New skills
Added “Army command” skill in the Command group. This skill works in a similar way as “Charisma” increasing the maximum number of deployed soldier groups by one per level.
Added “Companions” skill in the Heroic group. This is also similar to “Charisma”, increasing the maximum number of deployed soldier groups by one.
Added “Initiative” skill in the Heroic group, which will increase the maximum number of soldiers in a group.
Added “Heroic defenses” and “Heroic protection” skills in the Heroic group. These will add extra armor and evasion to all units on the battlefield, regardless of their equipment. These skills, together with “Companions” and “Initiative” will provide a very tempting “Heroic” path for lords, with boosts to commanded troops significantly better then those available in the “Command” path.
Added “Reflexes” skill in the Heroic group, which will increase the lord speed by 2 per level.
New combat mechanic
“Flanking” and “Overwhelming” attacks were added. Units will have an area of control, formed by the hex directly in front of them and 1 hex to the right and left respectively. The back will be exposed. If a unit can launch an attack without passing through any enemy area of control it will perform a “Flanking” attack. Flanking attacks will provide a base 150% (2.5x) damage to the unit. This, unlike the accuracy bonus, will apply before the enemy armor. That means, units that normally cannot penetrate enemy armor now have a way of doing so. Spear soldiers will obviously benefit most from this, due to them ignoring enemy evasion and that little extra speed.
The client was changed to plot “Flanking” attack paths if possible, but the player must still choose the correct attack angle, namely, hit the enemy from the rear.
Units can only be flanked once per round. Additionally, when a unit is flanked it changes its area of control to include all the adjacent hexes, providing protection against flanking to others also.
Overwhelming is a base damage bonus received for targeting the same unit multiple times in a round. Whenever a unit is attacked, it will receive an “Overwhelming attack” stack. The attacker will receive 25% base damage bonus for each existing stack, on top of adding a new one. That means, the first attack against a unit receives no bonus. The second attack will get a 25% bonus, the third 50% bonus and so on. This is also a base damage bonus, so it will apply before enemy armor.
The AI will sometimes perform flanking attacks, but will not always take advantage of this. Similarly, it will not try to protect itself from being flanked. The AI will however focus its attacks, taking advantage of “Overwhelming” bonuses.
Archers cannot flank, under any circumstance, and attacking (unlike melee units) will not “turn” the archer. Meaning that if the archer is “kiting”, it leaves itself very vulnerable to flank attacks.
If a melee unit retaliates or takes damage, its area of control will not be affected (the unit will not turn), except when it takes flanking damage of course, as previously stated.
New items
The process of adding upgraded versions of blacksmith weapons continued with items from the tier 3 and 4 blacksmith. Just as before, a low tier but upgraded armor will have better stats then a higher tier armor. The tier 1 “Cloth armor”, basically a rag compared to the tier 5 “Ranger clothes”, will now actually be much better, if upgraded 4 times.
To compensate for the increased defensive stats provided by armor, the tier 4 and tier 5 weapons, and also the tier 3 longsword, have received new upgraded versions. These versions can be specialized or just be uniformly better. A special weapon specialization for “damage” was added. The tech 6 longsword for example, specialized for damage, will do more than 110 damage. It would be next to impossible to completely protect against such fierce attacks.
Quest giver shops
Due to the large amount of items added, all quest givers will now sell a specific set of items. Upgraded armor can be purchased from these shops, without completing specific quests like it was the case with the previous patch. The previous quests remain in place, since they provide new players with a good source of cheap upgraded armor.
Upon reaching a quest giver, a window will open that will display the quest list and quest details in a similar way as before, but will also contain a second tab called “Trade” which will list the items that the quest giver is willing to sell. To purchase an upgraded items, the player will have to provide 3 non-upgraded weapons, some gold and “favor” with the questgiver. Favor is a currency that is specific to a quest giver and is earned by running quests. Favor will also be used to upgrade a quest giver shop in order to list better offers.
