It hasn't been long since our last update, but we've been able to implement several features and new content in these past few weeks and we'd like to keep you in the loop.
Two bigger changes have made it in - first, as promised we're expanding the variance on world map types and introducing the Crypt variant. The Crypt is now available for Skirmish mode runs and you're welcome to jump right in and give it a go!
Secondly, we finally got to replace the human faction models and portraits - the placeholder assets were a long way from our own hand-crafted ones, and we've been wanting to get to it for a LONG time.
Thank you for providing constant feedback and being a part of our journey, multiple aspects of this update have been guided by our fantastic Discord and Steam communities.
Major Changes (0.13.0.1, 0.13.1)
New Crypt strategic map variant for Skirmish mode.
Placeholder human faction models and portraits finally replaced.
Implemented full descriptions for traits to clarify their effects.
Balance & AI
Party creation cost reduced from 400 to 200 Beetcoins.
All plot costs now start at 200 Beetcoins, and increase by 50 for every plot excavated.
Savage's Claws now hit twice causing low damage when attacking, rather than once for high damage.
The bleed effect caused by Claws now requires level 6 instead of level 4 and is twice as strong.
'The Skull Key' difficulty balanced by making the second group of enemies stay in place before being discovered.
Building and guild upgrade effects now included in AI calculations.
Strategic AI aggressiveness lowered in low difficulties, including early aggression on Normal difficulty.
Strategic AI will play less defensively and leave fewer guards back home.
Strategic AI will prioritize preserving its heroes and will avoid fights in which they are likely to perish except against player factions.
Strategic AI now understands it should farm XP in easier fights even if they aren't guarding map rewards.
Health increased by 1 for human, skeleton and goblin mages in Normal Difficulty.
Adjusted low difficulty stats for enemy heroes and player creatures to make enemy heroes less potent.
The Terrible trait will now cause the unit to push targets in a direction 45 degrees clockwise from the original path.
Fixed an issue causing performance drops in strategic AI.
AI party size is now properly affected by purchased upgrades, except for the initial party on game start which is decided by difficulty level (replenishing lost units will be capped by upgrades).
Tester Access - Removed the Stun mutator.
Visuals & UI
Ability icons will now gray out while units move to prevent misclicks or mid-action clicks that aren't properly registered.
Added a 'Purged' status icon to make it easier to understand why a unit isn't stunned or otherwise debuffed.
Whirlwind has a new visual effect.
Electrocute visual effect cleaned up and improved.
Fixed some broken tree models to fit better within tiles.
Bug Squashing
Evasive Instincts bug causing Savages using it to become invisible to direct attacks fixed.
World map camera will no longer get locked to the bottom of the map when returning from combat after casting Fireball as the last action.
Mission stats will now properly change the amount of renown received, which didn't work in some cases. AI will also now properly get renown when fighting against the player.
Taunt now works as intended after being broken.
Fixed unwalkable tiles in forest and village maps.
Passive abilities gained by leveling up will now apply immediately when chosen.
Plank wall health adjusted, and they are no longer toppleable (as they weren't meant to be).
Sight calculation is now symmetrical to prevent battles from starting with undiscovered (but activated) enemies. Also fixed an issue causing a gap between sight calculation and displayed range outlines when using ranged abilities.
the 'Construction Available' info button is fixed and will open the town screen as intended.
AI can no longer mistakenly interact with story missions.
Leap, Lift and Telekinesis can now properly work for tiles that were previously mistakenly marked as unavailable.
Standing in Shallow Waters will properly override Stun Protection.
Sight behavior around doors improved to be more intuitive.
Fixed a bug causing units that are pushed onto stairs in Village maps to sometimes drown and insta-die.
Purge now properly removes all debuffs.
Dodge Stance effect now properly lasts 1 turn.
Fixed some Cave and Crypt walls.
Fixed multiple tooltips, enemy cards and status effect descriptions.
That's it for today, on our plate for the next updates - local multiplayer and multiple enemy factions in Skirmish mode!
Hope you're having a great time and please, keep the feedback coming! The suggestions and thoughts we've been getting over at Discord and in our forums have been and are extremely useful, we'd love to hear yours :)
Onwards!
Major Update - AI Can Now Use Physics! (0.13.0+)
Hail, Heroes!
It is great, as ever, to have you around our campfire. We’ve had a good month in terms of progress as well as in terms of feedback, and your contributions are making a difference. As mentioned in the previous updates, we’re shifting towards polish and optimization, but that doesn’t mean we can’t add new things on the way to full release.
September’s update is a big one, with several major additions and changes. Perhaps the biggest one for the tactical layer is the addition of house interiors and the ability to fight within them. The new houses are fully interactable with furniture you can kick and otherwise use with physics, and even destructible walls you can destroy to create new entry point. Be careful though - destroy enough walls and the roof will crash down on anyone inside.
We’ve also implemented two new environments, or rather new iterations of the Forest and Village environments - the old ones weren’t up to our standards and it was time to polish things up a bit. There’s also a bunch of AI upgrades and features including AI factions using hero units, and a meaningful performance upgrade as we’re investing more into optimization.
While 0.13.0 should not break save files from the last couple of builds, we recommend starting a new run because of how differently the AI behaves and the fact creatures are now gone.
The list of changes also includes changes from 0.12.0.2 and 0.12.0.3 which were released a few weeks ago.
Major Changes
Replaced the Forest and Village environments with shiny new ones.
Houses in the village environment now have fleshed out interiors with furniture that responds to physics and destructible walls.
