Tales & Tactics Road to 1.0, Week 4 Patch Notes
Features & Polish
PVP Tactician 2 cap has been removed - Tactician is now infinitely climbable. Behind the scenes, a bug has been causing players to still accrue their true ranking - only the display was capped to Tac 2. This means if you have played at Tac 2, you may launch and find yourself at a higher ranking. As a reminder, we will be purging all PVP rankings for 1.0’s update.
A pass has been done on Unit Skill icons and names - replacing outdated icons like the clock for Volcanus' skill (from a time where he burned out over a duration) and replacing a few outdated names with more flavorful and relevant variations.
Dragon II has been changed. Now, Dragons will receive their Temporary Tier Up the first time they're struck by the trait's Dragonflame each combat. In addition, a new visual effect triggers on Dragons that Tier Up this way.
Dragon II was often confusing to track, buggy in cases where Dragons died at odd times, and wasn't as exciting as we were hoping in the chaos of combat. Now, the effect should be easier to track and more fun to trigger - additionally, it may incentivize placing Dragons in a row, or making sure they don't wander out of the range of their own Dragonflame.
The Master Trollgar boss fight has been reworked - Armor Totems are no longer present. Instead, Trollgar summons four identical Shadow Clones when losing a healthbar, each of which cannot cast and die at 75% HP.
The previous iteration of Trollgar's fight had multiple levels of issues. The Armor Totems weren't actually providing armor like they stated - but if they had, the fight would have been even more binary than it already is, and open a one-dimensional door where Stalker teams that can access the backline far outpace any others. This new mechanic means AOE tactics are more valuable and should also be more generally exciting than the Totems, which didn't have proper visuals.
Gera's Manaflow boon has been changed and replaced with the new Infusion hex, which grants a different variant of Mana Regen with a downside! This fixes an issue where the Potion Partier PVP combatant could receive nothing when selecting the option (since it already granted Manaflow).
Units summoned by Baa'lor now die after 10 seconds to prevent filling the board up entirely with certain builds.
Mage II's Manabomb now Stifles enemies for 5 seconds, rather than draining their Mana. This also means if both teams have Mage II active, both will gain full Mana but become unable to cast for 5 seconds, rather than resulting in neither gaining any.
The Boss Heart no longer grants 20 Cost Reduction. Some Bosses have had their Maximum Mana reduced to compensate, to varying degrees. One effect of this is that Master Trollgar will no longer cast as frequently.
The downside effects obtained from Dungeons now (finally) properly have differentiated Icons for each type and stage, rather than all being vague yellow blobs.
Reviewed the Completed and Event item pools to make sure the "flash item when activating" system triggers whenever relevant. It should now be easier to tell when your Equipment's special abilities activate.
Made a review of Perk icons to ensure no duplicates existed. Additionally, some icons which didn't match their respective theme have been changed - no more River's Card being some red cloak!
The Beast II Bite now has improved visual effects!
The Ghoul trait's stages have been swapped. Stage I is now the 100% max health Heal at 50% HP, while Stage II is the Lifesteal and overhealing damage.
The Lifesteal and Overhealing damage often felt slightly under par when it was only on Fester and Grundy, particularly in earlygame combats where it was highly unlikely to actually overheal. The burst heal is far more potent in those early combats where health matters much more, and the sustain and damage much more relevant when the burst heal is always guaranteed to occur (and with more Ghouls on the team).
The Plush of Vo-Do and other effects that scale linearly off Curse now cap when Curse hits 15. Additionally, fixed a bug where the Plush could grant decimal values of Mana Regen.
Decisive Win (one of Lel'Thas' PVP Act 3 perks) has been replaced with a new Perk, Battlefield Promotion, which grants an immense Shield and Spell Power boost to the first one of your Units to score a kill each combat.
Major Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug related to players truly (and invisibly, per the first note in the patch notes above) at Tactician 6 or above being treated by the PVP system as having looped back to bronze for purposes of rating gain/loss amounts, and which pvp pool they are playing in. This means these very experienced players were unknowingly putting their armies into bronze/silver. We may wipe the pvp pool as a result of this issue, still debating the pros/cons. Thanks to Bonkin (who's record was at Tactician 9) for providing information which helped figure out what was going on here.
