Thronefall News

Dear Queens and Kings,

This update brings tons of balancing changes, Eternal Trials Season 3, a progression system rework, a tutorial and onboarding rework, seamless UI scaling as well as many small fixes and improvements.

[h3]PROGRESSION SYSTEM[/h3]
Weapons, mutators and building upgrades are now unlocked by completing campaign levels. For example in order to unlock the Spear you now have to beat Nordfels. With each level you beat (except for the last) you’ll unlock the next weapon. Perks continue to be unlocked through XP leveling the same way as before.

We also removed the level-cap. There is no more content to unlock after you’ve got all the perks, but for each additional level you earn a trophy (they don’t do anything special besides filling you with pride and joy).

With this change we try to strike a good compromise between making the game more approachable and less grindy for new players while also rewarding those who stick around to get deeper into the weeds. Thank you for all your feedback on this! We feel like we found a good middle ground with this now.

[h3]TAKING MORE PERKS WITH YOU
[/h3]
This has easily been one of the most requested and wished for things. We increased the number of perks you can pick from three to five. This allows for more complex and creative strategies as well as making the later stages of the game more accessible for casual players.

[h3]BALANCING CHANGES
[/h3]
Many player units, perks and building upgrades have been tweaked in an attempt to improve the overall balance of the game and to give every tool a well defined place in your tool box. For a full list of balance changes check out the balance patch notes at the bottom of this post.

[h3]ETERNAL TRIALS SEASON 3
[/h3]
While we won’t have regular recurring seasons in a traditional sense, we’re adopting the model to allow for bigger balance changes such as this one. Your eternal trials save file and highscore have been archived. Everybody can start with a clean slate. If you’d like to finish your existing season 2 run, you should be able to roll back to the previous version of the game using the rollback branch (Right click Thronefall in your Library / Properties / Betas / select previousversionrollback).

We used this opportunity to also implement another request from you: Adding more of the new buildings to the older maps in the Eternal Trials game mode. Every map in this mode has a Blacksmith and a few Shrines now as well as some other buildings where we managed to find some good spots for them. Happy exploring!



[h3]NEW TUTORIAL & TIP SYSTEM
[/h3]
The tutorial has been reworked to include some of the newer quality of life features. There is also a new tip system that essentially continues the tutorial after the tutorial by teaching you some more advanced features at a later point for example how to select only an individual unit type using the smart command hotkey.

This means even if you’ve already completed the tutorial you’ll receive a short series of tips to get you up to speed with all of the new features of the game. No worries, it’s just a few and they’ll be out of your face in no time.

[h3]SEAMLESS UI SCALING
[/h3]
We implemented seamless UI scaling to the game. You can now scale the UI between 50% and 150% of its original size in the gameplay settings, affecting all UI elements in the game. This *greatly* improves the experience on small screens and handheld devices such as the steam deck! :)



[h3]WHAT’S NEXT?
[/h3]There is a very clear answer this time: Full Release!

We’re pretty happy with where the game is now. The biggest thing we’re lacking for a full release is some more content, so that is exactly what we’re gonna do next. We will leave Early Access later this year. There won't be any major updates until then, but we plan to celebrate with 2-3 extra maps on launch day.

It’s always our priority to be transparent with you, so we’d also like to share that we don’t plan to roll out any additional content after the official release of the game. We’re a very small team of two people. Thronefall is what is, is because we follow our passion and put all our heart into our projects. After two years of dedicating our lives to making Thronefall the best game it can be, the truth is we really need a break and are keen for new adventures.

Thanks for all the continued love and support. Developing Thronefall alongside you was and continues to be an absolute blast!

Cheers,
Paul & Jonas

—

____________________

[EDIT July 10th, 2024]
[h3]Version 1.71 Hot Fix:[/h3]

• Added WASD, Ctrl and Q back to the default keyboard map as hidden key bindings. We wanted to optimize the keyboard layout for new players. The changes that happened to existing players were unintentional. If you're playing with the default key bindings, it should all work the way you're used to again. We appologize for the inconvenience.

