Attention Mercenaries! Community Update 2 is here and boy oh boy are you in for a read! We noticed the patch notes are quite long, so for those of you who are a bit short for time or just fancy a quick overview of what’s new we have just the thing: a Community Update overview video. Grab some snacks and let's dive right into today’s update.
Introduction
With this update, our main focus was to bring a new layer of experience to Wartales for those who had already explored the depths of its existing content. From now on, four new features will pave the way to the Paths’ endings: the Arena of Legends, the Trade Routes, Burglaries and Archeology.
But there’s more. A lot more, actually. Once again, we strive to expand the game with new ideas, while also fine-tuning its existing features. Your valuable feedback has been taken into consideration, and many recurring demands have found their way into this update.
We chose to give you more agency by introducing Troop Names, Recruitment Ads, new Relationship Interactions, new path challenges linked to your destiny choice, and the ability to Reforge your gear when you want to increase its quality.
We also put additional efforts into making each biome feel more different, with a bunch of new Contextual Camp Tools and Battle Traps. And we found other ways to polish the overall experience, with a Customizable Skill bar, as well as Sorting Options for both the inventory and the compendium.
Finally, for our most seasoned players, we are opening a new, awfully demanding Extreme Mode. This was one of the features you’ve been asking for the most, and it is our pleasure to deliver it.
Path Features and Endings
Until now, Paths allowed you to specialize your troop by exploring 4 separate aspects of Wartales and unlocking bonuses that suited these specific playstyles. From now on, each Path will also come with its own unique gameplay feature. Eventually, you will be able to unlock and complete all 4:
- Power and Glory: The Arena of Legends
- Trade and Craftsmanship: The Trade Routes
- Crime and Chaos: Burglary
- Mysteries and Knowledge: Archeology
You can unlock them by reaching level 8 of a Path. As you continue to progress from level 8 to 12, you will unlock new, harder steps for the feature. Upon completing one of these steps, you will be rewarded with a unique item AND a unique title for your troop. That’s a total of 25 new items and 25 new titles. Once you complete the 5th and last stage of an activity, you’ll reach the end of the Path.
Power and Glory: The Arena of Legends
This is Wartales’ ultimate Arena. It must be completed in a single fight during which you will face a series of familiar champions from every region on the continent. When a champion is defeated, another takes their place immediately. Each champion introduces an arena rule that adds up to the previous ones, which can lead to some unexpected combinations.
If that sounds impossible to you, rest assured: you can regain some energy, provided that you can fulfill the audience’s requirements.
There are 4 separate leagues with 3 champions each. But for the 5th and final fight, a new Champion will make an appearance. After being defeated once, all the leagues can be fought again as many times as you like.
Trade and Craftsmanship: The Trade routes
You can build paved Trade Routes to connect all major cities, with several advantages. First, your walking speed between the connected cities will be increased. Additionally, 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, though). It will also become a lot easier (and cheaper) to obtain resources from all the connected regions thanks to the peddlers.
Peddlers will appear in every trading post to offer a selection of resources from each region they are connected to. This means that if you build a road between New Asthel and Marheim, and another between Marheim and Garussa, you will be able to buy snow iris in the middle of the marshlands! Roaming peddlers will also appear on the road, for even more resource availability.
Crime and Chaos: Burglary
Several informants will entrust you with enigmatic keys, and you will have to find the hatches they open. Each of them leads to a unique treasure protected by a new kind of security system, sold by an inventor from Gosenberg to clients belonging to all kinds of factions and regions. Of course, you will be able to crack the system, using a combination of deduction and lockpicking.
Each room is filled with chests. One of them contains the treasure. Some contain keys and clues. The 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 burglary you perform, people will come up with increasingly difficult versions of the puzzle.
Mysteries and Wisdom: Archeology
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. These writings describe the places where the man buried his treasures. Once found, these objects can be placed in your camp and to grant bonuses to all adjacent companions.
