Alternate Game Modes

There are currently 3 alternate game modes that can be played: Prismatic Trials, Eclipse and Simulacrum. Prismatic Trials can only be played solo, while Eclipse and Simulacrum can both be played in multiplayer.

Prismatic Trials
The Prismatic Trials is a special, solo-only game mode where players compete for the fastest time of completing 2 stages. However, to initiate the Teleporter Event, the player must destroy three of a handful of Time Crystals scattered across the map. These crystals explode when destroyed, dealing moderate damage to players and monsters alike. Unlike in standard gameplay, the Teleporter charges instantly once the Teleporter Boss has been defeated.

Prismatic Trials feature a set of two Environments on difficulty, starting cash, and random artifact selections. The only adjustments a player can make are the selected Survivor and their skill loadout.

All items and equipment are considered unlocked and can be encountered in a run, even if they have not been unlocked during a normal run. This is so that everyone competes under the exact same circumstances. This means that player cannot unlock the in this game mode as the  for unlocking her does not appear. However, the player can still trigger the conditions for achievements they have not yet completed, even though the related item/equipment is already accessible in this game mode.

Similarly, all content introduced with the Survivors of the Void DLC is enabled, even for non-owners of the DLC.

Prismatic Trials cannot be accessed if the player has installed mods.

Currently, the Prismatic Trial's only in-game purpose is to unlock and.

Seed

 * Every 3 days (72 hours), a new seed is generated for the Prismatic Trial. This seed is the same for all players, but has different artifacts on console.
 * Seeds affect stage rotations, interactables' locations and drops, bosses, monster spawn timing, and activated artifacts.
 * Player choices may affect some outcomes of the seed. For example, if the player visits the after the 1st stage, the 2nd stage will have a different spawn location and teleporter location.
 * Seeds are not the same for consoles and PC.

Tips

 * Since the monster spawns and item drops from interactables are the same every playthrough, it is possible to memorize them and create strategies for each Prismatic Trial seed.
 * If is the second stage, it is possible to skip the Teleporter event (without destroying Time Crystals or fighting a Teleporter Boss) entirely by submitting an artifact code and entering the artifact portal.
 * If Sky Meadow is the first stage, entering the artifact portal will take the player to the.
 * By going through a Blue Portal on the first stage and then going to the, the player can prematurely end the stage -and the run- by leaving via the Null Portal.

Eclipse
Eclipse is an alternate game mode that adds stacking challenge modifiers to successive runs. Each Survivor starts at Eclipse level 1, where playing Eclipse mode as that Survivor will have the first of the modifiers shown below. After successfully completing a run, that Survivor's Eclipse level will increment (up to a maximum of 8), and the next modifier will be added to future runs (in addition to all the modifiers from lower Eclipse levels). Eclipse has the same difficulty settings as, and Challenges that require Monsoon can be completed on Eclipse. However, clearing an Eclipse run will not unlock the Survivor's logbook entry.


 * 1) Ally Starting Health: -50%
 * 2) Teleporter Radius: -50%
 * 3) Ally Fall Damage: +100% and lethal
 * 4) Enemy Speed: +40%
 * 5) Ally Healing: -50%
 * 6) Enemy Gold Drops: -20%
 * 7) Enemy Cooldowns: -50%
 * 8) Allies receive permanent damage. "You only celebrate in the light... because I allow it."

Note: "Ally" includes the player in all cases.

Celestial Orbs and do not spawn in this game mode, meaning that the only way to complete a run is to fight. The is also inaccessible, although the player can still fight  after defeating Mithrix by petting the Glass Frog at the starting area of  ten times (one Lunar Coin per pet, ten Lunar Coins total), which will lead directly to. Dying to Voidling on Eclipse will not progress the player's Eclipse level and will count as a loss.

Artifacts cannot be used in Eclipse, and the Artifact Portal cannot be spawned.

Eclipse can be played solo or multiplayer. In multiplayer, the Eclipse level will be set to the lowest level from all Survivors in the lobby.

There are no challenges or unlocks associated with Eclipse; it is strictly a challenge mode to test players' skills, although visual indicators of Eclipse progress will be displayed on the character select screen for the game mode, including a Gold Eclipse icon after completing the Eclipse level on every character. For example, the image below indicates the completion of Eclipse 8 with all characters.

