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

[Noisestorm]

THE ANVIL UPDATE BETA 13 PATCH NOTES

• Improved crosshair visibility and reduced the amount it grows due to weapon spread especially when aiming- this should make it harder to lose track of the crosshair in the action. It should feel much more solid and functional compared to before
  
• Made some slight adjustments to improve aim down sight behavior to be less zoomed in / close to the crab. I’m determined to get this feeling right especially on the auto rifle!
  
• Due to popular demand, reverted back to the old snappier and lighter crab interact sound!
  
• Increased the visual size of Elite crabs since Hard crabs were made bigger in the previous update and it was harder to distinguish elites
  
• Enemies deal slightly less damage, it was a bit too spicy in the last update
  
• Fixed issue that prevented non hosting players from being able to enhance their loot more than once
  
• Fixed jarring vertical camera movement when starting and stopping aiming if you use an FOV of 100 or higher

[Dopey Shepard]

Hey Noise, any chance you make it so that Twinned wave does not spawn 2 elites? That is just way too much IMO

[Mami The Beer Baron]

Originally posted by Noisestorm:

THE ANVIL UPDATE BETA 13 PATCH NOTES

• Improved crosshair visibility and reduced the amount it grows due to weapon spread especially when aiming- this should make it harder to lose track of the crosshair in the action. It should feel much more solid and functional compared to before
  
• Made some slight adjustments to improve aim down sight behavior to be less zoomed in / close to the crab. I’m determined to get this feeling right especially on the auto rifle!
  
• Due to popular demand, reverted back to the old snappier and lighter crab interact sound!
  
• Increased the visual size of Elite crabs since Hard crabs were made bigger in the previous update and it was harder to distinguish elites
  
• Enemies deal slightly less damage, it was a bit too spicy in the last update
  
• Fixed issue that prevented non hosting players from being able to enhance their loot more than once
  
• Fixed jarring vertical camera movement when starting and stopping aiming if you use an FOV of 100 or higher

i have no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ idea how this happened, but when i was in a run on a night desert level, and ended up leaving back to the lobby while an elite pumpkin was attacking, i wound up crashing the game and causing my pc's background to be temporarily black until i restarted my pc, not sure if thats a bug in the game or if its from my pc since i dont remember having it happen before lol

[Mr. Tickles]

Thank you for reverting the snappy crabs keep up the good work

[Noisestorm]

THE ANVIL UPDATE BETA 14 PATCH NOTES

• Added new enhancement: Endangering: Increases damage by 250% but it can also damage you
  
• Added new enhancement: Chipping: Increases damage by 100% but damage is dealt over time
  
• Added new enhancement: Growing: Increases damage and size by 75% but reduces speed by 20%
  
• Added new ability mod: Time Explosion: Abilities deal more damage but damage is dealt over time
  
• Added new relic: Time Ring: Damage dealt over time is increased by 400%. This only shows up if you already have Time Shot or Time Explosion equipped
  
• Added new challenge modifier: No Healing: Healing is disabled for this island
  
• Starting max health has been increased from 150 to 200 to both match the value Mango gives and also to smooth out the early game which was feeling a bit punishing if you didn’t happen to find max health perks
  
• Armor is now twice as likely to show up
  
• Ring Of Reinforcement now triggers whenever you gain armor (including gaining armor from other relics), not just when you explicitly pick it up from the ground
  
• Close range threshold doubled. This should make Personal Space and Danger Close feel much nicer to use
  
• Snaking enhancement damage increased from +50% to +75%
  
• Sticky enhancement damage increased from +50% to +75%
  
• Added a Speed tag to Speed Demon and Ring Of Swiftness and made it mandatory to have at least one speed tagged piece of loot before Speed Is Power will show up
  
• Reduced how large Orbiting Shot makes projectiles so that it is more comfortable to use
  
• The Orbiting enhancement now extends projectile lifetime and adds bounces to make it behave similarly to the Orbiting Shot weapon mod. This should make it far better on slow and short lifetime projectiles like Arcane Blast
  
• The Orbiting enhancement mixed with the Homing enhancement now works nicely: it orbits initially but then blends to homing over time. Previously homing would have no effect which felt bad
  
