News

Now that the dust has settled from our recent major update, we’ve had some time to squash a few bugs. Thanks to everyone who helped report these. Please continue to send us your suggestions and feedback so we can keep Rivals excellent.

Bugfixes

• Holding down during the flinch state will no longer crouch cancel unless you were previously in the crouch state.
• Opponent’s speed is now capped when they’re sent into parry stun from a projectile. Prevents weird bugs where players would go flying after getting parried.
• Wrastor Aerial Dspecial hurtbox corrected.
• Fixed scenarios in Kragg’s and Elliana’s tutorials that would prevent completion.
• Forsburn’s clone will no longer use the default color for Elliana’s mine when it is stuck.
• Ori’s bash is no longer techable before the launching hit connects.
• The detection radius for Ori bashing Elliana’s mech has been corrected.
• Elliana’s guided missiles will no longer pass through low crouching characters on a platform when moving vertically.
• The charged version of Elliana’s guided missile will now correctly break Kragg’s rock.
• Kragg can no longer airdodge out of Elliana’s mine explosion.
• The moves below have been fixed to work correctly when Team Attack is turned on:
  • Ori’s Spirit Flame
  • Clairen’s Plasma Field
  • Elliana’s Steam

• Uair hit 1 and 2 SDI modifier increased from 1 > 1.2.
  This prevents uair > tether > uair from being guaranteed which had somehow worked its way back into the game.

• When Elliana’s Uspecial is parried she now receives extended parry stun.
• Holding the attack button will only cause you to hover if you’re doing an aerial, instead of any air attack.
  This change allows people who use the “strong attack” control scheme to do smashes without flying to the top of their screen.
• Utilt can no longer hit frozen enemies.

We’ve got a small patch today featuring some quality of life changes, a few bugfixes, and other balance changes we’ve made in respect to Sylvanos’ and Elliana’s launch last week. There’s also some fixes for controller issues that had arisen from our revamp last patch. If you’re looking for older notes since there’s been a few patches recently, here’s 1.3.0 and 1.3.1.

• Trading with a move that hits inward will no longer turn you around.
• Fixed a bug that prevented multihit projectiles from being crouch cancelled correctly.
• Added more profile icons.

Controller Support

• Switching the window focus away from Rivals of Aether will no longer reassign Dinput controllers’ ports or unassign player profiles once focus is returned.
• Fixed a bug that caused one controller to control multiple ports at once.

Last week patch 1.3.0 revamped how Rivals detects controllers, allowing players to use Dinput and Xinput devices at the same time without setting a controller mode. This also solved one of the largest common controller issues in Rivals where crashes would occur when players were added or removed (more commonly seen during live events).

Thanks to players’ feedback we’ve been able to work out a few of the kinks in the new system and we appreciate all of your help as we make this change for the better. We’re still working on re-adding support for a few adapters. If you find your controller not working, unchecking Steam’s controller configuration settings under manage game has gotten many players back up and running. If you’re still experiencing issues please email [email protected] so we can help!

• Dspecial now only restores Wrastor’s jumps on hit instead of always.

• Smoke is now destroyed by steam and Elliana’s uTilt.
• Holding the special button will prevent clone from jumping or using Uspecial while offstage.
  This allows Forsburn players to get even more creative and sneaky when spawning clone offstage.

• Ustrong shard damage decreased from 6 > 3 (to match Fstrong and Dstrong shards).

• Can now bash Elliana Dspecial and Uspecial.

• New sound effect added when starting Fspecial, making it slightly easier to react to.
• Gravity reduced while channeling bubble movement.

• Projectiles are no longer active in the plasma field for 1 frame.
• Clairen can now counter Elliana’s steam and Utilt.
• Plasma field will now disable Elliana’s Uspecial mech.

• Uair has been redesigned to be a two-part multihit. The second hit is unchanged, but only if you miss the first hit. If you land the first hit, the second will have the strength of the previous patch’s first hit. This means if you want the strong hit, you’ll have to intentionally miss the first part of the attack.
• Time between Uair hits decreased from 10 > 4 frames.
• Uspecial multihits can no longer destroy projectiles.
• Flower hp reduced from 10 > 1.
• Flower is now immune to projectiles that deal less than 8 damage for the first second after it’s planted.
• Flower dies when Sylvanos dies.

