Big Time Patch Notes v0.29.2

Version 0.29.2

Version 0.29.2 Hotfix 1 (2/23/24)

BUGFIXES:

• Chests (including Epoch chests) will no longer allow you to open them if you’re too high level to receive their rewards
• Cracked Hourglasses now persist in the Personal Metaverse for 8 hours (increased from 1 hour) to give players an easier chance to collect Cracked Hourglasses spawning at disparate times
• Fixed invalid costs appearing for some Epoch Chests

SEASONAL CONTENT:

• New content added for various upcoming events, holidays and seasonal NFTs

BALANCE:

• Cracked hourglass drop rates in SPACE are now affected by decorations within that SPACE
• Elemental Monitor is no longer affected by certain dungeon curses which were causing it to be more difficult than intended, and loot drops from Elemental Monitor have been adjusted to reflect its increased difficulty
• Orbital Strike cast range has been decreased
• Balanced hourglass rewards to more accurately follow their relative rarity and cost

GAMEPLAY:

• A new type of chest known as the Epoch Chest has been added throughout the land. New portal rolls unlocking drop bonuses from these chests have been added as well. These chests cost a fee to open, but have hefty rewards!
• Text above workshops can now be seen through walls in the Personal Metaverse once again
• New types of bonuses and curses have been added
• New type of item: Schematics. These allow players to craft certain new NFTs that require them to have this schematic to do so
• Immunity timer when zoning has been increased and made more tolerant so people don’t get unfairly damaged while coming out of a portal.

BUGFIXES:

• Fixed more enemy name text elements appearing during gameplay than intended
• Fixed sell price shown when selling junk to vendors sometimes displays the wrong value
• Fixed reddish background UI element appearing above the heads of enemies when it should not have been
• Fixed incorrect quantity being displayed in the loot stream UI in some circumstances
• Fixed client framerate/performance issues when dismantling Cracked Hourglasses
• Fixed equipped hourglasses able to be placed in recharge UI despite not being able to be recharged
• Fixed clanking/equipping sounds playing in the background during crafting

Version 0.29.1

SEASONAL CONTENT:

• New content added for various upcoming events, holidays, and seasonal NFTs

GAMEPLAY:

• Portal locations and selections have been tweaked
• New types of bonuses and curses have been added
• Different types of bonus drops now appear in distinct visual styles to help distinguish them
• Drops from party members now have a different appearance from your own drops in the UI
• Some portal bonuses have been adjusted
• Fixed some icons that were missing or incorrect for portal bonus rolls

BUGFIXES:

• Fixed more enemy name text elements appearing during gameplay than intended
• Fixed sell price shown when selling junk to vendors sometimes displaying the wrong value
• Fixed reddish background UI element appearing above the heads of enemies when it should not have been
• Fixed incorrect quantity being displayed in the loot stream UI in some circumstances
• Fixed client framerate/performance issues when dismantling Cracked Hourglasses
• Fixed equipped hourglasses able to be placed in recharge UI despite not being able to be recharged
• Fixed clanking/equipping sounds playing in the background during crafting

PATCH NOTES
Version 0.29 Hotfix 1 (2/03/24)
BUGFIXES:

• Fixed SPACE not dropping as many Cracked Hourglasses as intended.
• Fixed Hourglasses displaying incorrect Luck values.
• Fixed some vendors not spawning in Time’s End.

Version 0.29 Hotfix 2 (2/06/24)
BUGFIXES:

• Improved feedback for loot drops so it’s easier to tell what the source of $BIGTIME and NFT drops is.
• Fixed an issue that could allow the crafting UI to get in a bad state where bonus rolls could be made, but the craft could not actually be started.
• Fixed a server crash occurring in dungeons.
• Fixed a client crash occurring when transitioning between instances (using portals).
• Improved network congestion handling to address players having trouble getting into very large Personal Metaverses.
• Fixed enemy health bar status icons (like from dungeon curses) appearing when the health bar itself is hidden. This should reduce screen clutter significantly.
• Fixed enemy health bar status icons not always showing up even when curse modifiers were active on them.
• Fixed bounty asking players to kill enemies with exploding barrels not giving credit for the kill in some situations.

KNOWN ISSUES:

The following issues will be fixed shortly in a follow-up hotfix:

• Enemy names above their heads are on more often than they should be.
• A rogue “Text block” UI element will appear on screen in rare circumstances. This will resolve upon zoning.

