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Primal Fury Content Pack and Wolf Update OUT NOW!

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Respond to the Call of the Wild and find your kin…


Reach your true potential and get in touch with your inner Godir with the help of the Age of Wonders 4: Primal Fury Content Pack. This Content Pack introduces the brand new Lupine and Goatkin forms, the animistic Primal Culture worshippers of 7 different Primal Animals, 2 exciting new Tomes and the challenging Stormwreathed Isles Realm. Heroes known for their Affinity with Life and Death also make their return as part of 4 new Rulers to play as and fight against.

Everybody has two wolves inside of them and one of them is the Wolf Update. All players get to enjoy new Form Traits, an improved and expanded Pantheon, a completely reworked Necromancy experience and a brand new Bounty System to set War Targets for other Rulers to complete. Hero Recruitment and Free Cities have seen large updates alongside other Quality of Life Improvements such as brand new Realm & Combat Overviews, a Special Province Improvement UI/Flow Update and even more ways to express your Fantasy with Custom Throne City Names and Race Biographies.

Check below for all the details on the Primal Fury Content Pack and the Wolf Update.

Game Version: 1.006.001.90116

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2401850/Age_of_Wonders_4_Primal_Fury/

[h2]Primal Fury Content Pack[/h2]



New Forms: Lupine & Goatkin
Two new forms have joined the planes of existence. The beastly Lupine are beings which communicate through barks and howls. Trained in long distance running, they are exceptionally fast and adapt at surrounding and overrunning their enemies. Alongside these creatures of the forests we find the Goatkin. Graceful beings who take pride in their elaborate horns. They are vigorous and strong, true beacons of health with a knack for consuming plants to revitalize themselves.



New Culture: Primal

The Primal culture is animistic and in tune with the environment. Not every Primal Culture is the same, as each culture picks a Primal Animal that they worship. This Primal Animal dominates every facet of their physical and spiritual lives.
  • Pick one of 7 Primal Animals, each linked to a different terrain and damage type
  • Channel the Fury of your chosen Primal in combat for powerful buffs
  • Find the den of your chosen Primal on the world map and channel its power to Terraform the land.




New Tomes
Reach into the hidden powers of Nature with two new Nature Hybrid Tomes. Embrace the mischievous side of the Fey with the Tome of Fey Mists, conjuring otherworldly mists to protect and strengthen your armies. Or call forth the darker side with the Tome of the Stormborne. Control the storms to do your bidding and transform your race into creatures from the deep.



New Realm: Stormwreathed Isles
A realm of storms and islands inhabited by fey creatures that play host to a dispute between two powerful Godir. Featuring two brand new Realm Traits. Hostile Seas make Sea Storms a permanent feature of this world, which makes traversing them exceptionally dangerous. Primal Dispute turns the realm into the stage of a violent dispute between the Godir Serena and Nimue, whose primal followers fight a bloody conflict.

Even More Content
While we’re sure the above has your mouths watering, there’s even more that you can enjoy. Further included in the Primal Fury Content Pack are:
  • 4 Achievements
  • 4 New Premade Rulers, including the return of Arvik the Dark and Serena, self proclaimed master of Elves and their Eternal Trees
  • 6 New Wildlife and Compositions that expand the variety of Units you’ll encounter
  • 4 New Mounts split between Default options and Exotic Mount Traits
  • New Primal Interface Skin & New Banner Emblems



[h2]Wolf Update[/h2]

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War Bounties
None are safe with the brand new War Bounty System. War Bounties are public (re)quests akin to wanted posters that are sent out by Rulers. These requests target locations of strategic benefit such as Outposts, Cities and Victory Condition Structures along with a hefty reward for completion. Other Rulers can choose to accept a bounty and try to achieve it or they might tempt you into a War for the right reward. Work your way to Victory from the comfort of your Seat of Power through this new Diplomatic system.



Hero Recruitment
We have taken a look at how Heroes are recruited into your Empire and how they interact with each other. In this new version of Recruitment we've disconnected the Hero Cap from cities and gone back a bit to our earlier titles. Over the course of a game your Hero Cap will increase automatically, introducing Heroes to you over time or spend your Imperium to requisition one immediately. Alongside these changes comes a new interaction between Heroes that are part of the same Stack. Any stack that contains more than one hero will be subject to a Leadership Clash, the effects of which result in lower Morale and less Experience Gain.



