May 30, 2024

Eldritch Realms coming June 18th! ft. Umbral Abyss Dev Diary

Age of Wonders 4 - Pdx_Tauriel

Dear Godir,

We are excited to announce that the Eldritch Realms expansion and the free Mystic Update are going to be available in less than a month — on June 18th!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2401860/Age_of_Wonders_4_Eldritch_Realms/

You can find below:

Eldritch Realms key art reveal
Feature highlights
First Look Stream
First Dev Diary about Umbral Abyss

Watch the teaser to see the breathtaking key art of Eldritch Realms:

Age of Wonders 4: Eldritch Realms Key Features:

New Map Layer - The Umbral Abyss: New tactical combat maps, unique locations to explore, and new independent factions of Umbral dwellers wait for players who can withstand the hazardous environs!
New Ruler Type: Ancient beings of terrible power, the Eldritch Sovereigns have been corrupted by the Umbral Abyss and possess a unique Thrall spell casting mechanic. Choose your path as an Eldritch Sovereign ruler and decide between Dominating your foes, Manipulating the flesh or Wild, chaotic magic.
3 New Tomes: Tighten your grasp with the Tome of the Tentacle, turn your enemies’ strength to weakness with the Tome of Corruption, or drive back the darkness using the Tome of Cleansing Flame.
New Event System: Mini-crises threaten all rulers at once in the Cosmic Happenings, a series of events with unique tactical maps, units, and mechanics - and powerful rewards!
2 New Forms: Swarm into battle as a faction of Insects, or lead the return of the Syrons from Age of Wonders’ past!
2 New Story Realms: Return to Athla and come to its defense in epic clashes that will determine the fate of the world.
So Much More: 2 new mounts, 3 new Realm traits, 2 new Realm templates, 5 new premade rulers, 6 new music tracks, and a gloomy, unsettling new interface skin all await you in the Eldritch Realms!

Alongside Eldritch Realms, all Age of Wonders 4 players will receive a free content update on June 18. The Mystic Update will include new features such as randomized realms with hidden traits, new pantheon content, and an expanded rework of the Mystic Culture. Full details on these free additions will be shared in the game’s patch notes shortly before launch.

Watch the First Look Dev Stream

Read the Umbral Abyss Dev Diary!

Hi crusaders and eldritch sovereigns! I’m Bas, a game designer at Triumph Studios. We’ve been hard at work chanting incantations and plunging esoteric daggers for summoning something both wondrous and horrific.

I’m talking of course about the upcoming new expansion for Age of Wonders 4: Eldritch Realms! Which is coming on June 18th. Which is SOON(™)!

This expansion is all about lovecraftian monstrosities, fiery templars who defy them, and the opening of an old wound in the Age of Wonders universe as a new plane awakens and seeks to corrupt all.

I’m happy to present to you with that very last feature, worthy of the name Eldritch Realms!

Behold, the Umbral Abyss!

Disclaimer: You must be at least halfling size to enter. Keep arms, legs and extra appendages within the Umbral Gates at all times.

The Umbral Abyss is the domain of Urrath and home to the Umbral Demons, a new type of creature in Eldritch Realms. The Umbral Abyss exists beyond both the Astral Sea and the Void but is seeking to manifest and corrupt the realms.

In this expansion’s Story Realms, you’ll be able to discover more of the origins of the Umbral Abyss and its exotic denizens.

As some long-time fans will recognize, it bears many resemblances to the Shadow Realm in Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic. The Umbral Abyss is the evolution of the Shadow Realm into something new yet familiar.

The goal of the Umbral Abyss was to be a terrifying place where players could embark on high risk high reward ventures that felt like little dungeon crawls.

Furthermore it needed to provide a new way to traverse the world map like the Shadow Realm did in Shadow Magic and lastly, we wanted it to present a creeping threat and corruption upon the rest of the realm.

The resulting Umbral Abyss we created exists as a new optional World Map layer enabled via a Realm Trait. It features a number of hand-crafted eldritch islands floating in a void rather than fully randomly generated landscapes. The islands you see are randomly placed every time, so that you will find new ones each playthrough!

Each island is filled with wonder and rewards in the form of exotic locations and treasures. But it is also full of peril and danger with patrolling Umbral Demons and the corrupting Gloom.

Let’s begin by looking how the Umbral Abyss can be traversed by our mere mortal troops.

In a realm with the Umbral Abyss enabled, many portals are spread across every world map layer. These portals are called Umbral Gates and connect the Umbral Abyss to the Surface and Underground.

