🎰 Exotic Upgrades

Feed drip fish to the Reel of Fortune for a chance to unlock absurd new powers for your guns, Knife, and Knuckles. Exotic rewards coexist with regular skins and follow each island's native item pool, so you will not unlock upgrades for gear from later islands.

✨ Exotic upgrade pool

Pools by weapon type

All values can be changed in the generated BepInEx configuration file.

🎮 Controls

Hold the inspection key while using the normal skin/reload controls:

The in-game instructions use your current bindings, so rebinding these actions is supported.

🔓 Unlocks and loadouts

• Unlocks are permanent for the local player and apply to a specific item model.
• Multiple compatible exotic upgrades can be active on the same item.
• Each unlocked upgrade can be enabled or disabled independently.
• Firearms, Knife, and Knuckles each receive only their compatible upgrade pool.
• Native sights, suppressors, magazines, damage upgrades, lasers, and weapon skins continue to work normally.

🌐 Multiplayer

The mod is required for every player in the lobby. Projectile effects and melee hit metadata are synchronized; the server applies explosions, cleave damage, and player bleeding. Bleeding uses NativeStatusUI for its timed wine-red droplet indicator.

⚙️ Configuration

After launching the game once, edit BepInEx/config/ArceDev.ExoticUpgrades.cfg to tune gacha chance and every firearm or melee effect.

AI Disclosure

This mod was developed with assistance from generative AI for programming, documentation, and promotional artwork. The author reviewed, tested, and approved the final implementation and assets.

Changelog

[0.4.0] - 2026-09-04

Changed

• Registered exotic upgrades through Upgrade Core so other acquisition mods can discover and grant them.
• Migrated persistent ownership and enabled state to Upgrade Core while preserving existing local unlocks.
• Migrated Bleeding lifecycle and synchronization to Status Core.

Fixed

• Fixed Homing Bullets preventing Explosive Bullets from applying their impact explosion and area damage.
• Fixed inspection failing when an item did not support every registered exotic upgrade.

All notable changes to this project will be documented in this file.

The format is based on Keep a Changelog, and this project adheres to Semantic Versioning.

[0.3.0] - 2026-09-04

Added

• Dedicated melee exotic pools: Cleave for Knife and Knuckles, Heavy Hitter and One-Two for Knuckles, and Bleed and CoD-Like for Knife.
• Server-authoritative cleave and bleeding effects, including a NativeStatusUI bleeding indicator.
• CoD-Like target pursuit limited to visible targets inside the player's current camera FOV.

Changed

• The Reel of Fortune now mixes compatible melee exotic rewards into each island's native item pool without replacing skin rewards.
• Exotic inspection controls now work with compatible melee items as well as firearms.
• CoD-Like pursuit now moves at a configurable near-teleport speed while retaining native movement collisions.
• Bleeding ticks now emit the game's native small-blood particle effect for every observer, including the attacker.

Fixed

• Cleave secondary hits now show their server-confirmed damage numbers to the attacking player.

[0.2.0] - 2026-09-02

Added

• Multiplayer synchronization for exotic projectile settings, homing targets, split projectiles, ricochets, and server-authoritative explosion damage.

Changed

• Knife, Knuckles, and other melee weapons are explicitly excluded from exotic upgrade rewards and controls.

[0.1.0] - 2026-09-02

Added

• Island-aware exotic upgrade rewards that coexist with native weapon skins.
• Homing Bullets, Explosive Bullets, Ricochet, Slow-Mo Bullets, and Split Shot.
• Permanent unlocks and independent enable/disable state per player and weapon model.
• Native-style weapon inspection controls and custom reward icons.
• Configurable effect strength and gacha reward chance.