This is our second regular update since Early Access. We plan to ship updates every two weeks. This update focuses on balance and difficulty feedback that we've been getting both here on the Steam discussion boards and on Discord.

We've nerfed bows, because they were too dominant especially at higher difficulty levels. We've also removed wield. It was poorly understood and really just not making the game better.

There are a bunch of other changes that address feedback about the game (or particular monsters) being too deadly, especially on C.S. Lewis and J.K. Rowling difficulty. (Higher difficulties have not been impacted much, outside of a few particular monsters being adjusted.)

We have some exciting new boss music in the game, and we've also added two new stories that give you relationship choices, and fixed a bunch of bugs. Lots of stuff for everyone, we hope! Coming soon, we should be able to announce a roadmap for future work.

• New Story: Settling In
  
• New Story: A Novel Decision
  
• New Music for gorgon and morthagi boss fights!
  
• Special Boss Death animations + sfx
  
• Several new tidings & retirements
  
• Overall Balance and Difficulty Changes
  * Reduce all bow and crossbow damage by 1!
  * Remove wield from the game!
  * Adjust various items in response to changes (dueling swords)
  * Fire abilities can now be blocked (mystic nerf)
  * Decrease monster damage generally in JKR and CSL difficulties
  * Nerf specific outliers like Watchman, Batchby, Bartoth that were too lethal
  * Reduce calamity frequency in JKR an CSL
  * Getting a maimed arm now replaces 2H weapon with equivalent 1H version
  * Start with more LP in Age of Ulstryx and Enduring War on JKR and CSL
  * Stone Stunt now pins nearby units in addition to shred
  * Fire Stunt now deals magic damage pierce 1 instead of true damage
  * Nerfed Wardrobe - reduced health of spawned units
  * Open Door is now a swift action instead of totally free
  * All attacks that fail to get through armor now shred 1
  * Increased tier 0 mace knockback to 1.6
  * Snakestrike deprecated, riposte now happens on both block and dodge.
  * Removed possibility of dodging when walking through fire
  * Shieldshear no-longer benefits from ranged weapons - uses melee range
  
• Now possible to delete player accounts from the account menu
  
• New Hairstyle (reward - blame Jargo :-)
  
• Fire Chicken SFX
  
• Mystic abilities like splinterblast now properly take advantage of flanking
  
• Fixed a bug where recruited legacy heroes would not have their levels or stats
  
• Fixed a bug where legacy heroes would get different off-hand items
  
• Legacy heroes now only keep off-hand items if recruited in chapter 2+
  
• "Blinded" now correctly affects all AOE targets (e.g. Drathix)
  
• Fixed a bug with Starheart
  
• After chapter end, secure/research/repair jobs are removed (will be completed)
  
• Fixed a bug where monsters spawned by summoning did not have calamities applied
  
• Fixed targeting on wolfFriend tiding
  
• Fix a bug where gear pop ups in combat lab would cause a soft lock
  
• Fix a bug where editing an event from in game would cause a soft lock
  
• Spirit capture dialog more clear
  
• More clear that Seacave fight is endless and escape is the only option
  
• Reduce difficulty of Enduring Ch2 capstone (poison gas) on JKR and CSL.
  
• Fix a bug where riposte would keep attacking
  
• Fixed a bug where some item stat boosts would affect other (non-weapon) attacks
  
• Fixed a bug where the name of the wrong town would show in a tooltip
  
• Fixed a bug where the generic gorgon campaign said "Age of Ulstryx"
  
• Fixed many typos, missing tags, and instances of dev text
  
• Several improvements to Steam Workshop integration (edit image, name/blurb, tags)

If you're enjoying the game, please consider leaving a review!

Wildermyth is a mythmaking tactical RPG currently in Early Access. Our philosophy is to put as much storytelling power into your hands as possible, and part of that is exposing our tools so that you can craft your own stories inside the game.



The tools I'm going to show you today are under active development, but they work right now and they're only getting better. Some of this stuff is documented on the wiki, and some needs to be. If you decide to give this a shot, find me on Discord. We have a tools-and-modding channel just for this, and I'll be thrilled to answer your questions and help however I can.

You'll Need:
* Wildermyth
* An idea for an event


Wildermyth supports mods via steam workshop or direct download. Mods are stored in their own folders, and the folder structure mirrors the structure of the main game. Here are the steps to create your own mod.

From the main menu, select Tools,



then Open Editor



And open up the Comic Editor.



Use the Mods button in the upper left



to open the Mods dialog.



Press 'Create New Mod' and fill in the details. Mod Id is mostly for your use, when you upload it to Steam Workshop it will get a number. You also don't have to worry about load order. It's there in case mod authors ever need to use it to make sure mods load in a particular order - you can leave it as is.



Press CREATE! This creates a new mod folder at [install]/mods/user/[yourModId]. And it should open this folder in your OS file viewer so can see where it is. All of your mod files need to be placed here, which should happen automatically if you tell the editor to place them in your mod. Go back in to the mods dialog and make sure your mod is selected:




Before you start working in the editor, it really helps to have a plan, including a rough script and an outline of your choices and outcomes.

For this article, I want to make a little story called "A Novel Decision." It will center on Bookish and Friend talking about what they're reading, with a side-gag for Volunteer who is lighting the fire for the night. There will be a relationship choice where Bookish and Friend can choose romance, rivalry, or to simply stay friends.

Cast of characters
1. Bookish - bookish is at least 80, no lover.
2. Friend - friend of bookish, no lover, similar age (within 15 years),
3. Volunteer - prefer fire theme, fire chicken, tree theme, vine theme, or wolf theme, then snark.
4. Npc - a famous highbrow author
5. Npc2 - a popular novelist

Prompt:
Bookish, nose in a book, volunteer in the background, sun setting.
Volunteer makes the fire, says something relating to theme/pet if any.
Friend shows up also holding a book.
Bookish: Oh, what, are you reading?
Friend: Oh, it's that new book by <npc2>! I really love it, it's about a young [sameGender] that finds out they're really a [prince/princess] and has to choose between their family and their new kingdom. Also, there are dragons. What are you reading?
Bookish: Oh, this, well, this is by <npc>, it's a history of <foes.plural>. Well sort of history mixed with speculation and theorizing. But I thought it might be useful.
Awkward Turtle - Um. Oh. (Friend feels embarassed at not being serious enough, wanted to impress Bookish but clearly failed.) (personality dependent?)
Volunteer: (skeptical) <npc2>? Really? Bookish, what do you think about <npc2.mf:him/her/them>? (personality/theme dependent?)

Choice 1:
Bookish: Oh I love <npc2.mf:him/her/them>! I didn't realize this was out, can I borrow it when your done? (Romance)

Choice 2:
Bookish: I've heard those are pretty good, I've been meaning to give them a go one of these days (Stay friends)

Choice 3:
Bookish: Please don't read that garbage. I'll lend you a real book. (Rivalry)

Outcome 1:
bookish puts down book
both gush over npc2
allusion to romance in previous novel of npc2 (class/personality variation)
lovey eyes
volunteer disgusted

Outcome 2:
Friend: yeah, I'd be happy to lend it to you when I'm done with it.
Bookish: thanks! (keeps reading)
Friend: (reading)
Volunteer: Anyone hungry? Food's ready.

Outcome 3:
Friend: I thought you'd be happy to see me reading
Bookish: not reading trash. We should be preparing for battle
Friend: Oh I'm prepared for battle all right! (weapons out)
Volunteer: Hey guys dinner's ready. Also keep it down.

Go to the Effects tab (Control+2) and Press the New... button in the upper left.



This will show the New Event Dialog. Fill in the name of the event you want to create. We're creating an "Arrive at Hostile Site" event, which should already be selected. Make sure to select your mod, instead of Core. If you don't see it listed, check to see that it's being loaded in the mods dialog, (and you might have to restart the tool to make sure it loads?) Fill in the name and the author field.



Press 'create' to create the Event! Now go to the comics view (Control+1) and save your work (Control+S).

Now we're going to add targets (story roles) for our cast of characters. We need 3 heroes from the present party. First we'll select Bookish. Press the New Story Role button.



This brings up the New Story Role dialog. We'll select the role "bookish" which auto-selects the bookish stat.



We'll multiply their bookish score by (1-HAS_LOVER), and set a threshold of 80. HAS_LOVER is a special lookup that evaluates to 1 if the hero has a lover, and 0 if they don't. So this score overall targets a hero with a bookish score of at least 80 and no lover.



Go ahead and click create. You can see the new story role is inserted right after foes and before choiceTarget. (ChoiceTarget is where the user will make a choice, and it includes the prompt for the choice. It must be last, because otherwise the prompt would not be able to use the other targets in comic panels. So, the tool inserts new story roles at the end, right before the choice target.)



Next we'll create Friend. Click New Story Role again. Select the friend role. Select Relationship: "is friend" with "bookish", and check "require relationship."



We'll also make sure that friend doesn't already have a lover, like so:



Finally, we'll create volunteer. I want to do a gag where Volunteer talks about lighting the fire differently depending on their theme, so we'll build a score function to prefer (but not require) someone with one of a few themes. Start out by clicking New Story Role, select the volunteer role and the SNARK stat.



Press create. Now click on the "volunteer" button that was inserted on the left.



This will show the details of the volunteer target. We're going to modify the scoreFunction. (It might be hard to click on, you can expand the edit panel, or check the box to put it on the left if your screen is small.) Click on the value of the scoreFunction (it should say SNARK right now).



I'll enter this score function: SNARK+100*(theme_wolf+theme_tree+theme_vine+theme_fire+theme_petFireChicken) We should get validation that these are all known aspects and the expression is valid:



I'll leave the score function at 0, but if we wanted to guarantee a theme we could set it to 100. But I think the event works fine without a theme so I won't require it. Cool, that's the heroes taken care of!

We also need to create 2 authors, one highbrow, and one popular. For this, we can press the New NPC button. (If the panel editor is obscuring the left-column, press Esc or click close.)



Since these NPCs won't ever show up in panels, and we just need their names, we can use the default setup. Make another one, so we have npc and npc2.

Aside: Though, if you wanted to remember these npcs for a later followup, it might be fun to give them an npcId. If an npcId is specified, the game will first search for an existing npc, and if not found, will create one and give it the id. So it would be possible, for example, to create several events that reference the popular novelist npc2, and as long as they all use the same npcId (e.g. npc_popularNovelist) they will all be consistent. Which is a great way to create persistent characters, running gags, etc. without having to hard-code names.

You should now have two npcs listed under Generated Targets, like so:



Generated Targets means that these will be generated on the fly when the event is fired. Unlike regular targets, they don't have to exist ahead of time. Nice!

Now we'll move on to the structure of the event itself. We'll have three choices which lead to a single outcome each. Let's create them. Press the New Choice button.



Put bookish on point for these choices.



This will place them in the panel. Click Create. Do this 2 more times and you should see all the comic panels laid out like so:



Alright, this is the fun part you guys! Let's make it happen!

I went ahead and recorded this part because there's a ton of little clicks and I think it's easier to just watch someone do it, and I don't want to make a million little screenshots. Part one shows the prompt, including panel splits.



Part two includes the choices and outcomes, including some personality splits and other fun.



But basically, use the Add Panel button to add panels, use the Compose (cmp) button to make big panel changes. Lots of things can be edited visually in the panel itself, and everything can be edited in the panel editor.

So now we have a prompt, choices, and outcomes all laid out like this:








Remember to save!

Let's go back to the Effects view (Control+2) to define what happens when you make these choices. Scroll down in the middle pand and you'll see the outcomes section with three outcomes laid out like this.



Under outcome 1, we'll press the "Add Outcome..." Button to bring up the New Outcome Dialog. Click on the "RelationshipPoints" outcome in the left panel. In the right panel, select bookish and friend for "who", and set forceChangeRelationshipTo to "lover"



Press create and you'll see the relationship outcome right below the Description for outcome 1.



From here we can just copy it and paste it into the other two outcomes. And, in fact we could have found another similar and copied the outcome from there, that's a totally legitimate approach. Press the Copy button on the RelationshipPoints outcome, then press the Add Outcome button under the second outcome. The copied value should be in the middle column, and you can click it.



Create the final relationship outcome under the third choice, and set it to rivals.



We also need to add a fight outcome, since this is an arriveAtSite event! Scroll back up a bit to the "outcomes" row, and click the New Entry btton.



Select the "Mission" outcome. This will create a fight. Click



You'll see a warning in yellow at the bottom that the mission must define a goal, so let's do that. Scroll to the bottom, expand our mission object, and set the goal to liberate.

In order for the event to show up in-game, it must be enabled. Scroll to the top and open up the Ability object and set encounterEnabled -> true.



Save your work!

Now, as long as this mod is loaded, the game will try to use this event in the Arrive At Hostile Site rotation.

Create a (blank) file in your install folder called devMode.txt. This will enable cheats, which will make it much easier to test your event.



Start a new game. A three or five chapter generic story is easiest. In the Campaign Options step, choose Pick Mods and make sure your mod is selected.



And make sure cheats are enabled and the Pick Events is enabled:



For your starting party, make sure you have a bookish character. You can use the personality adjustments to get it right. Start the game. You'll see the pick events dialog come up whenever there's a potentially random event.



You can press the "random" button to let the game pick an event for you. Make sure to leave your bookish hero and a friend without a romance, so you'll have the right heroes to see the event.

Fight or cheat through the first mission, then scout a tile. After you reveal an enemy site, pro tip, save the game. Then click the assault banner and take a look. If all went well, your event should be in the "possible" list.



If you don't see it at the top, scroll down and check to see if it's in the "FAILED" section. If it is, there might be something wrong with the targeting, or your current party simply isn't eligible (need a bookish > 80 with no romances but 1 friend, who also has no romances.) If the event is not in the list AT ALL, then it's most likely you forgot to enable it (see step 9.)

Go ahead and click your event and it should work!



Step 11. Upload your mod

You can use the Steam Workshop lab to upload your mod.



Or share it via nexus or whatever your prefer. (I think I'll probably just go ahead and add this event to the main game, maybe after a bit more tweaking.) Happy storytelling!

Since Early Access release we've been focusing on fixing bugs and making small improvements in response to your feedback. This is our first regular update, we plan to ship updates every two weeks.

The major focus for this patch is bugs and crashes. We fixed several crashes and several memory leaks, and we think things should be a bit more stable now. We also had time for some small features and some content, too.

One thing people have asked for is more customization options, so we added personality customization. You can swap personality stats around from within the character sheet. Go ahead and make that Cowardly Hothead or that Goofish Leader you've been thinking of!



Here are the full patch notes:

• Can now customize hero personality stats
  
• Reworked Story: Drifters
  
• New Theme: Sylvan
  
• Fixed several memory leaks
  
• Fixed a bug where augments (rings, cloaks, pauldrons etc.) would get wrong stats on load
  
• Added a tutorial panel for Legacy Points
  
• Changed shooting star to magic damage
  
• Fixed a bug where evading fire damage would show an extra animation
  
• Removed interfusion slot requirement for compulsion
  
• Differentiate "Swift Actions" from free actions in UI. Swift are "free once per turn."
  
• Crossbows now correctly give +5 accuracy
  
• Nerf Bartoth speed to 4 instead of 5
  
• Fixed wrong "retake the station" being triggered.
  
• Fixed a bug where it was sometimes impossible to secure 2 sites at once
  
• Fixed a bug where sacrificed hero could show up in party select during next chapter
  
• Fixed a bug where promotion events for retired heroes could block the game.
  
• Ulstryx Chapter 2 (Seacave Escape) now easier on Rowling and Lewis
  
• Don't show continue button if most recent save is a completed game
  
• Clean up some log spam, including "skeleton fire is missing animation attack"
  
• Improved layout of "customize mods" dialog
  
• Additional tiding for wolf theme
  
• Fixed a bug where fire stunt could go through walls
  
• Jumpjaw now correctly a swift action
  
• Use correct monster for Library of Light
  
• Use origin town name instead of "Bunch of Farmers"
  
• Fixed a bug where Enduing Mortificer would show up as a human in combat.
  
• Fixed (most/all?) cases where dead heroes could show up in the credits
  
• Fixed: Comic editor did not work in countries where , is used for decimal separator
  
• Fix a couple small bugs with Labors screen
  
• Fixed a bug where choosing the same legacy hero twice in recruit popup would fail
  
• Fixed various typos and missing text
  
• Fixed a couple of tool crashes
  
• Wiki: get rid of Ability: and Event: prefixes for wiki links

And we shipped this tiny patch a few days ago, but we didn't announce these changes here, so, here they are too:

• Calamities now correctly buff monsters on GRRM Difficulty
  
• Enduring War chapter 4 hero now correctly added to legacy
  
• Engaging now removed if engaged enemy is killed
  
• Added particles for Stalwart

If you're enjoying the game, please consider leaving a review!

0.9+93 Cathryn Del Hunt

• Mystic Nerf:
  * Interfusion abilities no longer use Potency for accuracy
  * Steal Fire is now turn ending, but increased range
  
• Updated Story - Spirit of the Forest
  
• Reworked Story - Great One
  
• Hovering over enemy portrait now shows their movement range
  
• Now possible to edit History text for characters.
  
• Defense maps now always put escape zone near hero start zone
  
• Fixed crash when crafting offhand items
  
• Fixed crash related to mods with no scenarios
  
• Corrupted player accounts should no longer crash the game
  
• Increase logging around some mysterious crashes :-(
  
• Fix various typos / missing tags
  
• Ulstryx chapter 2 now provides 2 prebuilt bridges / passes instead of 1
  
• Modding: Monster mods are now done via monsterTweaks, tweak data now lives in mods
  
• Modding: Can now put a preview.png in the mod folder to be used as workshop preview image

After each chapter in Wildermyth, the map grows and opens up new lands for your heroes to explore. And after years of development and months of beta, we're finally ready to let the heroes loose on Steam!

Huge thanks to our Discord and all of the beta players who have helped bang this game into shape over the last year. Hearing the crazy stories about the characters you've made and your experiences in the Yondering Lands—it's what this whole endeavor is all about. <3

The "Early Access" part of this release is to let everybody know that we're still actively working on making Wildermyth better. We're adding stories and art, we're balancing combat, we're polishing our interface, and we've got at least three more villains/campaigns planned for the coming months. We're aiming to release updates pretty regularly, and we love getting feedback, so don't be shy—get in touch!

This is our last regular patch before Early Access launch! This patch focuses on high-difficulty game balance, improving the warrior's utility a bit, and fixing a bunch of bugs.

• New Story: Avenger - TamTroll's contest reward!
  
• New loading screen art!
  
• Fixed a bug where certain battles would crash when launched
  
• Adjust several town recruit events
  
• Recruit and Station jobs show LP cost in tooltip, appear disabled if you can't afford
  
• If an event replaces an arm causing a hero to have no weapon, give them a basic weapon.
  
• Improved monster descriptions for spawn cards
  
• Fixed a bug where spectral lantern and spellshard didn't function properly
  
• Spellshard no-longer craftable
  
• Updated some dialogs to put Done or Confirm on the right, for consistency
  
• New FX for concussed, hobbled, and mindwormed.
  
• Renamed Prophet to Shadow Hunter
  
• Fixed a bug with calamity and incursion UI on resize
  
• Removed incorrect history line for Crag Eagle fail case
  
• Job Banners look more clickable now
  
• Fixed several free actions that were preventing the turn from ending
  
• Control the pace of "2 spectiks", "3 spectiks" calamities so they can't happen too soon
  
• Nerf Bard - no longer gives LP per battle. reduces recruit cost by 1 instead.
  
• Fixed bug where heroes could show up naked in gear popups in some cases
  
• Show +3LP on retirement
  
• Increase the cost of wands
  
• Decrease warrior XP thresholds
  
• Warrior: Engage now has no cooldown, grants +1 armor per engaged foe, added particles
  
• Limit free action from water stunt to once per turn
  
• Leaving behind gear now grants a crafting resource instead of a legacy point
  
• Reduce Weldling armor
  
• Added blurbs explaining difficulties
  
• Fixed bug where shackle could affect allies
  
• Fixed bug with targeting in One False Step
  
• Balance monster stats - H.P. Lovecraft monsters don't deal additional damage.
  
• Building Stations now cost 1 LP instead of 2
  
• Friendship buff no-longer stacks
  
• Hurlaxe and Throwing knives now respect cover
  
• Can now view current calamities from "Calamities!" popup
  
• Fix a bug where Through Shot would grant an extra action via Thornfang
  
• 3 New recruit events
  
• Tier 3 weapons and Tier 2 armor cost a bit more now
  
• Swords now correctly give a small accuracy buff
  
• Dueling swords now give +5 stunt chance
  
• Added a healing rate indicator to hero portraits, with tooltip explaining factors
  
• Secure Site now shows a time estimate when choosing party
  
• Fixed a bug where mortal choice sound would keep playing if interrupted to load game
  
• Fixed a bug where winning a battle with riposte caused a soft lock
  
• Tweaked defense jobs - now give class-oriented speed buffs
  
• Fixed a bug where the game would auto-save right before a game over.
  
• Game now defaults to windowed mode for new users

As we get ready for Early Access we're moving to a quicker pace for patches. Here's a Halloween update with a couple new stories and some big combat changes that we've been mulling over for a long time.

• Updated main menu art
  
• New main menu option: Tools
  * Now possible to launch editor from main menu
  * Now possible to launch Battles without being in dev mode
  
• Can now adjust text size from interface options (make bigger or smaller)
  
• Rename Edgar Allen Poe difficulty to H. P. Lovecraft
  
• Reworked Story: To Humble Ends
  
• New theme - Oldwane Curse (Skeleton)
  
• New Story: Dreams and Bones
  
• Swapping weapons now always completely free - Deftness is now obsolete!
  
• Warrior Abilities:
  * Centurion becomes Stalwart: +3 armor to self or ally for 2 turns.
  * Zealous Leap no longer combos with Engage
  * Shieldshear now shreds two armor as a free action every other turn
  * Paladin is now a passive that enters guardian whenever you end your turn with a move.
  * Thundering Challenge - free action once per combat to terrify an enemy, forcing them to flee.
  * Broadswipes - melee attacks deal Bonus Damage to all other foes within range.
  
• Quickfuse now obsolete, removed from ability deck:
  * Interfuse is now a free action
  * Interfusion range is reduced from 8 to 6
  
• Heroism: now grants 1 action point and attacks don't end the turn that turn.
  
• Fire Stunt: now sends up to 3 fireballs at nearby enemies
  
• Stone Stunt: now shreds 1 armor from all foes within 2 tiles of target
  
• Heroic Death (defend) now properly grants +3 armor for 2 turns.
  
• Flame Cone damage now based on level instead of potency
  
• Added animation to indicate saving the game
  
• Shield text shows up at the right time.
  
• Auto-build discovered/ruined stations during intervals (but don't get resources from them)
  
• Fixed several small bugs with item tooltips and stat blocks
  
• Fixed some lingering tooltips
  
• Fix some bugs where resizing could cause botched text
  
• Fix misc bugs
  
• Add some tutorials for idle heroes
  
• WIP on Steam Workshop integration

This is part 3 of a series where I'll teach you how to write and implement your own "main story" for Wildermyth.

Part 1
Part 2

Wildermyth is a mythmaking tactical RPG currently in beta. Our philosophy is to put as much storytelling power into your hands as possible, and part of that is exposing our tools so that you can craft your own stories inside the game.



That's our goal, anyway. The tools I'm going to show you today are under active development, but they work right now and they're only getting better. Some of this stuff is documented on the wiki, and some needs to be. If you decide to give this a shot, find me on Discord. We have a tools-and-modding channel just for this, and I'll be thrilled to answer your questions and help however I can.


You'll Need:
* Wildermyth Beta
* Java (64 bit) in order to run the dev tools (for now - we're working on this)
* A picture of a monster?



For this article I want to make a "corrupted forest guardian" to insert into our "Heart of the Forest" fight from part 2. You should be able to make your own unique monster by following the same basic process.

My corrupted guardian will use this art:



The monster image should be a square .png file, usually 512x512, or 1024 x1024 for larger monsters, and should be placed in the mod under /assets/figures/images/



I want the forest guardian to have a free attack based on Wild Grasp, that can pull heroes out of position, and a standard melee attack to follow up with. The gaurdian should have about 16 health, 2-3 armor, take up 2 tiles, and otherwise be a fairly standard mob.

Run scratchpad, and go to Combat Lab.

Combat Lab is great for testing out monsters and combat abilities, because you can control both sides of the fight. Press F10 or click Content Editor to open up the editor view.



Make sure that the Heart of the Forest mod is enabled in the Mods control in the upper left.





Go to the Monsters view (Control+7). From here you can see all the monsters that are defined in the game. The best way to make a new monster is to base it on an existing monster. Let's start with the actual Forest Guardian.



On the very top row, to the right there are three buttons, Copy, Duplicate, and Delete. Click Duplicate.



That will bring up the New Monster dialog. Let's call it "hotf_corruptedGuardian." Make sure to save it to your mod, as well.



Go ahead and create it. It will be using the new ID, but otherwise it's a total copy of the old monster. Now we'll change the image to use our "corrupt" version. At the very bottom, expand the skin->0->image-> nodes.



click on the misc/forestGuardian line. That will bring up a big list on the left of all the "figure" images in the game. Use the box at the top left to search for our image by name:



Select it. The picture in the upper left should now show our version:



You can edit the guardian's stats in the stats section by clicking on the values and entering new values.




press Enter to confirm. I'll edit the stats, set the scale to 1, and also enter a name and blurb:



Save your work! (Control+S)

Next, I want to add a new ability, "grasping vines," based on the mystic "wild grasp" recipe. In the aspects section, let's add an entry called "monster_GraspingVines".




This aspect doesn't exist yet. That's ok, we're going to create it now. Head over to the Aspects view (Control+3) and find an aspect to duplicate. I'll use "drauven_stormsend", because it's a simple ability. Press the duplicate button



And fill out the New Aspect dialog. We'll use the exact name we entered before, "monster_GraspingVines". Make sure to save the aspect to your mod.



Edit the name and blurb to be more appropriate, and edit the effects->0 node to say "monster_GraspingVinesAbility". This is referring to the ability, which we're about to create.



Save your work! Now go to the Effects view (Control+2) and search for "mysticRecipeWildGrasp". This is the effect we're basing our new attack on. Find the duplicate button on the top line.



Click Duplicate to bring up the misleadingly named "New Event" dialog. Type "Grasping Vines" into the Long Name field, and use "monster_GraspingVinesAbility" for both the id and file.



Then press create. There's a fair number of changes to be made to this ability. Normally you'll iterate on this a fair bit, changing some things, testing them out, and adjusting. For now I'll just run you through all the changes I've decided to make. Some of this stuff might not make sense at first, so I'll list them one by one and explain them as I go. Also, I'm not gonna take a billion screenshots of this, sorry. But let me know if you'd like to see videos of this sort of stuff I guess?

name -> "Grasping Vines" - this is the name that shows on the Ability Button.
blurb -> "Thick vines shoot out to grab and draw in an enemy." - this shows up in the tooltip
info.aiPriority -> 2500 - this tells the AI to prioritize this over a regular attack (which is 2000).
info.tags -> null - this is not an interfusion recipe, just a basic ability
ability.cooldown -> oncePerTurn - we'll be making this a free action, so we need to put a cooldown on it or else the AI will just spam it.
targets[0].cost -> null - make it a free action
delete targets[1] (source) - in Wild Grasp, this would be the interfused plant, we don't need it. When we delete this, a lot of errors pop up. Cool! We'll need to fix all those...
targets[1](target).relativeTo -> self - find an enemy that's within range of self (not the scenery that we're not using)
targets[1](target).minRange -> 2.1 - don't pull an enemy who's already adjacent.
targets[2](sourceTile).relativeTo -> self - find targets nearby self.
outcomes[0] (AttackRoll).intermediateRole -> null - there's no intermediate role anymore, just a simple attack.
outcomes[0] (AttackRoll).particles[0].setPosition -> self - vine particles should originate at self.
outcomes[0] (AttackRoll).particles[1].setPosition2 -> self - vine particles should travel back to self.
outcomes[0] (AttackRoll).flankMarkOrigin -> self - controls where the flanking mark originates
outcomes[0] (AttackRoll).always -> null - we don't need to damage scenery
outcomes[0] (AttackRoll).onHit[0] (Damage) -> delete - we don't want to damage the foe, just pull them close.
targets[0].missionFeedback.orientTo -> target - self should orient towards the target of the attack when hovering, animating.


So now it should look something like this.



Let's save our work.

Let's test it out. (Due to a bug, you may need to close Scratchpad and re-open it in order to refresh the data.) Head over to Combat Lab (press Esc to close the Editor.) Where it says "Farmer" in a dropdown in the upper left, pick our new monster:



Press F2 or click the button just below to spawn the monster on side B (the heroes are side A). The unit should show up. Click on it to select it. (in combat lab, use SHIFT+CLICK to select a unit on the other team from the one you have currently selected.)

You should be able to select Grasping Vines, and target as hero, and pull them over!


Sweeeeeeet!

Let's open up Content Editor again (F10) and go back to the monsters tab (Control+7) and find our guy.

Monsters can have different stats and abilities depending on the difficulty level the player selects. The base stats we set before are for "George R. R. Martin" or "Hard" difficulty, and are the default vaules for other difficulties. To make our monster easier for "C.S. Lewis" players, let take a look at the "mods" section of the monster definition. If you expand those three mod nodes, you'll see one for C. S. Lewis (easy), One for J. K. Rowling (Medium), and one for Edgar Allen Poe (very hard). You can override stats for any of these, and you can see there are already entries that override the main attack of the guardian.

I'll set these up like so:



Step 7: Add the monster to a fight
Let's put our new monster into our fight so we can see how it feels. From Combat Lab, We'll hit the "back" button (lower left) to get back to the Lab Selector screen, and head over to "Site Lab"



We'll use the selector on the top right to find our fight.



And then down at the bottom where we spawn the Thrixl ambush, we'll add our monster by specifying the mosnter id.



And let's set "combatantCards" to false while we're here, so that we won't also spawn some random Thrixl.



Step 8: Playtest
Load up the game and choose the scenario from the New Battle menu (you have to be in dev mode to see this)




Start the scenario and play through. Our monster should spawn, and use its devastating wild grasp on us!



So, this is how we make new content for Wildermyth. Hopefully we've got your imagination started. The tools are still getting better, so let me know what you'd like to see improved. Our dream is for it to be a really powerful and flexible content creation tool. Thanks for reading!

We've been in development for something like 5 years, depending on how you count, and we are downright thrilled to be able to finally announce a release date for Steam Early Access.

-- November 13 2019 --

Early Access means certain things are not totally finished, and we're still actively working on adding content, but overall the game is in a great state, and we're proud of our work.

We've built a new trailer as well, since the old was starting to show its age.


Once Early Access begins, you can expect regular updates including features, bugfixes, and content. We have a lot more ideas for this game, and we're very excited to be working on it for quite a while to come.

Wildermyth aspires to be a lot. We call it a myth-making tactical RPG, and it has strong roots in both D&D and XCOM. Over the course of several campaigns, you'll build up your own unique cast of iconic legends. We want you to really care about your party, even though they're randomly generated, and we've done a ton of work on writer-driven procedural narrative to make this all work the way you want it to.

And we're not done yet. There's a lot more content to add, and we want to improve and polish the content we've got. Come join us!

Hi guys! We've just released a huge update to our beta, which includes our first Villain, Ulstryx, as well as a whole weapons rework and a ton of other stuff. If you're into betas, check it out here.


This is part 2 of a series where I'll teach you how to write and implement your own "main story" for Wildermyth.

See Part 1 here
(Note - if you completed Part 1 in an earlier patch, you might need to run through those steps again, since the tool chain has improved and the data structure has changed a bit. This stuff will stabilize over time! Contact me if you need help.)

Wildermyth is a mythmaking tactical RPG currently in beta. Our philosophy is to put as much storytelling power into your hands as possible, and part of that is exposing our tools so that you can craft your own stories inside the game.



That's our goal, anyway. The tools I'm going to show you today are under active development, but they work right now and they're only getting better. Some of this stuff is documented on the wiki, and some needs to be. If you decide to give this a shot, find me on Discord. We have a tools-and-modding channel just for this, and I'll be thrilled to answer your questions and help however I can.


You'll Need:
* Wildermyth Beta - get it here.
* Java (64 bit) in order to run the dev tools


For this article I'll be continuing to work on the Heart of the Forest campaign I sketched out in Part 1. Here's the outline again:

Introduction

• Intro Event: a rumor reaches town of strange beasts in the woods. Three friends decide to investigate.
  
• Fight: You find a shrine, and you're attacked by Thrixl. You learn they've been disrupting shrines.

Chapter 1

• Goal: Clear all hostile sites to unlock chapter one boss
  
• Fight: A forest guardian is slain, but you kill the thrixl responsible.
  
• Interval ~10 years pass

Chapter 2

• Omen: the woods are growing wilder and more angry, and the thrixl have returned in greater force. The heartseed has been stolen from the fallen guardian.
  
• Goal: Track the thrixl to a poisoned stream.
  
• Fight: The seed has been corrupted and planted at the source of the stream, poisoning the water. Kill thrixl and corrupted guardians.
  
• Victory: Over time the forest heals, yay!

We'll be working on the first fight, where the heroes are scouting in the woods and find a shrine desecrated by some weird creatures. Here's a little sketch of how I think I want the map to look:



For this fight, I want the heroes to approach the shrine in the center, and then get ambushed by Thrixl from the two sides. We'll create three comics, an arriveAtSite to set the scene, a midMission event to announce the ambush, and a victory to wrap it up.


Run scratchpad, go to Site Lab.



This is where we'll be spending most of our time. Site Lab is all about previewing and editing combat maps. Find the New Fight button in the upper-right hand corner.



And press it! Fill it in something like this. Keep all the checkboxes checked! They'll save us some legwork.



Go for it.

So, that created a whole bunch of stuff, here's the breakdown:

Mission Map: This is the map itself, it's always created, and it defines the terrain, visuals, and where to sprinkle random scenery, as well as defining spawn points and stuff for the plot to use. You can view the map in SiteLab.
Scenario: This is how we will test drive the fight from the main menu, without having to embed it into a campaign. You can take a look in the Scenarios Editor (Content Editor, Control+4)
Plot: The plot controls how the fight is run, when things spawn, what the objectives are, and little things like defeat and victory. You can view it in the PlotView but normally we'll work on it in SiteLab where it's displayed right below the Mission Plan.
Arrive Event: This is a comic event that can be called from the campaign, that will kick off this fight. You can view it in the Comics tab or Effects tab.
Mid-Mission Event: If we want something to happen in the middle of the mission, like an ambush, a discovery, whatever, it's fun to have the heroes talk about it with a mid mission event. It's optional but we'll be using it here.
Victory Event: The comic that will be played on victory. We generally don't bother making defeat comics to be honest, but you can, if you want mission defeat to be a viable story path. Usually it makes more sense to end the game if the player wipes on a plot mission.


This fight should actually work, just as it is, so let's take a look! To convince the game to show you the dev tools, you'll need to add a file called devMode.txt to your install folder, like this:



There doesn't have to be anything in the file, the name is all that matters. Now when you launch the game you should see an option called "New Battle." This is how we're gonna test our fight.



Find it in the list...



You should see the mid mission event play, and then the fight will start. The default roster is just one farmer, who probably definitely won't win this fight, so... When you're done let's head back to scratchpad and make some changes!

(Note - the Arrive event is not played when using the Battle menu, but it will be useful when we integrate our fight into the campaign later.)


Head back over to Site Lab, and use the Scenario dropdown in the upper right of the screen to find our map, like so:



Ok now this is the fun part! But Also I'm gonna be honest with you: this tool is maybe not what you were expecting.



So yeah. The way it works is, there's a grid of text that controls the individual tiles. Here's the (default) meanings of the characters:



Characters _not_ on this list can be used for spawn points or other purposes, as we'll see in a bit. Based on my sketch from earlier, I'm going to enter some data. I want the heroes to spawn at the bottom, so I'll put the '1' there, and I want the monsters to spawn in on the wings, so I'll put a '2' at each wing, like so:



(You can press New Seeds over on the right (Control+R) to see what it looks like and adjust as you go.)

Let's take a moment to fix the other problems with our fight - the monsters are the wrong group, and there's only one farmer on our side. Head over to the Scenarios tab (Control+4) and find our scenario in the second list:



We'll set the foe to Thrixl instead of Gorgons (Inhabitants -> 0 -> threat -> flavor), and we'll set calamities to 0 there as well.



Then expand the scenarioInfo at the top and define a roster for the scenario, like we did in part 1 for the campaign:



Save your changes (Control+S), and then head back to the Map view (Control+8) and refresh the map (New Seeds -> Control+R). If you don't save the scenario, the map view might not pick up your changes. Now you should see a warrior, hunter, and mystic, and thrixl spawning in the corners. Great!

Let's also set the biome to the forest, by setting the environment, like so:



Now, I want a focal point in the middle that they have to approach, and I also want to clear away some of the excess furniture, so I'll put some more marks on the map, like so:



The lowercase 'o' character just means "don't put scenery here," and you can find it in the legend to make sure. The 'ssss' is where we want the shrine to be, and the '3' is where we want the heroes to approach to investigate. You don't have to use 's' or '3', just check the legend, and use the same character in the next step, where we tell the map what to do with those locations.

First let's define the focal point. We'll create a piece of scenery where the ssss is, by adding a Map Detail. Click the New Detail button and choose MapDetail_SingleExactScenery.



for the location select New... TilesFromMap and set the mapInputCharacters to "s" (because we put some ssss on the map where we want the shrine to appear.) For the sceneryId, enter "shrineTreeTeal". (You can browse the sceneries in SceneryLab to learn what your other options are.) That should get your shrine spawning:



Hot! For my maps, I like to go a bit further, messing around with floor layers to create the impression of a path on the forest floor. You can see how this is done if you load some of the Ulstryx maps and poke around, there's a variety of different techniques available for map crafting. But for now let's get back to making it functional.


We want the mission to start out without any monsters, to give the player a chance to look around and get spooked out a bit. Then, once the player approaches the shrine, we want to play the midMission comic and spawn the monsters! To do that, we're going to add an objective to step in a certain region, and tell the plot to wait until that objective is complete, before playing the comic, etc..

Scroll down to the "Plot" section, and we'll add new Objective called Objective_EndTurnInRegion



Set the "region" to TilesFromMap and set the mapInputCharacters to "3" because we put some 3333 on the map for where we want the player to approach to investigate.

Now we need to add the objective, and we want to wait for it to complete before firing the event and spawning the monsters. We can do all of this by adding a new step, Step_WaitForObjectives. Add the "endTurnInRegion" objective to the list to wait for, and move the step upward so that it's just after Spawn Heroes. Make the mid mission event next, and the monster spawn after that, and leave the AddObjectives step last. Your plot should look like this:



Because steps operate in-order, the mission should go like this: set up, spawn the heroes, then wait for the heroes to approach the shrine. When they do, show a comic. Then spawn the monsters, and lastly, add an objective to kill them all. If the heroes succeed, play the victory event. Feel free to give it a spin in-game!


Let's hop over to to comics view and embellish our stories a bit. I'm going to move fast here because making comics isn't the point of this article, but you can read more about it here on the wiki.

I'll do a quick little arrive:



And a scene at the shrine:



And a victory scene:



One thing about the victory is, because any of the heroes might die in the fight, you might want to make most of the roles optional, or write a separate fallback event with fewer required roles, if you prefer. It shouldn't break the game if you don't, but it's nice to have stories that react to the actual in-game situation.


Now let's integrate our fight into the larger "Heart of the Forest" campaign we started in Part 1. In the Plots view (Control+0), find C_heartOfTheForest, and add a new Objective, Objective_AssaultJob.

Set the site to "otherSite", and set the arriveEvent to the arrive event we generated, something like "plot_hotf_1_1_shrine_arrive".

[24_assaultJob]

(If you're wondering where otherSite came from, check the MapConfig for chapter 0 to see how it's specified. You can specify whatever sites you want that way, and give them whatever roles you like.)

Then, create a Step_WaitForObjectives to wait for the Assault. Put it right before the start of chapter 1, like so:




Scout the tile, and assault it. You should see your Arrive event:



It worked!

So, now we've got a custom fight in our campaign, and honestly, stringing together custom fights is most of the work that goes into a villain (aside from writing comics, of course!) These are the core tools we use to build game content. Maybe next time we'll talk about building your own monster, or we can go into more depth on another topic if I get feedback in that direction. Thanks, and happy writing!