Robot Resistors

Players, take heart! Two more robotic resistors have joined the fight, armed with new weaponry and ready to lay waste to those that oppose you!

• Rebalanced progression: Completing Stage 1 now unlocks ultimate weapons for future runs. Completing Stage 2 now unlocks an extra weapon and passive slot for future runs. Added more weapons and ultimates to the base pool of unlocks (see below). –Dev Note: As we’ve added more weapons, stages, and characters, it’s become clear that we have the design space to be more generous with unlockables in general. We’ve moved up the ultimate unlocks to Stage 1 as we feel ultimate versions of weapons are fun and rewarding, and should be given to players sooner. As part of this change, the old reward for completing Stage 1 (extra passive slot unlock) has been moved to Stage 2. Additionally, we have greatly increased the starting pool of both weapons and ultimates. This change gives players more options for builds from the beginning, and pares back some of the meta-progression bloat that was starting to creep into the game as we added more content.
  
  Added 4 weapons to the base weapon pool:
  
  
  
  • Orbital Laser
    
  • Shotgun
    
  • Landmines
    
  • Rockets
    
  
  
  Added free ultimate unlocks for all basic starting weapons:
  
  
  
  • Planet Killer Laser
    
  • Molten Shotgun
    
  • Diamond Saw
    
  • Blue Ray
    
  • Toxic Waste
    
  • Charge Coils
    
  • Shrapnel Rockets
    
  • Cluster Mines
    
  
  
• Tuned Robot Graveyard difficulty. Reduced the HP gain of enemies slightly over time, and reduced the HP of the final boss by 20%. –Dev Note: We’ve decided our game plays a little too hard in the beginning, so we’ve made changes to the Robot Graveyard to ease onboarding slightly for new players. These changes should make the level slightly easier, especially in the back half of runs.
  
• Added a new Armor mechanic to specific enemies. Enemies with armor now gain flat damage reduction equal to their armor value, making them much tougher against rapid-firing low-damage weapons while remaining vulnerable to higher-damage weaponry. Armor cannot reduce damage below 1. Poison and burning damage is unaffected by enemy armor. Enemies with armor will play a “ting” sound when struck, and quickly flash a shield image. –Dev Note: The design goal of armored enemies is to reduce some of the inherent power of small damage weapons and make build choices more interesting. Assuming all things being equal, rapid-firing small-damage weapons have some inherent advantages over their high-damage slower-firing brethren in this type of game. One of our primary design goals is to make all builds viable and encourage variety, and abilities such as armor help with that. We like armored enemies internally as they add an interesting twist to gameplay and build choices, but we’ll also keep an eye on them going forward.
  
• Added a new armored [redacted] enemy to the graveyard! Watch out!
  
• Buffed Energy Burst. Default firing rate increased by 20% from 2 → 1.6 seconds. –Dev Note: Energy Burst is our default “vanilla” weapon that has a lot of utility, but it has long felt slightly weaker than its peers, especially in the beginning. This firing rate buff will help it be more useful, consistent, and reliable.
  
• Tesla Coils reworked so that it will now keep its targets until they go out of range or die (it will no longer strictly target the closest enemy). Since this change makes the Coils much stronger, their base damage is reduced from 0.45 → 0.4. –Dev Note: Tesla Coils can be frustrating to use when you’re moving around a lot and dodging enemies, since it can be very difficult to get them completely powered up. This change should make it much easier to actually power up those beams and get kills with intentional play!
  
• Buffed Orbital Laser. Slightly increased starting fire rate and size. –Dev Note: The Orbital Laser is really fun and unique, but can easily underperform compared to other weapons. These small buffs will make it a more appealing option.
  
• Adjusted Crankshaft Ability: Power Surge. Increased ability duration from 8→10 seconds. Increased ability cooldown from 35→50 seconds. –Dev Note: We are still tweaking this ability, as we want it to feel very strong when triggered and increasing the duration both increases its strength and makes it easier to use effectively with all weapons. The cooldown increase reflects the ability’s increased utility.
  
