Ruinarch News

Hello, everyone! We already announced this a while back on our Discord Server: Update 9 will be moved to next month to accommodate some more features and suggestions. Because Update 9 is titled Suggestions, it looks like some players think that we are nearly done with the game - why else are we already focusing on player suggestions? We'd like to clarify a few things about that.

We have a Suggestions channel on our discord page that has been going on ever since the game went live. However, we have been busy the past year finishing major game features, so we didn't really have a lot of time to implement most of them. Now that we just recently completed the important core structure and mechanics of the game, it felt like a really good time to take a breather and allot some time for player feedback - after all it's an important purpose of being in Early Access.

While the update will introduce a lot of small features and quality of life improvements suggested by players, we are also introducing some tweaks that should add challenge to the game. However, this wouldn't be significantly noticeable yet. The update after this one will flesh out our approach to game difficulty some more.

We still have some ways to go before we exit Early Access. Our current estimate is that it will likely be around middle of next year. In addition, exiting Early Access doesn't mean the complete end of development for the game - it simply means the game is already in a fully enjoyable and stable state.

Warning: Save Data from previous versions will no longer work with this update!

Hello everyone! This is just a small unplanned update that we had to push to address some recently reported bugs. These were done midway through our development of our next major update so a handful of the new features that were supposed to be part of Update 9 are already included here.


This should make map navigation much easier now.



High level Magic Users may eventually build their own Magic Academy. This allows other Magic Users to train their talents faster and to learn new combat skills. I won't give too much detail about this one as it's better for players to experience it randomly in-game.



Vengeful Mages may trigger a new interesting event if the conditions are right! That's all the hint we're going to give for now regarding this one. Like the Ankh of Anubis, this is an example of how we want to introduce more challenges to the game. On its own this wouldn't exactly make the Villagers too powerful, and you won't encounter this very often either. However, we will introduce many more player detrimental events like this to make sure that there will be interesting and varied hurdles across different sessions.


- Elven village assets have been updated.
- Butcher Shop is now more likely to be built over Fishery when appropriate.
- Each Food Producing Structure (Farm, Fishery, Butcher Shop) will only be claimed by one Villager. This would now mean that multiple Food Producing Structures will be built by a Village.
- Additional Workshops will only be created when a Village has over 16 residents.
- Increased Food produced from Butchering, Harvesting and Fishing. Also increased the number of crops that ripen each day.
- Tavern owners can now also craft and sell Healing Potions.
- Characters only need Level 1 Social Talent to become a Merchant. Social Talent isn't expanded yet so this is a temporary tweak to ensure Taverns will usually have workers.
- We've re-enabled weak monsters to sometimes spawn spontaneously on empty landmarks. This should give Villagers a way to get some combat experience in case the player does not use Monster Spawners.
- If a Villager intends to eat another sapient character, they will stop performing Butcher and Assault actions if there are witnesses that consider Cannibalism a crime.
- Tweaked the formula that determines how likely a target gets knocked-out by a non-lethal attack. It should no longer consider the attacker's HP in the equation.
- When a Bed is seized, Villagers already on the way to it should drop their current action.
- Vagrants should now consider Cannibalism and Demon Worship as Heinous Crimes.
- If there are no more Major Factions in the map, there will now be a huge chance that new migrants will arrive at the start of each day. The number of migrants will depend on the player's Portal Level.
- Some unnecessary Skeleton logs have been removed.
- A new Necromancer's Lair has been introduced. The mechanism for the Necromancer's Lair creation has also been tweaked to prevent it from creating multiple ones when there are already available Necromancer's Lair in the map.
- Necromancer's bonus gains from Absorb Vitality has been capped. It also goes down whenever it spends some of it to spawn Skeletons without corpses.
- Necromancer should now be able to raise dead Zombies into Skeletons.
- Monster Spawners will still take damage even if currently seized by the player.
- The damage that a Monster Spawner takes when spawning monsters now depends on the monster type. Spawning a Dragon will immediately destroy a Monster Spawner.
- Characters that are let go from the player's Prison will now be Dazed and won't be attacked by the player's Defenders.
- A Plagued Rat will transform into a Ratman if it eats anything with Abomination Germ.
- Increased Power Crystal drop rate from monsters if the character that killed it is an Elf.
- Ents killed inside a Kennel should no longer drop Wood Piles.
- Increased HP regen of Villagers from eating and sleeping.
- Slightly increased the rate that Vampires perform Vampiric Embrace on their own. Please note that Sulking is still a prerequisite for Vampiric Embrace to trigger.
- Updated various Power cooldown and costs.
- Various tweaks have been applied to the way Villagers change their Classes to make it more likely that characters stay with Classes that they have high Talent for.


