The long awaited combat update is finally here and we’re really excited to share it with all our players.
While redesigning the combat system, we paid close attention to all your feedback to assure this was the game we wanted to make and you wanted to play. No more timer! No more shuffling cards in search of heroes to deploy! Warcries galore!
As it’s very common with big changes, some new issues might arise, so please let us know of any problems you encounter on our forum’s support section!
We’ve made quite a lot of changes under the hood, so here’s a list of the most noteworthy. Thank you and we hope you enjoy this new update!
Added a new hero: Widukind.
Deploying characters is now linked to their Loyalty. The more loyal they are, the quicker you can bring them into battle.
New combat objective: Kill them all!
Timer has been removed from combat, you can now die as slowly as you want.
Each Hero has 3 Warcries they can use from the start.
Using Warcries now costs Warcry Points. You start combat with a pool of points to spend, and you can gain more by defeating enemies.
Completely new weapons, with Damage Ranges and Critical Hits.
Slash, Blunt and Pierce attack types have unique properties.
The Blocking stance will always defend hits as long the character has Defence Points.
We still have a few play testing spots available for this Thanksgiving weekend! If you want to try the new combat version before anyone else and provide us some feedback, please respond below and we will be in touch - the early warrior gets the loot. ;)
Have a great day and enjoy the pillaging during the Autumn Sale.
Early Access on Mac and Linux
Hello Mac and Linux Players!
We are excited that we can officially welcome you on board. Many thanks to the group of community testers on both operating systems, their help was essential.
We have created two separate discussions on the forum - please use them to raise OS specific issues there.
The game is optimised for 16:9 full HD, so you will see a bit of stretching on a 16:10 Macbook. Aspect ratio is something we are looking into as part of the video options for a later update.
Dev Blog: Combat v2 - Coming Soon!
Hi Everyone,
Work on the new combat has taken a bit longer than we originally planned, but we have entered the final stretch.
Our new design is incorporating the feedback we received from you since launch, and we merged your inputs with the ideas we already had for the next iteration of The Great Whale Road's combat gameplay.
So what will the upcoming update bring, you ask?
Less Randomness
Your heroes will no longer be part of a card deck. Your warband is placed during the first four turns of each battle. The relationship with the leader decides if they are there with you in turn one or if they tardy until a later turn. If you don't listen to their opinions while adventuring, why would they be keen to be the first to bleed for you in case there is trouble?
No More Deck
We actually went one step further and removed the deck altogether. Cards had limited gameplay value, so we decided to reduce them to what they mainly were - a user interface element.
Warcries
Each hero will wield three warcries. The warcries are class specific, and there will be rare hero specific ones later on. Once we have added character progression (around Christmas) this will evolve into a skill tree system, where you will be able to choose the three warcries for a hero from a range of warcry abilities per level.
Warcry Points
You will start every fight with a pool of warcry points. You can use these points to activate warcries - they will not have a turn activator anymore but a cost instead. At the beginning the warcry pool will be fixed, but as we add character progression this will become dynamically linked to the levels of your leader and heroes. Killing enemies, and later other combat objectives, will replenish points during combat.
Defensive Stance
There are also a few tactical gameplay changes. The key one is that your heroes can take a defensive stance which blocks all attacks as long as the character has defence points available.
New Victory Objectives
In addition to the existing "kill the enemy leader" we have added a new objective: "kill all enemies". This is also becoming the new default objective. Enemies might call reinforcements, so you'll have to balance a careful approach with the advantage of winning a fight early on.
We are working hard to get the updated combat ready for an early access release next week. We had hoped to get a closed community test going a week ago already, and we are aiming to get a shorter round started before this weekend instead. We are excited to have you play the new combat soon, and are looking forward to your feedback on the above points in the meantime.
Chapter II and a new UI: v0.4.0 is here!
Hello Everyone!
