0.6.0 Major Update

Hello, this is LIFUEL!

First of all, we're sorry it took so long to get this update out.

We expected to finish it in one month. However, as different systems started affecting one another, a series of unexpected issues came up during development. Finally, it took us almost three months to wrap everything up.

So in this announcement, we'd like to talk not only about what's been added and changed, but also about some of the reasons behind these changes and how they came about.

Map System Expansion

One of the biggest additions is the map system expansion.

As we mentioned in an earlier announcement, the original map was designed around moving forward in a single direction.

It was to make the map itself simple: make the best choice from a limited set of options, collect rewards, repeat the process, and gradually make up your ideal build. We wanted the depth to come from build variety rather than from the map itself.

This time, we've added ways to move backward, which let you pass through more nodes and pick up additional rewards. Of course, greater rewards also come with greater risks. Here's how the new system works.

Plunderer's Transport Ship

Mysterious Portal

After defeating the Manager Wolf in a combat area, a Mysterious Portal may appear, and it will take you to the Plunderer's Transport Ship.

It offers the same rewards as the normal route, but you can travel in the opposite direction. This allows you to leave your original route, explore other areas, and pick up additional rewards.

The ship will automatically become available based on your progress after you've played through a certain portion. This means returning players who have already made some progress may encounter it almost immediately.

Pursuer

Pursuers will appear on the map and begin chasing the sheep.

Whenever you move to the next area, the Pursuers will follow. Their current positions can be seen directly on the map.

Pursuers will actively try to disrupt your survival. In general, the safest strategy is simply to avoid running into them.

If you stick to the normal route and keep moving forward, you should be able to make your way through safely. However, if you want to use the Plunderer's Transport Ship to reach other areas and claim additional rewards, it's unavoidable to encounter the Pursuers.

Pursuer Difficulty Level

The number of Pursuer icons shown at each node indicates their difficulty level.

As you progress, more Pursuers will accumulate.

• Level 1: 3 Trackers

• Levels 2–4: 5–6 Trackers

They also become progressively tougher as the difficulty level increases.

So if you use the Plunderer's Transport Ship to venture deeper, be prepared to take on considerably more risk.

Hidden Boss: Elite Pursuer

Once the level reaches Level 5, the Elite Pursuer will begin hunting. It has absurdly high stats and is theoretically impossible to defeat. (We designed it that way intentionally.) It's very unlikely to appear during a normal run. However, if you get greedy and repeatedly use the Plunderer's Transport Ship to venture deeper for more rewards, you may eventually attract its attention.

In other words, the normal route is not supposed to lead you into an encounter with the Elite Pursuer.

We have made significant adjustments to relevant content for the map expansion. This is also the first time we have introduced greater variety to replayability through the map system. Rather than having players give up and restart whenever they get an undesirable reward or an awkward build path, we hope to give you more ways to adapt and keep pushing toward a better run instead of giving up and restarting whenever you get an undesirable reward or an awkward build path

Alpha Memory

Why We Made It

Looking a little further back, we've previously provided metaprogression in two different ways. The first was through permanent unlocks, while the second was a more flexible investment system, like the Omega Project.

However, many players told us that some of the more basic functions in the Omega Project would be better suited to permanent unlocks. We agreed, but at the time, the game didn't really have a system that could properly house these features. After spending a long time planning and adjusting, we've finally completed a new permanent progression system, and named it Alpha Memory. From now on, basic features will gradually be unlocked through it.

Features Moved from the Omega Project

• You can dismantle Skills, Modules, and Modifications to obtain Blue-P.

• You can obtain a dice that allows you to reroll the reward list.

• You can unlock the fourth Skill Slot.

Potion System Added

Potions and Potion upgrades have been added. This system is mainly intended to make the early game a little more forgiving and give players a way to recover from mistakes.

Basic Unlocks

Based on player feedback and our own judgment, we've changed some of the most basic features so that they can now be unlocked for free through special events and normal progression. We've also added one-time events for these unlocks.

Low Attack

Low Attack is now available as a basic feature and can be used without spending any resources.

We've also added a dedicated tutorial and event for it.

Third Skill Slot

The Third Skill Slot can now be unlocked through dedicated events based on your progression. A new combat event involving a special NPC has been added. Complete the event to unlock the Skill Slot. The event is intentionally not too difficult. It's mainly to help players get familiar with the basic actions.

Omega Project Update V2

Why We Updated It

While working on the changes based on player feedback, some of the existing features in the Omega Project were moved to Alpha Memory. This left empty nodes behind and, as a result, caused a chain reaction of problems with the existing level design.

So while addressing the long-standing issues with the Omega Project itself, we decided to give the whole system another major overhaul.

The main issues pointed out by players were:

• You had to activate nodes you didn't want just to reach the ones you actually wanted.

• There were too many nodes, while relatively few of them offered meaningful choices.

• The balance between individual nodes was uneven.

• The distribution of Omega Points didn't feel right.

For this update, our biggest priority was making sure you wouldn't have to spend a point on something you don't want just to reach something you do. We've also simplified both the nodes and the point system, so that each point you invest feels more meaningful.

UI/UX

The Omega Project has been changed from its previous tree structure to a radial structure.

Nodes are no longer connected in a fixed progression order. Instead, they are grouped together based on their functions.

When you invest Omega Points into individual nodes, the values from each group are added together and accumulated in the center.

Once the accumulated points reach certain thresholds, additional effects will be activated.

Effect Categories

Red — Pressure

Blue — Survival

Yellow — Mind

(Spoiler) Purple — Mutation

New Skills

Four new Skills and Passives have been added, focusing on builds centered around Cooldown and Energy.

