It's late night on the New Boston streets and things are quiet - until the update hover truck drops in. Roaring engines, new improvements, more level points for you! and you! and you! - plus Blueprints can now be sold widely, more Contacts are buying accounts, service maximums are more clear, better Matrix Escalation balance, you can detach mods again (woops!) and another big round of Steam Deck improvements. You know - just another New Boston day, another big update!

If you're enjoying the pace of improvement and how we do things over here at Trese Brothers, please leave a review. We are a small team, working hard for your reviews - if you like it, review it!

Steam Deck Progress

We plan to have continual Steam Deck progress for a while here, angling toward a better control scheme. Update #103 is taking a big step forward with resetting the default controller bindings to be more immediately playable and easy to use.

• Swapped Set Movement Destination to (Y) - it is easier to find and you can hold it down and drag your movement destination around by panning the camera.
• Swapped Toggle Highlights to (Right Stick Click) and added Decrease Full Auto Targets to (Left Stick Click) so you can control the Full Auto targets directly
• Fixed issue with (RT) being required to open Leverage and Item lists in HUD, use default select (A)
• Improved ability to preview terminal's security devices - center cursor plus (RT) to inspect

These changes are coming right out of the group chatting on our Discord in the Steam Deck Blitz thread and aren't likely to be the final changes, but please let us know how these changes feel and what else we can do to improve or if you found bugs, let's get them fixed on your Deck!

In order to use the latest default controller bindings - go to Options > Keybindings - Missions > Reset Defaults.

Better Level Point Progression

Bonus! You get extra Level Points today for all your characters who have at least reached level 10! We've improved the curve, smoothing out a minor oddity at level 9 & 10, and then added an extra +1 Level Point for every 5 levels achieved. So, that's extra points at 10, 15, 20 and 25 - adding up to +4 Level Points for max'd out characters.

Blueprints for Sale!

Blueprints have not been mature enough for a long time to really go up for sale, but as we are narrowing in on the upcoming crafting release, the time has come. Now a variety of Contacts can purchase Blueprints, limited by Type and Power Level. Contacts like Gun Runners will be interested in buying your Weapon and Weapon Mod Blueprints, while Corporate Researchers others will want to get a hold of your Item Blueprints.

Most Contacts start being able to purchase Blueprints up to Power Level 3 and will need further Limit Breaks to upgrade their services to purchase higher level and even more valuable Blueprints.
 

Better Service Listing

With Update #103, we've improved the display of Contact Service's list to be more clear when a Contact has maxed out a service. With the addition of Influence Limit Breaks being able to raise a service's level and trigger the sale of new weapons, armor, items, implants (etc) this is key to help further identify Contacts you want to focus on helping, selling to and supporting.

Maxed out Services are highlighted in yellow.

More Account Interest

More Contact types are now interested in purchasing Accounts from you, giving you the option to feed more Influence to them. For Contact types like Street Doc, Dopers, Gang Bosses, it is now easier to raise their Influence with high Rarity Account sales, but check their specific services for what they are seeking and keep an eye out for matching missions. For example, your Street Docs can make use of Street Accounts - those from Gangs - so, consider extra time and effort to plunder and hack on missions running up against gangs if you're trying to push your Street Docs up to Cybernetic Implants level 3.

Matrix Escalation Rebalance

As we continue to improve the matrix - and especially tune its balance for high Power Levels - we've made some changes with Update #103 that should help make the late-game matrix play more interesting and offer some more strategies.

First, we've adjusted how the Wake All IC Q-Security Escalation was weighted and drawn. It was used as a backup for a number of other cards that might not apply, causing it to be drawn far more often than it should be. It has now been pushed back to a realistic weighting among all the other options and should occur significantly less frequently, especially on nodes where the are already 3+ IC.

Secondly, we've adjusted the weighting of other Q-Security Escalation options, including to punch up the 3 types of lethal feedback the host can dish out - to your Hacker's HP, your deck and your Connection %. For your Hackers HP, the hits can now also come with a lot more bite, ranging from 10 to 30 Damage on the most deadly hosts - and then reduced by half your Deck Armor directly (8 Deck Armor = 4 HP saved).

Detach Mods

For a minute there, the ability to remove mods from weapons was completely gone. We've fixed this, bringing it back!

v1.7.17 - 7/2/2024

- Improved level points curve, +2 pts at checkpoints 10, 15, 20, 25 and smoothed out odd bump at level 9/10 and
- New Contacts willing to buy Blueprints by type - Gun Runners buy Weapon Blueprints, Researchers buy Item Blueprints and more
- More Contacts willing to buy Accounts (Street/Syndicate/Corporate): Street Docs, Dopers, Gang Bosses, Detectives, Sector Commander
- Wider range of Contacts can boost Influence with high Rarity Account sales to drive Limit Breaks
- Contact Services are now highlighted in Yellow if they cannot be upgraded further by Limit Breaks
- Matrix balance improvements - adjusted weighting of Matrix Escalations (more Dmg responses, less Global Wake IC)
- Matrix lethal feedback escalation can cause meaningful amounts of HP loss (10-30 HP, less 50% Deck Armor)
- Fixing bug preventing from detaching mods from weapons
- Prevent special effects (+5% Legwork for all mercs) from appearing in buffs and debuffs list
- Fixed Mintable Attack III (FAS) program to have Program Rating 7

Steam Deck Improvements
- Improved Steam Deck default controller config - use Options > Keybindings > Reset Defaults
- Moved Set Movement Destination to (Y) - easier to find and hold down to drag your movement destination
- Moved Toggle Highlights to (Right Stick Click), Decrease Full Auto Targets to (Left Stick Click)
- Fixed issue with (RT) being required to open Leverage and Item lists in HUD, use default select (A)
- Improved ability to preview terminal's security devices - center cursor plus (RT) to inspect