patch

Update Alpha 9

Note from the team
We have continued to try and “finalise” early game, and make sure that it’s inclusive, balanced and as easy as possible to understand. In update 9, we have included our very own Quest System, which should help aid new players to fully understand the basics of the game. A big part of finalising the early game has also been to realise that infinite skill points is an impossible balance act. While it can be rewarding and fun to progress through the skill system, we feel that there is a much better way of doing it, where early game doesn’t get “locked out” of skills just to ensure mid to end-game balance points. With this in mind, we have re-balanced every single talent and ability, and removed skill essence and skill orbs from being obtainable in the game. They may see a re-introduction with Greed levels in the future, but we haven’t fully designed that aspect of the game yet, so for now they are completely gone. Any player updating to update 9 will have all their skills reset, and any power level removed (skill point above your current level). While that may sound harsh, this of course includes a complete overhaul of all costs, specifically with talents. Our goal is to make the actual power level feel about 20% better than it did previously.

Spotlight Features

Quest System
We have introduced a quest system in order to help new players get started and understand the core mechanics of the game.

Skill Point Overhaul
We came to the conclusion that having infinite skill points is a bad idea for balancing the game out across the board, ensuring that it’s fun both early, mid and late in a playthrough. Therefore, as of this update, all skills are automatically reset, and the player is awarded with an amount of skill orbs that equates to their current level. Players will also get refunded 1 perfect black opal, and 1 extraordinary beniotite per skill point taken away.
With this, we have of course also reworked the cost & power of all talents and abilities, the goal is to increase the flat powerlevel by about 25%, while diversifying people’s builds and abilities.

Affinity Overhaul
We decided to make affinities much more engaging and unique depending on their effect. We are hoping this open up a big diversity in play styles and allows for more exploration around build styles

Lucky Hit Mechanic
We like the idea of on-hit mechanics, they are engaging and with a base RNG chance replayable while being reliable with our Entropy system. We also felt that Fatal Strike Chance and Fatal Strike hit in the form and shape they existed, was a bit of a gap for new players to understand, and less satisfying than it could be.
The decision was made to remove “Fatal Strike Chance” and move its mechanic to Lucky Hit instead, which procs by stacking chance modifiers on gear affixes. But instead of just having a Lucky Hit trigger a “Fatal Strike” we made it so that the player can tailor their lucky hits using a new talent group called Lucky Hit. This allows us to present mana regeneration, life leech and other things as specific lucky hit procs. We are very excited to see how this plays out, and excited to add more Lucky Hit effects in the future!

New Abilities!
We have introduced a lot of new abilities to the game, with the hope of making playing the game a lot more diverse and fun!

New: Totem
Totem is a cast ability with 4 unique specilisations aimed to provide variety and support many different playstyles. The totem is placed down when cast and lives for 30 seconds while it covers a large area with its effect, any player or mob inside its area is affected by its effect.
Totem of Rejuvenation, the default specilisation, aims to heal any player inside its radius and can be seen as a big competitor to Heal
Totem of Hatred applies a small part of the player’s damage to mobs inside its radius, it also chains on-hit effects such as stun, clouds and shocking and can be the perfect partner for a player looking to control the crowd
Totem of Spirit adds direct mana regeneration to any player inside its radius, allowing for more burst heavy builds with this brand new recovery option
Totem of Wrath adds direct damage buffs to any player inside its radius during its lifetime.

New: Empower
This ability replaces “Tank”
Empower is a togglable ability that aims to buffs the player briefly, it has 3 specilisations
+5-80% Movement Speed
+Thorns Damage, Knockback Resistance and Durability Mitigation
+Slowness aura around the player affecting mobs around the player

Changed: Stonefall
Since we have removed Powered Snow in this patch, and are planning on removing most lava in a near future, we decided that Stonefall needed a bit of love. This ability can now be considered a “center piece” for certain playstyles, and we are very excited to see how it plays out
The basic ability has got added knockback in a radius around the landing zone, and mitigates 100% fall damage at level 2
The Surefoot specilisation only mitigates 50% fall damage at max level, but fires a Nova when the player lands, and the damage is based on Player Damage + Fall Distance, in a radius
The Coldsnap specilisation mitigates 100% fall damage at max level, and fires a large Frost Nova on impact

Taunt & Charm specilisation
Taunt has not seen a lot of play so we gave it a bit of a buff to try make it a viable build strategy, in addition to flinging mobs towards the player and taunting them for a duration of time, they now also take increased damage from any source while taunted. We also buffed and redid the entire ability in terms of duration and power, which also affects Fear.
Lastly, we added a new specilisation: Charm! Charmed mobs will fight for the player for a duration of time, and deal a % of the player’s damage to mobs around them, charmed mobs will never attack the player.

