Greetings, tactics fans--I have a big free update for you! There is a lot to cover here--new assets for custom characters, AI improvements, interface improvements, an overhaul to the game's logic for manual save mode, and much more--but make sure to read the whole thing, because I am throwing a custom campaign contest, which I talk about that at the end of the post.
Okay, enough prefacing: let's get to the changes!
First, I reworked the game's save logic for manual save mode!
in response to feedback from a small (yet disproportionately vocal) segment of the player base, I've reworked things so that when you play with manual saving enabled, the game no longer auto-saves over your current save file. This means that you will no longer be locked in to your choices when you switch scenes! However, this comes at a cost: you must now save manually in order to save the game in manual save mode. This change is retroactive to all playthroughs with manual saving enabled.
in manual save mode, the game now tracks how many scenes have passed since you last saved the game. If the next in-game day comes and more than a couple of scenes have passed since you last manually saved the game, the game will prompt you to save manually.
Second, we have a variety of interface improvements!
you can now manage supplies when you're on the main town screen in Kalkerapur!
your characters can now use items when you're on the main town screen in Kalkerapur!
the reserve supplies screen now always shows your characters off to the side--they are no longer covered up by the character inventory subwindow when one of them is clicked.
the reserve supplies screen now shows who else wants equipment currently held by a character (see the screenshot above!)
in the reserve supplies screen, you can now drag an item directly from a character's inventory onto a second character to give the second character the item. This makes it much faster and easier to transfer items between characters.
when playing with manual saving enabled, the save game menu is now accessible from the victory screen after you win a battle.
you can now sort your characters in the army overview screen by clicking the icons at the top of each column of stats: by level, morale, health, energy, appetite, and salary. (Sorting by level will not just sort by visible level, but will take into account hidden levels that have been folded into a character's progression from promoting.)
the army overview screen now has page selection buttons for players who manage to recruit more than 18 characters.
rescaled and repositioned collision on units in battle so that when attempting to select a character with the mouse, units in front of them won't inappropriately block the click.
when mousing over a space containing a unit, the game will now always treat the top unit on the space as having been moused over.
drew a small version of the item sack icon that now accompanies the Manage Supplies button for more consistent iconography.
added in version 1.0.50c: you can now rate custom campaigns in the in-game custom campaign browser using new thumbs-up and thumbs-down buttons!
added version 1.0.50g: the download campaigns screen now shows you which custom campaigns you already possess at a glance; and if you click one you already have, it now changes the download button to an "update" button.
fixed: alt-Tabbing out of the game was causing Unity to fail to register the release of keyboard keys (most notably, Alt and Tab); this, in turn, was causing mousewheel functionality to lock up upon returning to the game, preventing mousewheel camera zoom from working.
fixed: if you managed to store an item from the character screen within the reserve supplies screen while the unit's inventory subwindow was open, the inventory subwindow would not update to reflect the change.
fixed in version 1.0.50c: the reserve supplies screen had become somewhat misaligned when opened during battle deployment.
fixed in version 1.0.50h: a fix from the prior hotfix, version 1.0.50g, had caused the "Save Game" button to stop bringing up the save game screen when clicked during battle.
fixed in version 1.0.50i: a fix from version 1.0.50g had also caused the "Save Game" button on the battle victory screen to stop bringing up the save game screen.
fixed in version 1.0.50i: when giving a character new equipment in the reserve supplies screen and then dragging another item out of their inventory with the inventory subwindow still open, upon accepting the game's prompt to auto-equip the first item, the inventory subwindow would not update to show the change in equipped items.
fixed in version 1.0.50i: the tooltips for items in the rightmost two columns of the reserve supplies screen had begun extending off the side of the screen following the redesign.
fixed in version 1.0.50i: it was possible to mouse over a unit after clicking to close to level-up screen when a character reached level 20, before the character promotion screen fully appeared, thereby leaving a tooltip stuck onscreen over the promotion window.
fixed in version 1.0.50j: when playing with gamepad, clicking the cancel button in the save game menu was no longer redirecting gamepad cursor focus to the correct element of the turn box.
fixed in version 1.0.50j: when playing with gamepad, clicking Rotate in the Action Menu would return gamepad focus to the battlefield, making multiple rotations tedious to accomplish.
