Tooth and Tail News

The year starts with a new version of Tooth and Tail!
Several new features are focused on more customization and comfort.
The headliners are:

• a difficulty slider for the campaign,
  
• and Steam Workshop Mod support for multiplayer.
  

On top of that, the patch also comes with:

• a ladder reset (Season 4),
  
• multiplayer balance changes,
  
• some fixes for multiplayer map gen issues,
  
• and a couple of smaller improvements & bug fixes.
  

You can now scale the difficulty of the campaign whenever you are on the Mission Briefing screen. 20% (lowest) should allow you to get past even the hardest missions, 180% (highest) is supposed to be challenging even for Tooth and Tail veterans. Note that leaderboard entries are only available for standard difficulty (100%), and speedruns as well as heroic achievements are not necessarily easier on reduced difficulty.



It's finally live! On Steam you can use the Workshop to upload and play Mods!
Mods can include balance changes, completely new units, weapon swaps and more... Try it! Go nuts!
Here's a guide on how to do it: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1934816955


Seven players got past 1000 points on the ladder in Season 3, in this order:
The Gentleman, ThisGuy, Arilou, Haru, Legomann96, Imari, and James!
Congrats! ːsteamhappyː

Now everyone gets back to their starting position and the new season begins!

All the changes in a nutshell:
Toad, Pigeon, Mole nerf; minor nerfs to Skunk, Cham and Snake (daze); Boar and Badger buffs; cheaper (& weaker) Barbed Wire; kind of a Landmine nerf; general Daze nerf (stacking; starts weaker, maxes like before); randomized spawn Farm positions.


All the juicy details:

• Toad: 8 HP (from 9 HP), 2 damage in aoe (from 3), 4 direct (from 3), direct damage with 2x structure crit (from no crit)
  
• Pigeon: 3 HP (from 4 HP), 2s cooldown and healing duration (from 1s)
  
• Mole: 12 HP (from 14 HP)
  
• Skunk: 5s gas duration (from 6s)
  
• Chameleon: 34 HP (from 36 HP)
  
• Snake: Daze effect is slowly stacking (see below)
  
• Boar: Boar bomb has 2 tile radius = Lizard range (from 1 tile = melee/Toad)
  
• Badger: 64 HP (from 60 HP)
  
• Barbed Wire: 10 Food cost (from 20 Food), 18 HP (from 28 HP), 2 DPS (from 4 DPS), slowdown to 0.4x speed (from 0.2x speed), 0.25s sell time
  
• Landmine: triggers only if a unit is on the same tile (from 1 tile radius = adjacent tiles), Daze effect is slowly stacking (see below)
  
• Daze: slowdown by 10% per stack (i.e. 2 stacks slow down to 0.8x normal speed), max. daze slowdown is 0.6x (needs 4 stacks)
  
• Farms: spawn positions are randomized (again)
  

Map Gen Improvements

• Fairness calculation overhauled (mostly based on type, accessibility, and elevation level of expansions per player/team).
  
• Cabins are guaranteed to spawn out of range of a spawn Gristmills' farms.
  
• In 2v2, no player can spawn closer to an enemy than to a teammate.
  

• You can now access Options (e.g. volume, controls...) without leaving an unranked lobby or the ranked queue.
  
• Crashes in/before the first campaign mission should no longer happen if the Cinematic is disabled.
  
• Fixed some translations and unit descriptions.
  
• Editor no longer crashes when trying to create a new map on Linux (affected only some systems, maybe also Mac).
  
• Commander portraits on the victory screen are positioned correctly, again (opposing factions no longer overlap after 2v2 etc.)
  

The 21 Generals event has started! In the pre-season tournaments last weekend, the three faction leaders have been decided:

• Jakobi for The Legion (red),
  
• Mishi for the Penal Squad (green),
  
• James for the Royal Knights (blue) - because he prevailed in the last two installments of the 21 Duels.
  

A total of 18 faction players and 12 mercenaries will fight for dominance in Vyeshal over the next few weeks.
See the last announcement for more details on this event!

Today, the 10th of January, starting at 6:00 PM EST, a one-shot adventure of the Vyeshal RPG will be played and streamed live on ToothAndTailTV on Twitch. Rumor has it that a well-known Mole and cheese connoisseur might be joining the party. Will his engineering skill be sufficient to make scout mines work, or will he screw up the whole team? Tune in and find out!

--
Have fun!
EELuminatus

Workshop Mod Support is Ready for Testing

The next patch is supposed to come with the possibility to share unit/balance Mods on the Steam Workshop. A test version of this feature is now available on the public_test branch. (The possibility to upload Mods to the Workshop is locked by default during the beta, because Mods are not fully compatible with versions before 1.6. However, you can contact me for instructions on how to unlock that feature. Here's a guide on how to create, publish, and play Mods.)

Other Features

The new version also includes improvements and fixes of other changes introduced in the last public test version. Especially feedback on the Story Mode difficulty slider are still appreciated!

How to Switch to the Test Branch

Right-click Tooth and Tail in your Steam Library, select Properties, go to the Betas tab, then select "public_test" from the drop-down list.
Note: In Multiplayer, you will only be able to find players using the public test version, as well.
In order to switch back to the current live version, just select "NONE - ..." in the same drop-down list.

