Crashlands 2 · build 18405483 · published
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OH HI THERE! It’s been a few weeks since the launch of Crashlands 2, and it has been a REAL WHIRLWIND! Tons of players have gotten their hands on the game, and they’ve left us LOTS of feedback. We've read nearly every comment and review, everywhere people are talking about the game, and found a bunch of fair critiques (and some super mean ones 😭... some of y'all need a stress ball or pile of kittens or something). After all of this time working on Crashlands 2 we'd be silly not to take some additional time to address those, and so we are!
In this post we'll talk about two things: the huge patch we just dropped (1.1), and what's coming next!
Before we get too deep in the weeds, here's the concise(ish) list of ALL of the things that are in this Patch. For full details, read the whole post!
Patch 1.1 was all about addressing the most common player requests that affect the whole game. As we start work on patch 1.2 and beyond, we’ll be focusing on the next major points of player feedback, which is a desire for more pets, more stuff in the Aquadunes, and more base building options.
We also acknowledge players wanting more bosses to fight as well as some kind of endgame or postgame stuff to do, and we intend to shore that up as well! We’ll revisit that stuff after we finish patch 1.2. We can only do one thing at a time, so you’ll have to be patient as we work our way through the list! Now... On to patch 1.1!
If you made it this far then we're going to assume you like words and reading them. So prepare to experience the Patch Notes of a lifetime!
In patch 1.1 you’ll find a new tab in your in-game menu for THE COMPENDIUM!
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Now, as you explore Woanope you’ll unlock new knowledge about the wild things you encounter, so you can use your Compendium as a handy reference for what things are called, what they look like, and what loot they drop. We also added a bunch of new stats that you can track, such as how many times you’ve died, how many plants you’ve farmed, and how many lives you’ve mercilessly ended!
Aside from all that, the Compendium also gives you a way to see how much of the game you’ve completed. Did you find all the Jems? Hatch and embiggen every pet? Discover all recipes? Find all special combat items? Now you'll be able to find out!
One of the core parts of the Crashlands 1 experience was crafting items and having random qualities and stats pop in. Whenever you crafted armor or weapons, you were never quite sure what you were going to get, and every now and then you’d get a surprise turbo powerful item.
Because of the huge number of changes in how items function in Crashlands 2, we didn’t think we could make random stats work in a balanced way. So up until now, all items in Crashlands 2 had specific, fixed stats on them.
But after hearing from so many players that they loved the random stats system, and that they were bummed out by no longer having it in Crashlands 2, we decided to revisit that decision and find a way to bring it back. So in patch 1.1, all crafted armor pieces will get random qualities and stats assigned to them. There’s even a small chance to craft a LEGENDARY armor piece with bonus stats!
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To accommodate this change, we’ve added a few other tweaks as well.
Thanks to everyone who spoke up about wanting this feature! When we hear that lots of people want something, it gives us a nice nudge to take a step back and try to find ways to make something happen, even if we hadn’t originally planned on doing it.
We’ve got a lot of players who are going ABSOLUTELY NUTS on the base-building side of things. But there were a few things standing in the way of maximum base-building enjoyment, so we set out to correct those.
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Lots of people wanted to move their base somewhere besides the starting location. But that pesky "Home" button on the map would only take them to the crash pod, so it was annoying finding their actual home on the map and teleporting to it. No more! Now you can set your Home to any teleporter on the map! To change your home location, simply interact with any teleporter and click the button to set your home. Have fun setting up shop in the Spark Flats and getting absolutely annihilated by Ampy Chargers every time you go home.
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We expanded the capabilities of the Zapper, so you can now blast more things out of the way to make room for your base. Like the debris from your ship, bones, and a few other odds-and-ends. This will let you clear out a lot more space so you can build the base OF YOUR DREAMS! We also made a few tweaks to the world map layout in a few areas to make it easier to build a contiguous base across some bodies of water.
Last, we updated Build Mode so your pet no longer gets in the way of whatever you’re trying to do. You can build RIGHT on top of your pet, and if you put it into an impossible situation, it’ll just teleport to you. No more worrying about awkwardly shuffling your pet around so you can pick up the docks from under its feet!
In the early game, riding the line between giving people enough interesting stuff to do while keeping new players from getting overwhelmed is a huge design challenge. Based on the feedback we've gotten so far, it looks like we leaned too hard on the "not getting overwhelmed" side of things. So lots of people found that the early game just felt too slow. WHOOPS.
