As Advertised
What's a corporate dystopia without intrusive advertising everywhere you go? At long last, we have added the advertisements you crave!
The ad billboards will accentuate the worldbuilding, add more flavor and background details to the corporations you hack throughout the story, and foreshadow future events so that you're already familiar with the places and people by the time you meet them.
Now that we have greater control over the world's colors, we can add even more.
Linked Servers
Linked servers that would join a hack to defend each other were meant to add an element of strategy. Trace the paths backwards to remove the layers of security protecting your target. Hacker vibes.
But in practice, it sometimes meant hacking the server at the end of the line to activate ?? hacks and spawn hundreds or even thousands of enemies for a 20-minute hack. While we want you to be able to challenge yourself, we'd rather they be opt-in experiences in arenas and special encounters than punishing and time-consuming difficulty spikes in the core experience.
We've changed the linked servers to still pass their security types downstream but not activate as a multihack. Each downstream servers also gets +2 level to boost the difficulty. Now there's still an advantage to peeling back the layers of linked servers but you're less likely to soft-lock yourself with an extremely long hack.
Gameplay Balance, Continued
With randomized loot, it was possible for a new character to end up with an inventory full of shotguns. Since we want every playthrough to start with a variety of build options, we've guaranteed a selection of different items in your first dozen hacks. Now a new character will find a heal, mobility items, a variety of weapon types, a scope, a mine, and even a grenade.
We decreased the level that some items unlock to also expand the early game loot variety and build options.
In the last patch, I had decreased the server levels in the early game but forgot to decrease the levels that missions unlock. Sorry about that, new players, it's been fixed!
P.S. Watch out for all the cats today!
0.9.221 - As Advertised (4/1/25)
- Added advertisement billboards to the startup valley and volcanyon
- Decreased the levels where post-volcano mission unlock (sorry, forgot to do this in the last patch!)
- Linked servers now pass their security types and +2 level downstream but don't activate as multihacks
- Revised drop pool after the tutorial to guarantee a variety of items in your first loot pickups
- Decreased the level where many items unlock to improve early game build variety
- New Perk, Buffer Overflow: on kill, get a random buffer for a few seconds
- Screen desaturates at low health again (sorry, broke this in last patch)
- Rebalanced some story server levels in the volcanyon
- Recycle Bin now tells you the percent chance of output items
- Removed 2 hacks from the Prank War to get you to Arcade faster (farewell Smellson)
- Additional minor fixes and tweaks
WeCare about you. <3
- Nonadecimal & superdupergc
