No Place Like Rome - CRPG Expeditions: Rome Is Out Today!

Vindobona, Noricum / Hafnia, Daniae, Januarii XX, MMXXII: The hero or heroine of Expeditions: Rome is not off to a good start: father murdered, sister married to an enemy and on their way to Asia Minor, to serve in the legion, far away from Rome. Meanwhile, on board your ship, there is another vessel getting closer - of course, pirates!

In Expeditions: Rome you will play a young male or female roman soldier, making your way through history. Take command of a small group of praetorians and eventually become the Legatus a Roman legion. You'll gather a group of loyal companions, engage in tactical turn-based combat, learn new skills, loot and craft new equipment for your soldiers, and shape the fate of Rome. Expeditions: Rome offers over 50 hours of cRPG-gameplay and multiple ways to end the story.

Try before you buy? Download the Expeditions: Rome demo now on Steam, you can even continue playing from your savegame if you get the full game - the demo and the game are available here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/987840/Expeditions_Rome/

The Launch Trailer on YouTube: https://youtu.be/WJfTCJwF6BM

Enjoy and stay tuned!

Expeditions: Rome Wasn't Built In A Day, But It's Ready In January 2022

Vindobona, Noricum / Hafnia, Daniae, Decembris VII., MMXXI: The fate of an empire lies in your hands! On January 20th, 2022 you can become the Legatus of a Roman legion and lead your troops through Greece, Egypt, and Gaul. You'll gain power and influence and your word will carry weight in the political affairs of Rome. Your decisions will change the life of your fellow companions, your soldiers, and even the destiny of whole nations.

This Classic RPG from the creators of the critically acclaimed Expeditions: Vikings will take you on a 50+ hour campaign across Europe and northern Africa. You´ll have to fight intense turn-based battles, level up your alter ego as well as your companions, manage your legion, explore, loot, and craft – in short, everything, you'd expect from a Classic RPG.

Expeditions: Rome is set in an alternative historical setting. Ever heard of Gaius Julius Caesar? He wasn't that important. But you'll meet Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt - if you choose to put her on the throne, that is. And even the famous Roman politician Cicero can become your ally, as well as the ferocious Gallic chieftain Vercingetorix.

Expeditions Rome will launch on January 20th, 2022 on PC at an SRP of $ 44.99 | € 44.99 | £ 36.99.

It is now available for preorder on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/987840/Expeditions_Rome/

The new trailer on YouTube: https://youtu.be/JRo5VTmlmKQ

Enjoy & stay tuned!

Blow Your Rome Trumpet: Expeditions: Rome Is Hosting a Music Contest

Vindobona, Noricum / Hafnia, Daniae, Novembris XVII., MMXXI: When in Rome, you want it to sound right. Logic Artists has worked together with composer Thomas Farnon, who created music for movies like The Dark Knight Rises, Hacksaw Ridge and Wonder Woman, TV-Shows like The Crown and Sherlock, and games like Assassin's Creed 3 and... Expeditions: Rome. Two orchestras with over 130 musicians and 6 soloists made the compositions come to life - Expeditions: Rome will feature over 75 minutes of music.

Check out the teaser for Making the Music of Rome on YouTube: https://youtu.be/IX5FYLNwJyg
If you want to learn more about music and audio in Expeditions: Rome, check out Dev Diary #10
- Download the all assets: http://n.thq.com/Hv9K30rFV7x

https://youtu.be/SkpGa-jg9EU

Music Cover Contest
From November 17th, 2021 at 10 AM EST until December 10th, 2021 4 pm CET, a music contest will be held. The music sheets and full stems for three tracks of Expeditions: Rome's OST are available for download and THQ Nordic is looking for musicians to come up with their own interpretations of the tracks.

Participation and Exclusion
Participation is allowed for individuals 18 years of age or older, except for (i) individuals working at THQ Nordic and members of their family, individuals in any way associated with THQ Nordic or the development team “Expeditions: Rome”, their partners and staff are excluded; (ii) residents of countries where participation to such game is not allowed under applicable laws; (iii) residents in countries to which EU or US trade sanctions apply; or (iv) individuals who are not of legal age under the applicable jurisdiction. To such excluded individuals no prize will be awarded.

Participation requires either Facebook, Twitter or Discord membership.

Each participant may participate only once with respect to one and the same Cover, however a participant may enter several Covers on the social media channels, multiple entries of one and the same Cover on the same or different social media channels will be disregarded. The use of automated entry software or any other electronic means of repeated entry is strictly prohibited. THQ Nordic reserves the right to exclude individuals from participation who try to gain advantages through manipulation or disrespect of these conditions. In such cases, the prize may also be subsequently revoked and a replacement winner will be determined.

The contest is free to enter, no purchase is necessary.

Participants can enter the contest starting from November 17th, 2021 at 9 PM GMT until December 10th, 2021 4 pm GMT. Any entries received outside this time will not be considered.



How to participate:
• Download the stems and/or sheet music for the track you’d like to cover from either of the following:
http://expeditionsseries.com/downloads/rome-concert-score.zip
https://expeditionsseries.com/downloads/rome-mix.zip

• Create an original music cover of at least one of the music tracks (“Cover”). You are allowed to use any of the supplied stems in your Cover, as desired.

• Upload your Cover to any publicly accessible site (YouTube, Soundcloud, Google Drive etc). The Cover must be playable from the site (i.e. without needing to be downloaded) and be made available via a link.

• Submit your Cover by posting your link to one of the three Expeditions: Rome social channels – Facebook, Twitter, or Discord and include the hashtag “#SoundOfRome”:

o https://www.facebook.com/ExpeditionsSeries/
o https://twitter.com/ExpeditionsGame
o https://discord.gg/expeditions

Selection of Winners and Prize
Two winners will be selected by the THQ Nordic team:
• One (1) Winner from the Community submissions, selected by the THQ Nordic team
• One (1) winner from the Influencer submissions, selected by the THQ Nordic team
One (1) Grand Prize winner will be selected by popular vote run on Facebook and Twitter from a list of finalists selected by the THQ Nordic team among all submissions made on Facebook, Twitter or Discord.
THQ Nordic will announce all three winners live during a special Twitch stream on December 15th, 2021 hosted on https://www.twitch.tv/thqnordic and thereafter contacted directly as indicated below.

The winner from the Community submissions will receive:
• $500.00 Cash Prize
• 1 signed piece of Expeditions: Rome music memorabilia
• One single-use Steam code for Expeditions: Rome upon the game’s release

The winner from the Influencer submissions will receive:
• $500.00 Cash Prize
• 1 signed piece of Expeditions: Rome music memorabilia
• One single-use Steam code for Expeditions: Rome upon the game’s release

The Grand Prize Winner from voted by the community from the selected finalists will receive:
• $1,000.00 Cash Prize
• 1 signed piece of Expeditions: Rome music memorabilia
• One single-use Steam code for Expeditions: Rome upon the game’s release

A winner will be contacted within seven (7) days of the winner announcement via direct message on the social media channel provided in its entry. A participant hereby expressly agrees to this form of communication. THQ Nordic reserves the right to request proof of identity, age and address. It is the participant's responsibility to within 72 hours from the notification of the prize complete all information required for accepting the prize and provide shipping information via direct message or email once identified. In the event that a winner is unable to within this period provide the requested information in a reasonably acceptable format, THQ Nordic may withdraw the prize without compensation and select another winner. There is no obligation to accept the prize.
Prize will be delivered via shipping once the delivery information is provided and prizes are complete. For some prizes (i.e. signed memorabilia), these will be shipped in a reasonable timeframe upon completion of production and signing.
Non-cash prizes cannot be exchanged or transferred to a third party or delivered as cash payment. THQ Nordic’s decision regarding any aspect of the prize is final and binding and no correspondence will be entered into. Legal recourse is expressly excluded.


You can find all terms & conditions on the following website: https://tc.thqnordic.com/expeditions-rome-music-contest

Rome Is Where the Heart Is: New Installment of the Expeditions Franchise Announced

Vindobona, Noricum / Hafnia, Daniae, Aprilis XXVIII., MMXXI: Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears! We've come to praise a new game, called Expeditions: Rome! A classic RPG (Rome Playing Game) it is, full of story and memorable characters. A game where your choices will matter, where your choices will shape the fate of Rome itself.