Changes

Burst Blade

The final Modification effect has been changed from“Gain 1 magazine when using an Enhanced Magazine”to“Remove the Enhanced Magazine limit.”

Each time the charge meter completes one full cycle, you gain one Enhanced Shot charge. As long as you have charges remaining, you can fire Enhanced Shots consecutively. The remaining charges are displayed as an ammo stack next to the charge icon. Moving to another room will reset both the charge progress and the stored charges.

Shock Speed

As stacks build up, the interval between lightning strikes becomes shorter, and the animation also speeds up. Each stack beyond the first increases the speed by 12% per stack, up to 2.5×.

Shock effects of the same type applied to the same target are now combined and accumulated as stacks.

Other

• The range of Super Dash has been greatly increased.

• Pulse Spear Piercing Fix: Enemies pierced will no longer enter a forced hit reaction. Instead, they will remain suspended in place, shaking as if time has stopped. They will be held in place for approximately 1 second from the moment the spear becomes embedded in the terrain.

Bugfixes & Other Changes

• The effect duration of the combo Skill Burst Lance has been reduced from 1.14 seconds (19 frames) to 0.30 seconds (5 frames).

• Fixed the preview behavior of several Skills. The aiming previews for Arc Sling and Concentrated Fire will now remain visible for the specified duration.

• Improved the visual presentation of the room map screen.

• Cleaned up Skill and Item descriptions: spacing and punctuation have been standardized across all 12 languages, and incorrect wording has been corrected.

• Fixed an issue where stunning Super Armor enemies that are normally immune to stun could cause the game to crash.

• Fixed a crash that could occur when a monitored monster died during a monster wave.

• Fixed a crash that could occur when a scene failed to load.

• Fixed crashes that could occur on the dialogue bubble, Skill icon, and tab grid screens.

• Fixed a crash that could occur when a Module disappeared due to dismantling or upgrading during a Module exchange animation.

• Fixed a crash that could occur when a monster whose prefab failed to load appeared.

• Fixed an issue where two cutscenes could overlap when entering the Base Camp after defeating Dr. Wolf for the first time.

• Fixed an issue where interacting with the Skill Altar without ever opening the Inventory could immediately cancel the interaction.

• Fixed an issue where interaction prompts would not appear when background objects overlapped with an interaction area.

• Fixed an issue where enemies using teleportation patterns could spawn stuck inside terrain near the edge of the map.

• Fixed an issue where independently generated attacks, such as drone attacks, could send their spawn notification twice, causing Critical modifiers and “on attack” Artifact effects to trigger twice.

• Fixed an issue where Skill attacks generated as separate objects, such as the bleed effect from the Blood Katana, could fail to receive Skill upgrades and Critical effects.

• Fixed an issue where summoned attacks generated by Modules could incorrectly receive Skill-specific upgrades.

• Fixed an issue where delayed bonus attacks from Passives would not trigger Skills that split into multiple attacks, such as Concentrated Fire.

• Fixed an issue where a bonus attack from one Skill could incorrectly be applied to attacks from another Skill.

• Fixed an issue where bonus attacks scheduled by attack objects that disappear immediately could be lost.

• Fixed an issue where the second hit of Flame Conductor could trigger an explosion on enemies that had only just been inflicted with Burn by the first hit. It will now only trigger enemies that were already Burning.

• Fixed an issue where field damage could remain after disabling Damage Floor.

• Fixed an issue where the Incendiary Shotgun magazine would not reset during Boss/Elite entrance cutscenes.

• Fixed an issue where the grab attack of the Infected Cutter could deal more damage than intended due to the target's Defense value.

• Fixed the damage taken when being knocked back by Dr. Wolf's collision attack during Phase 2 so that it now uses the intended fixed value.

• Fixed an issue where the Antenna and Watering Can Modules were incorrectly using each other's effect data, causing their effects to be swapped.

• Fixed an issue where the Breathing Support Device reduced Stamina recovery instead of increasing it. The value has been corrected from 0.7 → 1.3.

• Fixed an issue where Attack Speed increases were incorrectly displayed as “1%.”

• Fixed an issue where tooltips continued to display the previous values after changing Enhancement Levels.

• Corrected the displayed values in the descriptions of 9 Items across all 12 languages.

• Fixed an issue where 8 weapons sharing the same effect sheet could display the wrong blade image when certain Skills were used.

• Fixed an issue where the end of Doctor's Eye Laser could appear detached from the body when facing left and extend beyond its actual hitbox.

• Fixed an issue where route lines on the room map could be displayed at an incorrect angle.

• Fixed an issue where the smoke trail of Concentrated Fire missiles could break when the missiles disappeared.

• Fixed an issue where HP change indicators could remain visible during the black screen transition in cutscenes.

• Fixed an issue where control keys and Blue.P were not properly replaced in Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, and some other languages, and could appear in their original form.

• Fixed an issue where Skills with 0 Cooldown could display a “+0%” damage tag and lose their keyword color.

• Fixed an issue where the dismantling prompt displayed the original tag text instead of the correct key binding.

• Added illustrations and description text for the first time you board the Transport Ship and Return Transport Ship.

• Slightly adjusted the spacing between map nodes to accommodate the expanded map.

Closing

There are also some changes we can't go into because they would involve spoilers, as well as a number of development tasks that we weren't able to list here in full.This update took a long time, but we've made major improvements across the game as a result.Some individual areas may still feel a little lacking right now, but we'll continue to expand and improve them over time.

We originally planned to work on Sector 2 for the next update. However, given the scale of the changes made in this update, we'll likely need to revise our development plans moving forward.

We've spent this time restructuring many parts to make them easier to expand in the future, and we believe that will put us in a much better position for upcoming development.

Thank you so much for waiting for us all this time.

And, as always, thank you for all of your feedback.