1. Age of Wonders 4
  2. News

Age of Wonders 4 News

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/


Be the first to get information about Primal Fury:

Dev Diary #26: Primal Culture



Hello everyone, my name is Tom Bird and I’m the lead designer at Triumph Studios. Today I’m here to talk about the new Primal Culture from our upcoming Primal Fury content pack!

Primal Culture is nature focused and for people who want a culture that is all about having a connection with the land and the creatures who live there. Primal cultures focus on a deep connection with a Primal Animal who they see as their totem, guide and protector. You can choose which Primal animal your culture communes with, and this has a big impact on how your culture plays. To help explain this we’ll go with the example of the Mire Crocodile.


(Note that all cultures can choose to ride crocodiles, I just picked it here because it was appropriate!)

The Mire Crocodile is aligned with nature affinity, so that means that our cultural affinity becomes double nature (if we’d chosen the Storm Crow we’d have gotten astral instead, for a nature/astral culture), and it means that our some of our units do blight damage with their attacks.

Each Primal animal is associated with a particular type of terrain, and the Mire Crocodile is associated with Swamps.



This means we start off in swampy terrain, and gain the following bonuses:
  • Our units gain Swamp Walking, so they can move faster through the terrain
  • Provinces with Swamp grant our cities +3 food
  • When we summon Mire Crocodile units, they are more powerful when we’re in Swamp provinces

To prevent issues with overlapping bonuses, Primal cultures cannot use Terrain Adaptation form traits, however we can still terraform the landscape to our chosen terrain if we can find a Mire Crocodile Den.


Dens are special locations that are only visible to primal culture players with the correct Primal animal, when annexed they grant a bonus to city stability but more importantly they unlock the animal’s temple in the city. If we can build the Mire Crocodile Temple then the provinces near to our city will slowly start transforming into swamp, boosting our income! It’s important therefore that we keep our eyes open for these dens, since they’re priority locations for us to found new cities.

Of course, our Mire Crocodile will also help us in combat as well. In the most direct sense, we can directly summon him into combat using a spell!



Primal animals are all tier 2 mythic units, and they always use their favored damage types. This example has gained the Frenzy ability, since he’s been summoned into a swamp province!

The Mire Crocodile also empowers our cultural units with his Boon.



Each time a unit with a boon attacks, it gains a stack of Rising Fury (single attacks, such as from a shock unit, give 2 stacks). Once the unit gets its 5th stack, the Rising Fury is replaced by 5 stacks of Fury of the Mire Crocodile, this powerful buff enhances all of the unit’s attacks, granting them extra damage and the ability to inflict the Diseased status effect. Once the unit has attacked 5 times (one per stack), the effect expires and the unit needs to start building up Rising Fury again.

Some units, such as the support unit, the Animist, can spend their fury in other ways.


Animists can summon a Primal Mire Crocodile into combat for us, but this requires having Fury of the Mire Crocodile to be active, and doing so will immediately use up all the stacks the unit has, meaning it needs to start gathering Rising Fury again.

Animists also have the Spiritual Healing ability, this heals a unit for 15hp but also gains 3 stacks of Rising Fury, letting you quickly gain access to your Fury boost.

There are 7 Primal animals to choose from, so you can make your primal culture perfect for your chosen playstyle:

  • Affinity: Nature
  • Favored Terrain: Swamp
  • Terrain Bonus: +3 food per swamp province
  • Damage Channel: Blight
  • Boon Effect: +3 blight damage and inflict diseased
  • Special: Culture units have disease immunity


  • Affinity: Astral
  • Favored Terrain: Grassland
  • Terrain Bonus: +2 mana per grassland province
  • Damage Channel: Lightning
  • Boon Effect: +3 lightning damage and an additional 4 lightning damage to adjacent enemies.


  • Affinity: Shadow
  • Favored Terrain: Snow
  • Terrain Bonus: +3 production per snow province
  • Damage Channel: Frost
  • Boon Effect: +4 frost damage and 30% chance to freeze target
  • Special: Can build farms in arctic provinces


  • Affinity: Chaos
  • Favored Terrain: Ashlands
  • Terrain Bonus: +3 gold per ashland province
  • Damage Channel: Fire
  • Boon Effect: +3 fire damage and an additional 4 fire damage to one nearby enemy.
  • Special: Can build farms in ashland provinces


  • Affinity: Materium
  • Favored Terrain: Sand
  • Terrain Bonus: +2 gold per sand province
  • Damage Channel: Physical
  • Boon Effect: +3 physical damage and inflict blind
  • Special: Can build farms in sand provinces


  • Affinity: Nature
  • Favored Terrain: Mushroom Forest (starts underground)
  • Terrain Bonus: +3 knowledge per mushroom forest province
  • Damage Channel: Blight
  • Boon Effect: +3 blight damage and life steal


  • Affinity: Order
  • Favored Terrain: Forest
  • Terrain Bonus: +3 draft per forest province
  • Damage Channel: Spirit
  • Boon Effect: +3 spirit damage, +2 additional spirit damage per ally adjacent to the target.

