Ruinarch News

Note that existing Save Files will no longer be compatible with the new update.

Hello everyone! Our first update of 2022 is here. In this update, we've introduced several random events and introduced new challenges by adding the new Wiccans and Divine Church factions as well as various new Villager Traits that can make some game sessions more spicy.

Our next update will be a bit further than usual (May), We are taking a month-long break from the game to improve mental health, study modding and explore concepts for future games. Once we get back to work this March, we're going to give some attention towards improving Villager interactions via a new Favors and Grudges system. We'll also improve reactions to Share Intel to make it more consequential and we'll begin work on gameplay and progression balancing. Finally, we also plan to add more sound effects.

Here are the changes added by the new update:


A new landmark called Legendary Forge may now spawn in the game. A nearby Village may decide to claim it as their own. If so, one of their Crafters may visit and forge a new legendary weapon. The Forge can only be used once and will crumble after producing one weapon.

One of the following Legendary Weapons may be crafted at random:

• Mantra - A sword that provides immunity from all Afflictions and cleanses its holder of all Flaws.
  
• Fang - A dagger that may occasionally afflict its target with a random Affliction.
  
• Savage - An axe that deals triple damage against Demonic creatures and structures.
  
• Eclipse - A staff that steals some Mana whenever it deals damage to characters and structures belonging to the player.
  
• Citrus - A bow that may tame its target if it is an Undead creature.
  

You may sometimes encounter a Faction with Tower Defense Ideology. This Faction is capable of building Arrow Towers all over their Villages. These Arrow Towers shoots arrows targeting hostiles in range. Lightning Tower Defense Ideology is similar but provides the Faction with Lightning Towers instead.


You may sometimes encounter a Faction with a Breeders Ideology. This Faction can build Monster Pens that will occasionally spawn tamed Beasts.


You may sometimes encounter a Faction with a Wyvern Tamers Ideology. This Factions can build Wyvern Coops that will occasionally hatch tamed Wyvernlings. These will eventually grow into Wyverns after a day. Combatant Villagers of a Village Tamer faction can mount adult Wyverns. When mounted characters receive damage, the mount tanks the damage until it dies.

Mounted Villagers magically hide their mounts when they sit on a chair or sleep on a bed, just because it would be needlessly complicated to have them dismount and re-mount everytime they do these actions.


The Wiccans Faction is a Nature Worshiping rival of Demon Cults. A Devout Nature Worshiper can become a Great Witch (Cult Leader counterpart) through strong faith in Nature Worship and then found the Wiccans Faction. Like Demon Cultists, Witches (Cultist counterpart) can preach and spread Nature Worship, converting other Villagers to Witches.

Each living Witch in the map increases the Chaotic Energy cost of all the player's Abilities by 5%.


The Divine Church Faction is a Divine Worshiping rival of Demon Cults. A Devout Divine Worshiper can become a Priest (Cult Leader counterpart) through strong faith in Divine Worship and then found the Divine Church Faction. Like Demon Cultists, Clerics (Cultist counterpart) can preach and spread Divine Worship, converting other Villagers to Clerics.

Each living Cleric in the map will disable one random player Ability until they are killed.


This is an uncommon landmark that can be claimed by nearby religious-based factions: Demon Cult, Wiccans, Divine Church. These factions will fight over it as it provides all of their members a powerful buff - giving them double damage versus any target that has a different religion from them.


This is an uncommon relationship that may occur between two starting Villagers that we added as a fun flavorful event. Tip: We don't recommend killing off an obsessed character's target of obsession.


Stalkers have now been enhanced to be dangerous against Lycans, Vampires and Cultists. The following enhancements have been added:
- Stalkers cannot be turned into a Lycan, Vampire or Cultist
- Lycans, Vampires and Cultists cannot change class to Stalker
- At Martial Arts Lvl. 2, they will always deal critical damage to Lycans, Vampires and Cultists
- At Martial Arts Lvl. 3, they will be able to identify Lycans and Vampires on sight
- At Martial Arts Lvl. 4, they will be able to identify Cultists on sight
- At Martial Arts Lvl. 5, they may be able to purify Lycans, Vampires and Cultists from their Faction instead of attacking them


In order to make different Faction Types more distinct, we are limiting the type of monsters they prefer to recruit. This will also somewhat reduce the likelihood that monsters will take up a majority of a Major Faction's population.

Elven Kingdoms will usually only recruit Beasts. Rarely, they may recruit Demonics. If the Faction Leader is a Demon Worshiper, they will often recruit Demonics instead.

Human Empires will usually only recruit Humanoids. Rarely, they may recruit Demonics. If the Faction Leader is a Demon Worshiper, they will often recruit Demonics instead. They may keep a few Beasts for Food.

Vampire Clans will usually only recruit Undead. They will also always recruit any monster that is already a Vampire. They will keep a few Humanoids as prisoners to drink Blood off of. Rarely, they may recruit Demonics. If the Faction Leader is a Demon Worshiper, they will often recruit Demonics instead.

