Hello mercenaries!
With our Early Access release coming tomorrow, we wanted to go over many of the changes we've made since our demo became available in February (some of these were mentioned in a previous update). We've received a lot of great feedback, and we thank you for taking the time to share it with us! Onto the notes:
Dungeon Exploration and Time Meter
- On the Battle-Hardened difficulty, time modifiers are now applied after 16 time units, increased from 12. The value will also now change depending on your difficulty setting (including the new 'Warlord' difficulty!)
- Camping no longer costs time, and instead resets the time meter to 0, allowing you to deploy it strategically in order to minimize the number of time modifiers you accrue
- Added a new time modifier that can occur called Reprieve. Your party can breathe a sigh of relief, because nothing harmful will occur!
- Added a legend for dungeon event icons which you can toggle by pressing 'tab'
- Added a few more "Loot" events in dungeons
Abilities, Stats, Leveling Up
- Level 1 characters now start with 2 abilities. The remaining 4 are unlocked at levels 3, 5, 7, and 10. This was always an intended change, and it gives a much better sense of progression with your characters
- You can now spend coin in the ability tree to reset it and refund the ability points
- The tooltips for attributes, stats, and abilities have been greatly improved
- Attributes have been renamed to better reflect what they do
- When spending attribute points in the level-up screen, you can now see which stats will be increased, and by how much
- Many visual improvements to the level-up screen so it's a bit more informative and intuitive
- The Stormcaller's Cyclone ability has been overhauled, and now functions more as an escape ability
- All abilities now begin with 3 charges. Some previously had too many, some had too few. We'll be keeping an eye on these values early in EA
Combat
- Combat environments have been visited by an interior decorator, adding many props and lighting elements (where appropriate)
- More layout variations for every combat environment
- Flanking or Staggering a target now gives you a 100% chance to hit with a basic attack
- You can now hover a character and hold tab to see their stat panel without having to mouseover their portrait. We've also improved the hitbox around portraits, so it is easier to see the tooltips for status effects
- Using channeled abilities now show a preview of where it will occur in the turn order
- Charges from channeled abilities will not be consumed until the channel completes
- Channels can now be interrupted by Stun, Charm, Silence, Fear, Sleep, Freeze and Push/Pull effects
- When targeting an enemy, the chance to hit and defense stats are now displayed under the target's Health bar in the top-middle of the screen
- When targeting an enemy, the small health bar over their head will change to reflect how much damage your selected attack will do
- Injuries in combat will no longer occur when characters have relatively high health (>50%~)
- When enemies channel an area of effect ability, a warning icon will show on the cells that will be hit, giving you a chance to react accordingly
- Adjusted the difficulty curve of the first two dungeons (doing a better job of easing new players in). Beyond that, the difficulty for each setting remains mostly unchanged (aside from balance tweaks to individual units)
- Fixed some edge cases where Line of Sight wasn't being properly calculated
Economy and Cities
- Coin prices are now displayed on items in city Marketplaces
- The tooltips for items now show two coin values: The first is its true value under normal circumstances. The second is what the item can be bought/sold for in the current city. This will help you determine when it's a good time to sell or buy items
- Resources available in the Marketplace now match the city's export(s), allowing you to buy low and sell high in other cities that are in need of that resource
- Potential recruits at the Inn are no longer dismissed when you exit the negotiation window, allowing you to come back to them if you change your mind
- Coin and Renown rewards have been adjusted, providing a greater benefit for completing high difficulty missions
- The amount of scrap you receive when a piece of gear breaks has been adjusted (you now get more in general. Heavy armors in particular weren't giving you enough for their cost)
- Costs of provisions have been tweaked
- A new 'Stimulant' provision has been added. Using it will restore 1 charge to each ability, at the cost of 1 Bleedout point
- Added brief lore and histories for noble Houses and cities within the city entrance popup - we'll be expanding on the lore that is surfaced to the player as we progress throughout EA (there is quite a lot!)
UI
- Reworded the tutorial popups to be more concise, and added video clips to better illustrate the mechanics. The bleedout tutorial now properly triggers as well
- In the gear screen, you can now hover a piece of gear to compare its stats to what a character currently has equipped (colored numbers indicate if the stat will be increased or decreased)
- You can now also click the camping control hint (during dungeon exploration) in order to make camp
- Added a speed toggle (with 3 settings) on the overworld UI to make traveling visually faster
- You can now left click (or hit space) during dialogue in order to spit out one line at a time (with a pause in between). You can resume the auto scroll feature by pressing E. You can also now scroll up properly while the text is auto scrolling.
- The placeholder item icons have all been replaced with finalized art (well over 100 new icons!) Here's a peak at a few:
- Added an option to submit a bug report (or feedback) from the pause menu
- Added tooltips and hotkey hints to many UI elements that were missing them
Management
- After completing a dungeon or overworld fight, your party's Health, Morale, and Ability Charge values return to full. Injuries are also stabilized.
- Due to the above change, the Fatigued status now debuffs characters, reducing their Power, XP earned, and Morale. While they can still be used in the Fatigued state, they will not be as effective as a well-rested character.
- Armor values have been tweaked (overall a buff). Heavy armors in particular are much more effective at mitigating damage, justifying their high penalties to the Movement and Speed stats
Bug Fixes
- Fixed many issues that caused combat to occasionally hang
- Fixed issues where hang-ups would occur during the event/dialogue panel
- Many more bug fixes, but those two were the most frequent we saw!
We hope you enjoyed reading and approve of the changes! There may be a few undocumented ones that we might be forgetting, too. We'll leave them as pleasant surprises!
Release Time and Price
The Iron Oath is releasing at 9am PDT on April 19th and will cost $20
Demo
We've stated it elsewhere, but we just wanted to issue a reminder that we will be removing the demo ahead of the launch - so today is the last chance to play it. We would have liked to keep it up, but it's not something we can quickly update, and it is now 2 months out of date and missing many QoL improvements and vital bug fixes. For those who have played the demo, your save files unfortunately will not carry over into the main game due to the many changes we've made.
Early Access Roadmap
When we launch tomorrow, we will be sharing our roadmap plans for Early Access, so stay tuned for that! We can tell you now that our first major update (due this Spring) will be adding a new class to the game: the Icebinder!
By default, he will play more of a support role, focusing on debilitating enemies and reshaping the battlefield with his frost-based spells. His role can of course change depending on which ability upgrades you choose to unlock.
Mod Support
A short while after our release, we will be posting a guide on which things can currently be modded in the game, and how exactly you can go about doing it (we've made it pretty easy!). This includes things such as adding custom portraits, class skins and company flags. Our quest editor tool will also be included in the game's files, and we'll show you how you can create your own quests if it's something you're interested in doing!
Discord
We invite you to join our growing Discord community. We've seen many new faces and it's been great to see the activity in there as of late. Going forward, this will be the best place to discuss the game and provide your feedback directly to us!
Kickstarter Backers
If you backed our game on Kickstarter, we sent out keys over the weekend through BackerKit! You should have received an email, but if not, the key can also be found by logging into BackerKit and locating The Iron Oath project. If you backed the game and have not received your key, please message us on Kickstarter and we will sort it out asap.
The Final Countdown!
We're so excited for you to get your hands on the game - it is not long now! If you haven't yet, be sure to wishlist, and we'd greatly appreciate you telling your friends and spreading the word about our game and its launch!
If you'd like to support us further, we would also welcome you to share your thoughts and leave a review on Steam, as it greatly helps with visibility and every bit of feedback is useful to us.
Thank you, and we'll see you back here tomorrow at 9am PDT!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/699330/The_Iron_Oath/