Adventurers!
Our latest major content update for For The King II is now available on all platforms!
Today’s huge update celebrates the launch of the FREE Dungeon Crawl Update, and the paid Into The Wild Character Pack as well!
Read on below for more details on this free update and how to craft your adventures with the all-new Beekeeper and Angler playable characters.
[dynamiclink href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/4354810/For_The_King_II_Into_The_Wild_Character_Pack/"]
Dungeon Crawl Update
Chaos never truly lies dormant in Fahrul, even after the significant efforts of the Resistance; lingering threats and the fog of disarray still cling to the land, breathing further havoc into the once peaceful realm.
Don your gear. The Kingdom needs you once more, Adventurer.
Dungeons, Crypts, Caverns, Manors, and other fortresses of despair have risen across the realm, each crawling with encounters, enemies, treasures, and champions of Chaos.
With the returning Dungeon Crawl mode in For The King II, you and your party are tasked with tackling these new dungeons, defeating their twisted warriors, and shutting down the Chaos devices that plague this realm once and for all!
This mode focuses on providing a replayable roguelite experience that sidesteps the campaign formula present in the seven existing chapters, with each new session placing your party on an entirely new overworld, where your dungeons, biomes, map generation, and more will be randomized each fresh run. Enter the five dungeons found throughout the random selection of biomes and destroy the champion and Chaos Generator that awaits at the end of each dungeon delve.
For those keen to compete with your fellow Adventurers, we’ve got just the thing…
A New Gauntlet Difficulty Mode
With Dungeon Crawl, we’re also introducing Dungeon Crawl Gauntlet. A challenge mode that follows a monthly seed, allowing players to compete with static factors, such as map, dungeons, and bosses, allowing for an equal playing field when competing for the spot at the top of the leaderboard.
The best players each month will find themselves honoured across Fahrul as Bronze, Silver, and Gold Statues that appear in all other players' games!
For the adventurers seeking a slower pace, Dungeon Crawl retains the three difficulty options found across For The King II, as well as the accompanying difficulty sliders, allowing players to experience this more rogue-lite focused mode tailored to the challenge they’d like to square up against.
Dungeon Crawl Gauntlet runs need to be finished (whether your heroes leave alive—or not) before the monthly seed refresh to count toward the Leaderboard, so be sure to wrap up your escapades across Fahrul before we roll the new map over on the first Tuesday of every month.
Dungeon Crawl Level Cap Increase
With Dungeon Crawl Gauntlet more focused on providing a replayable free-form adventure, we felt we needed to expand the level cap available in this mode to truly enable players who love to roam, level, and get the most out of each session.
In the base game of For The King II, we cap our Adventurers at level 9; however, in Dungeon Crawl, players will be able to increase their character level all the way up to level 12!
We’re looking forward to seeing all the interesting builds and wild damage numbers the community can come up with!
This major free update comes with a whole range of goodies to help you, such as the returning playable character, the Treasure Hunter! You’ll also gain access to a new Mercenary, Weapons, Trait, Cosmetics, and more!
Check out the graphic below to learn more about the new unlocks and tools at your disposal.
Into The Wild
Launching alongside the Dungeon Crawl Update is the Into The Wild Character Pack! This Character Pack includes two brand new playable characters, the Angler and Beekeeper, as well as new weapon sets, pet, mercenary, Trait, and cosmetic!
Bee the buzz of the realm and reel in this paid Character Pack today to better augment your adventures!
[dynamiclink href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/4354810/For_The_King_II_Into_The_Wild_Character_Pack/"]
Sale
To celebrate the launch of today’s free major update and paid DLC, we’ve discounted For The King II and the previously launched DLC! You can also grab them all as part of a bundle for an even better price!
[dynamiclink href="https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/60547/For_The_King_II__Deluxe_Edition/"][dynamiclink href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/1676840/For_The_King_II/"][dynamiclink href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/3840390/For_The_King_II_Tinkerers_Of_Fate_Character_Pack/"][dynamiclink href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/3840400/For_The_King_II_Fallen_Oaths_Character_Pack/"]
What Else is New?
Dungeon Crawl
Custom Encounters
Dungeon Crawl also contains a whole host of custom encounters scattered throughout the overworld. Help out the communities of Fahrul in return for a thematic weapon that can be used in combat to aid you in your quest to save Fahrul.
Overworld Timeline Icon now appears on the timeline to inform the party of when a Town refresh is due to happen.
