Upgrade EA.1.8 Seeker Upgrade - Detailed Notes

[White Rabbit Games - Tom]

Patch EA.1.8 has upgraded the Seeker, this post lists all of the changes.

There are two phases to dealing with the Seeker, first when it hunts you and all you can do is avoid or run from it, and second when you can fight and kill it.

Our goal with this upgrade was to make the first phase more exciting and more of a cat-and-mouse experience, while making the second phase combat more challenging.

Please let us know what you think of the Seeker now. There are a lot of different stats the Seeker has which we can tweak to make it easier or more difficult in different ways, and we'll do that in future patches based on your feedback.

The New Seeker

• The old Seeker was slower than your sprint speed in Normal Mode and so you could easily run away from it. To address this we've added a stamina bar to the game, it goes down when you sprint and once it's empty you have to wait for it to recharge before you can sprint more. You're faster than the Seeker when sprinting but slower when walking, so if you're going to run from the Seeker you'll need to judge the distance correctly. You might need to use a stone, noisemaker or try to stun the Seeker in order to buy enough time to get all the way to safety.
  The stamina bar only appears when the Seeker is there (its presence instils breathless fear in your character). When it's not there, or in Exploration Mode, you can sprint as much as you like.
  
• When the Seeker damages you the spike of adrenaline recharges your stamina bar part way, so you have a chance to sprint to safety before getting attacked again.
  
• The Seeker is slower while searching for you in a location, and searches a wider area instead of sticking close to you. It should be easier to sneak around avoiding it if you stay behind cover and pay attention to where it is.
  
• Helping with the above, we fixed a bug so that the Seeker's slither sound is always audible - no more losing track of where it is.
  
• The Seeker will now abandon its search and leave a location if it can't find you within a few minutes - but will return more quickly if you keep making noise. If it scares you too much then hiding in a corner for a few minutes is an option!
  
• Stunning the Seeker is now more useful. If you stab it with the knife, or shoot it with regular bullets in the heart shard, then it will turn away and tactically retreat for a few seconds - giving you time to escape or hide.
  
• The knife is more useful now because of the above stun changes; you can stun the Seeker and avoid damage whilst it's charging you by timing your attack perfectly, but even if you time it poorly you'll only take a single hit and the Seeker will be sent running, giving you time to escape or hide.
  
• Regular bullets only stun the Seeker if you hit the heart shard on its chest now. Hitting the rest of its body does nothing (except show a puff of dust on its carapace).
  
• The Seeker's heart shard now changes appearance to let you know its current state. It turns a dull black when the Seeker can't be hurt and turns red when it can be. As you damage the Seeker with the right weapon the heart shard will glow brighter with each hit.
  
• You can no longer kill the Seeker by getting to a safe location where it can't reach you and then easily shooting it - the Seeker will enter a defensive stance when this happens instead of being a sitting duck.
  
• The Seeker can't be hurt while in a defensive mode, when it is spawning or for a second after it takes damage. No more easy kills :)
  
• When you damage the Seeker with the right weapon it will now speed up and charge straight at you. It gets faster with each hit until it dies, so be prepared!
  
• The Seeker has a new capability which could be quite surprising, so read this only if you don't mind spoilers! The Seeker can enter the ground floor of all buildings now
  
• The new Seeker drops a slightly different head trophy, so you can show off your victory over the more difficult version.

Seeker Tips

The Seeker needs to see a point around the middle of your body to alert to you, so you can peak around corners or above crates/etc to see where it is and where it's headed without being seen. Pay attention to the alert bar that appears above its head when it can see you - get back behind cover before the bar fills up!

You can throw stones to distract the Seeker. Drag them to your action bar and then press the hot key to throw a stone. The Seeker will immediately start to move to where the stone landed to investigate. Just don't let it see you - the Seeker will ignore any sounds once it's chasing you!

The noisemaker is a step above throwing stones - it will distract the Seeker even if it's already chasing you. You can use a noisemaker for an extended distraction, or you can keep it for emergencies and throw one when the Seeker is hot on your tail.

Once you have a knife or a revolver you can stun the Seeker. With the knife wait for it to get close and then try to time your attack - hitting it anywhere will do the trick. With the revolver you can hit the Seeker from a distance, but you have to hit the red heart shard on its chest. Once stunned the Seeker will roar and then slither in the opposite direction for a few seconds, giving you time to hide or escape.

Future Seeker Changes

We're turning out attention back to content and bug fixes for the next few patches, with some Seeker tweaks as needed. We will return to the Seeker in future though for some more larger changes.

• Different types of Seeker, such as one which spits poisonous goo.
  
• Some interaction between the Seeker and airship. Our goal will be to make it so you're not completely safe from the Seeker once on your airship. We're looking at a few different options here.
  
• This one addresses the same spoiler from above. Letting the Seeker bash down doors. We'll also consider letting it travel up stairs.

Stats

There are a lot of stats related to the Seeker which we can tweak to make it easier or more difficult. We thought we'd give a bit of insight into that for any interested players. As we get feedback on the new Seeker we will tweak these values in coming patches.

• Player stamina - increase/decrease to change how long you can sprint for.
  
• Player stamina recharge delay - if you sprint until the bar is empty it takes a second of not sprinting before it will begin recharging.
  
