There will be more data and proper atribution here (original author, steam link, original post date, etc) real soon, I promise. This is just like a technical test to see if they're coming in ok at all.
Crab Champions » The Fire & Magic Update (Early Access Update 6)
NEW WEAPONS: FLAMETHROWER & ARCANE WAND
VFX OVERHAUL
ULTRA CHAOS: NEW EXTREME DIFFICULTY
UNIQUE LOOT VISUALS + ICONS (A START)
Loot is finally getting some identity! While there’s a lot of loot to make unique visuals for, I’m happy with the way the first few are turning out. It makes a big difference to be able to start recognizing loot at distance or being able to share your inventory screen and not have to explain what each piece of loot is!
BIG MECHANIC IMPROVEMENTS
- Universal Critical Hits: ANYTHING can now cause a critical hit including your secondary projectiles like Mace Shot or Dagger Arc. This means that there is a single unified critical hit chance stat that affects all of your build at once instead of having to find separate grenade crit and melee crit etc. perks
- Damage 10x Lower: As many people were reaching the limits of the game in terms of getting to the point where enemies become invincible due to their health being so high, I’ve globally scaled down ALL damage sources by 10x (and of course enemy health too). This allows for longer runs, more noticeable power creep and easier calculations in the early game when comparing damage numbers. If comparing to the previous build, something dealing 2500 damage now deals 250 damage!
- Better Healing: Especially on the higher difficulties with many modifiers on, health became less and less important with many players opting to go for a “one hit” type build revolving mainly around armor and not health. Since there are so many perks around building health, I wanted to make it much more important and fun to do so. The base health pool for all difficulties has been increased, with the effectiveness of armor slightly reduced. Most health related perks have received a buff so building into health loot should be much more rewarding.
GENERAL
- Remade almost all VFX in the entire game from scratch to be much less blinding and more interesting to look at (there are some that still need to be replaced which will be done in the next update)
- Added new weapon: Flamethrower
- Added new weapon: Arcane Wand
- Added new difficulty: Ultra Chaos (unlocked by getting all weapons to Diamond). This is a difficulty for those looking for the most unfair challenge that I could possibly come up with. There are no unlocks or achievements tied to it, it’s purely for extreme challenge seekers
- Critical hits are now calculated globally: this means that ANYTHING can crit- dagger arcs, mace balls etc!
- Added 2 new Tropical biome islands
- Added new evolved enemy: Ice Pumpkin
- Added new evolved enemy: Fire Pumpkin
- Added new evolved enemy: Laser Skull
- Added new debuff: Arcane – damage is dealt once per second equal to the total stacks of arcane currently applied. Each time damage is applied, the total stacks of arcane are halved
- Added new weapon mod: Arcane Shot: Shots apply arcane to enemies
- Added new weapon mod: Drill Shot: Chance for shots to create damaging drills on impact
- Added new weapon mod: Link Shot: Chance for shots to burst into 3 link shots on impact
- Added new grenade mod: Giant Drill: Grenades explode into giant drills
- Added new perk: Crimson Haze: Enemies create short lived damaging zones when eliminated
- Added new perk: Critical Lightning: Critical hits shock random enemies
- Added new perk: Potent Magic: Arcane debuff stacks increased
- To make it harder to reach the damage limit (and getting negative billions of damage in the game over screen), all damage has been reduced by 10x- this is a global change and all mods and perks that deal flat damage have been adjusted accordingly. This also means all enemies start with 10x less health. The end result should be a more noticeable and satisfying damage increase as runs progress, seeing single digit damage numbers grow into the thousands and eventually millions! Another big benefit is for those that go on long runs, it’ll take much longer to reach the current island limits (where enemies become invincible due to having so much health). During the rebalancing pass, if a mod dealt 25 damage, I’ve rounded it up to now deal 3 damage (after the 10x reduction). While doing this I also buffed the damage of some underperforming mods and perks, mainly the strike and storm mods as well as all damage increasing grenade mods. All of these changes should make it also easier to calculate how effective a mod or perk is relative to the base damage as it’s easier to compare a 50 damage mod to a 8 base damage weapon than it is to compare a 450 damage mod to a 75 base damage weapon (which is how things were before the 10x reduction and rounding)
