Version 2.29 (Hot Fix 3)
- Fixed the bug that caused the game to crash in some cases.
The issue that caused the game to crash when "Play game" was pressed for some players should now be fixed. I was able to locate the cause with the help of a test build and a helpful player that provided me with logs where it happens, so thank you for that.
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Version 2.29 (Hot Fix 2)
- Added localization check at startup.
- Fixed localization editor export.
- Editors are now locked to English.
If the game attempts to use a localization file that does not work, it will now reset the localization to English and remembers it until the player sets it to something else.
Locale editor hasn't been used for awhile and its export function (Create new) no longer worked due to certain changes elsewhere. It is now fixed allowing new locales to be created.
Editors can now only be used while English localization is selected. None of the editor titles, labels, buttons etc. are localized and I don't plan to spend time to change that (and there is a small chance that something might break if a localization is used while it is being edited).
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Version 2.29 (Hot Fix)
- Updated Unity version to fix a potential security vulnerability.
- Fixed incorrect storing of taurium ores in the Artisans' Guild.
Apparently there was some kind of security vulnerability in Unity player that affects all games made after 2017. Since it meant updating the Unity editor, which is often a quite laborious task with a potential of breaking something completely random, I ended up updating the version from 2021 to 2022 instead of just applying the security patch.
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Uhh, holy changelog?
Here's the full list of changes:
- Third Leg of the Imp is now a unique rare drop.
- Added group leaders for all humanoid types.
- Added a loot bag tripwire and a spawner tripwire.
- Adventurer's Belt can now contain bags and expertise items.
- Legendary items can no longer be named as other items.
- Fixed a game breaking bug with mercenary equipment.
- Added a new weapon effect called Chopping for axes.
- Flails are now polearms instead of crushing.
- Due to weapon changes all save files will be corrupted.
- NPC AI was tweaked to make friends slightly smarter.
- Ability effects were tweaked to take less space on screen.
- Drakes, whelps and wurms received some additions and changes.
- Casting spells without energy causes more damage now.
- Plague bats are now daemons and they can be randomly found.
- Spirit wolves are now ethereal creatures with no type.
- Abyssal claw and dancing weapon are now typeless creatures.
- Tweaked several other allegiances...
- Ethereal monsters are no longer vulnerable to magic.
- Hastened effect is also shown with effect icons now.
- Fixed curio vendor's empty inventory at the start of game.
- It's now possible to discard an item after identifying it.
- Swimming and bridge crossing is now safer until level 10.
- Searching while hidden no longer always reveal you.
- A bunch of creatures no longer see through stealth.
- Encounter escape timer is now counted in player turns.
- Creatures that haven't dropped their loot can't be eaten.
- Fixed a bug that caused movement animations to flicker.
- Adjusted consumable item quality chances slightly.
- Randomly generated maps are now always small.
- Fixed Silent Move and hidden Steady Shot damage.
- Fixed elemental weapon damage bug.
- Fixed a bug with cloaks and talons.
- Fixed a bug with mouse drag merc equip.
- Fixed a bug with Amulet of Pestilence.
- Fixed a bug with drag-and-drop looting.
- Fixed a bug with Merchant's Tale challenge.
- Blessed empty potions and blank scrolls are now rarer.
- Monster Hunt is now a repeatable quest.
- Added hellhound monster and hellpuppy creature.
- Fixed some issues with premade maps.
- Elemental auras no longer damage everyone.
- Dispel Magic is now smarter in all its various forms.
- Changed some status effect colors to match their type.
- Shroomlings can now spawn as a random elemental.
- Added Omniblade legendary dagger.
- Improved Bloodletter and Hexcalibur.
- Plans can now be reduced in size with scrap pouch.
- Random levels can have only one chest now.
- Changed random loot in containers slightly.
- Reduced the number of guaranteed armour pieces on NPCs.
- Added white and exotic meats as new food items.
- Fixed some issues on heroic mode.
- Optimized path finding algorithm a little.
- Renamed the original Wizards' Guild to Enchanters' Guild.
- Wizard rods now require recharging after each blast.
- Blast attacks now receive less damage from cast modifier.
- Nice dagger can no longer drop randomly.
- Hexcalibur recipe is no longer always available.
- Added some card game stuff in the game manual.
