v2.8 - The Homestead update out now!

 

The game is currently on sale on its own, as well as in a bundle together with our long-respected comrade game of Songs of Conquest. Additionally, the v2.8.0 Homestead update is also releasing today. Woohoo!

The v2.8 update is a culmination of several different development processes that all come together into a single, large update. Looking over the final list of changes, it is comparable to both v2.6 and v2.7 in size.

Town Reworks

Faction Update

Rogue Update

Community Updates

Spells Update

 

If you’ve already read the previous post about v2.8, you might expect this to be nothing more than repetition. But this is not so. While I expected v2.8 to be mostly done when I wrote that post, several things then happened to expand the update. The newer parts of the v2.8 update will be tagged with (new!).

 

First, let’s do a general overview of the different parts of the update, and then we’ll go into more detail.

 

Town Reworks

New building requirement system and UI

New system for upgrading units

Tavern rework

Reworked town perks

5 new town perks

 

Faction Update

Arcane class skill reworks

2 new Tide units, changed unit roster, the Bubble Shield ability (new!)

New unit abilities, and changes for several faction units (new!)

Woodfae added as Wild’s tier 1 unit; change to Symbiotic Grove (new!)

New subskill for every hero class (new!)

 

Rogue Update

3 New Buildings for each Rogue town

Unique resources for several Rogue towns

Changes to Rogue town expansions

Changes to Rogue hero classes (new!)

New Major skills: Adventurer & Discovery and four subskills (new!)

 

Community Updates

10 new dragon units, four dragon themed vaults

15 new suggestions implemented, incl. new artifact management screen

A new hero for every faction and for every Rogue town (new!)

4 new units

Expanded Lore Document

 

Spells Update

New spell graphics and higher clarity for spell casting

New graphical effects during battle (new!)

12 new spells (new!)

 

 

To give an idea of how large the update is, if we ignore reworks and just focus on content quantity, the update adds 12 normal spells, 16 special spells, 17 units, 5 town perks, 38 town buildings, 4 overworld buildings, 27 new heroes and 16 new unit abilities. When it comes to skills, it either adds 8 or 44 new skills, depending on how you count the new class-specific skills.

 

Let’s dive into the changes in greater detail, then!

 

Town Reworks

 

This was the original goal of the v2.8 update: To rework various aspects of the town that I felt caused clunky gameplay. Front and center was my desire to overhaul the building requirement system, that has been unpopular (from what I can tell) ever since v1.9 added in static building requirements. Before then, each game would have a shuffled grid of buildings and requirements. After v1.9, those requirements were frozen to always be the same - which reduced RNG, but highlighted that the system itself was bad.

 

Apart from building requirements, various other parts of how towns worked felt like they could use a rework. Thus, the following list of changes:

 

 

 

 

New building requirement system and UI

 

There has been growing sentiment about the building requirement system for towns being bad. The general desire has been for all limitations for one building to require another to be removed - or most, anyway. My own issue with the current system is that as development has gone on, more and more buildings have been moved to be early on in the town’s development, which creates a flood of choices early on. Especially when a new development level was reached and - POOF - now you have 6 new buildings available - that felt somewhat off.

I’m trying out a new building requirement system which sorts buildings into three categories - commercial, warfare and magic buildings. Instead of building requirements either being a global amount of buildings built and/or a specific building, the new requirements are based around number of the various types of buildings built. So for instance, you might want to build Archmage Tribunal, but to do so, you’ll need two more warfare buildings and one more commercial building. This will still keep limits in place for building up your town and planning out your build order, while not being quite as limiting.

It also comes with a new UI which sorts the buildings in the three categories, which I hope will make it easier for new players to get an overview of their options.

 

 

 

New system for upgrading units

 

Unit upgrades have been tough to balance. They’re very core to the game, with most units actually being pretty basic and only getting their interesting abilities once upgraded. As well, they allow the player to focus on what units they think are most core to their strategy. However, I feel like as the game is now, usually unit upgrades are something you get not because you want to, but because you need another building and the upgrade is cheaper than the other options - and otherwise, you’d rather steer for more impactful buildings. There’s also a lot of micro-managing of bringing your units back to town to get upgraded, and then returned to your main hero.