New quests and quest maps
4 new quest types were added to the game, to all of the quest givers. These quests will be of comparable difficulty to the “Improved armor” quests added in the previous patch, so…they will be difficult. These quest types are:
– Eliminate enemies: the player will have to kill all NPC groups on the quest map.
– Kill some enemies: the player will have to kill about half of the NPC groups on the quest map, so the player is free to choose the weaker ones. However, the overall strength of the monsters will be roughly double that of the monsters on, let’s say, an “Eliminate enemies” map. This quest is made for players that have strong armies and want to go through the quest quickly, to farm favor.
– Find a chest: the player will have to pick up from the quest map a quest item. No need to kill any monsters, but it is very possible that the item will be guarded or might even be hard to locate without killing any monsters. Depending on luck, it might just as well be that the player will find the item without fighting.
– Find the secret letter: the player will have to kill enemies on the quest map until the secret letter drops. Based on luck, this can be the first group or, if unlucky, even the last group. The item is guaranteed to drop however.
To make things more interesting, 5 new small quest maps have been added, providing some variety.
New PVP map and quest giver
A new map was created, hosting the “Gargyle hut” quest giver. This map is accessible from the “Knight domain” map and it is a single instance, shared between all players.
Gargyle will provide end-game content, with very challenging missions and enemies. Also, the tech 6 upgraded weapons can be purchased from him, as well as most tier 3, second upgrade armor. Basically, the most of the best items in the game can be acquired from him.
Additionally, the map provides abundant resources that respawn really fast. The total value of the resources on the map is equivalent to about 3 million units of gold, and by the time a (single) player manages to collect them all, they will already have started to respawn. So, without opposition, a player could collect resources without pause.
Inventory changes
The stack size in the lord inventory was increased by a factor of 10, for all resources, not including items.
The spell stack has also been increased by 2, from 6 to 8.
New, procedurally generated, weapons
The 4 new quest types that were added will also have a chance to generate a special lord armor or weapon piece. This piece will, for now, be based on a standard weapon but will have its stats altered, with increases of up to 100% but also reductions of up to 50%. Depending on luck, a player might find a better then average item, or a useless one.
Besides this, the quests might also generate some regular items, like armor pieces. This is actually the only way, at this time, to acquire the light chainmail gloves, the only “iron armor” glove that can be obtained.
Non player armies mix
The non player armies from quests will now have mixed contents, once they reach a certain soldier count. Armies of hundreds of identical units will no longer be seen. This will add extra difficulty as a perfect counter for all situations will be hard, if not impossible, to find.
Skill balancing changes
The “command specific” skills, like “Charisma”, “Soldier discipline” and others will now incur a penalty to gaining heroic experience type. In a similar way, heroic specific skills like “Brotherhood of …” will incur a penalty to gaining command experience. This will force the player to choose one path or the other. To compensate for the fact that heroic lords still have to use troops, most of the heroic skills will also provide command to heroic experience conversion, which applies before any penalties. Choosing the heroic path and using troops will not waste any experience.
There are some skill that are “in the middle” between Command and Heroic paths. Such skills are, for example the “Veteran” for Heroic or “Iron armaments drills”. These skills will not provide experience conversion or penalties. They are meant for players to choose them and train them by using the experience provided from quests.
Some skills were changed.
The “Vetaran” skill will now provide 30% increased base health per level. That is, the “Armorer” and “Veteran” skills will not interact with each other, since both give bonus based on the hp provided by armor.
The “Field medic” skill will now heal 3% of the lord health each season instead of the previous fixed amount. Additionally, swapping lord gear will not change the percentage of missing health for the lord.
Archer range limitation
Archers now have an effective range, based on their speed. All archers will shoot at full damage at ranges up to their maximum speed. Past that range, the further the target the lower the damage. This opens specialization avenues for archers. Long range lower damage archers can kite and shoot everywhere, priming “Overwhelming damage” for other units, while short range high accuracy/damage archers need o be stationary and protected but will get to shoot targets with already existing stacks of “Overwhelming damage” doing massive amount of damage.
