Dead Monarchy is currently 40% off so it is a great time to try it out if you were on the fence about it, it costs about as much as a coffee.
Originally my plan was to simultaneously work on post-release content and the new game however due to an overwhelming amount of feedback directed to the UI, it has changed my priorities.
As such, I will most likely be spending the rest of the year just working on UI and balancing, I won't be able to do much work on the post-release content. The UI work will technically be for the new game however I am backporting it to Dead Monarchy as well. This is the solution to me moving forward as a developer but also responding to player feedback.
I am introducing the first round of changes, there is a lot more to come later this year. If everything goes smooth, there is also a chance that the first part of post-release content will drop towards the end of this year, as in literally the end of the year.
Important: For the most part you can continue on your existing save however not all changes will have an immediate effect. For example, all the changes to armour will only take place on newly spawned equipment. Other than that if not specifically stated, the majority of the changes will carry over. For the best experience, it is still recommended to start on a new playthrough.
Important: Build 18 will now be available on the beta branch, if you wish to continue your current playthrough on the same build.
Controls/UI:
- [Spacebar] no longer ends your current phase. [Backspace] and [Left Ctrl] is now the key to end your current phase during combat.
- [Spacebar] will now pause the game during combat and in the overworld map.
- Rejoice! The camera will no longer move with the player when the camera is not centered on the player. It will remain in its position unless you move it with WASD keys or center the camera on the player again [SHIFT].
- Added a button (T) to toggle tooltips on and off, if you find tooltips getting in the way of things.
- Added control list to the journal (requires a new playthrough to view).
- Improvements to battle camera. When camera angle is pulled all the way back (optimal angle) zooming in and out will maintain the same angle. You can still tilt the camera with "< and >" keys. If you don't like the way the camera moves away and focuses on different characters, you can disable it by enabling "Simple Camera", this gives you complete control. Furthermore, if you don't like the cinematic camera, that too can be disabled "Cinematic Attacks".
- Pushed back the camera collider borders for every single map, overworld and battle. Let me know if I am missing one. This basically gives the camera more freedom at the extreme edges of the map. It was needed due to the changes to the camera.
- Hovering over the shortcut bar will now preview the attack range and valid targets of the hovered ability.
- Removed the item stack limit to condense the inventory. A holdover feature from when I initially had an inventory limit. This feature will return in a future game, for now it doesn't really serve any purpose. Current items in the inventory won't autostack themselves, only newly added items will add to existing stacks. This is unfortunately just a limitation of the UI system that is currently implemented.
- You can now access the perks menu while resting in the tavern.
- New keybinds "+ and -" to adjust the height of the camera, "< and >" can then be used to adjust the distance/tilt of the camera.
- New keybinds "V and B" to zoom the camera in and out whilst maintaining the angle so long as the camera is angled all the way back first. If you don't bother with the angle/tilt of the camera then don't worry about this, the zoom will function as intended. If you do manually adjust the camera tilt then you just need to readjust when you zoom out. The default angle is already considered the optimal angle.
- Chests now have a larger mouse detection range. When zoomed out further, the player crown UI can be clicked through when in close proximity with a chest, this means you don't need to scroll down again.
- Fixed the issue on the shortcut bar where "Adjust Rotation" was highlighted despite not being able to use it when Exhausted. It will now be unavailable when Exhausted as intended.
- The locked cities bug should now be fixed. Let me know if it's still occurring.
- Items sold to the marketplace can be bought back at their original price. Once the menu is closed, the item price will revert to default values.
Gameplay:
- Added an option to toggle on easy/hard mode for the post-game boss fight. This option can only be set at the start of a new playthrough, it will not affect existing save files.
- Quick Shot (Arbalest) now has a default AP cost of 5, down from 7. This means you can take two inaccurate shots per phase during clutch moments.
- Organised Chaos (Tactics) no longer reduces the AP cost of Quick Shot. Previously it would reduce it to 5 but the default AP cost is now 5. Quick Shot hit chance increased to 60% against targets on adjacent tiles.
- Chaotic Strikes (Heavy) is now the perk that further reduces AP cost of Quick Shot. AP cost reduced from 5 to 3.
The reason behind this was to create a "ranged" version of Wild Strike, this perk is what builds a heavy arbalester. This also opens up the path for a very interesting hybrid build, a warsword wild striker who carries an arbalester for burst ranged damage. With this build, it won't require high focus however you will still be effective when it comes to heavily defensive units due to Quick Shot ignoring Block and eventually being able to ignore Agility. This playstyle wouldn't be effective if you were required to quickly take out high priority targets however it is effective when trying to clear out heavily entrenched fighters.
- Heavy armour, stamina rebalanced. The stamina penalty is now reversed. -25/-20/-15-/15 and then -10 for Ancestral (orange) armour. Max rolled Masterworks (500 armour - purple) will have 0 Stamina penalty, lower rolled Masterworks retain the -10 Stamina penalty, but it is still an overall improvement. I opted to skip -5 because I wanted there to be more incentives to doing the end-game content. These changes will only apply on newly spawned items. IE either when the marketplace refreshes or when you get new drops.
- Maxed rolled Masterwork heavy armour (500 armour) will no longer have a movement penalty. These changes will only apply on newly spawned items. IE either when the marketplace refreshes or when you get new drops.
