Swords and Sandals 5 Redux cover
Swords and Sandals 5 Redux screenshot
Genre: Role-playing (RPG), Adventure

Swords and Sandals 5 Redux

Patch 1.3.0 is live!

"Bah, I'm a gladiator not a pest control service!" - The Gladiator, Swords and Sandals V

As part of this round of patches for all of the Swords and Sandals games ( eleven games to support now in total including spinoffs and remakes!), one of the games that needed the most love was Swords and Sandals V Redux. This game is by far the most complicated I've made (only Crusader Redux rivals it) and definitely one of the buggier games - RPGs so often are and this one had an incredibly convoluted development (both through the original and the remake!)

Anyway, this patch is long overdue and I hope it makes your dungeon crawling that little bit more enjoyable.

I haven't been able to squash every bug but I'm hoping many of the major ones no longer cause grief - but I'll be sure to monitor the discussions (and the Discord Channel) to try and keep on top of things. As with the other S&S games, this is by no means the last patch the game will ever get, so if I've missed something, I'll keep at it.

Please note, this patch is for the PC build only for now ( I need to source another Mac so I can recompile it!)

Cheers, Oliver Joyce
Whiskeybarrel Studios

BUGFIXES

  • Fixed up how items work in dungeon when you have a lot of items. You can now properly look through your items when tapping USE ITEM in the dungeon and choose the item you want ( instead of seeing nothing there - was a big bug )
  • Fixed a bug where loot panels would spawn twice if tapping button fast
  • Fixed a bug where Falcon Eyes skill used melee damage instead of ranged damage values
  • Increased damage power of Winters Core per point spent on skill
  • Fixed a bug where Children of the Malevolence left massive blood splats on screen
  • Fixed up animation of spirit and shaman enemies
  • Fixed a bug where the game forced you to start up in Fullscreen mode even after you had chosen Windowed mode.
  • Fixed a bug where arenas sometimes scrolled past where they should and sky was visible behind
  • Fixed some jittery camera bugs while in the arena
  • Changed how elemental/magic resistance works. Spells that fail to hit now show a "MISS" icon (instead of RESIST). Successful spells damage is
  • reduced* by whatever your magic resistance is. (A fireball spell that hits for 200 damage against a character with 50% fire resist will only do 100 damage, for example)
  • Enemies who have 100% resistance against you will show an IMMUNE icon still.
  • Fixed a bug where enemies in dungeons did not rest when their essence reached zero
  • Fixed a visual bug where your gladiator didn't appear at the top of the stairs in the Hypogeum intro
  • Fixed a visual bug where Arena Champion battles were not centered and the characters were too large on screen


GAME IMPROVEMENTS / BALANCING

  • Steam Achievements are now in the game, 151 in total!
  • Damage to enemies now is cumulative. If an enemy has 25 armour and you do 100 damage, not only does the armour go down to 0, you also take an extra 75 points of damage. Previously if your armour reached zero in one attack, it absorbed the rest, so you couldn't one-shot enemies even if you were way more powerful. (This new way is how it works in classic and medieval)
  • Added a shake screen if you one-shot your enemy.
  • Changed how resistances work. Spells that fail to hit now show a "MISS" icon (instead of RESIST). Successful spells damage is
  • reduced* by whatever your resistance stat is. (A fireball spell that hits for 200 damage against a character with 50% fire resist will only do 100 damage, for example)
  • The game now auto sorts your items better into groups so you won't see multiple icons for torches, potions etc.
  • Reworked dungeon generation algorithm to ensure Levers do not spawn under dungeon guardians/bosses etc
  • Also reworked spawn position algorithm for monsters and items.
  • Gold rewards for rolling a 20 when resurrecting have been reduced to 50 gold + 25 gold per level
  • All food costs have been reduced by 75%. Barn Eggs are more expensive.
  • Gladiators now get 500 starting gold when starting in Dungeon Crawl
  • Reduced the average character level of other gladiators in dungeons
  • You now get XP for any gladiator/monster within 9 levels of your level ( previously was 5 levels )
  • 1 in 100 chance of a dungeon level spawning a gladiator much higher level than you (beware!)
  • The size of gladiators in dungeons no longer scales dramatically( characters with high strength / vitality previously got way too big to fit in doors visually)
  • Priests now start with the Levitate ability
  • You can now see which dungeon level you are on from the overlay panel in the top left
  • Improved the tween in animation for arena champions as they enter the arena
  • Changed the order in which artefacts can be discovered to:
    - McNess Ring of Avoid Traps (first dungeon)
    - Ring of Insomnia (second dungeon)
    - Ring of Nacho Theory(third dungeon)
    - Ring of Evermore (fourth dungeon)

