Even though the Corona situation has been and still is negatively affecting our schedule, we’re making steady progress every week. There are signs of normalcy on the horizon regarding the reopening of schools and daycare, so here’s hoping our productivity will also soon normalize again. In the meantime, we’ll take another look at several smaller additions coming with the next update. Read on!

As a thank you for your continued patience, and because having a guiding light in dark times seems fitting, we’ll include a new player banner in the free 1.4 update. Hurray.



The ‘Blazing Deserts’ DLC will introduce a variety of new human opponents. Several of these you can also face as more dangerous champions, like famed gladiators, nomad princes and southern officers of great renown. The screenshot below showcases some of the new named gear that these guys may carry.



We’ve also made more existing opponents into champions. For example, if you ever wanted to fight a particularly powerful necromancer with an illustrious name like ‘The Puppeteer’ or ‘The King of Worms’ who is carrying unique loot, you’ll soon be able to. And if you hire the Bounty Hunter as part of your retinue of non-combat followers, you can earn additional bounties for hunting down champions such as these, and find them more easily and more frequently.

In order to make fighting beasts, and particularly those of the powerful and dangerous variety, more rewarding, we’re introducing additional new treasure items. These are not for crafting, but only for selling. For example, a Hexe may now leave you a valuable jade brooch as you hasten her departure from this world, while an Unhold may have crushed and mashed any valuables that they found into a handy twisted ball, which you can loot and sell.



The southern city states come with a selection of their own settlement situations. For example, a city may hold slave auctions, which significantly increases the availability of slaves. Sand storms may temporarily limit the availability of goods transported by caravans, and bread and games will mean lots of activity in the local arena and increased availability of gladiators for hire. Other situations, like slave revolts, are directly linked to contracts, and completing them will resolve the situation for the city and, in this case, make slaves available again for purchase.



Northern settlements also get a few new situations, mostly to do with trade. A ceremonial season in a northern town with a temple means increased prices for incense and thus lucrative trading opportunities. Finally, tavern rumors now also include hints of settlement situations of nearby villages and towns, and less flavor responses, so that you get a better idea of trading, recruiting and work opportunities nearby. For example, if you’re set on hunting Unholds to wear their furs as cloaks, tavern rumors can now point you to villages where the giant creatures have been sighted.

While Direwolves, Webknechts und Schrats dwell deep in dark forests of the north, the upcoming southern deserts have entirely different beastly inhabitants. We’ve already learned about the Ifrit, intended mostly as an opponent for well-established companies. This week is about a new beastly opponent for you to face in the early and mid game: The Hyena. Let’s take a look!

Prowling the southern deserts and steppe is the Hyena, a carnivorous mammal that resembles a poorly groomed cross between feline and canine. Prey can be few and far between in the endless sea of sand, and so the Hyena is both scavenger and nocturnal hunter. Many a traveler lost in the desert ended up a feast for a pack of Hyenas – but whether they tore him apart as he was still alive, or he died of thirst long before the pack came upon him, is another matter.



In the barren wastes of the south, no scrap of flesh can go to waste, and the Hyena has a jaw strong enough to crush bone so that it can get to every last shred. As it turns out, a jaw that can crush bone can crush armor quite well, too, making the Hyena a threat also to men in armor that would protect them against lesser wildlife. Although a Hyena is smaller than a northern Direwolf, and not always able to kill an unarmored man in a single turn, the way it rips flesh from its victims can leave terrible bleeding wounds and inflict the ‘Bleeding’ status effect. A battle against starved Hyenas is not lost as quickly as against a pack of Direwolves, but it may well be over before you even realize it when your men live on borrowed time as they slowly bleed out while the hyenas circle you in anticipation of a feast.



Hyenas roam and attack in packs that swarm and often surround their prey, attacking from multiple angles. They’re faster in combat than most other opponents, faster even than a Direwolf. A single Hyena can attack three times a turn, often overwhelming their victims and leaving them fatigued as they try to dodge every attack. However, their morale isn’t particularly good, and like most beasts they’re especially afraid of firearms spewing smoke and fire with a loud bang, unreliable as they otherwise may be. Naturally, Hyenas drop unique loot which can either be sold or used to craft new items, including a new armor attachment, if you own the ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC.

The next update to Battle Brothers will introduce not just major new gameplay features, many of which we’ve already talked about, but will also include countless smaller additions and improvements. This week we’re taking a look at some of those. Let’s start!

Naturally, the ‘Blazing Deserts’ DLC will come with several new banners to pick for your mercenary company. They all sport a southern look and are a good fit for a southern-themed playthrough.



