ARCOSTATE  -  DEVLOG 01

Hello all, thank you to everyone that has played the game and shared their feedback and helped squash bugs.

A large mixed update: an implemented endgame, new content, new systems, a melee vs ranged combat rebalance, a batch of UI/UX additions, 

bug fixes, and world generation hardening.

ENDGAME

- Destroy the temporal reactors inside each sin vault to unlock the ending at the vortex center.

- Final boss, the Moon Mother, added into the game.

- Secret end game mechanic.

NEW SYSTEMS

- Player-placed chests + crate ownership 

- A deployable "flat-pack chest": unfold your own empty personal storage on a free tile beside you. Sold by the general shopkeeper.

- Items you stash in someone else's crate stay yours, taking them back is not counted as theft.

- Crates around the world can now belong to specific named NPCs; looting an owned crate is theft against that NPC's faction.

- Floating combat damage numbers, damage numbers fly off the player and enemies on each hit, drift up, and fade. Toggleable in Settings; on by default.

COMBAT / SKILLS REBALANCE

- Marksmanship: a universal ranged skill

    -- A new Marksmanship skill improves accuracy with any gun and carries the  general gunnery maneuvers (Aimed Shot, Crippling Shot), 

which now work with any single-shot weapon, kinetic or energy. Overcharge and Searing Shot stay energy-only.

- Melee vs ranged rebalance

    -- Lunge's reach trimmed so early melee can't gap-close quite as freely.

    -- Early ranged weapons hold their distance better, so they aren't immediately dragged into melee.

    -- Crushing Blow cooldown reduced.

    -- Melee gains armor penetration at high Strength, and Execute now shreds armor on every strike.

    -- Berserk drug lasts a little longer.

    -- Alien packs now include a melee brute for encounter variety.

- Earlier balance pass

    -- Meateaters softened so the jump up from scavengers is not as harsh.

    -- Quest rewards now grant XP scaled to the payout.

    -- The in-combat regeneration cybernetic is interrupted when you take damage.

    -- Vault guardians are now a real boss-level fight, with more vault floors to reach them.

    -- Hireable mercenaries ages capped so they could not spawn too old that they could not carry their own gear.

    -- Ambushes reworked: a cooldown between them, no free opening shot on the player, and escape gated by distance.

UI / UX

- Inspect the highlighted item with 'i' in both the trade and loot menus (loot  gained an inspect overlay), so trade, compare, and loot all read the 

same way.

- Item inspect descriptions close on Enter as well as Esc. 

- Cybernetic install requirements now show in item details, tooltips, and trade inspect ("Install: Cybernetic Torso rank 2"), so you see the gate 

before buying.

- The cyberneticist's surgery fee is charged only when you actually install or uninstall.

- Character creation's "Step X/6" label is now a row of clickable step tabs.

- Shops with a crafting bench now mention it in dialogue (drug crafting, weapon upgrades).

- Auto-explore is now a proper toggle: pressing the key again stops it.

- Keybinding now accepts capital letters (a held modifier no longer binds to Shift by mistake).

- Fixed the help text advertising the wrong default movement keys.

- Playtime tracking now counts time spent in menus and loading.

WORLD GENERATION

- Fixed settlements sometimes overwriting terrain you had already explored (a  patch of woods getting replaced by farm road on a return visit). 

- The same fix covers bandit and meateater camps and crash sites.

- Bunkers and vaults keep the same layout across reloads (they were reshuffling).

- Cleaner edge transitions into mountain-biome locations, and a fix for a shallow-water landing hazard.

BUG FIXES

- Fixed the Game Over "Load Last Save" / F9 option failing to load.

- Fixed character creation granting a free Telepathy rank, which threw off the skill-point count.

- Fixed merchants refusing sales they could afford, the spending cap now counts the scrap from the same trade.

- Fixed infinite corpse-looting: cybernetics no longer regrow on reload or area change, and corpses no longer snap back to where they 

spawned.

- Fixed weightless / empty rifle magazines.

- Fixed magazines generating over capacity.

- Berserk creatures can now reach and attack turrets, and no longer turn on their own allies.

- Fixed NPCs standing on top of the arcology merchant.

- Reduced stutter at the shooting ranges.

There are still many additions I want to add to the game, so please keep an eye out for future updates!