Hero's Hour Joins Strategems and Gets a Minor Update!
Hero's Hour is part of Strategems 2025, an event dedicated to affordable and highly replayable strategy games, with a 60% discount and a minor update out now: the v2.8.1b update!
BP now shows buildings in horizontal rows instead of mixed rows and columns
BP now sorts buildings by their requirements more strictly
Updated icons for BP requirements
Updated frames for BP to more clearly show what can and cannot be built
Changed font of BP
Improved BP performance
Readjusted building requirements
Fixes and Changes
Fixed subroutines for drawing the overworld HUD displaying your owned towns that took a lot more performance than was reasonable, significantly slowing down the game the more towns you owned
Fixed a bug leading to the artifact duplication check to stop working after the player had picked up a treasure chest or similar dual-choice resource
Fixed memory leak related to the new upgrade feature, slowing down games as they went on, as well as prolonging save and load times
Optimised performance for large maps by reworking the secter and coastline systems
Terrain now looks more correct when quickly zooming out the game
Fixed a crash when you would quit the game straight from the main menu
Fixed a bug related to expecting more hotseat players than the actual number of players
Fixed a bug related to setting all players to hotseat, then removing a player
Fixed a bug that prevented hidden beasts to respawn on the Gold Beach or Dreamscape terrain
Fixed a bug that in some cases would prevent hidden beasts from respawning
Fixed a bug related to Unit edit mods, making them often crash
Made sure unit edit mods can edit the stats of units whose stats were changed recently
Updated the Mirrored game data unit data edit files
Fixing an exploit allowing the player to make the AI think it's dead though it's very much alive
Changed the Heirloom skill to now only give one artifact when several level-ups are queued at the same time
Chinese translations that were missing are now added
Added a subroutine to clear up unused dead heroes, such as those that were created by a bug in v2.8.0
Extending Blight Ritual specialty unit protection to the second spec unit from Split Branch unit if the hero knows Mastery
Updating Blight Ritual so when it converts units into less power than the original, the lost power is remembered and added to the next Blight Ritual proc. This is a slight buff
Fixing a bug allowing Temple of the Learned to proc several times for the same building
Fixed Cartographer not working
Fixed a rare crash during enemy spellcasting in battle
Taught the AI to not use Shadowcloning and other spells requiring the hero to be alive while the hero is dead
Fixed a bug related to Devastations owned by a recently defeated player
Fixed Aether Forge being able to offer unique spells the hero already knew
Changed the Bloodwarping/Unit_get_elite() targets for neutral Goblins, Elves, Ants, Amphibians and Dragons
Fixed an issue where converting a town would prevent some town bonuses given to visiting heroes from working
Fixed Town Founding leading towns to have too low buildings levels
Fixed a bug related to Devour Enemy, Devour Own and Devour & Digest spells crashing the game when cast on a unit about to die before the spell completed
Fixed a bug that prevented Forest Spirits from being resurrected by the Infirmary despite v2.8 being meant to specifically fix that issue
Fixed a bug that prevented Corpse Eaters and Tarantulas from being resurrected by the Hospital
Fixed a discrepancy in how Soul gain from Decay towns is calculated. Before, non-Decay units counted. Now, non-Undead units count
Added a special case to the Infirmary for Wild, considering Anima a town unit even though one cannot hire Anima in town
Fixed a bug that gave the player a random hero instead of the desired hero in case the map re-rolled during generation because of wrong generation
Changed the UI for people who play with classic skilltrees, swapping the position of the Skillset and Ledger, and giving access to the new Ledger instead of old Ledger
Fixed a bug that made the AI still use the new skillsets even when playing with classic skilltrees, even affecting what skills recruited heroes would start with
Fixed classic skilltree settings showing the wrong descriptions in the tooltip for what requirements various skills would have
Fixing an AI stall bug related to an AI hero trying to defend a town with the Caravan Stables
Fixed a bug that made the screen flash whenever an AI interacted with an adventure map building, even if they did so beneath the Fog of War
Infirmary now works for superupgrades, too (Dragonworm, Loss, Wildren)
Rolled back a bug fix that made the Tavern work inconsistently when switching heroes
Putting in a new fix to the original bug that allowed the player to get tavern heroes with too many skills
Enabling the player to use the Switch Hero feature to switch between rehiring a dead hero, or recruiting a new hero/scout
Fixing a bug that allowed the AI and town conversions to build buildings that were upgrades to other buildings, such as building Centre of Order without Plaza of Order
Fixed the Keep going from giving 1 to giving 3 units with no inbetween
Fixed Entourage working strangely when literally all units are stacked on the single hero that has Entourage
Fixed a bug where skill-based permanent entourages would cut into the entourages from the entourage stat
Fixed the tooltip for the entourage stat not correctly showing the amount of lost entourage unit power
Fixed typo in map description for Demons, Deities, Dragons map
Diplomacy now rounds gold prices to the nearest 50 instead of the nearest 100
Fixed Ring of Bravery crashing when using Battle Speed = Skip
Lieutenant Hall heroes now have more consistent leveling, slightly higher than what a newly hired hero would have
Fixed a bug that allowed you to create demons/undeads that should be unavailable after losing a demonology/necromancy rank
Fixed random outcomes from Smithing not being random enough
Fixed towns without Taverns being unable to re-hire a hero that was killed
Changed the building requirements for unit dwellings to be more linear and expectable
Fixed a bug that prevented the AI from purchasing unit upgrades even though they had built the Upgrade Center
Fixed Father Ocho, Forbidden Tome, Ockra of Loss and Aurora missing starting spells
Fixed units not showing as upgraded in the Building Planner after a unit has been upgraded
Fixed units in Building Planner not showing tooltips
Fixed Lament tavern having higher build reqs than the taverns of other factions
Fixed Torblok, Olane and Seth of Sleep using Militia as starting unit when not playing with the Rogue Realms DLC
Fixed a remaining issue with stump towns sometimes having buildings that are impossible to unlock
Fixed the Development Plan town perk being broken
Fixed map pickups offering unupgraded units despite having upgraded a specific unit
The Building Planner and v2.8.1
The Release of the Homestead update went really well, overall. But the size of the update does seem to have led some parts of the update to have been done a bit sloppily. So I’m quickly working on a v2.8.1 update, currently live on the public_beta branch in steam, which I hope will assuage the transitional pains to the Homestead update.
I’ve released three small updates into the public beta during the last week, and the most recent one has the rework of the building planner to look like the above. There’s a long list of fixes, including some important performance improvements on large maps, and bug fixes to critical crashes. But a large part of the v2.8.1 update will be a rework to the rework, so to say - an overhaul to the new building planner that should make it more clear and more straightforward to use.
I know the new building planner is controversial. I still hold out hope that polishing it will make people accept and maybe even enjoy it over the old system. If not, I will be looking into options for adding an advanced map setting to go back to the old system.
It might seem strange to have had an update in the works for so many months, and then all the important work fixing issues comes the week after release. My best explanation is that I do, despite signs to the contrary, listen to feedback. Apparently hearing hundreds of people criticising my work was exactly the inspiration I needed to figure out solutions. And furthermore, I’ve received a lot of help from people posting bug reports in the Hero’s Hour discord. As the game has gotten older, fewer reports come in during the long betas. Releasing the update changes that. It’s not a perfect system - but I do want to give a deep congratulations to everyone who has helped by reporting bugs in the discord since the update went live 1½ weeks ago.
Before posting the long list of fixes for the current v2.8.1 pre-release C, I do want to share another thing I’m working on.
Those of you who read the long post about the v2.8.0 update might remember that I had a series of new Rogue town units planned for the update, but those had to be delayed. There’s still an unclear timeframe on when they’ll arrive. Meanwhile, I’ve been polishing off my aseprite and working on updating the art assets for a series of Rogue Realms units which were not quite up to snuff. So, at some point, maybe in v2.8.2, maybe in v2.9, you’ll be getting both those 23 new units, as well as updated graphics for 16 Rogue Realms units.
Anyway, here’s the update notes for v2.8.1 prerelease C:
Building Planner UI changes
BP now shows buildings in horizontal rows instead of mixed rows and columns
BP now sorts buildings by their requirements more strictly
Updated icons for BP requirements
Updated frames for BP to more clearly show what can and cannot be built
Changed font of BP
Improved BP performance
Readjusted building requirements
Fixes and Changes
Fixed subroutines for drawing the overworld HUD displaying your owned towns that took a lot more performance than was reasonable, significantly slowing down the game the more towns you owned
Fixed a bug leading to the artifact duplication check to stop working after the player had picked up a treasure chest or similar dual-choice resource
Fixed memory leak related to the new upgrade feature, slowing down games as they went on, as well as prolonging save and load times
Optimised performance for large maps by reworking the secter and coastline systems
Terrain now looks more correct when quickly zooming out the game
Fixed a crash when you would quit the game straight from the main menu
Fixed a bug related to expecting more hotseat players than the actual number of players
Fixed a bug related to setting all players to hotseat, then removing a player
Fixed a bug that prevented hidden beasts to respawn on the Gold Beach or Dreamscape terrain
Fixed a bug that in some cases would prevent hidden beasts from respawning
Fixed a bug related to Unit edit mods, making them often crash
Made sure unit edit mods can edit the stats of units whose stats were changed recently
Updated the Mirrored game data unit data edit files
Fixing an exploit allowing the player to make the AI think it's dead though it's very much alive
Changed the Heirloom skill to now only give one artifact when several level-ups are queued at the same time
Chinese translations that were missing are now added
Added a subroutine to clear up unused dead heroes, such as those that were created by a bug in v2.8.0
Extending Blight Ritual specialty unit protection to the second spec unit from Split Branch unit if the hero knows Mastery
Updating Blight Ritual so when it converts units into less power than the original, the lost power is remembered and added to the next Blight Ritual proc. This is a slight buff
Fixing a bug allowing Temple of the Learned to proc several times for the same building
Fixed Cartographer not working
Fixed a rare crash during enemy spellcasting in battle
Taught the AI to not use Shadowcloning and other spells requiring the hero to be alive while the hero is dead
Fixed a bug related to Devastations owned by a recently defeated player
Fixed Aether Forge being able to offer unique spells the hero already knew
Changed the Bloodwarping/Unit_get_elite() targets for neutral Goblins, Elves, Ants, Amphibians and Dragons
Fixed an issue where converting a town would prevent some town bonuses given to visiting heroes from working
Fixed Town Founding leading towns to have too low buildings levels
Fixed a bug related to Devour Enemy, Devour Own and Devour & Digest spells crashing the game when cast on a unit about to die before the spell completed
Fixed a bug that prevented Forest Spirits from being resurrected by the Infirmary despite v2.8 being meant to specifically fix that issue
Fixed a bug that prevented Corpse Eaters and Tarantulas from being resurrected by the Hospital
Fixed a discrepancy in how Soul gain from Decay towns is calculated. Before, non-Decay units counted. Now, non-Undead units count
Added a special case to the Infirmary for Wild, considering Anima a town unit even though one cannot hire Anima in town
Fixed a bug that gave the player a random hero instead of the desired hero in case the map re-rolled during generation because of wrong generation
Changed the UI for people who play with classic skilltrees, swapping the position of the Skillset and Ledger, and giving access to the new Ledger instead of old Ledger
Fixed a bug that made the AI still use the new skillsets even when playing with classic skilltrees, even affecting what skills recruited heroes would start with
Fixed classic skilltree settings showing the wrong descriptions in the tooltip for what requirements various skills would have
Fixing an AI stall bug related to an AI hero trying to defend a town with the Caravan Stables
Fixed a bug that made the screen flash whenever an AI interacted with an adventure map building, even if they did so beneath the Fog of War
Infirmary now works for superupgrades, too (Dragonworm, Loss, Wildren)
Rolled back a bug fix that made the Tavern work inconsistently when switching heroes
Putting in a new fix to the original bug that allowed the player to get tavern heroes with too many skills
Enabling the player to use the Switch Hero feature to switch between rehiring a dead hero, or recruiting a new hero/scout
The game is currently on sale on its own, as well as in a bundle together with our long-respected comrade game of Songs of Conquest. Additionally, the v2.8.0 Homestead update is also releasing today. Woohoo! The v2.8 update is a culmination of several different development processes that all come together into a single, large update. Looking over the final list of changes, it is comparable to both v2.6 and v2.7 in size.
Town Reworks
Faction Update
Rogue Update
Community Updates
Spells Update
If you’ve already read the previous post about v2.8, you might expect this to be nothing more than repetition. But this is not so. While I expected v2.8 to be mostly done when I wrote that post, several things then happened to expand the update. The newer parts of the v2.8 update will be tagged with (new!).
First, let’s do a general overview of the different parts of the update, and then we’ll go into more detail.
Town Reworks
New building requirement system and UI
New system for upgrading units
Tavern rework
Reworked town perks
5 new town perks
Faction Update
Arcane class skill reworks
2 new Tide units, changed unit roster, the Bubble Shield ability (new!)
New unit abilities, and changes for several faction units (new!)
Woodfae added as Wild’s tier 1 unit; change to Symbiotic Grove (new!)
New subskill for every hero class (new!)
Rogue Update
3 New Buildings for each Rogue town
Unique resources for several Rogue towns
Changes to Rogue town expansions
Changes to Rogue hero classes (new!)
New Major skills: Adventurer & Discovery and four subskills (new!)
Community Updates
10 new dragon units, four dragon themed vaults
15 new suggestions implemented, incl. new artifact management screen
A new hero for every faction and for every Rogue town (new!)
4 new units
Expanded Lore Document
Spells Update
New spell graphics and higher clarity for spell casting
New graphical effects during battle (new!)
12 new spells (new!)
To give an idea of how large the update is, if we ignore reworks and just focus on content quantity, the update adds 12 normal spells, 16 special spells, 17 units, 5 town perks, 38 town buildings, 4 overworld buildings, 27 new heroes and 16 new unit abilities. When it comes to skills, it either adds 8 or 44 new skills, depending on how you count the new class-specific skills.
Let’s dive into the changes in greater detail, then!
Town Reworks
This was the original goal of the v2.8 update: To rework various aspects of the town that I felt caused clunky gameplay. Front and center was my desire to overhaul the building requirement system, that has been unpopular (from what I can tell) ever since v1.9 added in static building requirements. Before then, each game would have a shuffled grid of buildings and requirements. After v1.9, those requirements were frozen to always be the same - which reduced RNG, but highlighted that the system itself was bad.
