The Redemption of Seekers of the Storm

 

 

    On November 8th, 2023, Gearbox held a livestream for the 10 year anniversary for Risk of Rain and in this livestream they detailed their plans for RoR2, a new DLC called Seekers of the Storm. This is also the same day that SoTV was ported to consoles and RoR:R released, a very good time to be a Risk of Rain fan. However, the DLC wouldn’t release for another year, releasing on August 27th, 2024 and to say it was a mess would be an understatement.

 

 

SCENE #1: Gearbox Office, circa Spring-2024.

O1: What a wonderful day at Gearbox HQ, I sure hope nothing goes wrong today while I work on the next DLC!

O2: Hey so Randy just called…

O1: (completely oblivious) Yeah, what’s up?

O2: He wants the codebase to be the same between console and pc,

O1: Ok, so- (cut off)

O2: and an engine upgrade,

O1: That’s possible- (cut off)

O2: and he wants it out in 4 months

O1: …W-What?

O2: Don’t ask me, it’s just what he wants.

O1: (stammering) H-He does know that this isn’t feasible right?

O2: (shrug)

O1: (sigh) this isn’t gonna go over well.

Upon release, people very quickly found out that this DLC not only released with most of the items being useless and the survivors being wildly imbalanced, but also released with an insane amount of bugs that only got worse the more you looked into it. Game logic tied frame rate, Mithrix being immortal if you dared to pick up one of the new items, Xbox save data getting corrupted among many more issues. This was supposed to be another SotV style expansion and what we got was a fraction of the content that SotV launched with and a vast majority of that content either didn’t work or was complete garbage, not to mention them completely breaking the base game as well. The ensuing wave of backlash was immense and (mostly) deserved, but there’s one saving grace from this period: The brand lead for RoR under Gearbox: Preston. Preston hopped in the discord pretty fast after release and began talking to the community over the next few days, assuring that the feedback was being passed to the development team. To their credit, they did manage to get their first patch out roughly a week and a half after launch that solved a bunch of major problems while admitting the actual DLC content wasn’t up to expectations. We’d get a few more patches, leading up to V1.3.5, the final version of what I like to call Seekers 1.0. The speed of these updates were pretty impressive, but it wouldn’t be enough to just fix the bugs and call it a day.

SURVIVORS 1.0

But what does the DLC actually introduce into the game and why was it considered to be so bad? To start off, the survivors were considered underwhelming. Seeker is the default survivor that you unlock by purchasing the dlc and was probably the most polished upon release. Her only bad parts were simply the cause of the rest of the game being in the state it was in, nothing was really broken with her. She comes with a passive ability called tranquility, which gives stat increases and buffs to her attacks with every stack, capping at 7 stacks. Spirit Punch is a simple three hit projectile attack, with the first 2 piercing enemies and the 3rd being a giant orb that explodes on impact. Her secondaries were either Unseen Hand, which lets you summon a giant fist from the ground that heals for a set percentage of health or Soul Spiral, which summons orbs that would orbit the player and deal constant damage to anything they touched, granting barrier on every hit. Sojourn is her utility is very similar to volcanic egg, putting you inside an orb that makes you invulnerable to damage, but the twist here is that it slowly damages you over time in exchange for dealing more damage when you hit a target. A common synergy was using Soul Spiral with this ability, allowing the player to deal easy damage to bosses while maintaining enough health to stay in the ability. Finally, her abilities end with Meditate, a quick time event that, while good at first, gets riskier (heh) to use as the run progresses. This is how you interact with tranquility, with each successful activation granting one stack, with the 7th–and only the 7th–reviving dead allies. I think on launch she was missing some visual feedback but once patch 1.3.5 hit, she was definitely the most polished of the three survivors added.

CHEF is the returning survivor for this DLC, and this might’ve been the worst survivor to ever hit this franchise. He has CHEF’s Kiss as his passive, which makes enemies drop an item that heals for 8% health if you kill them with 2 skills. Dice is the worst and most ineffective primary I’ve seen in this game. You threw cleavers and you could hold them in place, but their hitboxes weren’t active, meaning there was basically no point in holding them. They also had charges with cooldowns, meaning that you’d very often go without your primary if you had more than 2 enemies swarming you. The cleavers could also just disappear if you didn’t recall them, which was fun. It was overall just a very janky primary to use, but things only get worse from here. Sear had incredibly short range, forcing you into melee territory with a non-melee survivor, locked you out of doing anything else with a long animation and didn’t even allow you to aim it properly. Roll wasn’t really that bad initially, but for some reason charging it didn’t increase your speed or duration, with the charge only increasing the damage of the attack. The charge up of it was kinda slow, but overall it wasn’t too bad. Glaze is the default special for CHEF and instead of being a movement ability like the first game, they decided to change it to just shoot a few blobs of oil. This is a problem that I’ll touch on when we get to the CHEF rework, because this design decision comes back to bite this character in the ass. The alternative special is Yes, CHEF which is basically just second helping from the original. Dice still throws out a bunch of cleavers around you, glaze now shoots out flaming balls of oil and roll now applies bleed. The problem with this move is that taking it removes any possibility of creating oil, which sucks when oil feels so integral to Sear. CHEF is not only the most jank survivor but also just not very fun or good. His kit feels incoherent with itself and is far too limiting compared to the rest of the game.

