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

[Clutz4k]

Nguyên văn bởi Noisestorm:

Nguyên văn bởi Clutz4k:

I agree mostly, I'm saying so many updates so quickly it's hard to keep track of what's changing since it's also reverting in some cases. It feels off to me, movement mainly, and it's not as fun as it was. Early game is very punishing and late game is cake. Minor gripe, but I'm sure it's being done to meet steams new ToS on Early access games. I just don't want it rushed, it was a lot more fun. Still a great game.

I haven't heard of this ToS that you mention and I'm not rushing- just putting out frequent beta updates before the next big update as I have done previously. It won't release until I feel like it's in a good place which is partly the reason for the frequent changes.

Movement should feel pretty much the same as before, is there anything in particular with it that you'd like to see changed?

I am working on smoothing out the early / late game in each beta update, should feel more solid as it gets closer to release.

Movement wise me and my friends prefer the old system, we're not dashing when we want and can't climb nearly as well. Thanks for the reply, you made a hell of a game.

[Dopey Shepard]

I do like the new Mango/Banana maxHP idea although it needs to be still polished I think. Banana is too weak, so is Fortitude. Why is Value Customer giving the same amount of max HP as Fortitude if there were no real changes to the economy? At least speaking from True Nightmare perspective. Stacking up Mango feels better than picking up Fortitude. I feel like Fortitude should be rolled back to 20 hp per island or at least make Fortitude give you maxhp EVERY single island including shop and parkour

Regeneration is great, no real complaints here. Good idea removing cd off of Grim Reaper, now actually a viable perk to use

What I personally suggest is to bring back perks that made chance totems work better. Totems now at their weakest, HP one taking 10% instead of 5% and there's nothing to increase your odds especially for a green totem

Building maxhp right now is definitely harder than it was before where you would get Bigger Hearts over and over and it's basically game over. I feel like Green Totem deserves more place in the game. I personally never consider taking it. You either get a bad draw and just restart your whole run cuz it's basically over or you win big

[Noisestorm]

Nguyên văn bởi Clutz4k:

Nguyên văn bởi Noisestorm:

I haven't heard of this ToS that you mention and I'm not rushing- just putting out frequent beta updates before the next big update as I have done previously. It won't release until I feel like it's in a good place which is partly the reason for the frequent changes.

Movement should feel pretty much the same as before, is there anything in particular with it that you'd like to see changed?

I am working on smoothing out the early / late game in each beta update, should feel more solid as it gets closer to release.

Movement wise me and my friends prefer the old system, we're not dashing when we want and can't climb nearly as well. Thanks for the reply, you made a hell of a game.

In the first few beta updates, movement was a lot slower, should be nearly identical in the last few updates! 🦀

[Noisestorm]

THE ANVIL UPDATE BETA 9 PATCH NOTES

• Significantly reduced the spawn cost of Elites and Bosses so you should see them spawning more frequently in Ultra Chaos difficulty
  
• Grim Reaper healing increased from 4 to 20 but now only triggers when eliminating medium and large enemies
  
• Added a “Total health healed” stat in the inventory UI for Grim Reaper, Regenerator, Health Shot, Vampire, Scavenger, Endurance and the Ring Of Parrying to make it easier to see how effective most of the healing options are throughout the course of a run
  
• Improved destructible leak VFX to be more leaky
  
• Increased the amount of crystals that harvest areas give by 150%
  
• Increased the duration of each harvest area by 300%
  
• Increased the radius of harvest areas by 100%
  
• Reduced the damage bonus that the Orbiting enhancement gives from +250% to +100% since orbiting now happens around the impact point
  
• Reduced the projectile speed and time between bursts of the Elite Ice Skull triple ice block attack to make them easier to dodge
  
• Reduced the amount of projectiles fired by Ice Ants to be less spammy
  
• Reduced the time between bursts of the Elite Fire Skull X projectile attack and changed the formation to be a vertical line so projectiles are more focused in a smaller area and less likely to carpet the entire island in fire
  
• Reduced the projectile speed of the Elite Fire Skull delayed homing attack
  
• Added smaller VFX for Elite Fire Crab’s weapon projectiles as well as mini fire areas that spawn when they explode
  
• Reduced Ice Ant projectile collision radius to better match the VFX
  
• Changed various orbiting / boomerang loot descriptions to better reflect their new behavior
  
• Rocket Launcher projectiles now explode automatically after their lifetime expires even if they didn’t hit anything. This improves how they work with Orbiting Shot
  
• Removed the interaction delay on chests so you can now spam open them once again! A new line of sight protection has been added to prevent accidentally interacting with portals through chests
  
• Shortened the text chat sound
  
• Improved UI text legibility by adding a consistent drop shadow. This should make it much easier to see on bright surfaces like sand, snow or the sky
  
