Beta Patch Notes - WS v1.3.0 / BL v1.5.0

Greetings Warriors of Calradia,

Our last content patch focused on the sandbox simulation. It made diplomacy more responsive and encouraged our lords to pursue meaningful wars, create larger armies, go to sea, harass convoys and raid villages. It also included the new seaborne raid, additional ships and equipment as well as many tweaks to gameplay, visuals and performance.

Today’s beta release puts more emphasis on player activities. The segment prior to the patch notes discusses our motivations for some of these changes.

War Sails

While seafaring offers new opportunities for merchants and warriors alike, it requires substantial progress to not only acquire a ship, but also hire a crew that can fend for themselves. This is sensible from a balance perspective, but gates much of the naval content. We wanted to improve upon this without deeply changing the early game that many players enjoy.

The most direct solution the beta introduces is - additional player choice. At the beginning of every Sandbox game, you will be able to choose if you want to enter Calradia with a ship to your name or play the regular game start.

However, even if you opt for the latter, the patch includes a number of changes that should make progression both smoother and more flexible. For one, we added the ferry feature so that smaller player parties can reach (and escape) areas of the map that would otherwise be hard or impossible to get to without a ship. Given player feedback, we also increased land and sea travel speeds by 15% so that you will generally be faster to progress (and recover).

Once you do have a vessel of your own, you will find the pirate spawns adjusted to include smaller parties that you can engage earlier into the game. Similarly, part of the reason for why we introduced naval random events as well as the battle sites and wreckage system is to offer players more experiences that don’t require a strong fleet. Having said that, they should increase the variety of naval gameplay regardless of progression and allow players to organically witness more of what is happening in the world.

The mooring feature, in turn, opens up additional options for aspiring captains as their fleet grows. You will be able to store instead of sell ships that you cannot effectively crew yet. You also won’t need to risk your entire fleet in every naval battle. Instead, you can specialize and only bring what fits your current play style - be that trading, raiding or naval combat.

Finally, we added port points to coastal castles. While more locations to embark and disembark should make sea travel more accessible in general, the larger motivation is offering additional opportunities for armies to clash at sea. Given that most army encounters occur around sieges, naval blockades on castles will contribute to that.

While the beta includes other changes such as improved map visuals, better naval party decision making, storyline tweaks and the ability for players to cut boarding ropes in missions, our focus with this patch is on naval content access, progress and variety. Especially the variety and frequency of what you can experience at sea will remain an important topic for War Sails going forward.

Base Game

As we explored starting with a ship for War Sails, it quickly became clear that this was also an opportunity for the base game. Not the ship, mind you, but advanced starting options.

These are split into three categories - each with their own goals.

The player start options allow experienced players to access later game content more quickly and begin a game with a particular character role (such as king, vassal or merchant). For new players, this will also serve as an additional form of progression since you need to unlock most of the roles in regular gameplay before you can start with them.

The campaign scenarios, on the other hand, are always available. Their primary purpose is to increase replayability through the introduction of tailored but partially randomized world states. What would happen if the Empire remained united? What if you entered Calradia with only two warring factions remaining? What if you threw the dice on the state of the world? The campaign scenarios allow you to find out.

Modifiers are the final piece of the puzzle. They take aim at specific game mechanics that can deeply affect the experience such as recruit generation or travel speeds. Players who do not enjoy the default settings or just want to try something different will now have alternatives.

As you will be able to combine settings from these categories, the advanced starting options should offer quite a bit of content variety. They also integrate the Fast Mode directly into the game rather than the launcher, which will make it accessible on consoles as well. Please note that all of these are set when starting a Sandbox game and cannot be changed later. 

The rest of this patch is less about where you begin and more about what you can see as you are playing.

Battle sites and wreckages are one example of this. Their fundamental goal is to add visibility to battles that take place in the world outside of the player's immediate vision range. Instead of simply happening with players none the wiser, they now leave behind a temporary battle site that you can come across. You can also investigate it for further information and potential rewards. We believe that this will be a good addition to the organic worldbuilding and storytelling of our sandbox.

Visibility or recognizable gameplay impact is also an important aspect for two topics that are frequently raised in the community - traits and relations. 

