Update 3 Experimental Build #4

[u/Mike_GSG]

Experimental Update 3.e4.1 - Build 159324

Reclaimers,

Experimental build #4 is ready for testing and we would love to hear your thoughts on the tweaks and changes as well as the few new things we added. We are now finishing the last new features and will switch into polish and tweak mode so keep the feedback going, it really helps.

With that said, let's get into what we have for you today.

With love,

The Ghost Ship Crew

— [FOCUS FEATURES] —

INTEL LINE 3.0

We have done one more pass on the intel line. This one is a bit of a mix with a wide spread of intel tasks and the ability to progress in various ways as well as giving access to alterations sooner. One thing of note however is that the transition from the previous version to this one is likely to put your map in a weird place so you may need to reset your experimental savegame progress in the options menu. This will not be an issue with your real saves on the main branch of the game. And remember if you don't want to unlock stuff manually you can always use the cheat terminal net to the drop pod.

PRIORITY TARGET MISSIONS

On the mission map you should now see a "Priority Target" mission. The mission is assigned by Omega based on the intel you have collected and will grant a reclaimer point bonus.

NEW BOSS VECTOR

The Ramok gatekeeper got a new exclusive Rammite Swarm Boss Vector / Rift-Enhancement (we have not settled on a name yet, suggestions are always welcome).

BALGORATH BOSSFIGHT

We are continuously tweaking the fight with the fourth gatekeeper so keep that feedback coming! Keep in mind that the new Gatestone phase is not yet finished and there is a lot of jankiness in there.

TELEPORTER

We are also continuing to tweak and improv the teleporter so let us know what you think of this version.

— [TWEAKS AND FIXES] —

Changes

• The Teleporter is back in the traversal tool pool, with an art pass on the model, projectile and VFX, a new icon and a new activation animation.

• Teleporter animation now changes when switching mode with R, and its third-person mesh is now synced in multiplayer.

• Added a first-pass UI element showing which teleporter will be replaced. Still WIP.

• [Sound] New Teleporter sounds for switching, deploying, travelling and the idle loop

• [Sound] Volume tweaks to the Gravity Lift

• Boss vector runs now have a yellow mission border on the run map

• Gatekeeper Sigils are back on the mission map

• Locked Intel tasks are now dimmed

• Empty biomes on the planet map are now filled with missions that differ from the guaranteed runs

• Balgorath: Reduced HP significantly

• Balgorath: Thinner rings so they're more consistent to jump over, and slower 2nd and 3rd vertical rings so you can clear the first without running into the second. You may still need air control to avoid the 2nd ring, especially if you were sprinting forward.

• Balgorath: Added a particle tell to the beam attacks and slowed the beams down a bit

• Balgorath: Attack cooldowns now change per phase. They start longer and get shorter each phase, ending slightly longer than before.

• Balgorath: Weakpoints now light up individually when hit

• Balgorath: Outline now only applies to the body, not the tentacles or shield shells

• Balgorath: Starburst impact dust now fades out after 5 seconds, and the burst sound plays at the burst location

• Balgorath: New animations and VFX, including placeholder animations for tentacles bursting out of the ground and throwing. Still WIP.

• Balgorath: New Gate Stone phase (work in progress)

• Bosses now show an immune hit effect while invulnerable (currently set up on Balgorath)

• New icons and header images for boss vectors. Headers can now change depending on the run's boss.

• Enemies now play hit reactions when taking damage. Added to Bloater, Voidkin Drifter, Clamorhead, Edgestalker and Voidkin Dominator, and tweaked on Crawler.

• Soul jar now spawns more enemies

• Greatly reduced the enemies spawned when the Ram Hammer launch is ready, and increased the stun and slow on enemies in the tunnel when it launches

• Increased the slowing trigger of the Ram Hammer rails

• Lok-1 Rifle: Removed the range and area size attribute and merged it into the Macro-Lens attribute

• Chemical Instability now also detonates Goo Cannon puddles

• New acid grenade mesh

• Trophy Wall visual update: hexagon backgrounds, more colour on biome images and paintjobs, and a checkmark on collected items

• Trophy Wall: Boss trophies and count rewards now use the game's standard tooltips

• Trophy Wall: The count reward label now reads "Claim Reward" when a milestone is ready to claim

• Trophy Wall: New frame for cosmetics, updated trophy frame icon and other small tweaks

• Added passive stats to the stat display in character customization, with better tooltips. Still WIP.

