Astatos News

To the Crown Mages,

Today we’re pleased to have released the first step in our implementation of PvE for Astatos! In this update you will be able to play single player against A.I. in Trials.

While there’s a few kinks to work out in the A.I. logic itself, the feature represents a big shift in our development of the game—and required nearly as much code as the Trial system itself. You’ll be able to access the PvE from the new Training option in the Trials menu.

As mentioned above, this is Part 1 of the PvE updates planned. Throughout three updates, we hope to implement the most commonly requested features for the game.

• Part 1: Training Trials where the player can play against A.I. opponents in single player matches. Allowing players to learn the game without the pressure of a real match, and earn daily rewards without the need to rely on other players— albeit at a reduced rate. (This patch!)
• Part 2: Tutorial Trials where the player can learn how to play the game in a structured, and interactive tutorial. This update will involve many of the functions required for Story Trials, such as in-game dialogue, scenario scripting, and fully-local Trials. At this time we’ll look into introducing PvPvE for Conquest as well.
  
• Part 3: Story Trials: Implementation of Trials into the Astatos’ story. As there will be significant design time involved, we may split this part to only cover implementation for the prologue chapter, then expand to cover chapter 1, and the upcoming chapter 2 at a later date.
  

Please note that the above is subject to change depending on the production schedule for the rest of the game, but we hope you look forward to the changes implemented in this patch, and our future progress for the game!

For the detailed changelog of changes implemented with Astatos v0.4, please read on below.

- From the team at Studio Klondike


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Training Trials: A new PvE mode that allows you to play single player Conquest (4 person) and Takeover Trials against A.I. opponents.

A.I. opponents are available in 5 difficulty settings. Easy, Medium, Hard, Dummy, and Random Actions. When playing against a bot that is “Medium” or “Hard” difficulty, you will receive Monera and Reward Points for the Trial. You will not however earn EXP in Conquest, or Rank in Takeover Trials.



Even at the Hard difficulty, you should not expect A.I. to fill in for an experienced human Crown Mage. Rather, it is best to think of this mode as a way to learn the mechanics of the game, or test out new strategies.

Training Trials have their own Hero Pack equip settings that are separate from Conquest and Takeover Trials. Be sure to remember to check these before beginning a Training Trial as this specific setting is not currently saved between game restarts.

This feature is available from the “Training" button in the “Trials” menu. As this option replaces the previous “Tutorials” button that would access the text manual, that button has been moved to the “Training” menu.



Player Discovery: Within a lobby you will now see the numbers of total rooms, and joinable rooms for that game mode as well as a button to visit our official Discord. A room is joinable when it can be joined via Quick Play. A room is no longer joinable if it is private, or if it is already within a Trial. Players within Training Trials will show as non-joinable rooms. We hope this helps players better find each-other and enjoy the game in conjunction with the PvE features implemented in this patch.



Spell Card Names: After some UI adjustments, Spell Cards have now been given proper names in Trials. The name changes are as follows:

• Spell A -> Altered Trial
  
• Spell B -> Blessed Trial
  
• Spell C -> Consecrate
  
• Spell D -> Divine Favour
  
• Spell E -> Exalted Element
  

We hope this change serves to make spell cards more recognisable, especially if more Spell Cards are added to the game in future updates.



Ping: Your ping is now visible from the pause menu during a Trial. We recommend playing Astatos with a ping below 300ms. If your ping exceeds a certain threshold, you may be forcibly disconnected from a Trial.


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[h3]Game Features[/h3]

• Training Trials have been added to the Trials menu. Allowing players to participate in PvE matches.
  
• Server room counts have been added to the lobby interface, with separate counts for Takeover, and Conquest Trials.
  
• Spell Cards have been renamed alongside the Spell Card draw UI for Aristotle being redesigned.
  
• Server ping added to the lower-left corner of the pause menu during a Trial.
  

[h3]Balance Changes[/h3]

• The cost to summon Aristotle has been reduced by 1 Energy.
  

[h3]Game Content[/h3]

• New Hero Skins have been added to the store and made available as monthly rewards.
  
• Varius - Control
  
  
  
  
• Cerkles - Good Doctor
  
  

[h3]Game Changes[/h3]

• Music tracks have had their audio levels rebalanced so the volume is consistent between menus, gameplay, and story. Players may want to adjust their music volume setting after this patch.
  
