CHANGES TO THE FORGE OF DAITH
We’ve heard your feedback on the Forge, and have implemented a preliminary set of changes to deal with the most prominent gameplay issues:
Items will now revert back to their previous upgrade level after Reforging expires, rather than their base level
The ‘Naestra leaves’ option that appears when Daith offers to reforge a completed item with now reduce the timer until the next new item is offered by 2 turns
In addition, we’ve done a balance pass on all the items offered by the Forge. All items have had their stats tweaked, and Reforged items will now be significantly stronger, so they are viable choices in comparison to permanent upgrades.
CHANGES TO OFFICES
With the Wood Elf offices, we generally sought to avoid too many factionwide effects as these tend to promote recruiting Lords purely to fill a slot, then disbanding them. While this is appropriate for some factions – such as the Empire, where filling the Elector Count seats is the goal of the campaign – for Wood Elves we wanted to focus on offices as a tool for customising Lords and enabling alternative strategies and playstyles.
In this context, Durthu’s offices were meant to complement a more defensive playstyle where your Treemen lords would passively buff their local region while defending it, whereas Orion’s were designed to promote a more ‘spiky’ playstyle focused on expansion and contraction, with multiple armies running alongside each other to maximise bonuses.
In retrospect, the effects were probably not strong enough to have the desired effect. As such we have added adding the following:
ORION
Master of Scouts and Herald of the Hunt: +30% income from raiding to local forces
Master of Drums and Master of Supplies: +25% income from post-battle loot to local forces
Talon of Kurnous, Spirit of the Hunt, and Master of the Hunt: +15% razing income to local forces
Like other effects, these are doubled in strength during Wild Hunts. If several Lords with the same effect are in the same region, the effects will stack
DURTHU
All non-faction-leader Office slots provide -20% upkeep for all units while in owned territory
BUG FIXES AND IMPROVEMENTS
Fixed an issue where Ariel would not spawn in the Eye of the Vortex campaign after manually fighting a Forest Encounter
Fixed a bug responsible for various issues (e.g. some cases of unresponsive Forest Encounters, the Forge of Daith not firing)
Drycha’s quest chain will no longer abort if Middenheim is captured instead of raided
Coeddil now has the Immortal trait
Fixed a crash that could occur when escape was pressed after starting a ritual
Custom battles no longer crash when loading with more than 20 Clan Moulder units are selected
Removed some legacy advice that triggered on constructing the Oak of Ages which could cause soft-locks if the player completed a Ritual of Rebirth at the same time
We have fixed a problem which caused unresolvable Forest Encounters issues. However, this will not fix existing broken Forest Encounters. As such, we’re removing the Forest Health penalty from ‘unresolved encounters’ so that these broken encounters will not permanently hinder campaigns
The Wood Elf version of the Gaean Vale main settlement chain now has correct effects and unlocks the correct number of settlement slots
The level 4 and 5 Tree Spirits building (and the level 3 version for Drycha) now grant +1 recruitment capacity for Dryads
Orion’s Lord Effects now also apply to Great Stag Knights
Ariel’s Chosen will now correctly apply its melee attack increase effects during Forest Battles
The Stolen Power trait awarded from Drycha’s quest chain now correctly grants physical resistance to Tree Spirit units
Archaon’s faction effect now correctly increases weapon strength per rank
Wood Elf factions are now much less likely to refer to each other as traitors when they have positive diplomatic relations
We en-baubled the Oak of Ages but the dryads ate them all
The Lost Plateau region now correctly has a Heathland UI indicator
Throt will no longer be forced into a Military Alliance with the Wood Elves after completing his Vortex Final Battle
Doomfire Warlocks once again use a weaker version of Doombolt for their bound abilities
Settra is once again Undead when on his Chariot of the Gods mount
Coeddil, Ariel and Ghoritch now have zero upkeep, bringing them in line with other legendary heroes
The hidden army ability used to grant siege attacker is now actually hidden. The Power of Placeholder was too great to be handed out so freely
Fixed an issue that prevented the multiplayer leaderboards from being reset correctly. The multiplayer leaderboard has not been reset with this update
Various localization fixes
We’ve heard your feedback on the Forge, and have implemented a preliminary set of changes to deal with the most prominent gameplay issues:
Items will now revert back to their previous upgrade level after Reforging expires, rather than their base level
The ‘Naestra leaves’ option that appears when Daith offers to reforge a completed item with now reduce the timer until the next new item is offered by 2 turns
In addition, we’ve done a balance pass on all the items offered by the Forge. All items have had their stats tweaked, and Reforged items will now be significantly stronger, so they are viable choices in comparison to permanent upgrades.
