Thank you everyone for supporting Ruinarch during its Early Access phase! We're now at the point where there won't be any major revamp or additions to the game's core structure so we feel it's the perfect time to call this our 1.0. There's still plenty of space to introduce more content though, so while we intend to focus on developing our next game soon, we still intend to push some updates for Ruinarch over the coming months.
For now, here's what we've added for 1.0:
New Ideologies
7 new Faction Ideologies have been added to the game. You may discover some Factions having one or more of these flavorful ideologies when certain conditions are met.
Entkin - Nearby trees will randomly turn into Ents that will join and defend their villages.
Blood Sacrifices - Leaders will occasionally sacrifice a Villager to gain temporary buffs for the entire Village
Golem Makers - Occasionally produces Golems to defend their village.
Mage Guild - All combatants are Mages.
Necromantic - Allied with the Undead. Reanimates as Undead upon death.
Beastmasters - All Villagers can tame beasts.
Infested - Villagers spawn Abominations upon death.
Defenders
Previously, the player has to consume charges to summon Lesser Demons and Minions inside their territory for defense. To improve the process, whenever the player gains a Lesser Demon or Minion charge, they are already automatically spawned inside their territory. They will roam around and defend the base until they are used for Raid or Snatch parties - making defense significantly simpler. This should also mean that all the player's minion charges automatically serve as defenders until they are used. Only Raid and Snatch parties will consume these charges.
Monster Spawner Actions
The player can now instruct monsters spawned by Monster Spawners to perform a special action. The special action available depends on the Monster Spawner's Landmark type. These are fairly similar to the player's raid and snatch actions. The following are available:
Snatch a Villager
Kill a Villager
Destroy Supplies of a Village
Destroy Structures of a Village
Harass Villagers
Destroy Village Defenses
New Monsters
Added the following monsters to the pool:
Goblin - snatches villagers and impregnates them to produce more goblins
Splatter - a cat/reptile beast that explodes upon death
Dwarf King - highly resistant to Normal and Mental attacks
Dwarf Paladin - highly resistant to Normal and Mental attacks
If we have the time later, we'd like to give Dwarf characters expanded roles in the game.
Initial Modding Support
This was supposed to be a part of our first post-launch update but we wanted to begin the process early and at least provide initial simple modding support on 1.0. For now, we had time to support the following:
reskin existing monsters
reskin existing villager classes
rename monsters and adjust stat values
rename villager class and adjust stat values
replace monster portraits
replace human and elven portraits pool
You may refer to this documentation for guidelines on how to create Mods for the game.
We still plan on having our next update focused on substantially expanding our modding support.
Controller Support
Controller support is now available for the game.
Portuguese
Portuguese translation is also now available!
Tweaks
- Portal progression for all 3 Archetypes have been significantly changed. The first few levels are now much quicker to reach. Also, more Powers are unlocked per level, giving the player an overall bigger repertoire than before. - Removed Str and Int and turned it into a single attribute to represent a character's Base Damage. In the character Info tab, a Power field displays the character's relative strength as computed from its Base Damage and Attack Speed. It replaces Str, Int and Attack Speed. - Paralyzed Villagers can now also choose to sing for to recover Fun. - Paralyzed Villagers may now decide to just sleep on the floor when they are exhausted. - Vampires no longer get full when they are fed normal food. They will also get Sick afterwards and will have resentment towards the person that fed them. - Criminals trying to flee a Faction will usually no longer engage in combat. Apprehenders will attempt to run after a fleeing Criminal for only a short distance. - Adjusted placement of Villages in the world. In general, this should mean Villages can spawn in more locations compared to before. - Slightly increased chance that Humanoid and Demonic monsters would become Faction Leader successor even if there are other sapient Villagers available. - Anxious villagers will now initiate non-lethal combat if they decide to fight. They previously used to enter lethal combat. - Shock upon seeing someone have a Narcoleptic Attack will only occur once for that person. - Shock upon seeing a demonic structure will only occur once per villager. - Villagers now prioritize crafting clothing over weapon. - Villagers may now build blueprints and chance classes outside work hours. - Murder assumption will no longer occur if the dead character is a wanted criminal. - Villagers that do not have Agoraphobia are now more likely to visit homes of Friends and Close Friends in the same Village. - Agoraphobic characters will exclude their own pets from crowd count. - Agoraphobic Necromancers will exclude all skeletons from crowd count. - Villagers that are unable to return to their work structure for more than 2 days will automatically be "fired". - Kleptomaniacs may now also steal from Friends. Previously, they exclude both Friends and Close Friends as steal targets. - Demonic Walls and Decorations can now be built on adjacent non-corrupted tiles. This will also auto-build a corrupted tile. - Significantly reduced chance of a villager dying from Overheating. - Level 3 and 4 of Music Hater now causes the character to get Enraged when hearing music. - Updated Expel cooldown values. - Updated Seize Villager, Seize Monster and Seize Object upgrade values. - Updated Protection upgrade values. - Reduced Mana Costs of upgraded Tornado. - Increased movement speed of Locust Swarm. - Wisps are now Aggressive. - During Vampire Hunt, villagers won't accuse each other after midnight if the village is currently in an Under Siege state. - During Vampire Hunt, the likelihood of accusing others of being a vampire after midnight depends on the mood of the character. - If a character is Hemophiliac, they will allow themself to be knocked out by a Vampire and fed upon even if they are Vigilant. - A Hemophobic and Vigilant character will feel Enraged if a Vampire attempted to knock them out for feeding. - Combatants will attempt to knockout Berserked characters. Non-combatants will react warily. - Reduced the number required to complete some of the Goal Tasks. - Reduced the Mana Cost of all Prism events to 500. - Weapon and armor effects have been updated. - Empty landmarks may now spawn more varied monster types. - Increased damage of Tank Zombies, Revenants and Wyverns. - Increased HP and damage of Ifrit. - Slaves can now produce food from Forage structures if it is nearby. - Starving villagers may now decide to eat Food they do not own. How likely this occurs depend on the character's traits and current mood. If somebody else owns it, this action will be considered as Theft. - When a Villager flees a cave attached to their Village's Mine, they will post an Exterminate Quest so that the cave can be cleared of hostiles soon. - Watcher Eye can now be spawned on tiles with unimportant objects such as trees, rocks, flowers and trash. - Watcher Eye range has been increased. - Parties may begin Exterminate Quest even if only 1 member joins the quest. - Migration settings will now assume Portal is Level 4 if Omnipotent setting is On. - Reduced Stone cost of Dwellings from 60 to 40. - Reduced chance of characters stumbling badly due to Wet. - Visit and Dig actions will no longer have log entries. - Removed Beastmaster trait from Barbarian. - Added various character Info tooltips. - Performance and memory leak improvements.