• Fixed strange homing behavior on many projectile types
  
• Boomerang Shot now works much better on slower projectiles (most noticeable on weapons like the Blade Launcher)- I have extended the projectile lifetime to be a minimum of 2.5 seconds and also increased the time before projectiles return. This essentially adds much more range and makes Boomerang Shot less of a gimmick and more of an actual useful mod. The same improvements have been made to the Returning enhancement (so things like Returning Shotgun Blast will feel much better)
  
• Fixed strange returning / boomerang behavior on many projectile types (projectiles stopping in mid air when returning especially)
  
• Each level of Boomerang Shot / returning enhancement will now increase the projectile speed when returning
  
• Made various projectile performance improvements
  
• Arcane Blast now has a longer lifetime but slightly slower speed
  
• Elite Beam Skull vertical beam attack beam radius decreased by 33% to make it a bit easier to see around them
  
• Improved camera positioning when aiming upwards to prevent it scraping across the ground which felt clunky
  
• Improved camera positioning when aiming to be slightly more zoomed in since the previous update made aiming feel too subtle
  
• Added new hitmarker UI
  
• Various small crosshair visual tweaks
  
• Slightly increased the volume of the low ammo indicator but it no longer triggers when all you can eat is active or when you have more than 20 bullets loaded
  
• Slightly reduced the amount of spam in the Elite Barrel Skull regular barrel attack
  
• Elite Barrel Skull homing barrel damage radius reduced by 33% and armor plates removed but more homing barrels spawn
  
• Removed the Elite Ice Skull launch slam attack as it rarely hit and felt cheap when it did hit
  
• Reduced the speed of all enemy launch slam attacks (Starfish, Elite Fire Crab) to make them easier to dodge
  
• Increased movement speed for Chaotic Grub, Enraged Grub and Homing Grub to try and get them to not be just chilling at the back of the map out of sight all the time
  
• Added some space to the arctic circular cave loop island- ideally enemies won’t get stuck in the passage to the left anymore
  
• Crystals are now auto collected for convenience on shop islands on Ultra Chaos difficulty
  
• Fixed sniper scope aiming in on a location to the right of your hipfire crosshair (it is now centered)
  
• Fixed Elite Fire Crab slam attack not dealing damage
  
• Fixed Thorn Shot thorn having weak homing and missing enemies most of the time

[ShotgunBuddy]

Hey Noisestorm, thanks for making a great game, great music, and continuing to work on it for us.

[marsseth]

hey i have an issue with picking up starting mods from the key totem dropping my health back down 150. not sure if this is intentional because it happens every time i pick up the key totem mod but wanted to say something.

[Dopey Shepard]

Hey Noise, any way you can tone down certain islands spawning way too many Medium/Large types of enemies? Beta, Island 32, had like more than a dozen Chaotic Gurbs, at least 3 starfishes and a whole bunch of skulls. Not even sure if there were any minor crabs here and there. I barely survived entering it with 80% max hp when I had more than 4k I think. It was literal massacre

No other island that followed had that many big enemies spawning all at the same time, it was just minor crabs/grubs

[Dopey Shepard]

Latest beta update is absolutely most broken

Enemies exploding out of nowhere, Horde Island or not. I made sure I don't have excessive levels of Slugger/Explosive Armor perks, they explode regardless

I take no damage whatsoever, like 10 hp per shot at Island 25+ which obviously can't be real

And yeah, starting hp is 150, not 200

[Casurin]

The movement is too inconsistent to the point of being broken:
On the race-islands (forgot what it is called - the yellow flag thingy) sometimes you just don't get enough speed for the longer jumps. Mostly had that wit the tropical/fire-biome runs. the 3rd jump after the checkpoint (2nd powered jump) - the longer one.
before the Beta i loved these islands and had no trouble, now every 3rd run or so the jump-distance is just a bit too short. Well that is a problem cause using any dodges midair at that speed will send you way past the island and the only hope is to hit it within the 2-3 frames to directly launch you right into the next launchpad.

Originally posted by Dopey Shepard:

Hey Noise, any way you can tone down certain islands spawning way too many Medium/Large types of enemies?

That is an older bug: had it happen from time to time. But mostly right after getting good items.
Is there a spawn-multiplier for the next round after getting items?

[Dopey Shepard]

Will agree, Parkour Islands are inconsistent, I often miss the Purple Chest timer due to speeds being slow. I know if I switch to live version, it's gonna be much better

That is an older bug: had it happen from time to time. But mostly right after getting good items.
Is there a spawn-multiplier for the next round after getting items?

