---

---

Greetings!

We’re coming hot off the announcement of Shadows of Change, arriving August 31st, to bring you another developer update! Last time we looked at the changes coming to Immortal Empires in Update 4.0, and today we’re examining two further changes you can expect for Tzeentch in that very same update, beyond their Shadows of Change additions.

In between these dev updates, you can head over to the official Total War Discord server to share your thoughts with fellow Total War fans in the WARHAMMER discussion channel!

Let’s roll.

---

---

In our internal playtests, we noticed that some of the Changing of the Ways actions were not as useful as they otherwise could be, with some actions being considerably less potent than others, and a handful were never being used at all.

As Shadows of Change contains an update to Tzeentch, it made sense to update the feature now!

• “Halt Faction” has been changed to “Halt Army,” and as the name would suggest, it targets a single army. We felt that Halt Faction was too strong as is, and so we believe this tweak will help bring it in-line with the other Changing of the Ways actions.
  
• “Force Rebellion” now also damages the walls of the targeted settlement, hopefully giving the rebellion an easier time when attacking the settlement to make the action more potent.

We’re also addIng a couple of new actions, too:

• “Borrow Time” – this action replenishes an army’s movement range.
  
• “Force Peace” – this action forces peace between two factions that are at war.

To account for this, we’ve removed two actions that were not working as intended, or rarely seeing play:

• “Give War Co-ordination Target” – we felt this was too unreliable, so it’s gone.
  
• “Show Faction Intentions” – we felt that this, on the other hand, wasn’t particularly useful as an action, so it’s been scrapped.

These changes are in game and are currently being playtested. Feedback so far has been positive!

---

---

During internal play tests, we felt that when changing the Winds of Magic strength in a province, it wasn’t clear what benefits this was actually providing to the player, and as Tzeentch is getting a big boost in Shadows of Change, now is the perfect time to address it.


When changing the strength of the Winds of Magic in a province, the effects that become active are now clearly shown. This could, for example, be a building effect that increases in potency.

We’ve also made it clearer how much the player can change the strength level. For example, after decreasing one area, another area can be increased, and this has now been made much clearer.


These changes are in game and have been playtested to positive responses.
 

---

And that’s all for this week!

We’re keeping these short and snappy, so keep your eyes peeled for the next update in the near future.

Let us know how you’re feeling about these over on our social channels below, and we’ll see you on the battlefield!

—The Total War Team

What if tanks were outfitted with rapid-firing automatic cannons? What would the engagements between these steel behemoths be like? Well, now you can participate in these battles yourself—in the new Overwhelming Fire mode! Play in eight unconventional vehicles that are unlike anything you have seen in the game so far. Overwhelming Fire battles will be populated exclusively by these strange and wonderful armored beasts, so prepare for a whole new gameplay experience! There will be three launches of the mode, and you will be able to complete its special missions three times for a total of 1,200 .



From August 11 at 10:00 to August 13 at 23:59 CEST (UTC+2)

From August 18 at 10:00 to August 20 at 23:59 CEST (UTC+2)

From August 25 at 08:00 to August 27 at 23:59 CEST (UTC+2)


Barring their commanders, the eight vehicles available in Overwhelming Fire are the mode’s main stars. It’s jarring just how out of the ordinary they are. Sure, two barrels are nothing unusual these days, but what about a quad-barreled vehicle? Or ones that have six rotating barrels? Fancy a Maus with twin flak cannons? Or a Yoh whose automatic cannon uses a cartridge belt and has a rate of fire so intense that it can overheat? Or an arty that fires rocket salvos? Make sure to try them all!

[expand type=details]








[/expand]

• Only the eight special vehicles created for the mode can participate in Overwhelming Fire battles. They are all the same tier.
  
• The matchmaker will limit the maximum number of B-C CS 59s (rocket arty) and EBR 40s on a team to two of each. The rest of the vehicles can be mixed and matched with no limits.
  
• Random Battles rules apply: 15v15, with Standard Battles, Assault, and Encounter Battles possible.
  
• Battles can take place on any maps used for Tier X Random Battles (except Grand Battles maps).
  
• You don’t earn credits or XP in the Overwhelming Fire mode, but you don’t spend credits on repairs, ammo, etc. either.
  
• Battle Pass Points and bonds cannot be earned in the mode. Credits and gold are not added to their respective Reserves.
  
• You cannot complete missions except those created specifically for the mode.
  
