Update 55: Battleground and hearth, patron and demon

Come friend! Grab your Emergency Ration and sit with me by the runefire, let me regale you with tales of progress past. 

Its been a while since the last update, I hope this one won't disappoint you. The new demo is available for download now. Main focus has been on new areas and enemies, streamlining the game to flow better, and lots of bugfixing. Beyond this update I will be looking at revamping bosses, and give guns. and modifications some love, hopefully making their stats easier to parse. Enough chitchat, here's the stuff:

Additions and Features

• 2 new types of areas
• Overworld map generation has been changed to try and make the layouts funner and more varied. Safe areas like the interstice will no longer spawn on their own - instead they are attached to combat areas and you will arrive there before going into battle.
• 7 new enemies - the Astral Kings have sent their soldiers! Some of them slightly more intelligent than the common demon, will try to employ rudimentary tactics to overwhelm you. Or call down a meteor on your head.
• 5 new guns
• A hub area, quite barren for the moment though.
• A new unlockable character with different stats, special ability, and starting guns
• The initial level can have multiple different layouts now
• A few new unknown levels
• A new type of reward chest that can be gotten on specific levels
• 2 new music tracks - one is up on youtube for the curious: 

• 2 new active items
• 1 new gun mod
• 1 new rune power
• A "tutorial" - I'd probably call it a brief crash course
• New death animations for your character and low health warning 
• Spinning barrel guns, like the minigun, can be revved up  without firing by holding right mouse button - no sound for it yet though sorry
• Movespeed reduction while shooting is more closely linked to visible recoil
• Some doodads have breaking apart animations
• Entirely revamped the loot table system for guns to make the drops feel better and hopefully more fun. I have not done enough testing yet though so it might be quite unbalanced for the moment. This also affects shops. If you have any thoughts about it I would love to hear them.
• Its no longer possible to reroll the same rune powers as the last roll
• Projectiles that have their damage heavily reduced by an enemy's armor will give off different ricochet effects (grey)
• Piercing power is once again reduced by enemy armor.
• The time it takes to swap to a gun is reflected in the UI gun box
• Various changes to the UI to make it more coherent.
• There will be less lootsplosions  when finishing a survival area, however you now get a reward chest.
• Many different balance changes - too many to list - eg. cursed gun mods will spawn a lot less and the price of guns in shops are cheaper on the later levels.
• Runes will never disappear when the portal is up
• Guns will be dragged into better positions when the portal appears
• Gun mod crafting will now always give you two different choices

Bugfixes and Minor Tweaks

• Rune power descriptions tweaked
• Interstice rune goes dark after choosing your gift
• Pickups are slightly more visible
• Enemy pathfinding improvements - should get stuck less but there are still some minor issues I will fix later
• Slight level background changes
• Tweak to Biff's starting pistol
• Ant demons flank both ways
• Tweaks to enemy parabolic projectile trajectories - getting a rocky artillery crystal on your head should not be as sudden as before
• Enemy corpses will now always face the direction they died in
• Tweak to Biff's sprite
• Rune interest is now correctly applied the moment you portal into a new area
• Shinier suicider explosions
• Crashfix related to the Wreck gun
• Bug fix causing music volume to be reset
• Fixed bug making shields invisible
• Teleportitis will now correctly block damage when using the stimpack
• Bugfix and crashfix related to enemy spawns 
• AI pathfinding will now update and take destroyed walls into account even if you stand still 
• Fixed bug with enemies attacking multiple times at once
• Bugfix with enemy damage hitboxes lingering for much longer than intended
• Bugfix with ammo spawning too frequently
• Survival areas will now correctly spawn enemies as intended -  did not work perfectly before
• Bugfix with enemies getting stuck in pathfinding loops
• You can no longer block enemy projectiles with shields, like artillery rounds, that are actually above you
• Fixed rare bug with the shopkeeper sprite getting tilted
• Fixed audio glitch with the track Stone and Star
• Fixed a number of graphical glitches on lower end systems
• Fixed stars being visible through enemy corpses
• Steam wishlist texted correctly aligned on all resolutions

And more I've forgotten about.

Thank you very much for your time and attention, even if you just skipped to the end, and I hope to see you in future updatelogs; Gun in hand, demon blood soaking your shoes. As always, the game is available to be followed on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/widget/2351700/?utm_source=itch