Fixed the last released update being marked for the Experimental PVP pool, not the normal PVP pool.
Fixed a severe issue where, if you performed a Unit swap specifically with Marksman in play such that it destroyed the Marksman dummy due to losing the Marksman I trait effect, the entire Trait system would get into a bad state for the rest of the run and do some very, very bizarre things (like not applying Unit effects, showing the Trait UI incorrectly, etc)
Fixed an issue where Ranged Scrappers with the Scrapper trait activated could fire three to five bonus Combo Attacks at once whenever they launched a Combo, depending on distance to the target.
Fixed an issue that could cause subsequent runs to skip the first Star Point reward in PVP in certain cases after the first run.
Fixed Shred-o-Matic's Charge Totems not granting any stats at all. We will keep an eye on the fight to make sure difficulty is still on par with where we want it to be.
Fixed another case (harder to see than the last one) where the PVP Hothead combat modifier affected ALL your units, not just one.
Fixed an issue where, if the PVE Bad Necromancer combat modifier killed a Skeleton at the start of combat, that Skeleton would become permanently invulnerable. Additionally, fixed issues where the Bad Necromancer instant death wouldn't trigger special effects like Guardian Angel or on-death procs.
Fixed an issue where Gale could vanish 'off the board' if casting on a foe who was in the middle of repositioning; this would cause the casting Gale to become permanently invisible and invulnerable. This was easiest to see if two Gales casted at the same time.
Fixed an issue where the Death-wing Disciple PVP combat modifier's Ritual would permanently reduce affected units' Max Health afterwards.
Fixed various exploits and issues where Manasoaker stats persisted across combats.
Other Bug Fixes
Fixed Instant Start with Random Character being able to select 'Draft', which would result in loading with no character.
Fixed an issue where Stalker melee attacks would never be parried by Duelists' Readied.
Fixed an issue where, when buying a Cursed Unit via clicking quickly, the resulting Unit would become "stuck in your hand".
Fixed an issue where dragging Units behind the Unit Store would cause them to warp into the center of the screen.
Fixed an issue where, when in a Devil's Deal combat, if Champigno summoned Mush-Turrets, Barq summoned Decoys or the Graveyard's Obelisk summoned Zombies, the summoned units would have the Devil's Deal bonus Trait, sometimes causing Traits to increase a stage mid-combat.
Fixed an issue where Skye's Modular Tech could cause obtained Potions to become Prismatic. (This did not let you transform the Potions into Components.)
Removed an outdated behavior where Fire Potions also removed 70 Armor from their targets (in addition to applying the Ignite).
Fixed an issue where Serpentes' skill and the Tricky Book Trickster item wouldn't grant Gold when triggering.
Fixed an issue where the Experiment H family of Legends would deal no damage when attacking. In addition, they now have bonus traits when playing with Ifreyes' Specialization perk.
Fixed an issue where the amount of rewards displayed when entering the Maiden of the Mire event overflowed over the Choose button. In addition, fixed incorrect text displayed on those previews.
Fixed an issue where quickly right-clicking twice on a Component would break the Merge Table for the rest of the session.
Fixed an issue where the Genes and Genies event was missing most of its text.
Fixed many instances of duplicated textures across the game - including Items and Consumables that shared icons and more.
Fixed the Dragon Teeth item (gained from the Dragon Trait Improvement perk) not functioning at all.
Fixed an issue where, when fighting Otto as your Rival in the Grand Tournament, the game would instead use the previous Boss Fight's extra Modifier rather than Otto's bonus Modifier.
Fixed an issue where the Wanderbot would not receive a bonus from the Only the Best Specialization.
Fixed Orc Mark granting Zwei instead of Morita.
Fixed Mushroom II granting Maximum Mana Reduction rather than Cost Reduction.
Added a safeguard to fix a longstanding issue where the Trait hover visuals that appear over units would persist for a long time after the Trait itself was unhovered.
Fixed an issue where text tags could be seen on certain items in the Tournament.