- Added a lot of improvements to the dungeon editor's UI.
- Added patrol path functionality for creatures and editor.
- Added a parameter that allows custom screen resolutions.
- Added a parameter that allows custom window position.
- NPC talents got reworked slightly.
- One more thing.
Third Leg of the Imp is now a unique rare drop. It can only drop once per game and curio vendor can't have it for sale. If you have unlocked the Charm Collector heritage you will have it at the start of the game and it can't drop at all. If you happen to bind some useless ring on it or complete a challenge where it gets destroyed, I wish you better luck next time.
All humanoid types now have group leaders that are slightly more powerful than an average grunt of that faction. These leaders are called bandit leader, orc boss, packmaster, hellknight and undead captain. Some of them existed before but now all humanoid types have one and they can all have enchanted weapons and slightly higher chance of other magic items.
Two types of tripwires were added to the game, one that drops a bag of loot that causes physical damage (always critical as it drops on your head) and one that spawns a random group of creatures at the entrance of the level. Tripwires were all redone and they are now removed when they are triggered. They are also burnable now and fire spells can be used to remotely trigger them.
Adventurer's Belt can now contain all bags, pouches and quivers. It is now up to the player to decide whether to have various bags in the inventory and use them with one one click or on the belt and use them with two clicks. Additionally, the belt can also contain "expertise" items such as smoke bombs and some others and they can be used from the belt while Ctrl is pressed.
Legendary items must now have a name that does not exist in the game data. For example, you can't name a legendary item as 'Axe' because that name is already used for an item in the game data. Fixed a bug that caused the game to crash if a thrown weapon was equipped on a mercenary. This means that there is now a new unique thrown weapon in the game.
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Added a new weapon effect called Chopping for axes that counts critical hits as instant kill effects on a roll of 5+. This was added to make axes different from maces and to randomly chop off your head when you least expect it. Most NPCs don't have +crit on their equipment so roughly 1% of their axe attacks can now instantly end your run (1:108).
Flails are now polearms instead of crushing. This means that they can't be equipped in the offhand even if they are one-handed weapons. It also means that maces (and hammers) are now the only medium weapons to have crushing effect.
Due to the weapon changes your save files will be corrupted. It is advisable to retire and start a new game to properly reset everything, but if you want to play around with polearm swords then you do what you want.
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NPC AI was tweaked to make them behave slightly smarter. If you send your friend to stand guard in a corner, it will do that without wandering off as long as it hasn't already decided to attack someone. However, if your friend receives damage in that situation, it will proceed to attack the source of the damage and once that is dealt with, it will return to you instead of wandering off.
Similarly, if you send a friend to attack some NPC and they manage to kill it, they will first return to you and then attempt to rest and heal instead of trying to randomly rest or wander around and get lost in the process. This allows you to control if your friend should rest and heal - if you rest the friend will rest.
Friends that are following you will automatically attack your enemies if your enemies cause damage to you. This has always been the case but with this tweak, when an enemy that your friends are targeting dies and there are no other enemies near you, they will revert to following you instead of wandering off randomly. These tweaks make controlling your friends much smoother as you don't have to order them to follow you after every fight.
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Ability effects used to take up one effect slot per point. Now they all stack into one slot per buff type with values ranging from 1 to 5. If you now have +5 to all abilities through status effects, they will take up 4 slots instead of 20 (which was kind of a problem when there's only 15 buff slots on the screen).
Buff effects were also changed so that if you drink a potion that is weaker than your existing effect, it does nothing except refresh the duration of the existing effect. This can be used to cheese some extra value from blessed potions - i.e. when the +5 buff is running out, you can drink a diluted potion to refresh its duration.
Fully Buffed challenge got slightly more difficult to complete as a result of this change as a single potion can no longer give 5 different buffs.
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Drakes used to be blue and they used frost spells and attacks. Now the base drake is dark brown and it slaps instead of using spells. This drake also has improved armour and more balanced resistances compared to the old one. There's four new drakes; red, green, bronze and green that behave like the old drake but with different spells and attacks and you never know which one of them will appear in a dungeon. Blessed Ring of Familiar will now spawn a dark brown drake instead of blue.
Whelps had similar changes as drakes. The default whelp is now dark brown instead of red. There's four new kinds of whelps just like drakes but they are all melee creatures. Whelps are now dragonkins instead of daemons. Drakes have always been unfriendly towards pretty much anything other than other drakes, but now they have some friends in whelps.
Fire wurm was removed and replaced with red, blue, orange, green and mana wurms. They got slightly higher stats and in general they're more beefier versions of whelps. Mana wurm has energy breath, which drains energy and if the target does not have enough energy to drain, they will take 3 points of magic damage for each point of energy they don't have instead of 1 point of energy and 1 point of damage. Energy drain mechanic is now the same for all attacks and the enchant is now actually good.
Now that drakes, whelps and wurms have their own creature type, they also have their own rules, and all dragonkins are immune to curses, silence and polymorph.
There are also some other small changes such as bearlings are now called drakelings and Balthar is now a dragonkin instead of a daemon.
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Casting spells without energy now adds level modifier to the health cost. It used to be D3 regardless of level, which at level 20 is nothing, but now it is D3 + level / 4, which is 5-7 points of damage at level 20. It is still fairly low but lets see how it works. Manual was also updated to describe how level modifier works.
Plague bats are now daemons instead of beasts and they can also spawn randomly instead of a quest. Floaters were also changed from beasts to daemons and they like to hang around plague bats. Now that whelps are no longer daemons, something has to fill their place or RNG would produce too many humanoid daemons. Floater change was more of a cosmetic thing.
Spirit wolves are now ethereal and they have no creature type. They used to be beasts that befriended half of the dungeon but now that they have no type, they have also no friends and they behave like one would expect and they attack anything next to them (and they will come after you when all else is dead).
Abyssal claws and dancing weapons got the same treatment as spirit wolves and they also have no type. This makes them hostile towards everything. These changes should remove the oddities that happened with these spells that made them attack the player more often than enemies.
Creature allegiances were tweaked and their implementation changed slightly. Orcs no longer like spiders because they're icky. Undeads no longer hang around with wolves. Dogs are no longer neutral to everyone by default. Bears, mamalobs and glutopods no longer consider all beasts neutral. Beasts are no longer one monolith "we're beasts" faction and instead they're a bunch of small factions that fight each other.
Banshees and wraiths are no longer vulnerable to magic. Regular ghosts still say poof when anything magical is near them but ethereal monsters are now slightly tougher.
Hastened effect is now shown with a golden effect icon in addition to being shown on the combat log. If you hover mouse over the icon it also explains that you can act again after your next action. Hopefully this makes it clearer to see if you can act twice.
Curio vendor used to have empty inventory until the player spent some time in the inn. That is no longer the case and the curio vendor now has items in stock.
It is now possible to discard items in the Diviners' Guild and Enchanters' Guild windows (Identify item and Enchant item in town). When you identify that Amulet of Asphyxia, you can now discard it right away without having to close the window and open inventory again.
It is now safe to swim until level 10 as Lurkers and Dwellers no longer spawn unless the swimmer is level 10 or higher. Bridges are now more sturdier and they don't break unless the creature stepping on the is level 10 or higher. Lava bridges still require that the creature has a cursed item equipped for them to break at level 10, and two or more before level 10.
Quest bosses, spiders, air and fire elementals etc. no longer see through stealth. The current list of creatures that see through stealth is the King and his retinue, ethereal creatures, immobile creatures and guard dogs.
Encounter escape timer used to be counted in NPC turns and now they are counted in player turns. This makes it more clear as players can see their own haste effects and why the counter does not go down after every move. The encounter boss AI was also tweaked and if they can find a path to the exit they will go for it instead of fighting.
Creatures that have not properly died and dropped their loot can no longer be eaten by a shapeshifted player. It was possible to do that while hastened but now you will see "You can't eat corpses that are still dying." instead.
Movement animations didn't set their start position correctly which made them flicker depending on timing (they could randomly appear somewhere for one frame and then work correctly which made it harder to figure out what was going on). These animations are now moved to their start positions before they are set visible and that should fix the flicker.
Consumable item qualities were changed slightly (potions, scrolls and wands). The new chances for item qualities ranging from 0 to 5 are now 40%, 20%, 16%, 12%, 8% and 4% (they were 50%, 25%, 10%, 5%, 5% and 5%). This means that when a random potion is created, there's a 60% chance for it to be diluted, 28% chance for it to be normal and 12% chance for it to be potent.
So, I had to do quite a lot of playing to test after banging the keyboard with my forehead and what I found out was that large random maps didn't feel fun. The amount of backtracking on those maps can be just too much and they're now gone.
Silent Move and Steady Shot made while hidden now multiply all damage instead of just physical damage. This includes damage from enchants and they pack slightly more punch now. This was a bug that has gone unnoticed because they worked in the most common case but not as they were meant.
Elemental weapon damage was not calculated correctly and that made elementals much weaker than intended. Now that they are calculated correctly, you can expect to be hit by 20+ points of fire damage from a max level fire elemental before their aura does an afterburn. You may want to fill some space in your bags with ward amulets now.
Fixed a bug that would cause the graphics to fail if a cloak was selected over the left shoulder (offhand) and a talon was equipped in the offhand. This combination tried to do some texture operations that apparently no longer worked, and in order to fix that a new shader had to be made.
Fixed a bug where a merc is equipped with a thrown weapon using a mouse drag. This code path made it possible to equip a thrown weapon that resulted in the game crashing.
Fixed a bug with Amulet of Pestilence that prevented rats from being spawned. I don't know when or how but most likely I've been interrupted by something while fiddling with the code that caused me to forget to undo the changes before closing the editor.
Fixed a bug with drag-and-drop looting that made Nanah's Backpack and Tinker's Scroll not to trigger correctly. Dragging the quest items in the inventory did not unlock Lost and Found and Missing Notes heritages.
Merchant's Tale challenge should now trigger correctly when inventory is filled with coins from stash box or Artisans' Guild vault.
Blessed empty potions and blank scrolls sold by the arcanist in town are now much less likely to be blessed. There is always one or the other after a rest in the inn and that made it too easy to obtain them.
The random level with a monster that you can start by resting in the Frostmourn Inn and then paying some greedy adventurers is now a repeatable quest. This change means that action music will play until the monster is dead and these random quests can be used to level up your guild rank in the Expertise DLC.
There's a new monster called hellhound and a new creature called hellpuppy. They also have their own monster hunt to advance fighters' guild rank. They're nothing special but low level players may want to bring bandages to stop the bleeding.
Four premade maps had layouts that couldn't be cleared without jumping into a chasm or having extra light radius. This could prove problematic if the chasms were lava so they are now fixed so that they can be cleared. Four premade maps didn't have guaranteed random creatures so there was a small chance that they would end up being empty if the RNG decided not to add any additional creatures.
Elemental auras now use selective targeting and instead of damaging everyone around you, they only damage enemies. Friends and neutral creatures such as merchants are not affected until you decide to turn them into enemies. It is now possible to use Silent Move against elementals that are not aware of your presence (they have not seen you or heard about you from friends).
Ever since the dawn of time the priests at the Shrine of Nibar have been eager to remove magic buffs from weary travelers but now they only remove magic debuffs in exchange for a minor donation. Additionally, Dispel Magic and Scroll of Dispel are now smart spells that no longer remove buffs when self cast or when cast at the caster's friend, and they no longer remove debuffs when cast at an enemy. Neutral targets can still be dispelled from both buffs and debuffs and they can end up being enemies if a buff is dispelled.
Invisibility, levitation and polymorph have always been magic effects but they didn't have purple backgrounds to indicate that. Magic effects can be removed with dispel magic and now priests and clerics learn it at level 15 just in case you decide to levitate over a lava chasm. Debuff status effects are now colored either grey or red depending how bad they are (stuff that you usually survive are grey and the rest are red).
Shroomlings used to be part of a quest that only a handful of players ever completed but now they can spawn as a random elemental. Living air, fire, water and earth used to have a 25% chance to spawn each but now they have a 12.5% chance each and shroomlings have a 50% chance to spawn when the dice hits elemental.
Omniblade is a new craftable legendary item that has an effect that counts all symbols of power as weapon and armour enchants. Normally there can be only two of those on weapon(s) increasing spell damage and nine on armour increasing healing. With Omniblade they all count as both and 2/9 turns into 11/11. This is completely overpowered but it can't be obtained without a core of regret and at that point one is already overpowered, and being properly overpowered is just fun (at least until it gets nerfed).
