- May 26
- 4 min read
0.4.24 brings difficulty, balance and UI updates and improvements.
Patch Notes | | | 26 May 2026 |
GAMEPLAY CHANGES (Highlights; more details below)
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VISUAL AND AUDIO UPDATES
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BUG FIXES
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GAMEPLAY UPDATES
– Aleco, Lead Designer
This week’s gameplay changes are primarily focused on improving the balance and difficulty level of the game for both SSS/Endless players and RSP players alike. The design team has been hard at work on “Events 2.0”, a complete overhaul of RR’s existing event system, which still needs a bit more time before it is ready to be patched into the game. System Changes The total number of Heroes between the board and the reserves is now always 6. Notes:
Difficulty Spikes and RSP Difficulty Discussion Much of the discussion among and with our players over the past week has centralized around two topics, both related to the difficulty level of the game. Some of the discussion has been around frustrating difficulty spikes (particularly when playing on SSS difficulty), while another part of the discussion has been about the overall difficulty level of Rift-Sealing Protocol (RSP). Let’s start with the difficulty spikes, where we are completely aligned with our players that addressing as many of these frustrating outliers as we can is critical for the overall health of the game. In looking at both the feedback from players and at our current internal data, the signs are clearly pointing towards there being too many “run killer” moments, including the Frost Dragon SSS act boss modifier, the Rush/Stall Challenge fight modifiers in Act 1, as well as a few individual enemies and stages which are standing out compared their peers. We’re addressing as many of these difficulty spikes in this patch as we can, and have also introduced new data tracking methods in our analytics so that we can better identify and fix even more of these frustrating spikes going forward. Our ultimate goal is for the difficulty of a run to feel as smooth and fair as possible, and we will continue to address difficulty outliers (things that are both too hard and too easy when compared to similar content) in future patches. The discussion regarding the overall difficulty level of RSP had much more split opinions from our players. Some players feel the mode is far too hard and frustrating in its current state, while others feel it is just right (or even too easy!). Players clearly have different desires and expectations for RSP, so I think it is best to re-iterate our goals and plans for the mode in order to align expectations as best we can. We want RSP to provide players with the greatest achievable level of challenge possible in RR, with our goalpost for difficulty being Ascension 20 + Heart runs in Slay the Spire 1. The overall win rate for A20 + Heart sits around 10%, and at the moment the RSP win rate is actually slightly higher than that at 12%. We’re happy with the current win rate for RSP, but we also recognize the mode has a few rough edges and there are still many improvements we can make to it. We expect the win rate for RSP will climb as players get more experienced with the mode and as we continue to address difficulty spikes like the ones mentioned above, and that it’ll eventually be necessary to make some RSP-specific difficulty adjustments in the not-too-distant future. We are also starting to plan out some quality of life improvements for RSP in order to make it feel as fair and fun as possible. We deeply appreciate all of the feedback over the past week on both SSS and RSP, and look forward to reading even more of it soon! Difficulty and Enemy Changes Aria
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