Well, hey there, all you scoundrels, rogues, and misfits. We've got a lot of ground to cover today: a new Agent, a new event system, plus a whole stack of fixes.
The Isaac DLC accompanied by the Twist of Fate Update will be Free to Download for all of our players - Thank you for joining the Lamplighters League!
Saves, Heists, and Crashes
Reporting in on our Campaign to stabilize the game on Xboxes. While we’ve made progress in making the game more stable and more receptive to frequent saves, there are still some limitations to the system that we can’t get all the way around, and we want to be transparent about them.
Saves:
We have dramatically reworked our save logic to be leaner and faster. Players should notice faster save and load times across the board. Additionally, the demand for memory during a save operation no longer rises as sharply, which should reduce the possibility of crashing due to out-of-memory while saving. Our test group was able to save much more freely, even during heavy levels like Nicastro Heist and Strum Heist. We recommend that if you want to save during a heist, that you only save after completing objectives. Resist the temptation to save after every takedown and patrol combat for the best, most reliable experience.
Heists:
We did not end up making edits to the Heists this time. Between the Save and Crash fixes, we found that we were able to consistently complete the Heists without crashing, especially if we limited our save activity to “after completing each objective in the chain.” We’ll watch performance on these levels.
Crashes:
We fixed or guarded a few more null refs that were reported to us – and we think we have caught the remaining easy-to-encounter null refs. There may still be a few hiding in the dark corners of the game, but we expect random-seeming crashes due to null refs to be a lot less common now. We also made adjustments to more aggressively release memory space, to allow players to play longer sessions without running out of memory, which would then cause a crash. While we have seen dramatic improvements of memory usage, we do still see memory grow after rapid save/loads, especially in large levels. We recommend that players save judiciously - or consider resetting their memory by restarting the game before embarking on a large mission.
A Quick Note about Nocturne
Nocturne can now freely cross the boundary between PC Gamepass and XBox Gamepass instances. In the past, if a player had Nocturne on Xbox, and then tried to load that save through the Windows Store, they probably experienced an “invalid save” error or potentially even a crash to the main menu. This should no longer occur. Players don’t need to do anything to benefit from this, just make sure that you are signed in to the account that owns Nocturne when you launch the game on either platform. Our goal is a more seamless experience for our Gamepass Ultimate subscribers - thank you for playing!
Introducing Isaac Greymoor
Meet Isaac Greymoor, a hot-headed, lead-slinging mercenary who wields a deadly light machine gun to devastating effect. And watch out, folks: on a team of shady characters he just might be the worst of the bunch.
Isaac Greymoor's LMG spits a hail of bullets and generates Heat as it fires—the more Heat, the more Damage. But too much Heat, and Isaac could become Overheated—causing him to suffer Damage even as he dishes it out. To learn more about his gameplay, look out for the Dev Diary we’ll post tomorrow, it goes into all the details!
Does the name Greymoor sound familiar? Don't tell Isaac; it'll go to his head. But you may have heard Locke mention one Lord Greymoor, former leader of the Lamplighters League. Well, Isaac is his son, but the apple fell very far from the tree.
Once you've grabbed the DLC from your store of choice, he will be the next Agent Recruitment mission you find. Or, start a new custom game and skip the intro to select him as one of your starting 4 Agents.
One more thing. The Isaac DLC is FREE. That's right, folks, this criminal is a steal. Our little way of thanking you all for playing, for engaging in the community, for reporting bugs and voicing your feedback.
The Events of the Season
Events are a brand new way to campaign against the Banished Court, available to all. Everyone will begin to see these after applying the 1.3 update! Most weeks, after reviewing the Activity on the World Map after a mission, you will be presented with a Fate Event. Check out this example:
Fate Events offer the story of an adventure in the world outside of Del Vasto’s Landing and what else the League gets up to when not on a Mission or an Expedition. Fate Events usually end in rewards for the League, providing materials for the campaign by resolving each mini story with a choice. Available options can depend on which agents you have recruited, and each option leads to a different conclusion. It’s up to you how the League handles each opportunity!
House Events, on the other hand, occur rarely. These Events usually cost something to complete, but you may then sway the balance of power between the three houses. For these, the available options vary and sometimes can be completed by specific agents—but you can always choose to “Do Nothing” and allow the House to gain a little more ground instead. Choose wisely!
We think Events add a real je ne sais quoi to the game. We get to share more about the world the Lamplighters operate in, and you get the opportunity to choose different outcomes and learn more about this cast of scoundrels…and there’s more control over the strategic layer of the campaign from the added resources and new ways to interact with Doomsday Clocks and Threat. If you are in the middle of a carefully orchestrated campaign and don’t want this to affect your playthrough, the feature can be disabled under Settings. However, we hope everyone enjoys these Events as much as we enjoyed creating them.
Quality of Life Updates:
Added the Agent “Isaac Greymoor” —for free!
Get this dashing new Agent from your platform store for $0
Once acquired, Isaac will be immediately added to your Agent Recruit Pool
Or you can start a new custom game to get Isaac immediately
Added “Events” system
Events occur on the World Map after completing a mission
Fate Events give you a glimpse into the larger world of the Lamplighters League, and lets you choose how to handle each event. Each option will offer the player different rewards.
House Events tell the story of the world during the rise of the Houses of the Banished court, and offer the player unique ways to interact with them
Added the “Wet” Status Effect
Stepping in or through Water imparts the Wet status effect
While Wet, Isaac loses Overheated and 1 Heat per Round, and cannot accrue Heat while Wet.
Units with Wet are immune to Burning, but take +5 Shock damage
Fixed a few dialog texts that didn’t quite match their VO
Fixed a few pieces of dialog that were quieter than others
Reduced the difficulty of the early combat game on the Explorer difficulty mode
Improved the efficiency of save/load operations
Made some adjustments under the hood to save memory usage
Localization fixes
Bug Fixes:
A specific city level should no longer cause infinite loading issues.
A specific jungle level that sometimes had graphical issues on low graphics settings should no longer have black triangles in some places.
Turned down the default frequency of Action Cam
Fixed a few floating or clipping lore objects
Made sure that one bookshelf in the middle of a fancy room had appropriate collision
Lamplighter’s Tonic should no longer vanish from the Ability Bar during real time
Damage Talisman should now apply the correct amount of added damage output.
Fixed an issue where Threshold would not deal damage to all targets as described. Be careful with that magical ordinance, now!
In addition to the above fixes and new features, we made good progress on our campaign to stabilize some technical challenges. On the whole, the game saves and loads faster, and the game uses less memory overall. This is good news for our players on restricted memory systems!
Known Issues:
Very rarely, the Isaac Recruit mission won’t spawn on Week 5 the first time you recruit him. It should appear the following week.
Passive effects that Isaac inflicts on his enemies will sometimes also be inflicted on him.
We’re already working on a short-term hotfix to address the Known Issues above. But, that’s everything for today! If you notice new issues, please bring them to us on Discord or the Forums. We can’t wait to see how Isaac shakes up your Agent loadout. All the Best,
Samantha Stelter, Lead Producer
Jill Scharr, Lead Narrative Designer
