Beacon patch 2.3 is ready, providing new tools and evoking old memories. Explore crashed pods from Freja’s ship The Ouroboros and collect new items including a new set of Energy weapons! This patch only includes a Level 1 landmark with the Ouroboros Armory, but Level 2 and 4 landmark levels will be added in an upcoming minor patch with additional shipwrecked pods from rival corporations.
Along with a handful of new travel and loot mechanics, new weather variants have been added with tweaks to some of the older weather types. The new Eclipse weather fills a common request for a dark atmosphere, but will spawn rarely compared to other weather types. Check out the full patch notes below to see everything added!
Corporate Intervention
New Levels
Level 1 Landmark: Ouroboros Armory - Explore the Armory pod from Freja's ship. Stock up on any leftover supplies and discover more about the Human corporations from Freja's past
Updated Start level with new Escape Pod, leading the player into the level with a Conveyor Booster at the end.
Tutorial Update: Improved flow of mechanic introductions and updated terrain forms to fit the more recent design of levels.
Level 1: Shipping Fortress Landmark Update - Improved entrance terrain and left fortress layout, added new shipping overflow randomizations, and added zipline travel randomizer
Level 2: Shipping Mega Fortress Landmark Update - Improved left and right fortress entrances, expanded center area and replaced center with new variants, updated exit fortress with shipping overflow
Updated a few Act 1 levels with new travel and loot mechanics, including ziplines and rare 3D/DNA printer loot variants (More variants will be added later to more levels)
New World Mechanics
Travel: Zipline - Grab a zip line and repel across wide gaps. Dodging will release you from the zipline at any time and help you make a speedier exit at the end of the ride.
Travel: Conveyor Booster - Stepping onto the conveyor pad boosts you forwards, allowing you to boost over large gaps quickly.
Travel: Conveyor Squasher - A modified extension of the Conveyor Booster, two conveyors squash together launching anything inbetween them upwards.
Generator: Power Cell - Find and break the Power Cell to disable barriers left active on Freja's ship pods.
Loot: 3D Printer - Trade 60 health for one specific Ship Passive item up to 3 times.
Loot: DNA Printer - Trade 3 Base DNA for one specific Prism Passive item up to 3 times.
Loot: NanoMed Console - Rare consoles found in secret areas, when use is held they will slowly refill your Health.
New Items
Passive: Gravity Boots - Through the use of a proprietary intelligent monitoring system, the Gravity Boots are able to make informed assessments of the user’s local environment and current needs, adjusting their sense of local gravity appropriately. Gives the player slow fall.
Passive: Bio-Extractor - With the activation of this Asklepios Bio-Extractor, you will be able to begin earning reward points straight away with the elimination of corporate-approved targets. Each kill restores +1 health.
Passive: DNA Recharger - Through integration into compatible DNA collection services, the Recharger API detects the collection of genetic material and rewards the user with a small intravenous vitality boost. Each DNA picked up restores +5 Health.
Passive: Radioactive Coating - Compatible with all known ammunition types, the user is able to literally shoot irradiated material into their target – admittedly at the expense of some of the subtlety that comes from more covert methods of poisoning. Applies radiation on hit.
Auxiliary: Radioactive Core - At first glance you may think that the Radioactive Core is simply a way to inflict potentially lethal amounts of radiation on yourself and everyone else near you, and you would be right. Applies radiation to all nearby targets and damages self for -20 Health.
Auxiliary: Scrap Printer - When employed in the field, compact and portable devices will happily consume industrial waste, scrap metal, unclaimed organs, and many other kinds of detritus fed into its Recycle Hole. Print random Ship faction pickup when 50 gibs are collected.
Passive: MK-E Drone - The MK-E employs the same energy technology as found in other weapons in our range, now packaged within a small automated security drone. Orbits the player and fires Energy Shots.
Weapon: Energy Blaster - In this day and age, you simply can’t operate as a respectable munitions company without offering your own take on the classic sci-fi energy weapon. Fires a powerful penetrating energy shot with low ammo capacity.
Weapon: Energy Carbine - When your flagship product is the platonic ideal of an energy weapon, how can you hope to improve upon it? The answer, of course, was to just stick another laser emitter inside the thing and hope for the best. Fires two side by side penetrating energy shots.
Weapon: Energy Cannon - Okay, so you can probably see where we were going with this one. We doubled the amount of laser emitters from the Energy Revolver to the Energy Carbine, and it was a huge hit. Fires 4 side by side penetrating energy shots.
Weapon: Remote Crossbow - The whole ‘retro’ thing might not appeal to us, but market research has shown us that there are a surprising number of history nerds out there that want to combine their love of bad old technology with their insatiable need to kill. Fires explosive crossbow bolts. Detonate all active bolts by reloading.
New Mementos
Bestiary: Solus Enemy Logs - entries for all Solus faction enemies (Should now have a chance to unlock when you kill Solus enemies)
Ship Log: Shoraiteku Manufacturer's Guide - details the many corporations that supply Freja's corps with armaments and equipment
Prism Communications: DOLOS Prism Communications series - including 7 new log entries left by employees alive before Freja's arrival
Weather
New Act 1 Weather: Crystal Drought - Moisture is sucked from the terrain leaving it dry and forming momentary ice crystals that rise into the air. Stormcell event causes multiple whirlwinds to form, flinging any objects caught in one of them upwards.