The last month was one of our busiest so far, across all the areas of our small team. We writers wrote more than 10,000 words for our main and character stories. The artists not only designed a new user interface, but also completed its implementation. And then they created and added all the new settlements, which we needed for chapter II of the Danish story. Development worked on loads of enhancements and fixes, with their main focus on changes to combat. The new combat design has been in tech pre-alpha for a little while now, and we will be starting a small closed alpha testing round with community members soon.
Features:
Main storyline - Chapter II.
Character quest for Kætill Steadfast.
Unlock a new hero - Thorir Throatcutter .
Nine new locations - Frisian and Frankish settlements - with the first ancient Roman buildings and ruins.
A new UI--the combat screens will be changed when we release combat v2.
Improvements/Balancing:
<*>Product price range is shown on the map screen, as well as the originating region of trading goods.
<*>Combat rewards are linked to winning and losing. And we can script events based on combat outcomes now.
<*>Journey planning - food consumption and journey duration are shown.
<*>We removed ranged enemies from sea battles.
Bug Fixes:
<*>Fixed an AI crash issue.
<*>Linux float changes.
<*>Fixed a bug in combat where the player could select a dead character.
<*>Fixed a bug when upgrading the ship, where population would be used like a consumable.
<*>Fixed taverns in multiple locations.
<*>Fixed missing music for some locations.
We will be shifting the roadmap back a wee bit, and move a few things around. We will post an announcement with the details shortly. "Shields!"
We are always keeping an eye on our forum support section. Your feedback and bug reports are much appreciated and help us to make this game the best it can be.
TGIF - Patch v0.3.2
Hello Everyone!
We want to make sure you get the maxium level of enjoyment out of The Great Whale Road this weekend, and thus we have released a patch with some fixes and balancing tweaks on top v.0.3.1.
As part of our work towards the 'Halloween & Combat Update', we upgraded the game from Unity 5.3.4 to Unity 5.4.1. This also solves an issue that would cause the game to crash a few moments after starting on a small number of PCs.
This patch also includes the following changes:
Minor tweaks to character quests.
Fixed trading good rarity (for example food will be more common).
Balanced winter food production.
Fixed population growth.
Balanced food received from hunting.
Please provide us your feedback on the forum and any technical issues under Support.
Have a great weekend,
The Team @ Sunburned Games
Update - v0.3.0 - Autumn is here!
Hello Everyone!
October is upon us and while the leaves are busy dying, we are focusing on bringing more life to the Whale Road’s economy and warband relations.
We have been working on refurbishing the game’s interface, making it more readable for both Full HD and smaller resolutions. This will be an ongoing process for the next few versions, so please let us know if you experience any issues.
Thank you all for your support!
Features:
Added new events and two new character quests: Hild and Auðunn.
Added a new loyalty system for characters. Now your choices will affect what the warband thinks of you. In return, their loyalty will change how the whole warband's stats are affected by events.
Added a loot screen when your inventory is full.
Added the ability to receive rewards after battles. We are working on a better version of this feature along with the new combat design.
Implemented a new economy that ties trading goods to the cultures that produce them, and simulates rarity and price fluctuations.
Added a knot-o-meter for the sailing screens.
Added fast travel for longer journeys.
Added the ability to use hunting dogs when hunting.
Added a healer to settlements.
revised winter planning logic. Now you can reassign your population to any development area each year.
Added a new winter results screen that we’ll be further improving.
Bug Fixes:
Fixed a bug where an arrival event could trigger again when loading a saved game of the following day.
Fixed various crash issues.
Improvements/Balancing:
Improved weather artwork for sailing.
Sped up sailing scenes by jumping to the next day once an event is resolved.
Reduced the amount of health you recover from sleeping in the Hall/Tent.
The Tavern now costs Silver but also feeds the heroes assigned and some of your warriors.
Updated most location names in the game to increase their authenticity.
New resource bar feedback for when spending food, silver, etc.
Spending the night in a settlement is no longer required when no quest events will trigger the next day.
