Jun 24, 2024

Announcing v2.7 - The Progression Update

Hero's Hour - Hylda

A couple of months ago, I wrote about the next update and the goals behind it. Not only have some of those goals shifted around a bit due to player feedback, but everything has become a lot more concrete. So, in this post I’ll go over the main features of the v2.7 update.

First, you might want to hear about the timeline. Work on the update started around March, and the main features were more or less finished in the middle of May - with this post, the public pre-release is more-or-less stable, which it certainly has not been throughout the whole process. Now comes a last period of polish, bug fixes, and waiting for translations. I expect v2.7.0 to land in about 1-2 months.

The Progression update is so named because it overhauls the two major systems of progress in the game: Hero levelling, specifically skills, and map exploration. However, this is a bit of an understatement, as you’ll see there’s a lot of additional goodies outside of those two systems.

Here are the current patch notes. For the major features, I’ll be going into a bit more detail.

MAP CHANGES

Map generation completely overhauled

The map generation algorithm, which has remained mostly unchanged since v0.5, has been completely rewritten from the ground up. The new system is better at generating smaller paths and filling out space edge to edge. This also means that with v2.7, non-sea maps will no longer be surrounded with sea on all sides. Additionally, it gives better control over the shape of maps, which allows the new v2.7 map templates to be much more varied and interesting.

All maps have been replaced

New map system means new maps. v2.7 will launch with 31 maps of various sizes. Some of the new maps are based on the old maps and thus share a name, but even then, they are substantially different. An example is the new Duel map, which still is a small 1v1 map, but now its size is actually tiny, 32x32 tiles in all. There is also a series of maps with unique concepts, such as Path of Gold, where your enemy’s and your side of the map is connected by three paths, one which has ore, one which has wood and one which has gold.

31 maps might sound like fewer than what was there before, where the game had 43 maps. However! Many of the new maps can be played by any number of players between 2 and 6, and since many of the old maps are basically copies of each-other just with different player numbers, the actual number of maps is still larger.

Rogue Realms will still add an additional 12 new maps on top of the 31 base game maps.

New UI for setting up games

Prettier UI, which also solves some long-standing issues with the map selection screen being too large for small screens and too small for large screens; also allows better integration of advanced map settings and choosing number of players for maps with 2-6 player slots. Even the “teams” feature makes better visual sense with the new UI.

5 new win conditions for some maps (incl. 5 new buildings)

Some of the new maps will showcase new win conditions. Some of these are about keeping control of a town or certain map buildings, while some task you in defending a specific building. I’m not entirely convinced if these are better than the default win condition, but at least it’s more varied and in almost all maps, you can still win by defeating the opponent.

New system for creating templates for the random map generator

A bit more controversially, the old nodemap templates will not work in v2.7, nor will there any longer be access to the nodemap editor. Instead, v2.7 will work off a new map file format which is easier to work with and generally gives better control of things. This also makes the way the in-game map templates and the modded map templates work the same, so you can edit the included map templates instead of having to do your completely own thing.

The new map template files consist of a modding format that should be familiar to anyone who has worked with Hero’s Hour modding before. One of the most important features is the ability to “paint” the map by filling out a grid of numbers.

The grid of numbers on the left create a map layout like the one drawn on the right.

The 1s designate the red area for player 1, while the 2s designate the green area for player 2. S designates a secondary area unowned by any player. And then the A, B, C, D, E and F are defined as towns and underground entrances in the rest of the map. The w regions are defined as water, however in this map the bottom half is defined as underground and thus that won’t be water, but underground void.

This, in sum, turns into the new Constellation map:

Please ignore the floating pirate.

Resource piles now have different levels of wealth depending on what part of the map they spawn on

In short, early game resource piles will have fewer resources and late game resource piles will have more. There are also some special maps which play around with this, such as having a special area where all the resource piles are of the largest size.

Maps now generate with cliffs

For now, this is purely visual change, but still it looks rather nice and makes the map terrain become more memorable. The maps come in two terrain heights with cliffs in-between.