New Act 1 Weather: Eclipse - Darkness fills the landscape leaving only your flashlight and the dozens of neon objects to light the way. Stormcell sends out a Lunar EMP that disables your HUD for a short duration
Night Weather Update - Replaced Eclipse Stormcell event with a new Sporefall event, causing Swampspore health pickups to rain slowly from the sky
Polluted Fog Update - Replaced Tornado Stormcell event with Pollution Dump event, and increased the amount of dumps during the Level 4 version of the weather event.
New Level 4 Weather randomizations: Flauros Atmosphere and Stomach Spores - Level 4 now has a chance to spawn with Solus or Flauros themed weather, including new Solus Eggsac and Flauros Portal Stormcells that spawn enemies
Balance
Pickups - Tweaked durations of many buff pickups, increasing lower ones to 20 seconds and setting longer ones to 60 seconds or 120 seconds.
Misc
Upgraded Unity to 2019. Will give some minor performance improvements and other minor fixes.
Challenges - DNA drops are now enabled in challenge runs and will reward points when picked up.
Added HUD Scaling to video options (Waypoints will be offset this patch when scaled)
Fixes
Fixed vertical shipping conveyor platforms being difficult to walk and jump off of
Fixed certain grenade types flying too quickly when fired by the CopyCat grenade launcher
Miscellaneous level fixes and improvements
Beacon Patch 2.22
Patch 2.22 is here, making many various balance tweaks and fixes. Thanks to everyone for trying out the first few challenge runs and giving feedback in our Discord server! After tweaks to some of the items and mutations in this weeks challenge the Pyromaniac leaderboard has been reset to give players another chance to complete it after everyone killed themselves in the first level.
Patch 2.22
Balance
DNA Skill Mod: Reload Speed - Increased from 15% to 20% speed increase
Challenge Runs - Reduced research reward percent from 25% of score to 10% of score.
Challenges - Tweaked a few challenge item settings and increased base grenades on Explosives challenges from 8 to 14
Weapons - Fixed issue with regenerating ammo not having the correct delay applied on many weapons. The issue was fixed along with tweaks to the delay values on weapons with regenerating ammo. One handed weapons now start regenerating quicker and large weapons more slowly.
Weapon: Tesla SMG and Livewire (Variant) - Increased damage slightly, increased range on tesla arcs to nearby enemies, and increased amount of bounces on tesla arcs
Weapon: Tesla Pistol - Reduced hold fire rate and reduced max bullet damage. Also updated effect to be more readable.
Weapon: Flame Pistol and Spitfire (Variant) - Increased speed and max distance of flame ball projectiles, reduced explode range of flame projectiles, and set Spitfire cluster amount to 2-3 instead of always 3
Weapon: Flak Revolver and Crowd Pleaser (Variant) - Increased max ammo and increased shots fired per burst by 1 on each weapon
Weapon: Lance Keeper (Quill Gatling Variant) - Removed acid debuff applied by mini-quills, removed acid pool left by mega acid quills, and optimized effects.
Enemy: Flauros - Increased base move speed, increased base health by 5 (Should give score in challenge runs now), decreased charge duration and added slight homing. The Flauros should be easier to dodge with base player stats and will float past the player if missed instead of charging further away.
Passive: Hacking Drone - Set to not be able to hack enemies above a health threshold to prevent hacking the last large enemy in arenas. Also removed ambient beeping.
Mutations: Defensive Claws and Scuttling Claws - Removed Stamina stat reduction from Defensive Claws and reduced Stamina Stat reduction on Scuttling Claws (Daily challenges with the full Solus Warden mutation set will be able to melee now)
Mutations: Tesla/Pyro Hologram and Tesla/Pyro Hologram MK3 - Switched functions of MK1 and MK3 mutations. MK1 head now grants the energy buff when the corresponding debuff is applied to you and the MK3 head has a chance to grant the energy buff on Critical hit. Raised duration of energy buffs granted by MK3 heads, and reduced chance to gain buff on crit to 10%.
Trap: Rotneedle Balloon - Reduced amount of rotneedles spawned to make it less powerful after the buff to homing last update
Misc
Added new drop tables for Flauros creatures so they drop Lifeshards instead of Void Orbs and have a chance to drop a Flauros themed pickup
Slowed down DNA Drone flight speed slightly to make it easier to destroy as it flies over the level
Enabled item/gib pushing on more explosive projectiles
Fixes
Many miscellaneous level fixes and tweaks
Fixed a few various teleport fades sometimes getting stuck on a faded screen (Solus Stomachs and Telemite Maws)
Fixed broken boost pad randomizer on Level 5 Containment Core tile
Fixed Expunge Barrier trap kill trigger being much bigger than the actual kill hologram when angled
Fixed Level 5 hologram floors putting the player in a repeating drop loop if fallen through a disabled floor barrier
Fixed a few explosive shot types reflecting, causing issues with reflect abilities on the Chilopodrae and other enemies
Fixed Mirage illusion summons granting score on death in challenge runs
Fixed an error with sonic shotgun wave projectile positions to make it more accurate to the direction you're aiming
Fixed magrail meteor rolling shortly around before exploding
Fixed missing debuff descriptions on the Tab screen
Fixed Solus Appendage mutation not firing goo balls on dodge ever
Fixed arena swamplights not disappearing when popped
Fixed hatchlings summoned by Nursery Shell mutation staying alive forever if no enemies are nearby.
