Release 4

SHOP

 * Check out our new shiny shop tab and the customization items acquirable inside. All items are cosmetic only, and won’t affect your performance whatsoever.
 * New customization types include:
 * Death Poses (choose the pose used when you foam another Prospector)
 * Banners
 * Melee weapons
 * We slightly revamped the Appearance Tab where you can access your owned cosmetics.


 * Founders Packs Aurum was changed:

QUALITY OF LIFE CHANGES

 * We’ve added a new Inventory tab to the in-match Gear Store
 * When you press the inventory button you will see a page where all your current gear is displayed
 * You can use the arrows to re-order which slots your things are assigned to
 * You can drop the item by pressing the drop button
 * PLEASE NOTE: Items still lose their upgrades when dropped, we’re working to remedy this in the future!

GUN AUDIO IMPROVEMENTS (COMMUNITY FEEDBACK)
As before, we are continuing to make weapon sounds and SFX more impactful to enhance the game feel and overall experience.

We updated sounds for the following weapons:


 * ShatterGun
 * PDW
 * K-28 Auto Pistol
 * FF4 Grenade Launcher

LEVEL DESIGN

 * Changes have been made to the following areas:
 * Southwest part of the swamp camp
 * Northeast part of the waterfall
 * Eastern plains area
 * The jungle received another pass:
 * As it lost a bit of its original feel, we reverted some changes, but this time with an addition of more paths and embedded routes for easier navigation!


 * A lot of clutter has been removed or rearranged in these parts to open up some sightlines.
 * The goal is two-fold:
 * 1) to reduce the amount of surprise ambushes with other players.
 * 2) to enhance the gameplay between the different weapon effective ranges.
 * There are now more locations where epic minerals (white crystals) can spawn.

GAMEPLAY CHANGES

 * Disabled pact invites to pacted players and from pacted players. Now you won’t get confused getting with invites while you were already in one!
 * Based on internal and community feedback, we have made some additions to the Tutorial – have a look and tell us what you think!
 * Drones Salvage tutorialization: contract is explained to players once they enounter them during a match. Once you encounter Drones in the game, AI suit will tell you more about this contract and how to complete it!
 * Drones Salvage tutorialization (Attack & Defend): contract is explained to players once they enounter them during a match. Once you encounter Drones in the game, AI suit will tell you more about this contract and how to complete it!

VISUAL EFFECTS UPGRADES & MISC

 * The storm now rages more than ever!
 * Rain and new lightning strikes now permeate the map when the Cycle is in full swing!
 * Droids now have textures.
 * Loot is now affected by Physics. Kill monsters and watch the loot fly through the air

Dragonfly Jetpack

 * The Jetpack now activates at 0.2s of holding Jump (used to be 0.3s).
 * Upgrades
 * Rank 3: Jetpack thrust was changed from +20% to +25%.
 * Mods
 * “Dive Angle”
 * Jetpack Slam activation delay was reduced from +60% to +30%.
 * Now increases Jetfuel Regeneration delay after Jetpack Slam by +50%.
 * “Slow and Steady”
 * Thruster strength was increased.
 * “Catapult”
 * Thruster strength was increased

Boxer Warsuit
''Dev Comment: The Boxer Warsuit was in quite a good place, but the mods made its punch speed way too powerful. We’ve added a new tuning value so we can balance out how often it can use its punch ability. In general the boxer should not be as fast as the other kits. We also tuned up its jump height slightly and made the punch hitbox smaller. Before you could accidentally trigger the punch early as you passed certain objects (minerals, drones, etc) that would trigger the damage check. Now you’ll more reliably pass objects that you’re not aiming for.''


 * Health was increased from 875 to 900.
 * Super Jump speed was increased from 1100 to 1200.
 * Charge punch hitbox was reduced in size from 200 to 85.
 * Charge punch hitbox lifetime was changed from 1.3s to 0.9s (now stops checking for targets after the punch animation has ended).
 * Mods
 * “Charge Damage”
 * Now increases the charge punch cooldown from 4s to 7s.
 * Super Jump speed was reduced from -25% to -20%.
 * “Fast punch”
 * Punch speed bonus was increased from +40% to +50%.
 * Now increases the charge punch cooldown from 4s to 6s.
 * Doesn’t increase punch damage anymore.
 * “Shields”
 * Shield was decreased from 300 to 200.

Aani QuickSuit
''Dev Comment: The Aani QuickSuit has seen some further tuning after community and internal feedback. The new feel of the slide and jumps were appreciated but it was hard to get around high slopes and it was a tad too quick. We’ve also fixed one of the more problematic mods that basically didn’t have any downsides.''


 * Slide speed was reduced from 1300 to 1150.
 * Slide jump speed was reduced from 1250 to 1150.
 * Slide speed was reduction (how fast it brings you down to a stop)was increased from 17.5 to 18.5.
 * Slide jumping on an upward slope now triggers a higher angle jump.
 * Dodge speed was increased from 350 to 390.
 * Dodges are now triggered by double-tapping left, right or backward.
 * There’s now a control option to swap between different input methods.
 * Energy Regeneration was speed reduced from 10 to 8.
 * Energy Regeneration delay now begins counting down after a slide has been exited.
 * Energy Regeneration delay was reduced from 2s to 1.5s.
 * Mods
 * “Longslide”
 * Slide speed modifier was reduced from +50% to +40%.
 * “Fragile Charges”
 * Now properly reduces the current energy count rather than the max when taking damage.
 * Max suit energy was reduced from +100% to +75%.
 * Fixed a spelling error and a missing “h” was added.
 * Fixed a spelling error and a missing “h” was added.