Version 0.29 Hotfix 3 (2/07/24)
BUGFIXES:

• The rogue “Text block” has been found and crushed into the abyss
• “Chaff” mobs will no longer clutter up the screen with their names unless they need to be displayed
• Fixed another rare client crash
• Fixed a platform in the new Anomaly dungeon which enemy AI were unable to reach
• Fixed a floating vendor in Time’s End
• Fixed some localization (translation) errors

Special Thanks

We’d like to give a special callout to all our Player Council members who have been supporting the game team during testing of this patch. Their dedication and feedback make the game better, and we owe them our gratitude!

In particular, we’d like to mention the following members who went above and beyond during this process:

• Yake, Istarengwa, Big Yield, Boy Hustler, DibbukTime, Fisban, Ghazzawi, Hammerparty, Josep, LocoColo, MikeDBeastieB, Mories, Nautics, Quique, Razael, Sector, Slurpy, Sneaky, Strepi, Techno, Thundarr, TimeWarman, Tutita, Mrki, WIMPZ, Morkai

Many thanks from the Big Time Team to all of you!

WHAT’S NEW:

GAMEPLAY:

• Portal Bonus Rolls
  Adventure portals now get rolled modifiers that change the experience of that dungeon. Modifiers can be good (bonuses), they can be bad (curses), and players can use portal mod chips to roll to juice up the dungeon run! Get better loot, faster xp, speed modifiers, and much more.
• New Dungeon: Anomaly
  Something goes wrong in the distant future. Our new futuristic dungeon features a mix of different environments as if time itself has been divided.
• Players will play a new dungeon flow facing new traps (Giant balls, mines, laser beams…) With this new dungeon acting as a proof of concept we want to create a new family of dungeons. We hope you will enjoy the experience.
• New Passive Ability: Summon Decoy — Fire Aura — summoned decoys now come with a fire-based aura that deals damage to enemies
• New Passive Ability: Summon Decoy — Ice Aura — summoned decoys now come with an ice-based aura that deals damage to enemies
• New Passive Ability: Summon Decoy — Shock Aura — summoned decoys now come with a shock-based aura that deals damage to enemies
• New Passive Ability: Shadow Beam Heal Mod — using Shadow Beam on your friendlies now provides some additional healing as well as its usual functionality
• New Quest Mechanic: Revivor
  A new gameplay ingredient that players may encounter in our New Anomaly Dungeon. This Dark Totem will revive nearby killed enemies during battle.

You might want to take care of the Revivor first when you encounter one.

• Bounties referring to ‘toxic’ damage have been renamed to ‘Poison’ to reduce confusion
• Cracked hourglasses that spawn in your personal metaverse will now remain in the metaverse for 60 minutes after spawning, even if you leave the metaverse and return. This should prevent users from losing them due to being disconnected from the server or some other issue
• Corrupted portal objective has been improved
• Mage staff melee camera zoom pull-in has been adjusted for a smoother experience
• Added reminder quests for Bounties when the rescheduling period is up
• Emote Station quests have been revamped
• Players are now able to stand near the exit portal of a dungeon that is completed and skip the remaining loot timer
• Many dungeon missions have been adjusted to reduce how much players have to retread across areas they’ve already been through
• Fireball will now prevent players from falling off ledges during the cast animation
• Time Bomb now has its own targeting reticle
• Many quest objectives now evolve to adjust with the level of the dungeon they appear in

BALANCE:

• Heal drones can no longer stack heal the same target. In other words a player can only be healed by one drone at a time (per caster)
• Portal fee re-entry fee timeout has been reduced to 120 seconds
• Mob difficulty above level 45 has been increased
• Healing drone base energy cost has been increased from 45 to 70 and upgrade costs have been adjusted upward as well
• Hourglasses no longer consume ‘sand’ (time remaining does not decrease) when in Time’s End. $BIGTIME drops in Time’s End have been disabled accordingly. ($BIGTIME only drops within dungeons now)
• Various quest objects’ health curves have been adjusted offer more challenge at higher levels
• Weapon gems have been buffed at higher tiers
• Burning Oil Traps have had their damage output increased
• Dual Wield weapon heavy attack projectiles have had their base damage reduced somewhat, but now scales with weapon tier
• Blizzard cooldown has been increased to 40 seconds (up from 27)
• Arrow Volley damage now scales with strength (Agility previously)
• Arcane Storm cooldown has been decreased to 80 seconds (down from 90)
• Meteor Shower cooldown has been decreased to 80 seconds (down from 90)
• Shaped Charge cooldown has been decreased to 34 (down from 40), cost increased, damage increased, and now applies a tier 2 fire ailment upon damage
• Backstab cooldown has been decreased to 10 seconds (down from 27)
• Bastion, Chronograph, Entangler, Corrupted Portal, and other quest objectives no longer despawn all mobs upon objective completion
• Chain Heal range has been buffed
• Summon Decoy now has 3 levels of upgrade everywhere
• Time Bomb no longer allows evasion
• Dual Wield Swords sprint attacks now trigger a large hit react (instead of full knockdown)
• Ninja Leap distance now scales with upgrade level
• Fast Travel costs now scale with the level range of the destination point
• Maximum distance within which Chain Heal will bounce to targets has been reduced

