Welcome Back, Warriors!

Great to see you again. We know it hasn't been very long since the last major update, but our prophecy is being fulfilled! The increasing amounts of accurate feedback we've been getting from you directly, through in-game bug reports and in Discord is helping immensely. Therefore, it's major update time again! And it includes no less than three cumulative updates (0.10.3.1, 0.10.3.2, 0.10.4). The first two have already been deployed over the last couple of weeks, and the biggest one is coming later today. Let's dig in, shall we?

New Currency & World Map Changes

The market has changed - All hail the Beetcoin! Our world's new main currency. Costs have been changed accordingly and some Beet farms for you to capture have sprung across the map to leverage the new trend. Magic is still used for specialized services. Meanwhile, we keep upgrading and iterating our dynamic world map based on your feedback, and it's getting there. In 0.10.4 we added more variations, improved some art, and added elements important for the other changes. This is an ongoing effort and we plan to improve and add to the world map frequently in updates.

Towns, Buildings & Guild Upgrades

Patch 0.10.4 introduces the long-awaited overhaul to hubs, hereafter known as Towns, and sets the infrastructure for deeper strategic gameplay. The previous placeholder upgrade system is also gone, with Town upgrades and Guild Upgrades replacing them. Towns will be associated with factions, and their respective available upgrades and units will change accordingly. Town upgrades are buildings built in that particular location, to be gained or lost according to the tides of war. It is possible to build the same buildings in multiple towns, often with stacking effects. For example, some buildings generate resources, while others unlock higher tier units for recruitment. Guild upgrades are universal, can only be bought once, and can never be lost regardless of any particular town's ownership status. Once you increase your party size to five, for instance, it will remain five even if you lose the town where you bought the upgrade. Try the new build and let us know what you think of the changes at our Discord server!

Patch Notes

• Save files from previous builds are not supported in 0.10.4 releasing today.

Major Changes

• Beetcoin introduced, Beet Farms added to the world map.
• Added building which increases Beetcoin production.
• Added buildings which unlock higher tier units and grant a defensive bonus when the Town is attacked including a controllable ballista.
• Added multiple faction specific buildings with different perks for units, heroes or for the guild.
• Overhauled battle difficulty indication to a single 5 skulls meter of relative difficulty based on your currently selected party.
• Several ability upgrades (including some Lift, Brace, Kick upgrades for example) were removed from skill trees and reintegrated as Town/Guild upgrades.
• Removed the key segment of the tutorial after reports of it being confusing for players, instead tutorial will cover leaping. Also swapped the toppling pillar with a tree.

Balance

• Increased Chain Lightning cooldown from 3 to 4.
• Increased slow effect of Frostbite to slow units by 5 rather than 3.
• Reduced level requirements of Fire Blast from 4 to 2.
• Reduced level requirement of Smoke Bomb from 4 to 2.
• Reduced level requirement of Empower Party from 10 to 8.
• Reduced level requirement of the Charge reduced cooldown upgrade from 6 to 4.
• Changed Lift and Telekinesis to be more lenient. This was done because it was difficult to plan when not sure whether a certain movement would be allowed.
• Empower and Prepare can now be cast while stunned.
• Adjusted size, health and weight of Crystals and Eggs in Crypts to be more consistent with similar objects in other environments.
• Changed Columns and Spikes in Castle\Crypt\Goblin Camp\Crystal Cave environments to do damage that is more consistent with what trees cause.
• Changed mass of units for more consistent behaviors. For example, Spiderlings and Skeleton Weaklings won't be pushed as far as they used to be.
• Bleeding stacks will now increase damage suffered per turn instead of bleed duration.
• Added Smoke Bomb for Goblin Scouts.

AI & Behavior

• AI now properly detects attacks of opportunity when moving diagonally across enemy reach threshold.
• Ranged unit AI will be more willing to soak a ranged overwatch attack in order to leave a zone of control and be able to use ranged abilities.
• On Classic or Legendary difficulty, ranged units will try to maintain distance beyond the normal movement range of your melee units, as before. In Normal difficulty ranged units will be less vigilant and fail to stay out of reach.
• Tweaked AI to use fewer abilities in lower difficulties.
• Ranged units will account for the speed of melee units if slowed so it won't come too close.
• Ranged units will now properly recalculate hit chances when moving out of a control zone to a new position.
• Self Detonate on Goblin Bombers will now behave as intended and self-cast.

UI, Sound & Visuals

• Updated art for all dwelling types.
• You can now browse unit information in battle by clicking on an enemy card. Right-clicking the card will keep the information visible until clicking again, while holding RMB will keep the card open until releasing the button.
• You can now choose faction color for yourself and AI factions both.
• New art for towns, which now occupy 5x3 tiles instead of 3x3.
• Added new ability icons for several abilities (Chain Lightning/Bite/Piercing Bite/Encourage/Telekinesis/Lift/Frostbite).
• New model for Goblin Bombers.
• New icons for Goblin Bomber abilities.
• Updated art for rivers.
• Updated art for unstable magic on world map.
• Visual tweaks to Goblin Camp, Forest and Crystal Cave environments.
• Removed turn indication from several status effects for better readability.
• Party cards now have a dynamic size which fits current party size limit.
• Changed Frostbite sound effect, still don't like it, will be replaced.
• Changed Fog implementation for better performance and fewer visual glitches.

Performance

• Improved loading times of levels and especially first loading of each environment type, we'll keep working on it.
• Tactical battle performance improved significantly, there's still more to be done.
• Fixed a memory leak in mission loading which caused the game to slow down over time.

Bugs Squashed

• We added a timeout for physics actions to prevent the game from hanging when there's an issue - now when encountering a timeout the offending object or unit is killed or destroyed instead of hanging the game.
• Fixed a bug causing enemies to sometimes get activated and remain unseen on mission launch.
• Fixed a game crashing bug occurring sometimes when a tree fell into water.
• Fixed a bug which sometimes caused physics damage and kills to not grant experience.
• Fixed the issue which sometimes caused the game to display the wrong party when opening the skill tree, which caused the game to hang.
• Fixed a Resilient Attack of Opportunity bug where heroes sometimes became resilient enough to survive death itself! Dead units will no longer launch attacks of opportunity, even if they are resilient.
• Power Gloves now properly work with unit abilities as well as hero abilities.
• Improved diagonal pathfinding behavior in the world map.
• Fixed some edge cases where attack of opportunity is triggered even though it shouldn't be.
• Fixed an issue of physics causing more damage in Castle\Crypt\Goblin Camp environments than in Forest\Bridge\Crystal Cave environments.
• Fixed AI bug that caused ranged units to sometimes move willingly into melee unit control zones.
• Fixed Stalagmites in Caves sometimes not breaking properly in terms of animation.
• Fixed Insatiable Bloodlust bug which caused it to also grant the Dodge Stance upgrade.
• Fixed pillars in Crypt sometimes hitting twice for extra damage and stun protection removal.
• Fixed a bug where one could use Charge while stunned.
• Fixed Speed Potion lasting throughout the battle instead of two turns.
• After it was reported again, fixed an issue which sometimes allows player to move AI units on the first turn of combat.
• Added missing Lift ability to Skeleton Weakling.

That's it for now! Hope you like the changes, and welcome you to join the conversation, provide feedback, and help us improve more of what you care about for the next update. Onwards!

[ 2019-02-13 23:55:57 CET ] [ Original post ]