Some minor balancing changes while we were at it:
• Chaos God Mutator: Does no longer apply to exploding enemies at all (they just spawn in normally). Attack delay after spawning decreased to 3 (down from 5). Score bonus decreased to +45% down from +50% (as the attack delays etc in recent patches made this mutator a bit easier).
• Golem Hero: +20% health and +10% attack damage to make the hero a bit more competitive with the other hero options in Eternal Trials
• Support Mage Hero: +200% health to make the hero a bit more competitive with the other hero options in Eternal Trials (this is intentionally a rather safe / minor buff as the risk of healing becoming too overpowering is quite large)
____________________



[h2]UNITS[/h2]

• FIRE ARCHER: Health reduced to 20 (down from 30). Movement speed reduced to 3.5 (down from 5). Damage against fast enemies reduced by 50%. Fire archers should remain equally useful in most situations while giving them some more pronounced drawbacks.
  
• HUNTER: -15% Damage against non-monster units. Damage against monsters remains unchanged. A small but probably necessary nerf.
  
• CROSSBOW: Damage bonus against ranged units increased to +125% (up from +100%). Health increased to 45 (up from 35). Range increased to 21 (up from 13). Hopefully better fulfilling its role as your anti-ranged unit.
  
• LONGBOW: Health increased to 25 (up from 15). Damage against humanoid enemies increased by +60% (up from +0%).
  
• SPEARMAN: Movement speed increased to 9.5 (up from 8). Attack range increased to 5.5 (up from 4.5). Overall damage increased by +10%. Damage against fast enemies additionally increased to +100% (up form +75%). Health increased to 66 (up from 63). Already had a good niche, bu was too weak to shine compared to other options.
  
• BERSERK: Has 2 seconds of invulnerability after performing a jump (up from 0). Additional fire and explosion resistance: Now only takes 15% damage from explosions (previously 33%) and 25% damage from fire (previously 50%).
  

[h2]TOWERS[/h2]

• ARMOR TOWER: Shield duration increased to 6.5 seconds (up from 5)
  
• BUNKER TOWER: Attack speed decline when enemies are out of range reduced by 60% (making it easier to maintain a high rate of fire)
  
• SNIPER TOWER: Targeting changed to focus on the unit with the highest max health instead of current health. This is to ensure it actually finishes enemies off instead of just leaving each of them wounded.
  
• FIRE SPIRE: Projectile splash damage increased by +50%.
  
• HEALING SPIRE: Strength bonus increased to +110% (up form +90%). Projectile speed increased by +50%.
  

[h2]WEAPONS[/h2]

• SWORD: Active ability is no longer directional but deals splash damage in a large circular area around the player (this is a big buff as the area of effect is much larger and easier to aim). Passive health and health regeneration bonus increased to +30% (up from +20%). Active ability cooldown reduced to 8 (down from 9). Auto attack damage +5%.
  
• SHADOW CODEX: Passive damage per shot decreased by 50%. Auto attack cooldown reduced to 1.3 seconds (down form 1.5). Active ability damage increased by 50%. This should keep the power level of the weapon roughly the same while making the active ability more interesting and useful.
  
• FALCHION & TRAPS: Falchion now automatically prefers monster targets when in range.
  
• LIGHTNING STAFF: Active ability area of effect increased by +20% and damage increased by +10%.
  

[h2]CASTLE CENTER[/h2]

• MAGIC ARMOR: Damage reflection against melee enemies reduced to 1 (down from 3.3). Damage reflection against ranged enemies increased to 7 (up from 3.3).
  
• BUILDERS GUILD: Immediately upgrades one of your houses in addition to the existing benefits.
  
• CASTLE-UP: Discounts ALL tower and wall upgrades for the entire match by -1 for level 2 upgrades and by -4 for level 3 upgrades.
  
• GODLY CURSE: Effect replaced. The first time your character attacks an enemy it loses 25% of its max health. This keeps the role of the upgrade unchanged, but makes it a bit more versatile and useful as well as easier to use. (Exact numbers here will likely need some more tweaking.)
  

[h2]BLACKSMITH[/h2]

• MELEE DAMAGE: Melee damage bonus increased to +25% per upgrade (up from +20%)
  

[h2]MILL[/h2]

• WIND SPIRITS: +50% attack speed
  

[h2]TEMPLE[/h2]

• SACRIFICE: Level 1 unit respawn speed increased to +250% (up from +175%). Level 2 unit respawn speed increased to +275% (up from +225%).
  
• OVERLOAD: Tower health reduction speed reduced by 50% for temple level 2 and 3.
  
• ICE RAIN: Level 2 bold damage increased to 40 (up from 35). Level 3 bold damage increased to 60 (up from 50).
  
• PRAYERS: Level 1 shrine range bonus increased to +100% (up from +70%). Level 2 range bonus increased to +200% (up from +150%). Level 3 range bonus increased to +300% (up from +200%).
  
