Howdy oh!

I know we’re late, but better late than sorry.

The Winter playtest is now LIVE (on Steam only) and will last for approximately two weeks based on your feedback and the issues being reported. Once finished, the Winter update will land on all platforms at once (sometimes with a few days delay based on each platform’s validation process).

Accessing the playtest: You can access the playtest by going into your game library, right-clicking Roboquest, going into ‘Properties’, heading over to the ‘Beta’ tab and opting for the ‘Roboquest Playtest’ branch.
It should download the playtest version of Roboquest (note that your progress is separated from the standard branch).
The playtest version comes with enough Wrenches to purchase all basecamp upgrades so you don’t have to grind to try out changes that would potentially be gated behind them.
If your Steam doesn’t start an update, make sure to restart it.

Find below the highlights of the changes you can experience in the playtest.

PATCH HIGHLIGHTS

New Class: the Ranger

A new class is coming into play: the Ranger.
The ranger can stealth and throw javelins at enemies and it accumulates bonus critical damage as long as it doesn’t take damage.
It is more of a ranged-precision class.
In order to unlock the ranger, you will have to find the ‘lost javelin’ hidden in one of the levels.
Most of the perks related to Stealth have therefore been moved to the Ranger (view below for a brief explanation of that).

Recon Rework

We moved Stealth away from the Recon and gave him a dash instead.
Stealth seemed more fitting to the Ranger after playing it for a while and a dash seemed to synergize very well with the natural strengths of the Recon (noticeably its melee and front-fighter aspects).
Therefore we added a bunch of completely new perks to tailor its new ‘Blink’ (dash) ability to your liking and we also reworked several other of its perks.

Elite enemies

Elite enemies are powerful variants of a new enemy called ‘Elitepawn’.
There are a few variations of this enemy (with different attacks and behaviors) and we will add more variations as time goes by.
You may encounter one or several ‘elitepawns’ in each level and this number will increase based on the difficulty level you’ve chosen (starting in Heroes+1 onward).
But right now, this system is still in its very early stage and will be finalized later down the road, but its addition will help us determine exactly how the system should behave and how these elite enemies should be.
We already know that elite enemies' spawn rate will be tied to game progression in its final version but we do not have much more information to share right now.

New Boss

‘El Moustiko’ has joined the fray!
He’s been added to the random pool of bosses for Act 1.

Energy Weapons

For a long time, energy weapons were unable to use any of our ‘reload’ systems (such as ‘reloading grants X bonus’ for example).
But no more!
You can now press ‘reload’ with energy weapons to force them to overheat.
Every mention of ‘reloading’ in the game now applies to energy weapons as well, making them fit in much more builds than before.
In addition and consequently, we modified most of their energy metrics: they can shoot for longer periods of time (reduced energy cost) but also reduced their energy regeneration speed (it takes more time to cool down passively).
We felt like we needed to make these changes in order to make sure energy weapons have a healthy place into the different perk builds.
We also initially gave energy weapons a very low impact force. It was part of our design philosophy to make them ‘different’ than other weapons. After consideration, we realized it made them feel weaker than other weapons and we didn’t need that aspect at all. We therefore increased the impact force of all energy weapons.

Basecamp visuals

We started to implement the final stage of the basecamp visuals and building placement.
You will still find your usual couch co-op and hoverbus starter zone but also new buildings that are yet to be activated (noticeably a ‘compendium’ building!).
Each basecamp level will improve all of the basecamp buildings, props and accessories.
For now, reaching a new basecamp level will not immediately show in the basecamp. The visuals will only be updated once you reload the basecamp.
We know there are still a few quirks and oddities in the new basecamp, especially regarding gameplay collision but we will be monitoring and addressing the issues as usual.
We hope you’ll like those new and fancy visuals!

New Content

Finally and as usual, we’ve added a bunch of new enemies, bazaar items, perks and affixes to the game as well as a new class, new boss and new weapon.

View the complete list of changes here.