Greetings adventurers!
The wait is finally over and Update 1.1 is here! at 17:00 CEST today! This patch touches on almost every aspect of the game, so let’s dive in!
The Black Forge & the Frozen Sewers
Two new dungeon-type areas have been added to the game—each of them with its own lore, new events, items, enemies, and bosses.
We've been talking about them for a while and we've made several previews, so just a reminder that you can find the Black Forge on the Velkarath map, inside the raging volcano. The Frozen Sewers is located below the elven city on the Faeborg map.
Combat Log
One of the most requested features since release has been to have a place to see what has happened during a turn of combat and what cards have been used.
With the new combat log, both novice and veteran players, will be able to see in detail what cards the enemies have used, the different effects they have gained or lost, if any item or trait has been activated, as well as the general status of each hero and enemy at the beginning and end of each round.
This is the first pass for the combat log, so there may be changes and tweaks over time.
Weekly Challenge & New Cardbacks
To make the Weekly Challenges more varied and with more personality, we have added several new features to each Weekly Challenge.
They still have their own fixed seed and preset set of heroes, but now each one will have its own theme. That means that they will have one or more modifiers specific to that Weekly, plus, they will have a reduced set of corruptions and new thematic corruptions that only appear in that Weekly.
Also, to make them even more unique and exciting. By completing each Weekly Challenge you will be rewarded with exclusive cardbacks that you can't earn elsewhere in the game! Each week one cardback will be available (related to the theme of the WC), but as the weeklies will rotate, you will have the chance to get those missing cardbacks.
Obelisk Challenge Improvements
- Added four new possible bosses that can appear as final boss on the third floor, along with the Archon Nihr.
- Now during the draft and on the map, the three bosses (one on each floor) that you will face in that Obelisk challenge will be shown, to make it easier to make deckbuilding decisions. In addition, the enemies and champions of each combat will also be pre-displayed, to make it easier to choose the route to take.
- To spice up the initial combats and have more variety of enemies, we have added the enemies that appear in the Wolf Wars (whether you have or not the DLC) as possible enemies that appear in random combats, both in the adventure mode and in the Obelisk Challenge.
- We have given a balance pass to all the bosses in the Obelisk Challenge mode, Ignidoh, and Tulah, now they are more manageable and more in line with the other bosses on the second floor.
- New events have been added, where you can buy the new items of the new adventure zones and even the new pet "blobs" if you are lucky.
New Corruptions & Monster Pets
More than 15 new corruptions have been added, some of these corruptions are exclusive and will only appear in the corresponding Weekly Challenge.
We have made a general balance pass to all the corruptions of the game, changing values, functionalities, and difficulty of some of them. For example, The "Upwind" corruption is now more powerful, but it has been changed from Common to Rare. Or the "Hexproof" corruption now adds fewer buffer charges in each round.
Now enemies can have pets! Some of the new enemies introduced in the patch and in the DLC make use of this new system. There is also a new type of corruption that can add cute "Blobs" as enemy pets for that combat.
Improved Gamepad and Keyboard support
Added better support for gamepads and controllers. This is a work in progress that will require some more time and iterations, as there are a lot of complex menus in the game. With this first patch, the game loop is functional (including combat) but is a bit barebone. We have been working hard to finish the current patch and we ran out of time but full compatibility is what we are working on right now, so expect some small patches in the following days to improve each window/interface. We’ll be looking for your feedback to help refine and polish this feature to be intuitive and smooth for anyone wanting to play with a gamepad.
Added an option in the settings to see the numeric keyboard shortcuts during combat and to be able to play cards with it.
General Changes
- The tutorial has been improved, adding several new steps in the city to teach new players the importance of upgrading and crafting new cards, as well as purchasing items. Bear in mind that the tutorial is only available on your first single-player game.
- The experience curve required to level up heroes and obtain perks has been modified to be much faster. The first 20 levels of each hero and therefore the gaining of 20-30 perk points is significantly faster than before.
- The score bonus of the last levels of madness and obelisk challenge has been increased, effectively increasing the score you get from the runs from patch 1.1 onwards.
- The artwork of the remaining hero cards containing stock art (more than 200) has been changed.
- Combat backgrounds have been improved making them clearer and more vibrant.
- Several new soundtracks have been added for combat (especially in new areas)
- Added and changed sound effects on some enemies.
- We've made small balance changes to a few cards, mostly to monster and boss cards.
- Improved performance and stability in multiplayer.
- Fixed the reported bugs!
The Wolf Wars DLC
Our first story DLC "The Wolf Wars" has just been released!
When we started creating the game and thought about the heroes, their stories, their acquaintances, and their intertwined events, we always had the itch to delve into some of those stories where several of our heroes interact.
The Wolf Wars is one of those stories that are mentioned during the game, if not the most mentioned during Act I in Senenthia. Thanks to this DLC we finally have the opportunity to expand the lore of the game in this regard.
The DLC is not only about the lore, of course! It also includes a new mischievous hero (Yogger), a new pet, and several new hero skins.
You can get hold of the DLC right here.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2325780/Across_The_Obelisk_The_Wolf_Wars/
Concluding Remarks
We are very proud of this great patch 1.1! It brings a lot of new content, long-awaited features, and improvements in almost every aspect of the game.
We believe that with this patch, the game is in a really exceptional state. We are aware that it has taken us a bit longer than expected, but we are still a small team of 3 people and during this time a lot of things have happened, Christmas and holidays, family issues, and unexpected delays in general.
We hope you like both the patch and the DLC, and that you enjoy them as much as we did making them. Don't forget that it doesn't end here, we are already working on the next update. So stay with us, we still have a lot of cool things planned and stories to tell!
As a bit of tease, we can tell you that “soon” your team will be able to visit a brand new land in Act 2 or Act 3, where new enemies, quests, and items await you to be discovered.
As always, thanks to all of you for your support and feedback, see you soon!
- Across the Obelisk Team