The ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC for Battle Brothers has been released into the world!

Find it on Steam here.

You can find a detailed explanation of what is contained in the DLC here.

The new music tracks by Breakdown Epiphanies have been added for free to the soundtrack on Steam and GOG for every current and future owner.

Enjoy!

With the ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC comes a big free update that improves the game in many aspects. Below you’ll find a list explaining the most important changes and additions.

Note that all of this is in addition to the many additions brought by the DLC which you can read about here. You can purchase and wishlist it here.

If you’d like to continue your current campaign with the previous version of Battle Brothers, or continue to play it altogether without the DLC, you can do so as well. Find Battle Brothers in your Steam library, right-click it and select ‘Properties’. Navigate to the ‘Betas’ tab and select the ‘1.1.x’ branch from the dropdown menu. Steam should now update Battle Brothers, and once done, you’re ready to go.

Starting a new campaign is very much recommended. You may continue your current campaign, but if you do, expect some glitches.

Note that most mods probably will not work anymore until they've been updated by their authors to work with the new version of Battle Brothers. Make sure to remove them, as otherwise the game may crash.

• Added new main menu background.
  
• Added icons to the main menu showing what DLC are installed or missing.
  
• Added 24 new settlement situations for a more dynamic economy.
  
• Added 16 new character traits.
  
• Added ability to pay for a tryout and uncover a potential recruit's traits before hiring them.
  
• Added button to end the current round and have all your men skip their turns until the next round starts.
  
• Added ability to give potions, strange mushrooms and antidote to other characters in battle without having to drop them on the ground first.
  
• Added 'Free Ally' skill to free adjacent allies from nets, webs and vines.
  
• Added 'Grant Night Vision' spell to Goblin Shamans.
  
• Added lots of new event and contract illustrations.
  
• Added more names for characters, settlements, regions, items, locations and opponents for more variety.
  
  
• Changed world map to be 25% larger and include two additional settlements. New campaign required to take effect.
  
• Changed map seed to use words made up of characters from a to z, and no longer exclusively numbers in hexadecimal notation. For example, the word "overhype" is now a possible map seed.
  
• Changed XP required for veteran levels to increase by 1000 for every level. In effect, the first levels are attainable roughly as fast as before, but attaining the following levels takes longer as to cut down on the attribute inflation for very long campaigns. Also, with a linear increase in XP cost, there's no longer any sudden roadblocks where one veteran level would require twice as much XP as the previous one did. And because enemy strength scales in part with the levels of your characters, having the average level a bit lower in long campaigns will also reduce the number of enemies a bit, leading to quicker combat and less pressure to replace everyone with superhumans as time goes on. Note that when loading old campaigns, veteran level characters may seem to need excessively much XP to level again - this isn't the case when starting new campaigns.
  
• Changed starting size of stash to 99, up from 90.
  
• Changed named shields to always have either the same or better fatigue penalties than regular ones.
  
• Changed strength of roaming beasts to scale more depending on distance to civilization, and less on campaign time.
  
• Changed enemy bases to be more proactive in sending out parties to intercept enemies threatening them, but also have a weakened garrison while doing so.
  
• Changed all end game crises to start slightly later, to take slightly less time to defeat, and to fade out more smoothly.
  
• Changed greenskins and undead to be a bit less active in destroying settlements, as to make using the 'Permanent Destruction' setting more viable.
  
• Changed chance of any human dying during the Undead Scourge crisis to return as a Wiederganger to be lower.
  
• Changed 'Escort Caravan' contract to give better directions, an approximation of the time required (e.g. two days), pay slightly more per tile of distance, to support payment per head, and to have a cap on distance, especially in the early game.
  
• Changed 'Armed Courier' contract to have a cap on distance, especially at the start of a campaign, to pay slightly more, and to give an approximation on the time necessary for travel if going by road.
  
• Changed 'Defend Settlement' contract to make sure that there's bases of the attacking faction near enough to not have the player need to wait for too long for the attackers' arrival.
  