Bloodletter and Hexcalibur now add increasing damage on their damage over time effects. The number of kills you have done with the damage over time effect with each weapon increases their damage over time by up to 12 per tick at 78+ kills.
Hexcalibur's legendary effect also improves Curse of Agony to cause damage every turn instead of randomly based on power level. That additional effect is not mentioned anywhere but here and if you happen to read this then you can enjoy clearing entire dungeons with a single corrupting cloud.
If you have the transmutation bag with a scrap pouch, you can transmute schematics, blueprints and DIY plans from 2x2 into 1x1 items. With the current and any future plans it should save some valuable inventory space. Schematics and blueprints still turn into gold coins once all of them have been unlocked.
Chests feel good when they have a few stacks of gold but when RNGesus decides that there are 7 chests on a level that is just too much. Random levels can now have only one chest and additional chests will be replaced with crates instead.
Most containers now have a high chance to drop food items and low chance to drop anything else. Chests have increased chance to drop rings and amulets, bookcases have increased chance to drop scrolls and tomes, and cupboards have increased chance to drop potions. Crates are the only containers that remained the same and all items in them are random without additional tweaking.
NPCs no longer have guaranteed spaulders, vambraces, gloves and boots. They will have to roll a dice for each piece and this change should slightly reduce the amount of gold available while leveling. Obviously the King does what he wants and doesn't have to roll any dice.
Giant snails, spiders, cave crabs, glutopods, mama and papalobs can now drop white meat and dragonkins can drop exotic meat. Hunters needed a new source of protein as there just wasn't enough wolves and bears to keep them satisfied (you'll know what I mean when you have to collect some meat).
Certain things such as Blood Grail, Tragical Album, Advanced Grinding, Smelting, Smithing, DIY Plans and Blues Sister encounter can no longer drop or appear on heroic mode. Curio vendor no longer has random charms for sale. Leo's Workshop no longer shows craftable runes. Pouch heritages are now available on heroic.
The path finding algorithm the game uses is somewhat good at finding paths but it can do a lot of calculations to do that. After thinking a while how it could be improved, I figured out a way to make the heaviest number crunching part 5-20x faster depending on the length of the path. The side effect of this change is that if you are blocking the shortest path to an enemy that your friends are also targeting, they should no longer wander off in the wrong direction because they found the longest path ever.
Since there is a new Wizards' Guild in the Expertise DLC and the old one handled enchants, the old one is now referenced as Enchanters' Guild in town and in the Enchant Knowledge heritage. Any quests that mentioned Wizards' Guild still do so. The Bookworm challenge now gives the Bookworm title instead of the Wizard title due to new challenges.
Enchanters' Guild can now bless normal items if all three choices are the same. This is a QoL update for wealthy keyboard users as it allows them to select a normal item to enchant and hold down enter until rare item sound is heard. The chance of blessing that ring or amulet is 1:900 so it's not exactly cheap but it is convenient for whales.
Wizard rods now require recharging after a blast. If you have 2 rods equipped you will have to rest twice to charge them both for a dual blast or once for a single blast. Staves that are used with the Conductor perk are not affected by this change and they can keep blasting away without recharging.
Blast attacks used to gain full damage from cast modifier but now that value is divided by 2 and rounded down. What this means is that instead of gaining 8D3 points of damage when your cast modifier is 8, blast attacks can now only gain 4D3 damage instead. This change also lowers the chance of spell effects such as setting the target on fire to happen with blast attacks.
The in-game dungeon editor had a lot of things that needed tweaking just to make dungeon editing slightly faster. Many obscure keybinds were removed and their functions were added to the Alt-key popup menu by adding some new paint mode tabs. These new tabs can be accessed with the mouse wheel while holding down Alt-key. I'm getting old and it's hard to remember bazillion keybinds so some development time had to be spent on improving the work flow.
Up until now creatures either wandered randomly or stood still until they saw something to hit. Patrol pathing now allows creatures to also follow a predetermined path and patrol around a dungeon to see if they can find something to hit. The dungeon editor now supports up to 8 different paths with up to 15 path nodes each.
