What goes up must come down, and after the meteoric success of Peak since its launch last summer, the final major content update for the game is now here. It’s a good one, though, as Peak – The Final Ascent adds multiple new biomes, secrets, updated mechanics, new items and more.
The most eye catching additions are the two new biomes of Gloom and The Citadel, which will cycle in and out as pairing with Caldera and The Kiln. For the next two weeks, Gloom and The Citadel will be exclusively featured, but after that, just as with other biome updates, it will be randomised.
The team behind Peak – developers drawn from Aggro Crab and Landfall – have previously spoken about how this would be the final content update for the game (though there will still be fixes and tweaks) and they’ve reiterated what that means and why:
“PEAK isn’t a live-service-game. We intended to release a game that was “finished” on launch, and any major content updates would be the cherry on top. Due to the game’s overwhelming success, we’ve already spent quite a bit more time on it than we originally expected, and added so much more to it! We don’t wish for it to become a “forever game” where we constantly add new things that bloat the experience, just to try to keep people’s attention.
“A small team develops PEAK, made up of developers from two studios, Aggro Crab and Landfall. As much as we all love the game, we want to return to working on our own separate projects.
“But PEAK isn’t going anywhere!!! You’ll always be able to keep playing it, and we will continue to provide bug fixes and maintenance until we are satisfied with the game’s stability.”
However, there are still exciting developments for the game in future. Peak is being ported to other platforms, and it will be a cross-platform game when that happens. For that reason, though, the studio will not add Steam Workshop support, so that modding could be a possibility. Maybe.
Anyway, here’s the patch notes:
NEW BIOME:
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Added GLOOM and THE CITADEL, randomly replacing CALDERA and THE KILN on some maps.
But wait, there’s more
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Mysterious statues have begun appearing all over the island… no one is quite sure, but they seem to have a connection to the Scoutmaster’s original lost troop… and that’s all I’m gonna tell you! Have fun!
Additional Features
- THE FINAL ASCENT
Ascent 8 has been added. The description is a bit of a spoiler so we’re gonna let you guys discover it on your own. Ascent 7 has been changed.
We felt that preventing players from reviving, while it did make it a challenge, made this Ascent less fun and was not in the spirit of the game (and its meaningless in a solo run!).
Instead of “You cannot revive the dead” it’s now “Start cursed and take more curse from revival” to properly punish repeated deaths without locking players out of the rest of the run entirely.New Badges
There are 10 new Badges to unlock and new cosmetics to go with them! For you completionists, don’t worry, this is the last time we’ll be messing up your 100%.New Luggage Type: Clown Luggage!
Open one to get a bunch of wacky items!- The Lollipop, Cannon, and Balloon Bunch will now spawn in Clown Luggage instead of Climber Luggage.
- Loading an existing auto-save will no longer delete the save – they will now only delete when the run ends, regardless of winning or losing. Rejoice, save scummers!
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New Items:
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- Jetpack: Equip this in place of a backpack and fuel it with assorted items to reach new heights!
- Warp Fungus: A strange new form of fungus growing on the mountain. Try throwing it to see what happens!
- Glider: Extremely effective at crossing horizontal distances. Just don’t run out of stamina!
- And more we won’t tell you about…
- The game is now localized in Traditional Chinese!
Major Fixes
- The annoying bug that causes random fall damage when grabbing the wall with no stamina has been fixed. Read more about the changes to sliding fall damage under Balance Changes!
- Heavily reduced the frequency that arms would twist unnaturally when holding an item in your hands.
- Fixed an issue where items from a previous run in the same session could sometimes spawn randomly for players who joined the game later.
- Fixed an issue where being prompted to grab pitons would sometimes not work, especially when directly on top of the piton.
Minor Fixes
- Fixed an issue where throwing an egg at a surface would only stick it to that surface for the host.
- Fixed an issue where some badges would clip into the sash and not be visible.
- Fixed an issue where, using controller, Player 1 becomes unresponsive after selecting an item in a backpack while a Player 2 is equipping it.
- Fixed issues where players would receive poison damage after using a non-food cooked item.
- Fixed issues related to incinerated Scout Cookies giving poison damage incorrectly.
- The Anti-Rope Spool no longer makes sound while it’s in the backpack.
- Fixed issues with the blindness affliction duration.
- Carried scouts will now be affected by the Remedy Fungus healing AoE.
- Dozens of other bits of polish that aren’t worth mentioning!
Balance Changes
Several changes made to ROOTS, with the goal of making it less of an outlier in terms of difficulty compared to TROPICS:
- Made several changes to beetle behavior to make them slightly less aggressive and prevent them from conspiring to trap a scout in place.
- Decreased radius of spore mushrooms in ROOTS significantly.
- Decreased spore affliction of spore mushrooms slightly, but also decreased the falloff at distance (meaning you’ll get more spores on the edge of the radius than you used to)
- Wind will now disable these for an extra 2 seconds after the wind ends.
- Increased the average time between windstorms a fair amount.
Other Balance:
- Campfires now give Morale Boosts to solo players.
- The MESA has been lowered in height to match the ALPINE better.
- Ancient Luggage spawns slightly more commonly in all biomes.
- Made Fortified Milk slightly rarer, but increased the amount of hunger it cures to make it more useful as a food item. The invincibility effect remains unchanged.
- Made Scout Cannon slightly less common.
- Made Scoutmaster’s Bugle slightly more common, though still rarer than most other Mystical items.
- Drowsy decays slightly faster in all situations.
- The Portable Stove no longer spawns in the fourth Biome.
- Made Checkpoint Flag a bit rarer & removed it from Climber Luggage.
- Cursed Skull bonus stamina gain increased to 100%.
- Energy Drink
Previously removed all your Drowsy and then gave you back all the Drowsy + a flat 25% when it wore off.
Now removes a flat 50% Drowsy and gives a flat 25% Drowsy when it wears off. You cannot gain Drowsy when the effect is active.