- Various perks that restore or reduce a status value have had the Stamina cost reduced from -30 to -25.
- All the stat reducing warcry perks, will now remove certain medium armour perk status effects. These warcry perks are useful for countering medium armour fighters as you can now remove their most powerful stacking effects.
Violent Warcry (Reduce Attack) - Removes the status effects Defensive Strikes Effect and Killing Zone Effect from valid targets.
Savage Warcry (Reduce Strength) - Removes the status effect Reinforcing Footwork Effect from valid targets.
Unnerving Warcry (Reduce Defense) - Removes the status effects Defensive Movement Effect and Graceful Impact Effect from valid targets.
Distracting Warcry (Reduce Focus) - Removes the status effect Sudden Death Effect from valid targets.
Agitating Warcry (Reduce Agility) - Removes the status effect Defensive Dodge Effect from valid targets.
There will be more updates coming this year, I still have a lot of requests that I have responded to but have not implemented yet. All in good time.
As always, thanks to everyone that has supported Dead Monarchy! These updates are a result of player feedback.
Please consider leaving a review, they do have the ability to impact the direction of the game as well as my own motivation towards development.
Cheers, Kevin.
General Update #26: (Interviews, Youtubers, Next Update Info)
Hey guys,
So with the full release of Dead Monarchy, I've crossed a significant mental milestone. I'd like to thank everyone who has supported me over the years and to everyone that has bought the game.
I especially want to say thank you to everyone that has left a review. Reviews are naturally hard to come by. I don't respond to every review as sometimes there isn't anything further to say or to clarify however I read every single review.
Reviews are one of the main sources of my motivation, it is good to read what players think about the game, whether it is positive or negative, I value all feedback. So again, thank you to everyone that has left a review!
Interview:
Whilst I have already openly discussed about my future plans, I did an in-depth interview with Tom which details just how far I want to take them. I thoroughly enjoyed the interview, each question was well planned. If you would like to know more about my development journey, gaming history and my thoughts on gaming in general, I recommend checking out the interview.
A big shoutout to Splattercat who took the time to feature Dead Monarchy on his channel. Whilst I do have plans to reach out to more Youtubers, I wanted to wait until I had finished more content. I was super surprised when Matt/Splattercat reached out to me. Special thanks goes to erome5578 as well for mentioning Dead Monarchy to him, the exposure the video gave was great.
If you want to see longer playthroughs of Dead Monarchy, Special Caesar has continued his previous stream of Dead Monarchy, the improvements based on player feedback has gone a long way and he finds himself enjoying the game a lot more than the previous playthrough. His new playthrough starts at episode 4.
Lastly, if you want to see a video of someone diving straight into the cheese grater, I highly recommend checking out Nerdgoria. The thumbnail (Steam announcement image) he did alone is worth it and his commentary is hilarious. I have a special place in my heart for players that dive in deep straight away and don't get frustrated but instead plow forward and embrace it all. I hope he continues to chronicle his journey with Dead Monarchy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdpJ-AJnrAY
Post-release Content:
Things are going well with the roaming mobs, at least for now. It's looking pretty smooth and I haven't hit any major hurdles yet, time will tell if this is viable to backport, just a few more things I need to test. All I can say is that it is something I would love to get in but there are reasons why I didn't launch with roaming mobs included.
Next Update:
As for the next update, it will probably be coming out by the end of this month. It will mainly be focused around balancing and some UI improvements. You can view the current progress in the Steam forums "Development Progress".
Based on the feedback I have received, I may eventually fully shift to doing more UI improvements. Initially I wanted to work on new weapon types/abilities for the next game however it seems I may focus on the UI first and some of those improvements will be backported to Dead Monarchy as well. If I do this then the next game will obviously be delayed. At the very least, I won't know the development timeframe until I can implement the new combat additions as that is where the bulk of the work is.
Cheers, Kevin.
Dev Update #30: Build 18 (Full Release)
Hey guys,
After several demos and a complete rebuild of the game, 6 years of development has flown by and Dead Monarchy has now been fully released. I've put my all into this game, I didn't abandon it and even chose to completely rebuild the game midway through development. I feel like I can say that as a developer, I held up my end of the deal. Let's now take a look at the entire journey that Dead Monarchy took up to this point.
The very first prototype, a mockup of what could be, didn't have any art assets though.
Building a functional UI, levels and enemy AI.
Replacing the placeholder models, first attempt at skinning the UI, creating natural environments.
Second attempt at environments, I wanted to create elevation and was struggling, thought tiled approach might be the solution, I was wrong. Natural environments felt unnatural.
Released the first demo, decided to have it take place in a castle as I was still struggling to create natural environments.
Released the second demo, had a small breakthrough. I was able to create elevation that looks relatively natural but was also clear to see. Slowly getting better at creating natural environments.
The initial early access build. Elevations looked a lot more distinct now, had several custom armour models now too. UI was vastly improved.
Ultimately though, the initial build suffered from issues. Several monsters had animation issues, the combat wasn't as streamlined, contracts were unclear and I didn't like the open-world. So I completely rebuilt the game. I added in a cinematic combat camera, vastly improved the animations, overhauled the world map and took a more focused approach and completely redid the perks system.
