Time for a recap. Been some time since the release of v2.28 but work immediately continued to push v2.29 toward release- introducing even more new content, but most importantly the 2.29 release will fix the poor performance caused by physics calculations! A bug that appeared slightly in v2.27 at first, but turned to the worse with the 2.28 release.

Allright then, what've I been up to the past two months? For starters, I've redone the crafting system and the way it's managed alot- the Engineer can no longer help you with crafting in the Secure Command, although he sell blueprints now- instead in order to craft items you must find the new interface "Crafting Station". They're a bunch of machines scattered around the game world. But to gain access to these machines you must first accomplish a mission given to you by the Engineer early on in the game.

The new craft stations also require a new material/consumable called "Craft Card". One craft card is consumed for every item you craft- these items are rare drops from monsters and loot.

Also in addition to this, the crafting UI panel has been updated, providing a better overview of what blueprints are in your possession and how much crafting resources you currently carry.

- Game World -

The boss of the fifth chapter "Ascendant" have been removed from the game, primarily since he did not fit the story very well- and he was originally an early prototype of the Forsaken race's base model so therefore it goes without saying, his appearance did not quite match other Forsaken characters- The Ascendant have been replaced by a new monster called Paige the Distorted- an infected human technician who worked at the Bridge & Logistics sector.

Another monster that have been updated/changed are the "Nox". I've been annoyed by it's appearance for some time now and it felt as if it did not match the LBKR-standard for character models, a completely new model were created for the Nox and is implemented in v2.29.

There are three new unique monsters added to the game world, Peter Gully, the Lost One- a missing engineer from the Maintenance sector. Carries a mission-bound item. Cornwell, the Corpse Walker- an infected excavator found near an excavation site in Ch.10 Core of Sindre, and finally but not least "The Caretaker". A guardian of the new map "The Gallery".

A new common monster has been added aswell called "Excavator"- this monster will replace any "Hypoxia" monsters in the final five chapters of LBKR, since they take place much closer to the primary excav/expedition station on Sindre.

A new feature for the monsters are that they can now be immune to various damage effects such as knockback, stun, slow-down or entangle. Alot of monster and attack stats have been balanced for a better game flow and challenge, and all AI attack classes aswell as the AI behaviour itself have been heavily optimized.

I've also spent some time adding more items and have managed to get atleast a small list of somewhat interesting stuff done this far. First of all there are two new exquisite item modifiers. "Illuminate", which restores the player's energy vital to it's max value when the player kill a monster and "Ominous", the item carrying the "Ominous" modifier will emit a pulse at regular intervals that frighten nearby monsters.

Along with previously mentioned craft-system updates, common-classed items are now available to craft. These items will always be crafted with the "Mythical" rarity.

I've mashed in a couple of new items and equipment, to name a few we have
-Illuminate Hat (Exquisite Armor)
- Ominous Spaulders (Exquisite Armor)
-Pulse Launcher (Common Ranged weapon)
-Rusty Knife (Common Melee weapon)
-Two-Barrels (Common Ranged Weapon)
-Disc Ejector (Common Ranged weapon)
-Rim Blade (Common Melee weapon)
-HVPP 'Monster Maker' (Exquisite weapon)
-Craft Card (Consumable)
- Energy Fuse (Consumable)

Energy fuses will restore the player's Energy vital by the assigned amount of points when consumed. These items are of exquisite rarity ranking though and can only be dropped by minibosses and bosses of the game, or by crafting them at a Crafting Station interface.

Changes were made to the Field Repair Kit consumable, previously they were dropped at different item tiers depending on the monster's current level, but this was quite useless since the item durability in general are within a range of 1.0 - 6.0 so the bonus points restored per item tier didn't make much difference for this item as any tier would most likely fully repair a broken item. This also made repair kits take up unnecessary space in the player's inventory as the player were likely to collect kits of various tiers.
All repair kits are now dropped at tier 1 to help keep the inventory clean and prevent unnecessary flooding.

