The ‘Of Flesh and Faith’ DLC for Battle Brothers on the PC has been released into the world! Find it for free here.
The DLC and accompanying update will also come for free to the Xbox, PlayStation and Switch in the coming weeks.
In order to introduce you to the Anatomists and the Oathtakers in style, we’ve collaborated with an artist, Yuri Gamberoni, to create the very first Battle Brothers comic featuring both new playable origins. Read it by clicking the cover below!
Battle Brothers - Free DLC: Of Flesh and Faith announced for March 10
by Hiddenx, Saturday - February 19, 2022 15:19
The free DLC Of Flesh and Faith for Battle Brothers will be released on March 10:
'Of Flesh and Faith' DLC Announcement
While we’re working on a brand new game, fans of Battle Brothers have something to be excited about right now – we’re happy to announce that Battle Brothers will receive a free DLC called ‘Of Flesh and Faith’ on March 10th, 2022.
The focus of the DLC will be on adding two new origins to Battle Brothers, and thereby two fresh and different ways to approach the game. These two origins – the Oathtakers and the Anatomists – will be the most detailed origins in the game to date. They both come with unique mechanics, new equipment, new character backgrounds, their very own story events, and even a custom-tailored banner each. And because more variety is always nice, the DLC will add more than 50 new events in total to the game!
Here’s the list of features:
Oathtakers – Follow the teachings of Young Anselm, fight for righteousness, and swear oaths that confer advantages and disadvantages until fulfilled.
Anatomists – Further your research even if they shun you for it, dissect the corpses of your fallen enemies, and devise new ways to empower your men.
New Banners – Hoist two new banners that thematically fit the new origins.
New Equipment – Dress in style with new equipment that befits your origin.
New Events – Experience more than 50 new events on your travels.
Alongside this meaty free DLC full of new content will also come a sizable update to existing content. This update will contain a whole bunch of improvements, quality-of-life features and balancing changes. Both the DLC and the free update will arrive for PC on March 10th, and at the same time or shortly afterwards for Xbox, PlayStation and Switch.
Join us next week for our first dev blog on the new DLC and learn everything about the Anatomists.
This update brings some balance adjustments to help out noble armies against their southern counterparts, as well as various improvements and fixes for issues that have been reported to us over the last two months.
The Switch version of Battle Brothers - available now! - will receive the update soon as well.
If you have a modded game, update your mods. If you encounter issues, remove your mods.
If you still encounter issues, please report them here following the instructions in the sticky post.
Changelog for 1.4.0.48 Changed noble army stats and compositions very slightly to be able to better compete with Gilded armies. Changed 'Decorated Full Helm' to have 320 durability, up from 300, and a penalty of 21 to fatigue, up from 20, in order to transform it into a more unique piece of equipment. Changed 'Free Prisoners' contract to make it easier to follow the greenskinned scroundrels that absconded with their captives. Changed Ifrit ambush twist of 'Drive Off Nomads' contract not to trigger so early. Changed 'Hunting Lindwurms' contract to not being offered quite as frequently.
Fixed some character trait combinations that seemingly contradict themselves. Fixed a few events incorrectly firing for main characters of the 'Gladiators' origin. Fixed cultists gaining or losing mood on two Holy War events when they shouldn't care. Fixed donkeys counting towards the surrounded bonus. Fixed Ancient Dead and Alps not having resistance against the 'Throw Spear' skill the same way that they do against all other piercing attacks. Fixed direct damage of Lindwurm attacks not being applied correctly. Fixed direct damage of Firelances not being applied correctly. Fixed potential crash when killing multiple Screaming Skulls with a Firelance. Fixed Surgeon follower and 'Arena Veteran' trait being able to save characters that have been devoured by a Kraken. Fixed battle sometimes not triggering in 'A Pact With Witches' contract. Fixed potential endless loop if losing a specific engagement over and over in 'Siege Fortification' contract. Fixed some other minor issues and typos.
For a long time now you guys have written to us how you’d love to play Battle Brothers on your Switch and take your campaign on the road. Both the game and the community have grown a lot over the past couple of years, and lots of people have been patiently waiting for the Switch port to complete. Being able to play a hardcore tactical turn-based game with lots of replayability wherever you are? It’s finally possible!
That’s right! Now you are able to lead your own mercenary company through the perils of a gritty, low-power, medieval fantasy world even while traveling. You get to decide where to go, whom to hire or to fight from the comfort of a relaxing couch. And it is your choice what contracts to take and how to train and equip your men in a procedurally generated open world campaign whether you’re commuting or flying ten thousand feet in the air. You get to play with all the content and features of the PC version, and you’ll have access to all the DLC!
loading...
To bring Battle Brothers to the Switch in the best way possible, we’ve partnered with Ukiyo Publishing. With over a decade in industry experience, they’ve made sure that it is just as enjoyable an experience on the Switch as it is on the PC. We’re happy to say that they really outdid themselves with creating an intuitive, fast and effective control scheme for the Switch version that just works and is effortless to use.
Battle Brothers - Blazing Deserts Available August 13th
by Silver, Saturday - July 04, 2020 23:28
The latest expansion for Battle Brothers, Blazing Deserts, will release August 13th.
The largest and most ambitious DLC for Battle Brothers yet is almost ready. We’re happy to announce that the ‘Blazing Deserts’ DLC for Battle Brothers will be released on August 13th for the price of $14.99 or your regional equivalent. You can already find and wishlist it right here.
The artwork above can also be downloaded as a wallpaper here.
The 'Blazing Deserts' DLC for Battle Brothers expands the game with new lands of burning deserts and lush oases to the south. Visit independent city states, fight in the arena, face desert raiders and southern beasts in battle. Wear new gear inspired by Arabian and Persian cultures of the medieval ages, employ alchemical contraptions and primitive firearms, and forge your own path when the fires of religious turmoil threaten to engulf the world in a new late game crisis.
Features
New Lands - Visit new lands to the south with independent city-states that have their own lore, equipment and services, as well as entirely new character backgrounds to recruit.
Retinue - Hire non-combat followers for your retinue to customize your campaign experience to fit your playstyle. Hire a drill sergeant to train your men. Never lose shields again with a blacksmith that can repair gear no matter how damaged. Buy carts for additional inventory space.
Arena - Fight in front of cheering spectators to earn coin, experience and unique rewards as an alternative to mercenary work.
New Crisis - Survive a new late game crisis that tests the mettle of your company in the fires of religious turmoil.
New Opponents - Face new factions of city state soldiers and desert raiders, complete with their own gear and unique mechanics. Hunt down and get hunted by desert beasts.
New Origins - Play using one of three new southern-themed origins, each with special rules that shape your campaign into a different experience from beginning to end.
New Banners and Gear - Dress in style with a collection of new banners, shields, helmets and armors inspired by Arabic and Persian culture. Use new weapons, alchemical contraptions and primitive firearms.
Legendary Location - Visit a new legendary location and fight a new boss in a quest that leads to a legendary reward.
New Location Environments - Fight amidst southern ruins and nomad tents on the tactical combat map, in addition to graveyards and encampments by brigands, orcs and goblins that come with a free update to the base game.
New Contracts and Events - Earn your stay in the south by taking on new contracts. Immerse yourself in leading a mercenary company with even more illustrated events.
New Music - Several new music tracks set the mood on your adventures.
New Achievements - Challenge yourself with new achievements.
Please note: You'll be able to continue your current campaign with the DLC, but you won't have access to all of the new content until you start a new campaign. Starting a new campaign is very much recommended.
Battle Brothers has another dev blog about The Retinue.
Dev Blog #128: The Retinue, Part II
Last week we introduced a new gameplay mechanic with a retinue of non-combat followers coming with the ‘Blazing Deserts’ DLC. This week we’re taking a closer look at a selection of three more of these non-combat followers in order to give you a better idea on how all this is going to work.
There’s a total of five slots available for you to fill, but several times as many followers available to choose from. Choosing the right set of followers for your company is another way to customize it to your playstyle and to make each company and playthrough feel more unique. Do keep in mind that everything you’re about to learn is still under development and therefore subject to change depending on how testing goes. This is doubly true for numbers, which is why we’re not showing any of them this week. Onwards, then!
The Surgeon
A studied man from the south, the Surgeon is a walking tome of anatomical knowledge. A mercenary company seems the perfect place both to apply that knowledge in healing, but also to learn more about how the insides of men are made up.
With the Surgeon in your retinue, characters that fall in battle have a significantly improved chance to survive with a permanent injury instead of dying outright. A permanent injury can still end a career, of course, but it can just as well end up being but a reminder of a particularly hard-fought battle. The important point is that now it’s up to you and no one else to decide whether to let go of a character or keep them on the roster - which can be particularly helpful in the late game and with experienced and key characters. In addition, the Surgeon also looks after injuries of the non-permanent kind, and helps your men to recover from them faster, which reduces downtime.
The Scavenger
Whether the son of one of your men or an urchin you took pity on, the Scavenger pulls his weight by collecting bits and pieces from every battlefield.
With the Scavenger around, each armor destroyed will grant you a certain amount of tools and supplies after battle, the exact amount depending on what kind of armor it was. This makes the Scavenger a useful choice for heavily armored compositions that need a lot of tools and supplies for upkeep, but also for companies that destroy most enemy armors with hammers and so can’t loot those, but in this way still receive some loot anyway, and when fighting lots of Greenskins. The Scavenger also returns a part of all ammunition you spend during a battle, making ranged-heavy companies more self-sufficient, and the use of throwing weapons less expensive.
The Cartographer
The Cartographer is a man of culture and knowledge, but he also realizes that traveling in the company of well-armed mercenaries is one of the best ways to safely see the world and explore places that few visited before.
Available once you’ve found at least one legendary location, the Cartographer will pay you for each location that you discover out in the world on your own. The further away from civilization a location is, the more he’ll arrange for you to be paid. And legendary locations pay extra. The Cartographer is one example of several followers that further support specialized playstyles - if you’re more interested in heading out on your own terms, explore the world and raid locations rather than doing contracts, he’ll make this a more profitable venture. In a similar vein, there are other followers available that support playstyles like banditry, trade and hunting enemy champions for bounties and loot!
A new gameplay mechanic has been introduced to Battle Brothers with the DLC Blazing Deserts called The Retinue.
Dev Blog #127: The Retinue, Part I
A big reason why suffering heavy losses late in a campaign is devastating, and also why coming back from those losses is difficult, is because most progress that you attain throughout a campaign is in the growing strength of your men - which is the very thing that you stand to lose in every battle. While you can and should save some crowns for hard times, all too often you’ll have to start near the bottom again and hire fresh recruits all over. But what if you’d have a drill sergeant that whips these recruits into shape more quickly? And what if having that drill sergeant would be an advantage that you couldn’t lose again? In other words, permanent progress not erased by battles lost.
Some of you will recall the concept of having ‘non-combat followers’ - non-fighting specialists like blacksmiths, surgeons or that drill sergeant mentioned above. A retinue of people that would support your company of fighting men outside of battle. It’s an idea that we’ve been toying with since before Battle Brothers even went into Early Access, and it’s what we’re now introducing to the game.
Your retinue of non-combat followers can be found in a new screen accessible from the world map. Here, you’ll find the men, women and children that travel along with your company sitting around a homely campfire. There’s five slots in total for you to fill, and several times that many followers available to choose from. Each follower pulls their weight by granting you one or more beneficial effects on the world map. Let’s take a closer look at the drill sergeant.
The drill sergeant makes your men gain more experience from combat and never lose mood when being stuck in reserve, by keeping discipline and enforcing a hard training regime. In order to hire a follower like him, you’ll first have to unlock them. At the most basic level, followers require you to have a certain level of renown, but many also require other conditions to be met. For example, in order to unlock the drill sergeant you’ll first have to retire a brother with a permanent injury. That’s not hard to achieve, but other requirements can be more involved, giving new goals to pursue. Each follower costs a certain amount of money to hire, and you can replace a follower at any time with a different one for a cost.
There’ll be followers available that have an impact on various aspects of strategic gameplay that any mercenary company has to deal with, like the drill sergeant, but also a couple that further support more specialized playstyles. For example, if you’re particularly interested in banditry, exploration, trade or named item hunting, we’ve got you covered. Choosing the right set of followers for your company is another way to customize it to your playstyle and to make each company and playthrough feel more unique.
In addition to your entourage of followers, you’ll also find a donkey around the campfire which you can upgrade first to a cart, then to a wagon, and then to an even bigger wagon, each time to increase the capacity of your inventory. Indeed, you no longer have to wait until the right ambition comes along in order to unlock more slots for your stash, but you can at any time just buy more inventory slots for money here. Easy!
Join us again next week when we take a closer look at some of the followers available for your retinue in part two of this dev blog.
We’re back with another dev blog to take a closer look at what the upcoming ‘Blazing Deserts’ DLC for Battle Brothers brings to the table. As we’ve established last time, the world map will be expanded with new lands to the south. Even though the focus of the DLC will be on fighting human opponents, those new southern deserts wouldn’t feel quite complete without their own bestiary loosely based on middle-eastern mythology. The Ifrit is one such beast that you’ll soon be able to face, so let’s delve in!
The Ifrit
The south is a harsh land, and the southern city states do not tolerate dissent. Criminals, expended slaves and bothersome political rivals all may find themselves expelled to the blazing deserts without a drop of water. There, so folklore claims, the sun shall burn away their impurities and distill their spirits to their very essence. Forged by fire and tempered with heat, every once in a while, an Ifrit is born. A cursed creature, if folklore is to be believed, a spirit saved by basking beneath the gilded shine of the eternal sun, if the priests speak true, and a strange and alien creature in any case. Made not of flesh and blood, but of rock and stone, of shifting sands, it roams endlessly where the blistering heat of the sun has baked the land into endless barren wastes that stretch between the horizons.
In battle, the Ifrit comes in three sizes of living rock. The larger, the more dangerous. Unique among all creatures in Battle Brothers, several smaller Ifrits can assemble into one larger one, and several larger ones can assemble into one gargantuan. These shuffling behemoths are slow, but they can strike powerful blows in melee, and they can also rip out parts of themselves and fling them at enemies. Not only is getting a living rock thrown at you a dangerous ranged attack, but whether the attack hits or misses, the rock thrown is itself a small Ifrit that can attack in melee once it has crashed at its destination - which may well be at your backline. Worse yet, if there’s three or more smaller Ifrits being thrown around, they can then assemble again into a larger one elsewhere!
If your men manage to destroy an Ifrit, it will crumble into two smaller parts with one part lost, until it is down to the smallest size where destroying it will end its existence permanently. If there happens to be a third part around of a fitting size, however, the Ifrit can again assemble itself to a rocky monstrosity, so fighting it is as much about dealing damage as it is about smart positioning and denying access to tiles. While large Ifrits are too heavy to be pushed around, smaller ones can be both pulled and knocked back to your advantage.
The Ifrit is a powerful opponent best taken on by experienced companies towards the later parts of a campaign. There's a new contract dealing with Ifrits, but there's also incentive to challenge them on your own terms, and perhaps even earlier in a campaign. Ifrits drop rare and expensive ingredients which can be used to craft some of the powerful alchemical contraptions that are coming with the ‘Blazing Deserts’ DLC - including one shown in this wallpaper.
Instead of having a dev blog this week we bring you a special announcement.
For a long time now you guys have written to us how you’d love to play Battle Brothers on your Switch and take your campaign on the road. Both the game and the community have grown a lot over the past couple of years, and these days there’s nary a dev blog without you guys asking for Battle Brothers on your Switch. Being able to play a hardcore tactical turn-based game with lots of replayability wherever you are? Let’s make it happen!
We’re excited to announce that Battle Brothers is coming to the Nintendo Switch later this year!
That’s right! Soon you’ll be able to lead your own mercenary company through the perils of a gritty, low-power, medieval fantasy world even while traveling. You’ll get to decide where to go, whom to hire or to fight from the comfort of a relaxing couch. And it’ll be your choice what contracts to take and how to train and equip your men in a procedurally generated open world campaign whether you’re commuting or flying ten thousand feet in the air. You’ll get to play with all the content and features of the PC version, and you’ll have access to all available DLC – including the upcoming ‘Blazing Deserts’ DLC and the free 1.4 update which will release in Q2 of this year.
To bring Battle Brothers to the Switch in the best way possible, we’ve partnered with Ukiyo Publishing for this. This means that we can focus all of our energy on developing more content and gameplay features for Battle Brothers, while Ukiyo Publishing, with over a decade in industry experience, will make sure that it is just as enjoyable an experience on the Switch as it is on the PC. Good thing then that they’re fans of Battle Brothers themselves!
A new Battle Brothers DLC called Blazing Deserts has been announced.
‘Blazing Deserts’ DLC Announcement We’re excited to announce that we’re working on another DLC for Battle Brothers called ‘Blazing Deserts’.
The focus of the DLC will be on expanding and enriching the existing world with a new land of burning deserts and lush jungles to the south. Across these lands you’ll find a unique culture loosely based on historic Arabian and Persian cultures of the medieval ages built atop the ruins of the Ancient Empire in the world of Battle Brothers. You’ll find new lore and a different political system, equipment not seen anywhere else, and fresh contracts to earn your stay with. There’ll be a new late game crisis, new legendary locations and several new beasts roaming the wilds. This DLC will be our biggest one yet for Battle Brothers.
Here’s the rough list of features we’re aiming for:
A realm of independent southern city-states with their own lore, equipment and services, as well as entirely new character backgrounds to recruit
A new late game crisis that tests the mettle of your company in the fires of religious turmoil
A gallery of company feats that grant permanent boons with which to customize your company to your playstyle as you progress throughout your campaign
A variety of new opponents with their own fighting styles - from exotic beasts to desert raiders and southern armies quite unlike those in the north
New environments both on the world map and in tactical combat
Several new origins to pick for your company for a different campaign experience
New banners, weapons, armors and helmets inspired by historic Arabian and Persian cultures of the medieval ages
New legendary locations and legendary rewards
New contracts and events
New crafting recipes for owners of the ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC
Several new music tracks by Breakdown Epiphanies to accompany you on your travels south
In addition to these major features, the DLC will also include countless smaller additions. Just like in the past, we’ll explain all major features and most minor ones in detail in future dev blogs as we go along, so you’ll always know what we’re working on and why. We expect to be finished sometime in Q2 of this year and will announce a release date and final feature list once we’re closer to the finish line. Alongside the DLC, which will not be free, the game will also receive a sizable free update again. This update will contain a whole bunch of improvements, quality-of-life features and balancing changes, as well as some minor content additions. Join us next week for our first dev blog on the new DLC!
Battle Brothers - Warriors of the North DLC Released
by Silver, Friday - May 10, 2019 06:30
Battle Brothers DLC Warriors of the North is available on GOG and Steam.
Battle Brothers - Warriors of the North is now available DRM-free. If you don't own Battle Brothers you can get it 50% off until May 12th, 5 PM UTC.The 'Warriors of the North' DLC for Battle Brothers expands the game with a more distinct northern region, as well as different starting scenarios to pick for your mercenary company. Face an entirely new faction of barbarians in battle, wear new viking and rus themed gear, and follow the legend of the ‘Ijirok’, a mythical creature of the frozen north!
TurnBasedLovers interviewed Overhype Studios about Battle Brothers.
When you started working on Battle Brothers, was that exactly how you imagined the final product?
The original concept for the game was vastly different from what we ended up with. The only thing that stayed very close to the original design is the tactical combat. I can give an example of some of the crazy ideas that were flying around back then: With X-com as the mental foundation of the game we started out with the idea of actually fighting aliens in medieval times but the people at that time think of the aliens as creatures from their folklore and fairytales. We dropped that idea at some point and went for a less wild approach to the enemies in the game.
Being too strict with the concepts and mechanics of a game can be a very bad thing in our mind. As a developer staying open to new ideas and being flexible during development is crucial. There are countless bigger and smaller additions and features in the game that we never planned to exist but we implemented them anyways in between our planned features and often on very short notice. A game project is a living, breathing thing that changes during its lifecycle and we try to appreciate that. On top of that, developers should not be afraid of iterations and of rolling back things they once thought of as great ideas. Some things just turn out to not be that great after all and you should not be scared to touch them again for the sake of a better game.
The origins, a new faction, the champions, new legendary locations, new events, new items and much more we will find in the new DLC Warriors of the North. We know that initially, it didn’t have to be so big, what prompted you to do more?
When planning a DLC we start out with a basic idea and then add things around it. We want DLCs to have a certain amount of content to make them actually worth buying and to give the players a good deal and a reason to get them. Some of the new things also just come up as we are working so we never start out with a full feature list but keep adding to it on the go. The Warriors of the North DLC will still be a little bit smaller than the Beasts & Exploration DLC and that is why it will sell at a slightly lower price.
Here's some gameplay of the upcoming Warriors of the North DLC:
Warriors of the North - Battling the Barbarians
loading...
With the Warriors of the North DLC the new Barbarians enter the field of battle. In this video we show a bloody fight against the barbarian roster and explain some of their units, weapons and skills!
The ‘Warriors of the North’ DLC for Battle Brothers will be released on May 9th with a whole bunch of features. You can read up on those and add the DLC to your wishlist here. In the meantime, let’s talk about an important topic we haven’t touched on yet: New weapons! With the DLC, you’ll also get your hands on new tools of death, including hybrid and niche weapons to create new builds and tactics with. Let’s take a look!
