V0.35.30

**Patch Notes** **◆** ****V0.35.30****

*Introducing the weapon gear:  and the Super Mod: . This update, and the one that follows it, aims to balance and refine character progression before we shift focus to the game's final confrontation, ending, and full release.*

## New Upgrades and Mod Reworks

* Added Weapon Gear:  to the game, allowing you to wield a pair of monomolecular double-edged swords that can slice through targets, scale with construct, weapon, and crash modifiers, and can cleave through enemy projectiles
* Super Mod: Displacement has been reworked. It is now: Super Mod: . Void Slice makes you Blink to your Strafe destination, cutting through targets in your path. Void slice deals damage based on a flat amount added to a percentage of the enemy's remaining hull
* Super Mod:  has been reworked. It now causes projectiles to degenerate or destroy each other on impact. Antimatter Rounds now gives weapons uniquely colored VFX. Additionally, the stat bonuses now benefit constructs at a lesser percentage
* and its mod tree have been updated. Ally now fires "explosive rounds" as its base weapon, which have a cone-shaped blast radius
* Evasion has been removed. Half of the passive attack avoidance from Evasion was moved to Ally base stats and half was moved to
* has returned to the game and replaces Evasion, adding an additional, larger circular blast radius to Ally explosive rounds
* has gained a new buff: After dodging, your 's explosive rounds gain +700% rate of fire for .25 seconds
* The Blast Radius tree has been reworked. , , and  now affect all blasts
* Preexisting blast radius modifiers have been divided into new categories: Weapon blast radius, weapon projectile blast radius, and (global) blast radius
* Many mods now scale with the tree's global blast modifiers: , , ,  (base explosion and clusters), , Force Armor, , , ,  (missiles),  (blast wave), ,  (shield reset shockwave), ,  (warp blasts), , ,  (explosive rounds and )

## New Features

* Allowed separate key bindings for  and . The default binding for Blink is now "F". Strafe is still "Shift"
* Added SFX for the player taking burn damage, which layers 3 sfx at volumes determined by how long the player has been affected by burn damage, and how many sources they've been affected by
* Increased the volume of the self damage warning SFX from  (Which is also louder proportional to how much hull you're missing)
* If the player can't fire (via ), constructs will trigger enemies being the target of the enemy hull bar display with their attacks. Previously, only non-construct attacks would set enemies as the target of the enemy hull bar display for clarity
* Added some new "kaleidoscope" vfx for certain enemy portals, 's death, 's death,  stacking, and 's rebirth
* Added a new setting: Disable Kaleidoscope Effects. Reorganized the Settings menu to make room for this
* Added a new setting: Hide Cursor, which is enabled by default on Steam Deck. Steam Deck now automatically turns off and greys out most other mouse related settings

