I have taken the new content for a test drive on year 3.
I found two new bosses, at Spring and Winter. I suspect it’ll be an either or thing. Both were harder than the normal boss for those seasons, although not too bad. Still, this was year 3 and I totally see problems at higher years.
In Summer, one random non boss day I got this weird silhouette of a moon that appeared and suddenly I was facing tons of new types of enemies. And this got crazy hectic. The bullet speeds weren’t bad but the # of enemies was more suggestive of Year 9/10. And the movement speeds were definitely higher than you expect on year 3.
I haven’t looked too closely at the patch notes so I can’t speak to anything that changed in terms of item balance or the like. And I haven’t found the new anthill yet. But this feels like a good update overall.
I found the new anthill. It includes some starter gun upgrades (but iirc no damage), a 1% repair chance upgrade, some “chance to start with an upgrade when you buy a gun” upgrades, as well as some of those for specific guns (butcher knife and squirrel launcher, which both desperately need it). think I saw a luck upgrade as well as a few more seconds to day length.
The game is harder than it was. I met another new boss and died to it. The new bosses are all harder than the old except I haven’t seen the alt Fall boss yet, so it remains to be seen if Mechdonald can be knocked from his perch.
But I’m seeing some stuff, some of it is hard to put my finger on . I feel like there’s more bullets in year 3 than there was. And E.g. the old Spring boss drops 3 slugs when he is driven off by damage instead of two. None of it is a huge spike. Just a minor one, but I feel like it’s there.
I couldn’t resist peeking in. Last I had played around the new bosses were all added and there wazs some revamping of the persistent upgrade systems.
I think all the anthill upgrades have been revamped once or twice since. But man, this game has gotten some shit.
Playing on year 3 I am convinced it’s harder now than it was, in terms of bullet amount and enemy behavior. But this is more than mitigated from a host of new upgrades.
There are upgrades for each tier 1 animal where you just get 3 of them. These are amazing.
There’s a host of energization upgrades, including “stay perma energized at low health” (eww). But more importantly, there’s several that allow your friends to get energized under certain conditions (low health, you get energized, chance on enemy kill, when “petting” a friend). these are extremely strong for the most part. Just amazing.
There’s upgrades that cause glowers to grow on weeds (and another causing the bee family to polinate weeds when they have nothing better to do). Flowers harvest for like 5/10/20. I’ve had games where weed management was a non issue because there were so many damn flowers everywhere. Also, there’s a new upgrade that stops weeds from growing on soil.
Turrets for pigs and cows. Yes, they can contribute to farm defense. Also, there’s upgrades that make them faster (and the cow one gives them more water). There is an upgrade that makex cows block bullets (and drop fertilizer).
There are econ upgrades for cows and pigs. The former can make milk, which they do somewhat frequently. It harvest for 60/some larger amount rarely. For pigs, they can dig up truffles, which are worth a whopping 200 cashews. I’ve had runs where I was generating thousands of cashews everyday just from an army of pigs digging up so many truffles.
Some guns have slightly more expensive upgrade paths. Also
The sunflower merchant in the lower area can sell scrolls (this was maybe true before I can’t recall), the upgraded scrolls (new, v expensive), and t1/t2 animals (expensive and very expensive, but oh god so worth).
I’ve had runs where I finished with 20-30+ friends. And just massive farms.
I have been cleaning up some achievements. I won’t get them all - I am not going near Rodanth or whatever that one character is called). But I can probably snag a few more. I’ve been enjoying the game again, and may try some harder runs for funsies.
Oh thanks for the peek in! Yeah I’ve been threatening to give this another look after all the updates. I’ve got a lot of achievements to brush up on too. Will definitely be a year 1 restart I think!
No it was poorly worded “zomg there’s so much new stuff”.
I left out:
Starting plot starts tilled (a ant research upgrade, perhaps?). But this is such a great QoL thing.
There’s a new camp. It’s a tree you enter. There’s two buff items you choose from, but they are sort of transitory in nature (e.g. once you take damage they stop, dunno if they all work like that).