Character Balance & Changes
With our ever-growing cast of playable characters, we’ve made a bunch of changes to the playable roster of 23 characters in For The King II.
Stats for most characters have been slightly adjusted. In general, it shouldn’t shake things too much, but in some cases, you might find that a character’s playstyle has been slightly impacted. When there were only a few characters to play with when we first launched, we were pretty generous with stats to allow characters to have more versatility. But with the size of the cast now, we’ve reviewed where each character performs to make sure each character doesn’t perform better in an area where another class should obviously perform better.
Every character received base Evasion, some more than others.
Each character will now start with an additional item to help with starting an adventure. These items will be visible in the character creation class info window and shown when selecting loadout items.
We’ve also reworked the Pathfinder and are currently working on a Shepherd update that we hope to release later this year.
A cosmetic change for default helmets. Characters that have a cosmetic helmet (ie, Blacksmith, Beekeeper, etc) can have their starting helmets removed in character customization.
Pathfinder Changes
The Pathfinder originally launched with an overworld skill and a dungeon skill. The dungeon skill never really fit the way we intended and was removed upon the launch of the Dark Carniva update. Since then, the Pathfinder has been left hoping to find their own way. That time has come with a pretty substantial update to this pioneer’s toolkit.
Survey
Survey will now trigger up to one additional hex, allowing the Pathfinder to discover points of interest slightly further away.
Steady Stride
In true pathfinding fashion, Steady Stride prevents movement rolls from being affected by bad weather, as well as preventing the movement penalty from overworld biomes such as the Swamp and Midnight Woods.
Rally Banner
The Pathfinder now starts with a brand new item in their toolbelt called Rally Banner. Rally Banner is a consumable item that allows the Pathfinder to rally the party and teleport them to their location. Upon planting the Rally Banner, the immediate hexes also receive +1 movement, ambush immunity, and support range, for all characters within the area of effect.
Two important notes on Rally Banner. The Pathfinder is limited to four Rally Banner uses per run, and using the Rally Banner will end the active player’s turn.
Loadout Changes
With all of the character updates, we’ve also made a small change to the Loadout. The original intent behind the Loadout was that each Loadout point roughly equates to 10 gold worth of value. This works for a large portion of the Loadout items, but has left some items becoming too costly for the value they provide. With the evolution of the character base and the tiered weapons, now seemed a great time to bring in some lower costs for weapons and armour, with these items being set to two lore points down from the previous cost of three or four.
Hopefully, this change allows more robust starting builds and not just a Loadout full of Bags of Gold, which the previous design pushed many players in the community to default to.
Biome Changes
A biome’s feel and identity play an important role in making each biome distinct from the others. Discovering a biome for the first time should feel exciting, and returning to a biome should still feel interesting. We felt this update was the golden time to update and revise how we present the environments of Fahrul.
One important criterion for this revision was to explore different colour palettes for each biome to make them unique and readable. For example, previously, the Golden Plains and the Craghills shared very similar colours, making them blend together a little more than we’d have liked.
Many map props, such as trees, rocks, shrubs, etc., have received a glow-up and improved map placement on map generation.
Certain biomes now have more thematic spacing. For example, the Grasslands are more open, and more dense biomes will have different spacing and pathing. This helps to give each biome more of an identity, as well as providing players with more thoughtful decision-making when navigating through them.
Overworld
Quest objective markers
We’ve added Quest objective markers to main, side, and town quest objectives. This improves map readability when trying to determine which points of interest need to be visited.
Stone Heroes
Different quality Stone Heroes (ie, Stone, Bronze, Silver, and Gold) now give different perks depending on rarity.
At least one Bronze, one Silver, and one Gold statue are guaranteed to be generated per map. The remaining Stone heroes will be stone.
A UI element has been added to the overworld and dungeons to better inform players what the perks are of the Stone Hero before tributing.
New enemy types
Bees
The Beekeeper’s bumbling companion isn’t the only bee making their way to Fahrul. Adventurers may now encounter bees as enemies as well! Be sure to be on the lookout for Beehives, as these will continue to spawn additional bees for your party to fend off!
With the introduction of Beehives, we’ve also changed how “inanimates” work. Inanimates (Beehives, Powder Kegs, and the Farmer’s Scarecrow) now have an inanimate icon representing how many attacks they need before they are destroyed.