While they already influence AI in kingdom decisions and military actions (siege, raid, battle) among other things, it can be difficult to discern their role given the competition with other factors - and each other. For example, a valorous lord is less discouraged by a garrison’s power but may still not pursue a siege due to positive relations with the settlement owner - as long as there are more attractive, alternative targets.

With that said, there are options to make traits and relations more apparent and impactful to the player’s own activity. The present patch seeks to do this with the introduction of trait effects and blood feuds.

As the name suggests, trait effects tie a number of effects to your current character traits. These were designed to support gameplay that is aligned with each side of a trait’s spectrum. So whether you are merciful or cruel, you will have effects that suit the role you are playing. And while this is more oriented towards the player’s character development, AI lords do have traits and will benefit from them as well.

Blood feuds, on the other hand, are primarily concerned with relations. If you execute a clan member of another clan, they will begin doing the same to your clan until relations recover or blood money is paid. Notably, AI clans can start a blood feud as well and execute one of your clan members, including you, if you have sufficiently negative relations (currently -50). So you may want to check who you are fighting - or at least ensure that your heir hasn’t already been captured.

Finally, we took a look at the (offensive, defensive, balanced) player clan party stances. Much like traits, the active stance influenced the party behavior scores, but did not guarantee specific outcomes. To give players a more reliable way to manage their clan, we decided to shift away from the score influence and towards hard, observable rules for the most common pain points. You will now be able to directly allow or prohibit joining armies, raiding villages, donating troops and having a fleet (for War Sails).

Naturally, the patch also includes changes that go beyond these themes such as additional battle terrains, passive experience gains for lords and companions as well as a substantial rework of reinforcement spawns in battles.

As we enter this beta period, we look forward to further improving these and other aspects with your feedback. We also want to note that this version’s live release will include captain mode formation targeting, spectator mode improvements and a range of balance adjustments for our multiplayer community. Once we have made a bit more progress, we will also share another update for what the future holds.

Hope you enjoy the Beta - we’re looking forward to your feedback!

Here’s how you can play the Beta via Steam right now: Open Steam, right-click Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord → Properties → Game Versions & Betas → Select “beta - Beta v1.5.0”.

Please note that there may be a delay between the download of the base game and the download of War Sails. If you launch the game prior to both of them being updated, you will crash. If you face this issue, please verify your game files.

War Sails Beta v1.3.0

The following changes are specific to the War Sails expansion and are not part of the base game.

 

Settlement Actions (Town, Village, Castle and Hideout)

  • Added Mooring to Town Ports
    • In neutral or allied towns, you can now moor your ships and configure your fleet composition without selling or sending to clan. You can moor at multiple ports without a ship limit. Your existing moored ports will become inaccessible if the town owner is at war with you, and become accessible again once they are no longer hostile.
  • Added a ferry system that enables you to travel between some coastal villages without owning ships
    • To use a ferry, you must be in a coastal village (including the hostile ones), not be in an army, have a party size of no more than 50 troops, and carry enough gold to cover the fare. The fare depends on your party size and the hostility of both the departure and destination settlements, with the hostile village ferry charging more. The destination is preset for each coastal village and is visible in the village menu.
  • Added the ability to embark and disembark at coastal castles, and extended the siege blockade feature to coastal castles as well.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the lost battle simulation of Seaborne Village Raid to be considered as a win if the simulation is started right after losing the Seaborne Village Raid mission battle.
  • Fixed a bug that caused position errors of the player's party after setting sail, preventing the party from entering settlements.

 

Random Events

  • Added 39 naval random events. These appear based on your actions at sea. Each event tells a different story and offers choices that can affect your character’s traits, skills, party, items, or gold.

 

Character Development System

  • Changed how you gain the Boatswain skill experience. It is no longer gained when your ships take damage. Instead, you can develop the Boatswain skill by maintaining high party morale while at sea.
  • Increased the amount of Boatswain experience gained from repairing ships.
  • Added missing naval skills (Mariner, Boatswain, Shipmaster) to faction leader skill templates.
  • Reduced most non-governor perks' effects by 50% when used in naval battles (perks that are not in the Mariner, Boatswain, or Shipmaster category and those that adjust numeric values).
  • Made Boatswain - Streamlined Operations, Shipwrights Insight, Smooth Operator, and Accuracy Training perks' FirstMate role effects Captain effects.
  • Made Boatswain - Shipwrights Insight's primary effect a personal effect, which now only applies when the hero who has the perk uses a ballista on a ship.
  • Nord nobles now have beards and facial scars more often to make them appear more rugged.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented the Mariner - Forceful perk from applying its secondary effect properly.