Wishlist the game on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/987840

You are about to become a young Legatus, leading a Roman legion against the forces of a rebelling Greece. This campaign marks the start of your legacy that will take you to all corners of the world, making friends and allies, growing as a warrior and leader, all while uncovering political plots that have far-reaching implications for the future of Rome. Prove yourself in turn-based combat and find the right tactics to overcome any challenge you and your fellowship of elite fighters will face, then direct your legion to exert the might of Rome across the world.

Check out the announcement trailer here: https://youtu.be/HicfM3lt5E4
Check out the first gameplay trailer: https://youtu.be/ootyxaRUCXs

Expeditions: Rome is developed by Logic Artists, from Copenhagen, Denmark, who were also responsible for the critically acclaimed Expeditions: Conquistador and Expeditions: Viking. But as we all know: all roads lead to Rome. The game is currently in development for PC and scheduled to release later this year.

Stay tuned!

Hello everyone. Today we have released update 1.0.7.1 for Expeditions: Viking. This version contains some major new things, which is why it has been in open beta for almost a month. The most important new feature is the Iron Man mode, but we also have Steam Workshop integration now, as well as a bunch of quality-of-life improvements.

This is going to be the last major update for Expeditions: Viking. We still have a few things we're hoping Unity will get back to us on, so we may release another small patch or two down the line. Same goes if any new major bugs are discovered. The game appears to be in a pretty good shape now though, so we'll be turning our attention towards the next installment.

From the bottom of our hearts, thanks so much for sticking with us so far, and for giving the game another chance despite the rocky launch :)

Now that the game is mostly stable, we've finally added Iron Man mode. If you start a game in this mode, you will be limited to a single savegame and the game will auto-save over it at regular points during play. We haven't quite gone full roguelike: the game will not delete your save if you die. However, Iron Man mode forces you to live with the consequences of your decisions. To activate Iron Man mode, you need to start a new game and check the Iron Man box in the new difficulty confirmation pop-up window.

This version of the game now supports the Steam Workshop. You can use the toolset that we released with 1.0.6 to create new random events, and we've added an uploader for you to submit your events, portrait packs, and fan translations. You can find the toolset in Steam under Library -> Tools -> Expeditions: Viking Editor.

Even if you have no interest in unofficial mods, you may be interested to know that we've published three new random events (in English) in the workshop to demonstrate how the system works. There may be more to follow shortly.

We've added several new settings requested by players since release. The most important one is probably the ability to control the tilt angle of the camera a little bit. It was previously locked to 60 degrees, but now you can adjust it between 45 degrees and 80 degrees by moving the mouse up and down while holding the right mouse button (similar to how vertical movement controls rotation). You can also choose a fixed angle in the options if you prefer that.

Furthermore, we've added a drop-down to adjust how automated camera control is during combat. This has three options: full automation, minimal automation, and enemy turn only. The latter will still focus on all actions during enemy turn but mostly leave the camera alone during your turn.

Another addition you may appreciate particularly on subsequent playthroughs is the Combat Speed slider. Use this to speed up the game during combat so you don't have to wait as long for characters to run to their positions or for animations to play out. And finally, we have added a new difficulty setting to upgrade enemy equipment throughout the game - just their armour on the lower setting, but also their weapons if you turn it all the way up. This has been built into the presets as well, so you will now encounter substantially more well-equipped enemies on Hard and Insane.

As with patch 1.0.6, we're not going to include every fix and adjustment we've made for this update, but just the highlights.

• Updated the engine to Unity 5.6.3.
  
• Improved the smoke particles with new trails and tweaked some water particles in certain scenes.
  
• Enabled detail normals and static batching.
  
• Added Iron Man mode.
  
• Added Enemy Equipment difficulty option which makes the game way harder on Hard and Insane.
  
• Added Combat Speed slider to the miscellaneous options.
  
• Added camera tilt control and made the game save and load the camera angle/rotation.
  
• Also made the exploration camera framerate independent, faster, and a bit smoother.
  
• Updated the non-lethal toggle button to make it a lot more clear what mode you're in.
  
• Changed the Highlight All button into a toggle.
  
• Integrated Steam Workshop support.
  
• Improved the lighting in some of the Viking longhouses so it changes with the time of day.
  
• Added the weapon type to the item tooltips.
  
• Changed the Unstoppable special property description to be more clear that allies will take damage too.
  
• Optimized the tree setup in Skjern Forest.
  
• Made the player go first in the wolf fight in Skjern Forest.
  
• Made the palisades walkable during Hrodgærda's attack on Skjern.
  
• Added allies to the gate fight in Jelling and tweaked the equipment on Skule's personal guards.
  
• Made it so the kings' halls in York and Perth are emptied of characters after the betrayal or invasion, and made a few vikings show up there instead if you take the cities for yourself.
  
• Removed SSAA option from the game due to compatibility issues with the latest version of the engine.
  
• Changed Unbreakable items so they can now be dismantled like other items.
  
• The Ranged Shot animation is now 1 second shorter.

• Fixed some floating items if you looted the camp on the beach.
  
• Tweaked the lighting in skerninge, making the hill a bit brighter. Fixed being able to walk on things you shouldn't be able to walk on in Skerninge.
  
• Added missing names for the Wolves in the Danish forest campsite.
  
• Added wetness to the earth in York.
  
• Fixed some floating objects across various scenes.
  
• Fixed the camera going down through the ground if you pressed it forward against the cliff face in the Mountain Cave Entrance scene.
  
• Fixed missing materials on the male version of the Ancient Helmet and a bug that was resetting its model on load.
  
• Fixed an issue that was breaking the nighttime penalty to ranged accuracy as well as the illumination to counter it.
  
• Made the marsh campsite nearest to Skjern not show up until after the prologue so you can't wander off until you're meant to.
  
• Fixed issue when changing weapon while an ability is selected.
  
• Added character blockers around the walls of every interior scene in the game that contains an encounter, to fix an issue where ragdolls could fall through the world.
  
• Made sure Torfinn gets removed as a follower if you lose any of the fights in Skjern Forest.
  
• Fixed some save/load inconsistencies with the treasure on the little table in the abandoned camp in Yngilwood.
  
• Fixed an issue where Area Map icons would be offset due to the UI Scaling setting.
  
• Fixed the player character's death not triggering the game over if it happens during camping.
  
• Fixed deteriorated injuries not showing the original severity correctly in the camping results screen.
  
• Fixed an issue where scouting would create no loot spots even if scouting has been successful.
  
• Fixed an errant one-liner for Magnus mac Certain and Wulfsige if you take the town for either of them without ever getting the quest to side with Aiblinn.
  
• Fixed the conversation after you fight Osred in his hall checking whether Æthelred was dead instead of Osred.
  
• Fixed issue with unique spear not deselecting Extend ability.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Spotted status effect would sometimes not be applied.
  
• Fixed some inconsistencies in the Cure ability that was letting you use it on characters who would not benefit, and the AI would sometimes do the same.
  
• Fixed characters playing the Bow Idle act holding the bow in the wrong hand.
  
• Reduced the problems with characters sinking into the ground in the mountain cave entrance fight.
  
• Tweaked some hex grids (primarily in York and Hadrian's Wall) so the hexes are better aligned.
  
• Fixed some skill tooltip error messages that weren't quite specific enough, and in some cases outright wrong.
  
• Fixed the skill description for Throwing not being parsed correctly.
  
• Fixed the wreckers in Scarborough showing up after killing everyone in the village, and disabled loot ownership in Maucolyn's house in the same event.
  
• Fixed the fight at the sacrificial glade in Skerninge triggering after Skerninge turns hostile even if there's nobody there.
  
• Fixed an autosave bug that was creating broken autosaves when attacking an occupied campsite.

Hello everyone. Today we have released update 1.0.7.1 for Expeditions: Viking. This version contains some major new things, which is why it has been in open beta for almost a month. The most important new feature is the Iron Man mode, but we also have Steam Workshop integration now, as well as a bunch of quality-of-life improvements.

This is going to be the last major update for Expeditions: Viking. We still have a few things we're hoping Unity will get back to us on, so we may release another small patch or two down the line. Same goes if any new major bugs are discovered. The game appears to be in a pretty good shape now though, so we'll be turning our attention towards the next installment.

From the bottom of our hearts, thanks so much for sticking with us so far, and for giving the game another chance despite the rocky launch :)

Now that the game is mostly stable, we've finally added Iron Man mode. If you start a game in this mode, you will be limited to a single savegame and the game will auto-save over it at regular points during play. We haven't quite gone full roguelike: the game will not delete your save if you die. However, Iron Man mode forces you to live with the consequences of your decisions. To activate Iron Man mode, you need to start a new game and check the Iron Man box in the new difficulty confirmation pop-up window.