• WISDOM: Health reduction speed of all buildings decreased by 50% (so buildings survive twice as long).
  

[h2]MUTATORS[/h2]

• Pray to the War Gods: Removed as it caused more confusion than it did good. The additional perks, the buffs and other difficulty decreases in this patch should make up for it.
  
• Turtle God: Enemies only have +60% more health (down from +75%)
  
• Challenge the Elite God: Only every fourth spawn is an elite spawn (down from every third) and score bonus is increased to +75% (up from +60%)
  
• No Towers Pact: Now allows you to build towers but they are very expensive.
  
• No Units Pact: Now allows you to build units but they are very expensive. (Makes it possible to play with no tower and no unit pact at the same time if you so desire.)
  
• Challenge the Chaos God: All spawned enemies have an additional delay of 5 seconds before they can perform their first attack to prevent them from instantly taking down your economy buildings when spawning next to them. Score bonus increased to +50% (up from +40%)
  
• Challenge the Phoenix God: Now limits the amount of healing per enemy to a maximum of 15 per second to avoid ridiculous regen speeds for very high health enemies.
  

[h2]CAMPAIGN[/h2]

• Durststein: Enemy count in the first and second wave decreased so that you can more easily beat them without the "correct" counters.
  

[h2]ETERNAL TRIALS[/h2]

• SEASON 3: Highscore reset due to the massive amount of balance changes.
  
• Spiky Giraffe: Difficulty budget increased by +10% (so less of them will spawn at the same time)
  
• Big Spider: Difficulty budget increased by +10% (so less of them will spawn at the same time)
  
• Nordfels: Added 6 shrines and a blacksmith to the map (for eternal trials only)
  
• Durststein: Added 5 shrines, a blacksmith, a temple and a royal forge (for eternal trials only)
  
• Frostsee: Added 5 shrines, 2 hero quarters and a temple (for eternal trials only)
  
• Uferwind: Added 5 shrines (for eternal trials only)
  

[h2]PERKS[/h2]

• Treasure Hunter: grants 15, 25, 40 gold in the last 3 waves (up from 10, 20, 30).
  
• Loan: The first 10 (up from 9) gold dropped by enemies disappear.
  
• War Horse: Damage to enemies reduced to 2.4 (down from 2.7). Self-inflicted damage increased to 0.35 (up from 0.25). No worries, the perk is still very very strong.
  
• Daredevil: Maximum damage bonus increased to +115% (up from +100%)
  
• Lighter Materials: Reduces your auto-attack cooldown by -33% (previously -25%)
  
• Melee Damage: Increased to +35% (up from +30%).
  
• Interest: The amount of gold received is rounded up instead of down (e.g. if you have 4 coins in your chest you will receive 2 coins in interest instead of 1) but your interest is now capped at a maximum of +20 gold per night.
  
• Sustainable Mining: Effect replaced. Gold mines produce +1 gold and when a gold mine is destroyed its income is reset back to its initial value of 7 per night (but its income for the current night is still denied of course).
  
• Gladiator School The unit respawn bar can now fill up while all units are still alive (on top of existing benefits).
  
• Ice Magic: Riding over enemies applies a short slow effect to them (on top of existing benefits).
  
• Emergency Repairs: Health transfer speed between walls increased by +25%.
  
• Timber Scaffolding: Reduces the build cost of towers by 1 (on top of existing benefits).
  

[h2]SCALABLE UI[/h2]

• You can seamlessly scale the size of all UI elements between 50% and 150% now
  

[h2]META PROGRESSION[/h2]

• Allowed perk count increased from 3 to 5
  
• Weapons, mutators and building upgrades are now unlocked by completing campaign levels. This ensures new players get important upgrades and weapons when they need them. Perks continue to be unlocked by XP leveling.
  
• Removed level cap and added infinite XP leveling (mostly so you get to keep your current level)
  

[h2]ONBOARDING[/h2]

• Tutorial has been reworked to include new quality of life features.
  
• New tip system that shows some quality of life features and tips after completing the tutorial. (This is both to help new players but also to ensure existing players are made aware of features they might not know about. They only show up once or till you try them and there is only a limited amount of them so in case you're an experienced player already they should stop bothering you rather quickly.)
  

