Those of you that are tuned in to the PREVIEW channel of the game have had the chance to play with this update over the weekend. Now that Monday has rolled around and nothing significant broke, its time to make this one go live.

The changes
Here's an overview over the chances in the latest update. A lot of it is related to stability and balance. Plus some improvements to the interface to make it quicker to grasp.

[quote=changelog]Balancing
Improved states for opening the gate with follower count was reduced to 25/50
Armored enemies have a tad less armor
AI now properly evaluates and targets obstacles with Taunt
You gain Focus as normal on Doomed difficulty now
Juggernaut cost increased to 5 (was 3)
Decoy changed to 2/4 (was 1/4)

Interface
Followers in Combat now only show the "multiple effects" icon if they actually have multiple icons to display
Critical enemy buffs are marked blue in pre-combat screens
Event buildings leading to potential boss fights are marked red in locations
Focus value display changed in edit deck screen
Crypt Gate events split and put on the map and into the location
Chance labels in event options adjusted to be more accurate
Added visual effect to unsummoning of units

Bugfixes
Brain Drain can now target obstacles as expected
Coordinated Swarm now also potentially targets the enemy leader
Battlefield Sense no longer triggers if Energy is full
Quickly unsummoning a unit with a fury effect no longer creates a stuck card
Can no longer spam ESC to quit out of Mulligan while game is still setting up starting state
Can no longer sneak illegal attacks in during animation (queueing an attack while kennel master is off the board and before his dog has appeared now leads to no action happening)
Route Generator now no longer creates multiples of unique locations (gladiator camp, boss locations)
Palanquin fortification event no longer picks non-follower but destroys follower
[/quote]

This week
As mentioned on Friday, this week will be about tweaking the Powers (by adding Energy costs) and then improving the follower screen with better filters/sorting.

I'm also looking at some of the more problematic keywords. I'm playing around with some changes right now, which might be ready for release next week (or they might not).



First Strike to Stun Strike?
One of the things I'm looking at is First Strike. Nowhere Prophet is a game where keeping control of the board is very important, and losing it can be very punishing. First Strike increases this issue since First Strike units if you are behind do nothing (since it only triggers on attack) and if you are in front they are real work horses when it comes to cleaning out the enemy side.

So to that end I'm currently trying a drastic change: Stun Strike as a replacement. Stun Strike says that whenever this unit deals damage to another unit, that unit is stunned.

This has some interesting ramification: It still provides access to a similar effect (no retaliation damage) but not for the Stun Strike unit directly, but rather for everyone else. It would also trigger when you're behind, so any unit attacking your Stun Strike unit would be stunned during your next turn. And lastly it gives more access to Stun, which is an interesting keyword.

And yeah, that's it for today.

If you enjoy these updates and the game, please consider leaving a Review! They are the best way to tell Steam (and other players) that this game is fun.

Thanks for playing and for reading,
- Martin