Papership's first major update is live. Everything below landed patch by patch since the June 30 launch, a lot of it shaped directly by what you reported on Discord and the forums. You said, we did. Here are the highlights.
CRAFTING GEMS AND A DEEPER FORGE
Crafting actions now drop as gems from kills, with a guaranteed one from every boss. Holding a gem makes that craft free, whatever your forge level. The forge ladder itself now climbs to level 10, and every atlas tier unlocks something new on the way up.
BEACONS ROLL LIKE GEAR NOW
Beacon map mods became a real affix system: prefixes and suffixes, tiers, rolled value windows, and a REFINE craft to reroll them. Danger finally pays. Threat no longer inflates enemy stats behind your back; it multiplies your payout instead. Juice the beacon, farm the sector.
CHAMPIONS AND ACES
The atlas grew a monster rarity ladder. Champions with modifiers are now routine, and the new gold ACE tier stacks several mods, takes far more killing, and pays a bounty, a guaranteed powerup and better loot for it.
THE ATLAS, REBALANCED TOP TO BOTTOM
We measured the whole difficulty curve and rebuilt it. Enemy rosters now ramp smoothly across all ten tiers instead of lurching, tier one serves real swarms from the first sector, and a campaign-clear build lands on the fair line at tier ten instead of coasting over it.
NEW BLOCKS, NEW ABILITIES, NEW MODIFIERS
Around thirty new blocks since launch: budget commons like Flare Pop, Spark Orbit and Sidestep so early builds get ability choices, new shields, engines and armors, and mechanic pieces like Surge Capacitor, Mirror Ward, Ram Dash and Rewind Jump. SPECIAL and MOVEMENT blocks can now roll their own modifiers, so crafting matters on the slots that define your build.
SHARE YOUR SHIP
Beat the final boss and share your ship straight from the victory screen. Every share gets a permanent link with a proper ship card for Discord and Twitter, a public hangar page with full block details, and TEST FLIGHT: anyone can fly your exact ship in the browser demo, no install needed.
AND THE REST
New content
- New DEMOLITION sector: park under a drifting derelict hulk and break it apart for salvage and loot before time runs out.
- New BLITZ and DRILL sectors, plus a hidden special sector woven into voyage maps.
- Seventeen new enemy ships fill out the roster, from ricochet gunships to brood carriers to parked gun walls.
- Broken enemy bullet types finally work: homing shots, flak bursts, ricochet rounds and wave lances actually fire now, and six existing ships picked up new attacks.
- Sixteen new unique weapons and mechanics joined the loot pool, from a word gun that spells out its own damage to a giant projectile that eats bullets whole.
- Two new keystones let you commit hard to a build: one trades your hull down to a single hit point for huge damage, the other trades your shields for extra hull.
- Five bosses now have a chance to drop their own signature weapon when you kill them.
- New map mods Decorated, Warped Zones and Unstable Hulls, plus new champion modifiers Regenerating, Enraged and Splitting, add fresh danger to the atlas.
- Every starter ship now launches with its own ability: dash, blink, phase roll, turtle shell or cloak.
Crafting and economy
- Block modifiers now roll inside a value window instead of a single fixed number, and a new REFINE craft lets you reroll those values without changing which modifiers you have.
- The forge now opens right from the voyage map, so you can craft blocks mid-run without waiting for the atlas.
- Gems you find during a voyage run fold straight into your atlas stock the moment you beat the final boss.
- Your ship now has a pickup field that pulls nearby drops toward you automatically, and a new Magnetic modifier grows it further.
- Essences and crafting gems now fly out and home in on your ship instead of drifting away or getting lost in the fight.
- Your forge level now carries over from the voyage into the atlas, so beating the campaign no longer resets your crafting progress.
- Selling a beacon in the shop now pays the same rate as scrapping it at the forge.
Balance
- Every set now has a shield option, and five sets gained an engine option too.
- Every weapon family's damage now climbs cleanly from common to unique, so a rarer drop is reliably a stronger one.
- The first two voyage levels feel more alive: enemies actually shoot back with dodgeable fire, and the weakest ones die in one hit.
- Minions summoned by a boss and enemies spawned when an elite dies now scale with the sector, instead of arriving under-leveled.
- High-tier atlas sectors stream noticeably denser now, and early atlas sectors no longer crawl at the tutorial's pace.
- Extreme low-HP builds can no longer dodge every kind of damage entirely; every damage cap now floors at one hit.
Interface and feel
- Every block, beacon and reward now shows up as a sticker-sheet card, replacing the old trading card everywhere it used to appear.
- The shop got a full redesign: prices are comic stickers you click straight on to buy or sell, and locks became push-pins.
- The forge was rebuilt into a dark crafting bench, where every craft action is its own cut gemstone sitting in a socket.
- The block popup was redesigned with grouped stats and modifier cards that show their full roll windows at a glance.
- The redesigned stat panel now shows up everywhere a ship's stats matter, not just the ship editor.
- Kills got a lot more satisfying: hit flashes, recoil, debris chunks, ink splats on the playfield, and bigger bursts on crits and overkills.
- Your own ship now breaks apart into its real blocks when destroyed, with staggered hull explosions and burning debris.
- New players now get guided, step-by-step tours through the ship editor, forge, map, shop and their first fight.
- The top navigation bar got a full visual overhaul with a distinct texture for each destination.
Fixes and performance
- Closing the game window now always saves your progress properly, even mid-craft or mid-run.
- If the game crashes while writing a save, the recovery copy is now kept and loaded automatically instead of being thrown away.
- Continuing a saved voyage no longer secretly doubles the difficulty of its early nodes.
- Boss and elite hit flashes no longer lock into a solid white wash under sustained fire.
- You can no longer stand inside a huge boss without taking contact damage, and shots aimed at the outer wings of very wide bosses now actually connect.
- A pass of performance fixes cut wasted per-frame work across bullets, effects and enemy lookups so busy screens run smoother.
- Elites now drop their fair share of loot too: guaranteed powerups, essences and rare pickups, not just salvage.
- Letting the last enemy in a squad escape now correctly costs you the clear bonus instead of paying out regardless.
...and hundreds of smaller fixes. You can find this and every future update on the news page: https://tinytorpedo.com/papership/news/index.html
Enjoying Early Access? An honest review helps more than anything else right now. And the free demo is still up if you're on the fence.
Come tell us what to break next: https://tinytorpedo.com/discord