Reality Break news & patch notes

Reality Break hotfix v1.1.2.1 has gone live.

Dev notes: As mentioned in the v1.1.2 announcement event, there were several improvements that didn't make it in time for the 1-year anniversary build. These have now been implemented. Enjoy!

Performance

• Implemented a Projectile Consolidation system to improve performance of effects that create extra projectiles, such as Twin Bolt, Multi-shot, and Barrage:

  • If more than 10 projectiles would be spawned from a single shot, the extras will be rolled into the existing ones as a multiplier, and those projectile visuals will be cloned to match their multiplier count.

  • On-impact abilities will activate multiple times from a consolidated multi-projectile's impact.

  • The threshold for consolidation can be reduced to 1 for extreme performance gain at the cost of more visual artifacts (since the cloned visuals aren't real projectiles). All settings are near the bottom of `Reality Break_Data\\StreamingAssets\\Proto\\Settings\\GameSettings.xml` within the game's install hierarchy.

• Optimized firing projectiles at increasing Haste levels using a log curve for true haste and funneling the excess damage and procs into the Projectile Consolidation system described above.

• Amortized damage effects of Plasmic Funneler and Kanbor Stunner across multiple frames, and reduced the max targets they can hit per frame to 1.

• Fixed Rampage UI tweens getting updated and recycled unnecessarily frequently during heavy combat.

• Preallocate more instances of ships, projectiles, UI flyouts, world drops and their labels, and reduce how many are auto-added at once when their pools run dry.

• Added elite destruction add-on fx to pooling, reducing hitches when destroying elites.

• Added a hard limit on spawning most entity effects (variable per effect); can be toggled via EntityEffectsEnablePoolingHardLimit in GameSettings.xml.

• Amortized world equipment loot drop item comparison delta indicator calculation over multiple frames.

• Reduced WorldDropMaxSpawnsPerUpdate in GameSettings.xml from 5 to 3 since this can flare up frame times if large quantities of enemies are being destroyed per second. You can decrease this further to increase performance when lots of loot is dropping at once.

• Reduced delay before various flyouts (damage, pickup, etc) despawn back into the object pool.

• Reduced despawn delay for player ship tractor beam fx, increasing its pooling reuse.

• Fixed currency and resource drops not auto-despawning back into the object pool, meaning that they were always created from scratch.

• Converted "entity health > 0" conditions to new "entity is alive" condition type so it doesn't have to go through the stat system, e.g. when finding Attack Chain bounce targets, substantially speeding up certain mechanics.

• Loot dropped in space now checks whether it should be collected every few frames round robin, with a staggered auto-collect delay, which reduces physics pressure on the looting system.

• Disabled light probes on a few prefabs.

Balance

• The Chaos Vortex has been redesigned:

  • The RP reward now scales with the number of enemy ships you've destroyed.

  • You start with a 60 second time limit, and every enemy ship you destroy extends that limit by 1 second.

  • In addition, enemies now automatically target you and approach, no matter how far from you they are.

  • If there are only a few enemies active, the next spawn wave is substantially accelerated.

  • Save games that have a recorded Chaos Vortex time will convert this time to enemies destroyed 1:1.

  • Existing enemies auto-upgrade their levels 10% toward the current map level ~5 times per second.

Quality of Life

• Player Skills can now be set to Auto-Activate when they finish their cooldown:

  • Press and hold the corresponding Skill activation button to toggle this on/off for that Skill.

  • On mouse+keyboard, you can additionally toggle a Skill by pressing Alt+ or by right-clicking on the Skill's action slot.

  • Skills that auto-activate do not trigger the brief bullet time slo-mo activation effect.

• Pilot Skill cooldowns now reset when jumping into a sector.

Bug fixes

• fixed "The Onslaught" Epic Swarmer applying its debuff to allied targets on impact

• fixed ship dialog info area Haste readout showing "+-X%" if it was brought below 100% due to a region buff

• fixed Pilot Skill action slot visual bug where the on cooldown error message would fly out when toggling Auto-Activate via input hold

• fixed several instances of ship dialog text being too small at ultra high resolutions

• fixed ship dialog stat details tooltips blinking out immediately

Hello and welcome to the Women's Day Sale!

Element Games is excited to be participating in the Women's Day Sale with Reality Break for the second year in a row. Last summer, Element Games expanded from one to two female devs, so this year we are celebrating as a duo! Events like the Women's Day Sale are an exciting reminder of the growing diversity among game developers and the games we make, and we are thankful to be part of the celebration.

Reality Break recently celebrated its one-year launch anniversary with a patch and set of ongoing beta updates. Within the next few days, we expect the next beta update to roll out based on feedback so far!

Ship Types DLC

Here at Element Games, we are passionate about making games that are not only fun but subvert expectations and bring players something new. We're currently working on the Reality Break Ship Types DLC, with release date TBA for 2026. It's going to expand the game in some super cool ways!

Also...

We've been cooking up something new that we will share more about soon ;)

Thank you!

If you decide to pick up Reality Break during our 30% off Women's Day discount, first of all - thank you! Second, we love to hear what our players think and we always appreciate a review. Finally, if you like what we're doing and want to stay in the loop, subscribe to our mailing list!

Happy Breaking!

- Courtney and Sarah

Hello, Breakers!

Reality Break launched one year ago, and the past year has been wonderful in countless ways as a realization of Courtney's decades-long dream to create a spaceship Diablo-like. Thank you all in the community - now over 20,000 players strong! - for playing the game, for sending feedback, for attempting speed runs and posting pics of ridiculous Break RP amounts and videos of comically quick Overlord kills and mods where every enemy in the game is now the sandworm queen.

Anniversary Update

In celebration of the one-year anniversary, Sarah and I wanted to put out a small patch that addresses various bugs as well as improves QoL and other aspects of the game that we hadn't yet gotten to. This includes things like adding Auto-Fire support for Secondary Weapons, addressing Reflected damage balance, improving item tooltip damage comparisons, and a couple of Superheated fixes. In addition, be on the lookout for a forthcoming beta build with improvements for Twin Bolt performance and Chaos Vortex mechanics!

DLC

We are super looking forward to launching the Ship Types DLC when it's ready later this year! As a treat, please enjoy this first reveal of another new player ship type joining the Eldoran Hammer in the DLC, the Void Saber:

And, one more thing...

We have another cool announcement coming up sometime soon about what else we've been cooking up at Element Games. Stay tuned! And, if you'd like to be the first to hear about it, subscribe to our mailing list!

Thank you!

~Courtney & Sarah

Reality Break Patch v1.1.2 has gone live.

Patch notes:

Performance

• Beta: Twin Bolt and similar effects have been reworked. Once the total bonus exceeds a threshold, effects are no longer duplicated, but are instead processed multiple times so that the cumulative damage output is the same. (Courtney's note: for example, Twin Bolt going from 5 to 10 no longer spawns twice as many bonus projectiles; instead, fired projectiles now process their impacts twice)

Balance

• Projectiles that are redirected via enemy reflection/deflection now recalibrate their damage parameters to the redirecting enemy's stats, with a small damage boost, instead of preserving the player ship's likely far higher stats. Also, their speed is reduced by 20% after redirection.

Quality of Life

• The Insistent Metamorphosis story talent is now preserved during a Pure Ascension with Story Skip.

• When hovering an equipped item in the Ship dialog while the Station or Storage dialog is open, dim other items in those dialogs that don't match its equipment type. (Courtney's note: similar to how items are dimmed in the Ship dialog inventory)

• Added new Input Option "Continue Auto-Firing While Hovering UI" that controls whether toggled auto-fire is suppressed when you hover a UI element, such as a dialog or an item drop in space.

• Added new Input Option "Toggle Auto-Fire on Secondary Weapons", similar to the existing option for Primary Weapons.

• Weapon tooltips now show if they are a Beam weapon.

• Beta: Chaos Vortex now ramps up much more quickly in difficulty and rewards. Enemies that survive for a few seconds begin stacking a damage vulnerability debuff on the player's ship, and they also gain stacking damage reduction. (Courtney's note: this is to address the tedium of 10min+ Vortex runs)

Polish

• Changed color of projection reflection/deflection buffs on enemies and added an fx splash when a projectile is redirected so it's clearer what's happening.

• If the Epic weapon Backup Plan rolls a rewrite on its unique modifier value, it is now also guaranteed to roll a Drawback rewrite.

• Reworked item mechanics and added clearer display strings for unique items whose unique modifiers multiply existing affix values instead of increasing them independently, including Sudden Followthrough, Ignoble Retaliator, and Celestial Reverberation.