New: Javelin
Summons a magic javelin and throws it with a throw power towards your target, comes with four variations
Default: high damage, low mana cost and knockback
Piercing: Lower damage but pierces 4-8 targets
Scatter: Lower damage but creates several javelins on impact that bounces several times
Sight: Lowest damage but scans the area on impact, revealing mobs and chests for a duration of time
Warning; This ability can be very addictive!

New: Mana Shield Retribution
A Specilisation for Mana Shield which absorbs less damage but builds rage while absorbing damage, making the next hit the player does deal damage based on how much damage got absorbed, in a large radius

New: Smite
A new toggle ability that periodically bolts nearby mobs randomly with a large damage increase, also comes with 2 specilisations
Archon: The player becomes a spark, anything the player physically touches gets bolted while active
Thunderstorm: Unleashes the wrath of the vault gods by releasing a massive, high damage thunderstorm bolting all mobs within a radius

New: Dash Warp
A new specilisation for Dash which, instead of making the player dash, fires an ender bolt in the direction the player is aiming, and on impact teleports the player to the target. If the player hits another entity (mob, player, eternal) they swap place with them!
Warning; This ability can be very addictive!

New: Spirit Walk
A new speclisation for Ghost Walk that aims to be an escape ability, while Ghost Walk has been changed to have a longer cooldown but be useful to sneak in and clear dungeon spawners and other things

Skill Altar
We have introduced a new block, the Skill Altar, which allows players to set a preset of talents and abilities, and swap between different builds easily


Gear Crafting
We recognise that crafting gear has been less satisfying than intended. While gaining proficiency ensures the player success with vault gear down the line, the progression was a bit too slow, and the outcome a bit too harsh. We have lowered the requirement to max out proficiency (this buff also affects already started proficiencies) and rebuilt the tiers of crafts, to be more exponential and easier to get started with. In addition, we have made it so any player can max out all proficiencies instead of only 2.
Lastly, we recognise that scrapping vault gear isn’t as satisfying as it should be, to fix this we made a new recipe for Vault Alloy, using only Vaulterite ingots, as well as raised the chance for Faceted foci when scrapping higher rarity gear.



Expertise
With our skill overhaul, we felt that some systems were not supporting the gameplay as good as they could, and competed with skill points on a level where they shouldn’t compete, we have therefore created a brand new system; Expertise.
The player will be granted 1 expertise point every 5 levels, starting at level 5, for a total of 20 expertise points. A rare item can be used to reset expertise, however, this item can only be found after level 100, so expertise needs to be carefully selected.
We moved talents that we deemed be less of a “vault-talent” to expertise, these include;
Angel
Lucky Altar
Bartering
Blacksmithing
We also created some new expertise for you to explore. The goal is to allow the player to utilise these expertise’ as an addition to progressing the vault experience.

Thorns
Thorns has always been in a weird place, mostly because it inherits the damage it deals from the item the player is holding at the time of the hit, making it impossible to do anything else in the vault while applying thorns. With this in mind, we decided to completely change it up and make Thorns Damage a base flat damage implicit on all shields. Legacy shields still don’t have this, but can be rerolled using a Fundamental focus to obtain this new implicit. Thorns will still proc using thorns chance on gear pieces, but the damage is based off damage buffs (such as damage% and holy%) on top of the base damage on your shield. In testing, we have seen that this is now a very viable build style, and makes shields better compete with idols even in mid-end game, as an offensive tool.

Reach
We have reached (no pun intended) a realisation that with all the sources of reach we can’t get away from the fact that players can, and quite easily so, reach a point where their total reach is above 8, which means that you can loot any poi, or break any spawner, without interacting with the mobs/triggering the mobs. We have therefore taken the decision to put a cap on reach, just like we have on other stacking affixes (cooldown, resistance, block chance). The hard cap inside a vault is 7.0 (+2.0 from base), which still in testing gives “reach” a lot of validity without making it game breaking. Outside vaults there is no reach cap.


