Tales And Tactics News

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A pass has been done on Unit Skill icons and names - replacing outdated icons like the clock for Volcanus' skill (from a time where he burned out over a duration) and replacing a few outdated names with more flavorful and relevant variations.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.

Due to a lot of text changes that needed to be translated for our Chinese audience, Weeks 2 and 3 were rolled into one patch, and then still delayed a bit (it was a LOT of text). But, it has just been launched for everyone! There's too many patch notes to have in full here, so I'll just paste the features and link the rest.

FULL PATCH NOTES HERE

A new Dynamic Keywords system has been implemented! Keywords will now appear in Orange text throughout the game, and when Orange text is present, a Dictionary will appear near your character portrait. You can click on it, or summon it with the Up key. When multiple keywords are present you can navigate left and right between the pages.

Added a tab to the Items section of the Compendium for Special Consumables (ones not available in Shops, such as Event rewards)

Special 'Guarantee' Reroll mechanics are now visible - when spending SP on a roll while having 3 or more unique units, and not hitting any duplicates, the next roll visibly becomes a Power Roll, which guarantees a duplicate.

"Mana Required to Cast" has been renamed Cost Reduction, and now has a visual element shown on the mana bar as a white buffer at the end of the bar, indicating the Unit "always has that mana available"

The Run Modifiers page in the start of run process has been removed - this functionality was already present in the Unlocks screen by enabling and disabling unlocks, and we removed the need for all Run Modifiers to be enabled for challenge climb, so the Run Modifiers screen wasn't serving a strong purpose any more. All of your enabled or disabled Run Modifiers from before the update should still be reflected in the Unlocks page, either being enabled or disabled based on your previous preferences.

The old Quick Start (skip Training Yard) functionality is now a checkbox in the start of run process and can be enabled and disabled at will.

The Quick Start button on the main menu has been replaced with Instant Start, which jumps you immediately to a new run without needing to go through the start of run screens. You can customize how you would like your Instant Start button to operate (character settings, difficulty settings, and whether or not to skip the Training Yard) in the gameplay options.

Added a new gameplay option for Trait Side panel behavior - being able to set it as 'permanently hovered', never collapsing into just the icon.

Run History changes: Modifiers are no longer shown, replaced with just the Difficulty played on. Removed the massive scroll bar with one button for every entry in favor of just the most recent 5 being quickly loadable with a button, and a dropdown that covers all the others. The dropdown will now not load any run histories that are in the incorrect format from before March. The dropdown is date-sorted by most recent.

When viewing Run History from the End of Run screen, it no longer tries to load the run from the saved file (which may still be in the process of saving) and instead loads from a cached version in memory, which will prevent that screen from accidentally loading the wrong run. When viewing from End of Run, you can no longer load other runs (this is only loaded in the Main Menu's version for better performance).

This begins a series of weekly updates, which we will strive to meet from now until 1.0 Launch. We won't be saving things for a big mega-update any more, just releasing them as they come. We are also likely not to launch experimental again unless for a risky feature we need specific testing on.

For all of the below Compendium and related features, we were not tracking before which Events or Combatants you had come across in total, so they will all show as hidden until you see them again.

(Community Request) There is now a Compendium tab for Events! This previews all the unique rewards for the event.

(Community Request) The event reward preview system made for the Compendium has been extended to the Travel Panel. When viewing the two rooms to travel to, if you have been to an event before, it will preview its rewards in place of the former "Mystery Perk/Unit" etc. icons.

(Community Request) There is now a Compendium tab for Combatants! This previews all the effects of enemy combatants, and can swap between PVE and PVP versions.

(Community Request) There is now a tab in the Perks section of the Compendium for PVP, which has filters to sort by both Champion and Level.

Porcino range increased to 5 (from 3).

Flash range increased to 4 (from 3).

Wolfgang range decreased to 3 (from 4).

Marksman I updated - now increases Marksman's damage dealt by 15% to targets at least 2 hexes away, rather than increasing attack damage.

Marksman II updated - now scales the bonus shot by the wearer's Spell Power. Cooldown increased to 3 seconds (from 2).

Leechknife Sheathe now adds its knives over time (one every 3 seconds) instead of on every 3rd hit. Knife damage increased to 200% of AD (up from 100%). This makes the item more clearly an AD caster item rather than scaling with attack speed.

