It’s been just over a week since Crab Champions released into Early Access and I still can’t believe how amazing the community is already!

Since the last update, I’ve been trying to focus on the most commonly reported bugs and quality of life features to try and get the game into solid shape before starting on any major updates.

GENERAL

• Due to popular demand, locked inventory slots have returned with a few caveats. No slots are locked on Easy difficulty, 12 slots are locked on Normal difficulty and 16 slots are locked on Nightmare difficulty. The cost to unlock each slot has been reduced as it was one of the main issues with locked slots on previous builds

  EDIT: There is a lot of community discussion regarding this topic- some people love the locked slots, others hate it and want to just build without having to manage inventory. I think the only real solution here is to add a difficulty modifier system that lets players choose if they want bonus modifiers on their run such as locked slots. Having all modifiers active at once would be virtually impossible but letting players mix and match them without forcing a specific mechanic on them sounds like the best option here. I’m monitoring all of the feedback that’s rolling in- since the game is in Early Access there will be some trial and error to find the right balance on mechanics like this. For now, all slots will remain unlocked until I add this modifier mechanic.

• Added new enemy: Blocker Skull
• Added new Tropical island
  
• Reworked how Combo works (it was pretty invisible / meaningless before and only affected your final score which isn’t relevant until the top 10 runs update (coming soon btw), but it now has direct use in making new build options).

  In short, combo starts off at 1.0x and:

  • Increases to 2.0x after eliminating 25 enemies without getting hit
  • Increases to 3.0x after eliminating 100 enemies without getting hit
  • Increases to 4.0x after eliminating 250 enemies without getting hit
  • Increases to 5.0x after eliminating 500 enemies without getting hit

  Once you get hit, your combo resets back down to 1.0x. The newly added perks below are designed for those that enjoy the “don’t get hit” style of gameplay without forcing it on everyone as a required mechanic and instead introducing it as a build option

• Added new perk: Crystal Combo: Enemies drop more crystals depending on your current combo
• Added new perk: Damage Combo: Damage increased depending on your current combo
• Added new perk: Healthy Combo: Heal when increasing your combo
• Added physics crowns to parkour islands…

BALANCE CHANGES

• Orb Launcher damage increased from 30 to 35
• Launcher Crabs now only fire 2 projectiles instead of 3 and also have more telegraphing before they are about to fire
• Playing With Power has been removed from the loot pool for now as it was causing a lot of accidental deaths. I’ll look into improving and reworking it in the future

QUALITY OF LIFE

• Added anti-softlock measures for enemies stuck in weird places on the islands that prevented being able to progress
• Fixed lightning FX being extremely bright and making it hard to see
• Toned back various bullet trail FX that made it hard to see when doing late game runs, this should also improve performance
• Touched up some of the more work in progress island visuals (like the one with all the vertical pillars)
• Added support for native Steam Deck resolution (1280 x 800) as well as some missing ultrawide configurations and 720p resolutions
• Fixed various out of map spots
• Improved hitboxes on many assets including trees and chests that you could get stuck in
• Fixed various spawn points that could make chests spawn on trees or rocks as well as some player spawn points that needed adjusting
• You can now no longer take damage from lava on Shop islands
• Fixed various difficult to understand UI descriptions to make things like the Spiked Chest cost more clear
• Spiked Chests now show the exact amount of health that they’ll take when opening instead of always “33” which was confusing
• If a Blessing is active, it’ll show up on the UI of the island (the same as a challenge modifier) instead of having to remember if you chose a flawless portal or not
• Homing Thorns are now red to not confuse them with the harmless crystal pickups that fly to the player

BUG FIXES

• Fixed an issue where aiming down on the ground beside you with certain weapons like the Rocket Launcher wouldn’t spawn projectiles
• Fixed an infinite key exploit (keys are no longer saved with an autosaved run)
• Fixed an infinite loot exploit (where laggy players could spam the drop button in inventory to drop multiple copies of the same loot)
• Fixed an exploit that could let players use spiked chests and damaging totems without taking damage (using the I-Frames when dashing to negate the damage)
• Fixed an issue where the blue collision border would persist back to the lobby after a run
• Fixed issue where falling off the edge of a completed parkour island that you had enabled a checkpoint for would spawn you back at the checkpoint, stranded
• The Target Dummy can no longer be broken in most cases (the most insane builds will still probably manage it)
• Bosses should no longer spawn keys under the map or inside cliffs
• Fixed issue where bosses would give more keys to certain players
• Fixed issue where you could evaporate if you swam too far into the sea in the lobby
• Fixed issue where it would be possible to die when spamming interact on totems with certain greed perks equipped

That’s it for this update! As the bugs get ironed out I’ll have more and more time to put towards completely new content 🦀