Hello, everyone!
This update brings new ways to build your snake and reworks the pace of combat from the opening moments to the end of a run. Collect relics to strengthen your build, try Lily's Qi Orbs, or enter Endless Mode after clearing a run to see how far your build can go.
**A new relic system: more variety in every run**
- Added **64 relics** across four rarities: Common, Rare, Epic, and Legendary. Their effects cover damage, area, attack speed, piercing, bouncing, element generation, and a wide range of skill combinations.
- Chests now award relics with a new reveal sequence. Collecting the same relic again stacks its effects, with duplicate copies grouped under a single count.
- Relics follow behind your snake's tail. The relic bar at the top of the screen and the pause menu let you inspect their names, individual effects, and total bonuses from all copies you hold.
- Unlock more relics as you collect them across runs. Relic drops favor your character and existing buffs, helping builds come together while leaving room to discover other combinations.
- Buff rewards have been separated from chests and moved to independent Scale Altars around the map. You can now open chests and choose buffs separately, with clearer altar visuals and their own placement on the map.
**The new Qi school: turn every element gained into an attack**
- Added five buffs: **Qi Bending, Qi Cutter, Qi Gathering, Returning Qi, and Vacuum Burst**.
- Fire Qi Orbs when you gain elements. Upgrades and combinations can add piercing, damage that scales with your snake's body length, return flights, and area bursts that pull enemies inward.
- Added seven Qi relics that can increase orb count, range, piercing, and return cycles, or empower subsequent Qi Orbs through match-3 clears.
- Lily's **Origin of Qi** now uses the new Qi Orb mechanics, with matching buff and relic pools. Other characters can also access the Qi school through Qi Bending.
- Added matching Qi icons, cyan upgrade progress indicators, and Qi Orb effects.
**Keep going after a clear with Endless Mode**
- After reaching **15 minutes** in Standard Mode, choose to finish and collect your rewards or take your current build into Endless Mode.
- Enemy health and pursuit pressure continue to rise in Endless Mode. Elite waves and hordes return in cycles, testing your build's sustained damage and survival.
- Normal and elite enemies gradually gain resistance to knockback and ordinary hitstun, reaching full resistance at 10 minutes into Endless Mode. Freeze, stun, and slow effects still work.
- Entering Endless Mode does not undo your clear. Progression EXP is locked in when you clear Standard Mode, while Soul Jade rewards include everything earned throughout the run. Your Endless results are also recorded.
**Six combat pickups to turn the tide**
- **Soul-Drawing Magnet:** Collects the available elements on screen when activated, plus all uncollected Soul Jade across the map.
- **Gale Shoes:** Triples movement speed for 10 seconds.
- **Time-Stopping Hourglass:** Pauses normal enemies, elites, and related enemy projectiles for 10 seconds. Bosses are not fully paused.
- **Thunderfire Bomb:** Deals explosive damage to nearby enemies.
- **Treasure Pouch:** Doubles Soul Jade gains for 10 seconds.
- **Enlightenment Scroll:** Doubles in-run EXP gains for 10 seconds.
Pickups must land before they can be collected. They now have more visible icons, landing effects, and collection feedback. Time stop adds a spreading desaturation effect, explosions have new flame visuals, and active timed effects display their remaining duration in the UI.
**Combat pacing and balance**
- Reduced the opening health of normal enemies and elites. Adjusted basic attacks, summons, and multiple buffs to give early attacks more impact.
- Reworked enemy numbers, enemy types, and elite waves during the normal phase, and added recurring hordes. The first elite defeated in each elite wave awards one chest.
- The two Standard Mode boss altars are scheduled for minutes 3 and 9. The third boss altar now appears 3 minutes into Endless Mode. You still need to approach an altar to activate it.
- Boss base health is now three times its previous value and scales with the combat time at activation. Elites are larger, and boss and elite crowns and incoming-enemy notices are easier to see.
- Buff offers and rerolls now include a related option: when an eligible candidate exists, at least one option is linked to your character or selected buffs.
- Added early build assistance for players who have not yet cleared both difficulty 0 and difficulty 1. Early relic rewards are more likely to fill gaps in the build you are developing.
- Adjusted starting schools and later unlock progression, raising the EXP requirements for some later schools. Qi is available from the start, while Light Wings unlocks later. Existing saves keep Light Wings if it was already unlocked.
- Adjusted the stone-pillar interactions of Ice-Forged Stone and Heavenly Stoneburst, the target count of Lightning Stretching, and lightning prison effects. Also refined Sea of Fire's burning behavior and how Nine Days Transverse counts Golden Crows.
- Increased the Flytrap's thorn limit from 10 to 20. Added range relics for the Flytrap and Koi, and adjusted freeze chance, Soul Jade gains, and several relic bonuses.
**Multiple saves and a clearer interface**
- Added independent save profiles, each with its own progression and unfinished run. Switch between profiles, rename them, or delete them.
- Deleting a save requires confirmation. Deleting the last save restores the initial menu layout with New Game as the only run entry; Settings and the other menus remain available.
- Existing saves can be migrated, and new profiles have independent tutorial progress.
- Improved lobby buttons, all four talent shortcuts, Challenge Mode unlock messages, and feedback when you do not have enough Soul Jade.
- Refined relic details, chest confirmations, and relic-copy selection screens, including line wrapping and font sizing for longer descriptions.
- Completed Simplified Chinese, English, Traditional Chinese, and Japanese localization for the new content, and fixed several missing-glyph, language-switching, and text-display issues.
**Visuals, performance, and fixes**
- Updated water, ice, fire, lightning prison, and Qi Orb effects, along with collection animations for elements, EXP, and Soul Jade.
- Focused optimization on dense enemy groups, large numbers of attack effects, dropped items, and repeated audio playback. Improved enemy animation, shadows, pathfinding, hit detection, and resource reuse.
- Improved updates and cleanup while paused and when repeatedly entering or leaving scenes, reducing unnecessary processing, memory allocations, and object creation.
- Fixed charge and cutting attacks removing too many body elements at once. Each Mask explosion can now remove at most one element within its actual area.
- Fixed issues with some ice upgrades, water-projectile bounces, summon damage, lightning targeting, and stone-pillar pushing and splitting.
- Improved movement along walls and map boundaries. Fixed cases involving bosses going out of bounds, damage recovery during chest-opening pauses, and enemy visuals after switching windows.
Thank you for all your feedback! Try out the new relic combinations and Qi builds, and let us know how the early-game pacing, Endless challenges, and performance feel.
