PHOSPHOR 1.0 - Launch & Updates

Hey everyone,

PHOSPHOR 1.0 is here , and it's the biggest update the game has ever had. There's new stuff to find, the first hour is a lot friendlier, and most of the enemies you'll fight have been redrawn from scratch. Here's what changed

First, a fresh start

1.0 resets everyone's progress, one time only. The economy, perks, loadout and the order things unlock in all changed a lot in this update, and old progress just doesn't line up with the new game anymore.

• Reset: cores, perks, unlocks, codex, records, missions and any run you had saved.
• Kept: your settings, keybinds and accessibility options.
• Steam achievements you've already earned stay earned.
• It happens once per player, Steam Cloud saves included. You'll see a FRESH START screen the first time you launch 1.0.
• To play co-op together, both players need to be on 1.0.

Getting back on your feet is much quicker now. New profiles start with 50 cores, perks cost a third less, and the Loadout screen is a lot cheaper overall.

New things to find

• Malkail, Lost Descender. Keep an eye out for a lit campsite on the Fab Floor. Talk to him, ask him to come with you, and it turns into a duel against a dragon-styled copy of your own operative, build and all. Win and you walk away with 20 cores and 250 scrip. Lose and you just yield, no death. One try per run, and it works in co-op.
• The Amalgam. A huge blob of cyber-junk lives in the Sump. It rolls, it leaps, and it eats plants, crates and other enemies to get bigger. It can split, too. Go for the red reactor heart.
• Bunkers. Look for a BUNKER HATCH, about two per layer. It drops you into a short string of hand-built rooms (arenas, shafts, vaults and more) with a payoff room at the end and a lift back up. A bunker takes 3 to 6 minutes. Doors lock while you fight, there's a minimap, you can save inside, and co-op works.
• The Hoard. Some biomes hide a secret door that cracks open when you get close. Behind it is a short floor, a new boss called the Hoarder, and a vault with a better-than-usual pick of three cards. The lift puts you back exactly where you left off.
• Pets. Eggs drop from caches, gods, champions and bosses, and your first one is guaranteed. They hatch and grow through three stages, and you can bring up to three along. There are seven families: Lamp Moth, Magpie, Medic Jelly, Hornet, Shield Bug, Ember Wisp and Volt Eel. They do very different things, from fetching scrip to blocking shots to saving you from one killing blow per run.
• New rooms, zones and events that unlock as you hit milestones, including a Rest Stop, a Sniper Tower, an Elite Den, Low Gravity and Lights Out zones, and a Beat the Clock event.
• Run rules. Before a descent you can pick one rule that changes how the run plays: Magnet, Ricochet Rounds, One Gun, Lob World or Melee Route. They change the feel of a run, not the difficulty. You unlock each one by pulling off a feat.
• The Forge keeper. Forges now have a cyberpunk smith and his drone. He says hello, welds while you temper, and ducks when bullets start flying. The trader and the brokerage talk now too.
• And yes, the Konami code does something now. Try it on the main menu.

An easier start

PHOSPHOR had a habit of throwing everything at you in the first hour. We went through the whole start of the game to fix that.

• The first time you play, the bartender walks you through the Lounge. The Show Me Around tour is rebuilt: a thin strip at the edge of the screen that spotlights one thing at a time and shows the right button for whatever you're playing on. You buy your first gun and your first perk during the tour.
• Systems show up as you go deeper instead of all at once. A first run is guns, upgrades and the Forge. Doctrines, affixes, pacts and the rest arrive on later layers.
• Shop terminals and merge terminals are gone. Merging is a free service at the Forge now, and the old shop rooms are Forges.
• Reroll and Banish only appear on card screens.
• Stats use a simple view by default. When you reach LAYER 15 you'll be offered the advanced view.
• Range is now Reach, and it's worth taking: shots go farther and faster, shotgun spread tightens, melee hits wider and lobs fly farther.
• The Service Pistol costs 1 core. Everything on the Loadout screen can be bought in any order, and it equips as soon as you buy it. The Perks and Loadout screens were redesigned with one-press buying and an undo button.
• Bosses hit softer on the first two layers, and the difficulty ramps up properly from around LAYER 9.
• How to Play is rewritten, and controller movement feels much smoother.

Runs and rewards

• Short Run: a two-layer run straight from the main menu. It ends on its own, you keep your rewards, and you get 20% extra cores.
• Today's Run: the daily seed, one button from the main menu.
• Pick a style: at the start of a run you choose one of three playstyle cards, like Glass Cannon, Tank or Crits, and the run's offers lean that way.
• Every layer clear gives you the option to take a break or save and quit. "Bank" is now called Keep Rewards.
• The death screen and the new run summary show how close you are to your next unlock. In solo, anything you unlock mid-run joins that run right away.
• One Goals board with a Claim All button replaces the four separate goal lists.
• Mark items with ★ More of this or ⊘ Less of this to steer what shows up.
• Starting kits on Layer Selection now scale with the layer you pick.

A big visual upgrade

This is the part we're proudest of. We redrew most of the enemies you'll meet, rebuilt how glow and light are drawn, and gave the bosses a lot more detail.

The Leviathan Engine, Coolant Geist, The Maw, The Herald and Signal Scion are rebuilt from hand-shaded parts on the same animation rigs, so they fight exactly like before but look a lot better (old on top, new underneath). While we were in there we found some boss parts that had never been drawing at all, like the Leviathan's chains and the Herald's mantle. They show up now.

All 27 humanoid enemies, your operative and the other operatives were redrawn with proper joints, shading and glowing neon trim (old on top, new underneath). So were the flying enemies, the heavy walkers and crabs, the support enemies and the three sky ships.

Your build looks the part now too. Phosphor wings unfold and beat, the armour has real mechanical wings, the ward is sharper, and all ten doctrines got new armour pieces. Items you stack show up on your body, and your shots get bigger as your damage goes up.

• Smooth Glow (Settings > Video, on by default). Glow and light are now drawn at your screen's full resolution, so neon gets soft, wide halos while the pixel art stays sharp. Bullets, muzzle flashes, impacts and enemy eyes all cast coloured light. If your PC can't keep up, it turns itself off.
• Every biome got a neon pass, with darker backgrounds so the important stuff stands out.
• Enemies break apart based on what they're made of, and bosses leave wrecks behind. There are new reload and weapon-swap animations, a new death screen, and a cracked visor when you're low on health.
• 31 bosses now get a portrait banner when they arrive.
• Opening a cache is more of a show, with bigger effects for rarer items. One button skips it, or turn on Quick Reveals.
• Menus feel better. Buttons, cards and tabs react when you hover and press them, screens slide in and out, and button prompts look the same everywhere.
• New grass (some of it glows in the dark), and redrawn crates, barrels, doors, spikes and guns.

Fixes

• Signal Scion no longer becomes unkillable at around 20% health.
• You can finish LAYER 15 again.
• Ladders reach their platforms.
• Melee hits enemies and blocks right next to you.
• Dead cannons and other props fall instead of floating in the air.
• Event text like AMBUSH no longer hangs around after you've moved on.
• See-through Forge props that couldn't be used are gone.
• Lots of overlapping and cut-off text is fixed.

That's 1.0. Thank you to everyone who played early, sent feedback and put up with the rough edges. If you find something broken, tell us in the discussions and we'll get on it.

See you down there.