Tips

 * Because the player cannot obliterate, the goal should always be to beat on stage 6. As such, your loadout and item choices should be favoured towards a single loop short run. For example  may want to equip, due the low chance of gaining large amounts of crit and may want to equip , due to the lack of synergising items for her default Utility.
 * Avoid looping unless your goal isn't to climb eclipse levels. Looping will do nothing but add further challenges to an already harder run. Even if your run stands little chance against the final boss, its not going to beat the next 5 stages so taking a chance on the cauldrons and lunar pods on the moon is a better chance.
 * The single loop means enemy numbers and strength will be far weaker than a normal run; the main obstacles will be Mithrix and the teleporter bosses. Crowd control options should be on much lower priority than single target damage items.
 * can easily handle all enemies during the first loop and can help deal tons of damage to Mithrix, dont be afraid to dump powerful items to get it from a cauldron.
 * If a scrapper appears during stage 5, you should scrap everything that isnt going to help during the final boss; the waves during the last stage shouldn't pose much issue on the first loop and the cauldrons on the last stage can help an otherwise doomed run.
 * Getting an item such as an to skip the pillars on the moon will save both time and potential danger.
 * You should save up lunar coins and visit shops when possible as several lunar items are of extra value during an Eclipse run. Learning where Newt Altars can spawn on each stage can help remove potential rng from a run.
 * is very useful before Eclipse 5 due its short run value and can provide a ton of healing, but should be avoided like the plague past the 5th level due to its healing being cut in half twice.
 * is extremely strong due to most first loop enemies not having the damage to kill a player on half health, meaning its downsides rarely matter. Furthermore, E8 usually means taking damage will already lead to failure and that the players one-shot protection will already be nullified
 * is also a run saver, as the player is almost never going to have enough healing to outpace the value of its shields and it completely nullifies Eclipse levels 1, 3 and 5. Furthermore trying to heal damage will only build up stacks of permanent curse on E8 so its downsides are rarely applicable.

Simulacrum
The Simulacrum is an infinitely scaling wave based alternative game mode that is new to the Survivors of the Void update and DLC.

Upon entering the game, players will spawn next to the Assessment Focus inside of a small cylinder (extending from the ground to the skybox) which protects them from the deadly Void Fog. Upon interacting with the Focus, the bubble to a radius of 62m, and the first wave begins. Completing the wave requires killing all the enemies that will spawn. If 60 seconds have passed after the last enemy for the wave has spawned, the bubble will slowly shrink until it disappears. If the Void Fog kills all remaining enemies before the player, the wave will be completed successfully and the bubble will reexpand to its initial size. Upon completion of a wave, a Void Potential drops for each player and a 10 second timer starts for the next wave. Additionally, all dead players are respawned at the completion of a wave, effectively making useless for this game mode if played in multiplayer. Special modifiers known as Augments may also (randomly) trigger upon the start of a wave.

Every 5th wave will be a "boss wave", having stronger and more numerous enemies, and, after completion, the Assessment Focus will begin moving to a new location in the current Environment, during which all players must follow it. At the beginning of every 10th wave, the enemies will be granted an item, similar to the, in a Common-Common-Uncommon-Uncommon-Legendary cycle. Completing this wave will spawn a portal, transporting players to another Environment. After this, they must once again interact with the Assessment Focus to begin the first wave in that Environment. Since this counts as clearing a stage, and Malachite and Celestine elites start appearing from stage 6 onwards, they will not spawn before Wave 51.

The Environments have various modifications from their original versions, including missing sections and having additional Launch Pads to make traversing a stage less deadly to the Void Fog. The Environments can be selected in any random order, and each one can lead to any of the remaining ones, making the same Environment possible with only one intermediate in the between. There are a total of 7 Environments:

Note that Commencement is the only Environment that cannot be chosen for the first stage.

Due to the nature of the game mode, e.g., lack of Teleporter and drones, there are certain things that cannot occur:
 * Other than the special portal to advance to the next Environment, no portals can spawn
 * Family Events will never happen
 * Items that activate during the teleporter event activate during the waves
 * Certain items are blacklisted and cannot be obtained, even with the :

Interactables
Each Environment is given 600 credits to spend on interactable spawning. This is independent on the number of players, but they will still be halved with the Artifact of Sacrifice. The pool of spawn cards is more limited, but in contrast to the original game mode, they have no stage requirements, which means that Legendary Chests can spawn as early as stage 1.

