Card-Based Tainted Grail: Conquest - card-based roguelike adaptation of Kickstarted board game

[vazha]

Well, music at least is good.

 

[Infinitron]

https://store.steampowered.com/newshub/app/1199030/view/2525905600511080223

First big update, fixes, and what's to come!
A week after launch, yaay!

Hello everyone! It's been a week since we've launched, and once again, we'd like to thank you for all your kind words, feedback, and for your willingness to share this crazy journey through early access with us!

We're at over 200 reviews, and our rating so far is 91% positive. This is honestly AMAZING.

Your support and your trust mean the world to us and we're trying to do our best to read everything, answer your questions as fast as possible, and fix things that you find annoying in the game. We also understand very well that you guys took the leap of faith with us - its not easy to be with Early Acces from the first week since after a few months, you would get a much more developed and polished product… So we will want to make sure to make it worthwhile for you all

We are new to digital games, but in all our Kickstarter campaigns, we want to make our supporters a part of the process - show the whole backstage, meet the team, share the ideas and feedback and work together on creating a fantastic game. It feels amazing for us to be a part of such a community, and we also hope it's going to be really cool for you to be an active member!

In addition, we will make sure to prepare something special for everyone who supported us in this first few weeks early access - we are not yet sure what exactly it will be, so if you have any cool ideas, let us know!

And since we've promised an update for the end of the week - here it is, and we'd like to warn you that... it's a pretty big one.

Make yourself a cup of coffee/tea, and, well, let's begin! :D

Spoiler

This week we're introducing the first version, first iteration, of our new system: CORRUPTION.

It's only our first take on this concept - right now, it's really unbalanced, and we'd recommend even trying it out only to the most hardcore players.

After you've beaten the last boss of Conquest, you'll get an option to sacrifice yourself. On your new run, you'll notice a counter in the lower right corner of the screen showing you Corruption: 1. This will make your wyrdstone rewards higher... but also make all enemies deadlier.

After you die: Corruption will reset to zero. If you win against the last boss again, you'll be able to go further. Up to level 10 right now.

We're pretty sure no one is going to make it to level 3 so far (but it's because it's a very new concept and it's totally unbalanced for now).

We're implementing this for several reasons.

One is that we want to make sure that our most hardcore players have something to do after they've won so that the game will stay challenging, and maybe even - to some extent - unbeatable.

Two is that we needed to create a system that allows us to change global variables - and even though right now we're using it to make the game harder, in the future, we might use it to create difficulty levels!

Three is that this will give us additional space to create exciting encounters: things you'll be able to find only on certain levels of the world's Corruption or storylines that have surprising interactions after you've beaten a certain level (even once).

It's only our first take, but - well - it's in the game! Let us know what you think!

NEW! IN-GAME BUG REPORTS

We've fixed A LOT of bugs this week. But since we'd like to be even more effective, and some bugs require more data, we'd like to ask you to report critical bugs through our in-game bug report tool.

Feel free to use our google form or forums to report typos or general questions, but if you find a crash or a critical bug that prevents you from enjoying the game - please use the in-game bug report form. You'll find it in the game's options. It's important because this will automatically send us your save file, and we'll be more effective in fixing these.

FREQUENT PROBLEMS

1. White squares instead of images after loading the game.
   
2. Hero’s spawning in the grass/tress or stuff-is-wrong on the map after loading the game.

We don’t want to go into details why these things happen (#1 is because of “Addressables” in Unity, #2 is because our map generation tends to be a bit overprotective) but if these things happen, try to:

• Verify The Game’s Files through Steam
  
• Start a new run on the same save game (you won’t lose your wyrdstone and village’s progress)

If these don’t work: let us know through in-game bug report form and post your PCs specification!

A BIT OF BALANCING

• Breath Control can now be played only once per Turn.
  
• Catch a Breath now has Chain-keyword and can be played only once per Turn. Its Cost has been increased from 0 to 2.
  
• Draw no longer has Chain-keyword and can be played only once per Turn. Its Cost has been reduced from 1 to 0.

Changes to Brawler's level 10 Rune Reforges

• Explosive Force has been buffed: now heals for 15% max HP on kill instead of 5%.
  
• Manifested Ire has been buffed: now requires at least 10 Charges to Stun the target instead of 20.
  
• Staggering Strength has been buffed greatly: now requires at least 15 Charges to activate instead of 20 and reduces target’s Armor by 100, instead of 40.

Also, be sure to check out our NEW BOSS!
You’ll find it sometimes on the 2nd Path.

- Crippling attack shouldn't stun countdowning enemies
- End turn now stops all animations
- Abominations intents are now correctly displaying dmg
- There’s a warning for greedy humans who are looting chests in wyrdness
- Guardian's reforge - Ambush fix
- Guardian's passive - Wisdom fix
- Removed "use" option from Crafting Components
- Crafting components are now saved between runs in your inventory
- Ornate Vampiric Dagger should be properly Vampiric again
- Excessive damage on barrier now transfers to HP
- Barrier doesn't get used if any block is active
- Barrier dmg calculations now include Armor and statuses
- IMPORTANT: Hero can now be rotated during character creation
- Status: Drunk now lasts for 5 turns instead of 10
- You can no longer load the game in Conquest, you can only continue (in order to eliminate confusion). Your game is automatically saved when you quit your session.
- Wind-up Brawler Reforge gives you 3 Energy only when you're using Brawler Rune at 20 or more charges like it should do.
- Using one Blood Altar shouldn't prevent you from using others (+ more candles as a reward)
- Fixed a bug when drinking from one Fountain of Health made you magically drink from all of them
- A small benefit from being cursed added who-knows-where.
- Post-process effect of wyrdness has changed in battle. Now it is close to the one on the map and solves technical problems.
- Small improvements in pathfinding
- Fights can now contain up to 5 enemies…
- ...And because of that Rabid Rats had their Damage decreased from 15 - 17 to 11 - 13
- Probably fixed a block in the campaign when you went to the witch's hut after talking with the Druid
- Fat Knight combat encounter has been slightly altered - the overal Difficulty and rewards of it went up (combat part only)
- Flute protecting the caster with a barrier cannot be spammed anymore.
- Item Infuriating Incense correctly targets all enemies.

Last but not least:

We finally fixed Brawler's rune sound effect not being affected by sound settings!

Let Marcin explain our new, huge addition, that we have planned for next week

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Anyone play it yet?

 

[fantadomat]

Anyone play it yet?

Has it come out yet ?

 

[ADL]

Hoping someone will have some decent impressions soon. It's on GOG and I'm intrigued.
https://af.gog.com/game/tainted_grail?as=1649904300

 

[Infinitron]

https://store.steampowered.com/newshub/app/1199030/view/2599090546051990090

Future of Tainted Grail and this week's fixes and additions!

Hello! It's been a really long and very weird week for us! We've been hard at work, and we've been improving the game in plenty of different places - and there's this paradox that even though we've made A LOT of fixes, you're going to see mostly relatively small (but essential) improvements this week.

We're constantly enhancing our back-end and working on things that are going to be ready-for-release within a couple of weeks, but since it's easy to say that and you don't really have a reason to trust us, we decided to share some of the information about what can you expect in the future

So here's a couple of things we'd like to tell you about our upcoming patches and plans!

So –

Every run should reward you with something new, and we need a lot of new systems to make that happen - and also to track your achievements. We've already started coming up with ideas for a special journal that will contain information about the things you learned and unlocked in the game (serving both as a bestiary, lore-based journal, and comprehensive collection of statistics). But that’s not all - we’re going to add a lot of new cards, passive skills, and so on, so that there’s a proper reward system waiting for you in the future.

We're going to track your quests from run to run, too, so that it's clearer what's happening - because we're working on an over-arching storyline of Conquest. This will take some time, but, as we've said before, we're treating Conquest as a narrative-driven rogue-lite RPG, and we feel that this is something unique about this game, and we want to make this right.