Bardiche The Bardiche is a variant of the Greataxe with a differently shaped head and a longer shaft. Like the Greataxe, it comes with the ‘Split Man’ skill for great single-target damage. But while the Greataxe has more damage potential against up to six targets with its ‘Round Swing’ skill, the Bardiche instead comes with the ‘Split’ skill of Greatswords for more surgical precision and hitting two targets in a straight line at once. Like the Greataxe, the Bardiche is excellent in destroying shields and penetrating armor.
Staff Sling A simple weapon used since ancient times, and the favorite of many a shepherd, the Staff Sling is used to hurl stones towards the enemy. It’s not particularly accurate or damaging, but it’s cheap, and with stones abundant everywhere, it will never run out of ammunition. Two stones can be hurled each turn, and on hitting a target in the head it will inflict the ‘Dazed’ status effect.
Scimitar An exotic curved sword from the south, the Scimitar and its higher tier cousin, the Shamshir, are excellent for cutting deep wounds. They’re less suited for thrusting than straight swords, however, and therefore have a harder time penetrating armor. Like other swords, they come with the ‘Slash’ skill, but unlike those, they don’t have the ‘Riposte’ skill as a second. Instead, they have the ‘Decapitate’ skill of cleavers.
Heavy Javelins & Heavy Throwing Axe For users of throwing weapons that long for an extra bit of oomph, the DLC adds the Heavy Javelin and Heavy Throwing Axe. They’re sometimes used by barbarians and can be looted off of their cold dead hands.
Warfork A pitchfork re-forged into a battlefield weapon, the Warfork is the pride of any militiaman, and looks right at home with the new ‘Peasant Militia’ company origin. It’s a lower tier variant of the Spetum, which has in turn been slightly buffed. Like the Spetum, it is a specialized polearm that can be used to form a more deadly yet more fatiguing ‘Spearwall’ than with a one-handed spear. Particularly useful against non-sentient beasts, but also against humans if your battle line is long enough.
Battle Whip The Battle Whip is a specialized weapon with plenty of strengths, but also a clear weakness. Covering a whole 3 tiles, it has the longest range of any melee weapon currently in the game. Hitting an enemy with the ‘Whip’ skill will inflict two stacks of the ‘Bleeding’ status effect at once, and because the weapon is classified as a cleaver, this skill also benefits from taking the ‘Cleaver Mastery’ perk for further bleeding damage. However, the weapon doesn’t have a high base damage, and while it can be deadly against unarmored or lightly armored targets, it performs dismally against armored ones.
Luckily, it brings another bit of utility to the table. Its second skill is called ‘Disarm’ and on a hit will inflict the new ‘Disarmed’ status effect on a target, preventing it from using any weapon skills for one turn. Some targets which are immune to being stunned, like Orc Warriors, can still be controlled this way, but unarmed targets, like Direwolves, can of course not be disarmed. Disarmed targets can still move and use non-weapon skills freely, just not attack. Barbarians also have their own variant of the Battle Whip, called the Thorned Whip, which has slightly different stats. DLC Supporter Edition
Thanks to the overwhelmingly positive response to our announcement of the ‘Warriors of the North’ DLC, and many people expressing their desire to support us again even beyond the asking price, we’ve decided to also offer it as a special Supporter Edition again. This Supporter Edition includes the ‘Warriors of the North’ DLC, as well as an additional new player banner and shields with a nordic motif as a thank you from us to you. The bundle will be priced at $18.99, and you can already add the second part of it to your wishlist here as well.
What started out as a small DLC has become a sizable expansion again. We’re happy to announce that the ‘Warriors of the North’ DLC for Battle Brothers will be released on May 9th for the price of $8.99 or your local equivalent. You can already find and wishlist it on Steam right here and on GOG here.
The artwork above can also be downloaded as a wallpaper here.
The ‘Warriors of the North’ DLC for Battle Brothers expands the game with a more distinct northern region, as well as different starting scenarios to pick for your mercenary company. Face an entirely new faction of barbarians in battle, wear new viking and rus themed gear, and follow the legend of the ‘Ijirok’, a mythical creature of the frozen north!
Features
Origins – Pick one of ten different origins and play as northern barbarians, peasant militia, or a flock of cultists. Each origin has special rules that shape your campaign into a different experience from beginning to end.
New Opponents –Face an entirely new faction of northern barbarians, complete with their own gear and unique mechanics.
Legendary Locations – Visit two new legendary locations and fight two new bosses in a quest that leads to a legendary reward.
Champions – Hunt down enemy champions and face them in battle to claim famed items for yourself.
New Banners and Gear – Dress in style with a collection of new viking and rus inspired banners, shields, helmets and armors. Use new weapons and let loose the new nordic warhound!
New Contracts and Events – Earn your stay in the north by taking on new contracts. Immerse yourself in leading a mercenary company with even more illustrated events.
New Music – Two new music tracks accompany you on your adventures.
New Achievements – Challenge yourself with new achievements.
Please note: You’ll be able to continue your current campaign with the DLC, but you won’t have access to all of the new content until you start a new campaign.
Aside from new contracts and events, the upcoming ‘Warriors of the North’ DLC will also introduce two new legendary locations linked in a single quest leading up to a legendary reward. Today we’ll look at one of the two bosses that you’ll have to face along the way – if you don’t like to be spoiled about any of that, you may want to skip this dev blog. All others, let’s go!
The Ijirok
The Ijirok is a mythical creature of the north, folklore of the barbarian folk. It’s called the Beast of Winter, for it is said that it first carried the cold into this world on its back. Legend claims the creature to be a shapeshifter and deceiver, appearing in many forms. It abducts children solely to enjoy the pain of the parents. It leads men astray in the white wastes just to watch them go in circles and freeze to death. Some regard it a spirit, some a god, and others a force of nature, like the sun or wind, but with found divinity within the aspect of a cruel creature. Whatever its true nature, in the north they all can feel the presence of the Ijirok, and they count themselves fortunate that the horrors it brings are scant and passing.
When your mercenary company finally faces the Ijirok in battle, it will appear as a great horned beast with four legs and hooves. It’s a boss fight, and it will challenge you like fighting the Kraken or the Rachegeist does. Leading up to the battle, you’ll have the opportunity to learn more about the true nature of your opponent by reading events and visiting locations in the game.
The Ijirok charges you from afar to gore and trample anything in its path. Unlike the charge of other opponents in the game, the great horned beast charging you will inflict damage, but you can defend against it with melee defense like against any other melee attack. Even if your shields prove sturdy and your men are not impaled outright, however, the force of impact may still throw them back and stagger them.
Then, at the beginning of each turn, the Ijirok will shift into a different world, one where cold and ice reign supreme, only to emerge at a different place and charge you anew. While the great beast enters into and emerges from this other world, cold seeps into ours, turning the ground frozen and changing the battlefield permanently. Anyone near the Ijirok will get the new ‘Chilled’ status effect, which will freeze your men’s limbs stiff, and lowers their initiative and action points for one round.
The Ijirok is as elusive in combat as it is outside of it, but each round you’ll have the chance to wail on it before it charges you from a different angle. Like with fighting Necrosavants, your formation is key in defeating the beast of winter while the world around you slowly turns into a frozen hell.
A new dev blog for Battle Brothers introduces Champions.
As we’ve talked about a while ago, we’re overhauling how named items work and how they can be acquired. One way to get named items is by fighting champions – and that’s what we’re talking about today. Let’s delve in!
Champions
Hitherto, named items could primarily be found by looting locations – whether you followed tavern rumors or ventured out on your own. Occasionally, but rarely, they could also be looted from particularly strong enemies. And that’s where champions come in.
Champions are particularly skilled and experienced individuals of any non-beast faction. They’re guaranteed to carry at least one named item and have significantly increased stats over their brethren. You’ll be able to easily recognize them by their special base and unique name. They are, in a way, minibosses. They challenge you to fight hard to claim what is theirs, and they shake things up, but prevailing against them will always reward you with the named item they carry – be it weapon, shield, armor or helmet.
So where do you meet champions? The most reliable way is to complete contracts with a difficulty rating of three skulls. Those have always been a high risk proposition for any mercenary company, but they now come with more of a reward for taking that chance: the possibility of getting named gear by facing enemy champions. Another way is to simply play into the late game. The further along your campaign, the more likely that you’ll find champions roaming the world outside of contracts or defending a location.
While champions may prove challenging to defeat, they are significantly easier to beat than some of the battles around legendary locations. This way, they can also fill the gap in challenge between defeating your first late game crisis and starting to take on legendary locations, like the Black Monolith, with your company.
Before venturing further into the northlands, let’s set the mood this week by taking a closer look at fresh music accompanying the new faction of northern barbarians coming with the “Warriors of the North” DLC. Yup, Breakdown Epiphanies[soundcloud.com] are on board again to add to the game’s music. Let’s see what they have to say in this week’s dev blog!
Tunes from the North
As those of you who have been following Battle Brothers since they days of Early Access know, as composers we ourselves took an RPG approach when it comes to orchestrating soundtracks for the various factions in the game. The undead are accompanied by an orchestra solely comprised of dark string instruments and percussion that is supposed to resemble the rattling of bones, the orc music is dominated by dark and menacing brass as well as sounds of metal, for the brigands our theme was „instruments you can carry around with you“, and so on. The signature sound of each faction in the game grew from imposing limitations upon ourselves, which in turn lead to a very distinguishable tonal landscape that could even give away what the player is fighting the first time they do so.
You may be happy to hear that for the upcoming “Warriors of the North” DLC we got on board again to expand the soundtrack with new music accompanying the player’s battles against their new adversary, the northern barbarians.
Adding new factions to the soundtrack gets more tricky as time goes on: While from a gameplay standpoint, fighting the barbarians will play out differently than fighting orcs, there are certain aesthetic similarities (brute force, heavily armored higher tier units, show up in clans) that would also favour a similar approach to the music (which in case of the orcs translated to throwing all the brass instruments and war drums that we could find into the mix). Luckily, though, the barbarians also lend themselves well to going a different route, which is mostly inspired by their nordic and rus themed lore and background.
loading...
Avoiding brass (and the resulting overlap with the orc faction) completely, we decided to use vocals as the tonal backbone of this faction of northmen. Aside from more common singing styles, we incorporated mouth percussion, overtone and throat singing, which is a vocal style found in Norwegian folklore, Mongolian music and shamanist rituals leading back to the stone ages. As, from a gameplay perspective, the barbarians are a variant of the brigands, we also fell back on the brigands’ „instruments you can carry around with you“ philosophy. Only a single violin, a Swedish nyckelharpa (a medieval string instrument), a couple of drums and a choir of hardened nordmen come together to add new signature battle tracks to the Battle Brothers soundtrack. While production is still ongoing, we are happy to give you this sneak peek today.
Following the introduction of the barbarian faction in part one, this week we’ll take a look at the first three of their unit types and some general combat mechanics. All part of the upcoming ‘Warriors of the North’ DLC, of course. As always, keep in mind that things are still in development and may change. With that said, let’s delve in!
Thralls
Northern barbarians are not born free, but as thralls in servitude to their elders, and ultimately their tribe. They have no say on tribal matters, and they may possess only what they can carry. On occasion, members of other tribes are also accepted into thralldom, either peacefully or after being captured in battle.
It is expected that a thrall seek the respect of their master, their ancestors, and the tribe as a whole, and ultimately earn their status as a free man or woman. Indeed, young folk are considered to have reached adulthood as they become free, and to have then earned their place and say in the tribe. One way to do so, but not the only one, is to prove their worth in battle.
Thralls are the light and nimble infantry of the barbarian tribes. Clad only in furs, and sometimes with nothing but warpaint on their bare chests, armed either with weapons made from readily available materials like bone, or looted from the battlefield, they rely on ferociously overwhelming the enemy. They’re quick and agile, making ample use of the ‘Adrenaline’ skill. And having both the ‘Anticipation’ and ‘Dodge’ perks makes them harder to hit, at least until they’ve exhausted themselves after a couple of rounds.
Like all barbarian infantry, thralls have a very physical combat style of wrestling with the enemy, throwing their weight against them, and jostling to put their opponent out of balance. Their ‘Barbarian Wrath’ perk makes them fight even harder as they get hit, and the next time they land a hit of their own, they confer a status effect which for one turn knocks their target out of balance to lower their damage and defense until they have regained their footing.
Reavers
Reavers are the medium infantry of the barbarian tribes. They’re battle-hardened free men, yet not necessarily warriors by trade. Some may be bloodthirsty veterans of many battles that seek immortality through their deeds on the battlefield, and have tattoos on their skin tell the saga of their life. Others are merely hunters or craftsmen that join with the rest of the tribe to raid and ensure their survival in the upcoming winter.
Reavers are often armed with armor and weapons that have been passed down through generations and show signs of wear, but may also have claimed equipment in duels that settled disputes. Like thralls, they have an offensive and nimble combat style, but backed up with experience and skill. Like all barbarians, they don’t fear death the same as southern folk do, and so are not easily broken. They’re roughly comparable to brigand raiders, but may be more or less of a challenge, depending on your approach.
Champions
Warriors who show exceptional skill on the battlefield are said to be blessed by the ancestors, and those who also have impressive victories to show are said to eventually take a place beside the ancestors in the afterlife to watch over the tribe. These champions of the ancestors are the heavy infantry of the barbarians, and they wear weighty metal armor and heavy two-handed weapons – trophies from vanquished foes and gifts from invested elders.
Unlike thralls and reavers, champions rely on their heavy armor for defense. They can shrug off status effects more easily, and excel even when fighting against several opponents at once. Tougher enemies than any brigand, other than perhaps brigand leaders, they are mid to late game opponents.
The upcoming ‘Warriors of the North’ DLC will not just bring more replayability and nordic equipment, but also introduce an entirely new human faction to the game. They’ll come with their own lore, armor and weapons, enemy types and fighting styles to pose a unique challenge to any mercenary commander. Let’s delve in!
Introduction
During the development of the ‘Beasts & Explorations’ DLC we had this idea for groups of wildmen roaming the northern parts of the map. Essentially, they’d be a different flavor of brigands and use existing assets. Except, maybe we could also squeeze in one new armor if we found the time? Or maybe even two? And so we decided that if we wanted to do them, we’d do them right and dedicate the time necessary to give them equipment and mechanics of their own, their own music, as well as contracts and events to convey their lore and the part they play in the world of Battle Brothers. So here we are, with a ‘Warriors of the North’ DLC in development.
Many hundred years ago, in a different era, an empire of man spanned much of the known world. An empire, not of petty noble houses, but one of a dozen provinces, from the blistering sands of the south to the frozen tundra of the north, of a dozen peoples under one banner. As the empire spread further and further to the north, it became entangled in constant war with countless tribes of barbarians. Some were subjugated by force, some saw opportunity and swore allegiance, others faded into nothingness, but many more remained free; their constant raids and incursions a thorn in the side of the empire.
The empire, as you may know, eventually crumbled under its own weight, and feudal houses emerged from the dust to rule the lands in its stead. Yet, in the very north, the free barbarian tribes remained free still. For them, their own tribe is the beginning and the end, it is bliss in life and death, for their family is holy to them and they believe to sit with their ancestors if they meet their end in this life. They roam the harsh and infertile lands as they have been for hundreds of years, they raid to claim what they need, and they sacrifice their prisoners in bloody rituals to prove their worth to ancestors who ascended to be gods through their deeds in life. But they’re not beasts, and they’re not of alien minds like the greenskins. They’re humans; and while they speak a different tongue, they can be reasoned with, and they know the concepts of honor, and friendship, and truce and bartering. What they do, they have to do in order to survive in the unforgiving lands they inhabit. They follow their old ways to this day. They’re the warriors of the north.
Fighting Barbarians
The warriors of the north are ferocious fighters, but with scarce resources and a nomadic lifestyle, they usually don’t have access to the level of equipment that other human factions do. Many of them wear armor crafted from pelts and furs, and while some do boast metal armor, not least because it is a matter of prestige, the harsh climate of the north often has taken a toll on it over the years. Some barbarians even forego armor altogether, and instead paint their bodies with magic runes to call upon their ancestors to protect them from harm.
Their weapons are likewise often crafted from wood and bone, some of the few materials readily available to them, or have been handed down through generations and show signs of wear. Generally, all barbarian weapons have somewhat lower base damage values, but a higher percentage of damage that ignores armor than comparable weapons in the game. Of course, all their armor and weapons are lootable and equippable by you, too – and there’ll be named variants as well!
In combat, a barbarian warband doesn’t bother with formations, and they have no backline with polearms or dedicated archers. They are a horde of ferocious warriors in a constant shuffle of everyone trying to bring their weapons to bear against the enemy. They’ll shower you with throwing weapons, they run towards your line, and they make ample use of the ‘Adrenaline’ perk to overwhelm you before you can even strike back. They don’t fear death the same as other humans do, so they are not easy to break, and getting hurt will only further incite their barbarian wrath.
Because a barbarian warband is but a loose collection of individuals, unified only in their tribal bonds and their willingness to fight for their place in both life and afterlife, their unit types are quite diverse in terms of equipment and perks, as you’ll see in a future dev blog.
A new dev blog for Battle Brothers takes a look at nordic equipment.
Dev Blog #115: Nordic Equipment
It’s Friday again! This week we’ll take a look at some of the new nordic and rus inspired equipment and player banners coming with the ‘Warriors of the North’ DLC. Just keep in mind that things are still in active development, so we can’t show everything that is to come just yet, and things may still change. Onwards!
New Banners
Coming with the ‘Warriors of the North’ DLC are two new player banners. One is more inspired by scandinavian vikings, the other by rus vikings. Of course you’ll be able to paint your shields with the motif of these new banners as well.
Many of you supported us beyond the asking price of the ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC by getting the Supporter Edition. We’re very thankful, and your support has shown how much you appreciate us creating more content for Battle Brothers. We’ll also be offering a Supporter Edition for the new DLC as well. There’ll be more details at a later time, but for now, here’s a preview of the bonus banner and painted shields that’ll be included.
New Wardog
The harsh climate of the northern tundra and hills is home to a hardier breed of wardog, the warhound. Bigger and stronger than its southern brethren, it can bring a grown man down on its own, and take more of a beating, but it is also slower and therefore less suited for chasing down runners. You’ll face the warhound in battle, and you’ll also be able to purchase your own at northern settlements.
New Helmets
If your mercenary company operates in the north, and perhaps if it even hails from the north by virtue of choosing the ‘Northern Raiders’ company origin, you may want your men to look the part. The DLC will introduce various new helmets inspired by historical nordic and rus designs. Most of them will also come in extra fancy named variants to hunt for.
Last week we talked about what the company origins feature of the upcoming ‘Warriors of the North’ DLC is exactly and looked at several of these origins. This week we continue with a closer look at two more origins that are part of a larger selection for you to choose from. Just keep in mind again that things are in active development and may still change – let’s go!
The Northern Raiders
With an expansion focused on bringing variety and flavor to the northern parts of the map, it’s only fitting that there’d be an origin that has you start in the north as well. Playing as northern raiders let’s you start with veteran raiders that are well-equipped with some of the new nordic and rus inspired armor and helmets which we’ll show in an upcoming blog post of its own.
However, you’ll also start as outlaws, which means that 2 out of 3 noble houses are outright hostile, while the remaining one is distrustful. It makes for a challenging start where you rely more on venturing out on your own instead of taking on contracts. And it’s up to you how to proceed: Do you want to mend relations over time and become a proper mercenary company, getting paid by the the noble houses, or do you continue with raiding and pillaging, alienating the nobles further? Fortunately, your men are quite proficient at pillaging, and you’ll have a higher chance to get any equipment dropped by your enemies in battle, so you’ll have to rely less on being able to buy equipment in cities that will most likely just send their militia after you.
The Lone Wolf
For a very different experience of playing the game, and in some way the opposite to last week’s militia origin, have your player character be present on the field of battle.
You’ll start with a single well-equipped and experienced hedge knight who is, in a way, your player character. He can’t be fired and he’ll never desert the company, but if he dies, your campaign ends and you lose the game. He’ll be the strongest man in the company for quite a while, but having him in the fray is always a risk, so you’ll have to think carefully on how you want to use him. And because this origin only ever allows you to have 12 men in your roster, there’s no putting him in the backline – you go out there and fight side by side with the rest of your men, or you’ll leave them at a disadvantage and have them call you a coward. Having to defend your player character adds a different layer of strategy to each battle. Despite your character starting out strong, it’s a challenge suited best for experienced players.
There’s more origins to choose from still, but we don’t want to spoil everything, so you’ll have to find out for yourself by playing the game. Join us again next week when we take a look at a different feature of the upcoming DLC!
A new devblog for Battle Brothers discusses Company Origins for the upcoming DLC 'Warriors of the North'.
Dev Blog #113: Company Origins, Part I
Welcome to our first dev blog on the upcoming ‘Warriors of the North’ DLC. One of this expansion’s major features is going to be a little thing called ‘company origins’, and that’s what we’ll be talking about this week and the next. Let’s dive in!
Introduction
Until now, there’s been only a single way of starting out in the world of Battle Brothers. Because the game is otherwise designed for replayability, this is an area we really want to tackle with the upcoming ‘Warriors of the North’ DLC, both to further improve replayability and to accommodate different play styles.
The established way of starting out in the world, your company origin, you likely know well by now: your company is nearly wiped out by a brigand named Hoggart, and it’s up to you to rebuild it. This origin remains available in the game, and it’s a good way to start for new players, but it’ll be just one of many possible origins to choose from. For starters, the free update coming with the DLC will introduce a second origin which immediately drops you into the world without having to deal with Hoggart. It’s reminiscent of Early Access days, and it even has the old introductory text and music that some of you may remember.
