Breakers!

We’re thrilled to reveal our new Monthly Update is OUT NOW (surprise!) Like with our other Monthly Updates, this update brings a nice slice of content in-between the releases of Major Content Updates (ICYMI: we dropped our very first one, Buried Below, last month!) In the coming weeks, we’re planning to share a Summer Edition of our Early Access content roadmap that will include what we have planned for updates from this month until July, and what’s to come in the future.

May – Monthly Update Details

This month's update, like our previous Monthly Updates (separate from our Major Content Updates), brings a nice slice of content to Hyper Light Breaker in Early Access. This update brings a new Blade, Soulburn, a new Amp, Roly Poly Grenade, an Armor rework, a new Acessories system, new Holobytes, a new Status Effect, new enemies, bug fixes and improvements across the board and more.

• We know players have been patiently waiting for new Amps to be added and we’re thrilled to introduce a new one for this update! The Roly Poly Grenade’s name gives you a good idea of what the Amp is: it’s a powerful grenade that rolls across the ground to seek out foes. This new Amp is just the beginning, as we plan to introduce more Amps throughout Early Access and beyond!
• For the new Accessories system, we’re always looking for ways to give players even more options, especially when it comes to builds. The system is yet another way to give you more control of your build and how you want it to be!

Read the Patch Notes below for even more details on what this update brings.

Additional Updates from Heart Machine

Post-Buried Below Launch - Thank You!

We just want to take a moment to thank you all so much for your feedback and support for our first major content update, Buried Below! We poured a lot of heart and soul into every part of it. We went into knowing it’d be a game changer (quite literally!) as it’d change up how runs are structured and change up a few other systems in place, and the feedback we’ve received from you all has been nothing short of incredible. We’re thrilled that it seems the update is a step in the right direction for Breaker, and as we continue Breaker’s development in Early Access, we want to continue hearing from you on how you’d like to see the game evolve before it enters 1.0!

Summer Edition Roadmap Update

Mentioned earlier, we’re working on a Summer Edition of our Early Access content roadmap and plan to go out with it in the coming weeks, aiming for the end of this month. There’s still so much more to come for Hyper Light Breaker in Early Access, including our next major content update launching this summer! To make the major content update even more “major”, we’ve shuffled around our content pipeline a bit – so expect for our next Monthly Update next month to be a little on the lighter side (it’ll still have a nice slice of content, don’t worry!) We can’t wait to share what’s to come for Breaker.

And now, here’s today’s patch notes you’ve all been waiting for. Thanks again for the feedback and support!

- The Heart Machine Team
 

PATCH NOTES

Features:

New Status Effect

• Shock: Striking an enemy causes lightning to bounce between nearby foes dealing damage.

New Holobytes

• Doppler String: When summoning an ally, there is a 20% chance to create a double of that summon.
• Clean Capacitor: Use med kit to get an additional 20% of the base heal value as a bonus on top of the base heal value.
• Dire Dash: Dashing through enemies marks them. Marks increase melee DMG dealt to the enemy by 25% for 3 seconds.
• Dash Bash: After a kill, the next dash will damage the next enemy you collide with.

New Affix

• Dash Bullets: Dash Specials fire a projectile that seeks out enemies near the player.

New Amp

• Roly Poly Grenade: A powerful grenade that rolls across the ground seeking out foes. When the grenade finds an enemy, it inflicts pulsing damage the entire time it’s in radius.

New Accessories System

• Accessories are now found around the Overgrowth!
  • Accessories act as an additional slot for affixes, allowing you more control over your build - these are sometimes sold by the Junker or occasionally dropped from loot corpses marked “Equipment”.
    • “Equipment” corpses can also drop Armor.

New Enemies

• Dirk Missile Elite: This elite harnesses all the fire power of its missile comrades and then some. Watch out for its Fury Attack Missile; it’s slow but deadly.
• Grenadier: This bazooka wielding adversary packs a punch. At a distance he rapid fires arching projectiles and lobs lethal grenades, but get too close and you might get a bazooka to the face.