The category weights are:


 * Chests: 45
 * Shrines: 1
 * Rare: 0.4
 * Printers: 8
 * Void Stuff: 3

This means that for each stage one should on average expect the following:


 * 27 items (+10 from the wave rewards) (+10 more if one holds the )
 * 4-5 equipment
 * 2 Void Cradles
 * 6% chance for a Legendary chest and 10% for a Mili-Tech Printer to spawn

Do note that on the earlier stages one is very unlikely to accumulate enough gold, or have enough healing and mobility to traverse the void fog safely to fully loot a stage.

Waves
Each wave can trigger an Augment that can determine the monsters that spawn, as well as enable and disable artifacts. The rarity of item you receive can also be determined by an Augment.

Common Waves

Boss Waves

One orb is dropped for each participating player (alive or dead), but unlike in the where the orb has the same 3 items for all players, here each orb selects its items independently.

The reward for the common waves is a white orb with chances:
 * 88.4% Common
 * 11.0% Uncommon
 * 0.3% Legendary
 * 0.3% Boss

The green orb has items with chances:
 * 84.2% Uncommon
 * 7.9% Legendary
 * 7.9% Boss

The blue orb has items and equipment with chances:
 * 100% Lunar

The purple orb has void items with chances:
 * 79.2% Common
 * 19.8% Uncommon
 * 0.99% Legendary

The red orb has items with chances:
 * 80% Legendary
 * 20% Boss

Note that these percentages are actually affected by the drop chance bias.

Mechanics
This game mode uses its own difficulty coefficient, which is very similar to the one used in the normal game mode if one sets playerCount to 1. This makes the formula independent on the number of players:

$$waveFactor = 1.5 \times wave$$

$$difficultyFactor = 0.0506 \times difficultyValue$$

$$coeff = (1 + difficultyFactor \times waveFactor) \times 1.02^{wave}$$

The enemy level is calculated by the standard formula with setting playerCount to 1:

$$enemyLevel = 1 + (coeff - 1) / 0.33$$

The enemy level cap is set to 9999, compared to 99 for the normal mode. It takes 213 waves to reach that on Monsoon difficulty.

On starting a wave, the Combat Director gets a total amount of credits equal to:

$$totalWaveCredits = baseCredits \times coeff$$

where baseCredits is the base amount of credits a wave can use. Common waves have 159 credits and boss waves 500 credits respectively.

There is an initial burst of credits awarded for immediate spawning and the rest are slowly released over a period of time.

$$immediateMonsterCredits = immediateCreditsFraction \times totalWaveCredits$$

$$creditsPerSecond = (1 - immediateCreditsFraction) \times totalWaveCredits / wavePeriodSeconds$$

where:


 * immediateCreditsFraction is the fraction of total wave credits to grant initially. For common waves it's 0.15 and for boss waves 0.3. This is irrelevant for the Boss Augment of the Scavenger/Mithrix, as they don't rely on credits to spawn the explicit enemy monster.
 * wavePeriodSeconds is the number of seconds over which the remaining credits will be awarded. For common waves it is 30 seconds and for boss waves 60 seconds. While this places a minimum duration per wave, realistically this is limited by how quickly the director can spend the accumulated credits.

The immediateMonsterCredits is also what the director will use to set the first spawn of the boss wave to a boss monster. Such a boss spawn will fail to materialise for at least the first couple of boss waves as there will be insufficient credits. Most notably, on wave 10 on Monsoon difficulty the director will initially have access to 599.19 credits, while the cheapest boss monster costs 600. In rare cases a boss monster can spawn on wave 10 if another boss monster is rerolled after the first one and the director now has 600 credits.

Since there can be a maximum of 30 enemies spawned at once, the director stops accumulating credits when it hits the limit and resumes when at least one enemy has been killed.