AI factions will now use heroes fully, including physics abilities and attacks - brace yourselves!
Performance improved considerably.
Creatures and recruiting creatures are removed in this iteration, along with creature dwellings on the world map - we received plenty of feedback from players finding it confusing and unrewarding as it is now. We plan to reintroduce creatures in some way down the road after we experiment a bit.
Gameplay
Water tiles now have two types - shallow waters causing a stun and some damage each turn until the unit climbs out of it, and deep waters which auto kills units unfortunate enough to fall into, similar to how all water tiles behaved thus far.
Large forest mushrooms added, this is the first object to break in half and slide when kicked or pushed, but we plan on adding more of them.
Added images to tutorial scenarios to make them clearer.
Three new guild upgrades added.
Both player and enemy spawning patterns in tactical combat will now be more varied.
It is now possible to vault short fences or jump into houses through windows using a normal movement action.
Heroes cost less Beetcoin for all factions, and no longer cost magic to recruit.
The 3-hero per week purchase limit has been removed, slots will refresh with a new hero as soon as you purchase one of them.
All heroes (Player and AI factions) now have a passive stun resistance, making fights more balanced.
Parties are no longer created with free creatures (so you must have at least one unit in town to create the party).
Castle Walls environment temporarily removed, we’re not happy with it and want to remake it in a better way. For now we’re using a unique variation of the Village environment instead.
Visual & Sound
Added multiple VFX and SFX throughout the game’s UI to provide better feedback for player actions.
Units now have a new action points indicator on them, right under their health bar.
High or low to-hit chances will now show in green or red font respectively.
Tactical AI overhauled from the ground up. It is now smarter, more effective, and can handle ability usage much better - including physics abilities. This is something we’re going to keep an eye on and tweak until we hit the right balance.
Improved text spacing for ease of reading.
Fixed an issue making it too common for players to reveal two enemy pods at once in the first mission.
AI can now recruit heroes, with a maximum party size of 5, just like the player’s faction.
AI no longer starts the game with a very large army.
Performance
Forest and Village environment performance improved considerably. Older environments will be improved similarly down the road.
UI rendering CPU performance improved.
In combat, AI turn length reduced by improved pathfinding performance.
Cover calculation performance improved, some cover rules adjusted (For example, small objects on top of larger objects will now be taken into cover calculation consideration).
Replaced the see-through effect for tall objects to a slightly simpler one, because this new effect performs vastly better. The new effect is available for all quality settings.
Bug Squashing
Artifact images that didn’t display correctly on the world map now fixed.
Chain Lightning will now properly ignore unactivated enemies, as intended.
The ‘Unit in enemy control zone’ status icon will now disappear and not linger after moving away which happened in some cases.
Items with HP effects will now immediately register as intended.
Some UI text ‘leaks’ fixed.
Non-human faction portraits will now properly show customized color choices.
Changing quality from ‘Low’ to ‘Very Low’ sometimes caused a black screen bug, which is now fixed.
The ‘Physics 103’ and ‘Stunlock’ achievements are fixed and can be achieved.
Major Update - New Towns & Hero Traits (0.12.0.1)
Hail, Adventurers!
We're fighting on, through winter or as it is right now, extreme heat, and the work is paying off! Time for another major update, and 0.12.0.1 is introducing two of the systems we've been waiting for the longest.
The first is a system we knew we're going to have since the very start - Hero Traits, random perks that change specific heroes and differentiate them in interesting ways. While a few are mostly cosmetic, many are actually game changing, and since each hero will draw 2 random traits out of the pool (the first batch has 17 but we'll be adding many more) - we're going to have more varied gameplay right away.
The second major change is in how towns operate and look like internally. Town interface and menus have been reworked from the ground up, buildings have visual representations as they are built, and each town will have slots that need to be cleared up before structures can be constructed there.
We'd love to hear your feedback about these changes, and the easiest way is over at our Discord, join us there and share some thoughts!
Major Changes (0.11.2.2 Hotfix + 0.12.0.1)
Save files from previous versions will not work in 0.12.0.1
An initial pool of 17 Hero Traits introduced, more coming very soon.
Starting heroes will randomly get 2 traits from the growing pool.
Buildings now appear in towns after being constructed.
Buildings now have a 1 turn base construction time and will not instantly appear.
Towns now have building slots, slots should be cleared before used for construction.
Factions now have a maximum number of heroes they can have across all armies, which can be raised by upgrading their fort.
Renown is back as a resource! You get it in fights, and spend it to get guild upgrades.
Tactical Ability bar upgraded with better UI and differentiation between active and passive effects, will also display traits and artifacts now.
Added a strategic layer tutorial as well as multiple new helpful tooltips.
New music tracks added to our campaign intro.
New guild upgrades added.
New artifacts added.
New events added.
Balance
Neutral groups on the world map can now be composed of multiple creature types rather than just one.
Cages will now yield heroes instead of creatures, if there's no room in your party, a new one will be formed instantly.
AI will now value slowing and speeding effect slightly less. For example, Wizards are less likely to use Frostbite over their regular attack.
Grapple Hook now has an accuracy bonus.
Increased daily Beetcoin income from towns and farms.
Slightly increased the mean magic provided weekly by the Magic Distillery (2-4 instead of 1-4).
Starting resources reduced.
Player factions will start a skirmish game with a single party of 3 heroes.
Building prices changed.
Technical
Slime and Freeze slower animation removed following feedback.
Visual and sound effects upgraded for many abilities and attacks.