Apart from building requirements, various other parts of how towns worked felt like they could use a rework. Thus, the following list of changes:
New building requirement system and UI
There has been growing sentiment about the building requirement system for towns being bad. The general desire has been for all limitations for one building to require another to be removed - or most, anyway. My own issue with the current system is that as development has gone on, more and more buildings have been moved to be early on in the town’s development, which creates a flood of choices early on. Especially when a new development level was reached and - POOF - now you have 6 new buildings available - that felt somewhat off. I’m trying out a new building requirement system which sorts buildings into three categories - commercial, warfare and magic buildings. Instead of building requirements either being a global amount of buildings built and/or a specific building, the new requirements are based around number of the various types of buildings built. So for instance, you might want to build Archmage Tribunal, but to do so, you’ll need two more warfare buildings and one more commercial building. This will still keep limits in place for building up your town and planning out your build order, while not being quite as limiting. It also comes with a new UI which sorts the buildings in the three categories, which I hope will make it easier for new players to get an overview of their options.
New system for upgrading units
Unit upgrades have been tough to balance. They’re very core to the game, with most units actually being pretty basic and only getting their interesting abilities once upgraded. As well, they allow the player to focus on what units they think are most core to their strategy. However, I feel like as the game is now, usually unit upgrades are something you get not because you want to, but because you need another building and the upgrade is cheaper than the other options - and otherwise, you’d rather steer for more impactful buildings. There’s also a lot of micro-managing of bringing your units back to town to get upgraded, and then returned to your main hero. The new upgrade system seeks to improve this by removing dwelling upgrades, and instead creating a single two-tier building which allows you to upgrade units. Once a unit upgrade is bought, it affects all your units across the map instantly - no more micro-managing upgraded and unupgraded unit stacks! This also leads to a minor reduction in the unit stack clutter.
Tavern rework
This one is a bit more experimental, and might change with more player feedback. There is a problem in how central the tavern is to the current way the game is played. It allows you to get more heroes for:
Scouting
Moving around units
Getting extra units
Secondary heroes for leveling
I’ve tried disincentivising getting the tavern early and hiring several heroes early by changing the cost, the availability of the tavern - neither seemed to really fix the issue. The building is simply too strong and also too necessary. I also do not enjoy the inconsistency of sometimes getting a hero that can do nothing, and sometimes getting one which gives gold each day or gets entourage - completely at random. The new version of the tavern goes as follows:
You can hire “Scouts” even without building the actual tavern
Building the tavern allows you to upgrade Scouts into full heroes
Champion Statue etc. have been improved to offer even more heroes
Scouts are heroes in all ways apart from having skills and leveling up. You can even get xp on a scout and they’ll then level up when you upgrade the scout into a full hero. The scout is cheaper, too. Really, instead of trying to nerf the tavern, I’m now making it so that you don’t need it if all you really wanted was a scout - and the tavern, then, is more useful if you’re looking for a real hero to level up secondarily. Other changes:
Fewer units for hiring a scout
Larger cost increase from hiring several heroes
Heroes now level up when hired, making new hero levels more consistent, and giving you better control over their skill choices
Reworked town perks
With the removal of the old town level system with thresholds for number of buildings constructed, a new system was required for unlocking the town perks. But I do actually like the new system, because it always felt a bit jarring that you suddenly got a town perk pop-up out of nowhere when you were actually planning on doing something else. Now, instead of them being unlocked after building X buildings, they’re unlocked when building specific buildings. For normal faction towns, such as the Order town, this is the Centre of Order, Palace of Order and Empire of Order. Additionally, the town perks pop-up is displayed on top of the town window instead of removing the town window, and you’re able to click “wait” button to delay picking your town perk so that it does not interrupt you quite as much as before.
5 new town perks
There’s 5 new town perks on offer. The Sponsor perk is shown above and gives access to a rare faction unit that normally would only be accessible by starting as a special hero. The Spell Research teaches more spells and teaches spells to heroes even when they’re not in town. Devotee Hall increases a spell skill for any heroes stopping by town, as a second Archmage Tribunal. Gallows decreases luck and morale of anyone attacking your towns or heroes. Finally, and most excitingly, Development Plan allows you to build any building in town way before you normally would be able to.
Faction Update
This contains various changes and updates to various factions. Arcane, Tide and Wild each get their own unique changes, while the rest of the factions get more general changes. This part was not originally envisioned when I started working on v2.8, but various changes within the town rework and rogue rework made clear that these changes were needed.
Arcane faction skill rework
Previously, the Arcane class skills gave, respectively, a resource that can only be used in a single town building, or boring ore. This was way past due for a rework. In v2.8, the Aether system has been expanded, and the skills now do something on their own, too. Aether is now granted in four varieties: Fire, Earth, Air, Water - and is granted by defeating various enemies. Usually, it’s kind of obvious what units give what Aether, like, the Spirited Fire giving Fire, and most human units giving Air.
Aether can then be used in one of three ways:
Casting a random spell when entering combat with element and power based on the highest amount of Aether carried
Aether Forge now offers appropriate bonuses for the various types of Aether
Special spells with unique effects that cost Aether instead of mana
There’s 12 special spells that your Arcane heroes will learn by ranking up their class skills.
Additionally, the class skills have been renamed from Alchemy and Aethermancy to Aethercrafting and Aethermancy. The Alchemy name was simply too close in wording to the Alchemist hero class and the Chemistry skill.
2 new Tide units, changed unit roster, the Bubble Shield ability
Tide has been a moderately popular faction, but never really due to its units. There were a couple of issues, that I had tried to work around previously in a rather awkward manner. Here, I’m mostly hinting to the Harpooner unit, which was so useless that I decided that players in Rogue Realms would get it without picking it, just so that it would have some use. Additionally, the Geyseral and Canceri units for tier 6 were way too similar.
The Harpooner and Geyseral are being removed from the Tide unit roster, replaced by the new Sirenaga (pronounced Siren-aga) and the Tidemancer. The first is a tier 2 aggressively statted unit with charge, and the latter is a back-line support unit able to give allies bubble shields and resurrecting fallen comrades. The Harpooner and Geyseral can still be found as neutral units.
The bubble shield ability is a new Tide-specific ability for the Spawnling, Sirenage and Tidemancer, which gives a shield that absorbs damage until it pops. This finally makes Spawnlings more survivable and helps Tide out during the early game.
Finally, the Tide caster class has been renamed from Pyromancer to Sailblazer. The old name was an attempt at forcing people to accept Tide as a fire-themed faction, but that never worked out. With the changes to the fire-themed units of the faction, it felt natural to finally retire the old, confusing name, and to finally accept that Tide is a water faction first-and-foremost, with air and fire second. The name, Sailblazer, should hold up this compromise well.
New unit abilities, and changes for several faction units
I finally went and overhauled unit abilities for some of the oldest units with the least interesting abilities. Here, I’m especially referring to units which only had the passive, stat-altering abilities like Slow, Sturdy or Savage. These abilities will no longer show up in the units’ tooltips (since their effects can still be seen by looking at the unit’s stats). The units have been given more interesting abilities instead.
Druid gains the Long Ranged and Rooting abilities, while losing Summoning. The Wildspeaker still has Summoning. Flamejuggler gains the Burning ability, while the upgraded Flame Stoker gains Explosive Shots. Avalancher loses Terror, but gains the ability to Unit Thrower, throwing Goblins. Dreamer gains the Long Ranged and Dreamstrike abilities. It loses Summoning, but the upgraded version still has it. Sopor also loses Confusion. Divine Light ability is granted to: Friar, Crusader, Bladesinger, Djinn, Voodoo, Sunbringer, Archopriest, Panda, Teaknight, Bloomer, Monokero, and Prismatic. Beastslayer ability is granted to: Jotun, Tarantula, Catabolite, Imp, Lizardcher, Apex, Tunnelrider, Archer, Kroll Bowman, Equestrian, Demise, and Strongarm. Blackhearted ability is granted to: Lost Soul, Zombie, Rot Knight, Canine, Upgraded Demontamer, Minotaur, Shadowmancer, Absurdum, Shale Drake, Infernal, Black Dragon, and Larva. Rage ability is granted to: Raider, Monster Trog, Cave Regent, and Shambler. Terror ability is granted to: Cyclops and Watcher. Evolve ability is granted to: Worm. Interruption ability is granted to: Ophidian, Minewatch, Divine Monk, and Mountainguard. Plating ability is granted to: Hoplite, Polar Cavalry, and Hillkeeper. Inspiration ability is granted to: White Yeti. Potent Soul ability is granted to: Torchbearer. Salt Strike ability is granted to: Seamare and Crystallius.
Some of these unit abilities are new. We have the Rooting ability, which is akin to Rootcaller but the unit still attacks normally - and the Dreamstrike ability, which has a chance to make enemies fall asleep, its effect akin to the Slumber spell.
The Divine Light, Beastslayer, Blackhearted and Salt Strike abilities all give the unit increased damage against a specific type of units. In general, that bonus will apply against about 20% of enemy units - so the bonuses are going to be relevant rather often, but not in all combat scenarios. This occasionally brings a benefit to any player that positions their units correctly to intercept enemies that their units are strong against.
Woodfae added as Wild’s tier 1 unit; Change to Symbiotic Grove Okay, this takes a bit of explanation.
For a long time now, the most efficient way to play Wild has been to use the class skills to create a large amount of anima, and then making sure that you constantly move your anima back to town to upgrade them into forest spirits. When your forest spirits die, they create anima that you can then send back to town to re-upgrade as a sort of emergent infirmary.
This was really cool but also really clunky, taking a lot of boring effort in micromanaging heroes in ferrying back and forth units. Part of the reason for the rework to the unit upgrade system was actually to solve this type of micromanagement.
But the new upgrade system left the Wild strategy in a weird spot. Either, anima would always be auto-upgraded into Forest Spirits, effectively making Forest Spirits immortal - or they’d be really weak. Additionally, there was a long-standing issue where Forest Spirits could not be resurrected by the infirmary - because if the infirmary worked on Forest Spirits, you could duplicate them by upgrading their anima.
To solve this, there’s now a change so that the anima is a neutral unit, and instead Wild’s unupgraded tier 1 unit has been changed to the Woodfae. The Woodfae, just like its upgraded counterpart the Forest Spirit, create a permanent anima when they die. But since the anima cannot be upgraded back to a Forest Spirit and is a separate unit, all the problems disappear, and now Forest Spirits can be resurrected normally by the Infirmary. Additionally, the Woodfae is a rather sturdy unit what with being able to create anima on death even before it gets upgraded, so it works as a buff. It still gains flying by being upgraded - but upgrading is now less of a necessity.
But what about the cool Wild strategy of turning Anima into Forest Spirits? Well, the Symbiotic Grove has been updated to now also turn anima into Woodfae/Forest Spirits day by day - both for heroes inside and outside of town. Thus, the life cycle of the anima has been changed as shown above.
New Subskill for Every Hero Class
For the longest time, there has been a lot of suggestions about giving heroes unique combat abilities. In v2.7, it became easier to mod this sort of thing. And for v2.8, I’ve gone and used this as the basis for a new set of subskills. Along with a request for a more consistent way of getting mana regeneration for casters early, the following set of subskills has been added.
In total, there’s 38 new subskills - one for each class - but they can also be considered two subskills with a unique effect for each class.
One set of subskills are the Warrior subskills, which are given to fighter hero classes. They give a stat bonus and a combat ability. For instance, Extinctor heroes gain access to the Decay Warrior subskill which gives +2 proficiency and Leech Life during combat; while Artisan heroes gain access to the Arcane Warrior subskill, which gives +2 defence, +1 proficiency, and makes the hero summon a small group of Scrolls around them at the start of combat.
The other set are the Mage subskills, which are given to caster hero classes. They teach the hero one or several useful spells, often at a reduced mana cost. Additionally, it makes them regenerate 3 mana each day. Mana regeneration plus a spell with reduced mana cost makes them really efficient spellcasters during the early game. Examples include Withermages gaining access to the Decay Mage subskill, which teaches a Deathripple which costs 12 mana instead of 16, and Summoner heroes gaining access to the Essence Mage subskill, which teaches Elemental Air, Elemental Rock, Elemental Fire and Elemental Water spells, each with mana cost reduced by 2.
Rogue Update
While I think the Rogue Realms DLC worked perfectly as a large overhaul DLC that updated most aspects of the game, it fell a bit short on its potential of adding in 12 new factions. Adding in 12 new factions was never its goal nor something it promised - it promised to add a single new faction with 12 different towns - but still, we all had the dream, and woke up to twelve towns of varying quality and varying uniqueness. With v2.8, I’m trying to get the Rogue towns a bit closer to that dream of 12 unique new towns, that can, if not be called full factions, at least pseudo-factions.
3 New Buildings for Each Rogue town
This change has been a much requested one. Previously, all Rogue towns had the same buildings. Boo! Made them feel less like 12 factions and more like a single faction.
Anyway, I’ve now added three unique buildings per Rogue town, which mimic the design style of the unique buildings per normal faction (i.e. Hostler, Counting House, Conscription Centre, Tower of Idolatry). That is, in total, 36 new buildings with different effects - most of them at least slightly unique.
I won’t go into detail about all of them here, because that’s a lot of buildings. I’ll just let you know I tried to develop on the various themes of the Rogue towns with the aesthetic and gameplay design of the buildings. Additionally, several of them use the new improved system for custom resources, such as the Scrap resource for Industry.
As an aside, the introduction of these new buildings have also made me go through the Rogue towns and remove various buildings from them. Thus, all Rogue towns no longer have all five of Colossus, Lieutenant Hall, Deity, Summoning Circle, Mercenary Hall - instead, each town only has two of the five, different ones depending on what town, with the latter 3 replaced with the 3 new unique buildings.
Changes to Rogue town expansions
Previously, the Rogue town expansions were tied into the town building progression system. The idea was that Rogue towns would give you the unique ability to really quickly get access to late game buildings if you went and focused on building your expansions. This, however, was not as interesting as I’d thought. Instead, the Rogue town expansions now work a bit more similarly to normal town income buildings - as in, each requiring the previous one. But instead of each of them having the same effect, they now have different effects, as follows:
Trade Expansion: Gives a town perk Martial Expansion: Gives visiting heroes +2 attack Artisan Expansion: Gives visiting heroes +2 proficiency Urban Expansion: Gives visiting heroes +5000 xp
Changes to Rogue hero classes
Previously, Rogue hero classes were set up in the code as either fighter or caster classes. But before v2.6 reworked the hero class system, classes kind of did not exist, and each hero instead was either a fighter or a caster, independently of its class - with the Rogue heroes being half and half within a single class. This led to some strange situations after v2.6 where it wasn’t clear whether a Rogue hero was a fighter or a caster. Now, all of this has been aligned. Heroes of fighter classes do not start with spells, while heroes of caster classes do. Additionally, the starting spells of Rogue heroes have been updated to avoid duplicates.