• Ultimate Weapons will now always be displayed when leveling up (after you’ve locked them, and if there are any available for your current loadout), instead of only displaying when you can afford them. There is now a UI indicator that shows the cost of the next Ultimate. –Dev Note: We wanted to make sure that players know that Ultimate Weapons are available and display them even when the player might not have collected enough Ultimate Shards to afford them yet this run. We’re hoping this change will help make player more excited about getting ultimates (by displaying them more consistently), and help to alleviate any confusion about the increasing costs of subsequent ults.
  
• Molten Plasma Shotgun - Updated to apply burning instead of its own unique effect.
  
• Adjusted a few ultimate unlock requirements to be easier.
  
• Adjusted beetle rings in Stage 3 to be a little easier (again) by reducing their hp.
  
• Added lots of Steam achievements.
  
• Added a weapon sound to the CD weapon.
  
• Updated sprite for player stunned effect.
  
• Fixed glitch with graveyard boss’s hands not resetting upon death.
  
• Miscellaneous tweaks and improvements.
  
• Replaced and updated Serrated Byte character sprite: It is now 73.637% more adorable.
  

• New Character: DDOS! Starts with the floppy disk weapon (also new). Passive ability: +30% to the duration of effects from rare drops. Active Ability - Lottery: Generate a random rare drop that can be picked up. Unlock requirements listed in the character menu in-game. –Dev Note: Our newest addition to Robot Resistors came together very fast, and we hope players enjoy him as much as we have. His active ability “Lottery” is internally a new favorite, especially with the new rare drops we’ve added with this patch (see below).
  
  
• New weapon: Razor Disks! Burst-fire sharpened floppy disk projectiles at nearby enemies every few seconds. Projectiles have short range, unlimited piercing, and do bonus damage to the first enemy they strike. Level up to increase range, firing rate, number of projectiles, and damage. –Dev Note: Razer Disks are an auto-targeting weapon that chooses targets from nearby enemies (if available). Since they are very short range (especially before leveling them up), with low damage and unlimited piercing, they are designed primarily as a support weapon that works best at softening up nearby clumps of enemies.
  
  
• New Ultimate Weapon: 2-Dimensional Floppy Disks! Fires impossibly thin 5-inch floppy disks continuously in a never ending circle. Deals bonus damage to the first enemy struck. —Dev Note: 2D disks fire in a circle and never stop. It takes 4 seconds at base level to shoot 12 projectiles in a circle before beginning again. Extra projectile upgrades and passives will effectively boost attack speed, as it will take the same amount of time to shoot a higher number of projectiles, as well as adjusting the angle change per shot. Firing rate bonuses will reduce the time between shots as normal.
  
  
• New Rare Drops for pickup! Rapid Fire Protocol, Damage Protocol, Cloaking Protocol, Intelligence Protocol, and Mobility Protocol. –Dev Note: We’ve wanted more variety for random rare drops for a while, so we added five new ones! Loot tables have been adjusted to accommodate the new additions.
  
• Rapid Fire Protocol: Increase firing rate of weapons by 35% for 10 seconds.
  
• Damage Protocol: Increase weapon damage by 100% for 10 seconds.
  
• Cloaking Protocol: Become invisible to enemies for 10 seconds.
  
• Intelligence Protocol: Gain 35% more experience from orbs for 25 seconds.
  
• Mobility Protocol: Gain a large boost to movement speed for 10 seconds.
  