False Son is the “”secret”” survivor and is probably the most over-tuned of the DLC survivors. He was missing a lot of feedback and visuals at launch, as well as his animations looking super jank but was fixed in the patches that followed launch. His passive is Lunar Tampering, which gives attack speed and armor for every unused lunar spike, and gives movement speed and health regen for every used spike. This is a really unique system that is really solid both on paper and execution, and I hope they keep up the creativity of it with future survivors. Club of the Forsaken is an interesting primary, because it has the standard attack, but if you press the secondary button while holding down the attack, you start charging a slam attack that has no cooldown and does a lot of damage. This move is super busted because it does 1500% damage and has a 3.0 proc coefficient, which was just insanely overtuned. This invalidated the base melee because of how easy and spammable it was, as well as the base melee feeling like the particle effects and hitboxes were disjointed. Lunar Spikes is the secondary skill and is the core of his kit. These introduce two new mechanics: Lunar Ruin, which makes anybody inflicted with it take 10% more damage and have reduced healing, and Growth, which gives you more Lunar Spikes the more health you gain, making health-increasing items even more important on this character and finally gives Bison Steak an actual use outside of being free scrap. Step of the Brothers is a standard dash that has 2 charges, I think the cooldown could be reduced but other than that it’s pretty normal. Finally, he comes with two specials: Laser of the Father, which is a standard laser attack that gains duration from stacks of growth, and Laser Burst, which gains stock from growth and refills 30% of your lunar spike charges. LotF is a lot more powerful than burst, which is a shame because I think both are good options, even if one is significantly more busted.

ITEMS 1.0

Seekers of the Storm adds 18 new items and for the most part, they’re complete garbage. A lot of them relied on taking damage to have some sort of effect, which is not ideal when enemies can do over half of your health in one hit more often than you’d be comfortable with. Add on the sloppy implementation of these items and they were not received very well. 

Starting off with the common items, we have Antler Shield. This item had a 55% chance to reflect 10% of the damage taken to your attacker. I don’t have to explain why this is bad do I? In a game where enemies have far more health than they do damage, having a chance to reflect a small portion of their damage is absurd, especially when we have something like razor wire, an uncommon item that always procs whenever you take damage and does more damage. Next up is Bolstering Lantern, which was basically an inverse Delicate Watch. When you fell below 50% hp you’d gain 20% damage. Living below 50% hp is not something you’d really wanna do, considering you’d be in range of breaking your watches or even worse, flat out dying if you didn’t have any Power Elixirs to save yourself. 20% isn’t even worth risking your life for, considering watches are also a 20% buff and only require you to stay above 25% hp. Chronic Expansion gives you 10% damage for every 5 enemies defeated, and is one of the better items. The problem with this one is the fact that by time you build up the bonus, you’re typically leaving combat and I’ve had times where this item has done nothing for me because of the enemy drought that can happen early on. Although, pairing this item with FMP does give you infinite damage as long as you have permanent uptime on FMP, which was really funny. When activated, Warped Echo would split the damage taken in half, with it dealing one half immediately and delaying the other half for 3 seconds. This was poorly implemented at first, leading to problems with enemies having this item, but wasn’t too bad once it got fixed. Its main problem is just the way it handles the split, it’s a pretty good idea of delaying damage but it could be done a lot better, especially given that it doesn’t give any sort of damage resist on that hit. Finally, we end off the common items with Knockback Fin. This item has a 7.5% chance to knock enemies into the air. That’s it. No bonus damage on those targets, nothing. Why does it exist? Who thought it was a good idea?

The uncommons starts off with Chance Doll, which is another one of the few good items that were introduced. It gave chance shrines a 40% chance to give a higher rarity item. Outside of having a very poor indicator on when it actually worked, this item was pretty good, just a little unclear. Next up is Luminous Shot, which upon use of your secondary would buff the next shot from your primary by 150%, storing 5 charges. This item is just very clunky to use in general, with you basically needing Backup Magazines to take full advantage of this item. It’s among the middle of the pack, with it not being super terrible but not super good either. Noxious Thorn is another one of the “take damage to make thing happen” items, with it having a 25% to spread 2 stacks of bleed to nearby enemies when you take damage. Very underwhelming and again, taking damage to make a thing happen isn’t really great item design. Plus, all that for 2 stacks of bleed? Really? Luckily, the next two items aren’t nearly as bad, starting with Prayer Beads. This item stores 20% of gained experience into it and upon being removed from your inventory, it will give you those stats. It’s literally free stats: the item. Who could say no to free stats? It had the same problem as the chance doll, where it wasn’t super clear what it did but otherwise is a very good item. The next item is possibly the best item introduced with this DLC, the ever-beloved Sale Star. It gives you an extra item on the first chest bought per stage, with it able to drop multiple items from one chest if you have enough stacks. This item is perfect, there’s never been any bad feedback or function with it, it’s literally free items: the item. Immediate top tier item. Unfortunately, the next item does not bring me this level of joy. In fact, it brings the opposite: complete and total despair. Unstable Transmitter is an item that would teleport you to a random location if your health reached 25%. Now why does this item bring such despair? Well, one time it teleported me out of my cover and directly into the false son’s laser attack, ending a really good run. Sure, it protected watches and elixirs, but the random teleportation was a complete detriment to the player more often than not. I just… don’t understand why this item made it in. Being forcefully yanked from one spot to another can be good in theory but in execution it was more of an annoyance than a benefit.