Bug Fixes
- [FIXED] Landmarks can be generated right next to each other. - [FIXED] Villagers that simultaneously want to purchase the same Food pile can take the object from each other and get accused of theft. - [FIXED] Villagers may sometimes not travel to Forage spots for food even if they should be able to. - [FIXED] Paralyzed characters do not enter the bed when they are dropped on it to sleep. - [FIXED] A Kleptomaniac's steal action made due to Trigger Flaw is always caught by the victim. - [FIXED] Locust Swarm slows down when cursor is nearby. - [FIXED] Trigger Arousal only works when both of the couples involved have available beds. - [FIXED] Incorrect Choose World Map Size setting tooltips. - [FIXED] Non-combatants may sometimes ignore snatchers and raiders. - [FIXED] Un-upgraded Music Hater does not get angry when hearing music. - [FIXED] Vampires should not target pets and other monsters for Vampiric Embrace. - [FIXED] Bandit Leader may get stuck building a Bandit Camp if it is located at the edge of the map. - [FIXED] Logs window does not update if active character has no logs to show - [FIXED] A Necromancer with Agoraphobia was scared of his own army of skeletons. - [FIXED] Monsters sometimes change to Villager classes when they are in a Major Faction. - [FIXED] Agitated monsters may target characters inside the player's Prison. - [FIXED] Villagers are unable to do some urgent actions while socializing or visiting other villages. - [FIXED] Unbuilt Ward Lights trigger Under Siege state of the Village. - [FIXED] Ratmen get stuck because of erroneous Under Siege mechanics. - [FIXED] Prism's Bandit Camp requirement criteria does not activate even if the condition has already been met. - [FIXED] Dwelling structure walls looked burnt but were full of HP when the game started. - [FIXED] Some elven homes cause pathfinding issues. - [FIXED] NullError encountered if a monster starts working on a farm.
Known Issue
We've discovered a strange pathfinding issue that only occurs on the live build of the game. Some cave walls may sometimes not update as passable even after it gets destroyed. We'll be working on a hotfix for this as soon as we figure out the root cause.
Looking Ahead
We'll be spending the next few days on further bug fixing and smaller tweaks with a plan to do another small update at the end of the week. Afterwards, we'll allot time for more mod support and introduce some more interesting Villager interactions as part of our first post-launch update around the middle of June.
Ruinarch unleashes version 1.0 on April 24th!
We're happy to announce that Ruinarch version 1.0 will be available on April 24th on Steam after nearly 3 years in Steam Early Access!
We're adding partial mod support, more faction ideologies, more monsters, performance improvement and some improved QoL changes.
We're thankful for all players who took a chance in us and purchased the game while it was in Early Access. We'll continue supporting the game for a while longer after 1.0 releases while also looking forward to showing you what's next from the team!
Update 16: Penultimate
Hello everyone! This is our final update prior to our 1.0 launch in late April. I wanted to have a better thematic title to put for this update but can't come up with any since the update has a little bit of everything: some performance improvements, new power, QoL, balance tweaks, etc.
I just want to emphasize that this is the final update before 1.0 but we still intend to provide more updates even after we exit Early Access, just in a slower pace as we give more focus to our next game.
Performance
This is one of the biggest player concerns that we have to address. Due to the underlying simulation, character pathfinding and constant logging of events occurring per tick, the game suffers slowdown that becomes noticeable especially on larger maps and on longer playthroughs. Some of the performance improvement work we've done have been included in this update but more significant fixes are still in progress. We still expect some lag spikes and memory leaks but we intend to have most issues fully resolved when we launch 1.0.
Critical Break
Villagers in Critical Mood used to randomly trigger a Mental Break. This will no longer happen. Instead, a new Critical Break has been added so that it is up to the player to trigger it whenever they want to. Once activated, the player gets to choose from 3 Critical Break options.