When you obtain a fragment of the journal, you’ll have to decipher it first, using the runes you’ve discovered in the tombs. Once deciphered, it will reveal a vague description of a location. There, you will be able to use a new kind of 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 molerats. You should try using it whenever you encounter remains from the Ancients’ civilization.
Experience Wartales in the hardest possible way
Extreme difficulty is now available. This additional game mode was designed to challenge the most seasoned of Wartales’ players, bringing every potential threat to its maximum level of danger and complexity. Do not try this at home.
In extreme difficulty:
- Every unit that runs away from combat is lost forever.
- The consequences of a retreat are heavier.
- All prison sentences are life sentences.
- The “dying” status is only available to companions with 15 willpower.
- The usual perk of having 15 willpower is not available.
- Merchants’ stocks replenish more slowly.
- Resources replenish more slowly.
- Wages are higher.
- Penalties to Happiness are doubled.
- Suspicion accumulates faster.
- The troop gets tired faster.
- Hostile groups run faster.
- Failing a mining, woodcutting or fishing minigame causes the resources to be lost.
- Failing one of those, an alteration or thievery minigame can cause an injury.
- The usual difficulty changes are also applied.
Additional features and content
We have many plans and ideas for the future of Wartales, but we also keep our eyes on your, our community’s, needs and wishes. In this update, we strove to explore both options, and implement as many of the features you’ve wished for while also bringing new ideas to the table.
Troop name and titles
There is now a name for the troop. And once you have acquired the banner, you can rename your troop at will. In that same interface, you will find a list of your troop’s titles. Until now, there were only individual titles and troop bonuses. At the intersection of those two things, we’ve come up with collective titles that will be awarded at special occasions (most notably when completing Path activities or regional settings) and highlight the troop’s progression.
Recruitment ads
It is now possible to pass recruitment ads in taverns in exchange for a fee. Once you’ve dished out the krowns, a character matching your requirements will show up in the tavern. The cost of this service depends on the number of companions you already have, and how many different criteria you want to use. The available criteria are: weapon type, gender, personality, a positive trait, and exclude negative trait (you cannot choose which negative trait you’ll get, but you can choose to avoid a specific one).
Companion interactions
In order to give you more agency in the way you develop relationships within your troop, we’ve added two actions to the relations screen. Each of them can be unlocked via the compendium, and used once per relationship:
- Good friends can share a drink and talk about life together. This will further improve their relationship, leading to each of them losing a negative trait.
- Enemies can share insults. This will further degrade their relationship, and they will both gain the “Sociopath” trait, increasing their power per negative relationship they have.
Gear quality
The quality of the gear you find on enemies can now vary (until now, it was always low). This means you can use layers on the armor and helmets of any faction, thus allowing for a variety of new builds. But there’s more. Your blacksmith can now increase the quality of any helmet, armor or weapon by using the forge, in exchange for resources of course, provided their forging skills are sufficient.
Battle traps
Chances are you’ve already come across an abandoned spear or bear trap on Wartales’ battlefields. In order to add more variety to your fights and character to regions, you will now find a few more traps. Their presence always depends on where you’re fighting.
- In fields, pumpkins can be thrown at opponents, which might get them, understandably, confused.
- In forests, rusty axes can also be thrown around, inflicting damage and destabilization.
- In plains and mountains, flowers can be used to heal wounded or dying companions.
- In marshlands, bomblets and flammable bogs can be found. This additional explosive potential will give you the opportunity to dissipate poisonous gas.
- In the city, barrels will serve as obstacles that can be destroyed when hit.
- In ruins, abandoned torches can be thrown and spread fire where they land.
Contextual camp tools
Similarly to battle traps, these items will make every biome feel a bit different, and give travelers the opportunity to better interact with their surroundings.
- In towns, the pure water of wells can bring your troop some happiness and slightly reduce the need for food.
- In the Vertrusian vienyards, grapevines can be collected.