The legendary items start off with Electric Boomerang, which is a pretty alright item. It’s an on-hit item that fires–get this–an electric boomerang that deals 120% damage and stuns enemies. It had a bug where if you held the Sawmarang equipment it would cause the Electric Boomerang to inflict bleed, which was a fun interaction. Other than that, this is a fairly standard item that didn’t really have any problems, just a fun bug. Growth Nectar was intended to be the opposite of Death Mark, where if you have 5+ buffs you’d gain 20% bonus stats. This item is a good idea but, say it with me, had sloppy implementation. Runic Lens is an item that had the description of all time. I remember when I sat down to actually read this description and felt my head start to explode. Why is it so wordy? The item is so painfully simple but the way it’s worded is just over complicated as hell. The game states “Overspill” as a thing but it doesn’t have a defined definition like other blue text. It’s just… Overspill. Thank you Gearbox, very cool. The next item is a lot more concise, thankfully, but also one of the most busted items in the entire game, only 2nd to sale star. Sonorous Whispers is the reincarnation of the 56 leaf clover from the first game and oh boy does it just allow infinite loot. It gave elites a 15% (+5% per stack) chance to drop an item on death and guaranteed an item from boss tier enemies, meaning in the later stages of your run where the only enemies you’re fighting are elites and bosses, the floor is just covered in loot, to the point of being slightly annoying at times. I believe this item to be weaker than Sale Star simply because Sale Star is always useful in any run no matter what, where this item does rely on you looping to encounter enough elites/bosses to get use out of it. If this item dropped on a non-loop run I wouldn’t be mad per-se, but it definitely wouldn’t serve me as much. We finally end the legendaries off with the most laughable inclusion; War Bonds. You ever heard of Ghor’s Tome? That’s basically this item, but instead of enemies dropping nuggets of gold, you’re granted this gold when you start a new stage, and that’s it. It’s so laughably bad it makes me wonder how it made it into the game at all in this state. 75 gold? Really? Yeah it scales but it’s still just… not good.

This DLC only added one equipment, that being Seed of Life. This item has two uses, one of them is basically a Dio’s and once used, it becomes a healing equipment, with it dropping little healing orbs that heal 2% of your max health. We also got a lunar item in Longstanding Solitude, which converts all gold to exp, instead giving you a free unlock every level up. Combine this with something like Roll of Pennies and Brittle Crown to completely outlevel the enemies, even within a standard 5 stage run.

EVERYTHING ELSE

The enemies introduced in this DLC are very hit or miss, mostly misses. The Child is a returning enemy from the first game and shoots orbs at you while teleporting around the map. It’s a bit annoying but it’s not really a bad enemy, especially compared to Scorch Worms. Oh. My. God. Scorch Worms. These enemies are the worst enemy in the game because they can just, not come out of the ground sometimes. It also feels like they do way more damage than they should, leading to a lot of unfair deaths. The final new enemy is the Halcyonite, which is just laughably bad. The laser only locks in on your position once, so if you avoid the first laser in the burst then you’re fine. They can also often get stuck on the geometry. The damage on the sword attack feels a little overtuned but other than that, it’s a fine enemy that just needs some tweaks.

This DLC added a new boss, False Son, and it is a fight ever. It’s better than voidling–not that it’s a high bar or anything–but wow it is not that good. The build up to the fight is really cool if a little frustrating. Scaling the Prime Meridian while being assaulted by the Lunar Spikes is really cool. The fight suffers from janky telegraphs, the arena has basically no cover and False Son has no adaptive armor so he falls over in 3 seconds. The way you access this fight is going through the green portals, which take you on the path of the colossus and I think the implementation of this doesn’t really feel that great. Instead of the stages going in the regular rotation, the new dlc stages–minus Shattered Abodes and Helminth Hatchery–are exclusive to the PotC. Not to mention the new stage one that was added in the devotion update and the stage pool is all out of sync, whereas it used to have 3 maps per stage minus stage 5. Now we have 5(!!) different stage 1’s and you have to go out of your way to interact with the new ones. What’s worse is that once you defeat False Son, you can never enter the SotS stages again. I understand why we can’t go back to Prime Meridian but you’re telling me we can’t at least go to Reformed Altar or Treeborn Colony? Especially when the Colony is one of the few maps to have an exclusive variant only found by looping? I think having the separate path is fine because it at least guarantees you can always access the False Son boss, but I think they could just add these maps into rotation while keeping the green portal functionality. If you wanna guarantee you go straight to False Son, you can still interact with a green portal on stage 1 and guarantee you get put on the PotC, but you can also randomly spawn on one of the new dlc stages if you don’t.

