Strap in. It’s a big one.



TL;DR – Every boss fight got a full makeover, you can now ban items you hate from dropping, there’s a new keybind for quick recycling, and Steam Deck players are finally getting that performance love they’ve been begging for.

This patch is a proper shake-up. I’ve been reading through feedback, Discord rants, Steam reviews, and I’ve tried to tackle the biggest recurring stuff.

Let’s start with the bosses. A lot of you said they felt like oversized damage sponges, which is fair. That’s not what I wanted them to be, so I went back in and reworked the whole system. All boss health values are now normalized, and instead of just eating bullets, they’re designed to get nastier mechanically the deeper you go. So yeah, if you memorized their moves before, theyre going to be a bit different now as you age through the warps. Let me know how they feel now, I’m genuinely curious if the fights are more “oh no” and less “ugh.”

Next up, the long-awaited item ban system. You can now blacklist up to one-third of the items in each category from dropping during your runs. Hate an item? Yeet it into oblivion. Never see it again. Problem solved(And please, tell me which items you’re banning so I know which ones I need to go cry about and fix). My goal is for every item to feel usable in some weird combo… except maybe the basic pistol, that thing’s just here for moral support.

Oh, I also ordered a Steam Deck devkit way back in February. Yeah, it finally showed up. I can now actually play my own game on it like a normal person instead of begging for logs from my Discord heroes(THANK YOU FOR ALL THOSE THAT HELPED). Turns out Katanaut was doing some very dumb things under the hood on Deck, so I squashed a bunch of performance issues. Frame rates are up, loading times are down, and overall it’s just a smoother experience.

And finally… I’m taking a vacation. Wild, right? After years of working on Katanaut every single day, I’m forcing myself to step away for two weeks. No weekend patches, no “just one more tweak,” just sleep and probably some existential staring into the void. I’ll be back soon, and with 10x the amount of plans for Katanaut as well.

As always, massive thanks to all of you. Seriously. The feedback, support, and memes keep this whole thing alive. Hope you’re having a blast up there on the station.

Core:
- Added a "Quick Recycle" button to break down Offhand weapons and Skill Orbs quickly – F or Left Joystick Press by default.
- Added a menu to ban items from dropping on your runs, to help reduce your active pool of items – look for a computer by the elevator.
- Normalized Mawhound health across all warps.
- Mawhound now has increasing mechanical challenges across all warps, starting from easy to difficult.
- Normalized Avarice Engine health across all warps.
- Avarice Engine now has increasing mechanical challenges across all warps, starting from easy to difficult.
- Normalized Lilithex health across all warps.
- Lilithex now has increasing mechanical challenges across all warps, starting from easy to difficult.
- Normalized Doctors health across all warps.

Small Core:
- Spawn timer rates for Lilithex's hexes are increased by 20%.
- Added a new launch option specifically for Steam Deck users for optimized play. This is the initial popup when launching the game.
- Steam Decks will automatically default to low texture blood in order to improve performance.
- Added Steam Deck button icons for Menu and View.
- Updated Shurikens to stick around longer after colliding to help make the shadow warrior achievement easier to get.

Balance:
- The majority of all offhand ranged weapons will no longer stun-lock bosses when hitting them.
- All minion damage is buffed by 15%.
- Corruption Launcher damage buffed by 50%
- The amount of minions you can have out at any given time is capped to 60.

Bugs:
- Fixed issue where you can use teleport dagger to clip through the boss fight boundary.
- Fixed issue where items would get stuck under "reroll" buttons for the purchase shops.
- Fixed issues where sometimes laser beams on level 7 would not damage you.
- Fixed visual Implant menu issue where the "installed" animation would go off when selecting implants, even if you couldn't afford them.