Greetings Wielders!
It’s still officially January, which means we can get away with saying things like, “Hope the start of 2025 has been great for you!” For us at Lavapotion, the past few weeks have been about getting back into the swing of things and planning the year ahead.
Looking at our roadmap, we’re happy to say it’s still solid. There are a few TBDs that we’ll have more to share about soon, but one thing is certain—2025 is shaping up to be an exciting year for Songs of Conquest!
Click on it to make it bigger, a nifty trick!
And before we get to what lies ahead, let’s take a look at what we just did. We released a new faction! The Vanir hit the shores of Aerbor, and judging by the stats, you liked it. Our Viking and Nordic folklore-inspired addition to Songs of Conquest sold above expectations.
Of course, despite all the playtesting, some things might still need fine-tuning. That’s part of the process and the joy of making something new. We want to say thank you for your support, your love for our new units, and the appreciation you’ve shown us.
You’ve so far recruited over 1.6 million of these stabby little ravens, well done!
But let’s look ahead. One of the most frequent requests since early access has been Sim Battles or simultaneous battles. We already released Sim Turns, but only one battle can happen at a time, which slows down multiplayer games.
One of our developers, Niklas, spent his Christmas working on it, and we’re proud to say that it's now ready for testing. It’s not fully done yet, but it’s close. There might still be a few small hiccups, but internal playtesting has been very promising (and fun). Now, we’re opening it up on the Public Test Realm right now, for everyone to enjoy, and if you find bugs, let us know by using our in-game bug report tool.
It’s right there in the game properties, sim-battles, just a few clicks away!
We plan to test this for about a month before rolling out a major update to improve Songs of Conquest for everyone. We promised multiplayer updates on our Roadmap, and this is a big one.
But that’s not all we’ve been working on. We’ve also made improvements to our random maps—most notably, they now have elevation, something they didn’t have before! It’s more than just a visual upgrade, though that part matters too. We’ve also tweaked the gameplay in ways we think you’ll enjoy. We made sure that not just the terrain is more varied but that pick-ups, buildings, and artifacts are more varied.
It might be random, but its’ definitely planned!
All these random map changes and more, besides go live on PTR together with the sim-battle feature. This really is the biggest change to our Random Map Generator in a long time and our goal is to make them feel random but a lot more true to the beautiful game that we want to show and more similar in both look and feel to the maps that we created for Conquest maps.
More hills, more water! You should get in there and enjoy the randomness!
And of course, we have to mention Roots, Q2’s star and the main focus of the team right now. Roots will be our second faction DLC, introducing the strange creatures and beings of the Wyld forests in the Bleak East. Ancient, mysterious swamp-dwelling beasts, skeletons held together by roots, and living buildings. It’s going to be wild.
But there’s much more to say, and we’ll be sharing those details in a series of devlogs, starting with the launch of the Roots Steam page, which is just around the corner.
Suffice it to say, that 2025 is shaping up to be quite a year, and we haven’t even covered everything yet. There will be console updates, a secret project we’ve been keeping under wraps, and much more. So stay tuned!
For now, jump into that Public Test Realm, try Sim-battles with a friend, and surprise them with your latest Vanir strategy. One that, for some reason, just involves a lot of pigs.
What are you most looking forward to? Have any questions for the team? This is the perfect place to ask, we’re always happy to chat.
Thank you,
Anders & the Lavapotion team