The new upgrade system seeks to improve this by removing dwelling upgrades, and instead creating a single two-tier building which allows you to upgrade units. Once a unit upgrade is bought, it affects all your units across the map instantly - no more micro-managing upgraded and unupgraded unit stacks! This also leads to a minor reduction in the unit stack clutter.

 

 

 

 

Tavern rework

 

This one is a bit more experimental, and might change with more player feedback. There is a problem in how central the tavern is to the current way the game is played. It allows you to get more heroes for:

Scouting

Moving around units

Getting extra units

Secondary heroes for leveling

 

I’ve tried disincentivising getting the tavern early and hiring several heroes early by changing the cost, the availability of the tavern - neither seemed to really fix the issue. The building is simply too strong and also too necessary. I also do not enjoy the inconsistency of sometimes getting a hero that can do nothing, and sometimes getting one which gives gold each day or gets entourage - completely at random.

The new version of the tavern goes as follows:

You can hire “Scouts” even without building the actual tavern

Building the tavern allows you to upgrade Scouts into full heroes

Champion Statue etc. have been improved to offer even more heroes

 

Scouts are heroes in all ways apart from having skills and leveling up. You can even get xp on a scout and they’ll then level up when you upgrade the scout into a full hero. The scout is cheaper, too. Really, instead of trying to nerf the tavern, I’m now making it so that you don’t need it if all you really wanted was a scout - and the tavern, then, is more useful if you’re looking for a real hero to level up secondarily.

Other changes:

Fewer units for hiring a scout

Larger cost increase from hiring several heroes

Heroes now level up when hired, making new hero levels more consistent, and giving you better control over their skill choices

 

 

Reworked town perks

 

With the removal of the old town level system with thresholds for number of buildings constructed, a new system was required for unlocking the town perks. But I do actually like the new system, because it always felt a bit jarring that you suddenly got a town perk pop-up out of nowhere when you were actually planning on doing something else. Now, instead of them being unlocked after building X buildings, they’re unlocked when building specific buildings.

For normal faction towns, such as the Order town, this is the Centre of Order, Palace of Order and Empire of Order.

Additionally, the town perks pop-up is displayed on top of the town window instead of removing the town window, and you’re able to click “wait” button to delay picking your town perk so that it does not interrupt you quite as much as before.

 

 

 

 

5 new town perks

 

There’s 5 new town perks on offer. The Sponsor perk is shown above and gives access to a rare faction unit that normally would only be accessible by starting as a special hero. The Spell Research teaches more spells and teaches spells to heroes even when they’re not in town. Devotee Hall increases a spell skill for any heroes stopping by town, as a second Archmage Tribunal. Gallows decreases luck and morale of anyone attacking your towns or heroes. Finally, and most excitingly, Development Plan allows you to build any building in town way before you normally would be able to.

 

 

Faction Update

 

This contains various changes and updates to various factions. Arcane, Tide and Wild each get their own unique changes, while the rest of the factions get more general changes. This part was not originally envisioned when I started working on v2.8, but various changes within the town rework and rogue rework made clear that these changes were needed.

 

 

 

 

Arcane faction skill rework

 

Previously, the Arcane class skills gave, respectively, a resource that can only be used in a single town building, or boring ore. This was way past due for a rework.

In v2.8, the Aether system has been expanded, and the skills now do something on their own, too. Aether is now granted in four varieties: Fire, Earth, Air, Water - and is granted by defeating various enemies. Usually, it’s kind of obvious what units give what Aether, like, the Spirited Fire giving Fire, and most human units giving Air.

 

Aether can then be used in one of three ways:

Casting a random spell when entering combat with element and power based on the highest amount of Aether carried

Aether Forge now offers appropriate bonuses for the various types of Aether

Special spells with unique effects that cost Aether instead of mana

 

There’s 12 special spells that your Arcane heroes will learn by ranking up their class skills.

 

Additionally, the class skills have been renamed from Alchemy and Aethermancy to Aethercrafting and Aethermancy. The Alchemy name was simply too close in wording to the Alchemist hero class and the Chemistry skill.