Soul Shards & Black Market
Killing mobs in the vaults should be beneficial, and a combat oriented playstyle should compete with a “loot and run” playstyle, that was always the vision and the core reason we introduced Soul Shards back in the second edition of Vault Hunters. However, we feel that soul shard gathering have been trailing, and with the soul diffuser system (which we love), building item quantity and looting more has always been the best way to get soul shards.
We have made the following changes to accommodate, and better reward, a combat oriented playstyle;
Baseline dropped soul shards have been increased by 1000%
Gear soul hunting has been reduced heavily to accommodate the base being increased
Note legacy gear still has very high rolls, we urge all gamers to not use legacy soul chance stats as it will throw your gameplay a bit off balance.
Only the first wave from any spawner will drop soul shards, this change was necessary to combat “making a mob farm” inside a vault. Mobs that can drop soul shards have got a purple soul effect on them for visibility.
In addition, we felt that the Black Market needed a bit of love, the gambling function was moved to rerolling offers and hardly ever used, and the items on sale many times felt underwhelming. We made the following changes:
Removed all “ingredient” type items for the sales offers
Changed the cost of the gamble to 1500 soul shards
Changed the reset timer to 2 hours (from 24 hours)
Items on offer now get “sold out” and don't automatically reroll the offers.

Weapon Changes
We believe that weapons need more diversity in their builds and rolls, we also believe that Axes are in a weird state. We have made the following changes,
Both axes and swords have had their implicit damage tiers significantly lowered across the board
This allows diversity in single target builds by applying higher damage using the modifier “Damage”
Chaining competes with the Damage modifier, but can now roll along side with an on-hit modifier (Stunning, Shocking, Sweeping, Clouds) - which all have been moved to suffixes
An additional Stunning modifier has been added as a prefix, competing with Damage and Chaining, and can stack with the suffix of stunning which allows for a very heavy crowd control weapon
Axes have been overhauled, they now have the same damage stats as a sword, but rolls Attack Range in their implicit, allowing them to attack mobs further away. Cleave was also removed as a modifier

General Visual Improvements
We have done a bunch of visual upgrades;
Chaining now renders a magical chain to indicate hit targets
Nova visuals completely reworked
All cloud effects visuals are completely reworked and shouldnt be obstructive.
Stunning particles upgraded
Shocking particles added

Mob and Spawner Changes
Mobs are now grouped better when spawning in. Certain spawners will only spawn our new “Tank” mobs (previously T4 mobs) all the way from level 30 onwards, in very small amounts, while other spawners will spawn large amount of “Horde” mobs, aimed to be individually harmless but dangerous in large groups. There are several mixed groups as well, but the aim is to make the experience more exciting and different per POI.
Lastly, we are testing out having all mob spawners be ambush/fizzle spawners, with the exception of Dungeons and Challenge rooms.



Tool Affinities & Strongboxes
Instamining sliced chest has become a signum for Vault Hunters, and a good one. It has a very good “feel” to it, specifically triggering chest rarities with it. We want this to be available to more people, earlier in their playthrough, and because of that we have made a big change;
Having any affinity and efficiency 5 on a vault tool now guarantes insta-mining, no additional haste level or mining speed is required. This also fixes the arbitrary number knowledge of where the break points are for insta-mining, and allows the player to build tools focused around Trap Disarm, Item Quantity/Rarity and Durability - all of which also have been slightly nerfed per individual jewel.
Mining speed and haste is however not completely useless, as “Strongboxes” of Ornate, Gilded and Living start appearing in POI’s after level 50. Strongboxes contain more than double the loot table from their normal equivalent, and are not sliced, but they have a high block hardiness and require their affinity to be mined in the first place. They lack a UI and can only be opened by being broken open.

Vault Identification Lectern & Vault Enchanter
We have added two new QoL blocks, the Identification Lectern will identify all vault gear in the players inventory if right clicked, and the vault enchanter will provide all the highest level enchants available on any enchantable-item put in, for the cost of 5 emeralds and one EXP level.

Hardcore is back!
The absolute original idea of Vault Hunters was to include permanent loss in the game loop. This made the pack very challenging and appealing to a bunch of highly skilled players. With adding the spirit extractor, and, in this update removing the death multiplier mechanic, we felt like we were letting those people down. As a result, we have included a Hardcore mode to the game, accessible through the new game rule vaultMode, where we also consolidated all of our game modes; casual | normal (default) | hardcore. Hardcore mode makes it so that no player spirit/ghost spawns on death in a vault.

