We hope this message finds you well. This is a tough time for everyone, and our team is grateful to report that we are safe and healthy with our families at home. We’re still able to operate, so we’ll keep doing our jobs. If we can provide a bit of entertainment for some of you out there, we see that as doing our part.
Our 4th content update for Don’t Die, Minerva! launches today, Friday March 27th, for Steam PC and Xbox One, and should be available by the time you read this.
As we announced back in January, we have exciting plans on our roadmap for Minerva, and today we’re rolling out one of the biggest new features: Abilities.
Until now, Minerva has only directly wielded one category of weapon, flashlights, and has otherwise relied on her Friendlies to battle ghosts. In the interest of adding depth and variety to combat, we’ve created 5 Abilities (including a default melee Flashlight Smash) that Minerva can perform in the midst of combat. At intervals you’ll find special new rooms in the dungeon that will allow you to swap out your equipped Ability and try something new.
Speaking of combat, we’ve also made some major changes on that front. Not only have we done a great deal of balancing, tweaking, and fixing, but we’ve completely overhauled our spawning system and added a whole new class of enemies to the mix.
As we’ve said before, our original vision for the game was to imagine what it would be like if you could compress the entire Diablo experience into a single hour (well, maybe two hours). Of course there are implications in terms of loot delivery and game structure (hence the rogue-lite approach), but we realized that we were falling a bit short in terms of combat feel. We want a big part of the fun to be putting together a build that allows you to smash your way through packs of enemies, and have the satisfaction of seeing massive carnage on the screen.
We’ve done a great deal of work to try to achieve that feel. The result is definitely a milestone along the way, not the final result, but we like where it is heading and we hope you will too!
There’s a lot more in this update, including a heap of new loot affixes, bug fixes, and general polish. You can read about it below. We can’t wait to hear what you think about it, so let us know on Twitter!
New Stuff!
Minerva’s Abilities
Flashlight Smash (default)
Baseball Bat (Physical)
Hoop of Fire (Flame)
Electro-leap (Voltaic)
Hockey Freeze (Ice)
New Fodder Enemies
Eyeball
Skull
Book
Wax
Rat
Roach
New Enemy Art:
Ranged Shielder (replaces Shielded Sheet Ghost)
Melee Shielder (replaces Shielded Ghoul)
New Enemy Death Ragdoll System New proximity-based enemy spawning system New Affixes
Bonus Crit Chance Vs Burning
Bonus Crit Multiplier Vs Burning
Bonus Crit Chance Vs Chilled
Bonus Crit Multiplier Vs Chilled
Guaranteed Crit On Frozen
Coin Spawn On Bomb Explosion
Mod Spawn On Frozen Shatter
Increased Legendary Friendlies
NoFriendlyDeployCost
Bonus Flashlight Damage From Ice Equipment
Guaranteed Flashlight Crit After Dash
Bonus Voltaic Damage While Moving
Flashlight Attack Speed When Stationary
Reduced Damage From Elites And Bosses
Increased Damage When Full Health
Guaranteed Crit When Low Health
Balance
Room count per dungeon level revised
Loot tables revised
Vendor drops revised
Essence unlock costs and unlock order revised
Fewer legendaries
More variety of treasure rooms – not guaranteed to get 3 items from every treasure room
Reduced enemy damage across the board
Rebalanced enemy health based on their roles
Reduced likelihood of getting gear that is above the current dungeon floor’s level, removed the chance to get gear below the current dungeon floor’s level
Reduced overall drop rates of gear, changed likelihood of various types of loot depending on the source
Tuned damage for all flashlights and friendlies
Extended base lifespan of the Bee friendly
Tuned energy consumption for flashlights
Reduced time it takes for enemies to spawn and become active
Reduced range of most friendlies and flashlights
Disabled touch damage for most enemies
Increased health drops
Increased Essence Crystal drops
Polish and Improvements
Adjusted lighting schemes for levels 2 and 3 to make them more distinct
Removed mouse-based click-to-move navigation – LMB now executes Minerva’s Ability.
Visual pass on Voltaic-themed rooms
Visual pass on Ice-themed rooms
Lighting pass on Flame-themed rooms
Reduced health bar size based on enemy size
Revised behavior for melee enemies to keep them in closer proximity of Minerva (to make her melee abilities more viable)
Elevator doors that lead to a boss fight now have a special visual designation
Ram Bat now has dangly legs
Player movement speed is reduced while firing flashlight
New boss battle music
New props and flooring
Bug Fixes
Fixed affix descriptions not wrapping in inventory
Fixed a bug with affixes applied to Physical Necklaces
Fixed a bug where some enemies could get stuck if they didn’t perceive Minerva immediately upon spawning
Fix for crashing on creep movement component moving through doors
Fix for camera lagging between rooms
Fix for bad camera plane assignment when quickly hopping between rooms
Fix for enemies automatically acquiring Minerva as a target regardless of their perception range
Content Update #3 is LIVE! (rev. 4492)
Happy Friday Everybody!
