Patch Notes
Dec
16
2009

Patch Notes: December 17th, 2009

Posted by Daeke

Hot Issues

  • The Attack of the Misfit Toys has arrived! All heroes are requested to report to Millennium City to receive further instructions on the menace that’s been terrorizing charity workers throughout the city. Visit this page for more information about the event.
  • Crafted travel powers are here! Only the best at their skills will be able to assemble the devices necessary to imbue you with additional powers.
  • Gadgeteering has received a balancing pass. Due to the large number of changes made to the set, all Gadgeteering users have received a free Retcon.
  • Glow has been added back to a large number of costume pieces. Check the list below for details.

Patch Note Topics

General

  • Added new C-Store costume bundles! Visit the C-Store page to see the new pieces available for purchase.
  • A “Software Cursor” option has been added to the game options. This option will let you enable/disable the use of the game’s mouse cursor instead of your operating system’s cursor.

User Interface and Chat

  • The Retcon single-power undo confirmation should now display the price correctly again.
  • Pressing tab on Ticket Summary now goes to the description.
  • The “My Tickets” UI now shows a refreshed list of tickets when opened.

Powers

Gadgeteering

  • Bionic Shielding: The heal provided by this power is now properly tagged as a Heal.
  • Bionic Shielding: Activate time increased from 0.6 seconds to 0.67.
  • Bionic Shielding: Recharge reduced from 60 seconds to 30 seconds.
  • Bionic Shielding: The various ranks of this power did not all function the same way. Some ranks let you heal other players with this power, some would only heal you even when you used the power on someone else. All ranks have been fixed to heal the target of the power, instead of always healing you. The description has been updated as well.
  • Entangling Mesh: Changed from a PBAoE to a 50 foot range AoE.
  • Entangling Mesh: Cost increased by approximately 25%.
  • Entangling Mesh: Recharge time reduced from 18 seconds to 15 seconds.
  • Experimental Blaster: Fixed an error in the math for the damage of this power. This results in a substantial increase of the damage this power deals.
  • Experimental Blaster: Reworked the way the random effects of this power work. It is no longer possible to get multiple effects at once (with the exception of the AutoKill from the advantage), but the likelihood of getting some effect on any given shot is now higher. Also, what determines which random effects are possible has been changed. It is now determined by "under 1 second" or "over 1 second" instead of varying numbers for different effects.
  • Experimental Blaster: The lowcharge extra damage random effect was reworked to just deal “additional damage” instead of triple damage, as the base damage of the power was increased as was the range with which you can get this effect. Overall damage numbers are still higher.
  • Experimental Blaster: The description of this power incorrectly read that it had a 50% chance to deal extra damage at low charge. It now correctly states that there is a 30% chance.
  • Experimental Blaster: Activate time reduced from 0.6 seconds to 0.5 seconds.
  • Experimental Blaster: Charge time reduced from 2.83 seconds to 2.5 seconds.
  • Experimental Blaster: Cost reduced slightly.
  • Experimental Blaster: Death Ray: This advantage now also increases the chance that your low charge shots will deal additional damage.
  • Gauntlet Chainsaw: Reduced activate time from 0.67 seconds to 0.5 seconds.
  • Gauntlet Chainsaw: Ripsaw: Reduced the bonus damage from 60% to 30%, but fixed a bug with calculations to this power increase. Players with low values in each super stat will see a slight decrease in the damage dealt by Ripsaw, people with high numbers in their super stats will see an increase in the amount of damage Ripsaw does.
  • Miniaturization Drive: Now provides a buff icon while active.
  • Miniaturization Drive: Reciprocating Gizmo: Updated the description to state that it actually increases your movement speed and damage when you grow. This is just a description change.
  • Molecular Self-Assembly: This power had an "undocumented feature" of sorts, in that if you had the Rejuvenating Injectors advantage for Nanobot Swarm, Molecular Self-Assembly would heal you a small amount when it triggered. This was not intended. The base power of MSA now includes this healing benefit and does not require purchasing an advantage for another power to get it. The heal provided was increased slightly.
  • Nanobot Swarm: Cleaned up the tooltip by moving the tooltip for the advantage out of the main power.
  • Nanobot Swarm: Cost reduced by about 10%.
  • Nanobot Swarm: Rejuvenating Injectors: The heal provided by this advantage no longer increases as you rank up the main power. People who were using Rank 1 should see an increase in the base healing done by this power, people who use Rank 2 will see a decrease in the base healing done by this power.
  • Nanobot Swarm: Rejuvenating Injectors: Now scales with Presence like other heals. This allows the heal value to reach much higher values than previously.
  • Orbital Cannon: Fixed this power to be tagged as an AoE, not a PBAoE.
  • Orbital Cannon: Fixed a bug that made it so you could not stop charging this power once you started charging it. You can now release the button to cancel the charge, like any other full charge required power. Also updated the description to clarify that it requires a full charge.
  • Orbital Cannon: Anvil of Dawn: This advantage was incorrectly scaling with ranking up the base power. The damage of this advantage will now be the same whether you have Rank 1 or Rank 2.
  • Particle Mine: Fixed a bug with ranks 2 and 3 so they appear on the ground like the rank 1 version does.
  • Particle Mine: Changed the activate time from 1.33 seconds to 0.67 seconds. This has minimal effect on the power itself, due to the way it works, but you should be able to perform other powers sooner after placing the mine.
  • Particle Mine: Fixed the names of the placed mines that ranks 2 and 3 of the nonadvantaged version of this power create.
  • Resurrection Serum: Increased the amount of health a player is rezzed with.
  • Resurrection Serum: Reduced the recharge from 5 minutes to 15 seconds.
  • Resurrection Serum: Fixed a bug that made it so you could not stop charging this power once you started charging it. You can now release the button to cancel the charge, like any other full charge required power. Also updated the description to clarify that it requires a full charge.
  • Resurrection Serum: Reanimator: The Ghouls created with this power no longer despawn when the target it was created from despawns. Players will now be able to have a maximum 3 of these ghouls out at a time.
  • Resurrection Serum: Reanimator: The Ghouls created with this power did not scale with stats all. They now use the standard stat scaling that other pets use.
  • Sonic Blaster: Added the AoE tag to the advantaged version of the power.
  • Sonic Device: Now provides a buff icon while active.
  • Sonic Device: Was incorrectly only lasting 10 seconds instead of the stated 18 seconds. Now lasts 18 seconds.
  • Toxic Nanites: Now provides a buff icon while this power is active.
  • Tractor Beam: Reduced recharge time from 30 seconds to 6 seconds.
  • Tractor Beam: Base cost increased very slightly. Cost per period decreased substantially.
  • Tractor Beam: Instead of increasing the maximum maintain duration as you rank up, it now increases how powerful the pull effect is.
  • Tractor Beam: Now applies small amounts of Repel Resistance to the target with each period the power is maintained.
  • Tractor Beam: The way this power checks to see what it can affect has changed. Players should now be able to affect more targets with the pull this power applies.
  • Tractor Beam: Final Delivery: This advantage now properly checks to see if it is affecting the proper target, so it should no longer damage and knockback other targets near the player, only the target being affected by Tractor Beam. This fix also prevents using the power to repeatedly deal damage with this advantage against targets that are immune to the effects of the pull.
  • Tractor Beam: Final Delivery: The damage this advantage applies is now tagged as Ranged Damage, instead of tagged as nothing.