The ‘Warriors of the North’ DLC adds greatly to the selection of origins. Each of those comes with a flavor introduction, different starting characters, equipment, resources, and special rules for your campaign. Some origins change the game more than others, but most of them impact it from beginning to end. Because the game is and always will be fundamentally about leading a mercenary company, all origins will ultimately lead to this – but they do add new challenges, accommodate different play styles, and provide roleplaying flavor. If you own the ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC, you’ll also get a bonus origin centered around beast slaying.
Let’s take a closer look at two origins that the ‘Warriors of the North’ DLC adds to the game – just keep in mind that things are in active development and might still change!
The Militia
If you prefer to overwhelm your enemies with superior numbers, or even just equal numbers in the late game, but still want a balanced game, then the peasant militia might be for you.
The militia starts not with three companions, but with a full roster of a dozen characters from various civilian backgrounds – daytalers, farmers, butchers, millers, and the like. With these kind of people, you’ll want to rely on numbers, so you’ll be able to field 18 men on the field at once, instead of the usual 12. The downside is that you’ll never be able to hire any noble or high tier combat backgrounds to join your mob of angry peasants. You’ll start with lower renown and crowns, but a home village that idolizes you and gives you great prices.
The Cultists
For a different experience, and some roleplaying flavor, you can also start the game as a wandering cult that worships Davkul.
You’ll start with three cultists, and more cultists will join you without any hiring fee. Cultists can be found more often in any settlement, and they may also flock to you in new events. Your god will demand sacrifices, and you’ll be expected to cull the herd and give lives to Davkul in bloody rituals. All cultists will rejoice upon this gruesome occasion, and Davkul may bestow upon them permanent boons. Of course, anyone not a cultist in your company may have a different reaction to the proceedings. Having a special relation to your god will also make certain late game cultist events much more likely to trigger.
There’ll be plenty more origins to choose from, of course. Join us again next week when we explore them in part two of this dev blog!
We’re excited to announce that we’re working on another DLC for Battle Brothers. In other words, there’s going to be even more content for that game that you like. The name of the upcoming DLC is going to be ‘Warriors of the North’.
As the name suggests, the focus of the DLC will be on introducing a new human faction hailing from the north. This faction follows the old ways of raiding and sacrificing prisoners to cruel gods. They’ll bring more regional flavor to the northern parts of the map, as well as a different challenge to fighting brigands in the north at every stage of the game. This DLC will be focused on new content, and it will be smaller in scope than ‘Beasts & Exploration’. This also means that you won’t have to wait quite as long until you can play it!
Here’s the rough list of features we’re aiming for:
A variety of new human opponents with their own fighting style and equipment, providing a fresh challenge at every stage of the game, including the late game
Different origins to pick for your company, each with different starting characters, equipment and circumstances, as well as special rules that impact your campaign from beginning to end
New nordic and rus inspired banners, armors and helmets
A new legendary location
New contracts
New events
In addition to these major features, the DLC will also include countless smaller additions. Just like in the past, we’ll explain all major features and most minor ones in detail in future dev blogs as we go along, so you’ll always know what we’re working on and why. We expect to be finished within the next few months and will announce a release date and final feature list once we’re closer to the finish line.
Alongside the DLC, which will not be free, the game will also receive a sizable free update again. This update will contain a whole bunch of improvements, quality-of-life features and balancing changes, as well as some minor content additions.
Join us next week for our first dev blog on the new DLC!
This update brings a rework of everyone’s favorite opponent, the Alp, and fixes a couple of more obscure bugs.
The Alp
In reworking the Alp, we wanted to have fighting them feel more varied and interesting than up to now, but at the same time not compromise their theme or identity. The Alp is a nocturnal predator that haunts you with nightmares and feeds off of it, and fighting it is supposed to have a puzzle-esque aspect to it as you navigate a maze of nightmares. In order to achieve the above, we’ve changed the mechanics of the Alp quite fundamentally.
Alps no longer inflict the ‘Sleeping’ or ‘Nightmare’ status effects – those are gone. Instead, they cast the new ‘Realm of Nightmares’ spell on ground near your men. Any tile such affected has the boundary to the world of dreams erased for two turns, which allows living nightmares to manifest and haunt your men.
Nightmares are a new type of opponent that goes down with just one hit, but whose attacks always hit and ignore armor. The more resolve a character has, the less damage they’ll take from these attacks. A single hit doesn’t do terribly much damage in any case, but nightmares can slowly eat away at your men’s sanity, health and morale. If the ‘Realm of Nightmares’ effect runs out, the living nightmares will also fade from the world.
With the new Alps, you’ll have to face off against nightmares holding you in place and damaging you a bit more literally, but you’ll also be able to get use out of more skills, perks and equipment than with the previous incarnation, and battles should end up feeling more varied and faster-paced. They’re also a bit less unique than before, which is a price to pay, but should still feel unique enough compared to fighting all other opponents in the game.
Changelog for 1.2.0.24
Changed mechanics of Alp. See above for details.
Changed AI to perform better when defending with and against ranged units.
Changed Black Monolith to always drop the Emperor's Countenance as loot again when destroyed. It's no longer dropped as loot by the Conqueror himself, as players might retreat from battle without realizing that this meant that the armor would be lost forever.
Fixed some legendary locations potentially getting sucked into nearby combat without the player having to first unlock them properly via event dialog. Requires a new campaign to take effect.
Fixed game potentially not continuing as characters with equipped wardogs get devoured by a Kraken.
Fixed Kraken sometimes not dropping loot.
Fixed issue with necromancer twist of 'Root Out Undead' contract.
Fixed player strength calculation for scaling purposes not always updating properly.
Fixed another cause for combat between AI parties on the worldmap potentially not ending.
Fixed issues with characters retreating without properly taking into account all opponents that can catch up with them, and thus taking improper routes.
Fixed potential issue with contracts not continuing properly after losing your entire deployed roster in battle, but still having people in reserve to carry on with.
The 'Beasts & Exploration' DLC for Battle Brothers expands the game with a larger world, full of unique hidden locations throughout that offer new possibilities and rewards to the daring adventurer, as well as challenging new beasts roaming the untamed wilds. Craft your own gear from trophies you collect, customize your equipment with a new system for armor attachments, and engage in profitable beast hunting and exploration!
Features
Legendary Locations - Hidden legendary locations offer new possibilities, lore, unique opponents, and unique rewards for the daring adventurer in a world that is 25% larger. New Opponents - Five challenging new beasts populate different parts of the wilds, and three fearsome bosses guard valuable treasure. All of them come with unique mechanics and loot. Crafting - Trophies from slain beasts can now be crafted into cloaks, armor plating, armor for your wardogs, shields, potions and other items to customize the look of your hardened mercenaries and benefit them in combat. Customize your Gear - Wear cloaks, shoulderguards and more for additional benefits with the new armor attachment system, and use the new paint items to paint shields and helmets in the colors of your company. New Weapons and Armor - A collection of new weapons and armors allow for new play styles and character builds. New Contracts, Events and Ambitions - Engage in profitable beast hunting and exploration. Immerse yourself in leading a mercenary company with even more illustrated events. New Music - Two new music tracks accompany you on your adventures. New Achievements - Challenge yourself with new achievements.
The release of the ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC is just around the corner – it’s launching on Thursday next week, the 29th! Time to recap on all of the many new features and content additions that are about to arrive with both the DLC and the free update to version 1.2 of Battle Brothers.
You can find the DLC on Steam here and on GOG here. The DLC will also be available as a Supporter Edition with a fancy Kraken banner and painted shields!
Here are detailed introductions of what is about to come.
And then, of course, there’s even more new things which we haven’t covered much in our dev blogs, such as new contracts, a bigger world, new music tracks and new achievements!
The ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC is set to release on the 29th of this month and by now it’s essentially feature-complete. We’ve moved on to thoroughly test, balance and polish everything, but there’s still so many interesting smaller things we haven’t even talked about yet. Let’s shine a light on some more of these this week!
Mercenary Psychology
A mercenary’s life isn’t easy, and seeing the man to the left split in two by an orc and the man to the right mauled by an unhold does put a strain on the psyche. People react differently to this, and so we’re introducing several new traits that characters can gain and lose over the course of a campaign depending on how their time with the company goes, what their background is and what other traits they have.
For example, a devastating loss against orcs may result in a character starting to fear greenskins and having less resolve when in battle against them. A sentiment that most people who played Battle Brothers can sympathize with. But as he grows in experience and is hardened by battle, he will eventually overcome his fear and lose the trait again. At the same time, another character may handle the loss quite differently, become more determined and start to hate greenskins instead, gaining a bonus to resolve when fighting against them. All in all, the number of new character traits has now climbed to be 16 – good, bad, and combinations of the two. Most of them have event interactions, some unlock additional options in events, and many of them can be gained or lost by events.
Events
Speaking of events, we’re currently at 52 new ones for the game. There’s still time left until release, so it’ll likely end up to be even more in the end. Alongside these events we’re also adding a lot of new illustrations and updating a couple of older ones with more high quality artwork.
As you may have guessed, that illustration on the left is related to one of the upcoming legendary locations.
Resilience
As part of the free update accompanying the upcoming ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC, we’re doing a balance pass on all of the character perks. The objective isn’t to make the game any easier or harder, but to further improve build variety, especially in the late game. You’ll find a list of all perk changes in the changelog once the update is live, but there’s two perks, one old and one new, which we want to talk about in more detail.
The ‘Hold Out’ perk stands out as the least-picked perk in the game currently; it benefits you only in a specific situation you want to avoid as much as possible, while at the same time you can pick other perks instead that actually help you to avoid getting into that situation in the first place. We’re going to entirely replace the ‘Hold Out’ perk with a new perk called ‘Resilient’. If you’re one of the few people that liked to pick the old ‘Hold Out’ perk, fret not, for you can now get the same effect without having to spend a perk point for it by drinking an ‘Iron Will Potion’ which can be crafted at the taxidermist from relatively common ingredients.
The new ‘Resilient’ perk reduces the duration of any negative status effect with a finite duration by one turn, up to a minimum of one turn. For example, the ‘Bleeding’ or ‘Poisoned’ status effects both have a duration of two turns, which get reduced to one turn. Of course, with a shorter duration, those two effects will also inflict less damage to a character. And quite importantly, some new status effects, like being ‘Charmed’ by a Hexe, also get their duration reduced by one turn. It’s not necessary to have the perk in order to beat the Hexe at all, but it is one possible counter and can be quite helpful if you otherwise struggle against opponents which rely on negative status effects to make your life hell.
More Proactive Garrisons
And speaking of making your life hell, enemy bases are more proactive now in sending out parties to intercept anyone that threatens them and that they can realistically take on. Camping right next to a bandit hideout to wait for morning may not be the best idea anymore, and even locations infested by undead may send out parties come night. On the bright side, if a base sends out a party to intercept enemies, their garrison will be weakened, and in some cases only a skeleton crew will remain. You can use it to your advantage by splitting a large enemy force in two, or even attack while a third party is luring part of a garrison away!
Let’s Play!
Join us again next week for some moving pictures. Our very own Jaysen will start a new Let’s Play series with the ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC and explain all of the new features and content as he encounters them.
A new dev blog for Battle Brothers titled 'More Things'.
The ‘Beasts & Exploration' DLC is set to release on the 29th of this month with a bunch of cool features that you can learn about here. That's great, but there's actually even more coming than covered by this feature list. Let's take a look at some smaller things that come with the DLC and which we haven't talked about yet.
The Beast Slayer
There's a new character background in town: The Beast Slayer. Experienced in both melee and ranged combat against beastly opponents and monstrous adversaries, the beast slayer is a versatile background similar to the sellsword, but more affordable. Of course, he comes with his own events and interactions with other backgrounds, and some expert knowledge on beasts and their lore to share with you.
Wage Changes
There's several changes incoming on how wages for characters work, so let's break them down.
First off, the base wage for a couple of backgrounds has been adjusted to be more in line with their actual worth as defined by how often they're picked by players. In addition, every individual character now has a certain idea on how much they want to get paid - there's a small random factor on the daily wage demands of all characters, and so you'll find cheaper and more expensive recruits also within the same background, and even if they don't have the ‘Greedy' trait.
Finally, the wage progression has changed. While previously you paid 2 additional crowns per character level, you'll now pay a cumulative 10% of a character's base wage for every level after the first and until the 11th, and then 5% of a character's base wage for every level afterwards. In effect, there's less wage pressure in the beginning, which gives you more leeway to actually explore the world earlier and find all those new beasts and locations. Low tier backgrounds have also become cheaper to employ in the long term, but high tier backgrounds have become significantly more expensive to keep around if they reach veteran levels, which gives you more of a reason to diversify your company composition in long campaigns.
New Named Weapons
As you've previously learned, the DLC will introduce a bunch of new weapons. People have been asking about whether there'll be named variants of those weapons as well - and the answer is yes, of course. Take a look!
New Armor
It's not just new weapons, it's also stylish new armor, all of which can be further customized with the new armor attachment system. We're filling some gaps in the armor progression, and we're also introducing some high tier light armor as part of a larger effort to make light and medium armor more of a viable choice for some character builds.
Join us again next week to learn about even more changes and additions of the upcoming DLC and the accompanying free update to Battle Brothers!
A new dev diary for Battle Brothers releases The Kraken.
Dev Blog #109: The Kraken
27 OCTOBER - RAPSDJFF
We round off our collection of new opponents for the upcoming ‘Beasts & Exploration' DLC with the introduction of our largest enemy yet. It's a giant beast, a creature that has lived throughout the ages and is at the very top of the food chain. Unleash the Kraken!
The Kraken
As an attentive connoisseur of last week's release date announcement (November 29th!), something might have caught your attention: There's three fearsome boss type enemies coming. Each one is guarding a different legendary location, and as it so happens, one of them is the Kraken. We're not going to spoil the other two in dev blogs, but we're taking a closer look at the tentacled horror today as an example of what to expect.
The Kraken is a remnant of a different era. Its age numbers in millennia, and it has spent much of its life slumbering beneath the surface of the swamp it inhabits. The tentacled horror is myth and a legend that few have seen with their own eyes, and people have been born and grown old living atop a slumbering Kraken, for it awakens only every few years to feast. The Kraken has countless tentacles that stretch on forever below the surface, and each tentacle has a dim light to lure prey. Those lights are the origin of many a tale; in the thick fog of the swamp, Irrlichts, or ghost lights, promise company and a warming fire, only to lead men to their doom. Worse still, the tentacles will wrap around their prey, crush them and drag them through the muddy water into the gaping maw of the Kraken, where they will meet a gruesome end.
The Kraken is firmly situated in late game territory. It's an opponent to test your veteran party against, and quite possibly the end of many an ironman run. Most of the Kraken is below the surface when fighting it, and you can only guess as to its actual size. Individual tentacles reach all over the map, and they will disappear into the mud and water of the swamp only to appear again at another place. As the Kraken feeds, a many-toothed maw will slowly rise from below the waterline to gorge itself.
From the perspective of this giant beast, your group of tiny mercenaries is but food, and so it will start combat by moving its tentacles to wrap around your men and drag them towards its maw to feed. Being dragged through the swamp is a hellish ride, and your men better start attempting to free themselves along the way by hacking at the tentacle that holds them tight. Nearby brothers-in-arms can help as well. If you fail at freeing your men in time, and they end up next to the maw at the end of their turn, they're done for. The maw will shred them mercilessly in a single turn.
If you hurt a Kraken enough, either by destroying several of its tentacles, or by injuring the head, it will get enraged and let you know with an ear-deafening roar. The Kraken understands now that this is no longer about feeding itself, but about defending itself. The tentacles show teeth and begin to snap at everything and everyone. They continue to wrap around your men and drag them towards the maw, but they do it so tight now that they slowly crush and suffocate their victim along the way, meaning that your men will lose hitpoints at every turn they end while entrapped like this.
Should you manage to beat the Kraken, you'll not only get the treasure it guarded, but you'll be able to craft items from its remains, and you'll unlock it to appear as a regular albeit rare enemy in swamps across the wild for your epicly long campaign.
DLC Supporter Edition
Thanks to the overwhelmingly positive response to last week's release date announcement, and many people expressing their desire to support us even beyond the asking price of the ‘Beasts & Exploration' DLC, we've decided to also offer it as a special Supporter Edition. This Supporter Edition will be priced at $19.99 and include a new player banner and shields with a Kraken motif as a thank you from us to you.
Battle Brothers - Beasts & Exploration Release Date
by Silver, Friday - October 19, 2018 21:00
The release date for Battle Brothers ‘Beasts & Exploration' DLC is November 29th.
Release Date Announcement
20 OCTOBER - RAPSDJFF
We're happy to announce that the ‘Beasts & Exploration' DLC for Battle Brothers will be released on November 29th, 2018, for the price of $9.99 or your regional equivalent. You can already find and wishlist it on Steam right here.
The artwork above can also be downloaded as a wallpaper here[battlebrothersgame.com].
The ‘Beasts & Exploration' DLC for Battle Brothers expands the game with a larger world, full of unique hidden locations throughout that offer new possibilities and rewards to the daring adventurer, as well as challenging new beasts roaming the untamed wilds. Craft your own gear from trophies you collect, customize your equipment with a new system for armor attachments, and engage in profitable beast hunting and exploration!
Features
Legendary Locations - Hidden legendary locations offer new possibilities, lore, unique opponents, and unique rewards for the daring adventurer in a world that is 25% larger. New Opponents - Five challenging new beasts populate different parts of the wilds, and three fearsome bosses guard valuable treasure. All of them come with unique mechanics and loot. Crafting - Trophies from slain beasts can now be crafted into cloaks, armor plating, armor for your wardogs, shields, potions and other items to customize the look of your hardened mercenaries and benefit them in combat. Customize your Gear - Wear cloaks, shoulderguards and more for additional benefits with the new armor attachment system, and use the new paint items to paint shields and helmets in the colors of your company. New Weapons and Armor - A collection of new weapons and armors allow for new play styles and character builds. New Contracts, Events and Ambitions - Engage in profitable beast hunting and exploration. Immerse yourself in leading a mercenary company with even more illustrated events. New Music - Two new music tracks accompany you on your adventures. New Achievements - Challenge yourself with new achievements on Steam or GOG.
Please note: You'll be able to continue your current campaign with the DLC, but you won't have access to all of the new content until you start a new campaign.
We’ve covered the ‘beast’ part of the upcoming ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC quite a bit already, but we’ve only touched upon the ‘exploration’ part here and there. Let’s take a look this week at a major feature that’s going to make exploration in the world of Battle Brothers more interesting and worthwhile: legendary locations.
Legendary Locations
Legendary locations are supposed to capture the flair of unique and mythical places in the unknown parts of the world. It’s giant overgrown statues and hidden temples. Remnants of a different age. Places that people think only exist in myth, until they see them with their own eyes. Places that give insight into what happened in the world of Battle Brothers before your campaign.
There’s two places already in the game which we consider to fall into this category: The Black Monolith and the Goblin City, both offering a very challenging battle and a legendary item as reward. We’re going to add an illustrated introduction to both of them, as well as a powerful named opponent to one of them. But more than that, we’re adding a whole bunch of new locations, many of them more complex, scattered all across a world map that is about to become 25% larger in order to have sufficient room for exploration and hunting all of those new beasts.
Instead of just two legendary locations, you’ll be able to find about a dozen now in every campaign. Upon first approaching any such place, an event will be triggered. These events vary in complexity, and some will lead to epic battles, like with the Black Monolith, while others give opportunity for peaceful exploration, interaction and perhaps even puzzle solving. A couple of these legendary locations are intended as challenges only for very experienced mercenary companies and guarded by powerful creatures or armies, but most can be mastered at earlier stages of a campaign. As a general rule, the more distant a location from civilized lands, the more challenging it will be. All of them will offer a unique reward for the daring explorer that can’t be obtained in any other way, and which is suitably powerful for existing only once in every campaign.
With exploration becoming more rewarding, we’re also adding several new ambitions that focus on exploration, uncovering legendary locations and besting a legendary beast we have yet to reveal. And if you’re looking to get paid for all this exploration business, you might be interested to learn that there’s also a new exploration-themed contract coming together with a bunch more for a total of 10 new types of contracts in the ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC.
A new dev diary for Battle Brothers introduces 'The Schrat'.
Dev Blog #104: The Schrat
Hostile plant life makes its entry into the world of Battle Brothers in this week’s edition of our dev blog for the upcoming ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC. Get your axes ready!
The Schrat
The Waldschrat, or Schrat for short, is a fabled living tree found in the most remote forests of the world. A creature of bark and wood, it resembles no other, and its mind is truly alien. It blends between trees and shambles slowly, its roots digging through the soil. A frightening night time story tells of how trees watered with the blood of the unjustly killed turn into twisted living trees, out to strangle and choke the life out of children that don’t behave.
A Schrat can grow limbs at a whim, and so they grow and regrowth what resembles a wooden shield to protect their more vulnerable parts. While this shield is up, they’ll be much harder to hit and damage. The shield can be destroyed like any other with the ‘Split Shield’ skill, and doing so will reveal the Schrat’s much softer innards; although Schrats can be destroyed either way, they’ll take significantly more damage without the shield’s protection. In a surprising twist, then, axes are particularly useful against trees.
A Schrat attacks by slamming its thorned roots up from below ground, knocking up and impaling whatever is above ground. It’s an area of effect attack that always hits three tiles in a straight line, starting from the tile the Schrat sits on and going outwards along how their roots grew. Anyone hit will receive the ‘Staggered’ status effect – they’ll be off-balance, scrambling and late to act for their next turn. The Schrat has the potential to inflict a lot of damage when hitting three targets with a single attack, but they’re much less dangerous if you use smart positioning and work around their limitation of only being able to hit multiple targets if they’re in a straight line from it.
