Patch Notes - 0.8.25412 (Hotfix) - Changelog

Hi GOG Community!

A few more issues have been reported that we considered "hotfix-worthy". So after our big Stinger's Debut update (0.8.25290) and last week's hotfix (0.8.25327), here's yet another hotfix for you:

Bugfixes

- Fixed that crafting resources were sometimes not added when dismantling items
- Fixed a crash when increasing the rarity of an item that has the mining catalyst installed
- Fixed occasional crash when switching ships on homebase and undocking or upgrading a device
- Fixed more cases of pillar-shaped asteroids in generic Zharkov locations having a wrong rotation

Introducing - Hardcore difficulty!

On Hardcore difficulty, enemies hit even harder and use every opportunity to punish your mistakes. Resources also come in less generous numbers, so long story short Grasshopper - don't get hit and watch your aim! Last stand invulnerability timer has been reduced.

General Balance Changes

• Katana fire attack projectile speed, explosion range and burn chance increased.
• Katana ice attack freeze effect duration reduced.
• Katana's electric attack range decreased.
• Sidekicks’ damage slightly increased and spread decreased.
• HP amount restored from the Finishers now varies with Difficulty.
• Adjusted the Health Points of certain enemies.
• Enemy Health Points are now the same across difficulties (except bosses).
• Shuriken Spitter does not register headshots anymore.
• Health and Ammo orbs respawn-time now varies with Difficulty.
• The amount of Health and Ammo restored from the orbs now varies with Difficulty.
• Last Stand invulnerability-time decreased.
• Thorn's damage now varies with Difficulty.
• Kugutsu accuracy and projectile speed increased.
• Laser Shogun laser now stops on enemies.
• Riot Gun range slightly decreased.
• Oni Hanma's stagger delay increased.
• Lifetime for Seeking Eye and Blade of Hattori have been reduced.
• Removed temporary invincibility after usage of Brain Tonic.

Fixes and Improvements

• Various Balance changes (see below).
• Fix for Achievements not unlocking in rare cases.
• Fix for an unwanted second attack being made with the upgraded Katana if the weapon wheel was used during an attack.
• Fix for the Shuriken Spitter not causing damage during some attacks on the Guardian of The Heart.
• Fix for a bug where the player might get locked in the Guardian of The Heart’s third phase on Hard difficulty.
• Fix for Shogai not reacting to Katana hits if they are performing a melee attack at the time.
• Fix for headshots on Kugutsu from Sidekicks making the ragdoll spin.
• Fix for one of the upgrade points on "The Fast and the Furry" disappearing after the player respawns.
• Fix for some weapons not shooting when the "ranged attack" input is being held while switching between guns.
• Various User Interface fixes.
• Fixes for when the player could fall out of the world.
• Fixes for players leaving the gameplay space.
• Additional checkpoint added to "Doomsday Device" level.
• FOV minimum value set to 80.
• Various progression issues fixed.
• Fix for Thorns popping up inappropriately.
• Fix for a bug where the Thorns wouldn't wither on the final arena of "Egg Express".
• Fixed various edge case logic bugs in various levels.
• Fix for a bug where the player could move with the Tanuki in their hands. Shame.
• Fixed LoD and popping issues in various places.
• Fix for a rare crash when performing a Finisher on Chef Oboro Guruma.
• Various performance enhancements.
• Fix for tutorial messages staying on screen after the player's death.
• Fix for the weapon disappearing when the weapon change was performed right before a cutscene had started.
• Fix for a bug where the player could shoot their weapons during transition cutscenes.
• Fix for the Grappling Hook remaining open after performing certain actions.
• Updates for French, Spanish and Russian localization.
• (PC) Fix for the weapon disappearing when trying to choose an unobtained weapon using keyboard shortcuts.

Update 1.0.32

In this update we increased the game size to decrease the size of future patches.

- bug with the entity fixed

4.017 Feeling Helpful
(Released April 13th, 2022)

-Astro Trains and their prototype constructs now have their own Ship Class types for easier recognition.
-For player allied fireteams, double-count their friendly strength on a planet when deciding whether to attack
-The goal of this is to make player-allied fireteams much more willing to enter a close fight to help the player.

