This Patch has tons of fixes and balancing after the UE5 upgrade. Combat been changed using UE's own Ability system for better result in Multiplayer, tweaked animation speeds and re balanced all weapons/armor and HP calculations.
Portraits and illustrations has been changed to computer generated ones, something we will continue to delve into.
Combat
We now use the Ability system in UE5. And it seems to work very well both for SP and MP. This is a better system to work with and opens up much better support for future improvements.
It also solved the Client prediction needed for Players in Multiplayer combat.
Most weapons work the same, if they had a High Mode before they do now too. In the future High Mode will be used for making Combos.
Weapons and Armor have all been re balanced (special thanks to Zethcas Cane) and HP calculations are lowered. Early game Bandits/Undeads/Wolfs are now much less dangerous and the starting weapon is enough to handle them using Parry/Block.
This makes Early Game much easier to get into while equipment have better spread and make more impact when upgrading.
Titles
This is a fundamental feature for the upcoming Kings & Queens patch. But is released now and in full effect.
The new Title system is the foundation of what access a character has in the World. And Long titles are now full length of all combined Titles in increasing Rank.
Long Title example: "Lord of Hollybrook, Warden of The North and Keeper of the Seals"
Rank is a Titles measurement of how high status it holds. All Titles with higher or equal Rank to Wardens now grants their children the Prince/Princess Title. This will give better chance for more and stronger children and status.
Each Region now has their own Capital and the owner is granted the Warden Title for that Region.
Access in UI or for AI is controlled thru Rights that each Titles grant the character. So a Settlement Lord can access more Management and collect taxes because of the Title, and each Settlement can have one appointed Chamberlain that also has certain access to help maintain Settlements.
This system will be heavily used in future Kings & Queens patch to control High Society relationships, invitations and access to marriages/alliances/banquettes.
Portraits and Illustrations
All Portraits and Illustrations are now replaced with computer generated images :)
Yes they are not perfect but the amount we can get is staggering, and we thought it gives much better feeling and ambiance being able to match regions.
This will be improved on over time, and more additions.
This also introduced defined Races that correspond to each region. Having Children with a Nord will most probably give that look and so forth. Race has no other meaning than looks in the game and will most probably never affect anything else.
Gender will have an effect though in the game.