EXPERIMENTAL BUILD (0.5.1.0)

The primary changes in this patch are focused on bug fixes, campaign tweaks, balancing, and some new things for level designers (part of our work on Act III).

ONLY SAVE GAMES CREATED WITH THE CURRENT VERSION NOW SHOW IN THE LOAD SAVED GAME DIALOG. SEE DEVELOPER NOTES BELOW FOR MORE INFO.

Where can I get it?

Experimental Build:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/224440/discussions/0/541906348034355622/

What's new?

Player: Load Saved Game: Only save games from the current version now show up (see dev notes section below)
Player: Updated stone block icons so it’s less like the iron ingots icons
Settings: Added a checkbox under gameplay settings to stop spider den raids against player villages
Settings: Added a graphics setting to enable depth of field (although it’s not widely used at the moment)
Editor: Workbench: Added CutsceneDepthOfField node to control camera depth of field*
Editor: Workbench: Added Transform node for when both position and rotation are needed
Editor: Workbench: Added WorkPointTriggerCustom node for making innate objects interactable**
Editor: Workbench: Replaced helper text at bottom of inspector with a ? button that links to a web reference guide

Bug Fixes

Fix: The mysterious case of disappearing items on heroes is hopefully now fixed
Fix: Blizzard weather effect is now working as intended
Fix: Nara’s charm ability was causing charmed heroes to level up a lot
Fix: Prevented most damage being applied during cutscenes (CharacterDamage and Damage nodes ignore this)
Fix: Prevented loot sparkles from being cleaned up after 10 minutes if the loot contains a quest item
Fix: Some save games in experimental 0.5.0.0 (any map that created custom loot items) wouldn’t load properly
Fix: Willow’s thorns visualization no longer rotates with the affected target
Fix: Prevented tactical pause from being toggled when conversation dialog is visible
Fix: Grublin invasion mobs were being created as Undead faction
Fix: Selecting a character, opening village inventory or a character sheet now cancels any building placement
Fix: Most trinkets were set to not stack
Fix: Sandbox: Stinking Swamp: Too many wolves could get spawned

Map Changes

Campaign: Desecrated Cathedral: Player must now destroy the generator before Lilith appears to seek her revenge for killing Brom
Sandbox: Cold Peak: Minor changes to reduce z-flicker, added a few of the new props

Balancing

Balancing: Reduced the XP penalty on Normal, Hard and Harder difficulty levels
Balancing: Enemy units now only recover health at half the rate of player heroes and units
Balancing: Withering Dead: Nerfed Bonefinger, Mordrich and Lilith as they were too challenging on normal difficulty
Balancing: Gladefolk: Nerfed Nara, Willow and Mossclaw as they were too challenging on normal difficulty
Balancing: Boss agro detection range has been significantly reduced to prevent them hunting down the player

Assets (For Level Designers)

Kits: Terrains/Snow Monastery receives banners, bells, better flooring, lots more
Kits: Terrains/Snow receives some new trees including pink cherry blossom

We’ve done some content optimization in this patch, so if you cannot find certain kit pieces, they have probably been moved to the Core Tiles kit.

Please note the new Workbench Reference Guide is work in progress; we’re aware of the occasional long class name issue.

Important/Breaking Changes

If you are a level designer with maps/worlds on Steam Workshop, you will need to republish your maps to Workshop with this version so that they show up again in the game.

Known Issues

• Load times will have increased due to code we’ve added to the experimental build to help us track down a serialization bug
• Kenny can get stuck again during his attack if you complete his dialogue while he’s stunned

Developer Comments

In this patch only save games created with the current version will now show in the load saved game menu option. We have taken this step to prevent bug reports being submitted where an error is caused by incompatible save game versions. If you prefer a period of no disruption, please exit the experimental build and revert back to the main Steam version, or turn off automatic updates in your Steam Library.

* Note that by default depth of field is never enabled. The player must actively enable it under graphics settings, so in most cases it won’t ever show.

** WorkPointTriggerCustom node does not work on characters, only innate objects such as props. This is intended to make things like books/weapons etc. interactable.