Across the Obelisk News

Hello everyone. This is a fast hotfix to solve some problems that have been reported since we released the patch.

- Fixed a problem when a user disconnected inside the Wolf Wars zone that didn't restore the Madness level after loading the game.
- Fixed the time stamp for the combat log, which always showed the current time instead of the time that the action happened.
- Fixed the card interaction with gamepads during combat that prevented clicking on a target until you changed the current target.
- Fixed a problem where some of the heroes' initial items were not granting additional HP.
- Fixed a problem with some enemy pets that soft locked the game when attacking a fully stealthed team.

- From now on, key shortcuts during combat will only work if you have enabled the settings option to see the key numbers.

Gameplay

To speed up the introduction to the game for new players and shorten the duration of Act 1, we have removed some enemies that appear in the fights of Act 1. We have also removed one of the enemies from the first fight of Act 2. These changes do not affect the balance of money or experience received, and in general, those values should remain the same.

These changes only affect the lowest difficulty of the game (Madness 0).

As always, thanks to all of you for your support, feedback, and understanding.

It's been 24 hours since we released the new story DLC "The Wolf Wars", after seeing your reactions and feedback, we wanted to communicate why we made several decisions and what was our intention with this DLC.

First of all, we would like to thank all of you who participated in our DLC giveaway on the discord. Reading your stories is really encouraging and we are truly grateful.



About the Wolf Wars DLC

We wanted to make this DLC and tell the Wolf Wars story. Not only giving skins but "something" more, and in this case it is the new hero Yogger (making a new hero is not as simple as it may seem, also a new hero includes his 3 skins, animations for every skin, cardbacks, emotes, and some interactions over the campaign), the pet, the new monsters and the bosses that work for the random combats of all the game modes. Also in Acts 2 and 3, you will find a random event that adds a new path never possible before and the last minute cardback.

About the new zone, we made it to explain a story that we wanted to tell. The story takes place in the past (and that's why the result of the event choices doesn't change because without spoilers... those things happened) and the idea was to show that Magnus and Yogger had different opinions, sometimes Yogger got his way and sometimes Magnus prevailed. That's why at the end of Wolf Wars what happens is what happens and that's how it ends for the main story of the game.

Besides explaining the story, the idea is that the zone serves as means to unlock the new skins and the new Hero (a bigger and more detailed quest event to unlock Yogger). We decided to scrap deckbuilding and card rewards within the zone because what's the point of spending 1-2 minutes deciding whether to take a card for a hero, if in the next fight one of the heroes is changed for another, plus the story consists of 3-4 fights per route and then your deck and heroes are the same as before. Being aware that it's a content that you wouldn't want to repeat every time during every run, we didn't put any "boon" or reward at the end so that players wouldn't feel "forced" to repeat it every time.

We consider this a small-medium DLC, and we call it Story-DLC. Keep in mind that it has taken us a long time (we are still a team of 3) because it comes with a very big 1.1 patch, which does have new game content, expected features, and many more things. And this 1.1 patch is free for everyone.

After seeing the initial feedback of the DLC we have seen and learned several things, like that it is not clear how to start the content, that maybe it should have been a separated mode on the menu, that maybe it should have had some deckbuilding part within the zone or that maybe people expected more from the zone. But it gives us the impression that maybe without the zone (or less focus on it) and just saying, "hey here's a new hero, skins, cardback and misc stuff" the DLC impression would have been different... Or even if we had put half of what comes for free in the big patch 1.1 inside the DLC the general opinion would have changed too... but we belived that the other new zones and content included in the 1.1 coming standard and for free was a much better option...

In conclusion, now that 1.1 is complete and released, we'll fix any bugs we may find and improve controller support.

Then our intention is to fully dedicate ourselves to doing a big content DLC, which will be the next one. It will be a completely new zone that you can choose for Act 2/3, with its enemies, events, new items, bosses, and more. In addition to including 1 or 2 new heroes.

As always, thanks to all of you for your support and feedback.

Hello everyone. Fast hotfix to solve a problem with some item activations that were not being fired properly (F.e. Hourglass of Death).

As always, thanks to all of you for your support, feedback, and understanding.

Greetings adventurers!

The wait is finally over and Update 1.1 is here! at 17:00 CEST today! This patch touches on almost every aspect of the game, so let’s dive in!

[h2]The Black Forge & the Frozen Sewers[/h2]
Two new dungeon-type areas have been added to the game—each of them with its own lore, new events, items, enemies, and bosses.

We've been talking about them for a while and we've made several previews, so just a reminder that you can find the Black Forge on the Velkarath map, inside the raging volcano. The Frozen Sewers is located below the elven city on the Faeborg map.

[h2]Combat Log[/h2]
One of the most requested features since release has been to have a place to see what has happened during a turn of combat and what cards have been used.

With the new combat log, both novice and veteran players, will be able to see in detail what cards the enemies have used, the different effects they have gained or lost, if any item or trait has been activated, as well as the general status of each hero and enemy at the beginning and end of each round.