This version of the game now supports the Steam Workshop. You can use the toolset that we released with 1.0.6 to create new random events, and we've added an uploader for you to submit your events, portrait packs, and fan translations. You can find the toolset in Steam under Library -> Tools -> Expeditions: Viking Editor.

Even if you have no interest in unofficial mods, you may be interested to know that we've published three new random events (in English) in the workshop to demonstrate how the system works. There may be more to follow shortly.

We've added several new settings requested by players since release. The most important one is probably the ability to control the tilt angle of the camera a little bit. It was previously locked to 60 degrees, but now you can adjust it between 45 degrees and 80 degrees by moving the mouse up and down while holding the right mouse button (similar to how vertical movement controls rotation). You can also choose a fixed angle in the options if you prefer that.

Furthermore, we've added a drop-down to adjust how automated camera control is during combat. This has three options: full automation, minimal automation, and enemy turn only. The latter will still focus on all actions during enemy turn but mostly leave the camera alone during your turn.

Another addition you may appreciate particularly on subsequent playthroughs is the Combat Speed slider. Use this to speed up the game during combat so you don't have to wait as long for characters to run to their positions or for animations to play out. And finally, we have added a new difficulty setting to upgrade enemy equipment throughout the game - just their armour on the lower setting, but also their weapons if you turn it all the way up. This has been built into the presets as well, so you will now encounter substantially more well-equipped enemies on Hard and Insane.

As with patch 1.0.6, we're not going to include every fix and adjustment we've made for this update, but just the highlights.

• Updated the engine to Unity 5.6.3.
  
• Improved the smoke particles with new trails and tweaked some water particles in certain scenes.
  
• Enabled detail normals and static batching.
  
• Added Iron Man mode.
  
• Added Enemy Equipment difficulty option which makes the game way harder on Hard and Insane.
  
• Added Combat Speed slider to the miscellaneous options.
  
• Added camera tilt control and made the game save and load the camera angle/rotation.
  
• Also made the exploration camera framerate independent, faster, and a bit smoother.
  
• Updated the non-lethal toggle button to make it a lot more clear what mode you're in.
  
• Changed the Highlight All button into a toggle.
  
• Integrated Steam Workshop support.
  
• Improved the lighting in some of the Viking longhouses so it changes with the time of day.
  
• Added the weapon type to the item tooltips.
  
• Changed the Unstoppable special property description to be more clear that allies will take damage too.
  
• Optimized the tree setup in Skjern Forest.
  
• Made the player go first in the wolf fight in Skjern Forest.
  
• Made the palisades walkable during Hrodgærda's attack on Skjern.
  
• Added allies to the gate fight in Jelling and tweaked the equipment on Skule's personal guards.
  
• Made it so the kings' halls in York and Perth are emptied of characters after the betrayal or invasion, and made a few vikings show up there instead if you take the cities for yourself.
  
• Removed SSAA option from the game due to compatibility issues with the latest version of the engine.
  
• Changed Unbreakable items so they can now be dismantled like other items.
  
• The Ranged Shot animation is now 1 second shorter.

• Fixed some floating items if you looted the camp on the beach.
  
• Tweaked the lighting in skerninge, making the hill a bit brighter. Fixed being able to walk on things you shouldn't be able to walk on in Skerninge.
  
• Added missing names for the Wolves in the Danish forest campsite.
  
• Added wetness to the earth in York.
  
• Fixed some floating objects across various scenes.
  
• Fixed the camera going down through the ground if you pressed it forward against the cliff face in the Mountain Cave Entrance scene.
  
• Fixed missing materials on the male version of the Ancient Helmet and a bug that was resetting its model on load.
  
• Fixed an issue that was breaking the nighttime penalty to ranged accuracy as well as the illumination to counter it.
  
• Made the marsh campsite nearest to Skjern not show up until after the prologue so you can't wander off until you're meant to.
  
• Fixed issue when changing weapon while an ability is selected.
  
• Added character blockers around the walls of every interior scene in the game that contains an encounter, to fix an issue where ragdolls could fall through the world.
  
• Made sure Torfinn gets removed as a follower if you lose any of the fights in Skjern Forest.
  
• Fixed some save/load inconsistencies with the treasure on the little table in the abandoned camp in Yngilwood.
  
• Fixed an issue where Area Map icons would be offset due to the UI Scaling setting.
  
• Fixed the player character's death not triggering the game over if it happens during camping.
  
• Fixed deteriorated injuries not showing the original severity correctly in the camping results screen.
  
• Fixed an issue where scouting would create no loot spots even if scouting has been successful.
  
• Fixed an errant one-liner for Magnus mac Certain and Wulfsige if you take the town for either of them without ever getting the quest to side with Aiblinn.
  
• Fixed the conversation after you fight Osred in his hall checking whether Æthelred was dead instead of Osred.
  
• Fixed issue with unique spear not deselecting Extend ability.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Spotted status effect would sometimes not be applied.
  
• Fixed some inconsistencies in the Cure ability that was letting you use it on characters who would not benefit, and the AI would sometimes do the same.
  
• Fixed characters playing the Bow Idle act holding the bow in the wrong hand.
  
• Reduced the problems with characters sinking into the ground in the mountain cave entrance fight.
  
• Tweaked some hex grids (primarily in York and Hadrian's Wall) so the hexes are better aligned.
  
• Fixed some skill tooltip error messages that weren't quite specific enough, and in some cases outright wrong.
  
• Fixed the skill description for Throwing not being parsed correctly.
  
• Fixed the wreckers in Scarborough showing up after killing everyone in the village, and disabled loot ownership in Maucolyn's house in the same event.
  
• Fixed the fight at the sacrificial glade in Skerninge triggering after Skerninge turns hostile even if there's nobody there.
  
• Fixed an autosave bug that was creating broken autosaves when attacking an occupied campsite.

Hello everyone. You may have noticed Steam updating Expeditions: Viking last week and wondered what we just pushed on you. Hopefully your confusion wasn't too great when you found it updating yet again today. After a summer break and a long test period, we've finally released version 1.0.6 of Expeditions: Viking - and then version 1.0.6.1, which is a hotfix to solve an issue with one of the new features. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Let's talk about the new things we've added in this version!

In version 1.0.6, all portraits are now loaded from your Documents directory in the folder \My Games\Expeditions Viking\Custom Portraits. If you want to add your own portraits to the game, you must create 5 different versions of each portrait in specific sizes and place them in that directory. The first time you launch the game in 1.0.6, it will write all our portraits into that folder, and you can use those portraits to see how it needs to be set up.

New portraits must meet the following requirements:

• The files can be either .png or .jpg.
  
• Each portrait's filename must end with a keyword that reflects its size: Large, Medium, Small, Tiny, or Camping.
  
• Female portraits must contain the word "Female" anywhere in the filename. Otherwise the portrait will be treated as male (because patriarchy).
  
• Note that the Camping portraits contain a frame. You can just cut that out of an existing portrait with your image editing software of choice.
  
• You can overwrite an existing portrait by simply replacing its files with a set of identically named files in that folder.

If you overwrite an existing portrait, that portrait will be replaced with your new version in your game, without you having to start over in your playthrough. If you want to reset this portrait to the original later, you can simply delete the portrait files from the Custom Portraits folder, and it will be restored by the game next time you launch it.

All portraits included with Expeditions: Viking are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Public License. In simple terms, you are allowed to remix, tweak, and build upon our work non-commercially, but you must credit Logic Artists or Expeditions: Viking and you must license your new creations under identical terms (no making money off of our work, please!)

If you find that your Custom Portraits folder is empty, it's because something on your computer is denying write access to Expeditions: Viking. In 1.0.6 this was breaking the portraits entirely, which is what 1.0.6.1 was created to address. As per 1.0.6.1 the game will fall back to the internal portraits contained in the data files, but that still means you won't get any portraits written to your custom portraits folder. You can still add new portraits there which will then show up in the game, but if you want to see the original portraits you'll have to find a way to give the game write access to that folder - you can try disabling your firewall and antivirus or just checking your user permissions. If your user account simply doesn't have admin access, you may need to talk to your admin.

