A third path
NOVAE has always rewarded specialising. Now it rewards specialising
twice.
Hold two powers in each affinity of a pair, and a ✦ Hybrid becomes eligible in your next power choice — a card that belongs to neither affinity alone, and does something neither could do on its own:
- Orbit — 🌀 Gravity + ⚡ Plasma — your shots coil around you, sweeping the ring instead of flying straight.
- Eclipse — ☀️ Radiance + 🌀 Gravity — your shots focus into a cone ahead of you: devastating where you aim, blind behind you.
- Ember — ☀️ Radiance + ❄️ Stellar Frost — burn your own maximum health into raw damage. A glass cannon that gets thinner every time you take it.
Each hybrid is a real fork in the run, not a stat bump — and the difficulty curve has not moved. What changes is how many different runs are worth playing.
Fixes
- Projectile range no longer depends on your framerate. Shot lifetime was counted in rendered frames while the shot itself moved in physics, so the same weapon reached further on a faster machine.
- Black Hole can no longer be offered twice. Taking it a second time silently consumed the whole choice.
- An unlocked hybrid now shows up as often as it should, instead of being drowned out by specialised powers.
- Backing out of the Sanctuary and the Bestiary no longer leaks the keypress into the rest of the game.