• Jab hit lockout time increased from 0 > 6 frames.
• Dash attack no longer builds any heat during the first 3 cycles (since these cycles happen even if you aren’t holding the attack button).
• If Utilt is interrupted, the opponent will take minimal knockback instead of the full cannon knockback.
• Utilt claw now appears closed when it can no longer grab players.
• Fair/Dair multihits now force flinch on grounded opponents.
• Dair hit one and two hitstun modifier increased from 1 > 2 frames.
  This move now has 1 frame less overall hitstun on grounded opponents because of the above flinch change.
• Uair is now a single-hit sweep attack.
• Uair endlag increased from 14 > 16 frames (on hit).
• Disjoint added to dash attack and fair.
• Fair final hit damage increased from 2 > 4.
• Consecutive strong attacks without touching the ground release less heat.
• Rocket fist now detonates when colliding with Sticky Bomb.
• Rocket fist’s explosion becomes stronger when hitting Sticky Bomb.
• Can no longer control Guided Missiles while dead.
• Charged Fspecial is no longer breakable by attacking it.
• Uspecial is invincible for the first 3 frames after dropping the mech.
• Uspecial is projectile invincible while rising.
• Uspecial landing hurtbox changed to just be her idle hurtbox instead of the full cloud.
• Snake hurtbox now matches her sprite.
• Snake walljump horizontal speed decreased from 7 > 4 (so she can recover using walljump without the use of an airdodge).
• Sticky Bomb explosion is now bigger.
• Sticky Bomb cooldown increased 30 > 90 frames.
• Sticky Bomb is now removed from the stage when Elliana dies.
• Steam influence from hitboxes reduced from .5x base knockback > .3x base knockback.

Surprise! Patch 1.3.0 was not an April Fools’ joke (unlike most of what we revealed this weekend). We’ve got two brand new characters, revamped controller support, a host of balance changes, and more to dig into. Read on for the detailed notes and other good stuff.

New Characters – Sylvanos and Elliana

Sylvanos, The Heart of the Forest and Elliana, The Aerial Arsenal are now available on Steam! These Rivals come as a DLC two pack and can be added to your roster for $4.99.

Sylvanos is our third Rival to represent the earth element while Elliana rounds out our roster as the final air Rival. Both of them are also unique in that they’re our first Rivals who are also villains. Pick them up today on Steam or try them for free in their tutorials, accessible through the solo menu in game.

Steam Sale

To celebrate the release of Sylvanos and Elliana, we’re putting on the biggest Steam sale Rivals has ever seen. For just one week, the base game is going all the way down to $4.94, while all of the past DLC (both characters and skins) will be 50% off. That means you can pick up the base game in addition to all characters and skins for under $20. If you have a friend who’s been waiting for a sale, make sure you pass on the news!

Controller Support Update

We’ve completely revamped controller support this patch. Players will no longer need to select a controller mode in the options menu as Dinput and Xinput both work simultaneously now. Support was also added for Switch Pro controllers via Bluetooth.

Since this update has reworked how Rivals handles controllers, some devices may have become inadvertently unsupported. If you have a controller that worked last patch but is having issues now, please email us at [email protected] so we can get it working again.

1.3.0 Patch Notes

• Wall tech can now be cancelled by a double jump or airdodge.
• Wall tech invincibility has been increased from 8 frames > 12 frames.
• You can now crouch cancel multihit crouch cancellable moves like Absa upSpecial, Ranno needles, etc.
• You can no longer ASDI up/down while grounded. This was a bug that allowed people to tech grounded spike attacks, which were not supposed to be techable.
• Fixed angle flipper 8 (Absa Dspecial and Ori Charged Flame) to behave as expected when compared to angle flipper 1 (e.g. Zetter Nspecial).
  Previously it calculated the angle based on the bottom of the player’s feet instead of the center of their body, leading to a lower angle in most cases.
• Jab is no longer cancellable into strong attacks. Forsburn could cancel Fstrong into Dstrong, which was unintended and extremely powerful.
• Attacks with the ‘force flinch’ property can now force flinch even if the opponent is in hitstun.
• Successful techs now reset the tech failure window, allowing you to tech two attacks in a row.
• Shortened dash attacks no longer happen when you press dash and attack on the same frame. Instead, a dash attack will shorten if you’re holding down on frame 1 of the attack (an easy way to do this is to do a quarter circle motion from forward to down, then press attack). This makes shortened dash attacks easier to do on purpose and more difficult to do on accident. This change only affects characters that could previously shorten their dash attacks: Zetterburn, Clairen, Orcane, and Sylvanos.
• Hit lockout time is no longer used as the mechanic to make multi-hitbox, single-hit attacks (like Zetterburn fair or Ori bair). It is now only used for moves that shouldn’t be interrupted by things like Orcane bubbles, Kragg rock shards, or Elliana steam. Instead, hitboxes now have a hitbox_group property that prevent hitboxes in the same group from hitting until the attack ends.