Bug fixes

• fixed stat details panel sometimes not displaying correctly

• fixed incorrect rounding with quantized stats (was always increasing to next whole number instead of rounding)

• fixed weapon equip delta compare damage indicators not working correctly in the presence of any matching bonuses to weapon specialization, Ammo vs Energy power source, or Primary vs Secondary subtype

• fixed Loot Filter button text word wrapping in certain translations

• fixed bug with automatic Superheated proc on arrival through jump gate only working sporadically to destroy blocking asteroids

• fixed Superheated not allowing your ship to pass through other units if activated very quickly after warping in through a jump gate

• fixed Superheated not passing through enemies with deflection/reflection shields active

• fixed immediate expert goal failure on story mission Ripples in Spacetime while running the Stalker Aptitude

• fixed inability to buyback sold Chassis items

• fixed the Aptitude tooltip running off the bottom edge of the screen at low resolution

• fixed multiple bugs with Phasic Aligner weapon:

  • was double-counting items equipped via loadout passthrough

  • was not working for items equipped in the inactive loadout if another item was equipped in the same slot of the active loadout

  • didn't update correctly when cycling loadouts

  • wasn't showing its bonus correctly in Stat Details

• fixed enemies getting stuck if they warped in outside the screen bounds during continuous-spawn scenarios, including the Chaos Vortex and Survival missions

• fixed item loss caused by placing an item in the scientist's Extraction slot, then leaving the area (including exiting to the main menu or quitting the game)

• fixed some bugs with main item action on the Extraction re-slotting the item instead of retrieving it

Hi all!

Today we are pleased to announce Reality Break's first DLC coming in 2026! The most common throughline of player feedback in our DLC survey was that you'd like to pilot more ships - so we're adding Ship Types!

In the Ship Types DLC, you'll be able to hunt powerful enemy Prototypes to capture their Echoes, then assemble new ships for new playstyles. Take advantage of each ship's unique Ship Action and Specialist upgrades to mix up combat. Plus, use the Ship Augments system to hone a unique build for each of your new ships, and keep your favorites across breaks!

New features you can expect:

• Pilot three new ships

• Fight three new enemy Prototype bosses

• Build new ships from Prototype Echoes in Ship Assembly

• Switch out your ships anytime at the Ship Hangar

• Customize each ship's build with Ship Augments

• Buy unique Tech Specialist upgrades for each ship series

• Explore the newly discovered Ancient Keep while reckoning with an all-new Alert Level system

There will also be an accompanying free update for the base game, including a new endgame battle, Ascension talents, performance improvements, quality of life features, balance tweaks, and bug fixes!

Thank you once again to everyone who participated in our DLC survey this fall and to all of our players who have provided feedback since launch. If you want to be at the forefront of all updates, join our mailing list! We'll provide more info about the Ship Types DLC as we draw closer to its launch in 2026 (exact date TBD).

Until then - Happy Breaking!

~Courtney and Sarah

Hi all,

This year, Reality Break is eligible for the Steam Awards, and we would love to receive your nomination! :D

We're going for the Outstanding Visual Style category, so if you appreciate our slick and colorful style, give us a nomination! You're also free to nominate us in any other categories, too.

Every single vote is super appreciated, and it's your continued support that helps us keep working on the game to make it the best it can possibly be.

Thank you for being with us, nominating, leaving reviews, and just being part of the community. Let's make a splash at the Steam Awards together! 🚀 Oh, also get ready for some very interesting Reality Break news soon... ;)

Reality Break hotfix v1.1.1.1 has gone live.

Stability

• Addressed a save/load stability issue with certain pre-v1.1 metagame profile saves. (dev note: this could, for example, prevent Playing a newly-created pilot)

Quality of Life

• Prime Unique items dropped in space now show a unique label and visual effect.

Bug fixes

• fixed guaranteed affixes on Epic+ items not benefiting from Prime Unique's affix range increase and range compression

• fixed "hold to delete profile" showing incorrect glyph on gamepad

• fixed loadout stat boost being cleared from a secondary loadout item if dragging and dropping an item to equip it over that secondary item

• fixed item Affix Type rewrite options starting with the second one not upgrading in value when the item's rarity was rewritten

• fixed low-level unique items sometimes generating certain affixes with zero affix value, such as Siphon Energy

• fixed Hyper Mode Duration affix

• fixed Rarity rewrite often not granting additional rewrite paths

• fixed Rarity rewrite not improving an item's Crafting Budget

• fixed rewriting Rarity to a unique item not granting additional random affixes, only defined ones

• fixed broken values for Unique Modifier rewrite paths after rewriting the Rarity of a unique item

• fixed Affix Operator rewrite path values not updating on Rarity rewrite

• fixed Survival missions not playing the map music

• fixed regression with Epic Swarmer weapon Salvo no longer homing toward locked-on targets

Hi all!

Autumn is here, and so is the Steam Autumn Sale with a new discount on Reality Break!

We are also continuing our DLC survey until the end of the Autumn Sale (info below), now with East Asia translations, to gauge player interest in paid expansion content for the game. Thank you to everyone who's already responded! If you're new to Reality Break and pick it up during the Steam Autumn Sale, we'd love to hear from you too! Whether that's in the survey or a review (hopefully both), it's always greatly appreciated.

We have continued to expand and fine tune Reality Break with over a dozen updates since launch, with the major Ascension Update over the summer taking the metagame to new heights and introducing boss missions for new challenges. Your feedback will help to shape and inform what comes next.

DLC Survey

As we look ahead to next year, one of the options in front of us is to produce paid DLC for Reality Break. We would love to gauge player interest in this, so we've prepared a few questions for you. This will greatly help us in understanding what players would want out of an expansion!

Take the survey here: Reality Break DLC survey

Update 10/13/25: Thanks for all the survey responses! The English survey will be closing on 10/15/25. If you haven't taken it yet, don't miss out!

Happy breaking!

~Courtney and Sarah

Performance

• Substantially improved performance of Swarmer weapon projectiles, especially at high rates of fire or in high density combat situations.
• Improved performance of projectiles expiring and spawning their death fx.

Content

• New automatic Talents have been added to the Ascended Form, conferring AP bonuses and quality of life improvements.

Balance

• Fate Villain (assault and random) now slows down while channeling Focus Ability.
• Increased damage of Fate Villain (random) Focus Ability.
• Weapon effects that increase effect radius over time now reduce their physics impulse strength at a distance.
• Improved loot drops from various boss drops to make rewards from all boss side missions consistent and guarantee at least one Epic+ item.
• Stratified loot drop rates for the Shaper of Knowledge talent by rarity.

Quality of Life

• Improved multiple aspects of gamepad virtual cursor handling for Crafting rewrites.

Modding

• Added ExtractionEchoCount to ScientistSettings.xml, which controls the Adjacency Bias affix count.

Bug fixes

• fixed items dropping at Epic+ rarity without becoming unique (e.g., Salvage mission target items)
• fixed items awarded through a reward instead of as a drop not being flagged as New
• fixed some unique Sensors and CPUs not dropping with crit chance and crit damage, respectively
• fixed weapons below level 3 being prevented from rolling affixes if they're Epic or better
• fixed Void Striker's Blink Strike ability sometimes detaching it from the nav mesh
• fixed lock-on reticle being unclear on certain enemy ships
• fixed physics impulse resist buff not stacking properly on enemies hit by knockback effects
• fixed weapon effects that have expanding effect distance over time, such as Novas, frequently applying physics impulses multiple times per activation
• fixed asteroids and other entities that can be affected by knockback not using the same rules and constraints as enemy ships
• fixed loot drops ejected from destroyed fast-moving ships having an overly high velocity
• fixed homing projectiles sometimes not acquiring targets correctly if Attack Chain was available
• fixed Ship Dialog Stat Details panel stat tooltips not remaining visible
• fixed Warship+ items sometimes getting a bonus rewrite path
• fixed Timespace Cache subtalents allowing for infinitely stacking affix upgrades when combined with Affix Extraction
• fixed Timespace Cache subtalent Infused Favor boosting item level by more than intended at high enough Break RP levels
• fixed Shaper of Knowledge bonus not dropping Anchored items at the correct minimum rarity
• fixed Analysis being made inoperable when an item being Analyzed was Extracted
• fixed enemy waves that had a spawn delay timer incorrectly being cleared on death in several story missions, interfering with mission objectives or expert goals
• fixed Fate Echo launcher missile debuff never going away
• fixed Story Skip becoming enabled before seeing the True Ending if the profile was broken after starting the final story mission
• fixed the Permissive Conduit talent reducing stats when interacting with multiplier affixes below x2 and being underpowered in other scenarios
• fixed item Rarity rewrite to Epic+ rarity clearing all existing Rewrite Paths
• fixed Clairvoyance subtalent Guided Leniency randomly re-triggering each time a Rewrite Path's costs were refreshed
• fixed Survival mission objective timer counting down while player ship is in the miasma
• fixed delayed map load on warp if the Pilot dialog was opened while the camera was fading to black
• fixed Shaper of Knowledge talent bonus not updating for existing enemies when a new set is Anchored
• fixed being able to Anchor sets without having the Shaper of Knowledge talent unlocked
• fixed Spectral Understanding subtalent Wide Aperture not requiring any items of the higher rarity to have been collected
• fixed mission items and non-equipment items being valid Prime Unique targets

Bug fixes

• fixed being unable to access Reality Stream Tiers or Subtalents that had been unlocked before the previous hotfix's Talent rebalancing
• Substantially reduced the cost scaling curve for standard Ascension.
• Reset the cost multiplier for standard Ascension when loading a v1.1 profile.
• fixed not being able to respawn after being destroyed by the side boss mission Fate Villain's super attack
• fixed Sun Breaker not updating debuffs and other abilities when too far off-screen, preventing certain mechanics from working
• fixed Epic Railgun item Splinter gathering invalid targets, such as projectiles, for its secondary attack
• fixed enemy cloak detection indicator not hiding one of its rings when detected, and fixed them not getting cleaned up on despawn
• fixed projectile hits on Elites still triggering Ultimate Superlaser item's secondary attack
• removed some unnecessary debug logging for sprite loading that snuck into the final build

Stability

• Bulletproofed against the Overlord Mission Type rewrite sometimes causing loss of profile progress if it failed to match the specific map index.
• Addressed an instability when opening Ascension dialog while there is an Aptitude upgrade or unlock queued up to display in the Reality Stream.