Two new terrains: Gold Beach and Dreamscape

One of the goals of the map rewrite was to make the game no longer have artificial limits on the number of terrains or players. Previously only 14 terrains were supported and only 7 players were supported. Now, any number of terrains can be added, and two have been added, one as a new Tide starting terrain and the other as a new Delirium starting terrain. Additionally any number of players can be put on a map, though I have not tested beyond 10. If at some point it becomes relevant to have more than 10 players on a map (I cannot foresee why that would ever be the case), that limit might be raised again.

New large terrain art assets for all terrains

There’s a lot of new terrain set pieces, not just for the two new terrains, but also the old ones. The game has never looked as good as it does now. Even the sea looks better, now with waves coming off the coast-lines.

SKILLS CHANGES

Skillsets is the new default for for hero skill progression; Skilltrees turned off

Skilltrees were originally added in the v1.4 update as a bit of an afterthought. I was not able to do what I wanted to, so I settled for these instead. They ended up becoming a huge part of the game’s identity. Yet, they have caused a lot of issues with most later updates to the game. Especially Rogue Realms and v2.6 updates both suffered a lot in quality due to the disadvantages of the skilltree system.

Skilltrees are still playable as an advanced map settings.

Now instead of each hero having a skillltree of 14-16 skills, each hero will have a learnset of 6 major skills. These can be taken in any order. Major skills unlock various subskills, which means that on average, a hero will have access to 26-28 skills throughout their levelling. The new levelling system is both more open, full of more features (because there’s more skills), and more intelligible, since skills are grouped together into sets of major skills.

Sorted all current skills into 47 major skills and the rest into subskills

So, what is a major skill, anyway? As mentioned, skills are grouped together into sets, and the Major skill is the one at the top, which gives access to the subskills.

Here you can see an example of these major skills and subskills. For instance, in the middle, we have the Mysticism major. Underneath, we have the Destruction subskill, Blight Ritual subskill, Buffer subskill and Mana Life subskill. To gain any of those subskills, you’ll first have to rank up Mysticism. Then, later, you can put points into them - though some, like Blight Ritual, might have additional requirements, like being level 7 and having Mysticism rank II.

Leadership is a major skill too, with Plunder and three new skills as subskills. And finally, all the class skills have been expanded as major skills with three new faction-specific subskills.

That’s a lot of new skills in a single picture, huh…

Why did I choose one thing to be major and another to be subskill? In general, the major skills are supposed to represent the most important mechanics in the game, and should generally always make you more powerful. The subskills are better suited for unique interactions and synergies that aren’t always useful. In general, the major skills are also a lot more straightforward than the subskills - many of the latter being as complex as Hero’s Hour gets.

Oh! One last thing. Skills now have varied number of max ranks. The old skills generally can have up to 4 ranks if they’re major skills and up to 2 ranks if they’re subskills, while almost all new subskills added to the game are single-rank only.

Reworked the following skills: Tactics (now called Strategist), Champion, Aeromancy, Swiftness (now called Wind Pace), Weightless Soul (now called Wing Master), Fortune, Terramancy, Heavy Soul (now called Stone Heart), Enchanting, Swordsmith, Armorsmith (now called Shieldsmith), Pyromancy, Leadership, Armorer, Hydromancy, Offense, Mysticism, Summoning, Avatar, Engineering, Wisdom, Demoralise (now called Horror), Tragedy, Mastery, Scouting

These reworks range from being rather minor to being rather vast. For instance, Leadership and Fortune now give +2 morale or +2 luck instead of +1 - but also, the stats are changed to be half as powerful, so it all works out in the end. Other skills were changed due to becoming subskills.

Several skill changes deal with how bonuses multiply together. For instance, Hydromancy/Pyromancy/Terramancy/Aeromancy no longer give a 60% power bonus, instead giving +7 spellpower while casting that type of spell. In general, this will make late game synergies a bit less unpredictably powerful, while keeping the early game scaling the same.

