Two weeks ago, I made the devlog about the Penultimate update. Well, I've been hard at work since then. Thus I now bring: The Ultimate Update. Not as in the best, but as in the last big update before v1 release. The 8th Faction is fully implemented, though locked from being a starting faction. And all 8 factions have been given two unique new skills for their magical and melee focused hero classes respectively. The new hero skills especially are really exciting. They were released a week ago, and the general feedback is that they're fun to play with.

Developing those major features had taken away from adding smaller features, which is why it has taken me so long to write this devlog. But today, I had time to do AI improvement, map-generation improvements and also adding those guardposts you see in the screenshot above.

No more stalling! Time for features.

FEATURES

• 16 new hero skills - two for each faction
• 9 new neutral units
• NEW FACTION: Lament
  • (currently locked until release)
• Guardposts
  • Replaces mobs guarding different areas on some maps - chance reduced on higher difficulties
  • When defeated, turns to your faction and spawns a new, free defensive force
• AI updates

Now, what are those 16 new hero skills? Well, I did these posters to give an overview of the hero skills and the other things that set apart factions from one another.

You can also see the currently three unique buildings per faction - but the most important part is the hero panels and the skills, in this case Firetrapping and Firegating. The rest of the posters can be seen above. The Lament poster looks a bit strange, but don't worry - the faction looks correct in-game.

CHANGES

• All units have been rebalanced
• Soul Beacon and Throne of the Dead now choose what units to give differently, including the two new rare Undead units
• XP gain from fleeing combat is now no longer always 500 xp
• Hovering units now use the flying unit movement animation instead of ground unit walk animation (this change activates at time of release)
• Game now tracks dying and gained units in battle separately, showcasing them as a green and red number respectively in combat results
• Updated combat results
• Army lists in combat now reflect deaths and gains
• Updated several bits of text referring to units and things that had their names changed
• UI of hero screen and town management screen has been updated
• Headlines of several windows now use the new headline font
• Xp penalty for taking easy combat has been reduced greatly
• Base Xp gain from combat has been doubled
• Each level now takes +15%+300 max xp instead of +12.5%+300 max xp
• To match this change, Learning has been made even more powerful
• The Order faction now starts on grassy terrain when faction terrain setting is turned on - now dirt terrain goes with the Lament faction
• Firegating’s cooldown has been reduced to 2 days
• Only one Nomad can be bought per town per week
• Towns can now only be converted once per week’
• Hero stops moving when discovering a creature
• Disabled roaming armies being able to attack anyone ever
• Picking up an artifact no longer switches with an already equipped artifact
• Increased density of overworld buildings and other interactables
• Made the AI prioritise constructing dwellings
• Made the Lament unit cost curve less steep
• Taught the AI fear
• Decreased the chance of mines and artifacts to spawn without guards

The map generation now creates maps with much more dense object generation. This change has been so large in fact, I ended up shrinking the smaller maps so that they wouldn't become too complex.

BUG FIXES

• When units come out of reserve because of fleeing, they instantly flee
• Fixed empty reserves sticking around even though you decide to flee combat
• Fixed a bug relating to xp gains being all weird, including sometimes creating incredibly strong enemy heroes
• Fixed a bug that would crash the game if going into autobattle as your first battle of the game
• Fixed an uncommon crash bug relating to the Aether Forge
• Fixed an unavoidable crash bug on the tutorial
• Fixed being able to drag elementals out of the elemental gate without purchasing them
• Fixed a bug that showed hero gaining knowledge through level-up while getting spellpower, and vice versa
• Fixed a bug that made enemy hero skills not count when casting spells
• Fixed a bug that made enemy hero ability uses not trigger cooldown
• Fixed a temporary bug that made the game crash when an artifact was picked up
• Fixed a graphical glitch relating to cliffs
• Fixed several bugs allowing holes in the walls between regions
• Fixed a bug that caused the hero available in week 1 to be identical to your starting hero
• Fixed a bug that caused alternate heroes to spawn if there already was an alternate hero of the same type

Well then - I'll keep chugging along, working through the never-ending list of fixes and polish for the v1 release. You can find me over at Hero's Home, the Hero's Hour discord server, where everyone is a hero.

I'll catch you next week, I hope! Have fun playing with all the new stuff

- ThingOnItsOwn out!