Physics have been sped up, associated bug eliminated (see below).
Loading times improved, especially for story missions.
Improved text layout for non-English languages, more readable font too.
Updated multiple ability icons.
Bugs Squashed
Skirmish mode will no longer sometimes spawn a high difficulty fight near your initial spawn's nearest town.
Bleeding effects from different sources will now stack properly. For example, using an ability which causes bleeding and having a bonus bleeding damage from a building will stack.
AI parties will no longer sometimes lose units after a player battle (in some cases it happened even to parties not participating in that battle).
Fixed the diagonal kicks physics bug reported in recent weeks, at a small performance cost - we'll optimize this in the following weeks.
Fixed a bunch of tooltip visual bugs.
Insatiable Bloodlust will now properly yield a single AP rather than occasionally providing 2.
We're happy with progress overall, and hope you are too :) The next major update is planned for next month, and among other things we're going to introduce physics-using enemies. Other than that - optimization is the name of the game, and we have a lot of ground to cover in the next couple of months.
For now have fun, and please report bugs you encounter as well as share your thoughts with us either directly, in our forums or over at our Discord server. Thank you!
Onwards!
Major Update - Localization, Caverns & More (0.11.2)
Greetings, Brave Ones!
As promised earlier this month, it’s time for a major update with a bunch of highly requested features including the first localized versions, male heroes and a bunch of AI upgrades!
This is a big one for us, and we’d love for you to hop into the new build, share thoughts and provide feedback for the new features in our community or in Discord.
Localization Begins (DE, RU, PO)
As those of you following our progress know, it has always been our priority to open the gates ever wider for new adventurers. It started on day 1 when we chose to always release builds for Mac and Linux along with the PC ones, it will continue in the future with the planned console versions, but today, we’re celebrating our first three localized versions - for German, Polish and Russian.
We hope to keep this up and release in as many languages as we can down the road, so stay tuned for more!
Major Changes
Male Hero Models have been added to the game. This is something we’ve continuously left for later as gameplay was our primary focus, but it is time.
Existing save files are not affected by this addition.
Caverns procedural strategic maps have been added to the game.
In Skirmish mode you can now configure the map between caverns and grassland environments.
Continued our tutorial rework, improving the overall flow and adding new tips as well as a new scenario for Overwatch and Brace mechanics. You can now retry or skip scenarios more easily. Some scenarios have controller issues but we’re working on that and it should still be playable.
New mission added in the beginning of Act I, this will not break existing save files but will not appear for them when playing either.
Party movement speed and vision range reduced during worldmap travel.
Heroes in towns changed so they will never be all of the same class.
Balance
Improved game balance across all difficulty levels.
Objects and Guards spawn in the world-map in more balanced patterns to increase replayability.
Heroes will be limited to level 5 during Act I and will not gain experience after reaching level 5. Future acts will increase this limitation. Existing save files will not have this limitation.
The Powerful Encouragement upgrade will no longer increase the AP cost of the Encourage ability.
Visual & UI
Changed the font of the game to improve clarity and readability, let us know how you feel about it!
New and better indication for currently selected units.
Ability tooltips are overhauled and will now show more information in a clearer way.
New Ability visual effects - Chain Lightning, Holy Shackles, Bolster.
Technical & AI
Performance for the Windows version has been improved, Linux and Mac will get the same treatment soon.
Strategic AI in Legendary difficulty will now better handle neutral forces and monsters, both in terms of aggression and choosing targets and in combat it will lose less units facing them. This change was started by great feedback from veteran players who noticed Legendary AI is too aggressive towards neutral to a point it harms itself
‘Reckless’ enemy units will no longer move if they are already near an enemy.
Enemy units will no longer attempt to move to new cover causing them to trigger Overwatch or Attack of Opportunity unless their current cover is compromised.
Gharzan and Gharbarak will now have Goblin hero classes.
Bug Squashing
<*>Stacking potions will no longer sometimes disappear, including when returning to the world map. <*>Fixed several bugs causing faulty scaling of UI elements (for example, sometimes enemy unit cards became visually broken). <*>Cinematic Camera will now work properly on the first attack in a mission. It is no longer possible to move on the spot and waste movement points this way. <*>Several bugs in the party merging screen have been fixed to prevent unit loss / duplication as well as empty party scenarios. <*>Fixed Ballista to have 3AP like other units, and changed the cost of its an attack to be 3AP. <*>Game will no longer get stuck when using hotkeys to open the skill tree or party screen while there is no party selected.
Thank you for keeping up the good fight, for supporting us, and for sharing your thoughts to help us make the game better.
Onwards!
Minor Update - Balance & Soundtrack Update (0.11.1.1)
Welcome Back, Adventurers!
We have a small, sweet update going live today, this one brings some new music, UI upgrades and a bunch of balance tweaks following the feedback we've been getting from you.
A major update is coming in a few short weeks, so this is just us wanting to put out what's ready before we sink our teeth into the bigger challenge.
New Features
Added a second music track for battles, which only had one so far.
Improved intro cinematics.
Many new portraits added including Spiders, Goblins and Skeletons.
User Interface
Town interface improved and the order of its panels has changed.
Following your feedback, changed movement outline to be orange rather than blue when a move action is going to leave a unit with 1 or less action points.
Improved the quality of artifact and reward icons on the world map.
Iterated some ability icons.
Fixed multiple ability descriptions not conforming to the 3AP change.
Selected enemy movement outline will now only include the 1 AP range rather than both 1 and 2 AP move ranges.