 

 

 

2 new Tide units, changed unit roster, the Bubble Shield ability

 

Tide has been a moderately popular faction, but never really due to its units. There were a couple of issues, that I had tried to work around previously in a rather awkward manner. Here, I’m mostly hinting to the Harpooner unit, which was so useless that I decided that players in Rogue Realms would get it without picking it, just so that it would have some use. Additionally, the Geyseral and Canceri units for tier 6 were way too similar.

 

The Harpooner and Geyseral are being removed from the Tide unit roster, replaced by the new Sirenaga (pronounced Siren-aga) and the Tidemancer. The first is a tier 2 aggressively statted unit with charge, and the latter is a back-line support unit able to give allies bubble shields and resurrecting fallen comrades. The Harpooner and Geyseral can still be found as neutral units.

 

The bubble shield ability is a new Tide-specific ability for the Spawnling, Sirenage and Tidemancer, which gives a shield that absorbs damage until it pops. This finally makes Spawnlings more survivable and helps Tide out during the early game.

 

Finally, the Tide caster class has been renamed from Pyromancer to Sailblazer. The old name was an attempt at forcing people to accept Tide as a fire-themed faction, but that never worked out. With the changes to the fire-themed units of the faction, it felt natural to finally retire the old, confusing name, and to finally accept that Tide is a water faction first-and-foremost, with air and fire second. The name, Sailblazer, should hold up this compromise well.

 

 

 

 

New unit abilities, and changes for several faction units

 

I finally went and overhauled unit abilities for some of the oldest units with the least interesting abilities. Here, I’m especially referring to units which only had the passive, stat-altering abilities like Slow, Sturdy or Savage. These abilities will no longer show up in the units’ tooltips (since their effects can still be seen by looking at the unit’s stats). The units have been given more interesting abilities instead.

 

Druid gains the Long Ranged and Rooting abilities, while losing Summoning. The Wildspeaker still has Summoning.

Flamejuggler gains the Burning ability, while the upgraded Flame Stoker gains Explosive Shots.

Avalancher loses Terror, but gains the ability to Unit Thrower, throwing Goblins.

Dreamer gains the Long Ranged and Dreamstrike abilities. It loses Summoning, but the upgraded version still has it. Sopor also loses Confusion.

Divine Light ability is granted to: Friar, Crusader, Bladesinger, Djinn, Voodoo, Sunbringer, Archopriest, Panda, Teaknight, Bloomer, Monokero, and Prismatic.

Beastslayer ability is granted to: Jotun, Tarantula, Catabolite, Imp, Lizardcher, Apex, Tunnelrider, Archer, Kroll Bowman, Equestrian, Demise, and Strongarm.

Blackhearted ability is granted to: Lost Soul, Zombie, Rot Knight, Canine, Upgraded Demontamer, Minotaur, Shadowmancer, Absurdum, Shale Drake, Infernal, Black Dragon, and Larva.

Rage ability is granted to: Raider, Monster Trog, Cave Regent, and Shambler.

Terror ability is granted to: Cyclops and Watcher.

Evolve ability is granted to: Worm.

Interruption ability is granted to: Ophidian, Minewatch, Divine Monk, and Mountainguard.

Plating ability is granted to: Hoplite, Polar Cavalry, and Hillkeeper.

Inspiration ability is granted to: White Yeti.

Potent Soul ability is granted to: Torchbearer.

Salt Strike ability is granted to: Seamare and Crystallius.

 

Some of these unit abilities are new. We have the Rooting ability, which is akin to Rootcaller but the unit still attacks normally - and the Dreamstrike ability, which has a chance to make enemies fall asleep, its effect akin to the Slumber spell.

 

The Divine Light, Beastslayer, Blackhearted and Salt Strike abilities all give the unit increased damage against a specific type of units. In general, that bonus will apply against about 20% of enemy units - so the bonuses are going to be relevant rather often, but not in all combat scenarios. This occasionally brings a benefit to any player that positions their units correctly to intercept enemies that their units are strong against.

 

 

 

Woodfae added as Wild’s tier 1 unit; Change to Symbiotic Grove

Okay, this takes a bit of explanation.

