Greetings, Courageous Ones!

Happy new year everyone! We hope you had a great time and wish you all an awesome 2019! On our end, we started the year off with a sprint and we have no less than three cumulative updates to share with you today! Two of them were already deployed stealthily to Steam over the past two weeks, and the biggest one is going live right now. As always, keep the feedback coming and join us on Discord - one of the main reasons we managed to do so much in just a few weeks is your constant support, we're counting on it! To make it easy to find a specific type of change, changes will be listed for all three patches together (0.10.2.1, 0.10.2.2, and the new 0.10.3):

General Changes

We have changed the Skirmish Mode's strategic gameplay several times and are making good progress with it. The highlights are:

• Restored tactical map environments Crypt, Goblin Camp, Castle, Crystal Cave.
• Optimized unit spawns in Crypt, Goblin Camp, Castle, Cave and Bridge environs to increase combat variety.
• When initiating combat near a creature dwelling or faction hub, Combat now takes place in that location.
• Battles against AI parties will now happen in a map that fits the current location on the world map, rather than always using the village maps.
• Work continues on the new human faction and many abilities and upgrades were added.
• World map AI improved considerably and poses a greater threat.
• Each faction now has different hub upgrades.
• Regular units can no longer level up, their XP gains are shared among heroes.
• Regular units can no longer interact with world map events.
• Autosave will now happen at turn's end rather than when the turn starts.
• Autosave will no longer happen when AI is attacking the player.
• Fixed world map zone guard locations so they have to be beaten.

New Abilities & Upgrades

We've been fleshing out skill trees at a high pace and progress is solid, however we still have plenty waiting on our list, as well as great ideas coming in from you guys in our Forums and Discord.

• Added Chain Lightning, the mage can attack several targets with each hit causing less damage after the initial target.
• Added Electrocute as an upgrade for Chain Lightning.
• Added Evasive Instincts for Savages.
• Added two upgrades for Evasive Instincts - Blinding Instincts and Daredevil Instincts.
• Added Stomp ability for Paladins.
• Added upgrades for Ranger's Grapple Hook and Knockback Arrow that allow choosing push direction.
• Added the Whirlwind Wall upgrade for Whirlwind.
• Added the Cleansing Fire upgrade for Fire Blast.
• Added the Fog and Thunder Storm upgrades for Rain.

• Added the Incapacitate upgrade for Claw Attack, draining 1AP from enemies hit.
• Replaced Mage ability Lightning Strike with the new Magic Arrow.
• Added two upgrades for Magic Arrow - No distance Penalties, and Absorb 1 HP on Hit.
• Added the Oppression upgrade to Paladin's Blinding Light.
• New Healing Aura upgrade giving it unlimited range.

Changes to Abilities & Upgrades

• Changed Savage's Bloodlust into a passive ability that grants the Savage an action point every time she kills a foe (Max 1 per turn).
• Mage's Empower now boosts physics strength rather than attack damage and lasts 2 turns.
• Changed Ranger's 'Become a Tree' to only cost 1AP and not end the turn, and movement is not prevented.
• Savage's Charge now works in diagonals.
• Savage's Charge now has infinite range, Savage will only stop when hitting an obstacle she cannot run through, but that list now includes trees.

• Replaced Fire Arrow damage upgrade with Guiding Flames.
• New upgrade for Fire Arrow removes its cooldown.
• Replaced Brace's Stun Immunity upgrade with Purge which removes all debuffs and provides immunity for debuffs and stuns.
• Replaced Rally's upgrade with a higher tier one which will provide Brace bonuses for allied units.
• Removed the Adrenaline Rush upgrade from Dash and Slash, added a passive Dash and Slash effect instead.
• Two new upgrades for the Savage's Bloodlust - Dodge Stance and Insatiable Bloodlust.

Balance Changes

Much of what we do after adding new features to the game is collecting feedback and adjusting stats and effects for better balance. While naturally some units will have better value at different levels, we're aiming for a point where different tactical styles decide picks rather than any objective gap.