- [FIXED] All characters can no longer be knocked out if Agitate has been upgraded to max level.
- [FIXED] Characters can still pass through walls even if their Flying trait has been stolen.
- [FIXED] Ball Lightning and Fire Ball direction cursor work erratically.
- [FIXED] Skinners do not do any work.
- [FIXED] Plague Reservoir trait disappears when a Ratman changes its class.
- [FIXED] Player may sometimes be unable to expand corruption on some spots when loading a game.
- [FIXED] Burnt resource piles within Mines may cause Miners to stop working.
- [FIXED] Hovering over some Villager name sometimes reveals a different character's nameplate.
- [FIXED] Player can gain Chaos Orbs by dealing damage to their own defenders.
- [FIXED] Corpses placed in Caves and other monster homes still take up one of the structure's resident capacity.
- [FIXED] Dropped equipment still disappear after 2 days even if a character already picked it up.
- [FIXED] Player's defenders may sometimes chase enemies even when they are already out of the player's territory.
- [FIXED] A Villager may still report Demon Worship even if Preach successfully converted them.
- [FIXED] Retaliating Angels may sometimes stop attacking.
- [FIXED] Flying monsters an be Sacrificed or Let Go if they fly over Kennels
- [FIXED] Sloth demons are categorized as Beast.
- [FIXED] If a Malnourished Villager becomes a Necromancer, the status is retained and cannot be removed, causing the Necromancer to eventually die.
- [FIXED] Trolls stop whatever they are doing after it becomes night.
- [FIXED] Villagers still attempt to sleep on their personal Bed even if it has been moved away by the player.
- [FIXED] Villagers may douse a burning enemy if the enemy started burning inside their Village.
- [FIXED] Human Villagers still gain experience and level up Talents even when the Talent is already maxed.
- [FIXED] Enslaved cultists may still sometimes join another Faction.
- [FIXED] Enslaved characters no longer gather Food.
- [FIXED] If a Ratman lives in a Village, it may keep carrying prisoners to its home.
- [FIXED] Demons may get stuck after getting zapped.
- [FIXED] Kleptomaniac trigger flaw actions disregard its current level.
- [FIXED] There is an exploit to Drain Spirit on Night Zombies multiple times. Note: bodies will now be removed from the game after Drain Spirit.
- [FIXED] There is an exploit that allows player to spawn infinite Eyes.
- [FIXED] Portal Upgrade to Level 8 takes too long.
- [FIXED] Some chaos orbs cannot be hovered over.
- [FIXED] Defending dragons are immune to all damage.
- [FIXED] Pathfinding issues in Cultist Hospice structure.
- [FIXED] Inconsistent Petrasol outline when moving a restrained Troll from inside a structure to outside.
- [FIXED] Basic Dagger does not provide any stat increase.
- [FIXED] In-game discord link is no longer working.
- [FIXED] Updated tooltip related to Cold Blooded to better state that it does not provide full immunity.
- [FIXED] Various issues related to characters getting stuck while moving towards their target.
- [FIXED] Various "no translation" texts.
- [FIXED] Various typo errors.

Hello! We have a hotfix today addressing some reported bugs.


- For a Monster Spawner's Capacity, we changed it so that it should no longer count any other residents of its current location and just count monsters it spawned. We did it that way before to prevent some exploits but it is confusing players. Please note that spawned monsters that have been recruited by other factions or captured by the player will not be counted.
- For clarity, "Active Capacity" in Monster Spawner's tooltip has been renamed to "Maximum Spawners". This refers to the number of active Monster Spawners that can be active at any one time.
- Retaliating Angels no longer gain humanoid upgrades from the Primordial Pool. Angels spawned by player should still gain the upgrades though.


- [FIXED] When mothman gifts Flying to another character, the character still can't move through walls.
- [FIXED] Various issues related to some Villagers unable to eat in some instances.
- [FIXED] Drain Spirit can produce infinite Chaos Orbs if the Villager has 100% Physical Resistance.
- [FIXED] Defending Wurms continuously blinking in place.
- [FIXED] Sometimes there are multiple entires of Plagued Rats in the Spells list.
- [FIXED] When removing flaw, sometimes the flaw is not removed from the Target's list even when the action was successful.
- [FIXED] Primordial Pool costs are not free even when the No Cost setting is turned on.
- [FIXED] Primordial Pool upgrades are sometimes applied incorrectly.
- [FIXED] There are still some instances when a Cultist will attack demonic structures.
- [FIXED] Snatch party members may get stuck pathfinding in Mage Towers.
- [FIXED] Chaotic Energy is already consumed before confirming Raid or Snatch party spawn.

Hello everyone. Celebrate with us on our Early Access first year anniversary with a week-long 30% discount and another update! Aside from the new features and tweaks listed below, we've also started the first steps in preparing the game for localization. We hope to make the game available to other languages soon.