Season 4 (finished)

The 21 Rooms - Bizarre Adventure / Pyramid of Doom ended with the grand finals on Dec 8! Although the Raiders defeated every single guardian and took every last piece of gold out of the Pyramid, James Bowring eventually defended his throne!
A big thanks to the 16 raiders & the 12 guardians who participated in this experimental format! You can rewatch it all on Youtube thanks to Tosh & Delthius!

Season 5 (coming Jan 2019)

The 21 duels will return in January for a 5th season, with another new weird & spectacular format! It will be called the 21 Generals and have 3-kingdoms themed rules.

In January, join King James or one of two rebel factions! (Or join no one and become a Mercenary, loyal only to Meat!)
Main season will be a 3-way TnT Team League/Board Game mix!
Those who survive the main season will fight in a final bracket, for a 100€ prizepool!
The leaders of the two rebel factions will be decided by two pre-season open tourneys in early January (Sat 4th and Sun 5th of January - 12pm est / 5pm gmt / 6pm cet).

>> Read the Rules / Join the Discord server

The 21 Rooms Bizarre Adventure in the "Pyramid of Doom" is coming to and end, and a new patch is coming up - you can now test some of its features on the public test branch.



The Raiders already played their six turns inside the Pyramid, looted as much as they could or got killed in the attempt. Turns 5 and 6 will be streamed tomorrow: Sunday, Nov 24, 12pm EST (= 5pm GMT / 6pm CET),
on: https://www.twitch.tv/wittypun7

You can find a detailed recap of everything that happened in the Pyramid before (Turns 1-4) in this presentation (link), and here is a snapshot of the Pyramid at the beginning of turn 5:



The event, however, won't end with Sunday's stream! - The survivors who raided the most gold will fight the final battles live one week later, on Saturday, Nov 30 ːdeniedː two weeks later, on Sunday, Dec 8, at: 10pm EST / 3pm GMT / 4pm CET. ːapprovedː

Story Mode Difficulty Slider and more...

A test version for the next patch is now available on the public beta branch. You can activate it by right-clicking the game in your Steam Library > Properties > Betas (tab) > and selecting "_public_beta" from the drop-down list.

While playing on the public test branch, you will only find multiplayer lobbies/matches with other players on the test branch!

In the beta version, the Story Mode's difficulty can be changed on the mission briefing screen (same button as map type selection, usually X, then "Select Difficulty").
For now, achievements & leaderboard entries are deactivated for any setting except standard difficulty (in the middle, 100%).



Be aware this has not yet been thoroughly tested, so the difficulty curve might feel off and there might even be some bugs left!
I'd appreciate any feedback, especially on the lower difficulty settings, because those are hard for me to judge. The lowest setting (20%) is meant to allow everyone a comfortable playthrough, whereas the highest setting (180%) should make even the Longcoat's campaign tough for veterans.

Other changes already available on the _public_test branch are:

• Balance changes: Toad, Pigeon, Mole nerf; minor Skunk and Snake (daze) nerf; Boar buff and minor Badger buff; cheap & weak Barbed Wire and kind of a Landmine nerf; general Daze nerf (stacking --> starts low, maxes like before).
  
• Multiplayer map gen improvements: better fairness calculation; preventing spawns too close to the enemy in 2v2; preventing Cabins too close to spawn Gristmills; farms spawn in random positions, to make early game scouting and attacks more interesting, again.
  
• Some convenience improvements in menues: Options can be changed while in a lobby; crashes in/before the first campaign mission should no longer happen if the Cinematic is disabled.
  

The actual patch will probably also come with a ladder reset and Steam Workshop Mod support. I'm still working on the latter feature - it's mostly done, but not quite ready, yet.

Less than two weeks after Strawberry Series III (results & YouTube link below), a fourth season of the 21/12 Duels series has been announced, yet again with a new twist:


(thanks again to Glorious AYY FB / @WolfdawgArt for the artwork)

or Bizarre Adventure Part 4: The Pyramid of Doom
is a mix of a virtual boardgame adventure and a TnT tournament (see the rules & further information here).
It will start on October 16 and last for about 6 weeks.
Before that, however, we will see a pre-season event...


This Sunday, October 13, starting at 2pm EST (18:00 UTC),
a couple of round-robin showmatches will be played between the "guardians" of the Pyramid,
and streamed by Big Pimpintosh and JetEriksen.



If you're curious about the last few seasons, btw, here are the YouTube playlists for former parts of the 21/12 Duels series:
Season 1, Season 2, Season 3


The winners of our last major tournament are
#1 Mishi (who happens to have been the end boss of the last 21/12 Duels, btw)
#2 ThisGuy #3 Big Pimpintosh
Results of all matches can be found on challonge.
The whole stream of the event is also up on YouTube.

With last weekend's "Old vs New" tournament, a legendary Tooth and Tail caster from the days of yore returned:
Strawberry continues with Strawberry Series III!



Date: Sep 29, 2019 at 16:30 UTC (12:30pm EDT)
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/strawberryspeedruns
Signup & more: https://challonge.com/de/strawberryseries3

As for the Old vs New tournament:
After 42 competitors, 7 casts and nearly 5 hours of streaming, it has been settled once and for all* that new is indeed better than old. Congratulations to Jakobi, who is now officially the best player ever, and to Gentleman, who came second by killing his own teammates!

Full list of participants:
(in the order determined by BlooCoon's matchmaking bot)



*) until next year