A big release, containing many technique buffs and a full rework of the pillar creation breakthrough mechanic.

New Features

• The Pillar Creation breakthrough mechanic has been significantly reworked:
  • Tiles unlocked are now persistent, and fracturing tiles just puts them back into the pool.
  • Shards have been reworked into 2 pools. Channeling and Consuming shards. Consuming shards give buffs to the breakthrough, but reduce the pillar stability.
  • Added new 'variant' type shards, which require you to pick between mutually exclusive options.
  • Added max instances to all the most powerful shards, to avoid spamming single types.
  • Shards can now provide a vast number of new stats, like Droplet Regen, combat/crafting buffs, and more.
  • Added a lot more shard types throughout the world (mostly to stone cutting and raids).
  • Completely reworked the UI for the pillar.

Changes

• Many screens have been revitalised with new high-quality UI elements and designs.
• Combat screenshake now works off damage magnitude, instead of randomly.
• Keybindings are now disable during tutorials, to avoid breaking them.
• The progenitor echoes have been buffed, and Ru Gong has been reworked to not kill himself as often.

Balance Changes

• Condensation arts have been rebalanced:
  • Eternal Immolation gives droplet regeneration, but has a lower max droplets and reduces flesh by 1.
  • Distilling Furnance has extra droplet production, and the max droplets increased slightly.
  • Cycle of Nine has even higher max droplets, and increases eyes by 1.
  • Note: Base stat changes (flesh, eyes) will not apply on existing saves that have reached Core Formation.
• Enemy barrier no longer halves at the end of each round.
• Pressure has been reworked to no longer passively build. Explosive release scaling increased as a result.
• The least used techniques in each school (those with under 5% usage, most under 1% usage) have been buffed / tweaked:
  • Blood:
    • Rampaging Purity gives more pure blood.
    • Scarlet Torrent hp cost removed.
    • Heartblood Blast droplet cost reduced.
    • Sanguine Restoration heals for more.
    • Revel In Gore can now be used up to 3 times a stance.
  • Blossom
    • Petal Lance blossom cost reduced.
    • Bloom Seed blossom cost reduced.
    • Composting Growth gives more of everything.
  • Celestial:
    • Searing Lance can now stack sunlight over 10 stacks.
    • Lunar Rebuke applies a defense debuff.
    • Dawnflash sunlight stacks increased.
    • Harmonic Attunement reworked to be stack based that only decays when sun/moon are not equal.
    • Moon Blast damage and debuff stacks increased.
    • Sun Blast damage and debuff stacks increased.
  • Cloud
    • Call Storm now gives power aswell, and has a cap (no more infinite scaling).
    • Gale Blast now applies a power debuff.
    • Gather Clouds gives barrier.
    • Storm Surge gives more stacks of clouds.
    • Discharge Power gives more stacks of clouds.
    • Controlled Tempest now gives barrier aswell, and only requires the clouds to be no more than 10 instead of exactly 10.
    • Crushing Downpower has a stronger debuff, and applies to defense instead of power.
    • Flash Storm gives more clouds.
    • Storm Blade also has a stacking self buff.
    • Cylone Strike now gives barrier.
    • Pressurized Burst reworked to be a finisher that scales off massive cloud.
    • Storm Surge Generator reworked. It now only applies to the first n cloud built, and its damage reduced.
  • Fist
    • Surging Fist gives more flow.
    • Retreating Flash now just requires having deadly focus, not no flow.
    • Transcendent Blast cost reduced and damage/ripple force increased.
    • Expose Meridian now debuffs both power and defense.
  • Weapon
    • Fast Plating shard cost reduced.
    • Living Metal Shell gives more stacks.
    • Efficient Repurposing shard cost reduced.
  • Dual
    • Empowered Blade Stance gives more of everything, and also gives Weapon Boost.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed passive puppet DR.
• Fixed Progenitor buffs only lasting 12 days.
• Fixed attack animations not appearing for some buffs.
• Fixed attack animations sometimes being skipped.
• Fixed many typos.
• Fixed stability reduction condition actually being applied to stability.
• Fixed tooltips outside of combat showing incorrect values.
• Fixed Sixfold Resonance to actually work as stated.
• Fixed Pure Reinforcement cauldron buff stacks never decaying.