This is the first pass for the combat log, so there may be changes and tweaks over time.

[h2]Weekly Challenge & New Cardbacks[/h2]
To make the Weekly Challenges more varied and with more personality, we have added several new features to each Weekly Challenge.

They still have their own fixed seed and preset set of heroes, but now each one will have its own theme. That means that they will have one or more modifiers specific to that Weekly, plus, they will have a reduced set of corruptions and new thematic corruptions that only appear in that Weekly.

Also, to make them even more unique and exciting. By completing each Weekly Challenge you will be rewarded with exclusive cardbacks that you can't earn elsewhere in the game! Each week one cardback will be available (related to the theme of the WC), but as the weeklies will rotate, you will have the chance to get those missing cardbacks.

[h2]Obelisk Challenge Improvements[/h2]

• Added four new possible bosses that can appear as final boss on the third floor, along with the Archon Nihr.
  
• Now during the draft and on the map, the three bosses (one on each floor) that you will face in that Obelisk challenge will be shown, to make it easier to make deckbuilding decisions. In addition, the enemies and champions of each combat will also be pre-displayed, to make it easier to choose the route to take.
  
• To spice up the initial combats and have more variety of enemies, we have added the enemies that appear in the Wolf Wars (whether you have or not the DLC) as possible enemies that appear in random combats, both in the adventure mode and in the Obelisk Challenge.
  
• We have given a balance pass to all the bosses in the Obelisk Challenge mode, Ignidoh, and Tulah, now they are more manageable and more in line with the other bosses on the second floor.
  
• New events have been added, where you can buy the new items of the new adventure zones and even the new pet "blobs" if you are lucky.
  

[h2]New Corruptions & Monster Pets[/h2]
More than 15 new corruptions have been added, some of these corruptions are exclusive and will only appear in the corresponding Weekly Challenge.

We have made a general balance pass to all the corruptions of the game, changing values, functionalities, and difficulty of some of them. For example, The "Upwind" corruption is now more powerful, but it has been changed from Common to Rare. Or the "Hexproof" corruption now adds fewer buffer charges in each round.

Now enemies can have pets! Some of the new enemies introduced in the patch and in the DLC make use of this new system. There is also a new type of corruption that can add cute "Blobs" as enemy pets for that combat.

[h2]Improved Gamepad and Keyboard support[/h2]
Added better support for gamepads and controllers. This is a work in progress that will require some more time and iterations, as there are a lot of complex menus in the game. With this first patch, the game loop is functional (including combat) but is a bit barebone. We have been working hard to finish the current patch and we ran out of time but full compatibility is what we are working on right now, so expect some small patches in the following days to improve each window/interface. We’ll be looking for your feedback to help refine and polish this feature to be intuitive and smooth for anyone wanting to play with a gamepad.

Added an option in the settings to see the numeric keyboard shortcuts during combat and to be able to play cards with it.

[h2]General Changes[/h2]

• The tutorial has been improved, adding several new steps in the city to teach new players the importance of upgrading and crafting new cards, as well as purchasing items. Bear in mind that the tutorial is only available on your first single-player game.
  
• The experience curve required to level up heroes and obtain perks has been modified to be much faster. The first 20 levels of each hero and therefore the gaining of 20-30 perk points is significantly faster than before.
  
• The score bonus of the last levels of madness and obelisk challenge has been increased, effectively increasing the score you get from the runs from patch 1.1 onwards.
  
• The artwork of the remaining hero cards containing stock art (more than 200) has been changed.
  
• Combat backgrounds have been improved making them clearer and more vibrant.
  
• Several new soundtracks have been added for combat (especially in new areas)
  
• Added and changed sound effects on some enemies.
  
• We've made small balance changes to a few cards, mostly to monster and boss cards.
  
• Improved performance and stability in multiplayer.
  
• Fixed the reported bugs!
  

[h2]The Wolf Wars DLC[/h2]
Our first story DLC "The Wolf Wars" has just been released!

When we started creating the game and thought about the heroes, their stories, their acquaintances, and their intertwined events, we always had the itch to delve into some of those stories where several of our heroes interact.

The Wolf Wars is one of those stories that are mentioned during the game, if not the most mentioned during Act I in Senenthia. Thanks to this DLC we finally have the opportunity to expand the lore of the game in this regard.

The DLC is not only about the lore, of course! It also includes a new mischievous hero (Yogger), a new pet, and several new hero skins.

You can get hold of the DLC right here.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2325780/Across_The_Obelisk_The_Wolf_Wars/

[h2]Concluding Remarks[/h2]
We are very proud of this great patch 1.1! It brings a lot of new content, long-awaited features, and improvements in almost every aspect of the game.

We believe that with this patch, the game is in a really exceptional state. We are aware that it has taken us a bit longer than expected, but we are still a small team of 3 people and during this time a lot of things have happened, Christmas and holidays, family issues, and unexpected delays in general.

