Hyper Light Breaker News

March Monthly Update - Patch Notes - v0.5.3.113087

Hello Breakers!

Welcome to our second monthly update! This update is a bit smaller than our last as much of the team is working on our April release - ‘Buried Below’ - which promises a whole new tutorial level and systems to better onboard new players, a new Crown to fight, big gameplay updates built on feedback from last month’s Experimental build, and more!

For more information on the experimental build, check out Monthly Update 1’s patch notes.

This March update focuses on adding a new Blade, new enemies, new mods, and a new Assassin.

[h3]Features[/h3]
New Affixes: Crystal Pommel - Increases damage to targets afflicted with Crystal.
ICE Breaker - Increases damage to targets afflicted with Hack.
Threaded Strands - Nearby status effect afflicted enemies take additional damage when attacked.
Charge Sync - Reduces charge time for the weapon.

New Holobytes: Spiral Muzzle - Rails have a chance to fire a projectile that bursts into mini-bullets.
Tremor Repeater - Knocking enemies into each other via knockback effects makes them explode.
Spiked Fallout - Explosions leave a hazard behind.

New Blade: Death Wheel Thrash enemies with a whirling blade.
New Blade Special: Blooming Corpse Seed

Slain enemies grow an explosive bloom - Activate to detonate and damage nearby enemies.

New Assassin: Sword Master A deadly duelist with a bevy of blades at her disposal.

New Player EXEs: Wholesale License - Reduce prices on Vendors in the Overgrowth.
Bright Blood Attractor - Increase Bright Blood pickup range. Note - this upgrade does not require you to use a slot to equip it.

New Enemies: Wolf Mother - Breathes a flame attack that leaves flames burning on the ground.
Crystal Leaper - Slams the ground, causing crystal traps to burst up through the ground.
New Elite: Leaper

A powerful Leaper that has multiple strong attacks.

COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fog of War! By default, the map is now obscured sans some critical locations.
In multiplayer, all players share the same revealed area.
Inspired by player feedback and mods that highlighted that too much information on the map was reducing the need to pay attention to your environment, which was hurting the feeling of exploration.
Expect this feature to grow more in the future, including Player EXEs that modify how Fog of War works.

Updated Elite Slime hazard spawns on leap attack.
Improved Wolf AI behaviors.
Improved Elite Dirk AI behaviors.
Improved Engineer AI behaviors.
Improved Croc Brute AI behaviors.
Improved Snail AI behaviors.

Removed the flame trails from the basic Snails

Improved Dro AI behaviors when fighting her in the Crystal and Snow biomes.
Bleed Effect balance updates:

Decreased DMG dealt by enemy bleed to the player from 6 to 3 DMG.
Increased time between DMG ticks for players and enemy from 1 sec to 1.3 sec.
Increased bleed DMG per tick by player inflicted bleed from 2 -> 3 DMG.
Note: Bleed damage is triggered by movement and attacking - minimize movement and attacks while Bleed is active to minimize damage taken. Status Effects are also cleared immediately by using a medkit!

Reduced Auto Aim “stickiness”.
Rot status effect now lasts longer and increases the debuff when stacking.
Removed ‘Combat State’ behaviors (locking board and containers while in combat).
COMMUNITY REQUEST: Added “Invert Horizontal Axis" option to the controller settings menu.
In Multiplayer, each teammate can place a map marker, and map markers are now shared between all players in the session.

We know players are looking for more in-game communication support, and while this is a start, we plan to dive deeper into expanding this over the summer. In the interim, we recommend players looking for like-minded players to voicechat with to join our discord - www.discord.gg/heartmachine

[h3]Bugs[/h3]

Fixed an issue where player HUD would stay on screen during crown intro cutscenes.
Fixed an issue where Missile Dirks would not properly pursue the player.
Fixed an issue where Dirk Ranged Elite would not play voice lines when attacking.
Rarity Chip now counts rarity correctly for clients in multiplayer.
Fixed an issue where Engineer mines would continue to trigger UI alerts even after detonation.
COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed loot container spawns in several POIs that could not be looted in some seeds.
Fixed an issue where ground enemies would appear to be falling for clients as they walked across the ground.
Fixed an issue where Prisms that drop from Elites might spawn under the ground.
Ghost Signal and Hollow Magazine Holobytes now show updated stats in the modify loadout screen.
COMMUNITY ASSIST: Enemy loot drops should no longer sometimes spawn up in trees / etc above the enemy.
COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed an issue with certain 3rd party controller brands that were causing input disruptions.
Overgrowth vendors should now spawn more consistently and replicate correctly for all players.
Explosive Hilt now correctly assigns explosions to all enemies affected.
COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed labs sometimes being generated under objects.
COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed several issues with locked POIs.
COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed several clipping issues with procedural generation.
Fixed several soft locks caused by using the “end run” function while transitioning zones or while an acceptance timer is counting down.
Fixed an issue where sometimes the Crush Block Amp would get caught on a tall enemy it was slamming down on, preventing it from hitting all enemies.
Fixed an issue where re-applying Crystal status to an enemy would reset the damage timer.

[h3]Performance[/h3]

Improved performance of jump pad VFX.
Tuned LoD settings for better visuals/performance.
Improved Outpost performance.

Announcing this Month’s Monthly Update

Breakers!

We’re thrilled to reveal our next Monthly Update will launch next Tuesday, March 25! As we’ve shared in our Spring Edition roadmap, this update is our second monthly update before our first major content drop, Buried Below, releasing next month. Soon, we’ll have details to share about the first major content drop and what you can expect from it, but for now, we’d like to cover what you’ll find in next week’s update.