Fixed gibs being difficult to push with the player when in large piles
Fixed Upsurge mutation damaging player and releasing randomly instead of only on Stamina empty
Lowered collision of Mirage maze wall collision slightly so it's possible to jump over with the Feral Heels mutation
Fixed Effigy enemy crystalize debuff not applying to player if shattered while dodging
Removed hacking drone sound
Fixed missing Act 2 Native Loot zone music
Fixed Tesla champion mod leaving a floating tesla line when enemies are spawned with it
Extra Update 1 Notes
Fixed friendly Flauros summoned from Enflamed Skull mutation dropping health pickups
Fixed flamethrower and other spraying weapons with regenerative ammo having their particle broken
Fixed barrage missiles reflecting and duplicating off of Chilopodrae and other enemy carapaces
Our next focus is finishing up patch 2.3 for release in a few weeks. Along with new travel mechanics and items, the patch will feature new landmark levels with explorable pods from Freja’s ship, the Ouroboros. Here’s a peek at one of the new travel mechanics, ziplines!
Beacon Patch 2.21
Patch 2.21 is released, making some important tweaks to the Challenge Run scoring systems and improving many Act 1 Hydro zones!
Challenge Updates
Added Research Bonus Cap (2500 Points)
Added score particle effect when enemies are killed
Added score multiplier on champion enemies
Added score breakdown on challenge run end screen
Added different score values for enemy types - Small: 50, Medium: 125, Large: 250
Added score time decay (1 point lost per second)
Boss score reduced from 5000 to 2500
Level complete score reduced from 2500 to 1000
Added Prism turret enemies to scoring and altered scores of a few other enemies.
Switched to a different way of submitting scores to Steam to hopefully make it more reliable
Fixed champion mods not using RNG system (Will be the same on each seed now)
Fixed Magrail shots not transferring ownership of kill to the player, resulting in them not adding to the score
Items
Added Void Orb health pickup item that can drop from most Uncharted enemy types. Restores between 8-16 health on pickup.
Passive: Phase Booster (Added in 2.2 but forgot to list in the patch notes) - Upon taking damage, the individual in possession of the device is granted an extended period of what amounts to invulnerability. That is, they are unable to be harmed in any way – from any source, and with no discovered upper limit – for a short duration after its activation.
Levels
Updated Act 1 Hydro levels, including landmarks, intros, traps, and middle tiles. Terrain has been improved and pipewalks have been changed to large pipes with more pipewalk panels.
Balance
Enemies: Prism Sonic Droids - Decreased projectile speed of base sonic shots
Enemy: Pyro Spider Droid - Increased speed and fire range of flame ball projectiles, increased duration of holoshield while calling down flame pods, and updated telegraph ring effects
Weapon: Flare Gun and Supernova (Variant) - Increased flare projectile speeds and detonate radiuses, increased reload time.
Weapon: Laser Carbine - Increased damage of mini-laser and full charged laser
Auxiliary: Deployable Turrets - Increased targeting radius of turrets to make them more useful in large arenas
Auxiliary: Detonator MK2 - Increased damage and added telegraph ring to display explosion distance
Pickup: MYCE - Increased damage
Grenade: Mini MYCE - Increased damage
Fixes
Removed input pause on teleports
Fixed a few item and mutation descriptions
Fixed enemy healthbars not hiding during burrow attacks
Fixed leaderboard not showing your current score if you clicked the button and there was > 10 entries
Fixed swampspore lights in Solus arenas not being poppable
Fixed missing flux nodes in Level 5 Containment landmark variant
Blighted Stars Patch 2.2
Beacon patch 2.2 is finally here! As usual the patch took a bit longer to finish than we hoped, but is full of more features, content, and tweaks than any previous patch. New enemies, weapons, items, and challenge zones have been added expanding the Uncharted faction’s excursions into Prism territory. Beacon is 25% off in the Steam Summer Sale too!
Daily and Weekly challenges are the biggest addition to this build, adding the first community activity into the game. Make your best attempt at completing the challenge run, spawned into a specific level seed with a matching set of items and mutations. When played through Steam your run score will be uploaded to the leaderboard, along with rewarding you research points that will be granted on the following life based on your performance.
The bestiary was also added, allowing you to collect log entries that give you more background information on each faction and displays each enemies strengths and weaknesses. The current patch only includes Prism bestiary entries while we test out the system and finish creating the other entries, but the other factions will be added in future patches.
Many balance tweaks have been made to enemies, weapons, and mutations after playtesting with the new difficulty types. More weapons should feel viable as primary sources of damage now, and enemies will feel a bit more lumbering but with more potent attacks. A lot of improvements were made to some of the older levels in the game as well expanding their terrain, updating their combat and loot balance, and adding a few new randomizations to explore. Levels 1 and 2 were the main focus for this patch, and some similar improvements will be made to levels 3 and 4 eventually.
We’re already well into development on the 2.3 content patch, Corporate Intervention, and will have news on its release in the coming weeks. Until then, check out the full patch notes for 2.2 below to get a full breakdown of the new content, balance tweaks, and fixes released today.
Blighted Stars
New Features
Daily Challenge Runs Added - Compete for the top spot on the leaderboard in a pre-set seed with a specific set of mutations.
Weekly Challenge Runs Added - Compete for the top spot on the leaderboard in a pre-set seed with a specific set of items and mutations.
Difficulty Settings Added - Select base difficulty from options on the Main Menu. Affects the amount of enemies and champions that spawn, the spawn chance of items, and damage taken by the player.
Bestiary Codex Tab Added - Collect and view codex logs on enemies encountered in the game. Learn their strengths and weaknesses and read Freja's descriptions of their combat abilities. Prism enemy entries added this patch.
New Enemies
Uncharted: Mirage - A mysterious lifeform recently discovered by Prism, inbetween their relentless melee assault they can replicate themselves to create weaker copies to assist their attack.
