Gladiator Guild Manager News

In update v0.746 we have new universal items available. In order to implement them we had to update our code that handles items so they can do new things like cast an area of effect ability and other things that items were not able to do before.

[h2]Here are the new items:[/h2]
[h3]Mantle Of Invisibility[/h3]
Makes a gladiator invisible during the first X seconds of the battle, or until they finish executing their first ability.


[h3]Book Of Holy Light[/h3]
2 second after the battle starts, heals allies for X% of their max health, in the area of X around this gladiator.


[h3]Book Of Fire[/h3]
1 second after battle starts, enemies in area X% around this gladiator get set on fire burning total of X% of their maximum health during 5 seconds.


[h3]Blades Of Terror[/h3]
First melee attack makes enemy lose control and run in terror for next X seconds (or until somebody hits them)


[h3]Book Of Magical Shield[/h3]
Gains magical shield that absorbs a total amount of X damage per each level of the gladiator holding this item.


[h3]Book Of Invincible Shield[/h3]
Gains a magical shield that lasts for X seconds and absorbs all damage during its duration.


[h3]Best Friend[/h3]
1 second after the start of the battle a fighting dog is summoned. Dog gets 1 level for each X levels of this gladiator.
(Note: Currently this item summons a Worg. But we'll replace him with actual dog soon)

[h3]Necklace Of Recklessness[/h3]
Deals X% higher damage, but also receives X% higher damage. (any attack type)


[h3]Necklace Of Persistency[/h3]
Once the gladiator's health drops under 50%, gladiator restores X% of their max health, and enemies in the area of X get pushed away and knocked down for X seconds.


[h2]Quests[/h2]
Additional quest is added for Ancient Temple that has a few follow up quests if you accept to do some shady business with peasants ːsteamhappyː
In this quest you'll have 20 seconds to destroy a door in one of the Ancient Temple's chambers, before an army of imps appears. So it's all about putting your highest damage dealing gladiators.


[h2]Debug Console[/h2]
One last thing. We implemented debug console that you can activate by pressing Shift + F3. This might be useful if you run into any issues. If there is an error in game you'll be able to click on it and press copy button, and then paste the text to us so we can take a better look at what happened.

[h2]Join The Community[/h2]
Join us on Discord and tell us what you think about new items or anything else.

Here’s what’s new in patch v0.743:



[h3]Shaman[/h3]
A melee fighter who summons totems that heal, and shoots fire bolts. During Rain and Heavy Wind weather his abilities are stronger. He is most effective in that kind of weather and in longer fights where he gets a chance to summon as many totems as possible.


[h3]Cleric[/h3]
Tanky/Support gladiator. His shield can block melee, projectile, and area of effect attacks. He also heals allies around him, so he is most effective in crowded melee fights.


[h3]Storm Dwarf[/h3]
A Dwarf’s high tech equipment gathers power from the weather. During Rain and Crimson Mist, his shooting is stronger, and during Heavy Wind weather, his melee attacks also grow stronger. He will then move towards enemies to fight.


[h3]Note[/h3]
Once you play with Shaman or Storm Dwarf, be sure to read how their abilities behave during different weather. And be sure to check weather next to days in timeline, so you can make the best use of these gladiators.

Weather is already influencing gladiators and on harder modes it's advised to be aware of it. For example, if your fight a Troll boss, since his abilities are mostly using Strength, it is good tactic to fight him during Rain when weather buffs are decreasing Strength of all characters in arena, making his attacks weaker.

Also, note that Ancient Tempe and Hollow Mountain arenas have their own independent weather buffs and it won't matter to gladiators what is the weather outside while fighting in there.



The Quirk assignment was fairly flawed. It was assigning duplicate quirks into the list of available quirks. Meaning that you’d be seeing the same few quirks instead of a wider variety of quirks both in shop and on enemies. Now that is improved, and also quirks assignment is less random. So in a shop you’ll always see a combination of positive and negative quirks instead of sometimes running into all negative ones as some players reported.
Also during the championship, green coupons will tend to give enemies negative quirks, blue random, and purple positive. Before quirk assignments were completely random for each gladiator. Now this will make higher reward fights more difficult.



