Update 15 - The DemonsJudgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation - Suncrash
Survivors,
Three months ago, we decided to postpone our release date to give the final material more polish. The result of that decision was our previous update, “The Neighbors”, that introduced the neighboring settlements mechanic and many other improvements and features.
In Update 14 we focused on polish and ease of life while rebalancing the skill tree and other problem areas, and adding some new content and mechanics.
In this update, we continue the polish and problem-solving trend, while still adding some new content and mechanics that we felt were missing. One of the problems we tried to tackle was repetitiveness in later stages of the game, and we did that by adding more unique items and making enemies different from one another in more than just some stats.

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A full list of changes can be found at the bottom of this post.
More Unique DemonsSurvival in the harsh world of Judgement is in no way easy, but we also didn’t want it to be predictable. We offered a wide range of equipment and abilities that can shake up combat and turn the tides of the battle, but so far it has been pretty much one-sided. In update 15 we change that.
Many higher tier enemies will now have new, powerful, passive abilities that may very well require you to change your standard strategy based on your enemy’s composition. A Succubus will create an aura that will bedazzle male survivors around it. Others will rend your armor, cause splash damage or more lasting damage than normal.
More enemy abilities will be added in subsequent updates.
Traders 2.0One of the biggest concerns we’ve heard from you, the community, in the past few months has been concerning traders. We heard that the mechanic is not serving its purpose and is pretty much useless.
We were in a bit of a conundrum. On one hand, we didn’t want traders to be overpowered and provide an easy way for players to gain high tier equipment, making research and crafting redundant. On the other hand, we did want them to be a viable way to boost your strength, and for the arrival of traders to be something that players look forward to.
So in this update, we’ve made some changes to improve traders. First, we increased the chance of a trader offering something that the player will be interested in. Traders will now offer more items, a few of which are guaranteed to be equipment. We also changed the item selection algorithm, instead of being completely random, we now try to prioritize at least a few items that you are likely to be interested in, in your current situation. This algorithm is moddable and can be tweaked. Second, we added some valuable items that can only be acquired through trade. Last, we increased the selling price of equipment to 25%, like raw materials, so it’s a bit easier to acquire enough scrap to buy valuable equipment.
So far in the beta branch, the feedback has been positive and we believe we got this right, although we may still tweak and improve it.
Usable ItemsAs explained above, traders will now offer a new range of usable items that are capable of benefiting the players in numerous ways. You will find journals that allow you to retrain your survivor’s skills, get an XP boost or learn an entirely new skill. Others may gain you research points, or help you rescue additional survivors to join your colony.
In the Inventory window, there is now a new “Use” tab that lets you use these items that you purchased.
Auras & Splash DamageTwo new combat mechanics have been added - Auras, and Splash Damage.
Auras are a passive ability that can boost or debuff surrounding units. The Succubus, for example, now debuffs male survivors around it, making them less efficient. Two new items that your survivors can wield have been added as well, providing various benefits to surrounding survivors.
Splash damage is a passive modifier that allows a unit’s basic attacks to deal a percent of its damage to other units surrounding its target. For example, the fire-spitting Caorthannach will deal 50% of it’s damage to other survivors. Shotguns will deal some of their damage to surrounding enemies as well.
We hope these new mechanics will increase the tactics involved in combat missions further beyond cover, flanking and active abilities.
Defense PlanningThis feature has been requested many times by the community – the ability to designate ‘rally points’ for your survivors, pre-selected positions they should take when the demons invade. A new ‘Defense Planning Mode’ option in the Colony Management window, will let you view each survivor’s designated position and assign new positions.
You will also get two warnings before any imminent invasion to your base – one will be in time to recall some of your task forces back to base, and another one right before the invasion, just in time to activate the defense plan and send your survivors to their defensive positions.
Temporary and Lasting DamageAnother feature strongly influenced by community feedback, Temporary Damage is a new mechanic that has a meaningful effect on the flow of the game. Most of the damage your survivors receive will now be temporary. This damage can be healed using medkits or other active combat abilities and is also automatically healed as soon as the fight is over.
A smaller percent of that damage will be longer term ‘Lasting Damage’, and can only be healed by resting at your base or by using medicine at the infirmary. Natural healing has also changed a little, survivors will no longer regain health while working, however, they will regain health much faster while sleeping.
This new mechanic allows you to engage in multiple fights in distant biomes before being forced back to camp, making exploration less tedious but also deeper strategically, as you now have to carefully consider your survivor’s health both inside and outside of combat.
You can read more about this in our Dev Diary post.
Difficulty CurveEvery update we deal with the arduous task of making Judgement both challenging yet rewarding. Whenever a new mechanic or new content are introduced, we have to make sure they don’t make the game too easy or too hard, and we always strive to improve our difficulty curve to be gradual and make sense.
