Koboo: The Tree Spirit

Quick Fixes

• Fixed tutorial text being… a little bigger than usual, to say the least.
  
• You will no longer waste mid-air jumps when attempting to jump during a “skill freeze” effect (Most notably Turtle Cower and Rock Shield).
  
• The Owl Insight animal ability now has four charges instead of six.
  
• Removed periods from the Toxic Orb’s Torment upgrade level blurbs for consistent language usage.
  
• Fixed a bug with the Dual Wielder relic’s effect stacking when it shouldn’t.
  
• Fixed a bug with the backer-exclusive rainbow glider’s visual effect stacking while the game is paused.
  

Backer Weapons!

• We’ve completed four backer weapons! They’ll be available in the Favor Shop at a variety of tiers. We’re still working hard on the rest of them,
  
• Check out the grisly Dante’s Sacrifice at Favor Level 2.
  
• Check out the retro Sword of Hope at Favor Level 3.
  
• Check out the tactical Momster 3000 at Favor Level 4.
  
• Check out the whimsical Mandolin at Favor Level 5.
  

Other Weapon Changes

• Reworked the Leaf Axe’s Scorch upgrade (but not the Magma Orb’s version of it) to now apply burn damage proportionate to damage dealt (Similarly to the Fox Heart weapon infusion), so it may better synchronize with its other upgrade paths.
  
• Added a smoother transition when exiting most levels.
  
• Fixed rare occasions when mysterious unused weapon sprites appear when picking up new weapons.
  

GUI Rework

• Reworked how many UI functionalities work in the backend to make way for future quality of life and optimization patches.
  
• Fixed slow GUI animations and transitions for some unfortunate players.
  
• Improved the readability of textboxes for weapon/infusion/relic pickups and other interactables.
  
• Adjusted the equipment screen to make navigating it less jarring.
  

Skin Flavoring

• Renamed the “Standard” and “Classic” Koboo skins to “Classic” and “Matte”.
  
• Added flavour text for each of the skins.
  
• Added bars for each of the locked skins in the skin selector screen to indicate how many more times a boss must be defeated normally to acquire it.
  

Weapon and Relic Fixes

• Magma Orbs are now made asynchronous to their slot, so when dual-wielding them, they’ll be evenly spaced from other orbs (as long as they have the same level of Inferno) until one set acquires a higher attack speed.
  
• Toxic Orbs are now made asynchronous to their slot, so when dual-wielding them, the shots will fire in evenly spaced intervals until one acquires a higher attack speed.
  
• Relic popups will no longer be opened immediately as the relic spawns.
  
• Fixed relics changing colours when dropped in favor of the Chameleon relic
  

Happy Halloween everyone! We have been writing long patch notes so I will keep this short and only mention the best stuff here!

New Game Mode

• Added Nightmare Mode! In this game mode, all non-boss enemy spawns are randomized. It can be unlocked by defeating the new boss. We had a lot of fun with this one, so we hope you do too!
  

A Whole New World!

• A new world has been added! It can be accessed via a portcullis gate after the Abomination boss fight.
  
• Five new enemies and a new final boss have been added to compliment the area.
  
• Moths can now only be found in the new world.
  
• Added two new achievements, one for defeating the new boss and one for defeating them without taking any damage.
  

Skins and Bosses

• Added skins for Koboo! You can change them by speaking to Minnie and Milo Jr. in the hub.
  
• Skins can be unlocked by defeating each of the three final bosses either four times total, or once without taking any damage.
  
• Added a method of tracking how many times a boss has been defeated in a player’s profile. This will be updated from here on.
  

Fixes

• Removed some sneaky text not where it’s supposed to be >:) (Will be punished accordingly).
  
• Fixed a potential bug with updating save files.
  
• Enemy aimed trailing attacks (Storm Mage, Cavalry Knight, and Specter lightning, Cavalry Knight Cross Slash, and Abomination spikes) are now properly fooled by Panther Stealth decoys.
  

More Level Variation, New Enemy Support Class and Even More Quality of Life Changes!

New Enemy Class

• Added the Support enemy class! Supports have less health that typical melee enemies but more than typical ranged ones, and have abilities that passively latch onto the user’s squadmates, providing potent buffs that can only be removed once they flee from the fight. Three enemies have been turned into supports, and here they are now:
  
• The Priest (First seen in “Hunter’s Path”) now heals all other non-boss enemies over time based on the recipient’s maximum health.
  
• The Knight (First seen in “The Edge of the Jungle”) now reduces direct damage their allies take.
  
