The Hand of Merlin News

General fixes:
• Fixed an issue in the Lobby where Essence used for Blessings (when selecting a new Hard Mode+ run) was not returned upon returning to the difficulty selection screen.
• Fixed an issue where reaction attacks could still trigger even if the reacting unit is stunned or staggered.
• Fixed an issue where enemies could be revealed prematurely if Alain the White was in the warband.
• Fixed an issue with Warrior's Sword Sworn skill not activating when the other sworn ally kills the target after the first has already hit it.
• Fixed an issue with the Serpent Skin relic where it could apply Poison to its wielder in some cases.
• Fixed an issue on Marca Hispanica's Inquisition combat maps where some props blocked visibility of walkable tiles.
• Fixed an issue where some objects did not provide cover as intended on Marca Hispanica's River Path combat maps.
• Fixed a visual bug with cone attacks where some tiles could be visually excluded from the area.
• Fixed a typo in Tariq's encounter.

Quality of life changes:
• The large, static Legend widget which was shown on the right on the world map is now revamped into a smaller, dynamic widget which is contextual. This makes it take up less screen space while also being more informative.

Hey folks!

A week before release, I decided to finally do something about a few things that bugged me, one of which was influenced by a discussion here on Steam.

[h3]Legend[/h3]

The legend is the information element on the right side of the screen that can be opened and closed and that ideally shows information related to nodes. When you hover over a node, it has a little label that shows the type (or name) of the node, and rewards you could get there. Some nodes also have a little banner above them with a number. The legend was there to explain the meaning of the various icons you could see on these node labels. The issue was that it didn’t really explain them well, it just told you what the icons are. A lot of the more important information was sorely missing.


The legend was also already filled to the brim with text and didn't have enough room to add more information or reorganize it without impacting the screen and keeping it clean (as in empty until you need it).
So I attempted to improve the situation with a dedicated node tooltip which would show you the information relevant to a specific node you're hovering over. The new node tooltip (which is smaller than the legend) shows the name of the node and a general explanation of what the node contains, along with information about the threat you can expect there, the rewards you could find there and what the little banner above it means.


[h3]Hints[/h3]

The other thing that was increasingly frustrating to me while doing a lot of testing was the codex opening up and forcing a context switch from the thing I was doing. In the editor, every time we start a world or level, a new session and profile are created, which means none of the hints are marked as "seen". Thus, the hints would update and spam opening the codex, forcing us to close it just to have it open again a short time after. It also kind-of promotes a tutorial heavy approach to playing the game instead of figuring it out for yourself.

So I decided to change the hint situation. All hints except two are now shown as a side notification, similar to the “levelup available” and “essence available” notifications. Clicking these will open the codex onto that hint, so it’s a non-intrusive element. Any player who wants to read those is informed that these exist and are ready to be looked at, but is not forcing you to do so.


These side notifications don’t persist across loading screens, so if you get into a combat map, the previous unclicked notifications are gone, but the codex will still show these hints as unread.

This change should go live with the patch today, so please let me know what you think about these and whether additional changes could be made to the text on the node tooltip, in cases where it’s not clear what the benefits of a specific node are. Once you try it, leave a comment here or post on our Discord server!
Thanks!

MarkoP

General fixes:
• Fixed an issue where some skills that target multiple units (like Ranger's Volley) could sometimes not be able to hit units in the same effect area with other units that could be hit.
• Fixed Mystic's Reflective Empathy skill (upgrade from Empathy) from triggering from non-damage abilities.
• Fixed some edge cases with Warrior's Sword Sworn skill, in case it was used twice in the same turn or by two different Warriors on the same ally.
• Fixed an issue on the Herbal Shop set of combat maps (in Marca Hispanica) were some models were not correctly set up as cover objects.
• Fixed an issue on Desert - Corrupted combat map (in al-Andalus) where less enemies would spawn than intended.

Gameplay balancing:
• Mystic's Hallowed aura can now stack if used by multiple Mystics.
• Ranger's Hunter's Prize skill and its upgrades now only grant AP to the Ranger instead of the whole warband.

Hey folks!

It’s two weeks until 1.0 release, and we’re still playtesting and fixing reported issues. For today, we decided to do a round table for how the team actually plays the game.

I think that an interesting takeaway from this is that even the members of our team play the game differently, and everyone enjoys the game in a slightly different way for a slightly different thing.

