Howdy everyone!
The 0.8.0 Winter update is now available for download!
As a result, the playtest branch has been closed for the time being.
As usual, we thank all playtesters who helped us get this version up and running as well as the translators who are still hard at work to bring Roboquest to your favorite language. Some localizations are still not available, but we’re getting closer.
Here are the highlights of the Winter update:
Highlights
Sir Catercoaster
A new boss has come into play in the Act 2 (in the ‘Energy Center’).
Sir Catercoaster is making its comeback into the game in a brand new arena and attack patterns. We hope you’ll like it and if not, please make sure to tell us how you think we should improve it.
Aqua & Energy Center Update
The ‘Aqua Station’ has been fully reworked (visually and design-wise) and The ‘Energy Center’ has received a visual polish touch as well as a few level design changes.
‘Aqua Station’ has always been a level we were looking to improve as it felt a bit empty and lacked a strong visual identity aside from just being ‘watery’. This update was the right timing for us and we proceeded. We will be following your feedback on that side since it can be considered like a brand new addition to the game.
The visual changes of ‘Energy Center’ are mainly aimed at making it feel more different than other levels in the Act 2 and the level design changes are aimed at making the pacing and flow more pleasing. Nothing too big on that side, though we hope you’ll like and notice the changes nonetheless.
Perk Updates
We’ve updated a lot of names and certain perk (and upgrade) values.
They should be better balanced but more importantly more builds should feel viable over the course of the game (and the different difficulty settings).
Perks and their upgrades are something we will continuously be monitoring and updating according to your feedback and our data. The balance part of it is especially hard to accomplish considering all the new combinations the 0.7.0 brought to the game.
New Weapons
Three new weapons have been added to the game, and we hope you’re going to have a blast with them!
And here is the fully detailed list of changes:
The Winter Update v0.8.0 Patch Notes
Gameplay
• Movement speed while on rails has been increased from 1475 to 1650 and from 2000 to 2200 while sprinting
• Cryo effect has been reworked, it now progressively slows enemies up to a maximum at which point enemies are considered fully ‘Frozen’. While Frozen, enemies automatically take critical damage from all sources
• The range at which you can reboot your brobot has been greatly increased
• The Craft machine can only be used once but spawns 3 weapons instead of 1, its cost has been reduced from 2 Wrenches per weapon to 4 Wrenches for all three weapons.
Developer's Note: This is simply a quality of life change since almost everyone was always spawning all three weapons anyway.
Classes
• The primary and secondary abilities damage scaling per level has been increased from 24% to 25% per level
Guardian
• ‘Energy Shield’ base shield provided increased from 10 to 15 and regeneration from cells has been increased
Weapons
• New weapon: ‘Flak Cannon’ - Demolition
• New weapon: ‘Tommy Gun’ - Assault
• New weapon: ‘Light Machine Gun’ - Assault
• Removed the ‘Shock Rifle’ alternate fire and added it a pool of 6 random mods. to spawn with
• Added a new ‘weapon tier’ with 4 rare affixes and 2 commons
Mods
• New weapon mod.: ‘Hoverball’ - Fires a slow moving orb which can be expanded by shooting it with your primary fire (it previously was the ‘Shock Rifle’ alternate fire)
• New weapon mod.: ‘Barrier’ - Deploys a protective barrier in front of you blocking enemy projectiles
• New weapon mod.: ‘Trigger Tap’ - Rapidly fires several primary shots in a quick succession
• Weapon modules damage scaling per level has been increased from 10% to 20% per weapon level
• Added the ‘Can-Opener’ mod. to three new weapons (Riflecrossbow, Elite Crossbow and Long Rifle)
Affixes
• Reduced the ‘Heavy’ movement speed penalty from 30% to 20%
• Reduced the ‘Carbon’ speed penalty reduction from 15% to 10%
• The 'Artificer’ affix has been removed from the game
Developer's Note: This was the affix adding sparks to weapons. We found out that adding Sparks from different sources could be a source of misunderstanding for the players when it came to granting bonus to sparks. For instance, upgrades granting bonuses to sparks could be interpreted as granting bonuses to all sparks (those coming from both the perks and the affix). We therefore decided to remove that affix as we didn’t feel like it was a big loss in counterpart for the better clarity of that specific mechanic.
