https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//35665597/580ad5457cc00badbd74ea04a6788090440f610e.jpg Greetings, pilots! Northern Fall is here, and, as promised, we’re dropping our final major update during Early Access, featuring a sliver of endgame content, legendary items, new missions, and much more. Furthermore, your valuable feedback aided in a significant overhaul of our level-scaling approach. This will hopefully make more pilots happy about feeling powerful by leveling up while keeping beginner and intermediate areas relevant later through meaningful game world state changes. Now, before anyone rage quits because level-scaling is here to stay, let’s hear from our top pilot and Community Ambassador, Erik Schrader, as he explains the major changes and additions: Overhauled Level Scaling Let’s address the elephant in the hangar first! We’ve noticed a subset of pilots not being happy with level scaling, especially at the beginning of the game. While others appreciate having a challenge wherever they go and would find fighting underwhelming opponents that drop no meaningful loot just flat-out boring, some pilots just love to obliterate space baddies after they have advanced a few levels and are frustrated if enemies level with them; we get that. It’s tough trying to make two opposite kinds of player types happy, but we hope we found a fair solution that works for both sides: Instead of having enemies level with you constantly within a given level range per star system — there’s a lot more to the mechanic, but I’ll leave it at that — pilots can now over-level up to a certain point. These are events like reaching a specific player level, a major plot point in the campaign, or entering a new system. If a combination of conditions is met, previous game areas will level up, and you’ll get a message that is even woven into the game’s lore. https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//35665597/d2d94edf824f343d2e070783948f4e0e80964e95.jpg Meaning, within the first few hours of the game, there is no level-scaling in missions or while exploring locations anymore. However, after you have made some progress in the second star system, Union, you will be notified that enemies become stronger in Ceto, the beginner area, so you won’t be able to one-shot’em. In fact, if you’re lazy, you’ll be turned into stardust in no time. Enemies won’t chicken out on you or just idle in space without aggro. They’ll put up a fight, thus dropping meaningful loot when defeated. On the other hand, if you’re feeling lucky and rush into higher-level systems, enemies will no longer level down, so you might wanna do a few side missions, distress calls, jobs, or location challenges first to really earn going and find some high-level gear. It’s a massive change under the hood, so we encourage everyone to start a new game and let us know what they think about the new system, but don’t forget to use all tools available to your disposal: ship devices, consumables, ULTs, crafting, shopping, exploiting weaknesses, dodging enemy fire, and using the environment to your advantage. New Stuff To Do, Fly & Kill While the team is still working on the remaining missions of the campaign, including two more boss fights and the final encounter, the fall update offers a slew of new activities. Of course, the most significant addition is introducing Ancient Rifts, which we’ll cover further below. Now, most looter-shooters are all about the endgame, but, since space exploration is also dear to us, we added even more things to do in the systems currently in the game. So, even if you don’t want to start a new game now, there are plenty of new puzzles, jobs, distress signals, and three new side missions, one in Union, one in the Khaït Nebula, and one involving overhauled racing events. https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//35665597/f0f0a35b79f481bd8d724bc4fde9cd3285b150ed.jpg New job types can be found on the new job board at Kato Palace in Prescott Starbase as part of a new side mission. Introduced via a new side mission, featuring an old and beloved friend from the predecessor, all racing events in the game received a massive overhaul to make them more appealing. For starters, pun intended, you can jump right back to the beginning anytime you fail the course somewhere in between, like missing a ring or crashing into an asteroid. Furthermore, racing events now offer incentives, and the benchmarks have been altered accordingly. You’ll also notice some graphical touch-ups here and there. https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//35665597/b368333f6e8626d76c9f870efe38be6067a1a78f.jpg New challenges are on! Can you beat our Platinum times? With the fall update, we also added a new wing set for the Bomber, aka the Titan, when equipped with this new wing type, as well as two new Outlaw units, the Raider and the Tormentor. https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//35665597/0676b58129e8c9c8a9f94151bb0ceec9dfca97d4.jpg The Titan is probably the more elegant version of the Bomber series, with its wide-spread wings giving it a less chunky look than the Cyclops, especially from the player’s perspective. https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//35665597/8e1c7f85d65b9007e5c60217af93e0d18de2d29b.jpg The Outlaw Raider is a light fighter but comes with armor; it enters drone-like close combat if its target is webbed, so better stay on your zero-G