This *should* be the final update for 2019, and for the time being bring the  combat updates to a close. I knew once I released the initial combat update back in November it would spawn several more patches to further tweak and fine-tune the game. Overall I am extremely pleased with the updates and feel that the game is in a much better state because of them. Gameplay balance and tuning will always be a never-ending task, but I feel Astrominer is much more fun to play now than it was two months ago, and I can now look ahead to adding more content and systems to the game.

This update has a few major changes that may throw off long-time players of the game. The biggest change being that the buttons for accessing the inventory and dropping items has been swapped in order to avoid cases where the player might accidentally drop their items when trying to leave an area. Another major change worth calling out is that level stones will no longer heal an item's hp. My reasoning behind this is to encourage players to use repair stones on their items rather than updating an item 1 level at at time to keep restoring its hp and essentially keep a high level item forever. 

Be sure to delete your previous save files with this update as it touched the inventory item table and world object saving.

If you run into any bugs, please don't hesitate to reach out on Discord.

Changes

• Swapped the buttons for Access Full Inventory and Drop Held Items so that way the player doesn't accidentally drop their items when trying to hit the button to exit an area, and wind up losing those items.
• Added collectible consolidation to reduce how many collectibles are active.
• Fixed it so bombs can have enhancements applied to them - they were broken in the last update due to having no level cap to dictate how many attachments were allowed.
• Made it so level stones no longer heal items when applied - the item will retain the same percentage of health it had prior to the level being applied compared to it's new max hp.
• Removed the Build-A-Bomb item due to it being redundant.
• Moved the dirt processor timer/counter down a bit.
• Made it so bombs now save on the overworld when the player manually saves. Going into a new area (mine, dungeon, etc.) will NOT reload the bombs when you return to the overworld to simulate time passing.
• Made it so when the player is frozen on an ice tile and they break free from the ice, the tile's freeze timer is reset so it can't instantly freeze the player again.
• Made it so enemies will not attack the player when the player is frozen.
• Fixed a bug where hats that were made into armor would lose their armor status if the player dropped the hat and picked it back up.
• Fixed a bug where the player was able to deflect projectiles without actually having the projectile deflection enhancement applied to any items.
• Increased wearable items' (hats) level cap to 80 to make it better for armor.
• Made it so if player has armor with the projectile deflecting enhancement debuffs will not be applied to the player (ice, slime, fire poisoning).
• Made it so projectiles that are set to bounce will not bounce if/when they hit an enemy.
• Put in some extra error handling code to (hopefully) prevent empty mines from generating.
• Particle effects now spawn when the player uses an item that has a buff applied to it (ex. swinging a sword with fire buff creates fire particles).