Early Access Artifacts Content Update

**This is the fourth major content update for Risk of Rain 2 on PC.** With this update we are focusing on long-term content, replayability, and flexibility in the way you play.

This Content Update will be coming to consoles in the near future - for details on how our Content Updates get ported to console versions, check out our previous Development Thoughts here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/632360/announcements/detail/1588003708938246571

Changes with the ‘🌧’ icon in front of them are changes or additions suggested by the community. As always, if you want to stay up to date on the game feel free to join the discord at https://discord.gg/riskofrain2

## Major Content

* **Added System: Artifacts**
	+ The hunt is on! Be the first to explore the planet and find the secret to unlock 16 powerful and mysterious Artifacts that will dramatically change the way you play. We expect Artifacts to be the biggest feature to date in terms of replayability to all players.

* **Added 16 Artifacts**
	+ New Artifact: Artifact of Honor
	+ New Artifact: Artifact of Enigma
	+ New Artifact: Artifact of Spite
	+ New Artifact: Artifact of Soul
	+ New Artifact: Artifact of Death
	+ New Artifact: Artifact of Vengeance
	+ New Artifact: Artifact of Metamorphosis
	+ New Artifact: Artifact of Dissonance
	+ New Artifact: Artifact of Chaos
	+ New Artifact: Artifact of Frailty
	+ New Artifact: Artifact of Kin
	+ New Artifact: Artifact of Sacrifice
	+ New Artifact: Artifact of Evolution
	+ New Artifact: Artifact of Glass
	+ New Artifact: Artifact of Command
	+ New Artifact: Artifact of Swarms

* **Added System: UI Overhaul**
	+ This is something we have been looking forward to doing since the launch of Early Access. We primarily wanted to improve the visuals of the UI and finally get rid of the on-screen cursor for gamepad users. There are about a million changes with this change. Did anyone ask for this? No. Did it take a bunch of time? Yes. Was it worth it? No. Am I writing the patch notes? Yes. Is it at the top so you have to read it? Yes.

* **Updated System: Unity 2018.4.16f1**
	+ Update project to Unity 2018.4.16f1. This will help with a bunch of things, but the major reason for upgrading was to fix late game crashes. It may also be our imagination, but we’ve also noticed general performance improvements.

* **Added New Stage**
	+ New Stage:

* **Added 2 New Music Tracks**
	+ New Stage Track: The Rain Previously Known as Purple
	+ New Boss Track: Antarctic Oscillation

* **Added New Hidden Realm**
	+ New Hidden Realm:

* **Added 5 Skill Variants**
* **Added New Skin**
	+ New Skin:   Engineer Skin

* **Added 2 New Monsters**
* **Added New Boss**
	+ New Boss:

* **Added 6 Items and 2 Equipment to the game**
* **Added New Chest**
	+ New Chest: Equipment Triple Shop

* **Added 5 Character Challenges to the game**
	+ New Engineer Challenge:   Engineer Mastery
* **Added 3 Challenges to the game**
* **Added 3 New Environment Logs**
* **Added 8 Lore Entries to the game**
	+ New Item Lore Entry: Repulsion Armor Plate
	+ New Item Lore Entry: Squid Polyp
	+ New Item Lore Entry: Death Mark
	+ New Item Lore Entry: Interstellar Desk Plant
	+ New Item Lore Entry: Sawmerang
	+ New Item Lore Entry: Recycler
	+ New Item Lore Entry: Focused Convergence
	+ New Item Lore Entry: Ghor’s Tome

## Gameplay Changes

* **General**
	+ Initial Monster Spawns
		- 🌧 Allow initial monster spawns on the first stage
		- Update spawn logic so initial monsters spawns aren’t nearby players
		- Update spawn logic to allow elite monsters
	+ 🌧 Update how AOE falloff is calculated to be more accurate
		- *Developer Notes: This affects AOE attacks that did less damage at the edges, like Commando’s Grenade and MUL-T’s Scrap Launcher. They should now do full damage with a direct impact - however, this also affects enemies as well!*
	+ Characters with damage interrupt thresholds like  and  now use total damage received instead of incoming damage with a crit modifier when determining whether or not they should be interrupted when hit. This makes these interrupts more likely when using items that modify damage like  and .