[h2]MINOR FIXES[/h2]

• tweaked the colors on wildbach to be easier on the eyes
  
• physical coins in your chest cap at 200, preventing crashes caused by an overflowing chest. We might find a more satisfying solution for this in the future
  
• fixed exploit that made it possible to change loadouts mid run by canceling out of the restart run screen
  
• tutorial, tips and control rebind menu now show glyphs for controller buttons instead of their names
  
• removed double negatives from the localization (e.g. “-60% slower” is now just “60% slower”)
  
• improved save-load system safety with automatic backups
  
• probably a bunch more
  

[hr][/hr]


Our grand "Throne Tales" adventure has come to a close! 🎉 Your amazing stories have painted a rich and vivid picture of our realm; a heartfelt thank you to all who shared their tales and made this event special!

While every story added a unique spark to our world, a few stood out and enchanted us. ✨ Let’s give a royal cheer for the storytellers who captivated our imaginations:

Dr.Puzzler for "And The Rain Pitter-Pattered | A Sturmklamm Story" Long ago, the old ones crafted us. Our purpose was given– To watch and protect.
And the rain pitter-pattered.
We grew old and worn. Our purpose remained– To watch and protect.
And the rain pitter-pattered.
A once great land, now ruins.
Why were we abandoned?
But our purpose remained– To watch and protect.
And the rain pitter-pattered.
A new ruler has come, intent on conquest.
And now we stir, our purpose held true in our hearts–
We will watch, and we will protect.
And the rain pitter-patters.


Tiger Tank-II for "The Beast" The monstrous rumble nearly shook me off my horse. Explosions and wailing shrieks filled the air, causing my ears to ring. My mind raced to make sense of the chaos. How had the enemy bypassed me and my army? Turning around, I caught a fleeting glimpse of my soldiers' faces, etched with despair. When I finally faced the horror myself, I was paralyzed. I couldn't move or speak. But for my men, for my family, for my kingdom, I had to act. Summoning myself to snap out of it , I shouted, "ATTACK!" and charged toward the beast. Tears welled in my eyes, fearing for my life.


The_Pale_Wizard for "Wind Spirits" An ancient war goddess once protected the lands with a great army. She detested archers, believing there was no honor in dealing death from a distance. Many of her warriors fell at the hands of bows in the dawn of the new age. When the goddess left this world for the next, she mustered the vengeful spirits of her fallen warriors to turn aside arrows aimed for the hearts of her followers. Her temples are pyramids, a tradition carried on from her homeland near Durststein.


AAron for "A Sea Without Frostsee" “Liking the taste of sea salt, Lutz?” Elsbeth asked, stroking the scaly skin of her mount. Lutz’s tongue had danced like an energetic snake the entire ride. She could tell he was doing much better now that they were somewhere warmer.
Uferwind. A burgeoning coastal kingdom. The breeze was pleasant. But the sea made her nervous. She remembered the cold. The terrible wail, and the appendages piercing the icy lake.
“We’ll be safe here, Lutz.”
The Lizzard happily stuck his tongue out, lapping the wind.


Dylvester for "The Cometfall Festival" As dusk set upon Frostsee, a slight grimace crossed King Valen’s face as he stepped out into the frigid air of his once serene realm. It was a full moon, an evening meant for joy, but now just another amongst the grueling struggle for survival. What was formerly known as the land’s most cherished gathering, the Cometfall Festival, which celebrated the arrival of a meteor that landed in the Everlake, has long been forgotten. In its place, a nightly ominous wail has taken over, emanating from the Shadow in the Water.


Congratulations to you 5!!!

There were many good stories we enjoyed reading, but we nevertheless had to pick 5. It's always a difficult choice to make!

We hope you enjoyed this creative event as much as we did! If you have any feedback, and / or ideas for the next event, or if we should do things any differently, please make sure to tell us, replying here or on Discord. We're always curious to hear what you have to say!

Want to join the fun? Make sure to join our Discord server to not miss any community events and announcements related to the game!

Thank you all for participating! Though this chapter ends, our journey continues. Keep crafting, keep dreaming, and let’s look forward to more thrilling tales ahead. Until then, long live the spirit of Thronefall!

[h3]Take care everyone! 🤗 [/h3]

Dear Queens and Kings,

We're collecting some balancing feedback!

We are currently preparing the next balancing patch for Thronefall. While we think we have a pretty good idea of where we stand and what could use some balance attention, we'd love to get your input as well.

• What parts of Thronefall's balancing would you like to see changed?
  
• Are there any upgrades, weapons, perks, etc. that you feel are currently too weak or too strong?
  

You can stop reading here and reply directly to this post with your suggestions. Or you can keep going to learn a bit more about our design philosophy when balancing Thronefall.