  
• New and improved sprites for Dinobot3000 and Non-Binary
  
  
• Made the beetle ring waves in Scorpion Land a little less tough
  
  
• Some temple rooms now scale their objectives based on how many temples you’ve completed
  
  
• Fixed a bug that was causing there to occasionally be times when the enemies felt more sparse than intended
  
  
• Improvements to menu appearance
  
  
• Fixes/improvements to item shadows
  
  
• Added heal particles to regeneration effects for increased legibility
  
  
• Changed some internal code regarding weapons. Any bug reports appreciated! —Dev Note: We made some backend changes to streamline the code dealing with weapon behavior to make development easier on our end. If we did a good job, everything should be the same! Let us know if that’s not the case!
  

• Stage 3: Scorpion Land! Explore mysterious and ancient robotic temples in this desert land, and collect the secret blueprints needed for your final mission! Features over 22 unique new enemies with unique abilities, new mechanics, and a [redacted] to [redacted], culminating in a battle on an [redacted]. –Dev Note: Scorpion Land! is available to anyone who has completed the Crystal Caverns. It is intended to be the most challenging stage yet, and we playtested internally with between 5000-7000 salvage of upgrades to find a balance we felt good about. Feedback is greatly appreciated, and we anticipate making lots of adjustments once we start getting some responses.
  
  
• Shotgun changed again! Knockback increased 33% from 3 → 4. Shotgun base damage reduced 50%. At ⅓ max range or less, shotgun pellets now pierce enemies and continue onward. –Dev Note: We’re still trying to nail down the shotgun. We reduced its base damage as it was too strong against big enemies like bosses, but we gave it a piercing ability and increased its knockback so that it would remain very strong at close range against regular enemies. It remains a strong damage and path clearing weapon, and is still a strong choice against large enemies and bosses.
  
• Reduced auto-shotgun ultimate volleys per shot from 4 → 3. Reduced damage 40%. Eliminated piercing. –Dev Note: Our ultimate weapons are probably the most in need of balance generally, and the auto-shotgun was overpowered to a ridiculous degree, especially with recent shotgun changes. It still might be completely overpowered after these nerfs, but we took it down quite a bit this patch and will reassess in the future.
  
• Energy Burst given an additional count of piercing at level 6. –Dev Note: Energy burst gets a little love. It’s our vanilla and simplest “new player” starting weapon, and we want it to remain a viable choice as players progress in the game. Its high damage coupled with its knockback and the added piercing should make it much better at punching through swarms of enemies later in a run.
  
• Cyber Pulse Ult: Shocking Pulse changed due to bug fix. It will now stun enemies longer for each enemy it passes through, as originally intended. –Dev Note: Not much to say other than we fixed a bug, so it should be more effective at crowd control now.
  
• Hypercharged Tesla Coils: Damage penalty for the ult reduced from 60% → 30% –Dev Note: The damage penalty when taking this ult was too steep and punishing, this buff will hopefully make it feel more rewarding and worthwhile as an ultimate option.
  
• Drilling Burst: Now does 25% less damage. –Dev Note: Drilling Burst was slightly overpowered, and with this change it will hopefully be brought more into line with other ultimates.
  
• Heavy Metal ability reworked: Now heals for all the damage done to you by the ability over the next 30s (no longer based on the number of kills). –Dev Note: Heavy Metal’s ability was a little too hard to use before, and this change makes it more reliable and consistent.
  
• Malware’s Virus effect now benefits from +damage upgrades and passives. –Dev Note: This change will buff Malware’s ability proportionally if damage upgrades are taken, and will let him scale and still be a viable pick in later stages.
  
• Lucky 1101’s Reroll ability given a 20 second cooldown. –Dev Note: Reroll was very very strong, allowing a reroll of every single level-up. This slight nerf will affect the early game (when level-ups come fast and furious) more than the late game, but will still leave Reroll as a very strong ability. It will hopefully make the choice of when to use Reroll more interesting as well.
  
• Increased the Health and Regeneration upgrade from 35 → 40 health per level purchased. Health and Regeneration passive ability during runs increased from 35 (common) → 40 (common) per level, and adjusted the higher rarities upward as well. –Dev Note: We felt that both of these were a little stingy for the cost, so we increased them.
  