If a Schrat takes sufficient damage from a single blow to sever a large enough part of them, it will spawn a Sapling upon hitting the ground. They’re miniature Schrats that are much weaker, at least until they’re fully grown in a hundred years or so, but they can still whittle your men down. It’s a trade-off then; fight Schrats with heavy weaponry and they’ll die quicker, but you’ll also have to fight Saplings. Fight with light weaponry, and it’ll take longer to beat down a Schrat, but you won’t have to fight Saplings as well.
A new dev diary for Battle Brothers introduces 'The Webknecht'.
So far we’ve talked about two new enemies that are part of the upcoming ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC and intended to spice up the mid to late game. We want to bring fresh enemies to all stages of the game, so this week we’ll take a look at a new beast aimed to bring variety mostly to the early game. Let’s crawl!
The Webknecht
The Webknecht is a large arachnid that lives in sizable colonies in the dark areas of forests throughout the world of Battle Brothers. It’s there that they spin their webs between trees to trap anything from bird to deer and between. Unlike most other beasts, Webknechts don’t usually roam a lot, preferring instead to sit in their territory and wait until something unfortunate gets itself caught in one of their nets. Still, they’re known to choose the vicinity of settlements for their home on occasion and threaten the lives of villagers and their livestock.
The presence of a large enough number of Webknechts is heralded by extensive webs spanning from brush to tree to rock, uniquely transforming any combat environment in a way that leaves no doubt about who lives there. Worse still, amidst the webbings are nests of eggs, and these eggs hatch during combat. You can seek them out, and destroy them with a single strike before they hatch, but otherwise, as combat goes on, there’s always the danger of more and more eight-legged terrors swaming you until you cut down enough to make it ebb.
Webknechts make use of the ‘Weave Web’ skill to weave around their opponents a sticky web, which prevents anyone trapped inside from moving and reduces their ability to attack with full force or defend themselves effectively. Characters can attempt to free themselves of the web during their turn, and each failed attempt increases the chance of subsequent attempts succeeding, but doing so can quickly become tiring, which only works in the arachnids’ favor.
Webknechts aren’t as frenzied in their attacks as, for example, Direwolves are. Instead, they choose to let their opponents tire themselves out by struggling in their webs, and they wait until an opportunity presents itself and their opponent is distracted before they attempt to bite them a single time per turn. They act as a swarm, and so the more oversized spiders surrounding a target and acting in concert, the more effective they become.
The Webknecht’s bites aren’t terribly dangerous to the armored mercenary, but Webknechts are poisonous, and receiving hitpoint damage will apply it. Unlike the poison employed by Goblins, the Webknecht poison does damage to vital organs over several turns and characters can die from it. The Antidote item already in the game works just as well against this kind of poison, however, and is more important now than ever. In fact, it can now be crafted at will if you have the necessary components – but more on that in next week’s dev blog.
A new dev blog for Battle Brothers introduces new weapons.
Dev Blog #101: New Weapons
We take a break from looking at things that make your life harder, to take a look at things that make your life easier this week. The upcoming ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC will add a bouquet of new weapons. Some of them will fill gaps in the progression of existing weapon types, while others are hybrid and niche weapons to create new builds and tactics with. And all of them will add more variety to human opponents, like brigands. Just keep in mind that details may still change depending on how playtesting goes. Let’s take a look!
Filling The Gaps
First off, several of the new weapons are designed to fill gaps in the tiered progression of individual weapon types. The Longsword is a lower tier version of the Greatsword, but no less versatile. It allows us to more gradually introduce two-handed swords with enemies, and it allows you to use a less costly alternative earlier in the game. Similarly, the Two-Handed Wooden Hammer is a lower tier version of the existing Two-Handed Hammer. And while previously the Orc Berserker Chain was the only two-handed Flail in the game, there’s now two tiers of human two-handed Flails as well.
Two-Handed Maces
Maces now come in massive two-handed variants. They excel in single-target damage and crowd control, and like their one-handed cousins, they apply a lot of additional fatigue damage. Receiving a blow from a weapon like this will leave anyone dazed and gasping for air, and this is reflected in the ‘Cudgel’ skill applying the new ‘Dazed’ effect. A dazed character will have their maximum fatigue, initiative and damage output reduced. The other skill of two-handed maces is called ‘Strike Down’ and will stun a target for a whole 2 turns, instead of just 1 turn with one-handed maces. This also plays into a new perk which we’ll explain in another dev blog.
The Polehammer
The new Polehammer is the polearm variant of the Warhammer, a weapon designed to neutralize heavily armored targets. With two tiles of range, a Polehammer can be used from behind the frontline, and outside the range of most other melee weapons, to batter, deform and rip enemy armor. Against unarmored or lightly armored targets, however, other polearms perform better.
The Spetum
Even more defense-oriented than a pike, the two-handed Spetum is used like a cross between pike and spear in the game. It is a specialized polearm that is less damaging than the pike, but can be used to form a more deadly yet more fatiguing ‘Spearwall’ than with a one-handed spear. Particularly useful against beasts.
The Throwing Spear
Throwing weapons also get some love with the new Throwing Spear. Larger than a Javelin, it’s a consumable item similar to the Throwing Net and designed to take out shields from afar.
The Goedendag
A curious hybrid between club and spear, the Goedendag is a two-handed weapon that enjoys popularity with militia and similar non-professional outfits. It comes with the ‘Thrust’ skill of the spear, making it easy to hit with, as well as the ‘Knock Out’ skill of Maces, enabling the user to incapacitate their opponents.
The Three-Headed Flail
The Three-Headed Flail, also called Ochsenherde, is a less common weapon. It works the same as any other one-handed flail in the game, except for one detail: Every attack is split into three separate ones, one for each of the striking heads, and each head can hit or miss, and hit body or head, separately. That’s a good thing if you’re looking for consistent damage and a high chance to hit the enemy at all, for example to apply the Poisoned effect or because you’re fighting a fragile enemy with high defenses. On the other hand, this weapon will split damage between head and body armor even more so than other weapons, making it ill-suited if you’re looking to brute-force your way through enemy armor.
The Fencing Sword
Another uncommon weapon is the Fencing Sword; a light and elegant blade that favors a swift and mobile fighting style. It comes with a skill unique only to this weapon: ‘Lunge’. Using the ‘Lunge’ skill, the user will dash towards a target two tiles away, followed immediately by a precise thrusting attack to catch the target unprepared. Lunge gets a damage bonus scaling with the user’s initiative; the quicker the user, and the less armor weighing them down, the more damage they do. With a fencing sword, a combatant gains a lot of mobility, dancing between enemies to make precise strikes if any opening should present itself.
There’s even more new weapons coming, both legendary ones to be found by exploring the wilds, and craftable ones, but we don’t want to spoil these – you’ll just have to find them for yourself!
The latest development diary for Battle Brothers details 'The Unhold' which will feature in the 'Beasts & Exploration' DLC.
Dev Blog #100: The Unhold
Last week we took a look at the Hexe, a wily witch that is making its way into the world of Battle Brothers as part of the upcoming ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC. This week, we’ll take a look at the Unhold, a more down-to-earth type of enemy that is intended to spice up the mid game with its physical presence. Let’s go!
The Unhold
The Unhold is a lumbering giant, easily the size of three men, and dwarfing even the tallest orc. It eats whole sheep for a snack and empties a pond to wash it down. There’s tales of enraged Unholds leveling remote farms and plucking the limbs off of unlucky farmers like wings from insects, but closer examination will reveal that Unholds aren’t malicious creatures. They’re fiercely territorial, but may often be content to persuade with ear-deafening bellowing and threatening gestures any invaders to run for their lives. The Unhold is a somewhat solitary creature and can be found either alone or in small groups only.
The upcoming DLC will assign to all the beasts distinct habitats around the world, but the Unhold actually has several, because it comes in three regional variants. The most common variant is found in the northern tundra and hills. Another variant is said to be found in swamps and sometimes forests, where they inhabit caves. The fiercest is the northern variant found in the snowy wastes, with white fur that protects equally against cold and steel. Click here for a wallpaper of the artwork below.
The Unhold’s theme in the game is displacement, and all of his skills center around it. To this behemoth, zone of control means little, as he will constantly shuffle the battlefield and demand smart repositioning by the player to protect their weakest characters, and allow the strongest to bring their weapons to bear on the beast. Unholds have little to no armor, depending on the regional variant, but they possess the unique ability of healing wounds slowly over the course of combat. Luckily they can’t heal injuries, like a broken leg, the same way, but the longer combat drags on, the more their regenerative abilities will work in their favor.
The Unhold’s first skill is called ‘Unstoppable Charge’ and works similar to the charge that orcs employ. When charging, the Unhold hurls himself towards his opponents with such force that it can’t be defended against with a spearwall, it stuns or knocks back several people at once, and it also dazes the Unhold himself as he makes impact, so he isn’t able to charge and attack in the same turn.
The second skill is ‘Fling Back’ and allows the Unhold to grab any opponent in his way and fling them back over his shoulder like a plaything, taking their place in the process. Using the ‘Indomitable’ perk will guard against it, but anyone flung like this will receive falling damage. By tossing his opponents around, the Unhold can slowly make his way wherever he wants to go.
Once in melee, the Unhold uses his massive fists to make sweeping strikes that can hit up to three targets at once with so much force that there’s a chance they’ll be knocked back. Because the Unhold will constantly knock targets away from himself, he’s rather bad at focusing down a single target, but he excels at battering down a group of people over time. Individual attacks of the Unhold aren’t the most damaging, especially to armor, but he has the potential to make a real mess out of your plans if you don’t adapt fast enough.
A new Battle Brothersdevelopment diary details a new opponent called 'The Hexe' for the upcoming 'Beasts & Exploration' DLC.
The upcoming ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC will add a variety of new beasts and related creatures to the world of Battle Brothers. We’re going to introduce new opponents to cover the early, mid and late game. Some of them will be pretty complex to fight, and others more straight-forward. Some will be magical creatures, and some plain beasts, but all of them will come with their own unique mechanics to challenge you.
To start things off, we’ll be taking a look at the Hexe today. It’s the first of two upcoming spellcaster type opponents we’re adding, and intended for spicing up the mid to late game. Let’s roll!
The Hexe
The Hexe is a witch inspired by Grimm’s fairy tales, a malevolent old crone living in swamps and forests outside of villages alone or in a coven with other Hexen. They’re human, but have long sacrificed their humanity for otherworldly powers. They’re feared, but also worshipped by some. They’re burned at the stake, and yet people seek them out to plead for miracles. They lure and abduct little children to make broth and concoctions out of, they strike terrible pacts with villagers to receive their firstborn, they weave curses and cast hexes. Their huts may or may not be made of candy. With her sorcery, a Hexe can enthrall wild beasts, and even warp the mind of humans, and so will often be found in the company of creatures that serve her.
The Hexe has two skills in combat. The first one is called ‘Charm’ and works like this: From her shriveled lips, the crone blows one of your men a seductive kiss to bewitch their mind. A strong-willed individual can resist with a successful resolve check, but otherwise they’re doomed to have their senses warped and to fall under the spell’s dominion for several turns until the effect wears off. To the ensorcelled, the Hexe no longer appears as an old crone, but a youthful lady with radiant beauty for which they will gladly obey every command. They’ll be eager to shield the witch from arrows with their bodies, and not think twice about hacking their comrades to pieces in order to protect their beloved. Should every last man on the battlefield be mind-controlled by a Hexe, the coven will have them all commit suicide in order to end the battle.
Even though the Hexe is old and fragile, has no melee attack, and in fact no Zone of Control, she isn’t quite defenseless. Her second skill is also a spell; it’s called ‘Hex’ and can be cast on one enemy at a time. Anyone that has a hex cast on them is cursed to feel the same pain and receive the same wounds as the Hexe does. It’s mutually assured destruction when the Hexe defends herself by giving you a choice: Attack her, and risk the health and potentially even life of one of your men, or let the hag live for another round, hoping that she doesn’t do too much damage in the meantime and that you can get her before she casts another hex. Or at least casts it on someone who can take a blow for the team.
Fighting a Hexe is different from fighting most other opponents in the game. For starters, the stronger you are, the stronger the Hexe gets, as you’ll spend a good time dealing with your own men turned hostile. Her two skills also make for a more puzzle-esque battle than usual, but the right approach can turn a seemingly impossible challenge into a manageable one. Maces and nets are useful for disabling your own men while they’re charmed, rushing or taunting the Hexe can be effective, and having solid resolve is always helpful. What tactics can you come up with to beat her?
Join us again next week for a look at a new beast that you’ll soon be able to meet on the field of battle – one that uses brute strength and not trickery of the mind.
‘Beasts & Exploration' DLC Announcement 3 AUGUST - RAPSDJFF
We're very excited to announce that we're working on a full-sized DLC for Battle Brothers. Yes, you heard that right - there's going to be a real and meaty expansion with fresh content coming for that game that you like. The name of the upcoming DLC is going to be ‘Beasts & Exploration'.
That's a pretty telling name, and as it suggests, the focus of the DLC will be on introducing new beast opponents in order to bring more variety to every stage of the game, and to make exploring the world more interesting and rewarding. But that's not all!
[battlebrothersgame.com]
Here's the list of major features you can expect:
A variety of challenging new beasts populating different parts of the wilds. Each with unique mechanics and loot.
A bigger world to explore, full of unique hidden locations throughout that offer new possibilities and rewards to the daring adventurer.
Trophies from slain beasts that can be crafted into charms, potions and other items to customize the look of your hardened mercenaries and benefit them in combat.
New contracts that have you engage in profitable beast hunting, exploration and more.
New weapons, tools, shields, and armor to equip your men with.
New paint items that can be used to paint shields and helmets in the colors of your company.
Lots of new events.
New music tracks.
In addition to these major features, the DLC will also include countless smaller additions. Just like in the past, all the major points and most of the minor ones will be explained in detail in future dev blogs as we go along, so you'll always know what we're working on and why. We expect to be working on this for several months and will announce a release date and final feature list once we're closer to the finish line. We're also making good progress on our new game, and will continue to work on it in parallel.
Alongside the DLC, which will not be free, the game will also receive a sizable free update. This update will contain a whole bunch of improvements and balancing changes, as well as some minor content additions.
Join us next week for our first dev blog on the new DLC, introducing a terrifying new opponent!
Battle Brothers Review | Tactical Turn-Based RPG Medieval Low-Magic Dark Fantasy
loading...
Battle Brothers is a tactical turn-based RPG set in a low-magic dark fantasy medieval setting which has you taking control over and managing your own group of mercenaries, first trying to survive, then grow, and possibly even thrive so as to create a name and reputation for your band. The game focuses primarily on tactical combat coupled with a secondary focus on resource management but is it a solid enough overall experience to keep the diehard tactics player interested long enough to reach the end-game?
The free DLC for Battle Brothers called Lindwurmhas been released.
Free DLC Released
The Lindwurm DLC has just been released to every current and future owner of Battle Brothers for free. Challenge your mercenary company against a fearsome Lindwurm, an adversary of legend, home to the wild parts of the world and fiercely defending its hoard of treasure!
Read all about the content of this free DLC in the accompanying dev blog here. It's not necessary to start a new campaign in order for any of the additions to appear in your game.
Alongside the DLC, the game has also been updated to version 1.1.0.5 with a couple of bugfixes that we've collected over the past few weeks.
Changelog
Fixed game potentially freezing after combat ends under specific conditions.
Fixed 'Reset Equipment After Battle' option not working properly for specific combinations of equipment.
Fixed damage bonus from eating mushrooms not being displayed properly in some skill tooltips.
Fixed tooltip from a necromancer that himself has been raised from the dead not showing properly.
Fixed damage inflicted to a Direwolf's natural armor not being displayed in the combat log.
A free DLC called Lindwurm will be available for Battle Brothers on October 19:
Dev Blog #98: The Lindwurm
What is this sorcery?! Why, it’s a dev blog about the upcoming free Lindwurm DLC for Battle Brothers, of course! We’ve been working on a small thank-you gift for all you passionate fans on the side, and this is it. You’re about to get to face an entirely new opponent, get new armor to wear and items to use, new loot to collect, and a new banner to hoist for your company. Let’s take a closer look!
The Lindwurm
In Germanic mythology, a Lindwurm is a wingless bipedal dragon resembling a large snake. It’s a large and fearsome creature, the adversary in many a legend, and it’s making its way into Battle Brothers. The wild and uncivilized parts of the world are about to become more dangerous, as you’ll soon find a Lindwurm or two roaming thereabout, making an old forest or hillside their territory and fiercely defending their hoard of treasure from any intruder.
In combat, the Lindwurm is the only opponent that occupies two tiles at once – one for the upper body, and one for the tail. While both are part of a single body, and thus share hitpoints, the Lindwurm can move them and attack with them separately. The Lindwurm’s mouth is armed with long and sharp teeth, which can easily tear a grown man in two. The tail is strong enough to slam against several men at once, stagger them or even knock them across the battlefield.
And if that wasn’t terrifying enough, a Lindwurm’s blood is also highly corrosive to many materials – including those used in armor. Whenever a Lindwurm takes hitpoint damage in melee, the attacker may be sprayed with their acidic blood, which will slowly eat away at any armor for several turns. Attacking with polearms and ranged weapons will prevent you from being sprayed with acid. On the other hand, a Lindwurm’s acidic blood can also be used to your advantage…
But wait, there’s more!
You’re about to get a new Lindwurm-themed set of named armor, helmet and shield, which come with the unique property of being unaffected by the highly corrosive Lindwurm blood. And then, of course, there’s a new Lindwurm-themed banner to choose for your mercenary campaign of fearless lizard hunters.
The acidic blood of a Lindwurm can be collected in flasks, which can then be thrown from the offhand in battle, shattering on impact and corroding over several turns the armor of anyone nearby that is unfortunate enough to be hit – useful against heavily armored opponents such as orcs or the later ancient dead.
When can I play it?
The Lindwurm DLC will be released on October 19th for free to every owner of Battle Brothers. It’s not necessary to start a new campaign in order for any of the additions to appear in your game.
TechRaptor has reviewed the tactical RPG Battle Brothers:
Battle Brothers Review - A Proper Challenge
Tactical RPGs are often hard to come by nowadays, mostly because they are difficult games to master by design. Some (like the Fire Emblem games) are deceptively simple. For the most part, the glut of mechanics and options found in a tactical game is often a major turnoff for players. The indie gaming market has its own share of tactical games, but very few seem to really hit that sweet spot of being challenging without compromising its own mechanics. Thankfully, a game like Battle Brothers, the first major title from the small German indie team Overhype Studios, is an exception to that rule.
Battle Brothers is a tactical RPG where the player is put in charge of a fledgling mercenary company. The world is based on German folklore with a gritty and dark fantasy twist, but the game is all about building up your ragtag team of mercenaries to take on bigger and better contracts for piles of gold. What will ensue is a campaign that ends when you decide. A campaign where your men’s steel will clash with insurmountable odds as you hopefully lead them to fame and fortune.
[...]
Overall, Battle Brothers is a solid, exhilarating experience that might turn away some players due to its difficulty, but attract others because of its challenge. The strategic options and statistics are complex, the gameplay is tough but not overly difficult. At its heart, the game provides a deep, tactical experience that is both challenging and rewarding for players to enjoy.
Battle Brothers is turn-based Mount & Blade meets XCOM
'It's basically an open-ended, Dungeons & Dragons-style campaign for players who prefer combat over storytelling.'
We recently, and rightly, complained on this website that Final Fantasy Tactics needs to come to PC. Yeah, we've got XCOM 2, Xenonauts, Shadowrun, Massive Chalice, and BattleTech is on the way, but fantasy turn-based tactics games where you're playing chess with customized soldiers are hard to come by.
As it turns out, a follow-up to FFT has been hiding in plain sight—a German equivalent of it, anyway.
I started Battle Brothers over the Memorial Day weekend after hearing designers Josh Sawyer and David Goldfarb rave about it on Twitter, and it's exactly the sort of combat-focused strategy game I've loved since Shining Force on Sega Genesis.
Battle Brothers is basically an open-ended, Dungeons & Dragons-style campaign for players who prefer combat over storytelling. You roam a procedurally-generated overworld map fighting goblins, varieties of undead, orcs, brigands, and competing mercenary companies on outdoor battlefields split into hexagons. Some of these threats are roaming, and will even chase your party around the map, but most of them sit and wait for you in forts and encampments.
The 1.1 update to Battle Brothers is here and brings a bunch of additions and changes, as well as various bugfixes – see below for the complete changelog. Also, we’re talking about what we’ll be doing next.
The Conclusion Making Battle Brothers a reality has been a great ride. Back when we still worked our evenings and weekends on the game, we never imagined quite how many and how much people would fall in love with it, and all the support we’d get from you. Playing the game now ourselves, we’re genuinely happy with how things turned out. For all its flaws, Battle Brothers is fun to play, it’s satisfying to see what we achieved with our means, and we’re happy to say that we’ve learned a lot on game development as we created our first game together.
A part of game development is making tough decisions on where to spend your limited time. In creating Battle Brothers we, too, had to make concessions in order to make the game happen. Unfortunately, this now makes things like translations and mod support unfeasible, as much as we’d like to offer them, and expanding the game beyond its initial concept an increasingly unwieldy endeavour.
We’ve thought long and hard about where we want to go from here. After working on the same game for almost five years now, we’ve come to realize that it is time to move on. Creating Battle Brothers has always been about building the game we want to play ourselves, and furthering ourselves as game developers, and we believe that taking all the lessons learned here to create a new game dear to us is the right next step to take.