Balance
Starting parties in all game modes now start with an additional low tier unit.
Following an open Discord discussion we're boosting Paladins with two new abilities, 'Bolster' and 'Holy Shackles', with their respective upgrades. Both use placeholder VFX and UI.
Ability upgrades that affect the Ranger's basic attacks will now apply to Quickshot attacks too.
Chain Lightning will now bounce to targets even if they are out of line of sight.
Monsters yield around 10% less XP, especially higher tier ones.
Performance & Bugs
Improved memory management which reduces framerate spikes considerably.
Polished 'Tormenting Tone', the first mission in Act 1.
Polished 'Aristocratic Artifice', the last mission of Act 1.
Fixed a loot bug at the end of Gharzan's mission.
Fixed the 'Continue' button hitbox in the main menu which was partially blocked.
Fixed a bug with Troll stun protection sometimes proccing twice in a row instead of just once.
Thank you for your continued feedback, and if you haven't joined the discussion yet hop into our Discord and say hi!
Onwards!
Major Update - Campaign Act 1 & 3AP (0.11.1)
Greetings, Valiant Ones!
As promised earlier this month, a major step is upon us. For the first time since we split our game into testing branches, a unified build is live! We're super excited to invite you to take it for a spin, now that the first act of our story campaign is back, better, and with the new strategic gameplay implemented with it.
We've been gathering feedback for the tutorial for a while, and you've been heard - Instead of a single locked scenario with close to zero player freedom, we will have several training scenarios which are open and fully playable. There are five scenarios focused on basic gameplay principles, and we plan to add more advanced ones down the road to give you some more ideas.
As ever with major build overhauls, this update will break previous save files, so get ready for a fresh run!
3AP is Live
One of the coolest things about this project is how involved you have been from the start, showing care and sharing your vision for the game with us.
Slightly less than a year ago, following a discussion that started within the team and spilled to our community, we got it into our minds that we want players to have more freedom in each turn. After much testing, and we mean MUCH testing, the change is finally live and you can play around with 3 action points.
The biggest change is that actions previously costing 1AP and ending your turn before will now cost 2AP but not end your turn. This means you can attack and then move, brace and then move into overwatch fire, and many other skill combinations previously impossible (Savage's Bloodlust is also going to be much more balanced now).
Patch Notes
Merged Act 1 of the story campaign with strategic layer.
Reworked Tutorial into scenarios.
Units will now have 3AP instead of 2AP.
Physics Damage Overhaul: We wanted physics to be more predictable but balanced with damaging attacks. Regular physics hits will now cause a fixed amount of 2 damage, while toppled objects such as trees will cause 7 damage.
New world map objects added including corpses, totems of speed, broken wagons and more.
Artifact chests added to world map.
Many new sound effects added, several existing ones have been swapped for better ones.
Cages will now provide parties with several units instead of a single hero.
Units can now drop multiple potion types rather than just health potions.
Replaced Forest Tower with Totem of Stamina.
New ability icons for Blink, Swap, Chain Lightning, Charge, Evasive Instincts and Vortex.
Added game credits (Unfinished).
Beetcoin Chests will yield less Beetcoin.
Added Beet Distillery upgrade.
Spiderling HP on Easy increased to 3HP.
Urn and Cave Egg HP reduced to 2HP, now any physics impact will break them.
Units can no longer use enemies for cover.
Removed Cowclops.
Reworked in-game pop-ups and especially the reward screen.
Peasant units will now carry pitchforks.
Bugs Fixed
Fixed a bug preventing two different parties from visiting some world map locations during the same day.
It is no longer possible to stack a world map effect twice by visiting two locations of the type in a single day.
Town UI will no longer be available during enemy turns.
Fixed several physics bugs causing objects to sometimes swap during complex physics interactions such as Vortex.
Disabled abilities will no longer be clickable.
Goblin Bomber AI improved and will choose to self detonate in better locations.
Skeleton Mage class description fixed.
Performance
Main Menu will not require as much CPU power as before.
Improved loading times of tactical levels (Still a ways to go).
Thank you for being here with us, and please keep providing feedback in communities or over at our discord server - we love hearing from you!
Onwards!
Major Update - Faction Heroes & AI Upgrades (0.10.5)
Greetings, Warriors!
Development continues apace, and we've worked in quite a few features from our waiting list in the past month. Heading the list is a MAJOR upgrade to tactical AI, enabling it to calculate ability and spell usage and relative value - this is naturally still a work in progress but we're seeing some amazing initial results.
We're also heading faction heroes, including some sexy troll and goblin heroes with unique bonuses. Can't wait to see which of them you will like playing with the most!
As always, please share as much feedback as you can with us either through in-game bug reports, suggestions on our Steam forums or by chatting with us over at Discord.
Faction Heroes
In our continued effort to make factions interesting and relevant for different playstyles, we've finally added some non-human heroes, namely Troll and Goblin faction heroes. Each faction will also have a unique faction-wide ability present in all units and heroes.
Added goblin and troll heroes.
Each faction now has a unique passive ability present in all units and heroes.
Heroes from different factions have different health.
Faction heroes can be recruited in the town of that faction and only there.
Your starting heroes will change to reflect your chosen faction.
Tutorial can currently only be played when picking the Human faction.
Tactical AI & Abilities
A major step forward, our tactical AI can now evaluate ability effects when considering what to do. This allows it to "understand" a wider range of abilities, and use them better than before.