One change I do want to highlight is Engineering, which now gives a new warmachine each time it is levelled up. Previously, it would only give a First Aid tent to a hero if the hero started with a point into that skill. To this end, 3 new warmachines were added so you can always get an unowned warmachine no matter at what point you put points into Engineering.

Added 2 new major skills: Carnage, Faith

Carnage is the new major for a group of subskills which all deal with synergies of losing your own units. Faith is the new major for a group of ostensibly spell-focused subskills.

Added 54 new general subskills:

Strategist: Affinity
Fortune: Gambler's Wheel, Inspiration, Lucky Star, Luckyguards
Terramancy: Grave Guard, Life Aether, Terraforming
Necromancy: Mana Drain, Life From Death, Putrid Air, Undying,
Demonology: Demon Blood, Demonic Reduction, Demoncaller, Possession
Pyromancy: Cataclysm, Fireleaper, Inferno,
Leadership: Heroism, March Onwards, Persistence
Armorer: Plating, Lifelink
Offense: Aggression, Forceful Strike, Cult of Muscle
Mysticism: Manalife
Bodyguards: Underdog
Healing: Grand Physician, Vigour
Devour: Swallow, Belch, Digest, Spit
Horror: Betrayal,
Mastery: Survival
Aeromancy: Stormbringer
Smithing (previously known as Enchnating): Jewelsmith
Hydromancy: Healing Rain
Engineering: Sapper
Mastery: Conversion, Elite Guard
Combat: Brawn, Skepticism, One on One
Dragonking: Dragonform, Guard of None, Dragonslaying
Creativity (previously RR-only): Prism, Customisation, Whimsy
Estates: Productivity, Nobility
Carnage: Gold Teeth

So, yea, v2.7 adds a lot of new skills to the game. These range from rather minor effects, such as a stat bonus combining for instance morale and daily movement, and rather advanced effects, such as Stormbringer which summons a tornado each fight which becomes more powerful whenever you cast an air spell.

There’s a vast difference in the number of new subskills per major skill. This is related to how many old skills were put as subskills. In the end, each major skill has 3-5 subskill, most of them 4 - if you ignore faction skills anyway. About those…

Added 36 new faction subskills:

Order: Salary, Royal Tribute, Old Mirth
Wild: Elven Artillery, Lunar Rites, March of Nature
Arcane: Mage General, Spire Attunement, Scholar
Decay: Coil of the Dead, Frost Lich, Turn Living
Pyre: Ritual of Power, Venomus Demonicus, Great Feast
Horde: Sandcaster, Hero's Horde, Ritual of Flesh
Enclave: Swamp Silver, Bog Witching, Scale Lord
Lament: Doppelganger, Tunnel, Dragon Whisperer
Tide: Ways of the Sea, Pearl Crown, Fire Dance
Earthen: Gold Digger, Carve Guards, Earthen Eternity
Pillar: Uphold Tradition, Serene Meditation, Tea Master
Delirium: Umsql, Cult Recruiter, Romance

So, yea, v2.7 adds a lot of new skills to the game. This was a wonderful time to flesh out and try to represent various themes of the factions that weren’t already touched. They range from rather simple. On the simple side, each faction gets a lvl 7 subskill which gives an entourage of a notable faction unit as well as a minor side bonus
On the advanced side, we have skills such as Doppelganger, which creates a shadowclone of your hero on the overworld, and Great Feast, which gives an overworld spell with a short cooldown that can be used to buff your hero’s units, but turns your units drunk and has an unpredictable gold cost.

Moved several subskills from Rogue Realms exclusivity to be part of the base game

; of the old Rogue Realms exclusive subskills, only Call Beasts, Infest, Tinker, Lovely Tune, Exploitation and Crystal Assembly remains locked to Rogue Realms

The Rogue Realms skills are the ones seeing the largest shake-up. Most are turning into base-game subskills, either because they were too good to be kept in the DLC, or they were too bad to be kept as paid content. Before, Rogue Realms had twelve pseudo-faction skills and a bunch of random assorted skills with little rhyme or reason. Now, Rogue Realms will have six full fledged major skills with four additional subskills each.