New Weapon

• Soulburn (Blade): A blade with shorter range but a faster attack combo that deals double stagger DMG. Perfect Parries are easier to perform with this Blade.
  • Its Blade special causes an explosion around the player and knocks back surrounding enemies, and its short cooldown allows the player to make space around them when crowded but can be charged for more damage.
  • This Blade is favored by Lapis, Vermillion, and Rondo.

Armor Rework

• Previously, the Armor stat would reduce incoming damage.
• Now, the Armor stat grants you an armor “pip” for each point of Armor.
  • Each armor pip will absorb 15hp or 1 hit, whichever is smaller.
    • i.e., this means you will lose 1 armor pip if you take 1-15 damage, and two armor pips if you take 16-30 damage in a single hit.
  • When a player takes damage, armor pips are the first vector that absorbs that damage, before HP.
• Armor Shards will drop from enemy groups, crates and capsules and auto-collect like bright blood and small batteries.
• New Armor Shard pickup added.
• SyComs rebalanced for Armor stat.
  • SyCom Armor is not increased by leveling up at Shrines.
  • Some Breakers have a SyCom Armor value of 0.

Enemy Updates

• New Plunge Attack added for the Sword Master Assassin.
• Frost Dirk Improvements - Adjusted attack timing to give the player more time to react as the telegraph time is small for the claw drag attack.
• Enemy Composition Improvements: Swapped out a couple Missile Dirk Spread variants for Missile Dirk Grenade variants.
• Enemy Composition Improvements: Reduced the spawn weight chance of the duo heavy (Leaper + Croc Brute) composition in the Jeweled Spire biome.
• Made code improvements to prevent melee deadlock on the Dirk Wretches and CrocBrutes that could trigger in certain rare edge cases.
• Improved Elite CrocBrute behaviors to reduce awkward behavior in certain locations and compositions.
• Increased Elite CrocBrute network precision to help with feet sliding on clients.

Other Polish Items, Updates and Improvements

• Added new Arid Wastes environment assets.
• Added new Ruined Outskirts environment assets.
• Added party member names to the Hub HUD creating better visibility for when players join your lobby.
• Hub cables optimization pass completed.
• Updated rail vendor podium added.
• Polished the Maw Intro Cinematic.
• Destroyed walls optimization pass completed.
• Made improvements to the Maw Boss Arena to prevent hatchlings from spawning on boundary rocks.
• Made terrain improvements to prevent holes from forming around boss hills.
• Added socket blocks to cliff sides to better indicate where jump pads are located.
  • If you see grey blocks embedded in a cliff face, you will find jump pads below them!
• Drone Amp Improvements: Removed the 'In' animation from the Sync Group. This was causing the play rate to slow way down.
• Improved Hoverboard tutorial instructions for Keyboard and Mouse controls.
• Edited radar rotation preference player-facing name to better match the behavior.
• Disabled "extraction available" callout on danger notifications (legacy tip).
• New bleed and rot ground hazards now spawn from Elite Leapers leap attack.
  • Improved the Leaper’s leap attack telegraph to better communicate new ground hazards.
• Updated homing missile “beep” SFX.
• Added Hunter’s Mark SFX.
• Death Wheel Improvements:
  • Sped up the first attack in the attack combo.
  • Polished hand placement on charge attack.
  • Polished the swipe arc on the 'out' of the Dash Attack-- Made it more vertical/diagonal instead of horizontal.

Bug Fixes:

