Hey gladiators - this week's patch is *not* the anticipated Starbound Gladiator final battle, though that is not that far away. I have finished all the endgame cutscenes but wanted to do something a bit more special for the final fight.

So that one is maybe a week away, but this patch is pretty important in that it fixes a number of big bugs ( well, hopefully, please let me know if you still encounter them as I've done a few pretty sweeping code changes, it may create other issues)

There's also now the option to skip cutscenes, (this will skip all dialogue and most of the text cutscenes), be aware that you're going to completely miss the story of the game this way, no game ending scenes or anything, but if you are impatient or have seen them before, well that option is for you. Maybe good for speedrunners perhaps.

PLEASE let me know if you encounter any craziness with the game from this patch as I have done a lot of tweaking, armour and weapon values have changed a bit but I really hope the armour degradation issue is solved ( as well as a talent exploit bug ).

Until next week my friends!
Oliver Joyce
Whiskeybarrel Studios

--- NEW FEATURES ---
• Added Excelsior Armour Set to the game
• You can now rename your character at any time from the Vital Stats section of your character sheet.
• Non major cutscenes can be now skipped by setting them to 'OFF' in the settings menu. (You will miss some story elements by doing this!)
--- BALANCE CHANGES / STAT FIXES ---
• Refactoring of weapon damage ( relative increased damage overall, but reduced the damage value output of all rare + level weapons )
• Refactoring of armour values. All armour values will appear somewhat different across the board.

--- BATTLE CHANGES / FIXES ---
• Fixed a bug where special rules applied to Grand Champion Battles ( should always be standard rules )
• Fixed a bug where tag team gladiators would appear during Grand Champion battles
• Fixed a bug where throwing your weapon then drinking a cooldown potion would not return your weapon to you.
• Fixed a bug where Excelsior and Blood Magic talents healed your enemy instead of you
• Fixed a bug where Captivation returned essence to your enemy instead of you

--- MISC FIXES AND CHANGES ---
• POTENTIAL FIX for armour degradation (armour would lose points after a few days) - please let me know if you are still experiencing this
• POTENTIAL FIX for talent points exploit on level up ( levelling up talent points while wearing items also containing that talent), again let me know if you are still experiencing this
• Fixed a bug where the game would crash on load if it could not retrieve the daily rules of the arena you were in.
• Fixed a bug where sometimes you could not equip a weapon in your alt hand even with Dual Wielding skill learned
• Fixed some story typos
• Fixed a bug where sometimes in during Survival arenas with Random Rules mode you saw the "Challenge Arena Champion" panel.
• Fixed a bug where selecting certain huge champions to fight as simulcrums would increase the size of other simulcrum champions