Fixed an issue where putting the Skull of Hedra equipment on a Skeleton made that Skeleton permanently invulnerable. Additionally, fixed issues where the Skull of Hedra instant death wouldn't trigger special effects like Guardian Angel or on-death procs.
Fixed the Dragon Egg and Enlightened Gourmand losing their Hatching progress and Health stacks respectively when a run was saved and loaded.
Fixed several issues with Gorzak's skill that could cause it to miss its intended target at close range. Improved the skill's visual effects slightly and increased the damage per hit to 175 (from 160).
Fixed an issue where Teak would cast on a random ally rather than the ally with the most adjacent foes. This also fixes several other effects which looked for units with the most adjacent foes.
Fixed an issue where VFX wouldn't appear when Oakengard cast.
Fixed an issue where the Monock boss combat gained incorrect Units from Boss Armies, resulting in a less difficult combat than intended.
Fixed several rare cases where the game still referred to Vanguards when it meant to indicate Tanks.
Fixed an issue where, if a unit with Wicked Khopesh didn't get a kill in a combat, it would permanently double the effects of the Khopesh's on-kill bonus.
Fixed an issue where the Marksmen Trait Improvement perk still granted Du-Mi +100 Max Health, rather than actually doubling the amount of Shield gained by the unit's passive effect. In addition, fixed outdated text on Du-Mi and buffed its Skill stun duration to 1.5 seconds.
Fixed an issue where, if the player had a Morphling, the effects of the Reptile trait would be completely disabled.
Fixed an issue where right-clicking on one Unit or Unit Store card while the right-click info for a different Unit was already displayed would hide the info panel rather than making the panel change the described Unit.
Fixed an issue where, when leaving a Special Shop, the DM would advise you about spending Gold even if you couldn't afford anything.
Fixed an issue where, when instantly leveling up twice due to the Forbidden Knowledge perk, the displayed rewards would be from two XP Levels earlier than intended.
Fixed an issue where the extra Perk Choice from Crop Rotation would be lost if the perk choices were rerolled.
Fixed an issue where Kevin the Flamingo would permanently occupy the hex he started combat in despite not being part of combat, which could cause Units to take incorrect pathing decisions.
Fixed an issue where some characters' text entries in the Compendium would flicker rapidly.
Fixed an issue where enemy units could be encountered with two copies of the same Banner.
Fixed an issue where free rolls could grant a Power Roll in some circumstances.
Found and fixed several outdated references to Poisoners (the previous iteration of the Defiler trait).
Fixed an issue where the Doom Meteors launched by the Doomsaying perk dealt no damage.
Non-Fighter sources of 'Parry' effects now display BLOCKED! text instead of PARRY!
Added tooltips to display additional information about tabs in the Compendium.
Fixed an issue where the Enemy Items wouldn't appear in the Compendium.
Fixed an issue where Spiritfang would hang out idle for about 1 second after casting.
Fixed PVP rank bar's 'wings' UI elements being completely white instead of the expected color.
Fixed an issue where, when Limit Lock was enabled, the player also lost 1 Potion Slot.
Fixed yet another issue where the Doomsaying perk dealt no damage.
Fixed an issue where units that were generated during combat due to effects such as the Star Crown or Gemini Hex could Tier Up with your actual units if a third copy was obtained as combat ended due to the effects of Monk passive or Necromancy.
Fixed an issue where Geogukk's tier was based on the average tier of the team's Units rather than specifically the Dwellers in play.
Rebuilt the way Scrapper functions to fix many bugs and edge cases. The actual damage output should be slightly improved, as animation time has been reduced when delivering Combo attacks.
Fixed an issue where units that gained mana at the same time as they gained Cost Reduction would become unable to cast. This particularly caused Gorzak to lose the ability to cast if he was equipped with a Mage Banner.
Lifelines in the Match Cards for Potions event now cost 6 Points (from 8).
Fixed an issue where Noctus had no projectile despite being a Ranged unit.
Fixed an issue where events in the Compendium said they were from the Oasis rather than their actual respective act.
Fixed a longstanding issue where the Shield visual effects would stick to a unit forever (most often occurred with Healers in play).