Fixed several issues that ocurred when dragging a Lucky Clover directly from the Shop to a Unit, including breaking the Inventory UI or not spending Gold.

Fixed more cases where Defilers would Execute themselves when hit with certain sources of damage, such as Combat Modifiers or Act Modifiers.

When multiple Bugs are in the front, the Bug that's selected for the Swarm is now randomized, rather than always being the most recently placed Bug.

Fixed Frisky & The Darkness' skills being named 'The Darkness'.

Fixed an issue where the Compendium item merge data could get confused in runs beyond the first in a session.

Fixed a number of items in the Compendium appearing that shouldn't have been, such as Tainted War Banners, and a bunch that were being sorted into the wrong categories.

Fixed the Devil's Deal equipment showing {trait} tokens in the text when viewing in the Compendium. They now say "Random Trait".

Fixed several Units (mostly the ones added in the Brand New Game update) not having correct 3D model placement when viewed in the Compendium.

Fixed several Units (mostly the ones added in the Brand New Game update) not having correct Hat attachment points.

Fixed Amalgam perk being able to pick a banished trait.

Clockwork Industries now has a brand new set of table props! The factory is now operational, showing conveyors moving parts around, and animated furnaces.

Fixed an issue where the Ritual hex granted 75% of the sacrificed unit's Max HP rather than 50%. In addition, changed the effect to grant Max HP as stated rather than the Shield it was previously granting.

Fixed issues where Deshret's skill didn't function.

Fixed an issue where the "Roll the Unit Store with SP 10 times" Bounty was granting 1 more XP than intended. Now grants 5 (from 6).

Fixed an issue where the "Win 2 combats with (uncommon Unit)" Bounty was granting 12 more SP than intended. Now grants 4 (from 16).

Fixed an issue where the Brawler trait Improvement perk's Super-Punches weren't Piercing. In addition, highly improved the Punch missiles' visuals.

Fixed a longstanding issue where units that were previously Ranged but became Melee still had reduced Armor due to their Range. This primarily affected Barq, who had a perpetual, unintended -5 Armor. (/4098)

Fixed Curse clicks causing the Unit Store card to jarringly jump down momentarily.

Fixed Raine not having an introduction when playing in non-Quickstart runs. (/4099)

Fixed an issue where the enemy Morphlings used by the Morphomancy Boss Modifier disappeared as soon as you placed a unit into their hex.

Fixed an issue where the Incense shop slot appeared with Equipment rather than in the Consumables tab.

Fixed an issue where swapping a Unit into play would cause that unit not to count towards Traits.

Fixed an issue where player Morphling would disappear when matched with another Unit. (/4100)

Fixed an issue where Ivy was treated as a Vanguard by effects such as Lucky Clover and Divinination Dust. In addition, Ivy would be placed in Vanguard enemy teams, causing them to potentially miss a stage of Vanguard.

Fixed another issue with Morphling where white boxes would be displayed in certain spots over its Unit Store card or right-click description. (/4101)

Fixed an issue where, if a Tier 2 unit in the Unit Store was increased in Rarity at the Registrar, the resulting Unit Store card wouldn't cost the correct amount.

Fixed an issue where the Combat Modifier helper text for a River Rival fight displayed {riverTrait} instead of the actual granted Trait.

Fixed an issue where units such as Wolfgang who dashed directly to a target would instead dash one hex away if they were already adjacent to the target.

Fixed the Leechknife Sheathe breaking after the first combat it was used in. (/4104)

Fixed several text issues.

Fixed an issue where Lodestone Contracts could be completed with half the required values if you waited a combat, and doing so left the Lodestone on the Unit permanently.

Fixed an issue where Barq was still being placed slightly behind frontliners on enemy teams, despite now being a 1-range unit.

Fixed an issue where it was possible to softlock the game if one returned to the main menu immediately after starting the Tutorial.

Fixed an issue where Fae II only granted all Fae units a Mana Fairy. Now correctly affects your entire team.(/4108)

Fixed Morphling, when de-cloning a Unit but remaining on the field (as a Morphling), would not update your total Traits (would still show as if it had its former Traits)

Fixed several Chinese tooltip display errors.