 

For a long time now, the most efficient way to play Wild has been to use the class skills to create a large amount of anima, and then making sure that you constantly move your anima back to town to upgrade them into forest spirits. When your forest spirits die, they create anima that you can then send back to town to re-upgrade as a sort of emergent infirmary.

 

This was really cool but also really clunky, taking a lot of boring effort in micromanaging heroes in ferrying back and forth units. Part of the reason for the rework to the unit upgrade system was actually to solve this type of micromanagement.

 

But the new upgrade system left the Wild strategy in a weird spot. Either, anima would always be auto-upgraded into Forest Spirits, effectively making Forest Spirits immortal - or they’d be really weak. Additionally, there was a long-standing issue where Forest Spirits could not be resurrected by the infirmary - because if the infirmary worked on Forest Spirits, you could duplicate them by upgrading their anima.

 

To solve this, there’s now a change so that the anima is a neutral unit, and instead Wild’s unupgraded tier 1 unit has been changed to the Woodfae. The Woodfae, just like its upgraded counterpart the Forest Spirit, create a permanent anima when they die. But since the anima cannot be upgraded back to a Forest Spirit and is a separate unit, all the problems disappear, and now Forest Spirits can be resurrected normally by the Infirmary. Additionally, the Woodfae is a rather sturdy unit what with being able to create anima on death even before it gets upgraded, so it works as a buff. It still gains flying by being upgraded - but upgrading is now less of a necessity.

 

But what about the cool Wild strategy of turning Anima into Forest Spirits? Well, the Symbiotic Grove has been updated to now also turn anima into Woodfae/Forest Spirits day by day - both for heroes inside and outside of town. Thus, the life cycle of the anima has been changed as shown above.

 

 

 

New Subskill for Every Hero Class

 

For the longest time, there has been a lot of suggestions about giving heroes unique combat abilities. In v2.7, it became easier to mod this sort of thing. And for v2.8, I’ve gone and used this as the basis for a new set of subskills. Along with a request for a more consistent way of getting mana regeneration for casters early, the following set of subskills has been added.

 

In total, there’s 38 new subskills - one for each class - but they can also be considered two subskills with a unique effect for each class.

 

One set of subskills are the Warrior subskills, which are given to fighter hero classes. They give a stat bonus and a combat ability. For instance, Extinctor heroes gain access to the Decay Warrior subskill which gives +2 proficiency and Leech Life during combat; while Artisan heroes gain access to the Arcane Warrior subskill, which gives +2 defence, +1 proficiency, and makes the hero summon a small group of Scrolls around them at the start of combat.

 

The other set are the Mage subskills, which are given to caster hero classes. They teach the hero one or several useful spells, often at a reduced mana cost. Additionally, it makes them regenerate 3 mana each day. Mana regeneration plus a spell with reduced mana cost makes them really efficient spellcasters during the early game. Examples include Withermages gaining access to the Decay Mage subskill, which teaches a Deathripple which costs 12 mana instead of 16, and Summoner heroes gaining access to the Essence Mage subskill, which teaches Elemental Air, Elemental Rock, Elemental Fire and Elemental Water spells, each with mana cost reduced by 2.

 

 

Rogue Update

 

While I think the Rogue Realms DLC worked perfectly as a large overhaul DLC that updated most aspects of the game, it fell a bit short on its potential of adding in 12 new factions. Adding in 12 new factions was never its goal nor something it promised - it promised to add a single new faction with 12 different towns - but still, we all had the dream, and woke up to twelve towns of varying quality and varying uniqueness. With v2.8, I’m trying to get the Rogue towns a bit closer to that dream of 12 unique new towns, that can, if not be called full factions, at least pseudo-factions.

 

 

 

 

3 New Buildings for Each Rogue town

 

This change has been a much requested one. Previously, all Rogue towns had the same buildings. Boo! Made them feel less like 12 factions and more like a single faction.

 

Anyway, I’ve now added three unique buildings per Rogue town, which mimic the design style of the unique buildings per normal faction (i.e. Hostler, Counting House, Conscription Centre, Tower of Idolatry). That is, in total, 36 new buildings with different effects - most of them at least slightly unique.