Bears
Large Bears have been spotted! Adventurers, keep an eye out for these larger-than-average threats. Bears are the first enemy to occupy a 1x2 grid formation.
Enemy Swarms
With the reintroduction of bees, we’ve also been able to reintroduce enemy swarms. A swarm consists of weaker enemies that are usually seen in groups banding together to add another layer when choosing whether to fight enemies or not.
Bees, Crows, Rats, and other smaller critters will now come in swarms. Their purpose is to fill (up to four) the empty enemy slots in a combat. For example, if you were to fight a single Goblin and a Bee was in its combat radius, you would fight one Goblin and three Bees. If there was an extra Goblin in the radius, you would fight two Goblins and two Bees.
Overall Balance
Overworld Surprise Encounters
These don’t really have a name in the game, but we’re talking about enemies or encounters that pop up on you as you’re walking on the overworld. Enemies, Skill Tests, and Dead Adventurers.
We’ve tweaked the way these events happen to be less oppressive. Early on in a run, you’ll find more Skill Tests and Dead Adventurers. This should ease the early game and make moving on the overworld more rewarding. As the game progresses, however, enemy ambushes will become more likely and fewer resources will be distributed by chance, which means you’ll have to figure out how to compensate on your own.
Enemy ambushes no longer bring in surrounding allies or enemies, which means they will now be a forced 1v1. We’ve changed this behaviour to make them more manageable and not just an automatic flee in most situations.
Loot changes
LOOT!! So much loot. So many choices. What if we made those choices more interesting and meaningful!? Getting an item should not necessarily be an instant ‘Equip’ or ‘Trash’. There should be more depth to it than that—Pros and Cons for everything (unless it’s under-levelled, of course). This is why all wearable equipment (not weapons) have been reviewed and rebalanced to offer different, distinct, better, and quirkier stats and perks.
One challenge with that many attires in the game is to make every piece distinct from another. Within reason, each set should now feel fresh and unique in the stats that it provides, making it more of a thoughtful process when receiving a new piece.
We look forward to hearing the community's thoughts on all of the loot changes!
Pets and Mercs
They can no longer dodge a perfect attack from enemies. This resulted in them having way more survivability than intended.
Adventure Difficulties
We reviewed the general balance across Apprentice, Journeyman, and Master. We were pretty happy with Apprentice and Journeyman and have made a slight adjustment to Master. For Master, the global starting items are fewer, and all characters have one less starting Focus.
Pet Store Rates
Lowered the rarity of certain pets to improve their appearance rates across Pet Shop encounters.
Refined loot drop improvements
We’re aware that the accessibility of items has been a point of contention ever since launch. Our item distribution system was made with the best of intentions, but as the item pool grew, flaws started to appear. We’ve been slowly but surely making improvements to make the game’s loot mechanics feel better and more rewarding. This update doesn’t make it perfect, but hopefully it helps everyone find the best gear for their parties.
There should be less repetition in drops, rewards in treasures, and after combats.
Markets will be smarter and offer more equipment relevant to you from time to time.
All markets are stocked with more items.
Items found in different markets have been rebalanced to make each market have its own purpose.
The Goblin Merchant found in non-Dark Carnival adventures now has a 25% price increase on his wares. He’s become very opportunistic in these trying times.
Online Chat
Our online chat feature is only available on PC and is rarely used. We ran a community survey a few months ago, and we were pretty close to removing the feature in general as the overwhelming majority of players default to using Discord for comms. That being said, we’ve kept chat in for the time being with a couple of quality of life changes.
The chat window is now closed by default when creating a multiplayer lobby.
The Lobby name has been moved into the Party info panel for increased visibility.
Twitch Integration
We’ve adjusted some of the values for Encounters attached to the Twitch Integration we added late last year.
If you’re yet to check out the added engagement For The King II’s Twitch Integration can bring to your stream, check out the announcement and How-To Guide here.
PlayStation Save Data
We know there is absolutely nothing worse than losing saved data. We have been searching and working to try to determine what is causing players on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 to lose their saved game data and reset their game progress and Lore Store progress.
In this update, we’ve made changes to how we store data on PlayStation consoles. This should help reduce, and hopefully eliminate these instances of PlayStation console data being wiped. If you are on this latest update and experience data loss, please reach out to us on Discord.
Bug Fixes
Noteworthy
Fixed a softlock when playing on Chapter 5, The Castle Gates, when teleporting into Hell while playing Pinecone’s Plan. This fix will work retroactively, so players can load directly back into their affected game runs and continue as planned.