Unlike Underground passages, their position in one world map layer does not correspond to their position in the Umbral Abyss.

This means Umbral Islands can form many shortcuts, bridging large distances within the Surface and Underground. Some Umbral Islands were designed with this in mind, creating small transport hubs with many Umbral Gates close to one another.

Traversing in the Umbral Abyss takes time, its terrain has a higher move cost than on the Surface and vision range is decreased, making exploring the Umbral Abyss a lot more intimate. But traveling in the Umbral Abyss is not without danger.

One of the first things you may notice as you enter the Umbral Abyss is your units slowly losing health. While in the Umbral Abyss or in Gloom terrain, your units will be suffering from Umbral Malady, lowering their Vision Range and depleting their Hit Points every turn in the World Map.

This is Age of Wonders 4’s version of Shadow Sickness (from Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic), and represents the ever-growing madness and casualties plaguing your troops as they traverse the hostile Gloom terrain surrounding the Umbral Abyss.

It also lowers City Stability of any City with Gloom terrain in their domain, as the population finds their minds filled with nothing but gloom and doom!

Furthermore, powerful Umbral Demons guard treasures and patrol the shadows, eager to snuff out the life of your troops. Without a way to regenerate in the Umbral Abyss, your armies may need to escape to recuperate before going further.

The Umbral Abyss is also home to Umbral Nest Infestations and Umbral Dwellings (more on those later!) which spread the Abyss’ corrupting influence out from Umbral Gates, turning the surrounding landscapes in the Surface and Underground to Gloom.

If ignored for too long, the creeping Gloom will affect your armies and your cities without having even entered the Umbral Abyss, forcing players to crusade inwards and take out the source of corruption. Your troops will have to weather the Gloom though while seeking their target.

There are ways to ward off Umbral Malady, one of which is also how you get to reap your hard-fought rewards! Let’s talk about Beacons of Light and Sanctuary Outposts.

Within the Umbral Abyss, you cannot build regular outposts, found cities or annex provinces via Umbral Gates. Instead, you’ll need to build Sanctuary Outposts, and for that, you’ll have to find a Beacon of Light.

Beacons of Light are special locations in the Umbral Abyss where holy light still shines. They also appear when destroying Umbral Nest Infestations in the Umbral Abyss. Only on these locations can you build Sanctuary Outposts.

Sanctuary Outposts are, as the name suggests, a type of outpost. They cannot be converted to Cities (who would want to live in a tentacle riddled hellscape? Don’t answer that) and cannot build the Watchtower or Work Camp upgrades.

Instead, they themselves already grant a plethora of resources. They also allow you to annex up to 2 provinces adjacent to them within the Umbral Abyss, granting your empire access to those powerful nodes and magic materials nearby.

Finally, they are also a sure way to grant your units immunity to Umbral Malady while within their domain. This lets your armies recuperate before heading out again into the great unknown.

To make the trip to the Umbral Abyss and building Sanctuary Outposts worthwhile, we created new exotic locations that grant powerful benefits, either by being picked up, being visited or being annexed. Let’s take a look at some of them.

First off, the Umbral Abyss will feature 2 new base Nodes which can be found often, let’s show one of them: The Monoliths node!

The Monoliths grant 30 knowledge. This is triple that of what nodes normally grant on the surface and the underground and is also one of the only base nodes that grant Knowledge!

There are also powerful new pickups that can only be found in the Umbral Abyss; one of my personal favorites we created is the Tome Fragment, granting a random spell from any of the existing tomes in the game that you haven’t researched yet or aren’t researching currently.

The other two, which you’ll have to discover for yourself, grant an immense amount of various resources. All of these are hidden away in nooks and hard to reach locations in the Umbral Abyss, rewarding players who go off the beaten path every now and then!

A new world map layer also calls for a new Magic Material. Behold the Void Stones! These otherworldly orbs help you communicate with.. Umbral Dwellings..? There’s that word again. I guess I have some explaining to do later about those, but as is typical with lovecraftian content, it will for now remain unknowable.

They are also unique as they form their own set bonus, having 3 of them unlocks this bonus, allowing you to extract knowledge from your vassals and Umbral Dwellings (Really, what are these things???).

Lastly, I’d like to show something you guys have been asking for more. Let’s introduce some new Visit Sites that can be found in the Umbral Abyss!

Back in older Age of Wonders games, visit sites allowed armies to gain temporary buffs for future battles, explore the world faster or heal. We’ve been wanting to create more of them for a while for Age of Wonders 4. The Umbral Abyss is the first place where you’ll find some of these new ones!