Balance

• Substantially increased the Ascension Point gains from banked Reality Points as well as from a full Reality Stream.
• Rebalanced the Reality Stream to make Talent levels more consistent and to fix Tier levels not reaching exactly 100 with a full set of Talents.
• Substantially reduced the cost scaling curve for standard Ascension. (dev note: the multiplier will also be reset when loading a v1.1 profile)
• Reduced the unlock thresholds for Reality Stream subtalents and tier unlocks to compensate for the revised Talent maximum values.
• Massively buffed the damage output of Ultimate rarity Drone and Armor item procs.
• Reduced the damage output of the Ultimate Superlaser special proc.
• Gave Ultimate Superlaser item proc a small initial and recurring cooldown.
• Increased health, shields, and damage output of random boss mission version of Raider Factory.
• Added enemy spawns to Raider Factory boss random mission.

Polish

• Expanded the description for the Prime Uniques talent to include all of its bonuses.

Bug fixes

• fixed Ship dialog Stat Details panel overflowing if it had too many stats to show
• fixed rewriting Unique Mod Type on certain unique items not updating various stats until unequip/re-equip or going to a different map
• fixed multiple bugs with the Confiscation Flow Bonus: it was not applying to the player's ship, the effect's value did not match the display string, and the display string listed Siphon Energy instead of Energy on Hit
• fixed problems arising from Extracting an affix with no remaining room in the inventory (such as extracting an equipped item with a full inventory, or extracting an inventory item with a full inventory and the Extraction Echo talent)
• fixed Unique Mod Type rewritable entry display string
• fixed Intrusion Coder buff calculation not incorporating Unique Mod Type rewrite
• fixed missing icon for Energy Weapon Power rewritable affix type
• fixed rewriting to Overlord Mission Type sometimes causing loss of profile progress if it failed to match the specific map index
• fixed certain ship destruction fragments not using gravity on relevant maps (e.g., Syndicate Enforcer on Cloud City), like particles already did
• fixed Uncatalogued Space boss debuff fx going away even if the debuff's duration was extended by destroying its sub-structures
• fixed a certain Boss Remnant sometimes not dropping at the correct item level
• fixed front end music taking too long to fade out when Ascending
• fixed certain Fate Council ships not using their secondary weapons
• fixed Ultimate Armor item proc not working after warping into a sector without re-equipping it
• fixed extraneous items getting Preserved via Multiversal Cache talent
• fixed Extinguished characters being broken and "reset" during Pure Ascension
• fixed Favored Favorites that have been Preserved into ship inventory after a manual break not being preserved during a Pure Ascension break
• fixed missing visual effects if performing two standard Ascensions without leaving the front end menu
• fixed mission CL rewrite Experience display being clamped to unsigned int range for display
• fixed Compromising Field subtalent of Foe Undermine not having any effect
• fixed Foe Undermine talent not working on entities spawned via a specific delayed registration mechanism in the game

Today, I’m delighted to release the Ascension Update!!

Ever since Reality Break launched in February, players have suggested dozens of cool ideas that I have wished to include if given the opportunity, including new progression systems as well as expansions to existing gameplay mechanics. I have already included a few of those in the two Patches and ten Hotfixes released so far. But now, thanks to all of your support for Reality Break, many more of those wishes have become reality!

In the Ascension Update, you'll find a True Ending progression path that unlocks the all new Ultimate item tier, a system for Endless Progression, unique new Rewrite types, the ability to Preserve more unlocks across Profile Breaks, and much more! See below for more details.

But first...

I am also thrilled to announce today that @sarahelementgames has joined forces with me at Element Games! She is a brilliant, insightful game dev who has helped a ton with this update as well as helping me with the game's launch this past February, and I can't wait to see what we can accomplish together. After 11+ years of solo indie dev, it will be a nice change of pace... not to mention how incredible it will be to work on games with her!!

Features

Here's a partial list of what you can expect in this update:

New Progression Path

Once you've achieved the game's True Ending, a new Talent progression path becomes available in the Reality Stream. This uses a new currency and enables some of the most powerful upgrades the game has seen!

Ultimate Items

Some items cannot be found. They must be created. In the Ascension Update, you will be able to break the limitations of item rarity itself!

Endless Progression

Unlock the option to continue increasing your Tier bonuses directly... and permanently.

And Lots More!

Preserve your Specialist Upgrades across Breaks, analyze items multiple times, and occasionally Extract multiple Affix Fragments. You will also be able to challenge Bosses as often as you wish via repeatable Boss Random Missions, with a new custom Boss Health UI!

Ongoing Updates

This update represents the continuation of my incorporating player feedback in shaping where I take the game. As before, I will hotfix issues as they come up.

Daily Deal! Special Bundles! More Cool Games!

In celebration of the update, starting at 10AM PST on 7/28/2025 we're running a Daily Deal with our highest ever discount of 20%. Not only that, we've also teamed up with a few of our friends to hold a special "Four Galaxies" sci-fi extravaganza! We're bundling with three other sci-fi games that have major releases today: Star Valor with its new Base Building DLC, Astronomics with its Better Bots Update, and last but not least, Star Vortex which is launching today into Early Access! All games are available bundled with each other for extra discounts, so there's a ton of cool new stuff for you to check out!!

Feedback

The best way to give feedback is to email me at [email protected] or to join the official Element Games discord! This is especially helpful if you encounter something that breaks the game for you or prevents progress in some way - go to your %localappdata%low\\Element Games\\Reality Break folder and email me all of your *.sav and *.log files along with a description of the issue you're experiencing. This will help me fix things much faster.

Enjoy!

Oh but, one more thing: as you can probably tell from the above, it took a lot of effort to synchronize this Four Galaxies event, months in the making for all four of us to hit this singular date! That does mean that a few things didn't quite make the deadline... but, as an extra little surprise, stay tuned for a few small goodies coming to Reality Break over the next few weeks that were scheduled for the Ascension Update ;)

That's enough from me - much love, and happy breaking! <3

~Courtney

Reality Break full version build v1.1 has gone live!

Performance

• Addressed an issue with the Recursion skill effect not being cleaned up correctly, which was causing it to stack to ridiculously high spawn counts and bogging down performance after long play sessions.

Quality of Life

• Implemented first pass at support for ultrawide aspect ratios, defaulting UI elements on the left and right sides to the edges of the game window. (Courtney's note: The previous behavior that placed the main ingame UI in a virtual 16:9 rectangle can be restored in the Options dialog for those players who requested it)

• Implemented Story Dialogue Auto-Skip option, allowing you to choose whether it automatically skips all dialogue or only fast forwards what you've previously seen.

• Show confirmation dialog when resetting a Subtalent in the Reality Stream.

• Display a more prominent centered flyout visual when completing a mission and gaining its rewards.

• Loot drops are now spawned into the world more quickly, speeding up gameplay when destroying elites, warships, and other difficult enemies that drop many items at once. You can adjust this in GameSettings.xml via WorldDropSpawnIntervalSeconds and WorldDropMaxSpawnsPerUpdate.

• Duluh'a now drops her loot near your ship and does it much sooner instead of waiting 9 seconds for full despawn.

• The Storage dialog UI now slides over to the side anytime the Rewrite dialog is visible.

• Item tooltips now always show the item's sell value.

• Moved the colossus interior map from Colossus Demolition side missions into Excursion, Elimination, and Salvage.

Content

• Added new Talent progression tier, available when the game's True Ending has been achieved.

• Added new Ultimate item rarity. Ultimate items are created in a unique way, described when you unlock this feature ingame.

• Added Boss Side Missions. (Courtney's note: Renamed the Demolition mission type to Disruption, since Demolition is now the broader category of boss takedown missions)

• Implemented the Bonus Resources rewrite type for treasure crates. (Courtney's note: yay Calcium!)

Balance

• Improved the Precision Guide talent to grant a flat bonus to crit chance instead of boosting the current crit chance by a percentage.

• Increased the chance that treasure crates are rewritable.