Fixed a dungeon softlock when playing on Chapter 5, The Castle Gates, when playing Mooney’s Plan late game. This fix will work retroactively, so players can load directly back into their affected game runs and continue as planned.
Fixed an issue where loading an autosave into the Wheel of Death would prevent the player from replacing a wheel wedge.
Fixed an issue when playing local co-op after creating a manual save; controllers could control other playable characters.
Softlocks
Fixed a softlock in Dark Carnival that could happen if the player were to buy out all of the Mercs from the Merc Market in the Tunnel of Love.
Fixed a softlock that could occur in an online session for the client after the host selected a Charged Lancer’s taunt.
Online
Fixed an issue where an off-turn player could close the active player Encounter Menu when exiting their off-turn town.
Fixed an issue in combat where players could have their loot phase blocked by tooltips when afflicted with certain statuses.
Overworld
Fixed a bug where player models were not visible after a shipwreck until they moved at least one hex.
Fixed a bunch of missing road hex tiles. There are still a few cases of missing road tiles, and we’re hoping to get those addressed in an upcoming update.
Improved the consistency of POI and encounter placement during map gen. This should give each run a more consistent feel when navigating the overworld.
Fixed an issue when the Hangman is an active scourge and his cursed Hanged Soul replaces a follower, the follower character model persists on the overworld.
Fixed an issue where Quest items (i.e., Sealed Letter) would be delivered out of turn at the start of the round. Quest items are now delivered at the start of the turn.
Fixed an issue where the camera may not centre on arrival after travelling through an Alluring Pool.
Dark Carnival
Added a prompt in the House of Mirrors when gaining a follower from the Shrouded Mirror and the player has a current follower.
Fixed an issue where follower models may appear out of bounds when fighting the Shrouded Mirror failed roll fights.
Fixed an issue where the quest log may not display the active haunt correctly.
Combat
Fixed an issue where combat statuses weren’t always showing their correct popcorn text. For example, consuming an Icy Wiener didn’t display the corresponding text.
Fixed an issue where Deflecting a Drain Life attack still resulted in the enemy healing.
Fixed an issue where Protect was also blocking combat tile status effects from AOE/splash attacks.
Fixed an issue where player models could become invisible upon being revived after dying in a dungeon trap phase.
Fixed an issue where Luck-based weapon abilities could be focused.
UX/UI
Improved the gold calculations shown during the Adventure Summary.
Fixed an issue where certain quest menus could overlap with the game settings menu when opened during certain overworld POIs.
Fixed an issue where saved preset character names were not always updating in real time when selecting a preset.
Fixed an issue where Party Heal gained from the Grand Sanctum of Purity would not always show correctly in Party Summary.
Fixed an issue where “Herbs” was missing a tooltip in the Encyclopedia entry for Field Medic.
Fixed an issue where closing Party Summary would also close the inventory that was currently open.
Alluring Pools now shows available pools in alphabetical order.
Fixed an issue where the Terra Cradle orb item card may not show the skill that it rolls against in combat
Art
Polished the Astronomer’s Black Hole animation when consuming enemies.
Improved the item card placement of multiple weapons.
Fixed an issue where the item card for Merling Wraps would rotate the armour out of frame incorrectly.
Fixed an issue with the Goblin Outfit cosmetic that would stretch in the collar when certain character models.
Localization
Improved the wording on the Deflect skill
Fixed a missing string in the Dark Carnival Encounter for Wheel of Death.
Controller
Fixed an issue where controller could lose partial input after pressing LB/L1 and RB/R1 simultaneously during gameplay.
Fixed an issue where players couldn’t navigate to starting items in the Difficulty select when playing with controller.
Fixed an issue when playing with a controller, the character select list view would default to “back” rather than the top of the character list.
Fixed an issue where Player Summary could not be closed by pressing the back button.
We look forward to hearing all of the epic dungeon tales as everyone gets time with the Treasure Hunter, the updated Pathfinder, as well as those who get into games with the Beekeeper and the Angler.
As always, a big shout-out and thank you to our amazing community.
Happy Dungeon Crawling!
⚔️IronOak Games
Join the IronOak Games and For The King community on:
➡️Reddit ➡️Discord ➡️BlueSky ➡️Twitch | ➡️TikTok ➡️Facebook ➡️X |