 

Campaign Map

  • Improved terrain features and visuals of the world map.
  • Reduced visible grid lines on the world map.
  • Switched a terrain scene near Makeb with a more suitable one.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented parts of the world map from applying the correct weather based on the campaign time, leading to campaign map and mission scenes having inconsistent weather.
  • Fixed a bug that caused incorrect pathfinding on the campaign map.
  • Fixed a bug that caused battle missions to trigger a scene with a winter setting when started under the storm on the campaign map.

 

Naval Battles

  • Ship attachment ropes can now be hit by the player and destroyed to prevent bridges from being formed.
    • Additionally, attachment rope physics have been overhauled and made more realistic.
  • Relaxed the skeletal crew restriction for ship placement during the OoB phase. You can now deploy ships that have fewer troops than the skeletal crew number. The UI will alert you that such ships will underperform in battle.
  • Improved deployment zone planning for naval battles. Ship spacing is now dynamically adjusted based on deployment width, with a maximum gap of 20 meters that scales down for wider formations in river battles (e.g., 13 meters for 8 dromons). River battles now use a fixed deployment zone depth with 50-meter front and back margins, while sea battles continue to extend the zone toward mission boundaries.
  • Fixed a bug that caused ship collisions to have numerous camera shakes or deal damage more than once.
  • Fixed a bug that caused retreated ships to be displayed as destroyed in the mission scoreboard.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented ships from being displayed in the scoreboard during a custom battle seaborne village raid.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented troops from boarding the enemy ship in some scenarios.
  • Fixed a bug that allowed players to place troop formations in unintended areas during Seaborne and Village raid missions in OoB.
  • Fixed a bug that allowed the naval battle to start even with undermanned ships deployed.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented crew members from taking control of the ship when delegating command of the vessel.

 

Clan and Party

  • Improved AI noble party decision-making when encountering pirates at sea. Parties now consider their active task and proximity to friendly or enemy settlements before deciding whether to engage, reducing unnecessary interruptions and helping them stay focused on their current objectives. Parties traveling by sea near enemy settlements or parties performing Offensive Patrol tasks will now no longer engage pirate parties unless those pirates are already engaged with a friendly (own faction, alliance, or trade agreement) party.
  • Added smaller pirate parties to increase early game accessibility of naval encounters. 
  • Fixed a bug that allowed the player to set sail from hostile villages.
  • Fixed a bug that caused naval patrols to have trouble navigating curved rivers.
  • Fixed a bug that caused nobles to be embarking to their ships for 30+ hours, during which they couldn't be interacted with.
  • Fixed a bug that caused parties without a ship to try defending a raided village from the water.

 

Ships & Upgrades

  • Improved the descriptions of ship upgrades.
  • Added a new animation pose to the captain point of the Ghurab ship.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented the "Reinforced Battlements with Improved Rudder" ship upgrade from appearing visually.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented the top two parts of cloth on the Square Sails (level 3) from being affected by wind physics.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented colors from showing on ship sails and rooftops.
  • Fixed a bug that caused different LODs to change ship roof color.

 

UI

  • Changed the mariner icon visibility check when upgrading troops. It no longer looks at whether the current mariner is a mariner, but whether the upgraded version of the troop is a mariner.
  • Improved the ordering of scoreboard ships to show the player's ships first, in their formation orders (1->8).
  • Updated draft type in the Fleet Menu to include naval raid ability. 
  • Updated some ship thumbnails.
  • Removed the + ship buttons from custom battle Seaborne Village Raids beyond the 3 ships.
  • Fixed a bug that allowed you to open other screens while the Manage Fleet screen was open.

