Melee attacks & more in Don't Die, Minerva!'s latest update!

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

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

As we’ve said before, our 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 we realized that we were falling a bit short in terms of combat feel. We 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.

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

New Stuff!

• 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 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 behavior 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