We hope you like both the patch and the DLC, and that you enjoy them as much as we did making them. Don't forget that it doesn't end here, we are already working on the next update. So stay with us, we still have a lot of cool things planned and stories to tell!

As a bit of tease, we can tell you that “soon” your team will be able to visit a brand new land in Act 2 or Act 3, where new enemies, quests, and items await you to be discovered.

As always, thanks to all of you for your support and feedback, see you soon!

- Across the Obelisk Team

Greetings Adventurers!

Tomorrow is the big day! We are on the eve of launching our newest DLC: The Wolf Wars, alongside Patch 1.1: The Black Forge, and we are absolutely thrilled for you to experience what we’ve been working on! Over the last few weeks, we’ve given you insights into the many changes and additions coming to Across the Obelisk. Our two new zones are coming with Patch 1.1 - the Black Forge, and the Icy-Sewers below Faeborg (you can read it here). Sought-after changes like improved gamepad support, new Cardbacks for you to earn in our newly revamped Weekly Challenge, and the inclusion of the highly-requested Combat Log (which you can also read here)!

Best of all, all of these changes coming with Patch 1.1 are FREE to all of our players!

As most of you know, The Wolf Wars is an event that is mentioned throughout your adventure in Senenthia. Magnus, one of our leading Heroes, fought bravely in them and earned the respect of his allies and enemies alike, earning his sword the name “Wolfslayer”. In this Dev Diary, let us take a look back and explore such a defining moment in many of our Heroes' histories.

[h2]The Wolf Wars[/h2]
Ten years ago, Queen Amelia’s dream of creating a safe place within Senenthia for all the races of the Kingdom to unify them under one banner was on the verge of realization. After months of strenuous deliberation with the Werewolf Chieftain Gorlo, he decided to stymie negotiations and declared that anyone who entered the Forest would be prey to his werewolves.

Fearing for their safety, the other races of Senenthia pleaded with Queen Amelia for help. Thus, the Queen gathered her army and marched into the forest in search of the Werewolf Chieftain. Queen Amelia’s army was soon joined by Werewolves who refuted Gorio’s command, believing their former Chieftain would bring about destruction and ruin. They sided with the Queen in hopes of a better future.

This is where our story begins…

In order to access the Wolf Wars, you’ll need to read Yogger’s diary found at his encampment on the northern path of Act 1.

Upon entering the new zone, you’ll be given a new party of heroes with preset decks. Since The Wolf Wars takes place ten years in the past, do not expect to earn experience or new cards with your chosen party of heroes - there are plenty of other rewards for you to earn instead!



The Wolf Wars map has three main paths for you to explore, each containing several events and different challenges for you to overcome. It is within these events that you’ll learn more about some of the companions you know in the rest of the game, be it coming to know of their younger selves or even relatives 👀👀👀! Completing these events will earn you skins for five of our Heroes, which will require multiple playthroughs to unlock them all.



After making it to the end and defeating Chieftain Gorio, you’ll unlock our newest hero, the mighty, unparalleled, and immutably brilliant Yogger! (Yes, we are biased...) There will be a lot of events and interactions for you to read through and get more context to the characters' relationships and, as ever, new characters will have the possibility to add more options to events in the game!



Yogger is much like Magnus, a warrior-type hero who will receive subsequent cards that befit a warrior's playstyle with a twist. Yogger’s special ability is to generate “Meat”, a new type of food card that will make use of his innate abilities. What these abilities are and how you utilize his deck is for you to discover! We’re excited to see what kind of combinations you’ll come up with!

Upon starting a new adventure with Yogger in your party, you may find it beneficial if you stop by his old encampment just like with other heroes such as Malukah… there may just be someone else who’d like to join your party!

The big question that a lot of our wonderful community has been asking is how much The Wolf Wars will sell for. Let us answer this simply: $9.99 USD! There's still time to wishlist it, so you don't forget; not that you ever would.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2325780/Across_The_Obelisk_The_Wolf_Wars/

In addition to all of this awesome content, to celebrate the release of the Wolf Wars and Patch 1.1, Across the Obelisk is having a Free-to-Play weekend! Starting March 30th at roughly 19:00 CET, Across the Obelisk will be available for everyone to play during this time, free of charge! Have a friend on the fence about getting the game? Want to test out the game yourself before making a purchase? This is your chance to do just that.



Be sure to join the Discord as well, for throughout the free weekend we’ll have Mentors on standby to help guide you through the initial parts of the game, many veterans who are more than happy to play and form parties through our LFG (looking for group) channels, and a voice channel system that you can create a new voice channel dynamically without the need for admins/moderators to be present! Also, we have a really awesome community of people who love to help answer questions for new players.

Thank you all for continuing to support our game, and sharing in this journey with us. We're having a blast and we hope that you do, too!

- Across the Obelisk Team

P.S. Bonus Yogger!