CHAPTER 3 IS HERE!

Hello there!

We wanted to release this update 4 weeks ago, but two things intervened.

ːdamageː First, the war in Europe (we published our statement here). In a purely practical way this means that our team has less time to spend on the production as we are helping friends flee the conflict and spend sleepless nights thinking about those whose cities are getting bombed by the Russian army.

We cannot remain indifferent to such pain. Since we published our call to stop this war, we’ve been told that we should not talk politics, that war is peace, black is white, etc., but we are not changing our position. We will continue to ban, permanently, anybody who justifies the war. There can be no reason for the mass killings. No whataboutism or propaganda alters the fact that every day the invading Russian army kills innocent people in Ukraine. If you disagree with our position, please don’t buy our games. We’d rather go broke than take the blood money.

ːspellcastingː The second reason for the delay is positive: with Chapter 3, we ship the biggest content update that we’ve made so far. The map is larger, there are more stories and quests, and a whole lot of custom visuals. On top of this, we bring several features that we debated since December.

Let’s look at the key points:


[h3]SCHOOLS OF MAGIC [/h3]

We’re moving ahead with making the characters more different.

You may recall that earlier, the whole party had one Spellbook that they shared.

We then progressed to individual Spellbooks, and now we further increase the specialization of characters:

• Each mage can specialize in up to 2 schools of magic
  
• There are 9 schools of magic in total in the game (more may come, later)
  
• At the start of the game, you choose 1 school per mage (for free)
  
• The choice of initial schools of magic is limited to the 4 that are permitted in the Empire
  
• Later on, you can unlock the second school for each mage (this costs essences)
  
• You can change the mage’s school at a special room at the Spire

[h3]CHANGE IN DECKS[/h3]

Each school of magic now has its own set of elements. When you change the school, you change the composition of the mage’s deck. When you add a second school to a character, their deck expands.

Most decks are complimentary to each other: they contain the elements that are used by the specific school, plus additional elements that help other mages in the party.



[h3]CHANGE IN SPELLBOOKS[/h3]

Each mage now has a separate Spellbook for each of their schools of magic.

All the spells have been updated and assembled into trees. Certain spells are only accessible once you open the ones that precede them on the tree.

Also, the interface of open Spellbook during encounter changed to take less space, and each school of magic has its own button to call up the relevant Spellbook.




[h3]MONOLITHS[/h3]

All three chapters now have Monoliths, which are a source of magic energy.

To collect the energy, find the monoliths and step on them. Each map has up to 4 monoliths.

Magic energy is used to operate all the rooms in the Spire.




[h3]ROOMS[/h3]

After Chapter 1, the Spire now gets the following rooms:

• Master’s chambers – read stories from the Truthsayer
  
• Altar of restoration – heal ailments
  
• Living quarters – review all characters and inventory
  
• Scriptorium – change magic schools
  
• Beacon – summon new characters
  

After Chapter 2, one more room becomes available:

• Cavern of resurrection – bring back the dead
  

And after Chapter 3, there’s one more room as well:

• Transmutation hall – obtain alchemic resources
  

[h3]CHAPTER 3: ELDERWOOD[/h3]

The chapter brings the mages into the Elderwood: home to two tribes in conflict, and a dark secret that looms over both.



In addition to the main stories, we also designed several side-quests. Including one that goes back to player’s actions in Chapter 1. We will do more of this in the coming chapters.

To avoid spoilers, we won’t describe here any details.

As any other biome, Elderwood has its own resources and creatures, and with these creatures comes a new token and a couple of new hex effects. We updated the recipes for alchemic potions and added a few more items as well, plus a new food resource.


[h3]WHAT’S NEXT?[/h3]

Once this update is stable, we will move to working on Chapter 4. The events of that chapter happen in the toxic southern swamps and involve two new races that you haven’t seen before.



As to the features and mechanics, we’re working on a better visualization of tokens. The current tooltips are not very helpful and it’s difficult to understand the possibilities of stacking and combinations – unless you experimented with them already.

We’ll try to ship the new update faster, but at this point it’s hard to promise anything since things change so fast. We will keep doing what we can to help our friends who flee the conflict, and we will keep working on the game.

Stay safe!