The Iron Oath News

Hello mercenaries!

The Friends and Foes update is now live! We've received a lot of valuable feedback and bug reports during the last few weeks, and we want to give a big thanks to everyone who helped us playtest the update on the test branch. We also appreciate everyone being patient and supportive as we worked to get this update complete over the last several months. It was a big undertaking for just the two of us, and the amount of testing and tuning needed was comparable to when we were preparing to launch the game last year.

While there is still a bit of refinement to be done, we're happy with how it turned out, and we feel all the changes accomplished what we set out do: giving players a better sense of progression and choice with their characters, and making combat more engaging and less repetitive with new enemies and mechanics.

Before diving into all the changes, we want to address the feedback we've received on the update's difficulty. Players will be happy to hear that we've raised up Accuracy to be more in line with how it was prior to this update. While we do want players to have to work a bit make their Basic Attacks land (with Flanks, Staggers, Stuns), we realize that missing half the time by default isn't fun either.

With regards to overall difficulty, Battle-Hardened is now a bit easier than it was when the update first went onto the test branch. It may still be a bit too difficult right now for new players (or players who haven't played in a while), but we don't want to make any drastic changes right now since it would affect the other difficulty settings. For now, we've added the ability to switch your difficulty setting at any time in the pause menu, and we'll also be adding some new difficulty settings (and tuning existing ones as needed) in a future update.

Finally, we want to say a quick word on the state of dungeon exploration. Due to all the changes, dungeons are currently a bit barren right now. Our goal for the next major update is improving the whole dungeon experience by tweaking some mechanics, adding more event types, and also rewarding the player with better loot.

With all that out of the way, let's move onto the changes made with the release of Friends and Foes :)

• Attributes Overhaul: Attributes have been reworked, and a new 'Mending' attribute has been added that increases the potency of Heals and Damage Shields (Power is now solely for abilities that deal damage).
  
• Levelling Overhaul: On level up, the Attribute Points you gain can be spent towards ranking up attributes of your choosing. Overall, the increases are much more significant than before, and characters have a higher potential for growth.
  
• Level Cap: The level caps have been adjusted. From levels 1-20 you will gain both Attribute and Ability Points on level up. Level 20 is the new softcap, and from 21-40 you will only gain Attribute Points (3 per level).
  
• Class Abilities: We've adjusted the base function of a few abilities to make them a more attractive option.
  
• Full Ability Trees: We've made adjustments to almost every ability tree, and the 3rd and 4th tier of ability upgrades are now fully implemented (totaling 252 new choices). They can be upgraded at level 5 and level 10 respectively.
  
• Increased Party Size: The maximum number of characters in a party has been increased from 4 to 5.
  
• New and Modified Conditions: We've added some new combat conditions and have tweaked a few existing ones. Conditions now last longer and play a much larger role in combat now, especially when dealing with certain enemies.
  
• Reworked Enemies: We've reworked a lot of existing enemies, changing their stats, abilities, and passives. Overall, enemies are now more specialized in what they do, and are more statistically and mechanically different from one another.
  
• New Enemies: We've added 30 new enemy variants into the game for more variation from fight to fight.
  
• Enemy Traits: Elites and Bosses now spawn with Traits (from a pool of 50) that add an extra strategic consideration when fighting them, ranging from statistical increases to unique combat mechanics. You can view their traits by mousing over their portrait or sprite.
  
• Combat Deployment: The deployment zones available for both sides are now more varied (it's no longer always left vs right!).
  
• Line of Sight and Ranged Unit Mechanics: We've made some adjustments to Line of Sight, making ranged units less effective in certain situations when shooting through other units to hit their target. Ranged units will no longer be able to target and attack other targets when they have an adjacent enemy. They must either move, or attack the adjacent enemy (and deal 50% damage)
  
• New UI Screens: The Manage Roster and Storage screens have been completely redesigned. Other screens now have their own dedicated windows (they will also be receiving a redesign in the future to match the style of the new roster screen).
  
• Codex: We've added a Codex screen that contains information on all enemies, enemy traits, and combat conditions. To view the codex entry for an enemy, simply right click their portrait.
  
• Combat Frequency: Due to increased party size and adjustments to enemy stats, fights now take a little longer on average. To compensate for this, we've lowered the number of fights in dungeons to 2, 3 and 4 for Short, Medium and Long dungeons respectively. Don't be afraid to be a bit more liberal with your ability charges!
  

[h2]Gameplay Changes and Additions[/h2]

• You can now change your difficulty setting at any time (except in combat). We will be adding more difficulty settings (and tweaking existing ones) with our next major update. With the new mechanics at play, we recommend starting on Adventurer, and then bumping it up to Battle-Hardened if you're finding it too easy.
  
• Removed the old primary attributes (such as Toughness, Finesse, etc). Players now invest directly into combat stats such as Health, Power, Evasion
  
• Starred attributes are now randomly assigned to characters to encourage different builds, instead of being fixed and dictated by their class
  
• Power now only affects abilities that deal damage
  
• Added a new Mending stat that handles the scaling of Healing and Shielding effects
  
• Accuracy of Level 1 characters is now closer in range to where it previously was on the main branch (for those that have been playing on the latest test branch, it'll be 12~ higher than it was, 22~ if you only played the first version on test)
  
• Reworked the XP table for leveling up, particularly beyond level 10 (late game should be a bit less grindy now)
  
• Increased the level cap to 40 (with a soft cap of 20). From levels 1-20, characters earn both Attribute and Ability points. After level 20, they will only receive a reduced number of Attribute points
  
• Reworked the number of Ability and Attribute points given at each level
  
• The 3rd and 4th tier of ability upgrades (totaling 252 choices) are now fully implemented. A character will unlock them at levels 5 and 10 respectively
  
• The majority of character traits have been adjusted so they're more impactful, and two new traits have been added that affect Mending
  
• Adjusted the values of many enchantment scrolls to be more significant (particularly Health, Power, Damage Shield, and a few others)
  
• Added a 'Scroll of Mending' Enchantment, granting +5/6/7/8/10 Mending depending on the scroll's rarity
  
• All Gear has been slightly adjusted to better synergize with the new attribute system
  
• All existing enemies have had their stats reworked and abilities adjusted. Enemies now have more of a specialized purpose.
  
• Over 30 new enemy variants (many with new abilities) have been added to the game
  
• Elite enemies now also gain +14 Defense and +50 Mending (in addition to their Health and Power being increased like always)
  
• Increased starting coin across all difficulty levels (due to the party size increase)
  
• On Adventurer difficulty: player Accuracy has been increased by 10, enemy Evasion has been reduced by 10, and Bosses have fewer combat traits
  
• Adjusted starting XP when skipping the tutorial (so players don't need to replay the tutorial to start on an equal footing)
  
• While in the prologue, the Inn now guarantees enough recruits to reach a party of 5 (and a Guardian is guaranteed to be among them)
  
• Euric no longer takes a cut of your profits (and now works for free out of the kindness of his heart!)
  
• Euric no longer has the Reckless trait (since it conflicted with his Fortitude trait)
  
• Adjusted mercenary salary costs to be significantly cheaper, capping out around 300~ coin per year (it was too difficult to get ahead previously. This is more of a first pass, and we'll be revisiting salary costs again in the future)
  
• Overworld Encounters have been made more difficult across the board to compensate for the fact that you don't need to save your ability charges for future fights (they were previously far too easy)
  
• The difficulty of random Overworld Encounters is now more varied. If you are capable of beating '5 Skull' encounters, you will occasionally still come across 3 and 4 Skull encounters
  

[h2]Combat Changes and Additions[/h2]

• Max party size is now 5!
  