- In plains, ancient monoliths can be studied by scholars to generate knowledge and a small chance of finding an antique item.
- In ruins, small altars can also be studied by scholars, with similar results.
- In mountains, statues of the Eye can be used for praying, which will give the troop a chance to get a random daily bonus.
- In fields, haystacks can either serve as beds for your companions, or as snacks for your poneys.
- In the marshlands, small wild game can be caught by companions or domesticated animals in burrows.
- In forests, woodcutters can exploit tree trunks to collect a newly introduced resource that will become very useful in the near future: resin.
Caravan attacks
Merchant caravans can now be attacked randomly by bandits. This is an opportunity for you to intervene and help the merchants. The more merchants you save, the more generous your reward will be. Before you ask: no, there’s no way the bandits would let you side with them and share the spoils. Go find your own merchants to attack!
Extra Path challenges
Do you remember making a choice, at the very beginning of your journey? One that determines what kind of adventurers you are and what caused you to hit the road? This destiny choice will now have a more lasting influence on your game, for it will unlock one 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. Here are the different challenges you can unlock depending on your destiny:
- Apprentice friends looking for an adventure
- Inseparable: Form X positive relationships within the troop. (Glory Path)
- Young farmers looking for a better life
- Well-fed Company: Have X Rests in a row with sufficient food. (Trade Path)
- Men escorting merchants who lost their employer
- Trade Protectors: Defend X caravans attacked by bandits. (Trade Path)
- Bandits looking to escape the Guard
- Elusive: Escape from X Guard squads chasing you. (Crime Path)
- Deserters fleeing an abusive captain
- Seditious: Kill the leader first in X fights (Crime Path)
Knowledge levels
The abilities you can unlock in the compendium are now split into three levels. Each additional level costs more knowledge points. On this occasion, several new abilities were added to the compendium, offering a wide variety of new bonuses:
- Two friends can now cancel one of each other’s negative traits with the “Offer a drink” action.
- Two enemies can now gain the “Sociopath” trait (+5% damage by negative relationship) with the “Insult” action.
- Stickers can be added to the world map.
- Bandits have shorter aggression ranges and give up chases faster.
- All companions gain 1 willpower point.
- Tiredness accumulates slower.
- Destroying a plague-infected outgrowth generates 1 additional sample.
- Path challenges worth 1 point generate 1 additional point.
- The bonuses given by an armor and helmet are increased by 10% if the two are matched.
- Relationships improve faster.
- It is now possible to post recruitment ads in taverns.
- Everytime you gather flowers, you also get hemp.
UX
- It is now possible to customize each companion’s skill bar by changing the order of their available skills.
- Environmental hazards such as fire, poison or mud now have clear delimitations displayed when hovering over them.
- In the Compendium, it is now possible to send all unknown recipes at the bottom of the list.
Minor changes
- It is no longer possible to enter a forsaken village with a very large and noisy troop.
- Looking for an escape route during fights in forsaken villages now becomes easier with each turn that passes. The search is also more effective if a large proportion of the troop participates in it.
- Attacks of opportunity occuring when disengaging ignore the target’s guard.
- The length and rewards of several path challenges have been balanced.
- The toothpaste item can now be added to a meal, giving every companion a small chance to gain the “Bright Smile” trait:
- Each time this companion engages an enemy, they have a 10% chance of applying “Blind” to the target.
- New animal accessories have been added:
- Friendship collar: This animal generates happiness when it sleeps close to a human.
- Fly repelling mask: This animal gains 20% more experience.
- Halter: The group is more discrete. Hostile groups’ aggression zone is reduced by 10%.
- It is no longer possible to steal items during dialogues.
If you’ve made it this far we salute you Mercenary! Thank you all for your feedback and suggestions, we can't wait to hear your thoughts and feedback on this update, you can do so by joining our Discord, Reddit and following us on Twitter. Remember to take a look at the roadmap to find out what’s up next for Wartales!