Dev Update #25: Build 13 (35% Off! Story Completed, Contracts, Crafting, Camp)

Hey guys,

A big update today and to celebrate, Dead Monarchy is going on sale, 35% discount! This major update links the story together with updated text, adds in a challenging post-game encounter, new contract types, crafting and the player camp.

New playthrough is required.

Opting In:

- Right click Dead Monarchy.
- Select “Properties”.
- Select “Betas” on the left menu.
- Select “rebuild” from the drop down list.

The game can now be played completely from start to end, there will not be any more big additions to the game before release. I am now shifting to purely balancing and bug fixing as only now do I have the time to actually play and test. A couple of bugs have already been identified but they will be fixed in the next update. Now is a good time to dive back into Dead Monarchy as it is pretty close to a 1.0 release state. Just remember to swap over to the beta branch although it won’t be long until this rebuilt version replaces the live build.

New:

- Camping has been implemented. An item called "Supplies" has been added, it is a resource used when camping, it is required to pass the time when camping out in the wild. It is a rather expensive item because having a way to pass time when out in the wild subverts the danger of getting ambushed at night.

- Crafting has been added. Craft weapons and armour at the smithy, craft rings and trinkets and breakdown contract related items at the temple. Crafting can also be done in the player camp.

- 9 new contract types have been added to each haven. These contracts range from trade item missions, crafting, searching for abandoned chests to scouring the ancient ruins.

- Created 15 new items, 10x baubles and coins. Baubles are found only in ruins and will be a crafting requirement for trinkets. Coins can only be found in chests found out in the wilderness and are a crafting requirement for rings.

- Treasure chests now drop antique coins, the coins are melted down and the material will be an essential component for crafting. Trading goods no longer can be found in treasure chests.

- Quality wood now drops from bandit camps that spawn during raid contracts. Quality wood is a crafting material used in creating certain weapons.

- Remaining placeholder dialogue has been updated, all story related dialogues have been implemented and trigger correctly after each arena champion's defeat.

- The overarching story has now been connected, the game can be played through from start to finish and optionally trigger post-game content or finish the playthrough.

- Upon starting a new game, you can now select your weapon aptitudes (weapon class), based on the same classes used by other characters in the game.

Changes:

- Rings and gems no longer drop from ruins.

- Drop rate adjusted for gems from graveyards and rings removed from the loot table.

- Gems no longer drop from forts, the drop rate for rings has been adjusted.

- Iron and steel stat rings no longer drop from caves. Caves now drop iron ore, an essential component for crafting equipment.

- Higher quality armour can no longer be bought from outposts, it can only be bought in havens. Imperial weapons can no longer be bought from outposts.

- The chance of higher quality equipment appearing in havens has now been slightly reduced.

- The 5 trade goods that spawn in each of the outposts per haven have been shifted around. Now, only 1 type of trade good will spawn in each of the outposts per haven. If you want more valuable trade goods, you need to travel up north where it is also more dangerous to travel.

- Newly added havens now stock the new ancestral quality helmets and armours dropped by the newly added noble houses.

- The chance of ancestral level equipment spawning in haven marketplaces (provided you have the required affinity/prosperty with the haven) increases the further north you travel.

- Contracts will now have a cooldown which will be randomly set between 1-7 upon completion, per contract type for each city. Previously all contracts would have a 1 day cooldown but that was because of the limited selection.

- Masterwork weapons and armour can now be bought from havens, each haven sells their own specific masterwork equipment. The buy prices of masterwork equipment has been significantly increased. These items are not meant to be easily acquired but now the player has a viable money sink towards end-game. Only entry level masterwork armour is available in marketplaces, the best masterwork armours still can only be looted from champions.

- Grace period for random events starting has been reduced to 1 from 3 days, meaning you have 12 hours. This is to prevent exploiting the chests that spawn in the world and being able to freely collect them without any risk involved as soon as the game starts.

- There is now only a 50% chance of chests respawning each week instead of 100% due to the reward changes.

- 25% chance of forts, ruins, caves and graveyards respawning each week, decreased from 50% due to the contract and loot changes as well as crafting now being implemented. The lowered respawn rates means that players cannot just stay in one map tile forever, they will be need to push further north from time to time and brave the dangers there.

- Starting stat points are now distributed in increments of 5 instead of 1 during character creation.

- Maximum buy modifiers for recruitment costs on new recruits from the shelter has been increased due to the increased payout from new contracts.

- Maximum buy modifiers for marketplaces have been increased due to the increased payout from new contracts.

- Accessing the extended combatant information in battle (previously with RMB) has now been replaced with (mouse wheel click) to prevent misclicks with using the RMB to move on the grid.

- The amount of medallions required for each champion has been adjusted. x5/10/15/20/25 for each champion as opposed to x25 for all of them.

- Medallion fight now only has a cooldown of 1 day and not 1 week.

Fixes:

- Outposts and havens will now properly stock higher quality arbalests.

- The newly added havens now spawn the appropriate items in the marketplace depending on their individual settlement modifiers instead of using Korburg haven settlement modifiers.

- Recruits that spawn in the newly added havens will now be properly adjusted in accordance to the settlement's modifiers.

- Fixed the issue of being able to access the camp menu while in cities which would break the UI.

- Weapon duplication issue that occurs when swapping weapons is now fixed.

- Difficulty settings are now correctly displayed depending on starting initialisation options (requires new game start).

- Fixed lighting issues for interior scenes and blank/plain white terrain texture issue in caves and certain arenas.

Hope you all have a nice and relaxing holiday, next update will be out in the new year. Until then!

Cheers,
Kevin.