• Fixed harvest areas not getting cleaned up after completing an island
  
• Fixed the Targeting enhancement being listed as Common when it should be Epic
  
• Fixed various awkward chest spawn locations and reduced the distance of the chests from the portals
  
• Fixed the “SPECTATING PLAYERNAME” UI popping up for a split second when launching the game
  
• Fixed loading times especially when going back to the lobby being longer than before
  
• Slightly improved loading times when launching the game
  
• Fixed Hammer Crab attacks not triggering Silver Lining (but this bug fix has the unfortunate effect of also fixing Eternal Punishment not triggering when taking damage from exploding rocks)
  
• Fixed turrets with enhancements infinitely spawning projectiles

[MrHocotateFreight]

i saw a new update to the beta, went to check it out with a buddy, but none of the totems can be used! not the cosmetics or difficulty totems, not multiplayer invite or key unlock totems, its likely a hiccup, thought i'd let you know!

[Dopey Shepard]

Increased the duration of each harvest area by 300%

BRUH are you serious? I could at least enjoy harvest islands somewhat, now a hard pass, just like on live patch

[Clutz4k]

Nguyên văn bởi Noisestorm:

Nguyên văn bởi Clutz4k:

Movement wise me and my friends prefer the old system, we're not dashing when we want and can't climb nearly as well. Thanks for the reply, you made a hell of a game.

In the first few beta updates, movement was a lot slower, should be nearly identical in the last few updates! 🦀

I think it has something to do with automatic dashing. We don't want to dash because we hit the ground necessarily, we want to dash to avoid projectiles and be able to climb when we want.

[Dopey Shepard]

Nguyên văn bởi Clutz4k:

Nguyên văn bởi Noisestorm:

In the first few beta updates, movement was a lot slower, should be nearly identical in the last few updates! 🦀

I think it has something to do with automatic dashing. We don't want to dash because we hit the ground necessarily, we want to dash to avoid projectiles and be able to climb when we want.

Speak for yourself, many people would prefer that over holding Shift constantly which is what you should be doing 95+% of the time

Also, you can turn off the option to auto dash in the options in Controls section

[Noisestorm]

Nguyên văn bởi Dopey Shepard:

Increased the duration of each harvest area by 300%

BRUH are you serious? I could at least enjoy harvest islands somewhat, now a hard pass, just like on live patch

Harvest islands aren't a thing anymore- harvest in this case refers to the optional objective that can be found on Horde islands.

It's actually a buff for the player as longer duration = more bonus crystals

[Noisestorm]

Nguyên văn bởi Clutz4k:

Nguyên văn bởi Noisestorm:

In the first few beta updates, movement was a lot slower, should be nearly identical in the last few updates! 🦀

I think it has something to do with automatic dashing. We don't want to dash because we hit the ground necessarily, we want to dash to avoid projectiles and be able to climb when we want.

You can turn off this behavior with the "Auto Slide" setting

[Noisestorm]

Nguyên văn bởi Dopey Shepard:

I do like the new Mango/Banana maxHP idea although it needs to be still polished I think. Banana is too weak, so is Fortitude. Why is Value Customer giving the same amount of max HP as Fortitude if there were no real changes to the economy? At least speaking from True Nightmare perspective. Stacking up Mango feels better than picking up Fortitude. I feel like Fortitude should be rolled back to 20 hp per island or at least make Fortitude give you maxhp EVERY single island including shop and parkour

Regeneration is great, no real complaints here. Good idea removing cd off of Grim Reaper, now actually a viable perk to use

What I personally suggest is to bring back perks that made chance totems work better. Totems now at their weakest, HP one taking 10% instead of 5% and there's nothing to increase your odds especially for a green totem

Building maxhp right now is definitely harder than it was before where you would get Bigger Hearts over and over and it's basically game over. I feel like Green Totem deserves more place in the game. I personally never consider taking it. You either get a bad draw and just restart your whole run cuz it's basically over or you win big

I'm making some changes to max health in tonight's update (not out yet). Basically I want a bigger focus on building into healing and noticing it working and the current max health gains are a bit too limited for that to happen effectively so I'll be doubling most of the max health up perks but also raising the enemy damage scaling a bit. This means it'll give more value to both max health and healing perks and reward good play to heal back up compared to the current version that is basically always at full health but close to death at least for the first few biomes.

[Noisestorm]

THE ANVIL UPDATE BETA 11 PATCH NOTES

I played a bunch of runs to playtest this build and it felt good other than max health gains feeling a bit low if you are sticking to the traditional base max health up perks.

In the spirit of the whole "healing should be fun and noticeable" thing going on in this update I buffed the values of these max health perks a good bit but also increased enemy damage scaling so there's more noticeable depth when it comes to healing.

