The Xumi Post #5: Halloween Update Incoming!

Introduction

What's going on builders, today we have another blog post detailing all that's coming next week with the new update!

TL;DR

• Updated Rift activities deep dive
• Expanding the part inventory with decoupling!
• Spooky Halloween avatars in Xumia
• New objectives, some tweaks, and new paints
• Closing notes

Enhancing the Rift & the Cyber Threat

As you might've noticed in September, we updated the test flow and added quick respawn to the Rift, but the activities didn't really change. With this update we wanted to give you more of a challenge so you can properly test out your ships!

The Rift - Drone Hunt

The drone challenge was always a matter of movement and aim, but it could become stale - and easily bypassed if you knew where to place a few mobile defenses with gunner pods! To make it less trivial and more challenging, we now have hunter drones mixed in. These are the ones you've seen before in Core Siege and they seem to be making it to the Rift (their presence has been increasing as of late…).

However, the drones didn't come alone!

The Rift - Time Trials

Alongside the drones, all time trials now have defenses throughout - with each difficulty the higher chance of more appearing, with the endless trial being the truest test of endurance!

Our internal comms tell us the cyber threat has always used the Rift to attack the Xumi Cores, but they seem to be growing more aggressive. As we try to figure out why, help the Xumies by keeping them at bay!

Core Siege

Outside of the Rift, in Core Siege, we've added multiple quality-of-life changes such as the ability to delete spawned hand weapon gizmos, fixed a lot of bugs and improved performance even further with the upcoming update! It's the best it's ever been, and if you happen to be on Steam, it's the smoothest it's ever felt!

It's Time to Decouple and Use Their Weapons Against Them!

We teased it in the last blog post, but now it's time for you to see the newest set of parts you'll have access to! The Xumi engineers have helped us out and found a new method to allow parts to have unique functionality, decoupling!

How Does It Work?

By using the same connectors you do for weapons, you can now use the Decoupler, to separate one or more parts from one gizmo! What this means is you can have subassemblies, torpedoes, on-the-go defenses and much more, all at the touch of a button, or using sensors as triggers and on any gizmo type! This will have a big impact on what you can build and it massively opens up creativity just like hand weapons did back in April (and yes, you can use the decoupler with hand weapons or defenses, not just spaceships!).

But Wait, There's MORE!

In addition, the Xumies have also managed to hack some of the drones in the Rift and used the same technology on them! You'll have access to a small, a medium, and a large drone to be deployed in the same way (or alongside a decoupled section!)

• Here's a fun example. Hook up a decoupler to your right trigger. In that decoupled section have two drones hooked up to a sensor and add a gunner pod with some turrets attached to it.
  • The result - a deployable defense, where, if an enemy gets too close, it deploys 2 drones that'll go after them! This is just an example of the cool creations you'll be able to make!

Oh, and all of these will be available by default, no objectives required! The Xumis helped out in making it so!

Upcoming Themed Avatars

In the store, during Halloween there'll be a spooky new addition, Skulivan! It's the spookiest yet (with a moving fish!!!), and it'll be accompanied by the returning Corny, which we felt needed to come back as well - like a yin/yang of avatar Halloween themes ;)

As we've also shown during the last post, you'll now have arms! So your avatars will never have looked this good, corny or creepy! And with the movement updates like sprinting, it'll also be the fastest and smoothest they have felt (just like Core Siege!).

As a PSA, during Thanksgiving, the limited-time Gobblerator avatar will also make its return and during Christmas, the Iron Prancer will join back in!

Objectives Are Cool, but What About XP?

So, ever since we added objectives, we've had multiple changes. We've tweaked, reduced requirements, outright reduced objectives, gave more parts as default and for all the ones we've added we've only been giving cosmetics, and we'll continue to do so!

However, we've seen people still haven't been levelling up, and sometimes haven't really been introduced to it. With this update we're updating every objective to also give XP as an additional reward. This will give another incentive to go do objectives, as well as ensuring players can more easily earn crystals. You get crystals from every single level up (starting at 150, and going up to 400 per level), as well as from any activity completions! With this change, you should be able to earn crystals faster and be able to get all of the cool stuff in the store!

Don't forget to level up by opening the Wristpod and pressing the big level up button!

Now onto rewards, here are the new paints (all have cool shines or glows in-game) that'll come with the new set of tier 3 objectives, which include 4 highly unique paints with challenges related to using the decoupler, drones and the revamped Drone Hunt activity!

And the 2 new store paints, shining very bright! These can, as always, be earned with crystals in-game. Purple Reign is a fan favorite among the dev team ;)

See You Soon

Another week and another blog! Make sure to share any cool clips with the new arms, decoupler drones, your cool creations and paint combinations, or the new Rift activity with us on social media or in our Discord channel.

We hope you have fun with the new update, and we'll keep communication lighter through November as we prepare to show you what's coming at the end of the year (cof cof December)! It's really cool and we can't wait to share more, when it's ready!

See you soon, Builder!

- The BuildPort Xumia Team