Hello there Red Algorithm fans, happy holidays to you all!
This is yet another game update (we made it to 2.0!) that introduces a new interesting mechanic, traditionally adds some new content, and fixes a few bugs.
Here is a quick summary of what is new:
- New Declaration mechanic
- +1 new weapon
- +1 new perk
- +5 new achievements
- Monsters' HP in Hard Mode is now higher to compensate for the Declaration bonus
- Wicked monster will pretend to be a bonus less often and have a lower chance to bash
- You can train your skills faster if you completed achievements (the same mechanic as with Runes)
- A few important bug fixes
- Other changes
As always, this update is free and hopefully, with your support and feedback, there will be more updates in 2022, so the game can grow and gradually become even better.
Declarations
What are declarations and how do they work?
Declarations allow you to make a promise of how long you think you will survive in the next game.
You can declare 3 things:
- That you will survive 10 minutes
- That you will survive 20 minutes
- That you will survive 30 minutes
Also, you don't have to declare anything and can play as you did before.
You can declare how long you will survive on the heroes screen. Note that declaration are shown only to players who spent at least 5 hours in the game, but you can always go to settings, find "Declaration" there and set it "always" if you want to access them earlier.
If you have an active declaration (you promised to survive X minutes), you get a penalty until you fulfill your promise: -10% damage, -10% rune drop rate, -10% skill training speed.
However, the minute you fulfill your declaration (at 10, 20, or 30 minutes), you get a bonus:
- 10 minutes declaration: +10% damage, rune drop rate, and skill training speed
- 20 minutes declaration: +20% damage, rune drop rate, and skill training speed
- 30 minutes declaration: +30% damage, rune drop rate, and skill training speed
This is kind of a risk / reward system that allows you to get significant bonuses if you complete the declaration, yet that punishes those who don't. To put it simply, it will be harder to play with the declaration until you survive the time that you said you will, but after that, it will be easier to play and you will also get great long-term bonuses; more runes and skill points.
You can see what kind of declaration a player has in the bottom left corner of the interface while in game. It will be red when unfulfilled and green when fulfilled.
Another thing to keep in mind here is that it's not enough to just reach that time mark that you set and get those bonuses, you have to keep playing and try to survive as long as you can after that to fully enjoy the benefits that the fulfilled declaration brings.
Here is a small chart that might help to understand how this mechanic works better:
30 minutes declaration is a high-risk / high-reward type thing.
Declarations are available with casual difficulty and in Hard Mode as well.
The last note here is that declarations don't work with active missions (when you do achievements). So, you either play a 10-minute game and go for achievement without any declarations, or you play a regular game in casual mode or in Hard Mode with a declaration.
Weapons
New weapon - Fixer.
It's a level 30 pistol with decent stats. The pistols line had no 30-level weapon before, the best weapon there was Gemini (two pistols level 25). Fixer is a strong weapon in the late game with the right perks, it's very light, it has a good DPS and a much smaller experience penalty compared to other level 30 weapons.
Gemini pistols were nerfed. Their penetration was reduced from 2 to 1, and the range penalty was increased from 0.25 to 0.35, which means that they will do less damage at a long-range. There was really no good reason why these two pistols had an improved penetration (there is a big difference between penetration 1 and 2, far greater than between 3 and 6 for example), as most other pistols have the penetration of 1 with just a few exceptions of, particularly powerful weapons. The same goes for the range penalty as well, it should not be 0.25, a value that is more common for rifles. Even after these nerfs Gemini still will be a strong and versatile weapon.
Piercer (spear / javelin) was buffed: reload 1.5 > 1.25. The change is based on the internal tests.
Diablo weapon was reworked in a major way:
- Level 30 > 33, so you can carry it without penalty only if you have Deal With The Devil perk
- It won’t shoot 2 bullets at a time anymore, now it works like most of the weapons
- It won’t have the unique splash effect anymore
- Now it has a splash damage
- Critical chance was reduced from 0.66 to 0, as it’s a splash-type weapon now
- Hit speed: 0.66 > 0.4 (so the basic DPS with 100 Wickedness will be 250)
- Its primary class was changed from 0 (unspecified) to 9 launchers, which means that the special perk Explosives will work with it as well
- Its maximum ammo was changed from 22 to 6
This strange and unique weapon wasn't quite useful in its previous form.
