This week Scorched Acres went live, and we're thrilled with the reception of the update. This was a big nervous moment for us internally, since it essentially sets the pace for the rest of Early Access. Overall we're very happy with the balance and design of the content we included, and we're glad the community feels that way too! There are a lot of moving parts with each Content Update, so we're keeping our ears to the ground for anything that felt like it moved too much. With the release of Scorched Acres, our Roadmap has now progressed forward! Our next update lands in September - and it's [i]loaded[/i] with content. Check it out below: [img]https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/33906904/8d2ba44cb61c9a78c4d08d17dd56f14113700404.jpg[/img] ===**[b]Major Points[/b]**=== • Very excited about REX's reception! We're seeing a lot of polarizing views, which is super awesome and exciting. We don't want everyone to feel like he's good or bad. • Barrier as a concept seems well recieved. It will be a great tool going forward to help us design defensive items that don't give permanent sustain like healing does. • We noticed a change in spawn frequency - and presumably the difficulty of the game. While this was unintended, we're going to wait to see how it all plays out to see if it's for the best - Monsoon in RoR2 always felt like it was a bit easier than Monsoon in RoR1. It is also possible the game is more difficult because of the fix on critical strikes dealing multiplicative stacking damage, resulting in more enemies piling up. • People seem to think the Brooch is OP, which it might be, but that's OK • Malachite enemies are scary - which is perfect. Whether or not the anti-heal debuff is on needs to be more clear, with maybe a screen overlay. • We aren't planning on touching balance with the next patch. We want to see how things shake out, and to give players enough time to learn what enemies and items are strong before we change it all around again. ===**[b]Minor Points[/b]**=== • Cave TP spawns in Abyssal Depths can be very difficult - keeping an eye on that • The possibility of the permanent uptime on Spinel Tonic was intended by design - the combination seems difficult enough to assemble currently, and is thematically awesome enough to try to preserve • People are starting to see how strong the new proc math is. Starting to feel that the visual cap of 9999 damage may be too low. • Enemies are feeling a bit bullet-spongy, which most likey is a result of the crit fix. We don't really want things to ever be spongey, so we're watching to make sure the late-game experience is still enjoyable. • Surprised not a lot of people are utilizing REX's Shift to shove things off the edge of maps • Noticing some performance issues, possibly related to the higher spawn count ===**[b]Stuff we are working on[/b]**=== • Mercenary's Blinding Assault having issues with double cooldowns • Fuel Array behavior being mistaken for Sticky Bomb • Everything turning Pink and Invisible • Some other small bugs that we caught in the week of Scorched Acres' release Thanks again for joining us on this journey. We'll see you around! -Hopoo Games Team