Finally, Seekers added 2 new elite types in Gilded and Twisted. Both of these are horrible. Gilded Elites would occasionally steal gold from the player, which would strengthen their shield. It wasn’t nearly as annoying but could still be frustrating, given how it forces you to disengage with the enemy at arbitrary points, but it doesn’t compare to the Twisted elites. Who DESIGNED this? Imagine a Celestine elite, but instead of cloaking it made every enemy in the radius reflect the damage they take. I don’t know if the damage was boosted at all but there would be some stages where a Twisted elite would spawn and it would just be over because all your AoE would just hit the protected enemies and kill you instantly. This was never a good implementation because sure, early on you can mostly decide when you damage an enemy but as the run progresses, it becomes harder to dictate when you actually deal damage. I’ve had runs where I trip over one enemy and suddenly enemies can’t spawn because I simply deal too much damage to let them spawn, and those are the type of runs that have died due to Twisted elites. Decisions like these make me wonder how bad the crunch was for this DLC, because this shouldn’t have survived past one playtest.

That about does it for the 1.0 version of the DLC. Yeah the stage visuals look good and are well designed–minus my gripes with Helminth Hatchery being far too vertical–as well as the music banging as always, but those weren’t problematic. They were universally praised, so there’s not as much for me to talk about. Instead I felt it important to highlight the things that were bad about the DLC, so the redemption arc makes more sense. To call it underwhelming, even after the bug fixes, would be too nice. No new game modes, barely any new mechanics or interactables, nothing. We got a lot of QoL but it can only go so far, especially when the base game itself gets broken. Luckily, we wouldn’t have to wait long for the developers to say something.

 

 

SCENE 2: Gearbox Office, post-SotS release

(office is on fire, various voices in the background)

O3: WAAAAIIIIIITTT

(silence slowly ensues)

O3: (catching breath) I have an idea! (slams whiteboard down with png of roadmap)

(overwhelming applause)

O1: ok! but (slight pause) are we (slight pause) sure this will work

O3: (nervous) It better!

November 4th brought V1.3.5, the final version of Seekers 1.0 and with it, a roadmap explaining how they’re going to rework the entire DLC. Now this got clowned on a lot at the time and yeah, it isn’t the most elegant solution. A roadmap to fix an already released, full-price DLC definitely isn’t the best look, but what else were they supposed to do? Yes, not releasing the DLC as it was would’ve avoided this issue, but a delay probably wasn’t an option for them. So, given the circumstances they were in, I really think the roadmap was the best choice for them. It clearly tells the community they admit they messed up and details how they’re going to fix it, with them splitting it into 3 phases. I think the updates were rolled out this way to keep player engagement up while the team worked on the next update. This also gave us a taste of what the team was capable of, definitely leading to them rebuilding their image a lot faster than if they just dropped everything all at once. The incremental fixes would come over the course of the next 6 months, with the first one dropping just a month later on December 10th.

ITEMS 2.0

The first phase of Seekers 2.0 released on December 10th and its main goal was to fix the items and elites. The speed and scale of this update was very impressive, setting a good precedent for the rest of the updates. It didn’t break much either, instead fixing even more issues along the way. Starting off with the items, the Elusive Antlers are the reworked version of the Antler Shield, which now give 7% (+7% per stack) movement speed and spawns orbs around the player that give movement speed when collected, giving 12% per stack. I think in the initial teaser for this rework, it also gave barrier, which it doesn’t do anymore. It makes sense but it’s still something that could’ve been interesting. The spawning for these orbs is also really well implemented, always spawning roughly where the player is looking and pretty close to them. The visuals and overall feedback for this item are just insanely well done, way better than the Razorwire-at-home feel of the previous incarnation. Bolstering Lantern got updated too, with it now increasing attack speed for every ally or enemy in a 20m radius. It’s basically the Focus Crystal for attack speed, which makes these two a really good synergy for close range survivors. Warped Echo has been changed to not only give damage reduction on the hit that procs it, but the damage is now split into 3 hits, with only the last one being lethal. This is probably one of my favorites of the reworks, because it retains the spirit of the original while still being useful in any run. Chronic Expansion got changed to provide a 3.5% damage buff on every kill and was capped to 10 stacks at base. It also got its audio feedback completely overhauled, to the point where I think it feels better than it did before, despite it getting a nerf. 

Knockback Fin got changed to Breaching Fin and even changed rarities, going to an uncommon. Instead of having a random chance to knock enemies up, it went to a guaranteed effect on a cooldown, with you bouncing them up 3 times and dealing additional damage to targets affected by this. This rework also retains the spirit of the original while making it more viable, but I’m still not sure I like it. It can get a bit annoying for melee or projectile survivors to deal with, so while yes it is better I still find myself scrapping it more often than not. Noxious Thorns now gives a 10% chance to bleed as well as transferring debuffs to nearby targets if a defeated target has any. It’s an interesting concept that is really strong in any AoE build, almost to the point of feeling far more powerful than most other uncommon items. Unstable Transmitter went from probably the most frustrating item to one of the most busted items, with it instead granting you barrier upon proccing and also surrounds you with an aura that inflicts bleed and teleports any enemy that gets inside. The kicker is the 45s cooldown, which would be a problem but you can reset the cooldown with Blast Shower, completely negating any downside to the item, not to mention stacking the item already reduces the cooldown. Luminous Shot got changed to have a charge system, where you need at least 3 charges to activate the lighting strike. It also reduces your secondary cooldown by 20%, making it even easier to build up charges. Again, good rework that keeps the spirit of the original vision while still making it viable. 

