Happy New Year Everyone!
Despite the hustle and bustle of the holidays, we’ve still managed to put together an update that we’re very proud of. In the month since launch, our vision for our Early Access / Game Preview roadmap has grown clearer by the day. We’re going to share more details about the roadmap with you shortly.
In the meantime, our next update will launch this Friday, January 10th on Xbox One and Steam.
Our overall goal with Don’t Die, Minerva! Is to take the leveling experience you would find in a game like Diablo III, which would take several hours for an average player, and condense it into an action-packed run that lasts just a little over an hour. We want to capture all of the excitement of unlocking new abilities and constructing new builds with legendary gear into a bite-sized experience.
For that to work, things like pacing and loot tables are incredibly important. And so a big focus of this update is on pacing and loot drops. Minerva isn’t a huge game, but it does have a lot of variety to offer and we found that it was just taking too darned long to get there. So we’ve sped up the pace and increased the amount of loot you’ll find, including guaranteed Legendaries on nearly every floor of the dungeon.
We’ve also focused on the variety of rooms and enemies you’ll experience along the way, and we’ve done lots of bug fixes and quality of life improvements to boot.
There’s much more to come, but we think we’re moving in the right direction and we’re more excited than ever to grow and improve the game. Remember: Your feedback is invaluable so please share with us! Links are available on www.xaviant.com.
Full patch notes will drop along with the update on Friday. Here are some highlights:
More Variety
- New Enemy: Fly (Replaces the Ram Bat)
- New Enemy: Banshee (Replaces Rapid-Fire Ghost)
- Added 6 New Challenge Rooms
- Challenge Rooms now appear more frequently on each Floor
- New Challenge Room Hazard: Bomb Flinger
- New Challenge Room Hazard: Pendulum
Improved Pacing
The game moves faster, which feels better and allows players to experience more of the variety the game has to offer.
- Reduced the average number of rooms per floor.
- Increased the number of Challenge Rooms per floor.
- More consistent number of Cauldron Rooms per floor
- Fewer rooms means fewer enemies to fight per floor, increased the chance for gear to drop from enemies and small chests to compensate
More, Better Loot
We want players to have an exciting run from start to finish. That means ensuring that plenty of loot drops, including Legendary items. By increasing the quantity and quality of gear that drops, we empower the player, expose them to more of the wide range of loot available, and give them more meaningful choices as they construct their build for each run.
- Large chests have a more random selection of gear, guarantee at least one Epic and one Legendary item.
- Large Treasure Chests rooms are now guaranteed on the 2nd floor.
- Medium chests have more variety of gear and guarantee Rare items at a minimum.
- Small chests no longer drop currency, offer more variety of gear.
- Vendor table loot lists adjusted to guarantee improved rarity.
- Reduced cost of rerolling the Vendor’s stock.
- Reduced the value of recycling items to compensate for increased amount of gear that now drops.
And much more!