User Interface Improvements:

• Polished and reworked the Settings menus: Each category section is now a tabbed page
  • This lets us fit more options and makes the game easier to port
• Fonts now appear crisper and more readable, especially at non-native or small resolutions
• Replaced the old lock graphics with overlays so that locked content can be seen and moused over
• Made various other changes that improve the Steam Deck experience and make the game easier to port to smaller devices:
  • Ensured accurate glyphs are displayed when using Steam Deck
  • Controller glyphs are larger and easier to see at low resolutions
  • Tutorial visuals appear larger
  • High Score Entry shows a virtual keyboard on devices that support it
• Tutorial buttons now scale with the width of the message
• Dimmed the background behind non-gameplay UI screens to improve contrast

Major Changes:

• Reworked unlock progression
  • Previously, unlocks were acquired based on your score after each run. However, the scores that players are able to achieve tend to vary wildly in Nova Drift. This led to rather inconsistent experiences where, for example, some players would get showered with unlocks after powerful runs while other players could see their progress slow to a crawl if they couldn't get high enough scores. Additionally, now that Endless mode is optional, it's important to consider unlock rate for players who may prefer not to enable it. So, the new unlock system is based on waves cleared in a run instead of score earned. This ties unlock progression more closely to playtime and allows players of all skill levels to get to max account level in a reasonable amount of playtime (while still rewarding those who perform well). Overall this should provide a more consistent meta-progression experience for players, and we have tried to tune it so that in most cases it will take about the same or less time to get to max level. Additionally, extra consideration was made for the early unlocks in the game. Previously it was not too hard to get 8+ unlocks on your very first run, but this rate would drop off very quickly. Again this was not a very consistent experience, but also it's important not to deny some of the early unlocks too long, so we've tried to tune this carefully.
  • Extra details about the new unlock system:
    • Every wave cleared gives 1 point
    • Boss waves (multiples of 20 up to 120) give additional points, especially Star Eater
    • Waves cleared after 120 (or 180 for Draft) give additional points
    • Each difficulty mod enabled (except Annihilation) grants a bonus to your unlock points earned (note this was already the case previously since difficulty mods give score bonuses)

Minor Changes:

• Achievements can now be earned in Assist Mode
• Rapid Regeneration banishes Infuse
• Made it so that Leviathan's shielded body can also stop piercing projectiles, like its unshielded body can, if Reflect doesn't trigger
• Increased Spitfire's base hull by 13.6%. Decreased the multiplier to late-game Spitfire 2.0 -> 1.8, which makes it tougher in its boss fight and only barely tougher later on

Bug Fixes:

• Attempted to fix issues caused by Interceptor Swords after upgrading, resulting in Swords corrupting enemies (making them appear to vanish)
  • Interceptor now initializes Swords after completing all other initialization
  • Problems seem to have been caused by NaN object positions
• Attempted to fix a rare crash involving Hammerhead's burst warning object
• Attempted to fix a rare crash when transferring Star Eater damage to its controller
• Attempted to fix a rare corruption of positions from Singularities that can lead to NaN crashes
• Added a few measures to help prevent cases of corrupt values propgating and causing more trouble
• Fixed Shield continually cooling down with Hypermetabolism
• Priority Zero now scales based on the maximum hull of the enemy destroyed, not the maximum hull of the player
• Removed Shockwave pulses and Orbital orbs from destroyed drones that have Shielded Drones and Terminal Directive
• We now display an informative message when a custom skin sprite could not be loaded
• Refreshing player constructs also syncs Shield visuals (examples: Amp glow, Bastion glow, Helix controller, Shockwave controller)
• Cleaned up Salvo weapon state and display after the player switches to a different weapon
• Engineer Body construct assembly speed bonus now properly counts unassembled constructs
• Spectre decloaks when auto-deploying a Drone, Ally, or Turret
• Fixed a crash related to switching starfield backgrounds during gameplay under certain conditions
• Fixed the Leaf on the Wind multiplier potentially getting used before being set
• Fixed incorrect layout of banished mod hexes
• Prevented hull and shield bars from getting wider than the screen
• Fixed asymmetrical Homing Strike spreads
• Fixed a case where the player could earn "The Trolley Problem" achievement when they weren't truly dead
• Fixed Speerun mode with Draft: If you're on Endless mode, reaching wave 240 (which is possible with Draft) sets your Star Eater speedrun time correctly and displays as the end of run time
• Fixed the gamepad controls tutorial displaying the incorrect stick in some conditions
• Fixed Discharge not working with Shielded Swords
• Fixed Charged weapons being unable to release their charge after losing control to a black hole with Strafing Strikes
• Added a missing description for the "Window Size" setting, clarifying that it doesn't affect full screen resolution
• Fixed a problem that resulted in Serpent segments getting deactivated, then later showing up unexpectedly
• Fixed several cases of text, in Large Text mode, overlapping things or being off-screen
• Fixed Ally adding projectiles from Charged Shot when it shouldn't with Singular Strike
• Elite and Champion Host Drones are no longer valid targets for Cherub Hard Shield
• Constructor Drones are no longer valid targets for Cherub Hard Shield
• Restored multi-monitor support
  • Only works with Borderless Fullscreen window
• Fixed the baseline on the Simplified Chinese font being different than other fonts
• Fixed modifiers to direct projectile damage also applying to blast damage
  • Projectile explosions apply their own modifiers, so these were redundant
• Fixed the tutorial message not appearing to fade out. If Ataraxia Reminders is set to "Never", leaving the upgrade menu will fade out existing reminders, not just prevent new ones.
• Fixed a problem where, while fading to black when the game ends, the alpha wouldn't be properly reset
• Fixed Salvo doing no damage if the projectile was larger than the blast
  • Salvo now applies direct damage on hit
• Fixed the Speedrun Mode timer not updating while upgrading