Uncharted: Flauros Bloat - Either the nesting pod of the Flauros creatures or a failed attempt to forge a new one, the Bloats float slowly towards their target and release a group of Flauros Enemies when burst.
Prism: Golden Security Droid and Golden Containment Droid - Afflicted by a curse in the Flauros Realm, the droids continued to function after being turned into solid gold with emerald flame imbued abilities.
New Items
Passive: Celestial Clover - So named for the supposedly lucky flora that grew back on Earth. While the subject’s provenance is less clear than its namesake, it does appear that its effects are substantially more concrete. Increases Luck by 100.
Passive: Gravitational Relocator - PRISM employees assigned this task should locate the highest point in their surroundings and – with the Relocator in their possession – attempt to jump or fall from it. If working correctly, the subject will activate prior to hitting the ground, replacing the Drop Drone and safely teleporting the user back to their most recent stable location.
Weapon: Helix Repeater - Subject fires a unique interlocking double projectile. Despite the relatively low damage per hit on offer, it manages to remain a viable weapon in lower-intensity confrontations thanks to a high-capacity magazine and very rapid fire rate.
Weapon: Helix Overcharger - Subject acts like a semi-automatic shotgun, firing a wide spread of projectiles in quick succession, but suffers from a prolonged reload time that could limit its use in high-tempo situations.
Auxiliary: Laser Port - After careful study and with considerable trepidation, the R&D team was able to dismantle an inactive specimen of the ball-like ‘Icosatron’. On use, a concentrated laser beam fires forwards for 6 seconds.
Auxiliary: Crystal Matrix - Upon activation, subject emits an unidentified energy signal, passing through and altering the cellular structure of all liquids found within its radius in a process akin to crystallisation. All nearby targets are crystalized on use.
Passive: Golden Scorched Choker - Imbued with golden power, the Golden Scorched choker releases Flauros when damage is taken by the bearer and also has increased health regeneration.
Auxiliary: Golden Menhir - Summoned pillar is solid gold, dealing more damage on impact and dropping an item when destroyed.
Auxiliary: Golden Enflamed Heart - On activation the heart now sends out a giant flame wave, damaging and applying Fire to enemies in a large radius.
Pickup: Remote Hack - In the unlikely event of a malfunction, the Remote Hack scans for nearby droids, halting any commands currently in their work queues, before allowing manual overrides. On use, Hack a nearby droid to fight for you for a short duration.
Passive: Hacking Drone - The Hacking Drone orbits its user, continuously scanning all nearby wireless signals for a likely target. Once found, the drone brute forces its way into the local network, taking control of anything it finds inside. Orbits the player and hacks one nearby droid to fight for you.
New Levels
Act 1: Telemite Mini-Maw challenge zones added - Enter into a random challenge zone by jumping into the mini-maw and collect a bonus piece of loot if you survive, including the Golden Flauros Realm and Mirage Labyrinth. Entrances to the challenge zones have been added to various Level 1 and 2 Landmarks, along with inside the Level 4 Mirage Mega Labyrinth.
Level 1: New Telemite Maw Mirage Labyrinth zone added - Inhabited by the new Mirage enemy, the labyrinths hold bonus loot if you can outlast the Mirage’s duplicating swarms
New Level 1 Start Area - Simplified the start level and added a chance for 1-2 crates to spawn giving an early pickup, grenade mod, or 1 handed weapon if lucky. The wrecked ship pods will return in patch 2.3 in new Landmark areas.
Act 1 and 2 Prism Loot Choice Randomizers Added - Added loot choice randomizers to Prism Loot levels, sometimes giving you the option to choose between 2 Equipments
Level 1 - Updated Telemite Maw Shipping Overflow variant with a larger and more challenging shipping zone
Act 1 - Updated Prism Loot Excavation and Turret Bridge levels with improved layouts and encounters
Level 1 - Updated Hydro Outpost terrain and added a new loot entrance fortress more fitting of the Hydro theme.
Level 1 - Updated Tritoraptor Nest landmark terrain to be more condensed and have larger combat areas
Level 1 - Updated Excavation Outpost terrain, expanding upper combat zone and updating level variants
Level 2 - Updated Excavation Quarry terrain and condensed entrances
Many other miscellaneous level fixes and updates
Balance
Increased DNA Mod drop chance on small and medium enemies
Increased DNA drop chance on medium enemies slightly (All types)
DNA mutation chance percentages increased: Base - 60%, Fortified - 40%, Volatile - 80%, Paramount - 60%
DNA Mod: Reload Speed - Changed from 2x to -15%
Enemy: Icosatron - Decreased duration of lasers to 3 seconds, decreased cooldown between laser bursts, added laser burst telegraph ring, and tweaked movement values to make more agile and able to roll up ramps.
Enemy: Security Droid - Increased range of sonic shot attack and tweaked their attack values to make it more likely for them to prioritize completing a 3 shot attack. Reduced rotation speed to make dodging against them more effective.
Enemy: Containment Droids - Increased movement speed, lowered rotation speed, increased cooldown between sonic shot bursts, increased grenade cooldown, and decreased melee cooldown.
Enemy: Tesla Droid MK1 - Increased cooldown of tesla charge ability, changed charge to only have 1 quicker burst instead of 2, and increased readability of charge effects.
Enemy: Tesla Droid MK2 - Added shock to melee ability, increased movement speed, increased damage and range of charged Tesla Shot, increased abort range of Tesla Shot, increased Tesla Grenade cooldown.
Enemy: Tesla Droid MK3 - Added Melee ability that shocks on hit, reduced cooldown of Tesla Pulse Shot bursts and increased fire rate, increased telegraph time of Tesla Strike teleport ability and improved effects, and increased Tesla Dome cooldown so the enemy will fire more Tesla Pulse bursts before doming.