When we're at this: we want to implement a general "structure" of the game. Right now, it feels like disjointed bits and pieces of various things, and we know that we need to make a proper overhaul of everything related to the overall user experience. From the way our menus work, through general UI, up to how you interact with most of our systems.

Spoiler

This will be a significant change - at some point. First, we want to make sure that the game will work properly on gamepads because this will drive some UI changes, and we're sure it will allow us to change the UI for the better (to streamline overcomplicated stuff). But don't worry, most of our devs are from the PC Master Race - we won't make any changes that will make the PC version of Tainted Grail worse.

Moreover, over time, we'll be changing the way the village works. We're not satisfied, like, at all with what we have right now. From the visual side of it (it's not as pretty as we'd like it to be) to general usability - all of this will be improved.

And while we're at it, we will be gradually changing some of our artworks and locations so that they're more Tainted Grail, less fantasy. We've stolen one of the artists from the board game department to help us out with that, and he's already making a lot of changes and suggestions

What else?

We have a massive list of additions and improvements you can expect in the coming months. I won't spoil much (but you can expect, for example, mercenaries for hire), but a couple of topics that CAN be spoiled are:

• We will redesign the way armor works in the game. Like, entirely. It's going to be a different system.
  
• We will change a couple of OP mechanics.
  
• We will add more stories and questlines after completing the first run, and a lot of village improvements.
  
• We will add a version of a crafting system and change the way weapons and armors currently behave. Without going into too much detail, one of the changes you can expect is that runes will have dedicated weapons (no more Druids with swords), and these weapons will have some variations in attributes. Still, their major source of power will lie in special gems/imbuements/tbd you'll be able to enhance them with. More details - soon!
  
• We're almost ready for constant data-driven balancing. Removing non-playable cards / passsives and adding new ones. Adding more non-game-breaking-combo-potential
  
• More content overall:
  - More variety of passives
  - More cards for each class
  - More enemies
  - More items

We have plenty of other things in store but, well, we'll get back to that in the future

So what's happening this week?

MAJOR FIXES:
Some of you’ll be very happy to hear that Derenheim Winterbane shouldn’t be immortal anymore!

Also, we’ve improved the visual feedback of passive rune upgrades you can see in combat.

In terms of visuals, we've finally added screen space ambient occlusion to the game, and this means that it should be visibly prettier and everything should just feel... heavier. And in place. And softer. See for yourselves:

And a feature you've been asking for:

Yes, you can see your passive skills in your character panel

Fixes, changes:
- Legendary Cards shouldn't duplicate information about being Legendary
- Blood Druid Staff now correctly sacrifices your health.
- Robes are robes. 4 new Armor skins implemented.
- Fixed character pose in character creation
- Clothes are changing in class select window when you are changing your runes
- Fixed a bug that caused your character to heal every time you performed a summon
- Now Legendary cards are truly one-time-use-only
- Glyph of Enhancing Reforge is properly working now
- Weaved in Spells and Deep Reserves cannot be used if no Summon is alive
- Brawler Axe won't taunt enemies at the start of combat.
- Flutes targeting specific creatures won't target your summons
- Fixed a bug that turned off Staggering Strength Brawler Reforge when you picked Stone-breaker Reforge. (Explosive Force, however, is still broken)
- Fixed a bug that caused Steel-eater to show that it dealt 0 Damage
- Spawners can spawn more enemies, because now they can spawn enemies in place where they were standing.
- Battlelog shows correct information after Bounty Hunter actions (inserting Disturbance card into your deck)

Village and Map changes and balancing
- Manasse can only spawn once and only per run.

Lost Soul Rebalance:
- Discard works only 2 times and costs 500 G (rising after every use)
- Healing Mixture added to level 3 of Lost Soul's shop.

Seamstress Rebalance:
- Healing is 100 G (rising after every use)
- Discard is 500 G (rising after every use)

Also: Seamstress can change your character’s appearance now

Master-At-Arms Rebalance:
- Drawing Cards costs 350 G (rising after every use)
- Duplication costs 500 G (rising after every use)
- Setting Cards As Starting Hand costs 750 G

- Changes to Unyielding Steel armor:

• Gives +100 Max HP instead of 50
  
• Now reduces your Armor by 20
  
• Special Ability chaged to: "At the start of every 2 turns gain 1 Block"
  
• Price increased to 350 from 200

Summoner

FIRST BALANCE BASS. STILL A WORK IN PROGRESS!

Druid’s Summoner Rune

• Maximum charge count changed to 18 from 12.
  
• Charge thresholds for Ultimate ability changed from 4 , 8, 12 to 6, 12, 18.
  
• Passive skill now grants +15% Damage per Summoned Creature instead of +25%.
  
• Reforge Glyphs of Sustenance have had their Barrier generation buff increased from +50% to +100%.
  
• Reforge Glyphs of Shielding changed - now grants +2 Rune Charges per Turn.

Druid’s Summoner Deck & Passives:

• One Sacrifice Card has been cut from the initial deck in favor of +1 Ritual Card.
  
• Sacrifice now costs 1 Energy, and all effects except for Damage are removed.
  
• Invoke has had its Cost increased from 2 to 3.
  
• Reverse Seal has had its Cost increased from 1 to 2.
  
• Surge has had its Cost increased from 1 to 2.
  
• Power Up has had its Damage buff decreased from +100% to +30%.
  
• Coordinated Assault has had its Damage buff decreased from +50% to +25%.
  
• Swarm ‘Em! has had its Damage buff decreased from +50% to +25%.
  
• Cleansing has had its Cost reduced from 4 to 2 and its HP cost from 25% to 20%.

Summoned Creatures:

• All Summon-type Cards now cost 5% of Max HP.
  
• Golem now has no Armor and increased HP pool per each level. Healing capability increased from level 3 and beyond, but can now only heal self.
  
• Wyrm’s Damage has been nerfed slightly per each level, now attacks with less hits for the sake of better readability.
  
• Abomination no longer grows in its Damage exponentially. Armor removed and HP lowered.
  
• Blood Totem Energy buffs no longer allow for infinite combo. Damage buff was decreased at high levels, but now grants Damage buff at level 2+.
  
• Now Blood Totem also heals the player on Activation.

That's all for this week!
Let us know what you think, report bugs, and come chat with us at our Discord server! I have to tell you, though, that I'll be off next week (holiday, yay, finally!) so, unfortunately, I won't be able to answer your questions! I'll get back to regularly answering when I get back to work around the 20th of June

 

[Infinitron]

Frequent updates for this:



https://store.steampowered.com/newshub/app/1199030/view/2746584521672322118

New Druid rune is LIVE & A Guide to Avalon
Hello! Before we get to the update, we'd like to make a shout-out to our Discord community - and in this case especially lMaltel, Disiesel, and titan.bevel - because they've created something amazing.

They wrote a beginner's guide to Avalon - from their perspective as players - in order to help out everyone who feels lost. And it's incredible to read these kinds of things as a developer. To see that people care about your game and are willing to help out others in enjoying it? One of the best feelings!

Check out the guide HERE.

Back to the update!

So last week we've been hard at work, trying to add a new rune for the Druid. However, after sharing it in its prototype state to our players at Discord, we realized that it might be a bit premature to update the game with this character yet.

This week, though, we're pretty confident that we've got it. After reading all feedbacks we got, rethinking what we want to achieve, and implementing a lot of new features, we've reached something that feels really good to play!

(I personally always played as a Brawler, now I'm playing the Blood Mage!)

There's still a lot of work in front of us, a lot to do, but we just can't wait to share the Blood Mage and Summoner with you. Just hop into the game WITHOUT expectations because both of these runes were changed a lot!

Please note that this is an Early Access - things change and shift as we are listening to your feedback and updating things on a weekly basis. There were and will be builds that will not be balanced, but you might be sure we will change it into the best experience we have. That is why your feedback is so important. Your support too! Thanks to your positive reviews and general kind words we are MUCH more motivated to keep on going and giving our 100% into the game!

Here's an overview of what you can expect by our One & Only Marcin

Spoiler

Just remember that since the class was pretty much done from scratch in terms of its design, it is unbalanced - but by playing it, you can really help us out in seeing what needs a nerf. We're collecting stats of most/least used cards and other things like that, so we'll be able to see how you're doing

(Expect changes to the Warrior class next week - based on these analytics!)

So, what else is happening in this patch?

Some of you will probably be happy that two quality of life improvements you've asked for are live

• You can now hold the left mouse button to make the character go where you want (no more click-spamming!)
  
• The first iteration of the key-rebinding system is live, too. You can't rebind everything but... it's a start!

We've also fixed a couple of bugs and issues, but the important thing is that there are several things we're still working on...

But we decided not to share them/make them public just yet. There are two reasons for that.

Some are unfinished, and that's the case with - for example - new and better combat animations. Here's a work-in-progress sample of what we're working on:

It takes a while because adding these things means that we constantly need to improve our tools with new features. And I mean things like "I need to have the possibility to add a visual effect to a weapon" or "I need to be able to spawn a projectile or plenty of projectiles and make them go in proper directions." We're getting there, though, and the game should be much, much prettier, and - more importantly - should feel much better to play.

(Yes, we’re sad every time we look at that blue Barrier-spawning effect, too!)

The second reason is that plenty of things we're improving are connected to other features and systems so we can't just add "parts" of these redesigns - but I'll just tell you that we're planning a huge update, a significant improvement to plenty of things, for the end of August

This update should contain a revamped progression system throughout the entire game, a better implementation of corruption, proper reward-related systems, and... some things that I'll tell you about in the future!

 

[ADL]

Still waiting for impressions before I buy this. Anyone?

 

[fantadomat]

Still waiting for impressions before I buy this. Anyone?

It is EA,wait for full release.

 

[Infinitron]

https://store.steampowered.com/newshub/app/1199030/view/2746585790648217957

Changes to Warrior & a lot of fixes and improvements!

Hello! As promised, we've changed our public release day to Wednesday so that we're able to make sure that the game stays playable for those of you who prefer to play it over the weekend In addition, if something will be wrong, we can hot-fix it right away!

A while ago we said that we're fixing a lot of issues we've seen with the game and that it's going to take a while – we'll be able to share more info about those huge changes really soon because most of them are slowly becoming real. However, we won't push them to the game yet because they need to be "finished" in order to work properly – they’re heavily intertwined systems and so we need to make them “flow”. Expect a huge update by the end of the month or around the middle of September! More detail will come in the next week and we can’t wait to share with you what’s coming :3

So what this means, for example, is that we're adding a lot of new passives and advanced cards to the game but we won’t be releasing them yet – it’s because we want to implement a new system of "unlocks" which will reward you for certain things in the game. Things like finishing a run. This will be accompanied by a proper “journal” that tracks your progress and accomplishments – we hope you see why it wouldn’t make sense to release this as a couple of separate features instead of one big change

So, by the end of August or the middle of September, you can expect a lot of new things in the game. Like we’ve said before: a total revamp of Corruption, a certain surprise in terms of Conquest’s storyline, a journal, and a lot of other things. And that's not all we're changing and fixing in the game - there's A LOT of new stuff incoming.

But please be patient, we'll be sharing more info soon.

What we CAN talk about is that we're continually working on new content that we can release and we’re constantly fixing bugs.

So here goes!

Spoiler

New tier 1 boss encounter added
- Vran's Warband.

A gruesome pack of mercenaries led by Vran the Sullen. Using advanced combos and tactics, this group spells trouble for any would-be adventurer. Rush to kill Vran and the group will disperse, or kill them separately, one by one.

And two new enemies:
- Crimson Ripper on tiers 1/2.
- Forest Sentinel on tiers 1/2/3.

Forest Sentinel - heavy armored and defense-oriented protector of the woods that redirects all damage taken by whole enemy group to itself. Use stun to interrupt the effect, or dispatch him quickly!

Crimson Ripper - a powerful damage dealer attacking both friends and foes at random, leaving them with a short-lived but extremely dangerous healing lock

Bugfixes:
- We've fixed the problem with Summoner's audio which hurt some people when they were playing with headphones :D Sorry!
- We hope that we've finally fixed all problems with Lifesteal on Berserker. It should work properly now!
- That bug with Juggernaut, which prevented the game from continuing, was fixed, too.
- Also, a bug with Well-Maintained Body passive skill was fixed.

Quality of Life:
- We've added a hotkey for rune usage so that you don't have to click it. Just press the spacebar or rebind the key to anything you want in the game's options.
- You can now limit the game's fps in options
- Support for CJK characters in bug reporting added (you can write bug reports in Chinese now!)

Additions:
- Added a new rare random drop item that allows you to escape from any combat
- Over 12 new music tracks (remixes and other thingies)
- First test of fully RGB tattoos

We’ve also finally fixed that old effect for Barrier – here’s how it looks now!

- Removed TAUNT cards for Warrior
- Added new keyword, MOMENTUM, which makes cards grow in power until end of your run after certain conditions are met

Cards removed from Warrior Advanced Deck:
- Duel (Attack, Taunt)
- Provoke (Attack, Taunt, Return)
- Taunt (Stance, Taunt)
- Thunderstrike (Stance, Chain)

Removed Guardian passive:
- Cleave: All Enemies suffer 20% of the Damage inflicted to any target.

Removed Berserker passive:
- Come at Me!: At start of every turn Taunt all enemies.

New Keyword Added:
- Momentum: Cards that grow permanently more powerful when used under certain conditions.

Warrior’s cards added:
Short Pause (Stance, Momentum)
Restore 10 HP.
If used when less than 10% of max HP:
Momentum: +5 HP restored

Vicious Trap (Attack, Momentum)
Reflect 100% of next incoming Hit.
If killed an enemy with this reflect:
Momentum: +50% reflect Damage

Weak Spot (Stance, Momentum)
-20 armor on chosen enemy ueot
Momentum: +10 (when you kill enemy in this turn)

Warrior’s cards changed:
Counter-strike (Attack)
Reflects 50% of incoming Damage next Turn instead of 50% player’s BaseDamage
Final Strike (Attack)
It’s unique ability to grow turned into new Keyword: Momentum

Finishing Blow (Attack)
Damage decreased from 300% Base Damage to 150%
Damage Boost after kill increased from 100% to 200%
Energy cost reduced from 3 to 2

Mark of Blood (Stance)
Armor Debuff increased from 60 to 100

Power Blow (Attack)
Damage increased from 400% Base Damage to 450%
Tradeoff for playing changed from discarding hand to drawing 2 cards less next turn

Prepare for Pain (Stance)
Armor boost decreased from 50 to 30.
Added new effect: Next Turn get +5 damage for every hit received this Turn.

Shield Slam (Attack)
Attack now targets all Enemies, additionally Stuns them without any condition
Lefts hero with 30 Armor debuff lasting for 2 Turn.

Random Attacks (Attack, Chain)
Name changed to Two Feints
Added new functionality: If both hits target the same Enemy: deal additional 150%BaseDamage.

Stunning Shout (Attack)
Energy cost decreased from 3 to 1
Instead of Stunning all enemies Stuns only enemies with 0 or negative Armor

Warrior’s passives changed:

Berserker’s Sacrifice
Now cards instead of drawing in moment of losing Health gonna be drawn next Turn

Brawler Reforges changed:
Explosive Force (10lvl.)
Amount of healed HP decreased from 15% to 7%

Wind-up
No longer gives bonus to Energy on Threshold
Instead gives 2% Damage bonus per every charge
And +50% Damage bonus to ultimate

Guardian Reforges changed:
Defensive Heal (10lvl.)
Amount of healed HP decreased from 10% to 5%

Opportunity Block (10lvl.)
Charges threshold decreased from 10 to 7

Ambush (20lvl.)
Charges threshold decreased form 12 to 6

Berserker Reforges changed:
Born for Combat (10lvl.)
Every Turn charges boost decreased from 4 to 2

Remorseless Assault (20lvl.)
Condition for Stunning all Enemies is removed
Wyrdness Blade Legendary card does not attack for 1 Damage.

