Tainted Grail News

Hi folks! Thank you SO MUCH for your support and interest. Really. We're grateful for all your comments, your activity, and the fact that you CARE. We'd also really like to thank you for all those new positive reviews on Steam - not only they're really great to read for our team, they also help out in terms of visibility of the game so... yeah, thank you!

We've been checking out everything you posted here and on our Discord and trying to locate the causes of various bugs that you've experienced. We've squashed a lot of them so here's the changelog of what we've fixed with today's update!

[h3]First of all, once you download the update, we highly recommend you to START A NEW RUN instead of clicking Continue. Some things will be fixed ONLY after you start a new run and will stay broken on your current run.[/h3]

[h3]MAJOR ISSUES FIXED[/h3]

• We've found a cause of Corruption levels not unlocking properly and it's fixed now. It should work now as intended, so after beating one level of Corruption you should unlock the next one and be able to access it without any problems.
  
• We've found the cause of leaderboards not being visible in-game and this should be fixed now, too. There MIGHT be an issue where you won't see player nicknames the first time you see the leaderboards but all other times it should work correctly (you can refresh the leaderboard by dying, for example).
  
• We think we've found and fixed all causes of Runestones getting duplicated descriptions. Please let us know if this still happens for you but we're pretty hopeful that it won't :D
  
• We've fixed A LOT of issues with our Tutorial scenario. You shouldn't be able to avoid the Goat now, he should properly spawn after class selection, there shouldn't be an issue with cards becoming unplayable and various black screens. We hope that our new fixes should resolve most of the problems you've had with our tutorial mission!
  

[h3]QUALITY OF LIFE[/h3]

• Plenty of players complained that the minimap is barely visible in wyrdness. We've added a background layer under the minimap, you'll be able to toggle it on/off under the "M" key, so that the minimap will have increased visibility - it's not a fix, it's just a dirty and ugly hotfix for now!
  
• We made Village-related NPCs easier to find on maps! Remember that they'll start spawning on Corruption #2.
  

[h3]REBALANCING & FIXES[/h3]

• We've fixed a couple of issues with runestones: rebalanced them (NPCs won't drop stones higher than tier 1) and fixed an issue in which blacksmith wouldn't offer you legendaries even though you've paid for them. In order for this to work you need to start a new run!
  
• We've fixed the cost of the 3rd discard unlockable option in Lost Soul's shop (it's now 800 instead of that insane 8000 wyrdstone), and a couple of other minor things.
  
• Energy from Footwork passive is no longer carried over between fights
  
• We've fixed a lot of typos + the Sacrifice card
  
• Shops now do NOT restock items bought (but should restock next run)
  
• We've disabled Quick Save / Quick Load (F5/F9) because they don't work properly and could've been the cause of some of your broken saved games.
  
• Rat Week and The Message rewards should be now properly awarded! Sorry for messing this up.
  
• Reposition was nerfed (thanks to our player, pok, for finding an abusable combo :D We're going to keep your score on the leaderboard as punishment for ourselves for allowing this to happen :D)
  

Hey everyone!

Today is a big day for us, so you will have to forgive us for being a bit emotional :D

3 months ago we uploaded our very first digital game into Early Access. It was, as you can imagine, quite a stressful moment for our company. But y’all were amazing, offering us great feedback, words of encouragement, playing the game, and reviewing it so positively! This motivated us a lot and we just want to let you guys know that your support means the world to us!

We were carefully reading all the feedback, talking with you on Discord, and – well – putting TONS of hours to make sure we can properly address everything ;)

So here we are, during those 3 months, we’ve added:

• 70+ cards and 50+ passives
  
• 2 totally new playable characters
  
• Weekly events with leaderboards and rewards
  
• Tons of small fixes, balances, and quality of life upgrades...
  

But while doing all of that, we were working on something much, much bigger… And today, we are extremely proud to present to all of you...



[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]



There are still some bugs here and there and things we want to add more love to – but overall, we feel that this new Patch is light years away from what the game was 3 months ago! We really, really hope you will enjoy it and if you will – please remember to leave us your feedback here or on Discord... and a review! They really help!

[h3]Now, what exactly is Seeds of Corruption?[/h3]

It changes the whole dynamic of Conquest. First of all – it brings a whole new story layer to this mode and explains all the madness that is happening! We don’t want to spoil anything: but there are new characters, new voiceovers, new story encounters on the map, and many more surprises waiting for you!



Save-games wipe

Let’s start with one bad piece of news before we get to the positive updates. Changes in this patch were so big that keeping previous save files was, unfortunately… impossible. We are pretty sure that once you guys will test all the upgrades you will understand why – but this is still not ideal.