• Changed contracts to be more readily available at the very start of the game.
  
• Changed renown to decrease by -2 each passing day, as stories about your company will slowly fade from people's memories unless you continously create new ones.
  
• Changed effect of different training regimes at Training Hall to be slightly stronger and made them stay for a certain number of battles, and no longer a certain number of days. Also, they're more affordable now.
  
• Changed costs and stats for various character backgrounds to some degree, and introduced a random +/- 10% factor for all daily wage demands, so you'll find cheaper and more expensive recruits also within the same background.
  
• Changed how daily wages for mercenaries employed by the player are calculated. Instead of a flat +2 crowns for every level, it's now a cumulative 10% on the wage for every level until the 11th, and then 3% on the wage for every level afterwards. In effect, there's less wage pressure in the beginning, low tier backgrounds have become cheaper to employ in the longterm, and some backgrounds have become more expensive to keep around if they reach veteran levels.
  
• Changed how retreating works. If your men are already on the edges on the map, you'll safely retreat as before. If they aren't, they'll now attempt to move to the edges of the map by themselves until either they succeed or die. While this is going on, they'll get a defense bonus for moving through zones of control, the amount of which scales with the chosen difficulty level.
  
• Changed enemies and player characters to make no more than 2 attempts to flee from a position in a single turn.
  
• Changed morale checks to always have a 5% chance to succeed or fail, just like attacks do.
  
• Changed dropping items to the ground, or switching between hands and bags, to no longer grant effective fatigue to spend in the same turn.
  
• Changed polearms to have a -15 chance to hit targets directly adjacent, reflecting how long and unwieldy they are in close combat. Picking the 'Polearm Mastery' perk will remove this penalty.
  
• Changed 'Polearm Mastery' perk to reduce the action point cost for using skills of polearms from 6 to 5. The 'Repel' and 'Hook' skills now always apply the 'Staggered' effect, even without the mastery.
  
• Changed 'Hold Out' to be called 'Resilient' and have a new effect; any negative status effect with a finite duration (e.g. Bleeding, Charmed) has its duration reduced by -1 turn, to a minimum of 1 turn.
  
• Changed description of 'Shield Expert' to include the fact that picking it grants a +15% bonus to hit chance to the 'Knock Back' skill. This was already true in previous versions, but the game neglected to mention it.
  
• Changed 'Killing Frenzy' perk to count the turn the effect first triggers as part of its 2 turn duration.
  
• Changed 'Reach Advantage' to provide a bonus of +5 to melee defense per stack, with a limit of 5 stacks, instead of the +20% of total melee defense per stack it provided before.
  
• Changed 'Nimble' perk to now give consistent damage reduction to hitpoints up to 75%, but reduced exponentially by the total fatigue penalty of body and head armor. Fatigue penalty from other equipment does not affect the damage reduction, but neither do the 'Brawny' perk or traits.
  
• Changed 'Battleforged' perk armor damage reduction to be based on current total armor value, and no longer maximum total armor value. Also, a status effect now displays details on the effect as with 'Nimble'.
  
• Changed 'Underdog' perk. The defense malus due to being surrounded by opponents is negated, as was previously the case. However, if an attacker has the Backstabber perk, the effect of that perk is now negated, and the normal defense malus due to being surrounded is applied instead.
  
• Changed 'Brawny' fatigue reduction to 25%, down from 30%.
  
• Changed 'Bags & Belts' perk to no longer entirely remove the fatigue penalty for two-handed weapons and shields.
  
• Changed Lindwurms to have slightly more hitpoints, and to give significantly more XP. Their 'Tail Slam' skill now has an equal chance to either stun, daze or knock back their target. Also, they're a bit less rare now.
  
• Changed out some assets for updated versions.
  
• Changed AI of many enemies to perform better in a variety of situations.
  
• Changed AI to make better use of parallelization for faster turn processing times.
  
