Content update 2: “The Eldryth Emporium”

Greetings, friends! MythForce Project Director Luke here again.

In today's MythForce update, we mark the grand opening of the Eldryth Emporium, your one-stop shop for cosmetic character customization. What better way to begin than with some new duds for your hero?

You can now access the Eldryth Emporium from the main menu, and from there you can browse the brand-new character skins. Adventure in style and impress your friends with how snazzy you look. Each hero now has 2 additional skins to choose from, purchasable using Blood Gems, a new type of treasure found in treasure chests and in the pockets of monsters. Blood Gems are not sold via microtransactions and can be found only in-game!

We’ve added new quests and rewards to go along with them. This update brings 5 new artifacts, each themed around tradeoffs. Each comes with a big benefit–like greater critical damage or guaranteed high-tier perks–but at the cost of weaker non-critical attacks or fewer perk choices overall. I think these new artifacts will give you a lot more options for building your hero. We’re looking forward to seeing which ones are your favorites.

But that’s not all! Have you ever been close to the end of the floor, had some bad luck and want to start over, but don’t want to lose the rank XP you’ve earned? Maybe you just want to do a quick run between other things. For those on a tighter schedule who want a mulligan or who just want to rank up a little faster, we’ve introduced the Early Retreat system!

At the end of each floor, you’ll have the choice to continue to the next floor or, if you want to take a smaller win, end the adventure there. If you choose to retreat early, the adventure ends but you receive a small XP bonus for completing the floor.

If you are brave enough to venture deeper into the dungeon, however, we want to reward your tenacity, so we’ve increased the Rank XP rewards on each subsequent floor. Beware, though! If you’re defeated before the end of the floor, all of that bonus XP goes away, and you’ll receive XP only for collected treasure and regular dungeon depth rewards–although you’ll still get to keep any Blood Gems you found.

In multiplayer, it’s a group vote! Majority rules, and tiebreaker goes to the host’s vote.

Check out these fun new features and more! There’s plenty to see, so take a look down below at the list of changes to see what else we’ve been up to.

Improvements

• On the main menu, added the “Eldryth Emporium” where you can purchase new character skins using Blood Gems.
• Added Blood Gems, a new in-game currency that now appear in chests, can be dropped by enemies throughout the dungeon, and are kept whether you win or lose a run. Blood gems are shared by party members when picked up, like treasure.
• Added 2 new skins for each hero, purchasable in the Eldryth Emporium.
• Added a “Cash Out or Continue” choice at the end of each floor of the dungeon. Now you can choose to end a run early and take a floor-end Rank XP bonus, or you can try your luck on the next floor of the dungeon. Each floor is worth much more than the previous.
• Added idle animations to heroes when they stand inactive for a short period of time.
• Improved the animation of enemies affected by Hawkins’s Rift Arrow.
• Increased readability of text on Select Your Hero screen.
• Unified font size and position of title elements in menu screens.
• Improved treasure rooms to have more and better loot in their chests.
• Improved treasure rooms to have a chance to spawn shrines.
• Removed the “last room achieved” star from the Dungeon Depth Indicator HUD element, as it doesn’t provide useful information.
• Updated the contextual control indicator to the right of the Hotbar to no longer show “Drop L”/”Drop R” when an empty slot is active on the Hotbar.
• Added 5 new artifacts that can be unlocked through quests:
  • Beastor’s Gauntlets: Power attacks deal more damage, and light attacks deal less.
  • Cursed Goblet of Glass: Your HP max is permanently 3. All damage taken is 1 HP, and you are immune to “Damage Over Time” status effects.
  • Farsight Monocle: Deals extra damage with projectiles the farther you shoot.
  • Precision Implements: Critical damage is increased, and non-crit damage is reduced.
  • The Four Irons: Gain perks only at Level 4 & 8, but level perks are Tier 4.