New Major Skills: Adventurer & Discovery, and four subskills
In an attempt to expand on neutral heroes, there’s now a new set of major skills for Rogue heroes, mercenaries and wanderers. Adventurer is the major for fighter heroes, while Discovery is for casters. Both give bonuses when interacting with resources and buildings on the overworld map. There’s also four new subskills: Herbalism allows finding invisible herbs across the overworld. Split Branch allows picking a secondary unit for the hero to specialise in. Liberty gives a stat bonus that you can freely allocate across the 10 stats. Heirloom gives artifacts when the hero levels up.
There’s some fun interactions with Herbalism and Heirloom giving new interactables that the Adventurer and Discovery skills will trigger with. I’m sure players will also find a bunch of other synergies between this and various other skills.
With these, most Rogue and neutral heroes have had their skillsets updated. Additionally, the Menace heroes now have this as their “class skill”, further distinguishing them from necromancers.
24 new units for Rogue towns
There’s a set of 24 new units for the various Rogue town rosters. However, these aren’t finished yet. More news on them later. They will either be released as a later part of the v2.8.x update series or as part of v2.9.
They’re really interesting, and we had the community involved in voting for what unit concepts should be added and which should be discarded. So I’m really excited to bring them in when they’re done. Stay tuned!
Community Updates
The community is still going strong. While there haven’t been as many art marathons during the last half a year, the number and quality of those who enter has only risen. We’ve seen some really exciting stuff, and some artists have allowed their entries to be added to the game. Additionally, a lot of new suggestions, some 15 of which have been added to the game.
A new hero for every faction and for every Rogue town
The result of the 10th art marathon is that the above set of heroes are getting added to the game. There were sooo many people who entered this time, and their work was rather incredible in quality too. It was honestly a bloodbath, seeing the 84 submissions by 20 different artists being cut down to this list of finalists. The finalists were picked mostly according to vote count, but secondarily in a way to make sure that each faction and each rogue town would get at least one new hero. Credit to Freddy, DeadSaracen, DragonRose/AntRose, Lyolf, SleepyMage, Erridian, Revikatis, Hamastra and Medicine Melancholy.
10 new dragon units, four dragon themed vaults
V2.8 is going to bring in a large update to the dragon side of the game. This includes 10 new units, most of which are dragons, the rest of which are dragon-themed. These dragons come from the 9th art marathon, some of whose artists allowed their art to be used for the game. Credit to DragonRose/AntRose, Erridian, Revikatis, Nayooom, Spider Glace, DeadSaracen.
Many of these new dragon units are accessed by a synergy between the Dragonking ability and the new Dragonsoul ability. This allows specific units to be granted via Dragonking in case the hero knows another specific skill. For instance, if the hero has both Dragonking and Leadership, they can get the new Featherdrake unit. This is because the Featherdrake has the Dragonsoul ability for Leadership. That ability also gives Featherdrakes additional stats during combat for each rank of Leadership, and gives heroes extra xp when ranking up Leadership if they’ve had Featherdrakes in their army. Apart from Featherdrakes, there’s:
Abyss Sovereign, which is gained via Dragonsoul Mysticism
Pyroserpent, which is gained via Dragonsoul Pyromancy
Cloud Sovereign, which is gained via Dragonsoul Aeromancy
Sheepeater, which is gained via Dragonsoul Healing
Featherdrake, which is gained via Dragonsoul Leadership
Dragonturtle, which is gained via Dragonsoul Armorer
Bloodwyrm, which is gained via Dragonsoul Carnage
Tyrant Guard, which is gained via Dragonsoul Estates
Dragonscroll, which is gained via Dragonsoul Sorcery
Finally, these new dragons can also be found in a set of new Dragon Towers. There’s four different dragon towers, each with a custom crafted encounter of various dragon units and support units. Dragon towers are predominantly found in secondary areas of the map, very rare in starting areas.
15 new suggestions implemented
As usual, there’s been a bunch of new suggestions in the discord. A total of 145 new suggestions with 773 votes have been tallied and selected between, with 15 of them getting added to the game. These range from minor changes, like Balaenopteras getting Aquatic, to larger changes, such as new game options and a way to see the total cost of all units available in town. The largest change is that there’s now a much better system for managing artifacts.
4 new units
The people who win art marathons are given wishes as for something to add to the game. The two winners of the last marathon (their vote number was tied!!) both asked for units, and thus 3 new units are added to the game. The 4th new unit is tied to the Summon Salt Hawk (see below) spell, and is the epinomous Salt Hawk.
Expanded Lore Document
For a while now, there’s been a semi-secret lore document bundled within the game’s files. This document has now been greatly expanded. It contains history, overviews, diagrams, stories and lore snippets for over a hundred heroes. I’ve also added a series of hand-drawns illustrations to make it feel less like a block of text. I don’t expect players to read this - but for those who are interested, you’ll find the 153 page .pdf within the game’s files.
Spells Update
Finally, the update also includes a couple of updates to spells and other magical effects during combat.
New spell graphics and higher clarity for spell casting
New effects for spell casts have been added. There’s a series of hand-drawn animations as well as better spell particles. The animations depend on the element of the spell as well as the power of the spell. That means that as your hero gains spellpower, the animations for casting the same spell will adapt.
There’s also a 300 ms lag time between casting the spell and the effect actually occurring. This makes the spell casting feel more impactful and allows the player to more easily orient themselves towards a spell to notice its effect. For instance, when the spell is not cast by yourself, but by the opposing hero, or by an effect such as Destruction.
Additionally, the graphics for units casting spells has been overhauled too, using the new elemental particles rather than the old squiggly blue lines.
New graphical effects during battle
Further along the lines of increasing combat clarity for magical effects, there’s now a new particle effect for units healing or resurrecting other units, which more clearly show who does what.
There’s also a new hand-drawn animation for explosions - one for the fiery type, and one for other explosive impacts, such as the AOE damage from Blaster units.
12 new spells
Finally, there’s a series of new spells. The goal for these was to include effects that have not been seen before but that would still fit in as normal spells. I’m really really happy with the creativity of behind the recent spells, as I try to put more and more distance between the current design philosophy and the original quantity over quality philosophy of v1.0.
A good example of what I mean by that would be the four new Summoning spells:
Summon Dragonbreath summons a dragon that breathes fire and then dies
Summon Wasps summons a swarm of wasps that deal damage to a lot of enemies
Summon Titan Fist summons a series of fists that each picks a random enemy target, punching that target and any other nearby enemies
Summon Fireflies summons a bunch of fireflies. This one works like other Summoning spells, but its usage is a bit different, what with fireflies killing themselves when they attack
Additionally, there’s four new salt spells, and four other misc. spells, including the Fireball Barrage spell that allows a group of your melee units to throw ranged fireballs instead of their normal attacks for a limited time.
If you’re not sure what “salt spell” means, they’re a series of spells added originally in v1.7 which each has a type of anti-magic property. As more spells were added, they became so rare that it made sense to expand their series. Anti-magic spells are quite core to offering counter-play against spell-heavy strategies - and most of them also have usage outside of that scenario.
Other Changes and Bug Fixes
BUG FIXES
Fixing a bug that makes the enemy hero unable to cast spells if you do not have any spells yourself
Fixing Tide of Temples having a hidden requirement to only work on Tide heroes who knew their faction skill
Fixed a bug that allowed heroes to make temporary morale and termporary luck bonuses permanent by saving and reloading
Fixed Week of Shields and Week of Invasion working incorrectly when the enemy AI attacks your army during their turn
Fixed a bug that made units casting spells sometimes target the top left corner of the battlefield
Fixed an issue where a hero could use their Doppelgangers to trigger interactable buildings several times
Fixed Spire of Life and Death using the wrong sprite
Fixed Province Guards mentioning Dizzy Tune and not Lovely Tune in the tooltip
Fixed a bug that would make the game freeze when picking up a treasure giving a random spell if your hero already knows all spells in the game
Fixed a graphical error related to getting heroes with negative mana
Fixed one way in which heroes might end up with negative mana
Fixed Mana Crystals subskill being able to use 0.25 or 0.5 crystals. It is now rounded to the nearest integer
Fixed modded heroes who did not have their faction set being put into the wrong faction in case a faction mod was loaded, too
Fixed using Lieutenant Hall increasing the cost of recruiting other heroes
Fixed Raffe Rests getting restored in an arbitrary manner instead of restoring the closest Raffe Rest
Attempted to put in a fix for a rare issue that caused battles to be considered as Won within a couple of seconds of battles starting
Fixed King Tyrant Cal being shown as an unlockable hero for accomplishing the Wilderness Achievement
Added a text to the tooltip for gold income detailing gold income from Exploitation
Taxpayer units exploiting mines now still give taxpayer gold income, and this will show up in the gold income tooltip
Prevented rare Obelisks on islands from freezing the game
Fixed a bug that made roaming heroes on water maps only spawn on islands, not as pirates
Put in a routine to re-generate any map in which you would not be able to reach the enemy's town (unless the map has a special win condition)
Update to the sprite that shows that a unit is sleeping
Clarified in Tower of Idolatry tooltip that it sells artifacts to *visitng heroes*
Clarified in Doppelganger tooltip that xp sharing only goes one way
Added in a blacklist of spells that can't be casted via random effects such as Release and Arcane Spire
Removed Evolve from the Whimsy spell list - added Summon Wasps and Summon Titanfist to it instead
Added the ability to use unit group names for lexicon unit search
Updated the description of Horror to say that it gives -3 morale, as it was meant to
Made Dark Carnivals a lot more joyous
Updated the Soul resource tooltip to say that you get Souls while owning a Decay town, not a Soul Beacon
Fixed an issue preventing the AI from correctly trading between all their heroes, instead only trading between all non-garrisoned heroes
Fixed a translation issue for rare versions of mines
Fixed a translation issue for the header for the Unclear and Clarifying Vision windows
Fixed artifacts giving +1 Offense being able to give the hero unending amounts of Attack
Fixed lexicon unit search working strangely with certain ability names
Fixed lexicon unit search working strangely with certain living types
Fixed starting factions being set incorrectly when leaving a game from inside combat
Fixed starting heroes not being remembered correctly when leaving a game
Fixed Doppelgangers not always being considered ranged/melee like the hero that created them
Fixed Doppelgangers being able to get free levels whenever created if certain buildings were built in town / perks were unlocked in town
Fixed an issue preventing the AI from correctly trading units between all their heroes, instead only trading between all non-garrisoned heroes
Fixed a crash related to being above rank 100 in a skill
Fixed a bug that gave you units when losing a battle to a Mudcaster Tower, Dragon Aerie or Brood Cavern
UNIT CHANGES
Changed unit targeting so they now try to diversify their targets better instead of all targeting a single unit
The Rally ability now clears fear, confusion and sleep, and now preferably targets units afflicted by those
The Healer and First Aid abilities now clear poison
Unit abilities Slow, Sturdy and Savage no longer clog up unit tooltips; similarly, Aquatic has been made part of Sirenaga innate ability, and those units no longer show the Aquatic ability on its own
Made charge and leap slightly less inconsistent, especially at the start of combat
Passive units now have increased range for healing
Reworked penguins, giving them Freezing attacks and better stats
Canpinceri now have Budding, creating Cribcrabs when they take damage, instead of Impenetrable
OTHER CHANGES
Stat bonuses for the next battle are now shown in the hero's ledger tab
Runes are now shown in the hero's ledger tab
Customisation window now has priority over hero level-up, meaning that you use Customisation when the skill is picked even if the hero has more level-ups to go through
Waterpower, Earthpower, Firepower and Airpower now show their rank as a number instead of as a roman numeral in the hero's ledger tab
Fixed Rogue heroes being mixed between Fighters and Casters in spite of what their class would place them as
Picked new spells for all (unlockable) heroes that started with the same spell as another hero from their class
Lexicon now sorts spells by mana cost
Increased the effect of Shadowlock spell
Converting towns will now no longer sap all unit production from it, only sapping unit production from dwellings that are built in the town post-conversion
Renamed the Fur Shawl in the Ruthless artifact set to Leather Cape
AI will no longer waste time and mana casting spells that are uncastable, such as beam spells, when their hero is dead
The Deathcoil and Coil of the Dead mechanics can now at most trigger once per second per unit
Hegemony now no longer creates tier 1 units; instead, it stores the leftover value for proccing after future battles
Updated various Adventure Map Buildings to give upgraded units according to the new unit upgrade system
Updated the Entourage mechanic to give upgraded units according to the new unit upgrade system
Updated the Weaponsmith to now unlock upgrades for units map-wide instead of just upgrading the units carried by the hero right now
Improved Haberdashery interface for very high numbers of artifacts
Hero mods that do not specify what unitgroup a hero should use, but do specify their class, will now use the unitgroup usually represented by that class
Updated the description of the Ressurection unit ability to mention its limitations
Updated Seb the Full’s portrait
Closing Remarks
So, that’s it. Another huge update along the lines of v2.6 and v2.7. I don’t know if I have another huge update in me for v2.9. Chances are that updates will continue to slow down and shrink down as time goes by. I think the game is just about as good as it can get without once more pulling up a bunch of the core tenets of its design - which I am once more getting more unwilling to do.
There has been some pushback to the changes made in v2.7, just as there was to changes made in v2.6. I don’t regret the choices I’ve made. I spent a lot of time thinking about each change that people might potentially dislike, so I can rest easy with my assessment of the pros outweighing the cons. But I know that that’s what it’s like to update a game so long after its “Final Release” - make some happy on one hand, and on the other, disappoint others.
As mentioned, I’m going to size down the breadth and depth of updates from here on out. Probably just do quality of life and polishing for some time. Maybe even focus mainly on balance, for whatever that is worth.
As always, thank you for trying out my game, and for those who hang around and support the community, doing art marathons or guides or videos - thank you too, from the bottom of my heart.
See you in the next announcement. I think you’ll find that one really, really, exciting.
I’ve been a bit late with v2.7.2. It’s actually been out and in beta for a while, but it has only been pushed live recently. It has 10 adjustments, 9 changes to map generation, 37 bug fixes and 5 modding changes. This is as an apology for allowing at least one sort of common bug into v2.7.1. When that happened, I knew I had to be more careful with v2.7.2. Thus, it’s taken longer - but it’s here, finally.
