Ruinarch News

Hello! This is a small update fixing bugs reported over the weekend.

• [FIXED] Time and characters get frozen due to single Apprehend Jobs sometimes being taken by multiple characters.
  
• [FIXED] Stuck in loading due to mishandled letters in the Turkish language.
  
• [FIXED] Indestructible monsters like Golems will still take damage when Drain Spirit is used on it.
  
• [FIXED] Cultists are unable to create Cultist Kits.
  
• [FIXED] Deployed defense party is not unsummoned if the Prism is destroyed.
  
• [FIXED] Ratmen doesn't spawn in Custom.
  
• [FIXED] Various other null reference exceptions.
  

Hello everyone! This is our biggest update yet and marks a turning point in the game's development. This is Part 1 of the game's Progression systems - introducing the inital setup of the player's long term game flow and progression. Part 2 will come next - the Villager progression update that is focused on letting the world inhabitants keep up with you. Once both Progression Systems are in place, players will finally get a really good feel of how the game will play like when it reaches V1.0. The next updates will then primarily involve filling in the remaining feature and content gaps.

This is such a big update that was truly tough to finish within these last three months - we admittedly got a bit too ambitious this time. We do apologize if there are some imbalances due to not having enough testing time. In particular, there may be some issues regarding game pacing. We actually intend to have another small update next week to introduce some more balance tweaks and performance improvements. Your feedback will be especially helpful!


For Custom Games, the Portal now has multiple levels starting from Level 1 up to Level 8. New Powers are permanently unlocked each time you upgrade the Portal to the next level. You spend Spirit Energy to upgrade the Portal and it takes multiple hours to complete. We've linked Archetype-relevant Powers to specific Portal levels. This allows us to have a better control in keeping the different Archetype playstyles intact and also better manage their pacing.


For Custom Worlds, the new victory condition is simply to upgrade the Portal to Level 8. Since there are different ways of obtaining Spirit Energy, this is intended to make the player less focused on eliminating Villagers and allows us to develop the game further towards providing the player a variety of creative approaches.


Mana has now been reworked to be a capped resource that automatically regenerates every hour. It is used for casting Spells, Afflictions and Abilities, as well as for summoning Parties and building Structures. There is a maximum capacity for Mana so it serves to limit the player from spamming Powers. There is a new Demonic Structure called Mana Pit that increases Mana capacity and hourly regen. Upgraded Powers cost more Mana so be sure to build enough Mana Pits to keep up.


Chaotic Energy is a new player resource used to upgrade Powers and unlock improvements for various Demonic Structures. The Biolab, for example, now also uses Chaotic Energy for upgrading your Plague instead of the previous separate Plague Points resource.

You gain Chaotic Energy from Chaos Orbs, which are produced from different interactions with the world. For example, using Trigger Flaw will produce one Chaos Orb immediately, and then if the target successfully completes the associated action, it will produce two more Chaos Orbs.

Chaotic Energy is intended to promote interactions with the world. We reward the player for performing various activities with Chaos Orbs which they can then subsequently use to obtain new Powers or improve existing ones. How Chaos Orbs are produced is probably the mechanic that would need a ton of tweaks and balances over the course of development as it is particularly prone to becoming either a major blocker for some players or easily exploitable by others (depending on certain situations).


Spirit Energy is another new player resource used to upgrade the player's Portal. It's the rarest and most essential resource to achieve the Custom Game's new win condition.

For now, you also obtain Spirit Energy from Chaos Orbs but this is only temporary. We will eventually separate Chaotic Energy and Spirit Energy sources in a future update.


You only get Powers relevant to your chosen Archetype when upgrading the Portal. The Unleash feature was introduced to give the player access to limited charges of other Powers including those from the other Archetypes. These cost a small amount of Chaotic Energy.

When obtaining Bonus Charges for Demonic Structures, note that it will not increase your max capacity for that Structure type, so if you have built 2 Kennel Capacity and 2 Bonus Charge Kennels, the first 2 Kennels that will be destroyed are counted as the Bonus Charge Kennels and cannot be rebuilt.