We’ll also have a Supporter Edition again for those who want to support us in developing Battle Brothers above and beyond. As a thank you, you’ll get a unique southern-style banner with some extra bling this time.



The next update will include some rebalancing on currently available ambitions, but the upcoming DLC will add a whole bunch of new ones. Many of these new ambitions are tailored to specific playstyles - for example, perhaps you’re more into trading? There’s a new ambition for becoming a master trader. Or perhaps you’re into banditry and robbing caravans? We’ve got you covered. Because unlocking additional slots for your retinue of non-combat followers requires renown (the system was slightly revised since we last talked about it), these new ambitions also help out with more specialized playstyles that previously had a harder time at accumulating renown.



When picking ambitions, it’s obviously helpful to know beforehand what exactly is asked of you and what your your reward is going to be in order to make an informed choice of your company’s next steps. That’s why the ambition selection now includes a detailed tooltip showing exactly that.

In an effort to bring more reactivity to the world of Battle Brothers, we’ve added a few more ways to interact with parties on the worldmap. For example, if you happen upon a caravan that is being attacked, and you rescue them, they’ll now properly thank you and often provide you with some kind of reward. As they then tell the story of how you saved them to others, your relations to settlements will also improve this way.



Farmers travelling between settlements to sell their produce on local markets may now also offer it to you. That’s convenient for the farmers, as they don’t have to travel all the way to the next settlement, but can return early to their loved ones, and it may be convenient for you, as it’s a way to get cheaper supplies on the road. Of course, you can also decide to just take it from the farmers by force - after all, what are they going to do about it against a company of armed men?

The ‘Blazing Deserts’ DLC will introduce several new trade goods produced only under the blistering heat of the southern sun, such as silk, incense and spices. But while previously the prices of trade goods were affected only by the size of a settlement and whether it produced a trade good itself, it’s now also a matter of how far away a trade good is produced.



Southern trade goods, such as spices, will earn you a higher profit up north, where such goods are not commonly available. Conversely, northern trade goods, like thick furs, will earn you higher profit down in the south, where even a bear pelt is a valuable curiosity. All this makes trading across the continent and across larger distances more profitable.

We’ve previously announced that we’re going to portray any location that you’re fighting at, such as a graveyard or a brigand camp, also on the tactical combat map. If you haven’t done so already, it’s highly recommended that you read up on our explanation of why we’re doing this and how we’re addressing potential issues here. Since this feature is now more or less ready, it’s time to take a closer look at how it plays out!

First off, location environments will be included for free with the upcoming 1.4 update - this includes graveyards, ruins, and various camps for humans, orcs and goblins. If you choose to get the ‘Blazing Deserts’ DLC, you’ll also have desert raider encampments and southern ruins in battle, and if you own the ‘Warriors of the North DLC’, you’ll get to see barbarian camps and villages. But you don’t need to own either to see most of the new environments.



As we’ve said previously, we want fighting brigands in the open field to feel different from engaging them at their camp. Indeed, where their camp is located and what kind of camp those brigands have should also become more important. Smaller camps may be a loose collection of bedrolls around a campfire, providing a largely cosmetic backdrop for your battle, while larger camps may even have fortifications, like wooden palisades, that provide cover for the defenders. If a location does have fortifications, you’ll see it both in the location’s tooltip on the world map and in the engage screen before you start your assault.



A location with fortifications is harder to assault, but it doesn’t mean that you’ll have to bring siege equipment. Take a look at the barbarian camp below. It’s quite a defensible position, being the extreme example of a fortified camp built on a hill, but we’ve deliberately kept holes in the palisades. Those palisades are enough to limit your angles of attack, change up things and make you think twice on how to go about your assault, but never enough to bring the entire battle to a halt at a single chokepoint. Although the location environment doesn’t look like it makes the battle any easier, it does make it a lot more predictable where you and the enemy start, and more a question of good tactics and less of having luck with spawn positions.



Unlike with field battles, which most of your battles are still going to be, your men don’t start in a battle line right in front of your opponents when assaulting locations. You’ll still start in formation, but further to the left, whereas the enemy starts in their camp to the right. There’s also going to be a couple of instances where the roles are reversed and you have to defend a location against attackers.