In addition to that, here are some spoilers from what you can expect in the near future

A new bossfight!

(Sorry for the quality and size, Steam doesn't like big files!)

We’re also working on making the cards prettier and better – this means we’re starting to animate them. Here’s a sneak peak

 

[cyborgboy95]

https://steamcommunity.com/games/1199030/announcements/detail/2749964123632829677

Road to the HUGE Patch 0.95!
Hey everyone!

Time for our weekly update! First of all, let us start by saying that there is no patch coming this week for a few reasons. Many people from our crew took some time off (and we feel that they really deserve it!). Secondly, we have a lot of things that are in the middle of work, and they would not feel complete.

BUT! This is a perfect opportunity to take that time and talk about the roadmap of what's coming soon!
As you may know, we are reading almost everything you leave us – all the feedback, good and bad. We deeply believe that this is the only way of making awesome games – work on them with the community. Past weeks since our premiere, we have internalized A LOT of this feedback, processed it, and planned the most important features that we want to add to make the experience better.

A lot has been added already, but even more is in front of us, and that brings us to…

PATCH 0.95 – a HUGE upcoming update
Patch 0.95* is our response to the majority of your feedback and will be designed to address the following major issues:

• Learning curve
  
• Structure of the game
  
• Content
  
• Visual enhancements and UX

Here is the full list of features that are already in the middle of implementation or will be in the near future

1. Tutorial
Probably not as important to most of you, since you already manage to get through the game (and are quite good at it, considering how unforgiving the learning curve is!). But this is something that many people point out: the current learning curve starts way to high with the amount of different mechanics and little explanation.

This is why we are creating a special starting zone, that will not only walk you step by step through the core mechanics of the game, but also create a proper story setting for Conquest! A small visual spoiler for the game's storyline below! Can you guess what's happening here?

Spoiler

2. Corruption
Currently, Corruption is implemented quite poorly and in a non-interesting way. New Corruption will be a story-driven experience that will take you through 10 levels of increasing difficulty.

But the difficulty will increase in a quality way, not lazy “+20% DMG to all enemies”. With every new stage of Corruption, you will face new enemies, new encounters, new bosses, and old ones might learn new moves. Wyrdness will also get more deadly!

You will also build your village in-between runs with better-balanced buildings.

3. Journal
We will bring you a journal that will summarize all your in-game achievements.

You will know exactly how many cards and passives you have unlocked for every rune from the ones available. You'll know how many enemies you've seen and how many story events you've participated in.

All of this will be kept in one place, and you will be able to easily see how much content you've seen and how much is left to be discovered!

4. Weekly events
We will also be introducing weekly events. Right now, we are not sure whether it will be every week or every 2 weeks.

There will be some special rules regarding that play, usually including a special boss for that event too. We will also create a leaderboard for those events and achievements for everyone who will finish them!

5. Re-design of UI
We need to take a step back and re-design most of the game's interface so that it's easier to manage, prettier, and more intuitive. Here are a few quick examples of that:

• Once you get loot after defeating an enemy, you will also have your equipment on the other part of the screen to equip things right away.
  
• When you are picking new cards, you will see your current deck on the other part of the screen.
  
• There will be filters for your decks and so forth

These might be small things, but the devil is in the details We are deeply committed to making the game flow much better!

6. New map generation algorithms
Currently, we have a HUGE Tier 1 and then almost non-existent Tier 2 and 3. We will change it so that every Tier has more or less the same amount of enemies and encounters.

Overall, we think that one run's completion time should clock at around 1 – 1,5 hours of exciting, dense gameplay!

We're also introducing much better map generation rules to our algorithms. We're getting rid of enemies standing at the end of the path or treasure boxes "guarding" encounters (rewards should be rewards!). We're also reducing the number of milestones so that they're not just a checklist, but also a proper gameplay mechanic. There's a lot of different tweaks happening in this area!

7. Changing weapons and armors
This system will be re-designed in quite a big way, too. Here are the major new changes and additions:

One
We've had many discussions about armors and weapons - whether it's better to let players customize their characters any way they want, or to just offer them a couple of really cool visual presets. We decided to keep the best of both worlds. Because of that, we're going to detach gameplay-related effects from cosmetic items such as weapons and armors.

In the new version of the game, your weapon and armor will be set at the character creation screen you'll access through a special NPC. You will be able to unlock new cosmetic items for Wyrdstone (or get them as rewards), and after you've done that, they will stay with you throughout your runs. This means that we will offer you only starting archetypes with their respective gear sets, but if YOU want to change them - it's up to you! Do you want to have a Druid with blue hair and a heavy plate armor... well, who are we to disagree with your choices? :D

Two
So how will the gameplay values change? We will be implementing a new system of "orbs" or "gems" (development codename for now). During the game, you will be finding a lot of different gems that will contain small buffs and effects (things like "+5 DMG", "Start combat with extra 2 cards in hand", etc.), and you'll be able to place them in special slots.

Your weapon and armor (again: doesn't matter how they look like) will have limited slots for these gems, so you will have to carefully manage them, and create your perfect combination between gems, cards, and passives

Three
We will also be detaching base statistics from the items (DMG / Armor / HP). They will still be present in, for example, some gems, but your "Base" value will be dictated by your character's level. Yes, you've read that right, with every level, your character will get a bonus Base DMG, Armor or HP.
This will make your power level growth more linear (instead of "I killed the boss, now I have a weapon that is 3 times better"). It will also create a more prominent asymmetry between the runes. For example, Guardian can gain more armor and Brawler more DMG with every level.

...And that’s not all, but this update is already really damn long!

8. Balanced and more interesting buildings in the village
Currently, we are also not that happy with the village development. We will be re-balancing everything and adding a lot of awesome buildings.

We don’t have everything tested yet, but we have A LOT of cool concepts like cards crafting that we would really love to add o the game!

9. Visual enhancements
As we have shown in our previous updates, a lot is happening there. We are working on animated cards, more in-combat animations, better UI, new enemy visuals, effects, and so forth!

10. New content!
We are preparing over 100 new cards and passives to be discovered! New enemies and bosses, new encounters, and side quests!

And that's not all!
As you can see, there is A LOT on our plate, and most of those systems are interconnected. This is why we will introduce only small part of those features in our weekly updates and bring, hopefully, all of the above with the HUGE patch 0.95.

We hope that with it, this will elevate your gameplay experience on the new level!

When will it happen? We are aiming at the second half of September and feel pretty well with this prediction

As always, thanks so much for your encouraging feedback and for helping us with the game's development! We feel that this is a full beauty of Early Access, where you can actually play an active role in the game development and be a part of a community.

Have a great week, and we will see you in a bit with a new update

*By the way, we also made a little cleaning in our patch numeration and going forward this is how the Patch names will work. Currently we are at 0.92b. Every new functionality adds 0.01, balancing or content patch are letters (a / b / c etc.). Hope this will make more sense

 

[fantadomat]

Is this a procedural generation pile of shit????

 

[cyborgboy95]

Is this a procedural generation pile of shit????

Aside from the endless Conquest mode, they have a 3 hour long teaser of the single-player campaign mode with heavy branching storyline in the curent early access version as well

 

[fantadomat]

Is this a procedural generation pile of shit????

Aside from the endless Conquest mode, they have a 3 hour long teaser of the single-player campaign mode with heavy branching storyline in the curent early access version as well

Does the single campaign have a generated maps? Those in the screenshot up there were terrible.

 

[cyborgboy95]

To all my rat kins out there: https://store.steampowered.com/newshub/app/1199030/view/2753342456807638554

Hey everyone! Today we have a very exciting update for you all! :D

We've had this idea for a while, but there was a list of ASAPs we had to finish before we could implement it. Finally, most of the required components are ready, and we are happy to invite you all to the first Special Event in Tainted Grail!

