Hello divine beings,
Today we are releasing the first major update to Gods Against Machines nicknamed "Fate".
As promised in our roadmap, we will be doing regular updates during the next couple of months. In the "Fate" update, you can look forward to a ton of new content, including new difficulty settings, new mechanics and currencies as well as several quality of life improvements and balance changes.
New difficulty settings
We want to make sure that everyone can play Gods Against Machines and have a balanced and enjoyable experience. We have seen some players breeze through the Void Realm on their second or third try, as well as players who have struggled with some of the mechanics and found it difficult to complete the regular campaign. While we made many balance changes to address issues such as weak (or too strong) spells or added more ways to overcome some mechanics, we saw that a much more complex solution was needed to ensure a fun experience for everyone. In the "Fate" update, when you start a new game, you will have the option to choose one of four difficulty settings:
Difficulty: Normal
This is the regular gameplay experience you know and it is also the default difficulty of the game.
Difficulty: Easy
In this difficulty (nicknamed "Sandbox mode") we aim to give players much more freedom to have fun and experiment with weird builds. The most important changes compared to Normal difficulty are the following:
- Players can reroll rewards an unlimited number of times
- Enemy strength is reduced (~20% reduction)
- Amount of Power shards is increased
To preserve the value of achievements we decided to disable earning them in this difficulty. This also means that it is not possible to earn Essences of Life or use Transmutation.
Difficulty: Hard
This difficulty features greatly increased challenge. You will have to beat level 40 in Normal difficulty to access Hard. The major changes compared to Normal difficulty are:
- Enemy strength is increased (~40% increase)
- Number of rewards is slightly reduced
- Amount of Essences of life gained is increased
To make things more interesting, additional machine-strenghtening curses are active. Additionally, new features are available: Marks of Fate and Twists of Fate (more on those bellow)
Difficulty: Brutal
This is for players who want an extreme challenge. You will have to beat level 40 in Hard difficulty to access Brutal. This difficulty is very similar to Hard just taken to yet another level:
- Enemy strength is increased further (~80% increase)
- Amount of rewards is greatly reduced
- Amount of Essences of life gained is greatly increased
Of course, both Marks of Fate and Twists of Fate are available in this difficulty too.
New currency: Mark of Fate
When playing in Hard or Brutal difficulty, you will be able to earn a new currency: Marks Of Fate.
These tokens will allow you to reroll most types of rewards. The most important exceptions are Gaia powers and Twists of Fate. In cases where there are rerolls allowed normally (such as when picking your first non-basic spell) these rerolls will be used first and only after you use all of them up the marks of fate will be used next.
New mechanic: Twist of Fate
When playing in Hard or Brutal difficulty, additional machine strenghtening curses are active. To combat them, you will be able to choose one Twist of Fate at the beginning of the game, and one more after you defeat level 30 or higher for the first time. This blessing will fully negate one of the machine strenghtening curses. It is not possible to reroll these, so choose wisely! Bellow is a list of all the curses. In Brutal difficulty, most (but not all!) curses are even stronger.
New feature: Machine strenghtening curses
(Only active in Hard or Brutal difficulty)
- Fractured crystals - The presence of the machines causes Gaia's mana crystals to fracture. This reduces their mana output
- Self-destruct drones - Evacuation drones have a chance of self-destructing and when that happens you will not receive anything from them
- Disrupted atmosphere - Machines are disrupting the world's atmosphere, causing more extreme weather
- Hardened protocol - Spirits will be able to lure out machine commanders less often
- Tactical ambush - There is a chance machines will send an additional commander against you after 60 seconds in a region
- Advanced targeting - Machines use advanced targeting protocols and their attacks can now crit
- Narrow choices - You are not in tune with the threads of fate. The number of reward choices is reduced to 2
More achievements
We have added 19 new achievements for you to earn! There are now 5 new achievements for progressing through Normal, Hard and Brutal difficulties as well as 4 new achievements for beating additional challenges in Hard and Brutal difficulties.
New spell abilities
Many spells got additional abilities:
- Vortex - Added the fact that it can be used in antimagic zones.
- Meteor Storm - Added the ability to summon Fire Trolls when cast (needs to be unlocked).
- Molten Core - Added the ability to be cast in antimagic zones (needs to be unlocked).
- Fire Eater - added the ability to cleanse corruption (needs to be unlocked)
- Water Shield - added the ability to cleanse corruption (needs to be unlocked)
- Call spirit - added the ability to summon additional units (Crocodiles), needs to be unlocked
- Vortex, Healing Waters and Furnace - added the ability to instantly kill lesser units (needs to be unlocked)
- Shatter - mana cost increased to 400 (was 300) and reduced the number of units summoned
- Call of the sea - added the ability for reducing the cooldown of the spell further (needs to be unlocked)
- Nature's call and Sacred hammer - added the ability to heal friendly units and buildings (needs to be unlocked)
- Combustion - added the ability to summon Immortal Phoenix (needs to be unlocked)
- Rain of fire - added the ability to remove resources from the enemy (needs to be unlocked)
New blessings
To give more depth to the passive abilities of Azzinoth and Nadea, we added additional blessings:
- Burning Hell - Your Eternal Flame burning damage can now crit. At level two, it is also affected by fire damage modifiers
- Tsunami - Your Rising tide drowning damage can now crit. At level two, it is affected by water damage modifiers
Zafira overhaul
We heard your complains about Zafira. Her powers felt weak sometimes and her AOE damage was lacking. To address these issues we decided to change her passive power a bit and introduce a completely new mechanic for her to help with AOE damage:
Passive power update:
Eye of the storm - Your critical strike chance is increased by {0}% when below 50% mana and by half that amount when above 50% mana
New mechanic that is now baseline for many Lightning strike and unlockable for several other wind element spells:
Unstable current - Unstable current hits nearby random targets for a large amount of cast spell damage. This effect has a chance to trigger equal to your current critical strike chance (at most 70%)
More reward types
To give players more choices when picking rewards, passive rewards have been split by element and had diminishing returns added.
Quality of life
- It is now possible to open the spellbook/blessings/menu and queue spells for casting during pause (time freeze)
- Added setting to disable automatic camera pan during boss fights and tutorials.
- Added setting to completely disable joystick/controller.
- Added setting to disable autocast for basic spell
- Added the ability to automatically cast your basic spell (Fireball etc.) on a spot on the ground or unit/building
Bugfixes
The amount of small fixes is way too large to list them all, but here is a brief list of the most important ones:
- Reward distribution has been improved to offer new spells and blessings even much deeper into the campaign
- Improved controller handling and fixing some controller-specific bugs like lingering Info panel
- Spell autocast settings is now properly saved between play sessions
- Improved the targeting of spells around Antimagic zones or for targets under water
- Fixed several cases of spells not scaling summoned units properly
Conclusion
Hopefully you will enjoy this update! We have more things in store for future. Please keep the feedback coming, we read our forums regularly and take everything you say seriously!
Peter