DLC 3
-Skeleton, Wight and Mummy amplifiers no longer have a Ship Class of their own.
-Thanks to ptarth for reporting.
-Fixed planetary damage and speed modifiers for everything appearing everywhere.
-Thanks to Strategic Sage for reporting!
-Necromancers and Necromancer Sidekicks no longer have metal, energy and fuel shown in the special rows when looking at something buildable since they do not need to worry about those resources.
-Fix a typo in a Neinzul Faction journal
-Thanks to Strategic Sage for reporting
-Fix a typo in a ZA journal
-Thanks to Ithuriel0 for reporting
-Nerfs to orbital AI to make this appropriate for Moderate
-Reduced # of Dire guard posts on HW from 6 to 3
-Reduced budget across the board by about 10%
-Thanks to Dismiss and Sage for feedback on how to keep this a moderate AI type!
-Fixed some destroyers having the wrong tech
-Thanks to Sage for pointing this out!
-Sapper turrets/ships with cloaking now all have an albedo of 0.7 so they are properly dealt with by their counters
-Thanks to ptarth for pointing out this inconsistency!
-Elderlings start out with additional Feeble Elderlings at intensities lower than 5.
-This is to accelerate Essence accrual for these lower intensities
-Redo how the Templar Initial Encampments spawn. Now each Templar Difficulty comes with a number of Initial Encampments to spawn (1 at >= intensity 5). When a new Rift opens, if it hasn't spawned enough initial encampments then we will choose an initial one.
-This allows for the Templar to be made easier and more resource right at lower intensities.
-Fixed the Brutal Darkness Guardian being completely immune to tachyon beams instead of resistant.
-Nerfed the AI-Allied Sapper economy
-Thanks to Strategic Sage for the balance feedback
-The Necromancer game lobby hovertext now explicitly disavows support for Challenger+
-We are only going to balance the Necromancer for HA
-Fix a bug where Skeletons/Wights/Mummies weren't being properly counted in the tech menu when loaded into a flagship
-Thanks to Daniexpert for reporting
-Fix a typo in the skeleton decay description
-Thanks to Ithuriel for reporting
-Some improvements to the Skeleton Tip (explaining how decay/attrition works), and to the Elderling overview explaining the Madness mechanism in more detail
-Thanks to discussions on discord including Ithuriel and others
-Fix a bug where it was possible for an already-hacked Necromancer Amplifier to still be listed as a hack if you didn't have a flagship present
-Thanks to Daniexpert for reporting
-The build menu entries for things like Skeleton/Wight homes now correctly show the mark-level for the bodyguards they would grant
-Reported on discord, I don't remember by whom
-Nerfs to the Vanguard AI Type; it was too strong for Moderate
-Fix a typo in a number of hacking options
-Thanks to Ithuriel for reporting

Bug Fixes
-Hopefully resolve the bug with the selection symbols not being correctly coloured.
-Thanks to a number of people for reporting, including Zeus, Strategic Sage, Dismiss and Daniexpert.
-Fix a bug where a player could hack an ODSS > 3 times.
-Thanks to Peter Ebbesen for reporting.
-Add a missing newline in the science sidebar hovertext.
-Thanks to Ithuriel for reporting.
-Fixed the bug that didn't show the "Transform Flagship" hack for Necromancer Flagships.
-Thanks to ptarth for reporting.
-Add some defensive code to the threat resource bar
-Thanks to dismiss for reporting

Balance
-Significant changes to the amount of speed various structures and overloaders hand out:
-Logistic commands adjusted down to 130% base and +30% per mark level. Now cap at 310% at mark 7 instead of 550%. The first two upgrade ranks only cost 1500 each and get them back up to +190% speed at mark three.
-Military commands instead now grant 300 flat speed plus 25 extra per mark. Makes slower ships respond faster without taking already fast strike up to speed caps.
-Overloaders now grant 250 flat speed increase to allied ships. Roughly equivalent within a few percentage points for ships slower than 1000 naturally for the first couple overloaders but no longer multiplicative insanity at 3+. Now three overloaders is +750 speed instead of +174.4% speed.
-Spire Relics capped at double base move speed. This is roughly equivalent to the speed you'd get previously with two overloaders and now can get with one. If you want more overloaders to make the Spire fleet itself faster that is one thing, but no longer heavily incentivized to overloader stack.
-Speed cap adjustments:
-Combat ships are capped at 3000 speed.
-Transports are capped at 6000 speed.
With the revised logistic command speeds this means Agile stays quite relevant at lower levels of investment in logistic station tech. Regular transports only get close to the cap after four tech levels are purchased. The lower overall speeds make baiting harder and the AI tactic of trying to attack where your fleet is not more impactful. Its hard to make the AI seem smart when the player could just load up a transport and zoom over the highway at over 15000 speed to counter almost any attack directly.
-A change to distributed economy power generation:
-Previously too much power was granted from the asteroid power plants just by virtue of a station being an economic. No station upgrades required, and if the player does look at the upgrades its direct upgrades for high cheese. Namely that asteroids that are Mark 7 on an economic would grant 200,000 power each. The bonus for a station simply being economic has now been reduced from 4x to 2x. In exchange each mark level of economic stations in distributed is +200,000 power instead of +100,000 per mark level. This means the player will need at least a couple more power worlds on average instead of being able to hard pocket just a couple worlds that generate a few million or more power. And that just ignoring economic station tech isn't as feasible.
-The ZA is not allowed to claim any of the DLC1 Dyson-style homeworlds in its Territory
-Zenith Dyson Spheres were already protected
-Thanks to TheIronBird on discord for reporting

