Greetings, Warriors!
We are back from our break and now feeling stronger than ever. Future updates won't take as long, and they'll contain lots of exciting stuff. More details on that will be provided later...
The time has come for us to release another update for the game. With this one we're building a foundation for a serious rebalance of the existing systems in the game, which we will in the future polish up and see the new concepts come to fruition. Prepare for some good stuff ahead!
Regarding Stutter-Lag-Crash for certain Windows 11 users as per our previous announcement
This is being looked into as the highest priority right now, but might take a while as it affects only a certain part of Windows users. We have no way of reproducing this and only have to rely on more crash reports to be sent to us so we can pinpoint what exactly goes wrong there.
If you are a player who is struggling with the game on Windows 11, please contact us over at the BR Discord by submitting a bug-report. We will take it from there. Thanks!
Without further ado, let's get to the 1.58.3 changes...
• Highlights:
- Reverting some experimental changes made in 1.58.2.
- Getting rid of the Fire damage by mixing it into Explosive. The total amount of damage/armor types is reduced from 6 to 5.
- Making Piercing damage always be the middle value of maximum and minimum armor multipliers to make it a true universal damage without it overshadowing unit weakness to xyz damage types.
• General:
• Explosive & Fire Damage Mixed Together
- Simplification of the damage/armor system. It is now 5 types instead of 6.
- Getting rid of "Nobody resists Piercing" and "Everybody resists Fire" concepts in the game.
- Fire-based units now become useful vs other units and not just buildings (i.e. Raider of the Serpent Clan as an example of this).
To put it short, all units that used to have 'Fire' as their base damage type. now have it switched to 'Explosive'. Fire is not removed as a whole, but is rather remade into what Piercing used to be (nobody resists it e.g. everybody takes 100% damage from it), with a little remark - no units deal fire damage anymore. Fire damage is now only dealt by embers launched from burning buildings.
• Piercing Damage Rework
- Non-ZM units no longer take 100% damage from Piercing attacks.
- Piercing armor is now always exactly in the middle between the worst and best possible counters (weakest and strongest resistances).
- Piercing is no longer the best type of damage overshadowing proper counterpicks.
- Zen Masters no longer have a strong resistance against Piercing.
These two redesigns we consider to be rather significant, and that's done for the easier understanding of the game. These changes, as always, are not final and are bound to be improved in the future.
• Technical Changes:
- Fixed a bug that allowed Watchtower units to become invulnerable.
- Fixed a number of triggers that corrupted save games preventing them from being loaded (resulting in a crash).
- Made the game permanently rely on threads, forcing an update every 2 seconds (and not every frame loop); This causes a delay in chat messages, but should make lobby joining better overall.
- Kabuki Stardust VFX remade.
- Ronin Blade On-Ground VFX remade.
- Warlock Dark Arson VFX remade.
- Chemist Rocket Explosion VFX remade.
- Cannoneer’s “Steel Cannonballs” technique ICON and NAME changed.
- Minor AI tweaks.
- Wild/Pack wolves won’t be considered as ‘undead’ by the game.
- Movement commands won’t be issued if the unit is immobilized by anything.
- Improved code for AI Peasants Tower Repair. They will now consider some factors like if the watchtower is manned and its health percentage. This is to fix the current behavior where they just send all the units they've got to repair the WT no matter what.
- Fixed a scenario caused by simultaneous button presses where the unit would cancel a BG but still trigger a move command afterwards.
- Included ‘Undead’ type in KillHero BG functions so it functions correctly if there are undead heroes like The Necromancer.
• Gameplay Changes:
Campaign Tweaks:
- Swans Pool building health increased from 2000 to 3000.
• General:
The Serpent Cannoneer is back
You heard it right. We have reverted the concept of Stoneball introduced with 1.58.2 as it felt rather wrong and not fitting the tone of the unit, we believe the majority agrees on that.
This leaves us in a limbo regarding the "Steel Cannonballs" technique, which is now remade into an honest placeholder called "Ammo Pouches" that increases the amount of Smoke Bombs one Cannoneer can carry by two. We wanted to have it affect Mines as well, but once again the game decides to limit us technically, so that will take some time to figure out.
It's a placeholder until better times, and it's better than having a technique that does absolutely nothing (how it has been since the original release all the way to Winter of the Wolf, and even earlier BR:ZE versions built on the latter).
With that being said, maybe you, our player base, have a better suggestion for this Cannoneer technique (upgrade)? We'd like to hear your thoughts, send them our way!
The Everchanging Kabuki Stardust
Dragon Kabuki's Stardust has undergone yet another change, and hopefully this will be the final one in terms of its mechanics. Stardust will now be a sustainable ability similar to Dark Canopy of the Lotus Staff Adept.
Kabuki will still have to throw the Star Dust projectile, but will be immobilized once it takes effect, effectively having his stamina drained while he's sustaining the ability.
The VFX have also been remade for improved visual clarity.
- Cannoneer default/original/vanilla attack restored, stoneball removed as a concept (reverting the 1.58.2 experiment).
- Cannoneer’s “Steel Cannonballs” technique is now “Ammo Pouch” and will increase his Smoke Bomb charges by 2.
- Crossbowman Weakness Bolt armor debuff increased from 25% to 50%.
- Kabuki Stardust redesigned to work as a sustainable ability akin to Archer Zen Arrow. (10 Stamina Cost / 5 Stamina Drain Rate).
- Wildeye base damage reduced from 18 to 14.
- Wildeye’s Spirit Wolves base damage reduced from 20 to 18.
- Wolf Sledger's Siege value has been slightly increased (the unit is more effective at taking down buildings).
- Berserker’s base damage increased from 20 to 22.
- Hurler Lava Rock FirePoint value increased from 0,075 to 0,085 (Lava Rock projectiles will set buildings on fire quicker).
- Fixed Chemist attacks not showing as Siege in Tooltips.
- Time to acquire “Rite of Ascension” BG for Tier 2 Lotus units reduced from 40 to 25 as per Unit Training Equalization changes of 1.58.2 (oversight on our part).
- Training time for Master Warlock decreased from 45 to 25 as per Unit Training Equalization changes of 1.58.2 (2nd oversight on our part).
- Horses Time To Become Wild increased from 30 to 45 ticks (tamed horses without a host retain their state for longer before going wild).
This would conclude the changelog for this update. It might feel rather short especially after so many months but trust us - we have a lot for BR:ZE in store this year, and we are eager to prove it soon. For more details on that, keep your eyes peeled for the next announcement regarding the future of BR. :)
https://i.imgur.com/DsEykPn.mp4
(this is a video, if you can't click it, open the announcement in a separate page, if you have no sound, click on the speaker icon)
Battle Realms Discord:
Join the official server for the game, the universe, and the community if you haven't. Discord has proven to be a very helpful and fun program to use for us (as developers), so we're quite keen on maintaining our server.
Populated by more than 4000 warriors, it is a solid communication bridge between us and all of you.
If you're having issues, planning to report a bug, or just want to learn something new about the game and communicate with other fans or even developers -- we'd like to see you there, come around!
Battle Realms Fundraiser:
- Help Fund Battle Realms! by Ed Del Castillo.