If the Engineering sector is the domain of Helford and his enforcers, Research is the playground of Lilith the self-styled Reaper Queen, along with her deranged "sisters". These labs were once used for groundbreaking terraforming research, but now their halls are filled only with the cries of unfortunate scientists, and the guards who failed in their duty.
Sorry for the radio silence. A combination of busy life events and an inconvenient flu slowed the pace of this update somewhat. But now I can finally unveil the initial version of the next act! The Research sector will provide a more "refined" playground should you defeat Helford and his grunts. It comes with a new boss in the form of Lilith, and much like how Helford is the leader of the Enforcers, Lilith leads the Reapers and fights as such. This tile-set serves as the Reaper's new home, so expect a lot of aggression and play accordingly.

What follows next will most likely be some additional polish and bug fixes. But after that I have a couple ideas for brand new mechanics that should spice up the gameplay a bit.

• New tile-set (Research): A sector previously dedicated to breakthroughs in agriculture and environmental terraforming. The capable scientists that once walked these halls have become little more than playthings of Lilith and her bloodthirsty "sisters". Elevated walk-ways and high-speed elevators will serve as your arenas as you face stronger as more aggressive foes.
• New Boss (Lilith): Make it through ACT 2, and you'll face the Reaper Queen herself. Like her "sisters" Lilith likes to get up close and personal. Unlike them, her blade-mounted revolvers and deadly blade dance make her a deadly threat at any range. Can you keep up?
• All three weapons have had adjustments to better fit the increasing enemy counts and higher presence of reapers. In general, most attacks have been sped up slightly so the game should feel a bit faster as a result.
• Blade weapon arts have been adjusted. Piercer is now the first weapon art rather than the second, and Counter Slash has been removed. It's second weapon art is a new attack called Razor Wind. Razor Wind allows you to send forth a ranged slash to strike at distant foes.
• Weapon switching now has visual and audio feedback.
• A very short grace period has been added to the player's damage animations. You'll now have a very small window where you can jump or dash out of a knockback animation without the risk of taking damage again. Previously, getting unlucky with enemy attack timings could result in taking multiple instances of damage with no opportunity to escape.
• Enemies of different tiers have now had their colours adjusted to match the environments where they are most common.
• Battle rooms now have an upper limit on how many "hard" enemies that can spawn in a single battle.
• There is now a short delay between the reinforcement warning and the spawning of additional enemies.
• Map icons have been adjusted, and there is now a selection marker to better communicate which room is selected.
• Adjusted the timing of when weapon art cooldowns are triggered. This should prevent instances where trying to repeat a weapon art at the tail end of it's own animation could trigger its cooldown without repeating the attack.
• Added damage scaling to bosses. Attacks lose a small amount of their damage based on how much damage a helpless boss has taken in one combo. This should prevent certain combos from dealing far more damage than the player's current stats otherwise allow, while not being overly punishing otherwise.
• You can no longer take damage after the end of battle loot screen has appeared. This happened most often when defeating the last enemy over a bottomless pit, which would result in the player falling into the pit due to loss of input. Such cases will no longer result in unavoidable damage.
• Falling into a bottomless pit now triggers a quick fade to black.
• Fixed instances of pausing during a combat causing all enemies to disappear.