Lycan Clans will usually recruit Beasts. They will butcher captured Humanoids. Rarely, they may recruit Demonics. If the Faction Leader is a Demon Worshiper, they will often recruit Demonics instead.

Wiccans will usually recruit Beasts and Humanoids. They will always kill Demonics and Undead.

Divine Church will kill all captured monsters.

Bandits may rarely recruit some Humanoids.


We've added a few more Villager Traits to the mix. Many of these provide buffs to Villagers that will make it dangerous for the player to mindlessly attack random targets.

• Slick - A Slick character cannot be added as a Stored Target.
  
• Heavy - A Heavy character cannot be seized.
  
• Nullchild - Any Power used against the Nullchild will be disabled until the Nullchild dies.
  
• Grounded - Whenever a Grounded character is hit by a player Power, all of the player's Mana will be drained.
  
• Jinxed - Whenever a Jinxed character enters Bad or Critical Mood, it saps a small amount of Chaotic Energy from the player.
  
• Negative Nancy - A Negative Nancy reduces the Mood of other Villagers around them.
  
• Devout - Devout characters are more likely to Pray. They are the only Villagers that can spontaneously become a Wiccan or a Cleric and start the Wiccans and Divine Church factions.
  

- Added new monster: Gorgon.
- Demon Worship is no longer initially a crime for Human Empires and Elven Kingdoms. However, certain actions against a Faction may make them turn against you and declare Demon Worship a Heinous Crime.
- You can now instruct monsters spawned by Monster Spawner to attack a nearby Village. The Attack Village action is available in the Monster Spawner's Target Menu.
- Reduced cost to reveal Villager info from 8 Chaotic Energy to 4.
- Added a log when a monster is summoned to defend a village through a Shaman ritual.
- Defending minions can now be Unsummoned via Target Menu.
- Dead bodies outside houses of unknown characters will no longer trigger Murder assumption of other nearby Villagers.
- Reduced Nature Spirit HP to 1800.
- There is a small chance that a Treasure Chest may drop whenever a Villager slays one of the player's minions.
- Migration can now also occur for Lycan Clans, Vampire Clans, Wiccans and Divine Churches.
- Migrants will now have a 100% chance to appear early in the next morning once there are no more hostile Factions in the game world.
- Possible items obtained from a Treasure Chest may now include special Scrolls that will teach a Faction how to build the new special structures like Wyvern Coop, Beast Pens, Arrow Tower and Lightning Tower.
- Poison Cloud now deals Poison Damage to living characters it touches.
- To slightly rebalence Agoraphobia, we have reduced max stacks of Anxious from 5 to 3. Once an Agoraphobic character is already at max stacks of Anxious, it will no longer trigger Agoraphobic effects.
- Vampire Lords are now Melee Combatants that can equip Swords.
- At Combat Magic Lvl. 4, Mages may learn Polymorph - a combat spell that can temporarily turn a hostile into a weak animal.


- [FIXED] Overthrow Scheme still uses removed flaws when determining new faction ideologies.
- [FIXED] Vampire planning fullness recovery repeatedly even if vampire cannot reach anyone.
- [FIXED] Hunt beast party follows cursor.
- [FIXED] You have the option to Afflict Necromancers with Plague. It says it afflicts them with Plague, but the Plague actually fails unless you have bought the upgrade to infect Undead.
- [FIXED] Demon icon switches to vagrant on scheme dialog window.
- [FIXED] Vampire gets stuck in Bat form if you remove a flaw while it is in Bat form.
- [FIXED] Demon sometimes gets stuck while snatching.
- [FIXED] In some specific circumstances, a character that reaches zero health may still be considered alive.
- [FIXED] Killing villagers with a Combat Skill does not create Intel.
- [FIXED] Trapped villager can still report demonic structure.
- [FIXED] No snatch target option for Ratmen.
- [FIXED] Snatch party sometimes may not carry its snatch target.
- [FIXED] Snatch object party gets stuck if object is destroyed.
- [FIXED] Necromancer not becoming faction leader even though he is the only member left in the faction.
- [FIXED] Optimist increasing happiness instead of halving happiness reduction rate if the Villager is patrolling.
- [FIXED] Zero member demon cult faction is still at the villager tab.
- [FIXED] Hunt quest: Endless dropped quest loop.
- [FIXED] Insufficient charges tooltip stays on screen.

Hello everyone! We are currently working on our next update that we hope to have ready by the end of January of next year. Among the features that will be added are:

- Divine and Nature Cults
- A new monster
- (Rare Landmark) Hallowed Grounds
- (Rare Landmark) Legendary Forge
- (Rare Event) Villager Beast Pens
- (Rare Event) Villager Arrow and Lightning Towers
- (Rare Event) Wyvern Tamers
- (Rare Event) Obsession
- Enhanced Stalker Class
- Mages can Polymorph

We'll give out more details about the update when it arrives.