Necromancy Overhaul
Necromancy has been reworked to provide a more satisfying and enjoyable experience. With changes to Necromancy Tomes, Souls generation and the inclusion of Post-Combat Raising we’ve created a more direct connection between the units you kill and the undead you raise. Raise Skeletal variants of Shield, Polearm, Archer and Battle Mage units as well as Monstrous creations like Bone Horrors and Bone Dragons to form petrifying armies.



Pantheon Expansion
The Pantheon has been expanded with a large update improving Tech, Flow and Gameplay aspects. Pantheon Management has been reworked and Rulers that join your Pantheon are now added to a separate Tab in Faction Selection. From here you can review your Rulers, make changes or add your newly unlocked Pantheon Rewards. At the end of a game Ascended Rulers have the option to pick an Ascension Trait, special traits available based on your Affinity and Tome choices during the game. They will also keep the Race Transformations that they cast and remember the Tomes you picked.

There’s also new content and not just for the Pantheon. The Godir’s Aid event has been expanded with Affinity & Alignment oriented Events to provide more opportunities for your Rulers to join a campaign. A new Hero Loadout, Nature Society Traits and Ruler Visuals have been added to the Pantheon Rewards, but the most exciting is the addition of 6 new Mount Skins that can be unlocked for your Ruler & Units to ride.



Quality of Life and more
The features above are only the highlights of what the Wolf Update has to offer, other big additions have been made to the game. A heavily expanded Free City experience graces your realms with tons of additional Tome Upgrade sets, brand new Culture Upgrade sets and improvements to the Rally of the Lieges. The Item Forge sees a slew of new Infusions that let you create even more varied pieces of Equipment, as well as Dragon Gauntlets for the fashion forward Dragon.

We’ve added new ways to live out your fantasy, for those that spend more time creating factions than playing them. Editing a Factions now provides the choice between Overwriting the existing ruler or making a Copy, which is key for when you want to update your Factions with Custom Throne City Names and Faction Biographies. To help you keep your Fantasy going you’re now able to toggle the visibility of any Unit Enchantment or Race Transformation that you’ve cast. Now venture out into Realms that you let create for you with the new randomize option and crawl through forests filled with Webs, Mushrooms and what not.


This only scratches the surface of the Wolf Update. For the full list of change notes, please visit here.

[h2]Get Primal Fury now: [/h2]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2401850/Age_of_Wonders_4_Primal_Fury/

Be the first to get information about Primal Fury:

Everything you need to know about Primal Fury and Wolf Update

Hello everyone! We decided to put all the materials covering the upcoming content in one place for you to have a look before both Primal Fury and Free Wolf Update are released (IT'S TOMORROW!).

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[h2]Read the Dev Journals: [/h2]
Read full FREE Wolf Update Patch notes

[h2]Watch our Streams and Videos: [/h2]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llK_5heg4Jg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lElxmpYt6k

First Look pt.2: New tomes! First Look pt.3: Mistlings are MVP! First Look pt.4: It's time for the Ascension!

[h2]Watch videos made by our cool influencers! [/h2]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMwZtaTUM8w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-726Qern6FQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4qDowtkQZc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_6EFJZsU-U

[h2]Wishlist Primal Fury now![/h2]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2401850/Age_of_Wonders_4_Primal_Fury/

Be the first to get information about Primal Fury:

Dev Diary #29: FREE Wolf Update Patch Notes



Hello everyone! This is a joint Dev Diary by Jordi, QA Specialist and Tom, Lead Designer. Today we’re going to be talking about the Wolf Update which is coming out on February 27th with the Primal Fury content pack. Everything in this update is free, you just need the base game to get it!




[h3]New Feature: Bounties[/h3]
In the golem update we added the War Coordination system for vassal cities. In this update we’ve brought similar functionality for coordinating attacks with other rulers in the form of Bounties!

Bounties are Ruler created quests that can be offered in exchange for a reward. Any non-hostile Rulers may choose to accept your Bounty. The Ruler that completes the objective within the given timeframe will receive the reward and complete the Bounty.

  • Bounties can be made and managed in the Quest Overview.
  • Bounties can target Cities and Victory structures that are viable for other Rulers and offer a reward for achieving the bounty
  • Multiple rulers may accept the bounty, but only the Ruler that completes it will receive the reward.
  • AI Rulers can post Bounties for completion. Accepting these will add them to your Quest Tracker and completing them will see you earn the Reward.
  • AI Rulers that accept bounties will send messages giving updates on how their attacks are going.