* **Survivors**
	+ - Add 1 New Skill Variant
		- Improve Huntress tracker visuals to be a bit more clear
		- /
			* 🌧 Cooldown: 17s ⇒ 12s
		- * Fire Rate: 0.6s ⇒ 0.5s
			* Travel Speed: 60m/s ⇒ 120m/s
			* Improve VFX
	+ - Add 1 New Skill Variant
		- * 🌧 Damage: 200% ⇒ 300%
	+ - * Cooldown: 2.0s ⇒ 5.0s
			* Proc Coefficient: 0 ⇒ 0.5
			* *Developer Notes: Cooldowns aren’t displayed anywhere in character select, and are generally a lame way to balance Skill Variants*
	+ - * Cooldown: 7.0s ⇒ 6.0s
			* *Developer Notes: Cooldowns aren’t displayed anywhere in character select, and are generally a lame way to balance similar Skill Variants*
	+ - Add 2 New Skill Variants
		- Improve Acrid’s poison VFX
		- * The damage from the acid pool is no longer non-lethal
	+ - Add 1 new Skill Variant
		- Add 1 new Skin
		- 🌧 Update animations on falling, landing, sprinting, walking and jumping
		- * Increase shield warning flash by 0.5 second and tweak visuals to be softer
			* Now displays selected mine and turret variants in the Character Select screen

* **Items**
	+ - Max Health per kill: 1 hp ⇒ 1 hp (+1 per stack)
			* *Developer Notes: The cap remains unchanged, but it will fill up faster.*
	+ - Heal: 15 hp (+15 per stack) ⇒ 25 hp (+25 per stack)
		- Heal delay: 2.0s ⇒ 3.0s
	+ - Lightning now strikes where the target was 0.3s before the strike lands, instead of where they currently are.
		- Add new visuals warning before lightning strikes
		- Add glow and improve visuals so it’s more noticeable (hmm…)
	+ - 🌧 Is no longer invisible and missing an icon
	+ - Chance to trigger now scales by proc coefficient
	+ - Now checks against hurtboxes in a sphere instead of against root-level character positions, resulting in it hitting more often

* **Stages**
	+ - 🌧’Radar Towers’ will now properly appear
		- Can now spawn ‘Equipment Triple Shop’
	+ - 🌧’Radar Towers’ will now properly appear
		- Improve overall stage performance
		- Update rock formations in certain caves
	+ Stage Variant:
		- Improve overall stage performance and monster pathfinding
	+ Stage Variant:
		- Improve overall stage performance and monster pathfinding
	+ Hidden Realm:
		- 🌧 Time is now stopped in ‘Void Fields’
		- 🌧 Update ‘Cell Vents’ to only charge while the player remains inside the bubble
		- 🌧 Fix health degeneration not running on the final round of Cells
		- Enemy item indicator on the HUD now displays the number of item stacks
	+ - 🌧 Disable Ice & Fire  from spawning if the gate isn’t legitimately opened. We see you, Mr Streamer.

