Ruinarch News

Hello everyone. Our last update of the year is here. There is a lot of variables that could cause one's game to vary widely from another so it's definitely tough to have a game balance that would be consistent for everyone. When we tweak internal values, our aim is to make a smoother game progression for most players - but there will still be game sessions that could go vastly in favor or against the player.


In addition to the main Victory related Goals, we've introduced simple Side Goals that hints to new players what options are or would be available to them. Accomplishing these mini-goals provide extra Chaotic or Spirit Energy.

When we launch 1.0, these Side Goals will also serve as Steam Achievements.


- Further adjusted Portal Upgrade powers for all three Archetypes. All will now unlock more Powers per level compared to previous version.
- Players now immediately have to choose their Wildcard Powers once the Portal upgrade completes rather than needing to go to the Portal UI first.
- Adjusted HP of most Villager combat classes, lesser demons and some monsters.
- Increased damage of most of the player's direct-damage Spells.
- Characters within the player's own faction will no longer be damaged by the player's direct-damage Spells.
- Reduced experience gained by Villagers training at the Barracks or Magic Academy.
- Reduced experience gained by Villagers from combat.
- Slightly reduced stat increase gained by Villagers from Talent level up.
- Reduced cost of Reveal Villager Info from 4 to 3 Chaotic Energy.
- Reduced cost of Reveal Faction Info from 40 to 30 Chaotic Energy.


The Prism UI has now been updated to show more details about how to trigger the events.


- Griefstricken Mood efffect changed to -20.
- When a Lover dies or disappears, the Villager now instantly becomes Griefstricken but only if their Opinion is Acquaintance-level or higher. If Opinion is Rival-level, they gain Catharsis instead.
- When an Affair dies or disappears, the Villager now instantly becomes Heartbroken only if their Opinion is Acquaintance-level or higher. If Opinion is Rival-level, they become Cheery instead.
- Added a log when Villager feels Griefstricken, Catharsis, Heartbroken, or Cheery from the loss of a Lover or Affair.
- Villagers can no longer develop new Lover or Affair relationships while Griefstricken or Heartbroken.
- Villagers will no longer seduce or flirt while Griefstricken or Heartbroken, except when Trigger Arousal is used by the player.
- Villagers will no longer respond positively to other's flirtation while Griefstricken or Heartbroken.


- A Villager gains Arousal if their flirtation gets a positive response.
- An aroused Villager may seduce their target of arousal.
- Anytime a new villager joins a Village, Compatibility will now be generated with other residents that they do not have Compatibility with yet.
- Fixed an issue where Level 4 Unfaithful characters still do not flirt with Beasts and Undead.
- Beasts and Undead will always react to flirtation and seduction with confusion.
- Flirt will only be initiated if a Villager is in normal or better mood.
- Villagers will be much less likely to flirt with other characters if they already have a Lover, except if Unfaithful.
- Villagers will now much less likely respond positively to flirtation and seduction of another character if their Lover is on sight.


- When Wet is added on a Poisoned object, Poisoned will be removed.
- When Poisoned is added to a Wet object, Wet will be removed.
- Some wilderness tiles now have a chance to spawn new Trees while they are Wet.
- Poisoned Trees may eventually die.
- Characters may stumble badly and get unconscious if they are Wet or move through Wet tiles.
- Crop growth rate will now be sped up if it is Wet.
- Crop growth rate is reduced if it is Poisoned.
- Crop growth rate is now affected by the Biome.
- Food created by harvesting from Poisoned crops will also have Poisoned.
- Farmers with Level 3 Food Talent can now remove Poisoned from crops.


- The player can now create a Captive Intel when right-clicking on a restrained Villager. This can now be shared to other Villagers.
- If a Captive Intel is shared to other concerned Villagers, they may attempt to rescue the captive or post a Rescue Party quest.
- If a Captive Intel is shared to the restrained Villager's Settlement Ruler of Faction Leader, they may declare war with the captor faction depending on various factors.
- Introduced various reactions for when a Villager sees another Villager belonging to a different non-hostile faction who is Restrained, Ensnared, Frozen, Unconscious. Factors include personal relationship and traits as well as Faction Ideologies.
- A Villager now has a small chance of becoming obsessed with a Villager that rescues them from Restrained, Ensnared, Frozen or Unconscious.


