Crab Champions The Anvil Update Beta

[Noisestorm]

I’m settling in for about a month of daily beta updates so there’s still lots of content to add here. If you want to try the latest version out early, here are the current patch notes! There's been a huge focus on balance and QOL in this update, the new content is now being added on top of the changes

HOW TO GET THE BETA

The beta will likely have bugs and be unstable so if enabling the beta branch it's extremely important to back up your save file.

You can do that by copying the following folder to a safe location on your computer: %USERPROFILE%/AppData/Local/CrabChampions/ (if you are having trouble finding this location, press Win+R and paste it in there instead).

This folder contains your save files so if something goes wrong on this beta branch you can revert to your backed up save. Please note that the beta branch and the main branch share the same files so if you don't back up your saves you may lose permanent progress.

With that out of the way, you can download the beta branch by right clicking Crab Champions in your Steam library, clicking "properties" and then enabling the beta branch under the Betas tab

PATCH NOTES

GENERAL

Anvil Portal (Enhancements 2.0)

• I think enhancements were a good addition to the game but they had a few issues: there wasn’t enough control over which enhancements you got and you weren’t able to target a specific mod to enhance. In this update I have added an Anvil portal reward which spawns 3 enhancement choices after clearing the island. You can then choose to enhance a specific mod from your inventory, allowing you to make much more specialized and targeted builds centered around one main mod. The random enhancement totem in the shop is unchanged as it’s a fun alternate way to get enhancements, rolling the dice in the hopes of getting something good
  
• Increased enhancement limit per mod from 3 to 9
  
• You can now apply the same enhancement multiple times for stronger effects
  
• Many more enhancement types will be added over the course of this beta now that the new framework is in place
  
• KNOWN ISSUE: DON'T GET MORE THAN 8 ENHANCEMENTS ON A SINGLE MOD OR THE GAME WILL CRASH: I AM WORKING ON A FIX

Health 2.0

• A Regeneration Chest that only contains healing loot now spawns in addition to the guaranteed damage chest on island 1. I want there to be a nice balance between using health as a currency (on things like Spiked Chests) and being able to recover from small mistakes (like taking several hits from an easy enemy on island 1). Previously it felt a bit frustrating if you took a lot of damage early on in a biome and didn’t happen to find any health loot to recover. It’s also much more exciting when you have a smaller health pool that you can skillfully recover rather than a large health pool that just gets whittled down over time until you get eliminated unceremoniously. The danger zone is when you are constantly a few shots away from death while also being able to recover health by playing a certain way. I strongly believe that the danger zone is where the fun lies and the changes in this update will make playing especially the early game more enjoyable and consistent, rewarding skill and reducing the impact of small mistakes.
  
• Base max health reduced from 150 to 100 for the reasons above (remember you get the extra regeneration chest so you have guaranteed healing starting every run now)
  You can no longer die to a single hit that deals damage greater than 80% of your max health at once. This should prevent frustrating situations where you are eliminated instantly out of nowhere. Note that this only applies if you have a max health of 10 or higher and when the One Hit challenge modifier is not active
  
• Max health loot has been reworked and simplified: no more hard to understand behavior when picking up Glass Cannon where future max health gains were reduced by an unknown amount! The new system makes ALL max health related loot affect one of two stats: Base Max Health and Max Health Multiplier. Hearts have been replaced by the perks below as I want to remove as much consumable loot in the game as possible (it’s just more fun to be able to salvage later instead of it being a one off buff)
  
• Bananas have been re-added to the game since hearts are no longer a thing- even though they are consumable, it’s nice to get a big heal after an elite fight
  
• Regenerator now heals 5 times per second compared to the previous once per second to make it more satisfying to build into. This change makes it the most effective healing perk in the early game: as a tradeoff it also reduces max health multiplier by 25% which gives it more identity- effective healing but lower max health pool to work with
  