The following are available: - Break up with a lover - Abandon faction - Kill an enemy or rival - Become a cannibal - Trigger a lightning storm (magic users only) - Expel an enemy or rival (faction leader only) - Commit suicide - Become a bandit - Become evil - Set building on fire (must not be pyrophobic)
This is intended to further reinforce the game's premise of giving the player more control over the miserable things that can happen to the Villagers.
Monster Spawner Actions
In order to make Monster Spawners more useful, landmarks with Monster Spawners now have special actions that the player can activate. The action available depends on the landmark. The following are available: - Kill Villager - Snatch Villager - Harass Villagers - Destroy Structures - Destroy Defenses - Destroy Supplies
Base Building QoL
Players can now more quickly build demonic structures without first building the required corrupted tiles. It will still require the same amount of corrupted tiles but the game will place it automatically for the player.
It's also no longer necessary to have space between demonic structures. This should allow players to build more within the same corrupted tile limit.
Lastly, some of the bigger demonic structures have been resized smaller: Spire, Meddler and Maraud
Various Status Effect Changes
- Non-combatant villagers harassed by demons or monsters will become Traumatized when they get knocked unconscious. - Unconscious villagers will gain Injured once they wake up from Unconsciousness. This won't occur if someone else helps them out of unconsciousness. - Damage dealt by an Injured character should be reduced by 50%. - Frozen status may now add a new status effect: Frostbite - Frostbite can cause death by Hypothermia - An external tile on a Blizzard should have a 25% chance per tick to remove Burning on the tile and its objects - Bad Weather status effect now only has 1 stack limit and can be gained from Blizzard, Heat Wave and Rain - Ice Block should remove Burning on the tile - An Ice Block should apply Wet to the tile - All Ice Blocks have 25% to melt on adjacent tiles of a Burning tile or Burning object.
Chaos Orb Spawn Caps
All player Powers that spawn Chaos Orbs now have limits to the total amount they can spawn. The caps are mostly lenient as the intention here is just to prevent players from exploiting some of the easier options too much. This probably requires further tweaking and we'll actively watch player feedback regarding this.
Autosave
New autosaving feature has been added. The game will autosave at the start of each day.
Tweaks
- Village behavior has been tweaked to make them build important structures faster. - When a Villager attempts to strangle self, they will now only choose nearby wilderness area to do it rather than any distant spot in the entire map. - Players can now demolish unoccupied landmarks. - Villagers attempting to steal because of Kleptomaniac Trigger Flaw will still proceed even if there are witnesses to the act. - Removed Blizzard's separate additional Freezing chance. It should now simply apply Freezing through its Ice damage. - Removed Drain Spirit from Kennels since Sacrifice already serves similar purpose. - Criminals fleeing from their faction will now avoid combat. This should increase the likelihood of them escaping. Villagers attempting to apprehend them will drop it once they are far enough from the Village. - Villagers will now more often place Fisheries closer to the Village Center. - Cultist Dark Ritual will now only produce 3 Chaos Orbs instead of 4. - Chaotic Energy gained from Chaos Orbs has been increased to 6. - The Chaotic Energy costs of Portal's Release Power has been significantly reduced. - Cultists can no longer change class to Stalker. - Improved night lighting of some structures. - Added a new log whenever a Ward Light detects hostiles. - Updated world generation so landmarks will not spawn adjacent to each other. - Work Structure can now be clickable from the Character Info UI. - Log limit setting has now been turned into a slider that can be set between 1000 to 5000. - Updated popup message when Trigger Flaw of Unfaithful did not work because the target has no lover.
Bug Fixes
- [FIXED] Laziness does not produce a Chaos Orb when the Villager refuses to do work. - [FIXED] Building of Bandit Camp may sometimes fail and cause a loop. - [FIXED] Game may get stuck if all three randomized Wildcard Powers chosen was already unlocked from previous Portal upgrades. - [FIXED] Game cannot be saved while an object or villager is currently seized. - [FIXED] Error when Villagers attempt to restrain an intruding Ent that already reverted back to a tree. - [FIXED] In Polish, Portal UI button text does not fit in the button. - [FIXED] Fixed Empowered tooltip.
Update 15: Achievements
Hello everyone! This update was supposed to be our 1.0 release. However, a few factors forced us to move our launch date to April.
The main issue is the Base Builder Sale which goes on for this entire week. As this coincides with our target launch week, our publisher recommended to reschedule as it's detrimental in terms of visibility to launch during a sale. Since we're already a part of the Base Builder Sale, the next time we could do a launch discount as per Steam's rule is 30 days later so around March 1st. However, a Steam rep informed us that it's not a good idea either to launch shortly before a regional sale. March 1st is unfortunately too close to the upcoming Spring Sale. So, that gives us late April as the next earliest window.
This does have some positives for Ruinarch's development. Instead of moving most of our development to our second project by February, we now have a few more months to add more milestone updates to this game! We also have more time to reach out to press and influencers which should be helpful for the launch's success.
Our update this month is not as big as usual due to the long holiday vacations around Christmas and New Year but there are a lot of small useful tweaks that most players should appreciate:
Achievements
We've made Steam Achievements linked to our Side Goals! There are a total of 18 Achievements for the game.