 

I won’t go into detail about all of them here, because that’s a lot of buildings. I’ll just let you know I tried to develop on the various themes of the Rogue towns with the aesthetic and gameplay design of the buildings. Additionally, several of them use the new improved system for custom resources, such as the Scrap resource for Industry.

 

As an aside, the introduction of these new buildings have also made me go through the Rogue towns and remove various buildings from them. Thus, all Rogue towns no longer have all five of Colossus, Lieutenant Hall, Deity, Summoning Circle, Mercenary Hall - instead, each town only has two of the five, different ones depending on what town, with the latter 3 replaced with the 3 new unique buildings.

 

Changes to Rogue town expansions

 

Previously, the Rogue town expansions were tied into the town building progression system. The idea was that Rogue towns would give you the unique ability to really quickly get access to late game buildings if you went and focused on building your expansions. This, however, was not as interesting as I’d thought. Instead, the Rogue town expansions now work a bit more similarly to normal town income buildings - as in, each requiring the previous one. But instead of each of them having the same effect, they now have different effects, as follows:

 

Trade Expansion: Gives a town perk

Martial Expansion: Gives visiting heroes +2 attack

Artisan Expansion: Gives visiting heroes +2 proficiency

Urban Expansion: Gives visiting heroes +5000 xp

 

Changes to Rogue hero classes

 

Previously, Rogue hero classes were set up in the code as either fighter or caster classes. But before v2.6 reworked the hero class system, classes kind of did not exist, and each hero instead was either a fighter or a caster, independently of its class - with the Rogue heroes being half and half within a single class. This led to some strange situations after v2.6 where it wasn’t clear whether a Rogue hero was a fighter or a caster. Now, all of this has been aligned. Heroes of fighter classes do not start with spells, while heroes of caster classes do. Additionally, the starting spells of Rogue heroes have been updated to avoid duplicates.

 

 

 

New Major Skills: Adventurer & Discovery, and four subskills

 

In an attempt to expand on neutral heroes, there’s now a new set of major skills for Rogue heroes, mercenaries and wanderers. Adventurer is the major for fighter heroes, while Discovery is for casters. Both give bonuses when interacting with resources and buildings on the overworld map.

There’s also four new subskills:

Herbalism allows finding invisible herbs across the overworld.

Split Branch allows picking a secondary unit for the hero to specialise in.

Liberty gives a stat bonus that you can freely allocate across the 10 stats.

Heirloom gives artifacts when the hero levels up.

 

There’s some fun interactions with Herbalism and Heirloom giving new interactables that the Adventurer and Discovery skills will trigger with. I’m sure players will also find a bunch of other synergies between this and various other skills.

 

With these, most Rogue and neutral heroes have had their skillsets updated. Additionally, the Menace heroes now have this as their “class skill”, further distinguishing them from necromancers.

 

24 new units for Rogue towns

 

There’s a set of 24 new units for the various Rogue town rosters. However, these aren’t finished yet. More news on them later. They will either be released as a later part of the v2.8.x update series or as part of v2.9.

 

They’re really interesting, and we had the community involved in voting for what unit concepts should be added and which should be discarded. So I’m really excited to bring them in when they’re done. Stay tuned!

 

Community Updates

 

The community is still going strong. While there haven’t been as many art marathons during the last half a year, the number and quality of those who enter has only risen. We’ve seen some really exciting stuff, and some artists have allowed their entries to be added to the game. Additionally, a lot of new suggestions, some 15 of which have been added to the game.

 

 

 

A new hero for every faction and for every Rogue town

 

The result of the 10th art marathon is that the above set of heroes are getting added to the game. There were sooo many people who entered this time, and their work was rather incredible in quality too. It was honestly a bloodbath, seeing the 84 submissions by 20 different artists being cut down to this list of finalists. The finalists were picked mostly according to vote count, but secondarily in a way to make sure that each faction and each rogue town would get at least one new hero.

Credit to Freddy, DeadSaracen, DragonRose/AntRose, Lyolf, SleepyMage, Erridian, Revikatis, Hamastra and Medicine Melancholy.