We've added a few new monster types to the game:
- Ghoul
- Whisperer
- Broodmother
- Centaur
- Orc
- Mothman
- Tarantula

We'll just let you encounter them in the game to discover how they behave!


These are the new landmarks that may spawn in the world:
- Fiery Cave
- Frozen Shrine
- Dead Grounds
- Bandit Camp
- Noxious Cave
- Jungle Rampart
- Dragon Lair
- Beast Lair

Different landmarks are home to a small and specific subset of monster types only. For example, Tarantulas may only spawn from the already existing Abandoned Mines and the newly added Noxious Cave. This will make the available monster types per playthrough dependent on what landmarks have spawned.


Aside from the monsters spawned on initial world generation, new monsters will no longer spawn randomly afterwards. Instead, we've introduced a new Monster Spawner spell that allows the player to place a spawner inside a landmark of their choice. This Monster Spawner will then periodically spawn new monsters. The type will be determined once the Monster Spawner is created based on the monster types linked to the landmark.

The Monster Spawner slowly degrades every hour until it eventually disappears after several days. Protect it as long as possible as it also occasionally produces Chaos Orbs while it has active spawned monsters defending it.



Monsters are now categorized into 4 groups: Humanoid, Demonic, Undead and Beast. Humanoid, Demonic and Undead can pick up and use equipment. Humanoid and Demonic monsters can also take some Villager jobs like Farming, Crafting, etc. The categories are also important as upgrades from the newly introduced Primordial Pool are grouped by these four.



Previously, Agitate just forces a monster to go berserk and attack Villagers. It was not very interesting. The reworked Agitate ability will now affect monsters in different ways depending on their monster type. Some monsters are still just going attack Villagers when Agitated because that's still a useful tool for players but others will now instead be forced to trigger some of their unique behavior. For example, you can immediately trigger a Giant Spider's abduct behavior, or trigger a Kobold to place a Freezing Trap.


The Primordial Pool is a new structure that is available for all archetypes at Portal Level 3. In this structure, you can spend Chaotic Energy to upgrade various stats of monsters. All monsters from the wild and those you summon will be affected. The upgrades are divided per monster category.



Monsters will now have a small chance to drop Weapons when they die. A Weapon dropped this way may have a random unique prefix that adds a bonus effect. Some examples are:

Deadly - has a small chance to insta-kill per hit
Festering - has a small chance to apply Plagued to target
Demon Slayer - bonus damage to demonic characters
Sharp - increased crit rate
Mentor - faster talent experience

Keep an eye out on powerful weapon drops since some monster categories should now be able to equip these. Your lesser demons can also pick these up now and they will be able to retain it after despawn.



This will be our replacement for our previous Tutorial Scenario that will also be available in Custom Games. These are non-intrusive tutorials that are triggered by certain game events. These Alerts will show up in the Bookmark Menu and will explain different aspects of the game as they become relevant to the player. We'll continue to add more Alerts to help beginners learn all aspects of the game.


Just some simple visual improvements to forests and water tiles to make the world a bit more appealing to look at:

In future updates we plan to continue tweaking and improving other graphical aspects of the game including updates for Elven Villages and introduction of roads and rivers.


- Prism has been removed and defenders can now simply be summoned anywhere within the player's corrupted territory. These defenders will only roam on your territory. They cannot be seized by the player to prevent exploits.
- Maximum active defenders starts at 3 and increases by 2 every Portal level up.
- Ravagers gain Chaos Orbs from spell and raid damage at a much faster rate compared to other Archetypes.
- Warmonger Factions are more likely to raid other Villages whenever their Villages run out of basic resources.
- Villagers may sometimes decide to visit other Villages on their free time.
- Added Keybind Q to open up Snatch Villager UI without having to navigate to a Prison first.
- Prison summon slot upgrades are now shared across all Prisons.
- Charges of Prison actions like Brainwash and Torture increases by 1 per active Prison.
- Added Keybind E to open up Snatch Monster UI without having to navigate to a Kennel first.
- Kennel summon slot upgrades are now shared across all Kennels.
- Added Keybind R to open up Raid UI without having to navigate to a Maraud first.
- Added Keybind C to loop through all the player's Watcher Eyes.
- Villager Needs meter reduction are significantly slowed down while they are travelling outside the Village.
- Villagers death from Malnourished has been lengthened to 3 days.
- Kleptomaniacs may now also steal Furniture.
- Spells that previously can only be cast on fixed square areas can now be more flexibly cast in any spot.
- Success rate of applying various element-related Status Effects like Burning, Poisoned, Freezing and Zapped are now affected by relevant Resistances.
- Significantly reduced cooldown of most player abilities.
- Some of the least useful abilities no longer show up in the Portal's Unleash list.
- Players can now control the direction of Fireball and Ball Lightning spells.
- Increased movement speed of Fireball and Ball Lightning.
- Fireball now explodes when it hits a structure and deals major Fire damage upon exploding.
- Ball Lightning now explodes when it hits a character and deals major Electric damage upon exploding.
- Ball Lightning has a small chance of adding Paralysis to characters it hits. The Paralysis effect is affected by the player's Paralysis affliction level.
- Equipment on grounds outside Village Structures will automatically despawn after 2 days.
- A character that cannot damage a target (often due to Resistances) should eventually stop attacking it, then flee and will disregard it for a few hours.
- Treasure Chests have been temporarily removed. They will be re-added later and connected to a future mechanic.
- A Villager will no longer visit a Village where they are considered a wanted criminal.
- Soil paths are created on Village tiles that are frequently passed by Villagers.
- Monster Info now shows their Type, and other important stats like Piercing and Resistances.
- Added Eliminate All Villagers as a Victory Condition in World Settings.
- Added short description to most objects.
- Players can now filter Notifications per Village.
- Players can now adjust Camera Pan Speed in the Settings Menu.
- Players can now view Keybinds in the Settings Menu. We didn't have time to make this editable yet but that will be available next update.
- Updated Demons and Monsters UI so that they occupy a smaller space by turning Reserves and Active column into tabs.

