Massive improvements to Japanese localization, big thank you to Alis for their wonderful work!
Minor improvements across all languages
Balance
Spell Slinger and Mitenabs Witch item sets sets and Sir Caradoc's Sword got buffed.
Ring of Poison Thorns got nerfed
Other
Many minor bugfixes and performance improvements
Update 33
Since release of the last patch 6 months ago, we spent a lot of time working to improve the game's feel as well as improve localization and bring support for 4 new languages. This is the largest patch to date in terms of the amount of work that went into it, and we are very proud to finally be able to release it.
Localization
New language support: Spanish
New language support: Polish
New language support: Korean
New language support: Japanese
A lot of changes and rework on the French localization
Chinese localization improvements
German localization improvements
Gameplay
Added new types of starting bonuses that adjust game difficulty. Previously only group-wide buffs existed. There was a good variety there, but we felt it was still too restrictive and not exciting enough. So we added a new bonuses that provide one-off benefits, like getting an extra unique unit to join your party from the start, a bag of gold, a unique weapon etc. We hope this will give players more options and help tailor the run to better suit your needs and playstyle.
Certain starting bonuses now have restrictions to prevent players from taking bonuses that directly counteract one another. Like taking a defensive bonus and one that reduces defense in exchange for attack. This should make it more difficult to pick a bad combination of bonuses.
Added helpful tooltips to starting bonuses to help make better decisions.
Defeating enemy heroes grants a lot better rewards. These fights are some of the toughest in the game, and we felt that they should be better compensated.
Enemy heroes spawning locations are adjusted to take more factors into account. The end-result is that you'll get to encounter the enemy sooner after their spawn and it will be less trouble to hunt them if you choose to do so.
Enemy hero's power calculations have been adjusted to produce more consistent challenge. There were a few edge-cases where the power was too high or too low.
Reworked damage-over-time component for following talents: "Puncture", "Firestorm", "Shatter Strike" and "Shatter Throw". These have been buffed slightly for late-game and against high-health targets.
Following talents have been buffed by increasing their charges by 1: "Witchcraft" and "Giant's Bane"
Buffed "Conjured Thorns" talent.
End-boss nerfed a little bit.
Changed 3-piece set bonus of "Forest Sentinel" item set, it now permanently increases health of all healed allies by a small amount.
Added "Earth Caller" unit to altar of "Gravesand" settlement. This makes a summoner unit available earlier on in the game for those who are into summoners.
Increased levels of defenders found on the altar in settlements of the starting zone. This should help a bit in defending your settlements early on. You still have to spend money to restore those units on the altar, so it's not a complete freebie.
Changed passive health regeneration formula, units regenerate slightly more health when low and slightly less when high. In general you should see slightly higher health regen.
UI and Graphics
Reworked squad building screen, making difficulty choices more intuitive.
All heroes and bosses now have animated portraits.
Added new unit frames for giants, bosses and heroes to make them stand out a bit more.
Minor map improvements, added a few environmental particle effects to give more character to certain areas.
Controls
Moving camera around with a mouse will result in smooth transitions. It feels a lot nicer.
Performance and bugfixes
Minor performance improvements related to terrain
Large number of minor bugfixes
Fixed a major memory leak
This one took a very long time to finish, thanks for your patience! Please do let us know what you think.
Update 32
It's been just over two months since last update. During this time we've been working on a couple of exciting things, but we feel it's too early to announce them yet. Meanwhile, we're releasing a patch that provides a few hotfixes, minor improvements and addresses an issue that some players had with the final boss encounter.
Gameplay
We excluded the settlement with Barbiche from common training and 'Military Training' event. Instead of that, his group will get some experience every day with slow progression. A similar progression is provided by Vicereine to player's units in garrison. This will give players the ability to overtake Barbiche in levels. Players will be able to choose a moment when to attack Barbiche - when the level of Barbie's squad is higher, equal to Hero's squad or lower. Everyone has a different play style, squad combilation and enjoys a different level of challenge, this change is intended to better facilitate this diversity.
These changes will be only be available when starting a new game. If you've started a playthrough before the patch - this will not affect you.
Removed "Enchanted Weapon" and "Iron Fist" auras from Barbiche's squad, instead these are personal effects of Barbiche himself. This lowers difficulty of the final challenge slightly, the aim was to make DPS more predictable for this fight.
Visuals
Updated water scattering calculations, water looks more watery.
Added text highlights to tutorial messages, emphasizing certain words. We learned that many players miss key facts when skimming through some parts tutorial.
Localization
Massive rework of German localization
Various improvements to Chinese localization
All localizations now feature "localized" settlement names
Many NPCs received different names in Russian localization
Fixes
Found and fixed 2 minor memory leaks
Fixed a bug that would allow players to reduce difficulty below intended minimum level
Update 31
The changes are based on feedback from all of your over the past month and a bit. There were 3 main things we wanted to do:
Make the starting area more clear, as some players had negative experience because of confusion. We wanted to add more visual cues to help bring clarity.
Defending settlements was difficult. At earlier levels because of the fast pace at which the player levels up and at higher level the difficulty arises from not being able to train units to sufficiently high level, making newly recruited garrison quite weak
Add more variety, both visually and in terms of gameplay.
Gameplay
Vicerine received a minor rework, making it more useful at higher levels as well as making it contribute more towards the garrison's strength
Unit training level cap formula was changed. You will be able to train your units to a higher level than before as the game goes now, this caps at (HERO_LEVEL - 5)
Most of the available starting bonuses have been given to various enemy groups throughout the world to spice up the gameplay a bit. Overall challenge level has remained largely the same, to compensate for this slight increase in power, these groups now provide proportionately more experience
Final boss received a minor buff making the encounter about 8% harder
"Random Finds" occur ~25% less frequently
Revival of units from the Altar costs 50% less
Minor rework of the 2 elite enemy groups just west of the starting location
Visuals
Reworked the areas near starting location to better hint at the strength of certain enemy groups
Added sand particle effect to the northern desert
Localization
Improved English texts (big thank you to Stubbie!)