Mod Updates
-Updated the Exotic Ships Mod:
-Removed the part of the description from the Flameblade Light Frigate that, to reload, it needs to not be in stand-down mode as this is no longer true.
-Improved the Support Launcher Frigate:
-The shield delivery capsules now always deploy a shield, even when getting destroyed by enemy fire.
-Fixed the shield delivery capsules not seeking out targets on their own, requiring constant micro-management.
-Doubled the radius of the shield from 1150 to 2300, and their base shield capacity from 100k to 200k, but now only one capsule is deployed every 30 seconds instead of 2. Additionally they now deploy at almost 4k range instead of just 1k, making them more useful for ranged attackers in the 2k-6k attack range bracket than for almost-melee ships only.
-Thanks to motai for giving feedback.

4.018 Stability And Abortability
(Released April 13th, 2022)

-In the internal debug menu (the one from the escape menu), there are now "Log All Threads" and "Abort All Threads" buttons.
-If the game is getting stuck in a background deadlock, this will give us some information on it. The tooltips have more information on it.
-If you press the Abort All Threads button, it may crash the game (in theory -- so far it has not in testing), but it gives us exact stack traces (within reason) for all the threads it is aborting. Assuming that there is a stuck thread, and not a stuck Interlocked value, this will identify any deadlock for us to within the method that it exists in, at least.
-If we wind up with still having deadlocks and no interesting thread outputs here, then I'll instrument the Interlocked values to keep an eye on those.
-Thanks to ptarth, Pyrrhus, trabbo, and Sol for reporting.
-Fixed a one-line error that was causing multiplayer clients to eventually get a flood of errors relating to GameCommands already being back in the pool.
-What was happening was that it was being executed twice on the client if the command was a frame late, rather than only executing once. Mostly this would only show up after about 45 minutes of play, evidently.
-Thanks to Badger, ptarth, Cyborg, and Dismiss for reporting.

• Added quit level option.
• Changed explosive ammo to reduce screen shake.
• Changed electric tank enemy to reduce screen shake of its railgun attack.
• Changed intensity of low quality fog to reduce it.
• Fixed crash when worms would try to unburrow in the void.
• Fixed crash with puzzle trap cube.
• Fixed crash related to melee enemies that friendly fire.
• Fixed crash when using the mouse wheel in weapon interface with no weapons.
• Fixed freeze when using explosive weapons.
• Fixed issue where red grappling hook wouldn't work if you never picked up the blue one.
• Fixed issue where homing projectiles that bounce would hit the target every frame.
• Fixed issue where being crouched or shielded would stay in nightmare reaper mode.
• Fixed issue where there could be missing pages.
• Fixed issue where boss blue orb wouldn't destroy wall.
• Fixed issue where you'd need to have unspent jade to get the jade achievements.
• Fixed issue where round progress in flesh arena wouldn't be saved.
• Fixed issue where bouncing fireball decal would never be removed and caused performance issues.
• Fixed issue where weapons with multiple projectiles and explosive ammo would do almost no damage.
• Fixed issue where smart gun magazines would ignore player self splash damage protection.
• Fixed issue where some savegames required the final level to be played twice.
• Fixed issue where you couldn't aim with the gamepad if the player was slowed down.
• Fixed issue where weapon wheel would be stuck if nightmare reaper was picked up during it.
• Fixed issue where weapons wouldn't come back up after being shocked with weapon sway off.
• Fixed issue where invisible light was visible in space room.
• Fixed issue where lock pentagram could spawn behind boat in warzone room.
• Fixed issue where objects could block path in other rooms in underground levels.
• Fixed issue where level couldn't be completed if player could keep two weapons, but only one met the requirements.
• Fixed issue where you could get stuck when ledge grabbing.
• Fixed issue where fireball book's alt fire could make enemies, and thus the player, burn for way too long.

