Ever since Heart Machine’s Hyper Light Breaker made its debut on PC as an Early Access title, the game has faced a few different issues and criticisms from fans about some of its core design philosophy and decisions. One of the most vocal elements revolves around the Medkits and how challenging they can be to acquire, something that the developer has tackled in the latest patch for the game.
Now, following this update, players will start with a Medkit in hand and will get an auto-refilled Medkit at the start of every run too. You’ll be able to refill Medkits at Shrines using Bright Blood and not Medigems, and you’ll be able to get Medkit improvements from one of the vendors too, all while Medigems become less important, putting less strain on the currency-heavy experience.
On top of this, Crown fights should become easier, flinch won’t be as impactful on the player, damage trails won’t cause hit-stun, and various bugs have been squashed too. Needless to say, this looks like the start of a great series of improvements to areas that otherwise caused frustration, many of which we highlighted in our latest impressions.
Check out the full patch notes below.
Gameplay Changes
Community Suggestion: Medkit rework
- Players now start with a Medkit.
- The first Medkit upgrade available via Pherus Bit now improves Medkits.
- Medkits now auto-refill on launch of run, up to max capacity (default 1, upgradeable to 2).
- Medkit refills at Shrines are now paid for with Bright Blood, not Medigems.
- Medigems still provide a small amount of health still when harvested, but are no longer used for Medikits or used in the end-of-cycle screen.
Enemy updates
- Community Suggestion: Removed the tech croc brute and white dirks from the extraction spawn table.
- Community Suggestion: Increased time between waves of additional enemies in Crown fights.
- Projectiles from weak enemies no longer hit-stun the player.
- Flinch animations will play, but the player will have full control. Previously they played a hit impact that momentarily interrupted them.
- Fixed an issue where damage trails would cause hit-stun on contact.
- Enemy aggro distance reduced.
- Removed some enemies from the Drop Down Lab spawns that weren’t supposed to be spawning there (or at all).
Bug Fixes
- Community Assist: Fixed a bug where some players would get stuck on a black screen when launched.
- Community Assist: Fixed a memory leak causing degrading performance over time.