Build 26611771

Patch 1.0 — New Agent ECHO, a New Boss, Atlas, and Caravan Hunters

Hi everyone, BORROW or ROB dev here.

We're calling this update 1.0. ECHO, the last agent, joins the fight, so all five agents are finally here. There's also a new boss, a new battlefield event, and hunters sent by the caravans you rob. This update gathers everything since launch.

At a glance

• New agent: ECHO — a purple agent who etches cards into slots and plays them again by stepping back on. 66 cards, 17 Legacies, plus circuits of their own.
• New boss: Atlas the Unbowed · New battlefield event: Ark Strider
• 5 Caravan Hunters — ROB a caravan and that faction's hunter comes to ambush you.
• Caravan contracts, reworked — 20+ new contracts, Service Token rewards, and Special Operations that span several regions.
• One-way mods and the Sealed Workbench — 6 mods that push one Signature Legacy to the extreme.
• 5 new VEX Trap cards + 2 Legacies · 5 new SYN Program Legacies
• Boss fights, upgraded — intro and defeat films, cut-ins before their big attacks, and bodies that break down in stages. Behemoth is now one body spanning three slots.
• Field repair before boss fights on Present difficulty
• New first-region tutorial, more accurate damage forecasts, new Temporal Pincer presentation, a new Korean font, plus balance changes and bug fixes

New agent: ECHO

• ECHO plays the board like an instrument: etch cards into slots, step back onto them to play them again, and link a melody through the order you play your cards. ECHO floats instead of walking and fires energy waves from an open palm.
• Unlock — finish a run with each of KAI, VEX, WARD and SYN. The demo uses the same rule.
• Etching — etch a card's effect into the slot you stand on. Enter that slot again and the effect fires again. Slots etched in the Forward Battle last until the same turn of the Rewind Battle.
• Palindrome — the number of slots you left and stepped on again this turn. Move 1 → 2 → 3 → 2 → 1 and that's Palindrome 2. Palindrome cards grow stronger the higher it goes.
• Interval — etchings a set distance away ring out together. Glissando — triggers when you chain cards whose cost climbs or falls by 1; when the Forward Agent replays that turn backward, the run plays backward too. Dissonance — etched on an enemy slot, it sounds on any enemy that enters or passes through.
• 66 purple cards and 17 Legacies, including the Signature Legacy Step Sequencer and epic cards such as Curtain Call, Cadenza, Coda, Symphony and Master Tape.
• Palindrome Temporal Pincer Weapons Dal Segno al Fine and Scale — retrace the slots you walked, in reverse, then strike.
• ECHO circuits on the Pincer Circuit: the Violet Circuit Loop Station, and the weapon trait circuits Multitrack, Retrograde and Portamento
• ECHO's Long Beat, Rewound Score and Flipped Strike join the Parallel Assist pool. There's an ECHO one-way mod, Silent Take, and events now have choices only ECHO can take.

New boss: Atlas the Unbowed

• A whole mountain range that is one machine. Its fists come down from a body that covers the top of the screen and seize slots; you can't pass a slot a fist has landed on.
• Its core opens only when Atlas bows. Hit it then for 150% damage.
• Its heavy blows knock agents back or drag them in. After the Forward Battle it sinks into the ground, then rises again in the Rewind Battle.

New battlefield event: Ark Strider

• A giant walking machine appears on the transit route and steals your Core power. Break its legs to bring the body down.
• Defeat it and your Core power refills completely.

Caravan Hunters

• Rob a caravan and its faction turns hostile and hunts your agents, raising the ambush risk on the map. Each of the five factions now sends its own hunter.
• Scrap Baler (Scrap Union) — rusts cards in your hand so you can't play them, and dumps Rusted Scrap on you that costs you while you hold it.
• Reclaimer (Forgewrights' Guild) — presses in with a Block-piercing hammer and reclaims the guild's goods.
• Counterfeiter (Smugglers' Cartel) — sprays buckshot and slips worthless Forged Goods into your deck.
• Hourkeeper (Order of the Hours) — blocks your agents from healing.
• Clamp Engineer (Pantheon Defectors) — a hunter armed with tech smuggled out of Pantheon.
• Hunters surrender and flee just before they fall. Make one surrender and you get that faction's unique reward once.