## Player Balance Adjustments

* Made some general buffs to under powered blast mechanics:
	+ Orbs of  deal ~+25% average damage and have twice the damage ceiling
	+ wave base blast damage +25%
	+ damage +25%, but scales its size far less severely (especially its width)
* Made some compensatory balance changes due to the new global blast changes:
	+ base radius -25%
	+ base damage 600 -> 750, hitting once on both entry and exit, not up to twice on each, and its base radius -21.4% (Warp was overpowered in general)
	+ mine stats -30% -> -20%, and chain reaction modifier +5% -> 4% per chain reaction
	+ base damage and base radius -16.66%
	+ base damage 40 -> 35
* no longer removes the blast radius tree from the mod pool
* has been adjusted to feel more fluid: It now spreads its acceleration over a short interval while strongly redirecting your motion in the direction you strafed
* cooldown 1 -> 1.5 seconds (We realized that strafe was becoming near-mandatory for any hyperscoring build, and that Blink had trouble competing with its power level. To compensate for this, enemy speed scaling has been significantly reduced, which benefits all builds)
* Using  during 's acceleration period will weaken Strafe. This is to help control Strafe with Stabilization
* cooldown 2 -> 1.5 seconds
* The base crash damage for all bodies is now 200, up from 100 (And this is now explained in the Glossary)
* Bodies that have increased crash damage now do so with a percentage modifier, instead of a hidden number, so that damage can scale with ' mechanic. This effects the following bodies in different ways:
	+ now has +250% crash damage instead of 350 base crash damage. This will help it be a decent choice for Sword wielding. Additionally, it also got knockback resistance, like  has
	+ now has +50% crash damage instead of 400 base crash damage. To help sell the difference in crash output between  and Battery, Carrier has been made slightly larger and Battery has been made smaller
	+ To compensate for the doubling in base crash damage, 's maximum increase to segment crash damage has been halved. This should be a general buff to crashing with Leviathan at slower rotation, the same value at the maximum rotation
* 's scaling from speed has been adjusted for the new base crash damage. It has also been made less explosive at high values, but higher at low to middling values
* rate of fire -30% -> -25%
* shields -30% -> -25%
* has been buffed:
	+ Swarm will heal and try to attack while farther away from its target
	+ Swarm base speed 5 -> 6
	+ base hull 110 -> 115
	+ shield bonus 10% -> 15%
	+ Improved acceleration of  Swarm and
* Constructs that passively avoid attacks now do so with unexploded enemy explosives
* buff 60% -> 70% of player regeneration (As a result of the above changes,  can stabilize "" for its Swarm without Wild Mods or Super Mods)
* Armor stack buffs:
	+ Armor Stacks deal 40% more base damage with
	+ now applies 2.5% vulnerability per stack
	+ regeneration multiplier .04% per stack -> 1% per stack
	+ Experiment: Armor Stack base quantity .125 -> .1375. (Was .2 before the nerf Feb 2021 )
* now scales less crazily with levels:
	+ 's buff to cloaked rate and cloak damage per level 2.5% per level -> 1% per level
	+ 's base cloak damage 250% -> 300%
* Ally no longer waits to fire  until it accumulates a salvo count of 10 or more. (This was needed for the original Salvo accumulation and firing behavior but is no longer relevant.  (especially with ) can fill that "accumulate salvo count" niche)
* 's base projectile (now called explosive rounds) no longer creates two explosions, one of which was too small to matter much
* Allies can now use
* now works with , applying bonus towards the middle of the stream of projectiles
* Removed some  bias and inaccuracy
* Weapon constructs ( and ) now have 2 plating
* Weapon constructs ( and ) weren't getting the innate blast damage resistance that other constructs were. Now they get it, in addition to their 75% resistance to all damage (This, along with Construct native blast resistance, is now explained in the Constructs glossary entry and in a new entry for "Weapon Constructs")
* 's second threshold effect has been changed:
	+ Was: While you have 10 or more unspent upgrade points, all Ataraxia bonuses are increased by 50%.
	+ Is: While you have 10 or more unspent upgrade points, +15% recovery and shield cooldown. (While the extreme scaling of body powers is interesting, in practice it ends up being a degenerate amount of damage scaling in specific cases such as  and )
* dual cannon aspect now affects non-construct weaponry
* Changed the way  calculates self-damage, especially for
* Lowered  base self-damage, making it more usable with fast-firing weapons.  no longer counts as an added projectile for the purpose of Antimatter's self-damage
* maximum hull +20% -> +25%
* ruling has been changed to trigger the weapon to fire for weapons that innately create no projectiles
* Adjusted and clarified a few things regarding  and mine effect:
	+ Mine effect has always impacted mine radius, but this wasn't made clear by the text descriptions. The  description has changed, now representing only an increase to mine effect for Architect (which already increases radius)
	+ no longer doubled dips mine radius. (However, note that combining  and Architect results in the same mine blast radius that Architect previously had)
	+ Updated the Glossary to clarify "Mine Effect"
	+ Mine cluster range and radii are now properly affected by mine effect and global blast radius modifiers, not just Architect's modifiers
	+ 's total modifier to mine effect now affects mine stock blast and clusters as it should, not just
* and  now mutually exclusive, since you can't "Strafe" with Void Slice
* Twinned weapons (, ) now use consistent  modifiers for each group of sub-projectiles
* (and ) no longer take extra damage from enemy damage scaling
* and  with  now always decloak the player
* now counts toward progress for enabling  as a mod choice

