Tainted Grail News

Hi everyone! We're really sorry for the various issues that appeared in our last build - the ones that were truly game-breaking should be fixed in our latest patch.

There’s this joke our programmer makes that game development and programming is like renovating your house - with one additional quirk that sometimes when you’re painting the walls in your living room, you can cause a roof in your kitchen to fall. This is pretty much what happened last week, and we're sorry for the inconvenience we've produced.



Here's what we've fixed:

• We’ve fixed your combat cards being missing in the game's campaign mode
  
• The game shouldn't get stuck on the Title Screen anymore
  
• Lord of Serpents (3rd Boss) should be killable now (and we've fixed some other things it was breaking)
  

We've also fixed problems with the following passive skills:

• Coordinated Assault
  
• Endless Gratification
  
• Overload
  
• Power of Experience
  

Which were causing issues with auto-targeting your last summon and other problems with summons in general.

We're working on various other issues (like the sound bug in Summoner), and we're going to push them in the next patch.



However, in order to prevent issues such as the one you've been experiencing over the weekend, we've decided to change our schedule a bit.

We're going to push big patches to the game's main branch on Wednesdays now - this will allow us to fix critical issues faster. A game staying broken for three days is unacceptable.

This means that if we're going to push a new patch this week, then it's going to be mostly a bug-fixing pass instead of a regular update! Hope you'll understand and approve!

However, broken/risky branches are going to be available for everyone willing to test them out, try new features earlier, and so on - you can hop on to the beta branch using this password: ParostatkiemWPieknyRejs.

Have a great week and - once again - sorry for the game being unplayable for some of you over the weekend! :)

Hello! Before we get to the update, we'd like to make a shout-out to our Discord community - and in this case especially lMaltel, Disiesel, and titan.bevel - because they've created something amazing.

They wrote a beginner's guide to Avalon - from their perspective as players - in order to help out everyone who feels lost. And it's incredible to read these kinds of things as a developer. To see that people care about your game and are willing to help out others in enjoying it? One of the best feelings!

Check out the guide HERE.

Back to the update!



So last week we've been hard at work, trying to add a new rune for the Druid. However, after sharing it in its prototype state to our players at Discord, we realized that it might be a bit premature to update the game with this character yet.

This week, though, we're pretty confident that we've got it. After reading all feedbacks we got, rethinking what we want to achieve, and implementing a lot of new features, we've reached something that feels really good to play!

(I personally always played as a Brawler, now I'm playing the Blood Mage!)

There's still a lot of work in front of us, a lot to do, but we just can't wait to share the Blood Mage and Summoner with you. Just hop into the game WITHOUT expectations because both of these runes were changed a lot!

Please note that this is an Early Access - things change and shift as we are listening to your feedback and updating things on a weekly basis. There were and will be builds that will not be balanced, but you might be sure we will change it into the best experience we have. That is why your feedback is so important. Your support too! Thanks to your positive reviews and general kind words we are MUCH more motivated to keep on going and giving our 100% into the game!

Here's an overview of what you can expect by our One & Only Marcin :)

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Just remember that since the class was pretty much done from scratch in terms of its design, it is unbalanced - but by playing it, you can really help us out in seeing what needs a nerf. We're collecting stats of most/least used cards and other things like that, so we'll be able to see how you're doing ;)

(Expect changes to the Warrior class next week - based on these analytics!)

[h3]So, what else is happening in this patch?[/h3]

Some of you will probably be happy that two quality of life improvements you've asked for are live ;)

• You can now hold the left mouse button to make the character go where you want (no more click-spamming!)
  
• The first iteration of the key-rebinding system is live, too. You can't rebind everything but... it's a start! :)
  

We've also fixed a couple of bugs and issues, but the important thing is that there are several things we're still working on...



But we decided not to share them/make them public just yet. There are two reasons for that.

Some are unfinished, and that's the case with - for example - new and better combat animations. Here's a work-in-progress sample of what we're working on:



It takes a while because adding these things means that we constantly need to improve our tools with new features. And I mean things like "I need to have the possibility to add a visual effect to a weapon" or "I need to be able to spawn a projectile or plenty of projectiles and make them go in proper directions." We're getting there, though, and the game should be much, much prettier, and - more importantly - should feel much better to play.