• The combat deployment zones available to both sides are now more varied
  
• Added over 50 enemy traits that can be assigned to Bosses and Elites, giving them increased stats and unique mechanics that will need to be considered as you're fighting them. Bosses will have 2-5 traits depending on the encounter difficulty, while Elites will always have 2.
  
• Tweaked the Resistances and Immunities of most enemies.
  
• Enemies now have Vulnerabilities to certain damage types (ie. Holy is strong vs Demons). Attacks against vulnerable enemies will do 25% more damage
  
• Units can no longer target other enemies with ranged attacks when they have an enemy next to them. They must either move away (and incur an Attack of Opportunity), or attack the adjacent target and deal 50% less damage. This was done to give players more means of countering powerful ranged units (by jumping on top of them with a speedy melee unit)
  
• Ranged units can no longer shoot through their allies from a distance to deal full damage to a target that is directly behind the ally. They will now do 50% less damage (due to partial Line of Sight) when attempting such a shot
  
• When using Guard, that unit counts as a full Line of Sight blocker to enemies (meaning you can place a squishier character directly behind them, and prevent them from being targeted at all under the right circumstances)
  
• The duration of most conditions have been increased, giving them a more important role in combat
  
• Most abilities that cleanse conditions have been made more effective by also providing immunity to all conditions for 3 Rounds (which allows you to also use them proactively)
  
• The Guardian's 'Radiance' passive - which cleanses all adjacent allies - now requires 4 stacks in order to trigger instead of 3 (it was very powerful and too easy to trigger, but it also makes her damage abilities that consume Radiance stacks more potent now)
  
• Added two new combat conditions: Sunder Armor (breaks target's Defense) and Grievous Wounds (prevents targets from being buffed, healed, or shielded)
  
• Bleed and Burn conditions now last until cleansed
  
• Updated Poison to deal damage to the target equal to 10% of their current Health, lasting until cleansed (we had been meaning to change it for a while as it was previously too similar to Decay)
  
• Stunned characters have their Defense halved (and we updated the tooltip to mention that Basic Attacks against Stunned targets cannot miss, which was always the case, but not displayed anywhere)
  
• Added a new Miasma terrain effect that inflicts Poison on the occupant
  
• Tweaked the Corruption Terrain that is spawned by Demons and Corrupted units. Enemy units standing on it will be healed for 10% of their max health once per round
  
• Increased the effects of standing in Tall Grass to be more impactful. Units now gain 15 Evasion, but lose 15 Accuracy.
  
• Reworked how enemy compositions are created by applying a "strength value" to each unit. Combat difficulty should now be much more consistent as a result, and we can easily tweak the values as needed going forward if an enemy is too strong or too weak relative to their value.
  
• Limited the number of enemies that can appear upfront in a fight. Any overflow will now spawn as reinforcements in later rounds (this will most often be seen in overworld fights, and on smaller tilesets such as the Fort)
  
• A number of changes to various class Abilities and Upgrades. Too upgrade changes to list, but below are the changes made to abilities themselves:
  
• (Guardian) Blinding Strike's damage has been significantly increased
  
• (Guardian) Safeguard's Damage Shield now lasts for 3 Rounds (up from 2)
  
• (Guardian) The Root from Judgment now lasts for 2 Rounds (up from 1)
  
• (Huntress) Rapid Fire's damage has been slightly reduced
  
• (Huntress) Restraining Order now Roots for 2 Rounds (up from 1)
  
• (Huntress) The buff and Mark from True Sight now lasts for 3 Rounds (up from 2)
  
• (Huntress) Increased the trigger range of Overwatch from 2 to 3 cells
  
• (Huntress) Volley's damage has been increased
  
• (Icebinder) Arctic Armor's Damage Shield now lasts for 3 Rounds (up from 2)
  
• (Icebinder) The Freeze effect from Cold Feet now lasts 1 Round instead of 2
  
• (Icebinder) Cold Feet's trap damage is slightly increased
  
• (Pugilist) Mind, Body, and Soul no longer heals by default, but it does provide condition immunity for 3 Rounds
  