- Greatly improved the smoothness of other players in multiplayer games especially when spectating, it should no longer look like players are lagging when they aren’t
- Small enemies no longer collide with each other which should greatly reduce situations where pufferfish get stuck on crabs
- Optimized the Shrapnel challenge modifier which could cause lag when many enemies exploded into shrapnel at once
- Optimized situations where many projectiles hit lava and created lots of splash FX, causing lag
- Added 30 FPS frame cap for those looking to preserve battery life on handheld devices
- Improved water ripple visuals to both work in shallow water and also push water foam away
- Improved the visuals of the Grid, Flow, Geometric, Purple Tiger, Regal and Void camos
- Raised the height of the camera when not aiming to make it feel more comfortable (as the crab is so flat and close to the ground, having the camera also low sometimes felt bad when looking upwards)
- Added 4 new achievements (Flamethrower and Arcane wand victory related)
- Added new inventory icons for some weapon mods (still lots more to be done)
- Added new generic icons for Rare, Epic and Legendary weapon mods (with a matching colored border to easily see what rarity they are at a glance in the inventory UI)
BALANCE CHANGES
- Slugs and Grubs are slightly less common to allow for their presence to be more noticeable (ideally they should be lined up with other enemies for bonus damage rather than half of the map being slugs and clearing itself with chain reactions- this can still happen but just a bit less often)
- Fire damage is more effective but all fire mods and perks apply less overall stacks to compensate. This should mean less situations where enemies are taking tiny amounts of damage from fire over a very long period of time and more situations where enemies are taking much more concentrated fire damage over a shorter period
- Moved Hot Shot, Sharpshooter, Power Punch and Mega Crit from Weapon Mods to be Perks as critical hits are relevant to more than just weapon shots now
- Critical Claws, Critical Grenade, Critical Chain and Streak Shot have been removed
- Critical Blast has been moved to a perk as it can trigger from more than just weapon crits now
- Precision has been renamed to Streak Shot since that has been removed and the name fits it better
- Since “lesser” crits can trigger “on crit” mods (which could lead to an infinite loop), critical hit chance is capped at 50% for “lesser” damage sources (any damage that isn’t directly from your weapon, grenade or melee)
- Critical Link has been renamed to Link Shot, has new projectiles and no longer requires a critical hit to trigger
- Critical Blades has been renamed to Homing Blades and no longer requires a critical hit to trigger
- Mega Crit now multiplies critical damage by 3 instead of adding 300% extra damage to the multiplier
- Destructibles now scale up their damage / debuff stacks from +5% per island to +10% per island
- Landmines no longer spawn naturally and barrels spawn less (no more chaotic barrels, only regular ones- the chaotic barrels are fun in the lobby but in gameplay situations they mostly just fly off into the sky and do nothing)
- Increased physics impulse strength from melee on regular barrels
- The Homing Barrels challenge modifier barrels have far less health and no longer can leak which should reduce the messy visuals that can sometimes happen with lots of barrels
- Turrets no longer target Shielded enemies
- The slowest moving enemies now move a bit faster to prevent situations where you are looking for one last really slow enemy when you’ve cleared all of the others
- Basic melee crabs no longer can be shielded as it slowed down the pace of gameplay too much
- Lightning has been reworked to last a bit longer and deal less damage (as it wasn’t adjusted for the 10x drop in damage yet). Also adjusted the lightning FX and tint to be a bit more blue to differentiate it from Arcane
CHANGES TO THE DIFFICULTY MODIFIER ROSTER
- Added new difficulty modifier: Surging Enemies: Enemies spawn in much faster
- Added new difficulty modifier: Limited Heals: All healing is reduced by 50%
- The Eternal Punishment difficulty modifier now only removes 2% of your max health when taking damage (it previously removed 5% which often made runs devolve into a glass cannon situation where max health was ignored)
- Resurrecting Enemies now triggers slightly less often as it could cause islands to drag in terms of pacing. In addition to this, enemies can no longer resurrect in a close range to the player as this could often lead to unfair damage from enemies spawning close behind
