Dome Keeper – Version 2.5 – Patch notes, changelog, download

ASSESSOR

• Got a complete rework to make it more fun and remove a lot of friction from the controls.

• Spheres are now shot by hitting the shoot key while moving into a direction, instead of holding it and aiming in a direction. This makes shooting feel much more fluent.

• Picking items up is now consistent in controls, being bound on the use key by default (as “using” often means “picking up” with gadgets and caves). The controls are automatically reset to this default, so please change as you like (but note that you should keep use and collect on the same key, ideally).

• Bundle is now the default mode of shooting resources. Ability to shoot single resources is gone. While it was fun, it was too unreliable and slightly redundant. To shoot a bundle, just move in a direction and press the shoot key.

• Rotational mining is gone. Instead you now push against the rock to remove it. This has the same gameplay, but you don’t need a sphere to mine and it’s less tedious.

• Assessor now has the option of 3 sphere abilities: reflect, split and explode

  • Reflection is now a stationary field that can be placed, instead of being an ability you have to time perfectly. While the old way was fun too, it didn’t stay fun if you kept reflecting spheres for 2 hours.
  • Added sphere explosion ability, which lets spheres in your vicinity explode, removing a lot of rocks around them.
  • Reflect, split and explode each got one improvement upgrade in the tech tree.

• Rebalanced reload times, with a repeatable upgrade to get more spheres and a repeatable upgrade to extend the sphere lifetimes.

• Added a free pet and skin, in addition to the Assessor Gear Pack (which also has a pet and a skin.)

• Added 3 achievements for the new skills and updated the older ones.

PRESTIGE

• Started season 4.
• Added “Pro Mode”. It’s a prestige modifier aimed for the keepers competing for the highest scores. Until now they had to restart their runs often until they had their desired gadget and cave combination. To avoid this unproductive repetition, you can now choose an order of caves and gadgets when starting a run in pro mode. Pro Mode unlocks when getting the achievement of winning prestige with 1000 score points.
• All highscores can now be seen on the title screen. This panel can be hidden if it bothers you.
• Added upgrade to lower time until the next wave, to get rid of joyless waiting after you mined the whole map. Everything is sped up, including the converter, mineral tree and shield.

GADGETS

• Drillbert mode can now be unlocked as a regular run modifier!
• Reduced blast mining upgrade cost, increased last stage blast radius and lowered initial production time.
• Teleporter will now just stabilize instead of trying to float back to the position it was dropped at.
• Mineral Tree from the seed cave has changed root mechanics, which especially impacts prestige. Previously it was best to build a very sophisticated setup of connected cobalt for the tree to grow in. This was a ton of work and quite RNG dependent, which was no fun. Now the tree only grows roots within a radius of 3.5 tiles (fraction is important for diagonals) and can only grow one cobalt in total.
• Mineral tree now drops resources that are not picked up after a cycle. This way it can also work with lift or resource teleporter, and generally requires less attention.

OTHER

• Added Catalan, Estonian, Slovakian, Hebrew and Filipino as community translated languages (incomplete right now – if you want to help translate Dome Keeper into your language: check out the link in the language selection panel in the options!). Please reach out if the fonts are not great, we need some help with it (ideally with a suggestion for two fonts, one being monospaced and the other not). Thank you to everyone who helped translate it! We will have support for Arabic once we can upgrade the engine from Godot 3 to Godot 4 this year.
• Added button to show all relevant previous tutorials in the pause menu
• Rebalanced cobalt distribution across all maps. Previously it was pretty much equally spaced out, but now it gets more sparse the deeper you go, to compensate for how your mining ability gets more powerful.
• Added different sky backgrounds per world when landing.
• Achievements are now checked upon startup, so if you have something unlocked/completed but are missing the achievement, it should automatically pop up on startup.
• Reworked relic bomb animation (the old skull is back!)
• Improved handling of the laser when using a gamepad. It should now respond more directly to the stick movements.

FIXES & SMALL THINGS

• Fixed teleporter looking deactivated after keeper teleports.
• Sword does not try to reflect rocks anymore.
• Driller is reachable by longest swords again.
• Improved shield hud visuals, with ability duration not hiding shield state.
• Very slightly changed timing on when scarab switches phases.
• Improved some UI sounds.
• Improved shield hud visuals, with ability duration not hiding shield state.