I created a bunch of new portrait elements for more variety in custom character portraits: new hairstyles, new clothing, glasses, masks, and more!
added four new glasses accessories for human portraits: glasses, bifocals, alt bifocals, and monocle.
added five new mask accessories for human portraits: Venetian, Venetian Dark, Skull, Blindfold, and Plague Doctor.
added a new hat accessory for humans: Crown.
added a new clothing option for human characters: Barbarian.
added a new clothing option for human characters: Dark Knight.
added a new clothing option for human characters: Marauder.
added a new clothing option for human characters: Warrior (based on the trainer in the main campaign).
added a new clothing option for human men: Blacksmith.
added a new clothing option for human women: Dress.
added a new clothing option for human women: Dress 2 (painted live on stream!)
added a new clothing option for human women: Chemise.
added a new "cat nose" for human portraits to the game.
added a new "cat ears" portrait accessory for humans to the game.
added a new hairstyle for humans: Afro (painted live on stream!)
added a new hairstyle for human women: Bob (see e.g. Uma Thurman's haircut from Pulp Fiction).
the crown, blindfold, venetian mask, dark venetian mask, glasses, bifocals, alt bifocals, and monocle accessories are now usable with spriggat portraits as well!
We have miscellaneous additions and improvements!
increased psy fighters' (e.g. pyrokineticists, cryokineticists, etc.) base starting slash resistance from -20% to -10%, making them just a bit less squishy.
two new skills: Create Ice Wall and Create Fire Wall.
new, third promotion option for cryokineticists: Cryostructor. Gets +1 range and -1 cost on Create Ice, learns Create Ice Wall.
new, third promotion option for pyrokineticists: Pyrostructor. Gets +1 range and -1 cost on Create Fire, learns Create Fire Wall.
throwing knives now appear in the shop after advancing sufficiently far through the leagues.
reconfigured the stats of random equipment drops in battle from their Telepath Tactics defaults to better match the values of comparable proc gen equipment in Together in Battle.
commissioned a new cutscene background for the door to the palace armory, incorporated it into the game.
Silent Blades now have higher Accuracy, making them more effective against Dodge tanks during story battles.
capped the max deployment in the first battle with bandits at 6.
capped the max deployment in the battle with the steel bandits at 8.
buffed a couple of the front-liner mooks in the battle with the steel bandits.
if the game ever fails to find an AI profile, it now loads and uses Balanced AI.
the beggar event will no longer occur unless you have at least one character who is Kind or one character who is Pessimistic.
wrote new, unique background dialogue for characters who come from Ploutos.
wrote four new family background lines.
wrote new Recognition and Recognition Response lines for Friendly characters.
added in version 1.0.50i: the Psy Clash cards Library and Steam Engine now have 5 Health instead of 4, and Bakery now has 6 Health instead of 4, giving them a greater chance of producing longer-term effects.
We have numerous bug fixes (including to a few annoying AI glitches)!
AI fix: when moving an AI-controlled character into a trap or other pressure trigger space, the game was incorrectly marking the unit's steps remaining based on the intended move rather than the actual number of spaces moved, leading to characters failing to move off of the space afterwards (most noticeable with ongoing-damage spaces such as fire tiles).
AI fix: for certain kinds of moves, the AI was not passing through the list of spaces containing neutral traps, leading it to sometimes disregard the presence of non-player-created traps and fire tiles when plotting movement around the battlefield.
