Beta Test - Splintershard Beta now live!

[jambell]

Hello hunters!

Today we are opening up the beta for Splintershard Cavern!

This beta includes a wide variety of content that we have been working on since our previous update: a new Weapon Type; a new Hunt and its associated Boss, Miniboss, Rots, Armour, Weapons, Heartstone, and more; the addition of Super Frenzies for more late-game content and challenges; crafting of Boss Weapons to begin harnessing the power of Boss Rots for yourself; Anomalies to provide more variety between runs and introduce ever-changing challenges for great rewards; Gems to allow more fine-tuning of player builds; and some world restructuring provide a smoother and less grindy experience for new players and old players alike, while laying the groundwork for incoming narrative.

Here is a point-form list of what is coming in this Beta, and please read below if you would like more information about each:

• A new weapon type: the Bow
• A new hunt and its associated content: Splintershard Cavern
• Super Frenzies, Elite Bosses, and Boss Weapons for two Hunts
• Anomalies: temporary and forever-changing modifiers to some Frenzy Hunts offering much more variety (coming to beta soon)
• Gems (coming to beta soon)
• Economy updates and equipment upgrading balance changes
• Game progression improvements and smoothing
• Improvements to game feel, including more consistent ability to Stagger and Interrupt enemies

More details:

Spoiler

The Bow

This update includes our first new Weapon Type: the Bow. The bow is a ranged weapon that rewards good positioning and good timing with massive damage and massive hitstreaks. The moveset, compared to something like the Cannon, is relatively simple so that your focus is spent on mobility, execution, and lining up perfect shots.

For players who want to play Rotwood with a ranged weapon, there wasn’t really an easy-to-pick up weapon class: the Cannon can be pretty complex having to manage ammo to optimize damage output and defense, and the Striker is more of a mid-range weapon. The Bow was designed from the ground up to give players an easy to pick up ranged weapon that feels natural right away, and has a high skill ceiling for players who want to invest into it.
 

Splintershard Cavern

We've introduced a new dungeon, Splintershard Cavern! In this Hunt, fight against new monsters, and utilize sliding blocks to hit them, but watch out because monsters can hit them back at you!

In Bonechill Quarry, we understood that players were frustrated by Blizzards, a mechanic that only punished you, without any associated tool that you can use creatively against your enemies. Shortly after its release, we added the Ice Bombs that you can use to freeze your enemies to give you more tools to play with.

With that lesson learned, for Splintershard Cavern we have focused from the ground up on a main mechanic that doesn’t just punish, but one where you can be creative, utilize it against enemies, and use cooperatively too.

As usual, this Hunt includes an entirely new environment, new enemies, new traps and obstacles, a new miniboss, a new boss, and all of the equipment and unlockables that these contain. (If you’ll forgive my self-insertion here, my personal favourite inclusion is the music that plays in the boss fight! That last phase is just chef’s kiss)
 

Progression, zones, and grind reduction

You will notice that your Equipment and the World Map look a little different. One of the main ways that Rotwood wasn’t providing the experience we wanted was in the new-player progression through the game. Because the strength of Rots jumped so dramatically from one dungeon to the next, the game nearly required players to grind before even thinking of entering a new dungeon, almost immediately upon starting the game. 

As we said previously, there is a place for grind in a game like this, but it shouldn’t be required to enjoy the game and we regret that we were too heavy handed here at the start.

Now that we have more Hunts to work with, we have shaped the game into two Zones: from Great Rotwood Forest to The Molded Grave, and then from Bonechill Quarry onward. Within a Zone, progression should feel relatively smooth and not require much grinding, if any. More than one Hunt within a Zone unlocks at once so you have more choice over how you progress, and the difficulty jump from one Hunt to the next is smaller than before. Alphonse’s Market features equipment from any Hunt in that Zone, and it comes pre-upgraded to match your progression so there is less friction to try new pieces. Lastly, Frenzies of a given Zone are now unlocked upon completion of that Zone, and they begin at the same difficulty level.

Individual equipment pieces no longer require Fortification, and now you can just help Hamish and Berna fortify their workstations instead which allows all equipment to be upgraded past their natural levels. We have also adjusted the economy and costs for normal upgrades.

We have been following a mantra of “A little work for progression, and more work for perfection”. We feel these changes provide a smoother landing for new players and less grind for existing players, making it a lot easier to build a toolkit of equipment that you can use to overcome the challenges thrown at you. In our eyes, your Armoury and Weapon Rack should be creative places to develop and try new ideas with the equipment you’ve invested in, rather than a place of dread because you have to spend hours upgrading before even considering trying a new idea.