Perks
• Damage scaling of perk effects has been increased from 28% to 30% per character level
• Many perks and upgrades have received value changes
Developer's Note: We’re sorry we don’t have all the information on that side. We will develop a tool that allows us to automatically detect and report those changes so we can be as thorough as possible when publishing these patch notes. Thanks for your understanding.
Upgrades
• Increased the amount of upgrades tied to each class from 4 to 7
• Added a new upgrade to all classes: ‘Size Matters’ - Increases ammo in clip and cooling gauge
• Renamed the class upgrade ‘Cell Addiction’ to ‘Cell Gluttony’
• Added the ‘Cell Gluttony’ class upgrade to Engineer and Guardian class upgrades
• Added a new upgrade to the Engineer and Guardian classes: ‘Meteorology’ - Increases elemental lucky critical chance
Commando
• Renamed the ‘Robzerker’ upgrade ‘Pyro Maniac’ to ‘Sapper’
• Moved ‘Sapper’ from the ‘Robzerker’ upgrades to the class upgrades
• Renamed the ‘Rocket Mag.’ upgrade ‘Extra Rocket’ to ‘Extra Load’
• Renamed the ‘Rocket Barrage’ upgrade ‘Hard Headed’ to ‘Mini-Nuke’
• Renamed the ‘Rocket Barrage’ upgrade ‘New Friends’ to ‘More Rockets’
• Renamed the ‘Hot Sauce’ perk to ‘Combustion’
• Renamed the ‘Combustion’ upgrade ‘Pili-Pili’ to ‘Hot Sauce’
• Renamed the ‘Combustion’ upgrade ‘Ignite’ to ‘Scorch’
• Renamed the ‘Shorty Scanner’ upgrade ‘Extra Sauce’ to ‘Extra Guest’
• Renamed the ‘Angry Barrel’ perk to ‘Unstable Barrel’
• Moved ‘Smooth Cannon’ upgrade from ‘Unstable Barrel’ to the class upgrades
• Renamed the ‘Unstable Barrel’ upgrade ‘Angry-splosion’ to ‘Unstable Fury’
• Added a new upgrade to ‘Unstable Barrel’: ‘Surprise Load’ - Grants a chance to instantly recover Shorty cooldown after using it
• Renamed the ‘Point Blank’ upgrade ‘Shorty in the Nose’ to ‘Shorty-Nose’
• Renamed the ‘Point Blank’ upgrade ‘Tête Brûlée’ to ‘Burning Bonk’
• Moved the ‘Y.O.L.O.’ upgrade from ‘Favorite Weapon’ to the ‘Robzerker’ upgrades
• Removed the ‘Frenzy’ upgrade ‘Thrill of the Fight’
• Removed the ‘Frenzy’ upgrade ‘Alternative Path’
• Removed the ‘Frenzy’ upgrade ‘Deep Pocket’
• Added a new upgrade to ‘Frenzy’: ‘Outburst’ - Increases explosion damage and radius
• Added a new upgrade to ‘Frenzy’: ‘Battle Fever’ - Increases lucky critical chance for each fury point
• Renamed the ‘Fortifying Wrath’ upgrade ‘Skin Flower’ to ‘Fighting Pulse’
• Moved the ‘Fighting Pulse’ upgrade from ‘Fortifying Wrath’ to the ‘Frenzy’ perk upgrades
• Renamed the ‘Fortifying Wrath’ upgrade ‘Furious Healing’ to ‘Repair-o-Fury’
• Renamed the ‘Fortifying Wrath’ upgrade ‘Mind of Steel’ to ‘Concrete Chipset’
• Added a new upgrade to ‘Fortifying Wrath’: ‘Mind of Steel’ - Increases your damage when fury is at its maximum
• Added ‘Robo-Coffee’ from the Recon’s ‘Favorite Weapon’ upgrades to the Commando’s ‘Favorite Weapon’ upgrades
• Renamed the ‘Crème Brûlée’ perk to ‘Ignite’
• Renamed the ‘Ignite’ upgrade ‘Torch’ to ‘Blowtorch’
• Renamed the ‘Ignite’ upgrade ‘Extra Brown Sugar’ to ‘Chemistry’
• Renamed the ‘Ignite’ upgrade ‘Explosion of Flavor’ to ‘Red Powder’
• Renamed the ‘Quick Firefly’ perk to ‘Light Sparks’
• Renamed the ‘Light Spark’ upgrade ‘Fire Sparks’ to ‘Pyro Spark’
• Renamed the ‘Light Spark’ upgrade ‘Explosive Sparks’ to ‘Boom Spark’
Engineer
• Added a new upgrade to the Engineer class: ‘Scraplosion’ - Takedowns grant a chance to trigger an explosion
• Added a new upgrade to the Engineer class: ‘Black Powder’ - Increases explosion damage and radius
• Reworked the elemental choice upgrade for all ‘Chroma’ upgrades with a ‘Chroma Specialty’ upgrade
• Added a new upgrade to ‘Chroma Blaster’: ‘Vivid Colors’ - Increases elemental damage bonus and duration
• Removed the ‘Chroma Blaster’ upgrade ‘Unstable Blaster’
• Renamed the ‘Triple Blaster’ perk to ‘Triple Bombs’