With all that said and done, I still have more plans for Dead Monarchy and my journey as whole, is still far from over.
Future Plans:
Initially, when I set out to create Dead Monarchy, I thought I could work on this one game forever. I know, it sounds naïve, a large amount of developers that go into early access don't finish their games and countless games don't even make it into the early access stage. I felt confident that I could do it though.
I have to say, that after 6 years, it does feel like forever, especially when it's just you. Day in and day out, solo development becomes extremely "insular". I say that because at least for me, it feels like I stuck my head in the sand and popped out half a decade later. Everyone and everything around me has changed and moved on but I still remained the same. To me, time stalled but the reality is that time keeps flowing.
After that realisation, I took some time off and realised that I myself had also changed, I had become more experienced, but I never realised that until I took the time to think about it. While I still have those lofty ideals and the same amount of enthusiasm and passion, I also now have a more realistic plan to achieve my dreams.
I have decided that I will create a series of games, essentially standalone expansions. They will all relate back to Dead Monarchy, as in they will all share the same setting but they are separate games. Combat will be the one consistent thing that will improve upon each game. I will continue to add new perks, new weapon types, new armours and new enemies and they will be built upon each new game. So the combat system will remain intact and be expanded upon each new game but other features such as the open-world exploration, may be removed and other major features added in such as base management.
The reason I am doing this is because I realised that it is impossible for me to balance and design the game that I want in a single game. It also isn't exactly financially viable.
My dream is to just be able to make a living from creating games, to be able to work on my games full-time. If I made a modest 50k AUD a year from games, that would be enough to go full-time or if Dead Monarchy somehow made a million that would secure me for life and I would have all the time in the world to just work on a single game.
Both scenarios still seem so far away and deep down I knew that going in as Dead Monarchy is a niche game, but that's why dreams exist, so you can chase them and in my case, gives meaning to my life.
Once I have created a few more games and the major features that those games will be based around have received adequate feedback and have been polished, I will then combine all the games into the "ultimate" version and that game will then ultimately be my "dream" game and the game I will then continue to work on.
That is the plan and the route I have decided to take. I need to be able to work in sections, if the game gets too big, it becomes too unwieldy, sections need to be locked down, if I have multiple things that need my attention all at once, it becomes extremely messy.
Post-Release Plans:
Roaming Mobs: I have already began work on the post-release content and the work towards my overall goal. Recently I worked on a pathfinding/waypoint system for roaming mobs. This is something that I would like to implement into Dead Monarchy but I knew it would take too long. If all goes well, I hope to backport this feature into the game.
Monster Enemies: The monster enemies in the initial early access build had several issues. I will eventually reintroduce a good chunk of them back into the game as well as new monsters. I plan for 4 monster factions.
Different Cultures: The initial early access build had different cultures however each map felt extremely bland so I decided to just focus on one culture, which was medieval Europe. I will be reworking the armour sets and reintroducing new human factions. These new factions will be inspired by the Danes (Vikings), Persians, Chinese, Japanese, Romans and Greeks. I plan to create 4-5 human factions and they will utilise perk combinations that have not been used in the base game yet. These human factions will essentially be "legendary companies", endgame enemies.
Reworked Factions: There are certain sets of armours that are not used as much and so I plan to do some reworking to create new factions that will fill in the level gaps between the current factions. This should create more variety for future playthroughs. All these reworked factions will most likely drop at once whereas the others mentioned above will be released gradually.
Other Surprises: All I'll say is that, if all goes well there may be a few other additions aside from just new factions.
Price Increase:
Once all the post-release content for Dead Monarchy is finished, the game will be increasing to $15 USD. I feel like that is more than fair as I don't plan to do paid DLC for Dead Monarchy.
Next Game:
I will be working on the new game whilst simultaneously working on the post-release content for Dead Monarchy. It's important for me personally that I do this so I don't burn out.
For the next game, I want to significantly expand the combat system and fully introduce new cultural factions. So not just visually through their armours but new weapon types that will change the way they fight. Axes, scimitars, spear + shield, dual wielding, bows, different shield types like bucklers. One of the main goals for the next game/standalone expansion is to fully lockdown the combat system. I want to know how the combat feels when it is fully fleshed out. It was too big of a jump to do it in Dead Monarchy, especially after the complete rebuild. When you consider all the tweaking I did in response to player feedback, something as little as changes to critical hits would have taken me 10x as long if I had added several more weapon types as several abilities have their own critical hit calculations that are impacted by perks etc. That is an example of what I mean by "locking down sections", it would have gotten extremely messy if I made the game any bigger without getting a sizable group of players to play it and provide feedback first.
Thanks Again:
Thank you to everyone that purchased Dead Monarchy, I am extremely grateful of what I have achieved currently and I owe a lot of that to the players. Thank you for all the feedback left by the players on the forums and the constant show of support, I've read every comment.
I also want to give a special thanks to the 64 people that have left a review for Dead Monarchy, positive or negative it all ends up as a positive outcome in the end.
My game development journey has just begun, I still have a long road ahead of me. Even if my games don't become huge financial successes, I don't regret the time I spent working on them, even during the hard times.