Demonic Structures no longer take up an entire tile area and you can no longer build them anywhere you want. All your Structures will have to be built expanding outwards from the Portal. Once built, a new Demonic Structure will corrupt all tiles around it, allowing you to further build adjacent to it. You may also corrupt individual tiles manually as long as it's already adjacent to a corrupted tile. This costs a small amount of Chaotic Energy. You can also build Walls on corrupted tiles.

We will introduce some more means for players to customize and decorate their base later but since Ruinarch is more about interacting with the generated world, we do not intend for players to spend too much time fiddling around or defending their base.


Spawning monsters have been significantly reworked. Instead of spawning one at a time, you must form a party of them and then summon them anywhere in the wilderness. You can no longer summon these monsters directly inside a Villager or any other structure. We initially wanted them to spawn from the Portal but the travel time can be really frustrating, especially on larger maps.

You spawn Raid Parties using the Maraud. These Raid Parties will harass Villages - destroying random objects and attacking Villagers. Their primary purpose is to produce Chaos Orbs and just simply disrupt the Village a little. Party members will continually produce Chaos Orbs as they deal damage in the target Village. A Raid Party requires a Lesser Demon to lead it.

The Prism is a defensive structure that allows you to spawn a Defense Party that will patrol around it. These Defense Parties are unique as they do not need a Lesser Demon party leader and they automatically spawn on the Prism rather than the player choosing the spot where to summon them.

Summoning monster parties cost Mana.


Snatching has also been reworked. A Snatch Party must be created from your Kennel or Prison to snatch a Monster or Villager. A Snatch Party also requires a Lesser Demon to lead it.

Instead of breeding monsters through the Kennel, the Kennel increases your capacity to spawn the captured monster type by 3. You then consume these charges whenever you add them to a Party. It takes time for a Kennel to regenerate its consumed capacity so you may end up defenseless if you use them all up and they get wiped out all at once.

The Defiler structure has been removed and its use has been added to the Prison. So now you can either Torture or Brainwash an imprisoned Villager inside the Prison. You can also drain their Spirit. This will slowly kill them while producing Chaos Orbs. You may also produce a Blackmail Intel which can then be used as a Blackmail material for your Schemes targeting someone close to your prisoner.

You can still use Seize Villager and Seize Monster to simply take your targets directly to these structures but note that these Abilities are now unlocked on higher Portal Levels. Some Archetypes do not even have access to either of them so you can only obtain limited charges of them through the Unleash system.


Crypts and Imp Huts are like Kennels but they produce up to 3 charges of Skeletons and Imps, respectively. The Lich has access to a Crypt from the start so that they'll have Skeletons to defend the base. The Puppetmaster has access to Imp Huts. The Ravager has immediate access to both!


The Spire allows you to upgrade your Spells, Afflictions and Abilities. We've already implemented some significant improvements to Afflictions as you level them up. As a result, some Afflictions have become noticeably weaker in their base Level 1 versions, but their Level 4 versions are now mostly much more interesting and powerful than before.

Spells and Abilities upgrades are a bit boring in comparison but we intend to do some improvements on them in a future update.


The Eye has been renamed to Beholder. Instead of logging Notifications and Intel for the entire map, a Beholder now gives the player only 3 Eye charges. These Eyes must be spawned in an unoccupied tile and they can only gather Notifications and Intel for a small square area around them. Please note that you may unsummon an Eye to spawn it somewhere else. You would need multiple Beholders to spawn more Eyes.


The monsters you breed will now mainly behave based on what type of Party they were spawned in. All monsters spawned in a Defense Party will patrol or defend around it. All monsters spawned in a Raid Party will go to the target Village and attack objects and villagers there. All monsters spawned in a Snatch Party will assist in abducting the target Villager or Monster.

