The Hand of Merlin News

New features / content:
• Overhauled Hero Skill trees: new skills are added for each class, most old ones made stronger.
• Added unique passive effects for each Hero. These provide more strategic depth even for level 1 Heroes, and also make individual Heroes more unique.
• Added alternative skirmish map versions for all regular combat encounters in Albion.

Crash fixes:
• Fixed a possible crash with voiceover textboxes when clicking on them furiously.

Quality-of-Life improvements:
• Difficulty selection screen now has a Back button.
• Added a notification when an Essence is gained.
• Redcap's Gaze ability now makes the camera follow a trail towards the target, to make it easier to notice which unit is Gazed.
• The action bar sidebars now save their opened/closed state.
• Slightly decreased font sizes for ability and effect tooltips to accommodate for cases of many stacked effects.

General fixes:
• Fixed some compatibility issues when using Windows Mouse Keys to emulate the mouse via keyboard.
• Fixed a bug where destructible cover could be destroyed around the caster by abilities that destroyed cover in general.
• Non-default Move abilities such as Sprint and Translocation will now also preview hit chances from the destination tile.
• Fixed a bug where the portrait hover texture was visible when undoing movement.
• Fixed several minor glitches on various UI element textures.
• Added some new VFX for the Core View and Hero Roster in Lobby.
• Fixed an issue where some sounds would sometimes not be played when switching levels.
• Fixed a bug where you could press backspace to prematurely end the AI turn.
• Optimized some FPS drops on a cliff skirmish map in Albion.

Gameplay balancing:
• Abominations now have stronger stats in later zones to account for increased player power via Hero passives.
• Status effects of the same type granted through encounters now stack.
• Vulnerable debuff from Cockatrice's Bad Omen will no longer stack.
• Aura-granted effects (such as from re-casting Mystic's Hallow before it expires) will no longer stack, but instead refresh their duration.

Hey folks!

Today we’re releasing our first major patch. It contains the unique Hero passive status effects for the Heroes and a solid rework of a bunch of Skills. Most of this work is purely on the design side, as most of the tech improvements and QoL get released as soon as they’re ready. If you’ve got a feature or improvement you want to see, tell me about it in the comments or on our Discord.

The patch today marks the first milestone of our internal plan. We’re sure we’ll be receiving feedback for the reworks, as it’s very likely the balance is now very different due to a lot of the Skills being upgrades or sidegrades in terms of power and utility. We fully expect to be fixing a bunch of errors on our end for next week as well, since it’s not easy for us to track down all niche issues. We also made some small adjustments to enemies to compensate for that power increase, and we hope to hear from players about how they feel about the game now.

As far as our future plans, we have a total of 5 milestones planned (the first one being today). These aren’t set in stone since the future is unpredictable, so some shifts may happen, but we have an idea of where we’re going and how we’re getting there. As an example, the Hero passive effects (aka character uniqueness) weren’t explicitly planned, but due to player feedback, we prioritized them for the first milestone. Things like this might change our future milestones.

So while I can’t write out the dates (because they might change due to unforeseeable circumstances), I can talk about what we have planned and in what order. We’re open to feedback on this.

For the second milestone, we’re planning three new Heroes. They’re partially done: we’re currently in the process of animating them, after which Mat would take over and design them as a selectable character. They need to get their base attributes defined, the default starting Skill chosen, and passive effect designed (which would be affected by the feedback we receive for the ones in today’s patch).

For the third milestone, we’re planning one new ranged abomination enemy and one new bandit enemy (Mystic equivalent class). The intention is to provide more variety to the early game combat with the bandit and to offset the melee-centric abominations for the later game. On top of that, it would contain gamepad support as well, which I’ve already started working on and have the basics working (can click a button to have something trigger and can move the camera).

The fourth milestone is all about meta-progression and Hard mode. By that time, we hope the players who consider Normal mode too easy will tell us how they feel the game could be made harder. We’re thinking something like run modifiers, where you could pick a set of modifiers that would apply to the game for that run (stuff like faster corruption timers on the world map, or +1 power per turn to enemies). There’s also talk of customizable Hero Prowess as a gateway to even attempt Hard mode, as well as some sort of meta currency (besides Essences since by that point you probably already unlocked all Spells). We have ideas floating, but no hard decisions as of yet. Also, two more Guardian Cores and Dire versions of enemies exclusive to Hard mode.

The final (planned!) milestone is more questline encounters that feature legendary relics, and general improvements and polish.

Each major patch will also have any alternate maps finished by that point, and any extra relics we make. Since new maps increase the patch size, it’s likely better to put them all into one patch than trickle them in every week, just so we can keep the weekly patches smaller.

