Dear Pioneers,
Magic awakens in Pagonia!
We can finally announce the release of our Magic Update!
This is the biggest content update we've had so far. So, sit back, relax and read the patch notes carefully, because this update is packed with a lot of game-changing new features!
What's new?
- Treasure Hunter & Hidden Treasures
- Light Spire and Monument of Wisdom Abilities
- New Enemy Type: Malthorn
- New Player Unit Types: Warlocks and Sorceresses
- Major Combat System Rework
- Arcane Economy Extensions
- and Many More Improvements!
Find the full list of changes in the patch notes below.
Developer Notes
Pioneers, it is time! Today we will find out what is waiting out there in the mysterious fog. We swear by the mighty boar statue, this update truly has some surprises in store for you! Here is a deep dive into everything that is new in our fourth major content update.
But before we continue, an old relic has been found in Pagonia! One of our wisest Pagonian scholars was able to decipher it:
A myth as old as Pagonia itself tells of treasures and mighty artifacts. Now learn to harness the arcane forces and make magic your craft.
What could it mean? Let's find out!
Treasure Hunter's Lodge
Pagonians learned how to find and retrieve lost and hidden treasures! If you find ancient ruins in Pagonia, there will be a hidden treasure with unknown content nearby. What could it be? If you're lucky, you will find valuable items such as coins, gems or jewelry. If you are in need of a military boost, the finding of equipment depots with tools, weapons and armor will help you defeat nearby enemies.
Treasure Hunter's Lodge by the Sea
Sometimes the Treasure Hunter even finds ancient relics which can be studied in the Monument of Wisdom. One of the rarest finds are artifacts and even treasure maps which help you mark the location of a particularly valuable hidden treasure.
Successful Treasure Hunter
Again, we have some amazing voice actors who lend their voices to our treasure hunter! Thank you Maurice Weber, (for the male unit), and Ovilee May (for the female unit). You can decide in the options which voice you want to hear.
For our German community, here are some funny outtakes of the recording session with Maurice Weber:
https://youtu.be/hQw7_TLuDsA?si=5aMzr644Yh-bo_7d
Good luck, finding valuable items, Pioneers!
You sure will need them for what's waiting for you in the fog.
Monuments
If any of you have played more than just one session of Pioneers of Pagonia (which we are sure is the majority), you might have come across big monuments like the Light Spire or the Monument of Wisdom. Up until now they were only pre-placed objective building. This will change, because now you are able to build these works of great architecture yourself!
Not only can you fulfill your fantasy of a sea of light spires, but they also have some awesome magical abilities. And trust us, you will need them!
Light Spire at Dusk
Light Spire
The Light Spire has two passive and one active abilities:
- Far view (passive ability): As soon as the light spire construction is finished, any remarkable location within 250m range is revealed immediately.
- Light Spire Watch (passive ability): Any incoming raid within 500m maximum view range of the light spire heading to your village will trigger a warning notification as soon as it has been spotted in explored territory.
- Eye of the Spire (active ability, costs 50 mana): Reveal an unexplored target location within 500m maximum range
- The scholars in the light spire can feed the fire of the spire with up to 10 firewood per work cycle to produce 1 mana per firewood.
Monument of Wisdom Charged with Mana
Monument of Wisdom
The Monument of Wisdom has two active abilities:
- Call ancestral workers (active ability, costs 25 mana): Summons a group of ancestral workers! They will quickly harvest nearby mining deposits and chop down trees in the vicinity and vanish after some time.
- Call ancestral defenders (active ability, costs 50 mana): Summons a group of ancestral fighters! They attack any units in the vicinity which are hostile to your Pagonians. They will also vanish after some time.
- The scholars in the Monument of Wisdom simultaneously analyze up to 6 Relics found in treasures to gather knowledge about the ancestors and produce 1 mana per relic.
Who says all ghosts in Pagonia are evil? These will definitely come in handy! (let your Woodcutters & Soldiers have a well-deserved break and let them enjoy a good meal at the Tavern for once! :D)
The Malthorn
The fog has lifted and out comes ... the Malthorn! Beware of this dangerous new enemy type, because they are not of this world! They corrupt Pagonia's nature with their magic and will summon their hordes to defeat you!
