Oh hello, beloved Nobles. How are you? It's so, so nice to be back here.
As some of you may have already seen a change to Twitch's backend recently took down Twitch Mode for King of the Castle. We've knuckled down, fixed the issue and were ready to update the game with that fixed.
As we promised in our "future of" blog post we're very much committed to supporting the game for as long as possible.
And for the past for the past year and a bit our lovely community in the Discord have been faithfully spotting and reporting bugs in KOTC.
This necessary update turned into a great excuse to come back, work through that list of bugs. As a result, we're happy to present a Proper Update filled with fixes galore!
We couldn't spare infinite time as we're currently also working on an update to Occlude, our newest release, as well as tinkering on Other Secret Things, but we're hoping these fixes mean you can all enjoy King of the Castle for many more year and bits to come.
All this to say - welcome to the MORGRIM update. So named after a much loved community member who faithfully collected and recorded all the little bugs that cropped up with King of the Castle. Thanks Morgrim, you deserve this.
Right, enough waffle from me. Let's get into it!
The important fixes
Twitch Mode is now back up and working as intended.
You can no longer get invited to the Lord's Hunt if you've banned hunting. If no fun is allowed for your Nobles, well, no fun allowed for you.
Speaking of which, the game also didn't recognize when you banned hunting in the Lord's Hunt invite event. We've fixed that, so the 'No Fun Allowed' Achievement should be easier to get!
Fixed a pronoun typo in the Boat Race which (fascinatingly) caused a softlock.
Hiring mercenaries to defend your roads can now lead to an event where they extort you for more money. We're trying to teach you the dangers of privately owned critical infrastructure, but this also caused locking issues in games.
If you fail the second stage of becoming a tyrant, the game entered an endless loop of telling you this rather than moving the story on. Funny, but fixed.
If any of the Regions needed to choose a new Scheme for whatever reason, the Sorcery option was missing from a few - This sometimes caused softlocks. That's also fixed.
In addition to the above, the Counts also had some bad syntax in their choosing new Schemes event. We've also also fixed that.
The Chiefs Prophecy scheme was nearly impossible as it was secretly looking for Kingdom's entire Faith to be down to 2. It's now just the Chief's Faith.
The Baron's Doppelganger scheme would try and read the Chief's Stat Goal and compare the Baron's Defiance level against it. Why? Great question. Anyway, this would cause soft locks if the Barons weren't in the game. Fixed.
We've stopped the Count's Intimidation scheme checking if the game is in Rebellion. I hilariously have the note next to this issue that "Intimidation is peaceful" which I wanted to share.
Meanwhile, the Baron's Intimidation scheme was actually checking for Stability and not Authority. That's resolved.
The mildly less important fixes
After resolving a haunted building with the Grand Inquisitor, the previously haunted Noble was nicking her line. Now, no more!
Fixed a typo in the Strange Fossils event.
If your previous Monarch is drowned in a 'miraculous' flood of beer, the next Monarch's event won't just refer to them as "the (name of previous monarch)" but use their title.
Typo fixes to the Expedition to Chur event.
The offending Count is not called a "COCKRAOCH" in the Fire in the Palace event. That was a typo, not some mythical monster.
If unleashed in the palace fire events, Illarion then wanted to "ay waste" to you. He now wants to "lay waste" to you instead.
Also, letting Illarion out of his box now correctly leads to a new event.
If the Monster in the East event does kill a Noble, it will now actually count as a death. Previously they were declared as dead but were, in fact, absolutely fine. Pretty ineffectual monster all round.
If a combatant is using a spear in the Patrician's Games event, they will not randomly start using a sword instead. No dual wielding in the arena.
Also, swamp giants stop turning into sand giants halfway through the same event. No giant transfiguration in the arena.
Your Honour Guard would often steal lines from Nobles who introduce or interact with them. They're less chatty now.
A number of typos and text fixes across the Honour Guard events.
Completing the game by becoming a Saint and dying now correctly redefines your current spouse as the spouse of the previous Monarch. That one could get weird.
A swathe of typo fixes in the Rightful Heir event storylines.
Weirdly, in both the Counts and Chiefs scheme choice event, the "old ways" are actually spelt the "old wasy". Great name for a pub though, The Old Wasy.
Fixes for incorrect timers and descriptions being displayed in the Grandee's Fervour scheme.
If you had the Chiefs and they picked the Sorcery scheme, their ending text was a little funky on certain occasions. Now, the correct soul is collected by the correct wizard, as well as the correct Noble is trapped in a bubble of silence for rest of their mortal life.
Fixed typos in the Chief's Ragnarok scheme.
One of the many sorcery endings stops incorrectly trying to call your usurper a Chief. I mean, they probably were a Chief, knowing Chiefs, but that's beside the point.
Sweat no longer runs from your 'bow' when Oreid survives an assassination. It runs from your 'brow'. Very important to sweat correctly when your exiled advisor/lover with a gunship has a near death experience.
If the Mad Professor type offers to cure you of your Therianthropy for free, he now won't charge you an absolutely huge fee if you agree. Potentially good political commentary, but no, that was a mistake.
A wandering Wizard can now correctly wreck a Region's Military, build an army of spider-pirate hybrids to take over the Kingdom and animate smoke-monsters, all thanks to the power of typo fixing.
Your Useless Cousin's pronouns are respected in the Salon event. He may be useless, but that's zero excuse for being impolite to him.
Over 60 typos resolved across all five Loyalist Schemes. That took some serious time, well done to Harry.
There are, as always, still other things we'd love to do for King of the Castle, but for the same reasons as we spoke about before, we can only do so much.
We hope this update brings you a little joy regardless. Also if you haven't yet tried Occlude, why not check it out? It's really cool.
Oh, and don't forget to join our Discord!
And finally a big thank you to you, our players.
On a personal note it means so much that our strange little game of "Game of Thrones meets Monty Python" is still so loved.
The team past and present worked extremely hard and every inch is filled with love and care. To have that reciprocated by you lot makes me genuinely emotional.
That's enough soppy nonsense. Now go on, get. Go find some friends and execute them for treason, you little scamps.
S