toes! https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//35665597/9d28a765577046331a9633077a59f8a34193e26b.jpg The Outlaw Tormentor is relatively fast for a heavy fighter. It shoots rapid rocket salvos, so better get your boost-strafe ready for rapid evasive maneuvers! To give pilots a broader choice of tools to work with when fighting against enemies that dish out a ton of damage, we added the Front Shield Generator with this update. It’s an extremely powerful passive device that you can tweak to your liking: In Avenger mode, the FSG reflects blocked shots back to attackers; set to All Day, blocked damage is converted into weapon energy, and when using On Your Left, the shield is 25% smaller but will automatically turn towards the closest enemy facing you. Ancient Rifts In our Kickstarter from 2019 (time really flies!), the Ancient Rifts stretch goal was unlocked by some eight-thousand awesome backers. Back then, we only had a vague vision of how these would look like and how they work, but we’ve always envisioned Ancient Rifts to bring back some of the crazy mechanics and challenges and that “one-more-run-feeling” of the first EVERSPACE. https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//35665597/f64c13d72420db503753604053a3735f985c9493.jpg In EVERSPACE 2, you can now have a similar experience by opening multi-staged rifts that become increasingly stronger with a chance of a legendary item dropping after you defeat the boss in the final stage. Much like in the predecessor, where you could increase the difficulty for each run and pick handicaps between sectors in Hardcore mode, you can now ramp up Lunacy before opening a rift and picking a portal with different modifiers leading to the next stage to define your individual challenge. Of course, bigger risks will yield greater rewards, like a higher legendary drop chance and better loot overall. https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//35665597/be0b9f8e719e357e8478c01e4861b72abce9a026.jpg As the endgame activity of a fast-paced space shooter, we want you to dive right into the battle with an optimized build and unleash mayhem on your enemies rather than camping behind an asteroid and picking one target after the other from a safe distance. So, to avoid been thrown out of the rift, you must maintain your Resolve score by defeating opponents rapidly and keeping your hull integrity above zero. Sounds intimidating, but don’t you worry! You’ll get all your health and your consumables back no matter if you succeed or fail in a rift. Of course, failing means no rewards, so you better enter fully geared up because your equipment while in a rift is locked. https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//35665597/b64fcdd6b279a95c0a9b4cbf4ae3c9cb776303f5.jpg That said, to prevent pilots from farming rifts like there’s no tomorrow, we’ll implement a system where you have to earn a particular resource to open rifts by completing other activities, beforehand. It won’t be too much of a grind, though, just enough against the inevitable rift cheese. Before we move on to legendaries, bear in mind that this is just the first implementation of Ancient Rifts while we have a few more endgame aces up our sleeves for the v1.0 release. Legendary Items Finally, legendaries made it into the game! We know, many of you have been waiting for this since the tease of a legendary beam laser, the Agent of Redemption, from the EVERSPACE 2 prototype back in 2019. Well, now is the time to go hunting for some legendaries in the all-new Ancients Rifts. If you have watched Erik in the most recent gamedev streams, you already saw some crazy legendary weapons like Eye Of The Storm, Thundercore, Wrath of the Fallen, Bob, Pango’s Pride, or The Final Reckoning. We haven’t decided how many legendaries there’ll be in the final game, but expect to be able to find at least one per main item category. https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//35665597/809907b0262adae1a1ab0cabe7b6d4d53645f336.png Then, there are also legendaries designed/inspired by our backers with some cool ideas. To make sure at least some of those are a guaranteed find, we decided to have those as side mission rewards in the v1.0 release, which will also help introduce legendaries to pilots unfamiliar with the looter genre. Now, while Erik was able to equip several legendaries in his dev build, there are limitations in the official version. Since legendaries are intended to have a significant impact on your build and the playstyle they’re suited for, you’ll be able to equip only one legendary at a time, with a second coming in higher ship tiers or even another slot to be unlocked via a companion perk, maybe. For the time being, players are able to equip two legendaries until we implement the T4 ships with the full release. QoL Improvements The team, in particular Andi, Sven, and Ingmar have also been hard at work to streamline game saving significantly. It’s a rather extensive topic and has great impact on the overall experience, as save games are automatically created when reaching mission checkpoints, docking, and entering locations. We've specifically addressed lags becoming more prominent with increased total play time and save file size due to the number of LocationStates growing over time. Ingmar, our Technical Engineer, provided a two-page-long tech document of what has been done so far, basically saying: “we’re not done here!” I’m saving the details for an upcoming deep