Heading into the legendaries, War Bonds also got a massive change, with it summoning a barrage of missiles when you activate the teleporter. The more gold you have means the more missiles that get fired, with each missile doing 2.5% of the bosses’ max health per hit. People raved over this item but to be honest, I never got the hype. If the teleporter boss died before all the missiles were done it would just start firing them at you, which while not doing any damage to you is a really funny mistake, but also highlights my problem with it. If you can kill the teleporter boss fast enough this item does nothing. Growth Nectar now gives +7% stats for each buff, for a max of 4, instead of requiring 5 buffs to get any benefit. It’s an overall buff too, with the old only granting 20% and this one granting 28% if you have 4 buffs. The final item to get major changes is Runic Lens, with them cleaning up the description (R.I.P overspill, whatever the hell you meant) cleaning up the overall functionality and having damage numbers tweaked.

The rest of the item changes are fairly minor, so we’ll just rapid fire them. Chance Doll’s description got rewritten and now displays green particles when it works, alongside a green chat message. Sonorous Whisper’s drop chance for elites got nerfed to 4% but still guarantees items from bosses.  Prayer Beads got blacklisted from printers and had text added upon removal to make it more clear what exactly it was doing. The free unlock from Longstanding Solitude is now retained between stages and only increases the cost of items by 50% gold, instead of 100%. Seed of Life now works with equipment drones and finally, Electric Boomerang no longer applies bleed when holding the Sawmarang equipment, except not really. This does get fixed later on but the bug remains for this patch.

Finally, this update also sought to rework the elite types, because if we had to deal with Twisted Elites any longer I might’ve finally lost the small amount of sanity I have remaining in my soul. Twisted Elites still latch onto other enemies, but instead any damage dealt to them is converted to charging a crystal. Doing enough damage without killing the elite will launch this crystal at the player, but you can still shoot it down. This is a VERY welcome change, as it makes this elite type more fair to fight against and doesn’t spell the end of a run. Gilded Elites now summon a gold spike below the player that, if it, will steal their gold and scatter it on the ground, allowing it to be re-collected. This is much more manageable but can also be easy to miss the telegraph when there’s a lot going on. Still leagues better than what came before though, no complaints here.

Overall, this update was well needed for the game. It rebuilt a lot of faith between the developers and the community, but they still had 2 more updates to nail. It’d be a while between now and the next update, with the developers taking in item balancing feedback and implementing it in the next update, which would primarily fix the False Son bossfight. We would hear nothing about this update until its release.

FALSE SON 2.0

The second phase of Seekers 2.0 was released on March 4th, 2025 and it sought out to make the False Son bossfight a lot better. But did it succeed in doing so? Well, it’s certainly a better fight than it was previously but it has a few flaws that are still yet to be addressed. They also introduced some questionable balance decisions, but I want to talk about the False Son fight because it sure got changed.

They improved all of his telegraphs and animations across the board, which was definitely overdue. It feels like you can actually read what the boss is gonna do, but  his AI can still feel a bit unpredictable. They made his laser the coolest thing ever, but it’s probably the most unfair of his attacks. It comes from the giant Providence statue in the distance instead of coming from the boss himself, but this has perfect tracking no matter what. Even if you’re hidden behind cover before the laser begins. This laser will absolutely destroy you too, and with the limited cover of the arena, it just makes this attack not very fun to play against. Not to mention the False Son is still roaming the arena, spawning enemies and chasing you out of your very limited cover. It also confuses me because to my knowledge, no other laser has perfect tracking. Every laser attack in the game has some sort of delay in its tracking and wow what do you know, it makes them more fun to play against. Why this wasn’t considered for this fight is crazy, but they could still keep the perfect tracking but not let False Son attack until the laser is done. It’s easily the worst part of the fight, even if visually speaking it’s the coolest thing. They also gave False Son adaptive armor, meaning he won’t fall over in 3 seconds. Other than some visual updates to other attacks and his overall scaling being changed, this is really all that was changed. It’s easier to see the changes by playing them instead of describing them, so hopefully the on-screen footage did good. These are good changes and the fight is definitely in a better state, but it’s still not on the same level as Mithrix. Still better than Voidling thankfully.