GAME ECONOMY CHANGES:

• Dismantling Cracked Hourglass will now require a Time Warden of similar rarity or higher of the Cracked Hourglass.
• Added new “Grey” quality crafting bonus rolls.
• Added new “Green” quality crafting bonus rolls.
• Added new “Blue” quality crafting bonus rolls.
• Increased the crafting duration for higher rarity cosmetics.

AI:

• Fixed some instances of AI failing to get close to game objects they are meant to destroy
• Fixed some instances of AI walking long distances across the map toward objects that are no longer there (especially in public events)

VFX:

• VFX for Avengery ability have been improved
• Explosion VFX for various types of grenades have been adjusted to more accurately represent the radius of the effect
• Unique VFX for Shaped Charge have been added
• Visual Trails have been added to various Cosmetics
• Fixed turret explosion decal size to more accurately represent the area of effect of the turret
• VFX for Ice, Fire Lightning and Poison Auras have been revamped
• VFX for Hamstring have been improved
• Cosmetic Footstep VFX duration has been increased
• Items dropped by players now have a unique set of VFX
• VFX have been added to fireplace decorations
• Loot shared by players now has unique UI and VFX treatment
• Decoration T-Rex’s eyes now glow
• VFX for Fixer Ability: Elemental Scan have been added
• VFX for Minor Frostball Impact have been added
• VFX for self destructing turrets have been improved
• VFX for Acid Rain have been adjusted to be more violent feeling
• VFX for Flying Drone bug Arc Projectiles have been added
• VFX for Mage sprint attacks have been improved
• VFX for Conversion have been reworked
• VFX for SuperfunBall have been added

LEVELS:

• Egyptian boss fight has been improved
• Trap Door in Egyptian Dungeons have had their visuals improved
• Trap door collision issues have been fixed in Egyptian dungeons as well
• Rotating Rings in Egyptian boss battle has had issues fixed relating to some enemies being moved by the rings and not others

UI:

• When trashing using “sell all trash” functionality, the total value of the sale will be displayed in the confirmation prompt
• Many new early game tutorials have been added
• Pocket Watches which automatically level up when you equip them, will now display the correct leveled up level in the UI
• When attacks are blocked, damage numbers will no longer be displayed to avoid confusion
• When players are at the cap for maximum in-game NFTs of any kind a warning message will now appear in the UI
• Right clicking on, or dragging Pocket Watches onto pocket watch slots will now open the Timeline and equips the Pocket Watch
• Minimap / Large map setting will now persist between portals and sessions
• UI display info for Minor Energy Ball has been updated
• New loading screens have been added
• Players can now sort stash by rarity
• UI notifications have been added when Hourglasses can and can not be equipped
• Revive Shrine UI markers are now visible for spectating and dead players
• Players can now switch tabs in the crafting UI with ‘A’ and ‘D’ keys
• Decoys now display information about their level in the UI
• Various quests and objective types now display health bars and other pertinent information on the center of the screen when the objective is relevant to the player
• Equipped hourglasses are now visible in the “After Action Report” screen at the end of a dungeon
• UI feedback when trading with Artifact Trader has been improved
• Minimap visual appearance has been improved
• Health and Energy bar appearance on the HUD have been revamped
• Added support for favoriting hourglasses in the UI
• Rank is now displayed in party member UI
• Workshops now allow recipes to be filtered similar to the Gem Crafter
• Time left on craft for active workshops is now displayed above the workshop in the world
• Zoom for minimap and large map are now independent of one another
• $BIGTIME and other Open Loot currencies will now be sorted to the top of the “After Action Report” at the end of dungeons
• RUST-E now appears on the minimap
• Summon allies portals now appear on the minimap

PERFORMANCE OPTIMIZATIONS:

• Inventory UI loading has been significantly improved
• Client performance in Time’s End has been improved
• Client performance in large personal metaverses has been improved

AUDIO:

• SFX for teleporters have been improved
• SFX for Time Shards have been improved
• SFX for Jaw Worms have been added
• SFX for Chronographer have been revamped
• New SFX have been added when a party member enters a portal
• New option added to allow the game to continue playing audio even if the application does not have focus
• SFX for Tank Bug Acid Cloud have been improved
• SFX for Microbiceratops have been improved
• SFX for Time Dilation have been improved
• SFX for cracked hourglass dismantling have been added
• SFX for corrupted portals have been improved
• SFX for Artifact Trader have been improved
• Added new music variation in Personal Metaverse
• SFX for Bastion objective have been improved
• SFX for turrets have been improved
• SFX when players die is now much quieter when the player is not in your party
• SFX when moving hourglasses and cracked hourglasses in the inventory have been added
• SFX for Chopper Sprint attack have been improved
• SFX for Meteor Shower have been improved
• SFX for Arcane Storm have been improved
• SFX for Raptor attacks have been improved
• Soundscape in desert missions at night have been improved
• Audio mix (volume levels) have been adjusted for two handed axe
• SFX for Vendroids have been improved
• Rotating rings bossfight has new music
• Unique SFX when opening each chest rarity have been added
• SFX have been added to Franklin’s tower area in Time’s End
• SFX for storm in Time’s End have been added
• SFX for Artifact Fragments being moved around in the inventory have been added
• SFX added for player jumping
• SFX for Force Fields have been added
• SFX for Great Sword heavy attacks have been improved
• SFX for One-Handed hammer jump attack have been improved
• SFX for Dual Sword attacks have been improved
• SFX for Mage Staff attacks have been improved
• SFX have been added when moving modchips around in the inventory
• SFX for player hit reacts have been added
• New SFX for healing friendly players have been added
• Various quest actions have had new SFX added
• SFX for Gastropod have been added
• SFX added when reclaiming placed decorations
• SFX for Flying Drone bug Summoner have been improved
• SFX have been added to cracked hourglasses spawned into the world
• Specific SFX when gold bonus rolls have been rolled added

BUG FIXES:

• Fixed a rare bug that could cause players’ rank and quest state to be reset
• Fixed several instances of flickering VFX in the inventory “paper doll” screen with cosmetics
• Fixed “last one alive” message appearing in situations it should not have been
• Fixed panels flickering for crafted cosmetics in some situations
• Fixed summon decoy passive skill tree unlocks not showing information in upgrade panel
• Fixed an issue when maximizing the game window that could end up with the game reverting to the lowest resolution
• Several server crashes have been fixed
• Fixed players having to go back to the lobby and rejoin upon completing the early game quest line
• Fixed various issues with very large Personal Metaverses that could cause workshops to not display recipes or have incomplete data
• Fixed gear slots appearing red for “can’t equip” when the gear could in fact be equipped
• Fixed chain heal reticle failing to highlight allies when aiming directly at the core of the ally’s body
• Fixed chain heal being able to heal allies that were not really being aimed at by the reticle
• Fixed an issue where the language would change, even though ‘cancel’ was clicked
• Fixed an issue where selecting ‘uncapped’ frame rate would still cap the frame rate
• Fixed an issue where equipping certain items could cause the player’s health to be reduced (ie when max health was increased)
• Fixed a bug allowing Town Portal items to be activated from the UI even though no Portal could be spawned at that moment, wasting the Town Portal
• Fixed SFX not playing on revived players when other players use the self-sacrifice DBNO ability to revive them
• Fixed wrapping issues for Crafting UI for recipes with many ingredients
• Fixed ally’s names not being displayed when they are DBNO
• Fixed pressing alt hiding offhand weapon gem slots
• Fixed DBNO sacrifice ability not reviving allies near the player using it
• Fixed an issue that could cause the UI animation not to play when switching to offhand weapons
• Fixed heavy attack canceling Lord of the Dead
• Fixed R1 of Dual Wield weapons missing its arc projectile
• Fixed encrypted items sometimes being revealed when stacked
• Fixed issues with shade grenade bounces not generating damage as intended
• Fixed crafting materials marked as trash not being destroyed when the ‘destroy trash’ button is clicked
• Fixed sprint anim sometimes canceling Frost Nova when it should not have been
• Fixed ‘mark for trash’ selection being lost in some circumstances when connecting to servers
• Various Decoration NFTs have had issues with their collision fixed
• Various Decoration NFTs have had their orientations fixed to make them easier to place
• Fixed weapon gems not able to be de-slotted into bags