Update 2 is LIVE! See the full patch notes / changelist here.

Hello Reclaimers,

Welcome to Update 2 of Rogue Core early access! We’ve implemented some core (ha) difficulty changes in this one along with a bunch of tweaks and fixes and of course some new content. Much to get through, so we plopped it all in a big list down below.

As always, we look forward to hearing your feedback. <3 Rock and Stone!

With love,
- The Ghost Ship crew

--- PATCH NOTES ---

THREAT LEVELS

You can now tailor the base difficulty of the game to your liking using the new ‘Threat Level’ difficulty scale. There are five Threat Levels, and they affect the number of enemies, the frequency of swarms, enemy health and movement, enemy aggression (attack frequency and projectile speed) and overall damage.
This should give you more control over your gameplay experience, letting you play most of the game’s content at a difficulty of your preference. It also means that Depth is now purely geared as a content progression tree, rather than affecting difficulty.

UNGATED SERVERLIST

Most of the restrictions from the Server Browser have been removed to make it easier to find a lobby. You can now join missions that may be at Depths or in biomes that you haven’t yet unlocked. You still need to unlock a Depth to be able to host missions there, however.

WAVE STACKING

We have also officially added the possibility for the stage’s waves to stack on Threat Levels 4 and 5. This is something that was happening unintentionally for quite a long time due to a bug, but it is now implemented as a feature for higher difficulties.

NO BOSS INVULNERABILITY

We're getting rid of the bosses’ invulnerability phases triggered by taking loads of damage in a short time. Instead, bosses will either do a very short block, or attempt to block in a way that can still be managed via careful aim, AoE damage or repositioning. Hopefully this makes it feel like more of a fair fight.

NEW UPGRADES

The pool of Expenite Upgrades has been further expanded with a focus on elemental damage types. Seven new Expenite Upgrades and one new Artifact are coming in Update 2:

1. Spark-Booster: When enemies in medium range are electrocuted, you get 45% movement speed for +3 seconds.
2. Grid-Shock: Damaging electrified targets spreads +50% as electric damage to other enemies connected via electrical arcs.
3. Weathering Blast: When active Stone Skin expires, deal 50 Ice damage in short range. +25 additional damage per 5 Stone Skin lost.
4. Icy Shrapnel: Hitting frozen targets launches ice fractures in the opposite direction, dealing +25% Ice damage in a Short Range cone.
5. Icicle Strike: Power Attacks spawn icicles lasting for +5s.
6. Concussive Shot: Weakpoint hits have 25% chance to stun targets for +2 seconds. Stun is guaranteed when destroying breakable weakpoints and doubles duration.
7. Frostbane: For every active Stone Skin you get +5% Ice bonus on all melee damage.
8. Nuclear Optics: Enemies in your flashlight beam take 30 Radiation damage per second.

NEW ARTIFACT EVENT

A new event has been added to the pool of possible stage spawns, but this one gets you an Artifact instead of Expenite. You’ll need to reactivate a classified experiment and see if you can’t finish what R&D started before they were forced to abandon the project. Hope you brought your thinking caps.

NEW ALTERATIONS

We’re adding four new Alterations to give more gameplay variety to your missions.

1. High Stakes: Increased Luck in equipment & upgrade RNG, but reduced Expenite gains from all sources.
2. Siege Engines: All enemies (except bosses) move at half speed and have twice as much health.
3. Headhunter: Expenite does not spawn in the caves, but all enemies drop Expenite on death.
4. Death Mitosis: All Core Spawn split into two smaller ‘baby zombies’ when killed. All enemies (except bosses) have less health.

NEW OLD WEAPON: LOK-1 SMART RIFLE

The Engineer’s Smart Rifle from DRG is now part of the standard weapon pool. It’s taken some work to get this weapon’s unique auto-lock firing mechanism to work with Rogue Core’s upgrades and damage systems, but now it’s tested and combat-ready.

NEW ENEMY: VOIDKIN DOMINATOR

A long-range threat is coming to the mines: the Voidkin Dominator. It’s a tankier, harder-hitting version of its smaller cousin, the Drifter. The Dominator targets foes with hard-hitting projectiles that leave volatile Rift energy lingering in the area of impact. On death, the Dominator releases its internal energy reserves, resulting in an intense explosion.

NEW ENTRANCE FACILITIES + CAVE GENERATION

Rogue Core's cave generation system has been expanded with 4 new facility entrance rooms and 15 new cavern formations. We’ve also reworked the cave generator’s process for connecting individual caverns.

NEW MOLAKTULA BIOME

The Molaktula Gatekeeper boss now has a new home with some explosive gravity defying elements. Now each of the 3 Gatekeepers have their own corresponding biome on their respective depth. As we add more Gatekeepers in the future, they too will get a biome to call their own.