• Some sound effects have been updated.
  
• The track “Louder Than Words” now plays during Training Trials.
  

[h3]Interface Fixes[/h3]

• Aristotle’s card draw mechanic now has a new pop-up which appears above passive heroes on the side of the screen.
  
• Aristotle’s card pop-up will no longer conflict with Kyros’ card pop-up, which resulted in the opponent's card colour counters remaining visible when they should not have been.
  
• Improved the way the lobby locks in players when a match is beginning, as well as the behaviour of the lobby timer under some scenarios.
  

[h3]Trial Fixes[/h3]

• Fixed various issues regarding high-ping and player desync in Trials. As a result, Trials should be significantly more stable under high-ping conditions.
  
• Players will no longer be able to break the Hero Stage by performing actions within the last second.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused Heroes to behave incorrectly when there was a significant ping difference between players.
  
• If the timer runs out on the victory screen, the main menu may not load in some cases.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused the Trials menu to open twice when returning from the victory screen.
  
• Occasionally Sulpicius would fail to function, causing the Trial to soft-lock.
  
• Occasionally Gaios would fail to function, causing the Trial to soft-lock.
  

[h3]Known Issues[/h3]

• Playing a card at the last-second during the Trial Stage, may result in unexpected behaviour, or Trial soft-locks in rare cases.
  
• Playing a card at the same time the Trial Card changes elements, can sometimes result in you being unable to play any more cards when you should be able to.
  
• Occasionally the “Keep or Redraw a Card” stage may result in unexpected behaviour where players may not draw back a full hand of cards, and the card colour counters may desync.
  

To the Crown Mages,

This update contains bug fixes and gameplay balance changes we’ve been working on while progressing towards finishing story content and new features such as vs AI/bots for Trials.

For the detailed changelog of changes implemented with Astatos v0.3.2, please read on below.

- From the team at Studio Klondike


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• Alkaios’ Hero Ability has been partially reworked. His new ability text reads as follows: Each side can wager their Energy. The side with the largest wager draws two Cards per Energy wagered. Distribute as desired. All Energy offered is discarded. If tied, no side wins. This ability resolves at the end of the Hero Stage.
  
  
• [Takeover Only] Drusus will now only draw 1 Card at the start of their Hero Ability.
  
  
• [Takeover Only] Spell C now reads as follows: Remove one Energy from any opposing Hero in the game, except if they already have zero Energy remaining.
  This change means that Spell C can no longer target players during Takeover Trials. We’ll be monitoring this change to see player feedback.
  

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[h3]Game Fixes[/h3]

• Resolved a positioning issue with the skin “Zermes - Messenger of Paradise” on the main menu.
  
• Tweaks to the display of text when a Hero Ability is used in a Trial.
  

[h3]Story Fixes[/h3]

• Typo fixes in English, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese.
  

[h3]Trial Fixes[/h3]

• [Conquest & Takeover] Fixed an issue where the activation of Caelius’ Hero Ability would result in the opposite side drawing 1 Card.
  
• [Conquest & Takeover] Resolved an issue that resulted in Timaios’ Hero Ability sometimes failing to complete, as well as various other edge case scenarios.
  
• [Trial Stage] Made changes to ensure players can always play cards after the Trial Card changes. (Please let us know if you see this issue occur again!)
  
• [Trial Stage] Menus opened by Spell Cards will now close when the Trial Stage is over.
  

[h3]Server Fixes[/h3]

• Improved the performance of player statistics tracking and the loading of the Titles menu, consequently improving gameplay stability.
  

To the Crown Mages,

This update contains a few bug fixes to Trials which were reported after the release of v0.3 of Astatos.

For the detailed changelog of changes implemented with Astatos v0.3, please read on below.

- From the team at Studio Klondike


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[h2]Game Changes[/h2]

• The time to wait for more players for matchmaking in a lobby has been decreased from 60 seconds to 45 seconds.
  
• Match rewards have been tweaked slightly to be less punishing.
  
• Resolved an issue which caused title progress to display incorrectly for some players.
  

[h2]Trial Changes[/h2]

• Player icons displayed in menus now update their Energy and Card display in real-time.
  

[h2]Trial Fixes[/h2]

• Drusus could sometimes appear to not pass the Trial to the non-participating players even if the player who used Drusus did pass the Trial, causing a desync between all players in the game.
  