Existing saves will be updated to fit into the new system, and we have worked to preserve your progression. Note that while you may see different stats than you are used to, this does not actually represent a nerf to your equipment but is just a display adjustment to match the new system. Your equipment should still be as strong as it was before, relative to the content you've been playing.
 

Staggers and interrupts

We have heard and understand well that players are frustrated by enemies being “stagger resistant.” Scoring an interruption was very situational, and some weapons had a much easier time than others, resulting in a very inconsistent feel across the board. It was difficult to know when you could interrupt, so we have made this more consistent: now, for any small Rot, a well-timed Heavy Attack or Skill from any Weapon will interrupt their attack. This also means that these Heavy Attacks will also knock an airborne Rot out of the air creating the opportunity to follow up with a combo.

Of course, heavier enemies like Yammo and some Elites will still be more difficult to interrupt, but please try out your Heavy Attacks and Skills against those Bulbins and take advantage of your new opportunities. 

We have been very happy with this change in our internal playtesting, and are grateful that players provided this feedback. It is always our intention that Rotwood requires paying attention to the battlefield to play successfully, and this change has not only made the game feel more consistent but rewards keen-eyed players and provides new opportunities for creative combos.
 

More late-game challenges

Speaking of overcoming “the challenges thrown at you,” we have been hard at work on those too: we know that many players are already craving more difficulty to test their skills against. On the other end of the game, we have begun to add a higher difficulty ceiling for players wanting even more challenges and rewards, with Super Frenzies. 

Mother Treek and Owlitzer have been affected by your progress through the Rotwood, and now even they have become Frenzied. Super Frenzies start with “Bosses are Elite”, and go upwards from there for several levels, with much more to come. Elite boss encounters take time to design and so we will be releasing them and the Super Frenzies for their associated location over time.

While Frenzies don’t care about what weapon you use, Super Frenzies are cleared on a per-weapon type basis. There will be a lot more uses (now and later) for the Imbued Teffra Hearts, and so you will need a way to get many more of them. Clearing Super Frenzies with a Hammer will provide a heart per clear, and you can get even more by clearing with other weapon types.

These Imbued Teffra Hearts are related to the introduction of Boss Weapons, but we’ll leave that for you to discover.
 

Anomalies and run variety (coming to beta soon)

Our design philosophy for Rotwood is to create simple mechanics that combine in interesting ways. We feel that interesting gameplay comes from taking two or more simple things and combining them to produce interesting variation and complexity. So far, this philosophy mainly manifests in our Power design, our Equipment design, and in the mechanics included within one Hunt.

However, we have always known that the mechanics you experience in a Hunt don’t need to be static and confined to just that Hunt. Until now, we have been focusing on making the baseline of each Hunt, but it is time to start remixing things a little bit.

Anomalies are how we are executing that idea. Once you have put your fourth Heartstone into the Wellspring, one of the locations on the map will be experiencing an Anomaly, which can mean many things.

An Anomaly could be something like Rain and Lightning Storm, and so all Charged damage is increased – both to you and to your enemies! It may be Acid Rain in Nocturne Grove or Spores in Great Rotwood Forest… or, maybe it is Permanent Night where Nightmares lurk.

When Anomalies are active, they are temporarily constrained to one Hunt and only one effect is active in a room at any given moment. You will know the effects ahead of time and can plan your equipment to improve your chances of success.

… and perhaps you may even harness the Teffra Saturation in these Anomalies for greater rewards!
 

Gems (coming to beta soon)

One of the main experiences we want to provide in Rotwood is to build up a toolkit over time by investing into a wide array of equipment, and being challenged to creatively use that toolkit to overcome adversity. So far, you have been doing so with equipment: as a Hammer main, perhaps you prefer the hard-hitting Golf Swings of The Tenderizer or maybe you prefer taking risk and goading enemies to attack you with The Smashing Pumpkin. Some Cannon players prefer raining punishment down with Hail of Gory, while others prefer rapid-fire reloading and building up massive piercing Heavy Attack hitstreaks with The Keening.

Ideally, you feel like you have lots of options to choose from.

Gems are our way of letting you fine-tune your choices even further.

Weapons that have been purchased in Zone 2 come pre-loaded with Gem Slots which can fit Gems of all sorts of varieties. You could use a Gem to increase Damage to a specific Rot, or even increase Damage Resistance against that Rot. Some Gems could increase the amount of Loot you find, increase your Maximum Health or even improve your Luck. 

Over time, your Gems will become more powerful and we encourage you to find combinations that push your Weapons farther than you could before, and find a gameplay style that really suits you.

We have more plans for Gems and Gem Slots in the works, but this update includes the introduction to the system.
 