 

Quests & Issues

  • Made a pass over the early and mid War Sails storyline to reduce difficulty in certain missions:
    • Adjusted enemy weapons in the alley fight and the ship escape to deal less damage.
    • Increased the duration of Gunnar's invulnerability after he is rescued following the in-mission cinematic of the alley fight.
    • Increased the allied ship's troop count to 14 in Escort the Vlandian Merchants.
    • Increased the fireship's health in Break Out of Omor Estuary so that it is much harder to sink before reaching the target ship.
    • Increased the second ship's maximum health and maximum fire health in Break Out of Omor Estuary.
    • Added an Alt-key highlight to the throwable axe barrels on the escape ship in Free the Sea Hounds' Captives, making them easier to find during the escape phase.
    • Updated the equipment and skills of the Vlandian Merchant, Sea Hound Recruit, and Sea Hound Thug troops.
    • Fixed a bug that prevented the first enemy ship from firing its ballista in Break Out of Omor Estuary.
  • Added postures and animations to characters in the naval storyline dialogues.
  • Fixed a bug that caused enemy troops to spawn inside water during the Army of Poachers quest in some villages.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented the player from correctly starting at the ship helm when choosing to control the captured ship during the Defeat the Sea Hounds mission.

 

Audio

  • Fixed a bug that caused Sturgian Victory music to be played instead of Nord when winning an encounter.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the Battle music to disappear during the finale of the Naval Storyline missions.
  • Fixed a bug that caused all naval battles to end with the Battanian Victory music. They now end with your faction's Victory music or the music of the troops' dominant culture.

 

Animations

  • Fixed a bug that caused banner animation issues during the Seaborne Village Raid on the world map.

 

Other

  • Made 14 armour pieces appear in Nord town shops instead of Sturgia.
  • Troop adjustments:
    • Updated Skolderbrotva troops and their leaders with Nord culture items. 
    • Updated Sea Raider troops' equipment with Nord culture items.
  • Fixed a bug that allowed some Nord female dresses to be equipped by male characters.

 

Crashes

  • Fixed a crash that occurred when entering a Scourge of the Seas quest due to other unrelated quests. They're now cancelled.
  • Fixed a crash that occurred when the player lost the battle in Seaborne Village Raid mission but won it in the battle simulation afterwards.
  • Fixed a crash that occurred when the player used cheats to kill their character during War Sails storyline missions.

 

Bannerlord Beta v1.5.0

The following changes are part of the base game and apply to the War Sails expansion as well.

 

Advanced Starting Options (ASO)

  • Campaign Scenarios - Choose a starting scenario to shape Calradia. ASO uses it as a guideline, randomizes the campaign state, and lets you share the result through the Seed system.
    • Default: Calradia as you know it.
    • United Empire: The civil war has ended, and your chosen imperial faction has reunited the Calradian Empire.
    • Invasion: Faction of your choosing expanded aggressively and is now ruling most of Calradia.
    • Last Stand: Faction of your choosing is on the brink of destruction and has a single town left, where they will make their last stand.
    • 2 Faction War: Every faction but the two factions of your choosing has been eliminated, Calradia is divided into two and is at war.
    • [WS] Nord Invasion: The Nords have arrived to Calradia and started an aggressive campaign. They have expanded south and are looking for more.
  • Player Starts - Choose a player start to shape your journey. Each start works with any Campaign Scenario and is randomized through the Seed system. Some player starts must be unlocked: reach King, Vassal, or Mercenary rank, or create your first caravan to unlock Trader. Loading existing saves with fulfilled conditions also unlocks the relevant starts.
    • Default: Default sandbox player start.
    • King: Your character starts as a Ruler of a faction of your choice.
    • Vassal: Start as a vassal of a faction of your choice.
    • Mercenary: Start as a small clan in mercenary service of a faction of your choice.
    • Trader: Start as a trader with a workshop and a caravan to your name in a random town.
    • Outlaw: Start as an outlaw that’s wanted by all the factions in Calradia.
    • Beggar: Start with nothing but the ragged clothes on your back.
    • [WS] Fleet Admiral: Start as a vassal of a faction of your choice, with a force at sea.
    • [WS] Merchant Venturer: Start as a merchant venturer on sea with trade ships, a set up convoy and a workshop in a random town.
  • Modifiers - Apply multiple modifiers alongside any Campaign Scenario and Player Start.
    • Bandit Surge: Increases bandit party sizes globally, with huge ones occasionally.
    • Civil Unrest: Increases rebellion chances globally.
    • Recruit Shortage: Decreases the recruit generation of notables significantly.
    • Swift Travel: Increases the travel speed globally on both land and sea.
    • [WS] Personal Vessel: Start with a small trading ship to your name.
  • Seed system - Seeds randomize campaign generation, player-start details, and other sandbox elements. You can share your seed and ASO options with a friend to recreate the same sandbox, or just your seed for partial parity.
  • Fast Mode has been moved to ASO, is no longer a separate Module, and is intended to become available on Consoles through this as well.