There is something special about seeing a dream that started in your head manifest itself into the world as a tangible product that you can interact with. I believe that feeling goes far beyond the exhilaration of monetary gain, it soothes the soul. It was worth selling my house to partially fund development.
Build 18:
- Fixed a major exploit where changing weapons during combat would replenish all stats, IE restoring Stamina and removing the "Exhausted" status effect.
- Fixed the issue where if "Faster Combat" was enabled, characters would still move after being hit with an Attack of Opportunity. Now with this option enabled, characters that are hit will remain in the same spot instead of moving.
- The chance of Resolve being reduced on death now takes place at the start of the death event instead of the end, this should fix the issue of the AI committing to an action only to suddenly rout afterwards due to the delayed effect from the death event.
- Updated Stalwart Believer perk description to reflect the new changes to Resolve.
- Stamina penalty on Ancestral (Orange) shields, reduced to -15 from -25. Masterwork (Purple) shields, reduced to -5 from -20.
- The "Instant Deployment" issues on certain combat maps have now been fixed.
- The official steam guide has been linked to the main menu.
- The post-game boss has now received a new set of armour with its own model.
- The stats for the post-game boss as well as the armour itself has been significantly reduced.
- Various tweaks to texts.
Cheers, Kevin.
Dev Update #30: Build 17 (Small Hotfix)
Hey guys,
Quick update, introducing just 1 change.
- Chance of -5 Resolve being reduced from allied members on a party member's death will be 50% instead of 100%.
- Updated Resolve tooltip to mention above changes.
Cheers, Kevin.
Dev Update #29: Build 17 (Full Release Date, Another Balancing Update)
Hey guys,
Originally, I had planned for Dead Monarchy to release on the 23rd of March however I had to push it back. I have now decided on a new full release date.
Dead Monarchy will transition from early access to full release on the 19th of May (19/5/2023), so basically just over a month from now unless something drastically changes again.
This update will most likely be the last update before full release.
Change Notes:
- Fixed the issue with the extended HUD not remaining pinned making it impossible to inspect perks on combatants during combat.
- A combatant dying will now incur -5 Resolve to all members of the same party. This also stacks with the perk Courageous Thoughts, which reduces Resolve by -15 on a critical hit (kill).
- Made some updates to the battle log output.
- Nimble Movement has been removed from militias/deserters and replaced with Impact Anticipation.
- Critical hits from standard attacks and weapon abilities will now do a minimum of 20 damage to Vitality. The minimum amount of damage will bypass armour perks. 10/10 damage to Head/Body and 10/10 damage to Helmet/Armour.
- Minimum critical hit chance is now 5%, maximum critical hit chance is now 95%.
- Updated several perk descriptions to account for the new changes to critical hits.
- Updated party selection for when starting with player members. You can now select starting companions by weapon type. Equipment and traits will still be assigned randomly though, this won't change.
- The perk Organised Chaos (Tactics) will now reduce the AP cost for Quick Shot (Arbalest) from 7 to 5 and allow the user to shoot at targets on tiles directly adjacent to the user. Basically, it removes the minimum range penalty.
- Post-game boss Stamina, increased to 250, due to changes with "Exhausted".
- If you are directly flanking a target from the back, critical hit chance will be set to 95% regardless. This will make being surrounded even deadlier due to the changes to critical hits that allow bypass damage.
- When "Routing" status effect is applied, the chance to critical hit is 95% regardless.
- When "Routing" or "Exhausted" status effects are applied, the chance to hit is 95% regardless.
- Updated relevant tooltips to reflect the above changes.
- The amount of medallions in your inventory is listed in the champion/spectacle fights page.
- The marketplace and shelters (recruitment) is now available in the quick interactions menu.
- Updated the way deployment/placement tiles are displayed. I am hoping this will be the solution to the "invisible placement tiles bug" that occasionally occurs.
Cheers, Kevin.
Dev Update #28: Build 16 (50% Off! Arbalester Nerf, Balancing Pass, QoL Changes)
Hey guys,
Dead Monarchy is 50% off during the Spring Sale, it is the deepest discount as of yet! Build 16 is a major update, a huge balancing pass and introducing a lot of new QoL changes and fixes. One of the major changes are the nerfs done to the Arbalester builds in order to bring them into line with other classes. They are still viable and very powerful however prior to this update, they completely outclassed any other build.
Due to this update, some of the classes listed in the Temporary Player Guide have outdated information, mainly ones related to the Arbalest.
For those that wish to continue playing on Build 15, I have made it available on the beta branch.
Opting In:
- Right click Dead Monarchy. - Select “Properties”. - Select “Betas” on the left menu. - Select “rebuild” from the drop down list.
As for build 16, in order to see all the changes, you will need to start a new playthrough.
New:
- Shortcut abilities can now be swapped with each other on the shortcut bar changing the hotkey, drag and drop to reorder.
- A new difficulty option has been added. "Higher Wages", if enabled wages for advanced military backgrounds will remain at the higher values introduced in the last major update. If disabled, wages will be the same as starting companion wages.
- Items in the crafting menu now display their stat ranges.
- The contract and crafting menu now lists the amount of items you currently have in your inventory where appropriate.
- You can now sort items in the inventory by price. Just click the sorting button and it will cycle between "as added, item type/ID, low to high, high to low".
