Hello, all! It's been a hot minute since I've been up here, but I've been cooking behind the scenes. In this update, I bring you... new enemies!

Sentry

The first new foe is a statically mounted sentry gun, capable of pivoting a full 360 degrees. When engaging in combat, this new trash mob patiently turns towards its target (you), until it has a direct line of sight. It emits a warning beep and locks its rotation, then fires a powerful artillery round. A short cooldown later, it begins seeking again. It's a very simple enemy, but introduces some much needed variety in the ranged department. You can also parry its projectile if you get the right Headsbane upgrade, which is pretty fun. They come in aqueous and electric variants.

Cleaver

The second new enemy is the total antithesis of the previous. It's a fast bipedal robot that charges rapidly at the player, swinging their twin blade-arms when close. It has no elemental affinity but applies Bleed on hit, which causes rapid incurable damage ticks for a few seconds. Their neutrality means most mixtures work against them, so they're fairly easy to dispatch if you act proactively.

Overseer

Finally, we have a proper miniboss for elite combat rooms. The Overseer is a massive drone with three tentacle-like appendages that it can use to fire projectiles, summon other enemies, and even temporarily ground itself for a giant blast. It's a tough fight that tests your speed, as it can swarm the map with Watchers if you don't cull them early.

This is the first enemy that I've had to implement fairly complex AI for, including conditional attack phases. It was definitely a challenge, but it was rewarding. I have a nice little system set up for future enemies now, so expect to see less mindless single-use enemies from here on out.

Alchemy and Balancing

Tiered mixing is now gated.  You can still mix tier 2 chemickals (products made from two base chemickals) right off the bat, but tier 3 mixing now requires an alchemy pack upgrade. I did this to add *some* feeling of progression in the alchemy system, being able to use the insanely broken tier 3 chemickals from the moment you start a run just isn't fun. This will hopefully incentivize people to use their whole toolkit, since they had to pay for it. 

On the topic of alchemy, I added a new tier 2 chemickal: Rotting Bane. It applies the Rot status effect to organic enemies, negating their healing damage vulnerability. In practice, this means that characters get hurt from healing sources while under the effect.  I can't wait to put this on an enemy, I'm sure it'll trip a lot of people up.

I reworked some of the elemental damage interactions. Electric enemies are now weak to Freezing damage, not because it makes sense but to have a more symmetrical damage model.  Also, chain lightning no longer arcs back to you from your own attack: you can now use electricity in melee range without fear of exploding at your own hand. I always thought that was a fun interaction, but it's become abundantly clear that it frustrates most people, so it's gone.

Finally, I made damage calculation more forgiving when you don't have a mixture equipped. The gist is that every attack has two components: flat damage and alchemy damage. Previously, alchemy damage would get entirely negated if you didn't have a mixture, meaning that using a non-effective mixture was actually much stronger than dry firing. Alchemy damage is now always applied, so your overall damage is way higher!

Moving Forward

The game is very near to being a complete vertical slice, I just need to make a boss-boss (and a couple other things). Expect to see a Steam page soon, I actually mean it this time. 

That's it for now! I'll see you again soon.