However, as part of that party, monsters still have some behavioral differences based on their Monster Type. A Tank monster may taunt hostiles, a Healer can heal partymates, a Snatcher has a higher rate of knocking out its target, etc. Note that these only take effect when these monsters are part of your summoned parties. Their Wild Monster behaviors are still the same as before.


Characters now have Resistance values to the various elements in the game. These Resistances reduce the damage they take. Piercing negates a target's Resistance. A 100 Fire Damage Spell with 100% Piercing will deal 80 total damage to a character with 120% Fire Resistance. In addition, there are Resistances that may prevent your Powers from succeeding. For example, a Villager's Physical Resistance increases the chance that a Seize Villager ability targeting it will fail.

At this point, you can pretty much disregard Piercing and Resistances as the Villagers will only start gaining Resistance on the upcoming Villager Progression update.


This is a replacement to the Threat Meter. We want players to have more freedom to do more things in the world so we're moving away from having increased threat from every single thing the player does. The main purpose of Retaliation is to discourage the player from too much destruction and killing. At a certain point in the game, the player would be powerful enough that they can probably easily kill Villagers, especially now while the Villager Progression is not yet in place - and while that is a fun thing to do from time to time, it's not quite what Ruinarch is about.

For the new Retaliation mechanic, we have a few specific events that may increase the player's perceived threat:

• killing a Villager
  
• destroying Village structures
  
• removing or destroying resources from a Village town center
  
• a non-allied Villager discovers one of your demonic structures
  

Whenever any of these events occur, there is a small chance that the Retaliation Counter would increase by 1. Divine Retribution will now occur when the Retaliation Counter reaches 5. The Angels will now zero in on destroying demonic structures, often disregarding your defenses unless taunted - so you have to eliminate them quickly. The number of Angels would increase each time a Divine Retribution occurs.

This is also another feature that probably needs some further tweaks so expect us to have some changes in how the counter increases over the next few updates.


World Map tiles have been removed. Biomes and Cave structures are now no longer limited to square areas and should therefore look more natural.


The player can now store Characters and Objects in a new Targets List. This allows the player to quickly navigate to those they deem important. The Targets List will also be used to instruct your monster parties. For example, you can send a Snatch Party to abduct a Villager or Monster in your Targets List.


A new Bookmark widget has been added below the Game Speed buttons. This section will display various important events. All your stored Targets will also be visible here so you can navigate to them quickly by clicking on their Bookmark entry.


We have removed the previous Tutorial stage and replaced it with a much simpler Tutorial Menu with subcategories detailing different features of the game. The players can access at anytime in the game. This will make it easier for us to keep on adding more Tutorials without having to make players go through a lengthy Tutorial Stage.


Scenarios have also been reworked to fit the new systems. We tried to keep it as similar to what they were as possible while still integrating the new mechanics. The intent is for Custom Worlds to be for long games while Scenarios are for shorter playthroughs:

• the Victory Conditions and unique situations are still the same as before
  
• you still start off with a bigger loadout with optional slots
  
• but there is no Portal Upgrade so you don't unlock any new permanent powers and there is no Spirit Energy
  
• you can unlock bonus charges via the Portal Unlock and upgrade starting loadout via the Spire
  
• unlike in Custom, Mana costs do not increase when upgrading Power's level via the Spire
  

We didn't have enough time to seriously playtest these scenarios yet so we do expect some imbalances. We'd include some tweaks on our small update next week!

Please note that now that we're finally putting in most of the major features into the game, our development focus will go further and further into Custom, as this is where we intend the game's replayability to be at.

• Game time tick is now equivalent to 3 minutes instead of 5. This means that an hour will now last 20 ticks instead of 12.
  
• Induce Migration and Stifle Migration are now Abilities that is available to all Archetypes. Right-click on a Village Center to access this.
  
• Player must spend Chaotic Energy to unlock Villager and Faction information.
  
• Significantly reduced Triton appearance rate.
  
• Blessed is now included in Traits that can be targeted by the Psychopath.
  
• Biolab starts with all upgrades at zero.
  
