Jupiter Hell 0.9.0 - Masters!

Hell, it's about time! Our most significant update yet, Jupiter Hell 0.9.0 -- a.k.a. "Masters" (of Doom? :P) -- is out, and with it, 15 (fifteen!) Master traits have been added, each bringing a unique playstyle! Read all about it below!

But before we get to the meat, this is our most important release up to date and we want to reach with it as many people as possible! We've set the price -20% off, and would be honored if you'd help us spread the news among friends, communities and your favorite streamers! Only YOU can really help us out with this quest!

Also, if you want to discuss master builds, be sure to join our Discord Server :)

Masters!

Fifteen Master traits have been added, five per class. Some of them are generic, some of them tailored toward a particular weapon group. All of these have 3 trait levels that can be picked -- one each at level 7, 10 and 13. Contrary to prior updates, Master traits have relatively few requirements (3 or 4 traits), and do not block any other traits, for maximum build flexibility.

Marine Masters

• Onslaught - once you spool up your chain-fire weapon (see below), you can move while firing and increasing spool-up!
• Bulletstorm - adds 1 more shot per action to SMGs and pistols, and reduces their ammo consumption
• Army of Darkness - designed with Shotguns in mind, this is a generic trait that converts the Slash weapon damage type to Pierce, and maximizes their effective range
• Vampyre - Health regeneration on melee kills
• Survivor - generalist trait makes you harder to kill and provides limited regeneration capabilities

Scout Masters

• Sniper - for use with any rifle, increases ranges and provides a bonus to critical chance which scales with range to target
• Gun Kata - fan favorite -- automatically shoots both your pistols at different targets as you dance between enemies
• Gunrunner - reload weapons on move and reduces their fire time for the turn after a move, leading to a run and gun playstyle
• Assassinate - Scout's flashy melee master -- phaseshift right behind the enemy to deliver a fatal blow
• Ghost - for the sneaky among us, significantly reduces stealth costs and detects enemies before you see them

Technician Masters

• Entrenchment - hold position and start spewing bullets - automatic hunker and damage reduction when firing while remaining stationary
• Sharpshooter - for the pistol fans: increased ranges and damage bonus which scales with range to target
• Fireangel - when you want to see the world burn. Shrug off explosions and proc fire effects
• Blademaster - Tech's melee master -- wield two blades at the same time for more damage!
• Wizard - smoke screen on cooldown, buff to hacked enemies and bot summoning

Apart from that, some of the existing non-master traits have been changed or removed, and a new Eagle Eye trait is present in Scout.

Masters obviously shake up the game a lot, and we tried to compensate balance for it (see below), but generally we kept most of the traits on the overpowered side -- expect more balancing in future updates :P

New Uncommon Weapons

To provide more early-game variety and fill up some gaps in weapon types vs available ammo, we added 6 new weapons that are alternatives to current common weapons:

• 9mm combat pistol
• .44 long revolver
• 7.62 sidearm
• 7.62 assault SMG
• 7.62 sniper rifle
• CRI plasma cannon

All of the above have ADV variants (which now show their tier in the name, i.e. AV1, AV2 and AV3), and are sometimes carried by regular humanoid enemies.

Chaingun Spool-up

Chaingun has changed! To give the chaingun its own niche among other similar weapons, chaingun now ramps up to its full damage potential after two turns of uninterrupted firing, represented by audio and visual effects, and a Spool-up status effect. Pick Marine's Onslaught master trait if you want to move while mowing down enemies!

Improved Animations

Speaking of the chaingun animation, we've also made a general pass on animations in the game - the player's body now rotates separately from the legs when firing and aiming, movement is smoothed out, rotating weapons actually rotate, and other miscellaneous animations were fixed.

UI Improvements

Several minor UI improvements have been made -- health bars now show what damage was done since the last turn, required traits in trait descriptions are highlighted red or green depending on whether or not the requirements are already met, and weapon statistics have been made more compact, and now include explicit weapon-group information.

Major Balance Changes

The inclusion of Master traits caused us to take a significant pass at game balance. In general, we made early-game a bit easier (especially on Medium), and significantly buffed all late game enemies to offset the power of Master traits. Also, there are more enemies in general post-Europa (scaling with difficulty).

Oh, and remember that UV accuracy bonus for enemies? It wasn't working correctly; we've now fixed it. Expect a lot more pain on Ultraviolence ;)

Plethora of Bugfixes

Last (but certainly not least), we fixed plenty of bugs, and we eagerly anticipate fixing the ones that will inevitably popup in this release with the amount of added mechanics :P.

Changelog

That's no moon, it's a changelog!