As we go into the new year we'd like to provide some general idea of our major plans for the upcoming year. Keep in mind that things may change over the course of development but at this point in time, here are some of what we intend to do in 2022:



Our biggest priority before exiting Early Access is to make each session as engaging as possible. We feel this would be done best by introducing many more interesting events that the player can influence and varied challenges that the player must overcome. Thus, the bulk of next updates will introduce more content that will shake things up a bit.



We still have some uninteresting Spells (Brimstones, Locust Swarm, etc) that could be tweaked a bit to make them more fun and useful. We will also start balancing and tweaking player progression while introducing a few more player Powers to round out the Archetypes further. Expect more dangerous Villager Traits as well to balance things out. Ex: Villagers that lock Powers used on them until you kill them, Villagers that cannot be Seized or Snatched, etc.



Currently, there aren't a lot of exciting Villager reactions to Intel. We want to improve on this. It is a tough issue to resolve because there should be different reactions to a single piece of Intel depending on the Villager's relationships, traits and status. It's not very efficient to manually handcraft reactions for each possible situation but making a holistic system that would tell Villagers to make major and logical reactions is a really big challenge. This is still something we're trying to figure out how best to approach.



We intend to make the game have more roguelike aspects by tweaking our progression. Instead of getting permanent Powers only from your chosen Archetypes, we are considering also giving limited access to Powers from other Archetypes. Let's say you're a Puppetmaster and you unlock Portal Level 2. You will then learn 2 random Tier 2 Puppetmaster Powers, and then you will be given a choice to unlock one from 3 choices: a random Tier 2 Puppetmaster Power, a random Tier 2 Lich Power, a random Tier 2 Ravager Power. You will have this choice probably 3 times. It's still a rough idea that requires internal playtesting first but the intention is to allow players to adapt to the current game situation and also to make each playthrough more different.



We're already slowly working on this in the background. Once available, this should allow players to share seeds of interesting game worlds.



One of the game's aspects that we have severely lagged behind. We are currently in early talks with a Sound Designer to address this but he will only be available around Feb so this may take some time before it gets improved.



Another aspect we're already prepping for. We're still waiting to include more content before actually passing the language files over to translators to reduce revisions. We expect this to start around May 2022 and will all be ready by the time we exit Early Access.



We are targeting August or September 2022 for our V1.0! This isn't the complete end of development though. Please note that this simply means that we are confident that it is in a really playable, fun and stable state. We will still continue to release free updates the game for awhile even after V1.0. At this point, we've decided that we do not intend to release any DLCs.



We actually do not have any experience implementing modding but the devs are starting to study it. We still have a lot of things we intend to introduce before our target V1.0 launch period so we expect to introduce Modding as an update right after V1.0. We hope this is acceptable timetable for everyone.



It's tough to think of how to bring back scenarios given that we would want the main sandbox game to also be able to generate any interesting scenarios we think of. But if it can be encountered in the main game, then it's usually just a matter of sharing the Seed - rendering handcrafted scenarios redundant. Perhaps we will go along a sort-of special challenge route where there is a specific goal you have to accomplish in a limited time using limited resources.

Hi everyone! We've received reports regarding some Save Games getting stuck when loading and have uploaded a Hotfix for it. This is a rare situation that may sometimes trigger when a character reports a crime that has already happened many days ago. Existing Save Games that encountered this issue should now work properly.

Sometimes, we fail to anticipate some rare circumstances in the simulation and it may result in some issues with our Save Data. Apologies for the inconvenience! If you encounter any other loading issues, please kindly submit a bug report using our in-game tool and upload your Save File so we can investigate and resolve it quickly.

Hello everyone. We have a small update to address a few bugs reported recently:
- [FIXED] Snatch Party sometimes goes for a previous Snatch Party target.
- [FIXED] Hunt Quest endless dropped quest loop.
- [FIXED] Some unconscious characters may end up with 0 HP.
- [FIXED] Vampire planning fullness recovery repeatedly even if vampire cannot reach anyone.

Hello all. We introduced a few minor fixes for today:


- Agoraphobic characters will no longer produce Chaos Orbs from its effects while they are recuperating in a hospice bed.
- Vampire Lord is now a melee combatant.
- Vampire or Lycan Shamans should not create phylactery if they like being one.
- Vampires should no longer create Lunch Packs.
- Village Guardians summoned by the Shaman will have a log entry to state who summoned them.


- [FIXED] Warmonger Faction members kill passive animals on sight.
- [FIXED] Prison and kennel hotkeys still work when options window is open.
- [FIXED] Plague affliction enabled on characters that are currently immune to Plague.
- [FIXED] If you Destroy or move a Troll Cauldron while a Troll is heading to it to cook a Villager then the Troll will still cook the Villager.
- [FIXED] If you seize the target of a Hunting Party, the members will follow the cursor.
- [FIXED] Ambitious Trait is not included in the pool of randomized Traits that Villagers may have.
- [FIXED] Vampires may still attempt to obtain Food when you destroy a Food Pile from their Dwelling.