Thanks a lot for the continued love and support!

Paul & Jonas
[hr][/hr]
[h2]The Tool Box[/h2]
Hi, Jonas here. I'd love to give you some insights about how I approach balancing Thronefall and the challenges that come with it. It's a deep dive, but worth a read if this kind of stuff interests you. Enjoy!

One analogy I really like is that balancing a single-player game is like offering the player a toolbox filled with a variety of tools. The desirable outcome would be that players get to use ALL of the tools in that toolbox. Not all in equal frequency—some tools have rare use cases—but what matters is that every tool gets used at least some of the time. Otherwise, putting them in the box would have been pointless in the first place.


Balancing pure power levels against each other is in my experience a poor approach, as it results in a few tools winning out over all the others. Make that archer a bit too strong, suddenly it's at the top and the only unit people use. Make that archer a bit too weak and nobody picks it anymore, because a different one is on top now. Trying to balance a game this way is a battle you can fight forever, but you're doomed to lose.

That means the only way to make sure all tools are used is to make all tools solve specific situational problems. Not every perk should be equally good on every map. Not every unit should be equally strong against each enemy. The circumstances should heavily influence which tools work and which don't. That way, the chance of every tool finding a use case goes up.

A lot of strategy games do this with rock-paper-scissors systems where certain pieces counter certain other pieces and so on. This is a reasonable approach; however, it is also possible to overdo that. If it is too obvious which tool you should use in which situation, it becomes boring again. The challenge should not be to put the square-shaped tools in the square-shaped holes and the triangular tools in the triangle-shaped holes.

Much of the fun in strategy games comes from deciding on the correct tool to use for a specific situation. If this choice is too easy, it kills the challenge, and a choice can be too easy in two different ways: Either the choice can be too easy because one tool is always the best, or it can be too easy because the correct tool is much too obvious (even though it might be a different one every time).


One example where I feel this toolbox-balancing approach works well in Thronefall at the moment is the mill upgrades. Every upgrade has very clear advantages and disadvantages that differ greatly depending on the situation. Explosive mills help little against ranged enemies, whereas wind spirits don't exactly shine against melee warriors. As you face a variety of different enemies throughout a match, deciding on the best mill upgrade to pick is a fun challenge and depends on the enemies and on the map. Sure, not every mill upgrade is useful equally often, but there are clear use-cases for all of them in the game.

One example of where this does not work as well would be the archer units because hunters and particularly fire archers are currently almost always the best options to go for. Fire archers counter both groups of enemies as well as siege engines, which makes them universally useful. If we buff them too much, they dominate the meta. If we nerf them too much, they become insignificant. Balancing universally useful units to compete with other options is extremely difficult.

Fire archers in particular are one of my biggest regrets for balancing Thronefall in hindsight. It is too late to make any significant changes to them at this point, and I don't want to nerf them too hard, either, as they are still fun to use. Our best shot at this point is probably to make the other archers more situationally useful so that they can overtake the fire archers in specific situations under specific circumstances.

This toolbox mentality is how I try to balance almost everything in the game. I want everything to be situational so that everything has some use cases.

There is, however, one exception I make to this rule, and that is for beginner tools. I often want to provide a decent default option to new players that they can pick if they are unsure. These are the only tools that are intentionally not very situational but very universally applicable; however, in order to keep them balanced, I have to intentionally under-power them a bit. Otherwise, I run the risk of them suppressing situational tools too often. A good example of where this works well at the moment would be Royal Mint, a solid perk for new players, but not as much for experienced folks who likely prefer more specialized perks such as Pumpkin Fields or Big Harbour to fill the same role.

Main Takeaways:

• Upgrades, Perks, Units, Buildings are like tools in a toolbox.
  
• Tools don't need to be used equally often, but every tool should have use-cases where it is best.
  
• The fun comes from challenging the player to choose the correct tool at the correct time.
  
• Making that decision fun can be achieved by making tools situational, but not overly so, resulting in an interesting optimization challenge.
  
• The only exception to that rule would be beginner tools that are universally useful but slightly underpowered by design.
  

Questions for You:

• Which "tools" do you never use?
  
• How could we make them more situationally useful?
  

[h2]Emotional Damage[/h2]
Have you ever wondered why balancing is such a surprisingly emotional topic in a lot of games? I certainly have, and I would love to share my guess for why that might be.