CHANGES TO OFFICES
With the Wood Elf offices, we generally sought to avoid too many factionwide effects as these tend to promote recruiting Lords purely to fill a slot, then disbanding them. While this is appropriate for some factions – such as the Empire, where filling the Elector Count seats is the goal of the campaign – for Wood Elves we wanted to focus on offices as a tool for customising Lords and enabling alternative strategies and playstyles.
In this context, Durthu’s offices were meant to complement a more defensive playstyle where your Treemen lords would passively buff their local region while defending it, whereas Orion’s were designed to promote a more ‘spiky’ playstyle focused on expansion and contraction, with multiple armies running alongside each other to maximise bonuses.
In retrospect, the effects were probably not strong enough to have the desired effect. As such we have added adding the following:
ORION
Master of Scouts and Herald of the Hunt: +30% income from raiding to local forces
Master of Drums and Master of Supplies: +25% income from post-battle loot to local forces
Talon of Kurnous, Spirit of the Hunt, and Master of the Hunt: +15% razing income to local forces
Like other effects, these are doubled in strength during Wild Hunts. If several Lords with the same effect are in the same region, the effects will stack
DURTHU
All non-faction-leader Office slots provide -20% upkeep for all units while in owned territory
BUG FIXES AND IMPROVEMENTS
Fixed an issue where Ariel would not spawn in the Eye of the Vortex campaign after manually fighting a Forest Encounter
Fixed a bug responsible for various issues (e.g. some cases of unresponsive Forest Encounters, the Forge of Daith not firing)
Drycha’s quest chain will no longer abort if Middenheim is captured instead of raided
Coeddil now has the Immortal trait
Fixed a crash that could occur when escape was pressed after starting a ritual
Custom battles no longer crash when loading with more than 20 Clan Moulder units are selected
Removed some legacy advice that triggered on constructing the Oak of Ages which could cause soft-locks if the player completed a Ritual of Rebirth at the same time
We have fixed a problem which caused unresolvable Forest Encounters issues. However, this will not fix existing broken Forest Encounters. As such, we’re removing the Forest Health penalty from ‘unresolved encounters’ so that these broken encounters will not permanently hinder campaigns
The Wood Elf version of the Gaean Vale main settlement chain now has correct effects and unlocks the correct number of settlement slots
The level 4 and 5 Tree Spirits building (and the level 3 version for Drycha) now grant +1 recruitment capacity for Dryads
Orion’s Lord Effects now also apply to Great Stag Knights
Ariel’s Chosen will now correctly apply its melee attack increase effects during Forest Battles
The Stolen Power trait awarded from Drycha’s quest chain now correctly grants physical resistance to Tree Spirit units
Archaon’s faction effect now correctly increases weapon strength per rank
Wood Elf factions are now much less likely to refer to each other as traitors when they have positive diplomatic relations
We en-baubled the Oak of Ages but the dryads ate them all
The Lost Plateau region now correctly has a Heathland UI indicator
Throt will no longer be forced into a Military Alliance with the Wood Elves after completing his Vortex Final Battle
Doomfire Warlocks once again use a weaker version of Doombolt for their bound abilities
Settra is once again Undead when on his Chariot of the Gods mount
Coeddil, Ariel and Ghoritch now have zero upkeep, bringing them in line with other legendary heroes
The hidden army ability used to grant siege attacker is now actually hidden. The Power of Placeholder was too great to be handed out so freely
Fixed an issue that prevented the multiplayer leaderboards from being reset correctly. The multiplayer leaderboard has not been reset with this update
Various localization fixes