BALLRENA Playtest PT5: Affix Overhaul, Ghost Purchases & Combat Fixes (2026-08-28)

Hello testers!

PT5 is now live. This update focuses on three areas: recalibrating core and item affixes, rebuilding shop purchases and standby interactions, and correcting several combat systems that directly affect build strength.

■ Full Affix Overhaul

• All nine core-growth paths recalibrated: Wording, values, and runtime behavior were reviewed across every core. Cards now describe what their affixes actually do much more accurately.
• Item and device affixes updated: Weapons, armor, devices, accelerators, and units received the same consistency pass, reducing mismatches between card text and real combat behavior.
• Keyword coloring is live: BUFF, DEBUFF, and item-type keywords now use consistent colors in the Shop, tooltips, Compendium, and ESC screens, making long descriptions easier to scan.
• Core-affix displays unified: Core-page tooltips and the ESC build screen now read from the same data source, preventing the two views from drifting apart.

■ Shop Experience Rework

• Ghost purchasing: Buying no longer removes money immediately. You first pick up a ghost copy of the item, and payment completes only when it is placed on the 5×5 board or standby rack.
• Safer purchase handling: Items cannot be picked up when you cannot afford them. Clicking an invalid destination automatically returns the offer to its shelf without charging you.
• Standby fusion fully connected: Matching items can now fuse in both directions between the board and standby. Purchased items can also merge directly into matching standby items.
• Colored items can enter standby directly: Higher-tier items no longer have to touch the deployment board first.
• Independent loot row: Battle loot no longer occupies a normal shop offer. A locked shop returns exactly as it was across rounds instead of being overwritten by new loot.
• SALVAGE RESTOCK now deduplicates per unit: Repeated deaths from the same summoned unit count only once. An IRON CASKET and its wreckage are also treated as the same machine.

■ Balance & Combat Systems

• Poison Pool phase two: Pools no longer deal separate direct damage. They now apply the Poison damage-over-time effect to targets inside the area. Radius is now 1.0, with one active pool per source.
• OPPOSITE POLES adjusted: Instead of complete immunity, enemies with Magnetic now deal 50% less damage to your core. The affix remains a strong defense without completely shutting down affected enemies.
• Volatile corpse damage clarified: A corpse is no longer Magnetic after death, so volatile and corpse explosions still deal full damage.
• PULSE TRAIN fixed: The three tiers now extend core-skill duration to 2.5 / 3 / 3.5 seconds, fixing the first tier's near-zero impact.
• TETHER root timing fixed: Root duration now starts after the pull finishes. Enemies that enter or respawn during the root window are correctly captured as well.
• Dark INVERTER boss fixed: Its near-death inversion heal now triggers correctly.
• Dark AMPLIFIER boss fixed: Having a shield no longer prevents its core behavior from activating.

■ Settlement & Battle Reports

• Contract Gate cards reformatted: Cards now show complete mechanic sentences with language-specific fixed font sizes and spacing, preventing cards on the same screen from randomly appearing larger or smaller.
• Clearer threat-intel lines: Affix summaries now stay on a fixed 18pt single line instead of collapsing into tiny two-line text.
• Full numbers remain available: Exact values can still be found in the Shop's FIGHT tooltip.

■ Tester Tools

The developer console remains available in the public Playtest build:

■ Current Known Issue

• The vertical owned-item highlight strip is temporarily disabled while we redesign its presentation. Its detection logic remains in place.

Please keep sharing feedback about the shop, buildcrafting, and combat bugs in the discussion boards. Every report goes into our tuning and fix pipeline.

Have fun!

— vampireblackcat