Update 1.5 is here, and it's huge. This update makes a ton of very important changes, completely changing up the dynamics of the game.

Enemy runs have had their health values reconfigured, making all runs more difficult and requiring more attention to upgrades.

The knights upgrade tree has been redone, cleaning up the jumbled mess it was before and modifying all upgrades across the board. Upgrades offer much more uniform value increases and scale higher than they did before, but at a cost.

You guys complained that the Mining Expedition felt mostly useless because it wasn't needed for progression at all, so now it's needed for progression! Rubble has been turned into a global currency and is now used for upgrades for the Knight and the Iron Fortress. The expedition also has a new upgrade branch available that allows for some nice passive currency/material gains. Rubble can be purchased in the black market now as well, and can also be used at the Gambler's Den.

A couple NPCs have been swapped out. The mining expedition is now led by Gollux, and the Iron Fortress is defended by none other than Cat! (I love Cat. I would kill for Cat.)
Speaking of the Iron Fortress, it has had a HUGE change. Many people didn't care for the Tower Defense minigame it offered, and felt it was too idle or just not fun for them. Because of that, the Iron Fortress now offers 2 minigames instead of just the one, each allowing for the normal required Iron Fortress progression. The new minigame is still a Tower Defense style game, but it's called Tower Wars. It's gameplay is simple, but more hands on than TD. It's heavily inspired by Cartoon Wars, albeit much simpler than it.

With this new addition to the fortress comes a revamp to the upgrade tree. Iron Fortresses upgrade tree now has 3 tabs at the top, one dedicated to TD specific upgrades, one for shared upgrades, and another for Tower Wars specific upgrades. All upgrades were redesigned in a similar fashion to the Knights upgrades, with some noteable changes being that to unlock Archers and Mages you MUST have some rubble, further enforcing the Mining Expedition as a required minigame.
But that's not all!

In addition to the new Tower Wars minigame, there's also a new utility town! Thea is back under a new profession, so everyone welcome Potion Brewer Thea to the kingdom!

Potion Brewing is a new town that allows you to use your monster mats for a good purpose. The concept is simple, one Thea spawns in your town (is placed) all monster materials will be rolled through an effect randomizer. By interacting with Thea you'll open up a new modal with a list of all your available materials, here you can choose any combination of materials and quantities that you want to throw into the pot for Thea to turn into a potion. Depending on your selection of materials, Thea's brew will grant either positive or negative effect modifiers in the same fashion your equipment grants you bonuses.
At the start, since all materials are randomized you have no way of knowing what effect a material will have. You can throw them into the pot and right them down one by one, but your character will not remember this so you won't be able to see the stats in-game unless your potion is active. In order to solve this mental dilemma, you'll have to identify your materials. Identifying a material is simple, give it to Thea and she'll turn it into a puzzle for you to solve. Once solved for the first time, you can see all the effects a material has by simply hovering over it. If you continue identifying a material you can eventually turn even negative effects into positive ones. Perhaps with the help of the mages or a blessing from the gods you may even take materials beyond their limits. If you get tired of identifying materials fully by yourself Thea will gladly take payment to assist you in the process.
Potion Brewing is a completely optional town, however you will find your journey will be much easier going forward if you let Thea assist you.
This update is big, and introduces A LOT of changes. From new mechanics, to completely redesigned gameplay loops. Existing saves will work with this update, but I personally highly suggest starting fresh so you can fully experience it with all the new changes. And if you've been looking for a reason to return to the game then this might just be it!
With all of that said and done, I have had a few people reach out about showing some extra support for the game on top of buying it. Initially I didn't want to any of the extra support, just because it's already an insane blessing if you bought the game in the first place, but some of your are pretty insistent. So, I have officially started a Patreon. I will be posting all sorts of teasers here, as well as using it as a place to ask questions and get suggestions from you guys outside of Steam and Discord.

https://www.patreon.com/cw/XeramGaming

If you want to grab a membership and show support just know that it means the world to me. If you can't, or don't want to, show any extra support in a financial way then know that you still mean the world to me. 99% of what I post to the patreon will be completely free and accessible to everyone. And any financial support that is received is simply going to go towards me improving Recursive even more as well as towards my next project, or projects!

I hope you guys enjoy this update. The more detailed changelogs can be found below:

• The Iron Fortress now has a new mode, Tower Wars

• Tower Wars runs now unlock the next available run for Tower Defense when cleared, and vice versa

• Tower Wars runs are available in the normal Iron Fortress run selector screen, under a new tab (hard to miss)

• Iron Fortress upgrades now has 3 sections, Tower Defense/Shared/Tower Wars

• Shared upgrades only need to be purchased once, but affect both game modes

• Fixed enemies in the Iron Fortress(Tower Defense mode) not regenning hp even if the run has the modifier active

• Rubble is now a global currency

• Unlocking Archers/Mages for the Iron Fortress now requires some Rubble

• Added equipment bonuses specifically for Rubble gain

• Added a new upgrade tree to the Mining Expedition minigame, Mining Rig, allows for passive generation of all currencies as well as all materials

• Fixed Rubble ignoring certain bonuses from achievements and prestige's

• Some upgrades for the Knight now require Rubble

• Fixed a few more translation issues

• Added a new area/run, the Field of Bones.