[h3]New Content: Pantheon Expansion[/h3]
As well as adding new content to the Pantheon system, we’ve done a big pass on the tech, flow and gameplay aspects. The main goal for this update is to make Ascended Rulers feel more special, by granting them a special trait when they complete a realm, and allowing them to keep their racial transformations. We’ve also added logic for an ascended ruler to remember the tomes they collected during the game, so that the AI can pick the same tomes again if it takes control of them!

Ruler Management
  • Once a custom ruler ascends, they will now be moved into the pantheon and out of the custom rulers list.
  • A new tab featuring all the pantheon rulers is now visible in faction creation and selection.
  • Pantheon rulers can now be edited and campaign rulers (when not edited manually) will automatically update to the latest settings.
  • Removing a pantheon ruler will place it back in the custom rulers list (if it was a custom ruler).
  • Already ascended rulers can ascend again to update their recorded information and race transformations.
  • Pantheon Rulers gained from Story Realms now default to act as Rulers and not as recruitable heroes. Only applies to newly ascended campaign rulers, you can always change this setting in the pantheon screen.
  • A warning has been added when a ruler is worthy to ascend but the maximum rulers in the pantheon has already been reached on finishing a session (already ascended rulers may ascend again however).
Ascension
  • Added 26 Ascension Traits. One trait can be chosen at the end of a game upon ascensions of a Ruler.
    • The Traits one can choose from are based on your Affinity and the Tomes chosen during the game.
    • If you ascend again, you can choose a new trait to replace the original one.
  • When conquering a Realm your applied Transformations are maintained. Your Ruler will be under the effects of these Transformations when next played by you or an AI.
    • Ascended Champions gain the choice to not partake in new Transformations cast during a Game.
    • Dragon Lords will benefit from their Aspect skill, their Transformation remains dormant until the appropriate level has been reached.
  • When conquering a Realm your researched Tomes will be remembered and when this ruler is next played by an AI that AI Ruler will attempt to research the same Tomes as you originally did.
  • A new option has been added to Advanced Setup to disable the Ascension mechanics and bonuses during a session.
    • Prevents rulers from starting with ascension traits, transformations and skills.
    • Pantheon rulers will not show up as heroes during a session.
    • On winning the session, your ruler will not ascend.
New Pantheon Content
  • Added New Pantheon Rewards
    • Crow Master’s Bow Hero Origin
    • Druidic Terraformers
    • Primal Good Banner Icon
    • Primal Evil Banner Icon
    • Keeper’s Helmet
    • Marauder Helmet
    • 6 Mount Visualisations
      • Lion
      • Panther
      • Tiger
      • Stag
      • Zebra
      • Warhound
  • Added 8 new events for Pantheon Godir that can join the player as heroes.
    • 2 alignment based events
    • 6 affinity based events.
  • Increased the rarity of Pantheon Hero events, which should increase the chance of a pantheon hero event showing.


[h3]Overhaul: Hero Recruitment[/h3]
When looking at how the hero cap worked, we became unhappy with how it interacted with acquiring new cities. Since getting more cities and getting more heroes were both very strong strategic approaches, having them intrinsically linked by saying that each city grants an extra hero was making the game’s meta very narrow, since simply grabbing as many cities as possible was the only viable approach.

The new system disconnects heroes from cities, allowing you to spend imperium to speed up acquiring more. This means players must choose between using imperium to have lots of cities OR lots of heroes, rather than always getting both.

Alongside these changes comes a new interaction between Heroes that are part of the same Stack. We felt that multi-hero stack armies were undermining the core idea of the game, by reducing the importance of normal units in armies. To try and counter this we’ve added a penalty that stacks the more heroes are within a single army.

  • The hero cap now increases over time instead of being linked to the number of cities. The first hero cap increase happens in 10 turns, subsequent increases each take 5 turns longer.
    • The hero cap can be instantly increased in the hero overview screen by spending imperium.
    • You can no longer recruit heroes beyond the hero cap.
    • When integrating a free city, their ruler will no longer be given directly, instead their ruler will become recruitable (for free) in the recruitment screen.
    • Existing save games will automatically upgrade to the new system and set the current cap to either be based on the current turn number or the number of cities the player has (whichever is higher).
  • Added “Leadership Clash” to all Heroes and Rulers. This will reduce the Morale and XP gain for heroes, if more than one hero is in an army


[h3]Overhaul: Necromancy [/h3]
The base game’s version of Necromancy wasn’t quite where we wanted it to be in terms of player experience. In too many respects it felt like all the other styles of magic, and wasn’t really hitting the goal of making you feel like the master of an ever growing army of the dead.