Each one was designed to grant both benefits in Combat and in the World map. Let’s take the Soothing Shrine for example. A relic of light is a rare but welcome sight in a plane full of darkness. Visiting it heals your units for 50% and grants them Faithful and Zeal for 5 turns, letting them continue their journey in the Umbral Abyss with renewed vigor!

But let's say all those exotic rewards are not enough. What if you’d want to coexist with the Gloom and the Umbral Demons, accept Urrath as your true master, and let corruption willingly take hold of the world?

Well, my diabolical friends, as an avid evil player myself, I’m happy to say we considered this as a possible route for your empires to take. The first step down this path is to meet an Umbral Dwelling (at last! The forbidden word’s meaning shall be revealed to you).

Umbral Dwellings are part of a new type of content called Dwellings, taking inspiration from Age of Wonders 3’s and Planetfall’s Dwellings. We wanted to make something similar to a Free City, an independent faction with which you can wage war or enter diplomacy. But they’re ruled by fantastical types of wildlife rather than the regular races.

Umbral Dwellings are our first type of Dwelling in Age of Wonders 4 and are ruled by Umbral Demons. They can only be found in the Umbral Abyss but can extend their domains through Umbral Gates to the Surface and Underground. Like corrupting tendrils, they will transform everything within and adjacent to their domain to Gloom terrain. They are pretty problematic neighbors to have, but you can try to befriend them!

To raise Allegiance with Umbral Dwellings, you’ll have to make continuous offerings to them.
They are not swayed by trinkets like Whispering Stones and sweetened by words.

Diplomacy with Umbral Dwellings involves sacrifices. Upon first meeting them, they will make their first demand and you’ll have to pick your poison. While not at war, they will continuously demand more sacrifices in the future. If you’re eager to please them, you can even freely offer another sacrifice through Boosting Relations (which normally costs influence).

Sacrifices can include giving various resources you have available, but every now and then they will want a more delicate treat: they will demand you declare war on one of your allies or vassals. Will you betray your former friends for a pact with these evil beings?

Each sacrifice given will grant a relationship bonus with them which raises allegiance gained per turn. It will also count as an evil act and naturally steer you towards Evil Alignment. Denying them of their demands will instead see your allegiance with them go down until another sacrifice is made or war is declared.

The Masters of the Umbral Dwellings are fickle and their appetite will change with each sacrifice you have made. You may not always be able to satisfy them. But don’t worry, there’s always the next demand from these evil overlords.

Upon reaching the final diplomatic state with an Umbral Dwelling, called an Eldritch Pact, you will gain access to war coordination and rally of the lieges just like with Free Cities. This will include being able to recruit Umbral Demons into your retinue. Furthermore, you will gain access to forbidden knowledge in the form of special research skills which can be bought from the Umbral Dwelling you have a Pact with via the Cooperation screen!

Each of these skills were designed to benefit from Gloom and the Umbral Abyss, as well as being able to spread it yourself. Now you will be able to plunge the realm itself into darkness! For the glory of Urrath!

Of course, if that doesn’t strike your fancy, destroying all Umbral Nests and Umbral Dwellings within the Umbral Abyss will ensure the end of the Umbral Abyss corrupting the realm with Gloom. But destroying Umbral Dwellings is no easy task: like with Cities, they must be besieged which is naturally made more difficult by your troops suffering from Umbral Malady every turn they spend sieging.

Succeed in destroying an Umbral Dwelling and you’ll be rewarded with a hefty sum of Imperium, a beacon of light, good alignment and its domain will vanish, stopping Gloom from growing even further!

So! That’s a lot of stuff to be found in the Umbral Abyss, and it’s not even everything. We’re all very excited to hear your stories of how you dared to enter and how you will return.

Will you be a crusader of light, venturing in and cleansing the seeds of corruption before they can germinate? Will you be an opportunist, capturing and harvesting the many riches that the Umbral Abyss holds? Or will you be a warlock of darkness, siding with the Umbral Demons and covering the entire realm in Gloom while your empire flourishes?

Whatever you choose, the Umbral Abyss will not hold back its horrors and wonders. It will be unleashed with Eldritch Realms expansion on the 18th of June!

But that’s not all included. Keep those eldritch portals open to receive another unholy vision (Dev Diary) next week. For now, I hope you enjoyed this peek into the unknowable future!

Follow us into the darkness! And also our socials too:

Share your thoughts on the Forum!
Chitchat on Discord!
Have fun with us on Twitter!
Follow us on Facebook!
Subscribe to our Reddit and YouTube!