Balancing Patch

Hello Brotatoes! We’re back with a first HEAVY balancing patch.

Since the release of Primal Dread, we’ve seen a lot of feedback around the balance of the game. We wanted to take some time before rushing into it so we tried our hand at balancing in beta first. And now it’s out for everyone!

We wanted to address:

• Balancing Mecha that felt overpowered
• Balancing Mutant that felt underpowered
• Balancing the Jungle Nightmare experience
• Adding more bans that comes during your run
• Changing some frustrating character design like the Variant
• Improving some items
• Bug fixing and Quality of Life features

There’s still some work to do. We plan to address the balancing of weapons in an upcoming patch.

And once again, we need your feedback!

Balancing is an ongoing process. We are making changes that can change themselves. Try it in game and let us know what you think!

BASE GAME

Shop

- Ban: gain 1 ban token every 4 waves, up to wave 20

- Endless: Piggy Bank and Crown no longer appear in the shop after wave 20 again

Fixes

- Fixed random zone selection when some DLCs are disabled

- Fixed challenge rewards not being unlocked on some saves, and rewards being locked again on "unlock all" saves

- Codex: fixed the 100% completion count per DLC

- Weapon popup: controller navigation no longer gets stuck when some buttons are hidden

- Burning: the tooltip now shows the current scaling

- Ambient sounds, fruit and crate sprites now follow the chosen background instead of the zone

Modding

- Backgrounds without fruit or crate sprites fall back to the consumable's own icon

- Removed some type inferences in RunData and the shop to make mods more robust

PRIMAL DREAD

New content

- New item: Chimera Cells, tier 2 mutant item: +10% chance to mutate an item when equipped (max 5)

- Variant now unlocks Chimera Cells. Wildfire Mutation is unlocked by default

Mutation

- Variant: the 50% better-tier mutation is replaced by a 25% chance to mutate an item when equipped from the shop or a crate

- The -1 Evolution of a mutation now goes on the Tumor, which shows the number of mutations as its first line. An item only becomes mutant when it loses a malus (existing Tumors start counting from now)

- Copied effects now reach 70% strength at 40 Evolution and 100% at 100 (was ~67 and 150)

- Mutation no longer copies effects that do nothing when duplicated or are already capped: Anvil's random weapon upgrade, Survivor's extra starting weapon choice, Time Shifter's mixed-up waves, Caveman's weapon burning, material attraction above 100%, Treasure Map above 100%, Snail once enemy speed is at its minimum, Extra Stomach once its per-wave cap is reached

- Copies of the same effect on the Tumor now always merge into one line

- Copied explosion chance is rounded up to a whole percent, and explosion chance no longer shows decimals

- A mutation that can neither remove a malus nor copy an effect no longer adds a "Nothing happened" line

- Mutation Fruit: base drop chance increased from 3% to 4%, then reduced by 1% every 10 waves from wave 30 (minimum 1%)

Mechanize

- Weapon damage bonus reduced: +3% per meca power point instead of +5% (a weapon mechanized 8 times now deals 208% of its base damage instead of 280%)

- No longer gives extra piercing or bounces

- Stat options now spread tier I to IV values over ranks 1 to 8 and stop growing after rank 8

- Mecha Parts drop chance reduced from 2% to 1.5%

- Hovering the Mechanize button previews the upgraded stats in green, and the preview stays while choosing the stat

- Once Mechanize is pressed, the stat choice can no longer be cancelled

- The mechanized weapon keeps its place in the inventory and around the character

Items

- Fossils rebalanced (Tooth, Right Arm, Left Leg, Right Leg, Spine, Jaw, Left Arm, Skull): higher bonuses, lower maluses

- Evolved Leaps: +50% chance to instantly attract Mecha/Mutant Fruits left on the ground at the end of the wave

- Dart Trap: the tooltip now shows the damage dealt

- Fog visibility tooltip is also shown with Caveman's permanent fog

Shop

- New "Sorted by mutation" option for the items inventory: character and Tumor first, then freshly mutated items, then previously mutated items, then the rest

- Crate ban counter now shows used/total tokens and no longer goes negative after gaining extra ban tokens

Characters

- Explorer, Caveman, Vagabond: Boomerang added to starting weapons

- Wildling: Blowgun added to starting weapons

- Generalist: Molotov Cocktail removed from starting weapons

- Mad Scientist: Awl and Blowgun replaced by Laser Gun and Carbon Bow

- One Armed: Boomerang removed from starting weapons

- Time Shifter: Dodge upgrades can no longer appear

- Arsonist: Engineering upgrades can no longer appear

- Wounded: Pocket Watch can no longer appear

Jungle

- Better economy: more basic enemies in waves 2 to 5 and in low material waves

- Waves 7, 11, 12, 16 and 17 rebalanced

- Jeholopterus no longer spawns

- Fewer and smaller hole clusters

- Acid puddles: damage increase per wave lowered (0.1 to 0.075), damage ticks as soon as you step in and stops as soon as you leave

- Carnivorous Plant and Mother Carnivorous Plant no longer leave acid puddles, Mother Carnivorous Plant stats adjusted

- Brachiosaurus Foot: new landing attack (can be mecha, mutant or neutral), fewer projectiles, fixed collision timing

- Pterosaur: speed greatly reduced

- Velociraptor: speed boost slightly reduced

- Spinosaurus: dash cooldown increased, long cooldown every 4 dashes instead of 5

- Baby T-Rex: health reduced from 10 to 8

- Iguanodon: health adjusted

- Parasaurolophus: knockback resistance adjusted

- Giant Dragonfly, Enigmacursor and Dilophosaurus now wait a moment before their first attack

- Codex: new descriptions and screenshots for many Jungle enemies, bosses, Ammosaurus, Hungry-Hungry Dinosaur and Mosquitor

Fixes

- Fixed crash on death while Brachiosaurus Foot is active

- Whip and Flail now hit enemies right next to the player

- Lifeform Scanner no longer replaces two Elite events after quitting to the menu and continuing the run

- Several Lootworms now go after different materials instead of following the same path

- Codex: evil Jungle enemies no longer counted in the completion

- Coop shop: the Mecha Parts counter no longer blocks shop and inventory navigation

- Lystrosaurus: fixed wrong sprite and stats

- Dilophosaurus: removed a stray line above the head

- Dimetrodon: shadow no longer drawn in front of the sprite

- Harpymimus Looter: fixed name

- Holes no longer appear at the bottom edge of the screen or outside the map

- Chimera Cells: new art

- Translations: Spanish Variant renamed "Variante" (no longer shares Generalist's name), Polish Caveman text fixed, Evolved Leaps text fixed

That’s it for us!