Okay, I remember there was some interest in this game here, so I thought I'd give some info on this if anyone was interested. Right now this update is playable in the beta branch of the game. The content is finished: They're just in bug-search mode right now until the update fully releases.
Anyway, I'm copying this directly from what I posted on Steam earlier:
Firstly: THE SHIELDS DONT SUCK ANYMORE. I'm moderately baffled at this. They were terrible before, I had found them unusable. Now they are anywhere from good to awesome. You can hold them in front of you to just help you tank incoming damage, but you can also parry if you do it at the right instant. The key to THAT is that the timing of the shields has also changed. There was this really bizarre delay with them before, where you had to hit the button a bit BEFORE the attack would hit you in order for it to do anything. Now, it's more like dodge timing: Just hit it right when the attack would connect. The timing isnt ultra strict. Most shields have some sort of effect when they parry. Often they can also cause stun. If you parry a projectile, it fires a green energy bolt forwards, no matter what angle the shot came from. If you arent good at the parrying, just hold the thing and tank hits when you see the need. Like dodging though you're best off trying to do it properly. There is one shield that is specifically incapable of parrying. Oh, and you can reflect grenade-type projectiles too, in a similar way to how the shovel does it. The shovel however is still more effective at that.
Second: Remember how you could unlock upgrades for all of the game's weapons and items? Gone. Entirely gone. That mechanic is completely removed. This is likely to bother some players quite a bit, but I personally think it was absolutely the right move. The two upgrades you DO unlock still are the ones for increasing the flask, and increasing how much gold carries over from each run to the next. Other than that, the whole system is about unlocking rather than upgrading.
Third: Massive rebalance of damn near everything. At no point in my runs tonight did I go into a situation and feel like an overpowered mess. Many fights were a good bit harder, whereas previously I'd just go in like some sort of demented lawnmower and flatten everything.
Fourth: Part of that though is due to the totally new stats system. Strength/skill/HP, that system is gone. Now it's Brutality, Tactics, and Survival. Color coded red, purple, and green respectively. They each have numerous effects when upgraded (previously they all did exactly one super simple thing and that was it), and you'll get a description of exactly what they do when it's time to upgrade. The key though is that your weapons/skills are also color coded. A skill that's red will take power from Brutality, for instance. Plenty of items have dual colors, though this isnt always a 50/50 sort of thing. Sometimes something might be 75% of one color, for instance. Along with the fact that shields arent bloody terrible, this all means that your build is probably going to get ALOT more diversified. One thing the devs have been going for from the very start is to get players to constantly switch up their items over the course of each run, and I think this is going to add alot more to that. What's more though, the nature of the scrolls themselves is different. Most scrolls are dual types, allowing you to pick from two of the three stats. You have alot more choice here. There seem to also be alot more scrolls, period. I dont think I saw even one scroll that didn't involve you getting to make a choice.
Fifth: New runes to find! I've encountered two types of areas I cannot get to. One involves what we've all seen, the wall jump. Another involves a floor that when you see it, is really obvious that you're somehow supposed to do some sort of super stomp and break it. Now these seem alot more interesting than the previous two runes, which are just glorified keys. But how much they'll actually play into the gameplay as a whole, I dont know. I dont have them yet.
Sixth: New areas! I got to the Clocktower. Got murdered by horrible stabby things. I actually got there from the Fjord, which now has two exits.
Seventh: New items and unlocks! Some interesting things here. Including a couple of shop-related unlocks, both of which take about a million Cells to do. There is also unlock for a bizarre sort of special grenade. I dont know exactly how it works, but it's supposed to assist you in getting rare blueprints (previously a giant pain in the butt to find).
8th: More secret areas. Typically these seem to have money in them. I've found that the map actually kinda gives them away... they might wanna fix that.
9th: There is another boss somewhere.
Really, this is a BIG update. Huge. Seems like a really good one.
On a side note, elite mini-zombies can go jump off a cliff. Elite monsters are nasty to begin with but as far as I'm concerned, that one is the worst. ...Unless there's an elite version of that horrible stabby dude in the Clocktower. That is probably worse.