Ice

  • Shatter: Will now properly remove all Chill effects from affected targets, as described.

Sorcery

  • Many powers have had their descriptions updated and clarified.

Telepathy

  • Mindful Reinforcement: Fixed a bug that prevented the triggered heal from applying to targets other than the owner.

Travel Powers

  • Rocket Jump: Ranks 2 and 3 now have the correct descriptions.
  • Teleport: Fixed the issue where players would fall down as they moved forward while teleporting.

Critters

  • Hurl: A cooldown has been added to prevent critters from spamming this power.
  • Shockwave: The charge up time has been removed.

Missions and Content

  • Power House: Battle Station training enemies now drop boosts.
  • Patrol Mission rewards have been doubled again, and are now equivalent to those of a normal mission.

Tutorial

  • Defender should no longer become stuck in the Champions HQ at the end of the Tutorial.

Desert

  • Doomsday Clock Ticking: Fixed a bug where the bomb would occasionally get stuck in a state where it couldn’t be interacted with.
  • Persuade, Escort, Extract: Techtinker should now correctly interact with players.

Canadian Wilderness

  • Added a new flyover cutscene for Canada. All characters will see this once the next time they enter Canada (but it can be skipped by pressing Space).

Millennium City

  • Dr. Destroyer’s Robot Factory: Based on player feedback the magnet puzzle has been vastly simplified. The magnet controls now correspond to each robot part. Selecting the Head will move the magnet to Head. Torso to Torso, etc.

Monster Island

  • Monster Island Crisis: Teleios should no longer become stuck behind his force field.
  • Rats in a Maze: Players should now be able to complete the Professor Ratso mission chain.
  • Viper Nest: Dr. Demogaard’s dinosaurs should now function correctly.

Lemuria

  • Lemurian Crisis: Based on player feedback we have added an exit inside the Aegir.
  • Give the Dog a Bone: Players should now be able to return the mission to Jack.

UNITY

  • Special assignments granted from returning Overwatch hotspot missions should once again be available to players.
  • Omega mission door should once again correctly allow players to interact with them.
  • UNITY’s Most Wanted: Now repeatable with no cooldown. As long as players have 6 or more UNITY Intelligence, the mission can be immediately repeated. This mission is not required to enter Andrith Ruins or the Mandragalore.