First of all, it is caused by the fact that balancing is important and most players know that. It's not "just" a bunch of numbers. These numbers very heavily shape an experience. Looking at the toolbox analogy, whether you get to use all of the tools in that box or just one makes a huge difference for player enjoyment. Players care because it matters. That should be the obvious one.

The less obvious one is that balancing is actually similar to politics. Everybody has a different experience with the game. Especially with strategy games that offer a large variety of different upgrades and play styles, one playthrough will look completely different from another. This can result in highly opposing "world-views" about the balance of a game. One player who had difficulties countering Quickslings might think they are completely broken, while another player who picked a different counter might think they are completely fine.

I've noticed that players (and probably developers as well) tend to get stuck in their balancing world-views. For example, I've seen players getting stuck in the view that eco upgrades are ALWAYS the best option to pick in Thronefall, not realizing that the defensive upgrades often allow you to expand your economy much more efficiently elsewhere.


Similarly I sometimes see new players getting stuck in the belief that building mills is much too risky and does not yield good returns, which could not be further from the truth. These players then struggle a lot more because of that, yet they can't easily break loose from their perspectives on their own.

This can even result in completely opposing balancing world-views, such as that either Builder's Guild is the only valid upgrade path for the Castle Center or that it is not worth it at all.

In short, everybody sees different things happen in their game, and therefore everybody has a different truth to tell when it comes to balancing questions. It is easy to point fingers and say that somebody else is wrong, but you have not seen what they've seen, and they have not seen what you did.

That's why taking feedback and getting more representative data is so important for balancing. That's why we decided to ask you, but that is also why the topic is so emotionally loaded, why we will likely argue in the comments, and why we will never fully agree on how to best balance the game. I think this is important to understand about the balancing process.

[h2]Trial and Error[/h2]
Because I have my own limited balancing world-views and I am very much stuck in my own perspective the same way most players are, most balancing changes aren't much more than an educated guess. It is very difficult for me to predict the full consequences of a balancing change beforehand. For example, I never would have guessed that the Interest perk would be so wildly efficient for highscore hunting. It's just not something that crossed my mind as the raw income on paper is really not all that great even compared to houses, yet here we are.

Any balancing change we make is essentially a guess. A guess that the change will make things better rather than worse. Most of the time these guesses are luckily correct, but some percentage of guesses will also be wrong.

That is why in every single balance patch, some changes will make the game better and some will make the game worse. The way to judge a balance patch is by the success rate of those guesses. If it is above 50% then it should count as a good patch, though negatives tend to stand out more, so ideally you should better be aiming for 80% or above as a developer.


[h2]Risk Aversion[/h2]
Now that we're getting closer to the full release of Thronefall later this year, I would prefer not to make any HUGE redesigns to the balancing anymore. Players are for the most part very used to how the game works now, and I don't think we should shake things up too much at this point. E.g., Entirely changing how a unit works or replacing a unit with a different one is off the table at this point.

As this might be one of the last balance patches before the release of the game, I also want to increase the success rate of my guesses as much as I possibly can. The way I try to achieve this is by asking for a lot of feedback and by not making any changes that I see as too risky.

Especially risky are raw buffs to tools that are already very universally useful, even if they're underpowered at the moment. (Usually economic upgrades fall into that category. I often struggle to make them situational.) Buffs to situational tools, on the other hand, are much much less risky, because even if you overdo it a bit, at least they won't dominate in every situation.

Making tools more situational and buffing them that way is certainly on the table, and my ears are wide open if you have any ideas.

Another risk aversion strategy is that I think we want to go mostly with buffs and very few nerfs. Making tools more powerful may result in power creep, but to be honest, Thronefall would benefit from being a bit easier anyway, so we don't really mind some healthy power creep at the moment at all.

[h2]Some Current Ideas[/h2]
Here are some balancing ideas I'm playing with at the moment:

• Increasing the number of available perk points from 3 to 5, both to make the game easier but also to allow for more strategic options in your loadout. (There are arguably other ways to achieve the same effect, but this implementation is most inviting from a development perspective as it doesn't cost any development time.)
  
• For fire archers, I've been thinking to nerf them a bit, but not in raw damage output, but more in utility—for example, -25% movement speed and -25% health. They should still be almost equally powerful after that but with some more pronounced potential drawbacks. This would by design only be a small nerf, though.
  