• Press the dodge button during the first few frames of aerial Dspecial to cancel the move, removing all hitboxes but giving you only 16 landing lag frames instead of 26.
• Uair endlag increased from 8 > 10 on hit and 12 > 15 on whiff.
• Fstrong linking hitbox active frames increased from 3 > 5. This prevents fast characters from running straight through Fstrong.
• Fstrong and Dstrong can now move players vertically during hitpause instead of just horizontally, preventing situations where the first strong hitbox would hit burned opponents, but the final fire-consuming hitbox would miss.
• Strong attacks no longer move opponents in hitstun if they aren’t on fire.
• Can no longer cancel Dspecial if it is parried.

• Jab 2 has two more frames of endlag (still cancellable on the same frame).
  This prevents a nasty 50/50 against lighter characters with jab > jab >dstrong.
• Bair endlag increased from 7 > 9 on hit and 11 > 14 on whiff.
• Fair knockback scaling increased from 1.0 > 1.1.
• Fair hit lockout time increased from 0 > 3 (so bubbles no longer interrupt your kill moves).
• Uair sweetspot hit lockout time increased from 13 > 18.
• Puddle Fstrong startup extended by 3 frames to match regular Fstrong.

• Wrastor is now actionable 5 frames later on dash attack in the air (only on whiff).
• Nair is now a 3 hit multihit move. The first two hits behave like Orcane’s dair, while the last hit is the same as Wrastor’s old nair.
• Ustrong sweetspot knockback scaling decreased from 1.45 > 1.35.
• Nspecial hitbox timings have been cleaned up. The active frames per hitbox have been increased from 3 > 7.
  Now the hitboxes appear every 8 frames with only a single frame between active hitboxes instead of being basically random. This makes the moves more consistent, both for Wrastor to use offensively and for the opponent to parry. This also means the very first hitbox at Wrastor’s feet comes out 2 frames faster than before.
• Nspecial final hit damage increased from 1 > 3.
  The hitbox timing cleanup changed the damage from 11 > 9, so the final hit does more to compensate and keep the total damage the same.

• Bair angle changed from 361 > 55.
• Bair startup decreased from 9 > 7.
• Fstrong angle changed from 361 > 45. (changes the angle from 40 to 45 on grounded opponents).
• Aerial Dspecial hit lockout time increased from 0 > 10. This makes it less common for opponent’s knockback to be interrupted by your own rock shards.
• Rockless Nspecial is now B-reversible.
• Nthrow base knockback decreased from 9 > 7. This finally makes Nthrow weaker than Fthrow, for intuitiveness and comboability.
• Rocks are now destroyed as soon as they touch the bottom blastzone, instead of significantly below it.
• If Kragg is interrupted while pulling a rock out of a pillar, it will no longer consume the pillar’s rock resource.

• Ustrong final hit KB decreased from 8 + 1.15 > 8 + 1.1.
• Bair strong hit active frames decreased from 3 > 2.
• Bair weak hit active frames decreased from 16 > 14.
• Bair endlag increased from 6 > 8 on hit and 9 > 12 on whiff.
  The full move duration remains unchanged on hit, so comboing off of bair will be the same as before.
• Smoke is now cleared on death.
• Clone no longer switches AI modes when the joystick is moved to neutral/sideways immediately after inputting Uspecial

• Parrying a non-projectile hit will now remove the watcher’s mark.
• Uair hitboxes now match the animation better (still has the same range in all 4 directions).
• Can no longer cancel the end of the tether animation with an Uspecial (tether Uspecial was a guaranteed combo on Etalus).