• (Pugilist) Healing Trance now heals adjacent allies for 25% of the value to himself (instead of 50%, which was too powerful)
  
• (Pugilist) Battle Instinct's starting values have been reduced to +35% for Evasion, Defense and Power
  
• (Pyrolancer) Pyromania can now be active on more than one ally
  
• (Pyrolancer) Wildfire can now be used again without erasing a previous instance
  
• (Pyrolancer) Return to Cinder can now be used again without erasing a previous trap, and its damage has been slightly increased
  
• (Pyrolancer) Heatwave has had its damage slightly reduced
  
• (Stormcaller) Conduit now targets a specific cell instead of an enemy (so it can miss if the target moves). Any cell within range (empty or occupied) can be targeted. We felt the ability was a bit too easy and powerful before, but now it requires a bit of planning. To compensate for the change, its damage has been slightly increased.
  
• (Stormcaller) The range of Cyclone has been increased and any pushed targets are also Slowed for 2 Rounds
  
• (Stormcaller) Changed Wind Surge to now grant a singly ally +10 Speed, +2 Movement and +20 Evasion for 3 Rounds.
  
• (Valkyrie) Aegis now grants the Valkyrie a flat +20 Defense (previously +40%). The Buff and the Taunt now last 2 Rounds (up from 1)
  
• (Valkyrie) Guardian Angel now applies a Damage Shield to the targeted ally for 3 Rounds
  
• (Valkyrie) Take Flight's damage has been slightly reduced
  
• (Valkyrie) Champion's Order now lasts for 2 Rounds and has a Range of 2 (both up from 1)
  
• The 'Potency' upgrades for Damage, Healing, and Shielding abilities have been reduced (most have gone from +25%/+30% down to +15%/+20%). With the rest of the trees now available, the previous values resulted in you outscaling enemies too much in the late game (few enemies could withstand 1500 damage from an upgraded Rapid Fire!). While we want you to feel powerful late game, it shouldn't be easier than doing 1 Skull missions in the early game
  
• A number of changes and additions to enemy Passive Abilities:
  
• (Specters/Wraiths) As a drawback to their Apparition passive (teleporting and ignoring Attacks of Opportunity when moving), Specters can no longer move and attack on the same turn, and will now delay their attack until the end of the round
  
• (Necromancers and Undead) Decay no longer stacks on targets. Targets will have their Max Health lowered by 5% every round until cleansed
  
• (Demons) Enabled the Demon's Empower passive. Upon their death, they will buff the stats of one adjacent ally (with the highest Health). Be mindful of this when going to strike a killing blow!
  
• (Soldiers) Due to their training and discipline, House Soldiers excel when fighting together in formation. We've given them a Shieldwall passive that grants them a bonus to Defense and Evasion when they have two or more adjacent allies at their side
  
• (Nullbeasts) Nullbeasts gain a new Deadzone Shroud buff when occupying a cell with Deadzone Terrain, granting them increased Evasion and cleansing their conditions.
  
• (Hoarwulfs) Ice Tracks now spawns Ice Terrain on the cell they move to, instead of on every cell traversed.
  
• (Hoarwulfs) Added a new Crystalize passive to Hoarwulfs, increasing their Defense by 10 (max of +30) for every round they remain stationary. This can be dispelled by pushing them, burning them, or by using an ability that removes enemy buffs
  
• (Brightmanes) Added a new Piercing Light passive, allowing their attacks to completely ignore Defense
  
• A few passives are currently disabled, leaving a few enemy types without any. We'll be enabling them in a future update
  

[h2]UI/UX Changes and Additions[/h2]

• Split up the old 'Company Management' window into separate screens (with their own hotkeys). The 'Manage Roster' screen has been completely overhauled and is much easier to use (the other screens such as Company Upgrades, Reputation will be getting a rework in the future to match the new style of the Roster screen)
  
• Added a stat comparison tooltip when hovering over equippable gear in the 'Manage Roster' screen
  
• Added a Codex that can be accessed at any time to give players information on the foes they are facing (accessed in combat by right clicking an enemy portrait)
  
• The default dialogue font is now larger (the smaller font remains as an option for those who prefer it). We will be slowly converting all other UI elements to this larger font.
  