Development on Battle Brothers is concluded with today’s update – although we’ll of course continue to provide bugfixes, as necessary. We have a very good idea of the game we want to create next, and we’re enthusiastic to get started. It won’t be Battle Brothers 2, but if you enjoyed playing Battle Brothers, chances are good you’ll really enjoy our next game, too. We look forward to tell you all about it in the future. It’ll even have legs!
Changelog
Added 18 new illustrated events.
Added 3 new player banners.
Added 63 colored variants of most common helmets for more customization options.
Added more options to customize campaign difficulty by introducing separate settings for 'Economic Difficulty', 'Combat Difficulty' and 'Starting Funds'. See tooltips for more information.
Added optional 'Reset Equipment After Battle' setting to automatically place equipment back into the inventory slot it was in before battle, if possible.
Added additional ambient sounds for settlements.
Changed combat log to show more detailed information, including hit chances, dice rolls for enemies and damage to shields.
Changed 'Bags & Belts' perk to also remove the fatigue penalty for carrying items in any bag slot.
Changed fatigue cost of ‘Indomitable’ perk active skill to 20, down from 25.
Changed various minor things to improve game balance and pacing.
Fixed 'Lone Wolf' perk effect sometimes not updating correctly after movement.
Fixed potentially wrong healing time displayed in medical supplies tooltip. Fixed specific ambitions not being recorded as fulfilled when engaging two enemy parties in quick succession.
Fixed issue with 'Armed Courier' contract during an active late game crisis.
Fixed two potential issues with the 'Siege Fortification' contract.
Fixed issue when retreating at a specific point during the 'Free Greenskin Prisoners' contract.
Fixed game potentially hanging when loading an ambush with a large number of opponents.
Fixed auto-loot sometimes granting loot to the player even if not having won the battle.
Fixed cultist conversion events also changing daily wages.
Fixed situations at settlements sometimes not being resolved correctly.
Fixed tavern rumors about famed helmets incorrectly referring to them as weapons.
Darkworld Gaming has reviewed the tactical RPG Battle Brothers:
Battle Brothers Review
Thorismund wasn’t very special. As our campaign started, as they all do in Overhype Gaming’s Battle Brothers, with our band being slaughtered by Hoggart and his men, he was one of the three that was left. In our very next fight, where he was one of seven in the band as we took revenge against Hoggart, Thorismund was struck down with a permanent injury. Brain damage, the game told me; one of many injuries your men can take in the line of duty. So be it, I thought, and armed him with a two handed axe. He can go at the front, take some damage, and die valiantly for the company. That’s all he’ll be good for. Yet Thorismund, despite his addled state and lack of understanding about colours, standing and which way is up, had other ideas. He took three heads off at the shoulders in that battle. Then another two in the next fight. Whenever Thorismund got a kill, the head came off. Every. Single. Time. Thus, Thorismund Headtaker was born; and he would not die.
[...]
Summary
Battle Brothers is a fantastic turn-based RPG with some real time elements as well. It has a superb graphical style, excellent music which changes depending on what you're doing, as well as addictive gameplay which will just keep you coming back. Any XCOM fan who has even a slight interest in a Game of Thrones style world must buy this!
Forgottenlor's next review is for Battle Brothers. A game he feels is one of the best strategy RPGs released these days.
Battle Brothers is a tactical RPG, and is best compared to games like X-Com and Heroes of Might and Magic. You spend a very large percentage of the game on the tactical battlefield. A game like this lives or dies based on how enjoyable it is to fight. The developers really did an excellent job with this portion of the game. While there are plenty of fine tactical games on the market, what really sets Battle Brothers apart is its fine attention to detail.
There are a large number of melee weapons each with its own specialty. Swords are fast and can be used to riposte. Axes can destroy enemy shields and you can't imagine how useful that can be. Flails can make aimed head shots. Never go into battle with orcs without a hammer. These can be used to destroy armour. Spears can be used to prevent enemies from entering the square in front of you. Pole arms can attack from the second rank. Two handed weapons are nasty, but require a lot of fatigue to use, and unlike many games, a shield in battle brothers often means the difference between life and death. Ranged weapons especially show the love for detail. Fire a bow or crossbow into a crowd, and even if you have a low chance to hit a particular target, you still have a good chance to hit the target or one of their neighbours.
Battle Brothers is the story of a merry band of ugly, illiterate mercenaries who do grunt work for rich people. Set in a decrepit fantasy world where living to thirty with all of one's teeth might be considered an accomplishment, the gritty landscapes are littered with seemingly countless brigands, orcs, undead, and really, really big dogs. Your company's primary concern, though? Gain reputation and money so that you can gain more reputation and money. It's like life, except with less ability to employ basic academic skills and more sudden death.
Battle Brothers offers little in the way of story or dialogue. Banter between your company and your employers occurs only when taking a job, and it's brief at that. What's more, exchanges are regurgitated with shocking frequency, leaving any immersion surface-level, at best. When traveling around, rare scenarios occur in which someone in your band wants a raise, a civilian needs help, or an injury is mended. These occur maybe once per hour and, again, are often regurgitated. Like most roguelikes, the story isn't secondary or even tertiary. The disappointment here lies in that the writing is decent, and with a little more work, the world building could truly enhance the experience.
[...]
Battle Brothers knows what it is and doesn't try to be more than it should be, and that makes it so much better than other titles that strive for an epic or storied feel. What's accomplished here is a solid, honest package of thrills and strategic depth, though not oppressively so. In truth, the world can get monotonous and drags at times, but I also found myself losing track of time on several occasions as I told myself, "Just one more job." I dabbled in Veteran a bit before writing this review and couldn't get back into it — I just couldn't find the heart to jump right back in after I had developed such an incredible group of fighters who I got to know by name. One day I will likely pick the banner back up and I may just fall on the battlefield twenty hours in. And that's okay.
GAME REVIEW: Battle Brothers (PC) – A Successful Sally Across Early Access
Roffgir the Wild smashed his maul into the face of a hostile orc. I could not help but to grin, noticing that the swing had so much impetus to it that it completely eviscerated the Greenskin’s helmet, as well as the face it was supposed to protect. I can imagine Roffgir would be pleased as well. Or at least he would be, were it not for the stray crossbow bolt which pierced his chainmail and embedded itself in his back, penetrating his lung. Roffgir perished on the field of battle, and even the victory achieved did naught to stamp out the bitterness of his loss.
[...]
Summary
Battle Brothers is a phenomenal indie game, and despite some minor grindy tids and tads, as well as potentially frustrating randomness, it’s a platform for vast quantities of self-made stories, both cheerful and devastating. Those that revel in the brutal, merciless genre will find a fantastic fantasy setting to devote time to, smashing and slashing across ne’er-do-wells, wild Greenskins and chaotic undead.
PC Gamer has reviewed the tactical RPG Battle Brothers:
Battle Brothers Review
Around our campfire, the men eat and sleep and sharpen their axes. I’m worrying about our profit margin. Our contract pays 400 crowns for taking out these bandits, but the fat little nobleman who hired our mercenary company didn’t mention that we’d have to charter a boat and march for a week just to find them. Watching the miles tick by, I keep thinking the same thing: we’re barely going to break even.
This is the kind of commander that Battle Brothers, a new medieval strategy RPG, has turned me into. In combat, I’m aggressive and decisive. But when the fighting stops, I turn into a miser. Every coin and every bandage is money we need to stay alive, stay equipped, and keep going in this wonderful game of tactics and sellswords.
[...]
Despite being fresh out of Early Access, though, the majority of Battle Brothers is well-oiled and dependably fun. I kept humming with the victory and despair I usually reserve for X-COM campaigns: the archer who makes a wondrous 19% headshot; the swordsman who blocks and dodges his way out of certain death; the veteran soldier suddenly gutted, lost forever behind the veil of permadeath. Battle Brothers takes a formula I love and twists it to fit a wide-open medieval setting. I don’t have to save the world, I just have to make enough to fix my gear, hire a new sword, and go on to my next contract. The stakes aren't as high, but it feels just as rewarding.
Battle Brothersupdate 1.0.0.4 introduces the option "Permanent Destruction" during the end game crisis:
Changelog
Added map seed that can be entered upon starting a new campaign, and seen for ongoing campaigns created after this update, for replaying and sharing maps.
Added checkbox for 'Permanent Destruction' during late game crises when starting a new campaign. It's checked by default to work how you're used to. Unchecking it will result in settlements getting the 'Razed' situation for a considerable time instead of being permanently destroyed.
Added warning prompt for users of Avast due to compatibility issues introduced with one of their latest updates.
Changed game to unpause only after autosaving is completed when leaving towns in ironman mode, so no time on the worldmap is wasted.
Fixed issue with the game potentially hanging in some cases as characters rise from the dead during the Undead Scourge.
Fixed AI not using the 'Footwork' skill properly in some cases.
A Wargamers Needful Things has reviewed the tactical RPG Battle Brothers:
Battle Brothers
Battle Brothers, from Overhype Studios, is a game which took me by surprise in the best way. The first time I sat down with it and started playing, my only thought was "How has no one made a game like this before?!" This is one of those occasional titles which reminds you why you started playing video games in the first place. In case you haven't guessed yet, I really enjoyed the game. Read on to find out all the details, or just go buy the game now.
In Battle Brothers, the player takes on the leadership of a small company of mercenaries making their way in a low-fantasy world. The world, and everything in it, is randomly generated each time you start a campaign. Towns, each of different size and containing different amenities, are scattered across a world divided between a few noble houses. There is also a massive area of the world map which is completely shrouded in mystery at the beginning of your campaign. One will immediately be reminded of Mount & Blade when beginning their wanderings through the world, and if you played that classic, you will feel right at home here. Between these towns runs a network of roads cutting through forests, grasslands, deserts, swamps, and mountains. Trade caravans, squads of soldiers, and even other mercenary bands travel the roads. Lurking in the shadows on every side are groups of baddies, waiting to strike the defenseless peasants. This is where your mercenary company steps in to make some coin.
[...]
Even with all the content in he game, it's clearly a candidate for more of everything, you really couldn't have too much variety here. More quests, character backgrounds, events, enemies, world ending disasters, and weapons are always welcome. Some areas I would love to see expanded in a patch or DLC down the road would include deeper interactions with towns, more options for running the company itself, a more complex perk system, or even introducing more fantastical elements like magic or taking a step forward in tech (why not both?).
If you have read this far and are still interested in the game, I strongly urge you to go buy it. This is easily my favorite game of the year so far. Not because it has flashy graphics or an amazing storyline, but because it ticks so many boxes of what I want a game to be. It is fun through and through, and feels polished from the moment the game begins.
Every fan of tactical RPGs can rejoice - the full release of Battle Brothers is now available:
Full Release
It’s here and it’s done! We’re excited to see the finished Battle Brothers graduate from Early Access and be fully released today, on March 24th, 2017.
Creating this game together with you has been a long and rewarding adventure, and we’re very happy with what the game has grown to become. We hope you enjoy playing Battle Brothers as much as we enjoyed developing it – and given a successful launch, this won’t be the end of the road.
With the game’s release, the soundtrack is now also available as a separate DLC. If you’re the owner of the Deluxe or Supporter edition, it’ll be automatically delivered to you via Steam. The Art & Lore book will become available in the coming weeks.
Let’s celebrate this momentous occasion with our new story trailer for launch and final feature list of the Battle Brothers 1.0 release.
About Battle Brothers
Battle Brothers is a turn based tactical RPG which has you leading a mercenary company in a gritty, low-power, medieval fantasy world. You decide where to go, whom to hire or to fight, what contracts to take and how to train and equip your men in a procedurally generated open world campaign. Do you have what it takes to lead them through bloody battles and to victory?
The game consists of a strategic worldmap and a tactical combat layer. On the worldmap you can freely travel in order to take contracts that earn you good coin, find places worth looting, enemies worth pursuing or towns to resupply and hire men at. This is also where you manage, level up and equip your Battle Brothers. Once you engage a hostile party the game will switch to a tactical map where the actual fighting takes place as detailed turn based combat.
Manage a medieval mercenary company in a procedurally generated open world.
Fight complex turn-based tactical battles with historical equipment and brutal injuries.
Permadeath. All characters that die in combat will stay dead – unless they return as the undead.
All characters come with their own background stories and traits. Want a stuttering ratcatcher, a greedy witch hunter or a drunkard disowned noble?
Character development without a restrictive class-system. Each character gains experience through combat, can level up and acquire powerful perks.
Equipment that matters. Different weapons grant unique skills – split shields with axes, stun enemies with maces, form a spearwall with spears or crush armor with a warhammer.
Diverse enemy roster. All enemies have unique equipment, skills and AI behavior.
A dynamic event system with atmospheric encounters and tough decisions outside of combat.
Three late game crises – a war between noble houses, a greenskin invasion and an undead scourge – add a looming threat.
Two full hours of orchestral soundtrack.
70 Steam Achievements and Steam Trading Cards.
Overhype Studios is an independent game developer studio from Hamburg, Germany. We are devoted to making great games that we want to play ourselves. With Battle Brothers we thrive to reflect the creativity, complexity and originality from the old days when game developers where passionate gamers, not corporate businessmen. While doing this we took a lot of inspiration from some of best games out there: The original X-Com, Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat, Mount & Blade and Jagged Alliance.
This week we start a new Let’s Play series with a preview version of the upcoming final update for Battle Brothers. Watch Jaysen race through the early game and point out new things in this first episode.
loading...
The final update of Battle Brothers is almost here! In this let's play series with developer commentary we show all of the new features you can expect in the final game.
We’ll be releasing new episodes every few days, so check back to see more new features in action. The update will be released to the beta branch of the game for you to play later this month.
The development of Battle Brothers is coming closer to the finish line:
Dev Blog #96: Wrapping Things Up
We’re beginning to wrap things up this week by finishing the last remaining items on our roadmap of things to make it into the final major update. The obituary is done, the veterans’ hall is now fully working, and we’ve added a whole bunch of smaller features. If all goes according to plan, you can expect the update to hit the beta branch of the game later in February. Let’s take a look at shiny new things! Training Hall
Formerly known as the Veterans’ Hall, the Training Hall is now working fully in the game. Usually to be found at larger cities and castles, you can pay to have your men trained in various ways here to shape them into hardened mercenaries – especially useful for mercenary companies later in the game that take on new blood.
Obituary
Also known as the memorial wall or graveyard, the obituary is a new screen that lists all of the men that have fallen under your command so you can properly honor their sacrifice. Aside from being reminded of their achievements and time with you, you’ll also get an unnecessarily colorful description of how they died in a column of its own.
Veteran Levels
Old dogs can in fact learn new tricks, as your men are now able to attain levels beyond the 11th character level. Any such level is considered a ‘veteran level’ and, for balance reasons, comes without a perk point and with limited attribute gain, but it does allow anyone living long enough to truly reach their potential, for you to continue to experience the leveling progression also in the very very late game.
Making Enemies
Another new feature is the ability to attack anyone on the worldmap, no matter your relations, when turning your friendly glove mouse cursor into a threatening sword cursor by holding the Ctrl key and left-clicking them. This only works when you’re striking out on your own and are not currently employed, but it does allow you to go the route of banditry and make lots of enemies if you truly want to, without having to first annoy your employers enough to finally declare you hostile. Although there won’t be any new gameplay aspects to support banditry for now, there’s a new deterrent coming: competing mercenary companies that can also get hired by your enemies to hunt you down.
New Contracts & Events
The coming update will add around a dozen new contracts to the game, and several dozen new events. We’re still busy writing more of them – more interaction with your mercenaries, new encounters as one of the late game crises ravage the land, and some hidden stuff to discover. We’re also creating new illustrations to go with these. Have a look!
Learn more about contract changes in the Battle Brothersdev-blog #95:
Dev Blog #95: Contract Changes
Time to take a look at some changes on how contracts work this week. Negotiations have changed, and we’re introducing a new minor feature to make contracts and your actions within the world of Battle Brothers have more of an impact: situations. Let’s find out what that’s about! Situations
With your actions in the world should come consequences. As we’ve mentioned in a previous dev blog, contracts are now based more on what is actually happening around settlements and less on artificially spawning things for you to fight. Lots of greenskin activity in the neighborhood? Then there’s a good chance people want to hire you to take care of them. There’s direwolves roaming nearby? People are likely to want to hire you to hunt them down.
We want to take this a step further. You know how the village burgomeister is telling you of how people are disappearing and that’s why he wants you to hunt down those beasts? It’s no longer just flavor as we’re introducing situations for settlements.
A settlement can find itself in any number of different situations. If there’s something roaming about, such as direwolves, villagers can be disappearing, which influences both the number of recruits available and the prices you get. As you take on the contract and rid the village of this terror, you’ll resolve the situation and the village can prosper again. Depending on your actions and success in fulfilling contracts, settlements can also find themselves in new situations. For example, your action of escorting an important caravan can result in a castle being freshly supplied, which grants you and everyone else a better selection of goods to shop for. On the other hand, if things don’t go as planned, a settlement can find its granaries raided or burned down, which makes food more rare and more expensive.
While just a small feature by itself, introducing these situations contributes to your actions having more of an impact in the world of Battle Brothers, and it makes the economy feel less static as settlements have actual problems to deal with and benefits to gain from hiring you. In addition, having this system in place will allow us to potentially extend it in the future with situations not linked to contracts, such as the outbreak of a disease, for a more dynamic world. Negotiations
Here’s the thing: Negotiating contracts should be a part of gameplay, but the way it works now, you just ask for more money until the employer denies, and that’s it. It’s automatic, there’s little thought behind it, it’s not an interesting mechanic. So yeah, something needs to change. There’s two ways we could have gone about it: Either turn this into a more complex minigame of negotiating for better pay, or change it into something different. While the idea of creating a complex and fun minigame may be intriguing, it’s also not feasible within a limited timeframe and an already packed roadmap, so we went with the second option.
Contract negotiations are now no longer about how much crowns you are to get, at least not directly, but about when and for what. There’s now a set amount of crowns per contract, depending on the type of contract, its difficulty, your renown and a small random factor. What you’re actually negotiating are payment modalities. What percentage is to be paid in advance? How much per head you return with and how much flat payment? Employers have their own thoughts on the matter, and you can ask them to pay out slices of the contract money in different ways. It’s no longer about getting a few crowns more or less in advance, it’s about whether you get half in advance or not. Sure you may not negotiate as often as before anymore, but if you do, it’ll be a much more deliberate action now.
Work is progressing well on the late game crises – all new contracts and twists are in the game now, and next up is implementing events and some remaining mechanics. So while we’re busy doing that, let’s take a look at some of the new weapons and tools that the upcoming update will bring to the table. Read on!
New Weapons
The upcoming update will bring a total of at least 13 new weapons to the game. While some are unique to the Ancient Dead and come with unique skills, others are there to fill the remaining gaps in progression.
Hooked Blade An agricultural tool adapted for use in battle, the Hooked Blade is a mid-tier variant of the Billhook. We’re handing it out to bandit raiders as we speak, for two purposes: first, to smoothen the difficulty spike experienced when meeting them in the early game, and second, to smoothen the power spike when looting these in the early game. The Billhook is still sometimes wielded by your enemies, of course, but it’s more rare now, and more often found on well-equipped noble troops or other mercenaries.
Rondel Dagger A long, quadrangular spike designed to pierce through weak points in armor, the Rondel Dagger is a high-tier variant of the existing dagger. It’s there to make daggers more viable as niche weapons later on, and it’s what named daggers are now based on in terms of stats. Note that the upcoming update will also bring a minor change to how the Puncture skill works! Military Pick An evolution of the classic pickaxe, the Military Pick has been adapted for use in combat to puncture the sturdiest of armors. It fills the gap between the low-tier Pickaxe and the high-tier Warhammer, and by being both more affordable and common than the latter, will give you the means to successfully engage heavily armored opponents, such as Orc Warriors, earlier in the game.
Heavy Crossbow The heavy crossbow is the new high tier variant of the crossbow, and is effective even against heavily armored targets. It’s roughly equivalent to the high-tier Warbow, and should make the use of crossbows more viable later on in the game if you favor armor-piercing qualities and ease of use over range and rate of fire. Named crossbows are now also based on the Heavy Crossbow in terms of stats.
New Tools
The update won’t just add new weapons, but also several new tools and accessories. Some of these can be unlocked as rewards for fulfilling ambitions, while others can simply be bought at the right place. Falcon A trained falcon can be taken into battle similar to wardogs. It doesn’t fight, but can at any time be let loose to lift the fog of war in an area around you for the remainder of the current round. Useful, for example, when you’re ambushed in deep forest, or looking for that necromancer that keeps evading you. Sergeant’s Sash The Sergeant’s Sash can be earned by fulfilling a specific ambition, and it’s to be worn by your second-in-command in the accessory slot. Not only does it make him visually stand out, it also grants a bonus to the Resolve stat, which in turn synergizes with the ability to rally the men and raise their morale.
We return from the holidays with our first dev blog this year. As announced in our roadmap to the finish line, Battle Brothers is about to receive Steam achievements and trading cards. Let’s take a look at both this week while we continue to work hard on the late game crises we’ve talked about last time. Onwards!
Steam Achievements
You may have already spotted some Steam achievements for Battle Brothers popping up over the last few weeks – that’s because we’ve been testing them. There’s currently a total of 70 achievements in the game, although that number may still change slightly in either direction. We wanted the achievements to be a good mix between short and long term challenges, some more serious and some more fun, as well as some rewarding the natural progression as you play the game. Here’s a few examples of different achievements you’ll be able to unlock once the next update is live.