Here are the full v2.7.2b patch notes. Below that, I’ll be writing about v2.8.
v2.7.2b CHANGE LOG
ADJUSTMENTS:
Changed Pain Aura so it now actually doubles damage taken in combat instead of applying a -50% rallying aura. This is also a nerf
Now the game remembers the last picked map so when exiting a map and opening the New Game menu, it automatically selects the last picked map
Added a slight bit of variability in the power of Potent Soul, making it so that a unit such as the Shadeamander now sometimes will be able to resurrect units it previously would not because they were just beneath the cost threshold
When several heroes are dead, the Tavern will now offer the highest level hero first, instead of the order being random and potentially different when saving and reloading
Changed the code so the gold spawned after a battle always is spawned by the feet of the victorious player
Standardised outcomes for gold spawned after combat
Bloodwarping now scales better for rank II and rank III, to offset the difficulty of ranking it up as a subskill
Torblok now has Bearguards as unit for players without Rogue Realms instead of Militia
Creativity can no longer offer Infest, Tinker, Exploitation or Crystal Assembly for players who do not own the RR DLC
Adjusted the power of the Reap spell down by about 20%
MAP GEN:
Made sure the "Check Missing Coastal" subroutine during map generation does not only work for docks placed automatically, but also for docks in forcelists or docks in map elements
Made sure the "Check Critical Failure" subroutine also activates to restart map generation in case a map-element-created structure is not possible to be placed on the map
Readjusted the placement of map cells during map generation to make them slightly better spread across small maps
Readjusted the code for connecting cells to make it more accurately connect cells supposed to connect together together
Fixed a bug that would sometimes allow the rare sea town to be generated on the bottom edge of the map, leaving an inaccessible town
Adjusted map generation to make it less common that part of areas aren't connected such as on maps like Mare Nostrum
Reduced time before giving up on clear-pathing to objects
Adjusted placement of water encounters to avoid cases where some of the resources would end up being placed on the coastline
Fixed Order units spawning at sea for players playing without the RR DLC on some maps
BUG FIXES:
Fixed a bug preventing AI from using Monuments correctly, leading to the AI not being able to play maps like Exile correctly. This should also make the AI slightly stronger on other maps by more effectively being able to use the offered map opportunities
Fixed a bug that made the Underdog skill prevent heroes from bringing in single-battle entourage units
Fixed a bug that made the Underdog skill sometimes calculate the relative difficulty of a fight differently than the overworld difficulty estimation
Made sure the AI won't cast Regroup! at random
Fixed Cult Recruiter being able to convert heroes
Banditry will now give Mercenaries if the player does not own the Rogue Realms DLC. This is a temporary work-around until a more appropriate solution can be implemented in v2.8
Reworded the Skirmish achievements to detail which Skirmish had to be fought to get them
Turn Living can now no longer affect Hexed units
Fixed several players starting as Random Rogue on the same map always ending up as the same hero
Fixed minor typos in map descriptions
Fixed only a single Raffe Rest getting restored even if the hero had picked up several Raffes before entering battle
Reworded the Industrial Smithy perk to better reflect its effect
Fixed units with Lash sometimes standing too far away to hit their intended target, making it look like they repeatedly miss their opponent
Temple of War now ranks up Grudge/Soul of the Earth for Stonemasons/Runecarvers even if they do not already know Grudge/Soul of the Earth
Heroes with a high number of warmachines will now have the icons for said warmachines resized instead of the list overflowing in the army overview UI
Fixed tooltips getting cut off at the top of the screen with screen resolution aspect ratios far from 16:9
Fixed an issue where buildings placed on the top row of tiles of the map would sometimes not draw their sprite
Fixed a visual glitch related to Gold Veins which would be obscured by the terrain features when saved and reloaded
Added a maximum distance for casting Gold Digger (24 tiles)
Fixed Patience achievement not working when playing in other languages than English
Fixed an exploit allowing you to start as any hero while using the Arcane town
Fixed a bug related to Entourage units being sent as reinforcements
Fixed a nerf for Coil of the Dead for Life Reapers not working as intended
Fixed certain Adventure Map buildings not registering being discovered when touched
Fixed the Scrying achievement not unlocking correctly
Fixed a bug that would make the After Combat results page show the wrong numbers if attacked by the AI during their turn
Fixing an issue with enemy AI, making it sometimes avoid good possibilities because the AI would think it had to fight its own armies to get to places
Fixing an issue with the AI where it sometimes would correct for the danger of a nearby enemy several times when picking a goal
Fixing a bug that made the AI move one tile less far for every 50 potential goals it was thinking about reaching, potentially locking heroes out of moving altogether on very large maps
Fixed a bug that made Ritual of Power not give XP in case you had too few units for a full levelup
Fixing evolution turning high-tier units into lower tier units
Doppelgangers spawned at sea now have boats. When they leave the water, their boat disappears
Fixed the Legend set and similar artifact set bonuses naming the unupgraded unit but creating the upgraded unit
Fixed Blight Monstrum being considered a Draconic unit for players not owning the RR DLC, as well as some other strange unit living assignments for boss units, such as the big dragons being beasts
Fixed Forlorn Cloister only keeping a single artifact post transformation
Fixed the non-DLC version loading and then just hiding the DLC maps, instead of not loading the DLC maps at all
Fixed achievement "God" only being granted when the hero ranks up a skill during level-up, thus becoming impossible in v2.7
Fixed a bug that made the Haberdashery crashed when using two times by the same hero
Fixed a typo in Morale's tooltip
MODDING:
Added Raffe Rest as a building placeable in the tilemap editor
Hero Replacement mods will now keep the default hero rarity modifier, allowing changing hero portraits for alt heroes and still keeping their town dwelling replacement mechanic
Added a new Hero mod tag "Replace Town Dwelling" to mimic the function of normal alt heroes to replace the town dwelling with their unit
Fixed "endai" variable only toggling off part of the AI code
The "endai" variable can now hold any number, and it will turn off ai for 10 frames for each 1 value it has
So, as you can see, it’s rather a big minor update - if that combination of terms make sense.
Development on v2.8 is just about done - or at least, it is entering the stage where I’m waiting for various things to be ready, rather than having particularly much left to develop myself. You can find the v2.8 beta up on steam.
The core goals of v2.8 were:
To be smaller than v2.7 and v2.6
To improve various aspects of towns
To improve Rogue towns, especially
Other secondary goals snuck in, such as expanding the dragons of the game and reworking the Arcane faction skills. The latter might sound out of nowhere, until you remember the Arcane fighter hero class skill is literally “get ore after combat”, which is about as boring as a skill can get.
Let me just run through the various major changes and talk about what they are and why they are.
New building requirement system and UI
There has been growing sentiment about the building requirement system for towns being bad. The general desire has been for all limitations for one building to require another to be removed - or most, anyway. My own issue with the current system is that as development has gone on, more and more buildings have been moved to be early on in the town’s development, which creates a flood of choices early on. Especially when a new development level was reached and - POOF - now you have 6 new buildings available - that felt somewhat off. I’m trying out a new building requirement system which sorts buildings into three categories - commercial, warfare and magic buildings. Instead of building requirements either being a global amount of buildings built and/or a specific building, the new requirements are based around number of the various types of buildings built. So for instance, you might want to build Archmage Tribunal, but to do so, you’ll need two more warfare buildings and one more commercial building. This will still keep limits in place for building up your town and planning out your build order, while not being quite as limiting. It also comes with a new UI which sorts the buildings in the three categories, which I hope will make it easier for new players to get an overview of their options.
New system for upgrading units
Unit upgrades have been tough to balance. They’re very core to the game, with most units actually being pretty basic and only getting their interesting abilities once upgraded. As well, they allow the player to focus on what units they think are most core to their strategy. However, I feel like as the game is now, usually unit upgrades are something you get not because you want to, but because you need another building and the upgrade is cheaper than the other options - and otherwise, you’d rather steer for more impactful buildings. There’s also a lot of micro-managing of bringing your units back to town to get upgraded, and then returned to your main hero. The new upgrade system seeks to improve this by removing dwelling upgrades, and instead creating a single two-tier building which allows you to upgrade units. Once a unit upgrade is bought, it affects all your units across the map instantly - no more micro-managing upgraded and unupgraded unit stacks! This also leads to a minor reduction in the unit stack clutter.
Tavern rework
This one is a bit more experimental, and might change with more player feedback. There is a problem in how central the tavern is to the current way the game is played. It allows you to get more heroes for:
Scouting
Moving around units
Extra units
Secondary heroes for leveling
I’ve tried disincentivising getting the tavern early and hiring several heroes early by changing the cost, the availability of the tavern - neither seemed to really fix the issue. The building is simply too strong and also too necessary. I also do not enjoy the inconsistency of sometimes getting a hero that can do nothing, and sometimes getting one which gives gold each day or gets entourage - completely at random. The new version of the tavern goes as follows:
You can hire “Scouts” even without building the actual tavern
Building the tavern allows you to upgrade Scouts into full heroes
Champion Statue etc. have been improved to offer even more heroes
Scouts are heroes in all ways apart from having skills and leveling up. You can even get xp on a scout and they’ll then level up when you upgrade the scout into a full hero. The scout is cheaper, too. Really, instead of trying to nerf the tavern, I’m now making it so that you don’t need it if all you really wanted was a scout - and the tavern, then, is more useful if you’re looking for a real hero to level up secondarily.
Other changes:
Fewer units for hiring a scout
Larger cost increase from hiring several heroes
Heroes now level up when hired, making new hero levels more consistent, and giving you better control over their skill choices
3 New Buildings for Each Rogue town
This one is kind of obvious. All Rogue towns had the same buildings. Boo! Made them feel less like 12 factions and more like a single faction (okay I guess that was the goal). Anyway, I’ve now added three unique buildings per Rogue town, which mimic the design style of the unique buildings per normal faction (i.e. Hostler, Counting House, Conscription Centre, Tower of Idolatry). That is, in total, 36 new buildings with different effects - most of them at least slightly unique. I won’t go into detail about all of them here, because that’s a lot of buildings. I’ll just let you know I tried to develop on the various themes of the Rogue towns with the aesthetic and gameplay design of the buildings. Additionally, several of them use the new improved system for custom resources, such as the Scrap resource for Industry. As an aside, the introduction of these new buildings have also made me go through the Rogue towns and remove various buildings from them. Thus, all Rogue towns no longer have all five of Colossus, Lieutenant Hall, Deity, Summoning Circle, Mercenary Hall - instead, each town only has two of the five, different ones depending on what town.
Rework town perks, Rogue expansions
With the removal of the old town level system with thresholds for number of buildings constructed, a new system was required for unlocking the town perks. But I do actually like the new system, because it always felt a bit jarring that you suddenly got a town perk pop-up out of nowhere when you were actually planning on doing something else. Now, instead of them being unlocked after building X buildings, they’re unlocked when building specific buildings. For normal faction towns, such as the Order town, this is the Centre of Order, Palace of Order and Empire of Order. For Rogue towns, this is one of their Expansions, the Turrets, and the Elemental Spire. Additionally, the other Rogue expansions are getting secondary effects, too. Finally, there’s five new perks per town.
Arcane faction skill rework
Instead of the Arcane class skills giving, respectively, a resource that can only be used in a single town building, or boring ore, the Aether system has been expanded, and the skills now do something on their own, too. Aether is now granted in four varieties: Fire, Earth, Air, Water - and is granted by defeating various enemies. Usually, it’s kind of obvious what units give what Aether, like, the Spirited Fire giving Fire, and most human units giving Air. Aether can then be used in one of three ways:
Casting a random spell when entering combat with element and power based on the highest amount of Aether carried
Aether Forge now offers appropriate bonuses for the various types of Aether
Special spells with unique effects that cost Aether instead of mana
New Units
v2.8 is going to launch with around 28 new units. For now, just 10 have been added, most of which are dragons. The rest will be tied to the various Rogue towns, and are currently in development by a community artist, who has been commissioned for this. Actually, the community will get a say in what those latter 18 units are. There will be various options that the community will vote to pick which get into the game. Join our discord and keep an eye open for when the votes start.
15 new suggestions implemented
As usual, there’s been a bunch of new suggestions in the discord. A total of 145 new suggestions with 773 votes have been tallied and selected between, with 15 of them getting added to the game. These range from minor changes, like Balaenopteras getting Aquatic, to larger changes, such as new game options and a way to see the total cost of all units available in town. The largest change is that there’s now a much better system for managing artifacts.
Miscellaneous
There’s likely going to be other things sneaking in, as well as minor other improvements. For instance, there’s going to be a general graphical improvement to spell effects.
Anyway, I hope you’ll try out the v2.8 beta. If you do, feel free to come by the discord server and leave some feedback that will help steer development.
I’m expecting v2.8 to launch around the end of quarter 1 2025.
Here we are - v2.7.0 is now live on the main branch! Concurrently, the game is now on sale to celebrate! Please note there are minor save compatibility issues (no crashes expected). If needed, you can access v2.6.3 via the Steam beta branch.
The Progression update focuses on the two main forms of progression in the game: The maps and the heroes. This is a really large update, perhaps even larger than the v2.6 Great War update. Not only that, I believe this might be the best update the game has seen since v1.4. It changes so much of how the game is played in the direction of there being much more to explore - whether we are talking literally about map exploration or figuratively about exploring the various avenues of hero skill synergies.
The headlines of the update are as follows:
New, more compact maps with height differences, win conditions, and an open number of player slots
New skill system sorting skills into categories and adding 120+ new subskills
New units, new spells, new adventure map buildings, new art upgrades
Various QoL improvements and balance changes
~70 bug fixes
If you want a development log about what’s changed and some thoughts about why, you can go check out the previous announcement - or you can see the short form of the patch notes below.
It’s been a long development process stretching across 23 pre-releases, and I want to thank everyone who played and gave feedback on the features as they were being worked on. It is thanks to them that we now all can enjoy this wonderful update. Oh, and thanks to the wonderful community artists who submitted ideas and designs for the various community art updates.
Now that v2.7.0 is out, I can start working on v2.8. I’m doing my best to make sure the next update will be a lot smaller than the last two updates, both of which have been much too big.
