Greetings mercenaries! Welcome to the first Update Preview, giving you a sneak peek of some of the upcoming changes to the Path system. Stay tuned for more of these articles as we share in-depth details the new features & changes coming your way in Community Update #2.
Overview
We’ve been working on giving Paths a proper ending for quite some time now. We’ve explored several options before deciding that each Path deserved a distinctive new feature. Our goal with the upcoming update is to give you access to new content as you get further into the game, rewarding your investment not only with more power, but also with more gameplay (don’t worry though, there’ll be plenty of power too).
When you reach level 8 of a Path, you will gain access to a new activity.
- Each Path has its own unique activity, and you can complete all 4.
- Power and Glory Path: The Ordeal of Legends
- Trade and Craftsmanship Path: The Trade Routes
- Crime and Chaos Path: Burglary
- Mysteries and Knowledge Path: Archeology
- As you continue to progress from level 8 to 12, you will unlock new, harder steps for the Path’s activity.
- Upon completing one of these steps, you will be rewarded with a unique item AND a unique title for your troop (yes, you read that right). For example, by completing the 4th step of The Ordeal of Legends, you will obtain:
- The “Heroic Fighters” title, which grants your units a 4% damage bonus for the current battle each time one of them uses action points.
- The “Helmet of Legends”, which, when worn, applies Frailty to all adjacent enemies.
- That’s a total of 25 items and titles. There was actually a hesitation at some point: should it be items or should it be titles? But the answer was simple: why couldn’t you have both?
- Once you complete the 5th and last stage of an activity, you’ll reach the end of the Path.
The Paths
Power and Glory: The Ordeal of Legends
An ultimate arena in which you will fight bosses from every region.
This one called for something epic. Something that would remind you of all the challenges you & your troop have faced, while also surpassing them all. Something that would make use of all the battle knowledge you’ve accumulated, while also making familiar rules surprising again. Something that would seem too hard to beat. Once all these intentions were lined up, our destiny had become quite clear: we had to make a Boss Rush.
- This Ordeal of Legends must be completed in a single fight:
- When a boss is defeated, another takes their place immediately.
- Each new boss comes with a new arena rule that adds up to the previous ones. Beware: this can lead to unexpected combinations.
- You can regain some energy by fulfilling the audience’s requirements.
- There are 4 leagues comprised of 3 bosses each:
- After being defeated once, they can be fought again as many times as you like.
- For the 5th fight, a boss to rule them all will make its appearance.
Trade and Craftsmanship: The Trade routes
You can now connect two trading posts with a paved route.
This one is unique. After designing a few propositions for actual trading mini-games or craftsmanship challenges, we felt that this wasn’t Wartales enough, and didn’t fit the spirit of the Path. It’s about expanding your influence, not winning the village fair’s smithing contest. So we decided to take an entirely different direction, and give you the opportunity to transform Wartales’ environment, adding a whole new dimension to the game’s economy. To achieve this, you won’t have to beat one specific mini-game. You’ll “just” have to become extremely rich.
- You can build paved Trade Routes to connect all major cities, granting you several advantages:
- Your walking speed between the connected cities will be increased.
- Once two trading posts are connected, it will no longer cost money to transfer resources from one’s chest to the other (there’ll still be a tax on trade merchandise, of course).
- It will become a lot easier to obtain resources from all the connected regions thanks to the peddlers
- Who are the peddlers?
- As you already know, most resources are linked to a specific region. For example: Gosenberg is famous for its wine, and its market offers a large variety of fish. Meanwhile, Ludern’s main activity is hunting, but it can also offer marsh parsley and beer.
- Peddlers will appear in every trading post to offer a selection of resources from all the regions they are connected to.
- This means that if you built a road between New Asthel and Marheim, and another between Marheim and Garussa, you can actually buy snow iris in the middle of the marshlands.
- A roaming peddler will also appear on the roads, for even more resource availability.
Crime and Chaos: Burglary
Mysterious caves are scattered across the land, waiting to be pillaged.
This one has been in the pipeline for a long time. Ever since development started on Gosenberg, we looked for a way to give thieves their big moment. The moment has finally come, except it won’t be limited to Gosenberg: it will be a round-the-world thievery experience. You will be able to steal from different major factions, in very different places, using a combination of lockpicking mastery and deduction skills to crack increasingly difficult puzzles.
- Informants will entrust you with enigmatic keys:
- You will have to find the hatches they open.
- Each of them leads to a unique treasure.
- A new kind of puzzle:
- A man from Gosenberg has sold his security system to all kinds of people. And you will be the one to crack it.
- Each room is filled with chests. One of them contains the treasure. Some contain keys and clues, others are booby trapped.
- You will need to identify the treasure chest and find the key to open it.
- If you make too much noise, guards will hear you and a fight will ensue.
- With each successful burglary you perform, people will come up with increasingly difficult versions of the puzzle.
Mysteries and Knowledge: Archeology
We’ve discovered a new way to unearth ancient artefacts.
This one will have an impact outside the Path features. We really felt that this old land, filled with history, tombs and codexes, should also be filled with forgotten artefacts and treasures, and that archeology could become part of how you discover more about Wartales. So we decided to introduce a new mechanic that would not only be at the centre of a compelling quest, but also be a permanent addition to regular exploration.
- Fragments of a journal from the time of the Ancients have been found:
- They were written by a man who tried to protect engineering masterpieces from plundering during the war.
- They describe the places where the man buried these pieces of History.
- Once found, these objects can be placed in your camp and grant bonuses to all adjacent companions.
- How to find the treasures?
- When you obtain a fragment of the journal, you first have to decipher it, using the runes you’ve discovered in the tombs.
- Once deciphered, it gives a vague description of an existing place.
- Once you find that place, you will have to use a new tool: the magnetic pendulum. Its mini-game will allow you to determine the exact location of the treasure.
- The pendulum can be used anywhere in the world to unearth pretty much anything, from antiquities to angry mole rats.
Extra Path challenges
Just one more thing about paths. As you may remember, Wartales begins with a choice: who are your companions? Because this game is all about freedom, we never intended to give this destiny choice too much weight in the long run: you start as starving peasants, failed mercenaries or endangered thieves, but you can become whatever you like. Nonetheless, we felt that giving that choice a little bit more influence could be a nice touch. Something to remind you of how things started and where you came from. Something that would give you a little nudge in the chosen direction without giving you the feeling that you’ve closed any doors.
So this is what we came up with: the destiny choice you make when starting your game unlocks an additional Path challenge. This should make it easier for you to level up in this specific Path, without affecting your progression in the 3 others.
That’s all for today! As always, let us know what you think of the upcoming features & changes here and on the roadmap. Don’t forget to join our awesome (and passionate) Wartales community on our Discord server, Reddit page as well as Twitter & Facebook. - Shiro Games