Fixed Flash still applying the old Weaken instead of the new Ignite effect.
PVP Tactician 2 cap has been removed - Tactician is now infinitely climbable. Behind the scenes, a bug has been causing players to still accrue their true ranking - only the display was capped to Tac 2. This means if you have played at Tac 2, you may launch and find yourself at a higher ranking. As a reminder, we will be purging all PVP rankings for 1.0’s update.
A pass has been done on Unit Skill icons and names - replacing outdated icons like the clock for Volcanus' skill (from a time where he burned out over a duration) and replacing a few outdated names with more flavorful and relevant variations.
Dragon II has been changed. Now, Dragons will receive their Temporary Tier Up the first time they're struck by the trait's Dragonflame each combat. In addition, a new visual effect triggers on Dragons that Tier Up this way.
Dragon II was often confusing to track, buggy in cases where Dragons died at odd times, and wasn't as exciting as we were hoping in the chaos of combat. Now, the effect should be easier to track and more fun to trigger - additionally, it may incentivize placing Dragons in a row, or making sure they don't wander out of the range of their own Dragonflame.
The Master Trollgar boss fight has been reworked - Armor Totems are no longer present. Instead, Trollgar summons four identical Shadow Clones when losing a healthbar, each of which cannot cast and die at 75% HP.
The previous iteration of Trollgar's fight had multiple levels of issues. The Armor Totems weren't actually providing armor like they stated - but if they had, the fight would have been even more binary than it already is, and open a one-dimensional door where Stalker teams that can access the backline far outpace any others. This new mechanic means AOE tactics are more valuable and should also be more generally exciting than the Totems, which didn't have proper visuals.
Gera's Manaflow boon has been changed and replaced with the new Infusion hex, which grants a different variant of Mana Regen with a downside! This fixes an issue where the Potion Partier PVP combatant could receive nothing when selecting the option (since it already granted Manaflow).
Units summoned by Baa'lor now die after 10 seconds to prevent filling the board up entirely with certain builds.
Mage II's Manabomb now Stifles enemies for 5 seconds, rather than draining their Mana. This also means if both teams have Mage II active, both will gain full Mana but become unable to cast for 5 seconds, rather than resulting in neither gaining any.
The Boss Heart no longer grants 20 Cost Reduction. Some Bosses have had their Maximum Mana reduced to compensate, to varying degrees. One effect of this is that Master Trollgar will no longer cast as frequently.
The downside effects obtained from Dungeons now (finally) properly have differentiated Icons for each type and stage, rather than all being vague yellow blobs.
Reviewed the Completed and Event item pools to make sure the "flash item when activating" system triggers whenever relevant. It should now be easier to tell when your Equipment's special abilities activate.
Made a review of Perk icons to ensure no duplicates existed. Additionally, some icons which didn't match their respective theme have been changed - no more River's Card being some red cloak!
The Beast II Bite now has improved visual effects!
The Ghoul trait's stages have been swapped. Stage I is now the 100% max health Heal at 50% HP, while Stage II is the Lifesteal and overhealing damage.
The Lifesteal and Overhealing damage often felt slightly under par when it was only on Fester and Grundy, particularly in earlygame combats where it was highly unlikely to actually overheal. The burst heal is far more potent in those early combats where health matters much more, and the sustain and damage much more relevant when the burst heal is always guaranteed to occur (and with more Ghouls on the team).
The Plush of Vo-Do and other effects that scale linearly off Curse now cap when Curse hits 15. Additionally, fixed a bug where the Plush could grant decimal values of Mana Regen.
Decisive Win (one of Lel'Thas' PVP Act 3 perks) has been replaced with a new Perk, Battlefield Promotion, which grants an immense Shield and Spell Power boost to the first one of your Units to score a kill each combat.
Major Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug related to players truly (and invisibly, per the first note in the patch notes above) at Tactician 6 or above being treated by the PVP system as having looped back to bronze for purposes of rating gain/loss amounts, and which pvp pool they are playing in. This means these very experienced players were unknowingly putting their armies into bronze/silver. We may wipe the pvp pool as a result of this issue, still debating the pros/cons. Thanks to Bonkin (who's record was at Tactician 9) for providing information which helped figure out what was going on here.