Map generation completely overhauled All maps have been replaced. Some new maps share name or shape with old maps New UI for setting up games 5 new win conditions for some maps (incl. 5 new buildings) New system for creating templates for the random map generator Resource piles now have different levels of wealth depending on what part of the map they spawn on Maps now generate with cliffs Two new terrains: Gold Beach and Dreamscape New large terrain art assets for all terrains
SKILL SYSTEM REWORK
The game now uses Skillsets instead of Skilltrees for hero progression by default Sorted all current skills into 47 major skills and the rest into subskills Reworked the following skills: Tactics (now called Strategist), Champion, Aeromancy, Swiftness (now called Wind Pace), Weightless Soul (now called Wing Master), Fortune, Terramancy, Heavy Soul (now called Stone Heart), Enchanting, Swordsmith, Armorsmith (now called Shieldsmith), Pyromancy, Leadership, Armorer, Hydromancy, Offense, Mysticism, Summoning, Avatar, Engineering, Wisdom, Demoralise (now called Horror), Tragedy, Mastery, Scouting Added 2 new major skills: Carnage, Faith Added 54 new general subskills: Affinity, Gambler's Wheel, Inspiration, Lucky Star, Grave Guard, Life From Death, Demonic Reduction, Demoncaller, Possession Cataclysm, Fireleaper, Inferno, Heroism, March Onwards, Persistence, Plating, Lifelink, Aggression, Manalife, Underdog, Grand Physician, Vigour, Belch, Digest, Spit, Betrayal, Survival, Stormbringer, Luckyguards, Life Aether, Jewelsmith, Mana Drain, Demon Blood, Rainstorm, Sapper, Swallow, Conversion, Elite Guard, Brawn, Skepticism, One on One, Dragonform, Guard of None, Dragonslaying, Prism, Customisation, Whimsy, Productivity, Nobility, Forceful Strike, Cult of Muscle, Gold Teeth, Putrid Air, Undying Added 36 new faction subskills: Salary, Royal Tribute, Old Mirth, Elven Artillery, Lunar Rites, March of Nature, Mage General, Spire Attunement, Scholar, Coil of the Dead, Frost Lich, Turn Living, Ritual of Power, Venomus Demonicus, Great Feast, Sandcaster, Hero's Horde, Ritual of Flesh, Swamp Silver, Bog Witching, Scale Lord, Doppelganger, Tunnel, Dragon Whisperer, Ways of the Sea, Pearl Crown, Fire Dance, Gold Digger, Carve Guards, Earthen Eternity, Uphold Tradition, Serene Meditation, Tea Master, Umsql, Cult Recruiter, Romance Added 23 new skills for Rogue Realms: Chemistry as a new major skill, and 22 subskills: Mana Crystals, Buying Life, Golden Blood, Dragonskin, Bestial Fury, Life summoner, Rootcaller, Questing, Analysis, Test the Flesh, Research, Midlife Crisis, Spore Spreading, Budding, Neurotoxin, Mychoral Guard, Artillery, Mechpriest, Inspiring Drum, Energetic Jam, Peace Binding, Province Guards Moved several subskills from Rogue Realms exclusivity to be part of the base game; of the old Rogue Realms exclusive subskills, only Call Beasts, Chemistry, Infest, Tinker, Lovely Tune, Exploitation and Crystal Assembly remains locked to Rogue Realms Designed new skillsets for all heroes Changed which skills and subskills heroes start with Changed, on a skill to skill basis, how many ranks a hero can learn, and what requirements exist for the skill Added 64 new spells for the new skills
OTHER NEW CONTENT
12 new units added: The Blood Golem, Medician, Mercenary, Nighthowler, Herculean, Terraformed, Questing Raffe, Aether Witch, Vulpella, Life Reaper, Blood Aspirant, Rune Beacon 15 new adventure map buildings added to the game Sea towns have been added as a special type of Brine town for players owning Rogue Realms DLC Added 6 new spells: Nightmare, Dream, Slumber, Detonate, Reap, Root Hand Designed Skirmishes - these were previously randomly generated
COMMUNITY GRAPHICS IMPROVEMENTS
Improved default boat during naval combat Divine Vessel spell now creates a unique boat with unique overworld and in-battle graphics Lizardfolk heroes now create Turtles instead of Boats at the docks. These have a unique overworld and in-battle graphic Most factions get unique new walls during sieges (by DeadSaracen) All factions get a new unique look for their first aid station warmachine (by SleepyMage) Updated art for Crusader, Paladin, Bloodsucker, Firestinger, Corruptor, Boneliath (by DeadSaracen) Updated art for Enclave units by AntRose Implementing 2 minor graphical updates + 1 overhaul to the pheromones subskills (drawn by AntRose)
MINOR CHANGES
All hero classes now get a unique silhouette for their artifact equipment screen Guardposts made by Mason now are guaranteed to give their units to the hero defending them when attacked, instead of there being a chance for the enemy to attack the guardpost but not the hero, or a guarantee for this to happen if the hero was uncamped Bodyguards/entourage losses are now calculated differently and more accurately Now all types of entourage units regenerate at 15% each day Week of X unit can no longer roll into technical units such as gods General artifact set and Champion Statue now give +1 Entourage instead of the Bodyguards skill Entourage time scaling now limits entourage units during early game for longer Rogue Statue now gives +3 daily movement instead of the Logistics skill FOW can now be cleared to the very edge of the map More player colours Units with damage reduction now show small glimmers during battle Lorane now starts with Nighthowlers Obelisk visions now look different Tide now starts on Gold Beach terrain, and Delirium starts on Dreamscape terrain Reduced the frequency of Death Coil killing huge amounts of units by increasing the damage dropoff per jump Hex and Toadify spells are now Water-school instead of Earth You can now see what a unit will bloodwarp into by holding B while looking at an expanded unit tooltip Transformation from Apothecary no longer clears curse of undeath from Malediction or Bane Air Shield now stacks with units that already had Ethereal, and stacks with itself when cast multiple times New sprites for the following artifacts: Mesmer's Wall, Batal's Gloves, Ruby Band, Ring of Power, Conjurer's Cape, Champion Banner Reduced the amount of Firepower/Waterpower/Airpower/Earthpower given by artifacts to 1/10th, to match the new spellpower mechanics Changed the effect of some artifacts to no longer give +1 skill point, but instead to use proficiency/entourage/command - Mesmer's Eye - Rabbit's Feet (daily gold income) - Tusk's Immortality - Rogue Trousers - Bluepearl Ring - Locket of Death Removed Learning from a series of artifacts and replaced it with an Experience rate bonus. These are nerfs - Ring of Victory - Regal Tunic - Pompous Crown - Artisan Helmet - Tusk's Helmet - Mandel's Gem Special artifact bonuses such as "Shadowbetrayal", "Grizzly Guard" and "Unit Speed" will now show up in the UI as skills and will now have tooltips explaining their effects Most units have had their living status sorted into more accurate categories (undead, human, draconic etc), and you can now see a unit's living status in its tooltip Heroes now have a per-hero setting for living status Some new living status categories have minor buffs or debuffs, such as Plants taking double damage from the burning status Improved various aspects of the Manage Heroes screen Warmachines now show tooltips when you hover your mouse over them during combat Tailtoads and Snowbeards now have their damage scale correctly and display correctly Infernal Gate is now weaker for armies with very few units (less than 100 unit power) Units that transform still retain proficiency bonus; this includes Lacks AI now prioritises fighting an enemy hero head on over teleporting home to defend their town from that same threat AI now prioritises developing and defending their strongest towns first, and will no longer become confused when two towns close by each-other both are threatened Higher levels of AI now prioritise hiring two heroes immediately when the tavern is bought Projectile Protection now also reduces ranged attack damage by 25% and is now named Deflection Fighter hero classes now gain Knowledge slightly faster Extended the differences between Mob Strength: Low and Mob Strength: High advanced map setting When hovering over the hero's movement bar in the HUD, the number of tiles in the current path is shown on the map Forts and Citadels that require more creature dwellings to build now also show other requirements in their tooltips. Changed the depth at which the Devour text is drawn, to be drawn on top of instead of underneath blood particles Made the resources given by Buried Treasure more controlled; now a certain number of piles will always give gold and a certain number of piles will always give rare resources Reduced the power of Buried Treasure for starting areas for small maps Amount of resources, amount of artifacts, and power of artifacts given by roaming heroes now scale with their level In battles where you gain more unit power than lost, the game will no longer phrase it as losing a negative number Oligarchy now affects entourage units Rewrote the tooltip for Statue of Physique to explain that heroes need to know Might or Ardour to be affected Updated the Elemental Crystal spell in Sample Mods to now use the new, more straightforward mod functionality for summoning spells Prevented the AI from casting Swift Retreat randomly during battles Updated the text in the window that explains army limit size Extended "Force Symmetry" to also guarantee same results when opening chests Extended "Force Symmetry" to also guarantee placing the same artifacts Reduced the variability of undead units by half, tieing the outcomes to specific heroes Heroes who specialise in undead units now have a significantly higher chance of creating those undead units The Idol unit will no longer become converted by Blight Ritual Updated lists of faction units for Custom Skirmish to include v2.6 and v2.7 extra-faction units Improved the tooltip for towns; the size of the small buttons, and the area for the cursor within which the tooltip will stay active Increased the Command of structures that use a lot of unit power, such as the Arena (by +1 command for each 25k gold worth of units) All Units list in Lexicon can now search for unit names or ability names All Units list in Lexicon can now filter for unit tiers Adjusted distance that AI is able to find buried treasure, making it more dependent on number of clues that they have found AI heroes now keep track of cooldown for individual spells during combat, increasing the time between casting the same spell twice Made it possible to right click units into and out of unit conversion buildings Changed how gold cost of Training Grounds is displayed Added Wildren Shrine to Wild's lexicon page Combat will now end faster when fighting Betrayal units that are out of health The mana display on the HUD now more accurately shows mana pct when you have between 0-20% mana Adjusted the number of units summoned by summoning spells to scale more accurately, incl. a lower number of units for low spellpower, incl. fewer units summoned by a single unit casting a summoning spell Blight Ritual will no longer convert your hero's specialty unit if the hero has the Mastery skill Reduced occurrence rates of unlockable heroes to 1/3rd of main heroes Inner Health can no longer be cast on Undead units Increased the stats of catapults that are used during defense Added a description of heroes specialisation unit and starting spells to map selection and lexicon
BALANCE CHANGES
Siren Song has been made more powerful, its effect increased by 25% Changed how fear works, making it less likely to affect high power units Added fear resistance. Each time a unit is terrified, the duration of its next fear becomes shorter The fear from Wail is now strongly reduced by fear resistance Morale now additionally shortens / lengthens duration of fear Halved the rate at which Tailtoads inflict freeze Increased the attack cooldown of Psychotrophs, Sludge Spitter and Absurdum units Fireflies burst damage now reflects their attack damage Increased Fireflies' attack damage by 50% Reduced Betrayal proc chance from 100% to 100% for player owned and 80% for neutral owned Gilded Pearlshells now have a slightly lower proc chance for both Petrification and Midas Touch Incinerate now deals 150% damage to burning units instead of 200% Buffed stats of following units: Dragonworm, Farmer, Child of Midas, Hound Dog, Hound Tamer, Imp, Glutton, Anima, Forest Spirit, Militia, Halberdier, Spawnling, Deckmate, Soulmage, Lich Nerfed stats / increased cost of following units: Slickspitter, Sneagle, Malcorvid, Infernal, Hellgoat, Sorcerer, Psychotroph, Sludge Spitter, Absurdum, Kroll Bowman, Freshling, Songblade Halved the power of Entourage so it now works like its description and how it was meant to work Entourage can no longer give more units than the total power of all your real units on all your heroes and towns Reduced the xp cost of summoning demons to 1/3rd of what it is Demonology now summons slightly more demons early in the game and slightly fewer units later in the game Reduced the mana cost of Necromancy by 1 mana Reduced the scaling of Necromancy with number of enemy units by 20%, but increased its base strength (same change as what happened with Demonology) Reduced the AOE of Freshling attacks Increased the base health and damage of Shadowcasting and Shadowcloning copies, making these skills less reliant on several ranks Number of Boneguards created by a Bane hero now scales with their level: Number = hero level + 6 * bane rank Taxpayer unit ability now gives +5 gold per power instead of +2 gold per power Increased health of Ophidians, Monster Trogs and Hollow Champions Increased health and damage of Corpseeaters, and health of unupgraded Zombies Removed high level summoning spells from the list of spells that can be cast by Release Reduced the proc rate of release slightly for Amberodes (from 20% to 17.5%) Reduced the duration of Insensate for units not owned by any players to 75% Buffed Goblin health by +5 and Voodoo health by +3 Gave leap units a very short immunity time after landing from a leap Reduced the power of Possession from units that do not belong to any player by 33% Infirmaries are now able to heal any unit that can be hired in town, even if those units are not faction units Nerfed the cost and thus difficulty estimation of Wildren unit Increased Slickspitter cost; decreased Slickspitter growth Increased Venom Darter cost Increased Agony Beetle cost Neutral Roaming heroes now either have half mana, or 30 + one quarter of their mana, whichever is lower Reduced the damage of Cannonneers manning the turrets of Tide walls for neutral encounters Reduced number of Cannonneers manning the turrets of Tide walls from 3 to 2 Greatly increased Health and Damage of Sorcerers Halved the duration of the immunity given by Swift Retreat Changed summoned/miraged units with Midas Touch turning into golden statues to now just leave normal corpses to fix an unintended gold gain Warding now protects against Comet Strikes Projectile protection and range reduction now works against Arrow Rain Avatar now scales off the average of the mana cost of the spell and the actual mana spent on the spell; this reduces the number of units created up to by 50% in case all of the spell's mana cost is paid by Buffer or similar mechanics Limited the effect of gold stacks spawned by battle turning into Artifacts to only happen via Hunter or Plunder Reduced number of Runescribes manning the walls of neutral Earthen combat encounters Flying units that do not belong to any player now can only use their pick-up-and-kill ability on units with 25% less health than before Fixed low rank units turning into Wretched units when turned into undead despite weaker options being available Nerfed amount of Soul power gained from combat to be more flat, closer to 20 per combat Improved Dragon Temple's rate of upgrading dragons by 4x Dragon Temple can now upgrade summoned dragons and entourage dragons, but only for the duration of that battle Warding now protects against Comet Strikes Projectile protection and range reduction now works against Arrow Rain Changed the way that Summoning spells scale with spellpower, unit cost, etc. Overall, they are now a bit weaker but scale better lategame Nerfed the secondary effect of the Hunting skill (giving artifacts when fighting beasts that did not come from Hidden Beasts) Increased the time to attack for Ranged units with Wind-up, more accurately halving their attack speed Reduced damage of Cultists and Spiritists Increased Venom proc chance for low tier units, mostly affecting Cultists, Spiritists and Venom Darters Reduced number of Grey Boys on avatars slightly for avatars after the first Forbidden Tome can now at most give +10 knowledge Units that summon units summon fewer units (see "Minor Changes: Adjusted the number of units summoned by summonings spells to scale more accurately") Doubled the resources given by Commercial Centre town perk
MODDING
You may now specify unique targets for bloodwarping and other similar effects when doing unit mods by adding in a new line called "Elite Target: Nameofunit" Heroes can now have their living status set Global variables can now be read and changed by prefacing a variable with an @ instead of using the global_read() and global_set() functions New function to make heroes unavailable by conventional means, allowing creation of special heroes Complete overhaul of skill modding New modding custom scripting functions: - find_object_index(name) - find_sprite_index(name) - add_sprite(filename,number_of_frames,x_origin,y_origin) - draw_sprite(sprite_index, image_index, x, y, x_scale, y_scale) - draw_sprite_outline(sprite_index, image_index, x, y, x_scale, y_scale) Two new functionalities: - put @ before the variable name in variable_exists() to check if the named global variable exists - array_create() and list_create() can now take any number of arguments to instantly put inside the list/array Technical unit groups for the various factions now get generated BEFORE mods are loaded, allowing you to use these groups with mods Implemented support for replacing unit sprites along with the new Unit Edit format Implemented support for replacing unit sprites without using a Unit Edit data.txt file