We're introducing time-limited events that change gameplay, offer a fresh challenge, and can net you a special reward! These events' structure might vary a lot – from new Boss, changes to one type of enemy up to changes to the character... and more! They are meant to be a fun way of testing your skills AND a way to get certain special rewards in the meantime.

We hope we'll be able to add a new event every two weeks but, well, we'll be making decisions based on your feedback

Please note – this is the very first iteration of those events, so we are extremely interested in your feedback! Make sure to let us know what you like, what you don't like, and what you think about the whole concept!

Spoiler

REIGN OF THE RAT!
So, our very first event is focused around the most beloved creature of Avalon – rat! There is a true rat invasion that our village needs to take care of!

The rat population not only increased, but there’s also an extremely powerful King Rat, a new Boss to defeat, waiting for you at the end of the run.

The struggle is real, but there is quite an awesome reward for that! Anyone who will complete this event at least once will be granted a special rat-armor… And we will not spoil you exactly what it does in combat! You’d have to discover it for yourselves!

Once you kill the final boss, you can try to complete the run again and put yourself on the top of the leaderboard – but every time you defeat the rat boss, he is getting stronger! In future iterations, we might additionally reward the top 10 players of the leaderboard with some memorable cosmetics

We’ve been upgrading certain things in the game for the past weeks on our beta branch and now’s the time to merge some of the new changes and additions to the public version. Hopefully nothing will break! So what’s new?

As you will notice while playing Conquest, our map generation algorithm changed (for the better). It is still not the final version, but we hope the game feels better to play than it did before. Major changes:

• All tiers are more or less similar size now
  
• Milestones are rarer
  
• Encounters are actually protecting treasures not the other way around

More on that in our last update HERE.

This is one of the steps we take to get to the patch 0.95 – other systems are also being made and we are really excited about all of them!

Three new enemies added:
Stalker on tier 3 - a sly, crowd-controlling enemy with a few trick up its sleeve. Be careful when below 50% max HP!
Raging Troll on tier 3 - a heavy-hitting and tanky beast that gains infinite Damage boosts and negative Armor until he’s dispatched. Force to be reckoned with!
Soul Harvester, along with a custom rare encounter, on tier 2 - a grim and ruthless enemy that kills his allies to drain their Health and become stronger.

Druid reforges added:

New Summoner Reforges:

Level 10:

• Glyphs of Sustenance: At the end of every Turn, all Abominations alive gain +100% Damage buff. The buff is removed after their first Activation.
  
• Glyphs of Enhancing: Wyrm now applies Vulnerable at 4 Combo Marks instead of 6.
  
• Glyphs of Shielding: Golem now reflects 100% Damage instead of 50%.

Level 20:

• Overcharged Runes: All Sigils effects are duplicated
  
• Glowing Runes: All Sigils cost 1 less Energy.
  
• Suppressed Runes: Every Sigil can be used once per Combat but is applied to every Summoned Creature alive instead of one.

New Blood Mage Reforges:

Level 10:

• Lesser Key of Binding: When any Summoned Creature Overcharges remove all active Sigils from it. They go back to your Hand with 0 Energy cost.
  
• Lesser Key of Punishment: All Health sacrificed by Summon-type Cards is multiplied by 2 and dealt as Damage towards all enemies.
  
• Lesser Key of Chaining: When any Summoned Creature Overcharges: Promote all other Summoned Creature alive by 1 level.

Level 20:

• Greater Key of Binding: On any Summoned Creature death overcharge it with 200% of effect's magnitude instead.
  
• Greater Key of Punishment: Overcharge resets Summoned Creatures to level 1 instead of killing them.
  
• Greater Key of Chaining: Overcharge gains an additional one stage more (12 Charges total). The final step increases the Overcharge effect to 800%.

• Hero level capped to 20 instead of 30.
  
• Mirrorblade lost its special effect.
  
• A LOT OF rebalancing and changes to Summoner. Too many changes to list them here, seriously. You can visit our Discord for more info!
  
• Summoner Reforge "Suppressed Runes" changed: Every Sigil can be used once per Combat but is applied to every Summoned Creature alive instead of one.

• Fixed Cleave + Redirect game crash
  
• Summoner's Summon Totem Advanced Card now spawns Totem instead of a Wyrm, as it should.
  
• Rush and Power of Wyrd cards can't be used when your HP is below sacrifice amount
  
• Necromancer instead of percent chance always spawns Undead Spawn if has place for it
  
• Desperate Measures no longer heals twice
  
• Beating 3 bosses unlocks the 4th Bossfight on the game map (4th path from the village) instead of happening inside the Menhir.
  
• Two Feints should show correct bonus damage
  
• It shouldn't be possible to get more than 1 flute from Pied Piper anymore
  
• Hunter's Grove gives you a choice of 5 random Advanced Cards and you can pick 3 (instead of picking 2 out of pre-selected cards). Cards should also suit your chosen character class now.
  
• Fountains of Health become inactive after using the "Leave" option
  
• Certain enemies should fill the fight arena with more enemies after dying.
  
• Selling multiple copies of non-stacking items gives you the correct amount of gold.
  
• Summoner's Summon Totem Advanced Card now spawn Totem instead of Wyrm.

Hope you will enjoy this event and good luck - you might need it! :D

P.S. Remember if you will have trouble beating the boss, there is a great good community guide to the game!

 

[cyborgboy95]

https://store.steampowered.com/newshub/app/1199030/view/2872688481260776219

New UX samples and the Future of Events!
Hey everyone!

Quick update today because there is no patch coming this week - we're still working on the 0.95 version, and most systems are in the middle of work, balancing, and bug-clearing.

But! We still wanted to update y'all on things and share a few things that we'd like to talk about

1. Event feedback and future of events
   
2. New user interface samples

Let's go!

Event feedback and future of events
First of all, we’d like to thank you for taking part in the event! Well over 1,000 people tried the Reign of the Rat!

We were reading your feedback very carefully and we have a few conclusions that we would like to share:

• We won’t be implementing the Top 10 Reward. This was an idea and we understand that making a very limited reward would make the experience too “exclusive” and we don’t want that.
  
• Reign of the Rat was way too hard to complete. But the general difficulty level of the game is on the extreme side of game balancing. The upcoming Patch 0.95 will be changing the learning curve of the game so that Conques is more like an “easy to learn but hard to master” type of experience.
  
• Most popular events will be coming back. So, even if you miss them the first time, you will have a chance to play them again at some point.
  
• Events will be modifying the game in more interesting ways than just the final boss. Not all of them, obviously, but expect an upcoming event to be something… different!

The next event will start next week and we can’t wait for you to check it out!

It will have a small story-related bit that will lead the way to the big event introducing patch 0.95! Exciting times are ahead of us!

User interface samples

Secondly, as we were saying, we are re-working the whole user interface – from the starting menu up to the screens you see in-game.

We went for a more modern approach and added TONS of quality of life features. Below you can find the first examples of them!

Spoiler

Journal

Level-up Rewards

Character Creation

 

[The Wall]

Yet another game being ruined by Steam babies' "feedback.tm", "thirst for balance.tm" and "hunger for quality of life.tm". Great! All games should look, feel and play exactly the same

 

[Infinitron]

https://store.steampowered.com/newshub/app/1199030/view/2901962512536006215

Patch 0.93b - New event! Near Death Revelations
A new event... foreshadowing Patch 0.95!

Hey everyone!

Time for our weekly update, and today we got a real treat for all of you! We have a new event, and boy, oh boy, we think y’all will really like it!

But first, congratulations to the TOP 10 players of the last event!

We knew the event had some problems and we hope that the new one will be more exciting for y'all! The new event is called Near Death Revelations – we will not spoil the small story inside it – but it leads to certain things that will happen once Patch 0.95 is introduced! But here are few highlights on the gameplay level!