In case you’re one of the players who wants an even higher challenge we added another extremely hard mode called “Hell”. At the start of the game you’ll notice that you get a bit less resources with each harder difficulty. But the biggest challenge is how the difficulty increases as you progress. On harder modes enemies will be higher levels as you complete new arena championships.


[h2]Corrupted Save Game Fixer[/h2]
In very rare situations people would get their save game corrupted and could not launch the game. This happened to some people if they lost electricity in the middle of the game or something else happened that we can’t predict. Overall when this happens the whole save game file gets corrupted beyond saving, and it won’t even let people get back into the game. We had a solution in the Beta branch that would fix this by clearing the save game. Now after being tested in beta, we moved it to the main branch so if this unfortunately happens to you, it will get fixed without you having to switch to beta branch.
We suspect that this might also happen if you exit the game while the game is being saved. Game is saved pretty quickly, but it could happen in very rare cases. Safest way to avoid this is not to suddenly exit with Alt+F4, but to exit using in-game buttons (Main Menu / Exit).


[h2]Bug Fixes / Polishing[/h2]

• Many of the localization issues are solved. Missing text, or misplaced text.
  
• Few gladiator buildings were missing descriptions.
  
• Area of Effect Indicator was not correct because it's shown at the position where the gladiator started casting ability and not where they executed. Now it's fixed so that the circle indicator is following the character's movement. This was not a big issue for previous gladiators, but now that we have Cleric who might move while casting his AoE Heal ability, the problem became apparent and needed fixing.
  
• The End Game Panel used to be above the Options Panel. Now fixed.
  
• Now that we updated gladiator and item shop update costs to start with zero gold we had an issue where if your gold was in minus, you could not update it. Now if shop refresh cost is zero, you can update it even if your gold is in minus value.
  
• The Area of Effect indicator is now thinner and looks much better during the chaos in battle.
  
• Purifier Wings Force effect added among a few other polishing details.
  
• Various other minor fixes and polishes.
  

[h2]Chat With Us[/h2]
Join our Discord Server and tell us what you think about the new gladiators or just stop by to hang out :)

-Few aspect ratio fixes
-There was a bug where sometimes near end of the game new gladiator buildings would not be added after finishing arena championships. Now fixed.
-Arena Championships teams are now 20% stronger, making the challenge of championship higher than other fights.

We just finished work on balancing the gladiators (version v0.736). Your feedback form Discord #balance-voting was a huge help telling us which gladiators needed changing. Of course, we took time and tested everything so it’s not balanced purely on voting but votes helped us a lot.

We also enabled the “More Info” button on gladiators where you can read about what they are good at and how to play them. For example we had a lot of votes to buff Cryomancer, but he is a support gladiator and is actually pretty solid in the right team combination. So we buffed him to deal a tiny bit more damage but didn’t change him too much. But when you read how to use him, you’ll find him way more useful.

-For now the More Info button is only available in the English version but translators are working on it and as soon as they are done we’ll enable this info for all languages.
There are also new tooltips for the game (at the end battle screen) that are only in English and will soon arrive in other languages as well, helping you understand the game better.

Another thing that was confusing for many players were the gladiators stats like: Strength, Agility and Intelligence.
Those stats are calculated into gladiators abilities. For instance if you roll over damage of Berserker orcs Long Axe, you'll see what it's made of:

Now when you roll over each of those 3 stats there is explanation that will help you understand how those stats work and how you can check what they affect:



Anyhow, now the ones that were useless are stronger and worth playing with (My favorite at the moment is Purifier ːsteamhappyː). Ones that needed nerf were not nerfed too much because with weaker gladiators buffed, they got balanced out as well. And also, we don’t want to ruin them for people who enjoy playing with these gladiators.

