Patch Notes (Frostbyte Update)

FROSTBYTE IS HERE!

The first major content update for Lynked: Banner of the Spark during Early Access has arrived! Check out the patch notes below for all the frosty details:

WHAT'S NEW

• Dynamic Weather System: Every four real-time hours, there's a chance of snow or rain in town.
  
  • New Collectible Critters: Snowy and rainy days bring out special Gillibots and Bitibots to find! Collect them all to receive blueprints of the new holiday-themed weapons.
    
  
  
• Frosteau Arrives in Town: Meet a mysterious Unibot searching for his missing Cryo Crystals. Help him through limited-time event missions to unlock exclusive rewards.
  
  • Event-exclusive Rewards: Collect Cryo Crystals in town or during event missions to trade at Frosteau's Shop for unique weapons, decor, and cosmetics.
    
  
  
• Rare Event Tokens: Dig through snow or leaf piles in town for Red Envelopes that can be exchanged at Frosteau's Shop for a large sum of Cryo Crystals!
  
  
• New Weapon Core: Imbue your weapons with icy attacks to freeze and shatter Combots with the new Freeze Core.
  
  
• New Holiday-themed Weapons: Destroy Combots with new festive weapons, including the Snowing Star (Ringblade,) The Sledder (Battleboard,) Double Dragonhead (Breacher,) and Candy Payne (Basher.) Even more will be added to the lineup in future updates.
  
  
• Snowball Fight: Unibot Residents can now request Favors involving snowball fights. Hit them, and they’ll retaliate—you might even spark a town-wide clash!
  
  
• The Snowball Effect: Intercept runaway Bitibots or catch Gillibots midair by tossing a snowball to momentarily freeze them in place!
  
  
• Multiplayer Ping System: Highlight items like Armor, Health, chests, and weapons during combat to guide your teammates.
  
  
• Updated BuddyOS: Explore the new Armory tab, which showcases Weapons and Weapon Mods. View stats and details of your collected gear in one place.
  
  
• Weapons & Mods Filtering: Prevent specific gear from showing up as loot during mission runs directly from the Armory.
  
  
• Expanded Combat Areas: Day/night variants and new remixes for mission maps essentially double the playable areas within existing biomes.
  
  
• Updated Character Customization Screen: Players can now click on the new “Selfie Mode” option to hide the UI for a better view of the character and outfit.
  
  
• New Character Customization Options: Personalize your character further with eight new eyebrow styles.
  
  
• Enhanced Town Management in Multiplayer: Hosts can now customize town permissions, including max player count and who can build or harvest resources. Choose from three permission levels for players who join your town:
  
  • Friends: Full access to Build Mode and resource harvesting.
    
  • Guests: Full access to Build Mode but no resource harvesting.
    
  • Tourists: No access to Build Mode or resource harvesting.
    
  
  
• Steam Deck Improvements: This update brings significant enhancements to improve Lynked's compatibility with the Steam Deck, including controller and touchscreen support, reworked default settings, and optimization improvements. While this is an ongoing effort during Early Access, we encourage players to share feedback or contact player support if any major issues arise.
  
  
• Changes to Chapters 1 & 2: We've optimized the flow of the introductory chapters in Lynked. If you encounter any issues with the early missions in the game, please don't hesitate to leave feedback or to contact our player support.
  

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GAMEPLAY CHANGES

• Spark Powers: Charges now carry over between rooms (no auto-refill) and recharging stops when rooms are cleared.
  
  
• Weapon Specials: Begin fully charged at the start of new combat rooms.
  
  
• Spear Special (Flurry Strike): Rebalanced damage and reduced the number of hits.
  
  
• Battleboard Special (Ten Eighty): Damage has been increased.
  
  
• Electricity (Status Effect): Reduced the duration of the shocked status effect on players.
  
  
• Chest Drops: Chests are now more likely to provide weapons matching the class of the one currently equipped.
  
  
• Player Armor: Max Armor reduced to three pips, with new "Starting Armor" upgrades in the Sparkhold allowing Max Armor to increase to five pips.
  
  
• Town Tools: Drastically improved responsiveness and speed.
  
  
• Town Economy: Slightly adjusted for better balance.
  
  
• Weapon Mods: Fixed exploits and retuned.
  

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BUG FIXES

• Improved Framerate (AMD): Players using AMD GPUs should notice better performance.
  
  
• Combo Counter Fix: The combo counter now correctly registers enemies that self-destruct.
  
  
• Cosmetic Items: Fixed the visuals and icons of certain items for improved consistency.
  
  
• Spark Power Descriptions: Corrected description text for certain Spark Powers.
  
  
• Spark Hunter (Weapon Mod) Fix: Now properly increases the number of Soulsparks dropped by enemies. Happy hunting!
  
  
• Decor Categories: Certain decor items are now sorted into the correct categories.
  
  
• Stash Error Message: Fixed the error message that appears when attempting to stash un-stashable items.
  
  
• 3D Icon Replacement: Some Unibots and Residents now use the correct 2D art for their icons.
  
  
• Combat Mission Fixes:
  
  • Resolved issues with enemies spawning in inaccessible areas.
    
  • Fixed a bug where enemies knocked out of bounds wouldn't get KOed.
    
  
  
• Town Fixes: Addressed areas where Residents could be thrown into but wouldn’t respawn.
  
  
• UI Improvements: Various UI issues have been fixed.
  

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HOTFIXES (01/27)

• Steam Deck: Fixed an issue in which the graphics settings were not updating when changed by the user.
• Rebalanced the difficulty of one of the new event (Frosteau) missions.
• Fixed an issue in which the "Starting Armor" upgrade would not grant 3 starting Armor.

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