Next up is a controversial set of Void Fields changes. Void Fields have always been a point of contention due to how powerful they are, giving you a free stage worth of loot plus a guaranteed red provided the enemies aren’t given a crowbar. They made the timer pause while inside a void cell, which is such a questionable change I wonder why they even bothered.  They also made void fog damage ramp up over time, which just… why? It works in something like Simulacrum because you’re always surrounded by a safe area. In an area as big as Void Fields, if you have low mobility your run is basically over. Even trying to leave the Void Fields can end your run, because the portal doesn’t stop the fog damage, so while the game is converting your money to exp you’re still taking damage and it ramps up fairly fast with no healing, so if you roll an unlucky item–like crowbars–you either have to suck it up and lose the run by continuing the fields, or you can lose the run by dying to the fog trying to leave. This damage ramp up was far too powerful and made void fields a near impossibility for some characters. Finally, they made enemies gain items faster if you take too long to complete a cell, which again just… why? Was anybody asking for these changes? 

Finally, we got some item balance changes that are very much a mixed bag. Some got hit too hard, some barely got touched, it’s just a mess. Unstable Transmitter is now a consumable, similar to Power Elixir, and only grants 35% barrier while also removing it’s one shot protection. I understand this item was broken, but hitting it this bad was too overkill. I think making it consumable is perfectly fine, the barrier reduction is even fine but also removing one shot protection? Yeah it’s a myth half the time anyway but it’s still better to have than not, especially given the other nerfs it was handed out. Antler Shield got the base 7% movement speed removed, which is… fine? They could’ve kept the base 7% buff but remove the stacking of it, but this is fine I guess. It doesn’t ruin the item or anything, just a strange change. Growth Nectar’s buff got changed to 4%, which is incredibly welcoming because 7% made things actively worse. Believe it or not, too much movement speed is a very real problem that this item contributed to. They also removed the base stat increase on each stack, which also helps with this item being actually usable. Warped Echo’s damage resistance got knocked down to 20%, but the additional hits finally proc items that rely on you taking damage, which is a very nice change. Warbonds got its proc chance nerfed down to 0 and the cost of each missile got increased to 25 gold. The proc chance nerf felt a bit too unnecessary but otherwise fine, given how little I really cared for this item anyway. Breaching Fin had its damage increase change, to where it now only provides a 10% damage buff but now gains more damage as you bounce the enemies more, which is a perfectly fine change. Bolstering Lantern’s attack speed got nerfed down to 7.5%, just making it a far worse version of a Mocha since you still have to be in range of something to get that buff. This is by far one of the most unnecessary nerfs because Lantern felt fine before. To rapid-fire the smaller changes, Sonorous Whispers’ loot chance got rebalanced to favor white items, Longstanding Solitude got the gold to EXP ratio rebalanced and the audio of Chronic Expansion’s beeping has been reduced. They also finally, truly, for real this time fixed Electric Boomerang applying bleed if you had the Sawmarang equipment.

FInally, we got some changes to the new enemies introduced. Halcyonite’s hitboxes got changed to match his visuals, his whirlwind attack no longer just breaks in half–although funnily enough if you kill this enemy during the whirlwind he can just… continue spinning. It’s really funny. They also finally fixed the laser to properly track you, instead of just the first shot tracking you. Scorch Worm got a reduction in hp and got made to have a more consistent way of getting them out of the ground, but this enemy still kinda sucks. I think limiting how long they can stay underground–or even how often they go underground–would be a substantial improvement, because despite the improvement to getting them to come up, it doesn’t work all the time. Both of these enemies still have really high damage stats, which just feels unfun to fight. I’m surprised they didn’t get nerfed because it feels like one hit is enough to proc an Elixir or even outright kill you.

The last major change they made was Prime Meridian taking you directly to stage 4, which is such a funny oversight that they had to fix because before this would not spawn the primordial teleporter on stage 5, instead forcing you to loop and then spawn the teleporter on stage 1. You’d also get cheated out of a full stage of loot before, making you overall weaker, so this is a very good change. They also added a bunch of destructible pillars to the Bazaar and destroying all of them spawns a green portal, which also guarantees that you can access PotC if you didn’t get a Halcyon Shrine. 

That’s about it for this update, besides the obvious bug fixes. This update felt mostly fine–barring a few questionable changes–but it’s also the most lukewarm of the 3 updates for me. I don’t typically do the False Son fight due to how out of the way it ends up being and still has a pretty glaring flaw with the laser attack. Luckily, there’s still one more update to talk about and it’s a pretty ambitious one, with it fixing the survivors–primarily chef–and rounding out the DLC to be what it should’ve been at release. Did they do well? Let's find out.

SURVIVORS 2.0

The final phase of Seekers 2.0 was released on May 5th, 2025 and set out to not only bring changes to the new survivors, but introduce new alternate skills for them as well, a very odd exclusion from the original release that I’m glad they’ve rectified.

