Act 2 update is out now!
Originally, this update was supposed to be quite a bit smaller, with only 1 hero. But we might have gotten a little carried off - with 3 campaign heroes, new units, 5 chunky campaign missions, 2 new skirmish maps and more. This also means that the total hero count planned for the 1.0 release has increased from 8 to 9.
Update content:
5 new campaign missions that continue the story, with 2 of the missions being Order faction.
2 new skirmish maps: Blue Pastures (4 player) and Sambia (6 player).
Saint George – A commander focused on cavalry troops. Currently only available in the campaign. He will become playable in custom games in a future update.
Vakarine – A powerful Baltic caster hero focused on mythical and spirit units. As a smaller scope hero that comes from campaign, she is unlocked in custom games after completing Mission 6: Eclipse.
Indraja – A Baltic archer hero with powerful abilities. As a smaller scope hero that comes from campaign, she is unlocked in custom games after completing Mission 10: Lone Star.
New units in hero rosters: Laumes, harpy-like casters with hero-specific elemental affinities. Kriwes, wise pagan priest casters great at banishing enemy heroes. Paladins, elite knights blessed by Heaven. Squires, mounted archers that can buff other units. Longbowmen, mercenary elite archers. The Wonderbird, a creature of legend that can heal injuries and prevent further conflict. The long awaited cockatrice, a very large monstrous unit, And more!
Hero animation updates: select heroes have received an animation upgrade. That's right, slow and floaty Michael is no more. Heroes now also have an introduction animation when selected in the lobby.
Features:
New Steam achievements.
New defense type: wet. Receives 200% lightning damage and 50% fire damage.
Non-hosts can now pick their own starting locations in skirmish lobby.
New charge system for knights.
Deer areas no longer block the build grid, making it easier to place a hunter building.
Catapults, cannons and other wheeled construction units will rotate when going up or down hills.
Extended color selection option in lobby.
Rangers now have arrows in their hands when shooting.
Fixes:
Overall FPS Increases, We keep looking for more things to optimize every update.
Potential fix to memory leak caused by projectiles. We monitor for more sources of leaks.
Minimap icon sorting should now render resources on top of units for better readability.
"Take this" text in ping wheel fixed.
Improved building collision with elevation.
Removed duplicate Blue Pastures in Gaurdians of Treiden.
Meness' blades no longer visible through fog of war.
Refund/cooldown should now reset when halting an ability mid-cast.
Charm can no longer be interrupted.
When targets die, the attacking unit no longer has its hit targeting spells cancelled.
Added missing physical damage type for Marksmen.
Destructible props now de-register correctly, which should fix some minor bugs and improve performance.
Golden Harvest glyph can no longer be applied to Ausrine, as she had no use for the glyph.
Fixed an issue where AI spells were not showing their visuals.
AoE spells can now hit destructible objects (props with hit points).
AoE spells with angles were offset in the wrong direction, fixed. Targeting should now feel a lot more accurate.
The building grid now gets updated later, to better match the pathing grid. This means you can't build outside of the walkable areas anymore.
Fixed some broken in-world text popups (tutorial messages).
Chosen player starting positions no longer reset on new player joining (and other actions).
Bear-Slayer can no longer be converted.
Double clicking a control group should no longer move the camera to dead units.
Finishing a match no longer opens the pause menu but rather the defeat or victory menu.
Camera pan is not frame dependent anymore, making it much smoother.
Top left XP bar should no longer flash.
The "eyes" of units are now at 3 meters high, instead of in their chest, for fog of war calculations. This should make approaching enemies on a hill less of a search for invisible units.
Hero randomization should now give you a new random hero when doing another match.
Projectiles will no longer rotate oddly when the target runs off.
Campaign:
Overlapping campaign dialogue prevention setup. While this should improve most cutscene triggers, if you find any cutscenes/events that refuse to trigger, please let us know.
Made it easier to click quests.
Bishop's Bane now has a fail condition. But we believe in you, so this should change nothing.
Mission 6: Eclipse.
Mission 7: Sword Brothers.
Mission 8: Founding of Ryga.
Mission 9: Winter Solstice.
Mission 10: Lone Star.
15 new glyphs to be found.
AI improvements:
Ausrine-specific AI profile for skirmish.
Ausrine will now focus on charming high health units.
Ausrine charm will now focus on stunned units.
Ausrine improved targeting behavior for Stunning Lights.
Ausrine will now use Falling Stars. I know you all love being targeted by Ausrine. :)
Ausrine will now Recognise her units.
Meness-specific AI profile for skirmish.
Meness will now convert low health units to wolves, but only when its a low xp unit.
Meness will now use Blade Dash.
AI will gift resources if it has a lot left over, in skirmish.
Balance:
Bear camps will also give 100 wealth.
Sunbringer's Passage -20 faith and +20 cooldown.
Meness' Sleep ability has been replaced with Hidden Blade. Vakarine has Sleep instead.
Rangers release their arrows slightly faster.
Unit production times increased across the board. This is to make less spammy deathball gameplay, and to encourage building multiple of the same building for faster production.
Steep reduction for Conversion cost, from to 90 to 30 faith.
Micheal has additional +100 hp.
Glyph rebalance:
5 glyph slots instead of 4 in custom games.
Medeina's Hunt grants additional + 1 yield.
Believers grants additional +50 hp.
Stronger Tribe grants additional +1 strength.
Giltine's Sickle now applies deathtouched.
Ruhnu Bear cooldown reduced to 60 seconds.
Summon Usinsh cost reduced to 320 faith.
Pillager now gets 4x, instead of 1x, wealth to xp.
Gabija's Fire Spirits cooldown has been doubled.
Jumis' Twins cooldown has been doubled.
Janis' Way grants additional +10 speed.
Sergeants are spawned on tower construction.
And to be quite fair, we probably missed a couple things! It's been quite a while since the last proper game update, so months of changes are in this one. This also means that some fixes might unexpectedly break some things, so please let us know if you find any issues. We always check the forums, our discord and other places for feedback.
To join the community for some coop, team games or pvp, or get some sneak peeks of what content we're working on next, join the official Discord: https://discord.gg/r2qBuBXfVc
