Tales And Tactics News

Fixed an issue where the Labs teleportation machine could cause a softlock in very rare circumstances.

Fixed an issue where, if you had no PVP ranking and lost ranking on your first run, the end of run screen would softlock.

Fixed an issue where the Cauldron event in the Labs could softlock.

Fixed an issue where PVP runs would send to the server permanently any 'temporary tier up' effects, most notably on Dragon 2 armies. This would lead to enemies with Dragon 2 having far superior armies than are possible for the given floor.

Hello Tacticians,

We are back with another exciting Tales & Tactics update!

Introducing the Laboratory update—a large expansion to the PVE content, which primarily includes the final Region, where the champion Gera hails from. With our previous update focusing on introducing PVP to Tales & Tactics for the first time, we were pleased to hear so many players were happy to see PVP introduced as this has been our most requested feature from the community. That being said a few fans were concerned that the game was pivoting to be a PVP focused experience. This is definitely not the case - our primary focus continues to be PVE. We will continue to support our new Multiplayer mode (such as adding Ranked in this update) since it has proven to be popular and well worth the time spent for the players that enjoy it, but it will never become our sole and only focus.

Before we get to the update notes, we'd like to ask you, our community, to help us work towards a great 1.0 Launch later this year, by way of leaving a game review. The number of Steam Reviews matters a ton to how much promotion a game receives, so the more we can get, the better. It can be as long or as short as you want, even just a single word, and it has a real, significant impact on our performance, which in turn means our ability to work more on the game and create more for you.

You can leave a review here.

[h3]Hexatech Labs![/h3]

A new area has been added to the game—Hexatech Labs is open for business! Inside you can find:

• Unique Events, and by Unique, we mean brand new types of Events! You won’t find just “pick one of three things” in the Area Tales for the Labs—we’ve cracked open the box to come up with some new and interesting ways to interact with Events and their choices.
  
• New Boss Fight, and you’ll approach this one like no other, we guarantee it. Reflect carefully on your choices as you prepare for battle.
  
• New Dungeon, and as always, a unique and powerful reward for going through to the end.
  
• New Champion, Gera, who will now appear in other Champion Tales, discussing and arguing with her fellow champions. Side with her to choose from unique rewards.
  
• New table decorations! Our last act, the Necropolis, was grim and spooky and foggy, so we’ve 180’d with the Labs - they are colorful and vibrant with splotches of colored slime and various instruments of experimentation all around. This also includes a new background music track to accompany the Labs.
  
• New Act Modifier! When playing with Act Modifiers on, your positioning will greatly matter when playing in the Labs, thanks to the… well, you can discover it yourself.
  

Veteran players, be sure to check the Unlocks screen to unlock the Hexatech Labs! You won’t see it in your runs without its associated unlock.



[h3]PVP Updates[/h3]

[h2]PVP Ranked Mode Enabled[/h2]

PVP now has Ranked Mode! Ranked Mode behaves mostly the same as normal mode, but when finding opponents, the game will prefer to find opposing armies from your own ranking. At the end of the run, you’ll lose or earn ranking points towards the next rank. When you reach a new rank, you can’t de-rank to a previous one.

We have also added 13 new PVP combatants to play as, bringing PVP to a new total of 30, as well as a whole host of new features and improvements.

[h3]Difficulty, Gameplay, and More[/h3]

We have a huge list of patch notes this time around, too many to list in the announcement, but here are some of the bigger items that are addressing player feedback more directly.

• Difficulty system updated and simplified - Challenge Climb doesn't require all Run Modifiers to be active, and becomes available even if you are still working through unlocks. No Difficulty features get automatically applied any more when you unlock things, they are all exclusively added through Challenge Climb. Every Challenge Climb stage now adds 2 things to the game instead of some adding 1 and some adding 2. You now unlock the next two stages of Challenge Climb when you win one.
  
• Full rebalancing of baseline unit stats, focused on making Rare units more effective, and granting Melee or short-range units some starting Armor to improve survivability.
  
• Additional item slots and Fusion Gems added to Shops (also through new Unlocks)
  
• Increase to all Mastery gains! New players should be able to complete the Unlocks faster.
  

[h3]Polish, improvements, bug fixes and more[/h3]

We have added many improvements and fixes with this latest update—for a full list of improvements please see the patch notes here:

Full Labs Update Patch Notes


We hope you enjoy our latest update! Please consider joining the DISCORD community to provide feedback and stay up to date with the latest Tales & tactics news! You can also take part in our Community Design Challenges, where players can directly write content for the next game update. We just completed Community Design Challenge #4, and #5 will not be far behind it.

Fixed item shop showing duplicators and other items they weren't supposed to.

Fixed an issue where when rerolling trait perks, the perks offered may stop being that of traits that match your army.

tto's Scepter has been reworked. It now grants positive and negative stats based on the Unit's out of combat positioning. Champion items are supposed to be niche in purpose, but Otto's was a temporary solve as the previous design fell through as being impossible. This puts it back in line with other niche choices.

Sword (and all related combined items) now grants 15% Attack Damage, down from 20%. Sword has been the dominant item choice for a little while now, and Fighters have been high in performance particularly when itemized. They generally are not a problem when not itemized.

Shrink and Grow effects are now unified in how they behave: Shrink increases damage dealt and damage received by 20% and increases movement speed. Grow reduces damage dealt and damage received by 20% and reduces movement speed. This was done for clarity as these effects are used yet again in a new way in the Laboratory, and like other buff/debuffs like Slow or Vulnerable, we prefer to try to unify these effects for player clarity. If the PVP Shrinkomancer or Gigantomancer need further tuning, we'd do so in ways not related to the shrink/grow effect.

Fixed Mirror of Duplication (PVP perk) stating it duplicates "Equipment" instead of what the consumable states, which is to duplicate a random Equipment.

Healer Stage 2 now only counts the healing performed by Healer Units, but the ratio value is increased to 60% (from 50%). This gives a reason to overcap the Healer trait, which is something all Traits are designed to do, that there's still some benefit for going over the limit.

Better skill icon given to Glitter.

Optimization involving recalculating Traits when a Unit is placed.

Fixed a bug where transformed Units with no skill override (such as a harmless Sheep) would show invalid Skill values if right-clicked during the fight.

Fixed a UI bug where the enemy side Trait Summary would sometimes not light up more than 1 pip.

Fixed an issue where the Stars would still be displayed on top of the end cutscene when winning a run in PVP.

Fixed an issue where two Common Unit bounties were shown instead of the correct Bounties.

Fixed an issue where Bounty choices wouldn't change when progressing through a run, which could lead to getting stuck in Bounty selection.