BUG FIXES
Reduced the hard disc use when showing the battle menu Docks building will no longer show up in the middle of battlefields when fighting near a docks Heroes who gain knowledge when leveling up also gain the +10 to current mana Fixed rooted units still being able to use Charge Removed the graphical effect of True Strike (archery bonus) on Blaster attacks hitting own units AI will no longer use Devour Own indiscriminately in fights against the player Fixed a bug that might make the AI pay for a hero without getting them Fixed AI not prioritising tavern for players with Rogue Realms installed Fixed autobattle spellcasting simulations sometimes making a battle a loss that was a win before the spell simulation Fixed Paradisic Meadow showing +1 bonus while giving a +2 bonus Casting Chaos while in a naval battle will no longer scatter units into the water Fixed a bug that made unlockable heroes have different town building layouts than other heroes Fixed a bug that made Mercury Boosts draw half souls instead of full ones Fixed Hydra Heralds not triggering correctly if dying in a battle that an enemy initiated Fixed several other post-battle effects not triggering correctly when battle was initiated by an enemy The daily ore income from Carver Stalls now is displayed correctly Setting all players to be on the same team will no longer trigger any achievements Taming now works correctly after autocombat Fixed High Unit Growth advanced map setting quadrupling unit growth instead of just doubling it Fixed a bug that would sometimes leave roaming heroes stuck on treasure Fixed Swift Retreat giving immunity when used by an AI that wouldn't use it to retreat Heroes with Infest can now interact with buildings that have already been visited specifically to Infest them Fixed Buried Treasure giving 2x as much sulphur as other rare resources Made sure that the Watering Well unit growth now rounds down when at 0.5 instead of sometimes rounding up and sometimes rounding down Fixed a bug that made units with leap underestimate or overestimate how far to charge / leap, especially when dealing with units with taunt Fixed Potency spells showing up in the Spellbook special spells tab Fixed a bug that allowed Shadowlocked or Petrified units to leave the battlefield in rare scenarios Fixed a rare bug crashing the game on the Last Week map Fixed a bug that would sometimes end a battle before a unit with Splitting or Potent Soul could use its on-death ability if that unit were the last unit fighting on its side of the battle Fixed flying units not scaling the walls even when permitted to or when the walls were breached Fixed Soul Beacon mercury boosting showing a different amount of units than what is actually given Fixed a bug that made the resource lost pop-up animation not show the number -1 Fixed a bug that would crash the game when Haste was offered in a scroll or pandora Fixed a bug related to Pearl-searching particles being spawned off screen and piling up Chaos unit ability can no longer teleport units from boats into the water Fixed an exploit where you could force the Batal artifact set bonus to always proc by just not clicking the level-up button on your hero Fixed Soul Beacon not triggering each day in Hotseat PvP games and for the AI Fixed the tooltip for Pheromones spell stating that the spell deals damage when it in fact does not Fixed new Unit Edit files not correctly desyncing abilities from base unit and upgraded unit Fixed the Rogue artifact set bonus shadow heroes not syncing caster/fighter abilities Fixed a bug that would crash the game when Haste was offered in a scroll or pandora Fixed a bug related to Pearl-searching particles being spawned off screen and piling up Changed summoned/miraged units with Midas Touch turning into golden statues to now just leave normal corpses to fix an unintended gold gain Fixed Soul Beacon mercury boosting showing a different amount of units than what is actually given Fixed a bug that made the resource lost pop-up animation not show the number -1 Fixed being able to dig for buried treasure while your hero is mid-movement, which would mess up the revealed treasure Fixed a graphical error in the Carcass sprite Fixed Academy being able to give lessons to avatars, which wouldn't do anything Fixed typo in description of Second Wind and Chaos spells (batte instead of battle) Fixed Diplomacy not combining separate stacks of identical units into a single stack Fixed some UI overlap issues with the hero window Fixed a bug that sometimes would have combat end before all units had deployed if enough units were killed at once Fixed casting Transform on low tier units making the game lag and eventually turn them into random, higher-power units Fixed Resurrection prioritising non-permanent units instead of prioritising permanent units Fixed a bug that would make summoned units that had been hexed able to be resurrected into permanent units Fixed a bug that meant that Balistas firing very far would deal no damage Units can no longer drown in naval combat if they are victorious Fixed a bug where certain buff spells could be repelled by Warding Fixed a bug where certain v2.6 units were not considered technical units when playing without Rogue Realms Fixed Entourage units not being considered when the AI is deciding to flee Fixed Necromancy not giving mana to avatars when using the Drain option Fixed the daily gold income of Exarch set bonus not being displayed in the gold income tooltip Fixed Wildren Shrine and Loss Shrine not being translated correctly Fixed a bug that made Forbidden Tome give one more knowledge than the number of spells you knew Made sure mana regen is described as an integer in the tooltip for Knowledge even when the hero has the Regeneration skill Fixed Lieutenant Hall not giving the same hero as what is displayed in the UI Fixed a bug that would allow you to duplicate Delirium heroes Fixed an occasional crash when the AI was trying to protect a town they'd town-portaled to Fixed a bug with the save file compression algorithm that would prevent the final 1-128 values not be recorded when compressing a grid Fixed certain combat encounters having no command (such as catapults) - now 1 command is minimum in all cases
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A couple of months ago, I wrote about the next update and the goals behind it. Not only have some of those goals shifted around a bit due to player feedback, but everything has become a lot more concrete. So, in this post I’ll go over the main features of the v2.7 update.
First, you might want to hear about the timeline. Work on the update started around March, and the main features were more or less finished in the middle of May - with this post, the public pre-release is more-or-less stable, which it certainly has not been throughout the whole process. Now comes a last period of polish, bug fixes, and waiting for translations. I expect v2.7.0 to land in about 1-2 months.
The Progression update is so named because it overhauls the two major systems of progress in the game: Hero levelling, specifically skills, and map exploration. However, this is a bit of an understatement, as you’ll see there’s a lot of additional goodies outside of those two systems.
Here are the current patch notes. For the major features, I’ll be going into a bit more detail.
MAP CHANGES
Map generation completely overhauled
The map generation algorithm, which has remained mostly unchanged since v0.5, has been completely rewritten from the ground up. The new system is better at generating smaller paths and filling out space edge to edge. This also means that with v2.7, non-sea maps will no longer be surrounded with sea on all sides. Additionally, it gives better control over the shape of maps, which allows the new v2.7 map templates to be much more varied and interesting.
All maps have been replaced
New map system means new maps. v2.7 will launch with 31 maps of various sizes. Some of the new maps are based on the old maps and thus share a name, but even then, they are substantially different. An example is the new Duel map, which still is a small 1v1 map, but now its size is actually tiny, 32x32 tiles in all. There is also a series of maps with unique concepts, such as Path of Gold, where your enemy’s and your side of the map is connected by three paths, one which has ore, one which has wood and one which has gold.
31 maps might sound like fewer than what was there before, where the game had 43 maps. However! Many of the new maps can be played by any number of players between 2 and 6, and since many of the old maps are basically copies of each-other just with different player numbers, the actual number of maps is still larger.
Rogue Realms will still add an additional 12 new maps on top of the 31 base game maps.
New UI for setting up games
Prettier UI, which also solves some long-standing issues with the map selection screen being too large for small screens and too small for large screens; also allows better integration of advanced map settings and choosing number of players for maps with 2-6 player slots. Even the “teams” feature makes better visual sense with the new UI.
5 new win conditions for some maps (incl. 5 new buildings)
Some of the new maps will showcase new win conditions. Some of these are about keeping control of a town or certain map buildings, while some task you in defending a specific building. I’m not entirely convinced if these are better than the default win condition, but at least it’s more varied and in almost all maps, you can still win by defeating the opponent.
New system for creating templates for the random map generator
A bit more controversially, the old nodemap templates will not work in v2.7, nor will there any longer be access to the nodemap editor. Instead, v2.7 will work off a new map file format which is easier to work with and generally gives better control of things. This also makes the way the in-game map templates and the modded map templates work the same, so you can edit the included map templates instead of having to do your completely own thing.
The new map template files consist of a modding format that should be familiar to anyone who has worked with Hero’s Hour modding before. One of the most important features is the ability to “paint” the map by filling out a grid of numbers.
The grid of numbers on the left create a map layout like the one drawn on the right.
The 1s designate the red area for player 1, while the 2s designate the green area for player 2. S designates a secondary area unowned by any player. And then the A, B, C, D, E and F are defined as towns and underground entrances in the rest of the map. The w regions are defined as water, however in this map the bottom half is defined as underground and thus that won’t be water, but underground void.
This, in sum, turns into the new Constellation map:
Please ignore the floating pirate.
Resource piles now have different levels of wealth depending on what part of the map they spawn on
In short, early game resource piles will have fewer resources and late game resource piles will have more. There are also some special maps which play around with this, such as having a special area where all the resource piles are of the largest size.
Maps now generate with cliffs
For now, this is purely visual change, but still it looks rather nice and makes the map terrain become more memorable. The maps come in two terrain heights with cliffs in-between.
Two new terrains: Gold Beach and Dreamscape
One of the goals of the map rewrite was to make the game no longer have artificial limits on the number of terrains or players. Previously only 14 terrains were supported and only 7 players were supported. Now, any number of terrains can be added, and two have been added, one as a new Tide starting terrain and the other as a new Delirium starting terrain. Additionally any number of players can be put on a map, though I have not tested beyond 10. If at some point it becomes relevant to have more than 10 players on a map (I cannot foresee why that would ever be the case), that limit might be raised again.
New large terrain art assets for all terrains
There’s a lot of new terrain set pieces, not just for the two new terrains, but also the old ones. The game has never looked as good as it does now. Even the sea looks better, now with waves coming off the coast-lines.
SKILLS CHANGES
Skillsets is the new default for for hero skill progression; Skilltrees turned off
Skilltrees were originally added in the v1.4 update as a bit of an afterthought. I was not able to do what I wanted to, so I settled for these instead. They ended up becoming a huge part of the game’s identity. Yet, they have caused a lot of issues with most later updates to the game. Especially Rogue Realms and v2.6 updates both suffered a lot in quality due to the disadvantages of the skilltree system.
Skilltrees are still playable as an advanced map settings.
Now instead of each hero having a skillltree of 14-16 skills, each hero will have a learnset of 6 major skills. These can be taken in any order. Major skills unlock various subskills, which means that on average, a hero will have access to 26-28 skills throughout their levelling. The new levelling system is both more open, full of more features (because there’s more skills), and more intelligible, since skills are grouped together into sets of major skills.
Sorted all current skills into 47 major skills and the rest into subskills
So, what is a major skill, anyway? As mentioned, skills are grouped together into sets, and the Major skill is the one at the top, which gives access to the subskills.
Here you can see an example of these major skills and subskills. For instance, in the middle, we have the Mysticism major. Underneath, we have the Destruction subskill, Blight Ritual subskill, Buffer subskill and Mana Life subskill. To gain any of those subskills, you’ll first have to rank up Mysticism. Then, later, you can put points into them - though some, like Blight Ritual, might have additional requirements, like being level 7 and having Mysticism rank II.
Leadership is a major skill too, with Plunder and three new skills as subskills. And finally, all the class skills have been expanded as major skills with three new faction-specific subskills.
That’s a lot of new skills in a single picture, huh…
Why did I choose one thing to be major and another to be subskill? In general, the major skills are supposed to represent the most important mechanics in the game, and should generally always make you more powerful. The subskills are better suited for unique interactions and synergies that aren’t always useful. In general, the major skills are also a lot more straightforward than the subskills - many of the latter being as complex as Hero’s Hour gets.
Oh! One last thing. Skills now have varied number of max ranks. The old skills generally can have up to 4 ranks if they’re major skills and up to 2 ranks if they’re subskills, while almost all new subskills added to the game are single-rank only.
Reworked the following skills: Tactics (now called Strategist), Champion, Aeromancy, Swiftness (now called Wind Pace), Weightless Soul (now called Wing Master), Fortune, Terramancy, Heavy Soul (now called Stone Heart), Enchanting, Swordsmith, Armorsmith (now called Shieldsmith), Pyromancy, Leadership, Armorer, Hydromancy, Offense, Mysticism, Summoning, Avatar, Engineering, Wisdom, Demoralise (now called Horror), Tragedy, Mastery, Scouting
These reworks range from being rather minor to being rather vast. For instance, Leadership and Fortune now give +2 morale or +2 luck instead of +1 - but also, the stats are changed to be half as powerful, so it all works out in the end. Other skills were changed due to becoming subskills.
Several skill changes deal with how bonuses multiply together. For instance, Hydromancy/Pyromancy/Terramancy/Aeromancy no longer give a 60% power bonus, instead giving +7 spellpower while casting that type of spell. In general, this will make late game synergies a bit less unpredictably powerful, while keeping the early game scaling the same.
One change I do want to highlight is Engineering, which now gives a new warmachine each time it is levelled up. Previously, it would only give a First Aid tent to a hero if the hero started with a point into that skill. To this end, 3 new warmachines were added so you can always get an unowned warmachine no matter at what point you put points into Engineering.
Added 2 new major skills: Carnage, Faith
Carnage is the new major for a group of subskills which all deal with synergies of losing your own units. Faith is the new major for a group of ostensibly spell-focused subskills.
So, yea, v2.7 adds a lot of new skills to the game. These range from rather minor effects, such as a stat bonus combining for instance morale and daily movement, and rather advanced effects, such as Stormbringer which summons a tornado each fight which becomes more powerful whenever you cast an air spell.
There’s a vast difference in the number of new subskills per major skill. This is related to how many old skills were put as subskills. In the end, each major skill has 3-5 subskill, most of them 4 - if you ignore faction skills anyway. About those…
Added 36 new faction subskills:
Order: Salary, Royal Tribute, Old Mirth
Wild: Elven Artillery, Lunar Rites, March of Nature
Arcane: Mage General, Spire Attunement, Scholar
Decay: Coil of the Dead, Frost Lich, Turn Living
Pyre: Ritual of Power, Venomus Demonicus, Great Feast
So, yea, v2.7 adds a lot of new skills to the game. This was a wonderful time to flesh out and try to represent various themes of the factions that weren’t already touched. They range from rather simple. On the simple side, each faction gets a lvl 7 subskill which gives an entourage of a notable faction unit as well as a minor side bonus On the advanced side, we have skills such as Doppelganger, which creates a shadowclone of your hero on the overworld, and Great Feast, which gives an overworld spell with a short cooldown that can be used to buff your hero’s units, but turns your units drunk and has an unpredictable gold cost.