Balance Changes

• Re-balanced session Rank XP rewards to accommodate the new floor-end Cash Out or Continue choice.
• Reduced the block stamina efficiency of shields and daggers, making it much harder to turtle and infinitely defend against enemy groups.
• Reduced the effectiveness of daggers. They can no longer stunlock enemies when attacking rapidly.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where Victoria’s Lion’s Roar ability ending would interrupt and reset the timer when actively reviving another player.
• Fixed an issue where using Rico’s Backslash on an enemy at the exact moment of the enemy’s death teleports Rico back to the entrance room of the dungeon.
• Fixed an issue where changing a quickplay lobby to “private” still allows other quickplay players to enter the lobby.
• Fixed an issue where the “snow cone” breath attack of Sporefolk Tanks affects players outside of its visible effect.
• Fixed an issue where the chill effect on use of the Ice Spellbook Alt power would not end when the power did.
• Fixed an issue where the fire jet from fire traps affected players outside of its visible effect.
• Fixed a rare issue where players could lose the ability to rotate their character after being revived.
• Fixed an issue where Lizardfolk were holding their shields upside-down.
• Fixed an issue where not all player character voice lines were playing when using certain attacks.
• Fixed an issue where character banter lines trample over one another.
• Fixed an issue where players could become locked inside the gated treasure nooks in some rooms if some members of the party do not enter the room before other players clear out all enemies within.
• Fixed an issue where defeating Beastor does not interrupt his voice lines.
• Fixed an issue where infrequently the episode selection screen would not fully appear, staying semi-opaque.
• Fixed an issue where the rank bar in the post-game results screen could overlap the “Return to Lobby” button.
• Fixed an issue where the ability information panel would not have a scroll bar at low resolutions.
• Fixed an issue where the character selection carousel would always select Maggie first when the arrow buttons are pressed.
• Fixed an issue where the exhausted state chromatic aberration visual effect persists into the character info panel, and in spectator mode after being defeated.
• Fixed an issue where enemies could not attack on angles, making them ineffective on stairs and slopes.
• Fixed some known locations that players can escape the level using Maggie’s Snap ability or “creative platforming.”
• Removed green “bubbles” that appear for client players on water surfaces.

Known Issues

Performance Issues

• As multiplayer in MythForce is Peer-to-Peer, you may experience lag or “choppiness” depending on your connection to the host and the power of their computer.
• On first launch, performance can be low on mechanical hard drives while building shaders in the background.

Gameplay Issues

• On rare occasions, it’s possible to get stuck in a knocked down state after being hit by Beastor or being caught in the explosion of a spore pod.
• It is possible to get temporarily stuck at “walk” speed after shield bashing an enemy or breakable.
• Infrequently, the “Light” effect on melee weapons does not properly reduce stamina use when equipped.
• Infrequently, the “Heavy” effect on melee weapons does not properly increase stamina use when equipped.
• On occasion, Beastor will “activate” early in the room before his combat arena and will taunt players loudly from a room away.
• On rare occasions, after falling into a pit the player may permanently lose the ability to rotate left and right.
• In cases where some players have a slow network connection, it can appear during the Beastor boss battle that Beastor is “teleporting” from one location to another after certain attacks.
• Some creative platforming in specific room variants can allow players to exit the playable area.
• Rift Arrow can sometimes cause colliding creatures and players to be ejected into the air and possibly out of the play area.
• Jumping on top of certain creatures can cause players to be ejected into the air and possibly out of the play area.
• It’s possible to exploit a “safe zone” at the entrance door to rooms, allowing you to shoot into a room without enemies being able to fight back.
• There are some rare instances where players can become stuck in the world geometry and be unable to return to the playable area.
• Clients will occasionally get kicked from the lobby while loading into the game.
• Immediately after taking the Perfectionist perk, for a short period of time the player is credited 2 stacks of Perfectionist instead of 1 per enemy defeated.

UI Issues

• On rare occasions, the hotbar can appear empty after reviving. Picking up or dropping items repopulates the hotbar.
• The item comparison hotbar popup when looking at an item in the world does not compare “like for like,” reducing its usefulness.

Visual Issues

• On occasion, after level transition, the “time of day” may appear inconsistent between players.
• Some seams are visible on ground textures, particularly in connecting corridors.
• Sporefolk can appear to “jitter” back and forth when approaching in combat.
• There is no “key” to pick up when you defeat Beastor. You can just proceed to the final room and use the pedestal.