• Modified ‘Triple Bombs’ perk - Handblaster now shoots three explosive balls
• Renamed the ‘Triple Bombs’ upgrade ‘Rabid Blaster’ to ‘Oiled Blaster’
• Removed the ‘Drone Bazooka’ upgrade ‘Black Powder’
• Added a new upgrade to ‘Drone Bazooka’: ‘Triple Zooka’ - Triggering ‘Love Bond’ makes your drone shoots multiple rockets for a short duration
• Renamed the ‘Drone Bazooka’ and ‘Drone Swarm’ upgrade ‘Oiled Barrel’ to ‘Oiled Cannon’
• Renamed the ‘Drone Bazooka’ upgrade ‘Headseeker’ to ‘Headseeker Rocket’
• Renamed the ‘Drone Swarm’ upgrade ‘Recycled Drone’ to ‘Eco-Drone’
• Renamed the ‘Chroma Bullets’ perk to ‘Chroma Weapon’
• Renamed the ‘Chroma Bullets’ upgrade ‘Pyro Bullets’ to ‘Pyro Weapons’
• Renamed the ‘Chroma Bullets’ upgrade ‘Cryo Bullets’ to ‘Cryo Weapons’
• Renamed the ‘Chroma Bullets’ upgrade ‘Electro Bullets’ to ‘Electro Weapons’
• Renamed the ‘Chroma Bullets’ upgrade ‘Hyperactive Weapon’ to ‘Carbon Grip’
• Renamed the ‘Love Spreading’ perk to ‘Elemental Split’
• Renamed the ‘Love Spreading’ upgrade ‘Long Arm’ to ‘Chroma Aberration’
• Modified the ‘Chroma Drone’ perk effects, it now only grants a random elemental to your drones and no longer reduces their health
• Renamed the ‘Chroma Drone’ upgrade ‘Drone Retaliation’ to ‘Drone Revenge’
• Renamed the ‘Quick Firefly' perk to ‘Light Spark’
• Renamed the ‘Light Spark’ upgrade ‘Recycled Spark’ to ‘Eco-Spark’
• Renamed the ‘Future’s Cooler’ perk to ‘Quick Cooling’
• Renamed the ‘Luxury Suit’ perk to ‘Body Armor’
Recon
• Modified the ‘Sharpened Wits’ effects, it now only increases Critical Damage instead of both Critical Damage and Dagger Lucky Critical Chance
• Modified the ‘Laser Cutlass’ upgrade ‘Lucky Star’, now it only increases lucky critical chance and no longer make Laser Dagger critical
• Added a new class upgrade: ‘Secret Trick’ - Laser Dagger is always critical
• Added a new class upgrade: ‘Eco Decoy’ - Increases decoy duration and efficiency
• Modified the ‘Shadowstrike’ upgrade ‘Shadow Madness’, it now only grants its bonus while the Shadowstrike bonus is active
• Renamed the ‘Shadowstep’ perk to ‘Night Shroud’
• Renamed the ‘Tactical Critical’ perk to ‘Tactical Scan’
• Modified the ‘Tactical Scan’ perk, it now triggers a marking explosion around the closest enemy in sight and taking down a marked enemy spreads the mark to another one
• Removed the ‘Tactical Scan’ upgrade ‘Deep Analysis’
• Added a new ‘Tactical Scan’ upgrade: ‘Double Spread’ - Taking down an enemy spreads the mark to more enemies
• Renamed the ‘Critical Split’ upgrade ‘Shareholders’ to ‘Chain Reaction’
• Renamed the ‘Critical Split’ upgrade ‘Fat Stacks’ to ‘Simple Geometry’
• Removed the ‘Locked and Loaded’ upgrade ‘Cunning Load’
• Removed the ‘Locked and Loaded’ upgrade ‘Gunslinger’
• Added a new ‘Locked and Loaded’ upgrade ‘Electro Mag.’ - Non-elemental weapons deal more damage when ‘Locked and Loaded’ is active
• Added a new ‘Locked and Loaded’ upgrade ‘Gun Diet.’ - Increases firerate depending on missing ammo in clip
• Renamed the ‘Locked and Loaded’ upgrade ‘Reliable Hand’ to ‘Quick Hand’
• Renamed the ‘Blue Screen Protocol’ perk to ‘Blue-Screen’
• Modified the ‘Blue Screen’ upgrade ‘Shutdown’, it now grants your first hit against an enemy a tiny chance to execute enemies
Guardian
• Added the ‘Low Rider’ class upgrade from the Recon to the Guardian class upgrades
Items
• Most corrupted items debuffs reduced by around 50%
Developer's Note: Like we said in our previous developer news, we have specific goals for corrupted items but we’re still working on the overall design and the implementation details. In the meantime we’re trying to make these items a bit more interesting to play with and we’re reducing the debuffs they apply. We’ll keep looking at your feedback about them and we’ll keep you in touch about what we think will be a better iteration of them.• Gasoline explosion radius bonus increased from 12% to 16% and from 8% to 12% (when mitigated)
