It's late in the New Boston zone and the game is on sale but that doesn't mean we can't drop a new update with new content, right? Update #133 comes with a new recruit option in your Underworld Hub, new unique Utility Program service for a Wireghost you might know, tuned the balance of the new enemy Talents, even better rules for Skip Enemy Turns and fixed a ton of UI related F10s. Let's see what we've got tonight!

If you're enjoying the pace of updates and new content - we've got more coming for you. And please take a moment to leave a review, our very small team appreciates every single one and it help us keep this train moving.

New Underworld Hub Recruit

A new Vanguard option has joined the Underworld Hub, which gives you the basic set of Soldier, Vanguard and Cybersword. Clearly, we'll be building out from here, and Sniper and Scourge are on the next list. This one includes a completely new and unique Trait, new backstory, new contact connections and more. Dial up a token and take a look at your new potential team mate.
 
As we continue to expand the game's content in Early Access, one critical area is the recruiting pool. With the addition of a new Vanguard recruit option to the Underworld Hub, the possible recruits have now reached 6 including:

• 2 street recruits that are brought forward by other mercs
• 3 recruits from the Underworld Hub
• 1 storyline recruit from Salvage Job

We are working to continue to expand this list to the point where (1) you'll be picking which recruits to take over just recruiting everyone and (2) you will not have concerns about being unable to refill your ranks in the case of merc death.

At this point in Early Access, our focus is on high quality and hand-crafted recruits, because everyone is helping us further push the game in very good ways. The last two recruits have multiple completely new Trait type and effects between them that open up a lot of interesting angles for the next round of Traits. They also have new backstory tagging, new Contact connections who offer up different services and story angles for future updates. We will get to a point where recruits can be created by proc-gen, but doing so without taking time to further expand the Traits, Tags, Backstory and Connection options will lead to some pretty dry results. So, for now we're using recruiting adds as a roadmap to expand certain parts of the game and will keep after that.


Watch this recruit count - it's going to go UP.

Carnivore Wireghost: New Utility Programs

We don't want to spoil anything, so we'll keep this brief. If your time with the Carnivore mission resulted in your scoring a new Wireghost Contact, that Contact now has a unique service selling some new Utility programs that are not available via regular Wireghost. Every Contact's slate of services is given a baseline by their Contact Type but then can gain or lose services based on story events or backstory and each one upgrades a differently compared to the next based on Hype and Exposure Limit Breaks. So, this gives this specific Wireghost a unique twist - and one that can be upgraded twice with Limit Breaks as well.

Update Size

The last couple updates have all been delightfully small, weighing in from 200-400 MB. In order to possibly further trim that, or just ensure that it stays that low, we made another round of changes to the asset organization to break up a few of the remaining large groups. This has resulted in a trickle down effect and another big update size - 3.3-ish GB. All for a better future!

Overwatch Tuning

After the latest update with the FireCOM and Wildfire, some enemy factions start using Overwatch a bit too much like a blanket on the field of battle. We've tuned their options to get this Talent a bit - hopefully achieving a better balance. We're looking forward to hearing your feedback.

Trait Balance

We've improved the merc Below the Level Trait to give better XP bonuses, it was starting to low and never getting high enough. We've also down-balanced the Contact Trait Eager Buyer by a small amount, slowing down its progression through levels 2 and 3.

Confirm Overwrite and Load Save Slots

With Update #133, we've ensured that the overwrite and load buttons for all save slots always pop up a confirmation. This is a big action, can results in loss of something you're trying to play and deserves a confirmation. Previously, only one of the two buttons had confirmation - odd but now fixed!

We've also adjusted the hotkeys used for overwrite and load so that they are consistent between the pause menu in the safehouse and the main mission map. To get the keys sync'd, you might have to adjust your defaults, so the results here will depend on how many customized keybindings you've done.

Timeline Pause Button

We've fixed a hotly reported F10 that sometimes the timeline pause button could end up disabled even as the timeline was playing, leaving you no way to pause the timeline! The state management there has been cleaned up.

We also had to put out a hotfix last night that had some really nice things in it - so we will include its details here -

Wreckspire Fix

There was a bug that could cause your team to appear multiple times at the start of a Wreckspire Siege level. This should not happen again. If you are unable to continue a level due to this bug, please just reload the saved game.

Better Skip Turns

We've improved skipping enemy turns. Siege and Battle Strikers were driving the playtest team insane so we bet you feel similar. Now you can skip enemy movement even when they are repositioning for combat.

Fixed Wildfire Talents

Sometimes the Wildfire were taking healing Talents instead of Full Auto. Fixed!

Hack Tutorial: No more Heat

The hack tutorial was accidentally generating Heat. No more!

v1.8.69 - #133: Recruit Pool - 8/28/2024

- New Underworld Hub Recruit - Vanguard!
- New type of Traits that react to going on missions or not
- Added 2 new Contact Types along with recruit offering
- If you get a Wireghost Contact coming out of Carnivore mission, they now have special Utility Program offerings (with 2 limit breaks)
- Added 3 new Utility Programs (Data Filter II and III, Trace Vector III, Decoy III)
- Minor down-balance to Contact Trait "Eager Buyer" -3-4% resale boost to levels 2 and 3
- Improved Trait Below the Level XP bonus
- Tweaked starting charges and recharge rate for Corp/Milsec enemy Overwatch Talent - less blanketing of the field
- Fixed bug where timeline Pause button could become disabled even when playing
- Fixed inventory issue where some equipment counts could be wrong
- Added confirmations to all Overwrite/Load save slot buttons, hotkeys now consistent
- Fixed issue displaying "Remove Mods" button even if all mods were locked by crafting

v1.8.67 - Hotfix - 8/27/2024

Fixed issue with Wreckspire where you could end up with multiple copies of your team
Skip significantly more enemy turns
Fixed issues with Wildfire's Talents
Preventing Hacking tutorial from causing Heat
Fixed odd reinforcement spawn point in Street Palisade