- Before placing a Monster Spawner on a wilderness tile, the player will now see a red square showing the size of structure that will be built.
- Shamans will now only perform their Rituals outside of Work hours.
- The player can now use Trigger Grudge to turn a character Evil.
- Vampires and Werewolves will no longer attack fellow Vampires or Werewolves that they don't know even when they see them in bat or wolf form.
- Villagers that become Unconscious will now produce 1 Chaos Orb if they are not allied with the player.
- Demon Cult Leader will revert back to its previous class when cleansed by a Stalker.
- Demon Cultist will no longer conduct Reconciliation Ritual for non-Cultists.
- Demon Cultists will no longer cleanse Corrupted Tiles.
- Characters that disapprove of a Preach action will no longer stop it from completing.
- If a character attacks a fully resistant target, they will no longer flee from it but will switch target if there are other less resistant hostiles in range.
- Revamped Share Intel response to Crime related Intels.
- When an object has been moved, its personal ownership will be cleared. This will prevent Villagers from automatically knowing the location of their owned object if someone steals it or the player seizes it.
- Opinions of Villagers towards humanoids and demonic characters may now change through normal interactions.
- Tombstones in landmark structures will no longer pop out the bodies when the structure crumbles.
- Jinx will now only drain 20 Chaotic Energy when it enters Critical Mood. It no longer drains on Bad Mood.
- Reduced chance of occurrence of Vampire Hunts and Werewolf Hunts.
- Reduced assumption chance that a wandering Villager at night might be a Vampire during a Vampire Hunt.
- Slightly reduced negative Mood effect of Despairing and Dolorous.
- An obsessed Villager may gain a Grudge if they become aware that their target of obsession makes love with a different Villager.
- Psychopaths now feel Approval when informed about Murder.
- Psychopaths will no longer feel typical negative emotions when becoming aware of Cultists, Vampires and Lycans.
- Added more monster types to the spawn list of Monster Spawners placed in Wilderness tiles.
- Monster Spawners can now be spawned on tiles with a tree. The Spawner will replace the tree.
- Threatened Villagers are now more likely to flee rather than attack if the target is a Friend or Close Friend.
- Monsters will no longer gain Newcomer trait when joining a Village.
- Snatch UI drop off location will now auto-update while still open when the player stores a new target.
- Ephemeral characters will no longer be shown nor counted in the Faction Info UI.
- Elven Kingdoms no longer include Animal Killing as a crime.
- Added Tile Dimensions to Demonic Structure tooltips.


- [FIXED] In German or French versions, game may crash after unsummoning Demonic defender.
- [FIXED] Sometimes, Fisheries may prevent a Village from building new food producing structure.
- [FIXED] Villagers that don't live in Dwellings are sometimes unable to eat.
- [FIXED] Characters immediately go home when it switches home location.
- [FIXED] Trigger Arousal sometimes do nothing.
- [FIXED] Imp can become a Demon Cult Leader.
- [FIXED] Omnipotent mode is stuck at only having 3 defender slots.
- [FIXED] When a Villager becomes a bandit, its pet no longer follows it around.
- [FIXED] Corrupted tile and demonic wall charges are not unlimited in Omnipotent setting.
- [FIXED] A raiding Dragon may flee from a Dragon in the same party.
- [FIXED] A Bandit may sometimes not help another Restrained Bandit near them.
- [FIXED] Wrong emotion text in Share Intel for Despair.
- [FIXED] Characters may get stuck in some sections of the Mage Tower.
- [FIXED] Monster Spawners may sometimes spawn monsters above its max count.
- [FIXED] Opening the Cultist tab and pressing Esc does not close the cultist tab unlike other tabs.
- [FIXED] Wolves are still called "Ravagers".
- [FIXED] Bone Golem has Cultist-related actions.
- [FIXED] Incorrect reaction log after seeing another character transform into bat form.
- [FIXED] Some essential Settlement Jobs get erroneously dropped.
- [FIXED] Recharge pop-up notification overlaps with the Top Bar UI.
- [FIXED] Summons list showing Monsters with no more charges on load.
- [FIXED] Top Bar UI is blocking the topmost portion of the map.
- [FIXED] Primordial Pool's tile placement is inconsistent with its graphic asset's position.

Hello everyone!

Firstly, we want to remind everyone that the game is now already available in the following languages:
- Simplified Chinese
- German
- French
- Japanese
- Latin American Spanish
- Polish
- Turkish

Also, we have a small surprise update today with various small tweaks and fixes.