• Endurance now heals at the start of each island instead of at the end and it has been buffed to heal 80 health (up from 40)
  
• Fortitude max health increase per island decreased from 25 to 20 to bring it in line with the other max health increasing perks
  
• The Limited Heals difficulty modifier has been removed as it made healing perks in general more confusing (why am I not healing the amount advertised?) and could be canceled out with a single Amber Resin which made it a weak / boring modifier
  
• Added new “Healing” loot tag. Amber Resin will now only show up if you already have a healing perk (this helps reduce useless options from health chests in the early game)
  
• Since recovering health is much more reliable, Spiked Chests health cost has been increased from 33% to 40% of max health and totems that cost health are a bit more expensive
  
• Removed Big Hearts (it’s no longer relevant as hearts aren’t in the game anymore)

• Added new weapon mod: Beam Shot: Chance to fire damaging beams along with your shots
  
• Added new perk: Elemental Specialist: Damage increased to enemies if they have exactly one debuff (fire, poison, lightning etc.) applied to them
  
• Added new perk: Mango: Max health increased
  Added new perk: Ambrosia: Max health multiplier increased
  Added new relic: Ring Of Vigor: Max health multiplier increased by 4% after clearing each island
  
• Added new relic: Upgrade Ring: All chests are guaranteed to contain duplicate loot where possible but the amount of loot choices in chests is reduced by 1
  
• Added new Greed relic: Overspill Goblet: Critical hit chance is halved but also added to critical hit damage multiplier. Sharpshooter and Hot Shot now scale linearly (can go over 100%) to synergise with this which is a significant buff to critical hit chance as there used to be diminishing returns as you got closer to 100% critical hit chance
  
• Added new enemy: Elite Beam Skull
  
• Added new enemy: Barrage Skull
  
• Added new difficulty modifier: Ambushing Elites: An elite spawns on the third island of each biome

• Sliding now naturally happens when you land after dashing or jumping. The end result here is that movement should feel exactly like it did before but without having to hold a key down every time you land to slide- it’s now way more comfortable to play the game for long periods of time! For those worried that they won’t be able to land precisely when platforming, don’t hold a directional key when landing and you won’t slide (just like it worked before) or just press the inverse direction when landing to cancel the slide. You can still manually slide at any time when on the ground
  
• Sliding length has been doubled (so you can slide for longer before slowing down)
  
• Sliding is 10% slower than before to make movement feel a bit less out of control and more deliberate
  
• I’ve made it so that main weapon damage calculations can happen separately again while keeping the optimizations for other types of damage (things like Drill Shot etc.). This mean Money Shot, Health Shot, critical hits as well as elemental damage will now roll PER PELLET on shotguns and other multi projectile weapons as well as spawn individual damage numbers which just feels way better
  
• Enemies no longer spawn in a boring and predictable way (one by one, easy enemies then hard enemies after), they now spawn in randomized packs which makes fights feel much more interesting and dynamic
  
• Rebalanced enemy spawn weights and counts for more variety between waves and to make biomes feel less linear. Also some harder enemies will show up slightly later into a biome to allow for more contrast between early and late biome spawns
  
• Rarities have been renamed to make more sense: Common (replaces the old Rare as it didn’t make sense for the loot you find all the time to be called “Rare”), Rare (replaces the old Epic), Legendary (same as before)
  
• The Waves island type has been removed as it wasn’t distinct enough from Arena islands while also having a “don’t get hit” gimmick already covered by the Flawless blessing or the One Hit challenge modifier. Each island type should be distinct and this really wasn’t doing enough to feel different + wasn’t a popular choice with players
  
• The Regenerating Enemies difficulty modifier has been removed as it was just not fun to be spectating the last player alive as they chip away at enemies that regenerate health, often resulting in a softlock. I have moved the same functionality to a “Regenerating” buff that can apply to enemies if you have the Buffed Enemies modifier active, this way it affects at most one or two enemies on an island making it much easier to focus on them and clear away the non regenerating enemies first
  Improved various lighting presets (like the dawn and sunset ones on the Tropical biome) to be much brighter and more colorful to match the mood
  