Moved several subskills from Rogue Realms exclusivity to be part of the base game
; of the old Rogue Realms exclusive subskills, only Call Beasts, Infest, Tinker, Lovely Tune, Exploitation and Crystal Assembly remains locked to Rogue Realms
The Rogue Realms skills are the ones seeing the largest shake-up. Most are turning into base-game subskills, either because they were too good to be kept in the DLC, or they were too bad to be kept as paid content. Before, Rogue Realms had twelve pseudo-faction skills and a bunch of random assorted skills with little rhyme or reason. Now, Rogue Realms will have six full fledged major skills with four additional subskills each.
The change to exclusivity actually goes beyond just the above. One problem with the Rogue Realms DLC was that it split up modding into two segments, with mods not quite working for both Rogue Realms and base game. In the underlying code, even the Rogue Realms skills will now be available for anyone running mods that does not own the DLC.
Added 24 new skills for Rogue Realms:
Hoard: Mana Crystals, Buying Life, Golden Blood, Dragonskin
Call Beasts: Bestial Fury, Life summoner, Rootcaller, Questing
Chemistry: Analysis, Test the Flesh, Research, Midlife Crisis
Lovely Tune: Inspiring Drum, Energetic Jam, Peace Binding, Province Guards
Chemistry is the new major skill and starting skill for the Alchemist heroes in Rogue Realms. The rest of the six main pseudo-faction skills are being fleshed out with appropriate subskills, such as Tyranny whose Hoard skill is now being supported by various resource-related or dragon-related skills.
You might wonder why Tinker has fewer than the others; it doesn’t, it’s just getting Crystal Assembly and Exploitation as subskills, since they fit it so well. So in total, each of the 6 main Rogue towns now has its own major skill with 4 extra subskills.
You might notice the above list only has 23 new skills. The last new skill is named Drown and is actually a Hydromancy subskill, but which can only be learnt by Admirals, that is, Rogue Realms heroes of the Brine town.
Designed new learnsets for all heroes
The new learnsets are in part based on the skill trees used for Rogue Realms, but with a much larger focus on what skills make thematic sense for each faction to learn. Of course, there will be a human General that can learn Necromancy, we can have some outliers - but most of the heroes will now better fit their faction themes.
Above you see the frequency of various majors for the Wild and Pyre factions. Unsurprisingly, Demonology and Pyromancy is frequent with one, and Fortune and Terramancy is frequent with the other. They both like Summoning.
Changed which skills, subskills and units heroes start with
The change of course goes beyond learnsets, also affecting starting skills. Additionally, the unlockable heroes, which with Skilltrees start with Rank II of a single skill, now start with Rank I of a major + Rank I of a subskill under that major.
Units are changed too. Mostly this is a redaction of a range of heroes that had non-faction units as their starting units. But also some new v2.7 units are being granted as starting units.
Added 64 new spells for the new skills
Many of the new skills add spells, either overworld spells, combat spells with mana costs, and combat spells with day- cooldowns. Some of these are “just” summon spells, but are made special in the way they are learnt - such as Demoncaller which teaches 3 spells to summon demons, each of which has a multi-day cooldown. Others are more unique spells, such as Drown, which floods the battlefield, Dragonform, which turns your hero into a dragon, or Prism, which summons a bunch of copies of a single chosen enemy or friendly unit.
OTHER ADDITIONS
12 new units added: Blood Golem, Medician, Mercenary, Nighthowler, Herculean, Terraformed, Questing Raffe, Aether Witch, Foxpirit, Life Reaper, Blood Aspirant, Rune Beacon
The new units come by either because of new subskills, or because of some of the community art marathons. The latter units are, for instance, based on designs by DeadSaracen, MagicalStorm, SleepyMage, Lyolf and Kaazmun. The new units represent 4 new unit abilities: Nighthowler, Foxpirit and Blood Aspirant all have the Bloodform ability, which makes them transform when they kill an enemy; Aether Witch has the Colourcaster ability; Life Reaper has the Reap ability; and Rune Beacon has the Rune Recipient ability.
15 new adventure map buildings added to the game
The sixth art marathon was held back in March and resulted in a lot of new buildings being added to the game:
Magic Mirror and Haberdashery by SleepyMage
Egg of Unknown Origin by Hamastra
Enchanted Pond and Earthblood Mine by DeadSaracen
Djinn Altar by me
Hero's Communion and Void Spiral by MagicalStorm
Dragon Aerie by Erridian
Ethereal Philosopher by Louis Morel.
Additionally, there’s five new adventure map buildings for the sea (the first of that type!): Den of Sirens, Brine Guild, Lighthouse, Calm Leviathan and Wrecking Reef.
Sea towns (Rogue Realms DLC only)
These are a special variety of Brine towns only found out at sea. On large maps, you’ll usually find 1-2. They’re rather rare.
Added six new spells: Nightmare, Dream, Slumber, Detonate, Reap, Root
These spells were added so that the Delirium heroes no longer had to start with Mysticism-specific spells. The mysticism spells in general were on the powerful side, and being given guaranteed access to a specific one was a bit too much, especially since generally, their power was balanced out by having to put a point into a specific skill.
Community Graphics Improvements
Above, I’ve mentioned art marathons a couple of times. I guess I should explain what those are. They started as a tradition in the discord server where a lot of artists would all do their own version of a single thing. The first official art marathon was to create a new portrait for Hardsoul, the best hero.
The art marathons are held in two rounds: First, people draw up their designs and write a bit about their concept. Second, voting. The third round is that I ask the people who get the most votes if they want to see the thing added to the game, and if they do, I’ll do my best to implement it as close to their vision I can without messing up balance or design principles. And of course, the person with the most votes get to wish a completely new piece of content into the game.
Since then, there’s been a couple of other art marathons, before a long hiatus known as the v2.6 doldrums. Now in 2024, we’ve held three art marathons:
5th art marathon: New overworld buildings
6th art marathon: Faction-specific designs for default assets
7th art marathon: New units based on the 12 factions
So, about half the new units are from the 7th art marathon, as well as some unit graphics being overhauled. Two thirds of the new buildings are from the 5th art marathon.
The 6th art marathon isn’t adding any new content, but it is adding new looks for old things - specifically doing faction-specific designs for things that previously looked the same for everyone:
Improved default boat during naval combat, by Hamastra
Divine Vessel spell now creates a unique boat with unique overworld and in-battle graphics, by MagicalStorm
Lizardfolk heroes now create Turtles instead of Boats at the docks. These have a unique overworld and in-battle graphic, by DeadSaracen
Most factions get unique new walls during sieges, by DeadSaracen
All factions get a new unique look for their first aid station warmachine, by SleepyMage
Updated art for Crusader, Paladin, Bloodsucker, Firestinger, Corruptor, Boneliath by DeadSaracen
Updated art for Enclave units by AntRose
These are all astoundingly excellent art pieces, going far beyond the general quality of Hero’s Hour art.
What’s special here is that the recent art marathons have not just been larger, more popular, and seen better and more diverse submissions, but also that we’ve held three in rather short succession, all of which will come in the v2.7 update.
Huge thanks to everyone who joined the art marathons, whether their submissions reached the top 10 or not, and whether they wished their things to become part of the game or not. They have been a blast, and they make me strive to improve my drawing skillz. I hope maybe in the 8th marathon, I will finally have a shot at the top 10…
Nine New Heroes
These new heroes are based on suggestions by various community members and are spread around the various factions. You’ll notice only eight of them can be found on the hero selection screen. The last one is a secret…
Hand Designed Skirmishes
For the longest time, Skirmishes have been a rather under-developed game mode. The units were assembled randomly - both the ones the player and the enemy would use - and thus the difficulty curve was very inconsistent. v2.7 comes with a new hand-designed set of skirmishes which gradually introduce more and more complex units, and with a more consistent difficulty curve.
Anyway, I think is the last I’ll write about the going-ons and ideas about the various changes. The rest will just be other changes you can expect with the upcoming update. These lists are the ones most likely to still grow before v2.7.0 is fully released.
Sandwalkers + Hero's Hour
Hi everyone,
We're really happy to announce that Goblinz Studio's new turn-based roguelike Sandwalkers is out now with a 10% discount for two weeks. But with the Sandwalkers + Hero's Hour bundle, you can save an extra 10% discount on the game! 🎉
We hope you will like Sandwalkers. If you do, please consider leaving a positive review! ♥
Enjoy!
Hero's Hour upcoming update & news from Goblinz?
Hello Goblinz,
We have a lot of news lately, so we thought it would be really cool to give you a little summary here!
As you probably know, Goblinz is focused on strategy and management games, and we strive to offer you high-quality games with our selection.
We regularly offer demos so you can get hands-on experience before buying!
Synergy
Today, Synergy is being released, a beautiful city builder inspired by Pharaoh and Frostpunk. The game is developed by Leikir Studio and you will have 10% off the 2 first weeks!
Sandwalkers will have a new prologue, this time focusing on gameplay rather than the story. It will be released on June 4th. And we can already announce that Sandwalkers will be available in Early Access before this summer.
The demo of Mini Settlers is a huge hit with more than 80,000 players in the last three weeks! If you haven't tried it yet, you can find it here. Mini Settlers is an automation game similar to Factorio but much simpler, like Mini Metro.
Last but not least, Fantastic Haven will be at the Steam Next Fest in June! If you want to join the private beta, head over to Discord: https://discord.gg/goblinzstudio
The new update for Hero's Hour is currently in open beta
A new update for Racine is coming
Fantastic Haven will have a prologue too!
See you soon Goblinz!
v2.6.1, v2.6.2 and v2.6.3 - minor patches
Here are the patch notes for the various minor updates. v2.6.1 was only live on beta - v2.6.2 was released a couple of days ago, and v2.6.3 is a small hotfix patch on top of that.
v2.6.1 Fixed a rare bug where an obelisk would generate an obelus ON TOP of the buried treasure Scrying achievement text now reads "Find an obelisk treasure with no clues apart from the first obelisk" Fixed a bug that might cause a boat or a resource to be generated on top of a coastline even when there was an empty tile available Rearranged credits so all of them are visible Added some new community credits and updated publishing credits Credits are now larger and better spaced Removed debug feature that made artifacts draw lines to other artifacts of the same set when holding backspace Fixed a crash related to defeating hostile pirates Fixed a crash that would occur when entering a battle while being tabbed out of the game Fixed a bug that would make units flee more rarely unless you held your cursor above the HUD at the top of the screen Fixed the placement of tooltips that just move a bit above the top of the screen to not be cut off at the top Fixed a bug making the "Skilltrees: Off" advanced map setting a bit more random than intended Fixed a typo that made Fus Sofu and Kop Laka not start with the right spell (Summon Seastar) Fixed various issues with custom modded units using sprites larger than 24x24 Added some code to make sure that hero units that respawn after death have the correct color and angle Fixed several issues with random events not occuring correctly during battle, which would, for instance, make all AOE projectiles land in the same spot, or make boats suddenly move strangely during naval combat Fixed the behaviour of swimming units with ranged attacks. Units can no longer use ranged attacks while swimming Swimming units now spend less time under water before jumping back up onto the ship Slightly increased width of Town UI window Made sure the Summoning Circle will not create units that should not be created by random effects Increased the size of Wyvern Reworked Reviving Legend achievement to now require 5 artifacts of a single set Fixed the Ancient Power achievement to now correctly trigger at 3 artifacts of a single set Fixed a rare situation where checking for abilities in custom scripting would lead to a crash Fixed unitskins breaking across mods in case canvas extension is used by a single mod Fixed a rare bug with backwards compatibility for corrupted saves, which would make the game crash whenever the player pressed the Load button Made sure that Hostile Pirates would generate unique heroes and armies instead of rerolling the same results again and again You may now place Rogue towns using the tilemap editor You may now place settlements using the tilemap editor Improved the display of what towns are available in the tilemap editor Using mods will now always export unit group .pngs, even if not using unit group mods (since unit mods might also go into unit groups on their own) Fixed an issue that made neutral unit mods not correctly add to the right unitgroup when using Rogue Realms Faction mods now correctly add Hero Class lore to their classes Fixed rare issues where a hero would get the wrong entourage units when having a specialty unit that had no unit groups - now Puk Aro, for instance, will no longer gain Great Hydra as entourage units Made sure that faction heroes will use faction units for entourage units if their specialty unit did not belong to any unit group Amtio now represents the Carrion unit group, and Fromage now represents the Pond unit group Fixed an issue that would sometimes delete artifacts in the hero's inventory Fixed a bug with Tailtoads fighting against Fireflies that could make the game hang forever Fixed Tailtoads' death animation Fixed a bug causing corpses to not reach the final frame of their animation when playing at 2x battle speed Fixed a bug causing spell casts to sometimes fail when holding your mouse above a unit while selecting the spell from your spellbook and also your resolution was low Improved the casting of Firegating and Firetrapping Fixed a typo that prevented the flying unit air drop and teleswapping unit abilities from working Fixed a bug related to achievement unlocking that would slow down large maps tremendously in the late-game Fixed a bug related to flying units getting stuck on the top, bottom or right edge of combat during naval battles Fixed living units' aura colour being coloured the wrong colour Fixed units occassionally moving strangely during naval combat Fixed unit corpses not moving along with their boats Fixed swimming units occassionally moving at supersonic speeds Increased the size of the naval combat battlefield and reduced the distance between the boats at the start of battle Fixed a bug that made the right-side units during naval combat not be placed correctly at the start of battle Losing skill points in Tactics, Mastery, Bodyguards and Oligarchy now correctly changes command, proficiency and entourage Fixed a bug that made Entourage and Proficiency gain from Mastery and Bodyguards doubled Reduced the frequency of Snowbeard and Tailtoad projectiles will freeze the enemy unit Midas Touch now applies via Snowbeard and Tailtoad projectiles, as they should Fixed a rare bug which could crash the game when playing on very large battlefields without any enemies left and using units with infinite range Fixed the following spells which could make immobile units move: Swift Retreat, Army of Giants, Gigantism Fixed the following effects which could make immobile units move: Echoes artifact set bonus, Chemun tea, Swiftness skill, Rallying, Combat skill (only relevant for modding) Made the following unit effects no longer make immobile units move: Fast, Light, Flimsy, Flying, Mutation Switched position of Dragonking and Blight Ritual for RR Puk Aro skilltree Magmoles are now significantly stronger Mirrored game files for units now accurately depict the units' stats Fixed names for some rogue dwellings being switched Fixed priority of modded heroes spec units when two units have the same name Updated art for the Arachnian as well as most of the new Ants introduced in v2.6.0
v2.6.2 Fixed a rare bug that could cause a crash when playing as Tide, not having any pearls, and using the Classic town screen Fixed a crash related to the updated Teleswap ability scripting Fixed an issue with faction mods that would occassionally make hero portraits for the 5th and later added faction have wrong portraits used Fixed an infinite stall bug caused by Snowbeards fighting against low-tier enemies Reduced the frequency of Snowbeard and Tailtoad projectiles will freeze the enemy unit EVEN MORE Fixed a bug that would occassionally crash the game when a hunted hidden beast was about to respawn Fixed Reveal full map not working correctly for hotseat
v2.6.3 Fixed a crash that led to faction mods being unplayable for non-English language games If mods crash the game before reaching the main menu, they now get automatically turned off next time you open the game Changed unit edit mods to now be able to just edit a few attributes without causing a crash Patience achievement now just requires winning on the Patience map - the time limit is removed because it led to a lot of issues
v2.6.0 - Great War out now!