Enemy: Pyro Droid MK3 - Increased damage, speed, and knockback of flame cannon projectiles, but decreased amount of projectiles shot. Increased effectiveness of flame pod waves.
Enemy: Flauros - Increased speed and distance of dodge, but reduced homing.
Enemy: Flauros Evoker - Increased speed, increased cooldown of Flame Spit and Teleport.
Enemy: Firefly - Increased speed of basic movement and charge, increased cooldown of charge.
Enemy: Prime - Removed Poison Touch ability, increased base movement and charge speed, increased radius of Flash ability.
Enemy: Drone - Decreased Acid Spray cooldown and increased range, increased Burrow cooldown. Should now spray 2 times before burrowing.
Enemy: Alpha - Reduced max health, increased Acid Bomb cooldown and increased projectile speed, increased move speed.
Enemy: Ward - Increased cooldown of Burrow ability, decreased cooldown of Scuttle ability. The Ward will now have a longer period of scuttling inbetween quill spray attacks, giving it less invulnerable time.
Enemy: Warden - Increased movement speed, increased scuttle speed and duration.
Enemy: Tritoraptor Patriarch - Increased melee swipe range, increased radius of Smash ability, and increased speed. It should land its attacks more reliably now but still be dodge-able with good timing.
Enemy: Chilopodrae - Reduced max health, adjusted size of reflect and damage hitboxes to make it easier to damage when attacking from the side and back
Weapon: Starborn Pistol and Snowball (Variant) - Increased projectile speed, increased damage slightly, and increased fire rate on base version to make it more effective with the lowest level shot.
Weapon: Starborn Sniper - Increased damage of base shot and of splinters, making it more viable as a single target weapon and more effective at clearing groups if charged fully.
Weapon: Starborn Shotgun and Fractal Death (Variant) - Increased damage of base shot and splinters, and increased max ammo.
Weapon: Hailshard Condensor - Increased hailshard damage and reduced the charge fire time, allowing it to be fired more quickly and two shot most small enemies now.
Weapon: Hailshard Generator - Added Frozen debuff to the fully charged Hailshard explosion, increased explosion damage for all shard levels, and increased amount of small shards released from the level 2 Shard explosion.
Weapon: Quill Revolver and Late Bloomer (Variant) - Increased damage of base quill shots
Weapon: Globule Lobber and Illuminatus (Variant) - Increased globule explode damage, and reduced detonate time of base version to make more effective as a primary weapon
Weapon: Globule Cannon and Rapture's Emissary (Variant) - Reduced charge time, reduced detonate time, increased globule explode damage, and removed third wave of globules from the base verison. The changes make filling a specific area with the globules simpler rather than spraying them over the entire arena and damaging yourself.
Weapon: Magrail Launcher - Increased reload time per shot, decreased fire rate slightly
Weapon: Rapid Rocket Launcher - Increased max ammo, adjusted rocket burst timings, added slight homing to mini rockets, and reduced missile damage.
Weapon: Rocket Launcher and Splitshot - Reduced missile damage, changed to single longer reload instead of per shot.
Weapon: Flame Cannon - Increased base shot damage, improved shot hit detection to prevent projectile stopping too early often when skimming over the ground, increased charge time, and added charge telegraph effect.
Grenade: Globule Grenade - Increased base globule explode damage to make it more likely for secondary globules to finish off small targets, removed third wave of globules.
Grenade: Lumens - Increased explosion damage
Grenade: Rotneedle Popper - Increased speed and homing power of rotneedles, making them much more effective at sticking into enemies.
Pickup: Quill Spears - Increased spear damage
Mutations: Stat Tweaks - Adjusted the statistics bonuses on many mutation sets, unifying them more and adding new bonuses to many mutations that had none previously. Bonuses on Back/Chest slots were generally raised and minor bonuses added to feet and arm mutations. Head stat bonuses were mostly removed.
Mutation: Gaseous Sack - Tweaked boost values and stamina drains to make climbing with the boosts more useful. Boosts can now be chained back to back to climb higher, or held down to float for a longer duration.
Mutation: Aerodynamic Tail - Increased Speed bonus when stamina is drained
Added Act 1 Excavation Boss music (Currently enabled on all boss fights)
Added new MYCE and Mini-MYCE explosion sounds
Added Containment Lockdown arena VO sounds to applicable Prism arenas
Added new Hydro Dam Drain VO sounds
Added Solus Stomach ambient sfx
Misc
Enemies - Tweaked many enemies movement values and ability cooldowns/ranges. Most enemies will feel a bit heavier as a result of the movement changes, but their main abilities will overall perform more reliably.
Lowered boost values on various travel mechanics to prevent over boosting in many areas
Updated many weapon and enemy ability charging effects with a thicker ring to increase readability.
Updated Shipping Container trap enemy spawners to fix not spawning and spawn in pairs of more varied enemies
Added Swampspore fruit packs that randomly spawn on Swamp Ferns, allowing you to shoot them off for a few health pickups similar to the Succulent trees
Updated Swampspore Lights to be pop-able, breaking the light and throwing out a few Swampspore health pickups
Removed random swampspores spawned in pools of water
Updated debuff descriptions to more usefully describe the debuff's function when viewed on the Tab Screen.
Updated tab screen model preview to more accurately center more object types (Some may appear small until we can discover and fix them)
Added a blink on the Stamina bar when there's not enough for a melee/dodge
Optimizations
Optimized Prism Shipping Containers to reduce triangle and vertex counts in areas dense with them
More Audio optimizations to reduce CPU and memory used
Garbage Collection optimizations
Improved performance with large triggers used for music and weather switches
Reduced amount of gibs spawned by enemies.