• Changed savegames to use compressed fog of war information for smaller file size and faster cloud synchronization.
  
• Changed lots and lots of smaller things for the better.
  
  
• Fixed game sometimes not continuing when a Lindwurm retreated from the battlefield.
  
• Fixed game sometimes not continuing when a character that used the 'Taunt' skill died in the same turn.
  
• Fixed rare issue with frenzied direwolves not dying properly.
  
• Fixed issue with 'Reset Equipment After Battle' option not working properly under very specific circumstances.
  
• Fixed issue with 'Last Stand' contract where the game would potentially freeze when defending settlements isolated on small islands.
  
• Fixed 'Caravan Escort' contracts failing without battle in some cases.
  
• Fixed combat slowing down in very long campaigns for some people.
  
• Fixed player banner bonus not being updated immediately after moving.
  
• Fixed wrong damage values displayed in tooltip of 'Knock Out' skill.
  
• Fixed morale chain events being displayed in the wrong order in the combat log under certain conditions.
  
• Fixed 'Nine Lives' perk not properly resetting after triggering once combat is concluded.
  
• Fixed coastal settlements not being reachable by boat in some cases.
  
• Fixed various minor issues and annoyances.

The release of the ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC is just around the corner – it’s launching on Thursday next week, the 29th! Time to recap on all of the many new features and content additions that are about to arrive with both the DLC and the free update to version 1.2 of Battle Brothers.

You can find the DLC on Steam here. The DLC will also be available as a Supporter Edition with a fancy Kraken banner and painted shields!



Here are detailed introductions to what is about to come.

• New weapons
  
• Crafting and armor attachments
  
• Consumables
  
• Legendary Locations

• The Webknecht
  
• The Unhold
  
• The Hexe
  
• The Alp
  
• The Schrat
  
• The Kraken

• The beast slayer background, new named weapons and new armor
  
• New traits, events and a new perk
  
• New settlement situations, hiring changes and a new retreat system

And then, of course, there’s even more new things which we haven’t covered much in our dev blogs, such as new contracts, a bigger world, new music tracks and new achievements!

The ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC for Battle Brothers is set to release on the 29th of this month. Let’s take a first look at gameplay footage today!

Sit back and enjoy as developer Jaysen will talk you through changes and additions while trying not to die horribly. Just keep in mind that this is a preview and not the final DLC, as we’re still busy working on balance and polish.

In the first episode we talk about crafting, new traits and new settlement situations while making use of one of the newly added weapons!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdAM-f50TDM

In the second episode of our ‘Beasts & Exploration’ Let’s Play series, developer Jaysen and his Battle Brothers encounter one of the new beasts and craft a first item at the taxidermist!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8v47cVxHm7o

We’ll be releasing new episodes every few days and will let you know on Twitter and Facebook!

The ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC is set to release on the 29th of this month and by now it’s essentially feature-complete. We’ve moved on to thoroughly test, balance and polish everything, but there’s still so many interesting smaller things we haven’t even talked about yet. Let’s shine a light on some more of these this week!

A mercenary’s life isn’t easy, and seeing the man to the left split in two by an orc and the man to the right mauled by an unhold does put a strain on the psyche. People react differently to this, and so we’re introducing several new traits that characters can gain and lose over the course of a campaign depending on how their time with the company goes, what their background is and what other traits they have.



For example, a devastating loss against orcs may result in a character starting to fear greenskins and having less resolve when in battle against them. A sentiment that most people who played Battle Brothers can sympathize with. But as he grows in experience and is hardened by battle, he will eventually overcome his fear and lose the trait again. At the same time, another character may handle the loss quite differently, become more determined and start to hate greenskins instead, gaining a bonus to resolve when fighting against them. All in all, the number of new character traits has now climbed to be 16 – good, bad, and combinations of the two. Most of them have event interactions, some unlock additional options in events, and many of them can be gained or lost by events.