To address this we’ve been doing some major reworking of the necromancy tomes, giving them a focus of spending souls to directly reanimate the enemies you slay as skeletons under your command. Using an early game piece of research you can start bringing back normal racial units as skeletons, with the type of skeleton you raise based on the unit that you slayed. So instead of just having a bunch of skeletons with pikes, you can now have skeletons with swords and shields, bows and even skeletal mages. Later on you can start raising more powerful creatures as Bone Horrors and Bone Dragons too!

We’ve made a raft of other changes as well to smooth out the experience, and boost the power level of the tomes which many felt were lacking when compared to other tome lines.

General
  • Lowered soul gain per kill from 2/3/4/5/6 to 1/2/3/4/5.
  • Soul rewards on kill are now granted during combat, allowing you to spend Souls on spells immediately.
  • Soulbound now also causes a unit to have a 30% chance to transform into a Decaying Zombie under your control until the end of combat when it dies.
  • Constructing Skeletons no longer comes with any Necromancy Tome. Instead you can now use the three new Reanimation Skills to raise undead units after combat.


Post Combat Raising
Researching the appropriate Reanimation Skill, allows you to raise fallen units as Undead. After combat you're presented with a list of Units that can be raised, any amount of them can be selected provided you have the Souls. The system uses all units that entered the battle on the Enemy side and have died to determine which units are able to be raised as undead.
  • This means it does not interfere with the capture or mind control conditions since those units need to stay alive.
  • This means that units that have been summoned or have routed are not valid.
  • You buy these units using Souls.


When killing Racial Units of any tier (15 Souls - requires Skeleton Reanimation)
You will always get a Tier 1 skeleton that costs 15 Souls. But depending on what the role was of the unit that is killed, you can raise one of 4 different types of skeletons as follows:
  • Shield (Shield, Fighter, Hero)
  • Polearm (Polearm, Shock)
  • Archer (Ranged, Skirmisher)
  • Battle Mage (Battle Mage, Support)


When killing non-racial units
  • Tier 3-4: Tier 3 Bone Horror (50 Souls - requires Bone Horror Reanimation)
  • Tier 5: Tier 4 Bone Dragon (100 Souls - requires Bone Dragon Reanimation)