 

Battle Sites & Wreckages

  • After battles on land or sea, battle sites and wreckages can now appear on the campaign map, marking where the fight took place. These can be investigated for loot, survivors, or other findings by you or looter and pirate parties, which are drawn to them.
  • Battle Sites & Wreckages come in three sizes. Larger ones require more time and troops to investigate, but offer greater potential rewards.
    • Small battles can leave Skirmish Sites and Wreckages.
    • Medium battles can leave Battlegrounds and Battle Wreckages.
    • Large battles can leave Battle Aftermaths which are named after the nearest settlement.
  • Investigating a Battle Site / Wreckage may yield all of the following which scale with the site size:
    • Wounded surviving troops that can be recruited into your party. The number of troops recovered also depends on the highest Medicine skill among your party’s heroes, and grants Medicine XP to that hero.
    • Denars.
    • Trade goods & scavenged valuables. The former also provide Roguery XP when looted.
    • A map revealing a nearby bandit hideout.
  • How fast you search a site is also impacted by your Roguery skill and party size.
  • Battle Sites and Wreckages eventually disappear, with Aftermaths being converted into Battle Remains - sticking around on the campaign map for longer even after being investigated.

 

Character Development System

New Effects for Personality Traits

  • Each now usually provides two positive and one negative effects.
  • Calculating
    • Calculating → Cerebral
      • +10% / +20% Workshop income
      • +10% / +20% Siege engine construction speed
      • Starting relation with notables you meet for the first time: −3 / −6
    • Impulsive → Hotheaded (negative side)
      • +5% / +10% Charge damage for troops under your command
      • +10% / +20% Combat starting morale
      • Disorganized state after losing a fight lasts +50% / +100% longer
  • Generosity
    • Generous → Munificent
      • +25% / +50% additional mercenaries
      • +10% / +20% Party morale gain rate
      • +10% Food consumption
    • Closefisted → Tightfisted (negative side)
      • +10% / +20% Town project effectiveness
      • −5% / −10% Troop wages
      • −1 party morale per day (both tiers)
  • Honor
    • Honest → Honorable
      • +10% / +20% Relationship gain rate
      • +10% / +20% Settlement loyalty gain rate
      • Crime rating decays 40% / 80% slower
    • Devious → Deceitful (negative side)
      • Crime rating rises 40% / 80% slower when you commit crimes
      • Recruiting bandits/prisoners costs 15% / 25% less morale penalty
      • +5% / +10% Amplified relation swings (gains AND losses) with clan leaders
  • Mercy
    • Merciful → Compassionate
      • +25% / +50% Chance to capture prisoners instead of killing them
      • +5% / +10% Village hearth growth rate
      • 0% / −20%  Gold when ransoming captured lords
      • −20% / −40% Gold when ransoming captured troops
    • Cruel → Sadistic (negative side)
      • +20% / +40% Raid loot yield
      • −20% / −40% Rebellion chance
      • −25% / −50% Chance to capture prisoners (you kill more instead)
  • Valor
    • Daring → Fearless
      • +10% / +20% Resistance to morale loss from battle losses
      • +10% / +20% Renown gained after battles
      • −5% / −10%  HP recovery per day
    • Cautious → Very Cautious (negative side)
      • −10% / −20% Personnel casualties during siege simulations
      • −25% / −50% Prisoners under your command/governorship escape less often
      • Siege preparation takes 30% / 60% longer
  • Hovering over characters in the encyclopedia now shows a tooltip showing their traits and effects.
  • Added trait change information to the tooltips of siege aftermath options.
  • Rebalanced the personality traits of rogue/bandit-type wanderers. Most lost Mercy and Generosity, being replaced with Calculating, Honor, and Valor. Cowardly/bandit characters are now Cautious, and dishonorable wanderers are Devious.
  • Your character now also gains Leadership experience while maintaining high morale.
  • Nobles, player companions, and wanderers now gain XP daily based on their focus points.
  • Reintroduced the "Character Leveled Up" indicator to the character development screen.
  • Stealth items are now also passed to the heir upon main character's death.
  • Made children visually resemble their parents even more by reducing static body-property randomization.
  • Fixed a bug that caused Auto Allocate Clan Member Perks to select the perks even when the option is off.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented dismount, knockdown, and knockback-related combat perks (ShowOfStrength, HardKnock, KeepAtBay, Skewer, Braced, HammerBolts, KnockOff) from applying their perk effect correctly. 

