Age of Darkness: Final Stand – Content Update v0.8.0

The light continues to grant blessings, and this time it has granted the Rebellion and Volatists Factions with a new Unit each to aid your crusade against the Nightmare plague that corrupts the lands.

The Cultist, a new Melee Unit for the Volatists that replaces the Soldier Unit. These crazed fighters work best in numbers, and can be just as deadly as they look. The Cultists are a low cost unit and have the benefit of training 2 Units for the Gold and Wood cost of 1. They have a very appealing Armour Shredding value compared to their cost and they are quick to train, these defenders can help facilitate early and rapid expansion.

For the Rebellion, the Hunter Unit replaces the Arbalest, but packs an extra punch with their specialised trap ability. They are first and foremost a range Unit, however they are able to utilise some stealth tactics and lay down traps at their feet that are invisible to enemy Units. Once an enemy sets off the trap, to add salt to their wounds, a noxious gas is released which damages and slows down Nightmares while the Hunters sit back and continue to wrack up their enemy count.

Since 2 of the valiant Factions have received new Units, it was only fair that the Order was gifted a unique Unit of their own. Although it may not be new like the latest additions, the Catapult is now an Order specific Unit.

Edwin and Aelis have levelled up their skills and both have been bestowed with a new ability each. Edwin’s Flame Shield Ultimate ability engulfs his body in flames, adding a shield that absorbs damage. Once the shield’s health has been depleted or the ability timer runs out, it will explode, causing damage to nearby targets. With Aelis’ Royal Decree Passive, if our Queen were to die while a Loyal Guard was alive, the weakest Loyal Guard will die instead, and Aelis will heal for 40% of her max health. While this skill is not on cooldown, Aelis Condemns enemies she hits, causing them to take 15% more damage from other sources.

As always, as the light has gifted the Factions with new loyal warriors, however to make the playing field even, Units, Nightmares and Buildings have had their Armour fortified. While something has Armour, it will take significantly reduced damage. To remove armour entirely, a Unit must inflict Shred Damage to the target. Each point of Shred Damage removes the same amount of Armour Once that has been expended, the target will take full damage from all sources.

We have continued to make improvements in the name of the light, Factions now have their own unique UI, along with balancing changes and multiple bug fixes.

As always please continue to report bugs to our Steam forums or in the bug reporting channel on our Discord, as we’re constantly monitoring those channels.

Check out the full patch notes below:

Release Notes

Improvements

• New Volatist Unit: Cultist.
• New Rebellion Unit: Hunter.
• New Ultimate Ability for Edwin: Flame Shield.
• New Passive Ability for Aelis: Royal Decree.
• New Faction specific UI.
• New Armour system for Units, Nightmares and Buildings.
• Localisation for New Features.

Additional Changes

• Catapult Unit is now exclusive to the Order.
• Cultist Unit replaces the Soldier Unit for the Volatists.
• Hunter Unit replaces the Arbalest Unit for the Rebellion.
• Countdown timers added to all Hero and Unit abilities.
• Ability to build if the structure is partially in the Fog of War.
• Improvements to Unit Pathfinding to stop Units from getting stuck.
• Tier 2 Walls now have the ability to activate Ignite Walls.
• Added in a setting to disable Environment Props to assist with performance.
• Visual updates to Aelis and Edwin’s existing Ability UI.
• Animation polish for Heroes and Units.
• Map grid now shows when placing Buildings.
• Updated the Credits to include new Team Members and VO actors.

Balancing

• Pikemen, Sentinels, Arbalests, Flamers, Impalers, Catapults, Edwin, Aelis and Aelis’ Royal Guards have had their health and damage values rebalanced around the reworked Armour system.
• Pikemen, Arbalests, Impalers, Catapults, Ballista,Grand Ballista towers, and Aelis have gained Armour Shred and in most cases have had their damage rebalanced.
• Similarly, Axemen, Spearmen, Spitters, Wraiths, Crushers and Bursters have had their damage, health, shred and armour values rebalanced.
• Elite Nightmares have gained multiple tiers of Armour, depending on their threat level.
• Increased the chance to find Elite Nightmares other than Elite Crushers, whilst making Elite Crushers less frequent.
  
  Dev Notes:

  These changes are significant and will impact the gameplay flow from about Death Night 1 onwards. We are going to monitor the impact of these changes, and your feedback is both welcome and wanted! Ultimately, we want you to feel like you have a new set of challenges and multiple ways to tackle them as you explore the map.

• Flamer Damage lowered from 10 to 8.
  
  Dev Notes:

  Nightmares which gained armour had their health values lowered. Fire damage ignores armour’s damage reduction, so Flamer’s damage has been reduced to keep them in check.

• Arbalest Movement Speed increased.
• Reduced collider size of all human Units by 50% to mitigate issues between Units.
  
  Dev Notes:

  The collision problem is not 100% fixed yet, but this is an attempt to soften the frustration whilst, and make units feel tighter whilst we work towards a long term solution.