Tome Updates
  • Tome of Necromancy
    • Now a Tier I Tome
    • New Skill “Skeleton Reanimation” - Empire Bonus that allows you to raise Tier 1 skeleton units from slain racial units after combat. The unit that you can raise depends on the role it had:
      • Shield Skeleton (Shield, Fighter, Hero)
      • Polearm Skeleton (Polearm, Shock)
      • Archer Skeleton (Ranged, Skirmisher)
      • Battle Mage Skeleton (Battle Mage, Support)
    • New Combat Spell “Necrotize”
      • Target Unit sustains 10 Frost/10 Blight Damage
      • Target Unit becomes Decaying
      • Summons a Decaying Zombie under your Control on Unit Death
    • Necromancer - Now a Tier 2 Support unit instead of T3.
    • Combat Spell “Rotting Explosion” - Can now also target skeleton units
    • Unit Enchantment “Necrotic Magic” - Increased upkeep from 2 to 3 Mana
    • Hero Skill “Unholy Leader” - Now also increases the resistance of Undead units in the army by 1.
    • The following skills were moved to the Tier II Tome.
      • Special Province Improvement “Soulwell” - Increased Soulwell Income from 3 to 5
      • World Map Spell “Soul Collection” - Increased income from 6 to 10
    • The following skills were moved to the Tome of Souls
      • World Map Spell “Restore Undead”
      • World Map Spell “Summon Corrupt Soul”
    • The following skills were removed
      • Combat Spell “Raise Zombies”
  • Tome of Souls
    • Now a Tier II Tome
    • New Skill “Bone Horror Reanimation” - Empire Bonus that allows you to raise non-racial T3-4 units as Bone Horrors after combat.
      • The Bone Horror is now a Tier 3 unit instead of a T2.
      • The Bone Horror unit no longer transforms into Skeletons on death.
      • The Bone Horror unit now spawns a Zombie unit when its HP drops under 50%.
    • Unit Enchantment “Soulbinders” - Increased additional damage against Soulbound units from 10% to 20%.
    • Hero Skill “Soul Collector” - Increased additional damage against Soulbound units from 10% to 20%.
    • The following skills were moved from the Tome of Necromancy
      • World Map Spell “Restore Undead” - Renamed to Restore Undead Army.
      • World Map Spell “Summon Corrupt Soul”
    • The following skills were moved to the Tome of Necromancy
      • Combat Spell “Soul Overflow”
      • World Map Spell “Soul Collection”
    • The following skills were removed
      • Combat Spell “Soul Fire”
  • Tome of the Great Transformation
    • New Skill: Bone Dragon Reanimation - Empire Bonus that allows you to raise Bone Dragons from T5 units after combat.
  • Tome of the Reaper
    • Unit “Reaper”:
      • Added the Ethereal Unit Type
      • Melee Strike
        • Changed from 20 Physical damage to 10 Physical and 10 Frost damage
        • Added Piercing - Ignores 50% of the target's Defense
        • Added Breaching - Ignores 50% of the target’s Resistance
      • Finger of Death
        • Changed from a Full action to a Single Action ability
        • Reduced Range from 4 to 3
        • The 45 Frost damage from failing to kill now ignores all resistance the target has.
      • Dark Rites - Now grants the Reaper 1 Strengthened and 10 Hp for each enemy that dies in battle. Doesn’t count Summons, Siegecraft and Towers.
      • Now displays a property that tells that it has a 5 Soul Upkeep but a -50% Mana and Gold upkeep
    • Siege Project “Construct Soul Siphons” - Now applies Soulbound to all enemies and deals 3 fortification damage
    • World Map Spell “Harvest Population” - Increased Soul Income from +10 to +30.
    • Combat Spell “Mark for Death”
      • Renamed to “Marked for Death”
      • Target unit:
        • Sustains 15 unblocked Physical Damage
        • Loses 10 Morale
        • Has a decaying zombie appear adjacent to them
        • Gains a Debuff called Visions of Death that triggers the above 3 effects at the end of each turn.
    • Combat Spell “Greater Reanimation”
      • Reduced the Soul Cost of this spell from 35 Souls to 20.
      • Revives Undead units with 100% of their Hit Points
      • Revives non-undead units as Corrupt Souls.
      • Enemy Undead units and Corrupt Souls gained in combat with this spell can be purchased for Souls at the end of combat if they survive.
  • Tome of the Eternal Lord:
    • Unit Enchantment “True Death Magic”
      • No longer applies Marked for Death
      • Now grants an ability called ‘Curse of the Reaper’, a Full Action ability which cares about engagement in close combat version of the Finger of Death ability from the Reaper unit.

[h3]Quality of Life Updates[/h3]
As well as the above balance changes, we’ve been working hard to bring you a whole host of quality of life changes!

Added Random Realm/Realm Trait Randomization
You can now get the system to generate a randomized realm for you, if you don’t feel like picking out a realm’s traits for yourself.

Added new Free City Upgrades
Free cities will now start making use of tome units in the late game, instead of only culture units. These tome units will also be available to the city’s masters via the rally of lieges!

Added Dismantle Province Operation
It’s now possible to dismantle a city’s provinces, if you want to switch their territory to cover a different area. Only provinces on the edge of a City are eligible for dismantling.

Added Enchantment & Transformation Visual Toggle
We’ve added functionality to the spell book that lets you hide the visual effects of unit enchantments and transformations. This means you can have better control of what your race looks like when you take multiple, overlapping transformations or enchantments. It also means you can take a transformation for its mechanical effect, without needing to have it visually update your forces.

For technical reasons, transformations that give you wings (Angelize and Demonkin) or replace your legs (Naga Transformation) cannot be disabled.

Faction Creation Improvements
We’ve added the option to explicitly specify a name for the faction’s starting city, as well as rewrite the faction’s biography, so you can make a faction more your own.

Also, to reduce some confusion, it is now possible to overwrite an existing faction when you edit it (previously you only had the option to save your edited faction as a new one)

UI Updates
We’ve made a bunch of UI improvements as well, including:

  • Added a Realm Overview so you can see the traits and settings your realm has active
  • Added a Combat Overview so you can see an overview of which units are still alive during manual combat
  • Updated the Combat History to a Side Panel that remains open while you play
  • Updated the Special Province Improvement UI/Flow to be easier to use
  • Added brand new Parchment Images, just because they look cool!


