Our December content patch has arrived, bringing with it a festive new Undermarket storyline and a visit from Mother Winter herself!
A Winter’s Crest Carol
Taverns that aligned themselves with the Undermarket instead of the Fantastical Crimes Unit will receive a special holiday mission to fake a haunting of elderly miser Jebediah Scrunge and trick him into giving away all his money to undercover Undermarket agents.
Jebediah is no fool, however, and tricking him will require the help of a powerful hallucinogen called the Waking Nightmare, which you should take special care in handling, lest you accidentally break the vial and dose yourselves instead.
Avoid dosing yourselves and convince Jebediah Scrunge of the errors of his ways to unlock up to four powerful new pieces of gear, including a Peanut Brittle Dagger and Chestnuts of Roasting!
Undermarket-affiliated taverns will receive this mission along with all the previous winter-themed content around Day 45.
Mother Winter’s Wild Ride!
Your tavern has been invited to compete in Beor’s craziest and most violent holiday tradition, Mother Winter’s Wild Ride.
Maneuvering her gift-laden death chariot pulled by a dozen dire moose, the matron of winter attempts to complete three laps of the snowy arena. If the heroes are able to unseat her from her sleigh, they’ll get to keep her whip along with earning an invitation to the Winter’s Brawl (coming next patch)! And any presents that fall from the chariot belong to the heroes, succeed or fail.
For this year’s Wild Ride, the role of Mother Winter will be played by orc warlord Mafalda Marrowsucker, a name that will sound mighty familiar to players who follow the backstories of their heroes. Mafalda is the mother of Grusilla, and killed five of Gru’s six sisters after being cursed to one day die at the hands of her daughter. Mafalda also annihilated Grunson Wolfspawn’s entire clan and kept him a caged prisoner for eight years.
Sending either of those heroes on the quest will result in a very different storyline, as they will be much more concerned with exacting revenge than winning any contest.
Five new pieces of festive loot are up for grabs in this holiday event, including a snowball cannon and my personal favorite new item… the Longbow of the Red Ryder.
All taverns, regardless of faction affiliation, will receive this quest around day 45.
A Nasty Narrative Bug Has Been Squashed!
In the process of testing the new content, we uncovered (and murdered in brutal fashion) a bug that had been causing a wide range of minor narrative issues for years. One of our string commands was zigging when it should have zagged, creating a situation where our engine would sometimes produce the wrong value on global variables.
This one little fix instantly corrected a host of small issues. This bug most recently manifested in last month’s food critic quest, where sometimes the system would say you earned a different number of stars than you actually did. That’s no longer the case.
Most excitingly, this fix unlocks a bunch of content that was already implemented, but wasn’t previously accessible. Tzarina Darkmane, Ursul Mangleclaw, Jenetta Lionheart and the famous bard, Szolem, are all now unlockable through the Frozen Games and a whole new style of road encounter now works properly for the first time. A few of many examples…
The Magic Seeds
You may have encountered a random stage where a hero is suckered into purchasing “magic seeds” from a street vendor. There’s now a whole storyline that will advance one step every additional time you trigger this encounter while having the hero present who purchased the seeds. Over the span of weeks, you’ll now see that hero planting the seeds and receiving a variety of powerful benefits from the plant that emerges.
Don’t Push the Button
That random encounter with a giant button marked DO NOT PUSH! now properly functions. The game will remember who pushed the button, and certain NPCs and factions will treat the button pusher differently because of it.
The Guy Trapped Under the Rock
There’s a whole storyline attached to that hiker you find trapped under a rock. Now, if you fail to save him, it kicks off a series of events that unfold each time you encounter that stage. You’ll eventually run across his remains and potentially find an item that launches a special quest.
Pastor Hartigan
In the bug territory, you may have passed Pastor Hartigan leading her flock to safety. That meeting now properly kicks off a storyline where she later returns to help in the fight and you can randomly encounter her multiple times. Whether that tale is one of triumph or tragedy depends on your actions.
All the Bug Dungeons
There were certain situations in some of our more complicated recent dungeons where some branches didn’t unlock properly. That is no longer the case. This includes some special events, like the medal count in the Frozen Games and the battle(s) against Waspzilla.
What’s Up Next?
Successfully completing Mother Winter’s Wild Ride will earn your tavern an invitation to the Winter’s Brawl, where four of your heroes will do battle with rival taverns and guilds in an icy stadium loaded with deadly obstacles. That event will be coming in our next patch, along with a bunch of inter-character relationship storylines that play out on the road.
Grunson was kept prisoner for years by Grusilla’s mother and will instantly hate her just because she’s a Marrowsucker. Sending them out together may result in them working through their differences and becoming friends... or one could straight-up murder the other.
Gurg once hired Dugorim to try to kill Braysen, and Katris has tossed Braysen in the clink a couple times. Expect to see relationships playing out and evolving on the road when you send characters with overlapping backstories out in the same party.
Do you have ideas for special events or loot that you want to see in Epic Tavern? We want to hear from you!
The Epic Tavern team streams every Monday, Wednesday and Friday on Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/epictavern), and we have open voice chats with players every Tuesday and Thursday on Discord (http://discord.gg/epictavern).
Mondays, 7-8 p.m. EST: Story talk with Tomo and Shawn on Twitch
Tuesdays, 1:30-2:30 p.m. EST: Dev chat with Tomo and Shawn on Discord
Wednesdays, 7-8 p.m. EST: Let’s Play Epic Tavern on Twitch
Thursdays, 1:30-2:30 p.m. EST: Dev chat with Tomo and Shawn on Discord
Fridays, 7-8 p.m. EST: Dev stream with Memige on Twitch