NORTHGARD OFFICIAL RELEASE - RIG'S SAGA IS OUT

Hello Northgardians!

We’re so proud to finally officially release Northgard to you!! :)

Before jumping into the patch note, we really wanted to thank all of you for supporting our game during this Early Access year! It’s been quite a ride :)

This major update is without a doubt the one we put the most work in. You’ll of course be able to enjoy the full version of Rig’s Saga. We also worked a lot on a new feature for our combat system, and we added A LOT of cool new things :)

As we reached the 20k users registered to our Rig’s Saga Beta, we knew that we had to deliver a very qualitative and fun to play campaign mode. We work very hard on these 11 chapters. I strongly recommend you to play the first chapter again, as we added new cool things (including Achievements, Easy and Hard mode, dynamic in and out game cinematics).

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1323083558

A few more things for you to know:

• For each difficulty levels, completing the campaign will unlock specific Steam achievements
• Completing every additional objectives for each chapter will also unlock Steam achievements
• When having completed every chapter in Hard difficulty and having obtained every additional object, you unlock something quite special for your solo and multiplayer games ;)

We truly hope you’ll have fun playing this campaign =)

Disclamer: We know that some of the campaign dialogue are still to be translated, we're on it, and it should be done next week! ;-)

Mac & linux versions of Northgard

You asked for it, so we did it!
Northgard's Mac & linux versions will be released tomorrow, March, 8th :)

New Features - Solo & Multi player

Supply Penalty:

We know there has been some issue with rush tactics. So we decided to add to the current combat system a “distance to home” dynamic. Military units will have their attack power decreased depending on the distance their are from allied territory:
1 Tile: -0%
2 Tiles: -5%
3 Tiles: -15%
4 Tiles and more: -30%
Please note that this rule will not affect mercenaries’ attack power and will not be implemented in the campaign scenarios.

Other changes:

• AI behavior has been modified: its aggressiveness will be scaled on how close you are to victory
• Silos now can only be built on tiles where a generating buildings are built. They now only improve food production of Fishermen, Hunters and Farmers
• Feasts now grant:
  • 20% production bonus for healers with Medecine
  • 20% production bonus for Menders and Sailors
  • 20% production bonus for Skalds and Sailors

• Tool upgrades now grant
  • +15% production for Skalds
  • +15% production for Menders
  • +15% / production for Sailors (depending on your choosing)
  • +15% production for Healers

• We changed the way villagers react to an attack in their tile:
  • Villagers who are building in a tile under attack will now run to defend the tile
  • Exception: villagers building towers will keep building!

• You can now cancel the launch of a Mercenary raid by pressing the ESC button
  
• The units of a defeated player will instantly be killed if they are situated in another player’s tile (ally and enemy)
  
• You can now access the patch notes from the landing screen of the game
  
• You can now travel to a healed unit by double clicking on their portrait
  
• When decolonizing a TownHall tile, every member of your team will now earn some
  
• We added many alert boxes regarding the players’ progression towards victory in multiplayer games:
  • Reaching 800 and 1000
  • Colonizing the Relic of Gods
  • Colonizing Helheim
  • Reaching 500, 1000, 1500
  • Colonizing the Magma Lake tile
  • When forging each of the Odin’s Sword peices

• We added 8 new achievements related to Solo/Multiplayer games
  
• We changed the way diseases work (again...)
  
• We added more shortcuts, with the possibility to remap them. Here is the list of the functionalities:
  • Change minimap type, from ressources to military (T)
  • Select inactive clan member (U)
  • Select all villagers (G)
  • Select all scouts (H)
  • We added another mapping system for Bear clan. Select the Warband (E) and click (E) again to exclude Kajia
  • Affect only one unit (Ctrl (Hold))
  • Cycle through selection (Tab)

New Features - Multiplayer only

• You can know choose to play on dedicated servers or to host games - this has been added after many Australian players (among other) encountered lag issues, sorry guys!
• We added a profanity filter on Multiplayer games
• In the lobby, you cannot choose a team if it is already full

Cosmetic changes:

• We added lightning during bad weather
• We added trails for combat units movement. This adds a lot of clarity (and coolness) to fights!
• We improved the FX of the Draugar Portals and Wyvern attacks
• You can now choose between 7 different environment when creating a Solo or Multiplayer game

Clan Balancing

• Clan of the Wolf:
  • Pillage now also works on ally territory
  • Plunder healing effectiveness has been reduced (from 50% to 35%)

• Clan of the Boar
  • Handiwork effectiveness has been increased from 10% to 15% for non-upgraded buildings
  • Lay of the Land now reduces the chance of being attacked by neutral units by 90% (previously 30%)
  • The Mender's Hut cost has been lowered from 60 to 50 and its Krown upgrade cost has been lowered from 50 to 25

• Clan of the Stag: Advanced Silo bonus went from +2 and +5 (when upgraded) to +2 and +4
  
• Clan of the Goat: You only get one sheep at the beginning of the game. However, at least one other sheep will ALWAYS be in an adjacent tile
  
• Axe Throwers attack power has been slightly decreased (-5%)

As usual, we fixed many bugs:

• Life bars of longships docks and harbors are now correctfully placed
• Victory bars are now more logically scaled
• We fixed an issue where sailors would spawn in the water once a player has lost its Town Hall
• We fixed many visual problems with the Wyvern animations
• We fixed a problem in the way the description of certain building was displayed
• It was possible to walk through the Altar of Kings, this has been fixed
• It it now possible to heal Vedrfolnir when given by an ally
• We fixed a visual bug on the farmer’s food gathering animation
• We fixed some issues with the tile transfer:
  • Towers will now have the right color
  • The notification “building not built” and “building empty” will now disappear

• When launching mercenaries on Fields Tiles, you’ll get the right amount of
  
• When targeting a tower, military units will not walk through rocks and lakes anymore
  
• The miner’s upgrade tool now gives 15% more Stones
  
• We fixed A LOT of “No Entrance”, “Null Access” and “EOM” bugs

The roadmap after the release

As we already mentionned, Northgard's development will not stop with this official release! We plan on working on the game much much longer, adding many gameplay features, game modes, and general content.

Between these MASSIVE updates, we'll keep improving the game, in terms of bugs, system compatibility and balancing.

In a few weeks, a balancing patch will be released to adjust the clans' specificities after the modifications of today's launch. Following this, we intend to work on a more complete multiplayer patch.

The next clans' release

With each of the major updates, we plan on releasing new clans to add to the diversity of the game.

Any resemblance to real months is purely coincidental

The last year has been quite a ride for us! Northgard's concept seduced way more people than we anticipated at first, and you, as a group of players passionnate about Strategy games, pushed us to deliver the best game we could. We could not have dreamt of a more helpful and dedicated community and it's clear that Northgard could not have been as complete as it is today without you!

For that, for your invaluable feedback, for you advice and feature requests,we say THANK YOU! The future will show that we will not let you down.

Enjoy Northgard, its campaign, its solo and multiplayer modes.

ShiroGames Team