Caravan contracts, reworked

• Contracts now come as regular contracts, Faction Contracts and Special Operations, with many new kinds: Sealed Crate, Stopped Clock, Pincer Trial, Pilgrimage, Defector Escort, Pantheon Teardown and more.
• Special Operations carry on across several regions. See one through, such as Coordinate Trace I–III or Information Broker, for a big payoff.
• New reward: the Service Token — use one caravan service for free (card removal, card duplication, Undo Wounds, a Contraband item or a Battle Pass).
• Accepted contracts get each faction's own stamp, and a "Contract complete" alert pops the moment you fulfill one. The map tells you when a Special Operation opens.

One-way mods and the Sealed Workbench

• From the third region on, a Sealed Workbench can appear on the map. Its forbidden blueprint grafts a one-way mod onto one agent's Signature Legacy. Once per world.
• Each one-way mod brings a strong boon and a cost just as big. Take one when you're pushing a build in one direction.
• Thorn Citadel — yellow attacks and basic attacks in your deck become Spike Ward, and your Thorns grow each time they reflect.
• Glass Bastion — gain Aegis Field, but your Max HP is fixed.
• Unchained Servos — moving costs no BA, but each slot you move deals Delayed Damage to you.
• Two-Way Rust — Corrosion DoT triggers multiple times, but Corrosion you apply hits you too.
• Full Automation — Programs trigger multiple times, but non-Program cards cost more.
• Silent Take (ECHO) — etchings replay at 100% with 1 extra use, but ECHO's Etching cards only etch when played, with no effect on the spot.
• Legacies with a one-way mod show a ◈ mark in Agent Management.

VEX — 5 Trap cards and 2 Legacies

• Rewind Mine — if it triggers in the Forward Battle, it triggers again on that turn of the Rewind Battle.
• Remote Mine — place it anywhere in the enemy front row; the farther away, the harder it hits.
• Repulsor Mine — knocks the enemy back, with collision damage if it's blocked.
• Claymore — hits its slot and both neighboring slots.
• Hunting Ground — each time your Trap triggers, gain Scrap and draw more next turn.
• Legacies: Hair Trigger (your first Trap each turn activates immediately) · Marker Dye (Traps apply Vulnerable)

SYN — 5 Program Legacies

• Hotfix — play the card of a Program that's already uploaded to gain Memory.
• Packet Sniffer — when an uploaded Program damages an enemy at Enemy Turn Start, apply Hacked to it.
• Interrupt Handler — land a Program pincer with GOOD or better and that Program triggers once more right away.
• Backdoor — the Program card you earn from Hacked skips your hand and uploads right away, taking only 1 Memory.
• Server Rack — expand your max Memory to 30.

Boss fights, upgraded

• Every boss now has an intro film, a defeat film and a cut-in before its decisive attacks — and the real hit after the cut-in lands just as hard. Bosses break down in stages as their HP drops, and tension builds in dangerous moments.
• Covers: Kenji the Merciful · Behemoth · Overseer · The Bloodhunter · The Flagellant · Eye of Pantheon · Mammon · Grey Goo · Pantheon Nucleus · Mirror Agents · Pantheon Avatar · Atlas the Unbowed · Halcyon in the first operation
• Behemoth is now one body spanning three slots: melee reaches it from any of the three, and area attacks hit it only once.
• Kenji the Merciful has been redrawn. His finisher is now a double slash; the damage lands on the second cut.
• Halcyon in the first operation now materializes onto the field and locks on with a machine voice.
• Bosses now make an entrance onto the field when the Rewind Battle begins. The Pantheon Avatar is bigger and far more imposing.

Present difficulty — field repair before bosses

• On Present difficulty, both agents recover 30% of their Max HP right before a regional boss and the final battle against Pantheon (downed agents excluded).

