that infinite stacking would always bring infinite satisfaction. In reality, we overlooked the performance pressure created by extreme builds.
For this, we sincerely apologize to all players for the design mistakes we made.
We will carry out multiple rounds of performance and balance optimizations while preserving the actual gameplay experience as much as possible.
This round of performance adjustments mainly focuses on reducing extremely high-frequency item triggers.
We have observed that in builds that generate items endlessly, players carrying Reversed Fool may experience crashes when changing maps. The likely reason is that Reversed Fool multiplying with The Devil creates extremely frequent Embarkation triggers, causing heavy calculation pressure. Therefore, The Devil/Reversed Devil will now trigger at most 100 times per stage, and Reversed Fool will now trigger at most 10 times per stage.
In infinite Ultimate builds, players can easily generate a huge number of trigger events, completely filling the trigger queue and causing stuttering or even freezes. To preserve the gameplay feel while making the experience smoother, we have made the following changes:
1.Optimized the visual effects for gaining Ember and Growth.
2.All characters' Ultimates now have a 1-second cast cooldown. This is to prevent a large number of events from being added to the event queue in an extremely short time.
3.Book of Pilgrimage changed to:
On Ultimate: Unleashes Blood Curse on the nearest enemy, dealing 600% Physical Damage.
After Blood Curse deals damage, triggers all of your Embarkation effects. (Unique Passive)
Forged Book of Pilgrimage changed to:
On Ultimate: Unleashes Blood Curse on the nearest enemy, dealing 600% Physical Damage.
After Blood Curse deals damage, triggers all of your Embarkation effects. (Unique Passive)
Blood Curse triggers an additional time. (Unique Passive)
4.Eye of Deep Winter changed to:
On Ultimate: Launches 1 Giant Glacier at the nearest enemy, dealing 600% Frost Damage.
After Giant Glacier deals damage, triggers all of your [Destination] effects. (Unique Passive)
Forged Eye of Deep Winter changed to:
On Ultimate: Launches a Giant Glacier at the nearest enemy, dealing 600% Frost Damage.
After Giant Glacier deals damage, triggers all of your [Destination] effects. (Unique Passive)
Giant Glacier fires an additional time. (Unique Passive)
5.The Hidden effect of World Stone has been adjusted to:
When you have [Tarot Card · The World], [World Stone] triggers 1 additional time.
6.Five-Color Crystal, Forged Five-Color Crystal, Five-Color Supreme Ring, and Forged Five-Color Supreme Ring:
Their Transmutation Damage has been increased, and their effects have been changed to Unique Passive, because having multiple Five-Color Supreme Rings could cause them to repeatedly trigger each other, resulting in infinite recursion.
At the same time, we found that Physical builds currently lack their own damage multiplier category, so we are strengthening the following Physical Relics:
1.War Horn changed from:
Embarkation: After entering combat, Fire Rate and Reload Speed +45% for 20 seconds.
To:
Embarkation: Permanent 5% increase to maximum bullet attack damage.
Forged War Horn changed from:
Embarkation: After entering combat, Fire Rate and Reload Speed +100% for 20 seconds.
To:
Embarkation: Permanent 12% increase to maximum bullet attack damage.
2.Executioner's Axe changed from:
Embarkation: Physical Damage permanently +3%.
To:
Embarkation: Physical Damage permanently +6%.
Forged Executioner's Axe changed from:
Embarkation: Physical Damage permanently +8%.
To:
Embarkation: Physical Damage permanently +15%.
3.Ripper's Blade changed from:
On triggering [Hemorrhage]: Reduces all Resistances of the target by 2%, stacks infinitely.
To:
On triggering [Hemorrhage]: Increases your physical damage by 5%, stacks infinitely until the end of combat.
Forged Ripper's Blade changed from:
On triggering [Hemorrhage]: Reduces all Resistances of the target by 2%, stacks infinitely.
To:
On triggering [Hemorrhage]: Increase your Physical Damage by 12%, stacks infinitely until the end of combat.
Finally, thank you all for your support and patience. We truly appreciate it.