This is our plan. Tell us what you think about it, what feature you’re waiting for, thoughts on prioritization, etc so we can consider if we have the means to shuffle stuff around.
And as usual, join our Discord server to give and get direct/instant feedback.

MarkoP

https://store.steampowered.com/app/600610/The_Hand_of_Merlin/

Hey all!
This week we got another design blog post by Mat. It almost seems he’s taking over my job of writing these!
Here’s what Mat wants you to know.

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Got an opportunity here to share with you all what Mia and myself have been working on for the past couple of weeks. The Unit Ability Overhaul is meant to address quite a number of feedback we received, so here is what it is.

Simply put, we took data from which abilities were less picked or less effective, and buffed or changed most of them, hopefully making them a bit more interesting to pick, or valid in a larger number of builds.

To give you a glimpse of that process, we took a few of the conclusions we made after reading the data and the feedback. In each, I’ll put an example of an ability overhaul.

1. Abilities need to not only be thematic, but they also need to provide immediate benefits that justify the cost of a slot. While before we were content in providing different themes and possibilities, we now know we need to compare skills between all available ones, not just the most similar.
   
   Example: Mystic’s Aeolic Elixir (cone buff, granted +3 Move), while it makes thematic and logical sense, it was not worth the slot/AP cost. So we buffed it, aiming to validate more kinds of plays with it: besides its original effect, it now Resets Skill cooldowns to target units.
   
   
2. Upgrades cannot offer downsides at all. All upgrades that did, even if they had a stronger base effect, were hardly picked. I call this “Roadblock design”, and we are not pursuing it any further. All upgrades must be direct benefits.
   
   Example: Warrior’s Reckless Slash, while more powerful than the base version, had an innate miss chance - That was done to validate ways of removing evasion but ended up just feeling bad to use. Instead, the warrior now has Overpowering Slash, which adds the Vulnerable status effects to targets, setting them up for combos later in the turn. A perfect example of our new direction!
   
   
3. Upgrades, in general, must not require actions or resources to be worthwhile. If the upgrade requires resources or conditions to perform its extra effect, there is a set of instances where upgrading the ability in that direction is meaningless. Alternatively, it would be better if the upgrades could be optimized, but were always positive.
   
   Example: An upgrade for the Ranger’s base ability, Far Shot allowed spending an extra AP to increase its range. This additional range is now native to Far Shot, granting the extra effect (more range) at no cost! More targets to shoot is always positive, but a smart player will be able to stay safer due to the increased range, optimizing this effect.
   
   
4. Upgrades cannot change the expected use of the ability. The original design for upgrades often had a “Weird Cousin” in the trio of possibilities, that took the functionality of the ability and changed it to something else with a similar fantasy. This makes some sense, but it turns out it’s not very likely that you would plan your build with this “weird upgrade” in mind, and, in general, they were the least picked.
   
   Example: The Mystic’s Corrosive Concoction ability (cone, deals armor damage only) had an upgrade that inverted its effect, Noxious Concoction (cone, deals health-only damage). While the upgrade was buffed to be more picked, it just made more sense to turn the “cone health-only attack” into its own ability, with its own upgrades! Noxious Fumes now comes into existence, playing with Poisoned and other effects.
   
   
5. More damage was always more effective. This one took my sleep for days. We found out that the most effective way to play the game was to pile up on damage effects and melt the opposition. While this is fun and all, it made the game easy to solve, and after a while, too simple. To combat this, we are making enemies a bit more resilient, but far more powerful, in hopes that if you don't take defensive or evasive actions, you’ll be in dire danger. In addition, we buffed the effects of most defensive/utility skills, making an effort to scale them off the “power” attribute whenever possible.
   
   Example: The Ranger’s Archer’s Vigil, in itself, was not very picked. Its ability to take a clearer shot at a target wasn’t worth the slot. One of its upgrades, Relentless Vigil, also dominated all others, for the simple fact that it allowed a larger damage output. The alternatives, such as gaining an AP to react or receiving less damage, meant little in the current meta. So we took a gamble: now all versions of Archer’s Vigil can now shoot at multiple targets (although at half-power), and its upgrades now offer increased benefits at every shot, preserving the most “fun” aspect of the ability and giving it an overall buff. The rest, however, will depend on us changing the meta, and this is still ongoing!
   

You can expect to see this overhaul in our first major patch! Changing the meta so drastically can be a bit disruptive, but without a holistic approach, we risked spoiling some effects. We would love to see the same polite feedback we have been receiving so far as we drop this new direction, and the data you provide will make the game even better!

Thank you for reading, and good luck out there in the multiverse!

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Join our Discord server!