Cassini plasma minigun was renamed to Pulsar and Kepler plasma shotgun was renamed to Splitter. Weapons' stats weren't affected. The names were changed because it felt wrong to use the names of real people (Astronomers) for these weapons in the game as those people had nothing to do with them.
Perks
New perk - Holy Spirit.
This is a perk with an interesting mechanic that is highly dependent on your Wickedness. With Holy Spirit, a yellow energy spirit will follow you and attack monsters every 5 seconds with the damage that directly depends on the Wickedness. The way it works is very similar to Demonic Possession, but this perk is a good thing from the moral point of view. In addition to attacking monsters, it will also reduce your Wickedness by 5 every minute, which means that the damage that this perk does will grow. Also, this perk would be amazing if you have other "good" things, like perk Paladin, and weapon Malleus.
Perk Demonic Possession was slightly improved. The fireballs created by it won't be destroyed on the collision with rocks (they will fly over them). Also, if your Wickedness is less than 0 (you are a good guy), the fireballs won't be created at all as they would have 0 or less damage anyway.
Perk Bet On Red received a small additional bonus. When you play as Mr. Lee and take that perk, if you won the lottery, in addition to doubling your Max HP, you will also get +5% to Dodge. This is made to reflect an existing achievement / combo.
Perk Doctor will now reduce your Wickedness by 20, as it's a "good" thing.
Perk Variety now has a combo with Liberte assault rifle (partially because of the new Vive La Révolution achievement). It reduces the weapon level by 5, from 14 to 9, allowing you to use this weapon earlier without penalties. It might not be that useful when you going for the achievement, as you are not likely to reach even level 9 anyway, but it can be quite helpful in regular games.
Monsters, Hard Mode, and Difficulty
All monsters in Hard Mode will now have more health (HP). They used to have a 25% HP bonus there, but now the bonus will be 40%, 15% higher. This is done because of the implementation of the declaration mechanic, assuming that an experienced player would play a game in Hard Mode with one of the declarations (10, 20, or 30 minutes), and end up getting an average damage bonus of 15% (most likely 10 min., or 20 min. declarations will be chosen with an average damage bonus of +15%). This change will be painful to players who won't do declarations in Hard Mode, and a little bit painful to those who will just go for the 10 minutes one (they'll end up with a -5% damage bonus in total if we subtract the newly added monsters' HP from the damage bonus, which is technically wrong). But if you go for 20 minutes declaration, or even for the 30 minutes one for the late game, you will still end up with a damage boost that will fully cover this new monsters' HP. This change won't affect new players who don't play in Hard Mode, but it will make active missions (that you do to get achievements, all of which must be in Hard Mode) harder if you don't have at least some runes and skills.
The logic behind this and other previous changes to the Hard Mode is that it's assumed that a regular player will enjoy the game in the casual mode, get some skills and runes, become stronger, and then perform better, have fun, survive longer, etc. You don't need to know the game perfectly and have a developer hero in order to enjoy the casual mode. However, at some point, you would need to start playing the real game in Hard Mode, where it's assumed that you utilize and understand all of the game mechanics (Kill Streak, Range Penalty, Declarations, etc.) and that you already have a very developed or even a maxed out hero. Achievements and active missions are kind of an entry-level of the Hard Mode and the real game, where you can slowly get used to the real difficulty and learn more.
Wicked became a little bit weaker and less annoying. A few players complained that too many bonuses at a certain game early game stage are fake (Wicked pretending to be them, and then attacking you when you come closer), so after this update you should see fake bonuses less often. That chance that this monster will hide and pretend to be a bonus was reduced from 5% to 4%. Also, Wicked's chance to bash was reduced from 6% to 3%. These changes should make this monster a bit easier to deal with.
