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  3. Dev Diary #56 - The Tomes of Rise from Ruin

Dev Diary #56 - The Tomes of Rise from Ruin

[p][/p][p]Greetings, combatants! My name is Luis, and I am a Senior Designer at Triumph Studios. Today, I will show you the new tomes that will make traversing the realms just a bit easier in the upcoming Rise from Ruin culture pack.[/p][p][/p]
Tome of the Warband
[p][/p][p]The Tome of the Warband is a new Tier I tome that showcases a low mana low magic tome for a more martial feel. It will help your units get stronger, recruit faster and rally in combat quickly.[/p][p][/p][p]The Lieutenant is a Tier II Fighter unit specializing in supporting your other units and leading them to victory.[/p][p]Discern Weakness targets an enemy unit, causing all units of that type to gain 2 Sundered Defense and 2 Sundered Resistance. For example, if there are five Piglets in combat, targeting one of them will inflict these negative status effects on all five.[/p][p]Lieutenant's Lead is a passive ability. It allows the Lieutenant to lead by example, Strengthening an allied unit when it attacks and granting Bolstered Defense and Resistance if they enter Defense Mode.[/p][p][/p][p]Bred for War is a minor transformation that grants your units +10 Hit Points. It also improves their morale loss resistance in combat by +10%, plus an additional 10% for each adjacent friendly unit. This makes them tougher and more resilient, especially when fighting in formation.[/p][p]Other Spells and Unlocks:[/p][p]Mentorship: This empire bonus grants all heroes an army property that gives the unit with the lowest experience amount in their army a passive experience gain each world turn.[/p][p]Training Regiment: When cast on a city, this strategic spell increases the city's Draft gain by +40 as long as you sustain the spell.[/p][p]Commander's Call: A tactical spell that heals and grants morale to all friendly units in a 1-hex radius.[/p][p][/p]
Tome of the Sand Stalkers
[p][/p][p]The second Tome on this pack is the Tome of the Shifting Sands. This tome is all about sand terrain, spreading it and exploiting it![/p][p][/p][p]To lead our Nature Materium Sand themed tome what better than a giant Sand Scorpion unit. This unit is a Tier III Shield unit whose Melee Strikes ignore half of a target’s defenses.[/p][p]Its signature ability, Debilitating Sting, is a Full Action attack that deals high damage and applies multiple stacks of Weakness and Poisoned to the target.[/p][p]Additionally, the Sand Scorpion possesses a Sand Shift passive, which grants it a free action 'bury' ability when in Sand provinces, allowing it to traverse the battlefield quickly and easily position itself to strike key targets with its Debilitating Sting.[/p][p][/p][p]The Dunestalkers minor transformation allows your units to become one with the desert. Units with this transformation gain increased speed, camouflage and increased damage with their flanking attacks when on a Sand province.[/p][p][/p][p]Scorpion Venom Blades enchants your melee units with the deadly and debilitating poison of the Sand Scorpion. This enchantment grants their melee strikes a chance to Weakness and Poisoned their targets and deal increased Blight damage when flanking a unit.[/p][p]Other Spells and Unlocks:[/p][p]Desertification makes the target and adjacent provinces turn into provinces with Sand terrain.[/p][p]Sandstorm is a combat spell that places Sandstorm hazards in a 3-hex radius which blind and slows units in it without Sand Walk, which your units gain from the Dunestalkers transformation.[/p][p]Grand Bazaar is a new Special Province Improvement that grants Gold and gains further gold and food scaling with the number of adjacent Sand Provinces[/p][p]Sand Preference and Desert Farming are unlocked with the tome and grants your cities some Stability from sand provinces and allows you to build farms on them. Don’t worry if you picked Desert adaptation as a form trait at the start of the game, as you gain a further boost on food income on these farms to compensate![/p][p][/p]
Tome of the Warlord
[p][/p][p]The Tier III Tome of the Warlord is a pure Chaos tome that mixes martial prowess with the fiery forces of chaos. It also has a theme of empowering Tier III and lower units.[/p][p][/p][p]The Warlord is the main unit of this tome. It is a Tier IV Mythic unit that combines the abilities of other specialized melee units, featuring the Charge Strike of a shock unit, the protective defense mode of a shield unit, and the First Strike of a polearm unit.[/p][p]The Warlord acts as a commander with several free-action command abilities that target units of a lower tier, all sharing a 2-turn cooldown:[/p][p]●      Command: Retreat heals, grants very fast movement, and prevents the unit from provoking retaliation strikes when moving.[/p][p]●      Command: Defend grants a unit an extra retaliation attack, along with 5 stacks of Bolstered Defense and Bolstered Resistance, providing a massive boost to defenses.[/p][p]●      Command: Attack greatly buffs a unit's power by granting it 5 Strengthened and 3 Fortune.[/p][p]Through its Command Momentum property, the Warlord can refresh these command cooldowns when it scores a kill.[/p][p]Additionally, the Warlord grants a passive +1 Defense and +1 Resistance to all lower-tier units via its Field Tactics passive.[/p][p][/p][p]The second unit in this tome is the War Golem, a summonable Tier 3 construct animated by Infernal energies.[/p][p]It is a Magic Fighter, a new unit type introduced with the Free Patch for this culture pack, meaning its Magic Strikes ability is melee range but counts as Magic, targeting Resistance. Like its animal counterpart, these strikes also pierce enemy defenses, with the War Golem ignoring 50% of its target's Resistance.[/p][p]Its special abilities are Fiery Shift and Infernal Ray.[/p][p]Fiery Shift lets the War Golem teleport to a desired location and inflict Burning on all adjacent enemies.[/p][p]Infernal Ray is a 2-hex cone of flame and destruction, dealing damage, burning enemies, and setting the ground on fire. It also does double damage to obstacles, making the War Golem a perfect siege unit, capable of teleporting behind enemy lines and destroying walls and weak targets along the path of its ray.[/p][p][/p][p]Relentless Might enchants your melee units with the power of Chaos. This grants them an extra retaliation and causes them to gain Infernal Might with each attack, which gives +1 Fire Damage per stack, up to 5 stacks.[/p][p]Other Spells and Unlocks:[/p][p]Might of the Battlefield is a combat spell that buffs friendly units in a 2-hex radius with increased Morale and a stack of Infernal Might. This effect is doubled for Tier III or lower units.[/p][p]Conqueror’s Edict is a siege project that at first grants all units participating in the siege the Siege Breaker passive, reducing the time of the siege. Then, during the combat, various hexes are set on fire, and all your units gain increased critical chance. If victorious, the razing or migrating of the city is 1 turn faster.[/p][p]Gladiatorial Pit is a pure economic structure that increases the Stability, Gold, and Draft in the city where it is built.[/p][p]The War Forge is a Special Province Improvement that grants Draft and then additionally, for each type of Ore Magical Material, it grants extra Draft and Gold.[/p][p][/p][p]The Rise from Ruin culture pack comes out on March 9th! I hope what you've seen here inspires you to try more martial builds, combining the Desert Adaptation trait with the new Sand Stalkers tome for a cool desert-themed faction, or mixing and matching to create something that will dominate the competition (or simply look cool)![/p][p]Join us next week when Bas will share the dangers of the Astral Barrens and the Cataclysm system.[/p][p][/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p][p]Follow us and be the first to know when we drop new content![/p]