- The sorting button has now been added to all marketplace menus.
- A new option, "Quick Interaction" can be accessed from the options menu. When it is enabled, you can quickly interact with the tavern, temple and smithy when inside a haven.
- Fast travel is now possible between havens provided you have unlocked the corresponding arena champion tied to the haven. Travelling between havens is done in a linear fashion, you move forward or backwards. There is no money cost because fast travel was never intended nor designed for Dead Monarchy so it is not really possible to fully integrate it into the gameplay. The existence of fast travel alone disrupts gameplay to the point where adding an additional money requirement doesn't really do anything in the long run. Fast travel will make trading contracts far easier than they should be, it will make camping to reduce chances of getting ambushed redundant, getting around in general with no time loss will make general company management easier, etc. This option purely exists for players that wish to have it, unfortunately there is no seamless way to integrate it.
- Added "End Individual Turn" and "End Phase" buttons to the combat HUD. They can be found in the right corner of the main combat HUD which is in the bottom centre of the screen. "End Individual Turn" the red arrow, "End Phase" the green tick.
- Added buttons to cycle forward and backwards between player combatants to the combat HUD. They can be found on the left of the main combat HUD (displaying HP etc).
- Contract cooldowns are now displayed when hovering over a haven in both the local map and world map.
Changes:
- During target selection in combat, you can now cancel your currently selected ability with [ESC]. It will not immediately bring up the exit menu. Only when out of target selection will pressing [ESC] bring up the exit menu.
- The perk Restore Stamina now only costs 7AP, down from 10AP.
- Updated console log to show when marketplaces and shelters have been restocked (each new week).
- Made some adjustments to the simplified overworld HUD when activated, [H].
- You can now organise your party (reorder and move from active to reserve) in the inventory and perk menus. The organise menu will remain as the only menu that can rename and dismiss mercenaries.
- Added a hotkey to call up the camp menu [C].
- You can now cancel an attack during target selection with [RMB], only click it once though as [RMB] is also for grid movement.
- Added in new console log entries to notify the player of when crowns/provisions have been paid and distributed.
- The chance to recover Resolve per turn has been decreased from 50% to 5%. Routing will now be more punishing for both the player and the enemy, as intended.
- Certain perk descriptions have been reworded for more clarity.
- Master level retrieval contract has been changed from collecting all baubles to collecting x3 Imperial and x3 Primordial. This also clears up the text overflow in the quest log.
- Movement penalties for heavy armour have been reversed. The higher quality the armour is, the less the movement penalty becomes.
- Experience multipliers have been reduced to smooth out the levelling progression especially at easier difficulties when having to deal with sudden increases in wages.
- Clarified the tooltip for encampments that spawn during raid contracts that the enemy types are dependent on the initial raid contract difficulty.
- Sharp Senses the perk that granted +5AP on a ranged kill, has been reduced to +1AP. You can still chain up to 3 kills once you have fully invested into the Arbalest skill tree in addition to acquiring this perk but the overall power of arbalesters has been brought in line with other classes. It was fun but they really were too overpowered.
- Adrenaline rush for ranged kills no longer fully restores Stamina but only restores +10 Stamina.
- Stamina costs for ranged standard attacks and abilities have been significantly increased to account for the fact that ranged weapons do not have ammunition or friendly fire penalties.
- Smoothed out the levelling progression, the caves now spawn enemy types appropriate to the region you are currently in. Starting region belonging to House Durant only spawns outlaws in caves and the enemy types gradually get stronger the further north you travel, just like how the enemies in the hostile random events are handled.
- Floating texts that appear in combat now linger on the screen longer, giving you more time to read them.
- There is now an option to disable floating texts during combat. If you are playing on an existing build which is not recommended, you will need to enable this option to show floating texts again.
- The amount of medallions required to access each champion fight has been reduced to 3/6/9/12/15, this means that at most, only one medallion fight is required before fighting the champions of each respective arena.
- The amount of champion insignias required to access the post-game boss fight has been reduced from x25 to x3. As a side note, post-game content will be expanded upon in the free post-release content and will be tied to this boss.
- Updated background skyboxes for haven interior scenes.
- The perk Indomitable Spirit (Battlefield Survival) has now been fixed and updated. It now negates damage from all sources except special abilities, meaning you will take no Vitality/Helmet/Armour damage from melee/ranged standard attacks, counter attacks, wild strike, short strike and quick shot. This means this perk is now more effective on pure tanks and can be used to counter enemies that have heavy wild strikers.
- Due to the initial fixes to Indomitable Spirit that led to a perk update, more changes have been made. AP cost has been reduced from -10 to -3. Cooldown reduced from 10 to 2. Stamina cost is increased from -5 to -10 and no longer restores Stamina. The effect wears off at the end of the next phase as opposed to 5 phases. It is now an ability you want to use more actively, the lowered AP cost means it can be used with Restore Stamina on heavy armour tanks or you can follow up with an attack. It has become a flexible tanking ability without having to directly rely on a specific type of armour.
- You can now enter any arena in any haven regardless of the status of your journal. The arena champion is still tied to the journal though.
- The exact amount of enemy spawns is now listed in all locations.