Traps
The three Traps (Freezing Trap, Snare Trap, Landmines) serve as the introductory way to earn Chaos Orbs. Previously, the process was too slow as you only get 2 orbs on their initial trigger. We increased this to 5 Chaos Orbs to speed up the early game. However, this is going to be easy to exploit later on so our novel solution is to put a Chaos Orb cap to them - meaning that after producing a certain amount of Chaos Orbs, it will no longer produce any. We set the value to 25 for all 3 traps. In addition, if you place traps on sight of a non-Cultist Villager, they will be able to avoid and remove them unless they were in combat at that time.
Updated Trailer
Our trailer has been updated to reflect the changes in gameplay and UI!
Tweaks
- Whenever a Chaos Orb is spawned offscreen, a purple arrow icon will show up at the edge of the screen pointing to it. Clicking on it will center on the Chaos Orb. These arrows only last for 3 seconds. - Special Cultist player instructions like Booby Trap and Poison now have increased priority over many other actions. This means they will prioritize this job over actions like eating, sleeping and entertainment. - Added a World Gen Setting to adjust Corrupted Tile charges. Options include Normal, Double and Unlimited. This also affects the number of Demonic Walls and Decorations available. - Only Resource Piles will have their personal ownership cleared when seized or snatched by the player. This should allow players again to frame other villagers of theft by transferring non-resource objects to another Villager's dwelling. - Villagers will slay pets of wanted criminals on sight. - Stalkers will no longer hunt Cultists, Lycans and Vampires that are already imprisoned by a faction if they are restrained inside that faction's Village. - A Villager that has been wrongfully punished for a fabricated crime may gain a Grudge towards either the punisher or the one that reported the crime. - A Villager that has been expelled from the faction or forced to leave due to an exclusive Ideology may gain a Grudge against the Faction Leader. - If opened by a Villager, Treasure Chests may now drop Weapons. - Moderately slowed down base Villager migration speed. - Slightly reduced chance to stumble and get injured due to Accident Prone trait. - Log related to injury sustained due to Accident Prone will now show the action that caused it. - Witches and Clerics have a slightly increased chance to Preach. - The time when the first Witch and Cleric will spawn in the world will now widely vary from game to game. - Added a new bookmark entry that shows the player how many remaining Chaos Orbs are still needed to upgrade the Portal to the next level. - A Villager always used to be accused of trespassing when it's passing through another faction's Dwelling. Since this is just a quirky limitation of our pathfinding, we adjusted what's considered as trespassing. If the Villager's starting and end points are both outside the dwelling they are passing through, they wouldn't be considered trespassing. - Increased cooldown of Lightning to 5 hours. - Bully a Villager task now requires 10 negative status effects to accomplish. - Slightly lowered maximum factions and villages for all map sizes. Also adjusted world generation to reduce the likelihood of villages being too close together. - Adjusted Villager's response text when the player shares an intel regarding a lover's infidelity. - Removed Portal prefix. - Updated texts on the Game Over screen. - Added flavor text description for various objects. - Some text related performance improvements.
Bug Fixes
- [FIXED] Game crash related to Spanish accented letters. - [FIXED] Villagers cannot build blueprints when game is in Japanese. - [FIXED] Migration may still sometimes occur even though it was already turned off in World Gen Settings. - [FIXED] Players can spawn unlimited Skeletons from Tombstones using Raise Dead. - [FIXED] Duplicate entries of Cowardice power on Ravager's upgrade path. - [FIXED] Villagers still report crime to ex faction leader. - [FIXED] A Villager may be accused of trespassing when moving through a landmark owned by another Faction. - [FIXED] A friendly villager will not help if a Villager becomes Unconscious while they are within vision. - [FIXED] Prism UI is not centered on Ultra Wide Screen.
Critical Language Bug Hotfix
A localization-related issue prevented villages from building some structure blueprints for some non-English players. This hotfix should fix the problem. We apologize for the error.
Update 14: Balance
Hello everyone. Our last update of the year is here. There is a lot of variables that could cause one's game to vary widely from another so it's definitely tough to have a game balance that would be consistent for everyone. When we tweak internal values, our aim is to make a smoother game progression for most players - but there will still be game sessions that could go vastly in favor or against the player.
Side Goals
In addition to the main Victory related Goals, we've introduced simple Side Goals that hints to new players what options are or would be available to them. Accomplishing these mini-goals provide extra Chaotic or Spirit Energy.
When we launch 1.0, these Side Goals will also serve as Steam Achievements.
Powers, Combat and Spells
- Further adjusted Portal Upgrade powers for all three Archetypes. All will now unlock more Powers per level compared to previous version. - Players now immediately have to choose their Wildcard Powers once the Portal upgrade completes rather than needing to go to the Portal UI first. - Adjusted HP of most Villager combat classes, lesser demons and some monsters. - Increased damage of most of the player's direct-damage Spells. - Characters within the player's own faction will no longer be damaged by the player's direct-damage Spells. - Reduced experience gained by Villagers training at the Barracks or Magic Academy. - Reduced experience gained by Villagers from combat. - Slightly reduced stat increase gained by Villagers from Talent level up. - Reduced cost of Reveal Villager Info from 4 to 3 Chaotic Energy. - Reduced cost of Reveal Faction Info from 40 to 30 Chaotic Energy.
Prism UI
The Prism UI has now been updated to show more details about how to trigger the events.