Troop templates were introduced
The player can now configure a soldier with a set of desired gear in the barracks or blacksmith and save the configuration as a template.
Later, the configuration can be loaded, either in the barracks for quick recruitment or in the blacksmith to quickly build the equipment needed for the unit.
Templates can also be altered and saved under the same or different name.
This should make using “doctrine” builds a lot easier.
Quest difficulty setting
All quests for witch it makes sense will now have a difficulty setting. Additionally, the “scaling” quests offered by Michi, the Knight mission post or Gargyle will use this setting. All quests will have 6 difficulty settings, and the “scaling” quests will have additional levels based on the number of “Knight’s mark of valor” present in the lord inventory. It hence no longer needed to move the knight marks to town if the player wants to do the low level quest multiple times.
Summon portal
Summon portal interface was changed. It will show the target map name and position, as well as the object providing the “anchor”. This will help if, for example, you visited more then on “Pippi’s hut”.
Additionally, it is no longer needed to have an open quest to open a portal to a quest giver. Simply touching it is enough, and the waypoint will be saved for later use.
The battle interface was changed
The enemy counters on the battle interface will now visually show the remaining health of the first unit in the stack, as well as the number of units in the stack. The lord indicator will now show the count, which will of course be always 1, instead of the hitpoints. Moving the mouse close to the indicators will make them transparent, to make it easier for the player to see the units and the hex grid.
A speed setting for the battle was added. The speed can pe set between 50% and 250% of normal speed.
Experience efficiency
Just as it was in previous builds, the experience gets penalized if the player kills low difficulty armies. The amount of the penalty was hidden. From this patch on, the percentage of experience received out of the maximum that could have been received from a battle will be shown in the battle report. In this way, the player can choose the targets it goes against, in a bit more informed manner. The penalty function was also altered so that it is smoother, and the player will always receive some experience.
The value of “minimum experience required to progress” in the ranking window of a lord was removed since it is no longer needed and does not make sens anymore.
Plunder generation
Plunder will now be generated based on enemy hitpoints for all non-player enemies. Overall, this means a reduction in plunder output throughout the game.
Plunder from PVP has been increased however. Defeating other players could potentially yield massive amounts of plunder.
Premium shop
The “crystal” premium currency was introduced. It cannot, yet be purchased in any way, as the game is still in its alfa stage.
All existing accounts have been credited with crystal worth 100$, 10000 units to be exact.
All future accounts will also be granted 10000 crystal upon account creation.
The premium shop, which can be open from the new button next to the main menu button from the post login interface, will contain resource chests, special use items or the premium account subscription.
Resource chests vary in size of course and, once purchased, the resources will be delivered instantly to any of the castles under the player control.
The player can also buy healing potions, to quickly replenish the lord health while outside battle. Healing potions will not work to heal a lord in battle!
Scroll of progress items, of various sizes, can be bought to quickly end a season, by reducing the remaining season time.
Divine intervention will end a battle against a non-player character, except for a siege, without suffering retreat penalties.
Turn back time is similar to “Divine intervention” except that it will also restore any fallen soldiers, for both sides.
Very important notice: these two items will only work to end battles against non-player entities! You cannot disengage from a player battle except by using the standard retreat command!
Divine portal can be purchased to instantly open a “Summoned portal” at the current location, bypassing any location restrictions (enemy territory, inside pvp quest) and without using a “Summon portal” scroll.
Premium account is a 30 days subscription that costs 500 crystal and will activate a few quality of life benefits. It is meant to make the gameplay a bit easier and lower the necessary grind a little bit. Benefits of the premium account are higher experience, plunder, gold production, manor production, out of battle or post battle lord healing and lower penalties for retreating from NPCs. Additionally, “Summon portal” scrolls will not be consumed, but they will still be needed in order to cast the spell. So, a premium account user must still waste a spell slot with them. Overall, the premium account does not and never will add direct advantages over other players.