• Platoons are available, but Platoon bonuses don‘t apply.

#Discussions_QuoteBlock_Author

Players with low-spec CPUs and graphics cards may encounter performance issues when running the mode. To optimize your game experience, change the graphics settings in your game client in accordance with the capabilities of your CPU and graphics card.

Playing in vehicles wielding a certain number of autocannons (or a couple of rocket launchers in one case) is fresh and original, plus you can earn some bonds by playing and completing special missions.

The missions will reset between the event launches, so you can complete the sequence three times and receive 1,200 in total!

Get ready to take part in a whole new kind of armored combat. Spray it, Commanders!

pleasantly surprised

Click Here to Download & Play
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2140020/Stronghold_Definitive_Edition/

We have now released our first public playable demo for Stronghold: Definitive Edition, coming to Steam on November 7th! Currently available via the game's Steam store page, this demo was previously shared with press and content creators as part of our full reveal last month.

This updated Alpha build demo contains new visuals, controls options, missions 4 and 11 from the original game's military campaign and a full tutorial for players new to the series. We are releasing this to gather as much feedback as possible ahead of launch later this year, with the demo remaining available until August 29th.



After playing either mission 4 or 11 you will find a Feedback button in the main menu. Hit that, fill out our player survey and let us know what you think! We are dedicated to making every improvement possible between now and launch, which we can only do with your detailed feedback. We have already had a huge amount of positive suggestions and input across our Discord and wider social media, however there's always room for more.



The eagle eyed among you may also notice that we have already implemented certain changes based on your feedback from the reveal on July 13th. Unit animations, buildings and characters have been improved, with many other changes coming based on both your suggestions and of course our own existing plans for the game.

We hope you enjoy our Alpha demo, add the game to your wishlist and look forward to more exciting Stronghold: Definitive Edition updates in the coming weeks!

The Daemons of Khorne will arrive as a playable faction in Battlesector on August 24th.

The warp-fuelled manifestations of rage and violence are the latest playable faction in Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector. Eight murderous units, including the dreaded Daemon Prince, are available to bring Chaos to the galaxy. Bring your armies of the Blood Legions to bear in skirmish and multiplayer battles, or to a Planetary Supremacy campaign.


Bloodletters and Bloodcrushers are ready to charge into battle fuelled by rage and an insatiable need for slaughter, while the Flesh Hounds hunt without mercy those who have dared to offend the Blood God. These horrors are led into battle by the Bloodmaster: powerful Daemons that use dark rituals to create a rent in the fabric of reality, allowing more of their kind to pour forth and shed blood for their ever-thirsty god. 


The Skull Cannon, a war machine forged in the furnaces of the Blood God’s throne, grinds across the battlefield collecting the skulls of the dead to be used as ammunition for its long-range volleys of fire and death. Nobody is safe from the mighty Harvester Cannon of the Soul Grinder, a diabolic fusion of daemon and machine, firing volleys of pure hatred.


The Blood God can always count on his most exalted champions: the Bloodthirsters and Daemon Princes. 

Created from the infinite anger of the Lord of War and armed with a Great Axe of Khorne, the mightly Bloodthirster stalks the battlefield, its arrival heralding the death of all who stand before them. These Greater Daemons also bring a range of special abilities to enhance their power, whilst their massive wings allow them to fly across the battlefield to seek more skulls for the Skull Throne.

A Daemon Prince was once a mortal, now given the gift of Daemonhood by the Dark God they worship. Upon being granted this precious gift, each Daemon Prince is endowed with murderously sharp talons, in addition to an Infernal Cannon and the deadly melee weapons they carry; none stand a chance against the Hellforged Sword or Daemonic Axe.

Every unit features distinctive, finely crafted models and unique special abilities. In addition, access brand new HQ abilities that benefit the entire faction: Aura of Terror, Echoes of Endless Fury and Blood Tithe.  

Hey everyone,

As part of our investigations into server performance, we have identified another potential cause for some of the recent server crashes being experienced and have now been able to verify a further fix.

While this fix may not resolve all instances of server crashes - as there are many different factors that could be causing crashes for different servers which we are continuing to investigate - we believe it is the likely cause for some of the recent crashes due to the way in which the server handles new RCON connections.

Previously, the Hell Let Loose server would create some data directly in response to receiving an RCON connection request. Since changing servers to run multi-threaded, as part of a previous improvement to rubber-banding in vehicles, that request could come in on any thread.