• Added night time lighting to the Desert biome
  
• Added enemy hit reaction animations
  
• Added skull death sound
  
• Added new more responsive crosshairs with consistent outlines regardless of the spread value
  
• Added a reload UI animation
  
• Added a low ammo sound
  
• Made a big visual pass on all VFX to be much less busy. This makes combat situations feel much easier to read (plus less random bright sparks constantly on screen!). For people streaming or making videos about the game this should also heavily help with compression and generally make the game more enjoyable to play / watch on smaller screens
  
• Removed the old high score system that was in previous versions of the game- there are more interesting metrics to show off when you complete a run (difficulty, islands survived etc.) and there were too many inconsistencies to make the old system be an actual indicator of skill and it was more a test of patience + luck than anything else. This removal allows for some nice cleanups in the game and UI codebase. The only noticeable side effect this change has is that the formula for the number next to your medal in game (the Player Level) is now much simpler: the number of islands cleared multiplied by the challenge level

[DinofartThenPoop]

DinofartThenPoop eredeti hozzászólása:

Can you consider creating a keybind for toggling autodash on landing? Kind of like using capslock to toggle sprint in an fps. It throws me off when I want to do precise jumping.

there is an OPTION in the settings to turn off or on auto slide


What I'm asking for is to be able to toggle it without having to go into the settings menu. I want it on most of the time just not all the time. I don't see why there couldn't be a keybind.

[Noisestorm]

THE ANVIL UPDATE BETA 21 PATCH NOTES

• Added new perk: Lucky Bug: All chance based mods have an additional flat % chance to trigger (+5% per level)
  
• Added new melee mod: Time Claws: Melee damage increased but damage is dealt over time
  
• Added new melee mod: Arcane Claws: Melee arcanifies enemies
  
• Added new relic: Arcane Ring: Arcane strength and max arcane stacks increased by 250% (no downside yet until more elements are added, Arcane is underperforming a bit anyway so why not!)
  
• Things are feeling much more engaging throughout a run since the last update but one common issue remains: increasing chance based mod chance per level instead of damage per level meant that although they were triggering constantly, they didn’t keep up with damage scaling in general. For this update, the inverse is happening: chance based mods gain +100% damage per level but have a set trigger chance. I’ve added a new perk to the Luck loot pool and buffed Gold Dice below to make it still possible to max out trigger chances. This system has some nice benefits:
  - It won’t feel like a waste to pick up more than level 3 of most chance based mods on slow firing weapons like Sniper or Rocket Launcher (as they have much higher base trigger chances compared to other weapons)
  - It reduces the amount of projectile spam in the early game and allows your entire loadout to stay useful and relevant for longer
  
• Gold Dice increased chance to trigger mods increased from +50% to +300%
  
• All chance based mods now accurately show their actual chance to trigger in the inventory UI so no more guessing when you pick up Gold Dice!
  
• X Shot rarity decreased from Legendary to Epic
  
• Lingering Fumes rarity increased from Common to Epic
  
• Ring Of Fury rarity increased from Common to Epic
  
• Ring Of Wisdom rarity increased from Common to Epic and critical hit chance per island increased from +1% to +2%
  
• As quickly pointed out, I went a bit overboard with the Elemental Specialist buff last patch haha: it has been brought back to a respectable +75% bonus damage
  
• The various “enemies explode when eliminated” perks having their cooldown removed feels great but can often auto clear entire islands without doing anything else- their values were tuned for cooldowns so I’ve toned them back 20-50% to better match their new no cooldown form!
  