Arrival events for quests no longer start automatically, an event button will be visible on each location that has one.
Removed unused hero personality traits.
We are always keeping an eye on our forum Support section. Your feedback and bug reports are appreciated and help us to make this game the best it can be.
Early Access Dev Blog #4: The Updated Whale Road-Map
Hello Everyone!
Gamescom was only a little bit over a month ago and we have been super busy in the meantime. Update v0.3.0 will be released on Monday (10/3) instead of today, as we have added so many new things that we have given ourselves a few more days for testing. This will include an updated closed beta version for Mac as well as the first closed beta version for Linux.
MONDAY - V0.3.0: TRADE, QUESTS & LOADS OF NEW FEATURES
New Features:
Character loyalty
Character afflictions
Dynamic trade
Healers in settlements: See them if you want to recover quickly.
Fast travel
And hunting dogs finally hunt!
Improvements:
A new event screen with a larger font and space for an illustration. We even added the first event images, with a lot more to come in the next updates.
Optimised for full HD and screen resizing for lower resolutions. Please let us know if you experience any issues on smaller/older screens.
Winter planning and results: revised screens and we changed the system from assigning focus points to assigning your villagers.
A new weather system with fog, wind and sky variations.
Streamlined the amount of intermittent screens
Combat rewards! Now some fights will result in you getting loot, in v0.4.0 we will limit loot to when you actually win a fight.
Odin, beer is no longer free! Spending the night partying at a tavern costs silver now.
Reduced the number of personality traits.
Content:
Two character storylines with quests and winter events.
New sailing events for character afflictions.
New winter events
Updated most location names in the game to increase their authenticity. Special thanks for historical-linguistic advice go to: Peter Alexander Kerkhof, PhD
You can find the updated road-map up to v0.5.0 on our website.
Update v0.2.2: Rainy Day at the Beach
As work continues on v0.3.0, we were fixing some bugs that sneaked into the last update.
We also noticed that the probability of rain on the whale road is slightly over the top, and we'll be reducing that in the next update.
Added the title ‘Occupied Camp’ to easily distinguish camps that can be raided from empty camps.
Added the ability to click anywhere in the screen to immediately show your warband's opinions during the sailing events.
Fixed a bug where a new enemy NPC would be invisible in battle.
Fixed a bug that would freeze the camera on a location when opening the map.
Fixed where the whale bone trading good was missing from some locations.
Fixed a bug where the game could get stuck by surrendering a battle before the tutorial is shown.
Fixed the camera boundaries in the forest battle scenario.
Fixed the text mismatch in a sailing event that would inform you the enemy ship caught up to you when the outcome is that you escape.
Balanced some sailing event results - rats are not the most deadly enemy anymore.
Improved the way events are randomly chosen to avoid too much repetition.
Please note that the 'invisible ship' bug is still sailing the North Sea, it hasn't found its way into the correct release branch. It will be released in the next update, pinky swear.
Following our Gamescom update from earlier this month, we are adding a couple of minor features and fixes while we get the next major update ready for the end of September. This will include the additional sailing events and rumours that we had planned for this update.
The big feature of this small update is raiding! You’re not the only one sailing on the Great Whale Road and you might just find an occupied camp along the coast, ripe for the picking.
We plan to further expand this feature beyond camps, along with adding rewards to battles won, in the following updates.
Highlights:
You can raid occupied beach camps. The whale road is no place for a summer vacation.
Added a new battle scenario: beach camp.
Added snow to winter battles. Just don’t eat the red snow.
Added a new javelin skirmisher NPC.
Added +1 attack range for spears. Inspired by a bug where Hild can poke enemies from a distance, we decided to give all characters with a spear that ability.
Added low personality traits event opinions.
Added a weather system. The whale road has become a bit more rainy, and the weather is now consistent between sailing and arriving at a location.
For the whole list of changes and fixes, check our change log on the community forums.
We’re always working hard to fix bugs while adding features, so if you experience any issues, please share them in the support section.
