Hello again!

We're back with another pretty substantial patch to the game's demo with the addition of a new weapon, a pretty big relic overhaul (as well as some new ones), and the new Soul Orb mechanic. Please let us know what you think through the comments or on Discord!

What's New?

• Excalibur, the Trenchant Minigun has been added to the arsenal.
• Many existing relics have been revamped together with the addition of the Infernal Engine, Ethereal Magnet and Soul Furnace. More detailed info can be found below.
• Enemies will now drop Soul Orbs on death that can be destroyed to steal their essence (which was previously only accessible by countering enemies).
• A random vendor (relic trader, relic upgrader, gun muncher or refuel station) now appears at the end of each floor.
• 2 large rooms have been redesigned to feel less awkward to play in.
• Various balance adjustments (mostly buffs) to some existing weapons have been made.
• Various bug fixes and QoL improvements have been made.

Weapons

General

• The Combat Data cost to unlock weapons now decreases with the amount you earn while using them during a run. This means the more you use a weapon, the less it will cost to unlock (it will eventually become free).
• You can now view tips on how to use every weapon in the details section of the loadout station.
• All weapons with alt-fires that recharge over time will play a sound when becoming fully charged.

Excalibur (New!)

• Fires a volley of swords while primary fire is held down.
• Alt-fire summons swords to juggle enemies around you and can be redirected towards enemies as well.

Vajra

• Projectiles from other sources can now also trigger alt-fire’s absorption effect.

Gungnir

• Increased projectile speed to make the gun more effective at longer ranges.

Faust

• Added a Meteor to alt-fire’s item pool that rains down on nearby enemies, damaging and igniting them.
• Faust’s display now shows which item alt-fire will fish out so you know what’s coming beforehand.

Muramasa

• The overheat bar now goes down instead of up to hopefully avoid confusion with alt-fire’s charge display.
• Overheat threshold has been slightly increased (meaning you can fire the gun for longer before it overheats).

Relics

General

• Added more visual and sound effects to relic effects for better clarity and feedback.
• Updated relic descriptions to hopefully be clearer.
• Examining a relic in the tab menu now tells you what collecting more stacks of it does.
• Hephaestus’ unlock store now tells you what the unlockable item does so you can make a more informed purchase/reservation.

Infernal Engine (New!)

• Grants a small chance to ignite enemies on hit. Hitting an ignited enemy grants you a small bonus to fire rate.

Ethereal Magnet (New!)

• Increases your pickup range for health packs.

Soul Furnace (New!)

• Hitting an ignited enemy has a chance to spawn its soul orb.

Lightning In A Bottle

• Chain Lightning has been replaced with a Shock debuff that zaps another nearby enemy whenever the shocked enemy is hit.

Dodge Cape ⇒ Afterburner Cape

• Now ignites the next enemy you hit after dodging through an attack instead of doing bonus damage. The number of hits the buff lasts for increases with stacks.

MP3 Player

• Now provides a small heal and is triggered everytime you earn a certain amount of style points.

256 Volt Battery

• Improved visibility of the battery and made it automatically fly towards the player like a regular health pack.

Steel Jetpack ⇒ Propulsion Jetpack

• Stack effect changed from lower charge threshold to extra stackable charges of the air jump.

Seismic Soda

• Now has a chance to spawn cluster bombs on explosions instead of a critical explosion.

Unstable Matter

• Now triggers an explosion around you after gaining an essence from any source, not just countering.

Sadism

• Now grants a burst of movement and attack speed after killing an enemy. The buff lasts longer with more stacks.

PG’s Fidget Spinner ⇒ Beano’s Spinner

• Is now a rare relic because it’s pretty strong.

Shattering Mallet

• Is now a rare relic and lets you do bonus damage to enemies for as long as the debuff’s duration, which scales with stack count.

Miscellaneous

• Enemies now have an extra visual effect when they are defeated.
• All stun effects on normal enemies have had their duration increased from 1s to 1.5s.
• Reduced the Relic Constructor’s relic cost from 5 to 4.
• The Immolator’s fireball attack now has a sound cue while it’s charging up.
• The game’s music now loops seamlessly (at least I hope it does).
• All essence-related style actions now reward more style points than before.
• The tutorial now has a short portion near the end to teach the player about Essences and Soul Orbs.
• The game’s intro scene now has background art.
• Improved the model used for weapon pickups.
• Core Augment pickups now remember how much charge you had if you dropped one from swapping it.
• Orpheus’ melee hitboxes now come out immediately and linger for a short grace period to make them feel more lenient.
• Added equip sounds for more weapons.
• The first reward choice of 2 weapons at the end of Floor 1 now always tries to give at least 1 locked weapon if possible (so you can use it and make it cheaper to unlock).
• Adjusted the short descriptions for every weapon.
• Various minor fixes and changes that I can't remember anymore and you probably don’t care about.

What's Next?

Moving forward, we'll be releasing one more patch of demo content for Yggdrasil before we shift our focus fully towards the game’s second zone, Yomi (which will only be featured in Early Access).

We plan to add another zone boss that may appear instead of Tiamat and make adjustments to some of the enemies in the game. We also want to continue tackling the game’s general lack of information which players have feedbacked to us about, and there’ll most likely be some kind of codex to read up about enemies and items in the hub world on the table that currently says “Work in Progress”.

Thanks again for playing!