Nemesis

  • Nemesis missions now spawn at the correct level of the character instead of level 15. Characters should gain experience (once only) before going into a Nemesis mission to ensure the character’s level is correct.
  • Nemesis Gallery: Minion portraits should no longer display minions belonging to the wrong nemesis.
  • Bunker Showdown: Heroes in stasis tubes should now correctly be freed when both switches are hit.
  • Nemesis Confrontation: Chests dropped by the Nemesis will now be available to the owner of that Nemesis first. After that player interacts with the loot window, other players will be able to interact with the chest. These chests should also now operate like other chests in the game, rather than dropping a loot item on the ground.
  • Nemesis Confrontation: Rebalanced reward distribution to more heavily reward completing the instance rather than farming the beginning. Changes are as follows:
  • Gladiators and chests now drop random Greens some of the time and Blues some of the time.
  • Shadow Destroyer now drops a random Blue in addition to one of his custom Blue+ quality rewards.
  • Shadow Destroyer now rewards 3 Unity Merits on every defeat instead of 1.
  • A fifth loot chest was added to the final Nemesis.

Perks

  • Martial Arts Ninjas and Might Cowboys should now be correctly counted for Nemesis perks.
  • Lemuria Graveyard Perk: An unintended change was made to the conditions on the Lemuria Graveyard discovery perk. This made it impossible for one of the Undying reef respawn points (the one under the Aegir) to be counted. This issue has been resolved and the perk can now be completed.

Crafting

  • Crafted travel powers are here! Only the best at their skills will be able to assemble the devices necessary to imbue you with additional powers. Visit your skill trainers once you reach skill level 301 to begin a lengthy mission chain in order to earn your R.A.D. Sphere (Arms), Storm Rider (Science), or Aethyric Incantation (Mystic) devices.
  • Changed the crafted items “Mutating Gene Bomb catalyst” and “Xeno-infection catalyst” from secondary to primary to match their stats.
  • The Blueprints for the following level 40 Blues and Purples no longer incorrectly generate level 48 Greens: Perpetual Energy Generator, Sub-Zero Hard Vacuum, Rapid Cell Regeneration, Universal Uplink Visor, Super Sensitive Sensory, Pandemic Super Serum.
  • Crafted Action Figures are now in the game! Visit the general trainer and your specialty trainers to learn the new blueprints.
  • Mass Conversion Blueprints are now available. You can now learn blueprints to convert 50 common components at a time instead of 5.
  • 4/5 and 5/5 Tier 3 and 4 experiments now have a greatly reduced chance to drop nothing. Instead, they will often drop a few research notes which can be compiled through new blueprints into tradable objects that grant Insights, Epiphanies, and Profundities of all types.
  • There are now new blueprints that allow the conversion of higher tier Insights/Epiphanies/Profundities into lower tiers.
  • Conversion for Unstable Mutagens is changed, it used to incorrectly allow the transformation of the common component X9 into the common component Unstable Mutagen, now it is correctly called Renton Notes and allows the transformation of the common component X9 into the uncommon Renton Notes.
  • Conversion for Renton Notes is changed, it used to incorrectly allow the conversion of the uncommon component Ophidian into the uncommon component Renton Notes, now it correctly allows the transformation of the common component Unstable Mutagens into the uncommon Ophidian.

Costume Creator/Tailor

  • Added the following female parts to match existing male parts: Arm Accessory (Armband Tied), Leg Accessory (Legband Tied), Neck (Scarf).
  • Added the knight’s “Armor Gauntlet, Short” for hands for both male and female.
  • Renamed and reorganized several Belts to be consistent from male to female.
  • Added more Glow to more costume parts, including the following:
  • Arm Accessory: Armor Bolted, Armor Plate, Vials, Cybernetic Implants, Cybernetic Implants Arm
  • Back: Retro Jetpack, Rocket Pack Stealth
  • Belt: Buckle Round, Buckle Skull, Discs, Ancient, Draconian, Archlich, Celestial
  • Bracers: Tangles Thick, Tangles Wild
  • Various Robotic pieces: Robotic Arms and Legs, Cyborg Chest, Robotic Arms, Robotic Head, Cyborg Foot, Cyborg Foot Plated
  • Chest Wear: Armor Ancient Tech
  • Earrings: Tech Antennae, Tech Antennae 2
  • Eye Accessory: Glasses Aviator
  • Foot: Armor Cybernetic, Armor Plated, Armor Tech Booster, Armor Tech Sleek Large
  • Heads: Demon, Jackal, Insect + Beast Heads
  • Hands: Cybernetic Implants, Armor Plated, Armor Tech Sleek Scalloped, Ancient Mystical Claw
  • Helmet: Hardhat & Light, Hammer Helmet, Gas Mask
  • Leg Accessory: Arcane, Armor Bolted
  • Mouth Accessory: Gas Mask High Tech, Scuba Apparatus
  • Neck: Armor Vents Spiked, Shaman Necklace
  • Shoulder Pad: Cybernetic Implants, Bear Head, Chiton Armor Medium, Chiton Armor Tall

Hero Games

  • Zombie Apocalypse: Fixed a bug where games played wouldn’t increase if you joined the map partway through.
  • Stronghold Apocalypse: Updated perks for defeating named NPCs to be clear that only named NPCs count toward the perk.