To name a few examples, the enemy will no longer slow already slowed units. Your foes will use AoE spells much better and maximize their effect, while avoiding hitting their allies with these effects and other explosions. We can give a ton more examples, but it would be best if you just hopped in and see if you notice the change yourself - let us know!
AI & Behavior
Improved ranged AI range positioning and AoE calculation.
Reduced AI aggressiveness so it will avoid taking greatly disadvantageous battles.
Added party size limits for AI based on difficulty.
Goblin Bomber now maintains distance in a smarter way, only approaching if it can close the distance completely.
Balance
Tweaked hero XP requirements based on feedback and testing.
Reduced XP bonus from universities from 25/50% to 20/40%.
Ballista attacks no longer ignores cover.
Iterated some building descriptions for clarity.
Increased the speed of Mages and Paladins by 1.
Reduced the speed of Savages by 1.
Increased the speed of Skeleton Militias by 1.
Removed 'Telekinesis Summer Camp' upgrade from human town, this is now the faction unique passive.
Added the Kindergarten upgrade to human faction.
Increased Charge cooldown by 1.
Lowered slightly the amount of units enemy factions starts with, especially in higher difficulties, to limit super early aggression.
Slightly increased party speed and also increased movement point cost on roads.
Reduced base accuracy of Quickshot from 80 to 70.
Refractive Skin now also applies to heroes.
Visuals & Art
Added new portraits for faction heroes and fixed how they are shown in town UI.
Improved color customization quality, but there are fewer colors to choose from.
Updated the world-map icons of Peasants & Spitting spiders with new art.
Decreased the size of House Spiders' world-map icons so they'd fit the grid.
Fresh and improved art for many ability icons and status effect icons.
New hammer icon for the Hammer Strike and Bash abilities, which used to be represented by a sword.
Improved visual effect for Knockback Arrow.
Damaged trees will now display a fallen leaves visual effect.
New visual effect for the Stomp ability.
Bug Fixes & Minor Changes
Added controller support for town UI.
Renamed Short Range Telekinesis to Faraway Lift.
Frightened enemies will now try to run away in a straighter line than before, effectively opening up more distance in many cases.
Fixed Bloodlust, it will not not stop working as it did in some cases with Insatiable Bloodlust, and will correctly apply the dodge stance bonus with the dodge stance upgrade.
Taunt will now properly affect ALL enemies who can attack the Paladin.
Improved Dodge Stance indication and fixed bugs occuring when more than one stack of dodge stance is gained in combat.
Status Amplifier will no longer sometimes change statuses that have no turn limit to last just one turn.
Fog will no longer cancel out the Refractive Skin upgrade.
Taunt will now properly prevent enemies in range from using self-cast abilities such as Brace or Overwatch.
Slowed units with a speed of 2 or less will no longer be able to leap three tiles for 1AP like unslowed units can.
Grapplehooks and Knockback arrow attacks with the directional upgrade which miss their target will now push the object they are hitting instead.
Stun protection and Brace indications fixed, especially with Status Amplifier upgrade.
Paladin running animation when entering combat fixed.
Fixed an issue causing some Visual Effects to cast shadows.
Fixed bug hanging the controller cursor in place when switching between parties.
With controllers, the invalid tile mouse hover marker will appear as it should.
Fixed an issue with targeting units standing on bridge tiles.
The controller cursor will no longer sometimes jump to the corner of the map in tactical battles.
The exploit for stacking heroes in towns is fixed.
Changed kick not to have height limitation (similar to other melee attacks).
Thank you for playing our game and sharing your thoughts, we're looking forward to announcing some big news in the upcoming weeks, so stay tuned!
Onwards!
Major Update - Towns, Currency & More (0.10.4+)
Welcome Back, Warriors!
Great to see you again. We know it hasn't been very long since the last major update, but our prophecy is being fulfilled! The increasing amounts of accurate feedback we've been getting from you directly, through in-game bug reports and in Discord is helping immensely.
Therefore, it's major update time again! And it includes no less than three cumulative updates (0.10.3.1, 0.10.3.2, 0.10.4). The first two have already been deployed over the last couple of weeks, and the biggest one is coming later today.
Let's dig in, shall we?
New Currency & World Map Changes
The market has changed - All hail the Beetcoin! Our world's new main currency. Costs have been changed accordingly and some Beet farms for you to capture have sprung across the map to leverage the new trend. Magic is still used for specialized services.
Meanwhile, we keep upgrading and iterating our dynamic world map based on your feedback, and it's getting there. In 0.10.4 we added more variations, improved some art, and added elements important for the other changes.
This is an ongoing effort and we plan to improve and add to the world map frequently in updates.
Towns, Buildings & Guild Upgrades
Patch 0.10.4 introduces the long-awaited overhaul to hubs, hereafter known as Towns, and sets the infrastructure for deeper strategic gameplay. The previous placeholder upgrade system is also gone, with Town upgrades and Guild Upgrades replacing them.
Towns will be associated with factions, and their respective available upgrades and units will change accordingly. Town upgrades are buildings built in that particular location, to be gained or lost according to the tides of war. It is possible to build the same buildings in multiple towns, often with stacking effects. For example, some buildings generate resources, while others unlock higher tier units for recruitment.
Guild upgrades are universal, can only be bought once, and can never be lost regardless of any particular town's ownership status. Once you increase your party size to five, for instance, it will remain five even if you lose the town where you bought the upgrade.
Try the new build and let us know what you think of the changes at our Discord server!
Patch Notes
Save files from previous builds are not supported in 0.10.4 releasing today.