If you don't want to fight the enemy at their camp, you can attempt to lure out their garrison on the world map to fight them in the open and then return to easily sack the location afterwards. On the other hand, engaging the enemy at their camp may sometimes be advantageous over luring out their garrison onto difficult terrain. That's because your enemies naturally cut down trees at their camps, making for open spaces, and build their camps only on dry spots within swamps. So instead of having to fight goblins in murky marshlands where your heavily armored men get stuck, you can descend upon their camp and fight them on solid ground. Ultimately, location environments are about bringing more variety and atmosphere to combat in Battle Brothers, and about adding another strategic consideration to the world map.

We’re back with an audible bang this week as we take a listen to the upcoming additions to the Battle Brothers soundtrack by Breakdown Epiphanies. Let’s hear in their own words what they’ve been up to!

The ‘Blazing Deserts’ DLC is going to make the world of Battle Brothers feel more diverse and rich in culture, and this of course also goes for the game's soundtrack. Today we are going to share a sneak peek into the musical direction in the form of short snippets of four of the new pieces that await you once your company starts to explore the new content. These tracks are all still work in progress, but they should give a good impression of the atmosphere you are presented with battling the new enemies and visiting the opulent city states.



Our montage starts out with a new town theme and opens up with one of the Middle-Eastern instruments that we incorporated for our latest addition to the Battle Brothers OST, the Oud, a type of Arabic, fretless lute that has been used in the Middle-East and North Africa for millennia. Musically, this piece ties together with the rest of the soundtrack by means of a motif you are probably familiar with: the Battle Brothers main theme that plays in the main menu, on the world map and in northern towns. This time, though, we gave it a new spin by moving it into a key typical for oriental music.

The most prominent instrument of the second snippet you hear is a Bağlama, which is a type of Saz, a long-necked lute used in traditional music from the Balkan over Turkey all the way to today's Iran and Afghanistan. It introduces us to one of the two battle tracks that are going to play when fighting the troops of the southern city states and the bandits in the surrounding deserts. Aside from the main motif on the Bağlama, this track features deep and heavy low string riffs that are reminiscent of the undead battle tracks (the city states are built upon the remnants of the old empire after all) as well as a more majestic brass section similar to the ones we came up with for the northern noble house battle music. The Bağlama also fills the role that the guitar did in those northern realms tracks.

The next transition brings us to a title that is going to play when fighting the new kinds of beasts introduced in the ‘Blazing Deserts’ DLC. As usual for our beast themes, the music is very heavy on percussion and the use of melodic elements is very sparse although we decided to let a flute play a bit of a more dominant role to convey that oriental atmosphere.

Finally, we have a piece that is not part of the southern deserts lore but expands the musical selection when travelling north since the new late game crisis might entail such ventures as well. This new world map track is like a more lush and open variant of the music we made for Warriors of the North, featuring the Nyckelharpa as well as deep and powerful northern choir.

This concludes today's presentation and we hope we managed to stir your appetite for the contracts and stories that await your company in the southern realms.

There should be a dev blog explaining the changes and additions coming with the ‘Blazing Deserts’ DLC right here. Instead, we have some unfortunate news to share this week about the Corona situation.

Overhype Studios is based in Hamburg, Germany. As with many other places around the world, Hamburg has closed all schools, kindergarten and daycare centers, and is asking everyone to self-quarantine as much as possible. As some of us have very young children at home, this has required us to do a balancing act between working and taking care of our children for several weeks now - and likely will continue to do so for some time into the future. As more and more people get sick, we now also have relatives and friends that require our support.

Unfortunately, all of this is impacting on our schedule. We often find ourselves unable to put in the hours of work on the game required, and consequently, we’re now behind schedule. This doesn’t mean that the future of Battle Brothers or the upcoming DLC are in any kind of jeopardy, but there are still some unfortunate implications of this very unique situation in our lives;

• The ‘Blazing Deserts’ DLC will likely take longer to be finished and may come out later than initially planned for.
  
  
• We can’t keep posting weekly dev blogs, because we can’t keep up pace with new features or changes to report on. As a consequence, we’ll now pause with our weekly dev blogs for a few weeks to gain more ground. We’ll resume our weekly dev blogs on the 1st of May.

It’s disappointing, but it’s just the situation that all of us currently live in. We look forward to when everything goes back to normal. In the meantime, we’ll soldier on as best as we can given the circumstances and look forward to show you more of the exciting things yet to come for a game that we all love. See you soon!

Last week we’ve learned about gunpowder weapons. In this conclusion of our dev blog series exploring the southern city states, we take a look at their remaining troop types that make use of these weapons. Onwards!

