Character creation
New users as well as pre-patch users will be asked upon login to configure their main character. Male/Female characters can now be created with this with a good degree of customization (ranging from body size and shape to hair style and color).
Soldier visual changes
All soldiers recruited by the player will be male with fixed body configuration and military haircut.
All NPC human soldiers will have various gender and configurations.
All armor visuals have been changed, but the main armors remain the same with same function and principle.
More armor slots added
There are new armor slots available for loading with manufactured armor. These are (in order of effectiveness/cost)
– Leggings (robes for cloth and pants for leather/iron armor)
– Boots
– Helmet
– Gloves
Leggings will be just a more luxurious version of the main armor, giving extra stats of the specific kind and a bit of speed, depending on type.
The other three slots give a small bit of extra stats specific to the armor type (leather gives evasion and hp, iron gives armor and a bit of hp, cloth gives accuracy and sometimes hp) and a slot specific bonus.
Boots will give more speed, helmets will give more evasion, and gloves more accuracy.
Generally, the armor pieces will become available the more luxurious they. Some exceptions are the gloves level 1 which become available at blacksmith level 4 even if they are a tech 5 item, and (cloth) helmet level 1 becoming available at level 3 blacksmith.
Weapon and lord gear balance
To compensate for the extra defenses, the weapons have received buffs, with swords receiving 50% more damage, accuracy and defense, bows 50% more damage, and all others between 0 and 20% more damage, depending on situation.
All shields have had their damage mitigation stats reduced, and their hitpoints buffed, with increases of more than 300%. This is to reduce boring fights when two very well armored targets melee, doing 2-5 damage on each round to each other.
The lord armor pieces have had their damage mitigation stats reduced significantly so the lord will not be able to block virtually all damage unless the equipment is used correctly in specific situations (armor vs spears or evasion vs blunts etc). The lord hp pool has been vastly increased with the lord being able to easily reach 1000 hp in early game and 3000–5000 hp on the barbarian island. The reduction in damage mitigation however should prevent or limit the option to “mop the map” with the lord alone (can still be done with the aid of magic). The maximum armor of a full set of iron armor for the lord can reach 16 now, with the armorer skill at level 5 making that go as high as 32.
Both the lord armor and weapons have had their offensive stats substantially reduced as well. This will limit the situations where a 40-120 damage weapon for example would end up doing over 1000 damage because of the huge accuracy value it has. Overdamage is still possible, but not as high.
To compensate for this, new higher tier weapons for the lord have been added, with much higher base damage values and stats. This should make the lord a viable combat unit until much later on in the game.
Brotherhood skill changes
The Brotherhood of blood and Brotherhood of steel skills have now been changed to work in the opposite direction they used to. Some of the lord damage and hit points will be added as bonus to the soldiers under his command. Furthermore, these two buffs will convert some of the command experience (generated by normal soldiers attacking and doing damage) to heroic experience to allow for more investment in the heroic skills that the player chose to go for. Coupled with the new weapons, this can create a very deadly lord guard.
The buffs however will no longer work if the lord is not present on the field and will vanish if the lord is killed, so, be carefull!
This is part of a plan to move the heroic lord back to its place of a bonus source meant to heavily augment the other units as opposed to being a bonus receiver and the only present entity on the field.
Skill training
The skill training is no longer a simple process of accumulating skill points and then expending them. The player should (but is not obligated to) select a skill to train. Whenever a battle is concluded, all the experience that is generated of the correct type is assigned to the skill selected. All experience that is not the correct type for the correct skill gets a -75% penalty and is converted as before to free skill points that can be assigned whenever the user wants. Some conversion happens between command and heroic skills (up to 50% base) but not from/to magic.
For example, if the player selects the “Soldier discipline” skill, which is a command skill, and in a battle would get 1000 of each magic, command and heroic experience, 250 of the magic experience will be stored as free skill points, 500 of the 1000 heroic experience will convert to command and all the resulting 1500 command experience will be assigned to “Soldier discipline” automatiically. The remaining 500 heroic skill points will get the 75% penalty resulting in 125 free skill points assigned as free skill points of heroic type. With the Brotherhood skills, the math gets more complicated but…
To keep things simple, always select the next skill you are working towards so that you get the most out of the combat experience.
The quests have had their experience bonus reduced significantly but they will still generate free skill points as before.
A limit of 256000 maximum free skill point storage has been added, so…don’t store too many of those.
Some of the skills have received prerequisites to make the player to commit to a training path or another.
New command skill
A new command skill was added, “Ceremonial burial”. It is a rather hard to reach skill, that requires a lot of training but, if mastered, can help the player recover up to 100% of the equipment lost in battle. That is, on average luck, you will get 50% of the lost stuff back, if you win. Coupled with the “Battle surgeon”, it can reduce the battlefield losses dramatically.
Spell changes
6 new spells were added.
“Shield”, adds extra hitpoints to a friendly unit and is available on a level 1 mage tower.
“Maim”, reduces an enemy unit speed, “Dashing speed” adds evasion to a friendly unit and they are both available on a level 2 mage tower.
“Eagle eye” adds accuracy to a friendly unit, “Summon soldiers” adds more damage to a friendly unit by adding extra soldiers (that do not contribute to the hitpoint pool) and they are both available on a level 3 mage tower.
“Ghost” will transfer the attacking power of a friendly unit to another friendly unit and is a channeling buff (the source will have to remain inactive). This is available on a level 4 mage tower.
6 new corresponding mastery skills have been added to give increased effects to these spells.
The “Smite” spell has had its damage reduced a little bit.
The lord can now store a very limited supply of spells, 5 stacks of 6 scrolls. This is fixed for now, but will change later on based on skill and scroll type.