Major Changes
Beetcoin introduced, Beet Farms added to the world map.
Added building which increases Beetcoin production.
Added buildings which unlock higher tier units and grant a defensive bonus when the Town is attacked including a controllable ballista.
Added multiple faction specific buildings with different perks for units, heroes or for the guild.
Overhauled battle difficulty indication to a single 5 skulls meter of relative difficulty based on your currently selected party.
Several ability upgrades (including some Lift, Brace, Kick upgrades for example) were removed from skill trees and reintegrated as Town/Guild upgrades.
Removed the key segment of the tutorial after reports of it being confusing for players, instead tutorial will cover leaping. Also swapped the toppling pillar with a tree.
Balance
Increased Chain Lightning cooldown from 3 to 4.
Increased slow effect of Frostbite to slow units by 5 rather than 3.
Reduced level requirements of Fire Blast from 4 to 2.
Reduced level requirement of Smoke Bomb from 4 to 2.
Reduced level requirement of Empower Party from 10 to 8.
Reduced level requirement of the Charge reduced cooldown upgrade from 6 to 4.
Changed Lift and Telekinesis to be more lenient. This was done because it was difficult to plan when not sure whether a certain movement would be allowed.
Empower and Prepare can now be cast while stunned.
Adjusted size, health and weight of Crystals and Eggs in Crypts to be more consistent with similar objects in other environments.
Changed Columns and Spikes in Castle\Crypt\Goblin Camp\Crystal Cave environments to do damage that is more consistent with what trees cause.
Changed mass of units for more consistent behaviors. For example, Spiderlings and Skeleton Weaklings won't be pushed as far as they used to be.
Bleeding stacks will now increase damage suffered per turn instead of bleed duration.
Added Smoke Bomb for Goblin Scouts.
AI & Behavior
AI now properly detects attacks of opportunity when moving diagonally across enemy reach threshold.
Ranged unit AI will be more willing to soak a ranged overwatch attack in order to leave a zone of control and be able to use ranged abilities.
On Classic or Legendary difficulty, ranged units will try to maintain distance beyond the normal movement range of your melee units, as before. In Normal difficulty ranged units will be less vigilant and fail to stay out of reach.
Tweaked AI to use fewer abilities in lower difficulties.
Ranged units will account for the speed of melee units if slowed so it won't come too close.
Ranged units will now properly recalculate hit chances when moving out of a control zone to a new position.
Self Detonate on Goblin Bombers will now behave as intended and self-cast.
UI, Sound & Visuals
Updated art for all dwelling types.
You can now browse unit information in battle by clicking on an enemy card. Right-clicking the card will keep the information visible until clicking again, while holding RMB will keep the card open until releasing the button.
You can now choose faction color for yourself and AI factions both.
New art for towns, which now occupy 5x3 tiles instead of 3x3.
Added new ability icons for several abilities (Chain Lightning/Bite/Piercing Bite/Encourage/Telekinesis/Lift/Frostbite).
New model for Goblin Bombers.
New icons for Goblin Bomber abilities.
Updated art for rivers.
Updated art for unstable magic on world map.
Visual tweaks to Goblin Camp, Forest and Crystal Cave environments.
Removed turn indication from several status effects for better readability.
Party cards now have a dynamic size which fits current party size limit.
Changed Frostbite sound effect, still don't like it, will be replaced.
Changed Fog implementation for better performance and fewer visual glitches.
Performance
Improved loading times of levels and especially first loading of each environment type, we'll keep working on it.
Tactical battle performance improved significantly, there's still more to be done.
Fixed a memory leak in mission loading which caused the game to slow down over time.
Bugs Squashed
We added a timeout for physics actions to prevent the game from hanging when there's an issue - now when encountering a timeout the offending object or unit is killed or destroyed instead of hanging the game.
Fixed a bug causing enemies to sometimes get activated and remain unseen on mission launch.
Fixed a game crashing bug occurring sometimes when a tree fell into water.
Fixed a bug which sometimes caused physics damage and kills to not grant experience.
Fixed the issue which sometimes caused the game to display the wrong party when opening the skill tree, which caused the game to hang.
Fixed a Resilient Attack of Opportunity bug where heroes sometimes became resilient enough to survive death itself! Dead units will no longer launch attacks of opportunity, even if they are resilient.
Power Gloves now properly work with unit abilities as well as hero abilities.
Improved diagonal pathfinding behavior in the world map.
Fixed some edge cases where attack of opportunity is triggered even though it shouldn't be.
Fixed an issue of physics causing more damage in Castle\Crypt\Goblin Camp environments than in Forest\Bridge\Crystal Cave environments.
Fixed AI bug that caused ranged units to sometimes move willingly into melee unit control zones.
Fixed Stalagmites in Caves sometimes not breaking properly in terms of animation.
Fixed Insatiable Bloodlust bug which caused it to also grant the Dodge Stance upgrade.
Fixed pillars in Crypt sometimes hitting twice for extra damage and stun protection removal.
Fixed a bug where one could use Charge while stunned.
Fixed Speed Potion lasting throughout the battle instead of two turns.
After it was reported again, fixed an issue which sometimes allows player to move AI units on the first turn of combat.
Added missing Lift ability to Skeleton Weakling.
That's it for now! Hope you like the changes, and welcome you to join the conversation, provide feedback, and help us improve more of what you care about for the next update.
Onwards!
Major Update - New Year Patches (0.10.3+)
Greetings, Courageous Ones!
Happy new year everyone! We hope you had a great time and wish you all an awesome 2019!