(Yes, we’re sad every time we look at that blue Barrier-spawning effect, too!)

The second reason is that plenty of things we're improving are connected to other features and systems so we can't just add "parts" of these redesigns - but I'll just tell you that we're planning a huge update, a significant improvement to plenty of things, for the end of August ;)

This update should contain a revamped progression system throughout the entire game, a better implementation of corruption, proper reward-related systems, and... some things that I'll tell you about in the future! :)

Hey everyone!

Today we got for you an update v0.91 with small changes here and there, new cards / passives for Druid and some extra visual upgrades! This week we have also been working on second Druid rune and we are happy to report, that we will be able to bring it to you guys quite soon!




Here is a quick list of all the changes that we managed to make this week!

• Steam Cloud Saves Support Added
  
• Fixed flute statuses duration
  
• Brawler's Passives and Reforges should correctly work with Stone-Breaker Reforge.
  
• Quick Save and Quick Load disabled in Conquest
  
• Added rune panel in character sheet
  
• Chain counter now resets after playing a card with Chain keyword (sorry Warrior - Guardians :( )
  
• Added "Show Intro Videos" option in Settings for people who run into problems while playing the intro video
  
• Added tooltips for Card Kinds
  
• Added new tattoos for female and male.
• Changed male body textures
• Fixed Derenheim Winterbane's immortality issues
  
• Druid shouldn't rotate towards his summons anymore
  
• Fixed energy display bug for guardian (sometimes it showed 1 more energy than it should)
  
• Updated several story artworks
  

Before we will get into biggest mechanical changes this week (Druid :3) - let us see some examples of the new Tattoos! Our team did an quite amazing job on them and now, you guys can slay the Wyrdness monsters in much better style :D



We also felt that things were a bit off with male 3D model, so we decided to quickly change it ;)



There is much more awesome visual things coming, but more about it later!



In gameplay department this week we spent mostly on Druid - we have changed a lot, added a lot of new cards, passives and experimented with a lot of concepts.
We are closer and closer to a point, were the Druid is properly balanced, challenging and satisfying to play!

Here are all the changes!


• Changed Synergy’s card kind to Summon
• Contract keyword should remove cards from deck Untill end of Combat
• Contract cards now activate summoned summons on use
• Promote now keeps the Health % ratio instead of healing Summoned Creature to the max. (for example if you had 25/50 hp and gain +30 max health, summon will have 40 / 80 hp after promotion)
• Sigils are now bound to the Summoned Creature for the entirety of combat and return to discard pile on Summoned Creature’s death.
• Summon Wyrm Card cost increased to 2 Energy (from 1).
• Consumables items can now be used on Summoned Creatures:
Consecrated Oil
Seal of Unfolding
Healing Mixture
Healing Potion
Healing Elixir
Strong Healing Elixir
Warding Lore
Food
Wyrdtainted Meat
• New Cards in Summoner Initial Deck:
- Acid Blood (Sigil)
On each Hit inflicted: -1 Armor per Summoned Creature's level
2 Energy
- Random Ritual (Spell)
Activate random Summoned Creature 2 times.
1 Energy
- Promote (Spell)
Promote a Summoned Creature.
2 Energy

• New Cards in Summoner Advanced Deck:
- Acid Saliva (Sigil)
On every Summoned Creature's Hit: Reduce enemy's Armor by 2.
1 Energy
- Advanced Promotion (Spell)
Promote a chosen Summoned Creature by two levels.
2 Energy
- Conversion (Sigil)
Decrease Armor per Turn by -10, but increase Damage by +15%, indefinitely.
1 Energy
- Druid’s Curse (Spell)
All Enemies get debuff until next Turn: -50 Armor, -50% Damage.
2 Energy
- Hammerhead (Sigil)
Every Summoned Creature's hit has a 25% chance to Stun the target.
3 Energy
- Infuriate (Sigil)
Each Turn: Gain +10% Damage
2 Energy
- Magic Wind (Spell;Ability)
Sacrifice 5% of max HP tpo Activate all Summoned Creature
1 Energy
- Not A Drop Wasted (Spell)
Activate a chosen Summoned Creature three times. Sacrifice it.
1 Energy
- Overdose (Sigil)
Summoned Creature loses 30% max HP per Turn. +200% Damage.
2 Energy
- Self-awareness (Sigil)
At the start of every Turn Promote a Summoned Creature
3 Energy
- Self-sustain (Sigil)
Each Turn: Heal 10% max HP.
1 Energy
- Sign of Revenge
Reflect 10 Damage per Hit.
2 Energy
- Sign of the Rat
For every other ally in combat: +20% Damage, -40 Armor.
1 Energy
- Whispers in the Wind (Sigil)
Every time a chosen Summoned Creature activates, draw a Card.
2 Energy
- Sacrifice is moved to the Advanced Deck.
Sacrifice rebalance:
250% Base Damage instead of 100%.
Targets Single Enemy instead of All Enemies