AI fix: if the game queued up a move that involved moving and then self-buffing, upon completing the move, the AI was not clearing other potential moves for that unit which were intended to come from different spaces, which on rare occasions could in turn lead the AI to have that character use a skill from a space it shouldn't have been able to reach its target from.
fixed: the game was not automatically clearing its list of moving units when initiating a new attack, which on rare occasions could cause the game to softlock if the wrong sequence of moves occurred too quickly.
fixed: the blacksmith was overwriting the "value" attribute of weapons with their cost to repair or rename.
fixed: the AI was valuing the Enthralled status effect positively for targets who were Stunned (and thus, could not act after becoming Enthralled).
fixed: the AI was valuing the Move Bonus status effect positively for targets whose turn had already ended (e.g. using Adrenaline on characters whose turn had ended and could therefore no longer move).
fixed: the AI was valuing the Move Bonus status effect positively for targets suffering from Stunned or Frozen status (similar issue).
fixed: part of the check to ensure thief attacks wouldn't occur when too many characters were wounded had a formatting error, preventing it from working as well as intended.
fixed: the number of tents to keep on the battlefield was being calculated incorrectly in the thief attack battles.
fixed: upon returning to camp late, the "late camp" message would not appear until the player clicked once.
fixed: cosmetic bridges beneath the current terrain tile could render adjacent spaces untargetable with melee attacks for non-flying characters if the elevation difference between the bridge and the adjacent spaces was too large.
fixed: with the addition of new, more granular custom character recruitment chance parameters to the ShowRecruits script action, the parameters for golem recruitment during the mechanic random event were no longer matching up, causing the game to display a recommended minimum recruitment of 100.
fixed: during the battle in the dissident's den, it was possible to draw axefighters out of the barracks, engage in combat with them, and only later get dialogue of alarm from other axefighters upon stepping inside the barracks even though everyone had already been aggro'd.
fixed: on Relaxed difficulty, a random piece of rug would removed in the witness protection battle.
fixed: characters would treat unbreakable weapons as close to breaking for purposes of deciding whether to say that they want a backup weapon in the shop.
fixed: starting a new run on New Game Plus did not clear the old run's day logs on the calendar screen.
fixed: hitting the Escape key during recruitment could cause the cutscene frame to advance instead of simply behaving like a click on the 'Exit' button.
fixed: due to a formatting mistake in the scripting for the Marriage Proposal event, the game was failing to weed out potential proposers who were already engaged to be married.
fixed: the game was not retrieving the momdad NPC attribute, causing character dialogue about how an adoptive parent was their real mom or real dad to appear with gaps.
fixed: most spriggats were being generated without Recognition Response lines.
fixed: athlete characters from a small town would be generated without a life skill background line.
fixed: one of the Cheerful recognition lines mistakenly required the Awkward personality instead.
fixed: the Natural Leader recognition lines had duplicative line IDs, preventing the game from loading them.
fixed: the Suave approach lines had duplicative line IDs, preventing the game from loading them.
fixed: there were a couple of gaps in the family background lines for people raised by their aunt and uncle.
fixed: there were a couple of gaps in the family background lines for people raised by their grandparents.
fixed: pronouns referring to character NPCs were getting inappropriately de-capitalized at the start of a sentence even if they appeared at the start of a sentence.
fixed in version 1.0.50a: some of the new logic checking for manual save prompts was overwriting the "next scene" attribute in cut scenes, leading most daytime activities to bring the player immediately back to camp even if time points remained.
fixed in version 1.0.50a: after saving the game in the calendar screen, if the player managed to immediately return to the title screen without changing scenes, their save file would be advanced by an additional day when they loaded it.
AI fix in version 1.0.50b: characters with an AreaPreference tag would often disregard good moves within their preferred area in favor of just listlessly moving around the preferred area whenever their AreaPreference modifier was set high enough.
fixed in version 1.0.50b: if the game chose a certain event in Camp, rejected it for lack of necessary preconditions, and then chose the Sick event in its place, the sick character could fail to show up and the game would throw a null error upon trying to add the "sick" mood to the resulting blank unit.
fixed in version 1.0.50b: fixed a scripting issue that was causing the game to throw fatal errors upon re-recruiting the subject of the revenge quest battle.
fixed in version 1.0.50b: unique named enemies with the Loyal and Natural Leader personality traits could get generated with combat barks referencing the player's team instead of their own.