Huge thanks for all the votes! This was super useful info for us to more accurately balance them. Of course it still won’t be perfect, you’ll still be able to find ways to increase some stats or use combinations of gladiators or items that will make them very strong. But there is fun in that as well, as you discover how to make a very powerful teams.

Next we’re working on adding a few new gladiators and quests. So as the pool of random gladiators gets bigger, there will be less chance that you always run into that same powerful combination of gladiators, so you’ll have to figure out new good tactics and it will make the game more fun to play over and over again.

Nothing is final of course. We’ll still listen to your feedback and keep tweaking gladiators.


One big change is that we increased Health per level up point from 30 to 50 and Stamina from 15 to 20.
This is done in order to make battles a bit longer and with that the strategy should matter more.

For instance if you fight against skeleton assassins and mages. Skeleton mages are freezing your gladiators and then skeleton assassins are dealing +150% damage to frozen enemies. So it’s important to kill off the skeleton mages first. But battle happens so fast that you can kind of ignore this and brute force your way through. But now if the battle is a bit longer, your strategy will matter a bit more.

Now if you already have a saved game, your gladiators will remain as they are saved. Sadly we can’t do anything about this as they already have their stats saved and we can only set the stats of gladiators that will be created. Sorry for this inconvenience, but the game will get better with this change so we had to make this choice. Overall, for you the game will just ramp up in difficulty a bit during your current playthrough (or at least until you don’t level up your gladiaotrs and get some new ones).




(Bellow are more updates, so if you don’t want to read every single change for every gladiators you can scroll down to see other updated things)


[h3]Archer:[/h3]
Due to the health increment of all gladiators we decided not to change her too much for now. As she will be already having a harder time dealing with gladiators with more health, and in melee fights she is not very useful no matter how much health she has.


[h3]Berserker:[/h3]
-Long Axe Attack
Damage gained from strength increased from x10 to x13
Damage gained from agility increased from x2 to x4.5

-Punch
Damage gained from strength increased from x3 to x4
Damage gained from strength increased from x7 to x8

-Kick
Base Cooldown reduced from 10 to 7 seconds.
Push force (hidden stat) is increased from 8.5 to 12 points.
Base Execution Speed decreased from 0.8 to 0.5 seconds.


[h3]Cryomancer:[/h3]
-Frost Bolt
Base Cooldown reduced from 11 to 9 seconds.
Minimum Cooldown reduced form 6 to 5 seconds.
Damage gained from intelligence increased from x1 to x2

-Icicle Shot
Damage gained from intelligence increased from x0.5 to x2
Base Execution Time reduced from 1 to 0.7
Minimum Execution Time reduced from 0.5 to 0.3

Cryomancer is a support type of gladiator so he is most useful if you want to prevent enemies from reaching your gladiators.
Like when you use lots of ranged gladiators. One good tactic when you have both ranged and melee gladiators in a team, is to put those melee gladiators all the way back in the arena. So that Cyromancer freezes enemies, and then your ranged gladiators have time to deal some damage before your melee gladiators even begin fighting.


[h3]Hunter[/h3]
-Trap:
Trap now slowly slides towards the enemy and then stops. Increasing the chance that the enemy will step into it and also allowing Hunter to move backwards enough to shoot again.
Damage gained from intelligence decreased from x15 to x8
Movement Preventing Duration Base increased from 1 to 2.5 seconds.

-Melee Attack:
Damage gained from strength increased from x3 to x4

-Shoot
Damage gained from agility increased from x2 to x6.5

-Burst Shot
Damage gained from strength increased from x10 to x14
Minimum Cooldown increased from 4 to 6 seconds


[h3]Ghoul[/h3]
Melee Attack:
Damage gained from strength increased from x7 to x9
Damage gained from agility increased from x1 to x2


[h3]Invigorator[/h3]
Divine Vigor:
Base Cooldown decreased from 7 to 3.5 seconds
Base Execution Speed decreased from 1 to 0.5 seconds

Restore Stamina:
Base Cooldown decreased from 8 to 3 seconds


[h3]Knight[/h3]
Melee Attack:
Base Cooldown increased from 1.3 to 1.6 seconds.
Minimum Cooldown increased from 0.5 to 1.2 seconds.
Base Execution Speed decreased from 0.6 to 0.4 seconds.
Minimum Execution Speed decreased from 0.6 to 0.25 seconds.

