When the Alteration Benches were introduced, the focus was on tools and melee weapons. With the Week 37 update, armors receive their first tranche of attachments. Ranged weapon attachments were teased, and crossbow and critical hit modifiers received a significant boost. As usual, we got another taste of what is to come in the next DLCs.
Armor Attachment Alterations Added
Like the tool and melee weapon release, the new armor attachments include standard attachments with Tier 3 and Tier 4 variants as well as a few special effect attachments. Also following suit, armor attachments will not fit into every piece: some only fit helmets, for example. These restrictions will be made clear on the attachment descriptions.
The 9 standard attachments appear to include inventory expansions, storm visibility improvements, and boosts to stats like damage resistance and stealth. There are also a few special effect attachments granting the prospector tracking, hunger, and healing buffs.
While ranged weapons have been passed over in this update, RocketWerkz has confirmed that they are in the works and will arrive in a future update.
Crossbow and Critical Hit Rebalance
Players may have felt a little underwhelmed by the Workshop crossbow offerings last week. They did not seem worth the top-tier exotics cost to research and craft. To date, crossbows have been fairly underpowered compared to the standard bows.
This week, several changes were made to these weapons, as well as the critical hit talents, that hopefully balance the scales. Crossbows now have an innate chance to slow enemies, as well as better armor penetration on hardened parts of enemies. (Perhaps crossbows could be the weapon of choice for scorpion bosses and armored variants.)
On top of this, bows, spears, and knives have received substantial boosts to their critical hit buff talents (Soft Spot, Deadly Thrust, and Deadly Stab). This might encourage players to move some talent points deeper into the weapon talent trees to take advantage of higher damage multipliers on enemy weak points.
DLC Development and Other Changes
The patch notes gave us another look into the DLC developments in the past week, as well as other changes that will interest players.
Animal taming mechanics are being implemented, bringing the mount system one step closer to a reality. A baby version of the Moa was added, and there were several inscrutable mentions of another creature, identified only by the letter “M”. On top of that was the introduction of a predatory bird, so prospectors may soon find themselves starring in a RocketWerkz retelling of the classic Hitchcock horror film.
Here are some other tasty tidbits plucked out of the patch notes this week:
DLC flora saw some development, with work on “megatrees” and mangroves (possibly referring to the same plant).
The DLC volcanic biome saw work on lava flows, clarifying that this is an active volcanic region.
On Dedicated Servers, the performance hit from ghosts used during deployable item placement has been reduced.
A fix to the collision asset for bullets should make firearms more accurate.
The level of detail controls for enflamed objects were reworked, so hopefully forest fires will cause less lag.
Chimneys will produce smoke after a patch to the fireplace cap.
The capacity of vapor condensers has been doubled, ensuring that you will no longer lose exotics when the Horde Mode bonus is greater than 100.
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SurvivalSherpa
SurvivalSherpa is an avid gamer spending most of his time at the nexus of the survival, crafting, building, and role playing genres on any platform, especially to test indie titles in EA. AFK, life is about work and education in STEM fields, reading fantasy, and sipping great coffee in the Pacific Northwest.