Cat plushies! You find them in fields. They offer a buff per type of cat in the home area. These are tiny (although they scale). But cats!
Also, the starting gun upgrades really are awesome.
I think a year 1 up replay would be fun. I wonder if it’s possible to reset persistent upgrade progress but keep unlocked achievements/cats/etc.
I picked this up out of curiosity and I have to say, I have very little idea what I’m doing. It’s a (very) little disorienting to be shown the (amusing) opening video featuring one character then be dropped into the game as clearly a different one, and the dead guy from the intro is there to give you the most barebones tutorial imaginable? I’m only one season into it but there seems to be, like, almost no available time to go looking for stuff in the wasteland, it’s all I can do to grow a couple of meager crops, I think, and I’m just tossing whatever happens to be around in there. What the hell are the little pink and green blobs I keep collecting? Is this one of those games where figuring things out is supposed to be part of the game?
You have to balance your days between planting and exploring. You can keep planting at night too.
Also, the pink fleshy looking blobs (as opposed to the smaller dots, which are seeds) are fertilizer. They make crops grow faster . If you plant 4 like crops in a 2x2 pattern you can use fertilizer to merge them into a “super plant”, which is worth more points.
Those are what I was talking about I guess, because they are definitely not seeds (which I think are smaller?).
Fertilizer. That makes sense. Sometimes enemies drop it when dying, sometimes I get it from cutting down plants. I have just been planting willy damn nilly while fighting, mostly, and have not even probably had four of the same seed at once.
A to fertilize (on an xbox controlleR), but it generally takes 12+ to do the crop merge thing.
There are many relics that boost fertilization intake.
Once you get some persistent upgrades it becomes easier to get started. E.g. starting with a tilled 3x3 plot, getting some seeds off the bat, and time capsule gives more seeds + some relics from previous run. But that will take awhile to get to.
Exploration is key, since it contains all the keys to unlock economic power. More seeds, yes, but more chance to expand the farm/friends to help you manage it/defenses and power boosts (which in turn make exploring/farming easier).
This is totally natural and that’s exactly how I felt too! I think the first thing to understand about Atomicrops is that it’s a game about learning stuff as you play. Unlike, say, The Binding of Isaac where there’s ‘hidden knowledge’ or tricks that you’re only going to learn via word of mouth or guides (which I don’t like), Atomicrops doesn’t really have much of that. You can discover it all yourself. I think the only major thing that isn’t so easy to work out are the 2x2 ‘megacrops’ that @peacedog mentions above.
The other thing to understand is that, while it is a farming game, it’s not a chill game. Yes, it’s bullet hell, but the breakneck day/night cycle make this a high pressure resource management game too, where you’re juggling lots of different things, not just to survive, but to maximise your yield for market. That sounds intimidating but once I started to get into the rhythm of things, the gameplay loop opened up with each new discovery. Some synergies are nuts and a ton of fun to unleash. It is tough but I found it very refreshing for an action roguelike and very rewarding too once I got what it was going for. The presentation–the visuals, music, sound design and amusing puns–make Atomicrops seem downright cuddly and cute but do not be deceived; it’s not messing about!
To piggyback on this, I think this game is extraordinary when it comes to building you up in terms of having you refine skill through playing it and then climbing difficulties.
The persistent upgrades matter but at the end of the day if you make it to year 10 and beat it (something I was convinced I would never do for a long time), it will be because you mastered the game.
Thre’s a ton of RNG in terms of what upgrades show up, but you will find yourself pausing to consider choices at animal camps, with whether to swap tractors, with which upgrade to take at camps chat give you a choice. S ometimes there’s “I hope I get something like X, Y, or Z to piggy back off of choosing A”, but often there’s “well, I am weakest here and A will help that, but I am strong here and B might ac tually help that more and that could in turn yield to strategy tweaks as I go”.
unlike Isaac et al, there aren’t a zillion relic upgrades. There are enough that it’ll take you some playing time to get comfortable with them, but you’ll mostly be able to keep what does what sorted in your headspace for the game. I came back after 11 months and 80% of the ones that had been implemented when I left I instantly remembered (some are just so iconic).