Infinity & Grindy Mode
In addition to adding a hardcore setting, we also saw a big player base being interested in not having to craft crystals to run vaults, and to use the game loop of vault > loot > vault instead of the minecraft aspects of the game. This is a very exciting thing for us as it proves that Vault Hunters have come a long way when the game loop itself is enough for some players to find enjoyment. Just as we have seen people not wanting to craft crystals at all, we have also seen people wanting the crystals to be more expensive, to incentivise even more farms to be built - in this update we accommodate both of these desires with our new gamerule vaultCrystalMode;
infinity - makes every crystal free, the player just needs to apply a redstone signal to the altar to get a crystal
grindy - triples the cost of a crystal and its scaling
normal - the default crystal scaling

Quicker Playthrough Options
We have seen a lot of people feeling like the playthrough speed is too slow/grindy/long, and while we believe Vault Hunters is supposed to be a longevity experience, we understand that time restraints and other factors play in.
To help cater to players who want a faster playthrough we have included a new gamerule vaultLoot, by default this is “normal” but it has two further settings, “plenty”, which doubles the loot in all containers inside a vault, and “extreme”, which triples the loot inside any container.
We would like to leave a disclaimer however, changing this setting will throw the balance out a bit, but that is to be expected.

Vault Potions
Something something potion side of life


Other Changes
Shocking got buffed, its knockback effect was tripled.
Vault Alloy can now be crafted using 2 vaulterite ingots, allowing for gear recycling to be more valuable
Crafted trinkets are guaranteed to roll 20 uses, while found trinkets can roll 20-30 uses
We removed any powdered snow from the winter theme
We have added a new village type room: Dawn, which spawns Ornate chests in its catacombs
The catacombs of village rooms are now randomly generated
We added a new theme; Mushroom Wood Caverns
Added a new penguin armour transmog
We changed normal vault dwellers to have slower movement speed than the player and included a new vault dweller that is very speedy but have lower damage
Vault Gear now shows the entire available range of modifiers, while holding SHIFT. Holding ALT+SHIFT will show the current rolled Tier
Added recipe for Cobweb through Mekanism Combiner
Added in world recipe for Cobweb using vanilla mechanic: Right click string on Vine, turns the vine in to cobweb
Added Flutter Egg rarely to Passive Mystery Eggs
Carapace Trinket buffed; It now grants the player immunity to any negative effect except Time Acceleration
Fireworks can no longer be used inside vaults
Base Mana regen was buffed, from 0.75 to 1.0 per second
Rampage: Vampire was changed to leech life based on players max HP instead of damage dealt, this makes it a very viable option early game
A lot of toggle abilities were reworked to drain mana much quicker, most of the toggle abilities are not supposed to be permanent buffs with enough mana regen, but instead be burst buffs to the player.
Several new in-world recipes was added to compete with Botany pot exclusive generation
Challenge Mob pool has been redone, they now contain illagers
All “Plus” clouds have been removed, and instead we have properly scaled the clouds so they get stronger and longer the higher roll they have
Massively buffed durability on Magnets
Hunter can now be coloured based on player preference in the accessibility menu.
The death penalty multiplier was removed
Added recipe for uncrafting vault meat and heavy vault meat
Added Driftwood logs and planks
Any fluid body deeper than 1 blocks have been changed to only be 1 block deep
Lava removed from the Nether Themes
Vanilla Crit Hits (Jump hits) no longer trigger any vault specific on-hit effects (such as chaining, stunning, clouds etc)
Renamed Holy, Spiteful, Baneful modifiers to better reflect what they do
Added Nether Damage modifier to increase damage specifically to nether mobs
Rebalanced & nerfed damage addition on weapons to specific mob types
Mob specific damage can now stack on weapons
Made scavenger hunt at level 50 slightly easier and added a new scaling tier at level 75
We lowered the cost of Simple Storage Networks, and removed the crafting interface as well as export/import cables from being crafted (if you have them in your world they will still function).  The reason for this is the terrible performance issues and world crashes they can cause to players.
We lowered the cost of Refined Storage & AE2 from 6 to 4 knowledge points, to accommodate no crafting possibilities with SSN
Added a new difficulty; Piece of Cake, as the new lowest difficulty setting