- Arena rewards have been revamped. Item price has been reduced down to only 5 medallions, some duplicate items have been removed and new mid-tier masterwork items have been added. Each haven will have different rewards so it is worth travelling to all the arenas.
Fixes:
- You can no longer duplicate weapons by dragging a weapon from primary/secondary (1) equipment slot to an empty primary/secondary (2) weapon slot.
- Fixed the issue of the UI breaking if you hire every single possible recruit at the shelters, the menu will now automatically close if there is no one left to hire.
- Fixed the issue of menus such as the inventory locking up when quickly opening and closing them resulting in not being able to fully close the menu.
- Fixed issue of character highlight marker not appearing after finishing an arena fight.
- Fixed the unclickable chest that spawns near Dismal Caves.
- Fixed the issue of the camera zooming in and out during animation sequences in combat if you zoom in and out during the enemy phase.
- Fixed another durability related issue where critical hits would reduce durability from helmet/armour without taking into consideration armour perks such as Nimble Movement or Assured Victory. For example, this would result in the helmet/armor stat being 350/350 but the actual durability value being 250/350, this would make it unable to be repaired despite needing it.
- Fixed the issue of masterwork light armour not applying +1 bonus movement. This also fixes the +1 bonus movement trait not stacking.
- Fixed the issue of the wrong haven names being mentioned as settlement modifiers are improved based on contract completion (Mirstone and Farmont).
Cheers, Kevin.
Let's Play Series: Special Caesar
Hey guys,
Special Caesar has been streaming a let's play series for the rebuilt Dead Monarchy. He is the first to stream the rebuilt version so if you are interested in checking it out, head over to his YouTube channel. It's always interesting for me to watch players play my own game and I've taken on some of his feedback as well. I'm always grateful to streamers who take the time to showcase Dead Monarchy.
In other news as of February 28, I have turned 30. I'm now also at that stage in life where you ponder about your 20s and question if you made the most out of it. All I really remember is working on Dead Monarchy since I was 23 haha, but I would say it was worth it.
I'd like to again thank everyone who has supported Dead Monarchy over these years and especially to those players that have left reviews, both positive and negative. All the feedback helps and goes towards improving Dead Monarchy.
Dead Monarchy was fully self-funded by myself, I never went onto kickstarter as I didn't feel I had built enough trust yet with the community to be trusted in delivering a product nor was I experienced enough.
There is one thing that would help me out immensely though and it would be my birthday wish too, all I wish for is some more reviews. Thanks again to all those that supported me!
Cheers, Kevin.
Dev Update #27: Build 15 (New Loading Screens, Small Fixes)
Hey guys,
Just a smaller update today, some QoL fixes, general fixes and new loading screens.
- Diagonal attacks now rotate to the nearest straight grid tile, meaning after an attack, combatant directions will no longer be left on diagonal angles which makes it hard to tell if you are flanking from the back/left/right.
- A player marker will now appear on the character when the camera is zoomed out further in the overworld map.
- Streamlined combat UI, only the current phase UI and battle log UI will appear during enemy turns during combat.
- Added 25 new loading screen art.
- Updated initialisation screen tooltips in regards to what is needed to play on Emperor difficulty.
- Resized floating texts in combat so they don't overlap in cases where two sets of floating text trigger side by side.
- You can now disable the majority of the UI when traversing across the overworld map. There were some reports of camera stutter when panning across, this is linked to the UI. You can press H to enable/disable most of the UI, just leaving the current days/hours UI but it should result in a much smoother camera. There is also a button to enable/disable the UI in the top right hand corner.
Cheers, Kevin.
Dev Update #26: Build 14 (35% Off! Live Build, Major Balancing Overhaul)
Hey guys,
Another major update today. A huge balancing overhaul and the rebuild version is now transitioning to the live build version. The store page has been completely updated and a new trailer has been released. To celebrate, Dead Monarchy is 35% off!
You will need to start a new playthrough in order to see all the changes. If you are loading up a save file from the initial Dead Monarchy and not the rebuild version, this update will break your save game.
For the past several updates, the updates have been on the beta branch but now the rebuild version has made its way to the live build, so now would be the time to opt out of the beta branch. The current live build will transition to a legacy branch before being removed in a month or so due to being completely outdated.
New:
- The 5 elevation related perks within the Battle Awareness perk category have been replaced with 5 new perks, due to the elevation perks being broken but also not entirely practical to use. The new perk abilities reduce status values Attack, Strength, Defense, Focus and Agility.
- Added a difficulty disclaimer screen when starting new games.
- You can now pan the camera with the directional keyboard arrows, rotate the camera with right ctrl and keypad 0 and reset the camera position with right shift.
- Buffed the post-game boss, has a new armour set, good luck.
- Added a button to cancel active contracts, will result in a loss to company morale.
- It is now possible to start with a party of companions. Party Strength is a new difficulty setting that determines your starting party size and also your starting crowns. It has been merged with the Starting Crowns difficulty option.
- Camping now has new features. During each camp session (every time you set up camp, once per day), you can gather provisions, iron ore and quality woods, x5 per member. In addition, you can increase company morale by 25% each session and train your men, increasing their EXP by +500 each session.
Changes:
- Wild Strike and Quick Shot maximum hit chance prior to obtaining the perk "Organised Chaos" is reduced to 40% from 65%.