- Volatile Explosions was a modifier that caused understandable frustration: being able to melee groups of slugs and not take damage from it was one of the best feeling mechanics in the game and removing it for the sake of difficulty decreased the fun factor for most. The flow state present without this modifier on got interrupted in a more tedious than fun way. This modifier has been moved up to the new Ultra Chaos difficulty. To make basic slugs still feel threatening with this change, they now explode faster than before, requiring a well timed melee or dash to avoid
- Manual Collection has also been replaced as it made the flow of combat more tedious than fun in many cases. Since there are those that still enjoy it, it is active in the Ultra Chaos difficulty
- These changes should shift the difficulty more to making good builds and less making zero mistakes
BUFFS
- Auto Rifle damage increased from 3 to 5
- Burst Pistol damage increased from 3 to 5
- Dual Pistols damage increased from 4 to 5
- Auto Shotgun damage increased from 2 to 3
- Orb Launcher damage increased from 4 to 6
- Sniper damage increased from 30 to 40
- Rocket Launcher projectile speed doubled (as the weapon was underperforming slightly before so this should make it easier to hit moving targets)
- Rocket Launcher explosion radius increased by 20%
- Rocket Launcher damage increased from 25 to 35
- Blade Launcher damage increased from 2 to 4
- Base starting health increased from 100 to 200
- Spiked Chest max health opening cost reduced from 33% to 25%
- Loot Totem health cost reduced from 33% to 20%
- Crystal Totem health cost reduced from 33% to 10%
- Chance Totem health cost reduced from 10% to 5%
- Gamble Totem crystal cost reduced by 33%
- Critical Blast damage increased from 400 to 500 and is now chance based as intended
- High Roller now duplicates Epic and Legendary chests on Elite / Boss islands rather than Healing chests which felt underwhelming
- High Roller base downside reduced from 33% chance for no chests to spawn to 20% chance for no chests to spawn
- Reload Arc is now part of the Skill loot pool to make choosing skill portals more enticing
- Wind Up, Streak Shot and Clip Shot no longer add flat damage and now add percentage damage
- Double Trouble enemy health increase reduced from +100% to +50%
- Hard Target now applies damage reduction AFTER other incoming damage debuffs (like from Hot Shot or Brute Force). So a 10% reduction is now 10% of the entire incoming damage amount which should make it a more viable option to counter increased incoming damage debuffs
- Enhanced Turrets damage increased from +50% to +75%
- Crystal Barrage damage increased from 1 to 3
- Split Shot now happens sooner in the lifetime of a projectile, making it much more viable for fast moving projectiles
- Arcane Blast now applies 8 stacks of the arcane debuff per damage tick
- Sharpened Axe damage per second increased from 50 to 125
- Barrel Explosion damage increased from 50 to 100 and armor removed on the barrels to make them easier to destroy
- Landmine Shot damage increased from 50 to 100
- Triangle Shot damage increased from 35 to 100
- Torpedo Shot damage increased from 35 to 100
- Firework Shot damage increased from 25 to 30
- Bomb Shot damage increased from 35 to 75
- Proximity barrage damage increased from 30 to 50
- Dagger Shot damage increased from 2 to 3
- Reload Arc damage increased from 15 to 20
- Spinning Blade damage increased from 4 to 5
- Time Bolt damage increased from 30 to 40
- Ultra Shot damage increased from 25 to 30
- Shockwave cooldown reduced from 10 seconds to 4 seconds
- Health Shot healing amount increased from 1 to 3
- Grim Reaper healing amount increased from 5 to 6
- Vampire healing amount increased from 2 to 4
- Personal Space max health increase requirement reduced from every 8 eliminations to EVERY close range elimination
- Bullseye max health increase requirement reduced from every 10 one shot eliminations to EVERY one shot elimination
- Checklist eliminations requirement reduced from 25 to 15
- Assassin eliminations requirement reduced from 10 to 5
- Tasty Orange damage increase per elimination increased from +1% to +2%
- Laser Crab, Poison Skull, Blocker Skull and Lightning Skull projectile damage decreased by 50%
- Grenade Crab, Fire Skull and Homing Grub projectile damage decreased by 25%
- Slightly reduced the radius of the Grenade Crab grenade to be a bit more fair
- Slightly reduced the Minigun crab projectile speed
- Reduced the collision radius of the Elite Lightning Crab projectiles as there were some cases that appeared to be a miss that would still hit
- Removed knockback on many small enemy projectiles to reduce situations where players could lose momentum and be juggled in the air, taking damage multiple times- not fun!