This update also introduces support for loading in custom localisation files and user-created random events. Because of the way the scripting system in Viking works, there is no way for us to let you add new characters with new conversations to the game, but the random events that trigger on the campaign maps and during travel are loaded in dynamically, and now you can add new events yourself or even overwrite existing events.

In other words, you can now write your own damn Aife romance events and stop bothering us about it! :D

We have also released our toolset which includes some example files, all of our conversation work files, and the editor we used to set up all our conversations in the game. It comes with a PDF manual with thorough instructions for how to set up your own localisation files or add your own random events. To install the toolset, click on Library in Steam and select Tools from the drop-down. The entry you're looking for is "Expeditions: Viking Editor".

For the next update, we're working on implementing the Steam Workshop into the game to make it easier for our players to share custom events, localisations, and even portraits. Until then, you can still share your creations the old-fashioned way: by uploading them to mod sites or hosting them yourself. We recommend using ModDB or the Nexus.

Since this update has had a particularly long gestation period (for our standards), we've decided not to include a full change list this time around. Instead, we're bringing you just the highlights. If you wish to know about any particular bug that's been bothering you, which isn't mentioned here, feel free to ask in the comments on this thread.

• The "ancient" Roman item set now has unique models
  
• Custom localisation support
  
• Custom random events support
  
• Custom portrait support
  
• 4 new beard styles, 4 new male hairstyles, and 7 new female hairstyles
  
• A UI scaling option for running the game in high resolutions on small monitors
  
• New animations for certain combat actions as well as for ambient characters
  
• Taunt now has voice-over

• Talon and Dust are now free actions
  
• Cure no longer removes Spotted, Illuminated, Exposed, Disarmed, or Condemned
  
• Made Taunt resistable with Mental Resistance
  
• The difficulty of Guarding your camp now scales with your group size: the larger your party, the better you must guard it
  
• Changed the skillpoint display to show the amount of points spent instead of the total
  
• Follower selection popup now uses alphabetic sorting instead of being based on injuries
  
• Fog of War now takes up way less space in savegames (will only affect new saves)
  
• Distract can no longer be used on an adjacent enemy, as originally intended
  
• The Focused status effect now increases Crit Chance by 10 points instead of 10%
  
• Trip wire traps can no longer be resisted
  
• When capturing an occupied campsite, the camera will now switch into the camping view once combat ends

• Fixed issue with pathfinding when reloading Homestead, causing players to get stuck in the terrain
  
• Fixed the AI sometimes switching to unarmed combat for no apparent reason
  
• Fixed a bunch of weird things with the Runaway bounty encounter
  
• The houses that are burning during the invasions of Perth or York will now remain burned-down after the battles
  
• Fixed the skill caps being circumventable during character creation by double-clicking on the icon instead of using the Upgrade button
  
• Made it possible to lie to Sandarr about taking Mani as a thrall exactly once and still come back to complete or fail the quest
  
• Fixed a quest logic bug in Pack It Up that was prematurely closing the quest if you left the forest after resolving Unwanted Guests and then came back later
  
• All characters' items will now be transferred to the item inventory in the unfortunate event of death
  
• Fixed a bug that would cause the game to get stuck when returning from the final dream if you triggered it in a specific camp site
  
• Fixed the issue where throwing the waterskin on an ally would select it instead
  
• Fixed another way it was possible to get stuck in the Unwanted Guests side quest by clicking on things in the wrong order multiple times in a row
  
• Made the intro conversation to the pig feud quest just play again if you interrupt it the first time and retrigger it later
  
• Fixed a bug whereby the start time for all time-based status effects except Hung Over was not being set, causing them to be immediately removed again
  
• Fixed an issue where allied combatants would sometimes not return to being NPCs
  
• Fixed characters being able to traverse blocked hexes in two encounters
  
• Fixed Torfinn not getting removed as a follower when you leave Skjern Forest before completing his quest, causing him to only spawn every 2nd time you enter the forest
  
• Fixed the Swipe ability not dealing damage to enemies around the target if the target was killed
  
• Fixed Cure and Restore abilities using reach distance when equipped with a spear
  
• Fixed the Escaped Thralls conversation in Perth being able to trigger during any of the battles despite the thralls not being around
  
• Fixed the combat character tooltips showing the selected character's crit chance in place of the hovered character's crit chance
  
• Fixed a few typos in dialogue
  
• Fixed an issue where some status effect icons would sometimes appear white in the camping interface
  
• Fixed the error message for having spent the necessary action in the utility item tooltips looking in the wrong localisation file

And many other minor things.

In addition to the Steam Workshop support mentioned above, we're planning several new features for 1.0.7.

Iron Man mode is the big one. We would've liked to add that a lot earlier, but we were getting so many crash reports in previous versions of the game that we simply weren't comfortable adding a mode that only allows one savegame. Now that we've addressed all common sources of crashing, we're ready to activate Iron Man mode in the next update. The update will also include a few new tweaks to difficulty including a new slider to improve the equipment used by enemies. Our goal is to make the higher difficulties higher without messing with the lower difficulties.

We're also planning a slew of small quality-of-life tweaks. Probably the most commonly requested change is to give the player some control over the camera tilt, to which we have now acquiesced. We're also adding a combat speed slider and an option to toggle off the automatic camera focus during combat. Finally, we're adding a little more information to some parts of the interface where things were unclear or unexplained.

Please let us know on the forums if you're experiencing any problems with version 1.0.6.1, or if you have any particular requests for small tweaks or improvements you would like to see in 1.0.7. We don't have as much time for the next update as we did for 1.0.6, so don't expect any major changes or additions, but we're always happy to take your feedback regardless of how practical it is :)

Hello everyone. You may have noticed Steam updating Expeditions: Viking last week and wondered what we just pushed on you. Hopefully your confusion wasn't too great when you found it updating yet again today. After a summer break and a long test period, we've finally released version 1.0.6 of Expeditions: Viking - and then version 1.0.6.1, which is a hotfix to solve an issue with one of the new features. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Let's talk about the new things we've added in this version!

In version 1.0.6, all portraits are now loaded from your Documents directory in the folder \My Games\Expeditions Viking\Custom Portraits. If you want to add your own portraits to the game, you must create 5 different versions of each portrait in specific sizes and place them in that directory. The first time you launch the game in 1.0.6, it will write all our portraits into that folder, and you can use those portraits to see how it needs to be set up.

New portraits must meet the following requirements:

• The files can be either .png or .jpg.
  
• Each portrait's filename must end with a keyword that reflects its size: Large, Medium, Small, Tiny, or Camping.
  
• Female portraits must contain the word "Female" anywhere in the filename. Otherwise the portrait will be treated as male (because patriarchy).
  
• Note that the Camping portraits contain a frame. You can just cut that out of an existing portrait with your image editing software of choice.
  
• You can overwrite an existing portrait by simply replacing its files with a set of identically named files in that folder.

If you overwrite an existing portrait, that portrait will be replaced with your new version in your game, without you having to start over in your playthrough. If you want to reset this portrait to the original later, you can simply delete the portrait files from the Custom Portraits folder, and it will be restored by the game next time you launch it.

All portraits included with Expeditions: Viking are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Public License. In simple terms, you are allowed to remix, tweak, and build upon our work non-commercially, but you must credit Logic Artists or Expeditions: Viking and you must license your new creations under identical terms (no making money off of our work, please!)

If you find that your Custom Portraits folder is empty, it's because something on your computer is denying write access to Expeditions: Viking. In 1.0.6 this was breaking the portraits entirely, which is what 1.0.6.1 was created to address. As per 1.0.6.1 the game will fall back to the internal portraits contained in the data files, but that still means you won't get any portraits written to your custom portraits folder. You can still add new portraits there which will then show up in the game, but if you want to see the original portraits you'll have to find a way to give the game write access to that folder - you can try disabling your firewall and antivirus or just checking your user permissions. If your user account simply doesn't have admin access, you may need to talk to your admin.

This update also introduces support for loading in custom localisation files and user-created random events. Because of the way the scripting system in Viking works, there is no way for us to let you add new characters with new conversations to the game, but the random events that trigger on the campaign maps and during travel are loaded in dynamically, and now you can add new events yourself or even overwrite existing events.

In other words, you can now write your own damn Aife romance events and stop bothering us about it! :D

We have also released our toolset which includes some example files, all of our conversation work files, and the editor we used to set up all our conversations in the game. It comes with a PDF manual with thorough instructions for how to set up your own localisation files or add your own random events. To install the toolset, click on Library in Steam and select Tools from the drop-down. The entry you're looking for is "Expeditions: Viking Editor".