• Since the Expensive Shops modifier change in a previous beta update reduced shop prices by 50%, the economy was a bit broken so prices have been globally increased by 33%. This is mostly to bring the economy on lower difficulties more in line with the rest of the game so it’s less of an unfun slap in the face when you do turn on the Expensive Shops modifier
  
• The change to make some loot not droppable on non-shop islands to prevent tedious loot sharing ended up making things feel clunky. Rather than trying to fix such a niche issue I’ve reverted the change and you can now drop those mods / perks at any time
  
• Fixed Random Shot not having the same trigger chance as the other elemental mods
  
• Fixed Scavenger not healing teammates on non-boss islands if they didn’t also have Scavenger

[Sally]

Does "speed demon" still exist? i can't seem to find it in any speed chests. around 40 speed islands cleared so far over a few different runs.

[Dopey Shepard]

Sally eredeti hozzászólása:

Does "speed demon" still exist? i can't seem to find it in any speed chests. around 40 speed islands cleared so far over a few different runs.

yes of course

[Limdood]

Did a couple runs to test it out.

arc/triple/split/etc....the shot pattern mods...have always felt underpowered on faster firing weapons (70% triple shot from 1 mod on a sniper rifle increases damage by 140%....1 triple shot on minigun for 5% increases damage by 10%).

Lucky bug now makes them feel somewhat better (they're still objectively FAR superior on slower firing weapons in all cases. Lucky bug just...closes the gap a bit).



On the other hand, Lucky bug has an EXTREME opposite effect on chance-based mods. elemental shots and enhanceable shot effects are ABSURDLY better on fast firing weapons due to Lucky bug. Since those effects are already balanced for the weapon speed, lucky bug has the effect of taking a 15% triangle shot on an slow weapon to a 20% spark shot, but a 3% triangle shot laser cannon gets buffed all the way to 8%.

Despite the lean towards slow weapons for shot pattern effects, the recent heavy skew towards an enhancement "meta" is going to unbelievably skew the game in favor of fast weapons.





On a positive note, the basic premise of lucky bug is fantastic (though perhaps its flat rate boost should more closely scale with the weapon speed, something like 2-3% for minigun/laser cannon up to like 10-12% for sniper/rocket?), and luck chests feel fun again. lucky bug is a top pick, and streamer loot is an acceptable backup in case bug doesn't show up. It no longer feels like driller or nothing, or streamer or nothing.

The swap to scaling damage, static proc on enhanceables feels better, though again fast weapons reap a ludicrous amount greater benefit.

The rarity changes feel good.

I haven't gotten an "exploding" run going yet, but exploding enemies was already crazy powerful before this latest round of changes during the anvil update (it didn't do much pre-anvil, and since the anvil update, its explosion radius and damage have seemed incredibly generous), so there is a worry that it will blow runs completely wide open....though it is a legendary, so maybe that's fine (on that note though, the non-proc, cooldown-based legendary shot effects continue to be completely underwhelming)

[Casurin]

Didnt see the patchnotes and started a new run. crit-island - "why are there only 2 items and no RingOfWisdom!?!?!" :P

For elements:
Why not just treat them the same? As in they all have the same items basically.
1 for the common elemental shot, 1 for a rare shot (arcane has that), legendary strike/storm (and maybe each a thirst like FireBall), same for melee, grenades etc.

On the topic of grandes:
LayerdExplosion, Triple and bounce: Same rarity but wildely different strength. Specially bounce as is is the only one that does not scale on chance (100%) but on how many bounces. even lvl 10 layered is weaker than 1 bounce, the only downside to bounce is the spread.

And enchantment is still... kinda mandatory given how strong it is, but the anvil-rounds are still buggy and underperforming on later stages: No way to get more than 5 for selection, no way to get more than 1, and nothing to influence the quality.
For chests you can get more items per chest, more chests (via many different items OR island-modifiers), better reward for chests and even pick multiple items per chest.
it feels lopsided that enchantments them self are so overpowered but you often are better going for the chests, selling the items and then getting many more random enchantments.