• Gaios' Passive Hero Ability has been improved, reducing the risk of errors in certain situations.
  
• In some situations when a second Hero with a Passive Ability is summoned during the Trial, that Passive Ability would not activate properly.
  
• The Card distribution interface did not properly display Spell Cards. However, the correct Cards were distributed as intended. You can now correctly see Spell Cards and their descriptions when distributing Cards in a Conquest Trial.
  

To the Crown Mages,

We have a new update for Astatos! This update adds some gameplay tweaks surrounding Cooldowns that didn’t make it for the last patch, along with some quality of life fixes, and plenty of bug fixes which have been reported over the past two weeks.

Additionally, this maintenance has given us a chance to make some backend improvements to the way our server handles player data to improve loading times for the Titles menu and overall stability of the game.

We’ve also been hard at work developing AI players for the game. While early, things are progressing smoothly towards implementing solo training trials, and interactive tutorials. We hope to be able to share more about this in the future!

For the detailed changelog of changes implemented with Astatos v0.3, please read on below.

- From the team at Studio Klondike


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God & Devil Card Cooldowns: Mukaki and Makari-Hari now have a 5 round cooldown on their Active Abilities. Removing the “Once Per Game'' condition and allowing their Abilities to be activated multiple times per game. These cooldowns persist when they flip sides, and when they are un-summoned.


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[h2]Game Changes[/h2]

• The time to wait for more players for matchmaking in a lobby has been increased from 20 seconds to 60 seconds.
  
• To account for other sources of Monera being added in the last patch and match reward balancing changes in this patch, the daily cap for Monera has been reduced from 250 to 200.
  
• Expanded the feedback given when a player is unable to bind their Steam account to unlock the Game Pass. This should help us diagnose issues surrounding new players being unable to unlock the Game Pass in the future.
  
• The friends list will now display 10 players at a time and then continue to load more players as you scroll. Additionally, the friends list now displays online players first, and then displays them in alphabetical order.
  
• The game now handles your network connection being interrupted properly, displaying a notification once connection with the server has been lost.
  
• Increased the time taken to revert graphics settings changes from 5 seconds to 15 seconds.
  
• The User Manual has been updated to reflect new gameplay mechanics.
  

[h2]Trial Changes[/h2]

• [Takeover Trial] Mukaki and Makari-Hari now have a 5 round cooldown on their Active Abilities. Removing the “Once Per Game'' condition and allowing their Abilities to be activated multiple times per game. These cooldowns persist when they flip sides, and when they are un-summoned.
  
• A new indicator has been added to show when other players have a poor connection to the server.
  
• Some Hero Ability descriptions have been updated to improve legibility and scrub out typos.
  
• The End Turn button will now have a short delay before appearing, preventing the player from accidentally clicking it during Trial Card changes in the Trial Stage.
  
• The formulas for generating rewards upon completion of a match has been updated based on gameplay data from the past month to be less punishing and distribute rewards more relevant to your gameplay.
  

[h2]Story Fixes[/h2]

• Typo fixes across all languages.
  
• Fixed some missing characters in Traditional and Simplified Chinese.
  

[h2]Game Fixes[/h2]

• Resolved an issue that caused you to be able to send friend requests to players who you are already friends with after a Trial.
  
• The Titles for flipping Mukaki and Makari-Hari during the Trial stopped tracking in the previous build, making related Titles impossible to achieve.
  

[h2]Trial Fixes[/h2]

• [Conquest Trial] During Makari-Hari’s Ability, rapidly clicking to distribute Energy could result in Energy being lost.
  
• During Caelius’ Ability, rapidly clicking to distribute Energy could result in Energy being lost.
  
• During Varius’ Ability, rapidly clicking to distribute Energy could result in Energy being lost.
  
• During Drusus's Ability, if you finish the first trial with precise timing, you can cause the timer to reach 0 just as the second Trial begins, skipping it.
  
• Picking a player during Herlcaus' Ability just as the timer reaches 0 can result in Energy being deducted twice in some cases.
  
• If you click too fast when selecting an Identity Card at the beginning of the Trial you could flip the card before it’s ready, stopping you from selecting an Identity Card before the timer runs out.
  
• When un-summoning a Hero manually by flipping them when you already have 7 Heroes on your side, that Hero may end up in a state where you can no longer summon them when you should be able to.
  
• When manually flipping Heroes, passive abilities could sometimes fail to activate for the other player.
  