• Player stamina recharge rate - how fast your stamina recharges.
  
• Player lethal weapon damage - determines how many attacks it takes to kill the Seeker.
  
• Seeker searching speed - normal speed when searching for you.
  
• Seeker chasing speed - when it hears a noise or sees you.
  
• Seeker enraged speed - after being damaged once.
  
• Seeker enraged 2 speed - after being damaged twice.
  
• Seeker detection time - how long the Seeker needs to see you for before it alerts and starts chasing you. This time is reduced at certain moments of heightened awareness, such as when the Seeker first spawns, when it's close to you, or when it has just been attacked.
  
• Seeker detection view angle - the angle of the vision arc in front of the Seeker.
  
• Seeker time until gives up - if the Seeker doesn't see you for this period of time it gives up and despawns.
  
• Seeker explore radius - the distance around the player the Seeker searches.
  
• Seeker searching pause time - how long the Seeker stays still for in between searching movements (so you can move hiding spots without fearing it will instantly turn around and see you).
  
• Seeker search distance min/max - how far away each new search destination is. A lot of short movements around an area has a different feel to larger ones.
  
• Seeker stun retreat distance - how far the Seeker runs in the opposite direction after being stunned.
  
• Seeker attack damage - how much damage it does to the player.
  
• Seeker attack stamina boost - how much stamina the player gains after being attacked.
  
• Seeker post-attack delay - a delay after the Seeker attacks before it can move or attack again, so the player has a bit of time to escape. Once the Seeker has been enraged from damage it will no longer delay after attacks.
  
• Seeker heart shard size - we can adjust the size of the heart shard so it's easier or harder to shoot.

[schtoolee]

Tried one. Much harder to get a shot on. Have it mounted with the rest. Looks like brighter eyes.
Added picture in screenshots.

[schtoolee]

Tried another Seeker in town. It killed me in a building. I popped up in the ship. When I went back to the place that it killed me. There was no coffin.
Thought maybe I missed something, because the seeker killed me right away. So I went back, without saving, tried it again, and there still was no coffin.

But when I let it kill me under my ship, the coffin showed up, on top of my sleeping bag.

Also tried again. I let it kill me in the street. The coffin showed up. Let it kill me before I picked up my stuff. And another coffin showed up on the street. But my stuff, was still in the first coffin, on the street.

I have plenty on my ship, to replace what I lost. Except for the hammer, and all of my gold bullets.

[⚡⚡qw0peaeral⚡⚡]

what about gamepad support

[Thumper (teased)]

This is amazing! Good work!

[White Rabbit Games - Tom]

Hi schtoolee, sorry about the lost gear, thank you for letting us know. I've just pushed a quick hotfix which fixes coffins when you die in a building.

I've also added a wooden hammer to the game which you can build from the workbench. In the next patch I'll add a metal hammer recipe to the blacksmith so you can get the original hammer back too.

[schtoolee]

Sounds good, Thanks.
Now back to killing Seekers.

[i_got_blisters]

Can we pin this thread?

[Fenfen]

I think it'd be good to leave second stories as a safe zone for players. Maybe make a small seeker that can be killed with out the special weapon needed for the big seeker?

[TwoStroke TonyYT]

Hi devs After this update i went into my game and i went into the caves and there was no loot at all no ores on the stone/wall and no loot what so ever at the camp is there a bug?

[i_got_blisters]

1.8.1 feedback

Finished my playthrough and I do like the new A.I.. And the new stamina is perfect. The only thing with the stamina bar only being active once the seeker shows up, is it may take people new to the game a long while to even notice the stamina bar. Maybe have the stamina bar active full-time? I don't know, that's a tough one because I do like sprinting forever when the Seeker isn't around.

I have mixed feelings about the seeker being able to enter buildings. Too easy to lock him inside a building.

With this being my 2nd playthrough, I already had the knowledge on how to defeat the seeker so I was ready to go when I reached the Legion's fort for the 1st time. And I gotta say, it was kinda hard, ...but doable. If I were a new player, I would have had no idea how to kill him. There hadn't been any mention, that I noticed, saying how to defeat him. Only that he could be killed. I either missed some clues or the clues aren't revealed until the 2nd run-through.

Also, need to add some better reward for killing him the 1st time. The legion fort was empty. I found 2 food tins & 1 bandage. And the 2 small guard rooms in the corners stayed locked. Oh, and I was unable to interact with the note in one of the rooms.
I hate saying it, but it felt very underwhelming. Maybe in future updates this is where we get to upgrade our airship, or something more than some head for the 1st kill.

And I noticed the scorpions were gone. The clift/drop-off was there but no scorps. After the legion fort i just drifted onto the next randomly generated location.

[Darkfox]

When i started my first playthrough, i had no clue what i was doing and when i first saw the seeker , i was like wtf was that and ran away quick , i liked this feeling in the start but as u learn the game, u quick learn how to kite or jump up on buildings carts and just stand their and look at it , and after a while u kill the seeker and just dont care about it anymore .
I then think ppl will focus on their airship which is fun for a while , but u lack things to do atm , i cant wait to see more things added, like more stuff to build , more enemie types and just a way to put the fear back into the game , because when u hit a certain point u become the hunter and will just kill the seeker .
Overall i had fun in the game and cant wait for more , and love the sound track it just feels right.