To somehow make up for it, we will be adding special cosmetics items for every event you were participating in – and for playing before the update!

We really hope that this update will make up for everything ;)

[h3]Learning the basics[/h3]
We also prepared a special story intro and tutorial, so that you are not thrown right into the extremely hard difficulty level from the very start. However, don't worry, we didn't nerf the game... We finally improved the Corruption system, which makes the game progressively harder as you successfully finish your runs! Just wait for Corruption 5! :D

This should make mastering all the game’s mechanics an understandable, and relatively easy to learn, process!

[h3]Ending run with a BANG![/h3]
In our earlier version finishing runs was a bit… anticlimactic? Well, not anymore!

Right now at the very end, you have to survive 10 rounds with a really powerful Fore-Dweller. JUST surviving is too easy for you? Well, don’t worry – you can always go for the biggest amount of DMG you can deal to him in set limit of time... and get yourself the highest ranking on our leaderboard!

On top of that, you will get a cool summary of everything new that you have seen that will be saved to your journal as well as unlocks:

• New cards added to your pool
  
• New passive skills
  
• Cosmetics for your character
  
• And more...
  

Journal – track your progress!
Speaking of journeys… we have created a single place to track all your progress and how much of the game you have actually seen. It tracks all the enemies you have faced, NPCs that you have meet, and faction cards and skills!



[h3]New cards, skills, neutral cards[/h3]
We have created a bunch of new cards and skills for every character and faction – traveling through different corruptions you will be unlocking them and then you can try out all the different tactics and strategies.

We also did a major re-balance based on all the data gathered, so you can expect really hard choices when picking a new card ;)

On top of that – we have also created a new type of cards – Neutral Cards, that can be bought only in NPCs stores… They are really powerful, but can be used only once per combat!

Last but not least… well, we were able to deliver on that awesome, animated cards! Small things, but it really makes your hand more alive ;)

[h3]New runestones system[/h3]
We have changed the previous armor / weapon system into something totally fresh – runestone system. Right now, you have one weapon and one armor slot for found runestones, that have some really interesting effects that can power up your build.

What's more – once you will find 3 runestones of the same kind and rarity, you can combine them into more powerful versions (and then three Tier 2 runestones into extremely powerful Tier 3!).
Once you defeat every boss, you will be rewarded with a possibility to unlock a new slot and put in more runestones into your weapon or armor!



Customize your character to the full!
The runestone system made a place for us to be able to offer you full customization of your character. Not only you can create your character and customize it after, but also chose armor, helmets, and tattoos to it!

Thanks to that you can create a truly unique character and unlock more cosmetics in the future!

New village!
We have also re-designed form scratch the Village and the gameplay options you will be getting! There's also the whole new tree of development of the village that you can get thanks to Wrydstone.



[h3]Totally new User interface[/h3]
We have also re-worked a lot of game interfaces – most notable changes:

After combat, you can equip loot right away



While choosing new cards/passives you can see your current deck



We have also a totally new character menu with tons of quality of life tabs... and more! Check it out for yourselves!

[h3]Tons of new animations![/h3]
We have added a lot of new animation to your character. Thanks to that, fights look much more epic and we also worked a little on the dynamics of them. For example previously when your character was dealing 6 hits with one card, you had 6 different animations – right now it's one nice animation and 6 hits go right away!

[h3]Huge overall visual upgrade![/h3]
Our 3D team has worked really hard on making everything way prettier and I think you will be able to spot it a first sight!

We got now much more interesting textures, more terrain variety, our village is looking much better and well… just take a look at those few random screens from the game!



[h3]New Wyrdness![/h3]
We also have changed the look of the Wyrdness – now it is not an overarching mist, but an actual awesome effect that is laid down on “reality”, distorting it strongly. Thanks to that maneuver we can have a nice close to TPP view in the game and experience it in almost-RPG style! ;)

But yeah, traveling through Wyrdness without a candle is quite scary, so don’t forget to manage yours!



[h3]What about the campaign demo?[/h3]
Ok, so one thing that you will notice is that the story campaign demo is currently not available. Don’t worry! It will come back in about a week or so, once we will implement all the changes from this patch ; ) So you will be able to enjoy the story demo with all the features of 0.95 patch!

Uffff…. Ok, those are major things… there are TONS of smaller things here and there but we guess this update is already way too long. As you can see, we were working quite hard those past months and we really, really hope you guys will enjoy the fruits of that work!

