Forged Papers is the first update since Papership went into Early Access, and it is a big one. It adds The Deep, an endless mining dive where you choose when to surface; Warlords, three bosses back to back; and a two-ship boss, Trouble & Double. Every voyage now has a seed you can share. Ship building has been rebuilt from the ground up: over 500 blocks, eleven sets, a new Support block type and a ten-level forge.
A New Look and Sound
Almost every screen and effect in the game has been redrawn.
- The voyage map and the atlas have a new design, split into coloured panels that fill in as you play.
- The atlas has a new layout. Each sector type sits at a different tier in each quadrant, and the bosses between quadrants now stand at tiers 3 to 7.
- The atlas has a Quadrants card that shows what each quadrant's bonuses give. The voyage map has a Sector Types legend.
- The hangar, shop, forge, reward screens and Field Manual have all been updated.
- Most special and movement abilities have new effects. Black Hole now looks like one, Time Reversal shows the rewind, and dashes and blinks leave a trail.
- Enemies flash and flinch when you hit them, and break into their blocks when they die.
- Enemy attacks have clearer warnings, and the biggest strikes hit harder on screen.
- Enemy bullets are easier to see, and most are drawn above your own shots.
- Dying has a new animation.
- Every sound effect has been remade, and waves arrive on the beat of the music.
New Content and Features
Drill and The Deep
- Added Drill, a mining sector. Your guns carve a path down a rock seam, digging out ore on the way to a heart stone at the bottom.
- Added The Deep, an endless dive that opens once you beat three Drill sectors. After every layer, choose to Surface with what you have collected, or Dig On into harder rock and richer ore.
Dreadnought Pass
- Added Dreadnought Pass. Chase a capital ship that stretches the whole level, shoot its parts off as they pass, and break the bridge before it warps away.
Other New and Reworked Sectors
- Added Warlords: three bosses back to back. Between fights, fly into one of two rewards. The last boss fights with a move from each one you beat.
- Added Blitz: ambush after ambush. Wipe out a whole squad for a bonus haul.
- Added Demolition: a derelict hulk drifts in, and you have 60 seconds to break off everything you can. Shoot its gold fuel cells to blow it apart.
- Added Hold Out: survive 75 seconds around a relay beacon. Kills inside its ring pay double, and the ring shrinks.
- Reworked Convoy, Salvage Farm, Elite Chain and Boss Gauntlet.
- Elite Chain pays x1.5 if you take no hits, and x1.25 if you take only one or two.
- Every voyage now has at least one special sector on the way to the first boss. Clearing a special sector pays bonus salvage.
- Normal fights have more going on. Squads fly together and pay a bonus if you wipe them all out, and from the third ring on every fight has one event: an ambush, a champion pack, meteor lanes or a bounty runner.
Seeds and Sharing
- Every voyage now has a seed, like 3F9A-C27E. Type a friend's seed on NEW VOYAGE to fly the same map.
- Win a voyage and you get a Run Card: a cover page of your run to save and share.
Achievements
- Added 22 Steam Achievements.
Ship Building
Blocks
- There are now over five times as many blocks to find.
- Blocks now come in grades. Most blocks have a grade I, II and III version. A higher grade is stronger and often plays differently. The deeper you are in a voyage, the higher the grade a fight can give you.
- Many more Uniques. Most are built on a graded block and add their own twist.
- Most bosses carry signature Uniques. A boss fight's launch panel shows which Unique it can drop, and the chance.
- Added a new block type, Supports. A Support boosts the blocks in its range.
- Supports can add extra shots, chain, pierce, new flight paths or elements, or make specials, dashes, shields and engines stronger.
- Added eight bullet types, each with one trick. For example, Magnum rounds crit more often, crystals shatter, seekers home in, and the Orb eats enemy fire.
- Elements now cause ailments: fire Burns, cold Chills, poison leaves Rot, and lightning Shocks.
- Every movement block now does something of its own. For example, Swarm Hop hatches an Orbiter and Flame Dash has three charges.
Sets
- Sets have been reworked. There are now eleven, each with five tiers. The top tiers change how you play.
- Your main set can reach tier 5. Your next two sets stop at tier 4, and any others at tier 3.
- Marksman builds around crits.
- Warden turns your Energy Shield into a weapon.
- Stormcaller chains lightning from enemy to enemy.
- Vindicator grows Quills that blunt hits and fire spikes back.
- Bombardier fills the screen with bullets.
- Overlord surrounds your ship with Orbiters.
- Outrider rewards flying fast and never slowing down.
- Pyromaniac spreads fire from kill to kill.
- Berserker trades your health for damage.
- Cryomancer chills and freezes enemies.
- Plaguebearer stacks Rot that jumps between enemies.
Crafting and Beacons
- The forge now goes up to level 10.
- Crafting gems now drop, and you spend them on crafts.
- Added new crafts: Refine, Annul and Fracture. Refine rerolls the numbers on a block's modifiers and keeps the modifiers.
- Uniques and Supports can now be crafted too.
- You can now open the forge from the voyage map.
- Beacons now roll modifiers like gear, and fit into a four-socket dock. A more dangerous beacon pays more.
Hangar
- Each starter ship now has its own ability.
- Links between blocks now show as yellow bursts.
- Every block shows the Power it adds to your ship.
- Power now includes burns, Rot, orbiters and your special.