• Reactor (Commando’s class item) now increases weapon damage instead of rocket damage
Developer's Note: The Commando’s class item was a too strong competition for the neutral item ‘Gasoline’ and was kind of overlapping in terms of build. We’re trying to separate them more so they can be relevant to different types of builds or be mixed up with each other without feeling like ‘Gasoline’ is a lower-tier pick.• Holopad (Guardian’s class item) shield bonus increased from 12% to 25% and from 7% to 15% (when mitigated)
Developer's Note: The actual values provided by ‘Holopad’ were pretty, pretty low so we’re buffing those a bit.
Basecamp
• Added a basecamp upgrade: ‘Fantastic Weapon’ - Grants a tiny chance to spawn a weapon with more than the maximum amount of bonuses
• Added a new basecamp upgrade: ‘Starting Upgrade’ - You start the run with a class upgrade choice
• Removed the basecamp upgrade: ‘Level Console’
Developer's Note: That console was reducing the amount of times you would switch weapons during your runs considering you could stick with the same one. This specific issue was amplified by the new ‘Fantastic Weapon’ upgrade if you would find such a weapon at the very beginning of the run. In the future, we’ll be adding another and more healthy way to bring a weapon with you along the way as we consider it to be interesting, but we don’t want it to be mandatory or too incentivized by the game mechanics.• Each repair-o-bot upgrade health restoration increased from 3% to 5%
Enemies
• Enemies’ impact resistance scaling by difficulty level has been reduced
• Enemies’ health scaling per level increased from 28% to 30%
• Reduced enemy density by approximately 5%-10%
Developer's Note: This change is mainly aimed at giving a little more air to breathe in between encounters and reducing the number of times you ‘accidentally’ aggro enemies from other encounters (or trigger trailbots). We consequently reduced the required XP values to level-up to account for this change.• Enemies’ damage scaling per level in multiplayer reduced from 25% to 20%
• Reworked the hitbox detection of enemies’ melee attacks
• Increased the warmup duration of enemies’ melee attacks
• The Gunpawn no longer shoots two blasts in a row, instead he shoots more often
• The Guardbot’s projectile spread has been reduced, making it a less dangerous threat at mid to long range
• Shockwave FX has been reworked to better highlight where it starts and ends
• Updated the Mine Pod visuals
• The mortar attack pattern of the Goliath has been replaced by homing missiles
Bosses
• In multiplayer, the Bosses’ health scaling per level has been reworked to be different from Act to Act
Developer's Note: We previously had a linear (across the levels) multiplayer Boss’ health scaling. We’re modifying these so that Bosses don’t have too much health at the beginning of the game and too few at the end. Earlier bosses should feel less like meat-tanks and later ones should feel more challenging in multiplayer.• We added a new “Speed” value for Bosses in order to make them easier in lower difficulties (Easy and Discovery), we also increased this value in Heroes+5 and Heroes+6 for testing purposes
Beetle Royal
• Renamed ‘Beetle Royal’ to ‘Lady Bug’
Judgeball
• Judgeball fires one less sky-rocket during its artillery pattern (‘cause he apparently wasn’t nerfed enough already)
Billy Boom
• Added a visual effect to better indicate the needed interaction with the lever
• Updated the Billy Boom ‘warning’ text to better indicate the need to take action before finishing him off
Levels
• ‘Aqua Station’ has been fully reworked