• You go to a totally different map!
  
• You get to level up to max level *really* fast
  
• You will fight a new, awesome enemy
  
• The whole goal is to max the amount of DMG you will deal to him! This is what shows on the leaderboard!
  
• You can only play the event as Warrior – Brawler
  
• The event will last a week, and then we will change the playable rune

Overall, we hope that you will have TONS of fun – we certainly had! Also, we can’t wait to see whether some of you will find a totally broken combo and what will be the biggest score on the leaderboard!
We have also prepared a special reward for everyone who will deal at least 20,000 damage!

Spoiler

Another big highlight of this event is a totally new boss which you'll be able to fight - Herald of the Unspoken, who comes with a completely new set of rules and quirks. We've bragged about this enemy model a while ago but we'd like to give a shout-out to our 3D and texture artists again 'cause they did a fantastic job bringing one of the most amazing creatures from the Tainted Grail lore to life – check him out!

(Sorry for the quality and size, Steam doesn't like big files!)

Overall, good luck, and have good fun!

Few extra things

We also have a few extra things from the upcoming Patch 0.95. We are working on all directions, and while it’s hard to show all the gameplay focus we have added to the game (you will need to see it yourself once the patch will ship), here are a few visual enhancements that we are planning.
Some extra combat animations that we feel look really good!

Another cool addition that you will see is that we have added water and heights to Conquest, so now the terrain looks better overall – it isn’t finished yet, though!

And we’re making first tests of new Wyrdness – this will change the logic of wyrdness totally, but it was a long-coming change since our former approach was blocking us from adding any gameplay-related impact to wyrdness. Now it will be possible!

(And once again: sorry for the quality and size, Steam doesn't like big files!)

 

[cyborgboy95]

https://store.steampowered.com/newshub/app/1199030/view/2901963148048610869

The weekly event’s class change – and a note on recent bugs and bugfixes!
Hey everyone!

So first of all: we’re blown away by the scores you’ve managed to get on the leaderboards of our current event. It’s been a joy to watch you break it and get insane scores even within the first hours of it going live – we honestly didn’t expect scores to go this high!

This said, Dakota15, reach out to us and tell us how you did what you did!

Also, thanks to Gurrflumfr for posting a very helpful strategy guide for the Brawler's event!

And now, as promised, we’re changing the rune so that y’all can break another character! This week it’s going to be a… Berserker!
Another purely organizational thing – we’d like to ask people who got to our TOP 10 in the Rat King event to add AR_Lukasz to their friends and reach out. We have something for you

Spoiler

Now, another important part of this update: the bugs.

We’ve received quite a lot of bug reports since this event launched and we’re really sorry for any inconvenience we might have caused. The truth is that we’re changing so many things in the game while getting ready for Patch 0,95 that we were unable to isolate some issues from the “release branch” we’re using for the events.

We’re improving this branch whenever we’re sure that we’re not going to break more and today’s patch should fix a couple of major issues. I’ll give you an example and tell you about the cause of two bugs a couple of you have reported.

Our programmer, by mistake, changed the order of two lines of code – not the lines, just their order – and because of that, some buildings in the village got their IDs misplaced. This caused a bit of chaos: suddenly some conversations couldn’t be ended (and you were stuck in an endless loop), and some locations started moving… while they shouldn’t.

Some players (shout-out to our Discord community!) helped us in identifying this issue – the funniest thing was when Master-At-Arms decided to pack up his house and go on a journey so that after a while his building could’ve been encountered on the map. It’s because he “inherited” an ID of something that was flagged as “movable” (like an enemy).

We’ve fixed this insanity, and some other stuff, so things should return back to normal now!

We’ve also seen reports from some players who were experiencing issues with broken save games. We hope that a part of these issues was fixed, too, but still – there are so many complex things going on that in some cases we’re still not sure what’s causing certain bugs.

However, thanks to the fact that we’re publicly updating a very isolated branch of the game we’re squashing a lot of the most critical bugs. Also, since we decided that until the launch of Patch 0,95 our events are going to be based on changing playable characters we’re not introducing major features to what you’re currently playing. Hopefully, this approach will stabilize the game!

However, if you do encounter any bugs definitely let us know. We’re reading everything you say everywhere we can find it and we’re trying to fix as much as possible!
That said, huge thanks go to Thomy013, one of our Discord community members, who's answering a lot of questions here on Steam before we get a chance to get to that! :D

Click the image below to join us there!

[discord.gg]

We’re hard at work on Patch 0,95 and it’s all really coming together. We’re very happy with what’s happening with the game so far and can’t wait to share it with you! It's only a few weeks now!

One of the most interesting additions are the Runestones which we’ll introduce in the place of Items/Armors. We’ve already done some tests and so far what we’ve heard about them from our Discord community was really positive.

Runestones are going to have their special effects and you’ll be able to “combine them” in order to create their better versions – three runestones will create a stone of a higher tier… but you will only get six places in your inventory to carry them. This means that after receiving a reward or buying new ones, you’ll need to make tough decisions on which ones to combine, which ones to keep, and which ones to let go.

We’re also testing “legendary” or “mythical” runestones which have huge, game-changing effects and resemble our former strongest weapons/armors but, well, that’s an entirely different case.

Anyway, this means that the Blacksmith in your villages will change his function – now he’s going to be selling runestones or allowing you to exchange them for different ones of the same kind. This is a part of the huge redesign of how villages are handled. It will be more streamlined than before and everyone you get will finally be of use – no more worthless NPCs! And, also, less grinding!

We’ve also decided to change the way the starting cards look – we felt that they need to immediately tell you what is their function because they’ll be the ones you see most often (before you remove them from your deck, you power gamer!) so there shouldn’t be any doubt in your mind about what-they’re-actually-doing.

Here’s how they look like:

Also, we’re tweaking the starting gear of characters. Here’s a revamped Brawler!

So, that’d be all for this week. Gotta get back to work, there’s so much going on… Let us know how you like the new event and definitely let us know if you encounter any bugs or something breaks!

 

[cyborgboy95]

https://store.steampowered.com/newshub/app/1199030/view/2901963782194919887

Guardian reforged – and ready to face the Herald!
Hey everyone!

Today we have yet another update. While a bit short, we could not be more excited about what’s coming with Patch 0.95! Everything is slowly coming together – gameplay, visuals, and story implementations… and boy, oh boy… we’re really proud of what we’ve achieved in these three months since our release in Early Access!

We hope we will bring you a lot of fun – polished, this time!

Let’s start with the summary of the Berserker event and let us just say that you guys are absolutely crazy for breaking the 1 million DMG barrier :O

Congrats to the top spots and to all players who participated in the event, we hope you liked it!

Spoiler

Guardian is ready for battle!

This week, Guardian will face the challenge of the event!

But we changed a few things in this class, making it a little bit more dynamic and… well, fun

Here are two BIG changes:

Guardian’s passive ability
Old Guardian passive (that one allowing you to save 1 card at the end of the round) felt good on paper… but we just couldn’t stand it in the game. We constantly had the feeling that it was causing additional downtime and turned out to be an overall frustrating mechanic.

We decided to change it in a way that would still reflect the spirit of this rune (defensive play and card management) but also add a little bit offensive bite.

New Guardian passive – Focus
If you haven't received any damage last turn, become Focused (where Focused means +50% damage dealt). This effect stacks with itself each turn you do not receive any damage.

Once you receive a hit from an enemy, you lose all accumulated Prepared buffs.

Chain is back!
Some of the Tainted Grail veterans might remember old days of Guardian, where you could do endless loops and generally crush everything on your way. Multiple iterations nerfed Guardian and also Chain cards.

Currently, when you use a card with the “Chain” keyword, the Chain stack resets to 0. This was mainly introduced to stop the endless loop problem.

But meanwhile, a few weeks ago we have introduced a more elegant fix to that problem, where we added another “temporary graveyard” for cards played. Long story short – you can play every card only once per turn (not counting Return cards).