March – Monthly Update Details

This month's update, like the previous update, will bring a slew of new content to Hyper Light Breaker in Early Access. This update will bring a new Assassin, the Sword Master, a new weapon, Death Wheel, and with it a new special attack, multiple new enemies, new Holobytes, new Affixes, and last but certainly not least a new gameplay feature we like to call “Fog of War” that was inspired by community feedback!

We’re thrilled to bring both the Assassin and weapon into this update – it's been a lot of work getting them ready, and we know they've been heavily requested for a while now, but now we feel that they’re finally ready! Expect to check out a mini video clip on our social channels of the Assassin and the weapon in action before the update launches.
Let's explain the "Fog of War" gameplay feature a bit! "Fog of War" means that initially, your map will be obscured except for a few key locations. As you (and your friends) explore, more of the map will be revealed. While we were experimenting with this internally, we saw player feedback indicating that they were having a better experience ignoring the map - in fact, one player - Refractor - even modded it out entirely. While we will be continuing to expand the map's functionality in future updates, we wanted to get this into our player's hands quickly to get initial feedback to better shape those plans.

Additional Updates from Heart Machine

The Experimental Branch that we put out alongside February's update was a huge success! It fostered a lot of discussion both within the community and inside Heart Machine, and expect to see our takeaways manifest in future updates. Being able to experiment and engage with the community this way is one of the key reasons we wanted to release Hyper Light Breaker into Early Access, and our wonderful community has repeatedly proven that it was the right choice.

As a final celebration of the benefits player and developer relationship - as a creator, your audience is there because they trust your tastes, even if they are eclectic or challenging. But sometimes, no matter how right or wrong it might be (no judgment!) - like pineapple on pizza, it isn't right for the majority. To everyone who enjoyed the "in-combat" state, we are sorry to disappoint all (three?) of you. For everyone else - the "in-combat" state system will be gone when we release next week's update!

The Overgrowth is about to get a whole lot more exciting, and we can’t wait for you all to jump in next week once the update is live! Your feedback has already been invaluable in shaping the future of Hyper Light Breaker, so please keep it coming!

- Heart Machine Team

A month into early access, Hyper Light Breaker has already added a new playable character, with a perk designed for players who like to 'shoot fast and shoot a lot'

Hyper Light Breaker may not have enjoyed the smoothest early access launch, but developer Heart Machine has been diligent in listening to feedback and striving to update the game since its initial release last month. The studio issued numerous hotfixes in the wake of launch, addressing players' most grievous complaints, and provided a more thorough roadmap of its future plans for the action roguelike last week. Now, it has debuted the first "monthly update" for the game, which among other things introduces a whole new playable character...
Read more.

Hotfix Patch Notes - v0.5.2.110871

We hope you all are enjoying our first-ever monthly content update! It's been great to see you all playing as the new Breaker, Ravona, and seeing you all tinkering with new builds.

We've released a Hotfix today to address a few bugs, and made some fixes based on community feedback. Below are the patch notes for today's Hotfix.

Reminder to keep the feedback coming as we set out to make Hyper Light Breaker the best it can be throughout the course of Early Access! The best way to ensure we see your feedback and concerns is to post in the #hlb-bugs-feedback channel on our Discord: www.discord.gg/heartmachine.

- Heart Machine Team

[h2]BUG FIXES:[/h2]

Fixed an issue where Rails would not display properly in multiplayer until a new Rail was equipped
Fixed a crash in cloth sim that would rarely show up for users swapping between Ravona and other characters in the loadout select rapidly.
Fixed improperly scaled Drop Down Labs.
Updated Zero Edge Blade Special text to reflect actual function
Fixed an issue where the Spark Seeker was triggering 100% of the time instead of the stated 25% of the time.
COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed an issue where password input window focus could be lost when pressing gamepad buttons (most notably, this made it difficult to enter passwords on Steam Deck)
COMMUNITY ASSIST: Reduced the volume of the Hoverboard Boost from Elite Gyroscope
COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed an issue where materials chests looted in previous runs would display their “unlooted glow” on future runs within the same cycle, rather than appearing dark as intended.
COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed an issue where drowning on the edge of a beach could spawn the player on the sloped edge of the beach, dropping them back into the water until they died.
COMMUNITY ASSIST: Fixed an issue where consecutive perfect parries could cause the parry vfx player glow to stack until you became too awesome looking (and also could negatively affect performance).

[h2]KNOWN ISSUES:[/h2]

With the February monthly update, we received reports from folks that the holobyte replacement selector does not function when you have a full loadout of holobytes, instead replacing a random one. This error corrects itself if you restart the game - it only happens during the first play session on the new update. We will not be hotfixing this issue at this time - instead putting our efforts into a more robust effort at preventing future issues, which will be incorporated into our March update.

Hyper Light Breaker gets lots of fixes and a new character in its latest update

When Hyper Light Breaker launched into early access last month, almost ten years after the much beloved Hyper Light Drifter, it did so less with a bang, and more of a wet thud. The game, even in early access, just wasn't quite ready yet, which is a real shame considering there's some serious promise there. Still, there's the potential for improvements, and Heart Machine has been hard at work deploying hotfixes post-launch. Even better than that, the first big update for the game is here, and it's accompanied by a whole bunch of additions, fixes, and tweaks.

Read the rest of the story...