• Increased the Max Shield upgrade per level from 15 → 40. Increased the Max Shield passive ability from 20 (common) → 40 (common) and adjusted the higher rarities upward as well. –Dev Note: This is a fairly large buff, but we want to try it out and give players more options, and this helps the shield upgrade compete against HP and Regen. Since shields regenerate automatically after not taking damage for a few seconds, buffing these choices makes them a much more attractive option for players looking to periodically “take a hit” and grab xp orbs. Additionally, being able to increase shields to a greater degree makes certain character abilities and builds more attractive and possible.
  
• Advanced Weaponry upgrade base cost reduced from 2000 → 1500 salvage. –Dev Note: This upgrade is great, but too expensive. We’ve reduced the cost, and any salvage put toward advanced weaponry before patching should be refunded to players upon loading their game.
  
• Reduced the hit points of the crystal caverns bosses by 1/6th. Reduced the max speed and damage of the green boss’s projectile slightly. –Dev Note: The crystal bosses were slightly too hard to kill for the average player with a typical amount of upgrades, even a player having a really good run. These changes will make the bosses more reasonable to take down. Additionally, the green boss in particular was overpowered compared to the others when tackled last or second-to-last, and these changes will hopefully bring its difficulty more in line with the others.
  
• Added two new enemies to the crystal caverns. –Dev Note: We had some enemy ideas that never made it into the crystal caverns as intended, so we finally added them. Enemy waves have been slightly adjusted to welcome them to their new underground home.
  
• Buffed giant tunnel worms in crystal caverns. –Dev Note: Giant tunnel worms are a weird (and fun!) hybrid of enemy and terrain hazard. Wth the increased piercing and AoE capability of weapons and ultimates, they were starting to become slightly too easy for players to destroy. They remain very killable after this patch, but will require players to be a little more determined and deliberate to take them out.
  
• Added a visual status bar display above the experience bar that shows temporary player statuses and cooldowns, whether from beneficial item pickups or harmful enemy abilities. –Dev Note: We’ve wanted a visual indicator for status effects for awhile, this is the first step in that direction. We have additional functionality planned for the future, but feedback on the current iteration is always appreciated.
  
• The upgrade menu now shows both the current value of purchased upgrades and the value the next level will give.
  
• Added a new Steam achievement for beating stage 3.
  
• Added a new hidden Steam achievement.
  
• Adjusted/replaced some art
  
• Updated some menu layouts to be more consistent
  
• Various tiny bug fixes and improvements
  

• Added a new upgrade for purchase: Cooldown reduction. Gives a 5% cooldown reduction to character special abilities per level purchased. Cap at 5, with a maximum of 25% cooldown reduction. –Dev Note: This is a fun upgrade we’d wanted to add for a while. Fairly simple, but hopefully opens up some build possibilities for players who want to better utilize their character’s special ability.
  
• Added a new upgrade for purchase: Poison resist. Gives 15% resistance to poison per level purchased. Cap at level 6, with a maximum of 90% poison resistance. –Dev note: We like and want different damage types and effects like poison, but currently the only defensive option players have against poison is to avoid being hit. This upgrade will enable players to mitigate poison damage if they are struggling against it (which may come in handy in the future…).
  
• Adjusted purchasable upgrade Experience Boost. Cap from 5 → 10. Amount of bonus experience reduced from 10% → 7.5% a level. –Dev Note: Experience Boost was often a first choice for an upgrade, and given its utility and cost, was outclassing other upgrade options. With this change, we hope to increase the possible bonus when maxed out, while bringing the individual level boosts down to a more competitive level with other upgrades.
  