• At the same time, longbows could receive +35% bonus damage against humanoid enemies and prioritize humanoid enemies, a situational buff to carve out a more interesting niche for them. Crossbows likely need some extra range (let's say +30%) and maybe some bonus damage (maybe +25%) against ranged units, as they already somewhat fill the anti-ranged role with their ranged armor. Hunters seem to be in a decent place (they deal like +122% damage versus monsters, so very situational indeed); there are just a lot of monster enemies at the moment.
  
• Spearmen already have plenty of drawbacks like being extremely squishy and vulnerable to ranged attacks, so they could probably just use a straight-up buff in damage and movement speed to better fulfill their role.
  
• Builder's Guild, the Castle Center upgrade, is another trouble child with very split opinions. At the top level, it seems too weak, but as a universally useful eco upgrade, we need to be super careful with buffing it too much unless we find a smart way of making it more situational.
  
• Castle-Up has a similar problem where it is essentially an eco upgrade that is pretty universally useful. I wonder how we could make it more situational. Otherwise, maybe just a small buff is the way to go.
  
• Magic Armor on the Castle Center could maybe only deflect damage from ranged enemies but deal a lot more damage in return. This would make it more situational, better in some cases and worse in others, which sounds nice to me.
  
• Godly Curse has always been in a weird spot, with most players not even knowing about the lock target hotkey (tutorial update is on its way). It's also been veeeery very niche with almost no legit use-cases. I would still love for it to fill the anti-boss anti-high-health-unit role in some way, so I thought about changing its effect to: When your character attacks an enemy for the first time, it instantly loses 25% of its remaining health (this is per enemy of course). This would be independent of your current damage stats, making it a potentially interesting option for many different builds while still being quite situational.
  

There are obviously more things that need attention, but these are the most interesting ones that I wanted to share with you for discussion.


[h2]Wrapping Up[/h2]
You now understand what it takes to balance a game with 2,412 balancing parameters (that's the current number counted by my balancing tool). The more we can activate our collective intelligence on these issues, the better, as individual opinions on game balance tend to be limited in one way or another. I will do my best to sort through all of your suggestions and, based on them (and my personal experiences), make the best guesses I possibly can (also considering factors like risk aversion and required development times).

Thank you so much for taking the time to read all the way to the end if you did. I hope you got something out of it. Thanks a ton for all the love, support and continuous feedback! We really appreciate it.

Cheers,
Jonas

[hr][/hr]

🎺Hear, Hear, dear Queens and Kings! 🎺

We challenge you to craft your very own Throne Tales!

Gather round, brave rulers and wise strategists, for a grand contest of imagination and storytelling awaits! Summon your creativity and rally your imagination for a joyful celebration of stories in our "Throne Tales" event! We challenge you to craft captivating lore for our beloved realm. Whether you spin tales of daring adventures, mystical beings, or ancient secrets, let your words bring the world of Thronefall to life!

The event's deadline is on June 28, 2024 9 AM CST ; no more stories will be accepted after that. We'll then review the submissions before announcing the winners a few days after!


[h3]📜 The challenge's rules are as follows:[/h3]

• Write a short piece of lore with a limit of 500 characters that takes place in the Thronefall universe. Answer a question you would love to have an answer to. Who is your ruler? What is the lore of a particular level? Where did a certain enemy come from? Write about whatever interests you. Anything goes.
  
• Before June 28, 2024 9 AM CST , post your story in #thronetales on our Discord.
  
• Each participant can only post one story!
  
• At the end of the deadline, we'll review the stories and proceed to choose the winners! (Community votes will also have an impact on the result, so make sure you upvote your favorite stories!)
  

[h3]🏆PRIZES [/h3]

Our 5 favorite storytellers will get rewarded with:

• The Champion Discord role
  
• 2 Steam keys to share with your friends
  
• A spot in the coveted Discord and Steam's Hall of Fame, where your name will remain for eternity...
  

Join our Discord server, to share your creation with your fellow rulers! Our events are only hosted on our Discord server exclusively to ensure we have a fair and even playing field for everyone so we have one unified community voting system for all submissions, as well as for the sake of simplicity, allowing us to have them centered in one place.

We'd also like to disclaim the following; this is a quest for fun and camaraderie, where every tale adds a sparkle to our community's tapestry. We don't plan to add any official lore to the game. We like that you can come up with your own stories and now's your chance to.

[h3]Sharpen your quills and let the storytelling begin! [/h3]

Dear Queens and Kings,
The new level, Wildbach, is out now!