• The Spectral Slasher (First seen in “Abandoned Castle”) now makes the nearest ally invulnerable to all attacks.
  

Other Enemy Changes

• The Knight’s windup and attack speed has been reduced to compensate for class change.
  
• The follow-up critical location on enemies is now smaller and slightly more transparent.
  
• The Specter boss’ splitting missile projectile is now larger and more noticeable.
  
• Adjusted many enemy attack placements to be less awkwardly positioned. This affects Fire Mage, Serpent Monk, Warlock, Ghoul Thrower, Ghoul Keeper, Elemental Mage, and Crystal Golem.
  
• Adjusted enemy shield triggers so they block more intuitively.
  

Level Changes

• Added variants to the non-boss levels of the first two worlds. Hopefully this experiment will add more deviation to your future runs!
  
• “Powers” are now tutorialized upon the first shiny enemy spawning.
  
• Barred portals (Those blocked by grates and portcullises) now form portals after they are bypassed for clarity.
  
• Adjusted the weapons in Mara’s Shop so they’re back to the same level as each other.
  
• Magic Orbs are now animated when on the ground in Mara’s Shop or throughout levels.
  
• Seeds will no longer spawn in bushes that are too close to NPCs, items, or portal spawners.
  

Weapons & Animal Abilities

• Rat damage from Rat Swarm (As long as they aren’t doing Poison damage) and the Fox Curse damage threshold are now affected by the Hurricane relic.
  

Movement & Physics

• Koboo now bounces off bodies of water, and floats to the surface, rather than sinking to the bottom. He can still dive in by holding the down button.
  
• Blowgun ammo will no longer get stuck in the floor tiles as it approaches Koboo.
  
• Cargo is now visually properly layered behind enemies.
  

Menus and GUI

• Renamed rarities for Weapon Infusions and Flower Seeds. “Uncommon” is now “Rare”, and “Rare” is now “Legendary”. Also rearranged these rarities associated text effects.
  
• Upgrades that the player acquires through exploration rooms are now explicitly called “Powers”.
  
• Added a new menu to list the players acquired “Powers”. It can be accessed in the Equipment menu.
  
• The Botany Encyclopedia can now be accessed from the player’s equipment menu.
  
• Added a new Font called “Medieval Typeface”
  

Visual Fixes

• Reduced some texture sizes to save memory.
  
• If a room is cleared out during Koboo’s death animation (Usually by damage over time effects) the “Stage Cleared!” message will no longer show up, along with other end of level triggers like weapon drops.
  
• Fixed a visual bug of discoloured textures in popups for acquired Powers.
  
• Fixed glitchy defeat animations from final bosses due to last patch’s change.
  

Added 12 New Relics, Reduced Bug Speed and Even More Quality of Life Changes!

Relics

• Added twelve new relics, four of each type, immediately available to all players.
  
• The Spell Thief relic’s Charge gain has been increased from 10% to 12%.
  
• Renamed “Relic of Conflict”, “Relic of Philosophy”, and “Relic of Adversity” to “Forge Relic”, “Spirit Relic”, and “Velocity Relic” respectively.
  
• Raised the chance for enemies to drop an infusion instead of a relic (When the Scavenger upgrade doesn’t trigger) from 33% to 50%.
  
• Nerfed Hustler’s movement speed increase from 50% to 40%.
  

Weapon Changes

• Added a sound effect when triggering Lightning Orb.
  
• Increased the Snowball’s base damage by 17%, critical damage by 33%, and charge speed by 6%.
  
• Added a sound effect upon landing an attack with a ranged weapon.
  

Favor Shop

• Upon acquiring a new weapon in the Favor Shop, it’ll always appear at the beginning of your next run.
  
• Upon acquiring a new animal ability in the Favor Shop, it’ll always appear as an option the next time Dusk grants Koboo a new one.
  
• Upon acquiring a new infusion in the Favor Shop, it’ll always appear as the next infusion an enemy drops.
  
• Adjusted and animated the favor icon at the bottom of the screen.
  

Fixes

• Steam Deck users now have “Modern Display” as the default font setting.
  
• Fixed a rare crash instance involving an interaction with Pacify effects, Conduit, and Turtle Barricade, caused by a coding typo.
  
• Fixed a potential freeze involving Fox Siphon.
  
• Adjusted offset weapon icons when standing over them.
  
• Slightly moved up weapons in Mara’s Shop so Koboo doesn’t walk over them and muddy up her hard work!
  
• Finally fixed the dying screen to include the heart icon in the center.
  

Quality of Life

• Changed enemy slain effects to be smoother and punchier.
  