Corrupted Oak & Bane Ritual
The Malthorn are using mystic portals to connect their home world with Pagonian islands. If you manage to destroy their portal, which is a giant Corrupted Oak, they are cut off from any reinforcements. Their mystic but vulnerable Bane units execute rituals to place evil Baneroots in the Pagonian forests.
Malthorn & Baneroot
Read more about how to defeat the Malthorn and their special abilities in the patch notes below! Their best counter unit, however, are Pagonians, who learned how to harness arcane forces and use magical weapons.
Sorceresses & Warlocks
Magic awakens in Pagonia! All those who are able to use magic are trained in the Arcane Academy.
Arcane Academy & Jeweler
Your Warlocks are the only Pagonians that know how to remove the curse over time and destroy the Baneroots. They will begin a counter-ritual as soon as they are in the vicinity of a baneroot. Wise and Elder Warlocks even have the ability to scare enemy units away, causing them to flee and return to their enemy camp.
The Artisan Blacksmith can combine gems with wands and staffs to craft magic weapons needed by advanced Warlocks and Sorceresses
The Grove Sorceress is equipped with a robe lined with silver or gold, depending on her rank. They wield an Emerald Wand or Staff which gives them the power to fight against Malthorns (with a whopping 200% bonus!). And they are not fighting alone, because their are able to cast a spell to summon wild boars which protect and assist them in combat. (No wonder Pagonians worship boars!)
The new robes can be crafted at the Tailor's Shop, which has three new recipes.
Arcane Economy
Gem Mine
Gems were discovered under the surface of Pagonia's beautiful landscape! The Gem Mine can now retrieve sub-surface gem deposits and find emeralds, sapphires, rubies and diamonds. The geologist can find gem deposits and puts up signposts to indicate valid locations. Yippie!
Jewelry Workshop
The Gems proved to be very useful not only for crafting powerful weapons but also for jewelry! The Jewelry Workshop can combine gems and precious metals to craft jewelry. Jewelry has a greater value than the individual components and can be stored in the treasury. Once made into a nice piece of jewelry, the components can no longer be used to craft something else elsewhere obviously.
Jewelry Workshop at Golden Hour
Top bar information enhanced
Additionally to all the magic floating around in Pagonia, we updated the top bar information. One the one hand, the numbers in the top bar will appear in different colors if a crucial resource is running out. You will also be warned with a notification, if this missing resource may cause a deadlock. This is valid for Softwood Trunks, Stone and Rations and will come in handy in your next game session.
And these were just the highlights! Find out more in the patch notes below. (spoiler alert: yes, we finally improved the farm field placement!)
As always thank you for following our journey up to this point and thanks to all of our beta testers for your watchful eyes.
We hope you enjoy all the new features of our Magic Update. Meanwhile the one-year anniversary of our Early Access release is just around the corner! Keep your eyes peeled for a special announcement on December 13th, where we also reveal more about our future plans.
See you in Pagonia!
Your Envision Entertainment Team
Large Pagonian Settlement at Sunrise
Patch Notes 0.10.0
Top 5 Highlights
- Treasure Hunters start expeditions to find and retrieve hidden treasures.
- Monuments like the Light Spire can now be constructed anywhere and offer additional abilities.
- New enemy type Malthorn invades Pagonia.
- New player unit types: Warlocks and Sorceresses, including new equipment and production chains.
- Major combat system rework and the magic units now use special abilities during combat.
Features
The Treasure Hunter’s Lodge
- Treasure Hunters can find and retrieve lost and hidden items.
- If you find ancient ruins, there will be a hidden treasure with unknown content nearby..
- Some treasures can be located by your treasure hunters if they get their hands on treasure maps
- The treasure hunters are able to search outside your territory like the explorer and geologist.
- The treasure hunters consume rations as well.
- Treasures can contain many different useful items.
- Valuable items like coins, gems, jewelry and more.
- Equipment depots with tools, weapons and armor.
- Secretly stored metals of any type.
- Ancient relics which can be studied in the Monument of Wisdom.
- Rare Artifacts and treasure maps for other treasures.
- You can define which items are immediately carried home and which are just. dropped for now where they have been found.
Monuments
- Monumental buildings like the Light Spire can now be built anywhere and anytime by the player.
- Monuments can have passive abilities which are valid as soon as their construction is finished.
- Monuments now have a work procedure to create mana for their activated abilities, which can be manually initiated by the player.
