Starborne: Frontiers news & patch notes

• Bounty fights now scale to the same difficulty over 32 stages instead of 15. Several stages have been added in between the preexisting ones to smoothen the difficulty curve. As a result, the enemy unit level increase has been normalized to 4 levels per stage. Additionally, the Affinity now rotates every 4 stages for Bounties, with the last 4 stages being the same Affinity that players are used to for the Bounties. As part of this rebalancing, EXP bit rewards have been significantly reduced, and first-time clear rewards have been adjusted. The pre-requisite for unlocking Abyssal Bounties is now Stage 32 of that Bounty, and mission/progression event challenges have been adjusted to 32 Stages.

• The requirements for the weekly Mission to "Complete live events" have been reduced from 1/3/5 down to 1/2/3.
• Incoming Damage Reduction, from sources that isn't Defense, is now hard capped at 70%. Any overflow is clamped down to the 70% maximum.
• Meatshield's Passive skill now only shares his base defense (pre-combat), and not his in combat buffed defense.
• Wusheng's passive skill has been updated, and he will no longer lose stealth when taking direct damage. "This Unit gains Stealth for 1 turn after critically damaging an enemy. This Unit takes 25% less direct damage while Stealth is active. If directly damaged while Stealth is active, remove Stealth. This Unit starts combat fully charged."
• Zosimos Balance Pass
  • Active skill "This Unit deals 170% damage and inflicts Inc. Repair Down 2 and Inc. Damage Up 2 for 2 turns. If the target was repaired this round, this Unit adds 1 charge to its charged skill."
  • Charged Skill "This Unit inflicts Reversed Repairs for 1 turn and deals 300% damage, and inflicts Block Repair and Inc. DoT Damage Up 2 for 2 turns."
  • Passive Skill "When an enemy performs a repair, this Unit adds 1 charge to its charged skill. Additionally, this Unit removes 1 charge from the enemy's charged skill for every second repair they perform."
  • Refit 4 +60 Hacking / +8% Speed has been replaced with an upgrade for the Passive skill, increasing the rate at which the passive skill removes charges from enemies. At Refit level 4 the charge removal triggers on every repair enemies perform, up from triggering on every other repair enemies perform.

• A new loot preview has been added to Bounties.
• Inbox claims are now grouped together. No need to claim and delete multiple different items after purchasing an offer, claiming a promo code, or receiving a message including several items.
• A "+" button has been added next to the Implant Ejector counter in the Unit management Implants tab, which will take the players to the Implant or Platinum market offer, depending on if the player has enough Implant Essence to buy an Implant Ejector, and alternatively falling back to the Platinum version of the Implant Ejector offer.
• Implants can now be swapped directly from other units in the Implants tab.
• Level requirements are now shown on units required for Fusion. The upgrade button will be visible and will lead to the hanger when the level requirement is not met.

• Purifiers Charged skill now correctly includes itself.
• The "Reverse repairs" debuff now correctly turns repairs into damage again.
• Fixed an issue with the Vault Phase 4 Core and Corrosive Infusion description.
• Fixed an issue with the burner set so it now only applies inferno to the main enemy target that is hit.
• Fixed an issue with the tutorial being breakable in stage 1-7 if a player managed to equip items on units beforehand.
• Fixed an issue with the implant stat previews not showing correct information.
• Fixed an issue where opening implant filters on a unit selected in combat could change the character art to a different unit.
• Fixed a UI issue after returning from fusing a unit.
• Fixed a UI issue when returning from upgrading a unit.
• Fixed an issue with the fusion upgrade button, so it now leads to quick rank instead of the hanger when ranking a unit from 5 to 6.

• Progress notifications for background battles have been added on mobile platforms.

• Fixed an issue that caused combining unit fragments to not give progress towards the recruitment live event.
• Fixed an issue causing background battles to be counted incorrectly for weekly mission.
• Fixed an issue causing unit portraits to appear in the starmap after using "go to" button during the background battle pop-up.

