v0.81
It's an update jam-packed full of UI tweaks, bug fixes and balance changes. There is also some lovely new art to depict some of the events that can occur on the road!
Systems
- If a fighter or hero has more than 50 morale, their pay cost now adjusts to cost proportionally less the closer their morale is to 100 - basically, paying a fighter or hero that is above 50 morale is no longer horribly inefficient cost wise
- Fighters now have a 20% chance to heal their health by one each time your caravan reaches a settlement (if their health is currently below max)
- Chance of non-combat road events is now increased when the cart reaches a certain speed threshold (so they don't occur much less when travel times are significantly reduced)
Balance
- Hero chance to heal by 1 (if health below max) when reaching a settlement reduced from 50% to 25%
- Ranged fighter types (local hunters and archers) now have 0 defence
- Removed the link between fighter morale and initial hire costs, as it made higher starting morale for fighters of little/no benefit.
- Rebalanced fighter initial hire vs wage costs so that hire costs are at a bit of a premium versus continuing wage costs (it costs a bit more to hire a fighter than pay for 100 morale for them). Then rebalanced this down somewhat.
- Rebalanced hero initial recruitment costs (now higher)
- Adjusted skills in the Recruitment tree, Tavern Trawler now +1 hire slots rather than +2, Friends in Low Places now +2 hire slots rather than better recruits available and Leader now +3 hire slots rather than +2. Leader and Scary Friends skills swap places in the tree so that Leader is the final skill in the tree.
- Building Guild Houses at Arrow and Hallbright now increases starting fighter morale by +12 for each rather than +8
- Small rejig to town recruitment levels, including Centuria (1 > 2) and Arrow (2 > 1)
- Changes to some Guild House bonuses. Guild Houses at Woodforde and Artemis now increase fighter talent chances kingdomwide, at Mandrago reduces trainer costs kingdomwide and at Mandrake increases recruitment level in the city by 1.
- Pratchet's hero bonus changed to be 'fighter morale increases by an additional amount' bonus that was previous assigned to Sigurd, and values for bonuses vastly reduced (they were probably game breakingly high before)
- Sigurd's hero bonus is now increasing fighter's chances of healing when they reach a settlement
- Some road events that result in the player gaining or losing coins or XP now scale the rewards/losses based on the player's global reputation level
- Some road events with options that have coin costs to access now have coin costs that scale based on the player's global reputation level
- Explore events also have scaling gold rewards/losses based on the player's global reputation level. Some entry cost coin requirements for options also scale. A few fixes for coin requirements for explore event options.
- Scaling added to gold stolen by traitor priest and max base amount also increased a little
- Hero morale falls more slowly
- Hero morale reverts to 50 if fired or if they leave after it reaches 0
- Woodforde and Serenity no longer offer cart upgrade and repair services
- Grain no longer has market effects apply to it (logic is that it's too much of a staple)
- Removed +1 security bonus from Sailor career background.
- Coin costs for some combat events (where coin based bribes are possible) now scale based on global reputation.
- Apothecary costs scale based on global reputation.
- Explore events are only available 33% of the time and not all the time.
Content
- Added two-stage road combat events for gaining the Battle Banners and Mine Equipment cart parts
- Added explore events for gaining the Horse Hats and Horse Flags when your riddle trait is high enough
- Three additional cart parts are now available to buy from the cart store in Lancer - Metal Wheel Covers, Cart Furnishings and Off Road Wheels
- A new repeatable Archon-only event allows the player to Unlock the trainer Culvert if they didn't select the correct option in a unique explore event
- 15 new event illustrations
UI
- Visual representation for hired fighters on the security sidepanel if their current health is below their max level (through injury)
- Added tutorial popups for each town panel. All tutorial popups can now be turned on by pressing an info icon, so the player can view them whenever they wish from the relevant screen. Revised and updated existing tutorial popup text a little.
- Player visual appearance randomised each time character create screen is reached
- Special UI addition with speech added to combat intro if player has no guards or heroes
- Removed the big GUILD button that appeared alongside EXPLORE on the town hub, added note about Guild Houses to the Town Hub help text
- Text and display for unlocking trainers, mercenaries, friends, taverns and a mayor in explore events improved
- Some paragraphing and text layout changes made to some explore events, plus a smattering of minor text changes.
- Explore event titles visible.
- Caravan stats going above their pure levels (through short term buffs and bonuses from night time) is now indicated on caravan sidebar stat bars.
- Short term caravan buffs indicated on stat bar mouseovers and with flashing stat icons while buff lasts.
- More details added to mouseovers for caravan stats on sidebar and caravan stats on cart screen in towns, with differentiation made for pure stats (shown on cart screen) and adjusted stats, taking into account temporary bonuses (shown on the caravan sidebar). Details of hero bonus and cart part caravan stat adjustments added to the cart screen stat mouseovers, details of the red line skill bonus when in effect added to the caravan sidebar speed mouseover and likewise for the nonchalant skill bonus for the conceal mouseover.
- Presentation of town status UI elements adjusted. Market forces (low and high demand), tax hikes and rumours are displayed in a bar above the town name when active, with mouesovers for each. Hopefully less cluttered and better able to handle situations where a single settlement has lots of status effects occurring at the same time.
- Lots of small fixes and tweaks to the UI for heroes on the security sidebar, particularly for mouseovers. Fix for Erin not appearing to be correctly at level 3. Some minor UI tweaks for heroes on the tavern screen as well.
- Top speed shown on the cart screen is now actually based upon the cart's pure speed stat rather than being largely static.
- Added previews for total gold that will be earned/spent when mousing over the sell all/buy all buttons respectively
- Repair cost now immediately updates to 0 after repairing the cart on the cart screen
- Some paragraphing and text layout changes made to some road events, plus a smattering of minor text changes.
Fixes
- Fixed issue where morale boosts for towns could cumulatively increase every time you loaded a save game
- Fixed the caravan sidebar transition animation getting stuck part way if you changed to a different sidebar tab before it completed
- Misaligned beehive hat properly aligned
- Autopay now works correctly when waiting in towns
- Negative market force times shouldn't appear on the map screen anymore
- Dog will now appear on the caravan screen if you've found them, and the dog specific road event can now occur
- Event outcomes that heal or damage fighters should work correctly again
- Beating wild animal type enemies in combat should properly provide loot now
- The Red Line skill should now work correctly (bonus to speed when cart capacity less than half full)
- Hero rapport capped at 100
- Issues with market forces not occurring in the game as much as they should have been are much improved, although still occasionally occur