- The construction costs of monuments have been rebalanced to reflect their new purpose.
- Monuments are no longer used as pre-placed objective buildings.
- The Light Spire
- “Far view” (passive ability): As soon as the light spire construction is finished, any remarkable location within 250m range is revealed immediately.
- “Light Spire Watch” (passive ability): Any incoming raid within 500m maximum view range of the light spire heading to your village will trigger a warning notification as soon as it has been spotted in explored territory.
- The scholars in the light spire can feed the fire of the spire with up to 10 firewood per work cycle to produce 1 mana per firewood.
- “Eye of the Spire” (active ability, costs 50 mana): Reveal an unexplored target location within 500m maximum range.
- The Monument of Wisdom
- The scholars in the Monument of Wisdom simultaneously analyze up to 6 Relics found in treasures to gather knowledge about the ancestors and produce 1 mana per relic.
- “Call ancestral workers” (active ability, costs 25 mana): Summons a group of ancestral workers to a target location within 250m maximum range of the Monument of Wisdom. They will quickly harvest nearby mining deposits, chop down trees in the vicinity and vanish after some time.
- “Call ancestral defenders” (active ability, costs 50 mana): Summons a group of ancestral fighters within 250m maximum range of the Monument of Wisdom. They attack any units in the vicinity which are hostile to your Pagonians. They will vanish after some time or if they cannot find any more targets.
The Malthorn
- The Malthorn found a way to enter Pagonia, beware!
- They are using mystic portals to connect their home world with Pagonian islands
- If you manage to destroy their portal, which is a giant Corrupted Oak, they are cut off from any reinforcements.
- Their mystic but vulnerable Bane units execute rituals to place evil Baneroots in the Pagonian forests
- Baneroots
- Baneroots infect the vicinity with their curse and drain the power of Pagonian forests to fuel the portal of the Malthorn.
- The Malthorn will protect their Baneroots with their mighty Curse Wardens
- Your Warlocks know a counter-ritual to remove the curse over time and destroy the Baneroots.
- Baneroots throw harmful curses to your nearby military units, which can be deadly at times.
- All your other military units are brave enough to get close to the Baneroots and attack any nearby Malthorn units, but they cannot remove the cursed Baneroots.
- Your civilian units will automatically keep distance from the Baneroots.
- If the portal at the Corrupted Oak is fully charged with Power drained by the Baneroots, the Malthorn will activate the portal and a massive wave of Malthorn Warriors of different ranks will invade the island.
- Corrupted Oak
- The Corrupted Oak reflects visually how close the Malthorn are to activate it.
- While Malthorn warriors raid your settlements, they can destroy any commodity based on plants in your settlement, e.g. any wooden materials and food ingredients.
- After the invasion, the Malthorn will try to charge up their portal again, and they send stronger waves each time they are able to activate the portal.
- Whenever your Warlocks manage to destroy a Baneroot, the Malthorn will call in a few warriors to start a retaliation attack on your settlement. This costs them some power, delays the main portal activation and buys your Pagonians valuable time!
Economy extensions
- The Gem Mine can now retrieve sub-surface gem deposits and find emeralds, sapphires, rubies and diamonds.
- The Geologist can find gem deposits and puts up signposts to indicate valid locations.
- The Jewelry Workshop can combine gems and precious metals to craft jewelry.
- Jewelry has a greater value than the individual components, but these components can no longer be used to craft something else obviously.
- Some jewelry items may be needed for trades or objectives.
- Tailors can now craft robes:
- Basic robes use 2 cloth and are used by the Apprentice Warlock.
- The Silver Robe uses 1 silver bar and 2 cloth and is used by Wise Warlocks and Grove Sorceresses.
- The Golden Robe uses 1 gold bar and 2 cloth and is used by Elder Warlocks and Grove Enchantresses.
- The Wooden Workshop can now craft wooden staffs for the Apprentice Warlock
- The Weaponsmith can now craft irons wands and steel staffs, which can be enchanted by the Artisan Blacksmith.
- The Artisan Blacksmith can combine gems with wands and staffs to craft magic weapons needed by advanced Warlocks and Sorceresses.
Warlocks and Sorceresses
- All magic units are trained in the new “Arcane Academy” building.