We got the update wrapped up faster than expected, so we’ve launched it today rather than holding it until next Tuesday as we originally planned. This update is now live on Steam and Xbox One.
If you missed it, you can see the announcement, along with our Early Access / Game Preview roadmap on our blog post.
Here are the full notes for the patch. As we mentioned in the previous post, this is a more modest update because we’re in the midst of working on some big new features that aren’t quite ready to be launched.
New Stuff!
New Enemy: Pumpkin - replaces Spread Ghost
New Enemy: Amalgam - replaces Sprinkler Ghost.
New feature for the dynamic dungeon generator - allows each floor of the house to be visually distinct sub-biomes. Includes some new props and breakable items. This will be expanded over time and eventually applied to the Gardens and the Crypts.
Balance
Reduced Dervish whirl duration from 4.0s to 2.5s, slightly reduced the exhaust duration.
Bee’s energy consumption rate has been reduced, extending its default lifetime from 3.0s to 5.0s.
Dr. Mendalots interaction UI element no longer bobs up and down.
Polish and Improvements
Improved Dervish model, more distinct from Mother.
Audio improvements for Cauldron rooms.
Audio pass for the Fly.
UI now displays correct icons if you’ve remapped controls (PC only).
Refactored energy regen delay affix so that it displays a negative value as expected in order to communicate clearly.
Attribute bonus previews have been reworked to provide accurate previews when equipping items.
The final boss no longer spawns a crystal unless there is a new difficulty level to unlock.
Enemy health bars are now positioned dynamically to prevent visibility issues when scaling.
Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug where the HUD would not update to reflect reduced hit points if you removed a Physical mod gem.
Fixed a bug where Dragon was not benefitting from movement speed bonuses.
Fixed a bug where the key would reappear in elevator key rooms if you used the fountain teleporter after retrieving the key and returned to the room.
Fixed a bug where projectile flashlights misbehaved in elevators.
Fixed a bug with inconsistent wording for chest interactions.
Fixed a bug where game credit only triggered when beating the game on very hard difficulty.
Fixed a bug where poison grates were not toggling on in some challenge rooms.
Fixed camera behavior bugs in recently-added challenge rooms.
Fixed some bugs related to floor grates not turning off correctly in boss battles.
Fixed a bug where the heavy flash gun’s projectiles would disappear instead of playing their expiration effect.
Fixed a bug where the player was able to move during the fountain interaction cinema.
Fixed a bug where bomb flinger hazard was launching multiple bombs unintentionally.
Fixed a bug where flashlight click SFX would play when triggering NPC dialogue.
Fixed a bug where elites were not scaling correctly, preventing their hit boxes from being accurate.
Fixed a bug where dining table objects were not blocking projectiles.
Fixed a bug where Slug Spawner elites were not using an offset when spawning Slugs.
Fixed a bug where enemies that were Bombed a second time did not show the orbiting bomb.
Fixed a bug in the dungeon generator that could lead to doorways that did not unlock or led to incorrect rooms, which could block progression.
Content Update #2 Is LIVE! (rev. 4377 Patch Notes)
Happy New Year Everyone!
Despite the hustle and bustle of the holidays, we’ve still managed to put together an update that we’re very proud of. In the month since launch, our vision for our Early Access / Game Preview roadmap has grown clearer by the day. We’re going to share more details about the roadmap with you shortly.
Our overall goal with Don’t Die, Minerva! Is to take the leveling experience you would find in a game like Diablo III, which would take several hours for an average player, and compress it into a run that lasts just a little over an hour. We want to capture all of the excitement of unlocking new abilities and constructing new builds with legendary gear into a bite-sized play session.
For that to work, things like pacing and loot tables are incredibly important. And so a big focus of this update is on pacing and loot drops. Minerva isn’t a huge game, but it does have a lot of variety to offer and we found that it could be slow to get there. So we’ve sped up the pace and increased the amount of loot you’ll find, including guaranteed Legendaries on nearly every floor of the dungeon.
We’ve also focused on the variety of rooms and enemies you’ll experience along the way, and we’ve done lots of bug fixes and quality of life improvements to boot.
There’s much more to come, but we think we’re moving in the right direction and we’re more excited than ever to grow and improve the game. Remember: Your feedback is invaluable so please share with us! Links are available on www.xaviant.com.
More Variety
New Enemy: Fly (Replaces the Ram Bat)
New Enemy: Banshee (Replaces Rapid-Fire Ghost)
Added 6 New Challenge Rooms
Challenge Rooms now appear more frequently on each Floor
New Challenge Room Hazard: Bomb Flinger
New Challenge Room Hazard: Pendulum
Improved Pacing The game moves faster, which feels better and allows players to experience more of the variety the game has to offer.
Reduced the average number of rooms per floor.