If you will, please remember to leave a nice word, feedback, or a steam review. This will really help us out, as well as motivate us to develop the game further and further!

In addition, to celebrate this huge patch (this is a really big milestone for us), we decided to announce 25% discount on the game, starting soon!

Ok, this is it! Make sure to try this totally new experience out and have a lot of fun slaying through corruption levels!

Take care!

Unfortunately today we have a really brief update from the frontlines... but with the next update we are going to share with you everything that we’ve been working on for the past three months.

[h2]Yes, Patch 0.95 is coming NEXT WEEK[/h2]
...and we really, really hope you are going to love it!

Since, as you can imagine, we are pretty much grinding hard right now with full focus on the Patch 0.95 – there is no patch or new event this week. We just wouldn’t be able to prepare it and properly test it because our entire focus lies in delivering the best 0.95 that we possibly can.

We hope that in the light of what is coming you are going to forgive us for that :)

And here's another thing we'd ask to forgive us for - the missing leaderboard for the last event! These scores are INSANE and players on the top positions got scores we honestly didn't imagine were possible :D



We're really sorry that we forgot to post the leaderboard - it was an honest mistake (we're just so focused on 0.95 that we lost the track of time!).

Another pretty important announcement is that the Patch and the next update here are going to go live most probably next Friday – October 2nd – instead of Wednesday because we want to give ourselves a little bit of extra time for testing and polishing.

Well… The past few months since our launch at the end of June were a hell of a ride. There was so much good feedback and support from all of you that we really want to send huge thanks to everyone who was a part of that journey – and we hope that you will be happy and proud from the progress Tainted Grail: Conquest made in that time!

We know it is not easy to support an Early Access game, especially from the beginning – but we hope that it was and will continue to be an interesting and rewarding process!

Patch 0.95 was also granted its official name – Seeds of Corruption. The title has some story significance since the patch will add quite a lot of extra lore to Conquest, that will make it possible to learn a lot of interesting details about the world of Tainted Grail.

Anyway! We won't make this update too long BUT we would not be ourselves if we wouldn’t show you a few visual spoilers of what’s coming - these are captured straight from Unity and are still a work in progress! :)

Take a look at them below and... see you next week!

Hey everyone!

Today we have yet another update. While a bit short, we could not be more excited about what’s coming with Patch 0.95! Everything is slowly coming together – gameplay, visuals, and story implementations… and boy, oh boy… we’re really proud of what we’ve achieved in these three months since our release in Early Access!

We hope we will bring you a lot of fun – polished, this time!

Let’s start with the summary of the Berserker event and let us just say that you guys are absolutely crazy for breaking the 1 million DMG barrier :O

Congrats to the top spots and to all players who participated in the event, we hope you liked it!





This week, Guardian will face the challenge of the event!

But we changed a few things in this class, making it a little bit more dynamic and… well, fun ;)

Here are two BIG changes:

[h2]Guardian’s passive ability[/h2]
Old Guardian passive (that one allowing you to save 1 card at the end of the round) felt good on paper… but we just couldn’t stand it in the game. We constantly had the feeling that it was causing additional downtime and turned out to be an overall frustrating mechanic.

We decided to change it in a way that would still reflect the spirit of this rune (defensive play and card management) but also add a little bit offensive bite.

New Guardian passive – Focus
If you haven't received any damage last turn, become Focused (where Focused means +50% damage dealt). This effect stacks with itself each turn you do not receive any damage.

Once you receive a hit from an enemy, you lose all accumulated Prepared buffs.

[h2]Chain is back![/h2]
Some of the Tainted Grail veterans might remember old days of Guardian, where you could do endless loops and generally crush everything on your way. Multiple iterations nerfed Guardian and also Chain cards.

Currently, when you use a card with the “Chain” keyword, the Chain stack resets to 0. This was mainly introduced to stop the endless loop problem.

But meanwhile, a few weeks ago we have introduced a more elegant fix to that problem, where we added another “temporary graveyard” for cards played. Long story short – you can play every card only once per turn (not counting Return cards).

Thanks to that, we can come back to Chain not resetting after use. Probably it will lead to Guardian power spike ; )

Obviously those changes are still subject to some balancing and testing, but we hope they will provide a bit more interesting playstyle for Guardian and bring a lot of fun!

We also can’t wait to see what you can do with this reforged rune in the weekly event!



Here are also few snippets of the upcoming patch.

First of all, as promised, your village in Conquest will be much prettier ;)

Here’s a quick gif from our current version:



Also, our new UIs are almost done, too! Here is how the new, modernized character creation screen will look like. Again, work in progress (we’re going to add camera close-ups and, for example, some presets for hair colors), but we hope you’d agree with us that it looks much, much better!