Note: This way he will execute attacks faster, but will have longer cooldowns in between, giving him free time to use defense what he is best at. Since gladiators can’t use defense if they are in the middle of executing an attack. We’ll do this for most defensive/tanky gladiators to help them use their defense more often.


[h3]Mace Wielder[/h3]
Note: There were some votes to nerf him but now that other gladiators are stronger we think there is no need to nerf him too much. Now he will lose to the same level of Orc Berserker or even Knight. But that is 1vs1. Mace Wielder's power lies in his Mace Attack, but he can use it only if he’s away from the enemy. So if he enters the fight with more enemies around him, between stabbing his target he can use his Mace Attack to hit nearby enemies and that’s where he becomes very-very powerful. If you’d put 2 Mace Wielders vs 2 Knight, the Mace Wielder orcs would win, as they help each other by hitting both enemies. It’s all about positioning them right.

Mace Attack:
Minimum Cooldown is increased from 0.5 to 0.75 seconds.
Stamina required for is increased by 50%. So you’d have to be careful to keep his stamina high enough for him to stay useful in bigger battles.

Melee Attack:
Base Cooldown decreased from 1.5 to 1 second.


[h3]Mana Assassin[/h3]
Melee Attack:
Damage gained from agility increased from x2 to x4.5
Base Cooldown decreased from 1.2 to 1 seconds.
Base Execution Speed decreased from 1 to 0.5 seconds.

Shadow Strike:
Base Execution Speed decreased from 0.6 to 0.4 seconds.
Damage Over Time (Bleed) gained from intelligence increased from x0.2 to x0.3 (occurs every 0.5 seconds till end of the battle)
Damage gained from intelligence increased from x12 to x14
Damage gained from agility increased from x0 to x2


[h3]Necromancer[/h3]
Raise Dead:
Base Cooldown decreased from 10 to 6 seconds.
Minimum Cooldown decreased from 4 to 3 seconds.
Base Execution Speed decreased from 1.5 to 1 second.

Terror:
Base Cooldown decreased from 20 to 14 seconds.
Base Duration increased from 5 to 6 seconds

Note: Tested him in a team with 3 Berserkers against 4 enemy Berserkers and they easily won. He just needs some dead bodies as soon as possible and he will be very powerful now with shorter cooldowns.


[h3]Priestess[/h3]
Shield:
Base Cooldown decreased from 9 to 7 seconds.
Range increased from 5 to 8
Shields Health gained from intelligence increased from x9 to x11 points.

Heal:
Base Cooldown decreased from 10 to 4 seconds.
Minimum Cooldown decreased from 2 to 1.5 seconds.
Range increased from 5 to 9
Heal amount gained by intelligence decreased from x7.5 to x12 points.

Note: This might seem like a huge buff. But since we increased the health points gladiators are getting by each level up point, her heal needed a good to stay relevant.


[h3]Purifier[/h3]
Burning Light:
Range increased from 9 to 14
Base Execution Speed decreased from 4 to 3 seconds.
Minimum Execution Speed decreased from 2 to 1.25 seconds.
Base Cooldown decreased from 1.5 to 1 seconds.
Minimum Cooldown decreased from 0.75 to 0.5 seconds.

