Immediate Updates fueled by last night's poll regarding game difficulty. (Patreon)

Hello!

I would like to inform everyone of some changes I've done to be included in v0.1.7 After yesterday's very much needed difficulty poll.First, you'll find a new option in the preferences menu for either 'Quick Equip' or 'Classic Equip'. In the new 'Quick Equip' mode. All equipable items in your possession will be available to swap between from the backpack without having to go to one of the benches or melee storage locker. Of course classic mode leaves things as are.I'm keeping it to only while in the hideout to maintain the original design of having the player think carefully about what they wish to take with them when leaving the safety of home.New shield item introduced earlier. I had planned to add shield items and other defensive abilities/potions to Act II, but after a very helpful comment, I saw more and more that it really should be introduced in Act I. At least via a basic shield that is.Shield stats: Will block 100% of incoming damage when successfully blocked. Max durability is 5. Basic shield black chance is 12% but scales via STR at 2% per STR point. This should allow for some defensive diversity between evasion/glancing blows and full STR builds that dump all of their stat points into STR for melee weapon damage and now increased block chance.Can be repaired with repair kits inside the backpack. This part in the future will stay in the quick equip mode but also I'll be adding an entry for shields at the guns/armor crafting table. Same as most likely giving a full length event rather than a small mini one.Reason for not doing this part now, is due to the large amount of already promised work this month. I'll be adding it to the list of things to get done in the next coming updates.Currently you can get the shield the 2nd day of leaving the hideout after Act I begins. Older saves, just sleep and then walk outside in order to trigger it.As it stands right now with only 50% of players stating that enemies are fine as are... I'm nerfing some of the enemies. You may ask, why nerf it? 50% still say it's good. Well... the other 50% of people saw the notification and took the time to check the post and cared enough to actually give their input about the game. I imagine most players that find it too difficult have rightfully gotten frustrated and deleted the game long ago due to difficulty would have never seen this poll. So... in reality, that number is probably MUCH higher.It won't be massive nerfs in all cases, but I believe what I've done will allow for a much smoother difficulty ramp up rather than steep jumps.The changes below are based off of the normal Story mode difficulty so of course higher difficulties will still offer more of a challenge. If this still doesn't feel like enough of a nerf for story mode, I don't mind nerfing a little more because for higher difficulties, I can always adjust the scaling multiplier to bring it back to how things were pre-nerf if need be.Hideout Special Raid Infernal Boss Old Stats: Hp-300 Bonus Dmg-20 New Stats: Hp-260 Bonus Dmg-15 Hideout Raider Heavy Male: Old Stats: Hp-200 Bonus Dmg-10New Stats: Hp-170 Bonus Dmg-7 Hideout Raider Delirious Assassin Old Stats: Hp-170 Bonus Dmg-15 New Stats: Hp-140 Bonus Dmg-11 Hideout Raider Thief Old Stats: Hp-130 Bonus Dmg-10 New Stats: Hp-110 Bonus Dmg-8 Metro Dweller (lesser) level 5 Old Stats: Hp-135 Bonus Dmg-15 New Stats: Hp-110 Bonus Dmg-11 Metro Dweller Level 6 Old Stats: Hp-160 Bonus Dmg-25 New Stats: Hp-130 Bonus Dmg-15 Metro Raider Level 6 Type 3 Old Stats: Hp-160 Bonus Dmg-25 New Stats: Hp-130 Bonus Dmg-16Alright.. After all of this, I'm finishing up the rest of today with another needed side quest of an in depth bug hunting and fixes. In my testing of the above updates and generally playing through the game, i noticed several irregularities that I'd like to pin down and fix as it will be better in the long run for the health of the game and this growing community.Tuesday's plan is to get back to work on the new Metro events and changes.Thank you for the feedback last night and this morning. I will still be regularly checking the poll to see if there are more suggestions/comments. And to reiterate again.. if the base game still feels too difficult, don't hesitate to voice your opinion. I'd rather fix it now vs losing more players forever due to difficulty.-BP