• Prevented Affix Value rewrites from generating for defined item guaranteed affixes. (Courtney's note: this created outlandish balance problems, much like when other affix rewrite types could hit them)

• Increased Reality Point gain from equipped Epic items by 100%.

• Adjusted difficulty curve of Story Campaign missions as well as enemy power scaling from Challenge Level and Omen. (Courtney's note: Patch 2's balance rework needed some TLC)

• Changed the Tier 3 bonus to Fate Ward, which increases Ship Armor.

• When crafting an item from a Chassis, the resulting item's rarity is no longer decreased to the lowest slotted Affix Fragment rarity.

• Buffed the Concentration pilot skill from +100% to +400%.

• Improved the Fate Council boss fight: they have a lower chance to use propulsion and a longer propulsion cooldown, they receive a speed and damage vulnerability debuff after using propulsion, and the game camera is zoomed out during this fight.

• Improved the Fate Villain boss fight: they can now use their own Focus Ability, and have nearly complete immunity to knockback.

• Improved the Expanse boss fight: destroying the outer structures now grants it a far more substantial buff that improves its Haste when spawning various adds and hazards, and its hazard spawns deal additional damage.

• Adjusted Uncatalogued Space boss: reduced the strength of the damage vulnerability debuff when its panels are destroyed.

Polish

• Added unique UI for visualizing Boss health and shields.

• Improved tooltip scaling at high resolutions so they aren't so tiny.

Modding

• Mission specs (such as Elimination, which corresponds to specific missions) are no longer hard-coded, and can be used by multiple CMissionProto XML definitions.

Bug fixes

• fixed tiny scale for Choose Aptitude dialog and various other UIs at very high resolutions

• fixed Aggression Boon talent not displaying percentages correctly

• fixed tooltips not being constrained by the top edge of the game window or screen

• fixed side missions sometimes rolling higher rarity than intended

• fixed some random missions still defaulting to the current Omen level when generated

• fixed various talent and tier fx not getting cleaned up when closing and reopening Reality Stream

• fixed default binding for Reset Talent being the same as the binding for Cycle Tier

• fixed Accumulated Brilliance talent multiplier applying twice when Breaking a profile

• fixed Scionic Boom talent bonus not displaying in Break Profile tooltip

• fixed Nexus capital ship only having a warship-sized health pool

• fixed rewriting Unique Mod Value not propagating to Unique Mod Type rewrite on the same item

• fixed various affix rewrites, such as weapon damage benefit and pilot skill benefit, not scaling up when the item's rarity was rewritten

• fixed Damage Flyouts radio buttons not initializing properly in Options dialog

• fixed Through The Looking Glass clone not having extra drone equip slots

• fixed various unique items no longer working properly after swapping loadouts

• fixed Chaos Vortex lightning fx and prologue explosion fx not despawning properly on scene transition

• fixed mission objective flyout showing Next Objective section before showing the next objective

• fixed certain mechanics, such as the Home Turf unique affix, not getting cleared properly when out of range

• fixed Fate Council not being able to use their Secondary Weapons

Hi all!

The Summer Sale is on, and it is a great time to pick up Reality Break. Since launch, I've released a ton of significant updates: drastically improving performance, obtaining the Steam Deck Verified badge from Valve, adding new content, and implementing many player-requested QoL features - all ensuring a much smoother gaming experience.

Also, some fellow sci-fi game devs and I have joined forces to make some bundles available, featuring Star Valor, Astronomics, and Stand Survivors. All fantastic titles from our friends, available for extra bundle discounts!

If you do grab the game, let me know your thoughts! Also, please leave a review when you get a chance. That’s always appreciated!

~Courtney

p.s.,, one more thing. Make sure you're ready for the next big update... coming soon ;)

Stability

• Fixed demo progression import not migrating completed timelines correctly, and added self-healing for profiles that are already in a bad state.

Bug fixes

• fixed being unable to open crates or pick up certain world drops while cloaked
• fixed certain capital ship visuals disappearing after 10 seconds
• fixed fatestone pickup flyout sprite handling
• fixed Ship dialog stat detail UI label scaling after jumping to a new map
• fixed Diamonds In The Rough subtalent not correctly upgrading items with Unique Modifier rewrites
• fixed Treasure Trove subtalent incorrectly boosting an item's Unique Modifier value based on item level
• fixed side missions being generated with improper starting level at Omen levels above 1
• fixed side mission Challenge Level rewrite being initialized to highest completed CL rather than that mission's starting CL
• fixed scrap sweep with mouse sometimes erroneously picking up the final item
• fixed Storage dialog UI not fully refreshing an item that had another item swapped onto its slot
• fixed possible save file corruption for a certain aptitude and having a drone in both loadouts' highest drone slot indices

Bug fixes

• fixed a certain Fate Core rarity rewrite bonus sometimes not applying by making it apply on the next rarity rewrite as well as being fixed up on load
• fixed various UI bugs with inventory management of items that are larger than 1x1
• fixed various codepaths that could cause instability when rewriting the Fate Core's rarity
• fixed loss of inventory items if dragging and dropping an equipped item onto them with non-matching equipment types
• fixed gamepad cursor no longer auto-warping to item when retrieving that item from the Analysis slot
• fixed regression with resources occasionally being picked up into empty inventory slots even if they could stack with existing resources in inventory

Bug fixes

• fixed Hurricane elite affix blocking projectiles
• fixed pooling for skill tier unlocked fx
• fixed Asteroid Barrage fracture debris occasionally happening near player ship
• fixed and improved handling of Stash/retrieve for stackable items
• fixed Voltaic Fortifier unique modifier type rewrite not working with certain stats
• fixed low-health warning triggering in certain circumstances when equipping or unequipped items
• fixed Rarity rewrite allowing items to go above the item level limit
• fixed regression with visual effects for selling and analyzing items cleaning up too aggressively

Performance

• Implemented a massive overhaul to the game's handling of visual object spawning so that the vast majority of game visuals are now automatically pooled for faster creation. (dev note: I've been testing this extensively over the past week, but please keep an eye out for visuals that don't spawn correctly or that persist for too long and let me know)
• Greatly improved CPU and GPU memory usage across the board, with an emphasis on particle and UI texture memory.
• Greatly improved performance of Hurricane elite affix on planet-based maps.
• Improved performance of world pickups.

Stability

• Added proper handling to prevent certain rare game crashes.

Quality of Life

• If you have completed the Story Campaign and reached the True Ending, you can now skip all story content when creating a new pilot or breaking an existing one.
• Tutorial progress is now saved in the Reality Stream rather than per-Pilot, which means new Pilots created to try different Aptitudes or to restart Ironman runs will no longer be repeatedly taught the basics.
• Added a flyout when auto-looting a resource drop to make it more obvious it happened.
• Increased the default Resource stack size by 100%, and doubled all of the stack size Specialist Upgrades as well.
• When using Retrieve on an item in the Quantum Frame, automatically equip it if there's an empty equip slot.
• Added an indicator to show that the recurring villain had been defeated during the current cycle.
• Added gamepad cursor teleport when opening the side mission Challenge Level rewrite UI.
• Added Stash cursor sweep, allowing you to hold down the stash/retrieve input while sweeping across ship inventory items do move them in bulk.
• Reworked the story campaign flow so that, after the prologue, profile breaks are no longer forced by the story. Instead, you may continue playing indefinitely until you choose to go into the Chaos Vortex and continue the campaign.
• Demo profiles are now immediately imported into the full version without requiring Story Campaign completion.

Content

• Chassis items of all rarities can now randomly drop from enemies once crafting has been unlocked. (dev note: until I add this to the loot filter UI, it can be disabled by setting LootFilterAllowChassisDrops in UserConfig.xml to false)
• Added a tutorial popup that explains how the recurring villain works.
• The Voi'ner capital ship now spawns on side missions located in Voi'ner Shipyards.

Balance

• Increased the drop rate of Epic rarity items by 100%, and increased the drop rate of other unique items by 400%.
• Greatly reduced Crafting cost scaling with item level and affix category when applying affix fragments.
• Added item level scaling to Crafting budgets, increasing them beyond previous caps.
• Rebalanced Analysis: durations have been slashed by around 10x, Credit costs have been upped by the inverse. (dev note: This will serve as a better foundation for future changes, provide a Credit sink and make targeting currency gains worthwhile, and facilitate far more Discoveries. As usual, I'll be monitoring feedback.)
• Specialist Upgrade Resource costs are now also reduced by the Aetheric Negotiation talent. (dev note: Credit cost reductions are fixed as well.)
• Extracted affix fragments that were already boosted via the Vibrant Formulation talent now cost +100% to apply to new items.
• Map enemy levels are now either the story mission level or the side mission Challenge Level. Enemies are then also upgraded based on the selected Omen level. Reward scaling has been adjusted.
• Station and trader inventory item levels are now increased to the last completed side mission Challenge Level.
• Shielded enemy ships now scale their shielding with Omen level.
• Affixes that are guaranteed on unique items, such as Engine Thrust on most Propulsion and Stabilizer items, can no longer gain an Affix Type rewrite or the bonus from the A Beautiful Cortex talent.
• Reduced chassis bonus budget multiplier from 2 to 1.5, and added a cap that scales by +3 with item rarity.
• Haste scales less strongly with item level and more strongly with rarity.
• The aptitude trait Exponential Programming has been reduced from +20 item level to +8, and the Accessory Overlord trait has been increased from +100% to +400%.