## Enemy Adjustments

* Enemy speed scaling from advancing in later waves has been significantly reduced (See Strafe changes above)
* Adjusted  variable area resistances along its body parts to be generally higher
* Enemies are now less stupid in the face of a cloaked  with no targets:
	+ s, s, and s with no targets are now able to "blind fire" a few seconds after spawning
	+ s with no targets are now able to "radial fire" a few seconds after spawning
* Made adjustments to s:
	+ shields have a quarter-second shorter duration
	+ shots now degenerate completely after a while
	+ shot burning wake now scales with the current projectile size of the projectile that spawned it
	+ Instead of firing at any range when they can't find a target, s instead use the new "blind firing" logic
	+ Blind-fired  shots degenerate quickly and linearly
	+ Aesthetic:  shots wrap at a larger distance, helping to "hide" the trail cut-off
* Added two new curated waves: "Crab Nest" and "Crab Vic"

## General Improvements

* vulnerability flash is now less strobey
* Clarified or simplified many upgrade descriptions
* In light of the global blast changes, clarified which modifiers specifically affect the player weapon. Such mods always have "weapon" in their description
* Language for "projectile spread" is now "weapon spread", displayed as "spread" in short descriptions
* Language for "projectile targeting" is now "weapon targeting", displayed as "targeting" in short descriptions
* Upgrades that scale with blast modifiers now use the word "blast" somewhere in their descriptions
* The game now uses a less bright screen flash for teal / green effects
* The pause menu now shows new stats including your construct size modifier and damage modifier
* The game can now detect the difference between Steam Deck and Steam Deck in desktop mode, allowing more Settings in desktop mode
* Updated localization, and improved or clarified the text of dozens of upgrades

## Bug Fixes and Optimizations

* and  with  now properly count as firing
* Made sure  and  always trigger from the player ship. This fixes an error when Outrage Module triggers with ,  shield, and  on a body with multiple guns ( or )
* Fixed self-damage from  not being applied evenly to  hull with
* Fixed  pausing briefly after gaining a level
* Fixed some  issues with :  Shield damage bonus doesn't get "baked into" shot damage on promotion. Fleet Commander power multipliers don't get reset on gaining a level
* Improved performance and visuals of the glossary
* Fixed visible streaks when a player construct with  Shield wraps around
* trails better match the actual size of their projectile
* Fixed an error when checking if the firing construct is shielded
* Fixed a bug where the radius of  was smaller when triggered from a
* Fixed  giving the wrong modifier value for projectile size
* Fixed  multiplier not getting reset properly in some cases
* Basic construct s (e.g. from ) now don't get shields
* vfx now scales with the same modifiers its blast does
* Fixed an issue with  affecting Integrated Weaponry  improperly
* Fixed  being able to make cannon sfx with no cannons
* Fixed a popping sound the first time singularities appeared
* Fixed a popping sound in the short enemy charge sfx
* Fixed  not counting toward unlocking
* Fixed  triggered by  or  continuing to fire with  in some circumstances when the trigger was held
* Drone beams now don't damage enemy segments covered by a hard shield
* Fixed Achievement issues: "The Hard Way", "Tis But A Scratch", "Ya Basic", "Don't Play Dice With The Universe", or "Still Alive" achievements now can't be awarded after player death. "It Was At That Moment He Knew" is no longer achievable with
* Fixed  Guards being unable to slow down after being sling-shot by an insta-gibbed Dweller (Weeeee!)
* Collision with  orbs no longer produces hit or sfx feedback if you're invulnerable
* now handles  properly, dividing the bonus among your projectiles
* Fixed inconsistent  burst counts
* Fixed  not counting as a boss if the wave advances past 60 while still inside its asteroid
* Fixed enemy charge up getting loud and crackly by allowing the sfx to "interrupt" each other
* Fixed s generated by  not getting shields with
* Fixed Swarm constructs being exempt from enemy damage scaling
* Made many mod tags more accurate
* Lots of internal bug fixes, optimizations, and minor visual polish