[Limdood]

Casurin eredeti hozzászólása:

And enchantment is still... kinda mandatory given how strong it is, but the anvil-rounds are still buggy and underperforming on later stages: No way to get more than 5 for selection, no way to get more than 1, and nothing to influence the quality.
For chests you can get more items per chest, more chests (via many different items OR island-modifiers), better reward for chests and even pick multiple items per chest.
it feels lopsided that enchantments them self are so overpowered but you often are better going for the chests, selling the items and then getting many more random enchantments.

There is an epic ring that lets you choose 2 options at anvil islands (in ADDITION to the ring that gives 2 extra options, which is a common).

BUT, I completely agree that anvil islands feel bad to pick. Like, I DO pick them, in the hope that i can get like freezing sparks or flaming shotgun shot or something else that stacks crazily good....but I pick them because they're the ONLY reasonable option. Enhancement totems are as likely to make your item utterly useless (spiraling is BY FAR the biggest culprit. It makes more than half of the possible enhanceable items completely unusable) as they are to give something useful, so unless you're using spark or bubble or something un-screw-up-able, anvils are the only option....but they're a BAD option. Only 2 items to influence them and both take a relic slot and literally ONLY interact with anvil islands.

What is stopping you from making enhancements a chest? a chest that has 3 items in it by default, and selecting one opens the inventory and lets you choose what you place it on, and then the rest of the options disappear, just like normal chests. That way it interacts with all the EXISTING systems for extra chests (or less chests), more loot per chest (or less), more picks per chest, etc. It would likely boost the power of those picked enhancements, sure, but just drop the common rarity bonuses from 75% to 50% and make the enhancement totem cheaper (or make it rejectable. Anything but its current functionality where it just irreversibly tosses enhancements randomly. A pop up saying "enhancement totem is going to place snaking on firework shot. Accept/reject?" and you're charged either way, but at least you don't end up with freezing burning bubbles....or spiraling anything.)

[Limdood]

BUGS (at least in abilities as listed/expected):

- Time Claws is not currently working with Vampire. The damage over time from time claws is not being registered as melee damage, meaning that vampire will NEVER trigger if you have any amount of time claws.
- Lucky Bug is not currently affecting grenade mods such as Triple Ability (confirmed) and Layered ability (assumed). They are most definitely mods and not perks, and as such, as written, Lucky Bug SHOULD affect them.

[Dopey Shepard]

What is going on? Why is Arc Shot 50% chance on Auto Rifle after the last update? It shouldn't be like that

[Limdood]

Dopey Shepard eredeti hozzászólása:

What is going on? Why is Arc Shot 50% chance on Auto Rifle after the last update? It shouldn't be like that

actually that sounds amazing. Finally brings it comparable to sniper/rocket launcher. Unless of course it's just showing 50% for you due to several Lucky Bugs?

I always found it ridiculous that arc shot was something like 9% on auto rifle and 50% on sniper...it meant a 200% damage increase on sniper to a 36% damage increase on autorifle. The damage scales per bullet, it isn't like giving autorifle an sniper both a 50% chance for a 40 damage ultra shot projectile.

They SHOULD have the same chance to trigger for shot patterns, as they stay equal over all of the various effects.

In fact, had arc shot had equal percentages over all weapons (and triple, and split, and scatter, etc.) PRIOR to this latest patch, it would have been the ideal balance....

unfortunately, with Lucky Bug existing now, what WOULD have been lovely evenly tuned damage (even static damage procs like bubble shot would have been accounted for due to their ALREADY balanced proc rate....proccing ~6-7x more per shot on sniper due to it firing 6-7x slower) is now skewed in the extreme towards fast weapons, since Lucky bug applies a flat additive percentage increase, meaning, in the above example, that something that fires 6-7x faster is getting 6-7x the benefit


I'm all for shot patterns getting equal percentages across all weapons, but I hope Noisestorm adjusts Lucky Bug the same way so the slow weapons remain relevant.