For the next update, we're working on implementing the Steam Workshop into the game to make it easier for our players to share custom events, localisations, and even portraits. Until then, you can still share your creations the old-fashioned way: by uploading them to mod sites or hosting them yourself. We recommend using ModDB or the Nexus.

Since this update has had a particularly long gestation period (for our standards), we've decided not to include a full change list this time around. Instead, we're bringing you just the highlights. If you wish to know about any particular bug that's been bothering you, which isn't mentioned here, feel free to ask in the comments on this thread.

• The "ancient" Roman item set now has unique models
  
• Custom localisation support
  
• Custom random events support
  
• Custom portrait support
  
• 4 new beard styles, 4 new male hairstyles, and 7 new female hairstyles
  
• A UI scaling option for running the game in high resolutions on small monitors
  
• New animations for certain combat actions as well as for ambient characters
  
• Taunt now has voice-over

• Talon and Dust are now free actions
  
• Cure no longer removes Spotted, Illuminated, Exposed, Disarmed, or Condemned
  
• Made Taunt resistable with Mental Resistance
  
• The difficulty of Guarding your camp now scales with your group size: the larger your party, the better you must guard it
  
• Changed the skillpoint display to show the amount of points spent instead of the total
  
• Follower selection popup now uses alphabetic sorting instead of being based on injuries
  
• Fog of War now takes up way less space in savegames (will only affect new saves)
  
• Distract can no longer be used on an adjacent enemy, as originally intended
  
• The Focused status effect now increases Crit Chance by 10 points instead of 10%
  
• Trip wire traps can no longer be resisted
  
• When capturing an occupied campsite, the camera will now switch into the camping view once combat ends

• Fixed issue with pathfinding when reloading Homestead, causing players to get stuck in the terrain
  
• Fixed the AI sometimes switching to unarmed combat for no apparent reason
  
• Fixed a bunch of weird things with the Runaway bounty encounter
  
• The houses that are burning during the invasions of Perth or York will now remain burned-down after the battles
  
• Fixed the skill caps being circumventable during character creation by double-clicking on the icon instead of using the Upgrade button
  
• Made it possible to lie to Sandarr about taking Mani as a thrall exactly once and still come back to complete or fail the quest
  
• Fixed a quest logic bug in Pack It Up that was prematurely closing the quest if you left the forest after resolving Unwanted Guests and then came back later
  
• All characters' items will now be transferred to the item inventory in the unfortunate event of death
  
• Fixed a bug that would cause the game to get stuck when returning from the final dream if you triggered it in a specific camp site
  
• Fixed the issue where throwing the waterskin on an ally would select it instead
  
• Fixed another way it was possible to get stuck in the Unwanted Guests side quest by clicking on things in the wrong order multiple times in a row
  
• Made the intro conversation to the pig feud quest just play again if you interrupt it the first time and retrigger it later
  
• Fixed a bug whereby the start time for all time-based status effects except Hung Over was not being set, causing them to be immediately removed again
  
• Fixed an issue where allied combatants would sometimes not return to being NPCs
  
• Fixed characters being able to traverse blocked hexes in two encounters
  
• Fixed Torfinn not getting removed as a follower when you leave Skjern Forest before completing his quest, causing him to only spawn every 2nd time you enter the forest
  
• Fixed the Swipe ability not dealing damage to enemies around the target if the target was killed
  
• Fixed Cure and Restore abilities using reach distance when equipped with a spear
  
• Fixed the Escaped Thralls conversation in Perth being able to trigger during any of the battles despite the thralls not being around
  
• Fixed the combat character tooltips showing the selected character's crit chance in place of the hovered character's crit chance
  
• Fixed a few typos in dialogue
  
• Fixed an issue where some status effect icons would sometimes appear white in the camping interface
  
• Fixed the error message for having spent the necessary action in the utility item tooltips looking in the wrong localisation file

And many other minor things.

In addition to the Steam Workshop support mentioned above, we're planning several new features for 1.0.7.

Iron Man mode is the big one. We would've liked to add that a lot earlier, but we were getting so many crash reports in previous versions of the game that we simply weren't comfortable adding a mode that only allows one savegame. Now that we've addressed all common sources of crashing, we're ready to activate Iron Man mode in the next update. The update will also include a few new tweaks to difficulty including a new slider to improve the equipment used by enemies. Our goal is to make the higher difficulties higher without messing with the lower difficulties.

We're also planning a slew of small quality-of-life tweaks. Probably the most commonly requested change is to give the player some control over the camera tilt, to which we have now acquiesced. We're also adding a combat speed slider and an option to toggle off the automatic camera focus during combat. Finally, we're adding a little more information to some parts of the interface where things were unclear or unexplained.

Please let us know on the forums if you're experiencing any problems with version 1.0.6.1, or if you have any particular requests for small tweaks or improvements you would like to see in 1.0.7. We don't have as much time for the next update as we did for 1.0.6, so don't expect any major changes or additions, but we're always happy to take your feedback regardless of how practical it is :)

Hello, and thanks for checking in with us again. Today we've released update 1.0.5 for Expeditions: Viking. In addition to some bug fixes, this version contains several major changes to game balance that I will outline separately before we get to the change log.

The most significant change we've made is to introduce caps on all skill ranks based on the total amount of skill points you've spent. Ranks 1 and 2 are freely accessible, but in order to upgrade a skill to rank 3 you must have spent a total of 100 SP. To reach rank 4, you must have spent 175, and to max out a skill at rank 5 you must have spent a total of 250 SP. Recall that you begin the game with 50 SP and that there is a total of just over 300 SP in the campaign. The result is that you'll have no skills above rank 3 when you go to Britain, and you won't be able to level up to rank 5 until quite late in the game.

This update trades away some freedom of choice to enforce a better levelling curve. Previously, we let you max out your weapon skills quite early in the game, with the predictable result that you would outpace the enemies before you even reached Britain, and the enemies wouldn't begin to catch up until near the end of the game. Now, you're forced to distribute your points among the different categories, perhaps buying some Utility and Passive skills for a more well-rounded character. This does have the drawback that characters will be a bit less specialised, but the improvement to the game's difficult curve is profound.

A new feature is the so-called Surprise Round, which occurs when you trigger an encounter where the enemy acts first. Previously the enemy would get a full turn before you had any chance to position your hirdmen. Since there is no formation system in the game, this felt unfair. From version 1.0.5 and onwards, the player always acts first, but in encounters where the enemy would previously begin, the player will not have any attack action, nor a bonus action in the first turn. In other words you can only move or change your weapons in your first turn because your party was caught by surprise. This has also allowed us to change the initiative back to Enemy-first on all the encounters that were previously set to Player-first to avoid unfairness. The result is a slight but significant increase in difficulty in many encounters throughout the game.

Bear in mind that this update is not the final word on difficulty. These are major changes that will fix our difficulty issues, but they are not intended to increase the upper ends of difficulty on the Hard and Insane settings. The next update will contain more tweaks intended to make the Hard and Insane settings live up to their name, as well as the promised Iron Man mode.

And now for the full change list. As with the 1.0.4 update, I have divided it into two sections: one for changes and additions, and one for fixes. Since this update has a far greater variety of changes than previous patches, I've decided to further subdivide each section into categories based on the type of change or fix.


