Hi everyone, As part of the Turn-Based Fest, we're glad to announce the latest update is now live - including tons of new features! 🎉
Hero's Hour v2.3.0 the Magical Update is now out! It's a large update which focuses on spells and spellcasters, but also has a lot of other goodies, a bunch of QOL-changes and almost innumerable balance changes. The patch notes are 190 lines long, but here are the highlights:
- 50 new spells
- Reworks to several magical skills - Potency, Wisdom, Demonology+Necromancy, Blight Ritual
- Magical overworld objects, such as mana wells, jars of pandora and scrolls
- Catapults, which destroy the defences of enemy towns over several turns
- Weather effects and other improved graphics
Good luck within a now even more magical version of Hero's Hour!
FULL PATCH NOTES
MAJOR FEATURES
- Potency has been reworked entirely
- Demonology and Necromancy now allow choosing the produced unit
- Spellbook now has sorting and filtering
- Mana Wells have had their effect changed slightly, but now appear sometimes during normal map generation
- Some cool new hero portraits
- Sorcery rework
- Mysticism rework
- Wisdom rework
- 40 new spells added
- Devour now uses unit power instead of cost, but shows the stat gain as you're targeting the spell so there's less need for guessing
- Fixed a graphical bug with Aether Forge spell offers which sometimes would show the wrong frame
- Spell targeting graphics updated
- Tired mechanic rework. Adventure map buildings that took "2 days" have been altered for the new system. Tired is now a debt of movement points. For instance, tired 5 means that next turn your hero will have 5 less movement points. Tired 25 means your hero will pay off 17 movement points next turn (remaining unmoveable) and then the last 8 the day after again.
- New Catapult mechanic
- New mechanic handling walls that are damaged before entering battle
- New UI that shows movement order controls
- Low Graphics setting that removes blood particles, numbers, corpses and spell effects during combat, as well as overworld mini-armies, minecarts and particles
- High graphics setting adds in denser obstacles
- High graphics setting adds in weather effects
MINOR CHANGES
- Skill descriptions now display fully without needing to press shift. The detailed description is slightly faded in colour
- Using the Aether Forge to gain mana can now set the hero's mana above max
- Nomads can now trade artifacts with normal heroes (still cannot trade units)
- Poison and Fire damage effects in combat now no longer deal any damage after combat is finished
- Malediction and Bane texts have been updated to better reflect their effects
- Auto-resolve prompt now also appears for tiny AI-controlled armies
- Made it so that you no longer accidentally press the start battle button when positioning units behind it
- Early encounters now no longer have Fireflies or units with Cinderspirit
- Shadowy units no longer leave corpses
- EXPERIMENTAL: Midas Touch hero skill also applies to some of their spec units
- Fire Shield and Air Shield spells reworked
- Meteor Shower renamed to Tectonic Shift. Icon and graphics changed
- Golden corpses have been greatly optimised
- Modded heroes which use faction classes now will show up naturally during gameplay, such as in tavern
- New unit ability icons for Retaliation, Quick Strike, Taunt, Savage, Leech Life
- The game will now correctly remember faction and hero choice when returning to main menu. Only works if the game was started recently - not loaded
- The Saviour unit ability from Flesh Wonders now has halved effect when targeting enemy units
- The Saviour unit ability now also works on Pillar (sans Monk), Arcane (sans Goblin Gunner) and Wild (sans Satyr) faction humanoids
- Saviour unit ability has been reworded to make this clear
- Loss and win screens for Hotseat mode should now work more correctly
- Shadowcloning now shows where your units will appear
- Army displays now look different to better fit larger unit sprites and to better show the number of units
- Overworld armies hover-over displays are now drawn differently to reduce the distance between army and display when zoomed far out
- Town tooltips have been overhauled
- New log that shows what spells are cast by heroes, units, abilities and skills during combat
- Spells no longer prioritise tier 1 units when the closest unit is the hero (very important for Shadowcloning)
- The skills one can choose when leveling up are now highlit in yellow
- Movement order controls have been improved
- Optimisation of background processes
- Neutral encounters now show a number of stars next to their difficulty rating. This shows their army sizes
- Graphics for dragons and great hydra updated
- Damage stat for units is now shown as a range instead of a single number
COMBAT AI CHANGES
- AI for a specific unit no longer switches targets randomly, instead having random weights of targeting for any unit pairing
- Ranged units now spend some time moving away from enemies while their attack is on cooldown
- Ranged units no longer slowly inch forward throughout combat while an enemy is within range
- When no enemy units are close, unit AI now searches for a far-away unit more consistently instead of switching between distant targets
- Unit AI now often keeps targeting the same enemy for several AI steps in a row, thus becoming more reliable and faster. It switches targets about once per second, so still should target correctly
- Combat AI should now run slightly faster
BALANCE CHANGES
- Week of Poverty now reduces gold income from towns to 50% (instead of 0%)
- Gold cost of using Diplomacy has been reduced significantly
- Damage from Burning is increased. Chance of applying Burning has been decreased
- Damage from Poison is increased. Chance of applying Poison has been decreased
- Siren Song now has a 3 day cooldown instead of 4 day cooldown
- Conflux now scales slightly more with higher mana spells