Damage gained from intelligence decreased from x10 to x8
Total Damage Over Time (Burning) gained from intelligence decreased from x10 to x3.5
Impact Force (hidden stat) decreased from 13 to 2

Wings Force:
Base Knockdown Duration increased from 1 to 2.5
Impact Force (hidden stat) increased from 15 to 20
Base Area of Effect Radius increased from 1.7 to 2.5


[h3]Pyromancer[/h3]
Fire Bolt:
Damage gained from strength increased from x3 to x6
Damage gained from intelligence increased from x0.5 to x2
Total Damage Over Time (Burning) gained from intelligence decreased from x4 to x8


[h3]Worg[/h3]
Bite:
Damage gained from strength increased from x5 to x6
Damage gained from agility increased from x3 to x3.5

Dodge:
Defence points gained from agility increased from x3.5 to x4


[h3]Brigand[/h3]
Throw Spear:
Damage gained from strength increased from x8 to x9
Damage gained from agility increased from x1 to x2
Now she is able to move while throwing spear

Throw Net:
Base Duration increased from 3 to 3.5 seconds.
Base Execution Speed decreased from 0.8 to 0.4 seconds.


[h3]Marauder[/h3]
Melee Attack:
Base Cooldown increased from 0.8 to 1 .6 seconds.
Minimum Cooldown increased from 0.5 to 1.2 seconds.
Damage gained from agility increased from x2 to x4

Shield Bash:
Note: Knockdown from this ability was not working at all. Now it’s fixed.
Damage gained from agility increased from x0 to x3


[h3]Claw Imp[/h3]
Melee Attack:
Damage gained from strength increased from x4 to x6

Dodge:
Defence points gained from agility increased from x3.5 to x4


[h3]Rock Imp[/h3]
Throw Rock:
Damage gained from agility increased from x4 to x5


[h3]Crossbowman[/h3]
Crossbow Shot:
Damage gained from strength decrease from x12 to x10


[h3]Guard[/h3]
Melee Attack:
Damage gained from strength decreased from x3 to x2
Damage gained from agility increased from x2 to x2.5

Shield Block:
Base Execution Speed decreased from 0.6 to 0.4 seconds.
Minimum Execution Speed decreased from 0.4 to 0.25 seconds.

Base Cooldown increased 1.3 to 0.9 seconds
Minimum Cooldown increased 1.2 to 0.9 seconds


[h3]Spearman[/h3]
Spear Attack:
Damage gained from agility increased from x11 to x12

Dagger Attack:
Damage gained from strength increased from x4 to x6

Weapon Block:
Defence points gained from agility increased from x3 to x3.5


[h3]Fence Wielder[/h3]
Punch:
Base Cooldown increased from 1 to 1.6 seconds.
Minimum Cooldown increased from 0.3 to 1.2 seconds.
Base Execution Speed decreased from 1 to 0.4 seconds.
Minimum Execution Speed decreased from 0.4 to 0.25 seconds.

Damage gained from agility increased from x4 to x5

Wooden Fence Block:
Blocked Damage gained from strength increased from x30 to x40 (Note: This is high number, but his fence can break when it takes all the damage it can absorb)


[h3]Granny[/h3]
Throw Knife:
Damage gained from strength increased from x6 to x7.
Damage gained from agility increased from x1 to x3.


[h3]Pitchfork Villager[/h3]
Punch:
Damage gained from agility increased from x5 to x6
Damage gained from strength increased from x1 to x3

Pitchfork Attack:
Damage gained from strength increased from x12 to x14
Damage gained from agility increased from x0 to x3


[h3]Executioner[/h3]
Melee Attack:
Damage gained from strength increased from x5.5 to x8

Shadow Burst:
Damage gained from strength increased from x14 to x15
Base Cooldown reduced from 8 to 6 seconds.


[h3]Afflictor[/h3]
Shadow Shield:
Base Cooldown reduced from 8 to 6 seconds.
Shields Health gained from intelligence increased from x6 to x8 points.


[h3]Summoner[/h3]
Shadow Bolt:
Base Cooldown reduced from 7 to 6 seconds.
Minimum Cooldown reduced from 4.5 to 3.5 seconds.
Damage gained from intelligence decreased from x11 to x10


[h3]Horn Beast[/h3]
Melee Attack:
Damage gained from strength increased from x3.2 to x8.

Heavy Horn Swing:
Note: Knockdown from this ability was not working at all. Now it’s fixed.
Damage gained from agility increased from x11 to x15.
Base Cooldown reduced from 15 to 10 seconds.