Because of this limit, the quests that give spell scrolls will now send the reward to the home castle of the lord and store them inside one of the mage towers (if multiple). That also means it is important to have a mage tower, or the reward will be lost.
Visually, the spells will now effectively be cast by the currently selected unit.
Important: Spells can no longer be cast on defenders from an attacker outside the city walls, unless the walls are first breached by catapult fire. Make sure you take catapults during sieges!
PVP changes
After a fight, there is a “loot bag” created by the system.
In the case of a player attacking another player army, the loser will have all the items stored in its inventory confiscated and stored in the loot bag. Also, there is a 60% chance for each of the lord equipped items to be confiscated and stored also in the loot bag. The attacker can then access and retrieve any items that he wants from the bag form the battle report interface. The bag can be used also to deposit less valuable items (if the attacker does not have room for all) but once the attacker moves, the bag is destroyed and everything in it is gone.
The siege mechanics have been changed. Any army inside the castle will participate to the fight (lord and troops) as well as the troops in the barracks. Siege weapons that are inside the siege workshop will NOT participate in any way.
If the assault is successful, the attacker will get the report as before and a loot bag containing only the plunder resulted from the battle. From that report, the attacker may choose to:
– “Leave”, just being satisfied with killing the garrison
– “Plunder” will confiscate all the prosperity in the castle and add it to the loot bag as plunder. Additionally, all the items stored in the city warehouse(s) and not in the vault slots will be moved to the loot bag. As opposed to the army vs army loot bag, items in this loot bag will be returned to the castle if not taken (except for the plunder which is lost).
– “Take control” is the most devastating option for the defender. All lords that have participated to the fight and are NOT lords of that castle will return with 0 hitpoints to their home castles. All lords that have participated but are part of the castle will convert to the new owner, with all their skills, gear, goods etc. All the lords that belong to the castle and were not present at its defense will betray their former owner and everything inside them will be lost forever. If they are in battle, they will be allowed to conclude that battle first.
The attacker can choose to first plunder a castle and then take control of it.
This is an intermediate point for the sieges. An offline player will have an AI assigned to fight in its stead so it will be at a dissadvantage. In the future, there will be two stages (or more) in a siege, with what is implemented now being only the final stage.
Quest changes
The “Clear the pass” quest has been moved after the “Capture the …” quests to allow the player more space to explore and more resources to harvest.
Also, the spawn map was changed so that the quest givers on the map are accessible in the order in which they were meant to be accessed, that being Myridon, Pippi, Ragnar and then Serena. The barbarian island portal will be accessible after Pippi now, but the pvp quest maps will be accessible after Myridon.
Some NPCs on the quest maps have been changed to provide more of a challenge but be less annoying. The AI has been changed to not kite as much with the archers, but a player can still use this tactic as before.
New quests were added to allow the player to upgrade its lord gear 1 for each quest giver starting from Myridon and ending with Kitsune.
The value of experience rewards has been significantly reduced.
The value of resource rewards has been reduced.
The value of resources on the generated maps has been significantly increased.
NPC changes
All npc changes have been buffed in two ways.
First, a tiny stats buff, for some monsters +1 min damage, for some +1 speed or both. Some even received hitpoints.
Second, their weapons now get the bonus specific for their types. For example, the Tree ent has blunt weapon attacks, meaning it will ignore all armor on its target, leaving just evasion as damage mitigation. The goblin and kobolt will now get the shield specific 50% archer damage reduction, making them tankier.
The weapon types a monster uses will be visible in battle.
Quality of life changes
The “End turn” button received a toggle. If that toggle is set to “On”, the client will automatically end turn as soon as the remaining turn time is 0. This is a client side feature and the toggle is set to “Off” by default. Be careful when using this feature, as it might leave you with the lord dead and plenty of turn time remaining, unless you have multiple lords.
The spells in the mage tower are not better organized and dragging a scroll in a lord spell slot will only move enough to fill that slot.
When a quest item is dropped, the battle report will open and show a loot bag. This way, the player notices easier that the item dropped.
Mines, castles, player armies, quest givers and quest markers have received label to make them more visible to the player. Hostile armies will have red banners on top of this label, while own armies will have a blue banner.
When collecting goods, there will be a visual resource moving from the map to the inventory icon to let the player know what was collected and where it went. This happens only for map resources (at the moment).
The “Quick status” window, accessible by holding right click on the map, will now stay open if an enemy was targeted by it. Moving the mouse over the enemies in that list will show the gear the enemies are using and their resulting stats.
Moving the mouse over a player unit either in the barracks, lord inventory, castle or lord status windows will show that unit’s gear and stats (not including the stats received from lord skills!)
In battle, the unit details window will show the weapon type wielded by the unit (monster or soldier).
The resource stack for all resources has been limited. Depending on resource type, you may not be able to stack as many resources as before on top of each other.
The blacksmith window was changed to allow the player to build sets of items. This makes the player life easier as the system computes the maximum number of sets that can be built, taking into account existing weapons also.
The barracks will now show all weapons that exist in the city and all weapons that can be built by the highest level blacksmith in the city. The player can configure a soldier in the barracks, and check its stats for weapons that he has not yet built. After a satisfactory combination is reached, there is a new button that opens the blacksmith window with that configuration pre-selected.
Defect fixes
The weapon accuracy was applied twice, first as general bonus to the unit, second when the weapon hit. This is now fixed and the weapon only applies the accuracy to the unit itself (not on hit).
The battle force evaluation grossly disregarded the armor factor and produced weird effects. It has been tweaked and should now provide better estimation of forces (with spells still being able to change the balance dramatically).