ALPHA CLEARANCE GRANTED

All Reclaimers have been automatically granted Security Clearance Level Alpha within the Intel system. This means that brand new players will no longer be locked out of starting Expenite Events or opening the Grenade Locker during their first missions.

COMBAT AND BALANCE

- Fusion Rod now works with ammo pool upgrades and clip size upgrades
- Removed the ‘double mag’ attribute from the Devastator
- Increase Heavy Landing minimum radius from 1m to 2m
- Impact Axes are back in the Grenade Locker
- Removed the Burst Fire upgrade from the Hammercaster
- Temporarily removed the ‘Return to Sender’ upgrade from the Breach Cutter until it is fixed
- Removed the Salvo Module upgrade from the Hurricane
- Killing blows with the pickaxe no longer slow the player down
- Sped up the spawning of enemies in waves when enemies are cleared fast, allowing the whole wave to be completed faster
- Rifts now spawn and follow the player for each wave, so enemies try to spawn close to the player. NowhereToRun.mp3
- Slightly extended minimum time between waves
- Shotguns no longer trigger Lucky Shot multiple times
- Change ‘Duck and Weave’ to provide its block chance when jumping or sprinting
- Added more Red Sugar to the Gatekeeper’s cave
- Added 1 second more grace time for players to revive before the run fails

VOICELINES / LASER POINTER

We did a big pass of writing and recording hundreds of more voicelines, with the main goal of making the laser pointer much more useful in directing teammates’ attention toward relevant objectives.

- Added laser pointer voicelines for pinging basically all mission/gameplay-relevant objects
- Added laser pointer voicelines for pinging more passive items and scenery in the caves
- Added more OMEGA lines for rude Reclaimers throwing mugs at his bartender eye