Armies of the city states train men in the use of the Handgonne, a metal barrel with a long wooden handle that uses gunpowder to propel shrapnel in a wide cone. Below you see Gunners armed with a Handgonne. Its visuals have been revised since last week to make it more readily apparent that this is an unreliable early firearm and not some kind of blunderbuss.



Because their weapons cover a cone, Gunners excel against tightly packed enemy formations. But because their weapons also have a very limited effective range, they often have to position themselves right behind their own frontline, leaving them vulnerable to polearms and firearms themselves. The city states do not make use of traditional ranged weapons like bows and crossbows, but desert raiders - essentially the southern equivalent of brigands - make use of a new composite bow with advantages and disadvantages over northern bows.

Malnutritioned slaves toil in the fields and quarries beneath a city of golden domes that reflect the glory of the Gilder. It’s a city of architectural marvels made possible by the application of mathematics and engineering. These sciences are taught in several colleges between the city states, and their graduates make for sought-after engineers. They devise intricate water pumps and fountains that create a private oasis in the gardens of wealthy citizens, and they produce mechanical toys that makes eyes go wide.

But where a child sees but a toy, a man with ambition sees what can become a weapon. And so it is that engineers of the city states also devise terrible weapons of war, and that they operate them on the battlefield to rain down destruction on the enemies of men with ambition.



As you face engineers in battle, they don’t pose much of a threat by themselves. In fact, they try to stay as far away from the frontline as possible. Their role is not to engage the enemy in direct combat, but to operate the technical marvel that is the mortar. A bronze-cast muzzle-loaded piece of artillery, the mortar is able to fire every other round as long as it is operated by at least one engineer next to it.

The mortar has enough range to cover the whole battlefield, but it’s entirely immobile during combat. It fires explosive shells that cover a large area of effect, but it’s highly inaccurate. The howling sound of incoming mortar shells has as much a psychological impact on combatants as it has an explosive impact, or perhaps even more so. Characters in the blast zone lose morale and receive the new ‘Shellshocked’ status effect that lowers their efficiency in combat, but receive only moderate physical damage.

Luckily, because the mortar is heavy, relatively immobile and hard to operate, it’s an uncommon weapon used only with large armies, and one that you’ll most likely face only as part of the new ‘Holy War’ late game crisis.

As you’ve already learned here, the southern city states are places where medieval science flourishes. Advancements in medicine, astrology and alchemy are unlike anything found in the north. You’ve also learned a good deal about the alchemy part already, but now it’s time to look at their finest alchemical achievement: Gunpowder weapons. This requires a bit of an introduction, so let’s start!

Battle Brothers is set in an era spanning the early to high medieval ages as we move from Scramasax to Greatsword and across all the tiers of equipment. There’s a few outliers, such as the Fencing Sword, but by and large this dictates what kind of equipment may make its way into the game. It’s also the reason why there isn’t any full-blown plate armor available. Naturally, the same restrictions apply to any gunpowder weapons we’re going to introduce.

Until the ‘Blazing Deserts’ DLC, the setting was limited to draw inspiration from Europe. Gunpowder weapons weren’t much of a thing there at the time, but it doesn’t mean that other cultures weren’t employing them. The gunpowder weapons we’re going to introduce aren’t the muskets that many people may immediately think of, because these clearly would fall out of the era that Battle Brothers covers. Instead, they are very early firearms based on what eastern cultures actually had available at the time.



Gunpowder weapons work differently from any other ranged weapons in the game and fill their own niche. Their attacks don’t target individual opponents, but instead hit an area of effect covering multiple tiles and always hit both body and head. Also differently from any other weapons, the skill of a shooter and the defenses of a target don’t determine whether a target is hit at all, but rather for how much damage it is hit. The higher the skill of a shooter, the more damage a target receives. The higher the defenses of a target, the less damage it receives. For example, while you’ll have a hard time dodging a load of shrapnel being shot at you in its entirety, a shield offers good protection against it and will reduce any damage you might otherwise take.



Because it’s important to understand the area of effect an attack with a gunpowder weapon will cover, not least to avoid friendly fire, we’ve revised how these are displayed in the game. No matter if a tile is empty or not, you’ll now always see which tiles are in the line of fire. Naturally, this goes for any melee attacks already in the game as well. So with all that said, let’s take a closer look at the gunpowder weapons available for you to use.

The Firelance is an explosive charge mounted on a wooden stick. Once ignited, it will spew fire in a straight line covering multiple tiles in front of the shooter. It has limited range, but can still be safely fired from the backline without hitting your own men. Victims caught in the jet of fire may suffer one of the new burning injuries.



The Firelance has a single use in combat, after which it is burned out and useless. Like throwing weapons, it is automatically refilled after each battle and can be used again in the next one. Firelances are particularly useful to soften enemy ranks in deep formation, as they are able to set ablaze opponents in their backline that are out of reach of most polearms or Greatswords and are guaranteed to hit. The conscripted armies of city states regularly make use of them before battle lines clash.

The Handgonne is a massive cast iron cannon with a wooden handle. It fires shrapnel in a cone and can hit multiple targets with one shot for devastating damage, but at less range than either bow or crossbow. Similar to a crossbow, it has to be reloaded after every shot with shrapnel and powder carried in the ammunition slot. As it is heavier and more cumbersome to reload than even a crossbow, a character carrying a Handgonne can not fire, reload and move in the same turn.



The Handgonne excels against multiple lightly armored targets, but can also be effectively employed for damaging several more heavily armored opponents at once. Because the Handgonne covers a wide cone, smart positioning and watching out for friendly fire is important. Used right, it can quickly even the odds if overwhelmed by superior enemy numbers - after all, the more enemies, the more targets to hit. And any target thus hit may suffer both piercing and burning injuries.

We’ve previously covered a good chunk of what the southern city states are about. Now it’s time to take a look at some of their troops that you may end up facing on the field of battle. Charge!

Whether born into slavery, made into a slave as punishment by law, or taken on a raid into foreign territory and sold to the highest bidder on a slave auction, it’s on the back of slaves like these that much of the economy of the city states is built. But slaves are not just cheap labor in peacetime, they’re also used as expendable troops in war.



Life is cheap in the south, as the saying goes, and nothing makes this harsh reality sink in better than how the city states treat their slaves. In battle, they’re usually send first against the enemy to tire out their lines before the real battle begins. They’re poorly armed, many just carrying tools used as improvised weapons, and rely on swarming, flanking and overwhelming the enemy. They have poor morale and flee easily, but killing or breaking them does not affect the morale of any city state troops that aren’t slaves themselves. In fact, the city state troops have no qualms about friendly fire when it comes to slaves, and they may seize the opportunity that slaves provide by locking down the enemy and fire their ranged weapons into the thick of battle.

Citizens of the great city states enjoy privileges that neither slaves nor outsiders do. For example, they have the opportunity to conduct business with the legal certainty of a codified law and can even hire legal council. In turn, they also have certain obligations to their state. Having to pay taxes is one such obligation, but another one for every adult male citizen is either mandatory military service or paying a hefty sum into the state’s coffers to be exempt. The council of Viziers may decide to conscript the citizens for the defense of the city state or for otherwise protecting and furthering the interests of the state. In practise, this can mean anything between border skirmishes with other states, doomed punitive expeditions deep into the deserts to hunt down raiders, and crushing slave rebellions.



Conscripts make up the bulk of the military force of the city states. They have received some military drill and are most often dressed in a distinct southern armor made of several layers of linen, called a Linothorax, that is relatively cheap to produce. If they don’t have access to helmets, they choose to wrap cloth around their heads to protect against the sun. The color and patterns of these head wraps are often linked to a particular region of the south, and one familiar would know what place a southern conscript calls home by his headwear alone. Just before battle lines clash, Conscripts employ a unique weapon of the city states. It’s one reason why they are a military power to be reckoned with, and you’ll learn about next week in detail!

Officers of the city states are mostly made up of the wealthy who would have enough funds to buy themselves free of conscription, but seek a career commanding troops in the military by their own volition. A victorious commander will accrue influence and gravitas, and some Officers may consider the army but a stepping stone in a fledgling political career.



Considerably better armed than Conscripts, Officers carry finely crafted mail and lamellar armor with intricate southern ornaments into battle. Naturally, all armors can also be bought, looted and worn by your own men in the game!

Members of a secretive ritualistic cult, Assassins deal in death and provide murder as a service. They have no political ambition beyond the continued survival of their cult and that of their warped philosophy, and so act only in service to other parties, like individual city states. They’re not encountered roaming on the world map, but exclusively as part of contracts and events.



In battle, Assassins wear traditional black robes over finely crafted mail. Many also choose to exchange their own face for that of their master and founder of their cult, the old man on the mountain, by wearing metal face masks. Assassins have a nimble combat style and employ a variety of alchemical contraptions like Flash Pots and Smoke Pots to daze their opponents and move freely between them, only to then use a Qatal Dagger for greater impact on their debilitated victims.

Naturally, the southern city states of the ‘Blazing Deserts’ DLC also have their own arsenal of weapons. Some are southern variants of weapons you already know, while others are entirely new and come with unique skills. You’ll be able to buy them in the city states and loot them from southern opponents. Let’s take a look at a selection of them!

If you’ve been playing Battle Brothers for a while, you may already know of the Scimitar and the Shamshir, both introduced with the ‘Warriors of the North’ DLC. They were a teaser of a southern culture with their own arms to come - which now is about to arrive. As we’re adding the Saif, we’re also doing some work on the existing Scimitar and Shamshir.



A curved sword, the Saif is excellent for cutting deep wounds. It’s less suited for thrusting than straight swords, however, and therefore has a harder time penetrating armor. The Saif is a southern variant of the northern shortsword and at the lowest tier in the line of curved swords. The Scimitar has been buffed to be a middle tier weapon now, while the Shamshir remains the highest tier. All of those weapons share the ‘Slash’ skill with northern swords, but also have the unique ‘Gash’ Skill, which is much more likely to inflict serious injuries with adverse secondary effects than regular attacks are.

Not all injuries are equally useful against opponents, and many of the cutting injuries inflicted by the ‘Gash’ skill were previously among the weaker ones. We’ve combed through all cutting injuries to rectify this. Inflicting a ‘Deep Chest Cut’, for example, will now always reduce an opponent’s hitpoints by a percentage of their maximum hitpoints in addition to any damage your attack caused. It may not make much of a difference against Brigand Thugs who don’t have a lot of hitpoints to begin with, but it can mean a lot against barbarians, orcs and many beasts. As cutting injuries become more worthwhile to inflict, the 'Crippling Strikes' perk also becomes a more worthwhile pick - particularly if used together with the Saif, Scimitar or Shamshir to basically guarantee an injury.

Identical in function to other shields already in the game, but with somewhat different stats, southerners also have their own shield designs that show well how their arms are inspired by those of historical Arabian and Persian cultures.



Southern armies are rather fond of maces, and so you’ll find a variety of southern maces with stats slightly different from their northern cousins while in the city states. In fact, they also mounted a mace on a long pole and aptly called it a Polemace. It offers the advantages of a regular mace combined with the range of a polearm.



The Polemace inflicts additional damage to fatigue with every blow. Using its secondary skill, a target can be stunned for one turn over a distance of two tiles.

The south is no less plagued by banditry and pillaging than the north is. While the north has brigands lying in ambush along the road, the south has desert raiders descending upon trade caravans. These desert raiders - or nomads, as they’re sometimes called - have some equipment not otherwise available, including one particular weapon: the Nomad Sling.



A simple weapon used since ancient times, and the favorite of many a shepherd, a sling is used to hurl stones towards the enemy. The Nomad Sling is a higher tier variant of the existing Staff Sling with similar strengths and weaknesses, but better suited for the later parts of a campaign. It’s not particularly accurate or damaging, but with stones abundant everywhere, it will never run out of ammunition. Two stones can be hurled each turn, and on hitting a target in the head it will inflict the ‘Dazed’ status effect.

The Qatal Dagger is a short curved blade notoriously used by assassins of the southern deserts. Like northern daggers, it’s intended for quick attacks. Unlike northern daggers, it’s not meant to puncture weak points of armor, but to cut throats of debilitated opponents.



Using its ‘Deathblow’ skill, this dagger inflicts significantly increased damage to targets which have the Dazed, Stunned or Sleeping status effects. It’s much less fatiguing to use than the ‘Puncture’ skill of other daggers, and it can be used three times a turn with the ‘Dagger Mastery’ perk. It works best, of course, in a combo with other equipment used to debilitate opponents - such as the new Flash Pot available from alchemists, or that Nomad Sling shown above.

As you’ve already learned, the city states were built atop the ruins of the Ancient Empire. It’s no surprise, then, that they also inherited some of their weapons. The Swordlance is a sharp curved blade attached to a long pole and used to deliver deep sweeping strikes over a distance of two tiles. It’s effectively a Warscythe that performs slightly worse against armor, but is much more durable because it wasn’t lying in some sealed crypt for hundreds of years.



Like all polearms, the Swordlance can be used to strike a single target over a distance of two tiles. Its unique feature is the ability to perform sweeping strikes in a wide arc that hit three adjacent tiles in counter-clockwise order over some distance, which can cause mayhem in the opponent’s backline.

There’s more new weapons coming with unique mechanics, and we’ll take a look at those as well over the coming weeks!