On our end, we started the year off with a sprint and we have no less than three cumulative updates to share with you today! Two of them were already deployed stealthily to Steam over the past two weeks, and the biggest one is going live right now.
As always, keep the feedback coming and join us on Discord - one of the main reasons we managed to do so much in just a few weeks is your constant support, we're counting on it!
To make it easy to find a specific type of change, changes will be listed for all three patches together (0.10.2.1, 0.10.2.2, and the new 0.10.3):
General Changes
We have changed the Skirmish Mode's strategic gameplay several times and are making good progress with it. The highlights are:
Optimized unit spawns in Crypt, Goblin Camp, Castle, Cave and Bridge environs to increase combat variety.
When initiating combat near a creature dwelling or faction hub, Combat now takes place in that location.
Battles against AI parties will now happen in a map that fits the current location on the world map, rather than always using the village maps.
Work continues on the new human faction and many abilities and upgrades were added.
World map AI improved considerably and poses a greater threat.
Each faction now has different hub upgrades.
Regular units can no longer level up, their XP gains are shared among heroes.
Regular units can no longer interact with world map events.
Autosave will now happen at turn's end rather than when the turn starts.
Autosave will no longer happen when AI is attacking the player.
Fixed world map zone guard locations so they have to be beaten.
New Abilities & Upgrades
We've been fleshing out skill trees at a high pace and progress is solid, however we still have plenty waiting on our list, as well as great ideas coming in from you guys in our Forums and Discord.
Added Chain Lightning, the mage can attack several targets with each hit causing less damage after the initial target.
Added Electrocute as an upgrade for Chain Lightning.
Added Evasive Instincts for Savages.
Added two upgrades for Evasive Instincts - Blinding Instincts and Daredevil Instincts.
Added Stomp ability for Paladins.
Added upgrades for Ranger's Grapple Hook and Knockback Arrow that allow choosing push direction.
Added the Whirlwind Wall upgrade for Whirlwind.
Added the Cleansing Fire upgrade for Fire Blast.
Added the Fog and Thunder Storm upgrades for Rain.
Added the Incapacitate upgrade for Claw Attack, draining 1AP from enemies hit.
Replaced Mage ability Lightning Strike with the new Magic Arrow.
Added two upgrades for Magic Arrow - No distance Penalties, and Absorb 1 HP on Hit.
Added the Oppression upgrade to Paladin's Blinding Light.
New Healing Aura upgrade giving it unlimited range.
Changes to Abilities & Upgrades
Changed Savage's Bloodlust into a passive ability that grants the Savage an action point every time she kills a foe (Max 1 per turn).
Mage's Empower now boosts physics strength rather than attack damage and lasts 2 turns.
Changed Ranger's 'Become a Tree' to only cost 1AP and not end the turn, and movement is not prevented.
Savage's Charge now works in diagonals.
Savage's Charge now has infinite range, Savage will only stop when hitting an obstacle she cannot run through, but that list now includes trees.
Replaced Fire Arrow damage upgrade with Guiding Flames.
New upgrade for Fire Arrow removes its cooldown.
Replaced Brace's Stun Immunity upgrade with Purge which removes all debuffs and provides immunity for debuffs and stuns.
Replaced Rally's upgrade with a higher tier one which will provide Brace bonuses for allied units.
Removed the Adrenaline Rush upgrade from Dash and Slash, added a passive Dash and Slash effect instead.
Two new upgrades for the Savage's Bloodlust - Dodge Stance and Insatiable Bloodlust.
Balance Changes
Much of what we do after adding new features to the game is collecting feedback and adjusting stats and effects for better balance. While naturally some units will have better value at different levels, we're aiming for a point where different tactical styles decide picks rather than any objective gap.
Improved behavior of world map spawns and encounters to make them more varied.
Reduced the amount of units in neutral hubs.
Rebalanced physics abilities and pushing power, with the biggest changes in ranger abilities and upgrades and kick mechanics.
Increased Fireball AoE upgrade level requirement from level 8 to level 12.
Reduced Knockback Arrow physics upgrade level requirement from level 12 to level 10.
Rally will now boost Offense and Speed by 2, instead of boosting speed by 1 and offense by 1-3 randomly.
Rebalanced the physics damage trees cause to be more consistent when hitting the same unit type.
Clobber will now cause damage only once the unit stops.
Bridge railings will not break as easily as they did.
Removed height modifiers for very small values.
Slightly reduced movement range per turn for parties on the world map.
Removed cooldown of Frostbite.
Increased Wizard damage and HP.
Holy Light cooldown increased to 2 turns.
Increased Priest HP to 12.
Fixed Whirlwind spell for Wizards.
Fixed Kick for Champions.
UI & Visual Changes
Upgraded creature dwelling art and increased building size, this could cause visual glitches in old save files.
Added a hub list to make them easier to manage, showing which hubs still have an available upgrade for purchase each day.
Improved mechanism for reducing misclicks while fast clicking. While ability selection occurs on mouse button up, rapid movements during selection will not cancel it even if the cursor drifts off the button.
Clicking on enemy unit cards will now automatically move the camera to them.
Added new animations and model for the ranger's 'Become a Tree' ability.
Most upgrades will now change ability descriptions in the ability bar after purchasing them, making it easier to track and use them.
Clarified missing requirements in hub upgrade cards.
Fixed Savage running slower than other heroes.
Added a bunch of visual effects for new abilities and upgrades, we still have several in the works.
Added animations for status icons to make them easier to spot when gained or lost.