- There are 3 ranks of Warlocks:
- The Apprentice Warlock only needs a robe and wooden staff, but only has a combat power of 1. While weak, they can be trained in large amounts and remove Baneroots until the advanced Warlocks are available.
- The Wise Warlock needs a Silver Robe and a Diamond Wand and has a combat power of 30.
- The Elder Warlock needs a Golden Robe and a Diamond Staff, and has a combat power of 50.
- All Warlocks can perform a ritual to remove cursed “Baneroots”.
- Wise Warlocks and Elder Warlocks have a spell to Scare enemy units, causing them to flee and return to their home base. Stronger enemy units have a higher chance to resist the spell.
- All Warlocks have a 200% combat bonus against Spectres.
- There are 2 ranks of Grove Sorceresses:
- The Grove Sorceress needs a Silver Robe and an Emerald Wand and has a combat power of 30.
- The Grove Enchantress needs a Golden Robe and an Emerald Staff and has a combat power of 50.
- Both have a spell to summon wild boars which protect and assist them in combat-
- Both and their summoned wild boars have a 200% combat bonus against the Malthorn.
Combat
- The “1v1 duel combat system” has been replaced as requested by many players.
- Units can be attacked by multiple units at once now. Assisting units increases the chance to win fights.
- This is important for the combat strategy in general.
- It is now a major difference if you send many units at once or if you send them in small groups or one after another. If you attack and defend with larger groups, losses can be reduced.
- Since stronger units benefited from the ruleset of the old combat system, but they no longer do, the combat values of all units have been rebalanced to ensure that their costs and effective combat power are in balance.
- Note that in the previous update, the “luck” factor of winning or losing fights has been mostly neutralized too, as requested by many players.
Balancing
- The value of most gems has been somewhat reduced, since they are available more regularly now. Emeralds still have a value of 20, Sapphires 22 instead of 25, Rubies 25 instead of 30 and Diamonds 30 instead of 40.
- The value of gold coins has increased from 6 to 10.
- Since Rangers were considered too powerful in general, and also Warlocks are now available to counter Spectres, the Rangers get rebalanced:
- Basic Rangers now have a combat power of 2 instead of 4.
- The Skilled Ranger, which is still a costly unit, gets an increased combat power of 30 instead of 15.
- Blade Dancers were scared by Spectres by mistake, this has been corrected. Like all units trained in the Adventurer’s Guild, they are now “fearless” and will no longer get scared by Spectres.
- Thieves now move faster if they have been discovered and return to their base without stolen goods.
- Bandits now move faster if they raid or return to their base without stolen goods.
Onboarding
- More than 20 short tutorial videos are now available in the game to better introduce new players.
- The videos explain controls and game systems, more videos about new topics will be added over time.
- The videos will automatically trigger while they are helpful for the player, e.g. territory expansion will be explained as the first guard tower is manned with guards.
- While a tutorial video is running, you can either pause the game or keep going to try out the things explained in parallel, as you like.
- Every video will only be shown once. In the Tutorial options, you can reset the videos to see them all again, e.g. if a friend or family member plays Pioneers of Pagonia for the first time.
- In the Tutorial options, you can also disable all or some types of videos.
Top bar information enhanced
- If a crucial resource is running out, which may cause a deadlock, you will be warned with a notification. This is valid for Softwood Trunks, Stone and Rations.
- The numbers in the top bar will get different colors depending on the current status.
- beige (“default”): If none of the conditions below apply, the number is shown in standard color.
- yellow (“commodity depleting”): If a commodity is still available currently, but at the current production and consumption rate depleting within the next 10 minutes.
- orange: (“commodity shortage”): If all units of a commodity are already requested or if there are more requests than commodities, but at the current production rate the current requests can be fulfilled within the next 10 minutes.
- red: (“commodity bottleneck”): As before, but at the current production rate, the bottleneck situation will resolve within the next 10 minutes.
Improvements
Maps
- The new predefined map “Eldritch Lights” has been added and introduces the Malthorn.
- All other predefined maps have been adjusted to support the new features (like the treasure hunter) and reflect the latest visual upgrades.
- Added a few dialogues to the guidance maps
Gameplay
- Added 2x and 3x to the game speed options
- Thieves, Bandits, Spectres and Werewolves attack somewhat later and less frequently, but with increased attack wave size.
Visuals
- Point lights everywhere!
- The option for point light amount has been replaced by an option “Lighting Quality”.
