Hello everyone, and welcome to what has got to be one of our most anticipated articles — an introduction to our upcoming beta!
Our last article spoke about what went on in the world of Hash Rush during 2019, and at the end of the article, we announced the big news that we are going to launch the Hash Rush beta in July.
So, for this article, we are going to go over what will be in the beta at launch, and what we will be working on to add in once it is launched.
Launching the Beta
If you played Hash Rush up till now (our alpha), you’ll have a good idea of what the beta version will look like. That said, we have made some big changes to the game to make it considerably more enjoyable.
Leaderboard Challenge — Formally the Bounty Campaign
The Bounty Campaign was a popular feature, however after running several campaigns and listening to the feedback we knew that we had to redesign the system. So let’s talk about the changes that we have made.
The Changes
The biggest change to this system comes from how the players’ position in the Leaderboard is calculated. Instead of using Crystals, we have introduced ‘Galaxy Points’ or GP for short that determine the player’s Leaderboard position. This is important because these points are obtained by playing the game, and so represent a direct ranking of how good the player is at playing Hash Rush.
The second major change is that players are now automatically a part of this challenge, and Galaxy Points are automatically submitted. No more manually joining and sending in your points.
Finally, we have set up the Leaderboard challenge to automatically reset every week, meaning that active players have more of a chance to gain the best prizes.
The manual entry and submission was what caused the biggest problems with the old system. Players would often forget to submit their crystals, leaving them frustrated!
Galaxy Points
As we mentioned earlier, we are stepping away from using Crystals to rank the player in the Leaderboard challenge. Instead, we are now using a new counter called Galaxy Points (GP). Fans of Crystals need not fear as Crystals will still be a big part of the game.
In the soft beta, there will be 3 ways for a player to collect Galaxy Points:
- Crafting the special ‘Tomes of Hermeia’ (more about this below in our crafting section).
- Through combat as when a player defeats a monster they will gain a set amount of Galaxy Points (the stronger monsters will drop more than the weaker ones).
- Converting Crystals to Galaxy Points in the Silo.
Crystals to Galaxy Points
Though this is short, it is important. We wanted Crystals to remain important to our game so we redesigned them to be more like a special ‘Galactic Currency’ (coincidentally, this is much more in line with the lore of Hash Rush). Players will be able to get Crystals by mining them from the special Crystal veins, or by defeating monsters.
Players can then convert the Crystals into Galaxy Points (essentially selling them to the wider universe) by selecting their Crystal Silo and starting a task to trade Crystals for GP. To balance this (we want to discourage massive Crystal hording), there will be a conversion time. The more Crystals that you convert in one go, the longer that it will take.
Who can Enter the Leaderboard Challenge?
The Leaderboard Challenge will only be available after the player has reached Colony level of Master. This leads us to the next big feature of the beta.
Colony Level
The Colony Level is the player’s indication of how well they have been doing on their specific planet, and is tied to the new Galaxy Point system. In total, there are seven levels for the player to work through and the way that the player advances to a new level is by gathering Galaxy Points.
At this point you may be thinking that Galaxy Points are essentially a measure of success for the player, if you were, that is totally correct which is one of the reasons why we are using it for the Leaderboard challenge.
Colony Levels
- Novice(Everyone starts on this level).
- Adept
- Expert
- Master
- Grandmaster
- Epic
- Legendary
Once the player hits Legendary, they will no longer be able to level up, however they can still gain additional Galaxy Points.
Increasing the player’s Colony Level is important as rising through the ranks unlocks three special features:
- As the player increases in Colony level, they will unlock new buildings (there are new buildings up to level 3, not beyond).
- The Colony Level also dictates what level of items you can craft. Do you want to craft a legendary item? Well you need to be on the Legendary level, or maybe you want to craft an expert item? You guessed it, you will need to be on Expert or higher, to craft that rarity.
- The drop rate of the rarer items will increase as the player reaches higher Colony Levels
Do note that the Colony Level is unique per planet. Therefore, when the player completes their planet and moves to the next one, their Colony Level will also be reset.
Crafting
Now for the big one, the much talked about Crafting System will make its long awaited debut.
How it works
The Hash Rush crafting system works in 3 stages, with a fourth being worked on for a future update.
First: the player will need to explore their planet and collect the brand new crafting resources. In total, there are 10 crafting resources.
Second: players will need to find the appropriate Blueprints by defeating monsters. Monsters now drop either Crystals or Blueprints.
Third: once the player has both Blueprint and crafting resource, they will be able to craft a Tome. Crafting a Tome will also grant the player Galaxy Points. It is also important to know that all Blueprints are single use.
For the beta, the crafting system ends here. However we are working on a fourth step which lets the players then use the Tome as a resource to craft items that can be equipped by special units.
Gathering Crafting Resources
A major point to take note of is that only the prospector can collect the crafting resources. This means that players who want to craft items will need to venture into the fog to seek and collect the crafting resources, an armed escort is advised as the monsters of the Crystal Scourge will be on the look out for potential prey.
Rarity
Finally, all items related to the crafting system come in varying rarities. The rarer the items used, the more powerful the final crafted item will be.
In the case of our beta, the amount of Galaxy Points gained by crafting Tomes will increase with the Tomes rarity.
The rarity ratings are the same as the Colony Level rankings, however they also come with a special colour-code that is made visible on the item card.
- Novice — Grey
- Adept — White
- Expert — Green
- Master — Blue
- Grandmaster — Purple
- Epic — Red
- Legendary — Gold
Phases of Resistance
Added in late 2019, the Phases of Resistance is the core feature that controls how aggressive the Crystal Scourge is in its campaign to destroy you.
Though the feature works, we noticed that the resistance phases were somewhat hard to survive (overpowered), so we have spent a lot of time with a balancing expert to re-balanced the system, making it much more survivable during the first few phases, but still challenging during the later phases.
Removing Dungeons
On the point of the enemy we do need to talk about the dungeons in Hash Rush. For the launch of the beta, the dungeons have been removed as when looking at our bug and crash reports, it became evident to us nearly all of the issues came from our dungeon system. So, in order to give our players the best experience, the dungeon system has been removed for now. However, don’t worry this is only a temporary feature. Dungeons remain a vital part of our game and they will make a glorious return, this time minus the major bugs!
Changes to the Skin System
Another big change that we’ve made is to the Skin system in Hash Rush.
In our alpha, the skin system worked so that one skin would be applied to every unit in the game, however this was somewhat inflexible and we received requests from players to allow them to customize this more.
So, our new skin system works per unit type, not globally. This means that players are able to apply a specific skin to their Troggs, a different skin to their workers, and then something entirely different to their Archers, and so on, giving them all much more customization options.
Changes to how Units are trained
The final major change to Hash Rush is how units are trained. In the alpha we had a system where the player had to first train a worker, then send the worker to a training building (stable or barracks) where they would then train with a specific weapon.
However, for the beta we have changed this, players can now train combat units directly, without the need to train the worker first. The reason behind this decision was to let the players train defensive armies much faster, giving them a better chance at surviving against the early stages of the Crystal Scourge. This is a big change so we will be monitoring your reactions to this, so be sure to let us know if you like this change!
This brings us to the end of this article. There are some big changes, huge changes, and of course some smaller changes and we really hope that you like them. However, in the end it is YOU (our community) that will steer the course of our game. What does that mean? Simple, we want your feedback. Whether you like or dislike a feature, please let us know.
We’re sure that some of you have noticed that we have not mentioned any blockchain news, that’s because our co-founder Kris is working on a separate article that explains how this will work. So don’t miss out and be sure to check back with us regularly!