And that’s about it for big new things! Obviously we’ve also made a huge assortment of balance changes, bug fixes and general improvements, all of which you can read about in detail:

[h2]Read Full Patch Notes[/h2]

The Wolf Update will roll out across all platforms on February 27th, along with the brand new Primal Fury content pack!


[h2]Wishlist Primal Fury now![/h2]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2401850/Age_of_Wonders_4_Primal_Fury/


Be the first to get information about Primal Fury:

Dev Diary #28: The Art of Primal Fury



Ancestral greetings my humanoid kin, for this Dev Diary I’d like to discuss the process of summoning this DLC to life. Be warned it is an image heavy thread!

Also don't forget to watch our recent Primal Fury Midgame Dev Stream

The art team, specifically the Art Director (me) the Concept Artists along with the Creative Director, are the first to explore the DLC. Through the ideation process of moodboards, keywords and rough sketches we set out by exploring the big questions -

Are we alone in the universe, what mood do we want to convey, what are the visual gaps we want to fill, and what would our players love?


[h2]Your Culture[/h2]

When it comes to Primal Fury we knew we wanted a new Wild nature affinity themed culture. We started with some early mood exploration, playing with a neolithic vibe combined with animism, spirituality and tribal motifs -



As designers join the team we start to solidify a visual identity. We knew we wanted to fill the Nature affinity culture gap, but at the same time introduce a new way to play via sub-cultures. We thought about how we might introduce these visually through animals, weapons and costume. We then start to concept potential lineups and unit types-



This changes rapidly as we hone in on a direction, we put basic 3D blockouts in game and push to introduce new weapons. Instead of a ranged unit using a bow how about we use a blowdart weapon? We explore avenues to bring in new ways to play with existing unit types. This meant having to create new poses and animation sets as it comes with it’s own unique abilities -



Wild culture weapon exploration -



After iterations we end up with a lineup we’re happy with. Each unit role and tier is communicated clearly, and differently from one another. We have clear material definition and customization options such as player and armour colour. We split up trinkets like jewelry, furs and bones so we can reuse them for leader customization -



We then take these 2D concepts and translate them into 3D by sculpting digital clay, notice in the texture of the double handed axe how the blade is really bright, this helps communicate readability in combat -





We wanted a way to show the sub-culture animal picks across your units so we made weapon variants to visualize this, for instance your support units magical staff or melee units shield swaps out depending on if you chose the path of the Storm Crow, or Dune Serpent etc. -





Additionally we create new skin decorations that fit the culture, we test to make sure that they not only look good on humanoids but also the 13 other forms we have -



An example of leaders you can create -



[h2]Your City[/h2]

Your city has 4 visual tiers, it should also show what wall defenses have been built, and have room for units and a wizard tower to spawn ontop. To communicate this we have a clear breakdown and composition of how a city is made. Firstly, the main tower which acts as the focal point. When it comes to the wild city we opted for a capstone that would switch it’s visual based on the sub-culture pick. Next we use secondary and tertiary towers, playing with scale and bridges to lead the eye to the center. We then place very small houses around to really push the scale of the city. Lastly we add particle FX like smoke, torches and fireflies, again these are coloured towards your sub-culture pick -



House and Tower concepts -




Wild city sieges need unique wall and house visuals with destructible variants, the lighting and biome will change depending on city location -





[h2]Your Forms[/h2]

From day 1 fans have been asking for a dog form, unfortunately we can’t make every dog breed so we decided to narrow it down to what we call the doge form, here’s the initial concept art and sculpt based off of our very own Senior Dragon Artist, Maki -



Just kidding! Instead we wanted to push for more of a beast vibe that tied well into the Primal Fury theme, so we opted for Lupine and Goatkin, more of a wolverine aesthetic and demon-goat vibe with really interesting silhouettes and horn customization, here’s some early artwork exploration and in-game shots -



We thought it would be a cool addition to add some extra life to these forms, so we added small ear twitches, secondary animation like this adds so much extra character to your creations making them the goodest of boys -



[h2]Return of the Naga[/h2]

We wanted to test a new method of Major Transformations that we haven’t done before, and that's mixing in different animals into your form, being a half-something…. For instance with the Naga half snake and half form choice. What would you call a half Snake half Goatkin creature?

We achieve this by essentially scaling down the legs to 0 and animation blending the top humanoid half with a custom bottom snake half. This also opens up interesting opportunities for future transformations down the line, what other half humanoid creatures can you think of that you’d love to see come to the game?