Fixed the last released update being marked for the Experimental PVP pool, not the normal PVP pool.
Fixed a severe issue where, if you performed a Unit swap specifically with Marksman in play such that it destroyed the Marksman dummy due to losing the Marksman I trait effect, the entire Trait system would get into a bad state for the rest of the run and do some very, very bizarre things (like not applying Unit effects, showing the Trait UI incorrectly, etc)
Fixed an issue where Ranged Scrappers with the Scrapper trait activated could fire three to five bonus Combo Attacks at once whenever they launched a Combo, depending on distance to the target.
Fixed an issue that could cause subsequent runs to skip the first Star Point reward in PVP in certain cases after the first run.
Fixed Shred-o-Matic's Charge Totems not granting any stats at all. We will keep an eye on the fight to make sure difficulty is still on par with where we want it to be.
Fixed another case (harder to see than the last one) where the PVP Hothead combat modifier affected ALL your units, not just one.
Fixed an issue where, if the PVE Bad Necromancer combat modifier killed a Skeleton at the start of combat, that Skeleton would become permanently invulnerable. Additionally, fixed issues where the Bad Necromancer instant death wouldn't trigger special effects like Guardian Angel or on-death procs.
Fixed an issue where Gale could vanish 'off the board' if casting on a foe who was in the middle of repositioning; this would cause the casting Gale to become permanently invisible and invulnerable. This was easiest to see if two Gales casted at the same time.
Fixed an issue where the Death-wing Disciple PVP combat modifier's Ritual would permanently reduce affected units' Max Health afterwards.
Fixed various exploits and issues where Manasoaker stats persisted across combats.
Other Bug Fixes
Fixed Instant Start with Random Character being able to select 'Draft', which would result in loading with no character.
Fixed an issue where Stalker melee attacks would never be parried by Duelists' Readied.
Fixed an issue where, when buying a Cursed Unit via clicking quickly, the resulting Unit would become "stuck in your hand".
Fixed an issue where dragging Units behind the Unit Store would cause them to warp into the center of the screen.
Fixed an issue where, when in a Devil's Deal combat, if Champigno summoned Mush-Turrets, Barq summoned Decoys or the Graveyard's Obelisk summoned Zombies, the summoned units would have the Devil's Deal bonus Trait, sometimes causing Traits to increase a stage mid-combat.
Fixed an issue where Skye's Modular Tech could cause obtained Potions to become Prismatic. (This did not let you transform the Potions into Components.)
Removed an outdated behavior where Fire Potions also removed 70 Armor from their targets (in addition to applying the Ignite).
Fixed an issue where Serpentes' skill and the Tricky Book Trickster item wouldn't grant Gold when triggering.
Fixed an issue where the Experiment H family of Legends would deal no damage when attacking. In addition, they now have bonus traits when playing with Ifreyes' Specialization perk.
Fixed an issue where the amount of rewards displayed when entering the Maiden of the Mire event overflowed over the Choose button. In addition, fixed incorrect text displayed on those previews.
Fixed an issue where quickly right-clicking twice on a Component would break the Merge Table for the rest of the session.
Fixed an issue where the Genes and Genies event was missing most of its text.
Fixed many instances of duplicated textures across the game - including Items and Consumables that shared icons and more.
Fixed the Dragon Teeth item (gained from the Dragon Trait Improvement perk) not functioning at all.
Fixed an issue where, when fighting Otto as your Rival in the Grand Tournament, the game would instead use the previous Boss Fight's extra Modifier rather than Otto's bonus Modifier.
Fixed an issue where the Wanderbot would not receive a bonus from the Only the Best Specialization.
Fixed Orc Mark granting Zwei instead of Morita.
Fixed Mushroom II granting Maximum Mana Reduction rather than Cost Reduction.
Added a safeguard to fix a longstanding issue where the Trait hover visuals that appear over units would persist for a long time after the Trait itself was unhovered.
Fixed an issue where text tags could be seen on certain items in the Tournament.