Robert (programmer)

I like playing on Hard+ mode and experimenting with different Blessings and Curses. Since I've played the game quite a lot, I know how skills and enemies work so it's fun for me to change things up and do challenge runs.
I usually take a balanced party: one warrior (Safir), one ranger (Merewen) and one mystic (Morgan Tud). Safir is unique since his passive allows him to make an automatic attack when using a defensive skill, which lets me turn him into a proper tank and still deal good damage. I like Morgan Tud because he's the only mystic to start with an active armor restore skill. Merewen is awesome because her passive lets her reset cooldowns on a kill, and that gives her crazy action economy potential with the right upgrades.
My favorite skill on a warrior is Shield Block (-50% damage taken), since that's a simple and powerful way to extend your survivability. Safir already starts with it (hence why I love him!), so I usually either take Rage (a stacking damage bonus per attack done, there's a defensive version which also reduces damage taken) or something like Stunning Blow or Bash or anything similar that can hard-disable an enemy for a turn. Crowd control is a life saver on Hard!
On a ranger, I love getting my hands on Quick Draw, which lets you shoot twice (or even thrice). There's an accuracy penalty, but once you get around that, you're dealing insane damage per round!
For a mystic, I lean on Haephestian Salts (armor restoration) a lot. For the second skill, I usually prefer getting Exploding Brimstone, which is a grenade-type skill that destroys cover and deals damage in an area. It's great for opening up a shot for my ranger.

Mia (designer)

I usually play on Normal, officially the reason is that I'm trying to balance the baseline difficulty.
Safir, Rana, and Rumayla is my go-to team composition. Safir takes all utility and defensive skills to proc his passive, Rana goes for full buff mode, and Rumayla is my damage dealer with damage over time effects: poisons, bleeding, fire… everything. I like being able to pass a round with AP remaining just to see the enemies die on their own round.
I often aim to get Warcry to increase the power of my mystics abilities, and any DoT ability on Rumayla, with preference on Noxious Fumes as a base ability.

Will (artist)

I like to play on Hard mode, cause I have a gamers ego. The hero combination I really love is Salim and Rana, the warrior is less important. I take those two because of the super high single target damage that Salim can apply. The most important part of this build for me is upgrading Salim's bow to get better range so I can maintain the Measuring passive ability!

AleLuja (artist)

I am always playing on Normal mode because I enjoy it the most. Hard mode doesn't tolerate mistakes:)
My favorite characters are definitely rangers, I love them all, and it's always a hard decision which one to pick, so it mostly depends. Usually I take one warrior, one ranger and Rumayla. For the skills, I love getting Partner Up, Archer's Vigil, and Fend Off, then I can partner up with a warrior, get closer to enemies, provoke them to attack me, and shoot all of the moving characters and bastards who are attacking my warrior.

Kaz (artist)

I prefer Hard+ mode (and its Doomed World). My usual warband consists of Tariq, Rana and Alain which is a party I find most suitable for eliminating threats before they can make their move against me.
My playstyle relies on heavy damage and crowd control, so the preferred skills for me are those which replenish AP (like Haste), allow for extra damage (Commanding Shot and Volley) and allow for me to manipulate the enemy positioning in order to group them up (Carving Cleave and Bash). I find Rana's Hallow ability to be very versatile, allowing me to choose between extra AP (Flash Hallow) or evasion (Dense Hallow) to compliment Alain's passive later on.
And, of course, to make the most out of my damage output, I carry Merlin's Core because of its passive ability.

sanduk (artist)

I love to switch between Normal and Easy. It depends on what mood I am in. I love Easy mode where you don't have to think much and just have fun, learn about all the skills, make reckless decisions and just play the game. Normal is where I want a challenge and have to re-think my tactics and it feels rewarding. I never managed to beat the game in Hard mode.
Every run I take different heroes, I really don't have a favorite, I love to combine everyone. It is mostly fun to see which hero combination will die the fastest, and the other way around. Since I'm using different heroes every time I use different skills, but I choose some skills more often that can bring me success, and those would be Bash and Cleave for warriors, Decoy and Take Aim for rangers, and for mystics Noxious Fumes and Restorative Salts.