The change to exclusivity actually goes beyond just the above. One problem with the Rogue Realms DLC was that it split up modding into two segments, with mods not quite working for both Rogue Realms and base game. In the underlying code, even the Rogue Realms skills will now be available for anyone running mods that does not own the DLC.

Added 24 new skills for Rogue Realms:

Hoard: Mana Crystals, Buying Life, Golden Blood, Dragonskin
Call Beasts: Bestial Fury, Life summoner, Rootcaller, Questing
Chemistry: Analysis, Test the Flesh, Research, Midlife Crisis
Infest: Spore Spreading, Budding, Neurotoxin, Mychoral Guard
Tinker: Artillery, Mechpriest
Lovely Tune: Inspiring Drum, Energetic Jam, Peace Binding, Province Guards

Chemistry is the new major skill and starting skill for the Alchemist heroes in Rogue Realms. The rest of the six main pseudo-faction skills are being fleshed out with appropriate subskills, such as Tyranny whose Hoard skill is now being supported by various resource-related or dragon-related skills.

You might wonder why Tinker has fewer than the others; it doesn’t, it’s just getting Crystal Assembly and Exploitation as subskills, since they fit it so well. So in total, each of the 6 main Rogue towns now has its own major skill with 4 extra subskills.

You might notice the above list only has 23 new skills. The last new skill is named Drown and is actually a Hydromancy subskill, but which can only be learnt by Admirals, that is, Rogue Realms heroes of the Brine town.

Designed new learnsets for all heroes

The new learnsets are in part based on the skill trees used for Rogue Realms, but with a much larger focus on what skills make thematic sense for each faction to learn. Of course, there will be a human General that can learn Necromancy, we can have some outliers - but most of the heroes will now better fit their faction themes.

Above you see the frequency of various majors for the Wild and Pyre factions. Unsurprisingly, Demonology and Pyromancy is frequent with one, and Fortune and Terramancy is frequent with the other. They both like Summoning.

Changed which skills, subskills and units heroes start with

The change of course goes beyond learnsets, also affecting starting skills. Additionally, the unlockable heroes, which with Skilltrees start with Rank II of a single skill, now start with Rank I of a major + Rank I of a subskill under that major.

Units are changed too. Mostly this is a redaction of a range of heroes that had non-faction units as their starting units. But also some new v2.7 units are being granted as starting units.

Added 64 new spells for the new skills

Many of the new skills add spells, either overworld spells, combat spells with mana costs, and combat spells with day- cooldowns. Some of these are “just” summon spells, but are made special in the way they are learnt - such as Demoncaller which teaches 3 spells to summon demons, each of which has a multi-day cooldown. Others are more unique spells, such as Drown, which floods the battlefield, Dragonform, which turns your hero into a dragon, or Prism, which summons a bunch of copies of a single chosen enemy or friendly unit.

OTHER ADDITIONS

12 new units added: Blood Golem, Medician, Mercenary, Nighthowler, Herculean, Terraformed, Questing Raffe, Aether Witch, Foxpirit, Life Reaper, Blood Aspirant, Rune Beacon

The new units come by either because of new subskills, or because of some of the community art marathons. The latter units are, for instance, based on designs by DeadSaracen, MagicalStorm, SleepyMage, Lyolf and Kaazmun. The new units represent 4 new unit abilities: Nighthowler, Foxpirit and Blood Aspirant all have the Bloodform ability, which makes them transform when they kill an enemy; Aether Witch has the Colourcaster ability; Life Reaper has the Reap ability; and Rune Beacon has the Rune Recipient ability.