Beta   0.9.0 - Masters - April 27, 2020
NEW    #1066 - Traits - Marine chainfire master - Onslaught!
NEW    #1125 - Traits - Scout rifle master - Sniper!
NEW    #1126 - Traits - Tech cf/general master - Entrenchment!
NEW    #1122 - Traits - Marine pistol/SMG master - Bulletstorm!
NEW    #1063 - Traits - Scout pistol/SMG master - Gun Kata!
NEW    #1123 - Traits - Tech pistol/SMG master - Sharpshooter!
NEW    #1064 - Traits - Marine sg/rl master - Army of Darkness!
NEW    #1118 - Traits - Scout sg/general master - Gunrunner!
NEW    #1065 - Traits - Tech sg/general master - Fireangel!
NEW    #1067 - Traits - Marine melee master - Vampyre!
NEW    #1068 - Traits - Scout melee master - Assassinate!
NEW    #1069 - Traits - Tech melee master - Blademaster!
NEW    #1070 - Traits - Marine general master - Survivor!
NEW    #1127 - Traits - Scout general master - Ghost!
NEW    #1128 - Traits - Tech general master - Wizard!
NEW    #1090 - 6 new uncommon base weapons with ADV variants!
NEW    #0863 - chaingun now has a spool-up (4/6/8 shots)
CHANGE #1086 - UV enemy accuracy bonus was not working - fixed
CHANGE #1101 - ADV weapons now AV1, AV2 or AV3 depending on tier 
CHANGE #1072 - Bloodhound and Tracking Data markers on screen
CHANGE #1128 - hacked enemies now give 1xEXP, but count kill EXP
CHANGE #1133 - UI - health bars use = to show recent damage
CHANGE #1112 - UI - required traits are highlighted red/green
CHANGE #1130 - UI - cleaned up weapon stats description
CHANGE #1130 - UI - explicit weapon groups in stats and traits
CHANGE #1130 - UI - stats now show mods line as count/capacity
CHANGE #1087 - Balance - fire fiend and drone accuracy reduced
CHANGE #1087 - Balance - Callisto sergeants deal 70% damage
CHANGE #1086 - Balance - heavies have -20% accuracy and -10% speed
CHANGE #1086 - Balance - much fewer heavies on Callisto and Europa
CHANGE #1086 - Balance - 25% fewer armored ravagers
CHANGE #1086 - Balance - +50% health to ravagers, +33% to reavers
CHANGE #1109 - Balance - more experience for ravagers and reavers
CHANGE #1109 - Balance - more health to formers post Europa
CHANGE #1109 - Balance - +60% health to all cerberi
CHANGE #1109 - Balance - x2 health for CRI marines, +50% for CRI bots
CHANGE #1109 - Balance - fewer enemies on Anomaly and Milibase
CHANGE #1086 - Balance - more enemies lategame at higher diffs
CHANGE #1088 - Balance - Scout's Dash L1 and L2 merged together
CHANGE #1088 - Balance - evasion (dodge + guard) caps at 90
CHANGE #1088 - Balance - evasion no longer halved against melee
CHANGE #1109 - Balance - Swordmaster and Summoner buffed
CHANGE #1110 - Balance - more health orbs on earlier levels
CHANGE #1099 - Traits - Marine - removed Shredder
CHANGE #1099 - Traits - Tech - removed Overkill
CHANGE #1099 - Traits - Scout - removed Shottyman
CHANGE #1099 - Traits - Scout - new Eagle Eye (+1 max distance)
CHANGE #1099 - Traits - Scout - Swashbuckler becomes a basic trait
CHANGE #1099 - Traits - Scout - Pinpoint buffed to +25%/+50%
CHANGE #1099 - Traits - Scout - Steady Shot merged into Deadly Prec
CHANGE #1108 - high HP enemies (boss, resilient) have overhealth
CHANGE #1062 - GFX - upper bodies rotate separately when aiming
CHANGE #1062 - GFX - smoother movement interpolation
CHANGE #0863 - GFX - rotating weapons now actually rotate when firing
CHANGE #1055 - GFX - improved animation and FX of ravagers
CHANGE #1102 - GFX - several fixes and improvements to lighting
CHANGE #1111 - Challenge - Carnage scavenger behaves like AoSh
FIX    #1071 - "free" actions are now free, not just super short
FIX    #1050 - rare enemy multi-shot crash fixed
FIX    #1076 - fixed stealthing against charging fiends
FIX    #1082 - fixed black tiles in industrial_01 generator 
FIX    #1080 - saving will be properly enabled after tutorial
FIX    #1081 - melee will properly advance even if corpse removed
FIX    #1077 - fixed not being able to hack bots in doorways
FIX    #1098 - enemies will no longer attempt charge over lootbox
FIX    #1061 - advanced bots are hackable (but expensive)
FIX    #1131 - ending game with follower wont crash the next game
FIX    #1136 - fixed accidental swearword on clean setting
FIX    #1135 - killing mechanical enemies isn't spilling blood...
FIX    #1132 - fixed a bug group related to death

What's next?

The next version, 0.9.1, will be on the lighter side in terms of content; we'll focus on balancing this update and adding more content options to early levels and their respective generators. It also might come a little later than normal, as I definitely need some Zzz.....