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Really...  There are some spoilers here.  Easy does it.

Spoiler

Episode 1:  Caves, Alien Artifact (world first! lol!), new traps(?), weapons, and more! 
Episode 2:  Grinding my way, Extension branch, quite a serious fight en-route to Cetus, entering Cetus.
Episode 3:  Cetus, interesting place ;).  Hub-07?  (not sure), and eventual.... death!

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Self destructing loot is fundamentally evil in all the right ways :).
Stuff that I found:
Derelict cores - Found one in mines and couple in the lower caves. One updated the world map and the other was a free inventory(component) hack. I can see these being very useful.
Derelict Terminals - Found one which I used to access a door and found dirty datajacks. Not sure what's up with them yet!!

I like how the structure of the caves doesn't allows for the "retreat into a bottleneck and shoot at enemies one at a time" strategy. At least not always. You need to take them down quickly and efficiently or take fire from multiple hostiles.

Tangent on branch difficulty:
I found lower caves a bit too easy. I can see that loot destruction can speed up the attrition process if you hang out for too long. But, I mapped the entire place and made short work of the disorganized resistance with ease. The exit wasn't too difficult to find. One thing that I am not sure how I feel about are the easy escape hatches in the branch maps. For instance, extension can be a very easy route to take if all you intend to do is progress up a level. Just kill the enemies in the junction and take the factory exit. Lower caves felt the same. It feels like the difficulty of finding a factory exit > difficulty of finding a branch exit + finding a factory exit in the branch. But these are impressions gleaned from a single run. Need to play a lot more runs to confirm...

is located in the caves and currently requires a bit of luck, and most likely to some sensors, to find. There will be an in-game hint in the next release regarding its general location, and there is also a slight hint in the current release indicating its specific location, but it might take a little while for anyone to notice that one.

I like the cave layout's affect on strategy, too. It can make them really dangerous in certain situations. That said, the caves can also be a bit easy, especially now since they're not fully balanced yet. BUT, you'll find that caves are also a bit like the mines in that difficulty can fluctuate significantly from cave to cave.

Quote from: Sherlockkat on March 22, 2016, 10:58:15 PM
Self destructing loot is fundamentally evil in all the right ways :).

I added that entire mechanic last night--and actually just came up with it last night :P--specifically because I needed to start making the caves a little more difficult. Lore-wise it works well, and it also has a couple of other related factors I'll not go into here :). Certainly the purpose there is to increase the risk of attrition, without going so far as to be a show stopper.

I'm not set on balancing the caves yet since they're incomplete, so like I explain in the release notes the survivability of the mid-game is going to be higher now. Like yourself, I need to do some serious cave runs to see how it all feels before deciding how much to emphasize each of the planned features for those parts of the world.

About the straight route vs. short branch detours, balancing their relative difficulty is a long-term goal to explore once more of the content is in place. It will involve changing the difficulty of some areas and perhaps removing/moving some exits. Delicate work!

The Caves are the first time I've released new maps that are incomplete, so that plays a role here, too, especially since there are so many exits to them. In fact, the number of exits to the caves was set to assume they are completed and balanced, so they're definitely on the high side right now.

I probably should've dropped that number at least temporarily, just to keep everything more balanced overall, though then it would be more difficult to reach the new content...