The hum of progress or the racket made by unaffordable, soulless condos being born? Either way, money is flowing...


It might be a lie but then again, why is everyone saying it? No smoke without a fire.


The HQ that controls the worlds you lose yourself in, where life is simulated and amplified.


Nothing like superpowers to brighten your day and protect you from intruders


Beaten by the noir life and plastic pollution, detective Perino remains playful and curious. That is what makes him so good.


You think conspiracies start in a smoke-filled room? What about a smoke-filled hole under the kitchen?

• New playable deck for the campaign: Lenders
  
• Now you can play card sounds in the library! Just click on the card and it will randomly play one of the available sounds.
  
• Added some missing Chinese Translations

• Debt Healer now cures up to $3000 debt with 30% interest
  
• Inheritance no longer costs debt
  
• White-collar Thief no longer costs debt
  
• Lady Pigeon no longer costs debt
  
• Spoiled Brat costs $100 debt instead of $200
  
• Rat Trap effect is now: Enemy thieves and lenders have 20% chance of not stealing
  
• Reduced Pigeon Boss difficulty

Just fixing some issues with health and some general adjustments

Balance Changes
*Buffed up some of the enemies in the game
*Stable and Forge gold costs have gone up (Stable 1400 to 3000) (Forge 4000 to 9000)

Bug Fixes
*Fixed some health issues regarding the Armored Pike Man, Cavalry, and Fairy

A fix has just been uploaded to allow demo and beta players to ACTUALLY try the campaign (fixes the problem with the AI freezing). Sorry for the wait! Both versions also have an extra level now, and some other bug fixes.

"Warriors who bear the thorns, you are the living embodiment of Quturan.
As long as you live, Orzeca will be eternal."


Is there any other word that presses down on your heart like “eternity?”

Father, I have rediscovered the story about the kingdom long gone,
the story you never got to tell me.
It was in the Promised Land, abandoned by the God of Light.
The story of High Priestess Echidna who led the abandoned children to the root of Quturan.

"The thorn is the gift bestowed by the goddess with eternity as its condition."

Echidna’s children armed themselves with weapons created with the thorns of Quturan
and slaughtered their enemies.
Records stated that the blood they spilled became nourishment for Quturan
and ushered in the glorious golden age of the ancient kingdom.
So I followed Echidna’s steps down into the dead root of Quturan.

"Only good children who overcome the trial can become the queen of thorns."

As I went in deeper, the smell of blood and something burning pierced my nose.
And with the smell Echidna’s whispers in my ear. Or was it just my imagination?
Then, when I opened my eyes again, I found myself soaked in cold sweat.
I do not remember how I escaped.
But father, I suddenly remembered the last night we saw stars together in Calpheon.

"Forgive my sins"
You said, as you handed me the golden key decorated with eagle wings.

"Forgive me for forcing you into eternal struggle."

This was the first and last time I saw tears in your eyes.
I didn’t understand, but your words felt so distant.
Thus, I buried the key deep into my heart.

"Do not forget who you are. You are my one and only Francesca Seric."


"Axian, the King of the Dead"

The last king of the ancient kingdom bears the bloodstained crown even after death.
He waits for the Queen of Thorns to deliver his salvation.

Father, after the day I visited the root of Quturan following Echidna’s trail,
I reread the history of the ancient kingdom every time I had a nightmare.
I awaited the promised day when I gather the abandoned followers to form an army
and reclaim the throne as I plant the young branch of Quturan.


Delore La Sylvia.
The cold star shall rise once more over my kingdom of Calpheon.

However, my nightmare became a reality before the promised day came.
The girl I saw at the root of Quturan, whom I did not believe to be real, found me.

With the power of the goddess distorted by life and death,
I seek to reclaim what is mine.

Is she the trial of the goddess Echidna mentioned?
Or is she the fruit of the sins you confessed, father?

My name is Francesca Seric, the rightful heir to the kingdom of Calpheon

She has my face, my voice, my memories, my emotions.
She wields the Morning Star and emanates the chill of the distorted goddess.

Father, pray to the goddess for my victory.
An inevitable strife for the true heir of the throne awaits,
and only one will survive to wield the thorn of the divine tree.





Nova gained a new form of power by making a pact with Axian, the King of the Dead, with the Thorn of Quturan.

Axian is a gigantic and ghastly undead creature with wings and horns. He was summoned by sacrificing Nova’s vitality and the Thornwood Guards to bring death to the land of the living.

Axian simultaneously attacks from the skies and taints the Morning Star in black to make it recover Nova’s HP and SP at the same time.

Nova can swiftly move across the battlefield more than ever as her Thornwood Guards bring destruction to anyone who defies her.

Nova is capable of exerting vast control over a large battlefield as she dominates her enemies through her command of Axian.



Nova in Succession continues to make most of her Morning Star and Quoratum to deliver heavy blows to her foes in a balanced combat style.

Her growth in strength can be especially seen in enhanced movement skills along with more diverse combos between skills.

However, the most notable development in Nova’s Succession can be seen in the summoning of her new guard "Axian”.

Axian can be summoned by sacrificing Nova’s Thornwood Guards and portions of her own HP. When commanded, Axian will accompany Nova in a joint attack just as the Thornwood Guards did.

Axian will recover Nova’s HP & SP whenever she uses a skill and it will also dive into a state of frenzy if it feels that Nova is in danger.


- Prime: King of the Dead
Summon Axian, the King of the Dead, by sacrificing Nova’s HP and her Thornwood Guards.
Axian brings in the chill of death into battle at the price of Nova’s HP.


- Prime: Entangling Icy Thorns
Create a circle of icy thorns to entangle Nova’s foes.
Axian emerges from the center to attack the tied down enemies.


- Prime: Fianchetto
Rip out the thrown morning star from the ground. Axian attacks the enemies that have been thrown into the air.


- Prime: Icy Prison
Nova commands pure destruction to Axian.
Axian summons the chill from the world of the undead to freeze her enemies.





Nova acquires Sting from the duel. This weapon was created with the thorn of Quturan and empowered by the distorted goddess. She wields it freely and slaughters her enemies with it.

Sting’s wielder can switch its form between a sharp sword and formidable scythe.

Sting in its sword form is a rapier-like weapon with quick piercing attacks, while her attacks in the scythe form are ring-shaped strikes making it difficult for enemies to predict her movement.

The Awakened Nova also acquires a special resource called "Star's Breath" when she successfully hits her enemies during combat. Once she has amassed the full extent of these resources, her skills are enhanced, allowing her to unleash faster and more powerful forms of her skills.

Be careful to not get mesmerized by the grand Queen of Thorns.



Awakened Nova switches gears to Sting, the thorn of Quturan that wraps around her arm and becomes her weapon.

Sting’s standard form is like a rapier, so many of her awakening skills revolve around Royal Fencing.

Additionally, Sting can transform into a formidable scythe, which enables her to hit a large area.

Awakened Nova’s major trait is "En Garde” and the incredible boost of speed it gives her.

She is able to stack “Star’s Breath” with every skill she uses. This resource can be used to enable “En Garde” to give her explosive speed.

When she enters “En Garde,” all her awakening skills are enhanced.

More importantly, she becomes extremely quick and pours out flashy attacks.


Royal Fencing: Remise
Quick and accurate thrusts of Sting.


Comet
Point Sting forward and dash in the direction to strike the enemy.


Starfall
Create countless blades of light then shoot them forward to deal astronomical damage.


Star's Ring
Summons a star by swinging the scythe around 3 times then throwing it.
Enemies near the star will not be able to move due to its gravity.

• Plugins manager
• New assets
• Converting Javascript code to ECMAScript
• New language: russian (beta)
• New language: korean (beta)

• Common reactions in battle effect: show text not applied
• Animations in engine: no sounds played
• Command set/move/turn a picture: game crash when setting picture ID
• Command teleport object: Yplus not working
• Font names and font sizes not changed in systems
• Improve semi transparent elements issues according to camera angle
• Walls: can't draw in the right and bottom limits of a map
• Battle maps duplication
• Crash sometimes when switching walls menu to 3D objects menu
• Objects random moves: no turn when camera turns + sometimes keep blocking in other map objects
• Title screen picture problem when changing window resolution
• Characters no longer learn skills as they level up
• Duplicate issues with recent projects list (+add a clear button)
• Item description not wrapped ingame
• Flashing the screen will only flash white, regardless of color chosen
• Crash with models inheritance
• The attacked animation (rows 7) of battle sprites don't run
• Crash Systems / datas > Cancel > Ok
• Correct custom 3D objects shapes: 1 meter = 1 square instead of 1 meter = 1 pixel
• Mountains issue: sometimes going down and crossing the floor
• Black menu bar in white theme (Windows)
• Miss indicator missing
• Impossible to rename window skins
• Change state pb database pb when copy / paste (ID)
• Camera small offset each time turn camera with arrow keys fast
• Mountain collision force always and force never reverted
• Rotation menu appearing when resizing window / tileset settings
• No reset bounding box when switching to another map ingame

Dear Astellians,


As we bid farewell to 2020, we sincerely hope that, in spite of the numerous adversities, you were able to make beautiful memories, find success, and find peace.
As we step into a new year, we wish you days filled with good health and laughter, and your life filled with happiness. May 2021 bring you and your loved ones many wonderful opportunities!
Happy New Year 2021!

On Sep 1 we took a tough challenge: make a game from idea to App store in 12 weeks. Here is what we did, a walkthrough of the game, what we learned from it, and what this means to Archmage Rises in 2021.

http://www.archmagerises.com/news/2020/12/31/update-128-2020-wrap-up

We finish 2020 with a second major update - V1.0.2.1 - (1.9gb) which really adds a better feel and quality boost to the game. In the last major update we introduced extra content and more improvements. This update follows on with some major improvements to some core parts of the game such as aiming down sights, weapons, Zombies, special effects and much more.




Improved weapons and usability! Most weapons have had a number of improvements. The new Vision X holo-sight for the standard rifle now illuminates dark areas and highlights pickups. Other weapons such as Battle rifle and mini-gun now have new sights with Friend or Foe systems to highlight hostile targets.



Zombie improvements! Less buggy, more varieties, improved animation and AI and much better Zombies with better headshot effects and new blood effects.

Team Mate Boost - Team mates are now much better and keeping at least some alive should be much easier. Better AI, can take more damage and generally fight much better.

Better performance! We have made more optimisations to make the game run much better. You will still need to observe minimum specs and if using a laptop - Use low Effects settings.

More random elements added to story line so no 2 games will be exactly the same. Story mode is much more fun and still full of surprises after this update.





Lots more improvements and bug fixes.



The Dev will be showing off some of these features in a live steam broadcast at 9.30 PM GMT-0 (UK Time) Be sure to check it out and have a great new year everyone

Hello Wizards!

Today is the launch of the Enshrinement 2 patch.

With enshrinement, the balance of the game shifted tremendously. Mostly it was much better, but there was still lots of polish I wanted to do to get the game into a nice state before I did any more new systems or big content updates.

This patch is a bit smaller than the previous two, focusing on balance and content. It contains 14 new shrines, and 3 new passives skills. It also contains some changes core gameplay mechanics. Lastly, and perhaps most notably, it contains extensive balance tweaks to player spells and skills.

Full notes follow.

Gameplay changes:

Lairs renamed to gates, and have a new sprite which is much easier to distinguish from walls
Gates have 2x as much hp as lairs had, to make it a bit harder to destroy them without effort via global spells and triggers.

Resistances over 100% no longer cause healing upon taking damage, they just resist it entirely

Damage over a unit's remaining HP no longer counts as being dealt for the purposes of skills and buffs. So if you devour mind a 4 hp goblin with Cracklevoid active, you'll only splash out 4 damage to nearby enemies, and shrines that trigger per damage dealt are now a bit harder to activate.

Shrine rarity is no longer constant, common uncommon and rare shrines now spawn with a 5:4:3 ratio. The rarity of a shrine is generally based on its complexity, so you'll see more swords and shell shrines and fewer toxic agony and butterfly wing shrines.

Made tileset selection based on terrain, not on spawns. Some tilesets now only spawn on levels without too many walls, or on levels with enough chasms. The focus is on making the game more aesthetically pleasing overall.
Removed some tilesets that didn't usually look good (mostly the bright red ones)

Added some new levelgen mutators- wizards may now encounter circular levels, diamond levels, and sectioned levels.

14 new shrines:
Stormcharge - IL - deals 9 lightning or ice damage to a random enemy unit for each 15 damage dealt
Disintegration - ALD - deals 1 arcane or physical to all enemy units for each 30 damage dealt
Alchemist - all - gain 1 charge on item use
Warped - T - Deal 11 arcane damage around the caster before and after spell resolves
Troubler - T - On cast, summon 1 troubler per spell level for 7 turns near cast location
Sphere- B - +2 max charges, +4 range, +9 minion health
Fireclaw - NR - Redeal minion physical damage as fire damage
Iceclaw - NR - Redeal minion physical damage as ice damage
Faewitch - AD - On killing a unit, if that unit had a debuff, summon a faewitch for 7 turns
Bomber - AF - On kill, summon a fire or void bomber
Sorcery Shield - S - When this spell deals damage, gain 100% resistance to that damage type for 3 turns
Frostfae - AI - Summon a frost faery for each 33 damage dealt
Essense - DAL - On kill, temporary summons gain 1 extra turn of duration
Chaos Conductance - FLO - Whenever this spell deals damage to an ally, redeal that damage in a 2 tile burst around that ally.

3 New passive skills:

Moonspeaker- holy allies amplify arcane damage they witness as holy damage
Voidthorns- allies deal arcane damage to attackers
Necrostatics- gain +lightning damage per undead minion

Spell Balance:

Annihilate
range 4->5
can no longer target empty tiles

Flamegate
fixed bug where you could cast fan of flames and move one tile and keep flamegate

Petrify
range 5->8
now has 3 SP glassify upgrade, which glassifies instead of petrifies the target

Wolf
charges 9->12
health 9->11
pounce cost 5->4
pounce range 4->3

Orbs
Now pause instead of explode if they get blocked
Now use minion damage instead of damage stat (so they can be improved by arch conjurer and various shrines)
No longer explode on expiration (this was theoretically cool but made them very hard to aim, often resulting in self death, and eventually, in a widespread lack of interest in orbs)

Glass Orb
Glassilution cost 2->1

Orb Control
charges 5->11

Lightning Halo
duration 4->9
damage 10->15

Mystic Vision
Now has a 5 SP upgrade that applies it to your minions as well

Chain Lightning
level 4->2
damage 16->8

Touch of Death
Touch of Vampirism spawns now properly get minion bonuses

Seal Fate
now uses delay instead of duration (so arch enchanter no longer makes it worse)

Soul Swap
level 3->2
charges 6->9
charges upgrade 2 charges for 4 SP -> 9 charges for 2 SP

Magic Missile
charges 28->20
can no longer target empty tiles

Death Shock
can no longer target empty tiles

Melt
can no longer target empty tiles

Word Spells: These are now all level 7 spells. They have been adjusted to attempt to give each one an effect worthy of spending 7 SP for 1 charge.

Word of Undeath
Completely reworked. Now doubles the current and max HP of all undead units, while halving the current and max hp of all other units, except the caster.

Word of Chaos
damage 20->45
duration 5->6
level 6->7
damage upgrade 10 -> 20 damage

Word of Beauty
Heal 50HP -> 100% HP
damage upgrade 10 for 2 SP -> 17 for 1 SP
level 6->7

Word of Madness
Now also a chaos spell

Arc Lightning
charges 6->5
level 3->4
damage 17->6
max arc upgrade cost 3 -> 4

Poison Sting
Added Acidity upgrade- removes all poison resist from damaged targets.

Blue Lion
charges 1->6
the lion itself is now also holy (was just nature/arcane)

Choir of Angels
fixed tooltip to accurately list HP (10, not 22)
fixed tooltip to accurately describe who gets healed
charges 3->5

Gold Drake
now works with range bonuses

Summon Archon
charges 2->4
range 4->5
level 6->4

Aether Swap
now swaps even if the target dies before the spell resolves

Conductance
charges 6->12
duration 8->10

Plague of Filth
fixed tooltip to accurately list fly damage (1, not 6)

Fiery Tormentor
charges 4->5
level 6->5

Knightly Oath
each knights spell now gets bonus damage from all applicable minion damage bonuses

Toxic Spore
range 5->8

Ignite Poison
base poison stacks/fire damage ratio 2->1
now shows impacted tiles properly pre-cast

Venom Beast
fixed bug where it always got the venom skin upgrade

Spider Queen
spawned spiders now get all applicable minion bonuses

Freeze
charges 10->20

Deathchill
Reworked. Is now an enchantment which deals dark damage to the target each turn, and does an enemy only ice explosion if the target dies while the enchantment is active.

Restless Dead
Is now an enchantment instead of an upgrade, now applies only to living enemies, no longer cares about finishing damage type

Ice Weave
removed

Upgrade balance:

Translocation Master
charges 2->7
range 3->4

Orb Lord
damage 4->5 (and now effects ball lightning and searing orb damage directly, rather indirectly through a ratio)

Pyrophilia
Reworked- now heals allies for 50% of all the fire damage they witness enemies take

Minion Regeneration
Now also a Holy upgrade

Natural Vigor
Now also grants ice and lightning resistance

White Flame
level 5->4

Hypocrisy
Reworked. Is now 'when you cast a dark/hol spell, if your next spell is the other element and lower level, its charge is refunded."

Scalespinner
No longer grants resistances to the wizard

Other small fixes worth noting:

Fixed a bug that was preventing some achievements from being set.
Achievement and stat actions are now logged in stats_log.txt. If you notice something funny with achievements, please post this file with your bug report (on the discord ideally).
Clouds now list duration remaining in their tooltips
The turn order of units besides the player is now randomized each turn (previously it was based on the order units came into play, which was an annoying thing to encourage the player to memorize)
Damage conversions now redeal damage to the unit they damaged, and only redeal damage if the unit they damaged is still alive.
Fixed bag of bugs making its flies after deathshock/chain lightning rather than during
Decreased teleport frequency for many teleporting enemies
Mind Devourers are no longer poison immune
Mushbooms are now vulnerable to Ice (-50 ice resist)
Blood creatures now have 75 instead of 100 dark resist
Removed glass reflection (it was a mechanic that mostly resulted in players one-shotting themselves if they faild to read the tooltip, with easy workarounds if they did- and glass monsters do enough other cool stuff anyway)
Fixed Frostfire Wizard hydras being permanent summons instead of 18 turns
Escape now saves keybinds rather than reverting them
Chimera Familiar can no longer channel multiple spells simultaneously
Fixed charge tooltips not showing bonuses to max charges
Fixed a bug that deleted options files every time a patch was launched. This fix will not kick in until next patch, so you will have to redo options and keybinds for this patch- but not for the next one!
Fixed bug where putting files in the savegame directory would crash the game
Fixed various bugs that caused certain conjuration spells to not get shrine bonuses (if you find more report them!)
Fixed many ambiguous or incorrect tooltips, far too many to list here. Megathanks to the Rift Wizard discord community for helping find these!
Fixed Suspend Mortality using current rather than inherint minion duration for respawns
Fixed flyin maturing/respawning units (vampires) not being able to respawn over chasms

Enjoy, and let me know what you think of the patch and the state of the game on the discord or the steam forums.

-Dylan

New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Multiplayer_Alpha_And_Beta#Version_2.712_Civilian_Pause

Just a small one this time. It improves the functionality of pause for multiplayer, and also gets the Civilian Industries mod to function again. If you have a version that errors when you try to unpause, then please restart Steam to force it to get the version that doesn't do that. There was about a 20 minute window where you could get that corrupted version -- apologies!

Other than important hotfixes, this will be the last build until January 5th or so, but I'll be keeping an eye on things and so if there's something urgent then please either @ me on discord or submit a mantis ticket, or ideally both. Thanks!