MISCELLANEOUS

- Made it so the narrative cutscene no longer plays every time you load into the game, only the first time. You can replay it from the Reclaimer’s Handbook if desired.
- Updated sounds for many of the enemies, with a focus on audio clarity and supporting positional awareness.
- Increased Barrier Drone flight speed just enough so that players never have to wait for them to arrive
- Fixed equipment, grenades and abilities sometimes not loading on the second level of a run
- Changed time to unlock Munitions Crates from 2 sec to 0.6 seconds
- Increased the speed of both large and small lifts and repositioned their call buttons to be more accessible and visible
- Prevent players from falling out of the world and sometimes not teleporting back, and fixed that players die when they are teleported back.
- Fixed gas clouds being able to take damage
- Fixed the server list’s “team members” tooltip not working
- Fixed a bug where the server list couldn’t be seen
- Added a few tweaks and improvements to the server list and server list sorting
- Added a button in the middle of the server list to show all servers when the server list is empty. This button removes filters and helps new players know that all filters can be removed
- Moved Enhancement buying into Enhancement buttons, instead of a separate button
- Added Bio-Booster decks to saved loadouts
- Updated stagger animation on the Rammer (get staggered idiot)
- There is no longer an actual limit on how many Expenite Upgrades you can get. Instead, once you pass a “max limit,” the cost just goes up by 100 for each one after that
- Improved the timer widget to more clearly show the current and next wave when it switches
- Fixed double and triple waves spawning randomly
- Fixed that sometimes all stages in a run had the exact same wave timings
- Prevented OMEGA talking about a wave ending when there are still a lot of enemies remaining from that wave.
- Added sound to swapping Bio-Booster decks
- Added sound to unlocking Enhancement Slots
- Added missing sounds to the Broken Mule
- Fixed footsteps playing twice
- Fixed Reaperworm attack being really loud
- Disabled OMEGA shouts when producing Expenite in the Solidification Chamber event because of the constant yapping in that event.
- Fixed Shield Generator applying Workbench upgrades twice
- Fixed Shield Generator upgrades overwriting each other
- Fixed the Crit Dart only applying crit for host but not for clients
- Attempted fix for Ellis desyncing and becoming unresponsive to clients
- Changed the Depth 4 tooltip to "coming in Update 3"
- Made enemies that fall or jump better at landing on cave constructions
- The stars on Ascension reward pickaxe heads now match the owning character's Ascensions instead of local player's
- Fixed dwarves being able to be downed from fall damage in the Ramrod after Ascension ceremonies
- Fixed Ascension Hall collision issues
- It's no longer possible for clients to enter a mission in their Med Bay suits
- Multiple performance optimisations including changes to shadows, particles, bounds, and lights
- Changed the asteroid field around Hoxxes in the skybox to a Niagara system instead of like 500 meshes
- Added some changes and improvements to the electric effect
- Removed anti-grav first-person overlay
- Optimized projectiles for Wayward Spark, Hammer Caster, Scorchers, and Magic Missile
- Updated Guardian’s ability and skill VFX
- Removed shadows from smoke particles for better performance
- Optimized HUD rendering a bit
- Improved visuals of simultaneous Radiation Boils
- Added a phase change animation for the Molaktula boss
- Updated animations for Ramok and Molaktula
- Fixed the red trail VFX from Molaktula to each Core Stone not disappearing for clients when the Core Stone is shattered
- Fixed Molaktula not being able to teleport
- Potential fix for Mr. Molaktula getting stuck in Invincible Mode
- Fixed a memory leak when pausing a solo run
- Fixed Expenite deposits not being visible on the map after scanning a downed Surveyor Drone
- Attempted fix for runs not ending after all team members are down
- Attempted fix for players losing upgrades and weapons when disconnecting and reconnecting
- Attempted fix for players being stuck in elevator after disconnecting and reconnecting between levels
- Attempted (again) to fix Ellis getting stuck / desynced if player disconnects while depositing
- Fixed Reclaimers that were revived in the elevator still ending up in the Cocoon Jail on next level
- Attempted fix for the game failing to pause during Expenite upgrades in multiplayer
- Fixed Vanguards being locked in place by DoT effects.
- Fixed Vanguards screaming during their defense animation
- Fixed other Vanguard-related issues (mostly emotional)
- Fixed the Research Subject not being able to be stunned
- Fixed elements not being removed in some cases when they reach 0 element value
- Fixed Electric Tethers tethering twice between enemies, causing them to stack and deal double damage.
- Fixed Electric Tether not being visible on clients
- Fixed Axe Out triggering from sentry fire shots
- Added safety fixes to Cryo Drain to prevent it being active when it shouldn’t be
- Fixed most on-kill effects counting one kill as multiple when using shotguns or very high RoF weapons
- Fixed Elementalist effect being visible on the Zipline Launcher, Platform Gun and Flare Gun
- Fixed Reclaimers not being able to Rock and Stone while holding L.U.R.E., IFG, Proximity Mine, Springloaded Ripper, S.S.G., Impact Axe, Voltaic Stun Sweeper
- Fixed Block Chance being called Dodge Chance in the stats widget
- Fixed fire effect not dissipating
- Fixed Platform Gun’s Enemy Repellent Texture attribute not working
- Clients can no longer get infinite amount of Workbench upgrades by disconnecting and rejoining (nice try)
- Fixed light cones having collision
- Fixed the punching bag’s damage numbers so they now appear where the bag is
- Fixed crash when switching camera modes while using the hacking tool
- Disabled cloth simulation on OMEGA’s bartender rag since it causes an extremely rare crash somehow lol
- Fixed Trident projectiles sometimes floating in the air for clients
- Fixed Minigun spread increasing with spread reduction enhancements
- Fixed the Hammercaster ammo counter initializing with a negative number
- Fixed issues relating to actions (such as LOK-1 burst) being canceled when you land into a sprint
- Fixed stuck class-ability modifier and grenade re-throw on fire input
- Fixed cave generation logic issue, with tunnel constructions not carving all the way through in a lot of cases
- Improved (reduced) angle of tunnel spawns after some facility entrances
- Fixed Creeper vines doing too much damage to Reclaimers
- Fixed asteroid field in loading screens
- Fixed crash related to drills? idk man the game designers wrote this one. I’m just the proofreader
- Incendiary grenade is now much more consistent with its visuals in terms of where the fire collision is and its duration
- Fixed Slicer’s sword not being able to hit some objects
- Fixed enemy projectiles not always getting blocked by CADNA or Slicer's shield
- Potential fix for missions not loading in
- Fixed autosprint breaking if a weapon is fired using the input buffer
- Fixed autosprint sometimes not working
- Fixed sprinting canceling pickaxing when landing
- Fixed some networking issues
- Fixed ‘Tough Creepers’ Risk Vector only adding 50% HP to creepers instead of the 100% that it should
- Fixed upgrade icons not stacking together as they should in the HUD
- Fixed the ‘Caching’ Artifact not storing overkill damage properly if you do friendly fire at the same time as killing an enemy (basically, this Artifact should do what it says on the tin now)
- Fixed the Critical Dodge legendary upgrade not working
- Fixed 8-FF Booster upgrade stacking radius instead of armor amount
- Fixed the Critical Shot upgrade not stacking
- Fixed Running Blades’ bonus speed not stacking
- Allow clicking through notifications (don't block mouse clicks)
- Fixed scaling of the Risk Vector pick widget headers (clipping)
- Fixed being able to start depositing minerals and ending up in a weird state if the item you were carrying is not a resource that can be deposited
- Fixed resource filter not affecting the progress bar when depositing
- Fixed some community-reported translation issues
- Added 1 billion typos
- Fixed some issues with dwarves’ dance moves
- Fixed Elevator Cables taking a weird direct shortcut
- Fixed wrong overkill damage shown in the mission end screen
- Fixed pickaxe power attack slowing you down
- Prevented crash if pickaxing certain objects
- Made it so boss altar balls no longer rotate you when you stand on them (no jokes allowed here please)
- Removed burn damage effect from Gatekeeper altars