Time for another fun-filled weekend of Darkspore!  Beta #5 is open, and once again Maxis has been cranking out those fixes.  If you have access to the beta, launch the game to install the patch!

General

  • Made general stability improvements.
  • Movie volume now obeys the master volume slider in audio settings.
  • Fixed a bug where players were unable to activate their third hero
  • Fixed a bug where loot was not displaying properly on the collect/continue screen
  • Fixed a bug where squads were not saving properly.
  • Fixed some issues where the chat window was capturing keystrokes at inappropriate times.
  • Fixed a problem where players were travelling to a random planet despite not completing that Threat Level.

Art/Sound FX

  • Improved visual effects for various abilities.
  • Changed loot drop colors to be more obvious.
  • Improved sound for catalyst pickup.

General Gameplay

  • The AI director now prefers to place larger clumps of minions during play.
  • Fixed a bug where percent-based damage bonuses for abilities were not correctly accounting for stat increases.
  • Reduced stat cap scaling somewhat.
  • Projectile bonus damage should now be properly reflected in tooltips.
  • Retuned the chances of spawning elite enemies throughout the game.
  • Reduced the effectiveness of health leech and power leech catalysts.
  • Increased the number of health and power capsules that health shrines drop.
  • Reduced timer on collect/continue screen to 2:30 from 4:00.

NPCs

  • Increased enemy movement speed in Invasion and Apocalypse modes.
  • Reduced the damage of captain-level enemies slightly.
  • Decreased NPC damage increase for multiplayer games.
  • Increased NPC damage and health in Invasion and Apocalypse modes.
  • Reduced the damage of Fragbot Mech-XS.
  • Captain-level enemies now have 50% disable duration reduction like bosses.
  • Undermind’s Fire Thorns buff no longer reduces melee damage, but the percentage of damage returned to the attacker is increased.
  • Fixed a bug where the damage from Undermind’s Fire Thorns buff was scaling exponentially.

Heroes

Shared Abilities

  • Reduced the base damage of Phantom Charge.
  • Reduced Charged Fist damage in PvP.

Blitz

  • Increased the damage and speed of Electron Sphere in PvP.

Goliath

  • Reduced the bonus damage percent from Arc Weld jumping to additional targets and reduced the maximum chaining distance (campaign only).

Krel

  • Reduced the cooldown time of Twinblaze.
  • Fixed a bug where Krel’s Flame Wave would fly over the head of shorter enemies.

Lumin

  • Thunderstorm now channels for only 2 seconds, but lightning bolts drop for 10 seconds.
  • Thunderstorm does slightly less damage per strike but strikes more often.
  • Thunderstorm only has a chance to hit a particular target once rather than multiple times.
  • Thunderstorm channeling can no longer be canceled early by walking.
  • A single target can only be damaged by a maximum of two bolts from each use of Webbed Lightning.
  • Reduced time between jumps for Chain Lightning.
  • Increased the maximum chaining distance for Lumin’s Chain Lightning in PvP.

Maldri

  • Fixed an incorrect damage coefficient in Probability Assault.
  • Reduced the damage of the area damage random effect from Probability Assault.
  • Added a new random effect for Probability Assault: banish.

Seraph-XS

  • Greatly reduced the damage, reduced the duration, and slightly reduced the cooldown of Auto Turret.
  • Fixed a bug where Contact Grenade was being treated as physical damage instead of energy damage.

SRS-42

  • Reduced the damage bonus from Target Lock during overdrive.
  • Increased the speed of the missiles launched by Missile Barrage, and reduced the delay between the launch and descent phases.

Viper

  • Fixed a bug where Expunge was not applying the correct amount of additional damage from the DoTs it was expunging.

Zrin

  • Increased the effectiveness of Pain Hounds’ Fire Thorns in (campaign only).