The buffs should end up making max health gains feel substantial early on while making healing back to full take a bit more regen which is fun to build around

• Doubled the amount that most max health perks give but also increased the rate that enemies scale their damage. This change should lessen the feeling of Eternal Punishment, make building into max health / healing more noticeable and satisfying and overall make progression feel a bit better
  
• Mango max health increased from +100 to +200
  
• Fortitude max health per island increased from +15 to +30
  
• Valued Customer max health per purchase increased from +20 to +40
  
• Personal Space and Bullseye are staying unchanged as they have the potential to scale massively
  
• Banana max health multiplier increased from +20% to +25%
  
• Beam Shot has been moved from Epic to Legendary rarity
  
• Lots of reports that Homing Blades was feeling a too strong so damage has been reduced by 25%
  
• Optimized Critical Blast VFX
  
• Optimized and repositioned Demolition Nest VFX
  
• Improved Elite Beam Skull VFX to match the actual damage radius of the beams
  
• Fixed various cases where portals couldn’t be interacted with when near rocks or other geometry (there is still one case where chests get stuck in pillars- I'm on it!)
  
• Fixed Elite Lightning Crab circle attack not aiming at the predicted player location
  
• Fixed health shards not healing on boss islands in some cases

[Clutz4k]

Nguyên văn bởi Noisestorm:

Nguyên văn bởi Clutz4k:

I think it has something to do with automatic dashing. We don't want to dash because we hit the ground necessarily, we want to dash to avoid projectiles and be able to climb when we want.

You can turn off this behavior with the "Auto Slide" setting

You're kidding... I didn't even realize

[DodgingDonkey]

Nguyên văn bởi Mr. Tickles:

Could I make one request? could we get the old crab pinching sound back when interacting with portals? It changed and honestly it's not as satisfying to bug your friend who is browsing Reddit and your trying to get their attention. Also please keep the starfish noises they are an endless source of enjoyment

This is really the only update the beta needs for me to be happy.

[Noisestorm]

THE ANVIL UPDATE BETA 12 PATCH NOTES

• Replaced Fire Turret with Wave Turret and replaced Poison Turret with Beam Turret since any turret can be enhanced with fire and poison now
  
• Added new turret visuals
  
• Added new Relic: Blacksmith Ring: You can choose 2 enhancements on Anvil islands
  
• Added new Relic: Blacksmith Amulet: Gain 2 more anvil choices on Anvil islands
  
• Improved enemy variety in Ultra Chaos- Elites aren’t weighted as heavily (but are still cheap to spawn) and in general more types of enemies per island can spawn
  
• Increased the visual size of most Hard enemies to make them more obviously stand out as being tanky and scary enemies
  
• Since healing is much more common and at higher values, Gold Coating was breaking the economy early in many cases. I’ve reduced the amount of crystals gained from 100% to 50% of healing
  
• Ring Of Parrying has been changed to heal a flat amount that scales per island (to keep it useful as a relic) to prevent an exploit with Gold Coating
  
• You can once again parry lava and other hazards (I thought this was a fun bit of tech and it was mainly removed previously to avoid the exploit mentioned above)
  
• Money Shot has been removed from the loot pool temporarily while I work on a fix- it was previously counting random sources of damage such as exploding slugs which snowballed the economy
  
• Amber Resin healing effectiveness reduced from +50% to +40%
  
• Paycheck crystal amount increased by 33% to be competitive with other economy options
  
• Removed the cooldown from Exploding Enemies, Freezing Enemies, Flammable Enemies, Electric Enemies and Poisonous Enemies- they should feel more legendary now!
  
• Increased Ultra Shot projectile speed by 40%
  
• As it was one of the most reported overpowered perks (especially in combination with Time Shot), Critical Blast damage has been reduced from 50 to 35
  
• Ring Of Healthy Turrets lifetime decreased from +400% to +200% (you are less likely to reach the turret cap this way and keep turrets in relevant positions instead)
  
• The “you can no longer die to a single hit greater than 80% of your max health” mechanic has been increased to 85%
  
• Enemy damage scaling slightly increased as the previous update was actually easier in terms of enemy damage than the live version of the game (due to max health perks doubling)
  
• Improved blue island border visuals
  
• Reduced Homing Grub projectile hitbox size by 50% to match the visuals better
  
• Reduced Poison Crab projectile speed by 15% to be a bit more fair
  
• Reduced the volume of the Sniper Turret gunshot sound to be less annoying
  
• Added drop shadow to loot location UI to be easier to see especially in the Arctic biome
  
• Fixed chests spawning in pillars on a desert island
  
• Fixed turrets not quite pointing at the right target visually
  
• Fixed enemies spawning inside of cliffs on the U shaped tropical island