Features

• Progress notifications for background battles have been added on mobile platforms.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue that caused combining unit fragments to not give progress towards the recruitment live event

• Fixed an issue causing background battles to be counted incorrectly for weekly mission

• Fixed an issue causing unit portraits to appear in the starmap after using "go to" button during the background battle pop-up

• Missions have been reworked:
  • The Mission panel has received a visual overhaul.
  • Monthly challenges have been removed.
  • Weekly challenges now reset on a set timer each week.
  • Daily and Weekly challenges have been updated, and new ones have been added.
  • The reward track for daily and weekly challenges now awards a series of rewards instead of just one final reward.
• A new Referral system with an exclusive avatar reward has been added!
• New item fragments for Expert and Elite Beacons, as well as epic and legendary Refit Kits, have been added to inventory. 100 fragments are required to gain the item.
• Deep linking is now supported. Expect to see promo code links in the future!
• Background and Multi Battle sliders now show how many battles you could have with both licenses active.
• A restart option has been added in the Background battle result screen, allowing players to reschedule background battles for the same encounter that was just finished.
• The updated Global Feed is now live, with a rolling recent-activity window (most recent ~500 events) instead of a fixed 24-hour window.
• The "Maxed out a Legendary unit" message will no longer be shown in the Global feed. It will now appear in the Alliance feed only.
• Official "SOVA" messages may appear in chat or the inbox when an admin contacts a player or alliance.
• Moderated chat messages will now disappear cleanly instead of being replaced with blank placeholders.

• Tygr Balance Pass
  • The attack pattern has been increased by 1 hex.
  • Active skill This Unit deals 180% Damage and inflicts Security Down 2 3 for 2 Turns. If this Unit damages 2 or more enemies, it adds 1 charge to its charged skill.
  • Charged Skill This Unit inflicts Stasis for 2 3 turns and deals 210% Damage.
  • Passive Skill This Unit's attacks do not break reduce Stasis. and All allies deal 30% more damage to enemies with Stasis or Disable. After damaging an enemy affected by Stasis, once per round, this Unit gains one extra action.
  • Refit 4 +60 Hacking / +8% Speed has been replaced with an upgrade for the Passive skill.
• Stasis has been reworked. Stasis no longer breaks when taking direct damage. Instead, the duration is reduced by 1 turn.

• Xcellence active skill Stasis duration increased from 1 to 2.
• Flamel passive skill Stasis duration increased from 1 to 2.
• Camellia (NPC) charged skill Stasis duration reduced from 2 to 1.
• Asphyxiator charged skill Stasis duration reduced from 2 to 1.
• Incursions now last for 3 hours and have no downtime between them.
• Incursions have had their loot tables upgraded to now include epic refit fragments
• The Shepherd rank-up tutorial no longer requires a unit sacrifice and can now be completed using a tier 1 Mainframe.

• Updated localization for Stasis and Disable
• Updated Stasis durations for the units mentioned in the Balance section,
• The passive skill descriptions of Akula and Snakeroot now clarify that they do not reduce the duration of Stasis, instead of the old "do not break Stasis" description.

• Fixed an issue with level indicators on chat messages always displaying level 40.
• Fixed an issue with how energy expenditure was attributed when using Background battles. Events that trigger when energy is spent will now only trigger when finishing Background battles.
• Fixed an issue where units affected by Stasis and Disable could still gain charges.

• Upgrading unit skills now uses an exponential cost curve. This change aims to make the first few skill level upgrades easier to obtain. The total skill upgrade costs for units remain the same. Units the are not at either skill level 0 or max will have their skills reset and all skill upgrade materials refunded.
• Bombs will now always detonate when reaching 0 turns remaining.
• Lingshe Balance Pass
  • Active skill This Unit inflicts 3 stacks of Bomb I for 7 ➔ 4 turns.
  • Charged Skill Unchanged
  • Passive Skill When this Unit causes inflicts a bomb to explode it gains Stealth for 1 ➔ 2 turns. At the start of the round, this unit reduces all adjacent allies by 1 turn. This reduction effect requires hacking. If this unit causes a bomb to explode, it detonates all remaining bombs on the enemy unit at 1% power for every 3% crit power. This Unit deals 1% more detonation damage per 10% crit power it has.

