Hi there! Just a quick update:

Steam keys are now available for anyone who has bought the game on itch io. This can be found on the purchase page, which can be found by logging into itch, going to your game library and clicking Hero's Hour, or by finding the email you were originally sent when you purchased the game. 

Reviews on steam from users who haven't paid for the game will count for less, but this can be counteracted if you pick up the Supporter Edition DLC. We're currently hovering around 80% positive reviews on steam, and being able to stay at or above 80% is quite important for the continued success of the game.

In other news, the first post v2.0 patch is live, introducing a couple new features, some unit rebalancing, and a lot of bug fixes

FEATURES

- setting for combat camera. Three options: Auto (current), Mixed, which both automatically moves camera, but allows panning / WASD / edge scrolling and temporarily disables automatic motion, and manual, which entirely removes the automatic combat camera

- load game menu has been redesigned

- MODDING: Unit group modding

- MODDING: Mod loading progress log

UNIT REBALANCING

- Increased health and damage by +5% for the following units (and upgrades): Militia, Cavalry, Strongarm, Treant, Bladesinger, Golem, Scroll, Boneguard, Imp, Canine, Capra, Goblin, Raider, Cyclops, Anaconda, Gilazard, Rex, Moss Golem, Troglodyte, Minotaurs, Cannoneer, Geyseral, Harpooneer, Rock Earthen, White Yeti, Horror, Carcass

- Decreased health and damage by -5% for the following units (and upgrades): Forest Spirits, Deadeyes, Bonewyrm, Runescribe, Tricrow, Spirited Fire, Hellgoat, Ash Demon, Ashen Giant, Ocean Menace

- Decreased health and damage by -10% for Mercurial

- All Blight units gain +5% base stats (Onyx Rod, Malavian, Blightstinger, Crawler, Malcorvid, Blight Monstrum)

- Seraph gains ability Aura of Power - Gryphon starts with retaliation

- Wildspeaker now summons Forest Spirits - the Druid now starts with Summoning for Anima

- Liongod gains ability Terror - Incarnation now starts with charge

- Thundergod gains ability Empower

- Stats of units summoned by Hunter and Ice Sculptors (bodyguards ability) has been reduced by 10%

- Pride gains ability Rebirth - Wrath now starts with Burning

- Archopriest gains ability Empower

- Miner gains ability Taxpayer - Carver loses ability Knockback

- Unit ability Fortune has its luck strike chance reduced from 30% to 15%

- Waveborn gains ability Versatile

- Aetherting gains ability Empower

- The "Power" stat of boss units, Horror and Rex has been decreased slightly, making them slightly cheaper to field in battle - their stats remain the same

CHANGES

- In Easy difficulty setting, AI have the number of units healed by infirmary reduced by 66%

- In Normal difficulty setting, AI have the number of units healed by infirmary reduced by 33%

- Heroes that are killed will now not only lose all movement points, but also gain Tired: 1

- Earthen Guards and Guardposts will no longer send units to the infirmary when defeated

- when choosing a different map in the map selection screen, the menu for picking faction and hero will now reset instead of staying open

- Lexicon > Faction > Skill tree - clicking anywhere on screen will hide the selected skill tree once more

- When opening the game, it should now unlock steam achievements that have been unlocked in-game previously

- Call of Champions now specifies in text that it only works for Horde units (translations might take some time)

- Nomad armies now recover their units more slowly (from 50% to 33%)

- Crawling Cave now correctly specifies that it creates Corpseeaters, not Goblins

- Dragonking skill can now spawn several dragons after a fight if you get enough points. Also slightly changed the Dragonking proc graphic

- Scrollbar on map selection screen is now correctly aligned

- Very slightly increased XP requirement growth per level (+1%)

- Pillar is no longer always shown as one of the combatants in the main menu battle

- numbers of units sent to infirmary is now rounded down instead of to closest integer