• Made an adjustment to the Maw Intro in an attempt to fix a bug where players can teleport underground at the start of the boss fight.
• Fixed a clipping issue on the Jeweled Spire Lighthouse POI.
• Fixed an issue with the spawn animation of the Chrome Golem when 2 Golems are spawned at the same time.
• Maw ending cutscene is no longer skippable — This is to prevent cases where players were fast and skipped the cutscene causing Maw to be visible after death.
• Fixed various tutorial collision bugs.
• Potential fix for an issue where opening the menu on Steam Deck and tabbing quickly causes the menu to stop working.
• Fixed issues with fading and letterboxing on the edges of ultra-wide monitor screens.
• Implemented a fix for being able to confirm resolution change when KBM binding is set to same input as submit.
• Fixed an issue and improved code for Dirk Rifle laser beam telegraph.
• Fixed an issue where the “Upgrade Sycom” option disappears after purchasing a sycom perk.
• Fixed an issue where the Arid Wastes Academy point of interest had floating pews.
• Fixed an issue where a Jeweled Spire Bell Temple point of interest decked over a cliff.
• COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed an issue where a Jeweled Spire cave entrance was blocked by a point of interest.
• Fixed issue where the “Proceed to Next Cycle” button lights up again for the Host after they have already held the button down to proceed.
• Fixed an issue where the hub vendor icons were clipping into the surrounding environment.
• Fixed double-focus state of the pause menu loadout screen on subsequent visits.
• Fixed the multiplayer menu issue where the lobby ping field always read “0 ms”.
• COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed issue where some users get a LowLevelFatalError when attempting to join a multiplayer game.
• Fixed issue where an Arid Wastes jump pad decked partially inside a cliff in an unreachable area.
• COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed issue where currencies were not being deducted when unlocking SyCom perks.
• Speculative fix submitted for an issue where a tiny white dot lingers on all players screens, likely vendor UI related.
• Fixed issues with various holobytes carrying over from successive runs.
• Fixed issue where the Critical Cuffs holobyte wasn’t functioning as described.
• Submitted a fix for the issue where a Client can have 2 SyCom perks active at once after joining Lobby.
• Fixed issue where skipping the combat training tutorial left the player unresponsive.
• Fixed issue where holobyte drops were including multiple high rarity holobytes.
• Submitted a fix to prevent SyComs from going into walls.
• Fixed issue where vendors were seen floating in several points of interest.
• Fixed issue where loot wasn’t spawning at the top of the Jeweled Spire Lighthouse.
• Fixed an issue where sometimes the tutorial shrine would stop functioning.
• Fixed UI bug where the extract prompt appears partially filled if you exit the menu early and reenter.
• COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed a bug where players couldn’t finish the cycle because a teammate died at end during extraction.
• Fixed UI issue where we were showing the Hub screen after pausing in the Tutorial/Combat Training.
• Possible fix (at least an improvement) for enemies spawning (and/or dropping) below, or inside objects during extraction.
• Fixed UI issue where controller input wasn’t working properly on the title screen.
• Fixed issue that was causing Dro to be invisible during part of her intro cutscene.
• Fixed UI issue where the assassins health bars were not synced properly.
• Fixed issue where, sometimes, the camera view fails to center on the player after closing the map while moving at the beginning of a run.
• Fixed an issue where the Shrine Healing EXE perk was not functioning in multiplayer.
• Fixed issue where loot dropped from Dro when defeated in the Ruined Outskirts biome would drop out of bounds.
• COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed an issue where Vermillion's Contractor perk wasn’t activating consistently.
• Fixed issue where Hunters Mark was affecting allies.
• COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed an issue where playing the tutorial repeatedly could prevent players from completing the tutorial as they could not level up at the Shrine after maxing out their level.
• Fixed issue where blade specials would fail to activate or charge when starting to hold the input during a jump/dash.

Performance Improvements:

• Small performance improvements in the Overgrowth, Hub, and Crown Arenas.
• Small performance improvements for Exus and Dro fights.
• Small performance / latency improvements for multiplayer.
• Improved projectile handling for singleplayer and multiplayer.

Known Issues

• Shrines will disappear from your in-game map when you return from a Crown fight.
  • We are exploring a hotfix solution for this right now.
• Some POIs will show dark marking around them on the map texture. This will be removed in our June update.

• Some features that did not make it into our May update, but will show up in our June Update are:
  • Quitting/Crashing Mid-Run
    • If a player quits mid-run, we no longer treat it as death. Instead, on next play session, the player will skip the Hub and start in-run at the last shrine (unless in multiplayer).
  • Performance Updates
    • We’ve identified a number of additional performance improvements but many of them require additional QA before we can include them in an update.