You find yourself in a lush jungle with various veins of water throughout. Everything seems a bit larger than usual, and not just the trees, but also the creatures. Perhaps that is why nobody has dared to set foot here in a while? Wait, was that a pair of eyes in that tree? Many think you’re a fool to settle here, but that’s not among the things that would stop you from trying.



[h2]A Mini-Map!
[/h2]We added yet another map to the game (two new maps in one update if you will): a mini-map! It's been one of the most asked for features and here it is. From now on you’ll have a full overview over the entire battlefield in the bottom right corner of your screen during the night.



[h2]New Building: The Temple!
[/h2]Which gods will you befriend? Be wise! Wildbach also features a new building, the Temple, granting you temporary buffs and spells for one night only. You can use it up to 3 times per match and it gets both more powerful *and* more expensive every time.



We want you to craft your own strategies and think the temple opens up some awesome new possibilities in that regard! It is the first building with a whopping 6 upgrade choices:

With its temporary upgrades the temple should also help to ease some difficulty spikes within a level if you struggle with specific waves. We hope you‘re going to enjoy it. Go wild!

[h2]New Weapon and more!
[/h2]With the new map also comes a new weapon. We don’t want to spoil it all just yet, but we’ll give you the name: Falchion & Traps (We almost called it the “Hunting Kit” which should give you a rough idea, hehe.)

Here is the full list of all the new content:

• New Map: Wildbach
  
• New Building: Temple
  
• New Weapon: Falchion & Traps
  
• Added Minimap
  
• 8 New Enemy Types
  
• 6 New Perks
  
• 1 New Mutator
  

The new content has been added to the Eternal Trials game mode as well.



[h2]Announcing Our Release Roadmap!
[/h2]As always, we want to talk about what’s next and be as transparent with you as we can. We are slowly nearing the end of our early access period and are aiming for a full release hopefully this year!

We’ve deliberately never published any specific roadmaps during the Early Access period of the game to be able to adjust to your feedback as best as possible. However the months leading up to the full release are going to be a bit more structured. We want you to know what to expect from them and would love to hear what you think. Here’s what we’ve planned:

[h3]Progression System & Tutorial Update (Upcoming)
[/h3]Thronefall has grown tremendously since the Early Access release, but the tutorial and progression system is still in its original state. This causes a couple of issues for new players:

• As the tutorial does not teach any of the quality of life features (such as the select army hotkeys)many players miss out on those awesome features.
  
• Since all the perks, weapons and mutators grew quite a bit in numbers, unlocking all of them feels very grindy now. A lot of players make it through the campaign while only unlocking a fraction of the content, which is not what we intended.
  

The tutorial needs an update, that’s for certain. The bigger change though will likely be the new progression system and we’d love to hear your thoughts on that:

Our current idea is to remove the level grinding from Thronefall completely and just unlock perks and weapons every time you beat a campaign level. Most of our players are here to play through the campaign and not much more (which is fine!), so we want to make sure you can unlock all of the tools you need without asking you to replay content if you don’t want to. If you’re into optimizing your strategy and replaying the levels over and over again that’s also great, and having access to all the content at an earlier point will hopefully open the highscore hunt up for more people to enjoy as well!

We feel like these changes will make the game more beginner friendly while also fitting our design philosophy of respecting the time of our players. We’re giving you an early heads up on this now so you can have a say in how exactly these changes should best look like.

[h3]Small Balancing Patch
[/h3]After that we would love to do another quick balancing patch to hopefully address some common pain points. In general we think we might have gone a bit too wild with nerfs in the past and would love to do a bit of an everything-buff to make upgrade and perk choices feel a bit more impactful again, especially the currently underpowered ones.

[h3]And That’s It!
[/h3]That’s all our plans for the remaining Early Access Period. After those updates we’ll put our heads down for a while and create 2-3 more levels that we want to publish with the full release of Thronefall. During this period we won’t be publishing regular updates, but rather do some (open) beta testing of the new content. Check out our discord for more on that!

We also want to be absolutely transparent with our post release plans upfront: The development of Thronefall has been a wild ride. We’re just two people making this game, and the last 2 years have been exciting, incredibly fun and very demanding. We love Thronefall with all of our heart, but we also really need a break. The end of the Early Access period will also mark the end of Thronefall’s active development. Once Thronefall is fully released we’ll be taking some time off to replenish our energies. After that we’re keen to further explore the waters of making games and dive into exciting new projects.

As always, thanks so much for all your love and continued support! Thanks for helping us make Thronefall what it is now (and what it will be on launch day).

All the best,
Jonas and Paul