There have been many changes under the hood in Update 15, many of them aimed toward the mid and late game, something that will become even more important as we get closer to the full release of the game that will be longer with more content.
We reworked the random enemy generator used for scavenging, defense, rescue and much more. It is now more flexible to control, and we used that flexibility to make the difficulty curve more gradual and scale better.
Visual UpdatesAs always, we also offer a wide range of visual updates and improvements. There have been improvements to many structures and doodads such as barrels and bodies, and you should see this mostly in new the slums biome maps. We’ve also improved the blackish fog that covers the world post-demon-invasion.
Another new feature will make all armor worn by survivors visible in the game view, although this can be disabled via the options menu if you prefer to see the customizable clothing of your survivors.
ModdingWe’ve updated the modding guide to match our latest changes and explained some of the previously unexplained mechanics around the enemy generator algorithm. We also included in the latest build pretty much all the configuration files that were previously not included, such as those configuring the random events and the possible portrait combinations for survivors you find. Most of these are not yet covered in the guide but feel free to check the original files and ask us questions (preferably through our Discord Server) if you don’t understand something.
Other company newsIn addition to our effort in improving Judgment we have some other company news as well. A new team member, Harel, has joined us and taken over many of the design, marketing, and community management aspects.
We also recently launched a new Discord Server which you are welcome to join. We are very easy to reach through there, and you’re welcome to chat with us, other survivors or leave feedback / bug reports. We have a Settlement Name Poll going on right now, where you can offer names for settlements that will be added in the full release.
Last, we have a new Suncrash Website. The old one was looking pretty bad, outdated, and was using tools that made it hard to update. The new website is much simpler and was built internally using only HTML, CSS and Javascript (with the bootstrap framework).
Previous saves and modsHappily, the changes in Update 15 allowed us to continue to support older saved games, from Update 14. You should be able to continue your previous saves without any issues, even most of the balancing changes should easily catch up once you update.
Many mods written for previous versions should be able to work with this new update as well, but some, especially those adding or modifying world map biomes or difficulty settings will need to be updated. Also, any mods adding enemies or items in tiers higher than those we have in the game will need to make some updates to support traders and the new enemy generation algorithm. See here for a list of backward-compatibility breaking changes.
Older versions of the game are available through the "Betas" tab of steam (right click the game in the library, choose properties, then the betas tab, and select the version you want from the drop-down).
Full Change List• Mechanics: Some of the damage taken in combat is now temporary damage, that is automatically regained after battle.
• Mechanics: Combat healing abilities can now only heal temporary damage and not lasting damage.
• Mechanics: Some items may now be used outside of combat for different bonuses.
• Mechanics: You can now perform "Defense Planning" that lets you pre-determine where each survivor needs to be when preparing for combat, and activate that combat plan when necessary.
• Mechanics: Added an aura mechanic, where some enemies and items provide bonus or penalty to units around them.
• Mechanics: Added splash damage mechanic, some enemies and weapons deal a fraction of their damage to other units around the main target.
• Mechanics: We've made some enemies more unique by doing more lasting damage than others, applying status effects on their targets, having auras that provide bonus to alies or penalties to enemies, or deal splash damage.
• Mechanics: You now get two warnings before combat, one that should give you some time to return some task forces to help with the defense, and the second one before the attack happens to give you some time to position your survivors for battle.
• Usability: Status effect (green and red arrow) icons no longer block clicks (like attack commands, selecting the creature under them, etc).
• Usability: You can no longer build on the map edges, because enemies spawn there and building there would cause them to spawn inside your base.
• Usability: You can now see which tier and how rare each item is. These affect its price, and strenght of weapons/armor, and when they appear in loot.
• Usability: When a survivor is attacked while idle (not attacking or moving, most commonly melee hiding behind cover), the survivor will automatically turn to face one of their attackers, so they don't get flanked unecessarily. They may still be flanked if attacked from several directions.
• Usability: Skills that allow survivors to equip rare weapon of a certain type are now labeled correctly. Previously it seemed that no weapons of that type could be equipped without the skill which caused confusion.
• Usability: The game now warns when changeing Anti-Aliasing settings that this may cause some recording software to become stuck.
• Usability: Can disable crafting stations, to prevent survivors from walking to remote areas for crafting (mostly useful for food table)
• Usability: Added an option that requires confirmation before performing a research, choosing a skill or using an item in the base. Enable from the options menu.
• Usability: Confirmation windows now appear on top of other windows instead of closing them.
• Usability: Now displaying "Can Equip" bonuses in separate lines in the skills window.
• Visuals: The armor that a survivors wear now determines their appearance in the game. Can be disabled if you prefer to see the clothing you selected.
• Visuals: Replaced the overall pants with another model, due to it being ugly and other technical issues.
