Major Update 3 Beta Test (and May Dev Transmission)
Hi everyone,
A beta version of Major Update 3 is now available!
The new hazards and rewards feature has exponentially increased the various gameplay systems so we’d massively appreciate you letting us know your thoughts, along with any bugs you may find.
To gain access to version 0.8.26211, you’ll need to switch to a beta branch:
- Find SENTRY in your Steam library and right-click on it, selecting “Properties”
- In the menu that pops up, choose “Betas”
- Select “Beta Branch” in the “Beta Participation” drop-down list
- In your Library you should see “[betabranch]” appended to the game name
When you play the new version, the most important thing to consider is that while your profile saves will carry over (i.e. all your equipment you’ve unlocked thus far), your current escape run will not – so if you’re in the middle of a run and you don’t want to lose any new blueprints you haven’t banked, reach a gate and bank them before switching to the new version.
It’s also generally good practice to back up your profile saves ahead of any Major Update, just in case you’re the one that finds an obscure bug. You can find your profile and save folder here:
C:\Users[Username]\AppData\LocalLow\Fireblade Software\SENTRY\Saves\Steam\[SteamID]
Hazards and Rewards!
The headline feature in this update is the Hazards and Rewards system.
The idea is to provide greater variety and spikes to the difficulty throughout your escape runs. A personal favourite is the “Barricades” reward, which places defensive positions throughout levels for a set number of battles.
The rules for this new system are essentially:
- Each boarding party has a hazard and a reward
- These re-roll when the enemy takes over a sub system and moves onto the next
- When you fight a boarding party, the hazard gets applied to you
- When you beat a boarding party you gain a reward (these last either a number of uses or are one-shots)
- If you lose a battle, the boarding party doesn’t generate a new hazard (but the reward will be re-rolled)
- The boss encounters before a gate have a harder “boss” hazard
- When you go through a gate, your hazards are wiped
- Some will stack, so for example if you are infected with the ‘Tight Budget’ hazard (where 25% of enemies will no longer drop scrap), this would increase to 50% if you were infected with another ‘Tight Budget’ hazard
We’d love to know your thoughts on the meta, individual hazards and rewards and any combinations that stand out – our Discord Playtesters already highlighted a bunch of particularly brutal combos which we’ve re-balanced for this version but you may find others.
There’s some clearer messaging of these that we have planned, plus we have a long list of other hazards and rewards we’d like to implement. We can’t wait to hear your own suggestions!
Other Big Additions!
A few other things that may interest you…
There are two new levels: Junction and Thermal Vats – the latter has a lot of lava pits waiting to consume enemies you throw into them…
We’ve implemented melee weapons: The HF Blade and Stun Stick
The Navigator and Overview UI have been reworked. This was largely to allow the new Deploy box to contain useful information about what you’ll face in combat.
There’s a bunch of smaller changes worth calling out because previous behaviour has now changed, just in case you were wondering if that was intentional or not:
- When blast doors are closed the enemy will choose an alternate route. If no alternative is available they’ll attack the door. This means you can still close them to buy you some time, but in certain areas you can now re-route them.
- We’re trialing having any piece of equipment appearing in any Supply Beacon
- The Giant Slug now spawns Grubs upon death
- Jump Jets are no longer a Gear item and are something you have all the time. They now double-jump more predictably too.
There are loads of other smaller changes and additions, but I’ll collate the changelist when we officially release MU3.
In order to not mix up beta branch feedback with the main game, there’s a dedicated area on the Steam forums to post your beta branch comments:. You can find it here.
We endeavour to respond to comments and feedback as much as we can, but rest assured that even if we don’t personally reply we do read and note everything. Here’s a bunch of useful links to where you can reach us:
As always your feedback is essential and helps determine our focus. We’re very interested in reading your thoughts; so please drop them in the comments below, in a separate post on the Beta Branch forum or on our Discord.
There are some additional systems we originally had planned for MU4 that we’re thinking of bringing forward. They are not only a net positive for the game but also compliment the new hazards and reward systems, so we’re going to investigate those next (along with working through your feedback).
Overall though, once we feel MU3 has had sufficient testing and we’ve accommodated your feedback we’ll officially release it. As always we’ll keep you updated 🙂
Thanks for your continued support!