- Slightly tweaked all archetype's starting loadout to improve the game's initial pacing
- Monsters buried in the Cult Temple will no longer disappear
- Added a tooltip when hovering over Villager Classes to give players info if they have something special they can do
- Updated Repulsed opinion reduction from -35 to -25
- Reduced the chance that a Villager will go berserk when experiencing a high amount of Opinion Reduction towards another character
- Increased additional tiles for every Portal upgrade from 100 to 150
- Added a log for when a Villager arrives at a new village for a visit
- Resized villager info UI so that it doesn't cover the Spells and Buildings list while both are open
- Reduced size of Villager's Relationship UI and fixed cropping issue
- Replaced some icons and portraits
- Increased small monster portrait sizes to 54x54px
- Updated Prism UI to show all the criteria needed to trigger the events
- Updated Snatch UI
- Updated Residents list UI


- [FIXED] Instructing Grounded cultist to Preach causes player mana to be drained.
- [FIXED] Faction Exclusive to Male but has Female Members.
- [FIXED] Fixed various null reference and loading issues.

Hello everyone! Features added today are supposed to be part of our V1.0 launch. As it has been postponed to January, we decided to release parts of it today and another part of it on December. We've started a tiny portion of gameplay balance tweaks here but more of it will be added on the December update and the V1.0 launch.


We made various tweaks to base building:
- Players can now mouse-drag to corrupt multiple tiles at once
- There is now a limit to the number of corrupted tiles a player can use. This increases every Portal Upgrade.
- Spreading Corrupted Tiles and Demonic Decorations cost Spirit Energy. Spirit Energy gains and Portal Upgrade costs have been adjusted in consideration to this.
- You can use a Demolish tool to delete Corrupted Tiles, Decorations and Structures.
- Added new icons and reworked Base Building UI.




The game has finally been mostly localized for the following languages:
- Simplified Chinese
- German
- French
- Turkish
- Japanese
- Latin American Spanish
- Polish

There's still a small fraction of new texts that haven't been localized. This is still a work in progress so please let us know if there are any issues that our localizers need to address.


Added a bunch of new icons to the game. Many UI have also been updated to include new icons. There's still more UI work to be done on the next update.

We're not satisfied yet with the changes made for Raid and Snatch UI so expect further improvements on that as well.



Elven, Human and Monster portraits have been updated. It should now be easier to identify different Villagers due to the more varied portraits available.



Players can now adjust hotkey bindings.



- Psychopaths are now more likely to walk to the closest edge of the Village to bury a corpse rather than pass through more parts of the Village. This will make it less likely for them to get caught.
- Reduced Landmine explosion range to 3x3.
- Added randomized structure name prefixes to make it easier to differentiate structures of the same type.
- When hovering over a character portrait, a directional arrow will be displayed to help the player quickly find that character's location in the map.
- Docile non-pet animals will now refrain from entering village structures.
- Villagers sleeping on the floor will now also get Wet when player uses Splash Water.
- Added the current number of active defenders and max number of defenders on Portal Info.
- A deposed Faction Leader will now develop a Grudge on the person that overthrew them.
- The type of monster that will spawn from a Monster Spawner placed outside will now depend on the tile's biome.
- Monster Spawner upgrades now alternately increase maximum number of Spawners as well as max monster count per Spawner.
- Preaching to a Berserked Villager will now always fail.
- Ratmen Faction will no longer build Ward Lights even if they relocate to a Village.
- Villagers will cleanse some of your Corrupted Tiles if you spread too close to their Village.
- Portal Upgrade costs have been reduced but Villagers will no longer produce a Chaos Orb when they become Starving, Exhausted or Sulking.
- Drain Spirit now takes 25% of Villager Max HP and 50% of Monster's Max HP per tick.
- A Villager will produce 1 Chaos Orb when they get Malnourished.
- Significantly increased the cooldown of all Afflictions. This is intended to make you more thoughtful of the Villagers you afflict and to also reduce the Chaos Orbs generated through Afflictions. More tweaks will be introduced for game balance on the next update.
- Dead Cultist will now be removed from the player's Cultist list once its corpse has decayed.
- Added a log when a Villager visits another town.
- Added a new Meddler Scheme to Assassinate a target.


- [FIXED] Destroy Structure goal does not count Grudge - Destroy Home actions.
- [FIXED] Werewolf pelt still in bookmark after being consumed.
- [FIXED] Villagers of Lycan Clans feel threatened by transformations of fellow Villagers.
- [FIXED] An obsessed Villager will have negative emotions if they find out their obsession is flirting with another character.
- [FIXED] Snatch Party sometimes won't move if target is being carried.
- [FIXED] Leaders without a personal home may sometimes get stuck in the Tavern.
- [FIXED] A bandit that joined the Divine Church remained at a Bandit Camp.
- [FIXED] Exterminate Quest completed even though there are still monsters inside the cave.
- [FIXED] Some behaviors related to Suicidal status and Devout traits are not triggered if the Villager does not live in a Dwelling.
- [FIXED] Remove buff was resisted and out of charge but the menu is still open and available to click.
- [FIXED] A Faction has Exclusive: Male Ideology but has Female members.
- [FIXED] Villager may sometimes not repair their home when it's damaged.
- [FIXED] Mana per hour tooltip shows wrong value.
- [FIXED] Tamed monsters from a Monster Spawner will still attack its master if the player activates the Monster Spawner's Attack Village action.