EDIT
Just tested real quick. Either arc shot is bugged for the autorifle specifically, or you have a bunch of lucky bug. Can confirm that WITHOUT lucky bug, arc shot is 5% for laser cannons

[Dopey Shepard]

Amazing? In what? Breaking the game? You DO realize that Auto Rifle is a fast firing weapon and as such, should have much lower chance of activating chance-based mods

Sniper Rifle and Auto Rifle can't possibly be compared

The point is, now Auto Rifle with Arc/any other Shot is just too OP. Noise might have done something he wasn't intending to

And no, you are absolutely wrong. You can't possibly compare the two weapons and be like "200% dmg increase" vs "36%"

Fast firing weapons will be activating Elemental Procs a lot more than slower firing ones, as well as activating crits

If I were to run either one of the two now with buffed Arc Shot, it'd be a clown fiesta. Way too broken

You don't really build crit chance build of Rocket/Sniper because it doesn't benefit those 2 as much as far weapons thats why R/S build Triple/Split/Arc Shots over fast-firing weapons for balance reasons


And no, I didn't have any Lucky Bug ever. It was all triggered without it

[Limdood]

Dopey Shepard eredeti hozzászólása:

Fast firing weapons will be activating Elemental Procs a lot more than slower firing ones, as well as activating crits

But they really don't. lightning shot, fire shot, etc. Bubble shot, thorn shot, etc. are all pre-balanced to the weapon firing speed.

Miniguns have like a 3-4% chance to activate elemental shot effects, and sniper/rocket launcher is over 20%. It almost certainly isn't 1 to 1, and so perhaps the chance based, non-shot-pattern stuff should be further tweaked, but pretending that a laser cannon launching a firework every 50 shots is "a lot more" than a sniper firing a firework every 5 shots when it's less than twice as much (100 shots per reload on laser cannons, 6 per mag on sniper) doesn't feel quite that "clown fiesta" to me...

At least until Lucky Bug, which changes everything.




Lastly, if you're sure you had no lucky bug (or gold dice, which now adds 300%, so a 12% becomes a 48%), then it would seem that you found a bug specific to autorifle. As I mentioned, I loaded up a run right after reading your post and picked up an arc shot on laser cannons, and without lucky bugs (I had 4, but I dropped them to check), it was a 5% chance.

Just got an arc shot ON the auto rifle. 13%

[Sally]

how does hp scaling work for elite crabs? i only have 150hp,
why to they all have "Over 9000" as the meme goes......

i have had so many rounds where its literally dancing around the entire arena for 3-4minutes, while being chased by 2-3 elites with health pools that feel more like health oceans. and thats only on the second biome.

do my upgrades effect their hp?

[MangoEagle]

Sally eredeti hozzászólása:

how does hp scaling work for elite crabs? i only have 150hp,
why to they all have "Over 9000" as the meme goes......

i have had so many rounds where its literally dancing around the entire arena for 3-4minutes, while being chased by 2-3 elites with health pools that feel more like health oceans. and thats only on the second biome.

do my upgrades effect their hp?

Your upgrades will not effect their stats unless you are grabbing greed/red perks like double trouble. How people get large amounts of health is through perks like Valued Customer, Fortitude, Banana, Ring of Vitality, Juggernaut, and a few others. The main thing you want is a scale-able perk for your base health being either valued customer or fortitude. Then you want health multipliers like the rest which will bring a 2k health build to a 20k health build. Putting investments into both is important.

As for your damage drop off one thing to keep in mind is that ironically damage chests generally offer some of the least options for actually scaling damage in a meaningful way. Your gameplay and understanding will evolve the more you play and you'll figure out builds over time.

[Casurin]

Fast weapons do proc elements far better:
With sniper and rocket it is easy to get 100% proc chance - but even just 20% on a fast firing weapon is many more procs in the same time.