Battle Brothers will have late game crises, that can be customized a bit:
Dev Blog #92: Late Game Crises
Here we go with a dev blog many of you have been waiting for. After ambitions and retirement, late game crises, also known as the ‘Greater Evil’, are the third aspect of adding more purpose and challenge to the game that we’re going to introduce with the upcoming update. Let’s find out what it’s all about!
The Greater Evil
Older players may remember that when Battle Brothers first entered Early Access, enemy factions would keep on growing and eventually overpower the world of man, if not kept in check by the player. For all the many balancing issues this raised, it certainly had a cool thing about it: the world was changing around you, and what you did had a tangible impact on the world. As we’re nearing the point now where all of the game mechanics are done, we’re going to re-introduce the ability of enemy factions to start an invasion and overrun the world. Only this time, it will be part of one of three different late game crises, and it will be supported by unique contracts, events and gameplay mechanics.
So, where to start? A late game crisis happening is not optional, but you do have some options on customizing them for your campaign. As you start a new campaign, you’ll be able to choose between a random late game crisis (the default), a war between noble houses, a greenskin invasion or the undead arising. A random crisis is probably slightly harder, because you can’t prepare for a specific enemy right from the start, but if you prefer fighting any particular enemy, or just want to see them in action, you can determine the flavor of your future challenge here.
Rock, Paper, Shotgun has previewed the Early Access game Battle Brothers:
Premature Evaluation: Battle Brothers
The life of a sellsword is not a forgiving one. But don’t take my word for it – ask José the Dog Whisperer, who has just been pushed into a narrow hole by a gang of heavily armoured Orcs and savagely sliced to bits from all sides. Oh, I suppose you can’t. Well, you could ask Fibs O’Hanlon, but no, now that I think about it, he was also stabbed until death. Let’s see, what about Dietrich With No Surname? Yes, he’s the one without the head. Oh, oh I see what you mean.
Battle Brothers is set in a world of grimy fantasy, where goblins and bandits and goblin bandits assault you on the road, demanding your money and your life. You play as a posse of armed mercenaries, travelling between towns and taking contracts, but once you get into combat you really see that you are just a bunch of weird medieval busts, taking turns to die on a multi-layered hexagonal grid. It’s like a swords ‘n’ shields version of Jagged Alliance. But I haven’t played those games. Are they difficult? They must be difficult.
[...]
Battle Bros is a tough game. Soldier improvement happens slowly but their deaths happen quickly, giving battles the same feeling of peril as an XCOM skirmish, if not more. And despite constant scraping for gold and loot, it never feels like you have enough. Your mercenaries’ lives become not so much about profiting, but just surviving the next job and the next job, living long enough to level up and perhaps get a better helmet. There’s a precise crowd who will love this, and I suspect you’ll already know if that’s you.
The devs of Battle Brothers are adding a new feature to the game - retirement:
Following up to last week’s dev blog about ambitions, this week we’re taking a look at the second upcoming feature that’s there to give your campaigns more purpose and in this case also closure: retirement. Let’s find out what that’s about!
Retirement
As mentioned last time, different players approach the game differently. For some, the journey is the reward, and the game doesn’t ever have to end. Others want to work towards a goal and then have definite closure to their game. We’re introducing the ability to retire from your company so that you can end your campaign, and have that closure, at any time of your choosing. The game won’t ever just end as you defeat an end game crisis, like the Greenskin Invasion, but it will only end when you choose to end it, or everyone is dead. Depending on the state you leave your company and the world in, and the ambitions you have or have not fulfilled, you’ll be presented with one of five different outcomes to your retirement. If you’ve already played Battle Brothers, you can probably imagine that not all of them are happy ends.
In dev-log #89 the devs of Battle Brothers tell us about the campaign goals of the game:
Ambitions
This week we’re talking ‘ambitions’, a new feature and part of the overarching campaign goals as announced on our roadmap to the finish line. What are ambitions and how do they work? Read on!
Introduction
Battle Brothers is a game about leading a mercenary company. It’s also an open world game that relies heavily on replayability. When it comes to introducing overarching goals to the game, then, a linear story would quickly conflict with replayability, and any story straying from the mercenary narrative would quickly feel artificial and conflict with what the game is supposed to be about. Maybe you care about saving the world or the fate of some princess, maybe you don’t, but it’s for you alone to make that call, and we don’t want to force you into a story that may not align at all with how you want to play a game that should be about your mercenary company. Indeed, the one constant in every campaign, and the one constant for everyone enjoying the game, is building up your own mercenary company, and that’s why this is and will be the overarching goal of the game.
We’ll be introducing 3 different aspects to support this further and give you more sense of purpose, progression and challenge; ambitions, the ability to finish your campaign by retiring from your company, and late game crises. Each of these will be covered in detail in the weeks to come with their very own dev blogs, and we’re starting things off by taking a look at the first of these aspects today: ambitions.
Ambitions
Not surprisingly, players approach the game quite differently. While some easily motivate themselves to build up their company and pick up challenges on their own for dozens of hours, if not more, others crave for being provided with more direction and structure. We’re introducing ambitions as mid-term milestones for you to work towards on the path of forging a legendary company in a way that fits the game’s narrative and lets you earn unique rewards.
We’ve put to rest the old skeletons only to resurrect them as the ‘ancient dead’. This week we’re taking a tour through their new lore, weapons and armor, fighting style and enemy types. Let’s delve in!
Introduction
The very first opponents in Battle Brothers were the undead. They were a good starting point for testing combat mechanics and developing the AI, but this early in development we didn’t yet put as much thought into their design as we’d do with later opponents. Moving on to develop orcs and goblins, we made sure that those had a certain level of cultural background reflected in their visuals, and in their choice of weapons and armor, and that they had a fighting style of their own, one that challenges players in unique ways and requires different tactics to beat reliably. In contrast, there isn’t really anything unique about how skeletons fight in the game, or about how they look. They’re just your generic fantasy skeletons – until now.
The world wasn’t always like it is now. Ruins dot the map, mass graves, sunken castles. But where did they come from?
Many hundred years ago, in a different era, an empire of man spanned much of the known world. What has fallen into ruin now, what was abandoned to nature and beast, what has long been forgotten, all this was that of man once. An empire, not of petty noble houses, but one of a dozen provinces, from the frozen tundra of the north to the blistering sands of the south, of a dozen peoples under one banner.
So many peoples, so many cultures and ideas under one roof, all vying to pull the empire into a direction of their own. Could those not be reconciled? Did they, in the end, just pull the empire apart? As remote lands became provinces of the empire, so could local cults become religions that swept across its entirety. Was the authority of the emperor lost to religion? Was it the gods that punished man for worshipping spirits that promised to give what they would not?
Does it matter now what brought it down? The ancient dead are rising again, not living and yet not dead. Long lost legions heed the call of their emperor. They march once more, tirelessly and without emotion, to claim again what was once theirs. What brought down the empire in the end, and what is bringing it back to unlife, is for you to piece together based on clues hidden within the world, if you want to learn more.
The Ancient Legions
The bulk of the ancient dead is made up of the ancient legions. They are what conquered most of the known world once, and they may well do so again. Legions that never tire, legionnaires that know no fear, a cold machine that ever marches forward. What could stop them?
The legions fight like they did hundreds of years ago – in tight formation two ranks deep, with shields in front and polearms in the back. They rely quite heavily on the front row providing protection with their shields and locking down the enemy, while the second row uses polearms to inflict heavy damage on their opponents. A formation like this doesn’t charge like undisciplined rabble, but advances slowly and makes heavy use of shields to protect against arrow fire. They don’t possess any ranged weaponry and don’t do flanking maneuvers, preferring to simply walk through any enemy. Because much of their strength is in their formation, they’re at a disadvantage when fighting in difficult terrain, such as forests. They are also the missing piece of the puzzle that makes resolve an important attribute, as fighting them continually puts a test to the morale of the men.
The ancient legions come with a whole lot of unique armor, helmets and weapons. It’s old, it’s brittle and sometimes broken, but it can still be deadly. All of it, except for some cloth rags, is lootable and can be equipped by your Battle Brothers.
Ancient Auxiliary
Recruited from local vassals was the light infantry, the ancient auxiliaries. Because Battle Brothers, at least for now, focuses on a pseudo-germanic region of the world, the equipment of these auxiliary troops is based on the look of ancient germanic and celtic warriors.
An auxiliary is armed with spear, short sword or falx – a new weapon unique to them. They’re lightly armored, often just with the remains of cloaks sporting the pattern of their ancient clans, and sometimes helmets passed down through the family. Time has taken a toll on both weapons and armor, and so you may find them attacking with broken swords seemingly unaware of it
Ancient Legionary
Ancient legionnaires make up the medium infantry. Once professional soldiers, legionnaires enlisted for several years to be trained and used in the empire’s campaigns in exchange for land they could settle at and call their own. Legionnaires are well-armed with metal armor, sword and shield, or pike.
Legions from all the different eras of the empire answer its call, so you’ll find legionnaires that died a hundred years apart, all with different armor, helmet and shield design, to march together.
Ancient Honor Guard
Recruited from the ranks of veteran legionnaires are the ancient honor guard, once used as personal bodyguards and as heavy infantry to tip the scales of battle. The highest honor a common legionary could hope to achieve, joining the honor guard involved a symbolic death to shed the weakness and frailty of man, and being transformed into a tool of the emperor. No longer a man, but the manifestation of the emperor’s will, the honor guard was encased entirely in armor that did not show any flesh, becoming essentially a living, moving and fighting statue.
Honor guards make use of heavy weaponry from all corners of the ancient empire, such as the warscythe, the rhomphaia and a two-handed cleaver. They were once among the finest and most dedicated warriors of their time, and although now but bones in rusty armor, their skill still echoes through their every swing of the sword.
But wait, there’s more!
We’ll conclude our presentation of the ancient dead in next week’s dev blog with the overhauled vampire, as well as the introduction of an entirely new enemy to fight against. How exciting!
Henriquejr spotted the changelog for the Battlebrothers update 0.7.0.11:
A new contract variant, overhauled Necromancers and Fallen Heroes, balancing changes and bugfixes - all this and more in this week's update!
Please note that this is likely going to be the last update to the game for a while. As explained in last week's roadmap, we'll now start working on the last big update to the game. Because most of the upcoming changes are interconnected, we'll have to do this as one big package to be released when everything is done. Of course, we'll always keep you up-to-date with what we're working on in our dev blog posts right here!
Changelog
Added 'Defend Settlement' contract against greenskins.
Added overhauled Necromancer with new visuals and additional skill.
Added new Fallen Hero Wiedergänger and potential bodyguard for necromancers together with a few new lootable armors and helmets. The classic skeleton variant will eventually be replaced as part of the upcoming undead overhaul, but remains in the game for now.
Added hint to injury tooltip reminding the player that injuries will only heal if the company has medicinal supplies on stock.
Changed introductory contract to no longer show the 'Hire at least 3 more men' objective once the player has done so but not yet completed the other objectives.
Changed introductory contract to have one less opponent in the final battle on lower difficulty levels.
Changed bonus effect of 'Spear Mastery' perk to having the 'Spearwall' skill no longer be disabled once an opponent manages to enter the Zone of Control, and continue to work on any further opponents attempting to close in.
Changed attribute gain per levelup to be slightly higher for initiative.
Changed position of fatigue and morale bars in panel for selected character of tactical UI.
Fixed amount of provisions/ammo/medicine not being properly displayed in red when at zero on the worldmap.
Fixed raiders stopping their attack on a settlement when the player cancels an ongoing 'Defend Settlement' contract.
Fixed issue with 'Defend Settlement' contract getting confused about kidnappings that didn't happen because the player already killed all attackers before they could act.
Fixed player being able to fast travel by ship to hostile settlements and get contracts there.
Fixed morale flags not getting removed in after-combat-report for suvivors with permanent injuries.
Fixed inventory filters resetting on actions such as equipping an item.
Fixed 'Bruised Leg' injury not reducing initiative like it should.
Here's the roadmap for the Strategy/RPG Mix Battle Brothers:
Dev Blog #82: Roadmap to the Finish Line
Battle Brothers has come a long way since it entered Early Access over a year ago, in April of 2015. Every update has brought it a step closer towards being a finished game – and there’s still a few more steps to take. Read on to learn what changes and additions are yet to come!
What’s still to come?
With the perk & injury update live and stable, we’ll now start working on the last big update to the game before it leaves Early Access. This is going to be the second-biggest update after the big worldmap update earlier this year and will take us several months to complete.
Here’s the list of major points we’ll be working on:
Three different ‘Greater Evil’ end game crises for you to get involved in – a war between noble houses, a greenskin invasion and an undead invasion. Each will come with its own set of contracts, events and changes to the world.
An overarching goal to work towards throughout your campaign, and the ability to retire at any point to receive an illustrated ending screen telling of your accomplishments.
A more lively and dynamic world, with more opportunities for you to shape it, and more relation between what is going on in the world and contracts on offer.
A memorial wall screen where your fallen Battle Brothers are listed with their deeds.
An overhaul of the mood and desertion mechanics on the worldmap.
An overhaul of the undead faction with new visuals and lore, unique lootable weapons and armor, and the introduction of new enemy types with their own fighting style.
An overhaul of ghouls as independent beasts that are more interesting and challenging to fight.
More contracts and events to change things up.
Various improvements to usability in both combat and on the worldmap.
Steam achievements.
Not included in that list are the countless smaller additions and improvements we’ll be doing along the way. As usual, all the major points and most of the minor ones will be explained in detail in future dev blogs as we go along, so you’ll always know what we’re working on and why.
This big update, once published, will then be followed by a couple of smaller updates for balancing, bug fixing and further improvements based on your feedback until the game is ready to be released.
So does that mean…?
It means that Battle Brothers will not be released in 2016. We’re looking at a release in early 2017 and you’ll be the first to know once we have a set date – most likely to happen when the last big update is live. It’s important to us that the finished game feels complete, polished and well worth its price, so we’ll take the time necessary to ensure just that and won’t rush anything.
It also means that some features that were considered at one point in development or another have been cut and will not make it into the game for now. While some concepts simply won’t fit anymore with how the game has evolved, others would still be cool to have but also require a lot of time to do right. Time that we then couldn’t spend working on other things. Game development is often about hard choices and setting priorities – what feature best to spend our limited time on? What feature will benefit the game the most? Our choices on what’s most important are reflected in the list above. If ever there is an expansion to Battle Brothers, we may revisit some of the concepts that didn’t make it into the game at first.
Also, the game has been updated
That’s right. The game has just been updated to version 0.7.0.10 with a new contract, balancing changes, a multitude of AI improvements and a couple of bug fixes. Find the changelog below.
The new UI for Battle Brothers has been released last week Thursday in update 0.6.1.6.
After tinkering with it over the last week in the beta branch, the new UI has just launched to propel Battle Brothers further towards being a finished game. Thanks to everyone who participated and helped us ironing out any issues!
We’ve talked a lot about the why of the new UI in blog posts over the recent weeks, so instead of doing it again, here’s the short list of changes for this update.
A more responsive UI with a hand-crafted look that fits the game’s setting.
A new reserve roster for a total of 18 Battle Brothers to keep with your company.
The formation in battle is now customizable via drag & drop.
Battles can now be ended once all your enemies are in retreat.
Four new events on the worldmap.
A new music track on the worldmap.
Movement sounds in combat specific to each type of terrain.
Numerous bugfixes.
This update does not break savegames.
The next major milestone for us is the introduction of a more complex injury system to take full advantage of the reserve roster, as well as the long-awaited perk overhaul.
According to an announcement for Battle Brothers last Friday, we will be seeing the updated UI for the game this week.
Good news, everyone! The reworked UI is almost ready to go. It sports a new look of wood and iron, and comes with two long-awaited additions: A larger roster with reserves and a customizable formation for battle.
Because some underlying parts of the game have been changed quite extensively, new issues are bound to arise, and we’d like to iron them out with your help. As previously announced, we’ll thus first launch the reworked UI in a separate beta branch, and once everything works smoothly, merge it with the main branch of the game. The beta branch will launch early next week so that we’re in office and can immediately address any potential problems.
To learn more about the new UI and coming additions, read our last dev blog here.
Here we go again. After being delayed a bit while we waited for some technical issues to be resolved, as well as some of us taking a small vacation to recharge our batteries, we’re now back to working full steam on the UI rework. What does it entail? Let’s find out!
What are we doing?
Several things.
First, we’re replacing the third-party UI library we used for Battle Brothers until now. There are a couple of issues we want to solve; there’s a tendency for mouse clicks to be lost, and the UI can feel very sluggish at times. Because this library ceased to be developed and we’re now stuck with all these problems, we can either ignore them or replace the library altogether. We’ve opted to go with the second option, and the result should be a much more responsive UI experience overall, as well as increased performance of the game.
Second, we’re taking the opportunity to make some usability improvements to the UI. We’ll be resizing some dialogs to have you scroll less, and we’ll be adding additional UI functionality.
Third, we’re skinning the UI. The current look, grey and orange, was always intended as a placeholder and not something for the finished game. We’re switching it out for lots of wood and metal in order to have the UI contribute to the game’s atmosphere rather than detract from it, and to give Battle Brothers a more professional look as it nears completion. See below for an idea of how the new UI will look, but keep in mind that we’re still working on it and will be adjusting colors and adding details.
Why do it now?
There’s two gameplay features yet to be added that require quite a bit of UI work: extended roster management and customizable formations. While we’re itching to get these into the game as soon as possible, doing these before the UI rework would potentially mean having to redo their UI again later, thereby wasting development time. We’re doing the UI rework now so that we can then move on to implement both of these features next.
When will it be done?
We’re progressing at a good pace and should have a new build with an updated UI available within the next couple of weeks. The idea is to make it available first as an optional branch of the game – this way we won’t break anything for you and can iron out any potential issues based on your feedback. Once we’re sure that everything works fine, we’ll merge the branches.
Nordic Game 2016
On the 19th of May we’ll head out to Malmö, Sweden, to attend the Nordic Game Conference held there from the 18th to the 20th. The last day of the conference will focus on indie games, making it the perfect place to get in touch with fellow developers, enthusiasts and all sorts of business contacts.
If you want to know more about the event you can get all the details here: http://conf.nordicgame.com/. If some of you should be there as well feel free to drop us a mail so we can meet up and have a quick chat!
TheBattle Brothers Strategy RPG is getting better and better:
Update 0.6.0.21
This week’s update adds the last batch of natural combat environments. With all terrain on the worldmap accounted for in combat, we can cross another item off of our list towards a finished game!
Swamps received a major overhaul for a much sleeker look, as you can see below. Picking a fight on hilly terrain on the worldmap now actually results in hills in combat, so there is now a benefit to retreating to hills or luring enemies there to make a stand. Finally, snowy forests now look appropriately, and mountains come with their very own new combat environment full of crags and ravines.
With all this done, we move on to work on adding more contracts, having locations like bandit camps being present on combat maps, and doing lots of UI work necessary before implementing certain new features. Because some of those items require longer periods of development and testing, we’ll transition again to have larger but less frequent updates to the game for a while. Depending on what we’re working on, it could be several weeks between those more meaty updates. We’ll keep you updated as we go along.
Changelog
Added new swamp combat environment.
Added new mountainous combat environment.
Added new snowy forest combat environment.
Added new hilly combat environments for grassland, tundra, steppe and snow.
Changed ‘Swipe’ scenario to use the new forest environment.
Changed ‘Early Game’ scenario to use the new swamp environment.
Fixed mountains, snowy forests and shores on the worldmap not being linked correctly to their combat environments. Requires starting a new campaign to take effect.
This week’s update adds a new combat environment: the tundra. Flat and stony plains, sparse vegetation and a unique look make it stand out among the growing collection of different environments to do battle in. Here’s how it looks in the game.
Here's the changelog for the new Battle Brothers update:
Worldmap Update 0.6.0.16
This update adds a reimagined version of the ‘Escort Caravan’ contract to the game. You’re now part of the actual caravan and don’t have to manually travel alongside it anymore. While the caravan travels, controls are locked from you, but time will pass faster until the destination is reached. The contract doubles as a way to fast-travel around the world and may also give you added safety with the caravan hands and guards in the beginning of the game. Be sure to take ample provisions before you start your journey!
The contract system has seen a general change. Contracts now vary in difficulty and payment as indicated by a rating of between one to three skulls. If you’ve taken some losses and need to rebuild your company, taking on easier contracts with a one-skull-rating might be a wise decision. On the other hand, if you don’t feel challenged enough, take on a contract with a three-skull-rating and get paid handsomely. Note that the skull ratings are rough estimates and don’t necessarily mean that a contract has to always be easy or hard for you. In an open world you can always run into roaming enemies, and how you fare against certain opponents will depend heavily on your equipment, leveling and tactics.
Finally, this update also adds our first all-new combat environment: the dry and flat steppe. Here’s how it looks in the game.
Changelog
Added new 'Escort Caravan' contract.
Added two new events.
Added steppe combat environment.
Added more debug output to logfile in order to help track down some remaining issues.
Changed contracts to vary in difficulty (and payment) as indicated by a rating of between one to three skulls.
Changed larger settlement factions to potentially offer more than one contract at a time.
Changed Orc Line Battle scenario to take place in the steppe.
Changed Riposte appearing as a negative factor in the hitchance breakdown only when the opponent is actually in range to execute a counter-attack.
Changed game to no longer pause when out of focus. Remember to hit Spacebar or Escape to pause on the worldmap before alt-tabbing out!
Fixed potential crash on worldgen.