This was particularly true for combat, since you didn't really have any choices about how to approach combat until you'd unlocked a bunch of stuff over the first few hours of gameplay. This prolonged lack of options made early-game combat more difficult, clunky, and gave the impression that combat just wasn't as interesting as the original. So we added a whole bunch of new items to plug that early-game hole!
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First, we added new Injector and Capacitor weapons throughout the crafting tiers all the way down to the very start of the game. You now unlock them at the same time as you unlock the Rayblade Shanker (the very first weapon), giving you multiple choices for your preferred playstyle INSTANTLY.
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We also added two new super-early craftable gadgets and a new craftable trinket for the Slinger and Chemist sets. We rolled them into existing Insights, so you’ll probably already have them in your existing save, and you’ll be able to build them very soon after starting a new game.
And last, we added a rare Firebrand gadget, the Hot Hive, that has a chance to drop from Explungus. What does it do, you ask? You’ll have to BEE patient and find out for yourself!
All of these new items are available before you even reach the Stoneworks, so the early-game now feels much more fun and alive, with lots of cool combat options opening up very quickly.
Crashlands 2 brought some big changes to pets -- how you get eggs, how you hatch them, how you embiggen them, and the passive bonuses they provide to the player. Each pet is unique and brings interesting ways to affect how you build out your character.
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We’ve gotten great responses from players about all these changes, but there’s one pet change that NOBODY LIKES: The way your pet fights. In Crashlands 2, pets have been more of a “support” system, where they don’t do a whole lot of fighting. Instead, they hang back, and deploy a big damage attack on a 20-second cooldown. When we were designing pets in Crashlands 2, we wanted them to be more of a “nuke” than a “chip away at stuff slowly” type of mechanic. However, this hasn’t panned out -- we miscalculated what players found fun about the combat aspect of pets. Players have given lots of feedback that they want it to feel like they’re fighting alongside their pet, and not just being occasionally supported by the pet.
To us, the only thing that matters is that our players are having a good time. Sometimes our design ideas just don’t translate into giving players the experience they want, and this was one of them.
So in patch 1.1, we’ve fully rebuilt how pets work. Now they fight alongside you in combat, dealing constant damage with one or more basic attacks that have no cooldowns. But we still wanted to have the fun “nuke” concept, so each pet now has a “Special Ability” on a 20-second cooldown, which it will use to deliver big damage. After playtesting with this new pet system, we can confirm that THIS IS INDEED MORE FUN! Thanks to everyone who spoke up about this feature!
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When some of our players learned that they had to press the Right Trigger to do stuff in Crashlands 2 when playing with a controller, many of them began vomiting profusely and then died of broken hearts. As it turns out, some players really really like using the A button instead. We violated that trust, and although we can never undo the horrific damage we caused by defaulting the game to Right Trigger, we hope we can at least prevent such tragedies in the future. So Patch 1.1 adds an alternate controller configuration that lets you use the A button instead.
For those with particularly adaptable brains, you can even use the A button in menus and RT for in-game stuff (or vice versa). We tried every combination ourselves and then had to take a mental health day to recover. We're still team RT-for-everything over here, but to each their own!
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Get Out There!
For players who felt that Chill Mode was most certainly NOT chill, we’ve added a new difficulty: EXPLORATION MODE! Exploration Mode is designed for players who are seeking to simply enjoy the story, build bases, and explore the world of Crashlands 2 without being stressed out by the imminent fear of death. In this game mode, we’ve slowed down the combat aspects of the game even further, and we gave the player so much health that you are effectively an immortal god who can never die.
You call THAT a Challenge?
On the flip side, we had a bunch of players who beat the game on Challenge Mode, and then said, “BUT CAN IT BE... EVEN HARDER?” The answer, of course, is YERP.
Patch 1.1 brings a new top-tier difficulty called LEGEND MODE. This mode makes enemies attack faster and move faster, it reduces your health even further than Challenge Mode, and it gives enemies a significant HP boost. This new mode is only recommended for players who have quick reflexes, a strong sense of how to utilize every aspect of your gadgets and trinkets in combat, and a good understanding of how to assemble equipment loadouts that do extremely high amounts of damage.
Legend Mode has no achievements associated with it, but beating Legend Mode will give you all the other achievements for beating the game on the lower difficulties. Because at that point you’ve earned it!
This patch also has a lot of other stuff, but we don't need to get into the weeds on those. It's all in the TL;DR above!