New stuff

• As explained above, added new "surprise round" feature to allow player positioning before enemy turn when ambushed
  
• Added full Danish localisation
  
• Added three new campsite scenes to the Denmark campaign for improved visual variation: Plains 2, Marsh 2, and Deep Forest
  
• Added new animations for Taunt and Dust abilities
  
• Added a new generic support ability animation for when you're wielding a spear
  
• Added an animation for consumable utility items (ie. drinking potions)

Skills and items

• As described above, skill upgrades are now capped by your total amount of SP spent, so you must spend 150 SP to upgrade a skill to rank 3, 200 for rank 4, and 250 for rank 5
  
• Made substantial improvements to the algorithm that assigns skills to enemies by rank and archetype, which will increase the effectiveness of enemies throughout the game
  
• Made the Archer archetype use axe and shield instead of dane-axe or spear, and changed the loadouts of all Archer characters in the game accordingly
  
• Items crafted with the Artisan skill can no longer get the "Cursed" property
  
• Decreased the cost reduction for repairing and the gain % from deconstructing items
  
• Discarding a weapon will now yield at least 1 Salvage or Hide even if you have no Repair skill
  
• Increased item degradation during combat from 1 point per crit to 10% of max durability per crit
  
• Added a 50% chance each round that a character is on fire that they'll get a Burn injury - subsequent rounds of being on fire then has a 25% chance of the injury deteriorating
  
• Taunt will now make the target move towards the caster even if they can't entirely reach them - they'll just move as far as they can
  
• Changed the Aimed Shot ability to have a 40% damage penalty instead of a 5 percent-point crit chance bonus, and changed Sharpshooter to reduce that penalty from 40% to 20%
  
• Sharpshooter now requires Bow on rank 3, Steady Hands no longer has a skill requirement, and Backstabber now costs 4 SP instead of 8
  
• Accuracy for ranged attacks now falls off by 6 points per hex instead of 5
  
• Walk Your Shots now reduces the per-hex distance fall-off for ranged attacks back to 5 instead of simply adding 5 points every time you take a shot
  
• Parrying no longer cancels all damage from the parried attack - the parrying character takes damage as normal, but with the doubled base DR from Parrying
  
• Changed Opportunist so that attacks of opportunity now apply Stunned to the target if you have the skill, instead of just giving you an extra AoO every round - also raised its cost from 3 SP to 6
  
• Increased the damage of Hailstorm from 50% normal attack damage to 75% normal attack damage and reduced its charges from 2 to 1
  
• Changed Stone Fists from a 10 point bonus to Melee Damage to a 10 point bonus to Armour Piercing damage
  
• Raised the cost of Powerful Kick from 6 SP to 9
  
• Revive is now restricted to 2 charges
  
• Gave pit traps a massive damage buff
  
• Increased all Tinkering material costs
  
• Reach weapons no longer inflict non-lethal damage at close range, since this was not explained anywhere

Encounters

• Changed quite a few of the encounters in the game to have the enemies start, which is no longer frustrating now that we have the surprise round feature
  
• Nerfed the damage of all wolf types except the Wolf Mothers, whose damage is now doubled
  
• Added a couple of guards in Perth's treasury and set all the loot in the main area to Owned - when you visit during the betrayal, the guards have been killed and the loot is no longer Owned
  
• Buffed all occupied campsite fights in Britain and tweaked the cover in some of the scenes
  
• Buffed the assassins in Ribe
  
• Buffed the fight against the youngsters in the Ravine Cave
  
• All the bounty fights have received a significant buff
  
• Added reinforcements to both of the wall fights during the invasion of York
  
• Doubled the number of enemies in the prisoner room fight in York's dungeon
  
• Made Leofric and Steinn brown-haired and made Steinn waaa-hay-haaay more badass
  
• The monks and nuns in Lindisfarne Church and the Scarborough Convent will now run into corners and cower in fear when you attack (the Cower animation is new)
  
• Made the female guard outside the Skerninge passage grave drop a damaged, cursed chain mail upon her death

Other changes

• Added icon tooltips to the Tinkering menu
  
• Injuries now deteriorate in combat with a probability based on how long the character has been incapacitated - characters can never die outright in combat, however
  
• Injuries now deteriorate during camping as well, and we've added some UI logic for this to work - fatally injured characters can die when you make camp if left untreated
  
• Increased injury penalties
  
• Tweaked injury settings to allow groin and chest punctures and eye trauma
  
• Reduced the Armour-smithing level of every blacksmith in the game by 1
  
• Made the faction reputation number show up even when your faction reputation is Neutral
  
• Added a menu option for disabling reflection probes so you don't have to mess with the config
  
• Made the farmer in Skerninge and his wife lie on the ground to match the description text
  
• Added thrall deco characters to the homestead depending on how many Slaves you have (up to about a dozen)
  
• Added a Medium reputation increase if you complete the Rats quest peacefully
  
• Reflection probes will now automatically be disabled the first time you launch the game on an Intel videocard, and you'll get a pop-up about it - you can manually re-enable them afterwards if you'll risk it
  
• Tweaked the morale changes in the initial conversation with Maban so they're more intuitive

Stability and performance

• Fixed one more set of crashes related to loading characters into the scene
  
• Fixed the unreproducible issue some players had reported where the game would crash at the end of camping and potentially at the end of a fight
  
• Added check so corrupted fog of war files do not prevent loading scenes
  
• Made some optimisation in the level loading

Quest logic

• Fixed the Ab Urbe Condita side quest hanging around in your quest log even if you choose an outcome for Chester that causes Fabian Quintus to leave, so you can't complete it anymore
  
• Fixed a bug whereby Myrddin would not spawn in the stone circle if you entered his cave instead of bringing Cillian directly to him after the rescue
  
• Fixed a spot where you could get stuck after the battle for Yngilwood
  
• Fixed a bug where you could start the Snakes Among the Trees or Lost Hunting Party side quests during the Battle of Yngilwood if you hadn't started them previously
  
• Fixed the fight at the entrance to Jelling potentially repeating with no enemies if you leave the town through the hidden tunnel and then attempt to re-enter it from outside
  
• Fixed an issue where Grainne would sometimes appear inside Caustantin's hall after the wedding when she wasn't supposed to
  
• Fixed a bug whereby you could no longer free the Yngilwood Scout's loved one in the York Dungeon if you chose not to do so the first time you were given the option
  
• Added a fade-out if you sentence Geirmundr in Orkney to the blood eagle, during which he'll be despawned
  
• Fixed the non-interactive parts of Geirmundr's "camp" in Orkney also highlighting along with the interactive parts
  
• Skallagrimr and the other thegns will now disappear from Steinn's house once you complete the first of the Viking ending quests
  
• Received and implemented the Russian and French versions of a single branch of conversation with Hulda that had been missed in the original localisations for those two languages
  
• Fixed the higher difficulty-related completion achievements not unlocking the lower levels
  
• Fixed being able to interact with the haystack behind Erlingr's farm after the fight if you already set fire to it once
  
• Fixed the fire in Erlingr's farmhouse persisting forever (it now stops once the quest is closed)
  
• Fixed most of the dead characters who were supposed to show up as ghosts in Grimnir's Helheimr dream not showing up
  
• Fixed Olbjørn and Grimkell's character spawners creating a very long delay in loading the goodbye scene in Skjern if they were killed on Holmgang Island
  
• Fixed Maucolyn not being set as immortal if you encounter him at the village after raiding the monastery, which could result in you speaking to a very clearly dead man
  
• Fixed Conall mac Taidg's death variable not being set, causing some narrative inconsistencies
  
• Fixed an error when teleporting the player party to waypoints in conversations which showed up if you lost the fight against Maucolyn in front of the village
  
• Fixed a bug whereby if you set an ambush for Osred's men in The Mercian Connection and leave any of them alive, the fight in front of the Roman tower wouldn't begin
  
• Osred's spy token will now be removed from your inventory when you show it to a scout in Yngilwood
  
• Changed the logic in Torfinn's tree conversations a bit to make the quest more robust
  
• Reduced the trigger radius on the sewer tunnel conversation in Chester to be what it's supposed to be

Skills and items

• Fixed a bug that was causing characters to play their incapacitation barks at entirely the wrong times during combat
  
• Fixed the highest rank ability of each skill not displaying its action type in its tooltip
  
• Fixed several issues with the implementation of Gungnir's special property - the weapon will now damage enemies in the two hexes in front of you, three if you're using Extend
  
• Fixed an issue where pre-damaged looted items would be using the current Salvage value to calculate tiers rather than the undamaged one
  
• Resistances are now capped at 100% in the UI
  
• Fixed Adrenaline Junkie applying its bonus as soon as a character is at less than max health, instead of only when they drop below 20% as described
  
• Fixed the missing icon for the British silver cross talisman types
  
• Replaced an old hack to prevent non-Vikings from getting the Dane-Axe skill with a more general solution that checks the nationality condition for all skills before assigning them (this will also prevent non-Vikings from buying Galder, which they cannot use anyway)
  
• Removed the track quest input from all contexts except Default (which will stop it showing up in the other sections of the input bindings)
  
• Fixed the Amulet of Macha not getting its special property correctly (this fix is not retroactive, if you already picked up the Amulet of Macha, it will remain useless - however you can give yourself a new, working amulet with the console command giveitem party Talisman_Macha)
  
• Fixed a 10-second pause caused by a timeout if a Parrying character is Stunned and subsequently attacked; all immobilisation now cancels Parrying as well as Hypnotised, Interrupting, Panicked, and Ready
  