We are also very happy how animated cards are coming into existence! They really add this nice feel to the art and immersion.



Last but not least, we have created some extra art for story interactions. And there will be quite a lot of new story content added to Conquest…buuuut, let’s not spoil things too much! Soon you will be able to test it yourself!

OK, that’s is it for today! We hope you will have some good fun with the new event and patch 0.95 is coming soon!

Hey everyone!

So first of all: we’re blown away by the scores you’ve managed to get on the leaderboards of our current event. It’s been a joy to watch you break it and get insane scores even within the first hours of it going live – we honestly didn’t expect scores to go this high!



This said, Dakota15, reach out to us and tell us how you did what you did!

Also, thanks to Gurrflumfr for posting a very helpful strategy guide for the Brawler's event!


[h3]Another purely organizational thing – we’d like to ask people who got to our TOP 10 in the Rat King event to add AR_Lukasz to their friends and reach out. We have something for you :)[/h3]



Now, another important part of this update: the bugs.

We’ve received quite a lot of bug reports since this event launched and we’re really sorry for any inconvenience we might have caused. The truth is that we’re changing so many things in the game while getting ready for Patch 0,95 that we were unable to isolate some issues from the “release branch” we’re using for the events.

We’re improving this branch whenever we’re sure that we’re not going to break more and today’s patch should fix a couple of major issues. I’ll give you an example and tell you about the cause of two bugs a couple of you have reported.

Our programmer, by mistake, changed the order of two lines of code – not the lines, just their order – and because of that, some buildings in the village got their IDs misplaced. This caused a bit of chaos: suddenly some conversations couldn’t be ended (and you were stuck in an endless loop), and some locations started moving… while they shouldn’t.

Some players (shout-out to our Discord community!) helped us in identifying this issue – the funniest thing was when Master-At-Arms decided to pack up his house and go on a journey so that after a while his building could’ve been encountered on the map. It’s because he “inherited” an ID of something that was flagged as “movable” (like an enemy).

We’ve fixed this insanity, and some other stuff, so things should return back to normal now!

We’ve also seen reports from some players who were experiencing issues with broken save games. We hope that a part of these issues was fixed, too, but still – there are so many complex things going on that in some cases we’re still not sure what’s causing certain bugs.

However, thanks to the fact that we’re publicly updating a very isolated branch of the game we’re squashing a lot of the most critical bugs. Also, since we decided that until the launch of Patch 0,95 our events are going to be based on changing playable characters we’re not introducing major features to what you’re currently playing. Hopefully, this approach will stabilize the game!

[h3]However, if you do encounter any bugs definitely let us know. We’re reading everything you say everywhere we can find it and we’re trying to fix as much as possible!
[/h3]
That said, huge thanks go to Thomy013, one of our Discord community members, who's answering a lot of questions here on Steam before we get a chance to get to that! :D

Click the image below to join us there! :)



We’re hard at work on Patch 0,95 and it’s all really coming together. We’re very happy with what’s happening with the game so far and can’t wait to share it with you! It's only a few weeks now!

One of the most interesting additions are the Runestones which we’ll introduce in the place of Items/Armors. We’ve already done some tests and so far what we’ve heard about them from our Discord community was really positive.



Runestones are going to have their special effects and you’ll be able to “combine them” in order to create their better versions – three runestones will create a stone of a higher tier… but you will only get six places in your inventory to carry them. This means that after receiving a reward or buying new ones, you’ll need to make tough decisions on which ones to combine, which ones to keep, and which ones to let go.

We’re also testing “legendary” or “mythical” runestones which have huge, game-changing effects and resemble our former strongest weapons/armors but, well, that’s an entirely different case.

Anyway, this means that the Blacksmith in your villages will change his function – now he’s going to be selling runestones or allowing you to exchange them for different ones of the same kind. This is a part of the huge redesign of how villages are handled. It will be more streamlined than before and everyone you get will finally be of use – no more worthless NPCs! And, also, less grinding!

We’ve also decided to change the way the starting cards look – we felt that they need to immediately tell you what is their function because they’ll be the ones you see most often (before you remove them from your deck, you power gamer!) so there shouldn’t be any doubt in your mind about what-they’re-actually-doing.

Here’s how they look like:



Also, we’re tweaking the starting gear of characters. Here’s a revamped Brawler!



So, that’d be all for this week. Gotta get back to work, there’s so much going on… Let us know how you like the new event and definitely let us know if you encounter any bugs or something breaks!