Fixes
Fixed Camera Zooms being multiplied a bit higher than intended
Fixed Gaseous Sack mutation boosting way too high
Fixed Solus Guardians passive drone being flammable, causing them to stay infinitely lit on fire
Fixed some enemies causing a global screenshake if left unkilled
Fixed some bullet types reflecting when they shouldn't
Fixed Icosatron enemy lasers leaving behind an invisible impact effect that damaged the player if walked over.
Fixed camera drifting when the UI was opened during a screenshake
Fixed health bars not disappearing during some enemies abilities (Flauros Evoker Teleport, Tesla MK3 teleport, etc...)
Fixed pickup duration cursor indicator lagging behind the crosshair
Fixed many Prism enemies not increasing their movement or animation speed when the Overclock champion mod was applied
Fixed some scuttle and strafe abilities not using the correct layer, allowing enemies to strafe over pits
June Development Update
Hello everyone,
We wanted to post a quick development update since it’s been a while since a patch has been released. We’re still hard at work on the game, but the addition of a few new features to 2.2 have required a lot of testing and iteration to get right and we want to make sure they’re working smoothly for the next patch release. Our current plan is to release content patch 2.2 on the week of June 24th.
Above is a screenshot of Freja encountering one of the new Uncharted species on the outer edge of their labyrinth. Patch 2.2 will be one of the largest content patches to date including 12 new items, 5 new enemies, new bonus loot challenge telemite maw zones, and updates to many of the current levels. It also will add two new features that we’ve been testing for a few weeks now, Weekly Challenges and the Bestiary.
The Weekly Challenge lets you compete against other players in a run on a specific level seed with a set of pre-determined items and mutations, giving you a chance to try a wide range of powerful themed loadouts. Completing the challenge will upload your score to the leaderboard and reward you with Research Points based on how well you performed.
Bestiary entries will have a chance to drop when you kill a specific enemy, giving you a closer look at their abilities, weaknesses, and strengths. Patch 2.2 will only include bestiary entries for Prism enemies, but the other factions will be added in future patches giving you a tactical advantage and filling in the lore behind each faction more.
We’ve also begun working on content for patch 2.3 and beyond while patch 2.2 is being completed, so the release of those patches will be a bit quicker. Here’s a look at another upcoming enemy, a tanky transmitter drone that if left untouched will repair all nearby Prism droids.
Thanks everyone for their patience while we finalize the new features in 2.2, and we’ll see you in a few weeks for the 2.2 patch release!
Beacon Patch 2.12
Patch 2.12 adjusts the cooldowns and balance of most Auxiliary items, making them more useful as consistent attacks. Further tweaks will be made if necessary to make Aux items more exciting to find and make use of, and in the upcoming 2.2 and 2.3 patches a handful of new Aux attack items will be added to make auxiliaries a bigger part of the combat system. New audio tweaks and optimizations have been made as well, giving large water forms and hydro areas a better ambient soundscape along with improving audio memory usage.
Balance
Weapons: Assault Rifle and Swift Arbiter - Increased max ammo count
Reduced many attack auxiliary items to a 20 second cooldown, and many utility auxiliary items to a 40 second cooldown
Pickups - Set all minor pickup buffs to have a 20 second duration, meaning an increase for most buff pickups and a nerf for a couple
Auxiliary: Barrage - Reduced damage and explosion range slightly
Auxiliary: Bonespike - Reduced damage (Will still one shot small and some medium enemies)
Auxiliary: Rebound Beam - Tweaked laser boomerang speed to make it fly further and be easier to double-hit enemies with
Auxiliary: Tesla Shield - Reduced shield drain rate, increased delay time before shield begins regenerating
DNA: Aux Cooldown Skill Mod - Reduced to -5 seconds to work with new cooldown balance
DNA: Pickup Duration Skill Mod - Reduced to +5 seconds
Misc
Tweaked gravity and speed of vertical boost travel objects more (Let us know if you run into a rotspore or swamp bubble that boosts too high)
Improved Spider Drone enemy drop with more delay once in position and a shadow of the droid where it will land.
Audio
Added new audio system to merge nearby ambient sounds together, leaving less duplicate ambient sounds and allowing us to give areas more accurate ambient soundscapes
Added Weakness sound effect when an enemy is damaged by a damage type they are weak to
Updated waterfall sounds to have more powerful waterfall sounds around large water terrain
Converted all in-game music to mp3 to reduce memory usage greatly
Fixes
Fixed a few broken nightshroud bouncer boosts discovered in 2.1 levels
Fixed Tritoraptor Crown mutation not giving speed buff for the right duration
Fixed Tesla Hologram MK3 not granting debuff when damaged by tesla damage
Beacon Patch 2.11
2.11 fixes some issues from build 2.1 and fixes an issue with Accuracy since a statistics update in a previous patch. We've started tweaking the player's gravity a bit more as well to make using boosts and falling a bit smoother, and will likely update it again in the next patch if there's any feedback on how this build feels.
