Darkest greetings Underlord,

It’s good to see you returning once more in this new year to inflict further suffering on the goodly people of Kairos. We can see that the clock ticking over into 2016 has granted you even greater aspirations for true evil, indeed, since our last announcement in the twilight days of last year we’ve received even more feedback and suggestions piled high upon our desks.

To reward your commitment to the darker pleasures in life we have acted with haste to deliver to you this delicious update. It’s packed full of improvements in various areas of the game, a new spell to help those of you who seek to destroy your rivals with an ally or two, and indeed a chunk of fixes to bugs uncovered by your roving eyes since our previous update!

We love to hear your suggestions so keep them rolling in while we work towards some of the extremely exciting stuff coming this year! Now onto the patch notes!

 

New Spell: Unclaim

This is a new spell we’ve introduced to fill a very minor niche, while we don’t expect there are many scenarios where the player may wish to unclaim their own territory it can be very useful in 2 vs 2 multiplayer games to make way for your ally to claim an area.

• Available immediately as a baseline spell
• Unclaims tiles and walls that belong to the casting player
• No mana cost
• Cannot unclaim rooms or shrines

 

Map Editor Improvements

• It is now possible to select any theme in the game for the Empire dungeon theme, regardless of whether you own the theme

 

UI Changes

• Workers that are fortifying walls are now shown as idle on the unit panel, helping players assign important tasks in preference of low priority ones like fortification
• Units which are unable to level no longer show their level in their unit shield
• Unit shields rotate what they are displaying faster – unit level is shown much more often
• Finished rituals can now be activated by clicking the ritual button
• The replay button on the mission briefing screen now reads as “Repeat”

 

Gameplay and Balance Changes

• Units which recently underwent corruption in a Torture Chamber will no longer seek pay instantly
• Workers that are automatically spawned by the Dungeon Core will now seek the whole map for tasks at equal priority
  • Previously they would prioritise tasks based on distance and thus may have fortified walls when other more important tasks were available.
  • Workers spawned by the Summon Worker spell are unaffected

 

AI Improvements

• Units which try to avoid enemy threats, such as the worker, are now less frightened by smaller threats
• Workers now have less fear when combat is occurring nearby, provided they are in good health.
  • As a result rescuing your own minions and imprisoning enemies from the middle of combat should be more efficiently handled
• Introduced new dynamic variables to worker priorities:
  • Priority for bringing piglets to the spit roast is now adjusted based on the current “ammo” remaining in the spit roast
  • Artefacts, defence parts and gold piles now have different priorities for collection tasks, artefacts being highest and gold being lowest
  • The level of a unit will now be considered when rescuing or imprisoning unconscious units, the higher the level the higher their priority
  • Claim tasks now get a slight boost in priority for each additional tile or room that becomes claimable after claiming the target tile
  • Mining gold shrines now has a lower priority than mining gold and several other high value tasks
• Several small tweaks to worker behaviour and task priorities

 

Performance Optimization

• Memory allocation in large combat has seen a reduction of up to 90%. This should reduce micro-stutter caused by code garbage collection
• Improved overall performance when many units are clustered together by up to 25%.
• Rendering and AI processes are now better balanced, boosting the AI’s performance when rendering is requesting use of the entire CPU. May reduce FPS on lower end systems, but ensures that AI is always reliable and does not freeze in long games on large levels

 

Misc Changes

• Multiplayer mode spectator camera has been improved

 

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a critical issue where some units would suddenly stop moving when CPU load was too high, often on large maps with multiple players and units
• Units will no longer perform certain actions slower when CPU load is high
• Fixed a game freeze that could occur under specific conditions when a large room was claimed (often on custom maps)
• Fixed a long standing issue on level 8 in the campaign where it was not possible to defile all tombs due to ghoul limits on the Necromancer. Ghoul limits are now disabled on this level
• Fixed an issue where units that had created their bed before a save game would not be rescued after that game was loaded
• Fixed an issue where unit beds would not be visible after loading a saved game
• Fixed an issue where the spit roast in the Tavern would no longer serve meals after loading a saved game in extremely particular circumstances
• Feral ghouls will no longer be brain-dead
• Fixed an issue with the Map Editor whereby maps with a colon in their name could not be saved
• Fixed an issue with the Map Editor whereby maps with a colon in their name could not be imported
• Fixed an issue with the Map Editor under which it was possible to create unclaimable tiles by painting claimed tiles over fortified walls, creating the greatly misunderstood but none the less beautiful fortified claimed tile
  • This has also been fixed in all existing maps
• Fixed an issue where it was impossible to place constructs on certain shrines in the Map Editor, if that shrine was not placed on claimed ground
• Clients in multiplayer should now be correctly removed from Possession when their unit is knocked out
• Fixed a crash which occurred after playing many multiplayer maps in a row
• Fixed an issue in multiplayer where clients could be desynced from the start and thus be unable to play
• Fixed an issue for clients in multiplayer where rituals could sometimes lock the Sanctuary permanently, making further rituals unusable
• The sound indicating that a player has joined your multiplayer lobby should now play correctly under all circumstances
• Fixed a visual issue with the corrupted skins of the Priestess and Bard Empire units
• Fixed an issue where casting Blood Money upon a prisoner would cause their model to be left behind, even though they were correctly removed from the prison
• Fixed an issue that prevented the loading of a save game when an object in the player’s hand was destroyed directly before saving
• Fixed a rare issue where unit shields could sometimes continue to be displayed even after a unit’s death
• Fixed an issue where the progress shield on Crypt pyres would show incorrect values after a ghoul had risen
• Fixed a bug where the load and save menus were not correctly showing the “Sandbox & Scenarios” category
• Fixed an issue where the Kickstarter and Founder’s themes were listed twice in the multiplayer and skirmish lobby

 

Until next time Underlord,

– WFTO Team

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