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It is now possible to manually edit settings.xml and add forced="True" parameter to indicate that screenwidth and screenheight values are not a suggestion. This parameter only works while windowed parameter is enabled and the size of the screen that you specify has one of the following ratios (32:9, 21:9, 16:9, 16:10, 3:2 or 5:4). The screen size also has a minimum width of 1280 and minimum height of 720.
It is now possible to manually edit settings.xml and add position="0,0" parameter to move the game window to the top left corner of the screen. This parameter only works while windowed parameter is enabled. The numbers indicate the x and y coordinate in pixels from the top left corner.
The position parameter can be used with a Unity -popupwindow command line parameter to create a frameless window (does not work in Mac unfortunately). Unity command line parameters can be added by right-clicking on the game in your library and then select properties, and then add -popupwindow in the launch options.
There are some quirks to setting your own screen size and you may end up seeing the reason why certain screen resolutions have been blocked even if some devices would support them. If the resolution is not divisible by some "magic" number you may see lines between tiles because of reasons.
The reason for the lines is that the game is rendered in 3d and light bleeds out from the edges of the meshes when the camera scales down the scene. It may take some trial and error to find a good window size that takes up the amount of space you want and does not show any lines.
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NPC innate talents got some new guidelines. These are talents that they know at level 1. NPCs can only know Sixth Sense, Strong Will or Literacy: Common as their innate talent but immobile NPCs (tentacles) can also know Deadly Throw.
There's also new guidelines and changes for other talents:
- Sixth Sense was removed from most creatures that are not beasts or casters.
- Strong Will was removed from most creatures other than monsters and bosses.
- Silent Cast was removed from most creatures.
- Dual Wield and Focused Cast is learned at level 3.
- Deadly Throw is learned at level 3 or 6 (this is exception).
- Dark Vision, Sixth Sense and Strong Will is learned at level 6.
- Silent Cast, Blade Flurry and Crushing Blow is learned at level 9.
- Aimed Shot, Steady Shot and Slow and Steady is learned at level 9.
- Sweeping Blow, Shield Bash and Silent Move is learned at level 12.
- Heroic Charge is learned at level 6 (creatures) or 12 (monsters).
- Multi Shot and Quick Shot is learned at level 12.
- Killing Blow is learned at level 15.
- Keen Eye is learned at level 18.
- All named encounter bosses learned how to read.
- NPC talents are now exclusive by level.
- It's good to be King.
Sixth Sense change means that many encounter and quest bosses are much more likely to be hit by a boulder as they don't get to re-roll reflex checks.
Strong Will change means that spells like Enslave Daemon and Turn Undead are much more likely to work when everyone and their uncle can't re-roll mental checks.
Silent Cast change means that most spellcasters can be dealt with polymorph with the exception of the encounter and quest bosses.
Most of these are not noticeable as the biggest changes were on creatures and monsters that you meet at higher level and they would already have learned the talents that were swapped around, but what you will notice is that those lesser elementals that show up at level 5 hit like a wet noodle, a level 3 big mouth does not instantly kill you and all named encounter bosses can now randomly zap you with a wand before proceeding to tear you a new one. Monsters also got nerfed at level 10-12 as many of them learned Heroic Charge earlier and they were able to use it the moment you met them. Now you have to be level 13 for all charging monsters to have Heroic Charge (NPCs can be either same level as the player or one level below).
Talents being exclusive by level means that an NPC can have only one of the following level 9 talents: Silent Cast, Aimed Shot, Steady Shot, Slow and Steady, Blade Flurry, Crushing Blow. Some NPCs were affected by this change such as Mamalob that can no longer have Heroic Charge because it has Silent Move. Many ranged NPCs had both Aimed Shot and Steady Shot that made them more versatile as the AI would use Steady Shot on long range and Aimed Shot on short range making them slightly too good on open areas.
Like all complex systems there will be exceptions and so it is in this case as well. The King does not care about these rules and does whatever he wants.
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Ohh, one more thing.
This update includes the content for the upcoming Rogue's Tale - Expertise DLC and you can see some new pages in the manual as well as a bunch of new heritages and challenges. Expertise DLC adds 4 guilds and 12 talents that can only be learned by gaining ranks in a guild by completing various jobs for them. It also adds 36 guild jobs (quests) that can be attempted once per game. Guild jobs have rules that force you to do them in a specific way and you can't simply make a meat blender and blast through all of them.
