Sorcerer King
Sorcerer King Beta 2 Now Available
The Guardian sovereign seeks to protect the world with magic that can restore the land, and starts with the noble Ranger hero whose task is to build up an elite party of heroes without attracting too much attention from the Sorcerer King.
The Tyrant sovereign, on the other hand, sees the Sorcerer King as a competitor. The Tyrant himself and his Warlord champion grow stronger as the Doomsday Counter increases and can secure victory not only by defeating the Sorcerer King in battle, but by co-opting the apocalyptic Spell of Making to his own ends.
Geomancy allows the player to ‘harvest’ mountains, forests, and fertile land to stockpile the goods they need to craft the finest weapons, armor, potions, and scrolls that can give their armies the edge on the battlefield. The price is steep, though, as cracking the world like this pushes the Doomsday Counter forward and the Sorcerer King closer to ultimate victory – and hastens the spread of the corrupted Shadowlands the Sorcerer King’s minions call home.
We’ve also enabled several new maps, fixed a ton of bugs, added a ton of content throughout every phase of the game (new monsters!), and cleaned up a bunch of interface issues.
Sorcerer King still has a ways to go – the next big things on our list are the big rework to the crafting system, additions to tactical combat to make it a little meatier, and improving the endgame to take into account the actions you’ve taken during the course of the game – but the release of Beta 2 today is a big step forward for the game.
As always, thank you very much for helping us to beta test Sorcerer King, and please don’t by shy about dropping feedback and bug reports on the Steam forums or the official boards at sorcererking.com.
Keep up on Sorcerer King's development with our weekly livestream, Wednesdays at 3pm Eastern at http://twitch.tv/stardock
Read the full patch notes here: http://forums.sorcererking.com/459275/page/1/
Updated Dev Snapshot Now Available
If you’ve already opted into the update, Steam will automatically apply the patch.
To opt into the development snapshot, do the following:
- Right-click Sorcerer King in your Steam library
- Select “Properties”
- Select the “Betas” tab
- Choose “Dev Snapshot” from the drop-down menu
- Close the Properties window
As a reminder, these development snapshots are rougher than a typical beta and likely to have bugs and missing content. Please adjust your expectations accordingly.
Sorcerer King Beta 2, which incorporates the additions in this opt-in build and more, is due out next Thursday, November 13.
Thanks for helping us test Sorcerer King, and have fun blowing up those mountains!
# # #
Sorcerer King 11/6 Dev Snapshot Patch Notes
- Added Harvest Mountain & Harvest Forest spells
- City List screen now displays enchantments, and cities can be double-clicked to shortcut to their action screen
- First pass of new ability icons
- Lots of new animations for tactical battle abilities
- Lots of fixes for animation hangs in tactical battles
- Additional unit portraits completed
- Bug fixing and polish on Guardian and Tyrant sovereigns and their champions
- Keeper’s of the Flame fortress added
- Fixed problem where the same quests would get placed near starting points
- Unit Details window now displays units core stats even when viewing equipment
- Lots & lots of misc bug fixes
Sorcerer King Beta 2 Dev Snapshot Now Available
Beta 2 is coming along nicely, and it’s full of new content and lots of requested features. Lead designer Brad Wardell posted a dev journal with a roadmap of what’s coming to SK both in the near term and in the big picture, which has a lot of great info. Beta 2 specifically includes:
- Guardian and Tyrant sovereigns
- New heroes
- Geomancy! Raise mountains or sink land into the ocean
- All eight minor factions
- Bug squashing, balancing across the board, and much more
We’re taking the unusual step of making one of our development snapshots available as an opt-in beta for you all. Beta 2 is still planned for a mid-November release, but you can check out a fair amount of the content today – with the caveat that this build is buggy and incomplete, even in beta terms.
Read the full patch notes below.
To download the opt-in beta, do the following:
- Right-click Sorcerer King in Steam, select Properties
- Click the “Betas” tab
- In the drop-down menu, choose “Beta 2 Development Snapshot”
- Steam will update your game automatically
You can revert to the public build at any time by repeating these steps and choosing “NONE” within the beta selection dropdown.