• Tweaked existing Tutorials and added a few new ones to help new players gain a solid understanding of various game mechanics
  
• Added a tooltip when hovering the difficulty skulls of a contract or encounter that suggests a recommended party level
  
• Void Breaches in the overworld now display a recommended party level in the tooltip (we'll be adding this in the tooltip for other Points of Interest in the future as well)
  
• Added a tooltip on a character's XP bar, so you can see their progress to the next level
  
• Increased the number of slots in the turn order UI
  
• Added more unique status icons for some buffs/debuffs instead of using the generic ones all the time
  
• The number of rounds remaining for buffs and debuffs is now displayed on the status icons (and within the tooltip)
  
• A unit's stat tooltip now comes up in combat after hovering their sprite for 1 second (you can still instantly access it by pressing tab)
  
• Added Mending, Critical Chance and Accuracy to the stat tooltip (and a list of traits for Bosses and Elites)
  
• Added a new boss icon to the portraits of boss enemies
  
• Added instructions and a sound effect when using abilities that select 2 separate targets
  

[h2]Fixes[/h2]

• Significantly sped up the "thinking" time for certain enemies on their turn (such as the Spectral Reaper)
  
• Potential fix for a crash that would rarely occur when a floor hazard expired
  
• Fixed a crash related to Frozen targets taking damage from certain sources
  
• Fixed a bug where all allied attacks would contribute to the Stormcaller's Static Charge stacks on an enemy (inflicted by his passive). All ally attacks still have a chance to trigger the Stun (based on stack count), but only the Stormcaller's attacks can increase the stacks now
  
• When using Wait, the duration of buffs and debuffs will no longer tick down until you actually take an action in the round
  
• Ability upgrades that refresh the duration and value of Damage Shields will now update correctly
  
• The Valkyrie's passive 'Vismyr's Protection' which provides a Damage Shield (base of 70) at the start of combat now works correctly
  
• Fixed a bug where other Damage Shields applied to the Valkyrie would instantly break when damage was taken
  
• Fixed a bug where Taunted units would just pass their turn
  
• Fixed a bug where Taunted units were not counting towards a Flank on their taunter
  
• Fixed a bug where the Icebinder's 'Impaling Ice' ability would cause the target to act twice at the end of the round
  
• Fixed a bug where you sometimes wouldn't get the promised coin during an event (like when making a deal with Bandits)
  
• Fixed a bug where Basic Attacks against Staggered units were not guaranteed to hit (now they are)
  
• Fixed a crash with falling rock hazards and significantly sped up the rate at which they fall
  
• Fixed various bugs where enemies would sometimes not act on their turn (still sometimes occurs, but the majority of instances should be resolved)
  
• Units should no longer get stuck in Ice Walls
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed the 'Potency' ability upgrades to persist after refunding that character's ability points (until the game was shut down)
  
• Fixed a bug where a character's Health in the overworld would be displayed as the amount that they had when they left a dungeon
  
• Possible fix for a rare softlock that could sometimes occur during the camping cutscene after the tutorial
  
• Fixed a bug where quests sometimes wouldn't appear in cities after completing the prologue
  
• Fixed an issue where the effects from Tall Grass sometimes weren't being removed even after the unit moved off of it
  
• Fixed a bug that was in the latest test branch where the Journal wasn't displaying any quest information
  
• Many more undocumented fixes! There are a few minor ones we're aware of, and they'll be getting addressed in a future patch
  

[h2]Notes[/h2]

• Due to the changes, all your characters will have their Attribute and Ability points refunded when loading an old save. You'll need to reallocate them.
  