 

 

 

10 new dragon units, four dragon themed vaults

 

V2.8 is going to bring in a large update to the dragon side of the game. This includes 10 new units, most of which are dragons, the rest of which are dragon-themed. These dragons come from the 9th art marathon, some of whose artists allowed their art to be used for the game. Credit to DragonRose/AntRose, Erridian, Revikatis, Nayooom, Spider Glace, DeadSaracen.

 

Many of these new dragon units are accessed by a synergy between the Dragonking ability and the new Dragonsoul ability. This allows specific units to be granted via Dragonking in case the hero knows another specific skill. For instance, if the hero has both Dragonking and Leadership, they can get the new Featherdrake unit. This is because the Featherdrake has the Dragonsoul ability for Leadership. That ability also gives Featherdrakes additional stats during combat for each rank of Leadership, and gives heroes extra xp when ranking up Leadership if they’ve had Featherdrakes in their army.

Apart from Featherdrakes, there’s:

Abyss Sovereign, which is gained via Dragonsoul Mysticism

Pyroserpent, which is gained via Dragonsoul Pyromancy

Cloud Sovereign, which is gained via Dragonsoul Aeromancy

Sheepeater, which is gained via Dragonsoul Healing

Featherdrake, which is gained via Dragonsoul Leadership

Dragonturtle, which is gained via Dragonsoul Armorer

Bloodwyrm, which is gained via Dragonsoul Carnage

Tyrant Guard, which is gained via Dragonsoul Estates

Dragonscroll, which is gained via Dragonsoul Sorcery

 

 

Finally, these new dragons can also be found in a set of new Dragon Towers. There’s four different dragon towers, each with a custom crafted encounter of various dragon units and support units. Dragon towers are predominantly found in secondary areas of the map, very rare in starting areas.

 

 

 

 

15 new suggestions implemented

 

As usual, there’s been a bunch of new suggestions in the discord. A total of 145 new suggestions with 773 votes have been tallied and selected between, with 15 of them getting added to the game. These range from minor changes, like Balaenopteras getting Aquatic, to larger changes, such as new game options and a way to see the total cost of all units available in town. The largest change is that there’s now a much better system for managing artifacts.

 

4 new units

 

The people who win art marathons are given wishes as for something to add to the game. The two winners of the last marathon (their vote number was tied!!) both asked for units, and thus 3 new units are added to the game. The 4th new unit is tied to the Summon Salt Hawk (see below) spell, and is the epinomous Salt Hawk.

 

 

 

Expanded Lore Document

 

For a while now, there’s been a semi-secret lore document bundled within the game’s files. This document has now been greatly expanded. It contains history, overviews, diagrams, stories and lore snippets for over a hundred heroes. I’ve also added a series of hand-drawns illustrations to make it feel less like a block of text. I don’t expect players to read this - but for those who are interested, you’ll find the 153 page .pdf within the game’s files.

 

 

Spells Update

 

Finally, the update also includes a couple of updates to spells and other magical effects during combat.

 

 

 

New spell graphics and higher clarity for spell casting

 

New effects for spell casts have been added. There’s a series of hand-drawn animations as well as better spell particles. The animations depend on the element of the spell as well as the power of the spell. That means that as your hero gains spellpower, the animations for casting the same spell will adapt.

 

There’s also a 300 ms lag time between casting the spell and the effect actually occurring. This makes the spell casting feel more impactful and allows the player to more easily orient themselves towards a spell to notice its effect. For instance, when the spell is not cast by yourself, but by the opposing hero, or by an effect such as Destruction.

 

Additionally, the graphics for units casting spells has been overhauled too, using the new elemental particles rather than the old squiggly blue lines.

 

New graphical effects during battle

 

Further along the lines of increasing combat clarity for magical effects, there’s now a new particle effect for units healing or resurrecting other units, which more clearly show who does what.

 

There’s also a new hand-drawn animation for explosions - one for the fiery type, and one for other explosive impacts, such as the AOE damage from Blaster units.

 

 

 

 

12 new spells

 

Finally, there’s a series of new spells. The goal for these was to include effects that have not been seen before but that would still fit in as normal spells. I’m really really happy with the creativity of behind the recent spells, as I try to put more and more distance between the current design philosophy and the original quantity over quality philosophy of v1.0.