• You can no longer parry attacks from weapons with reach from 2 or more tiles away
  
• Fixed missing sound effects on the Parrying animations
  
• You can no longer trigger an execution with any weapon type other than a sword
  
• Fixed a pretty unlikely combat timeout that would happen if Condemned characters took fire damage
  
• Fixed the Tactical Move button being selectable even if no attack action was possible
  
• Fixed Stunned animation not being reset if a character is defeated while that animation is playing
  
• Fixed the wolf mothers' Nuzzle ability placing the wolf inside the incapacitated wolf's tile instead of adjacent to it
  
• Fixed wrong health displayed in the UI when using Nuzzle or Revive
  
• Fixed the Sacrament ability tripling ally resistances instead of doubling it as intended

Other fixes

• Fixed certain music tracks being controlled by the main volume slider instead of the music slider
  
• Fixed the input system overwriting user settings with the defaults in some situations
  
• Removed Crouch Control from the input settings
  
• Fixed non-lethal attacks being able to proc critical hits
  
• Fixed certain blacksmiths being set up with a higher armour-smithing rating than is actually possible, which broke the UI
  
• Fixed bug where an occupied campsite would be marked as captured when entering the campsite but then reloading the previous saved file without even playing through the fight
  
• Fixed an issue where tinkering items in camping might not be loaded properly by the save system
  
• Fixed a missing line of subtitles in the intro cinematic in English and English (Norse Names)
  
• Fixed the player's ship reverting to the default sail colours in Orkney
  
• A loading screen will now be displayed while loading the main menu after the credits
  
• Fixed dead follower pop-up appearing during loading screens if you made a save after a follower had died in the scene and then loaded that save
  
• Fixed a typo "a dirty flash" (should have been flask) in Røskva's first romance conversation
  
• Fixed a typo in the to-do list reminder for unassigned shifts
  
• Nefja and Ketill can no longer die from injuries in Denmark
  
• Fixed switch weapon button being greyed out after an attack of opportunity on the selected character
  
• Fixed the localisation ID for homestead upgrades not being retrieved correctly for upgrades that only have 1 branch
  
• Removed an erroneously placed trash pile in Skerninge which was unlootable and would disappear when you looted another trash pile next to it
  
• Removed a lootable barrel from inside a house in Perth
  
• Added ability icons for the wolf abilities so they don't show up as white squares when you look at wolves with the character info panel, and added explanatory tooltips for them as well
  
• Fixed a weird-looking tree in the Britain forest menhir campsite

Hello, and thanks for checking in with us again. Today we've released update 1.0.5 for Expeditions: Viking. In addition to some bug fixes, this version contains several major changes to game balance that I will outline separately before we get to the change log.

The most significant change we've made is to introduce caps on all skill ranks based on the total amount of skill points you've spent. Ranks 1 and 2 are freely accessible, but in order to upgrade a skill to rank 3 you must have spent a total of 100 SP. To reach rank 4, you must have spent 175, and to max out a skill at rank 5 you must have spent a total of 250 SP. Recall that you begin the game with 50 SP and that there is a total of just over 300 SP in the campaign. The result is that you'll have no skills above rank 3 when you go to Britain, and you won't be able to level up to rank 5 until quite late in the game.

This update trades away some freedom of choice to enforce a better levelling curve. Previously, we let you max out your weapon skills quite early in the game, with the predictable result that you would outpace the enemies before you even reached Britain, and the enemies wouldn't begin to catch up until near the end of the game. Now, you're forced to distribute your points among the different categories, perhaps buying some Utility and Passive skills for a more well-rounded character. This does have the drawback that characters will be a bit less specialised, but the improvement to the game's difficult curve is profound.

A new feature is the so-called Surprise Round, which occurs when you trigger an encounter where the enemy acts first. Previously the enemy would get a full turn before you had any chance to position your hirdmen. Since there is no formation system in the game, this felt unfair. From version 1.0.5 and onwards, the player always acts first, but in encounters where the enemy would previously begin, the player will not have any attack action, nor a bonus action in the first turn. In other words you can only move or change your weapons in your first turn because your party was caught by surprise. This has also allowed us to change the initiative back to Enemy-first on all the encounters that were previously set to Player-first to avoid unfairness. The result is a slight but significant increase in difficulty in many encounters throughout the game.

Bear in mind that this update is not the final word on difficulty. These are major changes that will fix our difficulty issues, but they are not intended to increase the upper ends of difficulty on the Hard and Insane settings. The next update will contain more tweaks intended to make the Hard and Insane settings live up to their name, as well as the promised Iron Man mode.

And now for the full change list. As with the 1.0.4 update, I have divided it into two sections: one for changes and additions, and one for fixes. Since this update has a far greater variety of changes than previous patches, I've decided to further subdivide each section into categories based on the type of change or fix.


New stuff

• As explained above, added new "surprise round" feature to allow player positioning before enemy turn when ambushed
  
• Added full Danish localisation
  
• Added three new campsite scenes to the Denmark campaign for improved visual variation: Plains 2, Marsh 2, and Deep Forest
  
• Added new animations for Taunt and Dust abilities
  
• Added a new generic support ability animation for when you're wielding a spear
  
• Added an animation for consumable utility items (ie. drinking potions)

Skills and items

• As described above, skill upgrades are now capped by your total amount of SP spent, so you must spend 150 SP to upgrade a skill to rank 3, 200 for rank 4, and 250 for rank 5
  
• Made substantial improvements to the algorithm that assigns skills to enemies by rank and archetype, which will increase the effectiveness of enemies throughout the game
  
• Made the Archer archetype use axe and shield instead of dane-axe or spear, and changed the loadouts of all Archer characters in the game accordingly
  
• Items crafted with the Artisan skill can no longer get the "Cursed" property
  
• Decreased the cost reduction for repairing and the gain % from deconstructing items
  
• Discarding a weapon will now yield at least 1 Salvage or Hide even if you have no Repair skill
  
• Increased item degradation during combat from 1 point per crit to 10% of max durability per crit
  
• Added a 50% chance each round that a character is on fire that they'll get a Burn injury - subsequent rounds of being on fire then has a 25% chance of the injury deteriorating
  
• Taunt will now make the target move towards the caster even if they can't entirely reach them - they'll just move as far as they can
  
• Changed the Aimed Shot ability to have a 40% damage penalty instead of a 5 percent-point crit chance bonus, and changed Sharpshooter to reduce that penalty from 40% to 20%
  
• Sharpshooter now requires Bow on rank 3, Steady Hands no longer has a skill requirement, and Backstabber now costs 4 SP instead of 8
  
• Accuracy for ranged attacks now falls off by 6 points per hex instead of 5
  
• Walk Your Shots now reduces the per-hex distance fall-off for ranged attacks back to 5 instead of simply adding 5 points every time you take a shot
  
• Parrying no longer cancels all damage from the parried attack - the parrying character takes damage as normal, but with the doubled base DR from Parrying
  
• Changed Opportunist so that attacks of opportunity now apply Stunned to the target if you have the skill, instead of just giving you an extra AoO every round - also raised its cost from 3 SP to 6
  
• Increased the damage of Hailstorm from 50% normal attack damage to 75% normal attack damage and reduced its charges from 2 to 1
  
• Changed Stone Fists from a 10 point bonus to Melee Damage to a 10 point bonus to Armour Piercing damage
  
• Raised the cost of Powerful Kick from 6 SP to 9
  
• Revive is now restricted to 2 charges
  
• Gave pit traps a massive damage buff
  
• Increased all Tinkering material costs
  
• Reach weapons no longer inflict non-lethal damage at close range, since this was not explained anywhere

Encounters

• Changed quite a few of the encounters in the game to have the enemies start, which is no longer frustrating now that we have the surprise round feature
  
• Nerfed the damage of all wolf types except the Wolf Mothers, whose damage is now doubled
  
• Added a couple of guards in Perth's treasury and set all the loot in the main area to Owned - when you visit during the betrayal, the guards have been killed and the loot is no longer Owned
  
• Buffed all occupied campsite fights in Britain and tweaked the cover in some of the scenes
  
• Buffed the assassins in Ribe
  
• Buffed the fight against the youngsters in the Ravine Cave
  
• All the bounty fights have received a significant buff
  
• Added reinforcements to both of the wall fights during the invasion of York
  
• Doubled the number of enemies in the prisoner room fight in York's dungeon
  
• Made Leofric and Steinn brown-haired and made Steinn waaa-hay-haaay more badass
  