[h3]Skeleton Assassin[/h3]
Melee Attack:
Increased damage towards frozen targets increased from +100% to +150% (So it’s important to get rid of Skeleton Mage who freezes them)

Weapon Block:
Defence points gained from agility increased from x1.5 to x2.5


[h3]Skeleton Mage[/h3]
Frost Bolt:
Base Area of Effect Radius increased from 0.8 to 1.2
Max Area of Effect Radius increased from 1.5 to 2.5


[h3]Frost Mountain Spider[/h3]
Melee Attack
Damage gained from strength decreased from x10 to x7.
Damage gained from agility increased from x0 to x3.


[h3]Spider Baby[/h3]
Melee Attack
Damage gained from strength decreased from x4 to x3.



[h2]Gladiator and Item Markets[/h2]
Gold for updating both gladiator and item markets will start from 0 and rise slowly.
Each time the month ends, the cost is reduced 4 times (like you clicked 4 times less).
So now it’s much easier to get better gladiators and items at the start of the game for a very low gold cost. And overall the refresh market buttons are way more useful, giving you more choices for building your team and their gear.


[h2]Ring of Death[/h2]
1 vs Few is now not available at the start of the game but added later as it’s pretty hard when you’re just starting to already have a gladiator that can kill multiple enemies. But 3vs3 is added instead.
1vs many is also moved up for later arenas as it’s also very hard until you have some seriously powerful gladiator in your team.
Eventually we plan to add a refresh button that will cost you some gold to reset the games in Ring of Death in case you’re stuck with some battle that you can’t win. But this should already make this scenario way less likely to happen.

[h2]Championship[/h2]
In championship winning at least one purple reward will always give you one ordinary item. And winning 4 or more, will give you both ordinary and universal items. As we had complains that epic (purple) rewards were not as good as they should be.



We had a friend who came over and helped us solve the aspect ratio issue we had. The game used to support only 16:9. Now it supports a much wider range, going from 16:10, to 21:9, or even 32:9 if you have that sweat two in one monitor ːsteamhappyː


To thank our friend we want to give a shout out to his tavern building/management game that is going to be released very soon called: Tavern Master
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1525700/Tavern_Master/

It's a very enjoyable and relaxing game and even has a free demo called DM Prologue that you can check out right away.



-Blind fight would sometimes break and not let you put any gladiators in battle. Now that is fixed.
-Quest Guild Robbery used to be an ordinary quest and you could just wait till it passed. Now it's a red event that needs to be handled to continue.
-When Slen hides and steals gold from Baroness (From Ancient Temple Chambers), in one specific dialogue option he would not give you the gold that he has stolen. Greedy Slen… But we had a long talk with him, and he will not be pulling these kinds of tricks on you anymore ;)

-Adding back animations for several gladiators that were missing those.
-Undeads like Ghoul, Undead yeti, Skeleton Assassin, Skeleton Mage, did not have Undead Quirk on them, meaning that you could not benefit from Quirk that deals higher damage to Undead. Now fixed.
-Small fixes like Mace Wielder having switched icons and many-many more small things like that.



Now that most of the bugs have been solved and gladiators balanced we’re focusing on creating new content. Of course there is always going to be something small to fix or re-balance so please report if you run into anything. But the game is much smoother at this point and we’re already started work on new gladiators.

We want to thank you for all your support! It will allow us to keep working on the game and finish it. We do not promise super fast updates as we are a small team and the game has its fair share of complexity and complications especially as we're keep adding new things and it grows, but we do promise to finish it. And that we will give our best to make updates regularly until the game is ready for Full Release.
We’re at your disposal at Discord and will give our best to be active on Steam Community as well. So we can hear your feedback that will help us keep the development in good direction. ːsteamhappyː

At some point while fixing bugs and merging project between two of us, the fix for Universal items was somehow lost. But it's back and working now in version v0.729. If you have broken items in inventory they will be fixed as well.