So, it finally happened! Hero’s Hour version 2.6 is now complete and released. I know it has been almost a year since the last major update. You might even consider this the third Hero’s Hour anniversary release. First anniversary update was v2.0 and steam release - second anniversary was v2.4 and Rogue Realms release - and this third anniversary is v2.6 and the Great War update. The Great War update brings overhauls, updates and new content to rather a lot of systems. The three major areas of this update are:
Hero classes and rare heroes
Artifacts and artifact sets
Battlefields
Let’s take them one at a time and go over the various major improvements and the ideas behind them.
Unlockable Heroes
For the longest time now, Hero’s Hour has had a peculiar system where each faction had six heroes per faction - but then, each of those six heroes would have a copy with a different portrait and name, but the exact same skill tree. There have been a lot of suggestions across time to give those extra heroes their own specialty units at least. Well, I’ve gone now and made it so that the extra heroes actually are full heroes on their own. And to make sure they don’t just add too much extra stuff to the game, they’re becoming their own type of hero: Unlockable heroes.
BASE GAME
Replaced 72 alternate heroes with unlockable heroes
Added 8 neutral unlockable heroes
Added 4 unlockable faction heroes belonging to “secret factions”
ROGUE REALMS DLC
Changed what Rogue Realms rogue towns can be chosen when starting a new map, making it so that all 12 towns are now available as starting town
Changed the 12 Rogue Realms heroes that were previously unavailable as starting heroes to now be unlockable heroes
Added 24 unlockable heroes for Rogue Realms
Most hero portraits have been updated with new art by SleepyMage
When a player first starts playing the game, they will only have the main heroes available - but as the player unlocks various achievements throughout the game, they will gain access to more and more unlockable heroes from across the various factions. When picking your starting hero, the available list expands - or you can press a button to see the unavailable options and how to unlock them. Unlockable heroes are basically like the main heroes - but they have a bit more personality to make playing as them a bit more varied. First off, they have unusual specialty units - that is, units that are not usually part of their faction. Secondly, starting as an unlockable hero changes what units are available in the starting town so that you actually do gain access to their specialty unit. Finally, several of the specialty units for the unlockable heroes are units that are new to v2.7.
New Units
As mentioned, the update brings a bunch of new units to the game which are slightly more unique than most other neutral units.
- Changed unlockable heroes to specialise in non-faction units - Starting as an unlockable hero allows you to hire their specialty unit in town - Added 29 new units, including:
Houndmaster is a unit that is actually three units: two hound dogs and one hound tamer.
Thornbinder can root enemy units from across the battlefield.
Ebon Paw has nine lives.
Elemental Nexus turns into one one of four variants depending on the element of spells you cast during combat.
Snowbeard calls hail down on enemies across the battlefield.
Goblin Ensign leaves behind a banner when it dies, which will promote another goblin into a goblin ensign after the battle.
- Added two new unit groups: Frogs and Ants
A whole new series of ant units drawn by AntRose, author of the Colony, Honey and other mods
- Set these new units to be used by the unlockable heroes as specialty units Another unique thing about unlockable heroes is that they do not usually start with two rank I skills - instead they start with two ranks in a single skill, giving them a head start on (hopefully) a useful strategy.
Hero Classes and Stat Rework
While working on cleaning up the hero system in the game, I also went and cleaned up the even more spaghetti-codey hero class system. Did you know that the first 12 hero classes added to the game had their own unique progressions of how they would gain new stats, while the latter 12 hero classes and the neutral heroes all used copies of the Warden and Archdruid classes? Fun fact, huh. Anyway, that’s a thing of the past. Each hero class now has its own unique stat gain progression once more - also, there’s even more hero classes - and also also, there’s now more stats.
- Added 12 new hero classes for the Rogue Realms heroes - Added Daily Movement as a hero stat - Added Command as a hero stat, which controls how many units can be fielded at a time during combat
Tactics skill now increases Command; Hegemony now decreases Command
- Added Proficiency as a hero stat, which creates specialty units for the hero and increases their stats
Mastery now increases Proficiency
- Added Entourage as a hero stat, which creates disposable units for secondary heroes
Bodyguards now increases Entourage
- Added 10 new small overworld buildings that give permanent stat bonuses to heroes - Added 5 new large overworld buildings that give choices between units, stats, etc. - Changed all Hero Classes to now have unique stat progressions between all 10 stats - Implemented new level-up system which increases 1-3 stats each level, weighing some stats as more valuable than others - Expected stats for a hero class at level 20 is now shown in newly added tooltips
For a long time, I’ve wanted to solve the issue of hero classes never really mattering. While my previous collaborator for hero stats believed that you could tell hero classes apart just by four stats, I never could make it work myself. Thus this new system of ten stats. It might look like three new stats were added, but really, they’re just reworks of systems already in place. Proficiency is Mastery, but for all heroes - as Entourage is Bodyguards, too. Daily Movement already increased with level-ups, but in an unclear manner. And Command… Well, for a long time, army reserve limits have been dependant on how many units you had in your army. This pretty much works since it scales automatically throughout the game. But that system was never particularly clear. Command, now, should be more interesting and more clear - you will be able to feel that you’re at an advantage or disadvantage if you have more or less of this stat than your opponent in the late-game. This rework also symbolises moving from the old “can’t field too many units because the game can’t handle it” to the new “can’t field too many units because you need to prioritise strategies” - more on that later, though.
Hero and Hero Class Modding
For those of you who make mods, the reworks in v2.6 should also vastly increase your abilities when it comes to making mods for heroes. The new modding capabilities are carried by a new mod file syntax, which should be easier and more readable - adding more functionality without making simple mods more complex too. Some of the new functionality allows things like setting heroes to be of one type of class, another faction, and display a custom, third hero class name, while using the sprite of a fourth class. It is now also more straightforward to pick modded heroes that are aligned with a specific faction from the map selection screen. There are also easier ways to add unit abilities during combat to specific heroes or hero classes. Finally, there is now support to add any number of heroes in a faction mod, whether it be more or less than six, and to add in pseudo-factions by creating a unit group, setting a hero to use that unit group, and then starting the game as that hero. Oh - and the Rogue Realms system of having easily editable Skilltrees is now being added as a normal modding feature both for the DLC and for the base game.
Artifacts Rework, and New Artifact Sets
I set up to completely overhaul the artifacts system, with two big issues that I wanted to fix. One is about how difficult it is to collect a single artifact set - it seemed easier, actually, to get duplicate artifacts than to collect a set. The other issue was about how a lot of artifacts gave +1 to some random skill, which meant that with ten artifact slots, you might end up with a hero with an extremely bloated skills page.
- Removed 130 artifacts from the game (all non-set artifacts) - Added 217 new artifacts - Added 24 new artifact set bonuses, all of which give a minor bonus starting at two pieces and increasing with additional pieces - Implemented a new system where all artifacts are kept track off, minimising duplicates - Implemented a system where artifacts in the same map realm get generated with higher chance of being of the same set as other artifacts in the same realm - Fixed various issues preventing Delirium avatars from getting use of artifacts and artifact sets - Added various new artifact bonuses:
Firepower, Waterpower, Earthpower and Airpower improving spells of a specific type
Skeletal Strike creates skeletons when your hero hits enemies
Terror terrifies enemy units hit by your hero
Grizzly Guard creates grizzlies guarding the hero at the start of combat
Elemental Guard creates elementals guarding the hero at the start of combat
Shadowbetrayal creates shadowy clones of enemy units during combat
- Improved UI for artifact tooltips, showing colours and icons for the artifact sets.
The new artifact system not only brings a lot of new and more varied artifacts, each of which is tied into a set with common aesthetics, but also brings a lot more variety into the artifacts available. There are still some artifacts which give +1 to a skill, but most of them now give some of these more minor and less bloated bonuses instead. Their unique effects are now more often relegated to the new artifact set bonuses. The previous artifact sets had a small set selection of artifacts, meaning it was hard to collect enough for a set bonus - and if you did make a set, it would give a huge, often game-winning bonus. These new artifact set bonuses will be granted earlier, both because artifacts from the same set are more common, and because you only need two artifacts for the bonus to start - but the bonuses are more minor. For instance, there’s a set bonus giving daily gold income, one which casts lightning spells during combat, and one that gives a tier 7 unit each week. They will, however, scale if you have more set pieces, and they do start to become really strong at 4 or 5 pieces of the same set. Some of the new artifact bonuses are currently being watched for feedback - I am likely to phase some of them out as time passes. As for the artifact set bonuses, I don’t currently foresee any of them being balance issues, but it’s likely that some will need buffs. That’s the thing - this is a huge rework of a core system of the game - and I’m excited to see how people find it, and how it’ll evolve in future updates.
Battlefield Rework
One of the most common suggestions has been to improve the battlefields to add in interesting terrain features. This has not really been possible earlier due to the simplistic pathfinding of units. Units would move towards the closest enemy, and would just get pushed around any obstacles - this only worked if the obstacles were small and round (thus obstacles worked as they did previously). The largest change, code-wise, is that unit pathing during combat has been completely reworked to now take into account:
Obstacles blocking the path
Speed difference of various types of terrain
Number of friendly units already going that way
The new system should more efficiently have units spread out and seek out enemies, no matter what obstacles exist. The new system also opens up the door to a lot of new mechanics dealing with battlefield obstacles. For now, there’s just a rather simple implementation, but this is likely to be expanded later on, such as having spells that create or remove obstacles from the battlefield, or having combat encounters with walls that are not just the current, well-known siege type of thing. Joining us in v2.6, however, there’s already a lot of new terrain-specific combat obstacles that are being added. Most battles won’t change too much, to avoid the core gameplay of auto-battles not becoming too complex, but there are a lot of new avenues of strategy and decision-making for those players who want to maximise their armies:
Water that slows down unit movement, especially for small units
Mud that slows down unit movement, especially for large units
Flowers which increase healing effects
Crystals which buff magical units
Lava terrain which damages units walking across or landing on it
Cacti which damage units landing on it
Ice which is slippery to walk on
Various units get various immunities to the above effects. For instance, aquatic units are not slowed down in water, and demons are not damaged by lava - and there’s a new series of ant units which use their carapace to become immune to all terrain effects.
Battlefield Optimisations
While I am happy to tout the new abilities of the pathfinding system, both what it allows adding now and what it allows adding later, the ACTUAL reason I spent all this time reworking the system was because I realised that the old pathfinding took way too much computation time. And that a new system could exist which barely would not become more slow the more units were in play during combat. The old system calculated pathing for every unit. Mind you, it was rather optimised and fast - every unit did not have to check the position of all enemy units - but still, it was a unit-based pathing system and thus scaled poorly. The new system instead calculates pathing for all units at once. Or said in a different way: Instead of calculating pathing for each unit, it calculates pathing for each tile on the battlefield. We’ve gone from pathing being the thing costing most processing time during large battles to it now being one of the more minor things. Anyway, after spending all that time building tools to calculate how much processing time is spent on various processes, I was also able to figure out a series of other things that took a lot of processing time during combat. Things such as drawing the coloured shading beneath units, drawing the spellbook and other UI, etc. A lot of this has been optimised now. So not only does combat scale better when there’s a lot of units - it’s also just faster overall. The graph shown above was just a single step in the large process of finding and fixing processing time sinks - I wish I had a final tally of how faster combat is now, but unfortunately I don’t. The only thing I can say is that it’s really satisfying to now play large combat scenarios on 2x speed and still get around 55-60 fps. I hope everyone else with their various high- or low-spec setups achieve as large a performance improvement as I do - because for my PC, it is vast. For optimisations from here on out, that’s a more complex issue. One of the largest remaining time sinks is the upkeep of drawing and moving the units each frame. Anyway, the game is meant to now both allow more units during combat via the new Command stat, as well as actually being able to handle those extra units.
Updated Graphics
A lot of new units are getting updated unit animations in v2.6. This is the result of a long process of Hero’s Hour slowly getting better and better art - and now, it felt like it was time to return to some of the oldest art in the game. This process has been spearheaded by KraftKraken, but also joined by AntRose and DeadSaracen. While their styles are slightly different, I’m proud of the way they each evolve the Hero’s Hour art style. In total 65 base game units have had their art updated, and 2 Rogue Realms units have had their art updated. Talking about Rogue Realms, the Rogue Realms rogue towns have also had their graphics updated. Buildings have been moved around to be more tidy, and most rogue unit dwellings have had their graphics overhauled or reworked entirely.
Better UI and misc. other changes
Many UI elements have been updated with new art, making them look and feel better to use. There also various minor improvements, such as being able to close the Level-up window of a hero for later. Dragonking skill has had a rework, which makes it so that you get dragons earlier if you stay at Rank I. Before, the skill was entirely useless unless you put several points into it. Additionally, you can now choose whether you want to get a single large dragon or several smaller dragons when it triggers, and the dragons themselves become larger with higher ranks. There are three new music tracks for the overworld. Unit modding can now use the new modding format, and if you choose to use the new format, new things can be set for the unit, such as whether it can be generated by random effects (making it easier to create technical units for other units’ abilities).
The Future
As everyone has noticed, the pace of updates for the game has slowed down. This might just be how things are now that we’re a couple of years past the game’s release. I don’t plan to stop working on the game, neither for the base game or the Rogue Realms DLC - but I must be honest, there were times during v2.6 development that I was close to giving up. This update has become way too large and I was unable to carry it on my shoulders. I aim to learn from this and from here on out, start working on smaller updates again. Just a single systems rework per update, let’s say. Maybe this means faster updates. I cannot tell the future. I am, however, already working on v2.7, and I expect a public beta to be up on steam within the next month. But how long between the first pre-release and full release, only time can tell. Anyway, here’s a cheers to Hero’s Hour 3rd anniversary, and a cheers to everyone still playing and enjoying the game, as well as the wonderful community and the artists who put so much beautiful stuff into the game.