- A ship with no weapon, or with blocks that are not connected, cannot launch.
Boss and Enemy Changes
Trouble & Double
- Added a new boss, Trouble & Double: two ships sharing one fight and one split boss bar.
- Trouble is large, slow and hits hard. Double is small, fast and never stops shooting.
- The two are joined by a laser tether, and Double swings on the end of it.
- Below half health, Double docks on Trouble's back and both fire rings of bullets.
- When one dies, the other takes its guns and fires faster.
Other Changes
- Added dozens of new enemy ships.
- Champions now roll a modifier, shown as a badge. A gold Ace carries two or three modifiers, and pays a bounty and a powerup.
- Enemies now carry an element. Fire enemies burn you briefly, cold ones slow you, lightning ones delay your shield recharge and poison ones deal damage over a few seconds.
- Fly three or more blocks of an elemental set (Pyromaniac, Cryomancer, Stormcaller or Plaguebearer) and you are immune to that set's element.
- Minions that a boss summons, and enemies that spawn when an elite dies, now grow stronger with the tier like everything else.
- From atlas tier 8, enemies hit harder, and slams and rams get through more of your Guard.
- Bosses that hide behind escorts now stay on screen, cloaked, instead of flying off.
- Every enemy warning now lasts at least half a second.
- An attack with a solid edge deals damage. A dashed edge never does.
- Bosses now show one caption at a time.
Player Balance
The aim of this pass: every bonus you stack should pay off, nothing should depend on a hidden dice roll, and when in doubt the game should be easier, not harder.
- Increased bonuses now add together into one pool. More bonuses multiply.
- Increased damage from across your ship gives less past +50%, and never reaches +150%.
- Critical hits now always deal at least 50% more damage.
- Player shots no longer have random spread.
- Chain is now a percentage. Every 100% is one chain on every bullet, and the rest spreads evenly across your bullets.
- Guns are capped at 30 shots per second, so your monitor's refresh rate no longer changes your damage.
- Guard now works as points on a curve. 700 Guard halves a hit, and at least a third of every hit always gets through.
- Specials now grow with your damage bonuses. Fire, poison and lightning specials also grow with your Burn, Rot or Shock.
- Specials now ignore half of an enemy's Guard.
- Damage over time no longer counts as a hit.
- Health regeneration no longer has a cap.
- Speed now has a soft cap.
- Every level starts with your Momentum meter half full.
- A boss's giant bullet now deals at most 40% of your maximum health.
- Bosses on the first voyage ring now have half their health.
- Eleven Uniques built on small guns now beat the gun they are built on.
- Seeker bullets now deal more damage.
- Rot now grows to at most double damage. It had no limit.
Economy
- Voyages now start with 150 salvage.
- The final boss now pays 800 salvage.
- Selling a block now pays half its shop price, including its rolls.
- Your ship pulls in nearby drops. The Magnetic modifier makes the pull reach further.
- The first boss you beat in each ring of the voyage map grows your ship's grid. The map marks it GRID +1.
- The voyage shop opens with 8 slots.
User Interface Changes
- The glossary is now the Field Manual, with new pages for enemy modifiers, sector types and achievements.
- Added guided tours for new players. Each one can be skipped.
- Small text now uses a clearer font, and long names wrap instead of being cut off.
- Every block card now says what it does in one plain line. Popups explain every number.
- New filter bar, shared by the hangar, forge, shop and Field Manual.
- Star a block to keep it as a favourite. Favourites are never sold.
- Right-click a stat to find the blocks that give it.
- In the hangar, drag a block from your stash straight onto the ship, and right-click to put down the block in your hand.
- The death screen now lists the last three hits you took.
- Far fewer words float over the fight.
- Added a Screen FX slider and a Reduce Flashing option.
- Added an option to pause when the game loses focus.
- You can now fly, fight and finish a voyage on a gamepad. The hangar, shop and forge still need a mouse. Start does not pause yet, so use B.
- Boss kills and wins are now marked on the Steam recording timeline.
Demo Changes
- The free demo has been updated to match this build.
- The demo now saves. Continue picks up your demo voyage.
- Demo progress stays in the demo and does not carry over to the full game.
- Seeds are full-game only.
- The Striker now flies with its core again.
- Anvil and Warg have their attacks back.
Your Save
The game has changed too much since June for old progress to carry over fairly, so this update starts everyone fresh.
- Progress is reset the first time you launch this update.
- Your old save is kept as a backup, not deleted.
- Settings carry over, including volume, window size and key bindings.
- Each Steam account on a PC now has its own saves.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where guns fired slower than their card said.
- Fixed a bug where pausing removed your active buffs.
- Fixed a bug where fast bullets passed through small enemies.
- Fixed a bug where one very large hit could make a boss skip a phase.
- Fixed a bug where quitting did not always save first.
- Fixed a bug where visiting the hangar could remove rolls from your blocks.
- Fixed a bug where opening the demo deleted your full-game voyage.
- Fixed a bug where continuing a saved voyage made its early fights twice as hard.
- Fixed a bug where some bonuses to bullet speed, pierce and chain were ignored on weapons that have their own.
- Fixed a bug where shots missed the outer wings of very wide bosses.
- Fixed a bug where text was blurry at some window sizes.
- Fixed a bug where rebinding a control did not replace the old key.
- Fixed a bug where movement skills did not follow the arrow keys.
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