• Biolab now unlocks Spawn Plagued Rats spell and Plague affliction.
  
• A new Spawn Necronomicon spell has been added. Available as part of the Lich's Upgrade Path.
  
• Damage and Heal popups will now show up when characters take damage.
  
• Toggle ALT to hide or show Villager names under their sprites. Stored Targets will still be shown even if this is Toggled off.
  
• Demonic Structures no longer receive damage from the player's Spells.
  
• Villagers in Icalawa are no longer Robust by default.
  
• Decreased starting max Village caps for Large and Extra Large Custom Maps. Reason: the longer game duration means fewer starting Villages and Factions that expand slowly over time is preferable.
  

Hello everyone! The update is taking longer than we originally anticipated. To give us some more time to tweak the progressions for all three archetypes for fun and balance, we are moving the release date to the last week of April. The extra time will also allow us to introduce tutorials for some of the new mechanics as well as rework the scenarios to fit the new systems.

In the meantime, let me describe some more features that you may expect for the update.


Like Spells (Meteor, Lightning, etc) and Abilities (Zap, Ignite, etc), Afflictions can also be upgraded using the new Spire structure. The upgrades, especially the last one, introduces some significant improvements to the Afflictions. For example, Music Haters may eventually attempt to knockout or even kill characters that sing or play guitar, while Unfaithfulness may cause the character to actively search for multiple partners (including monsters and family members!).

The current Spells and Abilities do not have as drastic improvements when you upgrade them but we will also go through them in a future update.


Imp Huts are new structures typically available to the Puppetmaster. This allows the Puppetmaster to spawn Imps for defense. Puppetmasters will not have easy access to Kennels so this structure is its primary source of creatures.

Crypts are new structures typically available to the Lich. It provides Skeletons for the Lich in the same manner that the Imp Huts provide Imps for the Puppetmaster.


We've previously mentioned that players must now spawn Parties composed of a Lesser Demon party leader and monsters to raid Villages and snatch Villagers. To recap, a Maraud must be built to spawn raid parties while Kennels and Prisons must be built to snatch Monsters and Villagers. We initially planned to just have monsters behave depending on the party job. However, it didn't feel satisfactory enough after losing the variety of monster behaviors we used to have.

We felt its still necessary to include some variations in minion behavior based on monster type - even if it's just combat related. To this end, we introduced a few minion combat behaviors. There are now Tanks that have high HP that can taunt hostiles into attacking them instead of their squishier party mates. There are also Healers that can occassionally recover HP of their partymates. There are monsters that gain bonus stats if they are used for defense. And more!

As you can see on our Roadmap, another future update is related to Monsters. Let us know if you have some ideas of other combat behaviors you would like for us to include later on. There will also be more ways for the player to utilize wild monsters later, so the interesting wild behaviors like snatcher Spiders and trapper Kobolds would still be usable to some extent.


This is one major point of rebalancing tweak we had to do to reduce chaotic randomness in the player's progression. Initially, we wanted all Spells, Afflictions and Abilities to be unlocked one at a time (choosing from 3 different random options). As we are testing it, it felt likely that there may be instances when the player may not have access to enough things to progress properly.

To solve this, we moved the more important Powers to the Portal Upgrade system as well. So as you upgrade the Portal, you learn Spells, Afflictions, Abilities and Demonic Structures that are relevant to your Archetype.


Meanwhile, the unlock system will still provide you with 3 random Powers that you may spend Chaotic Energy on. These choices will include Powers from the other Archetypes but you will only obtain a consumable number of charges of it. To summarize, the Portal Upgrade system unlocks Powers relevant to the player's Archetype while the Unlock System provides partial and limited access to Powers from the other Archetypes.


Each tick now represents 3 in game minutes instead of 5. This means that it takes 20 ticks per hour. We're extending the duration so that Villagers can have more things to do within a day and also to lessen the proportion of time the Villagers have to spend on daily Needs Recovery. This should make Villagers more survivable as they are able to do more and move more before they starve or get exhausted. This is also a preparation for the next milestone where Villagers are expected to have more things to do each day.