• Increased maximum cap of many purchasable upgrades in the upgrade menu:
  
  
  
  • Damage cap from 5 → 10 (at max level, 50% weapon damage increase total)
    
  • Armor cap from 5 → 8 (at max level, 40% damage reduction total)
    
  • Effect size cap from 5 → 7 (at max level, 35% increased effect sizes of weapons)
    
  • HP and Repair cap from 5 → 10 (at max level, health increased by 350 and Health Repair increased to 10/second)
    
  • Shields from 5 → 10 (at max level, shields increased by 150)
    
  • Shield Recharge from 5 → 10 (at max level, shield recharge rate increased by 100)
    
  
  
• –Dev Note: As we look to stage 3 and beyond, we want players to be able to continue to have meaningful ways to increase their power. Increasing the caps for upgrades allows players to continue making progress, and opens up design space for later levels to have even more unique and challenging enemies and scenarios.
  
• Enemies with multiple drops will now drop them quickly in sequence instead of dropping them all instantly, and the drops follow the death animations more closely. –Dev note: Hopefully this makes bigger and tougher enemies feel more impactful and fun visually as loot pinatas.
  
• Reworked the way the game processes knockback/stun/freeze. Ideally, these code changes function identically in terms of gameplay, but we’d appreciate bug reports if that’s not the case. –Dev note: These under-the-hood changes will hopefully allow us to more easily add unique enemy behaviors, especially with regard to movement.
  
• Increased the active uptime of Chad’s invisibility special ability from 3 → 5 seconds, slightly lowered its speed, and increased the cooldown from 20 → 25 seconds. –Dev Note: Invisibility is an interesting utility for escaping and picking up xp orbs, but since it doesn’t prevent damage, we lowered the speed slightly but increased the uptime to avoid accidentally running into enemies. The cooldown was slightly increased to compensate for our new cooldown reduction passive, and to bring it more in line with its power.
  
• Lowered Chad’s passive experience boost from 25 → 20%. –Dev Note: 25% was a little too strong and is great for every build, so we’ve reduced his bonus experience gain by 5%.
  
• Increased the length of Crankshaft’s damage boost special ability from 5→ 8 seconds. –Dev note: This ability can be very impactful, but we feel its short timing window is currently too tricky to reliably take advantage of. With this increase in uptime, we feel Crankshaft’s special will both be slightly more powerful and be easier to use effectively.
  
• Boosted base damage of the shotgun by 50%, but increased damage falloff at range. Slightly increased pellet spread and increased base pellets fired from 32 → 36. Level 2 damage upgrade decreased from 80% → 50% Decreased base range by 50%. –Dev Note: The shotgun is weaker than we’d like, and so we boosted its base damage. To remain true to its close range style, we decreased its range, added more spread, added more pellets to its base attack, and increased the falloff damage to make it less effective at medium/long ranges. Overall, this should be a substantial buff against close enemies, and roughly similar to before at longer ranges.
  
• Changed upgrade name “Advanced Targeting” → “Advanced Weaponry”. –Dev Note: This upgrade increases the potential cap for weapon levels in-game, and the name adjustment hopefully makes this more clear/aligned with its function.
  
• Added new character art for Automageddon. –Dev Note: Our artist wasn’t happy with Automageddon’s look, so we changed it!
  
• Added a pixelated screen transition effect when starting or ending a game.
  
• Added/reworked some sounds.
  
• Added some new GUI elements to menus
  
• Added new dynamic screen cracks when health is low.
  
• Lots of little tiny improvements/tweaks that few if any will notice.
  
• Added some easter eggs for eagle-eyed players.
  

• Ever wish you had just a bit longer to finish that perfect build? Well now with Infinite Mode you do!
  
• Fixes for some other small bugs that hopefully no one ever noticed to begin with.
  

• New Graveyard music! Dev note: No one liked the graveyard music (including the composer). They kept saying “gimme somethin’ spooky!”, so we obliged with new music.
  
• Added “Refund All Upgrades” button to the upgrade menu
  
• Tesla Coils adjusted. Base maximum charge reduced, bonus from level 4 updated to work correctly and be more impactful.
  