- Wild Strike and Quick Shot maximum hit chance after obtaining the perk "Organised Chaos" is reduced to 50% from 80%.
- Watchful Slash (Greatsword Ability) now uses 100% of Focus as extra bonus damage instead of 50% when upgraded to the 3rd rank.
- Honing Slash (Greatsword Ability) now has a stacking bonus Focus buff of +50 instead of +20 when upgraded to the 3rd rank.
- The quantity selection UI box will not show up when selling items unless the item stack is greater than x1, meaning you can sell items faster.
- Cinematic attack camera transition at the end of the attack animation has been shortened due to issues with camera transitions.
- All 10 perks within the Battlefield Training category have been buffed. 25 to 50 and 15 to 25.
- The daily wage and daily intake (food) for advanced backgrounds has been significantly increased due to the increased amount of crowns that you can make from all the new contracts. With the buffs to status boosting perks, the non-military based backgrounds are still viable and of course much cheaper to field.
- Master level contract difficulty icons have been updated to reflect the increased difficulty between master level contracts instead of just using the same icon.
- The amount of Ancient Coins required to craft tier 2 stat rings (Steel) has been increased from x1 to x5.
- The cooldowns for contracts have been adjusted, it was too easy to exploit contracts such as Collection for easy crowns. Cooldowns in days:
- Updated the "Current AP" HUD to only display remaining AP instead of displaying max as well due to certain perks increasing AP mid-combat which can result in the player technically having more than the max displayed AP which causes confusion.
- Chests that spawn in the overworld maps are now highlighted to begin with and the cursor will change when hovering over the chest.
- Energetic Strikes, the light armour perk now adds the user's maximum Stamina as opposed to the user's current Stamina as bonus damage. This results in a substantial damage boost.
- Starting gold for all difficulty levels has been increased.
- The farmhand, peddler and squire backgrounds have been rebalanced to make them viable to use as arbalesters. You will see a significant focus boost at the loss of other stats.
- Contracts that ask you to collect a required item now take into account existing items that were collected before the contract was issued.
- The perk Indomitable Spirit no longer has a health requirement, can be activated whenever.
- The perk effects for Distracting Shot and Piercing Shot effects have been buffed from -10 to -25.
- The perks effects for Defensive Strikes, Defensive Movement, Defensive Dodge and Reinforcing Footwork have been buffed from +5 to +10.
- The perk effect for Tireless Dodge has been buffed from +10 to +25 Stamina.
- Status effect changes now show up as floating text during combat, along with missed hits.
- Completing a contract now has a 25% chance to increase company morale by +25%.
- Supplies for camping has been reduced from x5 to x1 in the haven marketplaces.
Fixes:
- Movement range has now been fixed, previously the Movement (stat) value was not recognised and so regardless of light or heavy armour buffs/penalties movement would always be 5 tiles. Now light armour correctly gives the wearer more movement range and heavy armour will significantly hinder movement range as was initially intended.
- The quantity/confirmation UI box that appears when purchasing an arena item with medallions has been fixed to display the icon for medallions instead of crowns.
- Some minor text fixes.
- Fixed issue of the medallions counter UI box not updating in the arena rewards menu when purchasing rewards.
- Fixed issue of incorrect settlement modifiers being displayed (Korburg values) when in the newly added havens.
- Fixed issue of random events triggering whilst moving to an outpost to access the marketplace.
- Fixed the light armour perk Nimble Movement not correctly adding Stamina as extra armour.
- Fixed the incorrect durability values when certain perks that use stats as secondary armour values are acquired, the correct amount of durability will now be deducted from armour.
- Dungeon locations such as caves, ruins, graveyards, forts will now respawn as originally intended instead of instantly as soon as you leave the haven.
- Fixed the model scaling bug related to masterwork Greatswords during combat.
- Updated the haven entrance menu UI to be more consistent with the rest of the location UI's. This also fixes one of the rare issues where leaving the haven would lock up the UI.
- Fix floating texts bunching up together, floating texts will now spawn apart if multiple instances occur during combat.
- Fixed the issue of a few treasure chests spawning to close to other locations which makes them unable to be interacted with.
- Fixed a major exploit where if you retreated from battle, the loot was not cleared and then would appear as loot in the next battle if you won.
- Quick Shot (Arbalest) no longer benefits from increased range when upgrading Arbalest abilities.
- Wild Strike is no longer affected by perks other than the perks that directly affect Wild Strike.
- Fixed item text display issues in the combatant placement battle UI.
- Masterwork armour will no longer have poorer stats than ancestral equipment at the lowest rolls.
- Fixed the issue of not gaining +5 AP on a ranged critical kill when the perk Sharp Senses is acquired.
- Added missing crowns for the loot reward for arena champions.
The full release of Dead Monarchy draws closer.
Cheers, Kevin.
Dev Update #25: Build 13 (35% Off! Story Completed, Contracts, Crafting, Camp)
Hey guys,
A big update today and to celebrate, Dead Monarchy is going on sale, 35% discount! This major update links the story together with updated text, adds in a challenging post-game encounter, new contract types, crafting and the player camp.
New playthrough is required.