Grief and Heartbreak
- Griefstricken Mood efffect changed to -20. - When a Lover dies or disappears, the Villager now instantly becomes Griefstricken but only if their Opinion is Acquaintance-level or higher. If Opinion is Rival-level, they gain Catharsis instead. - When an Affair dies or disappears, the Villager now instantly becomes Heartbroken only if their Opinion is Acquaintance-level or higher. If Opinion is Rival-level, they become Cheery instead. - Added a log when Villager feels Griefstricken, Catharsis, Heartbroken, or Cheery from the loss of a Lover or Affair. - Villagers can no longer develop new Lover or Affair relationships while Griefstricken or Heartbroken. - Villagers will no longer seduce or flirt while Griefstricken or Heartbroken, except when Trigger Arousal is used by the player. - Villagers will no longer respond positively to other's flirtation while Griefstricken or Heartbroken.
Flirtation and Arousal
- A Villager gains Arousal if their flirtation gets a positive response. - An aroused Villager may seduce their target of arousal. - Anytime a new villager joins a Village, Compatibility will now be generated with other residents that they do not have Compatibility with yet. - Fixed an issue where Level 4 Unfaithful characters still do not flirt with Beasts and Undead. - Beasts and Undead will always react to flirtation and seduction with confusion. - Flirt will only be initiated if a Villager is in normal or better mood. - Villagers will be much less likely to flirt with other characters if they already have a Lover, except if Unfaithful. - Villagers will now much less likely respond positively to flirtation and seduction of another character if their Lover is on sight.
Wet and Poisoned
- When Wet is added on a Poisoned object, Poisoned will be removed. - When Poisoned is added to a Wet object, Wet will be removed. - Some wilderness tiles now have a chance to spawn new Trees while they are Wet. - Poisoned Trees may eventually die. - Characters may stumble badly and get unconscious if they are Wet or move through Wet tiles. - Crop growth rate will now be sped up if it is Wet. - Crop growth rate is reduced if it is Poisoned. - Crop growth rate is now affected by the Biome. - Food created by harvesting from Poisoned crops will also have Poisoned. - Farmers with Level 3 Food Talent can now remove Poisoned from crops.
Rescue
- The player can now create a Captive Intel when right-clicking on a restrained Villager. This can now be shared to other Villagers. - If a Captive Intel is shared to other concerned Villagers, they may attempt to rescue the captive or post a Rescue Party quest. - If a Captive Intel is shared to the restrained Villager's Settlement Ruler of Faction Leader, they may declare war with the captor faction depending on various factors. - Introduced various reactions for when a Villager sees another Villager belonging to a different non-hostile faction who is Restrained, Ensnared, Frozen, Unconscious. Factors include personal relationship and traits as well as Faction Ideologies. - A Villager now has a small chance of becoming obsessed with a Villager that rescues them from Restrained, Ensnared, Frozen or Unconscious.
Other Tweaks
- Before placing a Monster Spawner on a wilderness tile, the player will now see a red square showing the size of structure that will be built. - Shamans will now only perform their Rituals outside of Work hours. - The player can now use Trigger Grudge to turn a character Evil. - Vampires and Werewolves will no longer attack fellow Vampires or Werewolves that they don't know even when they see them in bat or wolf form. - Villagers that become Unconscious will now produce 1 Chaos Orb if they are not allied with the player. - Demon Cult Leader will revert back to its previous class when cleansed by a Stalker. - Demon Cultist will no longer conduct Reconciliation Ritual for non-Cultists. - Demon Cultists will no longer cleanse Corrupted Tiles. - Characters that disapprove of a Preach action will no longer stop it from completing. - If a character attacks a fully resistant target, they will no longer flee from it but will switch target if there are other less resistant hostiles in range. - Revamped Share Intel response to Crime related Intels. - When an object has been moved, its personal ownership will be cleared. This will prevent Villagers from automatically knowing the location of their owned object if someone steals it or the player seizes it. - Opinions of Villagers towards humanoids and demonic characters may now change through normal interactions. - Tombstones in landmark structures will no longer pop out the bodies when the structure crumbles. - Jinx will now only drain 20 Chaotic Energy when it enters Critical Mood. It no longer drains on Bad Mood. - Reduced chance of occurrence of Vampire Hunts and Werewolf Hunts. - Reduced assumption chance that a wandering Villager at night might be a Vampire during a Vampire Hunt. - Slightly reduced negative Mood effect of Despairing and Dolorous. - An obsessed Villager may gain a Grudge if they become aware that their target of obsession makes love with a different Villager. - Psychopaths now feel Approval when informed about Murder. - Psychopaths will no longer feel typical negative emotions when becoming aware of Cultists, Vampires and Lycans. - Added more monster types to the spawn list of Monster Spawners placed in Wilderness tiles. - Monster Spawners can now be spawned on tiles with a tree. The Spawner will replace the tree. - Threatened Villagers are now more likely to flee rather than attack if the target is a Friend or Close Friend. - Monsters will no longer gain Newcomer trait when joining a Village. - Snatch UI drop off location will now auto-update while still open when the player stores a new target. - Ephemeral characters will no longer be shown nor counted in the Faction Info UI. - Elven Kingdoms no longer include Animal Killing as a crime. - Added Tile Dimensions to Demonic Structure tooltips.