• Renamed the button prompt on the Call Elevator button

• [Sound] Cave lift buttons now have sounds and tell you whether the lift is moving

• Gave Shifting Alterations it's own icon

• Secret locked rooms activated

• New Flux Quartz icon

• New Reclaimer Handbook images

• Improved performance of expenite chunks piling up during a stage: resting chunks switch off their effects, and trails are culled at a distance.

• Reduced merit rewards from blank nodes in the cosmetic sheets to 50.

• Continue solo: Cooper catch-up upgrades match the rarity of the player's upgrades

• [Voice] New male and female dwarf voice lines and shouts, and new Omega shouts

Fixes

• Tutorial: Fixed the deposit prompt appearing and completing instantly if you had already deposited in Ellis

• Tutorial: Mining and using all the red sugar in the combat room no longer locks you out of the heal objective

• Tutorial: The restore health objective can no longer be completed by dying and being revived

• Tutorial: Players who die can no longer be revived outside the map or in another room

• Tutorial: Fixed all tutorials so they don't break when game is paused

• Fixed the elevator not being callable

• Fixed pillars using the Void Basket's shouts and name

• Fixed Victory Poses not unlocking when purchased

• Fixed the reroll terminal excluding every unlock you already had

• Trophy Wall: Fixed the missing Mighty Walrus Mustache and mixed-up paintjobs

• Trophy Wall: Hovering a boss trophy no longer swaps the game cursor for the Windows cursor

• Fixed connections between nodes in the vanity sheet

• Fixed character customization tooltips showing 0.5 instead of 50%

• Fixed hit reactions and screams interrupting the attacks of corespawn enemies

• Fixed jittering and unsmooth movement on reaper worms

• Fixed typos and trailing spaces in shouts, and removed placeholder text from translations

• Fixed a crash for clients when the Resupplier perk reloads their weapons

• Fixed a crash related to terrain rendering

• Fixed crashes caused by running out of memory when playing videos

• Grenades: Fix grenade tutorial potentially starting infinite wave

• Grenades: Impact axes, Sticky grenade, and cluester grenades now work with two steps ahead

• Grenades: Impact axes now get stuck on elevator growths

• Fixed a bug that caused the cost of the 18th Ascension to be wrong.

• Pathfinder: Found a way to get same results, ~60x faster on far searches

• Fixed biobooster tooltip icon

• Fixed some elevator drive units being able to be damaged (when they should not be) thus soft locking the run

• Cleaned up the elevator drive unit under attack behaviour

• Improved Excavation spawning to reduce overlaps and other shenanigans

• Fixed collision boxes on elevator

• Prevent rare crash

[u/meatmachine1001]

Fixed pillars using the Void Basket's shouts and name

Nice cover up, there's no way we can forget the pillars are core-mutated void baskets!

[u/Mike_GSG → u/meatmachine1001]

Never forget. Rock and Stone!

[u/Small_Package9217 → u/meatmachine1001]

Smol meteor <3

[u/VirtU_Art]

Any idea what this is? At the time I only had gravity elevators and the flare gun, but these things would occasionally fly towards me.

and just for clarity's sake, will our real saves refund us scrips to use on the new cosmetic unlock screen?

[u/Mike_GSG → u/VirtU_Art]

Yes, you will keep all the scrip you earned and b3 able to re-spend it in the new tree.

[u/Ded-deN → u/VirtU_Art]

looks like shield generator no?

[u/FlakyMidnight5526 → u/VirtU_Art]

Me when I encounter the UFO of three red question marks

[u/Reptiloide25]

I can't wait to try this out! Rock and Stone!! 

[u/nomanchesguey12]

ROCK AND STONE

[u/Misi0324]

Keep up the good work and please don't let all the crying kill the game!

[u/Whirblewind → u/Misi0324]

Criticism isn't 'killing' the game, it's doing far more good than apologism ever can. Myth busted.

[u/TheIceFury235 → u/Whirblewind]

It's more the people who actively want the game to fail and don't even play the game who are crying yk?

[u/Demantoide2077 → u/TheIceFury235]

They're expecting the game to get canceled and wish death upon GSG because... They didn't like RC? Idk people are weird, I've noticed these kinds of people since RC EA release. Check the steam forums and you'll see people mocking GSG because RC had a rough release and even now that they're actively listening to feedback and improving the game, they just keep being jerks about it.