Hello everyone!

While a lot of our time was spent on unexpected issues related to localization, we were also able to spend some time to tweak UI and introduce some visual updates over the past few weeks.

We'll continue spending the next few weeks on UI and usability improvements to make the overall experience smoother for players. This may take more time than we initially anticipated and won't give us ample space to do other tweaks that would make the game ready for a V1.0. So, we decided to just turn the next update as Major Update #13: UX. We are targeting a release date of November 4 for this.

We'll have another smaller update on December but the actual V1.0 launch will now be the update after that - scheduled on January 26. Sorry for the move but at least this gives us more time to improve the game even further before more players are introduced to it on 1.0 Release.

Here's a quick preview of some of the upcoming changes:


Base Building, particularly expanding corrupted tiles should now be much less tedious. Still a work in progress, but here's a short preview:


Players can also now customize their territory with demonic decorations. More decorations can be added as you level up the Portal.


Placeholder icons have finally been replaced.



Spells UI has been updated!



Portal Upgrade UI has been updated with the new art.



The Prism has been re-conceptualized to instead trigger a few special events after satisfying important conditions. Previously, events like the founding of a Bandits Faction or the arrival of Ratmen are often largely RNG. With the Prism, the player will be provided specific criteria that must be satisfied. Once met, the player can then instantly trigger events such as spawning a new Lycan Clan or having Undead invade other factions.


Currently working on this. We have combined the Demons and Minions UI into one and made it much more compact and readable. There will just be two rows on the top of your screen for small icons of Reserves and Active Summons. This should make it much easier to see everything at once.


Customizable shortcut keys are now available.



Translations for existing texts are now mostly complete and being reviewed. However, we have some new features (ex: Prism) that require translations and these will begin next week. We are not sure if that will be ready by November 4 but we will already release whatever is ready by then and just update on our December Update.

Hi everyone! Apologies that this was delayed from our initial end of July target. With this update, the game's full structure is complete, paving the way to final gameplay balance and tweaks, and then hopefully more content after we launch 1.0 (albeit at a slower pace).

One major issue remaining is the rudimentary state of base building, which will be a focus of the last pre-1.0 update. The game isn't really a base building game at its core so we don't intend to expand on this significantly but we agree that it needs to be much more user-friendly to customize your territory if you want to.


We've introduced the new Goals tab on the top menu. The Goals tab consists of six Goal categories, each having multiple thematically-related tasks. Winning the game is now quite straightforward - the player must just complete 13 of any of these tasks. This allows for some flexibility regardless of your Archetype.

As usual with these new features, it would take a few iterations to balance - new tasks may be introduced, numbers may be tweaked, etc. The current version is probably going to be quite easy for veterans. At the same time it would give new players some ideas about what's doable in the game. PRO-TIP: Hovering over each Task will give hints on how to accomplish it.

Once this is in a much more final state, a portion of the Spirit Energy needed to upgrade the Portal will then also come from completing these tasks.


Victory is no longer directly linked to upgrading your Portal but the tasks you can accomplish are still dependent on the Powers you unlock. So we had to tweak this a bit. As you reach Portal level 6, you will now get to choose from some of the most useful Powers from the other Archetypes. This should give players more tools overall and should allow them to accomplish more Tasks regardless of their Archetype. Portal Level 7 used to be simply the Victory Condition. Now, unlocking it will also provide new Powers from the other Archetypes as well.

In a way, this also reflects how the Ruinarch player is getting back their full potential as the Portal's connection to the world gets firmer.


We've went through some of the more boring spells and introduced some ways to make them either more useful, or just more fun.

[h2]Manifest Food[/h2]

There are two new actions players can do with the Food produced by Manifest Food.

First is Lure. You can lure a Stored Target so that they will be forced to go and eat the Food. They have to be within a certain distance for this to work, though.

Second is Infuse. Use this to apply a negative effect on whoever eats it. You can choose from Bloated, Food Coma or Rabid. Infuse becomes available at Manifest Food Level 3.

