Vermin Evolution

UPDATE: Vermin Evolution!

Since their inception, the Vermin have slowly been gathering their strength and improving their abilities!

Last update, we added Vermin, an annoying pest that can spawn inside your Hermit rings and eat them. Now, they’ve gained some new abilities, and have loads of new loot to offer! We’ve also brought some much-needed reworks to the Hermit streak, new enchantments, mulch bucket prestiges, and… a demon?

In short:

New Vermin Mutations!
10 New rare drops from vermin (14 in total!)
2 New unlockable enchants!
4 New Mastery Perks!
Mulch bucket prestiges!
Hermit Block cosmetics!
Head-start bonus!

Vermin Mutations

Spawning a Vermin as a hermit now gives them a chance to come with a Mutation.
Mutated vermin have unique effects: for instance, the Ender Vermin teleports to a nearby location when hit, and has 4 HP.
Each Mutation type comes with some new rare loot items. For example, the Overgrown Vermin drops a rare weapon that can be used to speed up your grind.
In total, there are now 5 Vermin Mutations in the game.
Alongside unique loot, these Mutated Vermin drop more mulch. Overall, mulch-rates should be much higher after this update.

Demonic Vermin

While all vermin have grown in strength, one has developed significantly more than others. Through a new Hermit Mastery perk, vermin gain a chance to mutate into a Demonic Vermin. This has powerful attacks and takes numerous hits to kill, but it can drop some very powerful items. These things are very, very hard to kill. You’ll definitely die a few times while learning it’s attack patterns.

New enchants

Some of the loot of these vermin includes two new unlockable enchants! The only way to obtain these is through vermin drops, and they cannot be randomly enchanted. Once you’ve unlocked them, though, you can apply them to any of your items whenever you want.

Vermin Hunter I-III: Gain 5/10/15% Double Vermin Chance, and 10/15/20% chance to gain +1 mulch from vermin. Applied to pants.
Drops from the Overgrown Vermin.
Sticky Bomb I-III: Every 10/9/8 melee hits loads a Sticky Bomb into your bow. On landing, explodes after 1.5s, dealing 4/4.5/5 hearts + 300/325/350% damage in a 3-block radius. Applied to bows.
Drops from the Demonic Vermin.
If you manage to directly hit a player with it, it sticks to them.

Hermit Mastery

Hermit’s old mastery perks were outdated and boring. With this update, we’ve given it some new perks to tie into the Vermin system and speed up your Hermit journey.

Reworked: Mountain Miner -> Benevolent Bonus. The ability of Mountain Miner is now the default behaviour.
Benevolent Bonus: Shared kills are now 40% more common. Max of 5 tiers. (+40% per tier!)
I wanted to make hermit more beneficial in lobbies with a lot of streakers. This will make the kill sharing system more useful.
Getting a “shared kill” is possible when someone that you’re buffing with your ring gets a kill in mid. With this upgrade, this has a 12% chance to occur when a ring is fully built.
“Shared kills” use your own resource bonuses, with a flat 6x multiplier. With a lot of streakers in mid, this has the potential to be very powerful.
Additionally, all shared kills grant you +1 Hermit Block!
Infestation: Gain +1% Double Vermin Chance. Max of 10 tiers. (+1% per tier!)
Tank: While on hermit, bots have a 20% chance to deal no knockback on hit. Max of 5 tiers. (+20% per tier!)
Some people found getting knocked around by bots to be super annoying when trying to ring. This should help alleviate that.
Vermin Mutation: Vermin have a 2% chance to be Demonic. These vermin are deadly, but can drop some extremely powerful rewards. Max of 5 tiers. (+2% per tier!)

To make it easier to get started with these new perks, all players above prestige 3 will be given 10 Mastery Points for free upon logging in for the first 48 hours of the update.

Mulch Bucket Prestige

The mulch bucket can now be prestiged! With so many new sources of mulch, we’ve added the ability to prestige your Mulch Bucket with a new item, increasing its level cap by 1, up to 5 times. GL!

Reaching the new max awards an exclusive cosmetic!
The mulch bucket can now also be upgraded in some other ways…
How? Who knows!

New Cosmetic: Hermit Blocks

The look of your hermit rings can now be customised!