• Highlight radius updated on Human Units to reflect their new collider size.
• Units will return to their expected location at a higher and faster rate, when pushed away by allies.
• Decreased Impaler costs from 1500 Gold, 50 Stone, 50 Iron, 0 Wood to 1200 Gold, 40 Stone, 30 Iron, 30 Wood.
  
  Dev Notes:

  We’re watching the Impaler very closely, we’re starting with some cost reductions to bring it closer to its intended value.

• Decreased the cost of Pikeman from 300 Gold and 20 Wood to 200 Gold and 15 Wood.
• Increased Pikeman Move Speed from 1.25 to 1.40.
  
  Dev Notes:

  Pikemen were in a spot that we didn’t love, now we think they’re in a much better position, and can become quite a valid unit in any composition.

• Lowered the Cost of the Triage Tent to 450 Gold.
• Lowered the construction duration of the Triage Tent by 50%, to 30s.
• Limited the number of Villagers needed for the Triage Tent from 10 to 5.
• Lowered the Upkeep value of the Triage tent to 5 Gold, and lowered Upkeep per villager to 3.
• Increased the Triage Tent range from 10.8 to 14.
  
  Dev Notes:

  We’ve listened to your feedback and made the Triage tent far easier to use throughout the game. The lower cost and quicker build time should make it easier to build while exploring, and the larger radius and lower upkeep and villager requirements should make it a more viable option for defending during a Death Night.

• Lowered the Axemen count during Death Night 1 on Veteran from 25 to 17 to account for Armour Shredding changes.
• Ignite Walls Research Cost lowered from 350 Gold to 150 Gold.
• Ignite Walls cost for Tier 1 Walls lowered from 15 Wood to 3 Wood.
  
  Dev Notes:

  Even with the changes to units, the Triage Tent and the number of Axemen, the presence of Armour makes that first Death Night pretty tricky! Making Ignite Walls cheaper to both research and use gives you another option to tackle early encounters, particularly as fire damage currently ignores Armour.

  Generally, we’ll keep a close eye on Fire and the way it behaves against Armour.

• Slightly Increased Axemen count in Tier 3 Map areas.
• Slightly Decreased Crawler count in Tier 3 Map areas.
• Keep Icons will now display when there is an upgrade available to them.

Crashes

• Fixed a crash that would occur when starting a Custom game.
• Fixed numerous crashes related to starting and ending a game.

Fixes & Changes

• Fixed an issue where Shift Select was not functioning correctly and adding Units to a control group.
• Fixed an issue where Shift Select was not functioning correctly when selecting multiple buildings.
• Fixed an issue where Ctrl Select was not functioning and deselecting Units in a control group.
• Fixed an issue where the Ironworks 2 Skill cost 150 gold and 75 Stone instead of 150 wood and 75 Stone.
• Fixed an issue where Melee Units could not path around buildings to attack Enemies.
• Fixed an issue where Vizargo’s Serenity attack animations were playing incorrectly.
• Fixed an issue where a delay would occur between the spawning animation for an Elite and the enemy appearing.
• Fixed an issue where Units would play the incorrect animation when going from idle to run.
• Fixed an issue where ranged Units could be pushed into the Tower when ejected.
• Fixed an issue where a Camp Point of Interest could spawn the wrong units.
• Fixed an issue where Map terrain elements would spawn in incorrect locations.
• Fixed an issue where the Storehouse UI displayed Food resources provided despite Storehouses not providing Food.
• Fixed an issue where the Vision from destroyed Buildings would remain after loading a Save File.
• Fixed an issue where the text overlaps with the UI on the Victory/Defeat screen in Russian.
• Fixed an issue where certain Blessings and Malices could soft-lock the game.
• Fixed an issue where the Submit a Bug / Feedback was not functioning correctly.

Known Issues

A fix for these issues will come in a future update.

• As the pursue values were increased to combat Nightmares not attacking Units, Nightmares can agro and pursue from much further away than before.
• Some nightmares will appear to flicker while deciding to be in Idle or Attack states and get stuck. This is linked to the above issue.
• Custom Game Nightmare Density is providing incorrect Death Night numbers.
• Units are ignoring Target Priority. Archers have a tendency to ignore Axemen, favouring Crawlers, Wraiths and Spearmen. By comparison Arbalests will always target Axemen first, followed by Crushers, and will target Wraiths last.
• Vizargo’s Claw dash if he is in Serenity mode the claw dash cooldown is 150 seconds, out of serenity it is 24 seconds
• Nightmares are still able to stack up during Death Nights.
  Dev Notes:

  This problem is related to other fixes that we’ve made to collision – our collision system has to be very complicated to handle the large number of units in the game, which makes this a lot harder to fix, and we can’t just revert our other fixes without causing other collision bugs to occur – but we’re continuing to look into it!

Where possible please ensure all drivers are updated to ensure the best and smoothest performance.

We greatly appreciate everyone who has taken the time to let us know about these bugs and crashes you’ve encountered. If you come across any bugs or crashes in the future, please report them to us either through the Steam forums, our Discord server in the ‘bug-reporting’ channel or using the in-game bug reporting tool.

Till next time Protectors of the Light…