[h2]Your Wildlife[/h2]

We really wanted to push the Neolithic vibe here with Mammoths and Sabretooth Tigers. We go through the same pipeline with wildlife as we do with characters, first starting with rough concepts and blockout 3D. If we introduce a new rig and animation set we think about how we can get the most out of it, in this instance it made sense to also introduce an elephant as a variant so we could get the most out of the content being created.

Some early Elephant and Mammoth ideas-



Final in-game models-



Part of the art direction of wildlife is to capture the essence and character, much like a caricature portrait pushes proportions and expression to elicit a feeling. Below we see a small scribble from Picasso and a picture of a real pig, personally I find Picasso’s drawing of a pig more fun than the actual pig photo. We try to use this as an example to push expression through our characters to make them more interesting. Here we see the wolf’s proportion, snarl and pose bring about the essence of what a wolf is more so than what a photo would-



Here we see that same art direction principle applied to the Sabretooth, it’s snarl really showing why this animal was called a Smilodon-



We also experimented around with shader effects and scrolling glowing glyph textures to create the Primal Animal effects-



We’re also getting some cool new Tome units like the Racial Stormbringer and the cute fae Mistling creature (I won’t spoil everything here, you’ll find more wildlife surprises in-game!) -







With this DLC we focused on the forces of nature, especially with our particle FX we added powerful spells of mists, storms and lightning-



[h2]Your Mounts[/h2]

We heard you! You guys love mounts, so we really made an effort to bring you some cool variations that play into the Primal theme. We can’t wait to see what empires you create with these beasts!



These mounts below are unlocked at the start and both the Elephant and Mammoth come as special race traits. You can now have reptiles riding reptiles, and cats riding cats, not yet elephants riding elephants though…hmmm-



These mounts will be available as unlockable rewards in the pantheon tree, and available to all players of the game! -



[h2]Your Icons & Interface[/h2]

I’d like to take some time here to highlight iconography and interface. What I find astounding is that every icon here represents a new gameplay concept with localized descriptive tooltips, and coded gameplay. There might also be additional animation or particle FX with bespoke audio-



Tome artworks, 2 new tomes and 1 per starting Wild subculture -



We couldn’t have a Wild DLC without having a reskin of the UI frame to match, this will help immerse you in the game -



[h2]Bonus [/h2]
We saw feedback on the forest visuals from the forums, and agreed with the sentiment. We decided this was the perfect time to take another stab at them by adding more variety and interest via additional meshes, particle FX and colour. Using previous Age of Wonders games as inspiration we added things like little mushrooms and cobwebs. Before everything was a drab range of greens, now have fall colours for the highlands biome, pinks for the arctic, every forest biome got a pass. We’ll continue to make an effort polishing the game, and adding variety when and where we can so please keep the feedback coming!



We’ve also spent some time polishing interfaces like adding additional parchment artwork headers and much much more! -



Finally, not everybody likes changing their units visuals, either Enchantments, Minor or Major transformations. To address this we’ve added a Toggle Visibility button to the Active Spells page of your Spellbook.The only visualizations that we can’t toggle are those that grant you wings (for gameplay purposes) -



That’s all folks! We really hope you enjoy Primal Fury and getting a sneak peak behind what goes into creating a DLC content pack. If your hungry for more art please check out Dev Diary #11: The Art of Age of Wonders 4.

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Dev Diary #27: Primal Fury Tomes

Hello, my name is Luis and I am the main gameplay designer for Primal Fury. Today I will be going over the two new tomes you can unlock in this new content pack, and what they provide.

Watch the latest Primal Fury First Look as we explore the tomes!

The two new tomes are the Tome of the Fey Mists and the Tome of the Stormborne. They are Tier II and Tier IV respectively and both have the Astral and Nature affinity.

[h2]Tome of Fey Mists[/h2]



The Tome of Fey Mists is all about placing otherworldly mists into the world around you so that they can protect and enhance your units.

These mists make your units hard to hit and, with the fey touched transformation, grant them random positive status effects as well!

Spells like Lingering Mists can place a Misty effect for 3 turns on a target province that reduces vision ranges for units in the affected province, while also making them invisible to perceive by units outside and inside the Misty effect.



Provinces affected by this Misty state create mist clouds in combat, which apply a new status effect called Clinging Mist to all units ending their turn in the mist, enemies included.

Clinging Mists increases evasion to all attacks, including melee, by 20% and potentially stacking up to 3 times. The effect is countered by the Marked status effect, so factions like the Reavers have a few tools to counter this.