Bug Fixes
- [FIXED] In German or French versions, game may crash after unsummoning Demonic defender. - [FIXED] Sometimes, Fisheries may prevent a Village from building new food producing structure. - [FIXED] Villagers that don't live in Dwellings are sometimes unable to eat. - [FIXED] Characters immediately go home when it switches home location. - [FIXED] Trigger Arousal sometimes do nothing. - [FIXED] Imp can become a Demon Cult Leader. - [FIXED] Omnipotent mode is stuck at only having 3 defender slots. - [FIXED] When a Villager becomes a bandit, its pet no longer follows it around. - [FIXED] Corrupted tile and demonic wall charges are not unlimited in Omnipotent setting. - [FIXED] A raiding Dragon may flee from a Dragon in the same party. - [FIXED] A Bandit may sometimes not help another Restrained Bandit near them. - [FIXED] Wrong emotion text in Share Intel for Despair. - [FIXED] Characters may get stuck in some sections of the Mage Tower. - [FIXED] Monster Spawners may sometimes spawn monsters above its max count. - [FIXED] Opening the Cultist tab and pressing Esc does not close the cultist tab unlike other tabs. - [FIXED] Wolves are still called "Ravagers". - [FIXED] Bone Golem has Cultist-related actions. - [FIXED] Incorrect reaction log after seeing another character transform into bat form. - [FIXED] Some essential Settlement Jobs get erroneously dropped. - [FIXED] Recharge pop-up notification overlaps with the Top Bar UI. - [FIXED] Summons list showing Monsters with no more charges on load. - [FIXED] Top Bar UI is blocking the topmost portion of the map. - [FIXED] Primordial Pool's tile placement is inconsistent with its graphic asset's position.
Ruinarch is now available in other languages!
Hello everyone!
Firstly, we want to remind everyone that the game is now already available in the following languages: - Simplified Chinese - German - French - Japanese - Latin American Spanish - Polish - Turkish
Also, we have a small surprise update today with various small tweaks and fixes.
Tweaks
- Slightly tweaked all archetype's starting loadout to improve the game's initial pacing - Monsters buried in the Cult Temple will no longer disappear - Added a tooltip when hovering over Villager Classes to give players info if they have something special they can do - Updated Repulsed opinion reduction from -35 to -25 - Reduced the chance that a Villager will go berserk when experiencing a high amount of Opinion Reduction towards another character - Increased additional tiles for every Portal upgrade from 100 to 150 - Added a log for when a Villager arrives at a new village for a visit - Resized villager info UI so that it doesn't cover the Spells and Buildings list while both are open - Reduced size of Villager's Relationship UI and fixed cropping issue - Replaced some icons and portraits - Increased small monster portrait sizes to 54x54px - Updated Prism UI to show all the criteria needed to trigger the events - Updated Snatch UI - Updated Residents list UI
Bug Fixes
- [FIXED] Instructing Grounded cultist to Preach causes player mana to be drained. - [FIXED] Faction Exclusive to Male but has Female Members. - [FIXED] Fixed various null reference and loading issues.
Update 13: Base Building
Hello everyone! Features added today are supposed to be part of our V1.0 launch. As it has been postponed to January, we decided to release parts of it today and another part of it on December. We've started a tiny portion of gameplay balance tweaks here but more of it will be added on the December update and the V1.0 launch.
Base Building
We made various tweaks to base building: - Players can now mouse-drag to corrupt multiple tiles at once - There is now a limit to the number of corrupted tiles a player can use. This increases every Portal Upgrade. - Spreading Corrupted Tiles and Demonic Decorations cost Spirit Energy. Spirit Energy gains and Portal Upgrade costs have been adjusted in consideration to this. - You can use a Demolish tool to delete Corrupted Tiles, Decorations and Structures. - Added new icons and reworked Base Building UI.
Localization
The game has finally been mostly localized for the following languages: - Simplified Chinese - German - French - Turkish - Japanese - Latin American Spanish - Polish
There's still a small fraction of new texts that haven't been localized. This is still a work in progress so please let us know if there are any issues that our localizers need to address.
New Icons
Added a bunch of new icons to the game. Many UI have also been updated to include new icons. There's still more UI work to be done on the next update.
We're not satisfied yet with the changes made for Raid and Snatch UI so expect further improvements on that as well.
New Portraits
Elven, Human and Monster portraits have been updated. It should now be easier to identify different Villagers due to the more varied portraits available.
Hotkeys
Players can now adjust hotkey bindings.
Tweaks
- Psychopaths are now more likely to walk to the closest edge of the Village to bury a corpse rather than pass through more parts of the Village. This will make it less likely for them to get caught. - Reduced Landmine explosion range to 3x3. - Added randomized structure name prefixes to make it easier to differentiate structures of the same type. - When hovering over a character portrait, a directional arrow will be displayed to help the player quickly find that character's location in the map. - Docile non-pet animals will now refrain from entering village structures. - Villagers sleeping on the floor will now also get Wet when player uses Splash Water. - Added the current number of active defenders and max number of defenders on Portal Info. - A deposed Faction Leader will now develop a Grudge on the person that overthrew them. - The type of monster that will spawn from a Monster Spawner placed outside will now depend on the tile's biome. - Monster Spawner upgrades now alternately increase maximum number of Spawners as well as max monster count per Spawner. - Preaching to a Berserked Villager will now always fail. - Ratmen Faction will no longer build Ward Lights even if they relocate to a Village. - Villagers will cleanse some of your Corrupted Tiles if you spread too close to their Village. - Portal Upgrade costs have been reduced but Villagers will no longer produce a Chaos Orb when they become Starving, Exhausted or Sulking. - Drain Spirit now takes 25% of Villager Max HP and 50% of Monster's Max HP per tick. - A Villager will produce 1 Chaos Orb when they get Malnourished. - Significantly increased the cooldown of all Afflictions. This is intended to make you more thoughtful of the Villagers you afflict and to also reduce the Chaos Orbs generated through Afflictions. More tweaks will be introduced for game balance on the next update. - Dead Cultist will now be removed from the player's Cultist list once its corpse has decayed. - Added a log when a Villager visits another town. - Added a new Meddler Scheme to Assassinate a target.