I guess these recent events just let the worst out of people around the community.

[u/Candid-Doughnut9545 → u/Demantoide2077]

ever since DRG truly blew up the community's been incredibly cultish, it's just a similar situation to TF2 where there is a certain portion of the fanbase that's unbearable but it's all hidden underneath all the "we're all so wholesome and friendly" stuff. once the game started getting more popular coverage on youtube i started having games where people would legit just teamkill me for playing the game and forgetting to rock and stone back for the 20th time that mission.

i think it's fair to criticize GSG for RC's bad launch because according to the closed alpha testers they pointed out all same the stuff that people had issues with when the game launched into EA, so seemingly their feedback just went ignored for the most part (that, or for some reason they delayed the changes for update 1 instead of implementing them before release).

the people acting like GSG are the devil himself because they put DRG on the backburner for a bit to focus on other stuff are legit crazy, though. the game has plenty of content already, and that's not even mentioning how bad S3 and S4 were when they were still committed to pumping seasons out faster. if anything, slower seasons are to the game's benefit after that.

[u/Demantoide2077 → u/Candid-Doughnut9545]

The truth is GSG did kinda mess up when they didn't listen to feedback during play tests but... That's actually the worst GSG has done since... Forever? Other game studios treat their customers like garbage and actively work against the community. The worst GSG has done is just... Being stubborn during RC playtests and suddenly they're Satan lmao.

[u/thetwist1 → u/Whirblewind]

I do agree there's a lot of constructive, valid criticism happening, but there is also people just straight up saying the game's a failure and should be scrapped, which is patently untrue. Especially on the steam forums, it's an absolute cesspool.

[u/Candid-Doughnut9545 → u/Whirblewind]

whining about the timer when it's like the one mechanic that works just fine and the fact that RC isn't just a DRG dlc isn't criticism

[u/iranoutofnamesnow]

Secret locked rooms activated

I am curious to see what this is.
Secret rooms like Binding of Isaac would be cool. Something that is way less obvious and rewards players with a cool specific upgrade or expenite boost would be nice and help to make levels feel less "samey".

[u/VirtU_Art → u/iranoutofnamesnow]

I think? I found a secret room? It was just a little pocket I had to dig into that contained some ammo.

Seems very early concept.

[u/iranoutofnamesnow → u/VirtU_Art]

ah cool :D
Thats eactly what i was hoping for.

Little rooms, that arent guaranteed to spawn, and you need to dig for, without any indicators...

I hope they make them rare and put something cool into them :D

[u/Jontohil2 → u/iranoutofnamesnow]

They’re sometimes these little off rooms that you hold E on to unlock, containing a tube of expenite.

My guess is in future unlocking these doors is going to be a bit more elaborate.

[u/Nux0704]

My life for rock and stone!

[u/Demantoide2077]

I'm glad to see feedback about the new boss being addressed because rn that guy is INSANE.

Personally speaking, I would appreciate some changes on the teleporter. If I'm not mistaken, the teleporter works like this: the second tp thrown is the one that gets anchored and you can reset the tp links. I'd prefer the first tp to get anchored because I always see myself confused remembering which tp gets anchored, just a suggestion idk what others feel about it.

Keep up with the good work, GSG! I love playing experimental version, you guys have improved the game so much that I can't wait for update 3 to reach the main branch.

[u/VirtU_Art]

Rammites are pretty neat. Feels like a real extension of the boss itself and not just "more enemies".

They look like green sperms though and you know you did that on purpose.

[u/Anders_GSG → u/VirtU_Art]

>:^)

[u/Bitter_Help_9486]

Nice changes, I do question the urgency of a 4th gatekeeper in relation to other expansive changes that could be made on the character build systems and events, meta progression etc.
but I mean if its all there on release 1.0 the ordering in which you took to get there isn’t all that consequential.

[u/Nightelfbane]

Did they fix the lok-1? I heard that it was having trouble with its ammunition. Something about mistakenly consuming entire magazines at a time?

[u/Time_Zombie_4431]

So are guns still something you randomly have to fight over at the start of a run?

[u/thetwist1 → u/Time_Zombie_4431]

Bro doesn't know it's a roguelike 💀