Polish

• Improved the description string for the Multiplex Analysis talent to clarify that its effect is automatic.
• Improved multiple description strings for the Timespace Cache talent to clarify its restrictions.

Modding

• Added various crafting variables to ScientistSettings.xml: CraftingBaseBudget, CraftingBudgetFromRarity, CraftingBudgetItemLevelScalar, CraftingBudgetChassisMultiplier, CraftingFragmentPrimaryAffixCost, CraftingFragmentFateAffixCost, CraftingFragmentItemLevelCostScalar
• Data-driving for item definition XMLs: BaseAnalysisCostLevelExponent, BaseAnalysisCostRarityExponent
• Custom defined items can now point to existing icons using IconName in their XML definition.
• Added fallback display for defined item's UniqueDescription if there isn't an entry in the string table.
• Neutral Propulsion inputs also trigger abilities on the player ship's equipped items.

Bug fixes

• fixed certain translated strings not using the correct formatting, leading to improper display in East Asian languages (dev note: This included over a hundred instances of improperly formatted strings, mostly in Japanese, but across all East Asia languages. My apologies for not catching these sooner. I have implemented automated error detection so that future problems will be caught immediately.)
• fixed Skills flagged to scale with total ship damage output double-dipping into critical damage
• fixed possibility of applying both Compressed Fabrication and Vibrant Formulation subtalents of the advanced crafting talent Diversified Assembly on the same item by backing out to the main menu between acquiring a chassis and applying fragments (dev note: if an existing item has enough unapplied fragments to reduce the remaining budget below 0, it will not be possible to apply fragments to that item until enough have been removed to bring it within budget; and previously unapplied crafting budgets will be reinitialized using the new math)
• fixed showing Equip Boost line on item tooltips before it was unlocked on that character
• fixed Favored Affix multiplier display string causing color bleed to subsequent affix strings
• fixed ship rotation for tank controls not respecting delta time
• fixed Favored Stat bonus not being updated after rewriting an Affix Type to/from the relevant affix, or if the relevant affix was added due to rewriting an item's rarity
• fixed certain buffs from equipped items not hiding correctly when the player ship is warping through a jump gate
• fixed cost discount from Aetheric Negotiation talent not working on Specialist Upgrades
• fixed items like Resources and Affix Fragments having higher priority than Equipment items when sorting various inventories
• fixed untranslated character dialogue text appearing in speech bubbles after the player has unlocked the Booming Reformulation talent later in the game
• fixed being unable to cycle loadouts while the cursor was hovering an item
• fixed weapons and drones occasionally not firing if multiple ones of the same type were simultaneously equipped and the frame rate was lower than their adjusted cooldown rate
• fixed missing icons for Max Shields and Blast Radius affix types
• fixed certain indicator icons on Rewrite Dialog being clickable
• fixed various layout issues with Aptitude selection UI
• fixed incorrect formatting in Skill tooltip when displaying an altered maximum level cap
• fixed needing to restart the game before an unlockable Aptitude's modification to Skill cooldowns took effect
• fixed text label for credits gained from selling scrap potentially overflowing the station dialog UI
• fixed Asteroid Barrage entities not playing destruction fx when they expire
• fixed being unable to chain-cast Negate Existence and Asteroid Barrage with fast enough Skill cooldowns
• fixed improper visual scale for pooled ability effects that modulate their visual size with ability level, stats such as Blast Radius, and other multipliers
• fixed a certain Aptitude being able to chain-cast Ship Regeneration for free
• fixed Vibrant Formulation talent granting a 200% boost to Fate Affixes instead of 100% (dev note: it always said "up to 200%" but was granting 200% no matter what)
• fixed certain entities still appearing on radar even if their root visual was hidden
• fixed beam type weapons spawning their beam fx visuals in the wrong direction if overlapping a collision trigger, such as for a interactive object
• fixed shields up effect playing when player ship was hidden while jumping in after death and respawn
• fixed sorting of inventory item UI scrap and locked indicators
• fixed text outline coloring on Codex set names
• fixed speech bubble dialog being locked at a high scale factor no matter the screen setup
• fixed more visual effects not being hidden when player ship is hidden, such as when jumping to a different map
• fixed mission CL rewrite cost displaying incorrectly when first shown
• fixed codex set bonus name outline coloration by rarity
• fixed rewritten UI fx interaction with pooling
• fixed current side mission not auto-abandoning when beginning the story-mode fracture mission
• fixed input bug if abandoning the fracture side mission before the waves had begun spawning
• fixed always skipping story on broken profiles
• fixed completed mission objective text locking to incorrect scale
• fixed speech bubble dialog being locked at a high scale factor no matter the screen setup
• fixed enemy health bars occasionally getting stuck on-screen without being anchored to anything
• fixed the Foe Undermine talent applying twice
• fixed Through The Looking Glass skill not incorporating Tactician bonus
• fixed astronomical collision damage inflicted on the player's ship at higher map levels
• fixed Superheated preventing pickup of world drops while afterburning
• fixed Voltaic Fortifier unique description string not dynamically changing when Unique Mod Type was rewritten

Performance

• spawning of auto-pooled visual effects is now capped per effect, configurable in UserConfig.xml via AutoPoolingPerObjectMaximum (dev note: for example, projectile launch and impact effects)
• filling the object pools can either be done over time or all at once, configurable in UserConfig.xml via FillObjectPoolsOverTime (dev note: this is mainly for players on HDDs who want to let the game load more up front rather than have it stutter while filling the pools over time after startup)
• added an experimental setting that turns on auto-pooling for almost all ability effect objects, which you can enable in UserConfig.xml via EXPERIMENTAL_AutoPoolAllAbilityEffects
• added an experimental setting that decreases the chance an auto-pooled object will spawn if the current proportion of spawned objects relative to the hard limit exceeds the EXPERIMENTAL_ReducePooledSpawnChanceThreshold setting in UserConfig.xml (dev note: (this means objects with capped pools will gradually decrease their spawn rate by default as they approach their hard cap rather than just shutting off when the limit is reached)

Stability

• the game now creates a backup of the current pilot save file before it proceeds with a profile save
• in addition, the game creates session backups the first time the Reality Stream or any pilot are loaded successfully after a fresh launch of the game (dev note: if something happens to your profile, you can check %localappdata%low\Element Games\Reality Break for save file backups)
• fixed game getting into a bad state if it tried to import a demo profile but a demo folder did not exist
• fixed instability if an Analysis timer was reduced below the minimum possible value for DateTime via Inspection Point rewards for already-completed analysis

Quality of Life

• the Mission Challenge Level rewrite UI has been revamped to make it more obvious that different levels can be selected by the player as well as to teach various additional concepts via layout and tooltips, including showing the enemy difficulty increase as well as the improved rewards from higher CLs

Content

• added "Premium Cycler" unique Shields item, Screen specialization
• added "Sudden Followthrough" unique Drone item, Targeter specialization
• added "Evasion Protocol" unique Drone item, Orbiter specialization
• added "Voltaic Fortifier" unique Drone item, Transformer specialization
• improved legibility of Aptitudes dialog on handheld devices

Balance

• the Sublimation affix has been adjusted: its baseline potency, minimum increment, and scaling with item level, rarity, and ship class have been reduced (dev note: this affix was an extreme power level outlier, contributing in large part to some players being able to trivialize CL99 enemies and even the Overlord; I will be doing an Aptitude balance pass in the future that will aim to bring everything closer together, at which point this and other unique affixes will be adjusted further)
• the Ambush affix has been adjusted: its scaling with rarity has been increased
• the Devastator affix has been adjusted: its minimum increment and scaling with rarity and ship class have been reduced
• Affix Fragments are no longer blocked from installation by matching affixes on the target item, except for a crafted fragment with a matching affix that is already installed in that item
• reduced damage output of Federation Destroyer by 60%

Bug fixes

• fixed various affix and stat calculation inconsistencies by removing order dependencies (dev note: among other things, this fixes interactions between affix multipliers and other bonuses based on the order in which items were equipped)
• fixed the Aptitude dialog showing portions of UI for undiscovered Aptitudes
• fixed certain labels not using localized strings on Aptitude dialog
• fixed Superlaser weapons not being flagged as Beam weapons
• fixed rewriting Unique Modifier Type not updating the item's internal UniqueModifier for later use
• fixed certain Affix values being applied both to the additive and multiplicative components of the bonus calculation
• fixed being unable to scroll certain lists by grabbing and dragging their scrollbar handles
• fixed being able to equip drones into phantom slots after using alt compare on a drone tooltip and then switching to a pilot without as many slots unlocked
• fixed being able to extract an Affix Fragment from the Fate Core
• fixed mission rewards showing CL 106 as required for next Aptitude rank
• fixed regression with camera shake and screen edge effects option toggles no longer functioning
• fixed overly small labels on pilot profile UI
• fixed visual effects being offset and scaled after antialiasing was turned off, until a game restart

