Thronefall News

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

Hello fellow Kings and Queens!
As promised last week, here comes a little sneak peek of what’s to come with the next update. Most importantly it will feature a brand new map: Wildbach.

Everything seems to be a bit larger than usual in the fruitful forests of Wildbach. The merchants often told tales of the gigantic, winding trees, hosting a plethora of the most colourful critters. But why might it be that no people ever chose to make this lush place surrounded by glistening rivers their home? Maybe everything is a bit larger in those woods, not only the delightful things…


We don’t have a set release date for the update yet, since there is still quite a bit of work to do and we want to make sure to provide you with a polished and well balanced experience. All we can promise right now is: We’re doing our best to get it out to you as fast as possible.

We’ll keep you posted about our progress and share some details about what to expect from the new update soon. As always, thank you all for being such an amazing community, thank you for your feedback and your support — it’s an invaluable contribution to Thronefall’s development.

All the best,
Jonas & Paul

Dear Queens and Kings,
just a little hotfix containing score adjustments for the Gold Puzzle Mini Mode on Durststein (the desert map). We forgot to lower them accordingly when we decreased the "No Restarts Bonus" from 10% to 1% in the mini modes. Sorry about that!

All the best,
Jonas & Paul

______________________________________________
CHANGES:

• Lowered the score requirements for the quests in the Gold Puzzle Mini mode. They are now possible to achieve again.

Dear Queens and Kings,

After last week's update containing the new mini-modes we received an extensive amount of (constructive) criticism from you — and we get it: Not only was it unclear how much the new modes were meant to be part of the main progression and whether it was mandatory to play them, but some were also balanced quite harshly. First and foremost we want to apologize for this suboptimal experience. Thank you for providing us with so much thoughtful feedback! We understand your concerns and here is how we tried to address your points in this update:

[h2]Re-Structuring Overworld and Achievements
[/h2]
The modes are meant as totally optional late game content, for players that already have seen most of Thronefall and are eager for a fun twist on the original mechanics. We can see how the original layout made them seem much more important or even mandatory to beat before moving on to the next main level. We now moved the bonus modes to separate “islands” next to each main level’s region and bundled them under one flag for each level. They unlock once you beat the main level of the next region.

The modes also no longer reward crowns for completing their quests. That means they are not needed to achieve any of the game’s achievements. We adjusted the existing achievements accordingly. The mini-modes grant stars for completing their quests, so you can still track your progress there if you want to.



[h2]Balancing Improvements
[/h2]
Some of the modes turned out to be just too difficult to be fun. We toned it down a notch for the Bow and Arrow, Lightning Storm and One-Person-Army modes.

Additionally we reduced the “No-Restarts” bonus from 10% to 1% in the mini-modes and lowered the score requirements for the quests to reflect this. This allows you to use the restart option while still being able to achieve all quests, making the more puzzle-like modes more forgiving. The “No-Restarts” bonus stays unaffected for the main campaign levels (for now).

Please keep providing feedback on the mini-modes, both what you like and dislike, as it will continue to inform further balancing decisions during Early Access.



[h2]What about the new map?
[/h2]
We’re on it! It’s coming along quite nicely and we’ll be able to share some sneak peeks into what we're working on next week.

Thank you again for all your valuable feedback! It matters a lot to us and you’re an integral part of making Thronefall the best game it can be.

All the best,
Jonas & Paul



========================================================
[h3]FULL PATCH NOTES:

[/h3]
CHANGES:

• New Level Select Layout for mini-modes. The mini-modes are now less prominent on the map to avoid confusion. They looked a bit too important for what they were and are now located on their own “island” next to the main regions. All modes of a region are bundled under a single flag.

• Crown Count now only counts crowns from main campaign levels and achievements have been adjusted accordingly. This makes it easier for completionists to ignore the bonus modes as they are not necessary for any achievements. Instead the mini-modes now grant stars.

• The "No-Restarts" bonus is reduced from +10% to +1% for all mini-modes. Score requirements for each mini-mode have been adjusted accordingly. This allows you to use level restarts to optimize your 3 quests strategy without having to restart from scratch every time. The "No-Restarts" score bonus will remain unchanged for main campaign levels for now.

BALANCING:

• One-Person-Army mini-mode weapon changed to Bow and Dagger and enemies rebalanced to be a bit easier. More different builds should be possible now, though this is more of a quick fix as the royal forge might need some extra balancing work in the future.

• Lightning Storm mini-mode has been rebalanced to be easier and you now have the Castle Fortifications perk (once you start a new match in this update).

• Bow and Arrow mini-mode has been rebalanced to be easier.