BUG FIXES

- fixed a bug that would sometimes make the game crash when deleting a save

- fixed a bug that meant that saves from pre v2.0.4 that were loaded in v2.0.4 and then saved again would crash upon next time they were loaded - those save files affected are now once more compatible

- fixed a bug that duplicated any unit resurrected from a corpse (first aid tent, resurrection unit ability, immortal unit ability, rebirth unit ability)

- fixed a bug that would create a tiny bit of lag and memory leak during combat

- fixed a bug that prevented neutral mob stacks from counting towards the Soul Beacon power

- fixed faction mods using the wrong units as wall turret defence units, especially when several faction mods were installed at once

- fixed the "done" button on hero level up screen potentially overlapping with UI elements, interrupting the level up

- hovering over the Battle speed button no longer moves the camera in battle

- fixed several errors in the first version of the new load game screen

- fixed a bug that allowed you to gain units from monuments without paying

- fixed a save corruption issue where sometimes an artifact would not save its index. This might still cause artifact corruption (turning into a Four Leaf Clover), but won't crash the game. If you see artifacts turned into Four Leaf Clovers when saving/reloading, please report any relevant circumstacnes with your bug report

- fixed a crash that happened when switching to a custom map while selecting starting hero for another map

- fixed a crash relating to first aid tents resurrecting bodyguards (might also need to have been frogged bodyguards)

- fixed the Pillar of Essence graphics looking wrong when using the small or classic town screen

- fixed Arcane and Order towns showing the wrong icons for their faction mechanics

- roaming armies can no longer spawn inside neutral towns

- changed map generation code so no maps can have more than 16 sets of portals (this affects at least Ten Towns, making the map more playable)

- fixed a bug that made new maps with randomised skill trees unable to start

- fixed several issues relating to randomised skill trees. They should now work correctly

- fixed Tea House giving access to Engineer's Workshop when using the small or classic town screen UI

- fixed graphical issues with Tea House on small / classic town screen UI

- made changes that should fix an irreproducible crash that happened sometimes in combat at 2x speed

- fixed crash that happened while trading units between two heroless regiments and the > buttons overlapped the units

- fixed Puzzle Master not unlocking if you had saved and reloaded during the game

- made changes that should fix an irreproducible crash that happened sometimes with a first aid tent

- AI will now value visiting a Mana Well proportionally to how much mana their hero is missing

- fixed some Tide units not being boostable by pearls

- fixed the pearl boosting button being placed poorly in the unit creation UI

- fixed a crash that happened in combination between certain mods and changing language

- fixed map-building Palace of X not showing its gold income in the gold income tooltip

- fixed the gold income tooltip showing the wrong amount of gold income if you had several gold mines

- fixed an issue where Midas Touch gold would be awarded to the wrong player sometimes

- (potentially fixed) Voices of Wrath music track being silent for some users

- Nomads no longer will survive being killed or fleeing

- fixed a bug relating to trading units with Earthen Guards?

- fixed Scrying achievement not unlocking correctly

- fixed AI players fighting against AI players being able to flee, appearing back at their home town and bringing the boat with them

- there are now graphics for skills leveling up beyond Rank 10 all the way up to Rank 20

- fixed a bug that made upgraded dragons from Dragon Temple not correctly stack

- weaker enemy stacks in Easy mode now apply to all human players instead of just player 1

- Hex now prevents de-frogged non-permanent units to Split or Bud, fixing issues where high levels of Hex could make units like Mercurials go infinite

The launch on steam and other platforms has so far been a huge success. But I've been scrambling to keep up with all the new bug reports, as well as the features demanded by a new playerbase (lower difficulty, bodyguards nerf, wide screen support). I'll be getting to those eventually, one step at a time.

For now, thank you for reading, for helping, and good night! If there's one thing I could ask of you, it would be to leave a review on steam where you put a few words about how you see and play the game. And to have fun with automatic updates! Steam woohoo!

- Benjamin "ThingOnItsOwn" Hauer