Bug Fixes
- [FIXED] Destroy Structure goal does not count Grudge - Destroy Home actions. - [FIXED] Werewolf pelt still in bookmark after being consumed. - [FIXED] Villagers of Lycan Clans feel threatened by transformations of fellow Villagers. - [FIXED] An obsessed Villager will have negative emotions if they find out their obsession is flirting with another character. - [FIXED] Snatch Party sometimes won't move if target is being carried. - [FIXED] Leaders without a personal home may sometimes get stuck in the Tavern. - [FIXED] A bandit that joined the Divine Church remained at a Bandit Camp. - [FIXED] Exterminate Quest completed even though there are still monsters inside the cave. - [FIXED] Some behaviors related to Suicidal status and Devout traits are not triggered if the Villager does not live in a Dwelling. - [FIXED] Remove buff was resisted and out of charge but the menu is still open and available to click. - [FIXED] A Faction has Exclusive: Male Ideology but has Female members. - [FIXED] Villager may sometimes not repair their home when it's damaged. - [FIXED] Mana per hour tooltip shows wrong value. - [FIXED] Tamed monsters from a Monster Spawner will still attack its master if the player activates the Monster Spawner's Attack Village action.
V1.0 Release Update
Hello everyone!
While a lot of our time was spent on unexpected issues related to localization, we were also able to spend some time to tweak UI and introduce some visual updates over the past few weeks.
We'll continue spending the next few weeks on UI and usability improvements to make the overall experience smoother for players. This may take more time than we initially anticipated and won't give us ample space to do other tweaks that would make the game ready for a V1.0. So, we decided to just turn the next update as Major Update #13: UX. We are targeting a release date of November 4 for this.
We'll have another smaller update on December but the actual V1.0 launch will now be the update after that - scheduled on January 26. Sorry for the move but at least this gives us more time to improve the game even further before more players are introduced to it on 1.0 Release.
Here's a quick preview of some of the upcoming changes:
Base Building
Base Building, particularly expanding corrupted tiles should now be much less tedious. Still a work in progress, but here's a short preview:
Players can also now customize their territory with demonic decorations. More decorations can be added as you level up the Portal.
Target Menu
Placeholder icons have finally been replaced.
Spells UI
Spells UI has been updated!
Portal Upgrade UI
Portal Upgrade UI has been updated with the new art.
Prism
The Prism has been re-conceptualized to instead trigger a few special events after satisfying important conditions. Previously, events like the founding of a Bandits Faction or the arrival of Ratmen are often largely RNG. With the Prism, the player will be provided specific criteria that must be satisfied. Once met, the player can then instantly trigger events such as spawning a new Lycan Clan or having Undead invade other factions.
Summons
Currently working on this. We have combined the Demons and Minions UI into one and made it much more compact and readable. There will just be two rows on the top of your screen for small icons of Reserves and Active Summons. This should make it much easier to see everything at once.
Shortcut Keys
Customizable shortcut keys are now available.
Localization
Translations for existing texts are now mostly complete and being reviewed. However, we have some new features (ex: Prism) that require translations and these will begin next week. We are not sure if that will be ready by November 4 but we will already release whatever is ready by then and just update on our December Update.
Update 12: Victory
Hi everyone! Apologies that this was delayed from our initial end of July target. With this update, the game's full structure is complete, paving the way to final gameplay balance and tweaks, and then hopefully more content after we launch 1.0 (albeit at a slower pace).
One major issue remaining is the rudimentary state of base building, which will be a focus of the last pre-1.0 update. The game isn't really a base building game at its core so we don't intend to expand on this significantly but we agree that it needs to be much more user-friendly to customize your territory if you want to.
New Victory Condition
We've introduced the new Goals tab on the top menu. The Goals tab consists of six Goal categories, each having multiple thematically-related tasks. Winning the game is now quite straightforward - the player must just complete 13 of any of these tasks. This allows for some flexibility regardless of your Archetype.
As usual with these new features, it would take a few iterations to balance - new tasks may be introduced, numbers may be tweaked, etc. The current version is probably going to be quite easy for veterans. At the same time it would give new players some ideas about what's doable in the game. PRO-TIP: Hovering over each Task will give hints on how to accomplish it.
Once this is in a much more final state, a portion of the Spirit Energy needed to upgrade the Portal will then also come from completing these tasks.