Speaking of events, we’re currently at 52 new ones for the game. There’s still time left until release, so it’ll likely end up to be even more in the end. Alongside these events we’re also adding a lot of new illustrations and updating a couple of older ones with more high quality artwork.



As you may have guessed, that illustration on the left is related to one of the upcoming legendary locations.

As part of the free update accompanying the upcoming ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC, we’re doing a balance pass on all of the character perks. The objective isn’t to make the game any easier or harder, but to further improve build variety, especially in the late game. You’ll find a list of all perk changes in the changelog once the update is live, but there’s two perks, one old and one new, which we want to talk about in more detail.

The ‘Hold Out’ perk stands out as the least-picked perk in the game currently; it benefits you only in a specific situation you want to avoid as much as possible, while at the same time you can pick other perks instead that actually help you to avoid getting into that situation in the first place. We’re going to entirely replace the ‘Hold Out’ perk with a new perk called ‘Resilient’. If you’re one of the few people that liked to pick the old ‘Hold Out’ perk, fret not, for you can now get the same effect without having to spend a perk point for it by drinking an ‘Iron Will Potion’ which can be crafted at the taxidermist from relatively common ingredients.

The new ‘Resilient’ perk reduces the duration of any negative status effect with a finite duration by one turn, up to a minimum of one turn. For example, the ‘Bleeding’ or ‘Poisoned’ status effects both have a duration of two turns, which get reduced to one turn. Of course, with a shorter duration, those two effects will also inflict less damage to a character. And quite importantly, some new status effects, like being ‘Charmed’ by a Hexe, also get their duration reduced by one turn. It’s not necessary to have the perk in order to beat the Hexe at all, but it is one possible counter and can be quite helpful if you otherwise struggle against opponents which rely on negative status effects to make your life hell.

And speaking of making your life hell, enemy bases are more proactive now in sending out parties to intercept anyone that threatens them and that they can realistically take on. Camping right next to a bandit hideout to wait for morning may not be the best idea anymore, and even locations infested by undead may send out parties come night. On the bright side, if a base sends out a party to intercept enemies, their garrison will be weakened, and in some cases only a skeleton crew will remain. You can use it to your advantage by splitting a large enemy force in two, or even attack while a third party is luring part of a garrison away!



Join us again next week for some moving pictures. Our very own Jaysen will start a new Let’s Play series with the ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC and explain all of the new features and content as he encounters them.

The ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC is set to release on the 29th of this month with a bunch of cool features that you can learn about here. That’s great, but there’s actually even more coming than covered by this feature list. Let’s take a look at some smaller things that come with the DLC and which we haven’t talked about yet.

There’s a new character background in town: The Beast Slayer. Experienced in both melee and ranged combat against beastly opponents and monstrous adversaries, the beast slayer is a versatile background similar to the sellsword, but more affordable. Of course, he comes with his own events and interactions with other backgrounds, and some expert knowledge on beasts and their lore to share with you.



There’s several changes incoming on how wages for characters work, so let’s break them down.

First off, the base wage for a couple of backgrounds has been adjusted to be more in line with their actual worth as defined by how often they’re picked by players. In addition, every individual character now has a certain idea on how much they want to get paid – there’s a small random factor on the daily wage demands of all characters, and so you’ll find cheaper and more expensive recruits also within the same background, and even if they don’t have the ‘Greedy’ trait.

Finally, the wage progression has changed. While previously you paid 2 additional crowns per character level, you’ll now pay a cumulative 10% of a character’s base wage for every level after the first and until the 11th, and then 5% of a character’s base wage for every level afterwards. In effect, there’s less wage pressure in the beginning, which gives you more leeway to actually explore the world earlier and find all those new beasts and locations. Low tier backgrounds have also become cheaper to employ in the long term, but high tier backgrounds have become significantly more expensive to keep around if they reach veteran levels, which gives you more of a reason to diversify your company composition in long campaigns.