• Absa is now actionable 3 frames later when cancelling Uspecial.
• Dtilt knockback scaling increased from .3 > .45.
• Dash attack boost speed increased from 6 > 7.
• Can now do any number of jabs instead of only an odd number.

• Ice shards now only shoot out in the direction of the strong attack instead of every direction. The number of shards is unchanged, however, so the wave of icicles is more dense.
• Dspecial landing hitbox now comes out on the first frame of landing instead of the third.
• Grabbing a rock with Uair will now move the rock toward the second hitbox just like it does with players.
• Can no longer walljump or fastfall while wrapped with super armor.

• Jab 2 is now techable. Knockback angle changed from 40 > 60
• 4 frames added to the endlag of both versions of Ustrong.
• Fstrong is now techable at the ledge again. It may link less reliably in some rare situations.
• Ledge cancelling non-team up Ustrong while Sein is performing an attack will no longer teleport Sein to you.
• Can no longer bash Absa’s cloud after she activates it with Nspecial or Dspecial.
• Spirit flame now only causes hitstun on opponents already in hitstun (or for 30 frames after being hit by a Spirit Flame that caused hitstun).
• Charged flame max hold time decreased from 4 sec > 3 sec.
• Charged flame knockback scaling decreased from .55 > .4.
• Charged flame now has a strong, tiny sweetspot in the center.

• Ftilt frames between the hitboxes decreased from 6 > 4.
• A new small hitbox has been added at the top of Fair that has the same knockback as the front hit but with an angle of 45 instead of 30.
• Fair endlag increased from 14 > 16 on hit and 21 > 24 on whiff.
• Ranno can now hitfall any of the 3 hits of Dair.
• Dair landing lag increased from 4 > 6.
• Nspecial projectile lifetime reduced from 30 > 22.
• Fspecial ground grab box extended by 4px (does not affect grabbing players).
• Fspecial hitbox changed from a rectangle to a pixel-perfect sprite for the tongue tip.
• Fspecial will now prioritize ground over players when colliding with them both on the same frame.
• Uspecial dive kick hitbox split into 2 hitboxes.
• Uspecial rising hitbox now comes out 4 frames later to match the animation.
• Uspecial dive kick can no longer be cancelled if it was parried.
• Dspecial startup shortened by 15 frames.
• Holding Dspecial while a bubble is out now lets you control the bubble as long as you hold special. Tapping Dspecial behaves the same as before.

• Nair sourspot 2 and 4 moved 2 pixels inward to make the tippers slightly larger.
• Ftilt, Fair1, and Bair sourspots shrunk by 4-6px inward, making the tippers slightly larger.
  After comparing tipper sizes, these 3 were significantly smaller than most other tippers. This made them a bit too hard to land even when you space them, especially with the sometimes not-so-pixel-perfect hurtboxes that Rivals can have when in non-attack states.
• Ftilt tipper knockback scaling decreased from .65 > .6.
• Dash attack now has whifflag (oops).
• Dash attack recovery decreased from 16 > 13 on hit and increased from 16 > 20 on whiff.
• Fair landing lag decreased from 9 > 8.
• Bair landing lag increased from 6 > 8.
• Bair recovery increased from 14 > 15.
• Fstrong active frames divided into a 2 part swing (total active window duration increased from 2 > 4 frames).
  The first 2 frames only hit above her while the last 2 frames hit in front (the same as before but not as far backward). The above part starts 1 frame earlier than the previous version, and the front part starts 1 frame later than the previous version. Dividing it into two parts makes the move feel more like a sword swing.
• All non-tipper Fstrong and Dstrong hitboxes knockback scaling increased by .1.
• Dspecial final hit hitstun modifier increased from .5 > .9.
• Plasma field now destroys Forsburn smoke, Forsburn clone attack, and Etalus ice.

Rivals of Aether is now available in the newly announced Humble Brawler Bundle!

Humble Bundle is famous for their awesome pay-what-you-want bundles that support charities while providing gamers with great content. You can snag Rivals and 6 other games for just $9 for a limited time so don’t miss out!