We've got a medium-sized update for you today featuring Guardian Mode, in-game balancing, changelogs, and a few community requests & bug fixes.

If you're free this Friday, we've also got another Shapers vs. \[Metric] Showdown with prizes to be won.

Let's get into it.

By popular demand, Guardian Mode is a difficulty toggle designed to help players access the true ending of the game after defeating VerOs. This toggle option is located under the Gameplay Tab in the game's options menu.
When enabled, players will receive incremental damage reduction starting from regular runs to Phantom Code difficulty levels. The approximate breakdown is as follows:

• Baseline: 20% damage reduction

• Alpha: 20% damage reduction

• Beta: 30% damage reduction

• Gamma: 40% damage reduction

• Delta: 60% damage reduction

• Omega: 60% damage reduction

We've also introduced balances based on player feedback to reduce run duration and enemy health, along with a few others adjustments.

• Reduced base health of all enemies by about 10%

• Reduced grunt and grunt variants health scaling by 5%

• Reduced quantity of grunts and variants spawning during combat encounters from 6 to 3

• Increased duration between Strike Mantis' successive dash attacks in tower 3 encounters

• Reduced quantity of missiles fired from 4 to 3 when fighting Strike Mantis in tower 2 or 3 encounters

• Reduced missile speed by 20% when fighting Strike Mantis in tower 2 or 3 encounters

• Reduced travel speed of Wind Magistrate's tornadoes by about 15%

• Increased radius of the Volt Aura perk

The Daily Challenge's points scoring will now only reward players for retaining up to the 200 HP maximum. Under this change, players with 400 HP and 200 HP at the end of their run are both rewarded the same 400 points.

• Daily Challenge - Capped max health points to the base max

• Daily Challenge - Leaderboards now default to Global view

• Fixed persisting enemies & enemy effects when Overlord retaliation triggered during combat ending sequence

• Fixed Puzzle Switch chest in Robotics Factory that remained locked after completing the switch challenge

• Fixed connectivity bug preventing players from launching and playing the game offline

• Fixed Robotics Hub trophy not appearing after all ciphers were discovered and decoded

• Fixed Golden Ada trophy not appearing after defeating VerOS with all Phantom Code Fragments enabled, despite some players receiving corresponding achievement

• Fixed Volt Colossus trophy that always loaded in gold by default

• Fixed VFX bug in which the VFX for new trophies persisted after initial interaction

• Fixed 'Quad Conquerer' achievement not being awarded when criteria was met

🔗Event Link[discord.gg]📅 Date: May 16
🎁 Battle Shapers Game Key + Goodies
🏆 Custom Discord Role + Bragging Rights

In the last showdown on April 25th, \[Metric] Devs narrowly defeated the Shaper community with a top score of 1568, with only 12 points over InkAssassn's score!

They say third time's the charm and we can feel it in our bones - our reign is nearing its end.

As always, whoever holds the #1 position at the end of the day will be rewarded a Battle Shapers Key and sent a Battle Shapers package in the mail. We'll also award you the coveted "Top Daily Runner" role on our community Discord; an exclusive golden speed token fit for royalty.

And that's it for now!
See you around,
Metric Empire