 

A good example of what I mean by that would be the four new Summoning spells:

Summon Dragonbreath summons a dragon that breathes fire and then dies

Summon Wasps summons a swarm of wasps that deal damage to a lot of enemies

Summon Titan Fist summons a series of fists that each picks a random enemy target, punching that target and any other nearby enemies

Summon Fireflies summons a bunch of fireflies. This one works like other Summoning spells, but its usage is a bit different, what with fireflies killing themselves when they attack

 

Additionally, there’s four new salt spells, and four other misc. spells, including the Fireball Barrage spell that allows a group of your melee units to throw ranged fireballs instead of their normal attacks for a limited time.

 

If you’re not sure what “salt spell” means, they’re a series of spells added originally in v1.7 which each has a type of anti-magic property. As more spells were added, they became so rare that it made sense to expand their series. Anti-magic spells are quite core to offering counter-play against spell-heavy strategies - and most of them also have usage outside of that scenario.

 

 

Other Changes and Bug Fixes

 

BUG FIXES

Fixing a bug that makes the enemy hero unable to cast spells if you do not have any spells yourself

Fixing Tide of Temples having a hidden requirement to only work on Tide heroes who knew their faction skill

Fixed a bug that allowed heroes to make temporary morale and termporary luck bonuses permanent by saving and reloading

Fixed Week of Shields and Week of Invasion working incorrectly when the enemy AI attacks your army during their turn

Fixed a bug that made units casting spells sometimes target the top left corner of the battlefield

Fixed an issue where a hero could use their Doppelgangers to trigger interactable buildings several times

Fixed Spire of Life and Death using the wrong sprite

Fixed Province Guards mentioning Dizzy Tune and not Lovely Tune in the tooltip

Fixed a bug that would make the game freeze when picking up a treasure giving a random spell if your hero already knows all spells in the game

Fixed a graphical error related to getting heroes with negative mana

Fixed one way in which heroes might end up with negative mana

Fixed Mana Crystals subskill being able to use 0.25 or 0.5 crystals. It is now rounded to the nearest integer

Fixed modded heroes who did not have their faction set being put into the wrong faction in case a faction mod was loaded, too

Fixed using Lieutenant Hall increasing the cost of recruiting other heroes

Fixed Raffe Rests getting restored in an arbitrary manner instead of restoring the closest Raffe Rest

Attempted to put in a fix for a rare issue that caused battles to be considered as Won within a couple of seconds of battles starting

Fixed King Tyrant Cal being shown as an unlockable hero for accomplishing the Wilderness Achievement

Added a text to the tooltip for gold income detailing gold income from Exploitation

Taxpayer units exploiting mines now still give taxpayer gold income, and this will show up in the gold income tooltip

Prevented rare Obelisks on islands from freezing the game

Fixed a bug that made roaming heroes on water maps only spawn on islands, not as pirates

Put in a routine to re-generate any map in which you would not be able to reach the enemy's town (unless the map has a special win condition)

Update to the sprite that shows that a unit is sleeping

Clarified in Tower of Idolatry tooltip that it sells artifacts to *visitng heroes*

Clarified in Doppelganger tooltip that xp sharing only goes one way

Added in a blacklist of spells that can't be casted via random effects such as Release and Arcane Spire

Removed Evolve from the Whimsy spell list - added Summon Wasps and Summon Titanfist to it instead

Added the ability to use unit group names for lexicon unit search

Updated the description of Horror to say that it gives -3 morale, as it was meant to

Made Dark Carnivals a lot more joyous

Updated the Soul resource tooltip to say that you get Souls while owning a Decay town, not a Soul Beacon

Fixed an issue preventing the AI from correctly trading between all their heroes, instead only trading between all non-garrisoned heroes

Fixed a translation issue for rare versions of mines

Fixed a translation issue for the header for the Unclear and Clarifying Vision windows

Fixed artifacts giving +1 Offense being able to give the hero unending amounts of Attack