Accuracy: Tweaked accuracy values on many weapons and reduced player base accuracy stat to make accuracy changes more noticeable (Was accidentally set to max so accuracy was never affected in game. Base accuracy on many weapons will be worse now, but accuracy items will be more effective)
Pickup: Focus Injector - Added new 2x Reload Speed buff while active (On top of accuracy increase)
Weapon: Flak Revolver and Crowd Pleaser - Increased max ammo, decreased damage, increased reload time, decreased fire rate (No longer semi-auto)
Weapon: Starborn Sniper - Increased max splinters when fully charged, decreased charge time, decreased base bullet damage, increased fire rate
Weapon: Tesla Rifle - Increased tesla bounce range, decreased shot damage loss per bounce, decreased base shot damage slightly
Misc
Tweaked player’s gravity during boosts/falls to make increase to max fall speed more gradual. This makes landing after boosting off of geysers and rotspores easier and will make some jumps more forgiving.
Audio
Added new Karnak sounds (Walking, drinking, and death)
Added new Chilopodrae movement and attack sounds
Optimized audio priorities and other audio properties on many objects
Fixes
Various level fixes
Fixed level 4 not generating rarely since patch 2.1
Fixed Level 5 start elevator being sticky in the middle when walked over
Fixed rotspore needles spawned by Rotneedle Balloons not exploding after latching to player
Fixed duplicate explosives being created from reflect scripts
Fixed player death UI sounds not playing correctly often
Fixed missing materials on many item previews
Fixed debuffs applying to the player from their own explosives
Fixed Stockpile waypoints in pocket worlds appearing on maps and not disappearing when neared
Fixed Drop Pod warning sound not playing correctly
Undying Brood Patch 2.1
Undying Brood is released, the first major content patch for Beacon! The planet’s autochthonous inhabitants take drastic action to ensure their survival. Along with new enemies, mutations, items, and levels, we’ve added Enemy Health Bars to this build after community requests to implement them. We were against having health bars in the earlier stages of development, but after testing them out they greatly improve readability of combat and help you prioritize targets more easily. If you prefer not to have them there’s an option to disable them as well.
More improvements to combat readability have been made as well such as notifiers when an enemy is strong or weak to the damage type being dealt to them and improvements to critical hit readability, along with balance tweaks to many weapons and items.
This patch took a bit longer to release than we’d hoped after some delays to focus on optimization and other post release improvements, but it’s also ended up becoming one of our largest content patches to date with more level content than any previous patch. The next couple of content patches should be a bit quicker to release hopefully. Patch 2.2 will be our next focus, including new Uncharted content and the Bestiary screen.
Undying Brood
New Enemies
Chilopodrae - An evolved form of the Chilopod found in cavernous native areas. It charges forwards with a pair of reflective bulwarks facing forwards, knocking back anything in its path.
Karnak - A rare large species found only on the surface of the planet, they will idle passively in the background drinking water.
Champion Mod: Polluted - The enemy is afflicted by Prism's Pollution, causing them to burst on death and apply the Pollution debuff if hit
New Mutations
Ballooned Flesh - A strange sense of rushing water begins to build in your lower back, as an unseen pocket of flesh begins to bulge fills with an unknown liquid. Gives +80 Health, +40 Resistance, -40 Speed, and doubles the stamina cost to dodge.
Reflective Bulwark - An indescribable feeling descends down the length of your arm, as though the very bones are thickening beneath your skin. Melee attacks now push back enemies and reflect projectiles for a short window.
Springy Claws - You feel an intense cramping sensation in both of your feet, as they begin to constrict themselves inward. Your dodge roll now completes twice as fast.
New Items
Auxiliary: Nightshroud Launcher - The fruiting body of a Nightshroud plant, activating it places a Nightshroud Bouncer for you to bounce vertically off of
Grenade: Nightshroud Bouncers -Juvenile examples of the Nightshroud plant exhibiting the same extreme elasticity present in more mature members of its species, your grenades bounce off of enemies and the world.
Grenade: Rotneedle Popper - Small improvised devices combining the naturally-occurring Rotspore needles with a home-made explosive, your grenades explode on impact into a cluster of Rotspore Needles.
Passive: Rotvine Ammo - Ammunition seemingly augmented with the undeveloped seedlings of the native Rotvine, your shots have a chance to root enemies in place.
Pickup: Rotneedle Bombs - A device of unknown origin that appears to repurpose the sharp needles of the Rotspore plant into a semi-reusable explosive, releasing a large cluster of Rotspore Needles when activated. Has 3 Charges.
Pickup: Flydrop Core - The semi-translucent internals of the Flydrop fauna, giving immediate Stamina recovery for 120 seconds when used.
Pickup: Crab Legs - The darkly sweet leg meat taken from small crab-like animals native to the planet’s forests and streams, each use regenerates a small amount of Health and Stamina when used. Has 3 Charges.
Pickup: Wild Feast - An apparently purposefully prepared platter of meats and fruits harvested from the local environment, it grants Health regen for 120 seconds after use
Pickup: Quill Spears - Spear-like weapons, constructed by hand from the quills found on certain subsets of the Solus genus, you throw a large Quill Spear on use. Has 5 Charges.
New Levels
Level 1 - Rotspore Hive Landmark - A large forest spire covered in Rotspore Fungus, tread carefully when bunches of Rotneedle Balloons are present.
Level 2 - Untamed Sanctuary Landmark - Explore one of the last remaining Native dominated areas on the surface of Kovus-18, home to all Native species including giant Karnaks on rare occasions.
Level 2 - Nesting Islands Landmark - A new Solus dominated area, Intestinal Cannons propel you around the egg infested spires.
Level 4 - Irradiated Sanctuary Landmark - Polluted by Prism's industrial operations, the Native lifeforms near the Prism Vault are being driven out of their territory but still fight for what remains.