The Necromancer will eventually be a more integral part of the Lich archetype so we are giving it a new spell that allows it to create a Necromancer at will!


Villager and Faction Info will no longer be readily available to the player. You would need to spend some resources to reveal these! Turning someone into a Cultist will reveal their Info freely, though.


We have read concerns regarding the game ending abruptly with our initial proposed changes to the Win Condition and we agree. So in order to resolve that issue, we are also now linking the Win Condition to the Portal Upgrade system. Unlocking the final upgrade to the Portal will now be the Win Condition. At the same time, we will still give the player the option to continue playing the same map even after winning.

Hello everyone! We've just recently completed all the major features that will be part of the Player Progression update and we are now in the middle of bug testing it and checking whether everything fits along nicely.

One major thing we do want to let people know is that the Progression System definitely changes the way the game plays in a major way. The current version players have leans heavily towards a static sandbox feel. The update on the other hand will make the Overlord simulation more pronounced - and it will also make the gameplay slower, longer and more dynamic.

Once we are done with bug testing and initial systems check, we will then be iterating on it - improving and reworking on things that aren't quite working well. We will continually do this until we feel that it is in a good enough state for players to check out. This is where the timing may get a bit dicey. Ideally, we would hopefully finish by end of the month but the iteration may likely extend by a week or two, If so, expect the update to also be delayed by as much.

In the meantime, we want to discuss some more aspects of the update that we haven't mentioned in the previous update yet.


As much as we love our Hex World Map assets, it was really a remnant of a previous iteration of the game that we kept far longer than necessary due to loving how they look as well as budgetary constraints. We really have to let it go now for various reasons:

• the hex tiles do not match the associated square areas inside the maps
  
• the demonic structures have been reduced in size and they no longer have to occupy entire square areas
  
• the alternating square areas per row to reflect the hex tile arrangement in the world map is not ideal
  
• with multiple separate regions now gone, the world map is much less useful now
  
• dropping the assets will improve loading and processing and save on memory
  

Simply put, there won't be any World Map anymore. However, expect a simpler minimap to be introduced in a later update as it's a necessary QOL feature especially for bigger maps.

Now that we've ditched the hex tiles and no longer have the restraint of having single structures/features per square area, we were also able to improve the overall look of the maps. Here's an example of how the new caves look now:




Take a look at some of the new assets we've prepared for the new smaller demonic structures!



There has been some further rework of some structure mechanics, particularly the renamed Beholder (previously Eye). We'll leave the details of these for you to discover once the update is in your hands!


As mentioned before, we are splitting player resources into three: Mana, Chaotic Energy and Spirit Energy. I think it would be useful to share with you our current design goals for these resources.

[h2]Mana[/h2]
Mana is the resource the player must use to cast Spells, Afflictions and Abilities. It is also used to spawn monster parties and build demonic structures. This is a resource that limits how many actions the player can perform in a short amount of time. The player has limited amounts of Mana (based on the number of Mana Pits) and it will be exhausted rather quickly. However, it also auto-replenishes quickly in just a couple of in-game hours.

[h2]Chaotic Energy[/h2]
Chaotic Energy is one of two Progression-related resources. This is intended to be gained by interacting with the world. We want the player to have a lot of freedom in how he wants to approach the game so there are a lot of different ways to get Chaotic Energy. Basically, as long as you are doing "bad" things to the world, you should be able to get this resource.

[h2]Spirit Energy[/h2]
Spirit Energy is the second Progression-related resource. This resource is used to upgrade the Portal - which unlocks various Demonic Structures and new Lesser Demons. This is a rarer resource and we want each Archetype to have limited means of obtaining it. Players may capture a Villager, put them in a Prison and then drain their Spirit.

We hope to have the other means of obtaining Spirit Energy introduced soon but if we can't push it out quickly, we may have to reintroduce Spirit Energy at a later update and just have Chaotic Energy temporarily take up its uses first.

