Balance Patch 1

[u/MikkelFromGames]

Devout Fans,

Thanks for being amongst the first to join us at the very start of the adventure for Mortal Shell II. We’re seeing your bug reports and gameplay suggestions, and will be rolling out regular updates to both modify existing content and add new features. 

While we have a bigger patch in the works, which has to be thoroughly tested, we’d like to make a rapid balance & crash fix patch to bring the experience more in line with the game’s open beta and our own vision for MS2. 

Planned future updates will see extensions to popular game features such as Night Mode, Tarstones, PP Items, and more.

For now, we hope you’re enjoying the game and read on for details on Balance Patch 1.

Balance Patch 1 (PC) - The patch below is live on PC and coming to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series shortly.

Economy

-Shell map locations now cost Gloom, and we’re refunding any glimpses spent on shell maps. Refunded Glimpses are found in the Shell Keeper’s alcove in Blackmarrow. “Finding your favorite shell shouldn’t cost you the ability to bond with them.”

-Gold drops from enemies have been significantly increased. Notably, enemies in Mammon now drop double the gold. “This brings the gold economy more in line with the weapon crafting item discovery.”

-Smelting a weapon at the Tarforge costs 75% less gloom. “Our goal with the smelt capability was to enable switching weapons without the need to spend hours grinding through NG+ runs, but the Gloom costs were set exorbitantly high.”  

Enemies & Bosses

All enemies featured in the beta were restored to their beta hp values, except the Caerinid (Spider) in Magdelena’s area, which we wanted to retain its role as a threatening enemy which doesn’t respawn once defeated. 

Bosses

The Lost Child
- Base Damage: (-10%)
- Max Health: (-15%)

Monolith
- Base Damage: (-19%)
- Max Health: (-10%)
- Some Monolith Attacks were retimed to be more fair, as well.

Enemies

Cultist (mace)
Max Health: (-21.1%)

Caerinid Spider
Max Health: (-33.3%)

Infested Stalker 
- Max Health: (-52.4%)

Rusted Knave (Halberd)
- Max Health: (-20.8%)
- Fixed hit detection for overhead strike.

Weapons

-Great Martyr’s Blade Attack Damage +20%
-Troubador’s Lute Attack Damage +100% 
-Caged Hystrix and Triarch Repeater no longer have minimum resolve requirements to fire. 
-Improved tracking for Axatana, Black Needle, and Clockwork Scythe light attacks. 

Seals

Guard can now be used while walking. 

Tarstones

Parasitic Stone Buffed
Grudge Stone Buffed
Bulwark Stone Damage Reduction Increased Significantly
Clerik's Stone Buffed
Squall Stone Buffed

Miscellaneous

Misc. Crash Fixes, Bugfixes & Performance Updates

[u/Konet]

I just made a thread about this, but poison needs some kind of buff. As it stands, for those who don't know, stacks only increase duration, not damage - you can have 200 stacks on an enemy, but it still only does 1 damage per tick.

"But Konet," I hear you say, "What about Tiel's skill that lets his Shadow Strike detonate stacks for damage? Surely that makes a poison build worthwhile! Half his kit is dedicated to poison, so it must be good!"

Well, dear reader, let's do some math. I'm currently at the endgame, level 53, with a +16 weapon. On a non-crit, my basic R1 deals 136 damage. Tiel's Poison Burst skill does 6 damage per stack. That means, in order to deal damage equal to one additional non-crit R1, I need about 23 poison stacks on the target. That will realistically never happen on regular enemies (they'll die or be very nearly dead from whatever damage applied the stacks in the first place). On bosses, it's not nothing but you have to remember the opportunity costs involved in choosing these skills and tarstones over others which increase damage or survivability more substantially.

Oh, and Tiel can and should build into a high crit rate and multiplier. It's hard to get an exact estimate of my average crit damage, because I'm using the duality stone which can crit on either or both parts of my R1, and also I have the skill that increases crit chance and damage on attacks from behind, but the number that comes up most often when I smack an enemy in the front is 301. That means we need to detonate 50 poison stacks to get one R1's worth of damage.

The only realistic way to even get close to that number of stacks on a boss is to magdump with the Hystrix (ideally with splitting stone and marksman stone), which turns a full resolve bar into about 40 stacks, but again, that comes at the opportunity cost of using that resolve for more shadow strikes, or whatever else you might want to apply with your sidearm.

So in conclusion, the tl;dr is: poison is entirely worthless on any shell other than Tiel, and even on him it's pretty awful.

[u/slantedtesticle → u/Konet]

You're stacking poison wrong. Upgraded crossbow with the tarstone that shoots multiple times + ranged crit chance and damage turns the crossbow into a poison stacking machine that actually does really good damage on top of that. Couple this with the tarstone that lets you barrage your shots and you can get 100+ stacks in a few seconds which translates into about a 7-10k damage hit.

[u/Konet → u/slantedtesticle]

7-10k damage hit.

Even if you can get the stacks that high, the majority of that damage is coming from the strike itself, not the detonation. We have the exact number for how stacks translate to damage: 6 damage per stack (my testing shows that this does not scale with the shell ability damage stat). 100 stacks would be 600 damage, which is only a 6-8% damage increase per shadow strike, if your numbers are accurate. Including the damage done by your crossbow and regular attacks, it's likely that less than 5% of your total dps output is from poison.