dive into game performance in EVERSPACE 2. Bottom line: game saving is now twice as fast! https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//35665597/a42a625c66ec07131b53800cfd4db07821abf1b8.jpg This is what profiling in Unreal Insights usually looks like. This specific session shows our latest improvement, where we keep certain information buffered in an "always ready to write" state to speed up data serialization. Per community request, the Reflecting Panel also received an overhaul for better handling as the puzzle was a bit fiddly, indeed. The panel itself now has a nice unfold animation, too, both thanks to Toni, our Lead Level Designer. Changelog - 0.10.30110 Features Removed most of the dynamic enemy level scaling and added a few specific, system-wide leveling events Added the first version of Ancient Rifts Added new side quests Added Legendary items Added new Outlaw units: Outlaw Raider and Outlaw Tormentor Added new secondary weapon: Cruise Missiles Added new device: Front Shield Generator Added new Bomber: Titan Added new Gunship: Dominator Device Mastery modes can now be previewed Added new job types (and job board for Kato) Added new unknown signal/distress call types Added option to keep audio playing when game is unfocused Added new data sub-tab "The Story So Far" to rewatch cinematics and recap the latest story development (mainly placeholder content) Added AMD FidelityFX™ v2.1.1 to the AI-Upscaling methods Overhauled racing activity Overhauled ship dealer UI: Overhauled ship selector UI: Stats tab rework - Added racing stats overview Tweaks Reworked Sentinel special: now increases primary weapon fire rate by up to 20%, depending on shield charge percentage Zurilia Bombers will now briefly disable their front shield when firing missiles Striker ULT will now automatically deactivate if no further enemies are in range Reduced drop chance for signal decoders as High-Risk Area boss loot Some structures like tanks will now also sometimes drop scrap metal when destroyed Improved speed of save game creation to reduce lag during saving Saving during Enemy Wave Challenge is now no longer possible due to exploitative behavior Missiles fired by the "auto-fire at critical hit" attribute now have a 60% reduced damage/effect Changed look of Service Drone Changed look of Elek's ship Improved boss fight in Ghost Fleet: Better flight behavior that makes it easier to hit the boss Improved boss fight in Ceto before entering Union: More health and better weapons Increased loot quality bonuses of High-Risk Area mutators Improved Fusion Hook "Kunai" behavior to prevent targets from overshooting Completing certain unknown signal or distress call events will now grant a small amount of renown Improved Reflecting Panel behavior for better handling Item indicators for outleveled equipment now take rarity into account as well Weapons are aligned straight forward in sequences now Crafting - Removed general restriction that crafted items cannot be modified Crafting - Added restriction that items above player level cannot be adapted if gap is higher than 2 Balancing: Buffed Retaliator units Balancing: Reduced "Downtime Warrior" perk effect from 25% to 15% Balancing: Increased Thermo Gun projectile homing agility Balancing: Reduced Zurilia Drone damage Balancing: Brought damage and hitpoints scaling to equal levels, i.e. reduced both enemy health and player damage potential Balancing: Slightly increased "Very Hard" difficulty Balancing: Increased some NPC armor/shield hitpoints Balancing: Increased Sentinel Expertise scaling Balancing: Increased "Percussive Maintenance" perk proc chance but reduced effect Balancing: Increased Vindicator Expertise scaling for drone HP and damage Balancing: Reduced Executioner damage and increased spread Balancing: Increased Bomber base HP and shield/armor bonuses Balancing: Reduced Bomber secondary energy consumption Balancing: Reduced Gunship Expertise scaling Balancing: Reduced Gunship boost speed passive bonus Balancing: Increased Structure scaling Balancing: Slightly increased Corrosion Injector damage Balancing: Improved aiming precision of Vindicator drones Balancing: Increased credits earned from jobs but decreased XP Balancing: Increased Utility damage scaling Balancing: Increased Bloodstar Repeater kinetic damage Balancing: Increased Cave Crawler corrosion damage Balancing: The primary attributes, Firepower, Precision and Structure, can now roll simultaneously on items Balancing: Increased Umbra DPS Balancing: Increased Homing Missile damage but reduced their fire rate Balancing: Increased missile ammo across the board Balancing: Increased Ceto Ghost Hunt boss hull and armor hitpoints Balancing: Slightly reduced mine ammo across the board Balancing: Reduced mine fire rates across the board Balancing: Slightly reduced Rail Gun charge duration Balancing: Adjusted some device cooldown values depending on device level Balancing: Increased Energy Shield consumable hitpoints fraction Performance: Fixed performance lag when a random travel map encounter is popping up UI: High-Risk areas now display with proper HUD marker in supralight even if not hovered or targeted UI: Secondary weapons with low fire rates now display a cooldown in HUD to indicate when they can be fired again UI: Overhauled Game Over screen design UI: Added message banner for harmless/underleveled signal decoders on activation UI: Added message banner for harmless/underleveled high-risk areas when tr