- Versatile now removes the deadzone where ranged units can neither attack with ranged or melee attacks
- Toxicology now spreads a bit less poison at longer distances
- Great Hydras now spawn every 10 days instead of every 15 days. Sacrificing artifacts decreases the timer by less
- Disbanding Avatars will not make the cost of recruiting a new Avatar go down
- Bodyguards units now regen faster
- Pearls can now be used for 1 growth units
- Heroes in combat now have +10 hp per level and +1 damage per level
- Copies of units with bodyguards ability now only create one bodyguard
- Reduced gold gained from selling artifacts
- Summoning spells now use a different formula, summoning significantly more units with high spellpower
- Duplicate spell nerfed
- Low rank demonology now offers less expensive units
- Rage unit ability is now 50% stronger
- Elementals spawned by the Conflux skill now lose health less quickly (about 30% more slowly)
- Explosion unit ability now has a smaller AOE when caused by a nonpermanent or neutral unit dying
- Explosion unit ability now deals less damage not only for nonpermanent units, but also for neutral units
- Rune of Air no longer reduces luck strike chance of units with high luck - instead, the cyclones summoned last for shorter time
- Rune of Burning and Rune of Death now no longer override the burning or deathstriking abilities of the units
- Rune of Death now creates slightly more skeletons, but reduces luck and morale by 1
- Rune of Ice now has a larger chance to proc and deals more damage
- Diplomacy will now always at least give a single unit (even in case of dragons)
- Heroes that are camping remain tired
- Counting house now gives +500 gold per day, but costs more
- Cost to develop potential mines has been reduced
- Flying units now have a cooldown between each time they use their execution
- Copies of units with bodyguards ability now only create one bodyguard
FIXES
- Skills that give a flat bonus to health or damage now always apply before skills which multiply health or damage
- The icon that shows that a unit is fleeing now draws in front instead of behind the unit - it would become obscured by big unit sprites
- Fixed Forlorn Cloister
- First Aid tent no longer prioritises neutral units above permanent units
- Permanent units rezzed by first aid or other effects now have abilities requiring permanence apply to them
- Fixed a bug that made Armorer change units projectile sprite instead of giving projectile protection
- Salted units don't recreate bodyguards
- Fixed a bug that blocked selection of alternate heroes
- Lexicon now shows heroes in the same order as the hero selection menu
- Fixed heroes taking much longer to return to battle if they were slowed before "dying"
- The Tired text in the GUI now disappears when hovering over movement bar, so that you can still see daily movement points
- Fixed a low chance for a whole unit group to spawn as Pond Champions instead of Toadfrogs
- The rare chance for a toadfrog to spawn as a pond champion now works correctly with casualties
- Fixed being offered zero units via Diplomacy in rare circumstancces - instead, the diplomacy pop-up just won't trigger now
- Fixed a bug that made Call Beasts summon Militia instead of Snouthogs on Dirt and Bamboo Forest terrains
- Daily gold income from units with Taxpayer now shown in the gold income tooltip
- Monolith description changed to better reflect its effect
- The income UI no longer shows rare resource income from Tainted mines, but now shows them under Gold income
- The income UI now correctly shows Overgrown mines
- Power of Elementals and Desperado achievements now can unlock even if the enemy is neutral
- Fixed a crash that occured in classic town screen when hovering over the gold cost of a high tier unit
- Fixed a rare crash relating to a save_info.txt file being mysteriously empty
- Warmachines now move to the position of the boat in naval combat while setting up armies
- Wargroups deployed mid battle are now less chaotic in where they can be deployed. They are now deployed at the edges of the map
- Xp gained messages now show the correct number in the case of learning
- Lower resolution displays now have the number of towns and heroes displayed in the HUD reduced
- Rightclicking a group of units on the battlefield will now split the group correctly even when playing at 2x speed
- Hidden beasts can now no longer be discovered on top of your hero
- Avatars can no longer get infinite movement by equipping and unequipping artifacts that increase movement
- Fixed a bug that could make the game get stuck while using Firegating and Firetrapping and making a movement order into the space in the spellbook where the spell is, then cancelling the spell
- Reduced the chance that parts of the map are inaccessible due to a building spawning close to your town and blocking off the path
- Fixed a bug that made units look wrong when leaving the state of being a frog
- Summoned units dying at end of combat no longer cast spells via Destruction
- Mastery buffs will no longer apply to the hero as a unit in combat
- Conscription center now as expected when discharging units worth more than 1 level of Discharge income increase
- Combat camera will no longer be able to leave the battlefield no matter which camera setting you use
- Fixed a bug that made the combat camera jitter crazily right after starting combat
- Wail will no longer affect undead or mechanical units
- Using town portal now sends the hero to the correct tile, and also makes them the visiting hero
- Forlorn Cloister now more correctly converts the spells that heroes know
- fixed reviving evolved units becoming new units in your army
- Gold cost of using Diplomacy has been reduced significantly
- More than 100 neutral modded units can now be loaded in
Play Now!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1656780/Heros_Hour/