Fixed destinations for 'Armed Courier' contract not being uncovered on the map in some cases.
Fixed issue with AI of Withered Vampires that prevented them from using the Darkflight skill in some cases.
Fixed issue with AI of Orc Warriors that had them use the Line Breaker skill when they shouldn't.
Fixed armor for helmets displayed as floating point value in some cases.
Over at the Battle Brothers site there has been an update on the state of the World Map.
Worldmap Update 0.6.0.9
Whew.
It's crazy how many issues can all of a sudden pop up once 700 people start playing the game. After yesterday's hotfixes, here is a larger bugfixing and balance update that contains all of today's work.
We'll continue to focus our efforts on fixing any bugs and glaring balance issues until the game is as stable and playable again as it was before.
Have a nice evening! Changelog
Changed roaming enemy parties to start out weaker in the early game.
Changed contract rewards to be slightly higher.
Changed contracts to appear sooner after starting a new campaign.
Changed contracts to appear slightly more often.
Changed employers to be slightly less enraged when the player cancels contracts despite receiving advance payment.
Changed second tutorial battle to have one less opponent on Even difficulty.
Changed hotkey to show/hide tracking to ‘Tab', hotkey for camping to ‘T' and opening the character screen back to ‘C'.
Changed the way sounds and music are loaded in order to eliminate some potential crashes for people. This may introduce minor lag as music changes, but with the crashes gone we now can take the time to look for the best solution.
Fixed potential crash when loading an autosave right before combat.
Fixed game not saving correctly in rare cases when destroying a location that has a party roaming around it.
Fixed tutorial battle not triggering correctly because of Hoggart's hair.
Fixed bug potentially having the player start out with large amounts of money.
Fixed battles starting with the player being ambushed when they shouldn't.
Fixed issue with contract payment not scaling properly to contract difficulty.
Fixed ‘Tab' key making the UI glitch and not accept keyboard input correctly sometimes.
Fixed the player starting on tiny islands in rare cases with no way to get off.
Fixed bandits having a leader hostile to them in a twist of the ‘Drive away bandits' contract.
Fixed player choice in twist of the ‘Investigate Cemetery' contract not being registered correctly.
Fixed player choice in twist of the ‘Armed Courier' contract not being registered correctly.
Fixed issue with ‘Investigate Cemetery' contracts being issued on small islands with no space to spawn the cemetery.
Fixed issue with player's wardogs not properly attacking militia and noble house troops.
Fixed people joining the player via events even when the roster is already at full capacity.
The development blog for Battle Brothers has been updated with information on taverns and tracking.
Taverns with the capacity to serve a mercenary company can be found in larger settlements, cities and castles, and the odd small village along trade routes. Laughter can be heard coming from it pretty much around the clock, as it’s one of the few buildings that can be entered both day and night. It’s also the first instance that we’re using small atmospheric images in the UI, as you’ll see below, and the idea is to have a whole bunch of them complement the events in the game as we skin the UI later down the road.
Although taverns aren’t the most critical of buildings, they nevertheless fill with the services they offer what was previously a vacant spot in the world of Battle Brothers. These services revolve heavily around beverages, and they’re talking to the patrons for news and rumors while sharing a beer, and paying a round for your own men in order to get their spirits up. We’ll look at each of them in detail.
As you enter the tavern, you’ll immediately pick up some talk amongst the patrons. What they talk about comes in different categories, and
Dev Blog #66: Progress Update – Putting the Pieces together
The holidays are over and it’s back to work! This week we started putting all the pieces we have been creating over the past months together so that we can start playtesting and balancing all the new additions for the update in February.
Populating the World
Reworking the worldmap feels a bit like taking a machine apart and putting it back together. We started again at the beginning, improving the layout and terrain of the world, adding more interesting and unique settlements, and creating a more complex web of different factions. Now is the time to populate the world again and let the inhabitants roam the world.
Speaking of population, the world now has more clearly defined regions than before. There's the densely populated areas between settlements that belong to noble houses - you'll find bandits there every now and then, and the odd beast may find its way there, but it's a lot safer than the regions bordering on the wild. The wild is largely covered in fog at the beginning of the game and for you to explore. It's home to Orcs, Goblins and worse, and not somewhere you should venture out to before you got some experience under your belt.
Battle Brothers - Wardogs, Armor and Visual Makeover
by Myrthos, Wednesday - July 29, 2015 12:37
In a new development blog for Battle Brothers we are informed that wardogs are being added to the game and the armor mechanics changed. In addition a makeover of many of the older assets in the game are being worked on.
That’s right, wardogs have made their way into the game and you can soon have them in your mercenary company. These dogs are of a large and aggressive breed and they come with their own name and one of several different looks. But what is their purpose?
Goblins will rely heavily on ranged combat and kiting their opponents, so Battle Brothers need a new trick up their sleeves as well. And while the recently introduced feature of retreating enemies does alleviate the issue of having to catch the last remaining enemies, we want to go further. Wardogs are a tool for the player to chase down any enemy and hold them in place until Battle Brothers arrive, as well as to find any enemies hidden in the fog of war. It’s a tool that makes a lot of sense in a medieval fantasy world, and at the same time is something to have fun with and get invested in. Afterall, who doesn’t like dogs?
Wardogs are not individual characters in your party but are treated like an item – at least outside of combat. They can be bought in settlements and then assigned to a character before combat. Ever noticed that empty slot in the top left of your characters’ paper doll? That’s the accessory slot, and that’s where wardogs go, among other things.
In combat the character handling a dog has a unique skill called ‘Unleash Wardog’. The unleashed dog will spawn on an adjacent free tile and will act immediately after the handler has finished his turn. The dog is not controlled by the player but by the AI following a distinct behavior – it will straight up charge for the next free opponent and engage him in melee all while doing a lot of barking. Wardogs don’t actually do that much damage, at least not against armored opponents, but they are very useful in pinning down archers or other elusive targets in the opponent’s backline for your Battle Brothers to follow up. What’s more, they can track down hidden enemies. If you don’t know where the last few enemies are hiding on the map, unleash a dog and he will find them for you.
The development blog for Battle Brothers has been updated with information on worn armor and Goblins.
So far, everyone was wearing well-crafted armor and helmets in mint condition. This always felt a bit out of place especially with the bandits who looked pretty much like regular soldiers or militia forces with their equipment. After all, they are supposed to be outlaws living in the woods and they can have a hard time getting materials to repair their gear.
To address this, we’ve made a variety of new armor and helmets with a worn-out look, gear that has been patched up many times, lost some parts or has become rusted. This gives the bandit faction a unique look and makes them stand out from other human factions. What is more, all these items have their own values for armor and fatigue penalties. In general, the worn-out and patched armors are a bit lighter, giving less fatigue penalties but also having less armor points.
Goblins are of course the major coming new feature for Battle Brothers. We’ll do a proper reveal in time and talk about their place in the world, their culture, their equipment and their individual troop types in detail. Until then, we didn’t want to leave you without a small teaser of what is to come. So here it is, an image of the Goblin Wolfrider!
The most recent update for Battle Brothers adds named items with unique looks and randomized stats as rare loot for the most powerful opponents. In addition some bugs are fixed and balancing issues solved.
As we see it, there are two problems with the item progression currently. Firstly, the player very quickly skips the lower tiers of weapons after just the first few battles because higher tier weapons generally drop as loot and are widely available for reasonable prices. And because mid to high tier equipment is available so soon, there is also little to buy or save for later in the game. This will be addressed with the next big update. Secondly, although the selection of weapons, shields and armor is ever-increasing, there is a distinct lack of reward when prevailing against the strongest of opponents, and little excitement in the looting phase after battle. This update aims to address this.
The strongest opponents now have a small chance to both use and drop as loot named weapons and shields that offer some advantages over their nameless counterparts and come with looks of their own. Their stats are slightly randomized to excel in different areas and some of them are plain better than others. To be clear, named items are not the legendary items we plan on adding eventually – they’re just very well crafted weapons and shields and should make looting in the game a bit more interesting for now, as well as allow you to customize your brothers better with their unique look.
They are also loking for a sound designer:
Going forward we’re looking for a dedicated hobbyist or professional sound designer to join us in making the game come alive. Your responsibilities would include designing the sound effects for various fantasy creatures, general battle sounds, footsteps, ambient noise and user interface sounds. If you’re a fan of Battle Brothers and would love to work on the game yourself, read our full job posting and apply at contact@overhypestudios.com!
Time sure flies by fast! It’s been a full month now since we announced that we’d go full time and needed some weeks to get everything sorted out. While we took care of business and set up our new workspaces, we were also featured on the Steam Summer Sale for a day. Yay!
We’re happy to let you know that we’re now back in the saddle again. Both Christof (the programmer) and Jan (the manager) have moved to work full time on Battle Brothers. The last of the bunch, Paul (the artist), will join us mid-July. Development pace should now pick up again.
As previously announced, the first item on our roadmap is the introduction of an event system for the game. Today’s update to the game adds just that, so let’s take a closer look…
The Event System
Managing a mercenary company is not an easy thing. Not only do you need to command your men in battle, now your leadership skills are tested outside of combat as well. It’s easy to forget at times that the little guys you control are supposed to be humans. As humans, they sometimes have their own agenda, they have strengths and weaknesses in character, they may change with time, they may quarrel or bond with each other, and they’ll come to you with requests. While traveling on the worldmap, a lot can happen, much of which we can now convey to you with events. To kick things off, we’ve added 47 events to the game. These include things that you can just stumble upon while traveling the world, some things that require you to be at certain places, as well as things that require characters of certain backgrounds or traits in your party. Some backgrounds may not play well together, and some may have advantages or disadvantages also outside of combat. What choices you have available at events may depend on what characters you have, and the outcome of your choices may differ as well. (...)
Chasing that last surviving bandit marksman on a forest map isn’t always that fun, so non-undead enemies now have the ability to retreat from the battlefield should they perceive there to be no chance of winning the encounter. Just like the player, the AI has to reach the map border in order to retreat safely, giving you the chance to intercept them if you want to let noone escape, or get all the loot.
Whether an AI combatant retreats or not depends on a few factors, such as how many of his allies are still with him, how many have already fallen, and how many men the player still has. For the time being, the AI will not attempt to flee a battle from the beginning, even if they’re outnumbered. The option of retreat is meant for the last few scattered survivors. The actual thresholds for when individual combatants make use of it may still need some numbers tweaking.
We know that this doesn’t solve the issue of chasing enemy archers across the map in its entirety, but it is a good step in the right direction that makes sense in the context of the game world. We’ll eventually introduce a few more tools that will enable the player to better handle such situations. (...)
Overhype Studios reveals some great news in their Dev Blog #42:
Progress Update – Going Full Time and A Small Roadmap
Time for some good news!
It’s been more than three weeks now since Battle Brothers released into Early Access and so far it has been pretty successful. The game was well received and we got a lot of helpful feedback from all of you, much of which we’ll incorporate into the game over the course of the next year. There is a lot still left to do, of course, but things are looking bright.
The game has also been a financial success for us. As you may be aware, Battle Brothers was developed by a core team of just 3 people over the course of nearly 2 years in their spare time while also working day jobs. The recent success now allows us to quit our day jobs and start working fulltime on Battle Brothers. That’s right, we’re about to have a lot more time we can put into the game and should be able to make progress much faster than before!
The downside for now is that quitting our day jobs and going full time is not something we can do over night. As you may know from experience yourselves, changing jobs always comes with a lot of organizational hurdles. Getting legal stuff out of the way, setting up new workplaces, doing a clean handover for you former job, existing contractual obligations, and so on. We are looking at a transitional period that will keep us pretty busy over the next couple of weeks.
During these next weeks we won’t be able to make much progress on the game itself and provide you with updates as frequently as before. It’s all worth it, however, because once things are settled, the game should progress at a much faster pace than in the 2 years before, and we’re already looking forward to really get going!
A big thank you to all of you who made this, our dream of working on our very own game, possible! And an extra big thank you to those of you who supported us even more by getting the Supporter Edition!
A Small Roadmap
To give you a better idea of our immediate plans, once we have settled into working full time on Battle Brothers, we also want to share a small roadmap with you.
1) Event System As explained in our last blog post, our next immediate goal is the addition of the event system to add interesting encounters and tough decisions outside of combat, as well as laying the foundations for dialog and a future rework of the contract system. Because a lot of events will change depending on what backgrounds or traits your Battle Brothers have, it’ll also add a layer of complexity to character backgrounds beyond just their different stats.
2) Goblins Next up are Goblins. Those are the green skinned cousins of the orcs that have an entirely different fighting style. While orcs rely on physical prowess and brute-forcing their way through your ranks, goblins lack the physical power to do so. In fact, they’re quite fragile individually, more so than your average Battle Brother. In battle they rely on their wits and dirty tricks instead, preferring to fight at range. Goblins come with their own arsenal of unique weaponry and skills – throwing nets to incapacitate their enemies, arrows with terrible poison and long jagged pikes. Goblins should add an entirely new challenge to combat in Battle Brothers and are also meant to be a missing piece of the puzzle that is game balance by making ranged combat more important. No longer is the nimble swordmaster safe from all danger!
Goblin Concept
3) Rework of the Worldmap The third and by far largest step on our immediate roadmap is a rework of the worldmap as a whole. It’s quite clear that the world simulation, as it is now, is not satisfactory. With the resources available to us now and the lessons learned so far, we’re going to design new gameplay around commandeering a mercenary company in a low-fantasy medieval world. We already have a solid concept for this, and we’ll update you once things are further along. Yes, there will be multiple human factions working against each other. And yes, we’ll make contracts a lot more interesting and dynamic.
A word of warning: Battle Brothers is NOT for casual players - like Emily said:
Battle Brothers rewards careful planning. Its AI adapts effectively to changes in battle — even skirmishes that outwardly appear to be easy can result in the loss of life without careful planning. Sometimes, even that is not enough to save your men.
The Battle Brothers website summarizes one week of Early Access on Steam and share their views on the next steps.
We’ll soon start working on our first new feature: The event system.
While traveling the world a lot of unforeseen things can happen and surprise you. These events can occur anytime and anyplace and will force you to make tough decisions outside combat. Just to give you random example of what might be; if there is a Battle Brother with a criminal background in your mercenary company, a passing guard patrol might recognize that character and demand you hand him over as a prisoner or face the consequences. Similarly, individual characters in your group might interact depending on their backgrounds and traits – will the adventurous noble get along with the lazy sluggard beggar?
Events like this will not be entirely random but depend on what happens in the world and which characters are in your company. Their outcomes will be partially randomized for the sake of replayability. The possibilities for creating interesting, challenging and morally ambiguous events are limitless.
Rock Paper Shotgun looked into the early access version of Battle Brothers and come back with positive stuff like this:
The stuff that’s already there is great, though. Each class of weapon has a unique attack rather than simply changing stats and combat is brutally tense, as a perfect blow can kill even the mightiest mercenary. You’ll spend a lot of time replacing fallen brothers, as well as gear that deteriorates over time, and even though you’ll see the same text cropping up again and again, the backgrounds and traits of your soldiers are just detailed enough to hang stories on. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.
All of this is to say that even in its current state, Battle Brothers is well worth a look and certainly one to keep an eye on as development continues. Hurrah!
Overhype Studios next update announces that Battle Brothers is ready for Early Access on Steam, and the developer prefers you buy the game off their website.
Battle Brothers released to Early Access
Finally! After all that waiting you can now experience for yourself how it feels to get your men slaughtered and, in some rare cases, even emerge victorious in a game of Battle Brothers. We hope you enjoy playing the game as much as we enjoyed designing it!
Please keep in mind that this game was just released into Early Access and is far from finished. We consider it a solid foundation upon which we can now build a truly great game over the course of the next year.
Where to get it
The best place for buying the game is at our very own website. You’ll receive a Steam key with which you can start playing right away. In addition, you may leave a tip to further support us if you want.
Battle Brothers will launch to Early Access on April 27th
Finally! We’re all giggly and excited to get the game out there and see what you guys come up with, how you’ll play it, what you’ll think about it and which ideas and feedback you’ll have! Battle Brothers will launch on Steam and will also be available on the Humble Store and our very own website. We’ll look into other platforms for selling the game as well.
What’s in the Early Access?
The game is very much playable and stable with all core mechanics in place. It features several scenarios and an open world campaign mode with 20+ different enemies, 80+ items, 42 character perks and thousands of procedurally generated mercenaries for hire. Campaign gameplay is more sandboxy than the final game will be as the overarching story and endgame, along with more content and other features adding to the depth of the game, will be added as the Early Access progresses. The UI is not skinned yet, there will be bugs and the game balance may need some tweaking based on your feedback.
Here are the key features:
Procedurally generated worldmap, tactical combat maps and mercenaries.
Open and dynamic world simulation that is not scripted – your actions can actually alter the balance of the world.
All characters come with their own background stories and traits. Want a stuttering ratcatcher, a greedy witchhunter or a drunkard disowned noble?
Permadeath. All characters that die in combat will stay dead – unless they return as the undead.
Field up to 12 Battle Brothers on large and varied tactical combat maps with different terrain and multiple height levels.
Character development without a restrictive class-system. Each Battle Brother gains experience through combat, can level up and acquire powerful perks.
Equipment that matters. Different weapons grant unique skills – split shields with axes, stun enemies with maces, form a spearwall with spears or crush armor with a warhammer.
Diverse enemy roster. All enemies have unique equipment, skills and AI behavior.
One full hour of orchestral soundtrack with more on the way.
Overhype Studios released a new fourty minute preview video this week based on the early Access version of Battle Brothers on the games official YouTube channel.
loading...
This is a preview of the Early Access version of Battle Brothers! There won't be any major changes until the EA release so if you are wondering whether to buy the game and support us once the EA starts just watch this series and then decide.
Overhype Studios released another development update for Battle Brothers that has more information about weapon durability, new perks, and clouds.
So much work! Our current focus is on getting the balance right for our upcoming Early Access release and hunting down all those pesky bugs. Over the last two weeks we had two major changes: We’ve added durability of weapons and did a rework of all 42 perks in the game. Also, we managed to squeeze in moving clouds on the worldmap.
Overhype Studios released their 40th development blog for Battle Brothers. Topics this time are Campaign Customization, Retreating and Desertion, Men-at-Arms, & Zombies.
As always we’ve added a bouqet of new features and content over the past two weeks. This time we have a new start campaign screen with difficulty and banner selection, more in-game mechanics with the ability to order retreat from combat, and mercenaries deserting you if you run out of money and/or food. And that’s not all. Let’s go into the details.
by Couchpotato, Thursday - February 12, 2015 04:20
Overhype Studios released the second Lets Play video for Battle Brothers thats shows off more game footage based on an early Pre-Early Access build of the game.
loading...
In the second episode we rally our remaining mercenaries and head out to find a location where some new enemies confront us with a real challenge.
Overhype Studios released a new lets play video for Battle Brothers that shows over thirty minutes of brand new footage based on the Pre-Early Access Version of the game.
loading...
This Let’s Play was done with a development build that is still very much work in progress. Although the game isn’t ready yet to be released at this point, it should already give you a good idea on what the Early Access will look like and how a campaign in Battle Brothers plays. This is part 1 of a small series and a couple of additional episodes will follow over the next week.
It's time again for another progress update from Overhype Studios this week with more information on the bandits, militia, rivers, and more topics for Battle Brothers.
We’ve been busy this past week adding a whole bunch of smaller features and new assets to the game. Bandits are now available for you to fight in tactical combat – our first opposing faction that consists almost entirely of humans. Also, militia is now desperately defending their homes in tactical combat as well. But that’s not all.
Overhype Studios next blog update for Battle Brothers talks about the games mercenary contracts. and shares anew image oft the village screen.
We hope you all had a great holiday time and a happy new year!
After the holidays it’s back to work – and we’re happy to announce that our last missing core mechanic, the mercenary contracts, has now made it into the game. From now on it is adding meat to the bones, that is content, polishing and eventually secondary features. Read up in our progress update on villages, castles and mercenary contracts to learn more.
by Couchpotato, Saturday - December 20, 2014 05:19
Overhype Studios latest blog update for Battle Brothers shares a new video with developer commentary about how the games Strategic Worldmap will work.
loading...
For the first time we present you a video of our strategic worldmap in action. In the video we explain all the core features and mechanics of our Battle Brothers worldmap and show how the different factions act and behave. It took us a little longer than expected to get this done as we completely reworked all worldmap tiles and the way they are combined to achieve a more natural look.
Overhype Studios next blog update for Battle Brothers shares a new video with developer commentary about how an Orc battle will function in the game.
Our new gameplay video covers a line battle against the orcs with full commentary from one of our devs. Expect a lot of carnage and get properly scared of the green menace! Also, we have a lot of new stuff in the video: Two-handed axes, javelins, battle statistics, and more. Go ahead and check it out.
Overhype Studios next blog update for Battle Brothers givea prgres update on the games new Orcs faction, new UI tweaks, and talks about some new weapons.
In this week’s update we have a lot of big and small additions to the game. The largest part was implementing all the skills, graphics, weapons and characters of the orcs into the game and to teach the AI how to make good use of all that. On top of that, we added a bunch of new weapons that have been outstanding for a while, and we implemented new UI features and elements.
Overhype Studios next blog update for Battle Brothers reveals the orc faction.
We’ve gotten many a question regarding the enemy diversity in Battle Brothers. Until now we always had to put off these questions – but not any longer. We present to you the first major faction after the Undead: The Orcs!
The Orc faction has unique characters, skills, weapons and most of all tactics compared to the Undead and will force the player to challenge everything learned before. Lets get into some details.
