Hello everyone! We're now at the end of January and after some patching and experimentation earlier this month, it's time to move forward! Today we begin the first open beta for the incoming community update for Northgard, focus on answering many feedback shared those past years!
Community Update beta part 1
v3.6.54.41027-public-beta
Entering the year 2025 and the 8th year of development post-release of Northgard, we want to start by taking some time to address community requests.
Those changes will be added to the open-beta progressively and evolve based on community feedback.
We start with 2 main focuses this week : The PvP experience and Military balancing.
Quality of Life
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General
- It is now possible to transform a specialized worker back into a villager by assigning it to build or repair a building.
Pvp
- 2v2 mode is available for Quick and Ranked games
- New pick system for 3v3 and 2v2
- In Quick and Ranked team games, players will now have to select their clans one after another, in order to allow each team to see the strategy of their opponents, and react accordingly and suppress the problem of last-second picking.
- New blind system for FFA and Duel
- Following the same idea, clans picked in Quick and Ranked games in Duel and FFA modes will not be displayed to opponent players in the lobby, to avoid the same problems
Balancing
Military Units and Camps
As many players have reported, Legion Military Path is currently not as interesting as the other two, and requires a complete rework. We want to take this opportunity to also shake-up a bit the overall military meta, to make diverse armies a viable option, as well as reinforcing the power triangle as it was originally intended.
Warriors > Shield-Bearers > Axe-Throwers > Warriors
As the two main points preventing multi-units armies to be viable currently are the investment represented in forging a unit, and upgrading camps associated with this unit, we are proposing those changes:
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Military CampsShow details
- All Military Camps upgrade bonus are now a flat stat bonuses, rather than an gain in % (except for attack-speed)
- Those bonuses now impact the stats of ALL military units of the clan, and not just the type associated with the camp.
- For example - Upgrading a Shield Camp increases the Defense of Warriors and Axe-Throwers, while upgrading and Axe Camp increases the Attack Power of Shield-Beares and Warriors as well
Warriors
Warriors currently feel like the “default” military unit, as they are useful in most if not all situations, and have advantages against both other units with their military forge. The charge allows them to reach the Axe-Throwers quickly, and the Armor-breaking impact also makes them a great counter to Shields.
In the meantime, before they are forged, they do not have any natural advantage against Shields, and are in fact stronger against Axe-throwers, which is not supposed to be the case.
So we’re introducing those changes:
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- Warriors now have a native passive ability, allowing them to ignore 25% of the Defense of their target.
- Warriors forge no longer gives them a charge ability.
- Warriors forge armor-breaking ability now also reduces the target Projectile Resistance.
Shield Bearers
Shield-Bearers already DO have a natural advantage against Axe-Throwers, but their forge do not reinforce this superiority as much as it could.
That’s why we want to transfer the charge ability from the Warriors to the Shields, as it makes more sense for us to have Shield-Bearers charge enemy Axe-throwers to limit how much distant attack they’re taking.
This change also reinforces the overall utility of shields as tanks, as once forged, they will now naturally charge to be the first in contact with enemy units, making combos like Shields and Axe-throwers naturally more efficient while requiring way less micro.
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- Shield-Bearers forge now unlock a charge ability (while also keeping the previous defensive effect)
Military Path: Legion
To support all of those other changes, we wanted to rework the Legion Military Path to not be about supporting big armies, but about supporting multi-units armies instead.
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Level 1 - Weapons rack- All military forges are free.
- You generate Military XP based on your Max Warband (max: +10).
- Military units recruitment costs only increase based on the number of units of the same type already recruited.
- Once a Military Camp is upgraded, the other camps in the zone are 50% cheaper to upgrade as well.
Known Issues
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- UI - Upgrading a warrior camp will not display the 5% earned on unit UI
join the open beta and help us shape the Community Update!
To not affect the game, the following changes are available in the Public beta branch! You will be able to test them and send us feedback before it reach the actual game next week. ↓How to join the public beta branch↓Show details
If you want to test those features,How will the beta work?
As always, we have opened some channels on Discord and Steam for you to share your feedback. Starting tomorrow, we will ask questions in those places to receive your constructive feedbacks on those points! An open feedback thread will also be created for us to receive your more generic feedback. Be sure to be constructive in those as well and to not start debates with other feedbacks.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/466560/Northgard/