  • Made damage splat image popups smaller
  • Removed knockback effect from Molten Death spell
  • Reduced damage of enemies in all difficulties except normal
  • Reduced max health of enemies in all difficulties except normal
  • Magic Missile cooldown improves with each point spent on skill
  • Removed error logging for most users as it throws up too many 'false flag' errors that do not affect the game but still show up in error reports
  • Removed 'More S&S' button from Town
  • Changed Sir Belgrave's appearance to make him look like an older knight. He was never meant to look like a Samurai but something got lost in translation with the original artist.
  • Removed screen blur when opening chests (was creating texture memory issues)
  • Added stunned/scared animations when enemy gladiators health reaches zero in the arena and before death
  • Boosted the Lord of Sorrow's character level, armour and damage values

Patch v1.0.8 is live

Hey all, another patch has just gone up. This one was mainly to deal with issues surrounding the 'Third Ward' quest. It originally had a time limit but was proving to be very buggy for some users, so I removed the time limit.

Patch notes here!

Version 1.0.8:
* Changed the Third Ward quest to remove the countdown timer - you now must do 30,000 points of damage instead. (This quest seemed to inexplicably fail for many people, so it was altered)
* Fixed a bug where gladiators in the Sprint couldn't upgrade past level 1 armour
* Added option to use Low Rez textures for gladiators (change from settings mode) - if you find you can't see your gladiator on the screen, try switching to this mode and restarting.)
* Improved the drop rate of the Twin Bubbles book
* Improved the drop rate of better loot in dungeon chests

Patchv1.0.6 is live

Hi everyone, just a small patch to fix a few issues that I'd discovered with the game.

* Fixed a bug where runes of strength, stamina, etc did not allocate a stat point correctly
* Fixed a bug where sometimes torches would bug out when going into a dungeon
* Updated some quest descriptions to more accurately reflect quest goals
* Added low res arenas for machines with very low specs (will look more pixelated but you won't see the grey/black screen on arenas)
* Fixed a bug where enemy gladiators sometimes timed-out while thinking of their next move

May your swords be true in the dungeons deep!

Patch 1.0.5 is live!

Hey all, thanks for all the kind reviews so far - I'm working hard to improve the game with every new build.

Patch 1.0.5 just went up and contains a bunch of fixes to the game. Here are the main patch notes:

* Ultratus Amulet is back in the game ( was removed in earlier patch because it was buggy )
- Maximus and Ultratus players will find it in the intro screen to the dungeons.
- This amulet reduces your death roll needed to 5 instead of 10.
* Added an 'Error Log' button in the Settings screen. Toggle this on to see any errors the game might be throwing , so you can screenshot and send to support@egames.com
- Note, if an error appears with Error Logs On, click the text a few times to clear.
* Reduced the difficulty level of the Gladiator Sprint mode by 25%
* Fixed a bug where Heart of Luminus and Teleport couldn't be used in dungeons
* Gladiators can no longer teleport to dungeon level 20
* Fixed a bug allowing gladiators to teleport to guardian levels after defeating them
* Fixed a bug where in dungeons dead enemies on tiles could still be encountered
* Fixed a bug where sometimes the dungeon room intro wouldn't disappear after a short time
* Fixed a bug where levers sometimes spawned on tiles occupied by monsters or guardians

There's going to be another patch in a week or two once I've collected a few more error reports - so if you find some bugs and want to let us know, turn on the ERROR LOGs in the settings.

Cheers, Oliver Joyce
Whiskeybarrel Studios

Swords and Sandals: Official Tome of Lore

Hey gladiators!

As some of you may know, the Swords and Sandals series spans over five games and two spinoffs ( Crusader + Medieval ) - with at least two more titles either planned or in development. This, of course, can make for some interesting and confusing timelines and lore!

For those of you who are interested in a finding out a little more about the Swords and Sandals universe, I've started writing an official 'Tome of Lore' document. In this document, I've written more about each Arena Champion, what happened to them after the tournament, a little about the famous places and heroes of the world and so on.

Swords and Sandals: Official Tome of Lore

The Tome is a work in progress - currently I've only written of events up to and including S&S 2: Emperor's Reign. Let me know if you enjoy the Tome, or have any questions about the world and its characters in the comments below!

Cheers, Oliver Joyce
Whiskeybarrel Studios

Patch 1.0.4 is live!

Hey gladiators, we've just pushed Patch 1.0.4 up for the PC build of the game (Mac coming soon) - a few bugfixes and balancing. Patch notes here:

* Reduced the difficulty level of the Gladiator Sprint mode by 25%
* Fixed a bug where gladiators could keep attacking when their essence was near zero in dungeons
* Fixed a bug where the most recent item found / bought couldn't be used in your inventory sometimes
* Fixed the damage done by Sunder Armour ( will only do a small amont of damage if enemy isn't wearing armour, but double if they are)
* Potential fix for gladiators who encountered a dungeon guardian more than once and couldn't progress to the next chapter (if it still fails on your save game, you may need to start a new gladiator.