For now, there are 6 available skins. 1 is unlocked by default, and 3 can be unlocked from the Cosmetic Box.
The default hermit block is no longer bedrock, being replaced by Light Blue Glass. Blocks are, however, still unbreakable.
This is to make mid look significantly less ugly by default; for the uninitiated, it may have looked quite offputting.
Depending on how much people like it, we may bring back Bedrock as a skin.
Some hermit block cosmetics apply a special pattern to the rings you build.
Two of these effects cannot be earned from the cosmetic box, and are instead unlocked as a rare drop from the Demonic Vermin, and by fully prestiging your Mulch Bucket.
They’re a great way to show off how dedicated you are!

QOL and bug-fixes

Some general changes have been made to make the hermit experience a bit less stressful!

While on hermit, a glowstone overlay appears for you, showing where to place ring blocks. This is client-side.
Vermin blocks now no longer teleport to each other randomly if two are alive at once.
“Hermit blocks” now have a proper name and description.
A small section of the ring has been “opened” to make it easier for newer players to leave. Maximum ring rewards have no changed, and vermin spawn rates have been buffed accordingly.
Your rates will NOT change as a result of this! You’ll gain the same rewards!
Added a title that appears when a vermin spawns in your ring.
Hermit blocks can no longer be misplaced outside of the ring.
If a hermit block is somehow bugged and not giving buffs/despawning, it will now be cleared from the ring after a delay

Head-start bonus

To help with getting started, everyone above prestige 3 will recieve 10 free mastery points, if they log on within 48 hours of the update!

Thanks for playing! We’ll see you in the next update, it’s going to be a big one…

Update!

Patch notes from this stretch

Smaller updates and balance changes that followed, pulled from the announcements channel:

October 20, 2024

Post update changes:

Demonic Vermin despawn timer: 35s -> 40s
Ender Vermin despawn timer: 10s -> 15s
Demonic Vermin no longer randomly enters warp speed
Demonic Vermin no longer leap attacks every few seconds: Instead, it leaps at 9 hearts, and again at 4 hearts.
You can no longer enchant items that have enchants that you haven’t unlocked. This was a bug.
Enchants that have specific obtainment requirements can no longer be upgraded randomly in the Mystic Well.
People were getting the new enchants faster than intended. A lot of people have them now!
As a result of this, we’re making it impossible to unlock the enchants from these exploits, but the item drops from the vermin will be MUCH more common for those who haven’t already unlocked them! This should make it fair on everyone. Hopefully similar things won’t happen for future enchants!
Demon Knowledge drops at a 30% rate, Vermin Hunter drops at a 20% rate. They can no longer be dropped if already maxed.
Vermin will continue to jump off the map. Better catch them quick!
A Challenger Approaches mastery perk no longer overwrites existing speed effects.
Fixed rune containers

*These changes will be available when the servers next restart.

October 28, 2024

You’ll be able to throw out untradeable items that you don’t want after the servers next restart.

October 31, 2024

After the servers next restart:

Added /guild search, allowing you to find active guilds with players like you - you can also search for specific keywords. You can then join or apply to join them based on their settings. All guilds are set to Request to Join by default - guild leaders can go through the toggles with /g settings visibility. Use /g requests as guild officer or above to manage requests.
/guild now only displays relevant commands. Specifically, if you’re not in a guild, it’ll show guild searching and creation commands only.
Dead Withers in Team Destroy now slowly recover passively
Added a new mastery upgrade to buff time streaking. More changes will come to the streak in the future.
Increased the max level of Race Against Time to 7.
Increased the max level of Time Dilation to 10.

November 5, 2024

The Reward Chest is now accessed through a physical chest next to Fluffy. In addition to making it more obvious, this will allow new players below Level 120 to use it.
Expanded the Perk menu in the Contractor - you can now view levels of perks above and below what you currently have.
Progress bars for Megacoin Upgrades now indicate how close you are to the maximum level for your current Prestige

November 9, 2024

fixed gilded cosmetic unlocking (probably)
mulch buckets that have mulch inside are now untradeable
made the extra mulch from vermin hunter enchant actually work
nerfed the +1 mulch from candle: it now applies AFTER multipliers
buffed void box droprates: 7% -> 9%
book of demonic knowledge and book of vermin knowledge are now untradeable
mulch-scented candle now consumes 6 mulch per use.
demonic vermin now use their leap attack periodically again. They also leap at half health.
buffed drop rates of the demonic vermin.
buffed “A Challenger Approaches” to speed II.
when getting a rare drop from vermin, the droprate is now listed in chat.
Sticky bomb now ignores held enchants and other damage modifiers of the attacker
Added a new ring cosmetic, obtainable from the Void Box. It is very rare.
You can now un-glint armor at the Angus npc