Previously

• clarified the Unique Bonus description for Epic Gatling weapon The Shredder to make it obvious that its projectile damage boost degrades in flight
• toned down flashbang of Nexus capital ship destroyed debris
• toned down flashbang brightness on one of the Epic Gatling weapon's unique bonus visual effects
• Reinforced Coffers are now guaranteed to drop at least an Epic item
• treasure crates with additional Bonus Equipment now get extra loot quality and drop at least Rares, but cost 3x
• fixed Rewrite dialog background sorting against bright Navigation map mission node UIs
• fixed Rewrite dialog not making its rewrite entries operable if fate pulses were picked up while it was open
• fixed Codex dialog being partly cut off at certain screen aspect ratios
• fixed Nucleic Injector projectiles not spawning their impact fx on collision
• fixed Haste region mod entries not displaying as percentage
• fixed inventory sort not segregating different item types correctly, such as Equipment vs Resources
• Armor value on ship dialog UI now uses large number formatting if necessary
• reduced the delay before you can skip the first line of dialogue in a story conversation from 900ms to 300ms (dev note: it's there so players don't accidentally miss the first line if clicking rapidly; for advanced users, it is configurable in Reality Break\Reality Break_Data\StreamingAssets\Proto\Settings\GameSettings.xml via InputCooldownForFirstStoryIndex)
• reduced the delay before you can dismiss a tutorial popup from 900ms to 500ms (dev note: confgurable in GameSettings.xml via DefaultTutorialDismissDelay)
• renamed Shield Capacitor to Factory Capacitor so that it matches the Expert Goal's naming
• fixed miscellaneous bug with Rare set item names not matching the item that was acquired for that set item slot

Performance

• reduced the impact of object pool initialization when starting the game by amortizing it over time more effectively
• added more effects to object pool

Quality of Life

• tripled the auto-pickup radius for currencies dropped in space as well as for health, energy, and supercharge drops
• Resource drops are now automatically collected at the same distance as currencies. If ejected from your ship's inventory, they will not be auto-collected again until you leave and re-enter their auto-pickup radius.
• if you have two or more equipped weapons that are either all Primary or all Secondary, pressing either the Primary or Secondary fire input will fire all of them

Balance

• increased proc chance of Laser debuff from 10% to 50%, and increased its potency from +100% to +200% Secondary Weapon damage taken
• increased refund chance for the Vibrant Acuity talent from 50% to 75%
• increased the Armor multiplier from the Fortify Skill from 20% to 50% per level, and made it scale with all enemies within 200 meters instead of 100
• reduced the damage scaling for Pilot Skills that use Total Damage Output to bring them closer to weapons (dev note: This affects Superheated, Negate Existence, and Asteroid Barrage. For example, Negate Existence was being used as a pure dps Skill that outpaced any possible weapon combo even without factoring in the Execute bonus. However, I'm continuing to monitor this heavily and will adjust as needed, in particular making sure that all Aptitude Ranks are achievable.)
• increased Resource drop rates from Asteroids by 100%
• increased Resource drop rates from enemies by 900%
• dramatically increased spawn chance of recurring antagonist at higher story campaign completion levels during a given cycle (dev note: leveling your pilot past lv10, equipping Epics/Artifacts, and progressing the story will all increase the chance that this antagonist warps into your mission - as long as you're surrounded by several enemies)

Bug fixes

• fixed being unable to click on 'X' button to close the Navigation dialog
• fixed display strings for rewards from side missions that would rank up an Aptitude if completed at a higher Challenge Level
• fixed weapon damage scaling from the following affixes: power source (e.g., Energy-based vs Ammo-based), specialization (e.g., Phaser vs Launcher), and subspecialization (e.g., Primary vs Secondary) (dev note: this fix represents a buff to weapon damage, in some cases a substantial improvement if you were running many such affixes)
• fixed loss of ship and UI control inputs if Navigation dialog was open during a jump sequence
• fixed various consistency issues when displaying numerical bonuses from certain Affixes in various contexts, such as weapon type damage bonuses in item tooltips and the Stat Details panel
• fixed extra visual fx spawning and not being cleaned up for the ship buff applied by one of the unique Launcher weapons
• fixed not being able to Abandon Mission in the Chaos Vortex

Performance

• substantially improved the performance of the game's asteroids, including updating, damaging, and destroying them
• improved the performance of spawning impact/hit fx caused by standard attack abilities as well as beam type abilities

Progression

• story campaign mission The Reality of the Situation now includes additional exposition dialogue from a separate timeline branch if the player arrives at that mission after having defeated the recurring antagonist during the first cycle that's possible to do; this also makes sure to upgrade the relevant Story Talent to its maximum rank, and unlocks two more mission skips

Quality of Life

• show oversized item Ship Class rewrites differently depending on whether the player can afford them, and show "Fighter" as the ship's label in the ship dialog UI header (dev note: this is to increase tutorialization for the Ship Class rewrite feature since it continues to be missed by many players)

Balance

• Region Mod Type and Region Mod Value mission rewrites now generate more reasonable values that scale with mission Challenge Level

Bug fixes

• fixed Backup Plan item regression alternating its shots instead of firing both simultaneously
• fixed Negatron Collider item cooldown reduction bonus not working
• fixed homing weapon projectiles not tracking Hazards or Structures, such as Launcher missiles not acquiring lock on Volatile Anomalies and Colossus Pulsers
• fixed remaining Analysis time getting stuck at 0 seconds if the analysis was completed via the bonus from the Multiplex Analysis talent
• fixed various visual and calculation problems with the Region Mod Type and Region Mod Value mission rewrite
• fixed campaign story missions locking their level at 1 for newly-created pilots when other pilots have already completed other timelines for the Reality Stream
• fixed Talent Tier 2 bonus to Loot Quality not applying

Performance

• implemented the first pass at an Auto-Pooling system, currently just for projectiles as well as their launch fx and impact fx, which aims to reduce the performance impact of projectile combat dramatically throughout the game
• disabled generic fx spawned unnecessarily by projectile impacts that were critical hits since there's a separate and far more performant system for spawning those
• non-Epic Swarmer firing rate has been reduced by 33% because it was way above other Swarmers (its dps has been counterbalanced)
• disabled impact fx triggering impact sounds that would follow the object, which was an unnecessary expense
• reduced max particle counts on Rakeris boss encounter by 90%
• optimized the terrain on the Rakeris encounter map, reducing its memory and render requirements
• added support for disabling terrain decals during the Rakeris encounter (dev note: this is currently bound to the HD Clouds setting in the Options dialog until the next batch of localization goes through)

Progression

• if the player's ship is destroyed during the story mission "Gathering: The Magic", the protective barrier granted by the mission is now correctly reapplied
• restored the Into the Vortex button functionality on a lategame end-of-cycle popup
• don't spawn recurring antagonist as early in any given cycle
• the crafting NPC no longer becomes inoperable if certain missions are skipped and then the campaign is completed

Quality of Life

• the Loot Filter now has three additional toggles that allow items meeting certain criteria to bypass the filter's standard logic (Rarity rewrite, Affix Type rewrite, and Codex set completion) (dev note: this exposes functionality that already existed under the hood and defaulted to on, but that behavior was confusing to many players, so these Loot Filter bypasses now default to off.)

Balance

• rebalanced RP multiplier scaling from Expert Goals by bringing it in line with other RP multipliers instead of being wildly out of balance when incorporating the Strive for Excellence and/or Finesse talents
• substantially improved the recurring antagonist's loot table

Bug fixes

• fixed item loss resulting from dragging an equipped item onto another item in the ship's inventory that was not currently equippable in the source slot
• fixed certain rarity rewrites of common weapons resulting in a Selbar weapon
• fixed exploit in the Chaos Vortex that allowed for risk-free survival time in the miasma with the Walking With Ancients talent
• fixed exploit with repeatedly boosting an Affix Fragment while the Vibrant Formulation subtalent is active
• fixed equipped Drones firing too many shots in certain circumstances
• fixed gaining phantom Drones above the currently unlocked # of slots when rewriting an equipped Drone's rarity to Epic or higher
• fixed certain Expert Goals tracking instances of damage taken by player ship outside of the correct story mission map

Performance

• item tooltip performance: no longer recalculate layout or positioning if nothing has changed, no longer process "show" logic if the element being hovered hasn't changed, don't clean up tweens unnecessarily (such as when no tweens have been started)
• items marked for Scrap no longer calculate their comparison delta indicators (dev note: this system will continue to be optimized over time)
• added caching for logic that validates keys used for display string translation lookup
• set up object pooling for additional visual effects