This meant that it could happen while Unreal Engine is doing what is known as a garbage collection. It is not valid to create objects while garbage collection is happening, and so if this happened, it would cause the server to crash. With increased amounts of RCON connections to a server, the probability of having this timing overlap with the garbage collection would increase, which meant server crashes could become relatively frequent.

We have now ensured all object creation is deferred to the next server tick, on the main thread to make sure that this cannot happen. This has been tested with a tool that creates a huge number of connection requests to the server, continuously, to battle-test its robustness. Previously, this tool could crash a server in a matter of minutes, now the team has been able to play for hours at a time while the server remains stable.

This fix requires a client-side update, but does not have any changelog items, and will now be going live as a hotfix.

This update is for the Public Test version of Valheim, and may therefore be unstable. Before we launch this update to the Default version of the game, we want to make sure to have a chance to discover bugs and adjust the balancing, to give you the best game experience possible.

Access the Public Test branch on Steam by right clicking Valheim in your Steam library, and then select ’Properties’. In the new window, select ’Betas’ and type in the code “yesimadebackups”. The Public Test branch should now be available for you to choose from.

To access with Microsoft / PC Game Pass, launch the Xbox Insider Hub app. Navigate to ’Previews’, and then find ’Valheim Public Test’. Select ’Join’. Wait for the registration to be complete to be directed to the Store and then install ’Valheim Public Test’.

Be aware that there might be some minor offsets between the PC and console versions, but that we are aiming to keep the two as consistent as possible.

Please leave any feedback you may have in the appropriate channel in our Discord, or in the subforum on Steam.

As always, remember to be considerate towards players not partaking in the Public Test, in case they want to avoid spoilers.

Please make sure to make backups of your save files before playing.

A few issues managed to sneak past our watchful gaze in the last patch, so here's a small hotfix to hopefully solve everything!


Fixes & Improvements:
* Enemies in dungeons no longer scale size and speed on harder world modifier difficulties to avoid getting stuck
* Enemy spawn block and item despawn now matches workbench build radius
* Fixed glowing signs
* Fixed world modifiers not showing up or being cut off if they were too long for dedicated servers on Steam
* Magecap & Jotunpuffs can only be farmed in Mistlands again
* Tin, Obsidian, Guck and many destructible objects now scale drop correctly when using the resource rate modifier
* Players can now sprint while autorunning again
* Players can no longer zoom while in the build menu
* Mouse input is no longer blocked for a short period of time when selecting a build piece
* Fixed a bug causing the cauldron to be non-interactable
* Autocomplete in the console will no longer skip entries in the list
* Fixed flickering colours when placing beech sapling
* Player based raids should now activate correctly when a player has used a guardian power


Xbox:
* Fixed vegetation and reflection shader for Xbox

Turns out the Corruptor caused late-joining dwarves to see minerals and terrain that were no more - It is now back to only corrupting Hoxxes.

With Love,
The Ghost Ship Crew

- Fixed a bug that caused minerals and carved terrain to become desynced between host and late- joining clients, if the corruptor was present in the level.
- Fixed a bug where the Stingtail would sometimes fling players way too high
- Fixed a bug that caused the season countdown timer to be visible if the game is offline/lost connection to the backend

- Added the feature to reposition ships.
- Changed the structure of some unreasonable battlefields.
- Fixed bugs that prevented some reactor cores from working properly.

- Added some covers outside the barn to help player with gunfight

- Fixed a bug with carry weight not updating when picking up an item

- Fixed a bug with second sidearm's weight not calculated

- Added a warning and confirmation when player clicks "Load Last Save"

- Corrected the serum-XR recipe

- Player will now aim at NPCs with a lead based on relative velocity, IF the player has the "Accuracy" skill perk for the equipped gun type

- Slightly raised the lock-on aim point on an NPC for full auto weapons

- KS23 shotgun (Nightmare mode) will now always knock back the target

- Fixed various places in the game where Panned/Fixed mode cursor cannot interact with objects

- If player has very low energy when knocked out in Ashinaka, some energy is added to help the player

- When manually firing a full-auto gun in bursts, the recoil assist (which causes the gun to not fire for a second when the player experienced too much recoil) is removed for a smoother experience.

- Added the ability to aim at the buildings in Ravenwood to hide the roof, which helps with occasions when an enemy is under the roof and hard to aim at

- Crows will now drop more feathers in Deadzone and Sticks & Stones mode

- Further improved the panned camera movement during teleportation