Welcome to the dusk of the weekend in New Boston! We're continuing the tour of second-round balance and improvements and tonight are hitting on pricing in the weapons, mods and armor categories. We've also added a sick new map - the burnt out floor of a flophouse in a street habstack - for proc-gen rotation, improved coherence for Cyberdeck sales, upgraded some Decoy programs to Decoy (HOT) and improved the Hype, Stress (etc!) affects of boosting and burning merc and contact relationships. We always love rolling out something new and this is a key balance patch for the game's early economy. More will be following! if you are enjoy the game and our dedication to continued adds and improvements during Early Access, please take a minute to leave us a review. Remember, you can always edit it later!

Major Power Level 1-4 Price Drops

With this update, we're catching up on some much needed price rebalancing for Power Level 1 to 4 weapons, weapon mods and armor. The old pricing baselines came from a time in the game when there were few other things to spend money on and so the prices fit better. But now with the competition for safehouse upgrades, cyberdecks, programs, more cybernetic implants and more - these prices were due a big drop. Weapons dropped the most, ranging from 25% to 50% drop for some early game upgrades. Weapon Mods were already modestly price and dropped a bit, mostly around Power Level 2 and 3. Armors also had some modest reductions in the earlier Power Levels to help make those first upgrades easier to afford. Items on the other hand got modest gains, where the baseline prices for a Power Level 2 and 3 Item jumped by 10-20%. Item prices of course are small potatoes ($8K became $10K) and these price adjustments also boost the sale value for Item Blueprints on the far side, so this has its benefits as well. We are still working on a package of upgrades for weapons to help reinforce and boost the stat differences between the levels to further justify the expense to upgrade, but this price drop should help.

New Proc-Gen Map: Blown Out Flat

We've added a new map to the proc-gen rotation for the Battle Strike objective and anticipate adding it to other objective types throughout next week. This Blown Out Flat is a destroyed floor of a cheap habstack, utterly abandoned and dilapidated. The best kind of place for criminal dealings, gang warfare and hiding valuable illegal loot. The Blown Out Flat is on the smaller, more compact side of missions, so it is lovely to roll out additional variety in map types.

Cyberdeck Service to Power Levels

We've made some adjustments Contact services for selling Cyberdecks. We've extended the service ladder to having 4 levels and adjusted the placement of the Cyberdecks sold within those levels so that their is a clear and consistent match of Service Level to Power Level. This has moved one deck between levels and also another deck that was previously rated as Power Level 5 has been downgraded to Power Level 4. Get those limit breaks with your deck sellers and get back up to the latest!

Decoy Utilities go HOT

HOT is one of the designations for program variations. All HOT programs include IO buffer bonuses. With Update #158, we've upgraded the Decoy programs available from any Contact who offers the special Utility Program service to be Decoy I to III with the HOT designation. So, in addition to volunteering to be the first unloaded, these programs can now buff your IO. Some of you will find - depending on where you bought your Decoy programs before - that you now have these upgraded programs in your Inventory or already installed on your decks.

Improved Hype / Stress or Influence / Exposure Changes

We are prepare for the relationship flows of Hype, Stress, Loyalty, Discontent and for Contacts Influence and Exposure. This coming upgrade will cause relationships from merc to merc or Contact to merc to be more powerful, as big changes maybe ripple outward. If a merc likes a Contact and you treat that Contact badly, the merc may Stress over it. But that's all coming soon, in the next few updates. For now, the change in Update #158 is to further reinforce the changes to all of these values for your story actions. If you Burn or Boost a merc or contact by a story choice, the hit is going to be stronger. You'll get over all more Hype or Stress, or suffer more Discontent, Exposure etc, where some of these story choices were not feeling so impactful (+10% Exposure or +10% Stress was just not ... enough). Going along with this, we fixed a bug where helping the UNA hacker could result in a Burn with your Face's relationship instead of a Boost (as queued by the dialog). And, on that subject as well, we fixed Hype and Stress sorts for Roster, as they were backwards. If you sort by Stress, you probably want the high Stress characters at the top, right?

v1.8.129 - #158: Markdown Flat - 10/13/2024

- Major price reduction for Weapons, Mods, Armor for Power Level 1-4, from 10% to 50% reduction - Added new proc-gen map "Blown Out Flat": destroyed floor of street habstack with starting Objective Battle Striker - Aligned Cyberdeck Power Levels with Sells Cyberdeck service levels, new Service Level 4 now added to sell most powerful decks - Upgraded Decoy programs sold by Utility Program service to Decoy (HOT) with bonus IO - Improved Stress/Hype/Loyalty/Discontent and Influence/Exposure changes for Burning / Boosting relationships with story actions - Fixed bug where refusing to hire the UNA Hacker could cause Loyalty loss with your Face instead of (correct) gain - Fixed issue where Haven Smokeout Wireghost could be invisible, not spawn or refuse to flee - Fixed ERA story bug where Scourge recruit oddly started at level 1 - Fixed sort in Roster for Hype and Stress so that highest Hype or Stress is at the top