MarkoP

https://store.steampowered.com/app/600610/The_Hand_of_Merlin/

New features / content:
• Added several new relics: Bronze Bell, Petrosphere, Viking Beads, Charm Stones, Bayard's Bits.

Crash fixes:
• Fixed a crash when double clicking relics to equip/buy that could sometimes happen with a non-full party.
• Fixed a crash when starting a new game after wiping the entire progress.

Quality-of-Life improvements:
• Added visualization of knock-back and pull-in destination of units.
• Added visualization of covers about to be destroyed by the activated ability.
• Added a toggle to menu options that controls if the game will pause when window loses focus.
• Pathing curves are now rendered with a red opaque color over tiles where the unit using a movement ability would take damage.
• The end turn dialog will now appear closer to the action bar, to minimize required mouse movement.
• In skirmish, the hero and enemy portraits now have nicer and more noticeable selection / hover indicators.
• Removed a half second delay for executing abilities that don't have an animation on use.
• Added support for nested status effects on unit portrait tooltips, i.e. if a status effect can trigger another status effect, the additional one is shown on the tooltip as well.
• Added information about which auras the unit is providing to its portrait tooltip.
• When starting a new run, the roster UI now indicates Hero classes via column header icons and banners.

General fixes:
• Fixed a bug where the achievement "Al-Andalus Tourist" was not correctly tracked across multiple runs. This only applies to newly created profiles, and a fix for existing profiles will be added soon.
• Fixed a bug where double clicking allowed for buying relics with insufficient gold.
• Fixed a bug where the tooltip for a relic shop item could say it's an empty slot even though it's filled, if targeting exactly the slot frame.
• Fixed a bug where units killed with reaction abilities would die in slow motion.
• Fixed a bug where abandoning a run while in a skirmish would show incorrect Warband Level in the Epilogue report.
• Fixed a minor visual glitch where the wobble animation for cards appeared to snap a bit when first starting.
• The game will now correctly ignore the mouse while the cursor is outside the game window's area (such as when running in windowed mode, or in borderless fullscreen with multiple monitors).
• Rana now has female pronouns in her Prowess Unlock description.
• Renamed Notorious Bandit and Dire Thorntoad into Bandit Chief and Dire Toad, respectively. The new names are shorter and fit the UI better.
• Improved the wound animations of The Endless Dreadnought (the final boss).
• Added transition animations to action bar side bars.
• Fixed a few typos in some encounters and ability descriptions.

Gameplay balancing:
• Slight increase to Albion bandits' power to accompany blacksmith buffs.
• Quarry debuff can no longer miss.
• Maim Status Effect now decreases Move and Power in equal amounts, where before, Move was decreased 1 point further.

Hey yall!

This week we bring you another post from Mat, this time about his direction on designing the passive status effects for heroes.

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As we discussed in the last blog post, our first major attempt to improve the longevity and complexity of combat is the creation of passive status effects for each character. Today, I want to talk a bit about where we stand on that and some of our ideas.

We want each passive to address two distinct issues: (1) provide another degree of customization to your loadouts, and (2) modify expected gameplay to a meaningful level. More simply, we want passive effects to make your gameplay a bit different depending on your loadout.

We designed and implemented a few, and they are being tested internally to see if they are good enough for us to show you in the following weeks, accompanied by some extra gameplay/balancing changes we mentioned.

The design model had a rather simple directive: each class has at least 2 ways it can “do its job”, and two of the characters spearhead that effort while the other offers an alternate take. Here are some examples

For the Warrior characters, they are all about being able to pursue and disrupt enemies and survive multiple heavy blows. To do this job correctly, survivability is key. Safir aims for consistency: The Paladin passive allows him to react when he loses all armor points, and restores the use of his defensive skills, giving him a second wind in a complicated situation.

The Rangers are always about damage, but they have many tricks up their sleeves. While some builds for them are oriented towards mobility and good use of cover, Salim’s passive, Measured Shooter, increases his damage every round that he doesn’t move - something that will work well with his base ability, that increases his range.

Mystics are varied, but in general, they make sure their allies are doing the best they can, either by healing, increasing power, or making sure enemies aren’t as effective. Morgan Tudd, ever the dedicated healer, sports the Druid Physician passive, allowing his base attack to heal allies adjacent to his target, making even his damage have a defensive use.

Hopefully, you can see what we are going for! Furthermore, we want to entangle the power of each of these passives with the new meta progression cycles we are designing for, but even then, all the numbers are subject to change and balancing. As long as each character feels better suited to a specific gameplay style, or evokes a different feeling, we know we are going in the right path.

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This is all coming in a “major” patch in a couple of weeks.
Join our Discord server!

MarkoP

https://store.steampowered.com/app/600610/The_Hand_of_Merlin/