Thanks to that, we can come back to Chain not resetting after use. Probably it will lead to Guardian power spike ; )

Obviously those changes are still subject to some balancing and testing, but we hope they will provide a bit more interesting playstyle for Guardian and bring a lot of fun!

We also can’t wait to see what you can do with this reforged rune in the weekly event!

Here are also few snippets of the upcoming patch.

First of all, as promised, your village in Conquest will be much prettier

Here’s a quick gif from our current version:

Also, our new UIs are almost done, too! Here is how the new, modernized character creation screen will look like. Again, work in progress (we’re going to add camera close-ups and, for example, some presets for hair colors), but we hope you’d agree with us that it looks much, much better!

We are also very happy how animated cards are coming into existence! They really add this nice feel to the art and immersion.

Last but not least, we have created some extra art for story interactions. And there will be quite a lot of new story content added to Conquest…buuuut, let’s not spoil things too much! Soon you will be able to test it yourself!

OK, that’s is it for today! We hope you will have some good fun with the new event and patch 0.95 is coming soon!

 

[Infinitron]

https://store.steampowered.com/newshub/app/1199030/view/2885076552149865499

Patch 0.95: Seeds of Corruption is HERE!
Hey everyone!

Today is a big day for us, so you will have to forgive us for being a bit emotional :D

3 months ago we uploaded our very first digital game into Early Access. It was, as you can imagine, quite a stressful moment for our company. But y’all were amazing, offering us great feedback, words of encouragement, playing the game, and reviewing it so positively! This motivated us a lot and we just want to let you guys know that your support means the world to us!

We were carefully reading all the feedback, talking with you on Discord, and – well – putting TONS of hours to make sure we can properly address everything

So here we are, during those 3 months, we’ve added:

• 70+ cards and 50+ passives
  
• 2 totally new playable characters
  
• Weekly events with leaderboards and rewards
  
• Tons of small fixes, balances, and quality of life upgrades...

But while doing all of that, we were working on something much, much bigger… And today, we are extremely proud to present to all of you...

Patch 0.95 – SEEDS OF CORRUPTION!

There are still some bugs here and there and things we want to add more love to – but overall, we feel that this new Patch is light years away from what the game was 3 months ago! We really, really hope you will enjoy it and if you will – please remember to leave us your feedback here or on Discord... and a review! They really help!

Now, what exactly is Seeds of Corruption?

It changes the whole dynamic of Conquest. First of all – it brings a whole new story layer to this mode and explains all the madness that is happening! We don’t want to spoil anything: but there are new characters, new voiceovers, new story encounters on the map, and many more surprises waiting for you!

Spoiler

Save-games wipe

Let’s start with one bad piece of news before we get to the positive updates. Changes in this patch were so big that keeping previous save files was, unfortunately… impossible. We are pretty sure that once you guys will test all the upgrades you will understand why – but this is still not ideal.

To somehow make up for it, we will be adding special cosmetics items for every event you were participating in – and for playing before the update!

We really hope that this update will make up for everything

Learning the basics
We also prepared a special story intro and tutorial, so that you are not thrown right into the extremely hard difficulty level from the very start. However, don't worry, we didn't nerf the game... We finally improved the Corruption system, which makes the game progressively harder as you successfully finish your runs! Just wait for Corruption 5! :D

This should make mastering all the game’s mechanics an understandable, and relatively easy to learn, process!

Ending run with a BANG!
In our earlier version finishing runs was a bit… anticlimactic? Well, not anymore!

Right now at the very end, you have to survive 10 rounds with a really powerful Fore-Dweller. JUST surviving is too easy for you? Well, don’t worry – you can always go for the biggest amount of DMG you can deal to him in set limit of time... and get yourself the highest ranking on our leaderboard!

On top of that, you will get a cool summary of everything new that you have seen that will be saved to your journal as well as unlocks:

• New cards added to your pool
  
• New passive skills
  
• Cosmetics for your character
  
• And more...

Journal – track your progress!
Speaking of journeys… we have created a single place to track all your progress and how much of the game you have actually seen. It tracks all the enemies you have faced, NPCs that you have meet, and faction cards and skills!

New cards, skills, neutral cards
We have created a bunch of new cards and skills for every character and faction – traveling through different corruptions you will be unlocking them and then you can try out all the different tactics and strategies.

We also did a major re-balance based on all the data gathered, so you can expect really hard choices when picking a new card

On top of that – we have also created a new type of cards – Neutral Cards, that can be bought only in NPCs stores… They are really powerful, but can be used only once per combat!

Last but not least… well, we were able to deliver on that awesome, animated cards! Small things, but it really makes your hand more alive

New runestones system
We have changed the previous armor / weapon system into something totally fresh – runestone system. Right now, you have one weapon and one armor slot for found runestones, that have some really interesting effects that can power up your build.

What's more – once you will find 3 runestones of the same kind and rarity, you can combine them into more powerful versions (and then three Tier 2 runestones into extremely powerful Tier 3!).
Once you defeat every boss, you will be rewarded with a possibility to unlock a new slot and put in more runestones into your weapon or armor!

Customize your character to the full!
The runestone system made a place for us to be able to offer you full customization of your character. Not only you can create your character and customize it after, but also chose armor, helmets, and tattoos to it!

Thanks to that you can create a truly unique character and unlock more cosmetics in the future!

New village!
We have also re-designed form scratch the Village and the gameplay options you will be getting! There's also the whole new tree of development of the village that you can get thanks to Wrydstone.

Totally new User interface
We have also re-worked a lot of game interfaces – most notable changes:

After combat, you can equip loot right away

While choosing new cards/passives you can see your current deck

We have also a totally new character menu with tons of quality of life tabs... and more! Check it out for yourselves!

Tons of new animations!
We have added a lot of new animation to your character. Thanks to that, fights look much more epic and we also worked a little on the dynamics of them. For example previously when your character was dealing 6 hits with one card, you had 6 different animations – right now it's one nice animation and 6 hits go right away!

Huge overall visual upgrade!
Our 3D team has worked really hard on making everything way prettier and I think you will be able to spot it a first sight!

We got now much more interesting textures, more terrain variety, our village is looking much better and well… just take a look at those few random screens from the game!

New Wyrdness!
We also have changed the look of the Wyrdness – now it is not an overarching mist, but an actual awesome effect that is laid down on “reality”, distorting it strongly. Thanks to that maneuver we can have a nice close to TPP view in the game and experience it in almost-RPG style!

But yeah, traveling through Wyrdness without a candle is quite scary, so don’t forget to manage yours!

What about the campaign demo?
Ok, so one thing that you will notice is that the story campaign demo is currently not available. Don’t worry! It will come back in about a week or so, once we will implement all the changes from this patch ; ) So you will be able to enjoy the story demo with all the features of 0.95 patch!

Uffff…. Ok, those are major things… there are TONS of smaller things here and there but we guess this update is already way too long. As you can see, we were working quite hard those past months and we really, really hope you guys will enjoy the fruits of that work!

If you will, please remember to leave a nice word, feedback, or a steam review. This will really help us out, as well as motivate us to develop the game further and further!

In addition, to celebrate this huge patch (this is a really big milestone for us), we decided to announce 25% discount on the game, starting soon!

Ok, this is it! Make sure to try this totally new experience out and have a lot of fun slaying through corruption levels!

Take care!

 

[Infinitron]

https://store.steampowered.com/newshub/app/1199030/view/2926738653839607803

An update for the unluckiest day of the year

Hello everyone! It’s Friday the 13th... but we hope everything’s going to work well with our newest patch! :D

So, as promised, we’re updating the game today – and we treat this update as a “transitory patch” because we have some really huge things planned for the next patch (hopefully in the next two weeks). This means that we’re introducing some changes and features NOW... but expect the next update to be bigger, meatier, and more interesting!

tl;dr - these are the big things in today’s patch:

• We’ve finally resuscitated the campaign teaser. It’s playable. It has some issues and bugs but it’s finally live!
  