Hello everyone! The next update is scheduled for the end of August. This is quite a significant time as it's going to be our first year anniversary of Early Access. This is going to be the last update with some major mechanic additions. Succeeding updates will then focus on improving existing features, balance and additional content (new powers, items, etc).

Below are some details about what to expect from our Anniversary Update.


The next update is mostly focused on monsters so of course there will be a whole new set of monster types. There will be seven new ones available! The most interesting (and quite possibly game breaking) is the Mothman. We'll keep its unique power a mystery for now :)


Monsters are now categorized into four different types: Beast, Humanoid, Undead and Demonic. This new categories allow us to add broader categories with varying aspects. For example, we want to allow Humanoids, Undead and Demonic to have Equipment but disallow it for Beasts. It can also allow us to tweak some behaviors by categories once they are recruited by major factions. We may be able to allow Humanoids to take on Village professions like Farming or Crafting.


Players previously do not have means to upgrade Piercing and Resistances of monsters. The new Primordial Pool fixes that. Here, you may spend Chaotic Energy to improve them. The upgrades are divided per Monster Category.


Alongside more monsters, we're introducing more monster-infested landmarks to the game. Each landmark may only spawn a small subset of monster types so the monsters you will encounter in a game will depend on what landmarks are there. This is again intended to make different runs more varied.


The new Monster Spawner spell allows the player to place a Monster Spawner inside landmarks. These Spawners will periodically create new wild monsters depending on the landmark it was placed on. This addition is intended to further give the player more control - as if they are the game's dungeon master. There will still be an initial random wildlife generated by the game but after that, instead of the world randomly spawning more monsters over time, it is now up to the player where and when they will be created.

There are a few other tweaks we want to introduce to player's bred monster management. While we still do not intend to bring back spawning monsters inside Villages, we will now allow players to spawn their bred monsters within their corrupted area. This will allow players to more quickly respond to attacks. Spawning monsters this way will consume a monster charge and will be dispelled after being out of combat for a few hours. The Prisms will be tweaked to instead provide buffs and healing to defending monsters, and increase the maximum number of defenders you can spawn simultaneously.

There will also be some small rework to raid and abduct party creation to make them less tedious.


Previously, Agitate just forces a monster to go berserk and attack Villagers. It was not very interesting. The reworked Agitate ability will now affect monsters in different ways depending on their monster type. Some monsters are still just going attack Villagers when Agitated because that's still a useful tool for players but others will now instead be forced to trigger some of their unique behavior. For example, you can immediately trigger a Giant Spider's abduct behavior, or trigger a Kobold to place a Freezing Trap.


Monsters will now have a small chance to drop Weapons when they die. A Weapon dropped this way may have a random unique prefix that adds a bonus effect. Some examples are:

Deadly - has a small chance to insta-kill per hit
Festering - has a small chance to apply Plagued to target
Demon Slayer - bonus damage to demonic characters
Sharp - increased crit rate
Mentor - faster talent experience

Keep an eye out on powerful weapon drops since some monster categories should now be able to equip these. Your lesser demons can also pick these up now and they will be able to retain it after despawn.


This will be our replacement for our previous Tutorial Scenario that will also be available in Custom Games. These are non-intrusive tutorials that are triggered by certain game events. These Alerts will show up in the Bookmark Menu and will explain different aspects of the game as they become relevant to the player.


Just some simple visual improvements to forests and water tiles to make the world a bit more appealing to look at: