As usual, we will share big changes first before minor adjustments. Bugfixes and balance changes will be revealed with a [Patch Note] nearer to the patch date. Images used here are still in development and may include mistakes and errors. Please use them as reference only!

<Mastery Overhaul>

The mastery system went through a huge revision.

Mastery will be displayed with an alphabetical rank. It goes from F to SS!

SS is close to 300 mastery in the current system. You won’t be seeing it often.

Mastery required to climb to the next rank is displayed as a gauge, as you can see in the above image.

Actual effects of mastery can be seen from the character screen.

You will see the current mastery effect and the upcoming mastery effect.

With A and above, you get special effects.

This update focused on the overall framework of the new mastery system. Actual gameplay does not differ too much from the old system yet.

We received user feedback saying that implementing major changes during a season may cause confusion. Rebalancing weapon masteries will happen gradually over time.

In the long term, we will 1) make normal attacks less important after the first nightfall, 2) punch up each weapon masteries, and 3) emphasize the difference between character skills and stats. (These won’t be implemented with this patch just yet.)

For long term goals, please check this article out -> [LINK]

Mastery does not depend on character stars now.

Most characters will start at D with their main weapons and E+ with sub-weapons.

Starting mastery is the same, regardless of character stars. However, actual stats will change depending on the number of stars a character has.

<Item Popup Overhaul>

The item popup screen shows more information now!

Looking at an item now shows items you can make with it. If you have all the necessary ingredients, the item you can make right now is highlighted with double borders. We hope this will help with making food items or backup gear.

Further, the item popup screen now shows item skills also.

<Character Skill Revision>

Nadine’s Hunter’s Sight has been remade. Hunting will be overhauled entirely and become Bullseye. Her Stat Atk growth has been dialed down but she will make up for it as she hunts wild animals. Bullseye also improves accuracy, which will help with ensuring late-game finishers.

Hunter’s Sight (Field Skill): Consume 20 stamina and identify the location of 1 wild animal (except Dr. Wickeline and Mr. Meiji). Gain a Hunting stack with each wild animal kill which permanently increases Stat Atk by 1. Stat Atk bonus is ignored while Bullseye is cooling down.

(Field Skill): Consume 20 stamina and identify the location of 1 wild animal (except Dr. Wickeline and Mr. Meiji). Gain a Hunting stack with each wild animal kill which permanently increases Stat Atk by 1. Stat Atk bonus is ignored while Bullseye is cooling down. Bullseye (Combat Skill): Deliver a normal attack with (100 + Hunting stacks)% dmg. This attack is +20% more accurate.

In addition, Xiukai’s Feeling Hot! is revised as well. Feeling Hot! provides a massive dmg bonus, but it didn’t have much of a risk. With this revision, Feeling Hot! will remain powerful but require deliberation and discernment.

Feeling Hot! (Field Skill): After channeling for 3 secs, consume 16% of current HP and increase weapon dmg by that amount for 30 secs. Dmg bonus decreases by 20% every time an attack lands on the enemy.

<Nanorized Arms Revision>

The item Nanorized Arms now has a different recipe. This will make the “ultimate” weapons for each weapon category equally difficult to make.

Arcane Stone is now made with Flint and Holy Blood.

Engineered Arcane Motor is made with Arcane Stone and Motor.

Nanorized Arms is made with Engineered Arcane Motor and Knuckle.

Other “ultimate” weapons now use Engineered Arcane Motor instead of Nanorized Arms.

Dr. Wickeline no longer drops Arcane Stone!

<Preparing for the Worst>

During the 4.0 service, we encountered two server errors. It is most important to prevent them from happening in the first place, but it is also important to recover from when they do happen.

Now, to ensure no player suffers any undesirable losses, all users playing on the battle server will be logged separately. Further we have disabled the option that prevents server errors from preventing new games for an hour.

It all depends on the nature of the actual error, but we believe we will be more able to compensate for errors when they do happen.

<Steam Improvements>

Some issues unique to the Steam version have been addressed.

Hotkey overlay has been added.

The mouse curser will be locked onto the game screen.

Window/fullscreen toggle has been implemented.

<Complete Overhaul of Combat & Skill Algorithms>

We try to introduce new gameplay arcs with each new characters and skills. As such, we have to deal with interactions between each effect. This has led to a pile of exceptions. They are usually small things like visual effect presentation, but sometimes they include things such as the calculation order.

As such, we have waged war for three months and remade all the combat and skill algorithms entirely. (As a reminder, the first signs were the matchmaking algorithm overhaul in December!) We used to work with a base attack resolution logic before and handled skills as exceptions to the logic. Now everything is handled as a part of the equation. This should solve many problems, including but not limited to:

Issues with animation errors with complex combat situations (Attack! → Tit for tat! → Counter Attack!)

Issues with simultaneous deaths with skill effects, especially with regard to game result placement

Issues with action log display orders

This is actually the biggest change with 4.1.00 but hopefully you won’t notice anything has changed. However the change in the attack logic has caused noticeable details, like the following:

Some skills that have both duration of effect and cooldown counter will now count the flow of time concurrently.

# Future Goals (Post-March)

<UI Overhaul>: as the last month’s Tidbits!

Black Survival’s Lobby UI will be completely overhauled. The new Lobby UI is designed with three principles in mind:

1. Functionality: The current Lobby UI was first designed 2 years ago. With new features, new buttons were added to the screen and it feels crammed now. Many players could not notice mails for the first victory of the day or surviving to the above-average place in a match. The new Lobby UI will notify players about daily missions, game results, player rank, and other useful info. The main screen will have all the information needed to play a game. The rest will be moved to a separate tab.

2. Practicality: The current Lobby UI uses whole image files. The new Lobby UI will implement 9-slicing, a technique that will reduce file sizes. This should improve performance, reduce overheating, and decrease the game size.

3. Expandability: We have a ton of ideas that we would like to implement in Black Survival, but the current UI is hostile to that. There just isn’t enough space. To include new fun stuff like personal quests and others, we need more expandable space.

We understand that many of you are disappointed to see that the new UI is bright. But Black Survival is set between 2015 and 2018 and the UI will keep up with the times. The old UI is reminiscent of a decrepit 30-year-old laboratory. For more details, please read the [Preview] article linked here: [LINK]

<Minor Changes after March>

We are working on things to do between games, now that the Lobby is cleaner. They will be idle amusement that you can enjoy and buy.

Promotion System Overhaul: Promoting a character will no longer depend on chance. Once a character’s Confidence fills up, they will be promoted automatically. If Gold is used to increase Confidence, then on average it will be cheaper to promote characters now.

Lunchbox and Backpack will go the way of dinosaurs. Almost all players use them, so they will no longer be sold and instead will be given automatically.

Every day, each individual player will be given a personal quest. Completing the given quest will provide goodies such as Gold or daily pass for Aptitudes.

The new quest system will make it easier to use Aptitudes for free.

Ad-fueled resurrection will be removed. Since this is against the Steam policy, it is no longer feasible to include it in Black Survival’s game design. Instead, watching ads may give Gold later on.

(NEW!) We are working on customizable hotkeys for the Steam version.

<Navigation Improvements>

The navigation is a feature that helps players find target items and ingredients. There are improvements to the navigation system that should help both beginners and veterans.

Suggestions : Now, 4 suggested items that do not use randomly found items such as Holy Blood or Mithril are brought to the front tab. It should help beginners decide on what to work for.

: Now, 4 suggested items that are brought to the front tab. It should help beginners decide on what to work for. Presets: Veterans may choose 8 items as Presets. They will be at the frontmost tab and you will be able to easily target them without memorizing entire routes. Veteran GMs often use this function to look up food for specific situations.

<Long Term Goals>

After the UI overhaul, there will be major changes to the Item Shop. We are considering collectibles but the actual details are subject to change during development. Hopefully we will be able to share our ideas with the next Tidbits.

After the UI and Item Shop overhauls, we will share more details on the <Team Mode>.

As usual, long-term goals are rough drafts. We ask for your feedback! Thank you!