New Act 1 Chilopod trap level tiles - Fight the Chilopods in a small cavern platform and collect either Fungi or Shipwreck loot at the end of the arena
New Act 2 Native Loot Dungeons added - Scavenge the inner cavern of a mega spire
Updated Act 1 Chilopod Spire Landmarks, improving the terrain flow adjusting the layout to make use of Nightshroud Bouncers for traveling
Updated Act 1 Native Loot levels, adding more areas to scavenge and improving the combat scenarios
New Traps and Travel Mechanics
Stormcell: Wastefall- A large barrel of Pollution created by Prism's operations is released from a drone in the sky, filling an area with a pool of Pollution for a while. Appears on Level 4 in the Polluted base weather type.
Trap: Rotneedle Balloon - Floats idly around and bursts into a cluster of homing rotspore needles when damaged
Travel: Rotpit Launcher - Swallows the player and spits them out, flinging them to a new location
Travel: Nightshroud Mound - When touched bounces the player to a new location
UI
Added Enemy Health Bars - Appear after enemies are hit and tinted to faction of enemy
Added Enemy Weakness/Strength notifiers - Appears when an enemy is being damaged by a damage type they are weak or strong to
Updated Debuff warning notifier to use diamond for alert effect
Uncharted Faction Color changed from red to purple
Updated a handful of item and mutation names
Balance
Enemies - Raised the base health of many Small and Medium tier enemies by 10-20
Enemies - Adjusted the base armor weaknesses and strengths on many enemies
Enemy: Chilopod - Increased speed of roll and increased armor reflect chance
Pickup: Emergency Override - Buffed damage and increased radius to make more useful for its rarity
Weapons: Increased Semi-Auto Hold rate of fire
Weapon: Impeder - Increased max ammo and added a larger explosive acid pustule fired on critical shots
Weapon: Rotneedle Blaster - Increased max ammo, increased bullet spread and wave width, increased bullets per shot, and reduced ammo regeneration speed
Weapon: Rotspore Repeater and Seeker - Increased homing power on both weapon's projectiles, increased rotspore explosion arm time
Weapon: Starborn Pistol and Snowball - Increased base shot damage, decreased charge time, and decreased bonus charge bullet damage (Still the highest damage bullet in the game when charged)
Mutation: Rending Claw - Replaced melee function with new low stamina and low cooldown melee. One-handed weapon restriction removed.
Audio
Added new Laser Redirector Prism sounds for beam, trap, and loot variants
Added new Prism Conveyor Belt sounds
Increased max audio players to prevent sounds from clipping in and out
Mementos
Added new Native mementos detailing more of their species interaction with Prism on Kovus
Add new clone dog tag mementos
Options
Added option to disable Enemy Health Bars
Moved Video options to new tab
Optimizations
Optimized and updated more explosion effects
Optimized lighting on more objects
Optimized audio on many enemies and removed unnecessary idle sounds
Fixes
Enemies latched when you fall off of the level will now die
Fixed loading screen music cutting off shortly after starting
Fixed Reactive Flesh Mutation breaking player statistics occasionally when the players size and stats were changed
Fixed missing mining lasers in levels
Fixed Chilopods not rolling off of cliff edges correctly
Fixed hailshard drone exploding on certain environment objects
Fixed DNA being set to critical at 100 instead of only greater than 100
Fixed Keypad Locked sounds not playing
Fixed Palier Crown head mutation missing from mutation drop list
Fixed some Prism stockpiles locked by laser fences trapping the player in if bypassed with an item like the Rotspore Booster(Will now disappear if you manage to pass the laser gate)
Beacon Patch 2.05
Patch 2.05 is out, adding one final set of optimizations before we switch focus to finishing patch 2.1. Hopefully the game will run much more smoothly for the majority of players after the last few patches! This of course isn’t the end of the optimizations either, and we’ll continue to keep an eye out for any areas that are performing badly to improve in future patches.
Balance
Weapon: Flamethrower - Increased delay before regen ammo begins
Optimization
Optimized more lighting on Containment Chambers (Should greatly improve FPS in Containment Fortresses and Level 5)
Optimized enemy and player Flamethrower effects
Optimized and improved Tesla pulse ball effects
Optimized and improved Sonic Shot particle effects (Basic droid attacks)
Optimized and improved droid low health FX
Optimized Prism champion mod effects
Optimized and improved Tesla MK1, MK2, and MK3 droid particles
Optimized and improved Pyro MK1, MK2, and MK3 droid particles
Optimized and improved Mining, Tesla, and Pyro Spider Droid particles
Optimized many explosion and impact particles
Beacon Patch 2.04
Patch 2.04 is released, adding more optimizations and a few balance tweaks! This build should have a noticeable increase in performance for most players of 20-40 FPS in many areas.
Balance
Reduced Blood Altar use from 50 to 40 health to prevent instant kill if you have the Scorched Choker
Added secret highlights to more objects for the Leg Feelers mutation
Mutation: Gaseous Sack - Increased initial boost and vertical boost speeds to make more useful
Weapons: Quill Shotgun and Thorn Dealer (Variant) - Increased delay before regenerative reload begins
Weapons: Stygian Hunter and Stygian Hammer weapons - Increased reload time
Optimization
Cleaned Menu and Level 1 Start areas to give increased performance
Disabled shadows on many light sources that weren't largely noticeable
Optimized Prism Spider Droid and Shipping Drone light usage
Optimized Shipping Container and Containment Chamber light usage
Optimized fire effects and lighting
Optimized many champion enemy particle effects
Optimized many death explosion particle effects
Optimized weather particle effects
Optimized and improved geyser particles
Fixes
Fixed Effigy core material
Fixed weapons aiming at nearby player drones instead of enemies in some cases