I claimed Seeker as the most polished of the survivors and seeing as she got the least amount of changes, that judgement seems to still be correct. Meditate can now revive teammates on any cast after the 7th, making it far more useful than prior. You also now get a self revive once you get all 7 stacks, which is absolutely busted. Sojourn now increases damage at 500% instead of 400%, which helps with an unlock challenge. Finally, the 3rd hit of Spirit Punch and the explosion from Meditate now deal 50% and 200% more damage respectively per stack of tranquility. Moving onto the new skills, Reprieve is the alternative skill to sojourn, and has a ridiculous unlock requirement of wanting you to deal 500k% damage with sojourn. Best advice is just to do a command run on drizzle and stack as many damage items as possible. This ability is similar to sojourn, but instead of damaging you to increase its damage it gives you a barrier that, when depleted, will automatically kick you out of the ability and spawn a tornado that sucks enemies in and does 200% damage, as well as healing any allies in the tornado. The ability speeds up as you stay in it, with your turning radius tanking over time to compensate. I actually prefer this over sojourn, since I wasn’t super big on sojourn initially. The speed is really welcome and the tornado healing allows you to stay up close, as well as being able to extend the duration of the ability if you can master the turning radius by having more barrier generating items. Palm Blast is the alternative skill to Meditate and has a far better unlock condition, requiring 20 perfect meditate inputs. Just go into the bazaar and spam the ability until you get it for the easiest route. I’m not as big of a fan of it as meditate, even though I think as your run progresses it’s gonna be far easier to use. In order to gain stacks of tranquility you need to hit at least 3 enemies with the ability, which early on can be a bit rough but Reprieve can help with this. There’s also a bug at launch where it doesn’t scale damage properly, which could be clouding my judgement on the ability. You also lose the revive capabilities with this ability, which is a fair balance change.

CHEF was… a disaster on release to say the least. It was a big goal of this update to revive him and make him viable. And yet, despite that, I still feel underwhelmed by CHEF. Going over the monumental changes to his base kit, his primary now holds 3 stocks with no cooldown. Instead, if you tap the fire button the cleavers will return to you after a short time. You can also hold the button down to let them linger and the world, and they actually do damage this time! Although you have to hold the button down to make them do more damage on the recall, which is not really that fun to play with. They also nerfed the damage to compensate for this, which I also don’t really agree with. Sear has had its animation duration changed to be a lot shorter but still doing the same damage as before. They also fixed the aiming for it while increasing the range, making it far easier to use. Roll now charges significantly faster and has a super jump attached to it. Charging now increases duration and speed as well, something that should’ve been there on release but better late than never. Yes, CHEF has had its ability refresh removed, which is an odd change to say the least. Other than that and a cooldown reduction, the skill itself didn’t get changed, BUT the other boosted skills did get some changes. Boosted Dice got a damage increase, boosted Sear now creates pre-ignited pools of oil upon hitting the ground and boosted Roll applies more bleed. Talking about the new skills, Ice box is a frost variant of Sear, with it being my preferred secondary for CHEF.  The unlock is fairly easy, requiring you to apply 20 stacks of burn to Mithrix. Stack a lot of attack speed and you’ll get it easily. If you hit oil with this ability, it will freeze it over and apply constant stacks of frost to any enemy touching it, leading it to be insanely powerful as freeze has an instakill built in. Yes, CHEF transforms this into you shooting out one giant ice cube that freezes whatever enemy it hits. This skill also changes the visuals on CHEF, which is a really neat detail. Oil Spill is the alternative to Roll and is unlocked by hitting 5 airborne enemies with one activation of Roll. Primordial Cube is your best friend for this one. This ability sends you flying, dropping pools of oil below you. You can activate this 4 total times by hitting the button when you land, and can also be used to scale walls. I like this ability, but giving up the movement of Roll is really hard to give up. This ability is busted for AoE and I want to like it, but giving up Roll is a hard choice because without it I feel so slow. This also leads me to a problem with CHEF’s kit that I alluded to last time I talked about him. In Risk of Rain Returns, his kit is very simple. Your utilities were your oil generators, your secondary interacted with it, and then you had Second Helping which augmented your abilities. In this game, however, your oil generators are split between your utility and special, which is a horrible feeling. If you want to use Yes, CHEF and Roll, you give up oil entirely. Using Oil Spill for me feels worse than using Roll, and I really like running Yes, CHEF. It’s a complicated situation that just knocks the survivor down even more for me, even disregarding the fact I still don’t really like his kit in this game. I feel insane for not liking this survivor as much after this rework too, when everybody is so positive about him. He’s good, almost certainly better than his original release, but something about him still feels off to me personally.

False Son has been ever so slightly reigned in this update, but he’s still mostly busted. They actually reduced his base damage to 12, but increased the scaling on it. A weird change but it’s a change. His primary has been buffed to 450% damage, with the charge swing being nerfed down to 1000% and a 1.0 proc coefficient. This is completely justified, as the slam was comically broken. Both of these also got new visual effects which are LEAGUES better than what they used to be, it feels like the particles match the hitbox now. Lunar Spikes were made to be agile, which might be the most impactful change made to him. They also made them faster to shoot and at a more consistent rate, meaning you can just dump them significantly faster to gain their benefits. They also got a buff to 200% damage, which is a nice change. Step of the Brothers no longer cancels the charge slam and Laser of the Father, which is a very nice change. However, I thought this meant you couldn’t cancel LotF at all now, since I typically used dash to cancel it, but you can cancel it by just pressing your primary attack button. Finally, Laser Burst got buffed to do 1250% damage and now refills 50% of your Lunar Spikes, which is fantastic because 30% was such an odd number. Onto the new abilities, Lunar Stakes is a more offensive version of the spikes, and it’s glorious. The unlock requirement is a little poorly worded, but you need to gain 40 stacks of Lunar Spikes through growth, totalling to 44 since you start off with 4. Each stack of Stakes counts as 2 Spikes, and they pierce enemies, calling down a lighting strike when it hits an enemy and the ground. These are insanely powerful, making them my new preferred secondary for false son, especially combined with laser burst restoring one of them. Meridian’s Will is the alternate utility skill, which has an extremely annoying unlock; requiring you to have Aurelionite kill Mithrix. Try to pick up as few damage items as possible and go to the Gilded Coast as often as you can, since stacking her item will increase her damage. Moving onto the ability itself, I don’t really care for it. It deals fine damage and even vortexes enemies near you, allowing you to take advantage of your passive being tripled. However, I miss the vertical distance you could get with the base utility, not to mention the 10s cooldown on Meridian. Add on the buffs to Steps and it’s hard for me to want to use this new skill, although it’s really cool how all of his skills are inspired by his boss fight.