Forgot to mention in changes earlier, and part of me wonders if this is too powerful, but the yellow mushrooms that give a tractor charge now just stack extra charges regardless of what other upgrades you have. They’re temporary, so you can only hold one unless you get the whatsit upgrade (also there is a new tractor that energizes friends that gets 2 charges. It also makes you invincible for 2 seconds but it’s the energizing that is the big draw and I think it’s great). But you can stack these indefinitely and use them when you want. I love it. They stack per tractor, so if you’re running 2 you can swap to what you want.
Thanks, guys, I’m gonna farm the hell out of this shit.
Regarding tractors, that’s another thing the game didn’t tell me about until I got a pop-up or something that was like TRACTOR READY and I was like UH, OK, I GUESS I’LL PRESS R? And then this big thing dropped out of the sky and just like sat there.
Hahahah yeah. Some stuff is explained in game - it has better than average tooltip descriptions for relics e.g.
But some stuff, nope.
There is one dedicated combat tractor but the rest are for use on the farm for the most part (with one you haven’t unlocked having combat use and basically amazing versatility, and the energizer tractor which has minor combat utility imo).
Yeah, it’s definitely worth pausing once in a while and having a look at your gear to see what everything does. That’s where a lot of the ‘aha!’ moments are. Back when I played (when it launched on Epic) you couldn’t reconfigure the controls so tractors, I think, were on R3/right thumbstick click which meant that I was always triggering them in the heat of combat. That screwed me up so much. I think it was only when Atomicrops hit Steam that it got button remapping so I was able to shift tractor on to something else.
Another thing from when I first started playing: there were only a few duff items. Nearly everything had its place. I dare say with all the big updates since launch those duff items have been rebalanced or removed/changed entirely now.
You guys are making me want to fire this up again now for all the new content and to knock off some of those cheevos…
I have seen this described as Stardew + Enter the Gungeon, and yes but also no. It’s “Stardew” but by way of, like, Ed, Edd and Eddy. This game is the nightmares the main character in Stardew has on sweaty summer nights.
I made it to my first Nuclear Winter and got totally stomped. I looked it up, and ah, ok, I get it now. Was wondering why I was doing no damage. Unlocked a new character, but Rye doesn’t seem as good as Lavender.
A question: should I be spending my days away from the farm pretty exclusively and doing planting only at night? Sometimes I have so many seeds I’ll go a couple days without going away from the farm at all.
The 50% chance for the gun not to break can make for some serious snowballing. Turrets are good, although their effectiveness of course depends on how many you get and what turret upgrades you get.
It’s super rare that I don’t go exploring during the day. Sometimes I cut trips short to get back to the farm. Sometimes I plant some in morning, sometimes not. I always plant at afternoon (when I do cut trips short, although this is kind of rare)/dusk/night where possible.
The things is, all your power comes from the camps out in the various fields. Whether it’s more rose seeds, heart seeds, general seeds, fertilizer, tractors, upgrades, or friends, that stuff is all out in camps being guarded. Friends, tractors, and upgrades will dramatically snowball your runs. With enough friends and a few upgrades you’ll barely do anything other than plant (and maybe fertilize/do some weed wacking). Each field has two camps where animals (or scarecrows/turrets, it’s all done randomly) is guarded. Each one has two pidgeon houses (scrolls). I believe they all have two “chose one of 2 upgrades”. Each one has 2 Flamingos )where you get rose seeds). And then there are the assortment of additional “picks/seeds” spots, the sacrifice shrines, the other random assortment of camps And the Far fields have some interesting surprises waiting for you, to boot.
Even with a low supply of friends, there are so many upgrades that can speed up/improve your farming. Having to plant at night can be hectic, but you’d be surprised at the different ways it becomes not merely doable but easy (and productive). Likewise, you’ll be shocked what the occasional morning plant before you run off to explore can do, once you get upgrades.
The snowball potential is through the roof. But you’ve got to find the stuff to do it, and you can only do that exploring.