Fixed an issue where putting the Skull of Hedra equipment on a Skeleton made that Skeleton permanently invulnerable. Additionally, fixed issues where the Skull of Hedra instant death wouldn't trigger special effects like Guardian Angel or on-death procs.
Fixed the Dragon Egg and Enlightened Gourmand losing their Hatching progress and Health stacks respectively when a run was saved and loaded.
Fixed several issues with Gorzak's skill that could cause it to miss its intended target at close range. Improved the skill's visual effects slightly and increased the damage per hit to 175 (from 160).
Fixed an issue where Teak would cast on a random ally rather than the ally with the most adjacent foes. This also fixes several other effects which looked for units with the most adjacent foes.
Fixed an issue where VFX wouldn't appear when Oakengard cast.
Fixed an issue where the Monock boss combat gained incorrect Units from Boss Armies, resulting in a less difficult combat than intended.
Fixed several rare cases where the game still referred to Vanguards when it meant to indicate Tanks.
Fixed an issue where, if a unit with Wicked Khopesh didn't get a kill in a combat, it would permanently double the effects of the Khopesh's on-kill bonus.
Fixed an issue where the Marksmen Trait Improvement perk still granted Du-Mi +100 Max Health, rather than actually doubling the amount of Shield gained by the unit's passive effect. In addition, fixed outdated text on Du-Mi and buffed its Skill stun duration to 1.5 seconds.
Fixed an issue where, if the player had a Morphling, the effects of the Reptile trait would be completely disabled.
Fixed an issue where right-clicking on one Unit or Unit Store card while the right-click info for a different Unit was already displayed would hide the info panel rather than making the panel change the described Unit.
Fixed an issue where, when leaving a Special Shop, the DM would advise you about spending Gold even if you couldn't afford anything.
Fixed an issue where, when instantly leveling up twice due to the Forbidden Knowledge perk, the displayed rewards would be from two XP Levels earlier than intended.
Fixed an issue where the extra Perk Choice from Crop Rotation would be lost if the perk choices were rerolled.
Fixed an issue where Kevin the Flamingo would permanently occupy the hex he started combat in despite not being part of combat, which could cause Units to take incorrect pathing decisions.
Fixed an issue where some characters' text entries in the Compendium would flicker rapidly.
Fixed an issue where enemy units could be encountered with two copies of the same Banner.
Fixed an issue where free rolls could grant a Power Roll in some circumstances.
Found and fixed several outdated references to Poisoners (the previous iteration of the Defiler trait).
Fixed an issue where the Doom Meteors launched by the Doomsaying perk dealt no damage.
Non-Fighter sources of 'Parry' effects now display BLOCKED! text instead of PARRY!
Added tooltips to display additional information about tabs in the Compendium.
Fixed an issue where the Enemy Items wouldn't appear in the Compendium.
Fixed an issue where Spiritfang would hang out idle for about 1 second after casting.
Fixed PVP rank bar's 'wings' UI elements being completely white instead of the expected color.
Fixed an issue where, when Limit Lock was enabled, the player also lost 1 Potion Slot.
Fixed yet another issue where the Doomsaying perk dealt no damage.
Fixed an issue where units that were generated during combat due to effects such as the Star Crown or Gemini Hex could Tier Up with your actual units if a third copy was obtained as combat ended due to the effects of Monk passive or Necromancy.
Fixed an issue where Geogukk's tier was based on the average tier of the team's Units rather than specifically the Dwellers in play.
Rebuilt the way Scrapper functions to fix many bugs and edge cases. The actual damage output should be slightly improved, as animation time has been reduced when delivering Combo attacks.
Fixed an issue where units that gained mana at the same time as they gained Cost Reduction would become unable to cast. This particularly caused Gorzak to lose the ability to cast if he was equipped with a Mage Banner.
Lifelines in the Match Cards for Potions event now cost 6 Points (from 8).
Fixed an issue where Noctus had no projectile despite being a Ranged unit.
Fixed an issue where events in the Compendium said they were from the Oasis rather than their actual respective act.
Fixed a longstanding issue where the Shield visual effects would stick to a unit forever (most often occurred with Healers in play).
Fixed Flash still applying the old Weaken instead of the new Ignite effect.