Expanded Portal Upgrades
Victory is no longer directly linked to upgrading your Portal but the tasks you can accomplish are still dependent on the Powers you unlock. So we had to tweak this a bit. As you reach Portal level 6, you will now get to choose from some of the most useful Powers from the other Archetypes. This should give players more tools overall and should allow them to accomplish more Tasks regardless of their Archetype. Portal Level 7 used to be simply the Victory Condition. Now, unlocking it will also provide new Powers from the other Archetypes as well.
In a way, this also reflects how the Ruinarch player is getting back their full potential as the Portal's connection to the world gets firmer.
Updated Powers
We've went through some of the more boring spells and introduced some ways to make them either more useful, or just more fun.
Manifest Food
There are two new actions players can do with the Food produced by Manifest Food.
First is Lure. You can lure a Stored Target so that they will be forced to go and eat the Food. They have to be within a certain distance for this to work, though.
Second is Infuse. Use this to apply a negative effect on whoever eats it. You can choose from Bloated, Food Coma or Rabid. Infuse becomes available at Manifest Food Level 3.
Locust Swarm and Poison Cloud
You can now control the direction of the last casted Locust Swarm or Poison Cloud. It will follow the mouse cursor if you move it close enough to them.
Brimstone
We added more of a fun effect for Brimstone rather than something super useful. It now leaves behind Cinders on the ground it hits. These Cinders continue to spread fire to adjacent tiles but can be removed when hit by Water or Ice elements. As you upgrade Brimstone, it becomes immune to these elements as well, until at Level 4, it even explodes and deals damage when hit.
Iceteroids
We added more of a fun effect for Iceteroids rather than something super useful. It now leaves behind Ice Blocks on the ground it hits. These Ice Blocks obstruct movement and can only be removed when hit by Fire or Lightning elements. As you upgrade Iceteroids, it becomes immune to these elements as well, until at Level 4, it even explodes and deals damage when hit.
Earthquake
Earthquakes are now meant to be extremely powerful against structures but pretty useless against living beings. Structures will always get destroyed by Earthquakes. It doesn't deal damage to Villagers, except if they are within a structure that it destroyed. In that case, they will instantly die as the building crumbles over them.
Splash Water
Splash Water will now wake up sleeping Villagers and make them Irate. Villagers are also now unlikely to sleep on Wet beds.
Ward Lights
This is just a small tweak on how Villagers get alerted about hostiles in their Village. Before, anyone entering could instantly trigger the alert. Now, these Ward Lights serve the role of setting off the alarm. Any hostile that enters its range will alarm the Village and wake up some combatants to defend.
Localization Progress
We have completed our localization text and it is now being translated to different languages. The following will be available in the next update: - German - Simplified Chinese - French - Japanese - Spanish (LatAm) - Polish - Turkish
Tweaks
- Migrations will no longer occur within 3 hours of losing all Major Factions. - When new migrants arrive, there is now a chance that they won't occupy abandoned Villages. This will increase the frequency of abandoned Villages getting permanently destroyed. - Increased rate of Preach action. - Reduced relationship decrease when Preach fails. - When you share Intel about assault by hostile characters, the recipient will attack the hostile if it is nearby and its assault target is an Acquaintance, Friend or Close Friend of theirs. - Unoccupied landmarks will now last up to 5 days (previously 3). - Added description for Hallowed Ground. - HP damage dealt to objects will now also be displayed similar to HP damage to characters. - Added a new setting to adjust Log limit. This will adjust how many events are stored by the game. Reducing the Log limit may help performance issues. - Placing lumberyard and mine should not take into consideration existing blueprint limit. - Cultists will no longer destroy manifested Food. - Criminal Cultist Leaders will no longer join the Bandits faction. - Entering public structures will no longer be considered Trespassing. - Because spawning them are required Victory-related Tasks, you can no longer select Lycan or Vampire Clan as starting Factions. - Mushrooms taken from caves will now eventually respawn. - Spooked Villagers are now much less likely to sleep. - Adjusted volume of Migration Events.
Bug Fixes
- [FIXED] Sometimes, when a Villager leaves a party, the reason text is blank. - [FIXED] Landon did not earn any money after bringing a wolf back from hunting quest. - [FIXED] Blank relationship label. - [FIXED] Divine and Nature Cults have their Faction Info unlocked by default. - [FIXED] Sometimes, hovering over an empty tile will display tooltip related to a non-existent object. - [FIXED] There is an empty notification related to Heatwave death. - [FIXED] A pet Wyvern joined the Demon Cult faction but its master did not. - [FIXED] Wrong reaction when assaulting Monster Spawner. - [FIXED] Susan was raised as a skeleton while being carried by another skeleton. - [FIXED] Hunters are picking up wolfs already placed in the city center instead of the freshly killed wolves in the den. - [FIXED] Turning a faction into a demon cultist faction does not decrease the number of existing faction. - [FIXED] Witches that increase chaotic energy cost can be killed to reduce costs again, but when reloading after killing them, the costs go back to being increased. - [FIXED] Faction exclusive to Female but there are males in the faction. - [FIXED] Two non-combatants are stuck due to pathing issues. - [FIXED] Cultist keeps releasing the target of Snatch Villager. - [FIXED] Repeated log entries called "[Village Name] has completely fallen into ruins." - [FIXED] Whole village disappeared even though a faction resides in it. - [FIXED] Error sometimes occurs when storing a city center as target. - [FIXED] Various errors that causes the game to get stuck. - [FIXED] Various loading errors. - [FIXED] Various incomplete text replacement errors.
