Hello Champions
Following the latest update we published celebrating a week into Early Access, we are here again to give you an overview of what's going on with the development, sharing the roadmap we've drafted in these crazy busy days. We've already gathered tons of super amazing feeds about the game and gone through every single post with suggestions and critics. We are still overwhelmed by the incredible support you are giving us and all of this will help the team to build the game we've always wanted, since the beginning of this journey. Looking at people playing hours and hours and reading reviews witnessing that our vision has been embraced by so many people is literally hearthwarming. Thank you for that! Before going on with the plan, we want just anticipate a few things you are going to see with the upcoming patch [out tomorrow]. We've already put in workbenches in Safe Zones and Repair Kits will be available all around the kingdoms. Workbenches will work as shrines, more or less. Buy a kit, use it on the workbench, done. All items equipped will gain +1 durability. We are thinking about adding new traits for crafting in the future but this is just a first step, following what a great number of players were asking for. The same is for the new Legacy Mode, available for who defeated Alaloth already. It is a fancy mode that will let you create your house, customizing your banner, motto and starting city by lore. We are aiming to expand this in the future, making the world reactive to you wearing your colors. DualShock users will have now the right UI with correct inputs popping in-game when plugging their pad and last but not least, we've added 67 new achievements for hunters, bringing the total to 83. Other things have been fixed of course, all the details will be notified with the new changelog as usual. Time to move on with the hot stuff than!
First of all, we have to say this post is just to give you a general overview of what we are working on. We are not going to slow down with patches, so we've just put in the features that are going to take a bit more time, Bug fixing, new contents, balancing etc. will be on-going till the end, no need to underline this, hopefully. This means that plans may change moving on with the development and things listed Beyond for example, could happen in a few days [or in months], according to development needs. The idea is to update the roadmap on monthly basis, given that you are going to get updates almost daily on our channels and the same updates will be posted here too as soon as we decide something.
STRONGHOLDS
Strongholds have been thought to be your personal hub with access to stash, bed, kitchen and personal shrine. We have a few NPC here at the mo, you can't interact with. The counselor will allow you to customize your home upgrading furnitures and unlocking other special NPC visiting you time by time. Leveling-up, a personal smith will be available as well as a barber [to customize your aspect] and you'll be able to collect taxes as any noble in the Four Kingdoms. We are still working on the customization, because it's a bit of work to do with assets but we are aiming to 3/4 different layouts for each Stronghold. And we are open to put in special layouts and furnitures in the future
WORLD MAP UPDATE #1
We've built Plamen in a very modular way. The update will bring four new locations on the map with unique characters and quests available. Rockstarn is where The Mercantile Union has its own HQ. The port is where all official businesses are conducted to the benefit of the Union and the Kingdom. Merchants and ships come and go, but the Union always remains, forever amassing wealth and power.
Mountain Hand is owned by Clan Teres-Toil, the mines have supplied the stone and metal that built the first halls of Karak-Hohn. Thousands of years later the mines are still revered for their massive yield.
Fal'Thalas is the former home of a druids' clan that was wiped out by the Ver'Quintiss. The Gardens have been taken by the Vas'Yilien who tend to the crops of those that came before while waiting for their seer to return.
Arrowtooth lies on top of this cliff and among these tents the orcs gather to air their grievances against one another. With the help of the Tahred the orcs make peace or war, or better yet, joined together for battle against an outside force.
FULL SUPPORT FOR MOUSE & KEYBOARD
Ok, we had a problem here but let us explain once again what's happened with this, because it's very important. We explained all the issues we had on the way many times and by the end of April, we had to make some choices. These choices brought us to the release on June 30. We sat down and evaluated all the options. At time, we were in a very bad position because we had to build-up an emergency plan for the release more than anything else. It was about surviving and giving sense to all the efforts to make Alaloth happen. Someone rightfully argued about the partial support for mouse & keyboard, but we were not mad and moving on this way was just to be able to release as soon as possible with some weeks to market the game properly. Full mouse & keyboard support was simply delayed because it's not an easy task and in our long term vision, it is completely bond to a rework of the UI. The situation now is very different so it's way more easy to confirm that full support will be available in September. In the meantime, we are patching again by the end of the week, improving what is already in. With the patch arriving at the end of the week, you will be able to customize the assignment of default keyboard actions to mouse buttons, and default mouse actions to keyboard buttons.
NEW MOBS, ITEMS, LOOTS AND IMPROVED MAIN QUEST
Easy as it is: as you know the world of Plamen is huge and it's an amazing box to be filled with amazing contents. We have a number of mobs ready to join the army of Alaloth, as well as new NPC and special chars. We've almost done in putting in all the items we consider as a sort of Layer 1 and we are close to 800 different assets to interact with, including weapons, armors, wereables, consumables, mounts, quest items etc. This not means that we are going to stop and there is a bunch of new cool stuff on its way for vendors, loot tables and rewards. The main quest already received some improvements with a new cutscene introducing The Fifth Kingdom through Vaizmil's words. We are going to put in some new steps to be able to enter the endgame area, making the journey way more connected to the lore and the chars, introducing more of the pantheon and some other tasks to make things more challenging.
BEYOND...
These are just ideas we are discussing since a while, even considering feeds we've gathered in these first days. The Arena Mode was a thing since the very beginning, trying to understand what we can do with this. We could say that an arena is already in-game and it will be available at some point, but we are talking about a stand alone mode here, offering many opportunities in terms of local coop and such. Thought about something omaging the old arcade cabinets: think about a Street Fighter-like UI with the chance of playing using all the champions available from the houses in-game or importing the save to use your char against them or mobs and such. We'll talk about this later. We already had the chance to explain about localization too and our store page contains all the info about this. New languages are a prio and by the end of the summer we should be able to plan something with a ratio, using the data collected through sales. We had some really cool surprises in a few countries [hello Turkey! Hello Brasil!] and we are carefully evaluating all the options. Dubbing is a different thing, it will be English only but the idea is to start with the narration, the main char and companions moving on step by step. The same for companions and local coop: we have a few ideas to improve this, given that in the next weeks companions will be tweaked to make them pivotal in combat. Last but not least: dragons. Big boss fights waiting, heroes and legends to be told.
Size comparison & VFX testing
MISC
As said above, this update is just a sort of recap of the things we would like to do and we are going to do in the next months. There is much more and again, expect new stuff and fixes with every patch to come. We are now on numbers, balancing the combat sys, the mobs, the weapons, the items. You can expect changes in your inventory with new patches, changing rarity and values of what you've acquired on the way. We are actively working on keeping your saves ok and if something risky is going to happen, you'll be aware of it. We are actively working on our Discord server to introduce a small meta-game to be even more involved in the development and we are going to have polls about in-game contents to add. The iterations we are having on Discord are amazing but we really need a change of policy there, to make things easier for both you and us. We literally received hundreds of messages and gone through every single DM but this is something we can't handle anymore as we can't handle flooding on different channels that are supposed to be used properly. More info about these changes coming soon.
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https://store.steampowered.com/app/919360/Alaloth_Champions_of_The_Four_Kingdoms/