• Any enchantments applied to gear on old saves will be removed and you will be given scrolls in your Storage (if you're currently in a dungeon, you won't see them until you exit)
  
• We've left the F10 debug function enabled. If you experience a softlock in combat, hitting F10 will usually fix it (though please do still submit a bug report in game so we can get the log and fix the problem)
  

We will be following up with patches as needed to fix a few more minor bugs (and any new ones that are found). Up next is our Tales by the Fire update which will be bringing many improvements to dungeon exploration (and dungeon loot) along with adding our 8th class: the Balladeer.

Thanks for reading and for your continued support and feedback. We hope you like all the changes! If you're enjoying the game, we'd really appreciate you leaving a review on Steam, and we'd also like to invite you to join our Discord community. Have a great weekend!

-Curious Panda Games

Hey everyone!

The Steam Spring sale is here, and The Iron Oath is 10% off for the duration! We've also just updated the public test branch with the latest build. This will be the last update before we push it live on the main branch. We're still tweaking a few things and fixing some remaining bugs, but It's just about ready and will be released during the last week of March.



[h2]Special Notes[/h2]

- Saves from other branches should now work (feel free to test them and report back any issues!)
- Due to a few balance changes all character's stats and ability upgrades will be refunded, so be sure to reallocate them when you load your game (this includes saves already started on the test branch)

[h2]New[/h2]

- Added a tooltip to the contract difficulty skull icons, giving you a recommended party level
- We've enabled enemy vulnerabilities, giving most of them a weakness to a damage type (eg. Demons take more damage from Holy attacks)

[h2]Fixes[/h2]

- Adjusted the difficulty of the city defense mission in the prologue, which was unintentionally made too difficult due to recent changes
- Fixed a few instances where ranged units could shoot through their allies to hit enemies without incurring a partial Line of Sight penalty
- Units can no longer target other enemies with a ranged attack if they have an adjacent enemy
- When attacking an adjacent enemy with a ranged attack, units do 50% damage
- If you Wait on your turn, the duration of buffs and debuffs will no longer tick down until you actually take an action
- Outlaw Deadeye will now more properly target enemies with his channeled attack
- Fixed an issue that prevented the Outlaw Thug and Backstabber from attacking on their turn after they had moved
- Fixed various bugs dealing with ability upgrades (primarily with Pugilist and Icebinder)
- Ability upgrades that refresh Damage Shields will now properly update the tooltip with the correct values
- Fixed a softlock that occurred when enemies stepped on the Cold Feet trap
- Starting Accuracy for characters should now be properly configured. It was previously lower than it should have been (should be around 10% higher on average now)
- The 'Hag' enemy now uses their proper sprite sheet
- The 'Outlaw Deadeye' now uses their proper sprite sheet
- Abilities and upgrades that grant temporary immunity to conditions should now work properly
- All damage shields on the Valkyrie should now work properly (and her passive damage shield is now displayed with a status icon)

[h2]Balance[/h2]

- Tuned the 'Adventurer' difficulty, slightly reducing enemy Power and Evasion, and giving fewer traits to enemy Elites and Bosses
- The Guardian's passive ability now needs 4 Radiance stacks to activate (previously 3)
- Tweaked some settings around enemy encounters and adjusted the ratio of how many elites appear
- Limited the amount of enemies that can appear up front in combat, depending on the encounter difficulty and tileset (such as the Fort). Any remaining enemies will instead enter the battlefield as reinforcements (this will be a more frequent occurrence in overworld combat)
- Modified the effects of various character Traits
- Modified the values given when ranking up attributes. Power now grants 2 (down from 3) per rank, Mending grants 3 (down from 4) and Crit Chance now grants 2/1.5/1/0.5 (down from 2.5/1.5/1) depending on the rank
- Elite enemies now get a flat +50 to Mending
- Poison now lasts for the entire combat encounter (or until cleansed). Targets take damage equal to 10% of their current Health on their turn (previously it lowered a unit's Max Health every turn)
- Removed the Reckless trait from Euric on new saves
- Tweaked the values of various abilities and upgrades
- Valkyrie's Damage Shield from her passive ability now has a base value of 70 instead of 50
- Adjusted the XP tables for leveling up (particularly reducing the XP required beyond level 10)

Thanks for all your help in testing so far. We really appreciate your feedback and support!