• Redesigned some menu elements to be more consistent
  

• Added an ultimate upgrade for the Gauss Rifle: Cryo Rifle. Each shot creates an AoE burst of cold on impact, freezing nearby enemies for a few seconds.
  
• Added a new ability to Fatal Error: Shockwave. When activated, nearby enemies are knocked back. Reduced his bonus HP from 150 → 100. Reduced his bonus Shields from 150 → 100. Dev note: We initially didn’t give Fatal Error an activated ability since we wanted the game to be super simple in the beginning for new players. Ironically, being the only character without an ability made him MORE confusing to new players who wondered why he didn’t do anything when they hit the ability button. So that mistake has been rectified, and his bonus passive health and shield boost has been nerfed slightly to compensate
  
• Added a random character button in character select. Fairly basic at this point: pick a random character and receive a +10% experience boost for the duration of the run.
  
• Added text hint to start of Crystal Caverns to assist new players.
  
• Changed the procedural generation in Crystal Caverns to be a little more forgiving when navigating. Dev note: This under-the-hood change should lead to less backtracking and dead ends!
  
• Changed/Replaced Extra Salvage Upgrade. OLD Extra Salvage: Gain 10% extra salvage from pickups per level purchased. → NEW Auto-Salvage: Gain 5 passive salvage a minute per level purchased. Players are now given the first level of this upgrade for free when they start the game. Dev note: We wanted to ease the onboarding process for new players, and giving a tiny amount of salvage as a reward for surviving is a nice way to give new players a greater opportunity for early upgrades as they figure out how to play the game. We anticipate the impact will be minimal, but not negligible, in terms of balance and progression, particularly with regard to more expensive upgrades. Additionally, salvage spent on the previous skill Extra Salvage should be automatically refunded upon downloading the latest patch and starting the game.
  
• Bugfix: No more controller crash if swapping between mouse and keyboard in certain rare situations. Thanks to Wangston for finding this bug!
  
• Fixed/improved a bunch of shadows on objects not displaying properly
  

NEW CHARACTER AND NEW WEAPON

New Character: Ex-Terminator

• Introducing the newest member of the Robot Resistors family: Ex-Terminator
  
• Starts with Gauss Rifle (also new), +5% base movement speed, and a new unique ability: Decoy
  
• Decoy creates a holographic decoy at the player’s feet, and for its duration, attracts enemies to itself instead of the player. After a few seconds, the decoy explodes, damaging nearby enemies
  
• Unlockable in-game, check the Character Select Menu for more details
  

New Weapon: Gauss Rifle

• Meet the Gauss Rifle, a long-range single-target high-damage weapon with medium attack speed that has a chance to shoot multiple times in quick succession
  
• Each volley has a chance to fire additional bonus shots, a chance which is lowered as each bonus shot is fired before the next volley begins. Leveling up this weapon as well as the Weapon Enhancer passive and Probability passive will increase the chances of multiple rounds being fired.
  
• Unlockable for use by all characters in-game, check the Weapons tab in the Armory menu for more details
  
• Currently this weapon does not have an ultimate upgrade (Coming soon!)
  

Tinier Things

• Added small rock doodads back to the Robot Graveyard. They no longer block movement and are smaller.
  
• Fixed a bug in stage select that showed placeholder art if selecting the back button (thanks to Gensam for pointing this out!)
  
• Poison no longer kills players on its own (but still penetrates shields, watch out for green spore clouds and robo-snakes!)
  
• Additional typos fixed!
  
• Bug fix: drops and key items will no longer disappear if the player moves very far away (thanks to AvoidTheVoid for pointing this out!)
  
• Bug fix: fixed rare crash that could occur when leveling up twice in the same frame with max level weapons (thanks to Mindworm Jim for pointing this out!)
  
• Bug fix: pushing spacebar when on the Score Screen as Lucky 1101 will no longer crash the game
  

Additional Notes From the Robot Resistors Team