To wrap up this subject let's move on to the maps-

A new hidden map has been implemented called "The Gallery", this map act like an LBKR library, containing some behind-the-scenes content and development diaries. Furthermore a few new instances of some maps have been added.
-3x instances of Ch.10 Core of Sindre
-2x new instances of Ch.9 The Hive
-2x new instances of Ch.5 The Bridge
-2x new instances of Ch.3 The Armory
-2x new instances of Ch.7 Caverns

There are also some new world chunks to explore:
-2x tiles for Ch.10 Core of Sindre
-3x tiles for Ch.9 The Hive
-2x tiles for Ch.7 Caverns
-3x tiles for Ch.3 The Armory

The two Core of Sindre tiles above both contain one world event each, "Corpse Walker", and "Lost Rescue".

- Story & Lore -

I've added more info regarding the background story to the game, most of which can be read about in various logs and books scattered across the game world, at this stage there are currently 13 new "Lores", 10 new Log entries, 11 new Mail Logs and 3 new Com. Signals to collect and read. Some gramatic errors have been fixed in old logs and the Log UI window now sort logs by what chapter they were found in, in order to improve readability of the log lists.

- 2 new missions, Mecha-Doc and the Craftsman.

There are 12 new conversations available by speaking to NPC's in the safe zone(s) at certain times throughout the game.

- UI -

A new crew database UI has been implemented that can be accessed from Ch.3 Armory and Ch.5 Bridge, containing records of IGCC crew working in the facilities on Sindre. (Or atleast some of them, as some data is corrupted.)

By opening the game menu or standing near an access point in the game world the player will now be presented with the amount of world events located in the current map and how many of them have been accomplished yet.

The Item Crafting window was updated, but since I've already talked about it earlier in this article I'll just skip ahead- the Archeologist's 'Item Identification' shop window has been updated. It's now alot cleaner and easier to navigate, it also received a few tooltips explaining how the item ID process work for the player.

For the game's main HUD two new buttons were added, the "Consume Fuse" button and "Consume Battery" button, located next to the Plasma Fuel and Energy vital resource bars. These work like the earlier implemented health-vial button but instead of consuming a health vial they will consume a Plasma Cartridge and Energy Fuse as long as these items exist in the player's inventory.

- The Puppeteer -

Alot of work has been put down on the new player class that will ship with v2.29 namely, the Puppeteer. It's a female character that use black magic or something along those lines to summon puppets and drain her enemies blood and all such nasty crap. She's relatively weak when it comes to melee strike force and damage resistance so making use of her ranged abilities, summoned minions and ranged weaponry might be a clever idea.

The abilities of the Puppeteer have all been fully implemented and game-tested and are as following:

- Dart: Throws a poisonous fang in the player's forward direction
>Mode 1: There's a chance to stun the victim of the Dart
>Mode 2: There's a chance to slow down the victim of the Dart
>Mode 3: There's a chance that the victim will bleed and take damage over time until it dies
>Mode 4: There's a chance that the dart will pierce it's victim and keep moving on to the next

- Body Blast: The puppeteer will cause corpses at the target position to explode, inflicting damage to nearby monsters
>Mode 1: Corpses that explode might leave toxic puddles that inflict toxic damage over time to all nearby monsters
>Mode 2: Increases the blast damage but only corpses near the player character will detonate
>Mode 3: Only a single corpse will explode, though there's a chance that this corpse will shoot out a web of tissue that will immobilize any monsters caught within it

- Summon: The Puppeteer puppets that will fight by your side
>Mode 1: Summon up to three minions
>Mode 2: Summon up to three minions, the minions will be enhanced by a randomized elemental damage type
>Mode 3: Summon a single large puppet that inflict massive physical damage

- Drain: The Puppeteer drain the blood from her victims
>Mode 1: The stolen blood is used to restore the player's health vital
>Mode 2: The stolen blood is used to restore the player's energy vital
>Mode 3: The stolen blood is used to restore the player's weapon plasma fuel

- Puncture: Spikes emerge from the ground
>Mode 1: Three spikes are summoned that inflict physical damage and may knock back it's victims
>Mode 2: A wider field of spikes emerge at the target position, immobilizing nearby enemies and inflict toxic damage

- Blood Fueled: Enhances the puppeteer's skills
>Mode 1: Increases the puppeteer's Critical Hit Damage
>Mode 2: Improves all elemental damage resistances
>Mode 3: Increases the puppeteer's move speed
>Mode 4: Adds an extra armor to the puppeteer

This turned out to be a long update- I'll try to give myself time to post updates more often in order to keep them more reader-friendly, in any case- stay tuned for the 2.29 release, it's not too far away now!