- New light setting “Dusk”, maybe you already enjoyed it on the Halloween map.
- The mysterious fog color and brightness levels are improved to fit to all different light settings individually.
- The lighting adjusts when hovering over specific map areas such as areas infected by the Malthorn.
- The cats are no longer alone: Pagonians discovered how to tame dogs.
- The option for object quality was changed to a fixed list of options to make it easier to understand.
UI/UX
- Improved Farm field management
- The plant selection can be done before placing farm fields, allowing you to place any number of fields with a specific setting without the need to individually adjust them after placement.
- To change the settings of a farm field, a copy function is now available to quickly copy the setting to other farm fields without the need to individually select each farm field and adjust them.
- Small signs on the field show the currently selected fruit. While placing farms or farm fields or while copying farm field settings, the signs are enlarged to grant a better overview.
- Reworked unit assignment in territory buildings
- If you want to change the unit types which are allowed to man a territory building, you can just en- and disable checkboxes instead of reducing and increasing individual amounts.
- However, if you want to set up things manually, you can click the unit icons to open a sub-menu and still define all the details, as before.
- Note that you may need to reduce the requested amount for a unit type if you want to increase another one if all slots are assigned.
- Unit types which are enabled will fill up the territory buildings as they become available. This means if you enable soldiers and guards without defining specific amounts, any combination of soldiers and guards may man the buildings. If both types are available while units are requested, they will be distributed even.
- The following rules did not change, but just for clarification we mention them again:
- If you disable a unit type completely, all ranks of that unit type get unassigned and leave.
- If you disable some, but not all ranks of a unit type, no units of disabled ranks will leave the territory building, but new units will only be ordered if they meet your new rank condition.
- This allows you to keep e.g. weaker soldier units in the building but request only higher ranks as replacement.
- Improved the selection of buildings under construction
- Increased the size of the clickable flag to make sure it is easier to enter quick road construction mode.
- Merged the commodity category of “Rare resources”, which only consisted of silver and gold, into the “Mining” category.
- Improved highlighting of deposits when placing a gathering building such as mines.
- White: Deposit is in range and in player territory.
- Red: Deposit is not accessible yet since it is outside of player territory.
- Grey: Deposit is out of range but within the player territory
- Icons of builder and construction carrier units are now more distinctive.
- Polished Buttons and Backgrounds.
- Added new “Magic Update” loading screen.
- Mouse scroll speed in the UI can now be adjusted via an option.
Mini Map
- It is now possible to set focus/attack/patrol points of a building directly in the mini map.
- If you hold CTRL while in the mode of placing focus/attack/patrol points, a click in the mini map instead changes the camera location.
- Reworked the mini map to a new GPU based system.
- Increases the overall rendering performance.
- The visual quality of the map is higher, especially if zooming in.
Audio
- Audio adapts to the selected lighting setting
- Unique destruction sound effects for each enemy base
- Pagonians working at market stalls advertise their goods
- Audio mix improvements
- New in-game music track
- Treasure Hunter voiced by Maurice Weber and Ovilee
Bug Fixes
Gameplay
- Fixed: Sometimes a lake area could not be claimed completely.
Map Generation
- Fixed: Sometimes mining deposits were spawned on cliffs in unreachable positions.
- Mining resources and other deposits distribution has been rebalanced and some bugs in the distribution were discovered and eliminated.
- Swamps are no longer placed on top of hills.
Visuals
- Fixed: When pioneers get transformed into werewolves too frequent, they exit the cave too fast so that they are standing in each other during the “wake up/howling” animation.
- Fixed: The colors in the mini map and in the game world were not exactly matching.
- Fixed: Some shaders had errors in lighting calculations due to wrong calculation of the normals.
UI
- Fixed: Under some circumstances the commodity overview and the objective list were overlapping.
- Fixed: Scav units were missing their description when selected.
- Fixed: Military Camps and Construction Camps were showing wrong status messages about residents visiting the tavern.
Misc
- Fixed various rare crashes.
Known Issues
- Rarely Geologist stop searching while having available areas.
- Building preview of monuments cause flickering at unleveled construction sites around it.
- Light Spire not counting enemy wave size correctly.
- Sometimes guidance videos can be triggered twice.
- Construction tooltip still showing when guidance text pops up while in construction mode.