• Shelter and Shepherd have received new ship models.

• Fixed an issue causing Centurion's passive retaliation to still trigger after Centurion is destroyed.
• Fixed issues with implant auto-selling in Background Battles and Multibattles.
• Fixed issues causing implants not to appear in background battle results when auto sell is active.
• Fixed an issue with the background battle tier 5 label stating "Win battle in 00 rounds" instead of "Win the battle" when tier 5 is the current milestone.
• Fixed the Multibattle icon size next to the slider in the Multibattle panel.
• Fixed an issue causing the Background Battle energy cost label to turn red when the player had enough energy, energy cells, and platinum combined.
• Fixed implants looted recently being locked and unsellable.
• Fixed an issue with locking equipment in Background Battles results. Locking equipment will now prevent it from being selected by clicking "Select all".

• Background Battles have been added. This alternative to Multibattles allows players to engage in other activities while farming energy-based battles, and continues while offline. True offline progression is now available!
• Challenges that refer to equipment sets now show the equipment set icon in the text desciption of the challenge.
• Timed Boosters as loot have been replaced with Resource Boosters of equivalent tier for Background Battles.
• Battle Booster offers have been added to the Platinum Market.

• Phase 2 of the Alliance Vault has been adjusted by reducing its Attack by ~11%.
• Phase 1 of the Alliance Vault has been adjusted for easier entry of newer players.

• The Keyboard no longer overlays the login menu in the login screen on mobile devices.
• The Email field is now filled automatically with the last used email when logging in.
• The latest login details used are now highlighted in the login menu.
• Fixed an issue that displayed the ship models when skins were used on Los and Butcher.
• Void Breach loot tables have been fixed to prevent awarding players with invalid implants (both wrong slot minor implants and non-functional rarity ultimate implants)
• Anomaly Fusion event points gained per level have been corrected, restoring energy efficiency balance.

• Pc client: The ESC key now works as a shortcut for the back button on the UI, and the arrow keys can be used to access the previous or next unit in the unit management screen.

• The Defense Shred debuff can now be cleansed, and cleansing will remove one stack of the debuff.
• The Exposed debuff has been reworked. Exposed has no round/turn duration but will last until the target has been hit. Furthermore, Exposed can now stack, with each stack lasting for an additional hit.
• Nayra's Skill descriptions have been updated to reflect the above-mentioned change to Expose. Amartya Balance Pass
• Active skill This unit deals 150% damage, and then inflicts Inc. Repair Down 2 and Inc. Repair Down 2 on all enemies for 3 ➔ 2 turns.
• Charged Skill This unit delas 210% damage and purges 1 buff from all enemies for every 30% ➔ 50% crit power this unit has.
• Passive Skill When an enemy defender is directly repaired, this unit inflicts Defense Down 2 on them for 1 turn 2 stacks of Defense Shred on the defender. This unit starts combat fully charged. When an enemy defender gains Taunt, this unit inflicts 2 stacks of Exposed on them for 1 Turn that defender.

• Fixed some issues some players were having with Vault and Multibattle combat crashes.
• Fixed an invalid faction being shown in the squad leader selection (Obstacle removed).
• Fixed some issues that would log players out of their accounts.

• Applications to alliances are now removed when the player joins an Alliance.

• Snakeroot's Passive Skill will no longer break stasis when dealing damage, to improve synergy capabilities.

• A new Recruitment VFX for Rare+ pulls has been added.
• Enforcer now has an animated portrait.
• Homebase UI buttons have been resized.

• Improvements have been made to some Arena modifier descriptions.

• Fixed an issue with Lev's debuff damage scalar.
• Fixed an issue with Roach Roaster's debuff damage scalar.
• Fixed an issue that allowed Graphite to shield and grant charges to destroyed allies, which caused units to be revived.
• Fixed an issue that sometimes stopped a bomb from damaging adjacent units when a unit is destroyed with an active bomb.
• Applications made to Alliances that change their status to Open will no longer result in an error.