• Added a sound effect for enemies to play on defeat.
  
• Increased speed of Koboo’s death animation by +50% outside of the tutorial.
  
• Added sound lock to additional slam sound effects, most notably weapons dropping.
  
• Steam Deck users now have separate settings saved when switching between Steam Deck and PC.
  
• Reduced insect retreat speed by 44%.
  

Added 2 New Abilities, 2 New Weapon Infusions and Even More Quality of Life Changes!

Weapons

• Added two new weapon infusions, both at Favor Level 8.
  
• Buffed Toxic Orb’s Bombard upgrade bonus attack speed and critical damage by +100%.
  
• Nerfed the Rock Shield’s Towering upgrade’s damage bonus by -11% on all levels.
  
• The Rock Shield’s Thorny upgrade now has its poison damage properly adjusted to account for difficulty-based damage modifiers.
  
• Increased the Fae Daggers’ Toxicology upgrade poison damage by +100%.
  

Animal Abilities

• Added two new animal abilities, one at Favor Level 7 and one at Favor Level 8.
  
• The Turtle Barricade animal ability now has its damage properly adjusted to account for difficulty-based damage modifiers.
  
• Nerfed the duration of Deer Pacify, particularly at higher upgrade levels.
  
• Nerfed Deer Pacifies Charge count from 4 to 2 at all upgrade levels.
  
• Nerfed Deer Humility’s Attack Speed Reduction duration by -50%.
  

Other Fixes

• Reduced Bench trigger range.
  
• Fixed the Rainbow Koboo skin pop-up appearing multiple times.
  
• Fixed strange text sizes for animal ability titles in the Equipment menu.
  
• Fixed glitchy placements for melee weapon attacks that came with the enemy orientation rework last update. Fearless, Trickery, and Enemy Shields should now function more consistently for them.
  

Menu and GUI Changes

• Can no longer open the equipment menu while in the pause menu.
  
• Fixed Keybind menu unregistered key text being too big.
  
• The Impossible difficulty preset now has “No Life Recovery” selected for Life Resets. This makes no mechanical difference, since Koboo will have only 1 Max Life anyway.
  

Animal Abilities

• Added the Owl Insight animal ability to the Favor Shop at Level 5. It happened again, added an animal ability to the game only to forget to activate it! :(
  
• Clarified in the animal ability tutorial that now only weapon damage can increase ability charge.
  
• Renamed the Snake Slither animal ability to Viper Slither.
  

Infusions and Relics

• Relics now have more detailed pop ups when standing over them, akin to weapons.
  
• As they are now redundant, picking up a Relic no longer evokes a popup.
  
• Infusions now have more detailed pop ups when standing over them, akin to weapons.
  
• Renamed the Snake Ambush weapon infusion to Viper Ambush.
  

Mechanical Reworks

• Fixed enemy shield wonky mechanics (Long time coming on this one!). Weapons like Boomerang and Lightning Orb and animal abilities like Rat Swarm will now interact a lot more intuitively.
  
• Separated instances of weapon-based poison (Toxicology, Scorpion Venom, Thorny) and ability-based poison (Rat Poison) for ability-charging purposes.
  
• Ground slam now works on platforms.
  
• Adjusted how enemy aiming works in the back end, let us know if there are any issues!
  
• Enemy controller attack (Storm Mages, Blade Masters, etc.) indicators growth speed is now affected by the attack’s cast speed.
  

Story, Text, and Immersion

• Ambient music will no longer play during story elements.
  
• Adjusted various instances of Canadian vernacular to American english, mainly that of Otto calling you “neighbour”.
  
• Added a missing period. (I know, how dare we)
  

Controller Support

• Controller now acquires an aim indicator when Koboo has the Fox Curse animal ability.
  
• Aim Indicators (For Snowball and Controller) now disappear in paused screens and during the death animation.
  
• Players on controller can now go back in menus with B/O.
  

Weapons and Abilities

• The Cat Scratch infusion’s description has been adjusted to match last patches’ ability charge change.
  
• Cat Scratch no longer has a maximum to its attack speed bonus. Go wild!
  
• Fox Curse’s health threshold now scales to your damage multiplier in the Difficulty settings. Now more casual players will get better value out of this exciting abilitiy, and Helios difficulty players will suffer as they were always meant to >:) (And have more potential build versatility, I suppose)
  
• Clarified that Koboo can still take damage during the Snake Slither ability.
  

Menu Fixes

• Added an input lock to popups, so they won’t accidentally close as soon as they appear.
  
• Players will briefly be input locked after exiting non-combat-oriented menus.
  