Machnina (robots) became a little bit stronger. Their HP formula was changed to: "HP = 50 + ( TIME 25 )", instead of "HP = 50 + ( TIME 22 )", so they will get +3 HP per minute.
Heroes
Premium hero Amira was renamed to Samara. Samara is a different Arabic / Jewish name that fits this hero better. Such renaming of heroes won’t happen often (probably won’t happen at all in the future) and it shouldn’t affect those who purchased the DLC. If you have any technical problems with this premium hero, please contact the developer.
Graphics
New image for Renaissance shotgun:
This shotgun's image was redesigned 3 times already, but now it finally reflects its nature in the right way. It should have an old and mechanical look as it does now.
The Wickedness value and its icon during the game will have a white background:
So it'll be more visible and a bit cleaner.
A new popup "declaration" at 10, 20, or 30 minutes (when you successfully fulfill it).
Skills
Starting from this version the number of completed achievements will improve your skill straining speed, +1% per each completed achievement. This is a similar principle to how it works with runes. As there are currently 70 achievements in the game (+5 were added in this update), it's possible to get a +70% bonus to the skill training speed if you complete all the achievements, which is very nice. This is another good reason to do active missions and get achievements.
Achievements
Eventually, it's planned to have 100 total achievements in the game, as it's the limit that Steam allows most of the games to have. As we see new weapons and perks being added, new achievements will be added to the game as well. This update includes 5 of them:
Vive La Révolution: Liberte + Variety
Bladestorm: Katana + Mortal Spin
Hellish Breath: Inferno + Smokey
Safe Distance: Solo + Antisocial
Saint: Omega + Holy Spirit
Most of the achievements have a working weapon + perk combo that usually improves some of the weapon stats.
Settings
New setting: declaration. It's set to ">5 h" (play at least 5 hours in total) by default, but you can activate the declarations feature at any time and set it to "always".
Wickedness > when important (the default option) now includes new perk Holy Spirit as well.
Stats
The new declaration mechanic brought up some new stats too:
All declarations stats will be tracked! Yeah!?
6 kinds of declarations will be recorded in stats: 3 for the casual games and 3 for games in Hard Mode (both Classic in Waves game types are saved together). The first number there is the type of the declaration (10, 20, or 30, how long you declared you'll survive), the second number is how many declarations you fulfilled successfully, after that the total number of declarations (including failed attempts), and lastly, in brackets, you can see the success rate.
Sounds
A sound of the fallen meteor was added, which will be the same as the sound of an explosion.
A new sound "Declaration" at 10, 20, or 30 minutes (when you successfully fulfill it).
Many sounds used to be executed from the popup objects, which created a problem if the player turned off the popups, but wanted to keep the sounds that were supposed to be there, like the sound when you pick a bonus, etc. This was a rare case, but it could potentially be a problem. Now if you turn off all popups in settings, sounds won’t be canceled, and if you want to cancel the narrator’s comments as well, you can still do it separately.
Bugs
The bug with perk Antisocial was fixed. It caused the game to crash when there are 0 monsters on the map if you had this perk.
A bug with perk Smokey and an active mission were fixed. When you complete a mission while having this perk, the cause of death was recorded as "Smoking", and not as “Mission Completed”, which is wrong because smoking actually didn’t kill you at 10 min., the fact that you completed a mission did. Now Smokey perk effect will be processed in another way, so the bug shouldn’t appear.
Other
A new big guide in Russian was written and published on the Steam community.
Things that you have done in the tutorial (kills, damage received, etc.) won't be recorded in stats unless you fully completed the tutorial and passed all the tasks.
Canceling an active mission now will remove the green frame around it.
A couple of new random advice were added, mainly about the new features.
A few old random advice were fixed / updated (the one about Cultists' bash, etc.).
The mature content rating for the game was updated. The fact that it now includes rare references to smoking and drinking was added.
The official website was updated with a few new pages (new perks, weapons, etc.).
Changed files in this update