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Soulash 2 News

Progress on Conquest, Liches and Necromancy

Greetings fellow gods,

It's been over a month since the last update, and many of you appropriately started asking, "Necromancy when?", so I thought it might be a good time to update you on where things are and how much longer it will be until you can all live happily ever after with your (un)dead wives.

[h3]Raise the Dead[/h3]

My work is currently focused on necromancy and the new civilization of the undead led by Necrotyrant, a unique, immortal lich necromancer who threatens the world with his army of the dead.

Both necromancy and the undead civilization will not be available as a starting choice during player creation but will be uniquely accessible through play - by conquering the undead citadel, purifying the Monolith of Awakening, and becoming the new Necrotyrant controlling the undead army.

The necromancy skill will be uniquely focused on harvesting the souls of living beings in settlements and corrupting them to then use for assembling undead workers and warriors. It will be a skill tailored towards acquiring power by causing death to living civilizations.



[h3]Conquest[/h3]

The goal of the Conquest update is to enable taking control of other settlements. As players, we'll be able to create a state faction that will open up our settlements to attacks and allow us to field offensive armies that will take control of NPC towns, giving us access to their production and population management.

Those who prefer a more chill experience by building their towns uninterrupted will still be able to do so without proclaiming an independent state and participating in wars.

NPC factions may also decide to enslave weaker races instead of occasionally raiding them for their wealth and acquiring power that way.

This feature will open up a potential major endgame goal for our characters: controlling and ruling the world.

[h3]World Map Revamp[/h3]

We're working on a world map revamp that will increase the resolution of tiles and change the palette to fit the game's GUI better. We still need to make some tweaks to ensure locations are easily visible, but we're already close, and this should also be done for v0.9.



[h3]Polish Language[/h3]

Since November, we've been working on allowing translations into the engine and game. My wife has been hard at work translating the entire game to Polish since the beginning of the year, and she's been constantly cursing the amount of content we already have in the game, but I'll do my best to negotiate some more for you guys.

We're currently testing, tweaking, and ensuring everything makes sense. Once that's done, it should be a part of v0.9 as well. We'll have solid translation support in mods alongside it and explore options for officially supporting other languages in the full release 1.0 planned for next year.



These are the significant changes currently being made. I know things have been slower than usual recently, and I can't wait to get this big update done and return to the weekly updates schedule, which feels much more efficient in terms of development progress. Because all these major features are so intertwined through shared mechanics, it felt right to take more time and get all of them together at once.

The work on v0.9 will take a few more weeks, so expect the update in April. Once v0.9 releases, we'll be back in the weekly schedule and focus on features related to settlement management and trading as first priority.

I'm looking forward to your feedback on the upcoming changes.

Artur

Hotfix v0.8.16.6

[h3]Changed[/h3]
- When building, the cheapest available resource of the required type is prioritized.

[h3]Fixed[/h3]
- Fixed history simulation freeze related to wars.
- Greatswords and Engraved Greatswords no longer play arrow shooting animations on attack.
- Fixed battle reports display mixing with previously selected entities in the Beings tab.

Hotfix v0.8.16.5

[h3]Changed[/h3]
- Wars on the same settlements start with longer gaps, allowing more breathing room to recover.

[h3]Fixed[/h3]
- Fixed an issue that could cause crashes after many world generation attempts.
- Fixed a rare crash in history simulation related to food consumption.
- Fixed a rare crash related to the selection of dead beings.
- Fixed a rare crash when upgrading settlement.
- Fixed a rare crash related to army movement speed calculation.
- Families without buildings and members are not displayed on the Settlement Management screen.
- Swapped some occupations in multiple buildings in player settlements.

Hotfix v0.8.16.2-3

[h3]Hotfix v0.8.16.2[/h3]
- Fixed occasional freeze in history simulation.
- Fixed crash when stepping on exploding trap.

[h3]Hotfix v0.8.16.3[/h3]
- Improved starting wars to make sure both states can reach each other.
- Speed of history simulation returned to normal.

Soulash 2 v0.8.16 "Mercenary Life"

Greetings fellow gods,

It's been a while since we had an update, and I heard some of you grew hungry. While it's still not the time for the Conquest major update (re-scheduled for March in the Roadmap), since today you'll be able to participate in region battles as a mercenary.



That's right, you can now save all those poor elves harassed from every direction by joining their defense. Or make a quick buck by joining whoever has the advantage.

Additionally, some of you will be happy to see the request for building recipe categories has also been fulfilled. It should make it easier to manage the long list of available recipes.



Here's the full changelog for today's update:

[h3]Added[/h3]
- NPC battles are now simulated during region exploration.
- It's now possible to join town battles as a mercenary group on the side of attackers or defenders.
- During battles, moving army units outside the visibility cone are marked with exclamation signs and are always heard in the distance.
- Party member's exclamation markers are now green, while neutral characters are marked as grey.
- Unemployed NPCs in towns can now help clean up bodies and blood.
- Moving military groups are now visible on the world map during play.
- Added categories to building recipes in the building menu.
- A few new clothes for portraits.

[h3]Changed[/h3]
- One more zoom out level.
- Rebalanced some military units of civilized races.
- Improved clashing swords animation on the world map.
- Disbanded companies were removed from the list in the Knowledge Screen.
- The cheat command "mapregen" has been disabled in controlled settlements to prevent custom maps from breaking.

[h3]Fixed[/h3]
- Fixed race descriptions going out of screen bounds in Character Creator after changing the font settings.
- Caught Chick now correctly turns into a Chick in one turn.
- Reindeers no longer wear orc shoes.
- Fixed an issue where NPCs would sometimes attack already dead opponents.
The number of available Mycelium Weaver buildings is now equal to the number of Mycelium resources in the world tiles.
- Fixed an issue where a companion would cancel the command to attack.
- Fixed display of stat point gains on Skill Screen milestones list.

[h3]Hotfix v0.8.16.1[/h3]
- Fixed NPCs sometimes getting stuck when tracking the player character.
- Fixed ability amplifier tooltip descriptions.
- Fixed battle reward when siding with defenders.


With the introduction of NPC battles, we have everything we need for Liches, Necromancy, and the creation of our state faction to conquer and control the world. There is still a lot of work ahead, and until all 3 of these features are ready for the major update, we'll continue with an irregular update schedule and try to return to weeklies after v0.9.

I hope you're enjoying 2025 so far and have fun battling,
Artur