Fey Embrace allows you to place these mist clouds on a location of your choosing during combat, allowing for greater control of who gets Clinging Mist, as well as giving two random positive status effects to units.



And Staves of Mist grants your support units the Fey Blessing ability. This is a free action ability that heals 10 Temporary Hit Points, grants a stack of clinging mist and gives them a random positive status effect.

This is also the hero skill ability granted by this tome.



Now, with all these mists going around you don’t really want your enemies to benefit from them. That’s when Feytouched comes in. This minor transformation lets you avoid the penalties to vision granted by Misty and the accuracy penalties of Clinging Mist.



This transformation also gives a new passive, which all Fey now have by default, called Fey Guile. This new passive grants units that end their turn on mist clouds or on obscuring obstacles (like trees and bushes), a random positive status effect.



This tome contains a new Fey unit, a strategic summon called the Mistling. This unit is a Tier III skirmisher and was partly designed as a counterpart to the Gremlin.



While the Gremlin unit teleports to a random position when attacked, the Mistling has Misty Strike, a single melee attack that teleports it 3 hexes away from its target after attacking. This makes it great for the hit and run tactics skirmisher units excel at.



Their other ability is Fey Trick. It deals Physical, Blight and Lightning damage as well as having a base 90% chance of applying a random negative status condition to the enemy it hits.



On top of this, the Mistling’s Trail of Mists ability creates a mist cloud below themselves at the end of their turn, which triggers their Fey Guile ability to gain a random positive status.



Last thing I want to mention from this tome is the Special Province Improvement, Feywater Pond, which when built grants +3 Mana per adjacent Forester as well as covering the whole domain of the city in which it is built on with the Misty effect. Here’s what it looks like:



[h2]Tome of the Stormborne[/h2]



The second and final tome in this content pack is all about storms, lightning and harnessing the storm’s power over the sea.

Lightning Storm is a combat spell that uses the power of the storm to place the Wet condition on all units in combat and then deals deadly lightning strikes to enemies!



You can also place Wet on all units in a province with Downpour. It applies downpouring to a province for 3 turns as well as turning that province into a Swamp.



Downpouring gives all units in the province Wet and Slowed in combat, reducing their lightning resistance and their movement. Though Amphibious and Water Moving units are not affected by this.



Which brings us to the Major Transformation of this tome, the Naga Form:



This new transformation makes all racial units embrace their serpentine side, with a transformation that for the first time removes a part of a unit's body and then replaces it with something else, in this case a coiling naga tail.

This transformation gives a lot of benefits:
  • Fast Movement in combat and in the world map.
  • Immunity to the Electrified status effect.
  • Amphibious movement for entering water faster without slowing down or embarking on a transport.
  • Slip Away, which once per combat revives them immediately after they go down.
  • Blight and Lightning resistances.

The downside being that riding a mount without legs is a hard endeavor, so cavalry units lose their mount. Heroes and Leaders affected by this transformation also lose their Mount and Leg slots.



Bounty of the Sea and Stormport are economic research skills made to work on coastal cities.

The first is a Sustained City Spell that doubles the resources from Coastal Province Improvements, which makes it an ideal spell for cities with a lot of coastal sectors.



The second is a city structure that rewards having multiple coastal cities. Stormport grants a flat mana gain plus extra mana and gold for each stormport built in cities with a coastal province.



This tome also unlocks a new racial skirmisher Tier IV unit, the Stormbringer.



It is a potent skirmisher specialized in hitting multiple targets and applying Electrified. Its Storm Strikes ability not only deals damage to the target but can also hit up to two other units for 20% of the damage dealt and it has a base 90% chance to apply Electrified to all those it hits.



The Stormbringer can also throw its storm trident, which hits up to 3 units in a line and guarantees they receive a stack of electrified while dealing a decent chunk of damage from a distance.



Being in the same tome as the Naga Form Major Transformation this unit was made with it in mind, and art did a fantastic job with it!



And we don’t want the heroes to lose out on the fun of striking multiple enemies, so the Hero Skill Arcing Weapons allows a Warfare Hero to apply the bouncing strikes from Storm Strikes to all melee and physical ranged base abilities.



And with that we went over all the things the new tomes unlock. I hope you enjoyed the dive into these new tomes and are excited to try them out when this content pack releases on the 27th of February!

Join us next week as our art director Rich takes us over the art for Primal Fury.

[h2]Wishlist Primal Fury now![/h2]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2401850/Age_of_Wonders_4_Primal_Fury/


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