Progression

• fixed many instances of mission objectives being skipped or mission objectives disappearing after exiting to the main menu, quitting the game, or warping to a different region than intended. This fixes issues such as the third mission losing its "jump to Station 6" objective if a side mission was begun instead.
• fixed the first story mission skipping some of its objectives after breaking a profile and restarting the game
• the rescue target for the story campaign mission "Rewrite the Scientific Method" now has 99.9% damage reduction, 10x the shields, and 2x the shield recharge rate so that they are more durable and don't interrupt the flow of the story campaign
• opponents in the game's final fight have been significantly retuned: dodge chance reduced by 50%, shields reduced by 50%, shield recharge rate reduced by 80%, damage reduced by 75%
• the recurring antagonist has been significantly retuned: shields reduced by 50%, shield recharge rate reduced by 80%, damage reduced by 90%

Bug fixes

• fixed instances where an item's item level could be downgraded in a particular rewrite scenario (dev note: Pulling the Strands freebie item combined with a certain rewrite in mission 3)
• fixed various bugs with the Barrage affix: limited its affix value rolls in the same way as Twinbolt, ensured it's quantized, don't allow it to drop as a Unique Modifier Type rewrite option
• fixed being able to get above Tier level 100 by refunding subtalents; the game will fix up all profiles on load to have the correct tier levels for the currently purchased talents
• fixed tooltip for maxed out subtalents not including the "(no refund)" warning next to the Reset input instruction
• fixed loot filter allowing inappropriate items to drop once the bonus has been unlocked for the Fate Core's Rare rewrite tier
• fixed scaling bonus for Fate Core Rare rewrite tier not updating correctly if an item's rarity was rewritten to one that qualifies
• fixed tutorial not popping up that explains Fate Core Epic tier bonus
• fixed certain affixes displaying as 0% if their value was fractional
• fixed the logic for the talent A Beautiful Cortex so that it produces reasonable rewrite values
• fixed bug that prevented new pilots from seeing Shields and Drone item drops, even if the player had already stabilized the Fate Core

Stability

• fixed instability arising from applying the Timespace Cache talent bonus on the Fate Core item, or on any Mission item

Progression

• fixed a story campaign progression soft lock with a certain story mission encounter in the Chaos Vortex not keeping the player's ship immortal for long enough, causing it to blow up before continuing to the endless spawning portion
• added on-load fixup for profile saves that have gotten into a bad state with the story campaign on mission objectives waiting for the Fate Core to be analyzed, and the Analyze button not being interactable. This fixes the Fate Core not being analyzable during the "Wait for analysis to complete" objective of the "Resonance of Fate" mission, as well as bulletproofs against a similar possibility during the "Analyze the Fate Core again" objective of the "Dormant Colossus" mission
• fixed a few ways the game's story campaign could get into a bad state if a mission objective was waiting for the player to dock with a certain station, but the player warped to another station and docked there instead
• made the rescue target in Rewrite The Scientific Method invulnerable while stationary so that it doesn't cause mission failures out of players' control
• fixed being unable to progress to the final fight except during the first cycle encountering it

Balance

• increased the average number of Resource drops you'll see from Common asteroids throughout the game by 100%
• reduced the Resource costs of Tech Specialist ship upgrades by 30%-40%
• increased Credits gained when selling items to traders by 900%

Bug fixes

• fixed photonic storms in luzul cluster damaging your ship after it had initiated slipdrive
• fixed the recurring antagonist's ship not processing movement or abilities while too far off-screen
• fixed Extraction duplication exploit triggered by picking up the item in the extraction slot before clicking on the Extract button, then putting the item back into the Extraction slot for further extractions
• fixed Instigator skill activation
• fixed Slipstream Balancers unique bonus functionality

Stability

• fixed game getting into a very bad state if the local system calendar was set to any of the following: ThaiBuddhist, UmAlQura, Hijiri
• fixed rare crash when hovering the cursor over an equip slot in the ship UI
• fixed stability problem that occurred in certain instances of processing nearby loot drops in space for two of the tutorials

Progression

• fixed complete progression blocker if you purchased the Quantum Frame Regulator Chassis while ship inventory was full
• removed Price from the tutorial chassis to prevent a situation where you didn't have enough credits to purchase it at that step

Bug fixes

• fixed input binding for Rewrite functionality not yet being visible in the Rebinding UI when first instructed to rewrite the Fate Core
• fixed Codex Set 8 requiring Drone items that are not yet implemented

Today, I am beyond thrilled to release Reality Break!!

Reviews

Features

The rest of the Story!

More talents in the Reality Stream!

Rewrite the Universe!

New Epic items... and more!

Aptitude Expansion!

Item Customization

Varied Mission Types

Dangerous Enemies

Replayability

Ongoing Updates

Endgame

r/Games AMA

Beta branch

Feedback

Modding

Enjoy!

Performance

• Substantially sped up various Reality Stream UI functionality.
• Substantially sped up Reality Stream save/load.
• Slightly reduced performance impact of many dozens of uncollected world drops existing at once.

Quality of Life

• Substantially improved Reality Stream legibility.
• Further distinguished visuals for main Reality Stream talent UIs that unlock new features.
• Changed the player ship icon on the Area Scan’s overlay mode from a dot to the same triangular sprite used in the dialog mode, including rotation, to make it easier to see.
• Don't start the Chaos Vortex mission timer until dialogue is done showing.
• Treasure crates can no longer spawn inside hazards.
• Rewrite entry UI tooltips for Affix Type/Value and Unique Modifier Type/Value now show a description of their affix/stat.
• When equipping an item, preserve the ship's previous health/energy/shield fraction.
• Moved expert goal completion UI/fx to fixed screen area, improving clarity
• When dying due to collision with something, correctly display the name of the collided object in the skull icon hover tooltip on the area scan dialog.
• Move Storage dialog to the right while the rewrite dialog is open, rather than closing it.
• Item tooltips now appear adjacent to the UI dialog containing the item, such as just outside the ship dialog UI's bounds, rather than overlapping other inventory items or equipment.
• Show the reason for player ship's destruction on the Defeated outro/respawn UI.
• Don't advance mission elapsed timers while on Defeated screen or if the map isn't currently running for any reason.
• The Tech Specialist dialog UI now shows current resource amounts.

Polish

• Sped up appearance of Interact instructions.
• Improved Interact instruction sound.
• Improved hitboxes on Reality Stream Talent UI items.
• Made it clearer that the game has an Ironman Mode option.
• Map music continues playing through death and respawn to keep up the energy level.
• Made portions of the Break Profile flow mandatory, including tutorials that always show up and cannot be skipped.
• Added tutorial for Multi-Loot.
• Most Points of Interest and other things that can be scanned or approached no longer appear as gray on the Area Scan before they have been completed.

Content

• Reduced physics impulses on player ships by a further 50%.
• Shields are now hit before Armor to start with, until the new Guard Inversion talent has been purchased.
• Added Fortify skill (CL: one of multiple tools for player-controllable survivability)
• Added Recursion skill
• Redesigned Aggressive Engagement: it now triggers on secondary weapon kill for +25% crit chance.
• Redesigned Surge: it now triggers on Fate Beam kill for +400% energy regen.
• Additional Resource types are now required for various purchases in the game, and they can now be obtained from the usual sources of Resources with decreasing drop rate for rarer ones.

Balance

• Gave enemies extra targeting range when in combat.
• Reworked Gold Plated talent so it adds up to 100% of current Armor at high amounts of Credits.
• Removed errant +1 to RP break multiplier based on number of previous breaks.
• Mission CL rewrite costs increasing amounts of fate.
• Mission CL rewrite is capped at 4 CLs above highest completed.
• Reduced the effectiveness of Draw Essence by 90%.
• Multishot now has 5 points max.
• Dramatically buffed Pillager loot drops.
• Reduced baseline item drop rate by 50%.
• Toned down out of control Max Energy affix scaling at higher item levels.
• The free item received from Pulling the Strands now drops at a higher item level, based on the aggregate Tier level.
• Rewriting item rarity now costs less for higher rarities.
• Increased Negate Existence cooldown to 25 seconds.
• Reduced damage output of Nexus enemy ships.
• Dramatically reduced damage output of Colossus Detonators.
• Dramatically buffed context-based Affixes, such as damage from weapon power source, specific weapon specialization damage, pilot Skill effect.
• Removed the time limit on Investigation side missions.
• Increased the time limit on Demolition side missions by 30%.
• Fate Beam damage now scales with 20% of your Pilot Level.
• Reduced exponent base for completed Expert Goals by 15%.
• Reduced exponent base for completed Codex Sets by 25%.
• Rebalanced Codex set bonuses slightly.