• We’ve changed most of the game’s bossfights into more interesting, more challenging fights.
  
• You’re going to get an option to pick a Quest Card as a reward after every bossfight.
  
• We’ve added a new feature – “Scenarios” – to the game’s menu. When we're done with proper implementation of this thing you’ll be able to find our past events (and other special maps/modes/gameplay variants) there so that if you’ve missed an event, nothing’s lost (except for leaderboards and rewards).

Additionally, we’ve fixed a lot of errors and introduced some changes to the Village:

• Transmutation at the Blacksmith should properly let you pick the runestones you actually want.
  
• Exchanging runestones at the Blacksmith got fixed so he won't exchange your cracked runes for Tier2/Tier3 runes anymore.
  
• Restored the curse removal service at the Seamstress.
  
• All buildings in the village have proper rotation now.
  
• All buildings in the village have proper "rebuilt" states, meaning: they should transform into their "active" states when you've recruited their owners. Hopefully, this change will reflect on your normal playthroughs - there might be some issues, though, because refreshing building states and placements is quite hard. It should work well on clean saves, though.
  
• You can now "buy" every NPC in the village instead of trying to find them during exploration, in case you've had trouble with finding them.
  
• You can't exchange gold for wyrdstone at the Lost Soul anymore.
  
• NPCs are hidden in the fog/wyrdness by default now, you can reveal them by paying 100WS at the Candlemaker.
  
• Candlemaker should properly reset the counter of available candles with every run.

Same with encounters happening on the map:

• Fixed prices at the Provider's shop.
  
• You shouldn't be able to recruit the Master At Arms again in the Cursed Broch (after receiving him as a reward for clearing C1).
  
• Removed HP cost from Milestones.
  
• Removed the option to "Leave" the interaction with the Scientist.
  
• Treasures and chests should be easier to pick up.

As to bossfights:

• Golem was revamped - now it's an entirely different fight.
  
• Derenheim fight was slightly altered across all Corruptions - now slightly harder, and Winterbane has more moves in his arsenal.
  
• Lord of Serpents fight slightly altered, now noticeably harder and the Wyrm has more moves in his arsenal.

Small quality of life fixes:

• Collect & Continue added to item rewards screen after combat.
  
• Added the ability to re-roll cards you're given after level up.
  
• Stalker's card debuff slightly nerfed AND all Filler-type cards are now Special-type cards (the filler cards you're “given” by Stalkers and Bounty-hunters) and can be played for 1 Energy to remove them from your deck.

In terms of balancing you can expect A LOT of changes in our next patch - currently, in general, we've made Tier 1 fights mostly easier and Tier 3 fights harder.

As to our next patch... Let's say that we're going to post a bigger update next week with details and spoilers about what we're working on right now! As I've said before - we're in "transition mode" and won't be able to release a big patch next week so we'll share an update with details and some pretty pictures

 

[LESS T_T]

The non-roguelike game:

 

[Infinitron]

https://store.steampowered.com/newshub/app/1199030/view/2910976689295231026

Last week to get 2 in 1... and other news!

Hello everyone!

We have a pretty important update for you today! So, without further ado...

TWO SEPARATE GAMES

You could’ve noticed that some things have changed on our store page. Yes, thanks to your support and positive feedback we’ve decided to split Tainted Grail into two separate products – Conquest and The Fall of Avalon.

It will be easier for us during development, it will be easier for new players to understand what they’re getting, and it will be easier to prevent confusion of players who thought they’re playing an RPG and ended up playing a roguelike.

Two important things, though:

1. If you already bought Tainted Grail or received it as a Kickstarter reward you will get both games.

2. If you still want to get both games for the price of one – you can do it until the next Friday, the 27th of November.

Any purchases made after that date will be only for Conquest.

The game’s price will be reduced but after 27th you’d have to buy these games separately (and the campaign mode isn’t yet available).

So, here’s a Steam page for Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon if you’re interested in wishlisting

And now, let's get to...

Spoiler

NEWS

So, as promised last week, we have a couple of gameplay-related things to share about the future of Conquest.

Improved Visuals

We’re still in the process of moving the entire game to a new rendering pipeline. This caused A LOT of issues and we’re still fighting with them and figuring out how to approach certain challenges. But every single day we’re seeing insane improvements to the way the game looks and feels.

Here’s a quick comparison of the same area from before and after the change:

This level of details, of lightning, graphical fidelity is something we’ve been aiming for since… well, for a long time. Finally, we’re able to let our assets shine! This means that we’re able to have more fun with visual details in general.

We really hope we’ll be able to share this with you next week but – well – it’s a very complicated process and our artists are doing all they can to make this transition happen… but we’re constantly hitting unexpected roadblocks. Fingers crossed!

CORRUPTIONS

We aren’t happy with how Corruption works in our game. They’re scaling infinitely, yes, but they’re scaling in a very unpleasant way – boosting the most irritating stats of enemies, making the game a really slow, not that exciting, experience.

Currently, we’re testing a new approach: that the game should become harder because the situations you find yourself in are tougher, not because it’s just artificially rising in difficulty.

So, currently, new Corruption levels (up to a certain threshold) will spawn new enemy groups and give enemies new attack patterns. The stat scaling will kick in later and will be less punishing – but we’re going to add debuffs to the Player so that the game’s harder because you have more challenges to overcome.

We’re testing this and we hope to get the first iteration of this feature working and ready to share with y’all around the next week!

NECROMANCER

We’re making progress with implementation and testing – there’s still a lot left to do (mainly because this class requires some additional visual aids and in this case we’re dependent on the progress of #1, HDRP transition) but we hope we’ll be able to share our progress next week… on a private beta branch of the game available for members of our Discord channel.

EXPLORATION & VILLAGE

And here’s the last of major changes we’ll be making to the game. We’re not happy with how NPCs, exploration in general, and the village feel in the game and because of that, they’re going to get a major boost. We’ll start cleaning this whole thing next week and within the next two or three weeks, you should be able to see some initial results.

The major idea here is that we’re going to introduce a new progression system – the things you find and unlock aren’t going to be dependent on Corruption anymore. We don’t want to force players to play on harder difficulties in order to unlock content and have more fun – we want them to unlock content just by playing the game.

The main storyline will still be dependent on Corruption levels, though. But with the way we’re approaching the difficulty now (see #2) we’re pretty certain that, given enough time, most players should be able to reach the necessary levels to see the entire storyline.

Another thing is that, since most of the game is finally in place, we’re ready to start redesigning NPC interactions and the Village. We don’t want to spoil too much, but expect the interactions to feel a bit different – and better.

So... as we said last week: this was a text update for today, let's hope that we'll be able to patch the game with some cool stuff next week!

 

[Infinitron]

Release date for Conquest is now Q2 2021: https://store.steampowered.com/newshub/app/1199030/view/2910977322834750929

An Updated Roadmap!

Hello everyone!

This week we have something you've been asking us about from time to time - an updated roadmap leading us to the full release date of Conquest.

There are a couple of important things we need to tell you about, though!

We were pretty optimistic in our last week's update - and we've managed to do a lot this week - but ultimately we've decided not to release a patch to the game today. It's still a bit unstable and not everything is working as it should be so we need a bit more time to polish it out a bit before releasing an official patch.

The next patch, however, should get us really close to version 0.97 - the version you should expect by the end of December.

We're making steady progress with most of what you'll find in the roadmap and we've decided to share a sneak peek on our private branch for the members of our Discord channel

It should be available now - along with more details on a special channel. However, as is often the case with builds that aren't public, it's still heavily broken

The second thing is: once again thank you for feedback about the split of the game into two products. We're working closely with Valve to make this happen and even though we're not yet quite sure on how the second product will be shown in your game library, we're confident that all's gonna be okay. Don't worry then - and, well, from today onwards... Conquest is a separate game!

We're still waiting for information about the GOG version. We'll let you know about it as soon as we know something

Anyway, here's our updated roadmap!