Tutorial and first region

• The first region of your first run is now a series of lessons. From the barrier drone fight through the spider, the scout and Grey Goo, each battle teaches one thing, and your first return walks you through Agent Management and the B.O.R.R.O.W. machine.
• The first-operation Halcyon fight no longer swaps your hand; the Rewind Battle uses normal draws too.
• ADA's subtitles have a new design: short radio-style lines appear right beside what's waiting on you.
• The timeline guide shown as you enter the Rewind Battle is now an ADA briefing: Forward and Rewind on one continuous path, with a marker showing where you are.

Combat and balance

• Sharper damage forecasts — multi-hits, area attacks, push and pull, Traps, pincer judgments and Entropy Backflow are now all forecast as the damage that will actually land. Cards whose forecast and real damage disagreed have been fixed.
• Temporal Pincer — the Forward Agent's replay now starts the moment you play the card, so both hits land at exactly the same instant. The pincer cut-in is now a short prelude, and the two agents meet on the battlefield itself to strike together.
• Counter Strike — if Block remains after you're attacked, you counter. If Block hits exactly 0, you counter for 25 damage and Stun for 1 turn.
• Predestined Death — bosses take 20 damage instead of being executed. Triggers only once per enemy.
• Circuit Breaker — against several enemies, it now stops only the targeted enemy's next action.
• Counterflow Unit — no longer grants AP; the damage bonus stays.
• Legacy rewards — a Legacy you already own can show up only once more per world, and never again once it's Lv2 or higher. Legacy conversion cost now scales with run progress and card rarity.
• B.O.R.R.O.W. skill tree — nodes have been rearranged (effects and costs unchanged). Recommended placement has been removed.
• Grey Goo — splits on the first Rewind Battle turn unless it's Stunned.
• Summons that lose their summoner now warn you before they collapse.
• Smoke Screen — missed shots land beside the body, and the Forward Agent is protected by smoke too.
• Infiltrator and Blackhole Warden can now appear from the first region. Brood Engine appears only in city interiors.
• The worldline window now opens only when you click the worldline slot.

Visuals, sound and UI

• New main menu background: KAI looking out at Pantheon.
• New Korean font (Pretendard). Long tooltips and card text are easier to read, with clearer paragraphs and numbers.
• Right-click a card to see the other cards its text mentions, shown alongside it.
• Judgment feedback now appears at the actual moment of judgment, with display latency compensated. The BORROW marker now shows on the slot where the judgment happens.
• Parallel Assists and Parallel Pincers, the Pincer Circuit, and card and Legacy rarity now each scale their effects. Death Fist's final blow is now a super-move finish, and Fist of Heavens calls down a lightning pillar with its own thunder.
• Agents now sprint when they move several slots.
• Every card the Forward Agent replays in reverse has been checked, and missing effects and sounds have been filled in.
• Status rows are tidied: buffs in teal, debuffs in red. Legacies have new rarity marks.
• New effects for basic shots and their sound, agent teleports, Corrosion and pools, meteors, the Core rewind charge-up, and light in underground arenas.
• Music now plays in the Command Center's sub-screens and on the Frequency Map.
• If your Rewind Agent falls while the Forward Agent still stands, a new defeat scene shows the rewind breaking.
• Translations for 8 languages have been reviewed again.

Bug fixes

• Moving several slots no longer skips Core power on the slots you pass through.
• Paired enemies — defeat, sound, effects and judgments now follow the body that actually acted.
• The Flagellant — a Bind landing on a pillar no longer makes its self-harm hit both agents.
• Scouts and Enforcers no longer walk in place as they arrive.
• The damage breakdown now includes the extra hit from the Multi Hit Circuit.
• Overseer — the aiming line of a laser sight destroyed in the Forward Battle no longer lingers.
• Status effects no longer keep burning where a downed agent fell.
• Fixed cut-off text on worldline cards and overflowing text on several screens.
• Fixed formatting codes showing as text in card tags in some languages.
• Fixed a one-frame flicker when enemies are redrawn.
• Fixed a crash when closing the game.

Coming soon

• Two harder difficulties for experienced players

Please share feedback and bug reports on the Steam discussion board. We read all of them.