A note about Food:
Please note that this update replaces the existing empty Food slot in the UI with an icon representing the player’s Weight Class. We are still working on adding Food to the game, and this change does not represent its removal from the plan.

Today is the first phase of this beta, which includes everything listed above other than Anomalies and Gems. Some finishing touches are being applied to those features presently, and they will be arriving in beta soon.

As always, your honest and direct feedback about your experiences is extremely useful and we look forward to hearing from you, wherever you prefer to provide that feedback.

How to play

1. Close Rotwood if it is running.
2. In Steam, click on Library > Games.
3. Scroll down to Rotwood.
4. Right click, select Properties.
5. Go to the Betas tab.
6. In the dropdown, select the 'publicbeta' branch. (You may need to restart Steam to see this branch)
7. In that same properties window, go to the Installed Files tab.
8. Click Verify integrity of game files.
9. Your game will now be updated to the beta branch.

Save files
The beta branch uses a completely separate save file, due to its experimental nature.

The beta branch is to gather feedback and ensure stability before release to the live game. If you were to copy over your existing savefile, it would work, but it is strongly recommended to store a backup of your save file if you did so. We are not treating this branch as a live branch, so we will not be taking extra precautions to support moving your save file back to the live branch.

[BezKa]

 I'm so excited I lack words im just gonna run and play it now

[HeatAndRun]

What a beautiful day!!

[HeatAndRun]

6 hours ago, jambell said:

now, for any small Rot, a well-timed Heavy Attack or Skill from any Weapon will interrupt their attack.

Seems like Groady Groak Gulp skill still cannot interrupt rots' attack, will there be any buff on it?

Spoiler

 

 

[jambell]

3 hours ago, HeatAndRun said:

Seems like Groady Groak Gulp skill still cannot interrupt rots' attack, will there be any buff on it?

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

Yes, something is coming soon!

[HeatAndRun]

13 minutes ago, jambell said:

Yes, something is coming soon!

Thank you so much! 

[HondorDrache]

the game won't start, I tried checking the integrity of the files and reinstalling the game, nothing works 

 

[HondorDrache]

I tried a few more things and absolutely nothing works, as soon as I start the game this error appears 

[Instant-Noodles]

Some GIFs from the Splintershard Beta:

Rots (Boarfrost / Bullrog / Plumper / Scrambler)

Spoiler

   

Boss Rots (Shell Drake / Imbued Mother Treek / Imbued Owlitzer)

Spoiler

  

Special Rots (Golden Zucco / Teffra Zucco)

Spoiler

  

More Rotwood GIFs can be found in my older posts from: Jun 2024 (Bonechill Beta), May 2024 (Early Access Launch), Feb 2024 / #2 (Next Fest Demo), Dec 2023 (Playtest 3), Sep 2023 (Multiplayer Stress Test), & Jun 2023 (Combat Focus Test).

[Pawkins]

7 hours ago, HondorDrache said:

I tried a few more things and absolutely nothing works, as soon as I start the game this error appears 

you have a bonejaw equipment in your inventory from the dev menu. You can just go to your appdata/roaming/klei and find your save file, rename it, and start a new save file to start the game. 

My opinion on bows is that, they are extremely over powered. Majority of the damage you take in this game comes from not having range, forcing yourself to walk up to enemies to even hit them. And even if you do have range from say the cannon or strikers, they both run on resources to use which is having to pick up/juggle balls or reloading, both of which makes you vulnerable. 

The bow needing not to reload at all is absolutely busted beyond relief, there is nothing stopping you from just kiting enemies. 
While being extremely powerful, it's also boring and not very unique in terms of mechanics. A fun way to improve this is, is to make arrows a resource and make it so arrows can get stuck in enemies. The way to retrieve arrows is by killing them or pulling the arrows out with melee attacks.

[Bryce]

Hotfix #1: 635949
Changes:

Super Frenzy:

• Reduced health of Mother Treek
• Reduced health of Mother Treek's healing seed
• Reduced health and damage of the Imbued Zuccos, Gourdos and Yammos that Mother Treek summons
• Reduced the amount of Imbued Treeks that Mother Treek summons in phase 1 and 2

Crafting Costs:

• Reduced the cost of upgrading equipment that has been fortified
• Reduced the cost of crafting and repairing Proto-Weapons
• Reduced the cost of crafting and upgrading Boss Weapons

Fixes:

Super Frenzy:

• Fixed an issue where ingots did not drop in loot rooms
• Fixed an issue where materials did not drop from bosses
• Fixed an issue where imbued materials did not drop in loot rooms or from the Spring Port

Note: It is known that loot drops and difficulty modifiers are not behaving correctly for anyone other than the host in online multiplayer games, we are investigating

General:

• Fixed an issue that caused keybindings to be reset frequently
• Fixed a crash for people who had used debug commands to add invalid armour sets.
• Fixed a bunch of common crashes and bugs

[pyyoo]

Currently, the slower heavy cannon attacks fire larger bullets. I'm wondering if this is a bug, as my friends believe it is, while I don't. Personally, I like this change because it offers more variety with a slightly different pace for heavy attacks.

[Evelo]

Wooo! The Bow! I was really hoping for this. looking forward to trying it out. Hope my suggestions helped a little. :3

[Bryce]

We want to spend a bit more time on Anomalies and Gems, so they will not be making into this Beta. We will have more information about the Beta for those very soon!
Hotfix #2: 636994

Additions:

• Added a proper power to Aspect of Shelldrake
• Added a unique icon for broken proto-weapons

Changes:

Super Frenzy:

• Reduced base modifiers for damage and health in early super frenzy levels
• Reduced amount of attack cooldown reduction enemies have in early super frenzy levels

Imbued Mother Treek:

• Now throws a Giant Paincone instead of a Healing Seed during phase transitions
• Increased the amount of time between Giant Paincone throws
• Simplified the patterns of Defensive Roots spawned during phase transitions and Phase 4 of the fight
• Only uses the follow attack root in phase 4
• Increased cooldowns on attacks
• Removed the furthest back spawn points for Imbued Treeks
• Reduced the amount of Imbued Bonions Mother Treek throws out in Phase 4 when playing single player
• Reduced the amount of Imbued Beets spawned in the 2nd and 3rd phase transitions
• Reduced the number of Imbued Zuccos that spawn in the Phase 1-2 transition
• Reduced the number of Imbued Bulbins that Mother Treek summons during Phase 4

Imbued Bulbins:

• Reduce possible distance of spin attack by 40%
• Exit spin attack early if they collide with room bounds
• Modify max simultaneous attacks per target 
  •  1-stack Bite [2 -> 1]
  •  2-stack Slam [2 -> 1]
  •  2-stack Throw [No Limit -> 1] 
  •  3-stack Melee [2 -> 1]

Imbued Treek:

• Added longer cooldown to uproot and throw attacks
• Modify max simultaneous attacks per target
  •  Throw [No Limit -> 1]
  •  Uproot [No Limit -> 1]

Imbued Gnarlic:

• Modify max simultaneous attacks per target
  •  Slam [Unlimited -> 2]
  •  Poke [Unlimited -> 2]

Imbued Gustree:

• Reduce range of spikeball throw by about 20%

Owlitzer Weapon Skill:

• Updated the dodge cancel windows
• Can no longer expend a "stocked" skill that doesn't hit a target

Mother Treek Weapon Skill:

• Updated dodge cancel windows
• Updated FX
• Reduce damage mod from 2 -> 1.25
• Can no longer expend a "stocked" skill that doesn't hit a target

Groak Weapon Skill:

• Now interrupts attacks, and deals multiple small hits while target is in the inhale area

Bullrog Weapon Skill:

• Damage ramp caps out after 4 seconds

Cannon:

• Planting states, before committing to a choice, are now non-interruptible

Meowl Cowl: 

• Crit Damage boost 20/40/60 -> 25/50/100
• Duration 3s -> 5s

General:

• You can now overwrite which heart has been absorbed into a proto-weapon
• Added strings for the "how to play bow" popup
• Strip unshipped equipment from the game
• Reduced player revivable state stun time from 3 -> 1.5 seconds
• Spike traps do not trigger on dead/revivable players. 
• Set lifetime on bomb scorches in bossrooms to prevent infinite stacking of decals during some boss fights
• You can no longer make a proto-weapon before you've beat at least one super frenzy level
• The weapon and armour research conversations now flow much better

Fixes:

Bow:

• "Cold Plunge" and "Acid Dip" skills persist across rooms
• "Cold Plunge" skill lasts much longer

Sharpoon:

• Matched Weight to other Floracrane weapon variations: M -> L

Imbued Mother Treek:

• Fixed an issue where some of her attacks did not have hitboxes

General:

• Fixed an issue where imbued hearts did not show their icon
• When creatures have movespeed modifiers, apply less of that modifier to their attacks otherwise they go flying.
• Fix "too much of a player's runspeed is applied to their attacks by default", now the game feels less slidey and floaty when you have high runspeed.
• Fixed Gustree Helm triggering twice
• Fixed dungeon tier not set correctly for network clients
• Fixed a physics bug that was causing the game client to completely lock up in certain circumstances
• Owlitzer skill and Bullrog skill now correctly consume Lil' Schemer
• Fixed a bug where the shared power drop logic made it possible to drop multiples of the same power from a single crystal
• Fixed long buffer for 'dodge' button on the spear's Spinning Drill Attack

[BezKa]

1 hour ago, Bryce said:

Added a proper power to Aspect of Shelldrake

Oooo I like this one. Wonder how it works in multiplayer tho- host vs client on shared power selection.

