Once again, Maxis does an awesome job on patching their beta for DarkSpore.  Check out the fixes below!  Only one more full day to play until they close the servers for another week!

General

  • Crogenitor experience curves have been re-tuned to slow down the rate of early leveling. Note: If you participated in last week’s Beta, you may see your Crogenitor Level decrease slightly when you finish a mission. This is because your experience points carried over from last week, but that amount of XP now corresponds to a lower Crogenitor Level.
  • Heroes in the Arsenal are easier to click on.
  • Inventory no longer shows invalid or empty pages.
  • Fixed a bug where health bars were not updating properly in certain situations.
  • Smoother transition after loading the game into the Arsenal.
  • Players who are at higher Threat Levels are no longer able to pull a lower level player past levels that they haven’t completed.
  • Planet results screen now displays correct medals.
  • A chat message is sent to inform players in co-op games that other players in a party are watching a video update.
  • Player profile images now display correctly in the party UI.
  • Pressing “I” now opens the inventory when in the Arsenal
  • Pressing “Esc” opens the Options menu while in the space ship
  • Updated tutorial text in the simulation level.
  • Added polish to friends list including updated tooltips, positioning and alignment.
  • General Optimizations to make the game faster
  • Various crashes fixed
  • Beta Threat Level cap increased to 3-1
  • PvP Arena matchmaking and custom games unlock at Crogenitor Level 9
  • Party UI now appears for the other party members after matchmaking into a group.
  • Fixed issue with players not able to start a new game after finishing a previous game

Art and Level Polish

  • Improved Verdanth environment objects.
  • Updated Nocturna environments.
  • Destructible environment objects are now easier to click on.
  • Improved the placement of some obelisks.
  • Changed distortion fields to be clearer.
  • Improved fog, shadows, and water effects for various levels.
  • Improved Arsenal lighting and effects.
  • Certain effects have been improved to speed up the game.
  • Updated art for ally health bars.
  • Updated art for resurrection orb.
  • Filter buttons everywhere have similar icons and art shapes.

Abilities, General

  • Updated various issues with squad abilities not triggering.
  • Added new icons for some debuffs.
  • Fixed some broken poison debuff icons.
  • Updated stat caps to better fit the current item point curves.
  • Power costs will now scale appropriately in PvP.
  • Daze effects now use the snared effect instead.
  • Ability damage scaling improved significantly.
  • Some passive abilities that scaled heavily with player damage were reduced in effectiveness for overdrive.

Shared Variant Abilities

  • Omni Shield now displays the correct tooltip.
  • Phantom Charge damage now scales when you increase your primary stat.
  • Electron Sphere no longer auto-hits all nearby targets each time it zaps. There is now a random chance for it to hit each additional target (but it will still always zap at least one target).
  • Area effect abilities that deal damage over time will no longer benefit from Enrage. They are tagged as Periodic.
  • Reduced cooldown and duration of the root effect of Entangling Rush.

Heroes
Seraph XS

  • The turret placed by Auto Turret can now be targeted by enemies.

SRS-42

  • Added power cost and cooldown to Missile Barrage ability.
  • Increased the daze duration of Flak Cannon slightly.
  • Reduced the cooldown of Flak Cannon to one second.

Jinx

  • Minor improvements to Skullbomb.
  • Reduced weapon damage slightly.
  • Added the weakness status effect to Curse of Weakness.
  • Increased the radius of Sprit Aura.

Savage

  • The Savage Ally pet will now respawn near its owner if it becomes completely isolated.
  • Updated power cost of Savage Ally.
  • The Savage Ally pet now plays the proper enrage effect when the ability is used a second time.

Goliath

  • Target Reticule now does more damage.

Blitz

  • Ride the Lightning no longer increases damage, power cost, or stun duration with each use.
  • Ride the Lightning now removes its cooldown time if the target is killed with the ability.

Sage

  • Simplified Tree of Life. It no longer scales based on damage; it now just grows immediately and provides healing over time plus a burst of healing at the end.
  • Reduced Dendrone damage slightly to offset the extra damage they received when the pet primary stat bug was fixed.

Titan

  • Increased Titan Alpha’s starting Mind and reduced his starting Dex.
  • Reduced the scaling on Titan’s passive shield slightly.

Vex

  • Time Lapse bonus damage no longer benefits from the damage coefficient.
  • The max damage for Time Lapse is now accurately reflected in the tooltip.
  • Increased the damage cap scaling of Time Lapse.

Revenant

  • Crippling Shot now applies the weakness status effect.

Tork

  • Fixed a bug with Sleeping Cloud where life direct damage wouldn’t break it; now only DoTs won’t break it.

Arakna

  • Reduced the damage boost from Soul Collector.

Magnos

  • Fixed a bug with Resonance where it was double counting resist rating and ignoring dodge.

Chat

  • Fixed some issues with clicking in the chat input field.
  • Channel name/color should now work properly in all cases.
  • Chat will switch to /game or /party when going from the spaceship to a planet.
  • Added a profanity filter checkbox to the settings window.
  • While on a planet, chat will disappear and fade out after 5 seconds.

General Gameplay

  • The chance to get a Purified Item after choosing “Collect Reward” now scales throughout the Threat Level ratings (it’s now a combination of your medal performance and the Threat Leve; rating).
  • Gold medals now add 8% to your rare chance, silver medals are 4%, and bronzes are 2%. Failing an objective completely will no longer contribute to your rare chance.
  • The thorns status effect is now applied in more cases.
  • Cooldowns during overdrive updated to fix a bug that was causing them to be instantaneous.
  • Overdrive no longer grants invulnerability (now 50% damage reduction), but gains immunity to DoTs.
  • Increased the number of enemies you have to kill to maintain Overdrive.
  • Increased enemy damage scaling in multiplayer.
  • Reduced weapon damage scaling.
  • Health capsules now only give 10% health.
  • Increased capsule drop rate.
  • Retuned defense/resist/crit scaling so that being at the ratings cap should consistently give you 40% to 50% throughout the game.
  • Reduced DNA scaling in Invasion and Apocalypse difficulties.
  • Retuned the XP curve for the early levels.
  • A new health obelisk objective was added. Defeating a level without using the health obelisks in the boss pit will award a gold medal.
  • Time objectives are now activated. This objective is only active if both the Obelisk and Kill Objectives are complete. A timer will appear when this occurs.
  • Fixed a bug where some horde gates would not open even after all the NPCs were defeated.
  • Game difficulty increased
  • Darkspore Operatives now first appear on Threat Level 2-3 rather than 2-1
  • Using abilities should feel faster and less laggy

Loot

  • Fixed two attributes (overdrive duration and pet health) that had 100x the intended effect.
  • White items can now only have one of three suffixes: “of the Sentinel,” “of the Ravager,” or “of the Tempest.”
  • Item drops now scale appropriately. (They were scaling too fast before.)
  • Catalyss links now display new art/UI.
  • Catalyst links now have bonus tooltips.
  • Items that are equipped on heroes no longer count towards the total inventory limit.
  • Item popups now show colorized type icons.
  • Improved loot scattering to avoid overlap

NPCs

  • Fixed an issue with bosses sometimes not dropping loot.
  • Animus NPC has updated walk animations and idles.
  • Increased cooldown of Hypno Mantis’ mushroom sleep ability.
  • Fixed a damage scaling problem with Molten Crawler.
  • Fixed incorrect damage type on Molten Crawler magma pools.
  • Standing in Molten Crawler magma pools no longer deals damage. It just reapplies the burn DoT instead.
  • NPCs no longer have stat caps.
  • Improved certain elite and miniboss modifiers.
  • Darkspore Operatives no longer appear if all other players leave the Party between Threat Levels.
  • Hypno Mantis’ sleep ability no longer prevents switching.
  • Reduced the post-casting animation time for some melee enemies so they don’t stand around idly after attacking.
  • Trioculists now deal energy damage instead of physical.
  • Increased the amount of damage Nashira clones take in Onslaught difficulty.
  • Greatly reduced the chance for Distracted Mongrels to be distracted.
  • Parasitic Threshers now drain a percentage of max power instead of a flat amount.
  • Parasitic Threshers now explode after draining for a specified number of ticks instead of after stealing a flat amount of power.
  • Increased the damage of Polaris’s gravity orb explosions.
  • Doubled the gravitational pull of Polaris’s gravity orbs.
  • Reduced the knockback distance of Polaris and his orbs at low levels.
  • Mutation Agent damage is now properly tagged as an AoE.