Hello folks! It has been a busy couple of weeks here in 10tons offices. After releasing the Underworld DLC and the accompanying patch 1.1.0 out in the wild we have received a lot of feedback from you people, both positive and negative. Reception for the DLC has been somewhat mixed, so we sat down with the team, put our thinking caps on and identified some key points where we could improve the overall experience.
While our coders have been hard at work squashing bugs and deploying hotfixes to common issues people were having with the release, our level designers started the process of making some sweeping changes to the DLC content. I’ll go through some of the highlights of the update before posting the full changelog. Some of these changes have already been deployed via hotfixes, but for clarity’s sake these will be highlighted as well.
Do note that due to time constraints, this update will contain some new text strings that haven’t been localized yet to our other supported languages. These will follow a bit later.
Update Highlights
Changes to DLC enemies
The mana enhanced enemies specific to the DLC do offer some added challenge as the players need to get rid of the protecting mana crystals before being able to damage them. However, the players felt that they were limited in ways they were able to deal with these new foes. We made two large changes to how they work. First of all, the enemies now receive low damage even when they still have crystals on them. Secondly, you are now able to use power attacks and explosives to get rid of all of the mana crystals at once. This change should offer some new avenues to approach enemy encounters in the Underworld.
The Mana Spirits are a formidable foe that can really be a challenge to fight if you encounter them unprepared. We added a small info screen to explain the concept of the enemy when you first encounter them in the same vein that the Scrapper is introduced at the start of the game.
Changes and Additions to DLC content
The Underworld is quite a different beast when compared to the base game Island, both visually and in how the player traverses and explores the area. We received a huge amount of feedback concerning both the layout of the new map and about the general feel of it. On that basis we have revamped the map layout and made some new additions.
First of all, the Underworld now has three link tower areas instead of just one it had before. This change should make the map more approachable as the player is able to see parts of the map earlier, helping to plan out your expeditions and explorations into the unknown.
Speaking of exploration, if you have played through the DLC before you might notice that the map looks different than it used to. Although in-universe everything could be explained away by the magic of mana and the mysterious nature of the Underworld, the reality is that we made some extensive revamps to the map terrain in places where we felt the terrain was too complex to traverse or otherwise confusing. This should make traveling around the Underworld feel more clear cut and focused.
Of course you should also have a good reason to traverse around the Underworld again, if you have already completed the DLC, so what better reason to get back on the trail than to discover some of the new areas we have added since the initial release! These additions can be divided into two rough categories: Spicing up areas that felt a bit barren with new additions and few completely new areas to explore. There are new campfires, POIs, text content and who knows, you might even find a new quest or two!
As a clarification, this new content is not “cut content”, but content that was developed after release based specifically on your feedback.
Home Portal Long Range Recipe
As you might deduce from the name of the recipe, with this upgrade the player is now able to use the new home portal invention in places other than the main island. This feature was planned, but didn’t manage to make the cut in time for the initial DLC/patch release. We hope that this addition will change your quality of life for the better.
Building Additions and Fixes
Inner Walls buildable pack is a new invention that was originally deployed in a hotfix, so it might have been missed by some. You now have the ability to build inner walls to your abode, as a house is only a hollow shell without the ability to divide the space up into rooms. Included in the pack are a wall, a doorway and a newly added pillar for good measure.
There are also a good number of fixes to the whole building feature, including but not limited to optimizations to the building UI screen so it loads faster and workarounds to situations where the players managed to trap themselves into a never ending cutscene via building, a terrifying prospect for sure.
The building feature is planned to get some more features in the future, but we’ll discuss them at a later date.
Those are the large changes this time around and we hope you’ll enjoy them. Next up, the full changelog.
VERSION 1.1.1 - Underworld Revisited
ADDED
- Inner Walls buildable pack.
- Added Home Portal Long Range recipe.
- One small location and POI to Sunburn Desert.
- (DLC) New locations and new structures with new POIs.
- (DLC) New quests.
- (DLC) Mana Spirits have introduction screens the first time player meets them.
- (DLC) Added a storage box to catacombs.
- (DLC) New trinket, "Thimble".
CHANGED
- You can't open timed crates after travelling through home portal (until you camp or die).
- Buildable selection screen shows up faster and consumes less memory.
- Protagonist movement stopped and fall landing animation not played if falling small distances.
- (DLC) Extensive map terrain restructuring in various places.
- (DLC) The DLC now has three link tower areas instead of one.
- (DLC) Normal attacks now damage mana enhanced enemies a little even though there are crystals left.
- (DLC) Power attacks and explosives now destroy all of the crystals a mana enchanced enemy has.
- (DLC) DLC specific content such as skills signified with a star emoji.
- (DLC) Mana Chambers only require materials once.
- (DLC) Mana chambers now raise the dead inside their radius (not bosses though).
- (DLC) Mana crystals no longer drop mana chunks.
- (DLC) "Spirit Trouble" now needs only 4 spirits killed.
FIXED
- Multiple crash fixes.
- Multiple terrain fixes in both DLC and Island.
- "Construction Work" now accepts all kinds of doors.
- Fixed an issue where the player would turn invisible at a campfire after using a bed.
- Prevented saving while materials "are flying" to fix a material duplication bug.
- Potential fix for bugs where the player can fall through platforms.
- Partial fix to rectangular black voids in the world.
- Teleporter getting stuck.
- Save backups now also work in release developer mode (for modders).
- It is now possible to take materials from built storage boxes.
- Fix to hoe issue.
- Fix to main quest showing up weird in the quest tab after completion.
- No longer possible to build a new door on a doorframe that already has an existing door.
- Myth tablets now work even when the primary coop player is dead.
- Player does not get stuck to buildables in cutscene mode anymore.
- POI Info screen now shows location correctly.
- Enter build mode quick access button now works only if the same button has not been bound to some other action.
- (DLC) Some objects were missing permanency tags, making them respawn.
- (DLC) Missing drops for certain objects.
- (DLC) Multiple typo fixes.
- (DLC) Not being able to attain all audio logs.
- (DLC) Fixes to multiple issues where the player would get stuck after using campfire fast travel.
- (DLC) Second co-op player no longer loses control after dlc1 ending cutscene.
- (DLC) Treasure hunter skill now takes quest requirements into account.
- (DLC) Turret laser sight now disappears when the turret is destroyed even if there are crossbow bolts attached to it.