* **Monsters & Bosses**
	+ - Improve performance
		- Increase size of fire effect so they look fuller
	+ - Update mesh and textures
	+ - Improve performance
	+ - 🌧Base Armor: 1 ⇒ 0
	+ - Max Health: 600 (+180 per level) ⇒ 480 (+144 per level)
			* *Developer Notes: We aim for monsters to have, depending on their role, an approximate “health per director point” ratio. Some outliers had significantly higher health for what they cost to spawn, so we’re aiming to normalize these outliers*
	+ - Max Health: 600 (+180 per level) ⇒ 480 (+144 per level
			* *Developer Notes: We aim for monsters to have, depending on their role, an approximate “health per director point” ratio. Some outliers had significantly higher health for what they cost to spawn, so we’re aiming to normalize these outliers.*
	+ - Max Health: 200 (+60 per level) ⇒ 140 (+42 per level)
			* *Developer Notes: We aim for monsters to have, depending on their role, an approximate “health per director point” ratio. Some outliers had significantly higher health for what they cost to spawn, so we’re aiming to normalize these outliers.*
	+ - Max Health: 200 (+60 per level) ⇒ 140 (+42 per level)
			* *Developer Notes: We aim for monsters to have, depending on their role, an approximate “health per director point” ratio. Some outliers had significantly higher health for what they cost to spawn, so we’re aiming to normalize these outliers.*
	+ - 🌧Change bullseye hurtbox from the chest to the head so  can attack earlier during the spawn animation
	+ - Nullifier Bomb
			* 🌧Proc Coefficient: 0 ⇒ 1
			* Delay Time: 2s ⇒ 1s
		- Add missing animations and elite displays
		- Change AI movement behavior
	+ - 🌧 Improve accuracy of hurtboxes
		- 🌧 Fix corpse continuing to play idle sound loop after death
	+ - 🌧Improve accuracy of hurtboxes
	+ - 🌧 Can no longer spawn with
			* *Developer Notes: We’re comfortable with Scavengers being a bit BS at times - as long as it’s fun. Preon Accumulator, Capacitor, Disposable Missile Launchers, etc are crazy strong but still fun and have moments of cooldown. Ceremonial Daggers had no downtime, had infinite range, and had no cooldown.*
	+ Twisted Scavenger
		- Max Health: 3800 (+1140 per level) ⇒ 3230 (+969 per level)
		- Now properly spawns with unique boss health and damage scaling (Aurelionite, Alloy Worship Unit)
			* *Developer Notes: This is an enormous change, but was always intended. Expect the Twisted Scavengers to be SIGNIFICANTLY more challenging - Beads of Fealty should now be a significant risk vs reward. They should be treated as a powerful optional boss.*
	+ - Remove 3 ‘’
		- Remove 3 ‘’
		- Add 2 ‘’
		- Add 3 ‘’
		- Add 3 ‘’

* **Prismatic Trials**
	+ 🌧 Now spawns with a random selection of Artifacts!
	+ 🌧 Fix stage object rotation randomization not being seeded

* **Achievements**
	+ Huntress: Piercing Wind can now also be achieved on

## Sound & Music

* Fix  not playing its activation SFX correctly over the network
* Fix  equipment not playing activation SFX correctly over the network
* Fix   firing SFX and effects not playing for anyone but the client playing as the
* Fix   not playing SFX for anyone but the client playing as  and not applying forward self-force when playing as a non-host client
* Clean up explosion sound setups for several projectiles allowing them to play their explosion SFX correctly over the network
* Update SFX setup for several effects that could fail to play if the VFX budget is exceeded

## Quality of Life

* 🌧 Update AI so they don’t strafe off cliffs as much
* Update AI pathfinding so they are less likely to backtrack to positions along their path that they overshot
* 🌧 Move ‘Unlimited’ option to far right of FPS limit in settings
* Add optional MSAA (Default to 2x) in Options menu for UI ‘jaggies’
* Add a new death visual effect for players so it’s clearer when they die
* Update Quickplay icon
* Update Ally Indicator to make it more useful when trying to find allies
* Update Boss position indicators to show a fading marker when reentering the center of the screen to help locate bosses behind objects
* 🌧 Update ‘Time Crystals’ and ‘Explosive Pots’ to have proper character model setup and proper strings so they are highlighted and named when pinged
* 🌧 Update ‘Cell Vent’ safe icon to a shield so it's not the same as the  debuff
* 🌧 Add new glyphs for DualShock controller from PEW's PS4 Port (woo!)
* 🌧 Update Game End Report to use special strings and icon if no killer is found
* 🌧 Update Fusion Cells and Explosive Pots so they can detonate each other
* Add portrait icon for
* 🌧 Change mouse sensitivity from 1-10 instead of 0.01-1
* Change 'Steam Build ID' string to 'ver' string so its smaller
* Change "Killed by" text to be right-aligned so it can fit longer names
* Change 'Exit' in Title Menu to 'Quit to Desktop'
* Update ping functionality to use the same method of raycast modification used for object interaction to make it more likely to hit what you’re looking at