• Visuals: Tweaked survivor body texture because they were too bright compared to the portrait colors.
• Visuals: Color tweaks to increase contrast.
• Visuals: Improved the fog.
• Visuals: Improved slums combat maps appearance dramatically.
• Visuals: Increased variety of barrels in combat map.
• Visuals: Increased variety of crossed bodies in combat map.
• Visuals: Tweaked dark angel a bit, making it darker.
• Balancing: New algorithm for choosing items that a trader offers, so that they offer more items that the player is likely to want at that given time.
• Balancing: Trader item tier now depends on player's own research tier, instead of game day.
• Balancing: Improved enemy generation algorithm to provide more control and allow us to create a more graduate difficulty curve.
• Balancing: Removed the "Enemy Difficulty" difficulty setting, that affected what types of enemies you would encounter. Use enemy progression and enemy stats difficulty settings instead.
• Balancing: Amount of loot (per stack) in scavenge now scales better with combat difficulty.
• Balancing: Reduced amount of resources requested by neighbors.
• Balancing: Shotguns now deal splash damage.
• Balancing: Lich now deals splash damage and applies a chill effect on its targets.
• Balancing: Succubus now has an aura that debuffs nearby male survivors.
• Balancing: Caorthannach now deals splash damage with its fire spitting attacks.
• Balancing: The Demon's attacks now apply a rend armor debuff that lowers survivors' armor.
• Balancing: Added some more low level loot options.
• Balancing: There are now always
• Balancing: Made imps and fire imps a bit stronger (increased their accuracy)
• Balancing: There are now more tier 1 scavenge opportunities in grasslands and less tier 0, when you get a bit further away from base.
• Balancing: Reduced the amount of equipment found while scavenging while increasing raw materials. There's still plenty to be found.
• Balancing: Made "rare" weapons and armor (those that required a skill to equip) a bit stronger to better reward having those special skills.
• Balancing: There are now guaranteed to be a few scavenge positions right next to the base with very easy fights (for that scavenge step in the campaign that is required to unlock the rescue mission).
• Balancing: Made some starting skills impossible for some professions (like Engineer and Brute, since most of the Engineer's benefits are around base work, while brute reduces work speed across the board).
• Balancing: Resources that require building mines to gather them will no longer spawn too close to the map edge (since you can no longer build there)
• Content: Added a few items that can be used outside of combat to give a survivor some skills that cannot be acquired otherwise. These items can only be bought from a trader.
• Content: Added a few items that can be used outside of combat to give survivor an XP boost, or reset their skills. These items can only be bought from a trader.
• Content: Traders now sell items that provide science or occult research points.
• Content: Added trader-only items that can spawn rescue missions.
• Content: Added more combat maps for Urban, Suburbs and Slum settings.
• Fixed bug: When an item had no sell price (like wood), you couldn't undo purchasing it because it was disabled in the sell window.
• Fixed bug: Limit survivor level to 6 (increasing above 6 was not doing anything anyway, only confusing)
• Fixed bug: When applying multiple effects on an enemy that would cause their walk or attack speed to be below 0% they would actually become faster. There is now a minimum movemenet speed of 0.1 and attack speed of 0.5
• Fixed bug: In some resolutions the game day would not be visible the load game screen
• Fixed bug: Sometimes when opening a help page it would be scrolled down unecessarily.
• Fixed bug: The research window scrolled down too much below all the research subjects.
• Fixed bug: Using combat abilities on patrolling enemies will now be considered as an attack and cause the enemies to become aggressive.
• Fixed bug: Defender profession now behaves like fighter in regards to preferred tasks.
• Fixed bug: There was no animation when using the training grounds.
• Fixed bug: A pathfinding glitch that could cause survivors to take a non-optimal path, which in turn caused the survivors to walk back and forth indefenitely in rare scenarios.
• Fixed bug: When priorities window is scrolled down and then survivors leave the base, then the window would open scrolled down unecessarily.
• Fixed bug: Healing in the infirmary would show incorrect numbers and use more medicine than was necessary in some cases.
• Fixed bug: Disabling environment effects would not work properly after switching from base to map and back.
• Fixed bug: Priest had 4 stalwart skills instead of 3, and only 2 dark weapons.
• Fixed bug: Survivors didn't heal while sleeping.
• Fixed bug: The same random seed would generate different results when used right after launching the game vs after playing and quitting back to main menu.
• Modding: Difficulty settings now have a separate configuration file, and some of their syntax has been changed.
• Modding: Can now configure the chance for the game to spawn male or female (or other types added in a mod). It's possible to create a female only or male only mod.
• Modding: Localized special survivor names so they can be localized as well
• Modding: Added remaining original config files to build, such as those responsible for random events and selecting default portraits for new survivors.