• Reworked how cutscenes run on the backend. Hopefully this will alleviate lag and other issues.
  
• Fixed the Botany menu’s stats not adjusting to the movement of the window.
  
• You can now see the final upgrade of animal abilities in the first upgrade screen if you’ve already acquired it once before.
  

Text Fixes

• Fixed ability acquisition title text not changing according to the player’s Font settings.
  
• Fixed text not changing from keyboard controls to controller controls and vice versa in the tutorial text.
  
• Increased the size of some particularly small text instances.
  
• Fixed some typos.
  
• Fixed instances of glitched characters for Toxic Orb.
  

Tutorialization

• Added a tutorial upon receiving your first Parry effect to explain the timing mechanics.
  
• Added arrows to compliment tutorial popups and indicate end-of-level direction.
  

Level and Enemy Fixes

• Bosses now lose their invulnerability immediately after their reinforcements flee, instead of after a delay.
  
• Fixed Mara and Dusk hovering in mid-air after a fight.
  
• Blowgun darts will no longer spawn in inaccessible bushes
  

Weapon Changes

• Added two new weapons, one ranged and one magic. Check them out for yourself!
  
• The new ranged weapon will replace Thorns as a starter weapon. If you already have Thorns on a save file, you still will, and can acquire the new one in the Favor Shop at Level 1 for a low cost. If not, Thorns will appear in the Favor shop as a Level 6 Weapon.
  
• The new magic weapon will replace the Water Orb’s spot at Favor Level 2 in the Favor Shop, Water Orb will be moved up to Favor Level 4.
  
• The Bender upgrade from Water Orb has been replaced with a new one called Frostbite. Perhaps this upgrade can even be found elsewhere…
  
• The Lizard Adaptation weapon infusion now also affects enemies with Frostbite or Frozen.
  
• Rooms that drop more than one weapon will now never drop the same weapon multiple times.
  
• The Duelist upgrade from Spear now only parries on crit, and its critical damage bonus now scales more evenly.
  
• The Barbed upgrade from Thorns no longer can parry, but the base damage bonus is increased and its critical damage bonus now scales more evenly.
  

Animal Abilities

• Buffed Fox Curse’s health threshold by 20%.
  
• Reworded Animal Ability and Relic descriptions to set 100% maximum charge to the default instead of 200% for clarity.
  

Enemy Changes

• Bunny Hop and Shadow Orb users rejoice! All ranged and non-fixed controller attacks are now actively aimed so they no longer snap to you, making enemies easier to outsmart with teleportation and fast movement.
  
• Directional aiming attacks now aim significantly slower.
  
• All these attacks above (except non-fixed controller attacks) now have predictive aiming, they’ll attempt to shoot where Koboo is going, rather than where he is.
  
• Fixed an oversight that would make the Twin Golems significantly more difficult to defeat.
  
• Altered many of the visuals involving the Twin Golem’s spike attack, and gave it a sound effect. The attack is also wider, longer, and faster.
  
• Fixed some enemies spasming as they fall.
  
• Enemies now finish their attacks while Koboo is dying.
  

Story and NPCs

• Story Elements now only progress through pressing select and can be skipped by holding interact.
  
• NPC dialogue boxes now include the speaker’s name.
  
• Moved up some NPCs and objects in the foreground of bonus rooms who Koboo would unnaturally overlap with the ground.
  

Menu Fixes

• The Inventory screen can now not be opened while you have an active popup.
  
• Exiting the pause menu while you have a popup will no longer unpause the game.
  
• Options in the pause menu now only get hovered from the left side of the screen. (Apologies to the unfortunate players who lost their progress!)
  
• Holding select in the Favor Shop after a popup will no longer trigger until it is released.
  
• Now in the General Settings menu, only changing Resolution or Fullscreen or selecting Center Window will update the window.
  
• Opening or creating a save file no longer updates the window.
  
• Opening the pause menu will now close your inventory automatically.
  
• You can no longer open your pause or inventory menu while Koboo is dying.
  
• Added some very important special thanks! <3
  

Miscellaneous Fixes

• Fixed the tutorial achievement not triggering for many players. You should acquire it upon opening a save with the tutorial completed.
  
• Controller Rumble will no longer trigger while the player is using keyboard controls.
  
• Added a new “Dynamic” option in the mouse lock settings. It’s now the default for new players, and will be set for players with full mouse lock. Check it out for yourself in the General settings.
  
• Changing difficulty preset will now change your current run’s lives just as it would when changing lives directly ever since the previous update.
  
• Added better Steam Deck support on startup.