fixed in version 1.0.50b: under some circumstances, the bug fix concerning inaccurate step count totals when an AI-controlled character wandered onto a pressure trigger could itself produce a null error.
fixed in version 1.0.50b: the game had started saving displayed scene names incorrectly in save files.
fixed in version 1.0.50b: the chosen character for the revenge quest fight wasn't scripted to be quite single-minded enough.
fixed in version 1.0.50b: the game had started using the wrong mask for mouths on certain NPC portraits, giving them a "stained with berry juice" appearance.
fixed in version 1.0.50b: under certain conditions, the AI could have a character use an item twice in a single turn.
fixed in version 1.0.50b: the game was not swapping out script IDs for character names in the animated objectives screen at the start of battle.
fixed in version 1.0.50b: the WinBattle script action was not working as intended when the player's army was not army 0.
fixed in version 1.0.50c: the Restart Battle function had stopped working due to a change in the way that game data is loaded when starting a battle in manual save mode.
fixed in version 1.0.50d: the game's procedures for saving BattleStart save file (the files used to restart battles) so as to enable restarting of battles needed an overhaul to account for the new manual save file logic.
fixed in version 1.0.50d: the game was overwriting the displayed scene name of the last-used save slot upon entering a proc gen battle in manual save mode even if the game was not manually saved over that slot.
fixed in version 1.0.50d: under certain circumstances, the game could throw a null error when making a newly recruited character have a pre-existing relationship with another newly recruited character.
fixed in version 1.0.50e: the same voice-over dialogue could get triggered multiple times within a fraction of a second at the start of a cutscene.
fixed in 1.0.50f: the fix for overlapping dialogue from 1.0.50e had broken the game's capacity to create babble speech sounds.
fixed in 1.0.50f: in the custom character creator, the describer subwindow could remain onscreen and cover up accessory or clothing options upon clicking to open those subwindows.
fixed in 1.0.50f: the NextFrame reply type would result in skipping a frame instead of moving to the next one if ending the current dialogue left nothing else open in the current frame.
fixed in 1.0.50g: changes to the game's save logic in version 1.0.50 meant that it was no longer saving an important flag when returning to the introduction cutscene for a new game plus.
fixed in version 1.0.50i: the flag for a character having used a "can attack" skill was not being reset upon ending the turn in battle.
And last but not least, we have fixes and improvements for creators!
you can now mod new classes into the main campaign! The game will now check the Mods/_Common folder for XML files containing "Classes" in their filenames at run time, then load those alongside the game's existing classes. (Note: playing with modded classes will disable achievements for that playthrough going forward.)
a complete, moddable version of the main campaign is now available for download in-game from Steam Workshop! Browse it to see how things work, create a variant that suits your tastes, or simply extend what's already there with new battles, missions, or events.
the use of static custom portraits in custom campaigns is now supported! ("Static" meaning that they won't support dynamic changing of expressions or clothing. Static portraits behave like portraits in most other games: each is a single, baked layer. To change expression or clothing in a static portrait, you will have to load an entirely new image with those variations baked in. On the other hand, this makes it much easier to draw new portraits in a different visual style.)
when creating a new custom campaign, the game now creates a Portraits subfolder and saves a copy of instructions for creating and using custom static portraits there in CustomAssetInfo.xml.
the create character interface in the campaign creation suite now has a Custom Portraits window that pulls in all graphics found in subfolders of the campaign's Portraits folder and lets you select one to use as a character's portrait.
dialogue triggers that take a character name as a parameter will now accept the new special character GROUP[X] in place of a character name. If you use this, any character in AggroGroup X (where "X" is the number of the AggroGroup) can trigger the dialogue.
replaced all remaining instances of int.Parse() in script action methods with int.TryParse(), ensuring that the game doesn't lock up if you incorrectly format an integer script action parameter.
new text sprite: Items (a small version of the item sack icon).
fixed: the map editor was defaulting army AI profiles to "Default", which is not an actual AI profile. (In the map editor, army AI profiles now default to Balanced.)
