Some balance and other random fixes that folks brought to my attention. Thanks everyone for your continued support and feedback! Bullets seem to be broken/invisible, fun!

Escalation Protocol Ability was scaling far past its intended ceiling and quietly trivializing longer runs, to the point of being a near-mandatory pick that out scaled every other build. It is still a strong, build-defining passive that rewards heating up and going long. It just no longer overshadows everything else in the game.

• Stacks now build up more slowly. Reaching maximum takes around ten minutes of sustained pressure rather than a few.

• The per-stack bonuses are smaller across the board.

• There is now a hard ceiling on its total strength, so it can no longer snowball without limit no matter how long a run goes or how heavily it is invested.

Endless Mode

• The level cap is gone in Endless. Hitting 100 used to end your progression and leave you flying around waiting to die; now you keep leveling past it. Levels beyond 100 arrive more slowly the further you push, so the first stretch past the old cap is very reachable and then each one asks progressively more. Long runs get a real tail to chase instead of a dead end.

• Endless difficulty has also been nudged up slightly.

• Fixed Endless leaderboards only showing results for a single tier. Endless rankings are now combined across all tiers into one board. Existing Endless scores had to be reset as a part of the update.

The Sovereign

• Fixed the Void phase. The Void arm's wave was spawning no enemies at all, and the Void boss was never showing up.

• The Void phase spawns its swarm like the other factions.

• The Void boss now arrives once the Void arm is brought to half health.

• The other faction bosses now also show up throughout the fight!

• The number of enemies the Sovereign's portals keep in play during the fight now increases with your chosen tier, so higher difficulties bring real pressure instead of a trickle.

Bug Fixes

• Cursed Totem debuffs now show their real strength. The curses were always applying their full effect, but their debuff tooltips were displaying far smaller numbers than what was actually happening to you. Lethargy (slowed cooldowns) and Weakness (reduced damage) now show their true values, which scale with difficulty. The curses are not stronger than before. You can finally see how much they were doing the whole time.

• Fixed the Cursed status buff so it shows its full effect, not the default placeholder text.

• Flow State achievements now unlock. Flow State I and II were not tracking progress or unlocking at all. They now correctly track sustained high combos and unlock as intended.

• Found some edge cases that would knock the "immovable" bosses out of reach! If you see this happening anymore, let me know! This should be all of them!

ːsteamthumbsupː If you're enjoying the game, please add a review! It helps a lot, especially for smaller solo devs like myself! Thanks for your support, and don't hesitate to reach out via Discord to share your thoughts about anything! :)

First official post-release patch. No crashes so far which is good, I guess! I'm continuing to monitor Discord the forums and crashes, so don't be shy! (ok, don't purposely crash the game.. you know what I mean!) Off to the update!

Endless

• Endless Mode now scales more aggressively in the deeper waves. Enemy health, damage, and density continue climbing past the old plateau, so late runs stay genuinely threatening instead of settling into a grind.

Conduit Tether

• Conduit Tether's drain damage and shield restoration have been reduced. It remains a strong sustain tool, but it no longer keeps your shields topped off through sustained pressure on its own.

Siphon Sentry

• Siphon Sentry's per-bolt damage has been lowered, bringing its output in line with other deployables.

Armory

• Upgrades in the Armory now round to the nearest 500 or 1000.

• Due to a resource shortage in the far reaches of space, some upgrades are slightly more expensive.

Achievements

• Removed an achievement that is no longer in use. No more 69 achievements, we're now down to 68!

Icon

• Sovereign's End now has its own icon... not the default Unreal icon - oops!

Telemetry

• Anonymous stats now on by default. The game now sends anonymous gameplay data (kills, deaths, abilities, run length) to help me balance it solo. No personal info, nothing that can identify you. You can turn it off any time in Gameplay Settings.

• Added a bit more visibility into trait selection and occurrence

• Now capturing global kill metrics from all runs, so maybe in the future we'll find a fun thing to do with that detail.

If you're enjoying the game, please add a review! It helps a lot, especially for smaller solo devs like myself! Thanks for your support, and don't hesitate to reach out via Discord to share your thoughts about anything! :)