- Frenzied Enemies now doubles the attack speed of enemies rather than setting it to the max value (which could lead to inconsistencies and unfair situations on some enemies)
NERFS
- Crossbow default piercing reduced from 2 to 0 (as the previous update made it one of the best weapons in the game)
- Enemy bonus health per alive player in co-op increased from +40% per player to +45% per player and on Nightmare or Ultra Chaos difficulties, the bonus is increased to +66% per player on Elite and Boss islands as the situations where everyone shreds through elites and bosses in 1 second were happening a bit too often in co-op especially in 4 player lobbies
- Double Edged Sword crystal gain has been reduced from 250% of damage dealt to 100% of damage dealt as it was far too overpowered before
- Hot Shot critical hit chance reduced from 16% to 15%
- Sharpshooter critical hit chance reduced from 8% to 6%
- There is no longer a 2% base starting crit chance, you start with 0% chance to crit
- Mace Shot trigger chance decreased by 1%
- Mace Shot damage per second decreased from 125 to 100
- Aura Grenade damage per second reduced from 1250 to 500
- Armor health per plate reduced from 25% of max health to 15% of max health
- Slightly increased the health of most medium enemies (regular skulls, regular ants etc.) but also increased the time before health regeneration on these enemies (if playing with the Regenerating Enemies modifier enabled), allowing for more breathing room between each hit they take
- Pufferfish health increased to differentiate them from slugs when prioritizing targets
BUG FIXES
- Upgrade chests no longer contain duplicates of the same loot (you could have 10 mods in your inventory but get the same mod twice)
- Fixed issue where ALL strikes that had spawned during a run weren’t getting cleaned up properly which could lead to worse performance on late game runs
- Enemy movement now ignores physically simulated destructibles so they should stop being pushed under the ground by barrels
- Bouncing Shot no longer resets the lifetime of projectiles which was causing performance issues where projectiles would bounce around for 30+ seconds at high levels
- Removed Laser Crab and Minigun Crab from challenge crystals as they were appearing when the Evolved Enemies difficulty modifier was inactive
- Enemies that happen to spawn outside of the world bounds should get automatically eliminated
- Fixed Critical Blast having a visual cooldown in the inventory while actually having a chance to trigger on each critical hit
- Fixed issue that could cause Auras to trigger multiple times when dropping and re-picking back up an Aura perk
- Fixed various issues that could cause Auras to stop triggering when multiple Aura perks were equipped
- Lava now deals damage when stepping into it as intended
- Homing Thorns now deal damage as intended
- Fixed various spots where enemies could get stuck
- The “Islands Survived” text in the game over UI now shows island 18 if getting eliminated on island 19 (previously it would show 19)
- You no longer automatically fire when leaving a portal if you had entered it with the fire button held down
- Fixed some jankiness around sliding- when sliding forward and quickly pressing the back key, you no longer change directions while sliding and instead stop the slide which should prevent overshooting when trying to stop a slide
- Damage Dealt can no longer be negative on the game over screen
- Max health no longer goes to 1 when getting high enough
- Fixed issue that would cause players other than the multiplayer host to see blue borders in the lobby
- Fixed issue with auto melee that could cause it to continue indefinitely when exiting a portal
- Removed the invisible walls around the pillars in some boss islands- this prevents situations where you can seemingly deal no damage to enemies when they are near the pillars but will increase situations where they may be able to shoot through walls. Working on a better fix to this in the future
- Fixed issue that prevented the Challenger challenges from being completed
- Made several potential fixes for a low percentage of players not being able to join multiplayer games
- Fixed the Level Up perk favoring grenade mods over weapon mods when leveling things up
- Fixed the Level Up perk leveling up mods and perks that were already level 255
- Fixed a soft lock that could happen if knocked out of the Tropical island with the square 4 walls: there’s now a launchpad outside of the wall boundaries to bounce back in!
That’s all for this update, thanks for playing! 🦀
Made a few small improvements based on initial feedback from the update!
GENERAL
- Changed lightning to only interrupt your movement initially, not prevent jumping or dashing the entire time you were shocked which felt unfair over the new longer lifespan that lightning has
BUG FIXES
- Fixed Lightning Skulls not having purple projectiles
- Fixed a few rare crashes
- Fixed Checklist displaying the incorrect amount of eliminations needed in the description