MarkoZ (programmer)

I usually play on Hard+ mode with Curses because I like the extra challenge it brings.
I really like playing with Safir and Merewen and any mystic hero that seems most fun at the time. Safir and Merewen are great for hitting enemies multiple times, and it's always very satisfying to see plenty of hits for only a few action points. Safir's passive works great with skills that restore and/or don't spend any AP, and Merewen's cooldown reduction passive together with reaction shots can set up unexpectedly strong turns.

MarkoP (programmer)

I’ve been mostly playing Normal mode due to being constantly distracted with fixing issues and having to run through the entire game to make sure later stages of the game aren’t busted, and higher difficulties would have made that process slower. Because of this, I don’t have a favored warband composition, so I play with random units every time (and am happy we added a button for that), tho I do aim for rounded compositions (one of each class).
I do have heroes that I like how they work: Zahras passive is very nice and strong, especially coupled with Isabel, Safir using utility/defensive skills for damage is also fun, Salim with Measured passive and abusing Merlin’s Teleport spell to never lose it, Alain and his Decoy are also very useful, as is Rana starting with Hallow.
The skills I found fun are Specialty Arrow upgraded into Bodkin Arrow to fully bypass armor, Partner Up and Sword Sworn are similar and very strong that allow for extra actions or damage, Martyrdom for the extra action economy, Volatile Mixture for nerfing enemy actions, Lunge and Cleave for pure damage, etc.

What’s your playstyle?
Which heroes and skills do you usually take or have had the most success with?
Share your success (or failure!) stories with us, and consider joining our Discord server if you want to provide direct feedback or discuss stuff with us. The game is only two weeks away from its 1.0 release, so there are just a few more opportunities for improving the game for that occasion, and we love hearing your feedback!

MarkoP

New features:
• Added a list of skills to the Codex, showing all the learnable skills in the game. Skills that were seen at least once (through rankup cards, unlocked unit base skills or unlocked by beating the game) are automatically marked as visible in the codex, otherwise the name is obscured and the icon is dimmed.

General fixes:
• Fixed a bug which caused the Million cuts achievement to stop working.
• Fixed a bug with the Butterfingers achievement, which didn't work for all variants of Roland's Horn.
• Mystic's Raze skill now correctly affects friendly units as well.
• Fixed a rare bug with the Holy Grail where it would not grant mana on killing an enemy if said enemy was behind a cliff, abyss or high cover.
• Fixed a bug where knock-back and pull-in effects could move units into abyss and cliff tiles.
• Fixed a bug where Pylons in Mursiyah would not take damage from the Holy Grail.
• Fixed a bug where Ranger's Partner Up skill (and its upgrades) would sometimes trigger off of unintended enemy abilities.
• Fixed a bug where aura positions could get snapped to incorrect tiles for large units.
• Fixed a bug where some Journal UI elements could be left over on the screen in rare cases.
• Fixed Atlantes' Automata, Castle of Glass and Castle of Illusions spells to no longer cost nor require AP to cast.
• Fixed the Warrior passive from triggering Grail of Honor (applies Compelled Duel) and Expurger (applies Poisoned), as in some cases the warrior triggering the passive could apply those effects to himself.
• Fixed the Lacerate ability used by some bandits to trigger the effects on the target at the visually correct timing instead of looking delayed.
• Fixed relic pricings for each zone so it is no longer possible to buy and sell at the same price.
• Fixed encounter "The Castle of Maidens" which had an option which was too long and went out of UI bounds.
• Fixed a bug where the core spell unlock confirmation dialog wouldn't correctly unlock the spell if you first pressed on the dialog itself (not a button) and then confirmed.
• Fixed a bug where the end of game report in the Lobby was scrolling in reverse with the gamepad.
• Fixed the difficulty mode descriptions to make the Story Mode one not exceed its banner.
• Fixed a few typos.

Optimizations:
• Reduced the game's overall memory usage by about 10%.

Quality of life changes:
• Updated tooltips for Bleeding, Poisoned and Burning to indicate that these effects scale with the damage modifiers of the unit which last applied these effects.
• When using a gamepad, tile selection will no longer be able to go outside camera bounds.

Gameplay balancing:
• Arcane encounters in Albion now will grant the first Essence even on the first run.
• Relic shops in places other than Albion now sell Rare relics as well.
• Reduced the range of Pylon of Disruption's random teleportation ability from 10 to 4 tiles.
• Furtive status effect will no longer be lost via reaction attacks.