Fixed lexicon unit search working strangely with certain ability names

Fixed lexicon unit search working strangely with certain living types

Fixed starting factions being set incorrectly when leaving a game from inside combat

Fixed starting heroes not being remembered correctly when leaving a game

Fixed Doppelgangers not always being considered ranged/melee like the hero that created them

Fixed Doppelgangers being able to get free levels whenever created if certain buildings were built in town / perks were unlocked in town

Fixed an issue preventing the AI from correctly trading units between all their heroes, instead only trading between all non-garrisoned heroes

Fixed a crash related to being above rank 100 in a skill

Fixed a bug that gave you units when losing a battle to a Mudcaster Tower, Dragon Aerie or Brood Cavern

 

 

UNIT CHANGES

Changed unit targeting so they now try to diversify their targets better instead of all targeting a single unit

The Rally ability now clears fear, confusion and sleep, and now preferably targets units afflicted by those

The Healer and First Aid abilities now clear poison

Unit abilities Slow, Sturdy and Savage no longer clog up unit tooltips; similarly, Aquatic has been made part of Sirenaga innate ability, and those units no longer show the Aquatic ability on its own

Made charge and leap slightly less inconsistent, especially at the start of combat

Passive units now have increased range for healing

Reworked penguins, giving them Freezing attacks and better stats

Canpinceri now have Budding, creating Cribcrabs when they take damage, instead of Impenetrable

 

 

OTHER CHANGES

 

Stat bonuses for the next battle are now shown in the hero's ledger tab

Runes are now shown in the hero's ledger tab

Customisation window now has priority over hero level-up, meaning that you use Customisation when the skill is picked even if the hero has more level-ups to go through

Waterpower, Earthpower, Firepower and Airpower now show their rank as a number instead of as a roman numeral in the hero's ledger tab

Fixed Rogue heroes being mixed between Fighters and Casters in spite of what their class would place them as

Picked new spells for all (unlockable) heroes that started with the same spell as another hero from their class

Lexicon now sorts spells by mana cost

Increased the effect of Shadowlock spell

Converting towns will now no longer sap all unit production from it, only sapping unit production from dwellings that are built in the town post-conversion

Renamed the Fur Shawl in the Ruthless artifact set to Leather Cape

AI will no longer waste time and mana casting spells that are uncastable, such as beam spells, when their hero is dead

The Deathcoil and Coil of the Dead mechanics can now at most trigger once per second per unit

Hegemony now no longer creates tier 1 units; instead, it stores the leftover value for proccing after future battles

Updated various Adventure Map Buildings to give upgraded units according to the new unit upgrade system

Updated the Entourage mechanic to give upgraded units according to the new unit upgrade system

Updated the Weaponsmith to now unlock upgrades for units map-wide instead of just upgrading the units carried by the hero right now

Improved Haberdashery interface for very high numbers of artifacts

Hero mods that do not specify what unitgroup a hero should use, but do specify their class, will now use the unitgroup usually represented by that class

Updated the description of the Ressurection unit ability to mention its limitations

Updated Seb the Full’s portrait

 

 

 

Closing Remarks

So, that’s it. Another huge update along the lines of v2.6 and v2.7. I don’t know if I have another huge update in me for v2.9. Chances are that updates will continue to slow down and shrink down as time goes by. I think the game is just about as good as it can get without once more pulling up a bunch of the core tenets of its design - which I am once more getting more unwilling to do.

 

There has been some pushback to the changes made in v2.7, just as there was to changes made in v2.6. I don’t regret the choices I’ve made. I spent a lot of time thinking about each change that people might potentially dislike, so I can rest easy with my assessment of the pros outweighing the cons. But I know that that’s what it’s like to update a game so long after its “Final Release” - make some happy on one hand, and on the other, disappoint others.

 

As mentioned, I’m going to size down the breadth and depth of updates from here on out. Probably just do quality of life and polishing for some time. Maybe even focus mainly on balance, for whatever that is worth.

 

As always, thank you for trying out my game, and for those who hang around and support the community, doing art marathons or guides or videos - thank you too, from the bottom of my heart.

 

See you in the next announcement. I think you’ll find that one really, really, exciting.

 

-ThingOnItsOwn