Hello! Hope everyone is doing well.

I know not everyone wants to use Discord, and that’s okay. I do most of my posting there, but there’s no reason for me to do ALL of it there, right? I’ve done a lot of patching since the Playtest inception. As of tonight, it’s on version Playtest 1.5. Here’s the combined patch notes in case you’re curious — there’s a lot! I’ll exclude bug fixes to save on space.

• Enemies have been recolored to use colors in the spectrum of yellow, orange, pink, and red. The only player skills that share these colors are fire-related. Attempts were made to recolor fire, but nothing looked better than it’s normal colors.
• Enemies now have animated outlines which shift between red and white.
• Many of Kit’s arrows have been brightened to stand out more. This should help with keeping track of where they are in the heat of battle.
• The accents on the Boomerang have been changed to a bright blue. This should hopefully help with tracking it in the heat of battle.
• Disabled canopy overlay (this gave the map darker sections which made overall visibility worse).
• Hopefully this solves visibility issues, but please do let me know if you still have problems or have any suggestions on the matter.
• When leveling up, the background screen dims to a darker color.
• Cyclone base damage increased: 14 -> 18
• Arc Sword base damage increased: 20 -> 26
• Glint of Steel base damage increased: 9 -> 13
• Boomerang base damage increased: 5 -> 9
• Molten Volley cooldown reduced: 2.1 -> 1.7

• A message informing you that you have level up(s) in wait is now displayed below your character when an area is completed.
• Path info is now hidden until the area is completed.
• When offered Relics, you are now much more likely to get Relics that are relevant to the kinds of skills you already own.
• When viewing a Relic, it will now tell you how many skills you own that have the tag relevant to the Relic.
• Ball Lightning: Turn radius has been tightened and its projectile speed slightly reduced. It should be easier to direct.
• Ghost Buddy: Opacity now changes with the Player Skill Opacity slider.
• Ghost Buddy: Destroys itself when the room is completed.
• Ghost Buddy: Now transparent by default. This Relic was easily a big contributor to visual confusion and you don’t necessarily need to know exactly where they are at all times. Plus, they’re ghosts, so that works out.
• The info display for the next room now displays “Boss” and “No Risk, No Reward” appropriately when the next room is the boss arena.
• Reduced SFX of Relic Altars arriving.
• Enemy hit SFX has been overhauled. Some enemies have their own enemy hit SFX to help give them identity and to help in switching up the repetitive sounds that can come from enemy hit SFX. Generically, slimes now have a more goopy sound when taking damage.
• When clearing an area, the barriers preventing progression now wait 1.5s before being removed. This should help with cases where you accidentally leave a room or if you weren’t paying attention and were powering through rooms even though Relics or the shopkeeper spawned.
• The player now flashes when taking direct (non damage-over-time) damage.
• The player HP bar is now rattled and flashes when taking direct (non damage-over-time) damage.
• A distinctive sound now plays whenever the player takes direct (non damage-over-time) damage. This sound should help you easily identify taking damage even in total chaos.
• When leveling up and hovering over a skill choice, the level of that skill will now gently oscillate from white and yellow so that it’s subtly highlighted as more important information.

• New Nature Skill: Kinetic Marble
• New Nature Skill: Stone Shield
• New Storm Skill: Final Spark
• NEAREST has been renamed to TARGETED
• FURTHEST has been renamed to MISC
• Mouse Aiming now states that it only works on skills tagged as TARGETED
• Squall Salvo: Now properly targets random enemies at Level 5 instead of choosing 1 target and firing all arrows at them.
• Emberwake: Updated description to better match its effect. The effect itself is unchanged.

• New Neutral Skill: Ghost Blade
• – This makes 5 non-character-specific Neutral skills! No more will be created until the game is closer to Early Access release.
• New Water Skill: Subzero Surge (using a temporary icon)
• Interactive skills now have a special outline that’s exclusive to them. This also includes skills that can become interactive (i.e; Dancing Dagger), but only when they’re actually interactable.
• Shrubbery Solution (Relic) bush now has a duration of 15 seconds. The timer automatically pauses whenever the criteria is met to charge it, this way it doesn’t despawn when you’re in the middle of using it.
• Reduced opacity of the Shrubbery Solution progress ring.
• Kinetic Marble now moves much slower if you walk into it, and faster if you dash (faster than it was before this change).
• When purchasing an item from the Shopkeeper, the icon for the bought item no longer goes away, but instead gets a “Sold Out” overlay. This should help with the abrupt icon shuffling resulting in misclicks.
• Removed unnecessary text regarding Max HP in the Shopkeeper. Items would say “+10% Max HP of its current value” and this was needless and confusing. The new text will just say “+10% Max HP”.
• When pausing the game, you’ll now see your damage recap. Please do let me know if you notice weird unexplained jumps in your damage! I’m theorizing that it’s displaying damage wrong, but I’m not sure when, why, or how it is, or if it even is at all.
• While invincible, you were always immune to damage-over-time applications, but now you’re also immune to debuff applications.
• Hurtbox of Tentacle Slimes (spawned by the Slime Queen) have been shrunken down. Avoiding them should now be more forgiving and make more sense.
• When updating enemy brightness in Accessibility, the change is effective immediately and no longer only applies to newly spawned enemies.

• Many parts of the code were being ran in a way that was not framerate independent, meaning that if you ever lagged, the game would behave strangely. I believe I’ve fixed this, but it might’ve had some weird side-effects.
• Max Framerate has been increased from 60 to 144.
• Enemies no longer shatter on death. This effect was really subtle and the cost on performance didn’t make any sense. You probably won’t notice that it’s gone.
• EXP is now automatically collected. Coins remain because I’d like to explore interaction with them later.
• Increased the size of hit effects so that skills provide more visual feedback upon hitting an enemy.
• Icons can now be hovered over. It will display the basic info for the skill. Detailed information can be viewed in Compendium > View Skills.
• — This currently only applies to skill icons. I will be allowing icon hover for Relic icons soon.
• Enabled the “Item Hover Info” option in Settings > General.
• Ball Lightning: Chance to grant Haste has been increased from 30% to 100%.
• Ball Lightning: Chance to inflict Shock has been increased from 10% to 50%.
• Ball Lightning: Turn radius has been tightened further and it now travels slightly faster.
• Kinetic Marble: No longer picks up bosses.

I’m trying my best to push a new update every day. Thank you everyone for playtesting the game and submitting your feedback and bug reports. I want to reiterate that if you don’t use Discord, it’s all good. I also check the Steam Discussion Boards regularly, so you’ve got some input on Shadowkin, I’d love to check it out.

Thank you.

As always, stay awesome!