[h2]Server Fixes[/h2]

• Improved the efficiency of gameplay and statistics tracking used for player Titles which had begun to impact the overall performance and stability of the server, resulting in unexpected timeouts and player disconnections.
  

To the Crown Mages,

A new update to Astatos is here! Due to some of the system-level changes introduced in this update all players will need to download the new version to continue playing.

With this update we added new story content to Chapter 1, a new game mechanic has been introduced into Trials, and several quality of life fixes have been implemented. Along with these changes we have focused on revising our codebase, fixing bugs in Trials, and otherwise improving the stability of the game.

With this patch out of the way we will start to work on the following for future updates.

• [Short Term] Improve the gameplay experience during Trials, particularly with a goal to improve game-length issues with only “Base Gods and Heroes” equipped.
  
• [Short Term] Continue to work on bugs, Hero balancing, and quality of life changes.
  
• [Long Term] Continue to work on offline Trials and AI matches, including an interactive tutorial.
  
• [Long Term] Revise Chapter 1 of the story with new character sprites and new scenes.
  
• [Long Term] Implement Chapter 2 of the story along with single player Trial gameplay.
  

For more details about the new features and detailed changelog of changes implemented with Astatos v0.2, please read on below.

- From the team at Studio Klondike


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Seven new scenes are available in the Interlude menu. These scenes take place and unlock throughout Chapter 1 of the story. Scenes are available for the following characters: Sulpicius, Cerkles, Makari-Hari, Zermes, Mukaki, Herclaus, Reece.

Note: Some Interlude scenes will only become available after seeing previous corresponding Interlude scenes in "Ab Initio”.


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Hero Ability Cooldown: After using a Hero Ability, that Hero will go into Cooldown for 1 Round. During the Cooldown you will be unable to activate that Hero and use their Ability. During a Cooldown you can still give Energy to your own, and your opponent’s Heroes. If a Hero flips sides, their Cooldown will be reset immediately. Heroes with Passive Abilities don’t have an Ability Cooldown.

By introducing the Hero Ability Cooldown we hope to increase variety in matches and open up new avenues for strategic planning by preventing players from repeatedly using the same Hero. We’ll be monitoring feedback to this change and making other changes as appropriate.



Befriend Your Opponents: You can now send friend requests to other players on the victory screen. If both players send a friend request, the request will automatically be accepted.



Copy Room Code: Clicking the Room Code in the Lobby will now copy it directly to your clipboard.



Reward Point Exchange: Once you obtain enough Reward Points for the Monthly Reward, the Reward Point Exchange will become available. This allows you to exchange extra Reward Points for Monera.



Skip Mode: The Skip function allows you to quickly advance through dialogue in Story scenes. By default, you can only skip scenes that you have seen and completed before on any one of your Save Slots.

You can enable Skip by holding down the [s] key.

Note: Due to changes in the story save file format, some scenes will not be considered as “seen” until you view them again with the v0.2 version of the game.



Auto Advance: The Auto function allows you to advance dialogue automatically in Story scenes. The speed that dialogue advances can be changed in the settings menu.

You can toggle Auto by pressing the [a] key.


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[h2]Story Content[/h2]

• Seven new scenes are available in the Interlude menu for Chapter 1.
  

[h2]Story Features[/h2]

• A Skip function has been added to skip previously seen dialogue during story scenes.
  
• An Auto function has been added to automatically advance dialogue during story scenes.
  

[h2]Game Features[/h2]

• The Reward Point Exchange has been added to the Rewards menu.
  
• You can now add the Room Code to the clipboard by clicking on it.
  
• You can now send friend requests on the victory screen.
  
• The Hero Ability Cooldown has been added as a new mechanic during Trials.
  
• New Features in this update have been added to the User Manual.
  

[h2]Trial Fixes[/h2]

• [System] The way Cards are drawn and discarded has been consolidated and revised to be more reliable, improving the stability of any action or Hero Ability related to Cards.
  
• [System] Players are no longer able to receive more than the maximum of 20 Cards in their hand.
  
• [System] Card element trackers on the player icons have had several desync issues resolved and show now be accurate in displaying what elements that player currently has in their hand.
  
• [System] Hitting End Turn at 0 seconds left in the timer during the Trial Stage or the Hero Stage had the chance that both the end-turn button and the timer would try to send data to the server at the same time. This would result in the game proceeding incorrectly.
  