• Summoner Cards Rebalance:
- Arcane Shield (Spell)
Can target allies.
- Battle Enchantments (Sigil)
+10 Barrier Health instead of +5.
- Barrier (Spell)
+15 Barrier Health instead of +10.
- Cleansing (Summon)
Sacrifice 10% Max HP instead of 20%.
Gain Barrier with Health equal to the sacrificed amount instead of 100.
Summon 2 Abominations instead of 4.
- Deep Reserves (Spell)
Cost changed to 0 Energy instead of 1 Energy.
- Invoke (Spell)
Now targets All Summons instead of Single Summon.
Activates 2 times instead of 3 times.
- Oversaturate (Sigil)
Summoned Creature activates at the start of a turn instead of doubling every activation.
Cost changed to 2 Energy instead of 3 Energy.
- Reform Energy (Spell)
Now targets Single Summon instead of All Summons.
Draw 2 Cards instead of 1 Card.
Cost changed to 0 Energy instead of 1 Energy.
- Shamanic Knowledge (Summon)
Sacrifice 10% Max HP instead of 15%.
Give Barrier with Health equal to the sacrificed amount to every Ally and Self.
Cost changed to 2 Energy instead of 4 Energy.
- Two Pillars (Summon)
Cost changed to 2 Energy instead of 3 Energy.
- Weaved in Spells (Sigil)
+25 Armor instead of +10.


• Summoner Passive Skills Rebalance
- Arcane Foundations
Gain 1 Rune Charge per Turn.
- Eternal Leash
All Summoned Creatures start with 10 Barrier.
- Lash Out
All summoned Creatures: +15% Damage.
- Last Layer
At the end of each your Turn, if 2 or less Summoned Creatures alive: +5 Barrier on Summoned Creatures and Self.
- Reinforce
All Summoned Creatures: +20% max HP.

• New Summoner Passive Skills:
- Precautionary Measures
At the start of every Combat: +25 Barrier on self
- Power Tap
On every Rune use: Draw 1 Card.
- Runic Signs
First Sigil-type Card played in every combat is free.

As you can see - A LOT of things happened this week to Druid, but this is not everything, as next week we will have for you new, fresh rune for him too! Now, we hope you will have a lot of fun testing out all the changes and as always, don't forget to share with us your feedback!


We don't want to spoil too much, but soon you can also expect some really epic things ;) New animations for combat, new story interactions, new Druid rune and more!
We are really excited for the next week update and hope you are too! ;)

This is it for today, we hope you will enjoy this update and have a great weekend!

Hello! It's been a really long and very weird week for us! We've been hard at work, and we've been improving the game in plenty of different places - and there's this paradox that even though we've made A LOT of fixes, you're going to see mostly relatively small (but essential) improvements this week.

We're constantly enhancing our back-end and working on things that are going to be ready-for-release within a couple of weeks, but since it's easy to say that and you don't really have a reason to trust us, we decided to share some of the information about what can you expect in the future ;)

So here's a couple of things we'd like to tell you about our upcoming patches and plans!

So –





Every run should reward you with something new, and we need a lot of new systems to make that happen - and also to track your achievements. We've already started coming up with ideas for a special journal that will contain information about the things you learned and unlocked in the game (serving both as a bestiary, lore-based journal, and comprehensive collection of statistics). But that’s not all - we’re going to add a lot of new cards, passive skills, and so on, so that there’s a proper reward system waiting for you in the future.

We're going to track your quests from run to run, too, so that it's clearer what's happening - because we're working on an over-arching storyline of Conquest. This will take some time, but, as we've said before, we're treating Conquest as a narrative-driven rogue-lite RPG, and we feel that this is something unique about this game, and we want to make this right.