Bug fixes

• fixed difficulty button not showing up on current pilot after buying Omen talent
• fixed Fission elites spawned from Ambush Crates subdividing into allies of the player's ship
• fixed ClearLatestCompletionOnLoad not working if you just exited to main menu and returned
• fixed light color on railgun attacks
• fixed various enemy projectiles exiting the plane of gameplay and flying over or under the player's ship
• fixed ambiguity when interacting with specialist shipyard or item storage while near both of them
• fixed aiming of railguns and other beam weapons when their cast was started in a different targeting direction than when they fired (also demo internal: clear focus targets cached flag too)
• fixed beam attack direction becoming detached from player's aim and its fx
• fixed skill rewrite fx and audio playing every time the pilot dialog was opened after a skill was rewritten
• fixed a bug where some items could load in a Suppressed state and get stuck with nonfunctional affixes
• Fixed propulsion abilities not canceling when player input is suppressed or when speech bubble shows up
• fixed rewriting Unique Modifier Type not updating its display in a matching Unique Modifier Value rewrite
• fixed wrong interactions between Unique Modifier Type and Unique Modifier Value rewrites on the same item
• fixed tutorial flow getting stuck in a loop in cases where it was flagged to hide on a completed NPE step
• fixed being unable to click Codex dialog’s close button
• fixed input display icons not always working on international keyboard layouts
• fixed interact instructions not updating their input displays when interact binding was updated
• fixed area scan instruction input showing {0} the first time
• Fixed inline input text replacement not respecting QWERTZ
• Fixed input icon replacement not respecting QWERTZ
• Fixed Windows and Enter keys not working with input icon replacement
• Fixed bindings not refreshing if the system keyboard layout was changed while they were hidden
• fixes for overlord continuing its escape cast across death+restarts
• fixed front end metagame button label with specific # of RP getting overwritten by translated text
• fixed reflect/deflect mechanics not preventing projectile damage when the projectile was redirected
• fixed player ship no longer appearing on nav map after completing a mission and before jumping to another sector
• fixed item rewrites for affix value and affix type not being updated when an item was granted as a mission reward at a higher challenge level
• fixed various affix stats getting a double boost from being higher level (their value was increased by both the item's level and the Core Multiplier, which comes from item level)
• fixed Dormant Punisher not matching the rotation of the debris field it spawns from
• fixed Envelop fx not working correctly on repeated casts
• fixed Envelop not disappearing smoothly when its time was almost up
• fixed long pilot names overflowing their pilot dialog UI label
• fixed ship center HUD propulsion icon being at half opacity
• fixed item tooltip UI not always showing alt compare instruction when hovering a drone equipment item
• fixed Affix Type rewrite using previous entry's value to calculate conversion multiplier rather than the parent entry’s value, as it should be for multiple-choice rewrites
• fixed various inconsistencies in how affix values were displayed in the ship dialog and its stat details panel
• fixed a variety of issues with Ironman Mode deaths not "taking" and with pilots being Extinguished when they shouldn't have been
• fixed being able to go into the vortex while player input isn't allowed or the player's ship is dead
• fixed Current Sector display for side missions without objectives, such as Elimination
• fixed blank icon for Engine Thrust affix type rewrite entry
• fixed item loss if the "slot for analysis" input binding was pressed on an item while there was another picked-up item as well as an item slotted into the quantum frame
• fixed lack of audiovisual fx when rewriting an item in the stash
• fixed erosion of Talent Tier level when refunding Sub-talents that would have put it above 100/100
• fixed skill UI sheen overlay getting stuck in various positions if the dialog was closed during the animation
• fixed quantized item affixes, such as Twin Bolt, sometimes having fractional components under the hood, which resulted in their summation not working as expected
• fixed certain enemy railguns knocking back the player's ship after they'd already fired
• fixed epic sensors item Vivisector and epic propulsion item Superhero Launch making various things vulnerable that shouldn't be
• fixed resource items showing up dark in ship inventory UI due to recycling and stale non-matching equipment overlay
• fixed toggle favorite/scrap sweep not working in Storage UI
• fixed Slipdrive input binding working before Slipdrive was repaired
• fixed Raider Fighter's projectile attacks sometimes going over/under their targets
• fixed Volatile Crates not exploding
• fixed some issues that prevented Launcher missiles from homing in on targets correctly
• fixed Teleport propulsion ability sometimes lodging the ship in the middle of an object
• fixed stack overflow leading to a crash when completing a Reality Font point of interest
• fixed getting stuck with Mission-type "equipment" items if they were in Storage when a quest needed them
• fixed various radar and area scan signatures going gray immediately upon approaching their entity rather than after that entity was completed, such as defeating a Volatile Anomaly
• fixed Railguns being classed as Ammo-based instead of the correct Energy-based
• fixed Rarity rewrite doubling up the CoreMultiplier increase calculation
• fixed Rarity rewrite stat increase from CoreMultiplier bump not updating an item entity's stat cache, resulting in stale values post-rewrite
• fixed rewriting Rarity to a Defined Item not upgrading the item's affixes
• fixed items rewritten to Rare not generating their 2-part randomized display names
• fixed Elimination targets showing massive max health and shields with only partial current health if encountered on higher Omen levels
• fixed being able to toggle front end UI dialogs while launching into space
• fixed Salvage mission targets that split due to Fission losing the mission's target item

Overlord

Thank you very much for playing Reality Break!!

Content

• Full version sneak peek: Overlord. This is a first look at an endgame activity where you have to destroy an ultra-powerful enemy capital ship. Once engaged, it begins firing up its quantum slipdrive to escape, and summons a variety of enemies to defend it. If you defeat it before it warps out, you get rewarded substantially! In the demo version, the Overlord has a chance to spawn as the target of an Excursion mission. In the full release, it will be available to pursue via its own mission type. What's more, its health will be preserved across engagements and even across profile breaks! However, it will drop better loot if defeated in a single go, making it a true test of both damage and survivability.
• Unique Modifier Type rewrites on Epic items now use the same multiple-choice setup as Affix Type rewrites.
• Added randomization to items' Core Multipliers for more variation in item drops.
• Replaced the default engine sound for the player ship with more subtle audio and tuning.

Performance

• The particle effects spawned when anything takes damage are now metered out at a global level, allowing the game to detect when many are being spawned at once and reduce their spawn quantity. This improves performance substantially when operating at high levels of Haste, Twin Bolt, and various projectile/beam split effects, as well as against high enemy densities.
• Reduced the max loot drop spawns from 5 per update to 1 per update, improving performance when many ships are destroyed on the same update and generate large amounts of loot simultaneously.
• Don't update the ship dialog while it's not visible.

Quality of Life

• Improved the clarity of gameplay and reduced the impression of "visual clutter" across the board: (unit layer highlighting, reduced bg lighting, bg objects farther away, bg effects dimmer, destruction debris darker, lower bloom, smaller flares, lower exposure on skyboxes, dimmer stars.)
• When a side mission is completed at a rewritten Challenge Level, all other side missions have their rewrite dropdowns set to that same Challenge Level.
• Toggle Favorite/Scrap now locks itself to enable/disable based on the first item toggled. (Courtney's note: this lets you sweep the cursor across multiple items to batch enable or disable Favorite/Scrap based on what happened to the first item in the sequence, rather than a per-item toggle like before.)
• Increased the width of the visual tell for the Restored Punisher's Overload Blast ability.
• Decryption Key items now despawn when any other copy is looted.
• Reduced the game's baseline audio volume.
• Affixes that contribute to delta comparison tooltip rollups are now prefaced with an empty bullet point to distinguish them from the filled bullet point used for affixes that don't.

Balance

• Reduced the damage of the Restored Punisher's Overload Blast attack by 96%.

Bug fixes

• fixed loss of input control after opening nav map while jumping to a mission
• fixed Epic Sensors item "The Scrambler"'s Virus debuff applying to the player's ship
• fixed "skill points available" attention grabber showing even if all skills are maxed
• fixed enemies staying on the area scan after they're destroyed
• fixed inconsistencies/inaccuracies in area scan uncertainty radius indicators for points of interests that haven't yet been approached
• fixed Demolition side missions sometimes marking Colossus Pulsers as their mission target
• fixed issue where entities with colliders that prevent damage (such as the Colossus Reactor's armored rings) were still taking damage from certain collisions
• fixed various UIs mistakenly continuing to display the pilot's class
• fixed "skill points available" attention grabber showing even if all skills are maxed
• fixed "on cooldown" flyouts showing in wrong positions for attempted activations of propulsion and ship regeneration
• fixed being able to open various dialogs while camera was fully faded out
• fixed Chaos Vortex spawning ships the player hasn't seen yet
• fixed physics impulses against elites not propagating to their destroyed fx, and lowered impulse strength across the board
• fixed not all parts of various numeric dropdowns being clickable, such as for mission challenge level and screen resolution
• fixed equipment on clone spawned via the Through The Looking Glass skill not inheriting the source equipment's unique modifiers
• fixed certain mission rewards not upgrading correctly or at all with Challenge Level
• fixed mission rewards not displaying correctly if upgraded due to increased Challenge Level
• improved scrollbar positioning in numeric dropdowns
• fixed a bug that made the player ship engine sound play too loudly

Roguelike Celebration Celebration 2024

Player feedback

Demo profiles in the full version

After completing the full version story campaign:

• demo players get a 5x RP multiplier until the bonus RP they get has used up the RP they accumulated in the demo, up to maximum of 5,000.
• all aptitudes unlocked in the demo become available.
• all pilots from the demo version become unlocked for use.

Thank you!