Overhype Studios is happy to announce that Battle Brothers has been Greenlit on Steam. They also share information for Early Access, and a new AMA on Reddit.
Battle Brothers has been Greenlit!
After just a little more than a month on Steam Greenlight we made it - Battle Brothers has just been given the green light!
We are extremely happy and excited about how fast things went down in the end and we want to take the time to give you guys a big THANK YOU for all the support, comments, votes, encouraging messages and of course for spreading the word!
Without the engagement, effort and enthusiasm of you guys this would not have been possible! Now we can again point all our resources towards game development itself.
Next stop: Early Access in January
With the latest Greenlight success we can now look ahead to the upcoming Battle Brothers Early Access version. If all goes to plan you can expect it in January 2015 on Steam. The EA will contain a fully playable campaign with all core mechanics in place. Of course, it will still miss content from the full game and some secondary features. As we get nearer to release, we’ll let you know in a dedicated article what exactly is going to be in the Early Access version and what will be added later, so you can get all hyped up about it ;)
Overhype Studios next blog update for Battle Brothers talks about Steam Greenlight, Greenskins, and talks about how Persistent Campaigns will work.
Dev Blog #29: Progress Update
It’s been one month now since we’ve launched on Steam Greenlight. Time to give you an update: we’re at 91% of the way to the top 100. So close and yet so far. Unfortunately, daily votes for us have slowed down considerably by now, so if you haven’t casted your vote yet, please do so here and share the link with your friends. Thanks!
On the bright side, we’ve made great progress on the game itself these past two weeks. We now have actual persistent campaigns and no longer just separate combat scenarios. Also, Greenskins!
Persistent Campaigns
Battle Brothers consists of two major parts, the tactical combat and the strategic worldmap. So far, both of those have been existing more or less on their own. The tactical combat was prototyped first and tested by many of you in our combat demo to get the fighting right. The strategic worldmap simulation has also had a life of its own over the past few months – villages trade, bandits raid and militia struggle to keep order, all without much player involvement. Now, finally, we’ve connected both of these parts.
We’re now able to play an actual campaign and take the same band of Battle Brothers from battle to battle as we roam the world. Whether we’re engaging our opponents in a forest, in a swamp or on a road leading over plains on the worldmap, the procedurally generated tactical combat maps reflect this. They also change their ambient lighting to match the time of day on the worldmap. Weather isn’t in yet, but it will soon follow!
Of course, we can also keep the equipment we loot between battles and the experience our Battle Brothers gather from battle now has actual meaning. The campaign can now also be saved and loaded at any time on the worldmap. So, milestone reached. The next step to a complete game.
Greenskins!
While all of that was going on, we also finished the design on Orcs and Goblins. We’re very happy with how they turned out – they have a lot of unique mechanics, their own equipment and behavior. Orcs and Goblins fight very different from each other, and very different from the Undead. Also, just like Battle Brothers, they are subject to fatigue and morale. We’ll give a proper introduction to Orcs and Goblins in separate blog posts, including some of their lore, units, skills and equipment. For now, have a teaser of a goblin with and without heavy armor.
With our Steam Greenlight campaign still running and us busy working on the strategic worldmap, this week we’ll get some insight into how music is created for Battle Brothers and how it helps to shape the experience of playing the game.
We’ll give the floor to Dennis and Patrick, our talented musicians from Breakdown Epiphanies, who will give you a tour of the music in Battle Brothers in their own words and even reveal several brand new tracks for you to listen to. If you want to be always up to date regarding new tracks for Battle Brothers, you can also follow them on Soundcloud or Twitter. But for now, let’s listen in..
Overhype Studios latest update for Battle Brothers talks about how the AI works.
This week things get more technical as we shine a light on the Artifical Intelligence, or AI, that controls opponents in the game.
If you’ve played the later scenarios of the combat demo, you may have found the AI serviceable already. Once we have all the core mechanics of the game in place and things won’t change around all the time anymore, we’ll invest more work into the AI in order to have it actually stand out. Let’s find out how it works exactly.
It’s been one week now since we launched on Greenlight, and what a ride it’s been! We’re now at 63% on the way to the top 100. Not too shabby for one week, but still a long way to go before being greenlit.
Thank you all for your support so far! Only with your help can we get the game on Steam, which would allow us to work on it full-time and make progress much faster. If you know others who might be interested in Battle Brothers, please do share the link!
So, that’s that. For now, let us take a look at contracts, which in Battle Brothers work much like quests do in other RPGs, and how they shape the game.
Overhype Studios has a new update on Steam with more Questions & Answers.
Frequently Asked Questions - and Answers
As time flies by a lot of interesting and important questions regarding Battle Brothers pop up. We want to take the time to answer some important ones. If you have any more questions just ask in the comments or start a discussion!
Q: Is the game a sandbox or does it have a linear progression with a beginning and end?
A. Battle Brothers will have a completely open world which doesn’t restrict the player to go anywhere based on story progress, but only on being able to survive. Concerning progression, the game will have a beginning and an end given by the general setting, loosely framed within a narrative related to one of several “greater evils”. There’ll also be several milestones along the way, though they don’t necessarily have to be completed in linear sequence or at all. We won’t have forced and repetitive story missions that conflict with our open world gameplay or get in the way of replayability. However, the ultimate goal of every campaign will be to destroy the source behind the “greater evil” and stop the invasion. At some point the player will have to face the enemy or see the land get swept away.
It's time we give you guys some deeper info on the strategic worldmap part of the game. What is going on in the world, what is your role and what is the purpose of the strategic part?
When coming up with the basic gamedesign we took a lot of inspiration from classics games like X-Com and Jagged Alliance. Both of these games rely on two interlocking systems: A tactical and a strategic part.
While the tactical part takes place on a really small area where you control individual Battle Brothers and make decisions within a fast paced close combat, the strategic part shows the bigger picture where you have to make long term decisions like where to go, what battles to pick and how to make use of limited resources.
Overhype Studios announced today that Battle Brothers is now on Steam Greenlight, and needs your vote to help get sold on Steam. They also released a new trailer.
Battle Brothers is a turn based strategy RPG mix wherein you lead a band of mercenaries in a medieval fantasy world on the hunt for coin, fame and legendary artifacts. The gameplay is inspired by such classics as X-Com: UFO Defense and Jagged Alliance.
As we were not able to cover all questions in our last FAQ posting we decided to do another one. You will definitely learn something new about the game when reading through them. If you have any questions not covered, have a look at the full FAQ here or feel free to head to our forums or to leave a comment! Also, you might want to try our tactical combat demo to see how the game plays! Get it from here: Download.
Overhype Studios released a new video showing the progress of their SRPG game Battle Brothers, and shares some gameplay of the dead canyons.
This time we showcase all the new features in Battle Brothers like the new perk system, bravery and moral and the optimized character screen. Then we head out to find a patrol that has been lost in the dead canyons. We will find living creatures but they do not look like humans at all...
The next update for Battle Brothers is about the developers Motivations & Inspirations.
This week we go into our personal inspiration and motivation so you may get a better understanding of why we are making this game and what keeps us going. Two of our team members talk about what inspired them to start Battle Brothers and why they think a game like this is due. A little disclaimer: These are highly personal and subjective opinions by our team members and not the studio itself.
Q: How is the development of Battle Brothers funded and what are your future plans?
Right now we are funding the development out of our own pockets and most of us work on the game in our spare time. Here’s a quick overview of our future plans in chronological order:
1. Steam Greenlight campaign – we will start this step as soon as our trailer is finished, probably in September 2014.
2. Kickstarter campaign by October or November 2014. If Kickstarter decides to come to Germany, that would make the process a lot easier.
3. Early Access to fund further development by the end of 2014 or early 2015.
4. Full game release sometime at the middle of 2015 via digital distribution plattforms.
Q: Is the game a sandbox or does it have a linear progression with a beginning and end?
Battle Brothers will have a completely open world which doesn’t restrict the player to go anywhere based on story progress, but only on being able to survive. Concerning progression, the game will have a beginning and an end given by the general setting, loosely framed within a narrative related to one of several “greater evils”. There’ll also be several milestones along the way, though they don’t necessarily have to be completed in linear sequence or at all. We won’t have forced and repetitive story missions that conflict with our open world gameplay or get in the way of replayability. However, the ultimate goal of every campaign will be to destroy the source behind the “greater evil” and stop the invasion. At some point the player will have to face the enemy or see the land get swept away.
Lost Souls are unique in that they exist in part in the physical world and in part in the world of ghosts. They constantly shift between the two, yet can find peace in neither. With their visuals we tried to capture their lore of being torn between two worlds; they constantly change in contour, one moment just a hazy mist, the other a grotesque face manifests.
A quote about the Ghouls:
Ghouls are despicable creatures that scavenge graveyards and burial sites for fresh graves where they dig out the recently deceased and feast on their corpses. This is why any band of undead is often accompanied by ghouls just like a fishing boat attracts hungry seagulls - even though ghouls are not technically undead, but living and breathing creatures that also feel pain and are susceptible to morale effects.
Its time for another developer update from Overhype Studios for Battle Brothers. This time they talk all the various world map location you will visit in the game.
The strategic worldmap in Battle Brothers is filled with opportunities for adventure, battles and interaction. One of these opportunities are locations that you can explore, destroy and plunder or trade with. In this week’s developer’s blog we want to present you a couple of these locations.
Battle Brothers is a game where attachment to the individual characters in your retinue is an essential part of the game. Today we explain how we use character backgrounds and traits to create characters that feel unique from the moment you hire them, and that you can relate and get attached to (only to see them getting horribly slaughtered by some axe-wielding skeleton).
While work on the tactical combat has been reduced to a minimum we are making great progress on the worldmap. As we are setting up all the basic features and functionalities we already have some stuff to show and a packed list of things to come next. Read more below!
Overhype Studios released a new video for Battle Brothers called Hunting Werewolves.
In this commented gameplay video we will hunt down some werewolves, vampires and fallen heroes - heavily armored skeletons! Also, you can see the new inventory system in action.
We have a bunch of new things to show you this week. As work continues on the strategic part of the game, we give you a preview on the perk system for Battle Brothers. We also have a new weapon, the Flail, and decided that the character and equipment screen should have a layout redesign based on player feedback. But first, the trailer.
While we said before that our focus is now on the strategy part of the game, we’re constantly tempted to add little things to the tactical part as well. Seeing you play the demo and provide feedback gives us a lot of inspiration, and this is why this week we went back and added some new features and reworked others.
Reworked Damage System
We want our weapons to feel different not just with with unique skills, but also in how they perform against armored and unarmored opponents. Previously, a select number of weapons gave a small damage bonus when hitting armor. That made some weapons slightly better suited against armor, but it didn’t have that much of an impact damage-wise, since basically every weapon did a good chunk of damage to armor anyway. In fact, it didn’t seem to influence player strategy much at all.
We’ve now reworked that system so that different weapons perform significantly better or worse against armor in a way that has a definite impact on gameplay and equipment selection, while at the same time presenting this in a way that should be more clear and easy to understand.
Fatalities
Dealing the killing blow to an enemy now has a chance of causing a so-called fatality effect. Fatalities differ for each weapon type. For example, bladed weapons can decapitate and gut a target, and blunt weapons can crush the head. Different skills also have a different likelihood of causing these; the “Decapitate” skill will always decapitate, and the “Swing” skill of Greatswords has a higher chance to do so than the “Slash” skill of one-handed swords.
Fatalities serve two purposes. First, they portray the fatalism of our pseudo-medieval engagements, especially in light of our perma-death mechanic. If your favorite veteran Battle Brother dies now by getting his head chopped off, it should hurt even more. A medieval battlefield really is no picnick. Second, there are actual gameplay effects, at least when fighting the undead. Necromancers are unable to raise the bodies of characters that have been decapitated or their head smashed in. Grabbing those cleavers could be a good option when fighting an army of zombies!
Overhype Studios has a post on the website for Battle Brothers that mentions the combat demo has been updated. and shows the changelog of fixes.
Combat Demo Updated – Changelog
Has it been a week already? We’ve updated the Pre-Alpha Combat Demo of Battle Brothers to fix the bugs you guys reported and add a bunch of features you requested. Chief among them are the new optional armor and hitpoint bars shown above all characters. You can find a full list of changes down below. If you haven’t tried the demo yet or want to give it another go, don’t wait any longer and download it here: DEMO DOWNLOAD!
As always, we depend on your feedback. Talk to us and let us know of any problems you encounter and anything you’d like to see changed or added to the game.
It’s done. Finally! Get out your party hats as it’s time to celebrate the release of the Pre-Alpha Combat Demo of Battle Brothers. You can download it here!
Just keep a few points in mind when you give it a spin:
It’s pre-alpha, meaning it is an early release of a product still in development. Everything in the game right now can be improved and most probably will for the final game.
It’s a combat demo. It only reflects part of what the final game will be about and doesn’t cover the strategy part at all. The final game will not consist of a few scenarios but have an open worldmap. Read more about it here in our dev blog article on the worldmap.
The demo can be hard. This is intentional. Every scenario can be consistently beat with the right strategy. That said, the game isn’t properly balanced and if you find something clearly out of balance or plain stupid, let us know.
The demo requires an OpenGL 3.0 compatible video card and Windows XP, 7 or 8. If the game refuses to run on your rig and gives you a shader error, update your video drivers!
We’ll take the easter weekend off to recover a bit and lose the crunchtime-related rings around our eyes. Come monday we’ll be back and look forward to your feedback and the inevitable myriad of technical problems. Let us know in our forums how you feel about the game, about any ideas you have and about any bugs you encountered. Thank you guys for your support, and enjoy the game!
Overhype Studios has posted the next development blog update for Battle Brothers were they share a new video on the progress of the game.
We show you all the new stuff in the game from Inventory to soundeffects and then jump into a line battle scenario that looks like a lost fight for sure... or is it?
If you are just looking for a quick overview of the new features and the progress of the game, just watch the first 8 Minutes of the video!
We’ve reworked parts of our tactical battle UI to show you more helpful information in your upcoming engagements. The combat event log can be expanded now to show all previous entries, and we show a count of the number of Battle Brothers and opponents left on the field to keep you updated on how the battle as a whole is going. If the player hovers over a target to attack, we now detail all things, positive and negative, that factor into the hitchance – so there’s no guessing anymore, and you’ll know why you miss those shots and what you can do to improve your hit chances.
Inventory and Character Screen
The inventory and character screen is going to be a central hub for equipping and developing your Battle Brothers. The equipping part will also be featured in our upcoming combat demo, and that’s what we’re working on still. Beyond the demo, every time one of your Battle Brothers levels up, you’ll be able to pick a passive skill (also known as a perk or feat, if you prefer) out of several skill trees here in order to shape them the way you want.
Our basic design of the inventory screen looks like this – though, as you can see, it shows placeholder data currently and we now have to fill it with real one from the game.
New Bloodsplatter Effects
Medieval battles are brutal affairs, and we want our game to reflect this visually. We want our battlefields to be littered with discarded shields and arrows, and our combatants to really look the part if they’ve just barely survived a deadly encounter. As you guys know, we already show damaged armor and injuries on the characters. Since last week, we also display blood on weapons that have spilled blood. When characters have spilled lots of it, they’ll now even be sprayed with it themselves. It’s not over the top and looks reasonably subdued unless the character wears white – but skeletons especially look extra fierce now after they’ve slaughtered a few men.
New Sound Effects
Having a rich scoundscape is really important to us, especially since we can’t convey visually all the intensity of a pseudo-medieval battle we’d like to without fully animated combatants. Previously we only had placeholder sounds in the game, so it is a big step forward for us to now have our very own sound effects for most weapons and skills in the game!
We’ll continue to add new sound effects and replace placeholder ones along the road, so you can expect steady improvements as we go. Of course, the upcoming combat demo should now also sound quite a bit more engaging!
Overhype Studios has posted the next development update for Battle Brothers were the developers describes how the game will play out in after action reports.
Blog Post #9: A Battle Brothers After Action Report
This is an imaginary After Action Report (AAR) of a couple of ingame days in the full version of Battle Brothers. It describes in a prosaic way the events that will and can actually happen in the full game. We want the players to live through their own stories and not experience something we made up – a whole world that is different for everyone and each story is unique to your particular playthrough and playstyle.
What will be included in the Pre-Alpha Combat Demo?
The combat demo consists of several scenarios that differ in tactical situation, terrain and quality and numbers of enemy opposition. Those scenarios are designed to showcase various stages of the game and combat situations you may encounter in the finished game. In each scenario you’ll have a set number of Battle Brothers which you can equip with a range of early medieval weaponry and armor to suit your tactical approach. The way you equip your Battle Brothers will to a large part determine the tactical options at your disposal. Not every weapon is suited against every type of enemy or situation, and neither is heavy armor always the best choice. You should experiment with different combinations to find strategies that work well.
The layout of the individual scenarios will be randomly generated to different degrees, as will the equipment of some of your enemies. You shall find that some of them can play out very differently from one playthrough to another. The demo will include the following scenarios:
Combat Basics – A simple scenario to try out the basics of melee combat. Easy.
Swipe – A scenario containing few and easy opponents on a map with lots of terrain features blocking sight. Well suited to get used to lines of sight, fog of war and ranged combat. Easy.
Early Game Combat – A scenario simulating a possible early game encounter in enemy composition and equipment available. Moderate difficulty.
Defend the Hill – A scenario in which you have to survive against overwhelming odds while positioned on top of a hill. Well suited to learn about height advantage and to test sight and usability issues with height levels. Difficult.
Advanced Combat – A mixed scenario combining all the above elements and simulating more closely what an encounter might feel like at mid-game and later. Terrain can vary greatly between playthroughs, as can the enemies you encounter to some extent. Difficult.
The goal in every demo scenario is to kill all opposition without them killing your Battle Brothers first.
Overhype Studios has posted the next development update for Battle Brothers. We get more information on the game map, and gameplay.
Blog Post #7: Worldmap Reveal & Strategic Gameplay
So far we only talked about the tactical combat part of the game because we focused on developing it first, it is already fully playable and there was a lot to talk about. Now is the time to present the strategic part, also known as the worldmap, which we currently focus on. Everything that follows is heavily work in progress so don’t take it as set in stone. If there is anything you’d like to see in the strategic part of the game, let us know in the comments below!
Overhype Studios has a new development update for Battle Brothers. In case you missed the other updates they can be found on the site by following the link above.
Tactical Combat
During last week we made some additions to the tactical combat. First, as we already revealed, the Necromancer of the Undead faction made it into the game with all his skills and AI in place. He isn’t that hard to kill and neither does he do a lot of damage by himself. What makes him really dangerous is his abillity to revive fallen combatants, no matter what faction they belonged to, as shambling Undead. If you don’t take him out quickly you’ll eventually get overwhelmed by a horde of re-animated dead bodies, including your own fallen Battle Brothers. In the upcoming open pre-alpha of the tactical combat you will have the opportunity to fight this guy and find out the best tactics to beat him.
Worldmap
We recently shifted our focus on the design and construction of the worldmap and strategic gameplay. Although we had a rough idea of the gameplay we wanted for the strategic part from the beginning, there’s still a lot to do here. What visual style do we want? An old map style? A more realistic representation? How do we implement this technically? Do all the gameplay features we thought of fit together for a coherent whole? Do the tactical and strategic layers feel sufficiently connected? Is it going to be fun this way?
We have some pretty exciting stuff up our sleeves but it is too early yet to show it to you as we’re still constantly changing things around. Just this much: The strategical part of the game will not have to hide behind the tactical combat part!
Music and Sound Effects
Aaaand a quick mention regarding music and sound effects. What effects you might have heard in our gameplay videos are placeholders, sounds we put in the prototype to get a general idea of how things would feel with sound. We are now slowly extending our antennas in various directions to get some talented sfx artist and/or composer on the project who will create something uniquely fitting for Battle Brothers. However, we’re still in a pretty early stage regarding this and we want to get the gameplay right before focusing on presentation and sound.
Full gameplay commentary of a scenario we made to showcase what a combat in the early stages of "Battle Brothers" may look like. Also, we explain core game mechanics and tactics as we go along.
Battle Brothers is a turn-based SRPG that is being developed by a small studio called Overhype Studios. I have a video from last month with some pre-alpha gameplay.
About the game
Battle Brothers is a challenging turn based strategy RPG mix for PC, Mac and Linux. It is being developed by Overhype Studios and is in pre-alpha stage right now. The gameplay is inspired by such classics as X-com: UFO Defense and Jagged Alliance.
You take on the role of a leader of a band of mercenaries and adventurers on the hunt for treasure, fame and legendary artifacts. As you journey onwards, an epic scale invasion unfolds that leaves nothing but burning rubble in its wake. You and your Battle Brothers emerge as the people’s last hope to unravel the source of the invasion and strike at its heart. Will you turn out to be an able commander using cunning tactical outfits to emerge victorious, or will you fail miserably sending your men into a futile bloodbath? It is up to you, but be careful – every decision matters.
Gameplay
The game consists of a strategical layer, or worldmap, and a tactical combat layer. On the worldmap you can choose where to travel next in order to find places worth looting, enemies worth pursuing or towns to resupply and hire men at. This is also where you manage, level up and equip your troops, craft equipment and engage in discovering ancient mysteries through study of dusty tomes. Once you move close to an enemy force or potentially dangerous place you will switch to the tactical combat map where the actual fighting takes place. Both the worldmap and the combat maps will be procedurally generated so no two playthroughs will ever be alike.
You can also get in contact with the developer in our forums.
After just a little more than a month on Steam Greenlight we made it - Battle Brothers has just been given the green light! 