When we're at this: we want to implement a general "structure" of the game. Right now, it feels like disjointed bits and pieces of various things, and we know that we need to make a proper overhaul of everything related to the overall user experience. From the way our menus work, through general UI, up to how you interact with most of our systems.



This will be a significant change - at some point. First, we want to make sure that the game will work properly on gamepads because this will drive some UI changes, and we're sure it will allow us to change the UI for the better (to streamline overcomplicated stuff). But don't worry, most of our devs are from the PC Master Race - we won't make any changes that will make the PC version of Tainted Grail worse.

Moreover, over time, we'll be changing the way the village works. We're not satisfied, like, at all with what we have right now. From the visual side of it (it's not as pretty as we'd like it to be) to general usability - all of this will be improved.

And while we're at it, we will be gradually changing some of our artworks and locations so that they're more Tainted Grail, less fantasy. We've stolen one of the artists from the board game department to help us out with that, and he's already making a lot of changes and suggestions :)

What else?



We have a massive list of additions and improvements you can expect in the coming months. I won't spoil much (but you can expect, for example, mercenaries for hire), but a couple of topics that CAN be spoiled are:

• We will redesign the way armor works in the game. Like, entirely. It's going to be a different system.
  
• We will change a couple of OP mechanics.
  
• We will add more stories and questlines after completing the first run, and a lot of village improvements.
  
• We will add a version of a crafting system and change the way weapons and armors currently behave. Without going into too much detail, one of the changes you can expect is that runes will have dedicated weapons (no more Druids with swords), and these weapons will have some variations in attributes. Still, their major source of power will lie in special gems/imbuements/tbd you'll be able to enhance them with. More details - soon!
  
• We're almost ready for constant data-driven balancing. Removing non-playable cards / passsives and adding new ones. Adding more non-game-breaking-combo-potential :)
  
• More content overall:
  - More variety of passives
  - More cards for each class
  - More enemies
  - More items
  

We have plenty of other things in store but, well, we'll get back to that in the future :)

So what's happening this week?





[h3]MAJOR FIXES:
[/h3]
Some of you’ll be very happy to hear that Derenheim Winterbane shouldn’t be immortal anymore!

Also, we’ve improved the visual feedback of passive rune upgrades you can see in combat.

In terms of visuals, we've finally added screen space ambient occlusion to the game, and this means that it should be visibly prettier and everything should just feel... heavier. And in place. And softer. See for yourselves:



And a feature you've been asking for:



Yes, you can see your passive skills in your character panel :)



[h3]Fixes, changes:[/h3]
- Legendary Cards shouldn't duplicate information about being Legendary
- Blood Druid Staff now correctly sacrifices your health.
- Robes are robes. 4 new Armor skins implemented.
- Fixed character pose in character creation
- Clothes are changing in class select window when you are changing your runes
- Fixed a bug that caused your character to heal every time you performed a summon
- Now Legendary cards are truly one-time-use-only
- Glyph of Enhancing Reforge is properly working now
- Weaved in Spells and Deep Reserves cannot be used if no Summon is alive
- Brawler Axe won't taunt enemies at the start of combat.
- Flutes targeting specific creatures won't target your summons
- Fixed a bug that turned off Staggering Strength Brawler Reforge when you picked Stone-breaker Reforge. (Explosive Force, however, is still broken)
- Fixed a bug that caused Steel-eater to show that it dealt 0 Damage
- Spawners can spawn more enemies, because now they can spawn enemies in place where they were standing.
- Battlelog shows correct information after Bounty Hunter actions (inserting Disturbance card into your deck)

[h3]Village and Map changes and balancing
[/h3]- Manasse can only spawn once and only per run.

Lost Soul Rebalance:
- Discard works only 2 times and costs 500 G (rising after every use)
- Healing Mixture added to level 3 of Lost Soul's shop.

Seamstress Rebalance:
- Healing is 100 G (rising after every use)
- Discard is 500 G (rising after every use)

Also: Seamstress can change your character’s appearance now

Master-At-Arms Rebalance:
- Drawing Cards costs 350 G (rising after every use)
- Duplication costs 500 G (rising after every use)
- Setting Cards As Starting Hand costs 750 G



- Changes to Unyielding Steel armor:

• Gives +100 Max HP instead of 50
  
• Now reduces your Armor by 20
  
• Special Ability chaged to: "At the start of every 2 turns gain 1 Block"
  
• Price increased to 350 from 200
  

[h3]Summoner[/h3]

FIRST BALANCE BASS. STILL A WORK IN PROGRESS!