• [System] Under circumstances where the game becomes desynchronised between players, each player could decide a different side goes first in the Hero Stage. This is no longer possible even under similar circumstances.
  
• [Hero] Gaining a Spell Card using Sulpicius’ Passive Ability did not trigger Aristotle’s Passive Ability.
  
• [Hero] Gaining a Spell Card during Zermes’ Ability while Aristotle’s Passive Ability is active can no longer result in errors.
  
• [Hero] Under some circumstances, Zermes would appear to make incorrect comparisons between Cards.
  
• [Hero] Sulpicius, Gaios, and Mukaki’s Passive Abilities would remain partially active after being un-summoned by Nikos leading to incorrect behaviour or soft-locks.
  
• [Hero] Gaios would break when his Passive Ability is activated after the second turn in the Hero Stage, resulting in cards not being discarded properly if you chose to do so.
  
• [Hero] Under some circumstances Gaios could ask you to convert Cards to Energy twice in a row if no Heroes are activated during a given turn. Gaios will now only ask a second time if Heroes are activated during the Hero Stage.
  
• [Hero] You can no longer submit more Energy than you have to the wager during Alkaios’ Hero Ability.
  
• [Takeover Hero] The text “Flipping Sides” could be displayed instead of “Gaining/Losing Influence” during the activation of Drusus’ Ability.
  
• [Conquest Hero] The card distribution screen after Aklaios’ Ability could fail to load and soft-lock the Trial.
  
• [Conquest Hero] If Drusus and another Hero were activated in the same turn on Mukaki's side, there was a chance that no players would remain on Mukaki's side at the end of Drusus' Ability. In this case the next Hero would incorrectly activate their Ability and soft-lock the match.
  
• [Conquest Hero] If Mukaki’s Hero Ability was used in the first turn it would prevent the next Hero activated by Makari-Hari’s side from flipping a Seal.
  
• [Conquest Trial] With precise timing you could submit a card in a 0.5 second period after the Trial Stage had completed, failing the Trial Stage, but also receiving 1 Energy for passing the Trial Stage afterwards
  
• [Conquest Trial] Varius would only let you select yourself rather than all the players on your side when distributing Energy as the Consul.
  
• [Traditional & Simplified Chinese] Timaio’s Ability description in Takeover Trials did not properly reflect his Ability.
  

[h2]Interface Fixes[/h2]

• When loading into the Main Menu for the first time, occasionally multiple copies of the welcome text would be displayed at the same time.
  
• The next and previous topic buttons would not appear in the User Manual.
  
• The Friends menu now has sound effects.
  
• New sound effects have been added to the Story Chapter Menu.
  
• You can no longer open multiple instances of the Lobby UI by spamming the Host Room or Quick Play buttons in the Trial Menu.
  
• Resolved an issue where the Summon Hero button would appear partially transparent.
  
• Yes/No question interfaces during a Trial would sometimes show the Hero Card as if that Hero was on the wrong side.
  
• Opening the Hero Summon menu then scrolling to the end of the list would lock the right/left button when you close and re-open the list.
  
• When you first login, your Reward Points would appear to not be affected by the daily reset.
  
• Saving your deck in the Deck Customisation menu and swapping decks would make it appear as though your other decks were not saved. As this was only a display issue, all decks are saved correctly on the server.
  
• Fixed an issue where level-up reward Monera could be displayed as a separate item on the Victory screen if you had already reached your daily Monera cap.
  
• Equipped Hero Skins are now displayed when the Winning Hero appears on the Victory screen.
  

[h2]Lobby Fixes[/h2]

• When the Room Owner leaves a hosted room, the new Room Owner will now correctly be transferred the room controls and be able to invite players or start the game.
  
• You can now invite multiple players at a time to join a Room. Previously you would have to close and re-open the friends list to invite another player.
  

[h2]Story Fixes[/h2]

• Resolved an issue that prevented Interlude scenes from advancing correctly. Some additional dialogue will now be visible when visiting the Interlude for the first few times.
  
• [English] Fixed various typos in Story Mode.
  
• [Traditional & Simplified Chinese] The font has been expanded to include characters that were previously missing.
  

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To keep up to date on upcoming changes and bug fixes to the game, be sure to join our Discord! There you can find an up-to-date list of known issues and fixes in progress.