We got some other changes across the game too, like lowering the Void Fog damage and ramp up speed in the Void Fields, which is so much better than what it used to be. Ideally the ramp up would be removed altogether but this is a fine compromise. They also reverted enemies gaining items if you took too long, instead giving them items when you start a cell. Elusive Antlers spawns an additional 3 orbs per stack instead of 1, making up for the loss of base movement speed. Bolstering Lantern got rebuffed to 10% attack speed and instead got the radius increase removed, which is a far healthier change than what it was prior. Finally, Unstable Transmitter got buffed to give 60% barrier now. I’m still personally salty over how hard it got hit but this is fine.

CONCLUSION

Overall, these updates put Seekers in the state it should’ve been in from the start. However, despite the improvements, SotS still feels a tad underwhelming for me personally, compared to SotV. Maybe I’m still burnt from the horrible launch, or having to wait 8 months for the DLC to be what it should’ve been, but whatever the reason is, I don’t find SotS to be worth the $15 price tag. Yes the DLC is miles better than when it was released and I’d be a fool not to recommend it, it’s just for me personally I still feel slightly underwhelmed by everything. I’m still not sold on some of the implementation of the new content, primarily the PotC, as well as how little it feels this DLC added compared to the previous one. Maybe I’m just tired of this game and need to take a step back, which is very likely. Maybe I just feel uneasy with the immediate announcement of a new DLC days after phase 3. It could be a multitude of things, and yet–in reality–could just be a small couple of things.

DLC3 was announced mere days after the phase 3 update released and something about it feels strange. I think the development team really turned the tide with SotS, publicly admitting to the expansion’s shortcomings and going the length to fix it and make it worth it. There’s still some bugs with the game but overall, the game is in a much better state than it used to be. However, despite that–and despite the new DLC being praised by people who have played it–I’m still concerned for this DLC and the future of the game. I want to doubt that the DLC will ship with a game breaking update that takes months to get resolved. I don’t want to see another one of my favorite games be destroyed with one update and have the fixes take months to come to fruition. However, I feel it isn’t too fair to be doomposting over a DLC we barely know any info about, but I am very cautious going into this release. I’ll be keeping up with it as we get new news and I’ll certainly be playing it, but I’m still uneasy about it all. But for now, I’d like to thank you all for watching, stay hydrated and I’ll see you next time.

 

 

SCENE 3: Gearbox Office, Post-SotS 2.0

O1: (sigh of relief) Wow, I (pause) cannot believe that worked.

O3: (nervous chuckle) Y-yeah, me neither. 

(nervous silence, cue the crickets)

O1: …Sooooo what are we gonna do now?

O2: (popping into frame) You forgot about the next DLC already?

O1: (confused) wait, what

(cue dlc3 footage)

O1 & O3: Oh you’ve GOTTA be fucking kidding me

 

    video link: https://youtu.be/uLnxgCesaCU?si=fXUeON-ZT2c0hICC 

 

    short director's commentary: this was simultaneously fun and nightmarish to work on. on one hand, i knew i wanted to try writing little skits to put in (and i had been planning them in my head for months by this point) and i also wanted to include my friends in a video again, since the title cards were a fun little collaborative effort from the first fnaf video. i have plans to continue to include my friends in future videos btw, i just have to find a way to work it in naturally, which is easier said than done. that aside, getting all the perk descriptions on screen was a nightmare. the video editor i used at the time had very basic text editing, meaning in order to color in the text i had to write the perk descriptions (since it wouldn't automatically break the text line when pasted) and had to manually type out each instance of colored text and overlay it with the base text. for every. single. perk. and gearbox LOVED their colored text for this dlc. luckily the video editor i use now allows me to do this far easier, so in case i do this again for alloyed collective it won't be a nightmare. also fun fact, all the skits were animated over the course of one morning once i got my final lines and it was pretty fun. wanting to work more of these animated bits into videos but again, i need to find a way to integrate it naturally. this video was originally going to be a 2 part video, with the first part coming out before the reworks but since the general tone of the script was far more negative than i intended i decided to wait until all the updates were out and mash it into one giant video. 

word count: 8,772
video length: 44:15