[h2]Threat[/h2]
Threat was introduced early on to prevent the player from spamming powerful spells. With the Mana rework and a proper progression system, the current Threat mechanic is no longer necessary. Do note that we have an important future update linked to Angels and other attacks related to Divine and Nature Worship that will eventually take up a similar theme as the old Threat mechanic - but that's for a later discussion.


We felt that the victory condition of having to wipe out all Villagers conflicts with our intention for players to take their time in playing around with Villager lives. We want to promote a free form of world interactions rather than make it feel like a murder/killing simulator. So instead of directly tying the player's victory to wiping out Villagers, we instead will tie it with Chaotic and Spirit Energy. These progression resources are gained through all sorts of evil interactions so it suits our intent better.

Thematically speaking, the idea is that the Ruinarch must summon itself onto the world to complete the invasion. Mechanically, this is represented by a summoning meter that slowly fills up whenever the player obtains Chaotic and Spirit Energy. Once the meter has been filled, the Ruinarch is summoned and the player wins (for now). We plan on having something a bit more involved here later on but this first phase should be suitable enough for the upcoming update.

When tied with the next Villager Progression system, the expected challenge here is that the player must commit various evil acts while keeping up and defending against Villager counterattacks. You can still kill if you want, but the beauty of the new victory condition is that you now don't always have to!


One of the most requested features will also be available in the new update. Players will now be able to store Villagers, Monsters, Objects and Structures as Targets that they can keep track of. In addition to this being used as part of the instructions when creating Monster Parties, a Bookmark System will also track the list so the player can easily access them when they want. Here's a preview of how it looks like:



We still have a lot of work to do! The tutorial and scenarios have been severely affected by the new features so we must also work on those things after we are done with the features iteration. We're very hopeful that all this hard work will be worth it in the long run and we pray that the players will also enjoy the changes.

We hope that you can be patient with us for a while longer! The next two updates will be the toughest contents development-wise but Ruinarch will begin to feel like it's on the way to completion once we are done with these.

Hello everyone! This is the first month that we wouldn't have any significant milestone update. This is because our next milestone is pretty huge. We're finally introducing player progression system into the game. We're hoping to release it by end of March but there is also some chance that it may be delayed in case we need to refine it further.

As we haven't implemented a progressions system yet, the current version of the game simply allowed the players to choose an initial loadout - and this is the only ability set they will have access to all throughout that game. Aside from the Biolab progression, this makes playthroughs fairly static experiences all throughout.

With the upcoming progression system, players should now expect to start off significantly weaker - with a fewer subset of abilities, and a slower early game pace. But as the game continues on, expect to have access to multiple avenues of progression - unlocking new abilities, upgrading existing ones, expanding your minion capacities, obtaining new lesser demons and structures, and amassing various player resources. The progression system is expected to slow down the game's pace but it also makes it longer and more varied.

Below are some of the details regarding what's coming. We'll give out some more details by mid March.


We've split player resources into three different types: Mana, Chaotic Energy and Spirit Energy.

Mana is used to unlock new abilities, cast spells and afflictions and summon minions. The player gains Mana every hour. The amount gained can be increased by builiding more Mana Pit structures. This is a resource that you should have a steady and consistent supply of as long as you have a pretty stable base.

Chaotic Energy is gained through various interactions with the world. Cultists can produce it for you through prayers. The damage dealt by your spells and minions also generate Chaotic Energy. Certain Plague symptoms may also create more of these. Mental breaks also generate a huge amount of Chaotic Energy. The player may then use Chaotic Energy to upgrade abilities as well expand abilities provided by special structures such as the Biolab and the Meddler. This is a resource that you should be able to get by interacting with the world. We're giving you multiple options to get this so that different playstyles can be viable.

Spirit Energy is gained by draining the life essence of imprisoned monsters and villagers. This special resource will be used for lesser demons, passives and demonic structures. This is a resource that forces you to be 'evil' to obtain it.

The additional resources are necessary components that should provide some depth to the new player progression systems that we are about to add.