1 hour ago, Bryce said:

Imbued Bulbins:

• Reduce possible distance of spin attack by 40%
• Exit spin attack early if they collide with room bounds

YES! The room felt so small with how they would spin from one corner to the next and ride along the walls. Thank you!

1 hour ago, Bryce said:

Spike traps do not trigger on dead/revivable players. 

Thank you, this was a nightmare in SF Owlitzer

 

Anything on certain powers not working in Super Frenzy- Is that intended? Graphical bug? Fe: On a Roll not gaining stacks (at least on bow frenzy, can't say I tried others yet)

[HeatAndRun]

The Groak sets finally got the deserved improvement! The skill feels far more viable now.

[Pawkins]

one bug i noticed is that bows don't glow yellow like other weapons do when they have a damage buff, until you holster your bow.

[Bryce]

Hotfix #3: 637216
Changes:

• Bullrog Weapon Skill
  • Movespeed is reduced while charging the skill
• Splintershard Cavern
  • Added several more encounters with Antleer
• Great Rotwood Forest
  • Reduced the amount of encounters that include 3 Treeks

Fixes:

• Fixed several common crashes that were introduced in the last hotfix

[Hupo]

57 minutes ago, Bryce said:

Hotfix #3: 637216
Changes:

• Bullrog Weapon Skill
  • Movespeed is reduced while charging the skill
• Splintershard Cavern
  • Added several more encounters with Antleer
• Great Rotwood Forest
  • Reduced the amount of encounters that include 3 Treeks

Fixes:

• Fixed several common crashes that were introduced in the last hotfix

Excuse me. I don't quite understand Bullrog weapon's ability. How to understand the middle?

[Wormboi]

40 minutes ago, Hupo said:

Excuse me. I don't quite understand Bullrog weapon's ability. How to understand the middle?

When an enemy is about attack, hitting them during that attack does more damage.

[HeatAndRun]

On 10/18/2024 at 9:45 PM, HeatAndRun said:

The Groak sets finally got the deserved improvement! The skill feels far more viable now.

After using the Groak weapons for a while I found that the skill now is beyond excellent! The skill provide massive hitstreaks to player when used towards a group of enemies, which works really well with longer hitstreak duration the Groak weapon offers. You can easily stack more than a hundred of hitstreaks fast. Also, it is the only skill that can instantly interrupt regular rots from far away (besides the Owlitzer skill), allows the player to stably control large amount of enemies better than almost any other types of weapons.
I really love the Groak weapons now. Feels like it's a completely brand-new weapon, just like when the Big Yammo Slammo have changed!

[ZaKKa]

In Super frenzy, the damage caused by the environment is a little too much, a bomb can deal 2000+ damage, spikes close to 1000 damage, even thorns can deal hundreds of damage, I am not sure if this is set or there is a BUG in the damage multiplier, I think it is not reasonable, I would have gone from full blood to dead in an instant.

And I would like to add another feature to the BUFF Upgrade Merchant's room that allows players to exchange buffs with each other

[Kacpert25]

1 hour ago, ZaKKa said:

In Super frenzy, the damage caused by the environment is a little too much, a bomb can deal 2000+ damage, spikes close to 1000 damage, even thorns can deal hundreds of damage, I am not sure if this is set or there is a BUG in the damage multiplier, I think it is not reasonable, I would have gone from full blood to dead in an instant.

And I would like to add another feature to the BUFF Upgrade Merchant's room that allows players to exchange buffs with each other

This is probably not a bug, but an intentional behavior that has appeared since Super Frenzy 2.

[Kacpert25]

12 hours ago, Kacpert25 said:

This is probably not a bug, but an intentional behavior that has appeared since Super Frenzy 2.

I just looked it up and yeah, this is absolutely a Super Frenzy 2 thing.

[jambell]

1 hour ago, Kacpert25 said:

I just looked it up and yeah, this is absolutely a Super Frenzy 2 thing.

This is correct! However, we've uncovered a couple of bugs which made these do more than intended. They should do roughly double damage, not ~5x as they were!

Update coming soon, including descriptions of each Super Frenzy modifier on the selection screen.