As you’ve previously learned, the DLC will introduce a bunch of new weapons. People have been asking about whether there’ll be named variants of those weapons as well – and the answer is yes, of course. Take a look!



It’s not just new weapons, it’s also stylish new armor, all of which can be further customized with the new armor attachment system. We’re filling some gaps in the armor progression, and we’re also introducing some high tier light armor as part of a larger effort to make light and medium armor more of a viable choice for some character builds.



Join us again next week to learn about even more changes and additions of the upcoming DLC and the accompanying free update to Battle Brothers!

We round off our collection of new opponents for the upcoming ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC with the introduction of our largest enemy yet. It’s a giant beast, a creature that has lived throughout the ages and is at the very top of the food chain. Unleash the Kraken!

As an attentive connoisseur of last week’s release date announcement (November 29th!), something might have caught your attention: There’s three fearsome boss type enemies coming. Each one is guarding a different legendary location, and as it so happens, one of them is the Kraken. We’re not going to spoil the other two in dev blogs, but we’re taking a closer look at the tentacled horror today as an example of what to expect.



The Kraken is a remnant of a different era. Its age numbers in millennia, and it has spent much of its life slumbering beneath the surface of the swamp it inhabits. The tentacled horror is myth and a legend that few have seen with their own eyes, and people have been born and grown old living atop a slumbering Kraken, for it awakens only every few years to feast. The Kraken has countless tentacles that stretch on forever below the surface, and each tentacle has a dim light to lure prey. Those lights are the origin of many a tale; in the thick fog of the swamp, Irrlichts, or ghost lights, promise company and a warming fire, only to lead men to their doom. Worse still, the tentacles will wrap around their prey, crush them and drag them through the muddy water into the gaping maw of the Kraken, where they will meet a gruesome end.

The Kraken is firmly situated in late game territory. It’s an opponent to test your veteran party against, and quite possibly the end of many an ironman run. Most of the Kraken is below the surface when fighting it, and you can only guess as to its actual size. Individual tentacles reach all over the map, and they will disappear into the mud and water of the swamp only to appear again at another place. As the Kraken feeds, a many-toothed maw will slowly rise from below the waterline to gorge itself.

From the perspective of this giant beast, your group of tiny mercenaries is but food, and so it will start combat by moving its tentacles to wrap around your men and drag them towards its maw to feed. Being dragged through the swamp is a hellish ride, and your men better start attempting to free themselves along the way by hacking at the tentacle that holds them tight. Nearby brothers-in-arms can help as well. If you fail at freeing your men in time, and they end up next to the maw at the end of their turn, they’re done for. The maw will shred them mercilessly in a single turn.



If you hurt a Kraken enough, either by destroying several of its tentacles, or by injuring the head, it will get enraged and let you know with an ear-deafening roar. The Kraken understands now that this is no longer about feeding itself, but about defending itself. The tentacles show teeth and begin to snap at everything and everyone. They continue to wrap around your men and drag them towards the maw, but they do it so tight now that they slowly crush and suffocate their victim along the way, meaning that your men will lose hitpoints at every turn they end while entrapped like this.

Should you manage to beat the Kraken, you’ll not only get the treasure it guarded, but you’ll be able to craft items from its remains, and you’ll unlock it to appear as a regular albeit rare enemy in swamps across the wild for your epicly long campaign.

Thanks to the overwhelmingly positive response to last week’s release date announcement, and many people expressing their desire to support us even beyond the asking price of the ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC, we’ve decided to also offer it as a special Supporter Edition. This Supporter Edition will be priced at $19.99 and include a new player banner and shields with a Kraken motif as a thank you from us to you.

We’re happy to announce that the ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC for Battle Brothers will be released on November 29th, 2018, for the price of $9.99 or your regional equivalent. You can already find and wishlist it on Steam right here.



The artwork above can also be downloaded as a wallpaper here.

The ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC for Battle Brothers expands the game with a larger world, full of unique hidden locations throughout that offer new possibilities and rewards to the daring adventurer, as well as challenging new beasts roaming the untamed wilds. Craft your own gear from trophies you collect, customize your equipment with a new system for armor attachments, and engage in profitable beast hunting and exploration!

• Legendary Locations – Hidden legendary locations offer new possibilities, lore, unique opponents, and unique rewards for the daring adventurer in a world that is 25% larger.
  
• New Opponents – Five challenging new beasts populate different parts of the wilds, and three fearsome bosses guard valuable treasure. All of them come with unique mechanics and loot.
  
• Crafting – Trophies from slain beasts can now be crafted into cloaks, armor plating, armor for your wardogs, shields, potions and other items to customize the look of your hardened mercenaries and benefit them in combat.
  
• Customize your Gear – Wear cloaks, shoulderguards and more for additional benefits with the new armor attachment system, and use the new paint items to paint shields and helmets in the colors of your company.
  
• New Weapons and Armor – A collection of new weapons and armors allow for new play styles and character builds.
  
• New Contracts, Events and Ambitions – Engage in profitable beast hunting and exploration. Immerse yourself in leading a mercenary company with even more illustrated events.
  
• New Music – Two new music tracks accompany you on your adventures.
  
• New Achievements – Challenge yourself with new achievements on Steam or GOG.

Please note: You’ll be able to continue your current campaign with the DLC, but you won’t have access to all of the new content until you start a new campaign.

As you’ve learned in our dev blog about crafting, you’ll soon be able to create potions. How do these fit into the game and the gameworld, and how do they work? And what about the ability to paint shields and helmets while we’re at it? All this and more in this week’s edition of our devblog for the upcoming ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC. Let’s go!

There’s two types of consumables you’ll be able to use.

The first one you’re already familiar with – take, for example, Antidote or Goblin Poison into combat, use them in combat, benefit from them in combat. Apart from adding lots of new consumables, there’s one thing we’re changing about these in general: They no longer go into the accessory slot, but instead can be used from any of the bag slots. This way, it’s a lot more convenient to carry and use things like bandages without having to switch things around in the inventory, and using accessories like wardogs no longer prevents you from also using bandages at the same time.



The second and new type of consumables are those used exclusively on the worldmap. They can’t be equipped by your characters, but while on the worldmap, you can drag them onto the currently selected character to use them on this particular character. These include armor attachments, potions and paint items. You can identify these types of consumables by the ‘+’ on their inventory icon, and there’s also a new filter category so that they don’t get lost betweenst your other possessions. Let’s take a more detailed look on potions and paint items, then.

Battle Brothers has always been low fantasy, and we’ve deliberately established this asymmetry of a mercenary company composed of ordinary men, led by the player, who sometimes have to fight even supernatural enemies with their earthly means. That’s a pillar of the game’s setting, and it’s not going to change. That said, we still believe that in a quasi-medieval world there’s a place for alchemy and potions while keeping things grounded for the player.



Take the ‘Potion of Knowledge’. It’s a fancy name and what it promises borders on the mystical. Take a look at the accompanying status effect, and you’ll see that things aren’t always what they seem. It’s a matter of perspective, and it’s how we’re handling potions in Battle Brothers. They’re essentially drugs.

So, with that established, here’s the deal: You’ll be able to craft both potions for use in combat, as well as potions for use on the worldmap. Potions for use in combat give benefits such as a temporary bonus to a specific attribute, let the user ignore freshly suffered injuries or see at night. Potions for use on the worldmap include faster experience gain, as you’ve seen, wound treatment, and one particular effect that many people have been asking for for a long time. Of course, the more powerful the potion, the more rare the ingredients. And because all of those are essentially drugs, there’s always the chance of overindulgence and addiction.



Another type of consumable which can’t be crafted, but can be bought and looted, are items with which to paint your shields and helmets in the colors of your company. Helpful also, perhaps, to establish specific color schemes for specific roles in your company.