• The monks and nuns in Lindisfarne Church and the Scarborough Convent will now run into corners and cower in fear when you attack (the Cower animation is new)
  
• Made the female guard outside the Skerninge passage grave drop a damaged, cursed chain mail upon her death

Other changes

• Added icon tooltips to the Tinkering menu
  
• Injuries now deteriorate in combat with a probability based on how long the character has been incapacitated - characters can never die outright in combat, however
  
• Injuries now deteriorate during camping as well, and we've added some UI logic for this to work - fatally injured characters can die when you make camp if left untreated
  
• Increased injury penalties
  
• Tweaked injury settings to allow groin and chest punctures and eye trauma
  
• Reduced the Armour-smithing level of every blacksmith in the game by 1
  
• Made the faction reputation number show up even when your faction reputation is Neutral
  
• Added a menu option for disabling reflection probes so you don't have to mess with the config
  
• Made the farmer in Skerninge and his wife lie on the ground to match the description text
  
• Added thrall deco characters to the homestead depending on how many Slaves you have (up to about a dozen)
  
• Added a Medium reputation increase if you complete the Rats quest peacefully
  
• Reflection probes will now automatically be disabled the first time you launch the game on an Intel videocard, and you'll get a pop-up about it - you can manually re-enable them afterwards if you'll risk it
  
• Tweaked the morale changes in the initial conversation with Maban so they're more intuitive

Stability and performance

• Fixed one more set of crashes related to loading characters into the scene
  
• Fixed the unreproducible issue some players had reported where the game would crash at the end of camping and potentially at the end of a fight
  
• Added check so corrupted fog of war files do not prevent loading scenes
  
• Made some optimisation in the level loading

Quest logic

• Fixed the Ab Urbe Condita side quest hanging around in your quest log even if you choose an outcome for Chester that causes Fabian Quintus to leave, so you can't complete it anymore
  
• Fixed a bug whereby Myrddin would not spawn in the stone circle if you entered his cave instead of bringing Cillian directly to him after the rescue
  
• Fixed a spot where you could get stuck after the battle for Yngilwood
  
• Fixed a bug where you could start the Snakes Among the Trees or Lost Hunting Party side quests during the Battle of Yngilwood if you hadn't started them previously
  
• Fixed the fight at the entrance to Jelling potentially repeating with no enemies if you leave the town through the hidden tunnel and then attempt to re-enter it from outside
  
• Fixed an issue where Grainne would sometimes appear inside Caustantin's hall after the wedding when she wasn't supposed to
  
• Fixed a bug whereby you could no longer free the Yngilwood Scout's loved one in the York Dungeon if you chose not to do so the first time you were given the option
  
• Added a fade-out if you sentence Geirmundr in Orkney to the blood eagle, during which he'll be despawned
  
• Fixed the non-interactive parts of Geirmundr's "camp" in Orkney also highlighting along with the interactive parts
  
• Skallagrimr and the other thegns will now disappear from Steinn's house once you complete the first of the Viking ending quests
  
• Received and implemented the Russian and French versions of a single branch of conversation with Hulda that had been missed in the original localisations for those two languages
  
• Fixed the higher difficulty-related completion achievements not unlocking the lower levels
  
• Fixed being able to interact with the haystack behind Erlingr's farm after the fight if you already set fire to it once
  
• Fixed the fire in Erlingr's farmhouse persisting forever (it now stops once the quest is closed)
  
• Fixed most of the dead characters who were supposed to show up as ghosts in Grimnir's Helheimr dream not showing up
  
• Fixed Olbjørn and Grimkell's character spawners creating a very long delay in loading the goodbye scene in Skjern if they were killed on Holmgang Island
  
• Fixed Maucolyn not being set as immortal if you encounter him at the village after raiding the monastery, which could result in you speaking to a very clearly dead man
  
• Fixed Conall mac Taidg's death variable not being set, causing some narrative inconsistencies
  
• Fixed an error when teleporting the player party to waypoints in conversations which showed up if you lost the fight against Maucolyn in front of the village
  
• Fixed a bug whereby if you set an ambush for Osred's men in The Mercian Connection and leave any of them alive, the fight in front of the Roman tower wouldn't begin
  
• Osred's spy token will now be removed from your inventory when you show it to a scout in Yngilwood
  
• Changed the logic in Torfinn's tree conversations a bit to make the quest more robust
  
• Reduced the trigger radius on the sewer tunnel conversation in Chester to be what it's supposed to be

Skills and items

• Fixed a bug that was causing characters to play their incapacitation barks at entirely the wrong times during combat
  
• Fixed the highest rank ability of each skill not displaying its action type in its tooltip
  
• Fixed several issues with the implementation of Gungnir's special property - the weapon will now damage enemies in the two hexes in front of you, three if you're using Extend
  
• Fixed an issue where pre-damaged looted items would be using the current Salvage value to calculate tiers rather than the undamaged one
  
• Resistances are now capped at 100% in the UI
  
• Fixed Adrenaline Junkie applying its bonus as soon as a character is at less than max health, instead of only when they drop below 20% as described
  
• Fixed the missing icon for the British silver cross talisman types
  
• Replaced an old hack to prevent non-Vikings from getting the Dane-Axe skill with a more general solution that checks the nationality condition for all skills before assigning them (this will also prevent non-Vikings from buying Galder, which they cannot use anyway)
  
• Removed the track quest input from all contexts except Default (which will stop it showing up in the other sections of the input bindings)
  
• Fixed the Amulet of Macha not getting its special property correctly (this fix is not retroactive, if you already picked up the Amulet of Macha, it will remain useless - however you can give yourself a new, working amulet with the console command giveitem party Talisman_Macha)
  
• Fixed a 10-second pause caused by a timeout if a Parrying character is Stunned and subsequently attacked; all immobilisation now cancels Parrying as well as Hypnotised, Interrupting, Panicked, and Ready
  
• You can no longer parry attacks from weapons with reach from 2 or more tiles away
  
• Fixed missing sound effects on the Parrying animations
  
• You can no longer trigger an execution with any weapon type other than a sword
  
• Fixed a pretty unlikely combat timeout that would happen if Condemned characters took fire damage
  
• Fixed the Tactical Move button being selectable even if no attack action was possible
  
• Fixed Stunned animation not being reset if a character is defeated while that animation is playing
  
• Fixed the wolf mothers' Nuzzle ability placing the wolf inside the incapacitated wolf's tile instead of adjacent to it
  
• Fixed wrong health displayed in the UI when using Nuzzle or Revive
  
• Fixed the Sacrament ability tripling ally resistances instead of doubling it as intended

Other fixes

• Fixed certain music tracks being controlled by the main volume slider instead of the music slider
  
• Fixed the input system overwriting user settings with the defaults in some situations
  
• Removed Crouch Control from the input settings
  
• Fixed non-lethal attacks being able to proc critical hits
  
• Fixed certain blacksmiths being set up with a higher armour-smithing rating than is actually possible, which broke the UI
  
• Fixed bug where an occupied campsite would be marked as captured when entering the campsite but then reloading the previous saved file without even playing through the fight
  
• Fixed an issue where tinkering items in camping might not be loaded properly by the save system
  
• Fixed a missing line of subtitles in the intro cinematic in English and English (Norse Names)
  
• Fixed the player's ship reverting to the default sail colours in Orkney
  
• A loading screen will now be displayed while loading the main menu after the credits
  
• Fixed dead follower pop-up appearing during loading screens if you made a save after a follower had died in the scene and then loaded that save
  
• Fixed a typo "a dirty flash" (should have been flask) in Røskva's first romance conversation
  
• Fixed a typo in the to-do list reminder for unassigned shifts
  
• Nefja and Ketill can no longer die from injuries in Denmark
  
• Fixed switch weapon button being greyed out after an attack of opportunity on the selected character
  
• Fixed the localisation ID for homestead upgrades not being retrieved correctly for upgrades that only have 1 branch
  
• Removed an erroneously placed trash pile in Skerninge which was unlootable and would disappear when you looted another trash pile next to it
  
• Removed a lootable barrel from inside a house in Perth
  
• Added ability icons for the wolf abilities so they don't show up as white squares when you look at wolves with the character info panel, and added explanatory tooltips for them as well
  
• Fixed a weird-looking tree in the Britain forest menhir campsite