This game update focuses on new players by adding a step-by-step tutorial to the game. In addition to that, there is a new weapon, a new perk, some important visual and cosmetic changes, bug fixes, and more. Let's look at these changes in detail and start with the tutorial.

Tutorial

A number of people requested a step-by-step in-game tutorial and here it's.

Most experienced players probably won't find this tutorial very useful, but for a new player, this can be a great way to get familiar with all key game elements.

Tutorial is a new game type/mode, in addition to Classic and Waves

There you will have a number of missions, 19 at this moment, which you have to complete. Every mission would require you to do a certain action, like throwing a grenade, going to a place, or killing some monsters. The tutorial is generally simple and easy, but the last mission could be a bit challenging and fun to try out even for an old player.

One of the missions where we learn about the manual reload

The tutorial covers the most problematic elements of the game, those that new players (based on YouTube videos, reviews, the feedback, etc.) find complicated, but it was not possible to include everything there. For instance, the tutorial doesn't explain the Kill Streak mechanic, there is nothing about Range Penalty, Overwhelming, Wickedness, Skills, Runes, and many other game elements. Those things you can learn later by playing the game, reading Random Advice, and from guides on Steam.

Weapons

New weapon - Crusher


This is a heavy (but not crazy heavy...) high-level (30) shotgun. It has a slow rate of fire, but quite a lot of damage and unlike almost all other shotguns it has a basic penetration of 2. Also, for a weapon of the top-level, its experience gain speed is not as bad, only -45%, while many other weapons have -55%. This is a fun weapon to try out and it can be really strong with the right perks. The shotguns line already had a high-level weapon before called Lotus (27), which is also a gauss weapon and from a recent update a weapon with bio-type damage, but it felt like the shotguns class can benefit from something new and different as well. It might not be as effective with Vampirism as other shotguns, but with some damage and critical damage improvements and with Hunter perk it can show a very high DPS and be effective against top-level monsters and spawners.

Apocalypse's stats were adjusted: damage 85 > 43, hit speed 0.3 > 0.15. It will have pretty much the same DPS as before, but it just would shoot faster and feel more like a machine gun.

Perks

New perk - Smokey


With this perk, your hero will smoke every 30 seconds and get +25% shooting and moving speed bonus for 10 seconds but lose 5 Maximum and current HP. Eventually, smoking will kill you, as in real life. This perk is not very strong or useful, it's more educational and symbolic to demonstrate the bad effect of smoking, but it could be used on rare occasions in the game. The perk has a small additional effect of reducing the weight of Inferno by 50%, so you can finally carry that huge weapon for a bit.

Perk Execution now works with splash damage.

Perk Genius became stronger. This is one of the oldest perks that wasn't useful in most cases because of its severe negative effects (-50 Max HP and -25% damage), so now in addition to +50% experience bonus it will also speed up skills training speed by the factor of 2! This is actually a big deal that can allow a player to gain much more skill points after the game, and another good news is that it doesn't matter at what stage of the game you take this perk, as long as you have it taken at the end of the game, the amount of skill points you get will be doubled. This effect is somewhat similar to how perk Collector increases the rune drop rate allowing you to get a long-term advantage and carry some of the benefits to the next game.

Perk Unstoppable now has a small additional bonus for the .50 pistol, +33% shooting speed (1.5 > 1). This pistol had the hit speed of 1 before, but was nerfed to 1.5, yet there is still a special achievement "Bullet Tooth Tony" that uses the combo of this weapon and this perk.

Perk Rage received a small bonus. It will be activated at 50% of the maximum HP instead of 40% if you play as Amira, allowing you to benefit from perk's great effects earlier. This change reflects the emotional nature and history (story/bio) of the hero.

Graphics

Weapon's name will be written in red (maroon) if you have an active weapon penalty:

Its background is already red

Random Advice (ex. Scrolls of Wisdom) alignment was changed to a centered one:


Stats screen was slightly improved (lines were corrected), so it looks a bit better now:


The "Dirt particles" were added. They are created when a bullet hits a rock, and also at the moment of every fire-based explosion (not plasma/energy-based). These small grey particles are very similar to blood particles, their amount and lifetime can be adjusted in settings.

The skills button on the heroes screen was slightly changed to fit bigger numbers with decimals.

A new updated hero sprite with Apocalypse:


The Dev Stats background was adjusted by 1 pixel, so it looks nicer :)

Instead of 1x and 2x the real number of skill points (0.05 for the casual game and 0.1 in Hard Mode) is shown on the skills page.

Settings

There is a new thing to play with in settings - "Nice Skills". Skill points in the game were shown as rounded numbers with an ability to show them with decimals if you hold the "S" button on the skills screen. Now, instead of that, you can set in settings whether you want the skill points to have decimals, or be nice and rounded. This will affect skill points shown in 4 places: hero skills screen, skill points gained at the end of the game, total skill points in stats, total skill points in the heroes screen for each hero. Skill points are rounded by default (Nice Skills: ON).

Stats

Due to the fact that splash damage wasn’t calculated in total damage (see the explanation later in the "Bugs" section), the old average damage value and the respective leaderboard didn't fairly represent the real average damage value. That is why the old leaderboard was removed and a new one was added. Also, now the way average damage is calculated is different, it’s based on the total damage in the last 5 games only, and not on the total damage from all games as it was before. If you played less than 5 games in total the value won’t be shown.

You will see “N/A” there

When you hover the mouse over the question mark sign, you can see the total damage (in thousands (k)) from the last 5 games.

5k damage is done in the last game, and 0 in the previous 4 games as just 1 game has been played with the new system during the test

When you played at least 5 games with the new system, this value will be uploaded to the Steam Leaderboard (if the other conditions are met… like the last game was 3+ minutes and you have enough Trust). Hopefully, this new system will be fair and it will more reflex the most recent activity of the player, rather than the whole history (we already have The Total Damage leaderboard for that purpose).

A new cause of death was added: Smoking.

Now you can see if a player (or you...) completed or not completed the tutorial in stats.

Leaderboards

The old Average Damage leaderboard was removed from the game due to a bug (see the explanation later in the "Bugs" section) and replaced by a new one with the same name.

Bugs

The Total damage value calculation was fixed. It was not calculated properly before, it did not take into account most of the splash-type damage due to the way it's calculated. This means that Average Damage and Total Damage leaderboards are actually wrong. Unfortunately, at this point, it's quite hard to clean up those leaderboards or to wipe them out because the values that people have there are partially right (especially in the Total Damage leaderboard), it's just splash damage wasn't accounted for. Sadly, there is no easy fix for the old Average Damage leaderboard at this point and it will be removed from the game as it doesn't fairly represent the ranking. Sorry to those who was affected by it. There will be a new system to calculate the average damage _(see above in the "Stats" section) _and a new Average Damage leaderboard.

Wind-corrected crosshair won't be shown if you have Sharpshooter perk (because it cancels wind Influence on projectiles).

Blood particles that are generated after a splash damage were a bit broken before. You didn't see the right amount of particles after a splash damage because the life of the splash object (technical language...) was reduced from 30 ticks to 5 in one of the recent updates, yet the way blood particles are generated was not changed. Now it's fixed and you should see more blood after splash.

Other

"Scrolls of Wisdom" screen was renamed to "Random Advice" as it's more clear.

One old random advice was updated (the one about average damage).

A guide on Steam was updated.

The Trust formula was updated.

The official website was updated (+1 weapon, +1 perk, etc.).