Opting In:
- Right click Dead Monarchy. - Select “Properties”. - Select “Betas” on the left menu. - Select “rebuild” from the drop down list.
The game can now be played completely from start to end, there will not be any more big additions to the game before release. I am now shifting to purely balancing and bug fixing as only now do I have the time to actually play and test. A couple of bugs have already been identified but they will be fixed in the next update. Now is a good time to dive back into Dead Monarchy as it is pretty close to a 1.0 release state. Just remember to swap over to the beta branch although it won’t be long until this rebuilt version replaces the live build.
New:
- Camping has been implemented. An item called "Supplies" has been added, it is a resource used when camping, it is required to pass the time when camping out in the wild. It is a rather expensive item because having a way to pass time when out in the wild subverts the danger of getting ambushed at night.
- Crafting has been added. Craft weapons and armour at the smithy, craft rings and trinkets and breakdown contract related items at the temple. Crafting can also be done in the player camp.
- 9 new contract types have been added to each haven. These contracts range from trade item missions, crafting, searching for abandoned chests to scouring the ancient ruins.
- Created 15 new items, 10x baubles and coins. Baubles are found only in ruins and will be a crafting requirement for trinkets. Coins can only be found in chests found out in the wilderness and are a crafting requirement for rings.
- Treasure chests now drop antique coins, the coins are melted down and the material will be an essential component for crafting. Trading goods no longer can be found in treasure chests.
- Quality wood now drops from bandit camps that spawn during raid contracts. Quality wood is a crafting material used in creating certain weapons.
- Remaining placeholder dialogue has been updated, all story related dialogues have been implemented and trigger correctly after each arena champion's defeat.
- The overarching story has now been connected, the game can be played through from start to finish and optionally trigger post-game content or finish the playthrough.
- Upon starting a new game, you can now select your weapon aptitudes (weapon class), based on the same classes used by other characters in the game.
Changes:
- Rings and gems no longer drop from ruins.
- Drop rate adjusted for gems from graveyards and rings removed from the loot table.
- Gems no longer drop from forts, the drop rate for rings has been adjusted.
- Iron and steel stat rings no longer drop from caves. Caves now drop iron ore, an essential component for crafting equipment.
- Higher quality armour can no longer be bought from outposts, it can only be bought in havens. Imperial weapons can no longer be bought from outposts.
- The chance of higher quality equipment appearing in havens has now been slightly reduced.
- The 5 trade goods that spawn in each of the outposts per haven have been shifted around. Now, only 1 type of trade good will spawn in each of the outposts per haven. If you want more valuable trade goods, you need to travel up north where it is also more dangerous to travel.
- Newly added havens now stock the new ancestral quality helmets and armours dropped by the newly added noble houses.
- The chance of ancestral level equipment spawning in haven marketplaces (provided you have the required affinity/prosperty with the haven) increases the further north you travel.
- Contracts will now have a cooldown which will be randomly set between 1-7 upon completion, per contract type for each city. Previously all contracts would have a 1 day cooldown but that was because of the limited selection.
- Masterwork weapons and armour can now be bought from havens, each haven sells their own specific masterwork equipment. The buy prices of masterwork equipment has been significantly increased. These items are not meant to be easily acquired but now the player has a viable money sink towards end-game. Only entry level masterwork armour is available in marketplaces, the best masterwork armours still can only be looted from champions.
- Grace period for random events starting has been reduced to 1 from 3 days, meaning you have 12 hours. This is to prevent exploiting the chests that spawn in the world and being able to freely collect them without any risk involved as soon as the game starts.
- There is now only a 50% chance of chests respawning each week instead of 100% due to the reward changes.
- 25% chance of forts, ruins, caves and graveyards respawning each week, decreased from 50% due to the contract and loot changes as well as crafting now being implemented. The lowered respawn rates means that players cannot just stay in one map tile forever, they will be need to push further north from time to time and brave the dangers there.
- Starting stat points are now distributed in increments of 5 instead of 1 during character creation.
- Maximum buy modifiers for recruitment costs on new recruits from the shelter has been increased due to the increased payout from new contracts.
- Maximum buy modifiers for marketplaces have been increased due to the increased payout from new contracts.
- Accessing the extended combatant information in battle (previously with RMB) has now been replaced with (mouse wheel click) to prevent misclicks with using the RMB to move on the grid.
- The amount of medallions required for each champion has been adjusted. x5/10/15/20/25 for each champion as opposed to x25 for all of them.
- Medallion fight now only has a cooldown of 1 day and not 1 week.
Fixes:
- Outposts and havens will now properly stock higher quality arbalests.
- The newly added havens now spawn the appropriate items in the marketplace depending on their individual settlement modifiers instead of using Korburg haven settlement modifiers.
- Recruits that spawn in the newly added havens will now be properly adjusted in accordance to the settlement's modifiers.
- Fixed the issue of being able to access the camp menu while in cities which would break the UI.
- Weapon duplication issue that occurs when swapping weapons is now fixed.
- Difficulty settings are now correctly displayed depending on starting initialisation options (requires new game start).
- Fixed lighting issues for interior scenes and blank/plain white terrain texture issue in caves and certain arenas.
Hope you all have a nice and relaxing holiday, next update will be out in the new year. Until then!