Temporary new visual effect for 'Stun Protection' to differentiate it from Brace.
New loading screen tips implemented.
Fixed visuals when picking up magic on the world map.
Fixed drowning visuals for some units.
Priests no longer cast Holy Light by default when right clicking allies.
Bug Fixes
And of course, there are always some bugs to squash. Keep posting about the ones you find, or even better, report directly using the in-game console or via Discord.
Fixed a bug causing the game to hang during AI turn in skirmish mode's world map.
Fixed an issue causing players to gain control of enemy units on the first turn of battle.
It is no longer possible to transfer all units from a party and keep an empty one.
Fixed several physics bugs for consistency including diagonal impacts, 1 tile pushing effects, and unit-object impacts.
Fixed flicker of HUD when moving a melee unit near a ranged one (inflicting zone of control) that caused some players to have misclicks.
Fixed Telekinesis unlimited range bug.
Fixed Skeleton Archer's Curse Arrow to be shot by default.
Fixed a bug displaying a faulty healing indication of Healing Aura when killing multiple enemies.
Fixed badly configured abilities of skeleton heroes.
Fixed a bug which allowed units to provide cover to themselves in some cases.
Fixed Radiant Beacon bug which caused it to fail in some cases.
Fixed a bug causing bridge fights to spawn in the wrong map.
Fixed a bug preventing Champions from picking up potions.
Fixed a bug which caused the remaining movement bar to not refresh when switching parties.
Fixed the 'Marked' status tooltip and information being faulty.
Fixed a bug in ability selection and casting when using enemy unit cards.
While we plan to create a new tutorial, for now we implemented some visuals and abilities from newer game versions.
Fixed Ctrl+Number hotkeys which weren't working properly.
Fixed a bug causing enemy units to start combat activated when facing off against the same party for the second time.
Fixed several typos reported.
Performance
Reduced frame skips when applying status effects.
Improved loading time of scenes.
Removed delay in applying status effect visuals.
That's it for this one! We'll get back to work on the next updates and you are most welcome to play more and provide feedback to fuel our progress.
Onwards!
Major Update - Skirmish Mode (0.10.2)
Happy Holidays, Adventurers!
Lots of love from the team, and we hope everyone gets some time to rest, spend time with loved ones, and of course play some games ːsteamhappyː
To send you off properly, we have a big one for you today, including some meaningful steps made in the strategic gameplay front (see previous update for more on what's behind it).
As ever - we thank you for the fantastic feedback you have been providing us with, both directly and in our Discord. You are the reason we can move this fast on a new concept, and we appreciate it, a lot.
New Strategic Game Mode
A new strategic Skirmish mode is now available, building on what we've learned from the last testing phase. In this mode, you will choose one of four factions and face off against an AI faction across the map.
There are no story missions in this build, but we do intend to reintroduce them fully or partially in future builds once we lock down this aspect of the game.
And now the twist - the world map itself is becoming procedural to support this new mode, making it interesting and different in every playthrough. Naturally it will start off less fancy than the previous static map, especially during testing, but we intend to work on it and add more variations and maps steadily.
For those who enjoy the story missions more, you can play them at any time by switching the game to a newly opened 'Legacy' branch. That branch will maintain version 0.9.2.2 including the story missions until they are reintroduced and you are welcome to enjoy them.
To access the Legacy branch, follow these steps:
Right click Fort Triumph in your Steam game library.
Select 'Properties'.
Choose the 'Betas' tab.
Expand the dropdown menu and look for the legacy entry (see image).
Select this branch, let Steam download necessary game files.
Open Fort Triumph normally to run the legacy build
At any time, you may revert back to the normal release in the same dropdown menu (Choose 'none').
Gameplay Changes
New Human faction includes 5 unit types - Peasant, Brute, Priest, Wizard and Champion. This is a WIP and the models, abilities and balance aren't polished or stable yet.
World Map randomizes when the game starts, more variations will be added in future updates.
World Map AI improved considerably, will present a meaningful threat now.
Improved physics consistency. Unit/object size and mass now grouped by categories rather than being per unit and on a continuous range.
Many new ability upgrades introduced.
New human factions have new abilities (Clubber, Prepare, Holy Strike and more).
Split hub upgrades among factions so each has a different one.
Revamped Electrocute (Mage ability) - will now have a 2 turn duration, cause 1 damage for every tile moved rather than 1 for every 2 tiles, but will cap at 8 damage total rather than the previous 12.
Speed Potion now grants +5 instead of +3 Speed.
Spitting Spiders have new melee ability.
Reduced Speed of high tier units from 10-11 to 8-9.
New world map icon for Goblin Bomber and Goblin Warchief units.
Bugs and Technical Updates
Previous save files broken and cannot be played in 0.10.2. However saves from 0.9.2.2 should work in the legacy branch normally.
Fixed a bug causing some hub unit upgrades not to manifest at all.
Fixed a bug which caused Power Gloves to not function as intended.
Controller support restored but not yet optimized, we're working on it.
Fixed Frighten bug causing two units to run into the same tile.
Fixed Spitting Spider bug making it not act when in enemy zone of control.
Fixed a bug breaking max party size by freeing heroes from cages during missions. These heroes will now wait for you in the nearest hub if you are at max capacity.
Fixed a bug causing items to sometimes disappear when dragged over occupied item slots.
This is it for this one, friends. Have a great holiday, party responsibly, and talk to you soon on our next update. In the meanwhile keep sharing feedback and chatting us up over at the discord server!