• Eclipse Throne is now Run 9

• Eclipse Throne enemies now have a chance to drop all materials from previous runs

• Renamed Winged Skull materials to Bone Statue materials to fit the new enemy

• Rubble can now be purchased for Prestige Points in the black market

• Mining Expedition is no longer considered just a Utility Town

• Completely changed the HP values for all 9 "main" runs, creating a steeper curve

• Changed the resistances present in runs 1-9

• Added resistance badges to Iron Fortress(Tower Defense)

• Mage projectiles now have an actual sprite + animation

• Mage projectiles now use a different sprite/animation when chain lightning is active

• Improved performance in late-game Iron Fortress(Tower Defence) a bit

• Completely re-did the Knights upgrade tree (Placements, costs, max levels, cost scaling, effect values)

• Iron Fortress NPC has been swapped, say hello to Cat!

• Mining Expedition NPC has been swapped, say hello to Gollux!

• More improvements to Iron Fortress projectile tracking (Both modes)

• Added a few more safety nets and small refactors to prevent Int overflow (Big numbers going negative)

• Improved the look of the tooltip, ensuring auto-sizing for content worked correctly and the tittle banner properly covered the entire top inside instead of clipping

• Thea is back in town with a new profession! Everyone welcome Potion Brewer Thea!

• New Utility Town - Potion Brewing.

  • All monster materials are now granted a random bonus effect when Thea is placed.

  • Materials will have 1 guaranteed effect, but can hold up to 3 at initial randomization. 2nd effect has a 25% chance to be added, 3rd has a 10% chance

  • First effect has a 75% chance to be positive, Second has a 50% chance, 3rd has 25% chance.

  • Effects include most of the effects found on equipment.

  • Thea allows the user to brew potions by combining different materials at different quantities. Potion duration is determined by the smallest amount of contributed material (So if you have 5 of 3 different materials and then only 1 of a material the potion will only last 1 second)

  • Potion effects are stretched to accommodate difference in times

  • You can choose to dump brews before their timer is up, but you will lose all contributed materials.

  • Thea has 3 slots "loadouts" for recording your custom brews. She also allows you to name them.

  • Potion loadouts show materials used when hovered

  • Material effects are completely randomized when Thea is placed (Essentially randomized on prestige)

  • Any combination of materials can be used, allowing for a wide variety of stat bonus mixtures.

  • Thea's town has an Identification tab. Here you'll be able to put the puzzle pieces to identify the stats of a material as well as improve them and even have a chance to add an extra effect (Caps at 5 total effects per material)

• Added 2 new upgrades to Mage Tower Research that relate

• Re-arranged town essence drop order one more time

• Essence Selector now queues correctly when a boss drops more than one essence at a time

• Added a "You should start fresh" popup for existing saves

• Added a few achievements for Tower Wars

• Added a few achievements for Mining Expedition

• Added a few achievements for Potion Brewing

• Added a few rubble related upgrades to Mage Tower Research

• A bunch of backend fixes/changes to improve UI interactions

• Added new icons to the Knights upgrade tree

• Added new icons to the Iron Fortress upgrade tree

• Fixed the playtime not being pinned to the right in the save selection menu

• Fixed Magic damage not appearing correctly in DPS Breakdown panel

• Finished moving over some systems from Int values to Floats

• Locked the "Buy All Upgrades" button behind a new T1 prestige upgrade

• Fixed the Iron Fortress results screen not showing the correct multiplier amount for Iron gains

• Fixed an issue that was causing tutorial pop-ups to grow incredibly tall, hiding the buttons and making it impossible to close

• Fixed a few translation issues, likely many more that need to get fixed still unfortunately

• Slightly adjusted some UI sizes to better accommodate the new languages

• Added proper formatting to some numbers that were missed last time

• A bunch of backend fixes/changes to improve FPS in the post-game

• The blacksmith now has the ability to teach you a recipe for a random piece of equipment, for a small cost

• The Explorer has joined the Kingdom!

• New town linked to the Explorer, with a whole new minigame!

• New minigame, Mining Expedition. This minigame adds a new fun way of obtaining the existing currencies. It also introduces a new currency that is used specifically for this minigame, Rubble.

• Added a "Farm Mode" toggle after losing the Eclipse Throne battle for the first time (Allows for easier material farming)

• Expanded the new upgrade node system to the Knight and Iron Fortress upgrade trees (Nodes are hidden until their dependencies have at least one purchased)

• Upgrade trees now zoom in on mouse cursor, instead of towards the center of the screen

• Upgrade trees now start focused on the first upgrade of said tree

• New runestone area in the overworld

• Fixed the achievement popup sizing

• Fixed an issue with bad banding when the CRT filter was on in Fullscreen mode

• Added per-track volume sliders for music

• Setting volumes to 0 now correctly mutes the volume

• Added guarding for when certain values get too high that should prevent save corruptions (Cause y'all are insane)

• Demo now points to the full-game instead of wishlisting

• Even more small bug fixes and tuning!