Game developer Xaviant hopes this message finds you well. This is a tough time for everyone, and their team is grateful to report that they are safe and healthy with their families at home. They’re still able to operate, so they’ll keep doing their jobs. If they can provide a bit of entertainment for some of you out there, they see that as doing their part.

Xaviant’s 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 they announced back in January, they have exciting plans on their roadmap for Minerva, and today they’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, Xaviant has 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, Xaviant has also made some major changes on that front. Not only have they done a great deal of balancing, tweaking, and fixing, but they’ve completely overhauled their spawning system and added a whole new class of enemies to the mix.

As they’ve said before, their 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 they realized that they were falling a bit short in terms of combat feel. They 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.

They’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 they like where it is heading and they 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. They can’t wait to hear what you think about it, so let them know on Twitter!

New Stuff in Don’t Die, Minerva!!

• 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 the 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 behaviour 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

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