## Bug Fixes

* 🌧 Fix for "black screen" issue by preventing a host player from trying to connect to itself when lobby ownership is somehow lost
* 🌧 Fix ‘’ boss event not beginning if multiple eggs are destroyed in 1 frame
* 🌧 Fix 1-frame flash when changing loadout panels from different survivors
* 🌧 Fix inverted checkmark/no checkmark on Fullscreen setting in SettingsPanel
* 🌧 Fix issue which caused blast attacks to calculate hit distance based on the center of the hit hurtbox instead of the closest point. The overall effect of this is that blast attacks with falloff will do more damage since objects will now be considered closer than they were, especially against monsters with large hurtboxes like the .
* 🌧 Fix ‘Cosmic Explorer’ not counting the portal to the
* 🌧 Fix ‘’ item not checking if the victim body is immune to executes (no more instantly killing yourself with , , and /)
* 🌧 Remove stray backslash from Lunar Dagger description English string
* Fix issue where running up against walls would cause the camerato get extremely close
* Fix some sprites being on the wrong z-plane in the Game End Report causing weird distortions
* Fix ‘Disable HUD’ setting not saving when closing the game
* 🌧 Fix  gaining a permanent armor buff if interrupted while searching its bag for an item, like when activating
* Unhook window flashing on dedicated servers, which causes a weird window to be created
* 🌧 Fix spectators earning achievements
* 🌧 Fix  dash impact with heavy enemies not stunning and dealing bonus damage for clients
* Fix  dash impact with heavy enemies not triggering on-hit effects
* 🌧 Fix  Backpack not dropping items if it’s activated too quickly
* Fix Loadouts being lost when reconnecting to an online game
* Fix missing borders on some  skill icons
* 🌧 Fix   REX: Mastery achievement icon using old Smoothie skin colors
* 🌧 Clarify description of  to be a bit more accurate
* 🌧 Clarify  passive description to be a bit more accurate
* Fix dithering on a variety of materials so it fades if the camera gets very close
* Fix wrong death sound on
* 🌧 Fix a variety of effects still showing when using  and
* 🌧 Fix Chunked! challenge granting on non-teleporter boss kills
* Fix Teleporters not using the correct decal layer
* 🌧 Fix  and similar monsters from spawning as an elite version in Prismatic Trials. Goodbye  .
* 🌧 Fix a variety of typos in logbook descriptions
* Fix  area indicator being half the actual size of the blast
* Ghosts with curse no longer have shortened lifespans
* Fix monsters always spawning facing the same direction
* Interactables that spawn outside the Teleporter radius after it begins charging (like destroyed drones) now become locked until the end of the Teleporter event
* Fix  being able to stun certain characters with stun immunity (mainly survivors)
* Fix non-Teleporter boss encounters counting toward the Keyed Up achievement
* Fix characters hidden by  still being visible to AI
* Fix being able to ping the sky
* Fix description of  incorrectly providing the effect duration as 15 seconds instead of the 20 seconds it is in-game
* Fix a variety of other bugs we probably forgot…

## Known Issues

* Votes on difficulty and artifacts are reset for non-host players when returning from a run to the character select screen
* 'MUL-T: Pest Control' doesn’t grant the achievement despite completing the requirements
* The first monster chosen for  will not be shown on the HUD until starting the second cell
* Artifact of Vengeance may not work if too many monsters are on the map

If you made it this far into the patch notes... congratulations! This update was our most challenging yet, for so many reasons. We truly hope you all enjoy the update - and good luck!