• Changed particles implementation to try to fix some freezing issues.
• Fixed issue where some particle effects would be invisible.

The Eagle has landed!

Update to v1.3.0.2.

Hello village elders!

As you know, you live here in a peaceful valley far off from the hustle and bustle, and most of the time it's quiet out in the great wide open. Too quiet?

We went out and gathered a few animals to add to the background noise. We found quacking ducks, screeching sea eagles, hawks, and crows. Along with mysterious cooing pigeons, they will provide the soundtrack of the world with their tunes from now on.

Medieval Dynasty Birds and Trophies Update

Some of the fauna, too, will now be able to contribute more than before. Hunters, listen up: You may now decorate your cosy home with hunting trophies! If you're going to bring a big sixteen-pointer, then you should show it off in your living room!

Tell us what you love about the update. Tell us in the comments or drop us a line on our social media channels!

Good hunting!

The Render Cube and Toplitz Productions teams

PS: We will host a chat with the team chat tonight (April 14th, 2022) from 7 pm - midnight CEST.

The Notes:

Added

- Five new birds - Pigeon, Duck, Crow, Hawk and White-Tailed Eagle.
- Two new colour variants of hens.
- Three new wall decorations - Animal Trophies.
- Three new items - Animal Skulls. Skulls as possible rare drops to wisent, deer, buck, and moose.
- Six new floor decorations - Animal Furs.
- Two new maps to buy - birds and fish spots.
- Animal spots can now be discovered on the map.
- Attic module to the Simple Small House.
- New sounds for the Calf.
- Reverb and an occlusion system to some sounds.
- New graphic effect - Screen Space Global Illumination (SSGI) (This has a high impact on performance).

Fixed

- No damage to one of the Smithy modules.
- One of the house modules doesn't cast a shadow.
- Market stalls modules must not be damaged by old age.
- Destroyed building modules have the wrong textures.
- Accepting settings doesn't hide "restore default" button.
- After the interaction that allows a player to buy an animal the animal details instead of the building selection was opened.
- Falling tree sounds should be less likely play in a loop.
- Racimir going bald when putting on a hood while wearing a hat.
- Mount teleporting back home on a skipped day - now only on season skip, if not overloaded.
- Cancelling the skinning animation for Wisents skinned them prematurely.
- Torch handles sometimes do glow.
- Position of doors in buildings.
- Position of signboards in buildings.
- When a character dies of old age, the heir will also die in the next season if the player continues the game without saving.
- A few cases where NPCs block or sleep in front of houses.
- Sounds of the horse and donkey will play less often.
- Wrong interaction scale when trying to buy animals.
- Wrong offset applied when blocking after a tool broke.
- Accepting the package from Sambor froze the game.
- Asking about the exotic goods trader did not yield an answer from NPCs.
- Position of the signboard in the house.
- Animal skulls multiplied with the talent when finishing skinning.
- Some cases where NPCs go to a point in the water.
- When the player interrupts a conversation between NPCs (from other villages), one of the NPCs doesn't stop its talking animation.
- The wisent dropped meat instead of leather.
- The Innkeeper's icon.
- The player got stuck on the bench when sitting and trying to stand up immediately.
- Challenge dialogues don't fix on load.

Updated

- Building system - 3 construction stages (foundation, framing, modules).
- Terrain textures.
- Rendering optimisations.
- Optimisation of RAM memory consumption.
- Optimisation of VRAM memory consumption.
- Sounds optimisations.
- Numerous tweaks and improvements to the terrain.
- Reduced costs of some fences.
- Reworked models of Cowshed modules.
- The table in the Apiary is no longer a building module.
- The table in the Hen House is no longer a building module.
- Reworked models of fishing hut modules.
- Reworked models of residential building modules.
- Reworked models of barn modules.
- Reworked shaders of some vegetation.
- In repair mode, only objects that can be damaged are highlighted.
- Riding on horse in third person mode.
- Numerous tweaks and improvements to the terrain.
- Getting into NPC details with dialogue and then closing the details closes whole management.
- All languages updated.