Basic Prospector Kit
''Dev Comment: The basic kit was intended to be a solid choice for new players to have a solid defense and some help in surviving, this in the end turned out to make it more tanky than the Heavy Armor kit. We also had some legacy settings that made the base stats of the basic jetpack better than the Dragonfly. We’ve now changed some of the defensive upgrades into jetpack centric things, while also making sure that the basic settings (with a lack of major kit-level upgrades) make this a weaker version of the jetpack, with more health and some other perks instead.''


 * Health was changed from 730 to 700.
 * The height of jumps was slightly reduced to fall in line with the other kits.
 * Now has same starting values for jetpack as the the Dragonfly kit.
 * Jetpack fuel refill was slightly increased.
 * Upgrades
 * Old
 * Rank 1: Monster Damage Reduction +20%
 * Rank 2: Player Damage Reduction +20%
 * Rank 3: Max Speed (inkl. Kit abilities) +5%
 * Rank 4: Ability Cooldown Speed +20%
 * Rank 5: Health Regeneration Rate +20%
 * Rank 6: Weakspot Damage +10%
 * Rank 7: Monster Damage +20%
 * New
 * Rank 1: Max Movement Speed +10%
 * Rank 2: Monster Damage Reduction +20%
 * Rank 3: Jetpack Fuel +15%
 * Rank 4: Ability Cooldown Speed +20%
 * Rank 5: Health Regeneration Rate +20%
 * Rank 6: Jetpack Thrust +20%
 * Rank 7: Monster Damage +30%

General kit changes

 * Mods
 * Pistol Master
 * Reload speed reduction from -20% to -10%
 * Doesn’t affect spread anymore
 * Heal on kills
 * Solved a bug where it applied the effect of another mod.
 * Gain 100 HP on kills
 * Health regen cooldown is permanently increased by 50% while equipped

WEAPON BALANCING
''Dev Comment: We wanted to try this out in order to make heavier weapon feel bulkier and balance out the increase in power they grant. The system however turned out to influence more areas than intended, so back to the drawing board it goes! We might revisit this idea in the future but then without ADS slowing kit movement.''


 * General
 * Weapon weight no longer changes the speed of kit abilities and jumps.

''Dev Comment: In this update we wanted to adress the over represented Asp by lowering the stacking potential of its rate of fire, as well as make it slightly more difficult to use. Further changes have been made to make other mods more attractive to pick.''

''The snipers have gotten some changes to lessen the extreme damage increase by landing headshots. We still want them to reward skillful play ofc, but double damage on 500 Credit weapons turned out to be massive and we want to try reducing it slightly.''

The Bulldog has been the least effective starter weapon so therefor its seen some usability changes.

Asp Flechette Gun

 * Clip size from was changed from 28 to 25.
 * Projectile speed from was reduced from 15,000 to 10,000.
 * Upgrades
 * Upgrade Two changed from RoF +10% to DMG +5%
 * Mods
 * “Mercury Infused Needles”
 * Damage scaling against Monsters was reduced from -15% to -25%.
 * Player damage bonus remains unchanged (+15%).
 * “Rapid Ejector”
 * Rate of Fire bonus  was reduced from +20% to +10%.
 * Recoil was increased from +25% to +40%.
 * Hipfire spread was reduced from +50% to +35%.
 * “Bundle Ejector”
 * Clip size was changed from 8 to 10.
 * Damage per projectile was changed from 80% of base to 70%.
 * “Power Ejector”
 * Rate of Fire penalty was reduced from -25% to -20%.
 * “Heavy Handle”
 * Recoil was decreased from -20% to -15%.

Kinetic Arbiter

 * Damage was reduced from 345 to 330.
 * Weakspot multiplier was reduced from 200% to 175%.

Upgrades


 * Upgrade One was  changed from RoF +15% to RoF +10%.

Mods

“High Caliber Mag Rail”


 * Damage bonus was reduced from +15% to +10%.


 * Projectile speed penalty was increased from -15% to -25%.

“Lightweight Stock”


 * Fixed an issue with the mod actually slowing you down rather than giving a 7% movement speed increase.

 Basilisk 


 * Weakspot multiplier was increased from 130% to 150%.

 C32-Bolt Action 


 * Weakspot multiplier was reduced from 200% to 175%.

Bulldog


 * Refire time was reduced from 0.6 to 0.55.
 * Pellet spread factor was decreased from 0.25 to 0.19, creating a tighter pellet pattern.

KNOWN ISSUES

If you enter the shop tab within 5 seconds of launching the game the prices will not be shown. Please wait 5 seconds until you enter the shop.

We are waiting for an EGS update, as one of the recent versions can cause issues that lead to crashes when you start several streaming tools. If you encounter problems, please join our discord ( https://discordapp.com/invite/thecycle ) and reach out to us.

Please remember: even though we are now in Early Access, the game is still very much in development and not fully released. This means that bugs and crashes are to be expected. If you find any issues during your session, please don’t hesitate to report it using the bug reporter tool in-game. Please also keep in mind that queue times, especially late in the night might be longer than expected due to lower player count.

We hope you have fun during your time on Fortuna III and look forward to reading your feedback!