-Curious Panda Games

Hello mercenaries,

The Friends and Foes update is now available on the public test branch!

To opt in: Go to your Steam Library, right click The Iron Oath and select Properties. From there, go to the Betas tab and select "Public test branch" from the drop down menu.

For now, we recommend starting a fresh campaign, as existing saves will not work properly just yet (though they will be supported when we move the update to the main branch).

As mentioned in our last post, the update will need a few weeks on the test branch in order to make sure it's fully ready and balanced. It's fairly stable at the moment, but we are still working through bugs and fixing some mechanics that aren't working as intended. We'll be listing the full patch notes when we drop it on the main branch, but for now here is the gist of what has been changed:

• Attributes Overhaul: Attributes have been reworked, and a new 'Mending' attribute has been added that increases the potency of Heals and Damage Shields (Power no longer affects them).
  
• Levelling Overhaul: On level up, the Attribute Points you gain can be spent towards ranking up attributes of your choosing. Overall, the increases are much more significant than before, though a few stats have diminishing returns for balance reasons.
  
• Level Cap: The level caps have been adjusted. From levels 1-20 you will gain both Attribute and Ability Points on level up. Level 20 is the new softcap, and from 21-40 you will only gain Attribute Points (3 per level).
  
• Class Abilities: We've adjusted the base function of a few abilities to give players more incentive to use them.
  
• Full Ability Trees: We've made adjustments to almost every ability tree, and the 3rd and 4th tier of ability upgrades are now implemented. They can be upgraded at level 5 and level 10 respectively.
  
• Increased Party Size: The maximum number of characters in a party has been increased from 4 to 5.
  
• New and Modified Conditions: We've added some new combat conditions and have tweaked a few existing ones.
  
• Reworked Enemies: We've reworked a lot of enemies, changing their stats and their abilities (some minor changes, some major). Overall, enemies are now more specialized in what they do.
  
• New Enemies: We've added 30 new enemy variants into the game for more variation from fight to fight.
  
• Enemy Composition Rework: We've changed the way enemies are selected for a fight. The new method makes the difficulty level much more consistent (and it's easier for us to balance!).
  
• Enemy Traits: Elites and Bosses now spawn with Traits (from a pool of 50) that add an extra strategic consideration when fighting them, ranging from statistical increases to unique combat mechanics. You can view their traits by mousing over their portrait or by mousing over their sprite and pressing Tab.
  
• Combat Deployment: The deployment zones available for both sides are now more varied (it's no longer always left vs right!).
  
• Line of Sight and Ranged Unit Mechanics: We've made some adjustments to Line of Sight, making ranged units less effective in certain situations when shooting through other units to hit their target. Ranged units will no longer be able to attack other targets when they have an adjacent enemy without incurring an Attack of Opportunity. Additionally, if they try to attack an adjacent target they will only do 50% damage (these mechanics aren't fully functional just yet).
  
• New UI Screens: The Manage Roster and Storage screens have been completely redesigned. Other screens now have their own dedicated windows (and will also be receiving a redesign to match the style of the new roster screen).
  
• Codex: We've added a Codex screen that contains information on all enemies, enemy traits, and combat conditions. To view the codex entry for an enemy, simply right click their portrait.
  
• Combat Frequency: Because of the rebalanced enemies and character attributes, fights now take a bit longer on average. To compensate for this, we've lowered the number of fights in dungeons to 2,3 and 4 for Short, Medium and Long dungeons respectively.
  