Tips

 * In stark contrast to eclipse, simulacrum is about dealing with large crowds of enemies over an endless run. Items that deal with large groups such as and  are of extreme value during this mode and should be prioritised. Conversely, single target damage items should be of generally lower value.
 * Pay attention to what items enemies get at the end of each stage. In particular movement and attack speed altering items can mess with muscle memory and cause a loss to a foolishly timed dodge. If shows up make sure to give blazing elites a very wide berth and if  is added, cry.
 * Don't get greedy! The void fog builds up damage fast and can kill players in just a few seconds without healing items. Furthermore the focus only moves slightly slower than base move speed so getting left behind is usually a death sentance.
 * Artifact of Command waves will affect ALL item drops while the wave is active. Use the chance to open any nearby chests. If a 3D Printer is nearby and the risk is not overwhelming printing every item of that rarity will provide an extreme amount of value. Keep in mind you will need to choose each item from the command drops, so be careful if its the 5th wave when it occurs and the focus is about to move, or if the printer is outside the focus.
 * Abyssal Depths still houses its legendary chest in the usual spot, though its difficult to both reach and afford.
 * Because of the continuous predictable swarms of foes as well as lack of early boss enemies, most survivors normally less valuable skills are of higher value during simulacrum and may even be the better option in the gamemode.
 * will get a lot more value out of and  due to the large amount of weaker enemies lined up and grouped up. He can get easily overwhelmed with his alternative options.
 * Due to the holdout nature of the mode can get much more value out of his  and  than a normal run (though neither are strongly recommended)
 * can deal with the various swarms of weak crowds with as apposed to its more single target alternative.
 * Since being close range is harder to avoid, using  may be appealing. Her  also tends to launch her too high, pushing her outside the safety of the focus.
 * All of s beacons are extremely valuable, due to either helping the holdout or open the far harder to afford chests. His is also far easier to get value from due to the predictable and low range of enemies spawning.
 * Since she has less need for the mobility of her default option can take  to help control the large crowds of enemies.
 * Mobility items such as are significantly less valuable in this mode, as movement speed isn't needed to move around the stage, though it still helps to avoid damage and grab chests. Having too much movespeed will also make staying within the focus much harder and could cause a stray tic or two from the void fog to finish you off.
 * is far more useful due to the downtime between waves letting you heal, as well as being an option to heal damage from the void when grabbing chests. Furthermore if things go south and the focus falters it will likely let you outlast any remaining enemies and end the wave.
 * is highly valuable, even though it doesn't spawn on a wave starting having even one within a Focus will provide a buff for most of its zone.
 * is significantly buffed in the gamemode as it will be active in every single wave, being a constant source of health. Getting a few can be particularly valuable during a multiplayer game.
 * can be deliberately activated by standing in the void fog. With a few stacks darting in and out of the fog can wipe out most waves.
 * Since players gain far less money than normal, and  are of higher value especially in early waves.
 * is extremely impactful as the player has very limited access to lunar items. Since all waves give a choice of three items, its rare for it to be a negative impact while its much easier to get value from it due to void potential's 3 item choice.

Version History

 * PC Patch v1.2.2.0
 * Simulacrum
 * Waves now skip if nothing has spawned for 60 seconds
 * Waves now have a limit of how many credits can be given out at once
 * Waves will now spawn slightly more elites, and slightly less normal monsters
 * Artifact of Kin will always spawn monsters, even if they are considered ‘cheap’
 * Developer Notes: Simulacrum has a few edge cases where the director fails to spawn monsters - and as a result, the gamemode no longer advances. We added a few different checks to address situations where the game gets stuck. Not only that, but simulacrum tended to spam a lot more normal monsters instead of elites - so now, it’ll spawn a little bit more elite-y.


 * Survivors of the Void
 * Eclipse is now available in multiplayer
 * Prismatic Trials now has Survivors of the Void permanently enabled, even for non-DLC owners


 * PC Patch v1.0.2.0
 * Bug Fixes
 * Fixed modifiers applying to enemies


 * PC Patch v1.0.1.1 (Build ID No.5440050)
 * Bug Fixes
 * Fix safe zones on  being larger than the actual charging radius
 * Fix Prismatic Trials counting your run in leaderboards when you die


 * Early Access Content Update 5
 * (Undocumented) Added Eclipse


 * PC Early Access Patch (Build ID No.4892828)
 * Gameplay Changes
 * Remove from being selected in Prismatic Trials
 * Bug Fixes
 * Fix the teleporter not instantly reaching full charge on killing the Prismatic Trials boss


 * Early Access Artifacts Content Update
 * Gameplay Changes
 * 🌧 Now spawns with a random selection of Artifacts!
 * 🌧 Fix stage object rotation randomization not being seeded
 * Bug Fixes
 * 🌧 Fix and similar monsters from spawning as an elite version in Prismatic Trials. Goodbye.


 * Early Access Patch (Build ID No.3703355)
 * Gameplay Changes
 * Add Friends-Only Leaderboard
 * Update Global Leaderboard to be around your current position in the Leaderboard