15 new adventure map buildings added to the game

The sixth art marathon was held back in March and resulted in a lot of new buildings being added to the game:

Magic Mirror and Haberdashery by SleepyMage
Egg of Unknown Origin by Hamastra
Enchanted Pond and Earthblood Mine by DeadSaracen
Djinn Altar by me
Hero's Communion and Void Spiral by MagicalStorm
Dragon Aerie by Erridian
Ethereal Philosopher by Louis Morel.

Additionally, there’s five new adventure map buildings for the sea (the first of that type!): Den of Sirens, Brine Guild, Lighthouse, Calm Leviathan and Wrecking Reef.

Sea towns (Rogue Realms DLC only)

These are a special variety of Brine towns only found out at sea. On large maps, you’ll usually find 1-2. They’re rather rare.

Added six new spells: Nightmare, Dream, Slumber, Detonate, Reap, Root

These spells were added so that the Delirium heroes no longer had to start with Mysticism-specific spells. The mysticism spells in general were on the powerful side, and being given guaranteed access to a specific one was a bit too much, especially since generally, their power was balanced out by having to put a point into a specific skill.

Community Graphics Improvements

Above, I’ve mentioned art marathons a couple of times. I guess I should explain what those are. They started as a tradition in the discord server where a lot of artists would all do their own version of a single thing. The first official art marathon was to create a new portrait for Hardsoul, the best hero.

The art marathons are held in two rounds: First, people draw up their designs and write a bit about their concept. Second, voting. The third round is that I ask the people who get the most votes if they want to see the thing added to the game, and if they do, I’ll do my best to implement it as close to their vision I can without messing up balance or design principles. And of course, the person with the most votes get to wish a completely new piece of content into the game.

Since then, there’s been a couple of other art marathons, before a long hiatus known as the v2.6 doldrums. Now in 2024, we’ve held three art marathons:

5th art marathon: New overworld buildings
6th art marathon: Faction-specific designs for default assets
7th art marathon: New units based on the 12 factions

So, about half the new units are from the 7th art marathon, as well as some unit graphics being overhauled. Two thirds of the new buildings are from the 5th art marathon.

The 6th art marathon isn’t adding any new content, but it is adding new looks for old things - specifically doing faction-specific designs for things that previously looked the same for everyone:

Improved default boat during naval combat, by Hamastra
Divine Vessel spell now creates a unique boat with unique overworld and in-battle graphics, by MagicalStorm
Lizardfolk heroes now create Turtles instead of Boats at the docks. These have a unique overworld and in-battle graphic, by DeadSaracen
Most factions get unique new walls during sieges, by DeadSaracen
All factions get a new unique look for their first aid station warmachine, by SleepyMage
Updated art for Crusader, Paladin, Bloodsucker, Firestinger, Corruptor, Boneliath by DeadSaracen
Updated art for Enclave units by AntRose

These are all astoundingly excellent art pieces, going far beyond the general quality of Hero’s Hour art.

What’s special here is that the recent art marathons have not just been larger, more popular, and seen better and more diverse submissions, but also that we’ve held three in rather short succession, all of which will come in the v2.7 update.

Huge thanks to everyone who joined the art marathons, whether their submissions reached the top 10 or not, and whether they wished their things to become part of the game or not. They have been a blast, and they make me strive to improve my drawing skillz. I hope maybe in the 8th marathon, I will finally have a shot at the top 10…

Nine New Heroes

These new heroes are based on suggestions by various community members and are spread around the various factions. You’ll notice only eight of them can be found on the hero selection screen. The last one is a secret…

Hand Designed Skirmishes

For the longest time, Skirmishes have been a rather under-developed game mode. The units were assembled randomly - both the ones the player and the enemy would use - and thus the difficulty curve was very inconsistent. v2.7 comes with a new hand-designed set of skirmishes which gradually introduce more and more complex units, and with a more consistent difficulty curve.

Anyway, I think is the last I’ll write about the going-ons and ideas about the various changes. The rest will just be other changes you can expect with the upcoming update. These lists are the ones most likely to still grow before v2.7.0 is fully released.