Slaves of Magic News

Hello everyone!

In preparation for our participation in the Endless Replayability Steam Fest, I'm happy to announce the release of the 1.3.5 patch to the demo!

This patch is mostly about quality-of-life features and balance changes according to the feedback we have received so far, with the highlight being voiced end-of-month scene.

[h2]UI changes:[/h2]
- Reworked the end-of-month screen. Now the player will read the report in front of the council while they provide him/her with their opinion about the progress(with voice-acting!).
- Reworked the mission end screen to be more informative. It now includes the amount of enemies killed, damage caused, and the XP earned for every participating unit. Plus the amount of etherglow earned by completing this mission.


- On the combat map, the bottom bar disappears if there are no units selected


- The character description on the combat map is now bound to the screen, it cannot go outside of it.
- You can open the character description when right-clicking on the unit's profile picture as well, not just when on the unit. This is especially useful to the player while teleporting in, as the unit is not yet on the map at that time.
- On the base builder screen, in the building description, the player can see the actual number of smith/scholar/soldier/gold amount the building will provide.
- Added a new profile overlay for units that have been teleported out of the battlefield, and reworked the dead unit overlay.

[h2]New features:[/h2]
- The game now saves the team the player set before starting the mission, so there is no need to set the team again after reloading.

[h2]Balance changes:[/h2]
- Swapped the position of Forceful style skill with Endurance training skill on the warrior class. This gives every character an easier chance to increase their stamina if they dip into the warrior class.
- Because of the previous change, the knights that previously had Forceful style skill has been replaced with the self-defense training general skill.
- Swapped the position of Surgical precision skill with the improviser skill in the Assassin class. Same reason as in the warrior, this gives easier access for every character to increase their initiative if they dip into the assassin class.
- Swapped the position of the Move order skill with the Motivate skill in the Strategist class. The move order was a bit too strong for being a tier 1 skill that is freely accessible to everyone.
- Increased the stamina cost from 1 to 2 for the basic bow attack and the crossbow reload.
- Crossbows can't be reloaded while adjacent to a melee character (but can still use point black shot at melee range if already reloaded!)

[h2]Bugfixes:[/h2]
- On the campaign map, it was not possible to close the ESC menu with a right click, this has been fixed.
- Fixed subtitles that sometimes were aligned wrongly compared to their black background.
- Fixed level-up animation playing before the teleport animation after missions.
- Fixed some typos in descriptions.

Hello everyone!

Our first bigger patch after the 1.3.0 demo release is here with a lot of tweaks and bug fixes! Plus a big out-of-combat AI behavior change.

[h2]Major AI behavior change:[/h2]
The AI was too aggressively rushing to the player's spawn point and as such it was easy to kill them all (especially with ranged weapons) inside the time limit for the bonus. While I don't want to completely invalidate this tactic, the time-limit bonus should only be archivable with proactiveness and risk-taking.

To reach this goal, the AI squads now have 4 internal states. Hold/Patrol/Slow-Advance/Active. Hold means they just stay put. Patrol means they will randomly patrol the map with their walking speed. Slow-Advance walks towards the player's last known location again with walking speed. Active is the old behavior which is to rush to the last known location of the player. Pods will become active as soon as they see a player unit or they take damage. In addition, at the start of every round, they have a chance to escalate their status. The chance itself increases with the round number.

In practice, this means that they will be less aggressive at the beginning of the combat so the player will need to actively seek them out if they want to finish the mission inside the time limit for the bonus. But their aggressiveness increases with time so that it doesn't devolve into trying to find the last pod for 10 turns.

In addition, the randomness means that their behavior will be a lot more unpredictable. For example, you could be rather certain that a building was empty even without checking previously because the AI would have stormed out from it the first chance it got. Now, a pod can stay put for several rounds there, before going out surprising the player.

[h2]Balance changes:[/h2]
- The available character builds were very restricted in the beginning by every class skill requiring a base in their region. Now, the first 2 skills of every class are available from the start.


- Reduced the crossbow damage by 1 across the board.
- Increased the bow and crossbow equipment cost by 1. Massing range units should be less cost-efficient than melee units.
- Shields have been a bit too easy to break so increased shields max health to 15.
- Shields now have a +20 bonus block chance against ranged attacks, making them a more effective counter against ranged units.
- Removed the hammer-making from the Barbarian region and it has been given to the Strategist region so that they have access to a melee weapon as well.
- Changed the starting lineup of the Strategist region giving them a melee unit.
- Units leveled up a bit too fast, so the gained XP rate has been tweaked.

[h2]Ui changes:[/h2]
- Skill chooser ui has been completely reworked to show the available skills in a better organized way, and to give the player a hint of all the available skills.
- Added a level-up animation to returning troops.


- Fixed various missing and typos in descriptions.
- In combat when you select an exhausted unit (only has 1 stamina) you will be notified with a sound effect.
- Added borderless fullscreen option.

[h2]Bugfixes:[/h2]
- Fixed killing a redeemed(resurrected) priest counts for the assassinate mission when the priests are the target.
- Fixed showing the headquarters bonus of a region when it was not chosen as such.
- Fixed incorrect scaling when rendering at fullscreen on certain resolutions (like 4k).
- Fixed damaged armor condition shown token number was incorrect.
- Fixed a crash when opening the researched tab when nothing has been researched yet.

Hello everyone!

The previous 1.3.2 hotfix was incorrectly applied and created a crash when changing weapons. This has been corrected in this new 1.3.3 hotfix.

Hello everyone!

This is a very small hotfix that fixes a crash that can happen when 2 description boxes have been locked at once (like when checking the skill a weapon provides).

Hello everyone!

This is a small hotfix that fixes the issues that came up during the release of the 1.3.0 demo:

• Fixed that the intro video started again in case the loading has not been finished till the end of the video.
  
• The intro sound volume is now governed by the effect sound volume, not the music sound volume, which should make it louder by default.
  
• Fixed a crash that can happen when opening the smith projects when there is no approvable project in the list.
  
• Fixed a crash when the player successfully finishes the last mission.
  
• Aimed shot bow skill range is now correctly set to sight range from half-sight range.
  
• Added a general description for units from the Eastern culture.