Hotfix

- fixed picking up the key while unlocking a door with it
- fixed an issue with the entity not sometimes spawning in the final room

Update 1.0.35

In this update:

- improvements to monster AI and vents
- bug fixed with 2D player and flashlight interaction inside the janitor game

Update 1.0.4

In this update we made improvements to game's frame rates.

- Fixed an issue with fire extinguisher and some damage areas
- Fixed a bug when entering playing mode on Janitor machine from crouching
- Fixed some small visual bugs

4.019 To Hack, Or Not To Hack
(Released April 14th, 2022)

-Renamed the "Fusion Tower" into the "Dispersion Tower" since it has the weapon of a dispersion turret (this is an orbital for the Ultimate Fortress)
-Ultimate Fortress is no longer hackable
-This should be slain in glorious combat, not with some cowardly sabotage hack
-Fix a typo in the Maddened Elderlings journal and the Mummyies journal
-Thanks to Strategic Sage for reporting
-Fix a bug where the nanocaust could sometimes sit around doing nothing
-Thanks to Strategic Sage for reporting
-Fix a recent regression where you couldn't hack for many types of ships
-Thanks to a number of people for reporting

DLC3: Other
-The Truant venator now spawns against both cloaking and high albedo ships. The Foppish venator now spawns against high mass ships
-Requested by zeus

DLC3: Necromancer
-Necromancer Hacks cost less points
-Rift hacks from 25 to 20
-Track Elderling from 10 to 1
-Transform Elderling from 20 to 15
-Corrupt Castle from 50 to 30
-Claim Skeleton Amplifier from 50 to 30
-Claim Wight Amplifier from 60 to 40
-Claim Mummy Amplifier from 80 to 50
-Transform Flagship from 30 to 20 (base hacking cost, still more expensive per mark of flagship)
-All Necropolis now have a minor factory construction like the Phylactery
-Shipyards will still be significantly better at reflecting
-Wrathful Elderling/Flagship damage increased to 1,500
-This W. Flagship was much weaker expected, this should be a pretty hefty buff
-Orbital turrets now benefit from the Necromancer's "Tower Defense" tech
-Mummy nerfs
-Hull from 660K to 345K and Shields from 330K to 175K
-Death Gaze attack reduced from 10K to 9K
-Necropolis Summons should now spawn the right amount per attack
-Dire Guard Posts only generate AIP on death when they are owned by the AI
-This makes them safe for the necromancer to capture

DLC3: Templar
-Templar Encampment MLRS attack from 450 to 750
-Templar Encampment MLRS attack from 750 to 1250 and Sabot attack from 8K to 9K
-Templar Castle Sabot attack from 13K to 15K

4.020 Hotfix
(Released April 14th, 2022)

-The ZA build defenses a bit more slowly (I saw some complaints about that)
-Fix a bug with the Foppish Venators that was causing exceptions every few minutes
-Give the corrosive guardian and guard post a new overlay
-Add a scourge beacon with some options to serve as a template for others. I have not tested whether it works, but it should be easily imitated for other factions
-Neinzul Custodian changes
-Hives now spread out through allied territory more actively, instead of being limited primarily to their allies' homeworlds
-Roaming Enclaves now stick around in fights far longer, instead of immediately leaving the moment their opponents even remotely start losing
-Player allied Custodian spawn rates increased to match NPC faction rates
-Spawning reduction per existing custodians reduced by 33%
-This was originally put in place to prevent the Diamond Custodians from stacking 90% of their forces on the ai homeworld
-With the additional logic of hives spreading out, this is no longer as prevalent

• Controller’s VDFs are now bundled with the game
• Updated Steam controller configuration localization
• Fixed levers and gates visual overshoot bug
• Fixed gamepad disconnection message having a background
• Fixed problems with dynamic moving objects
• Fixed window bar not visible when in windowed fullscreen

• 3 new levels
• 1 boss fight
• 3 new enemy variants
• 2 side areas
• 17+ secrets
• 2 super secrets
• 4 golden emblems and 8+ silver emblems
• 14 monsters SFX
• 2 ambient SFX
• 1 new weapon "Tri-rocket launcher" - it launches 3 small missiles, each missile will cause explosive damage in a small radius. The emblem "Fire Wasp" allows it to launch homing missiles, further enhancing its efficiency.
• Other adjustments - The level select mode is now using a new logic: After finishing a level, the next level will be shown on the level select panel (previously, players needed to actually start a new level to activate the button for it on the level select panel)

Update (14 April 2022)

- added German, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Russian subtitles