Increased the number of Challenge Rooms per floor.
More consistent number of Cauldron Rooms per floor
Fewer rooms means fewer enemies to fight per floor, increased the chance for gear to drop from enemies and small chests to compensate
More, Better Loot We want players to have an exciting run from start to finish. That means ensuring that plenty of loot drops, including Legendary items. By increasing the quantity and quality of gear that drops, we empower the player, expose them to more of the wide range of loot available, and give them more meaningful choices as they construct their build for each run.
Large chests have a more random selection of gear, guarantee at least one Epic and one Legendary item.
Large Treasure Chests rooms are now guaranteed on the 2nd floor.
Medium chests have more variety of gear and guarantee Rare items at a minimum.
Small chests no longer drop currency, offer more variety of gear.
Vendor table loot lists adjusted to guarantee improved rarity.
Reduced cost of rerolling the Vendor’s stock.
Reduced the value of recycling items to compensate for increased amount of gear that now drops.
Quality of Life We made several changes to streamline the experience and help communicate how systems work.
Mods already in your inventory are now automatically equipped to a new Friendly or Flashlight when it is picked up
You can now unequip Mods using a new interface in the inventory
When equipping a Mod or Item, the effect of the associated Attribute is included as part of the preview to help you make more informed decisions and better communicate the Attribute system.
Stat previews when equipping a Flashlight or Friendly now assume that existing Mod will be carried over to give a more accurate comparison.
Added hit reaction animation to Minerva to better communicate when she takes damage
Improved hit VFX for Enemies to better communicate when they take damage
Balance
Orb Launcher is stronger: Increased damage, reduced charge time, increased explosion radius
Bosses now always grant health when they die (quality varies based on Difficulty setting), this was meant to be fixed in the previous patch.
Revised how Legendary loot items are rolled - “True” legendary affixes will only roll for Legendary items
Did a pass on which affixes can roll for which items to remove some that didn’t make intuitive sense and correct some oversights (i.e. bonus attack speed for Monkey was missing)
If player has “Witch’s Brew” Essence unlock, rooms are added to the dungeon floor layout corresponding with the number of Cauldron rooms present to preserve the number of combat rooms
Reduced health item drop rates on higher difficulty settings
Reduced cost of Lazy Childrens’ Map Essence Unlock to 7, placed it in front of most of the other Essence Unlocks
Increased likelihood that boots will receive a movement speed affix
Increased movement speed bonus affix value ranges for all rarities
Reduced frequency that players will encounter enemies that slow the pace of combat, i.e. Crow, Dervish. Added more enemy variety per floor to compensate.
Polish
Improvement pass on Dragons - movement, targeting, and VFX
Improved Friendly models / materials / colors
“True” legendary affixes are now formatted differently in the UI to draw attention to them
Added a special SFX when a Legendary item drops
Added trap door secrets to Garden and Crypts
Reskinned a duplicate room variant in the Garden
Added SFX for Boss loot delivery
Improved music functionality for Boss encounters
Improved calculation for Bee DPS
New SFX added to boss fights
Reformatted the game credits screen
Adjusted frequency with which certain Enemy SFX play
Adjusted range at which some enemy SFX can be heard
Orb Launcher has a new firing animation
Ice Attribute bonus is now communicated as “+X% Armor” instead of “-X% Damage Reduction” for consistency with other Attribute bonuses.
Challenge Rooms can now occupy dead ends in Dungeon layouts, which reduces the chance you will get two of them side by side
Polished some existing Ice Challenge Rooms
Improved Minerva’s run animation
Polish pass on Boss animations
Reduced the time it takes to recycle from 1.2s to 1.0s
Added a recycling progress bar to UI
Polish pass on Bat materials
Polish pass on Boss materials
Made an additional change to procedural dungeon generator to ensure players see maximum room variety during a run
Improved UI flow of starting a game - we no longer show the option to restart run in situations where it is not appropriate
Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug where a Boss’s adds could persist after killing the Boss, often resulting in the player being killed during the post-fight dialog
Fixed rarity VFX positioning so that it shows up properly for all pickups
Prevent player from opening inventory after death to avoid related bugs
Several enemy actions are no longer interruptible from Knockback or Wallslam - this was creating some situations where enemies were either very difficult or very easy to kill if the player was using Physical weapons.
Fixed a data issue with regen delay affix - it was having the opposite of the desired effect.
Fixed a bug where Minerva could get stuck when dashing into objects
Fixed a bug where the floor could block projectiles in some cases
Fixed a bug where projectile flashlights could fire their shots at steep angles
Fixed some terminology on the keyboard key remap screen
Fixed a bug where some ghosts could get stuck after attacking if the player didn’t move
Fixed a bug where the Friendly movement speed loot affix did not affect Dragons
Fixed a bug where rooms might not load properly if they were adjacent to an identical room layout
Fixed a bug where a particular dead-end room would not load