added in version 1.0.50b: new special characters -ARMYNAME- and -CHAR2ARMYNAME-. These get dynamically replaced with the triggering character's army name and the secondary character's army name, respectively.
added in version 1.0.50c: the new armory background is now in the assets list for use in custom campaigns.
added in version 1.0.50d: Create Fire Wall and Create Ice Wall are now part of the default skills available in new custom campaigns.
added in version 1.0.50d: Pyrostructors and Cryostructors are now part of the default class promotion options available in new custom campaigns.
added in version 1.0.50d: updated the items available by default in new custom campaigns to include all of the non-proc gen items available in the main campaign.
fixed in version 1.0.50d: in the character creator, the page picker buttons in the portrait clothing subwindow were not functioning correctly.
fixed in version 1.0.50d: in the character creator, opening the portrait accessories window a second time after closing it would cause the hat, mask, and glasses accessories to stop showing up.
fixed in version 1.0.50d: for some reason, Unity reset the Z scale of almost every skill button and many of the item buttons in the character creator to 0, rendering most of their tooltips unreadable.
added in version 1.0.50e: custom campaigns are now created with a Dialogue subfolder for custom voice-overs.
added in version 1.0.50e: custom music, sounds, loop, and dialogue voice-overs can now be referenced within the PlayMusic, PlaySound, PlayLoop, and PlayDialogue script actions by prepending the string Custom: to the start of the Sound Name parameter. Updated Guide documentation for each script action to discuss this.
added in version 1.0.50e: in the cutscene editor's edit narration window, added instructions for attaching a custom voice-over to the narration.
added in version 1.0.50e: in the cutscene editor, clarified the labels for narration and dialogue buttons to make it clearer that they are for choosing the narration and dialogue for the current frame.
added in 1.0.50f: the scene settings window in the cutscene editor now has a check box you can click to make it so a scene will prompt the player to save in manual save mode if they haven't saved recently.
added in 1.0.50f: you can now set personality, physical traits, and life background in the character creator within the campaign creation suite. (These are optional, but any that you set will feed into the suggested dialogue you roll up in subsequent steps and will enable the character to interact with the game's emergent systems more believably.)
added in 1.0.50f: when making a unique character in the character creator within the campaign creation suite, the game now automatically fills in missing details and camp dialogue necessary for the character to engage in the social sim side of the game.
added in version 1.0.50j: the game now supports the old Ally Pass-Through condition from the original Telepath Tactics! One parameter: true or false. If set to true, characters in the same army can freely pass through one another while moving. This is a global setting that carries forward into future scenes until changed. (This can now also be set dynamically via a script action of the same name, with the same parameter.)
fixed in 1.0.50f: the new save game logic was causing some unintended side effects when testing custom campaigns in the campaign creation suite.
fixed in 1.0.50f: part of the game's method of downloading custom campaign thumbnails had been deprecated, leading to inconsistent performance.
fixed in version 1.0.50h: if a character was spawned directly onto the battlefield from the player's roster (i.e. not via the deployment interface) and that character already existed on the battlefield from some other source (e.g. they were placed on the map directly by load ID), instead of skipping that character in the roster, the game would clone the character, creating a copy that would persist in the game's data going forward.
And that sums up all the changes!
SRPG Mini-Campaign Contest!
Back in May, Fire Emblem Youtuber ActualLizard put together a contest where players had one month to create a one-chapter SRPG campaign. I thought this was such a cool idea that I've decided to throw a custom campaign contest of my own! 🎊
The idea is simple:
create a short custom campaign in Together in Battle (or the free demo);
submit it to me by October 16th, 2025;
all entries will be livestreamed, and the best of the bunch will win prizes! 🏆
Detailed rules will be coming soon--but for now, if you've been considering learning the Together in Battle's campaign creation suite, now would be an excellent time to start. (Community member Tacitus even made this excellent guide to help you get started!)
More to come soon... 😉
Tactically yours,
Craig