I know it's sometimes like that on live patch but not to this extent, no. What I saw was the stuff of nightmares. Also, Noise decided to increase the amount of enemies being on the screen at the same time so that also played the part to a certain degree

Also, it was Island 32, it was not after Shop island, not sure if getting 1-2 chests, even spiked ones are supposed to trigger that stuff

[atomiczhp]

Bug report(s):

* loot spawned in from breaking a red crystal fell below the floor of the island and was unobtainable.

Observations/Annoyances

* The ring of armor and ring of reinforcement do not stack. Is this not intended to work the way I think it should? (edit: looks like it's fixed in the most recent patch)

* grub juggling will interrupting long melee attacks, specifically the pickaxe. It's one thing to lose your melee to being frozen, but this feels pretty bad.

*There have been many occasions where I've been stunlocked by multiple slugs from thousands of HP to death. Should there be a limit to this effect?

[Noisestorm]

THE ANVIL UPDATE BETA 15 PATCH NOTES

• Added new enhancement: Expanding: Explodes into a circle of projectiles
  
• Added new enhancement: Persisting: Increases projectile lifetime by 150%
  
• Added new enhancement: Doubling: Fires an extra projectile
  
• Added new enhancement: Ringing: Spawns damaging energy rings when exploding
  
• Added new enhancement: Booming: Increases explosion radius by 250%
  
• Added new enhancement: Tripling: Fires an extra 2 projectiles
  
• Added new enhancement: Accelerating: Increases damage by 75% but starts slow and accelerates over time
  
• Added new enhancement: Zigging: Increases damage by 75% but moves in zig zag patterns
  
• Added new enhancement: Spiraling: Increases damage by 75% but moves in spiral patterns
  
• Reduced max enhancements per mod from 9 to 8
  
• Improved inventory UI to prevent large amounts of enhancements from overlapping with the stats list
  
• Removed the Healing Enemies challenge modifier as it was more tedious than challenging
  
• Added a line of sight check to the Elite Ice Skull strike attack (the one that looks like the Hammer Crab) to prevent it dealing damage through walls without warning
  
• Added better telegraphing VFX to the Laser Crab attack and also adjusted the timing so there is less of a delay before they fire
  
• Reworked Elite Beam Skull vertical beam attack to only fire a single beam as the follow up beams felt unfair and not telegraphed
  
• Reduced Elite Beam Skull beam damage by 20%
  
• Decreased Collector damage from +4% to +3% per perk level
  
• Improved enemy buff UI text visibility
  
• Fixed max health decreasing from 200 to 150 when starting a run
  
• Fixed large enemies having huge shields when shielded
  
• Fixed Danger Close not getting the close range buff mentioned in the previous update
  
• Fixed Elite Beam Skull spinning while performing his 360 degree beam attack on Ultra Chaos difficulty

[Noisestorm]

Originally posted by atomiczhp:

Bug report(s):

* loot spawned in from breaking a red crystal fell below the floor of the island and was unobtainable.

Observations/Annoyances

* The ring of armor and ring of reinforcement do not stack. Is this not intended to work the way I think it should? (edit: looks like it's fixed in the most recent patch)

* grub juggling will interrupting long melee attacks, specifically the pickaxe. It's one thing to lose your melee to being frozen, but this feels pretty bad.

*There have been many occasions where I've been stunlocked by multiple slugs from thousands of HP to death. Should there be a limit to this effect?

Thanks for the feedback!

Regarding the loot spawning under the floor, you can press the Auto Loot key to pick it up once an island ends.

Re: grub juggling / slug stunlocking: yeah that's something that I want to improve for sure, it can be frustrating.

[Noisestorm]

Originally posted by Dopey Shepard:

Latest beta update is absolutely most broken

Enemies exploding out of nowhere, Horde Island or not. I made sure I don't have excessive levels of Slugger/Explosive Armor perks, they explode regardless

I take no damage whatsoever, like 10 hp per shot at Island 25+ which obviously can't be real

And yeah, starting hp is 150, not 200

Can you get a clip of this happening? I haven't seen any other similar reports. Thanks 🦀

Starting hp bug has been fixed in tonight's update