Known issues:

• If there are too many enemies, waiting near the start of the round makes the character lose their turn for that round.
  
• Taunted units aren't attacking.
  
• Many of the tutorial videos need to be updated.
  
• Overworld Encounter difficulty still needs to be adjusted (currently far too easy).
  
• Some ability upgrades aren't working properly (we're aware of most issues and are working through them, but still feel free to let us know if something isn't working right!).
  
• Many character traits are in the process of being changed, so their effects may not match the description that is shown.
  
• A few enemy traits aren't functioning correctly or matching their description (but we're aware of all the issues). You might also see some trait names that do not have a description (these are ones that we ended up not implementing and we need to remove them from the pool).
  
• There are a few enemy abilities and passive abilities that aren't working as described (we think we have all the issues documented, but it's possible we overlooked some so feel free to let us know if you come across any).
  
• A few UI screens may look a little off, as they still need to be updated to match the new style.
  
• Because we reduced the number of fights in dungeons, there will be some longer stretches of empty tiles. We'll be addressing this in our next major update which is focused on improving dungeon exploration mechanics.
  
• So far we've only done comprehensive testing on the Battle-Hardened difficulty. If you do try Adventurer or Warlord, please let us know how it feels in comparison to before (but fair warning it may not be totally balanced just yet!).
  
• The build isn't available on Mac just yet. If anyone wants to test on Mac just let us know and we'll put together a build for it.
  

If you do encounter any bugs, please report them in game if possible, otherwise you can report them in our Discord or here on Steam. We're especially looking to hear your thoughts on combat balance, combat deployment, and character progression as well.

We've left some debug commands enabled, so if you encounter an issue where combat softlocks you can hit F10 which should fix the problem most of the time. Additionally, if you wanted to test some higher level characters/dungeons, you can open up the console(~) in game and use the following commands:

• setMinCharacterLevel 1
  
• giveRenown 1000
  
• giveCoin 5000
  

You can change the numbers to whatever you want. For character level, anything between 1-40 is valid.

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Big thanks in advance for helping us playtest all these changes, we hope you enjoy them!

-Curious Panda Games

Hey everyone,

Firstly, we'd like to apologize for the lack of official communication during the last month. We were hoping to release Friends and Foes in January, but unfortunately this update has continued to take longer than planned. While it is content complete, there is a lot of testing, tweaking, and bug fixing still to be done to ensure that it lives up to our standard. The build will be available on the public test server 2~ weeks from now, but we expect that it's going to need to stay there for a few more weeks so we can gather your feedback on balance, and fix any bugs that you may find. Because of this, we're officially delaying the update until March.

Update as of February 19: We're going to need 1 more week to get it ready for public test.

We know many of you have been anticipating the update and will be frustrated by the news. We are sorry for the delays, but we do believe it will be worth the wait in the end. In hindsight, this update could have been broken up into 2 or 3 smaller ones, and we'll take this as a learning experience and apply it to future updates.

On that note, we've updated our Early Access Roadmap to reflect the changes to Friends and Foes, and the updates that will follow it.



Thanks for your support and understanding.

-Curious Panda Games

Happy Holidays, everyone! From now until January 5th, The Iron Oath is 10% off as part of the Steam Winter Sale!

We also wanted to inform you that the Friends and Foes update will be dropping early in January. It's close to being ready, but because the update is so large, it's definitely not something we want to rush out, and we're both wanting to take a bit of time off to spend the Holidays with our families. We know the extra wait is probably a bit disappointing, but we hope you'll understand :)

If you haven't read our previous post and wanted to know what all is coming in this update, you can find it here.

We can't thank you all enough for the support you've given us this year. We have a lot in store for 2023 and we're looking forward to sharing it all with you! We hope you all have a wonderful Holiday season and a happy New Year!

-Nik & Chris (Curious Panda Games)