• ‘Energy Center’ level designs have been updated (more high grounds, better movement flow)
• ‘Energy Center’ visuals have been updated (models and color scheme)
• Further reduced the enemy density in ‘Haven City’ by approximately 15%
• Further reduced the enemy density in ‘Haven City - Corrupted’ by approximately 10%
• Modified the line-up of enemies in ‘Canyons’
Developer's Note: We’re currently trying to diversify the enemy encounters in different levels. The ‘Canyons’ is the first level we’re trying this out and we’ll be closely watching your feedback on that side.
Challenge Rooms
• All challenge rooms in Act 2 and Act 3 are now mixed up (meaning you can find challenge rooms which were previously exclusive to Act 2 in Act 3 and vice versa)
• Added a new challenge room for Act 2 and Act 3
• Removed acid walls in all of the challenge rooms
Interface
• Added a visual ‘pause’ indicator when the game timer is paused
• Added a pop-up message when playing or switching to a language which is not yet fully translated
• Added elemental critical floating damage texts
• Added a time rank and cell rank gauge below the minimap
• Updated Cyrillic font for gameplay texts
Visual Effects
• Reworked the cells visuals
• Shock elemental is now purple
Audio
• Fixed some issues preventing certain feedback and interface sounds from playing when other sounds of the same category would play
• Modified the way your brobot sounds are spatialized to make them less overwhelming when being really close to your brobot
Balance Changes
Scratch Rifle
Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 8.5 to 9.0
Arquebus
Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 34.0 to 40.0
• Firerate decreased from 2.85/s to 2.63/s
• Heat per shot decreased from 16.0 to 15.0
Longbow
Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 58.0 to 68.0
• Impact force increased from 56.0 to 70.0
Shock Rifle
Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 13.0 to 20.0
• Alternate fire removed
Developer's Note: The alternate fire has been transformed into a mod. which can randomly appear on different weapons. We’re likely to continue this process over the updates for other weapons which seem to have an ‘arbitrary’ alternate fire which is not necessarily part of the weapon’s fantasy and / or for weapons which would benefit from accessing other mods.
Power Gloves
Alternative Fire
• Impact force increased from 76.0 to 80.0
Blast Rifle
Primary Fire
• Heat per shot decreased from 3.0 to 2.5
Assault Pistol
Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 36.0 to 38.0
Minigun
Primary Fire
• Firerate increased from 10.0/s to 11.11/s
Barrel Cannon
Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 48.0 to 56.0
• Impact force increased from 75.0 to 78.0
Ball Cannon
Primary Fire
• Damage increased from 100.0 to 115.0
• Impact force increased from 70.0 to 80.0
Engineer
Scrap Blaster
• Damage increased from 60.0 to 65.0
• Cooldown decreased from 4.5 to 4.0
Optimization
• Modified and optimized the rendering of several user interface elements
Developer’s Note: This is only a small part of our ongoing optimization process. However, this may lead to some weird or new behaviors in the UI, if you notice anything of the sort, please let us know using the F10 feedback system ingame.
Bug Fixes
• Replaced some misplaced enemy spawners resulting in enemies spawning inside of the level walls
• Fixed several occurrences of range values not being properly displayed
• Fixed several text tag errors leading to wrong values being displayed
• Fixed a crash occurring when you’d come back to the basecamp during a multiplayer run
• Fixed an issue with weapon Mods. recoil pattern not properly being applied
• Speculative fix: you should no longer find yourself in a position where you can no longer jump
Changed files in this update