The player will now begin with a smaller starting fixed loadout based on the chosen Archetype. New abilities are instead unlocked by spending Mana at the Portal. You may unlock a new ability once every 24 hours. You will be given a set of three random choices. Some have prerequisite abilities before they show up.

This is one core of the player's progression system. It is intended to make sessions lengthier and more varied. While abilities closely linked to your Archetype are more likely to appear, you will also occasionally be given choices coming from other Archetypes. You start out significantly weaker and limited compared to current versions, but expect to have a much wider repertoire by end-game.


We have introduced Piercing and Resistances as both player and villager progressions. All characters have different Resistance values for all the elements. There are also Resistance values related to Mental and Physical effects. Higher Resistance reduces damage from the related element. It also reduces the success rate of various effects. For example, someone with a high Physical Resistance is now more likely to resist the player's Seize action.

Piercing is a direct counter to Resistances. To completely negate a target's Resistance, your ability must have an equal or higher Piercing value.


All player abilities can now be further upgraded through the new Spire structure. Once Villager progression is introduced, expect the Villagers to continually improve their various Resistances. The player must be able to keep up by obtaining enough Chaotic Energy to be able to upgrade their abilities. Typically, the ability's Piercing value is increased, as well as some various small improvements in cooldown, charges or base damage.


Perhaps this will be the most controversial game change. Currently, depending on their type, a Lesser Demon or monster has a specific fixed behavior. Players typically breed a "charge" of a monster, and then summon it anywhere in the map.

The minion behaviors we give for bred monsters are different and limited compared to the wild monster behaviors. At the same time, the way the player can currently just store many charges of monsters and then summon them nearly anywhere is quite hard to balance. We're not quite happy with this system as it's quite exploitable. The changes we intend to make are:

- Certain structures should instead provide the player varying monster type Capacity. Capacity is the amount of that monster type that can be summoned in the world at the same time. Each Crypt for example gives the player up a small amount of Skeleton capacity. Each Kennel now also provides capacity for the one monster type that the player managed to imprison there.
- Instead of summoning monsters anywhere, we're introducing new structures that the player must use to spawn these monsters in small groups or parties. The structure provides the Monsters the "instruction" on what to do. For example, monsters spawned by a Defense Point structure will defend the area around it. Another structure called the Maraud allows the player to form Raid or Snatch parties led by a Lesser Demon. The player's active minion count is limited by their Capacity as determined by their Kennel, Crypt and other capacity increasing structures.

While certain monsters will be more effective at doing certain assigned jobs, this change does mean that most monsters can be used for various roles, instead of each monster type having its own fixed behavior. In a way, expect to lose some of the variety that different bred monster types currently have.

That loss, as well as being unable to summon them anywhere immediately, may turn off existing players. To make up for that, we will instead introduce another future feature that will allow players to more strongly influence and/or spawn wild monsters (in a future monster-related milestone) - so the things you typically do using bred monsters, you should be able to do using wild monsters in a slightly limited way.

In exchange for the reduced bred monster behavior variety, we feel that this new minion mechanic makes minion roles more focused and predictable. We also prefer the concept of the evil overlord sending out parties of monsters led by a lesser demon to harass and invade villages - rather than just spawning them out of thin air.


Demonic Structures have now been redesigned to be much smaller. They also no longer occupy an entire area. The player also must build them on or adjacent to corrupted tiles.

This means that the player typically expands outwards from their Portal instead of being able to build anywhere in the map. Also, since the player can no longer quickly someone minions anywhere, proper Defense Point placement and early summoning of defensive minions are important in case Villagers decide to attack you.

In the future, the player will also be able to further customize and decorate their base.



We'd love to hear your input and concerns regarding our planned changes. Please do know that we of course intend to test everything seriously first to confirm that all elements work together soundly. Expect features to still change as we playtest the new systems.

Tune in on another status update this March for some more details regarding new Demonic Structures, changes to the Eye and other mechanic changes we have been working on!