Druid’s Summoner Rune

• Maximum charge count changed to 18 from 12.
  
• Charge thresholds for Ultimate ability changed from 4 , 8, 12 to 6, 12, 18.
  
• Passive skill now grants +15% Damage per Summoned Creature instead of +25%.
  
• Reforge Glyphs of Sustenance have had their Barrier generation buff increased from +50% to +100%.
  
• Reforge Glyphs of Shielding changed - now grants +2 Rune Charges per Turn.

Druid’s Summoner Deck & Passives:

• One Sacrifice Card has been cut from the initial deck in favor of +1 Ritual Card.
  
• Sacrifice now costs 1 Energy, and all effects except for Damage are removed.
  
• Invoke has had its Cost increased from 2 to 3.
  
• Reverse Seal has had its Cost increased from 1 to 2.
  
• Surge has had its Cost increased from 1 to 2.
  
• Power Up has had its Damage buff decreased from +100% to +30%.
  
• Coordinated Assault has had its Damage buff decreased from +50% to +25%.
  
• Swarm ‘Em! has had its Damage buff decreased from +50% to +25%.
  
• Cleansing has had its Cost reduced from 4 to 2 and its HP cost from 25% to 20%.

Summoned Creatures:

• All Summon-type Cards now cost 5% of Max HP.
  
• Golem now has no Armor and increased HP pool per each level. Healing capability increased from level 3 and beyond, but can now only heal self.
  
• Wyrm’s Damage has been nerfed slightly per each level, now attacks with less hits for the sake of better readability.
  
• Abomination no longer grows in its Damage exponentially. Armor removed and HP lowered.
  
• Blood Totem Energy buffs no longer allow for infinite combo. Damage buff was decreased at high levels, but now grants Damage buff at level 2+.
  
• Now Blood Totem also heals the player on Activation.

[h3]That's all for this week![/h3]
Let us know what you think, report bugs, and come chat with us at our Discord server! I have to tell you, though, that I'll be off next week (holiday, yay, finally!) so, unfortunately, I won't be able to answer your questions! I'll get back to regularly answering when I get back to work around the 20th of June :)

Hello! We're really sorry for the various issues present in our Friday build. We knew about one huge problem (summoner corrupting fights). We offered a temporary solution, but we're pretty confident that we've squashed this bug properly with this newest patch. We were also really surprised by a bizarre issue (Brawler's combo marks not applying correctly during combat). We've also fixed that one - huge apologies to everyone who wanted to check out Brawler over the weekend!

We've been investigating and fixing, and we hope we have solutions to these problems - and to plenty of others. So here's a changelog for today's hotfix.

But, as usual, you can expect a bigger patch on Friday :)



[h3]MAJOR ISSUES FIXED
[/h3]

• Fixed Brawler's combo marks not applying properly.
  
• Fixed a bug with Summoner (that one where you couldn't enter fights)
  

[h3]ADDITIONAL FIXES AND IMPROVEMENTS
[/h3]

• Order of attacks during combat should be in proper order now (as Player -> Summons -> Enemies, and each row goes left to right).
  
• Spike Armor vs Lord of Serpents endless retaliation loop shouldn't happen anymore
  
• Seamstress prices should reset properly on new runs.
  
• Lost Soul allows you to discard cards even after you've recruited the Seamstress
  
• Seamstress shouldn't raise both prices at the same time, and now you're paying after discarding cards.
  
• Added information that you pay upfront for new cards at Master-At-Arms (but you can back off from duplicating for free).
  
• Flute Statuses now end at the end of combat
  
• Added missing Contract keyword description
  
• Fixed barrier not applying properly on saves older than 1-2 weeks
  
• Wyrdspecter and Crazed Witch should no longer ignore Blood Golem and attack other summons
  
• Retreat in the game's campaign is turned OFF
  
• Reverse Seal card is properly grayed out when you don't have any summons and it's status deals 50 Damage flat to enemy who killed enhanced creature instead of 300% Base Damage