• Improved behavior of world map spawns and encounters to make them more varied.
• Reduced the amount of units in neutral hubs.
• Rebalanced physics abilities and pushing power, with the biggest changes in ranger abilities and upgrades and kick mechanics.
• Increased Fireball AoE upgrade level requirement from level 8 to level 12.
• Reduced Knockback Arrow physics upgrade level requirement from level 12 to level 10.
• Rally will now boost Offense and Speed by 2, instead of boosting speed by 1 and offense by 1-3 randomly.
• Rebalanced the physics damage trees cause to be more consistent when hitting the same unit type.
• Clobber will now cause damage only once the unit stops.
• Bridge railings will not break as easily as they did.
• Removed height modifiers for very small values.
• Slightly reduced movement range per turn for parties on the world map.
• Removed cooldown of Frostbite.
• Increased Wizard damage and HP.
• Holy Light cooldown increased to 2 turns.
• Increased Priest HP to 12.
• Fixed Whirlwind spell for Wizards.
• Fixed Kick for Champions.

UI & Visual Changes

• Upgraded creature dwelling art and increased building size, this could cause visual glitches in old save files.
• Added a hub list to make them easier to manage, showing which hubs still have an available upgrade for purchase each day.
• Improved mechanism for reducing misclicks while fast clicking. While ability selection occurs on mouse button up, rapid movements during selection will not cancel it even if the cursor drifts off the button.
• Clicking on enemy unit cards will now automatically move the camera to them.
• Added new animations and model for the ranger's 'Become a Tree' ability.

• Most upgrades will now change ability descriptions in the ability bar after purchasing them, making it easier to track and use them.
• Clarified missing requirements in hub upgrade cards.
• Fixed Savage running slower than other heroes.
• Added a bunch of visual effects for new abilities and upgrades, we still have several in the works.
• Added animations for status icons to make them easier to spot when gained or lost.
• Temporary new visual effect for 'Stun Protection' to differentiate it from Brace.
• New loading screen tips implemented.
• Fixed visuals when picking up magic on the world map.
• Fixed drowning visuals for some units.
• Priests no longer cast Holy Light by default when right clicking allies.

Bug Fixes

And of course, there are always some bugs to squash. Keep posting about the ones you find, or even better, report directly using the in-game console or via Discord.

• Fixed a bug causing the game to hang during AI turn in skirmish mode's world map.
• Fixed an issue causing players to gain control of enemy units on the first turn of battle.
• It is no longer possible to transfer all units from a party and keep an empty one.
• Fixed several physics bugs for consistency including diagonal impacts, 1 tile pushing effects, and unit-object impacts.
• Fixed flicker of HUD when moving a melee unit near a ranged one (inflicting zone of control) that caused some players to have misclicks.
• Fixed Telekinesis unlimited range bug.
• Fixed Skeleton Archer's Curse Arrow to be shot by default.
• Fixed a bug displaying a faulty healing indication of Healing Aura when killing multiple enemies.
• Fixed badly configured abilities of skeleton heroes.
• Fixed a bug which allowed units to provide cover to themselves in some cases.
• Fixed Radiant Beacon bug which caused it to fail in some cases.
• Fixed a bug causing bridge fights to spawn in the wrong map.
• Fixed a bug preventing Champions from picking up potions.
• Fixed a bug which caused the remaining movement bar to not refresh when switching parties.
• Fixed the 'Marked' status tooltip and information being faulty.
• Fixed a bug in ability selection and casting when using enemy unit cards.
• While we plan to create a new tutorial, for now we implemented some visuals and abilities from newer game versions.
• Fixed Ctrl+Number hotkeys which weren't working properly.
• Fixed a bug causing enemy units to start combat activated when facing off against the same party for the second time.
• Fixed several typos reported.

Performance

• Reduced frame skips when applying status effects.
• Improved loading time of scenes.
• Removed delay in applying status effect visuals.

That's it for this one! We'll get back to work on the next updates and you are most welcome to play more and provide feedback to fuel our progress. Onwards!

[ 2019-01-12 22:18:40 CET ] [ Original post ]