[h2]Locust Swarm and Poison Cloud[/h2]

You can now control the direction of the last casted Locust Swarm or Poison Cloud. It will follow the mouse cursor if you move it close enough to them.

[h2]Brimstone[/h2]

We added more of a fun effect for Brimstone rather than something super useful. It now leaves behind Cinders on the ground it hits. These Cinders continue to spread fire to adjacent tiles but can be removed when hit by Water or Ice elements. As you upgrade Brimstone, it becomes immune to these elements as well, until at Level 4, it even explodes and deals damage when hit.

[h2]Iceteroids[/h2]

We added more of a fun effect for Iceteroids rather than something super useful. It now leaves behind Ice Blocks on the ground it hits. These Ice Blocks obstruct movement and can only be removed when hit by Fire or Lightning elements. As you upgrade Iceteroids, it becomes immune to these elements as well, until at Level 4, it even explodes and deals damage when hit.

[h2]Earthquake[/h2]
Earthquakes are now meant to be extremely powerful against structures but pretty useless against living beings. Structures will always get destroyed by Earthquakes. It doesn't deal damage to Villagers, except if they are within a structure that it destroyed. In that case, they will instantly die as the building crumbles over them.

[h2]Splash Water[/h2]
Splash Water will now wake up sleeping Villagers and make them Irate. Villagers are also now unlikely to sleep on Wet beds.


This is just a small tweak on how Villagers get alerted about hostiles in their Village. Before, anyone entering could instantly trigger the alert. Now, these Ward Lights serve the role of setting off the alarm. Any hostile that enters its range will alarm the Village and wake up some combatants to defend.


We have completed our localization text and it is now being translated to different languages. The following will be available in the next update:
- German
- Simplified Chinese
- French
- Japanese
- Spanish (LatAm)
- Polish
- Turkish


- Migrations will no longer occur within 3 hours of losing all Major Factions.
- When new migrants arrive, there is now a chance that they won't occupy abandoned Villages. This will increase the frequency of abandoned Villages getting permanently destroyed.
- Increased rate of Preach action.
- Reduced relationship decrease when Preach fails.
- When you share Intel about assault by hostile characters, the recipient will attack the hostile if it is nearby and its assault target is an Acquaintance, Friend or Close Friend of theirs.
- Unoccupied landmarks will now last up to 5 days (previously 3).
- Added description for Hallowed Ground.
- HP damage dealt to objects will now also be displayed similar to HP damage to characters.
- Added a new setting to adjust Log limit. This will adjust how many events are stored by the game. Reducing the Log limit may help performance issues.
- Placing lumberyard and mine should not take into consideration existing blueprint limit.
- Cultists will no longer destroy manifested Food.
- Criminal Cultist Leaders will no longer join the Bandits faction.
- Entering public structures will no longer be considered Trespassing.
- Because spawning them are required Victory-related Tasks, you can no longer select Lycan or Vampire Clan as starting Factions.
- Mushrooms taken from caves will now eventually respawn.
- Spooked Villagers are now much less likely to sleep.
- Adjusted volume of Migration Events.


- [FIXED] Sometimes, when a Villager leaves a party, the reason text is blank.
- [FIXED] Landon did not earn any money after bringing a wolf back from hunting quest.
- [FIXED] Blank relationship label.
- [FIXED] Divine and Nature Cults have their Faction Info unlocked by default.
- [FIXED] Sometimes, hovering over an empty tile will display tooltip related to a non-existent object.
- [FIXED] There is an empty notification related to Heatwave death.
- [FIXED] A pet Wyvern joined the Demon Cult faction but its master did not.
- [FIXED] Wrong reaction when assaulting Monster Spawner.
- [FIXED] Susan was raised as a skeleton while being carried by another skeleton.
- [FIXED] Hunters are picking up wolfs already placed in the city center instead of the freshly killed wolves in the den.
- [FIXED] Turning a faction into a demon cultist faction does not decrease the number of existing faction.
- [FIXED] Witches that increase chaotic energy cost can be killed to reduce costs again, but when reloading after killing them, the costs go back to being increased.
- [FIXED] Faction exclusive to Female but there are males in the faction.
- [FIXED] Two non-combatants are stuck due to pathing issues.
- [FIXED] Cultist keeps releasing the target of Snatch Villager.
- [FIXED] Repeated log entries called "[Village Name] has completely fallen into ruins."
- [FIXED] Whole village disappeared even though a faction resides in it.
- [FIXED] Error sometimes occurs when storing a city center as target.
- [FIXED] Various errors that causes the game to get stuck.
- [FIXED] Various loading errors.
- [FIXED] Various incomplete text replacement errors.