We’ve already seen the Animist unit, but what about the others? With the exception of the protector, The primal core units favor maneuverability, and taking the fight to the enemy.



The Darter is the starting ranged unit, their Blowguns have one less range than other ranged units, but ignore the accuracy penalties from cover. They also have Disengaging Shot which they can use when threatened by an adjacent enemy - this attack lets the darter damage the enemy and leap back to safety. As with the animist, the damage type of this attack changes depending on your chosen Primal animal!



The Protector is the other starting unit, it is a shield unit whose special ability Primal Renewal allows it to sacrifice its stacks of Fury in return for healing itself.



The Primal Charger is a powerful shock unit, their Cleaving Charge ability lets them strike up to three adjacent targets at once, while still gaining the damage bonuses and interruptions of a standard charge attack.



The primal culture’s tier 3 unit is the Ancestral Warden, this powerful Polearm forgoes the normal tactic of allowing shock units to charge into them by using Primal Lunge to leap directly into the middle of a group of enemies! The attack does damage to all enemies adjacent to where the Warden lands, and then places the Warden into defense mode ready to counter attack.

As a final feature, Primal Cultures have a special quest that will always trigger each session.



The type of quest and its goals differ between Primal Animals, but completing it will grant your ruler the full favor of their totem in the form of a powerful combat boost!

So, in conclusion Primal is a flexible culture that you can be customized to synergize with almost any affinity or tome path! Its powerful terraforming lets you take control of the lands, but you need to go and find rare spirit dens if you really want to make use of it.

That’s it for now, check by next week where we’ll have a dev diary showing off the new tomes! The Primal Fury content pack is due to be released on February the 27th.


[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:

Primal Fury First Look Dev stream today at 14:00 (February 1st)

Hello everyone!

Join us for the Primal Fury First Look Dev stream today at 14:00 (February 1st) [h3]Watch the stream on AoW4 YouTube channel (starts at 14:00 CET[/h3]



p.s. We will save the stream as a VOD later on our YouTube channel.

Keep an eye on our socials to learn more about the upcoming updates:

Primal Fury Content Pack and a Free Wolf Update coming February 27!



Fellow Godir,

We are excited to announce that the Primal Fury Content Pack and the free Wolf Update are going to be available in less than a month — on February 27th!

Wishlist it here now!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2401850/Age_of_Wonders_4_Primal_Fury/

Watch a key art reveal and a small content teaser below.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]The Primal Fury First Look YouTube stream and a special Developer Diary are going to be available later this week, at 14:00 CET on Thursday! [/h3]

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:
  • New Forms: Lupine & Goatkin
  • New Realm: Stormwreathed Isles
  • New Tomes: Tome of Fey Mists and Tome of the Stormborne.
  • New Primal Culture: From the Tunneling Spider to the Glacial Mammoth, choose one of seven primal animals for your people to worship and shape their physical and spiritual lives.
  • 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


And that’s not all! We keep on working on the base game improvements and are happy to share with you the highlights of the upcoming Wolf Update, which is FREE for all owners of the game. The following content doesn’t require any purchase and will be available on the 27th of February independently from the Primal Fury Content Pack.

[h3]The Wolf Update includes: [/h3]
  • War Bounty System
  • New Form Traits
  • Hero Recruitment Update
  • Necromancy Overhaul
  • Pantheon Update
  • Quality of Life Updates and more!
[h2]F.A.Q.[/h2]

What is a Content Pack and how is it different from an Expansion?
Content Pack is usually smaller than an Expansion, which is also reflected in the pricing.
For reference:
Dragon Dawn is a content pack.
Empires and Ashes is an expansion.

How can I purchase the Content Pack?
For now you can Wishlist it and buy the DLC when it is out. But you can still purchase Expansion pass or Premium version of the game to have it added to your library in advance — it will be available at the DLC launch.

When will the DLC be available?
Primal Fury Content Pack will be available on February 27th.

What is the Wolf Update?
It is a free update that includes various fixes and some gameplay feature updates based on the community feedback and requests.

How will the multiplayer work if my friend owns Primal Fury and I don’t?
The DLC ownership rights of the game's host are used. If the host owns the DLC, all players can use the content as if they owned it.

Keep an eye on our socials to learn more about the upcoming updates:

Take the survey to help us improve Age of Wonders 4! (Survey closed)



Hello Rulers!

We want to know more about you as an Age of Wonders 4 player — what you love about the game, what you think we could do better, and how you prefer to be informed about the news. We value your opinion highly and appreciate you taking the time to help us make Age of Wonders 4 a great experience for you.

UPD2: The survey is now closed. Thank you all for the participation!

Thank you so much for supporting us!

UPD: We see all your feedback regarding the survey — thank you for letting us know! We will do our best to adjust them in the future.