We would love to hear your feedback, comments, bug reports, and suggestions for the Beta 2 opt-in just as we do for all our builds, so don’t be shy about posting them on the official or Steam forums.
Thanks for your support, and happy conquering!
Sorcerer King Beta 1.2 Dev Snapshot Patch Notes
- New sovereigns available; Guardian & Tyrant
- New maps; Gilden, Magnar, Archipelago, Revive, & Ruined (we may remove 1-2 for Beta 2)
- Terraforming spells added
- Minor Factions all have unique quests, can be allied with, and fight monsters.
- New thrall mechanic (like unrest tied to Doomsday counter, takes away logistics)
- New art in some tactical maps
- UI notification system (for enemies in territory, etc.)
- Champions losing combat now gives a Doomsday counter penalty instead of a permanent injury
- Heal Shard spell added
- Some SK strongholds in the world at start
- Lots of additional abilities added to units for tactical battles
- New monster lairs
- Wolf Lair added
- SK Garrisons added
- Failed adventurers added
- Wolf Lair added
- Enchantment & special ability animation & VFX fixes/additions
- Swamp Giant Fortress model added
- New enemy & minor faction units
- Wraith
- Dreadling
- Swamp Spider
- Garrot
- Ship
- Wraith
- Spells now increase in lore cost as more are earned
- SK AI improvements and additional interactions
- Quests can result in future indifference, cowardice, courage, fame, compassion, cruelty, and honor events
- Starting units now visible on Sovereign Select screen
- Bug fixes for sliding and bad animation during auto-resolved combat
- Bug fixes for dialogue windows being displayed in the wrong order
- Pioneers now start behind other friendly units in tactical battles
- VFX for doomsday counter reductions
- VFX for transition into tactical battles
- Pioneer attack added. Donkey headbutt!
- Roads clipping terrain fixed
- Lots of misc bug fixes
- Probably a fair number of misc bug additions
Coming to SK in 2014: Terraforming, new crafting, and more!
Learn about the huge crafting revamp, upcoming sovereigns, land-warping magic, and more that are coming in the two major updates we have planned to hit before the end of 2014 here:
http://forums.sorcererking.com/458896
Sorcerer King Beta 1.1 Patch Now Available
Among other things, Sorcerer King Beta 1.1 includes:
Additions
+ Spell to reduce Doomsday Counter added (still working on the visual FX though)
+ Outposts can now fire on multiple units per turn
+ Added WASD map controls
+ Additional tactical battle special abilities added for a number of units
+ New portrait art when selecting a number of structures
+ New abilities hooked up for Elemental Damage types
- Weak Resistance to Cold, Fire & Lightning (10% defense to these types)
- Sensitive to Cold, Fire, and Lightning (10% more damage taken by these damage types)
- Most Beasts were made sensitive or vulnerable to these elemental types
- minor units were given the appropriate buffs / debuffs
- Some magic users were given buffs to elemental types
+ attack types added (ex. "Cold" attack/defense/resist)
+ added Healing Spirit ability: Any army with this unit gets +3 HP per turn on the overworld map.
+ circle of magic improvement added (unlocks Archon)
+ more quests added
+ Updated balancing on units
+ More quests are now spawned on maps
Notable Fixes
+ Potential fix for terrain performance issues on low end machines
+ Fixed "Marching Orders" sovereign skill
+ Fixed Tactical Battle initiative list highlighting when mousing over units
+ Fixed Summon Wisp spell
+ Fixed animation issues around auto-resolving combat on the strategic map
+ Citadel now properly unlocks the Paladin unit
Plus a ton more fixes for minor issues. Read the full patch notes here.
Let us know what you think! For further upcoming patch news, check out the current development roadmap for Sorcerer King Early Access.
Live Sorcerer King Gameplay – Official Dev Stream
The first dev stream is happening on launch day (Thursday, October 2) because who wants to wait almost a whole week to get this thing out there?
Sorcerer King Early Access Manual
Build cities, defend shards, craft items, kill bad guys. But there’s more than a little nuance in there worth exploring.