 

Blood Feuds

  • Blood Feuds make executions more consequential. You can start a feud with a clan by executing one of their members. 
    • Executing a noble already affects your Honor and Mercy traits, as well as relations with their clan, faction, and friendly clans. Executing dishonorable nobles carries fewer negative consequences.
  • AI clans can also start a Blood Feud by executing one of your clan members. This may occur when relations are low (at least -50), and is influenced by the captor’s Mercy trait.
  • Once a Blood Feud begins:
    • Your clan members toss a coin on whether to execute captured members of the rival clan when given the opportunity.
    • The AI clan member will always choose to execute the player if given the opportunity.
    • Each day, AI captors become increasingly likely to execute your clan members, reaching a guaranteed chance on day 10. If they enter a settlement, they instead hand over the prisoner for execution 8 days later.
    • No ransom offers between the feuding clans are allowed.
  • Blood Feud Resolution:
    • Blood Feuds can be settled through Ransom Brokers. Only executed family members are counted: if you lost or tied the feud, it ends only for a small commission; if you executed more, you must pay compensation. Relations between both clans are then set to -50.
    • Blood Feuds also end if the relations between the feuding clans reach 0.
  • Blood Feuds block the following with the rival clan: defections, faction membership and invitations if they come from a ruling clan, as well as safe-passage agreements.



Clan and Party

  • Clan Party Controls
    • Replaced party stances with behavior toggles.
      • Party stances did not have a reliable, recognizable gameplay impact outside of preventing raids in the defensive stance.
      • The new behavioral toggles can enable/disable:
        • Raiding villages
        • Donating troops to garrisons
        • Joining other armies
        • [WS] Owning a naval fleet
    • Added the clan party recovery system, which holds the party slot for defeated clan parties and spawns the party with the same configuration from a safe location. 
      • [WS] Additionally, if the clan party is defeated on land, their ships will be returned to them upon respawning.
    • Removed the finance screen from the Clan tab.
  • [WS][BL] Increased the naval and land party speeds by 15%.
  • Improved positioning of world map party visuals during battles by placing them closer to the center of the battle in an arc formation.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented the automatic addition of troops to companions that were promoted to vassals.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the changing party leader UI to open the clan screen without displaying the party leader change prompt.

 

Art

  • Added 4 new battle terrains to locations in the image.

  • Added the corresponding Seaborne Village Raid scenes to Land Custom Battle.
  • Improved rendering performance of the main menu videos.
  • Fixed some collision issues with walls in Omor.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented Dagby, Ykerslund, and Amycon's village scenes from triggering correct mission scenes.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented the intended starting stealth equipment from appearing in the inventory.

 

Battles and Sieges

  • Reinforcement Deployment
    • Improved reinforcement deployment positions. Reinforcements spawn on one of the invisible scene paths, with the initial path determined by the parties' world map positions. The reinforcement path selection algorithm avoids spawning units too close to enemies. It now prioritizes the two neighboring paths that are radially closest to the initial path. This keeps reinforcements closer to their expected approach direction and prevents cases where they arrive from a wildly different side of the scene.
    • Fixed a bug that caused reinforcements to arrive near the middle of the reinforcement path, instead of near the beginning or the end of the path.
  • Caravan Equipment Deployment Improvements
    • Fixed a bug in caravan encounters that caused caravan equipment to be placed on an incorrect position. It is now placed at the very end of the path, close to the initial spawn area of the caravan troops.
    • Even though caravan equipment may now spawn at mission start, its associated tactical position is added after OOB deployment is completed, and the TeamAI tactic of the caravan team is reset. This prevents the troops assigned to protect the caravan from teleporting during OOB deployment and overlapping with the caravan. Instead, they spawn in front of the caravan and then move to protect it.
  • Reduced the friendly bump attacks made by troops in a shield wall by improving combat collisions.
  • Improved the troop placement in the column arrangement. Units now try to form a column first before following the unit in front of them. This should prevent a bug that caused some agents to get stuck in the column.
  • Improved the aiming of AI troops while using the ballista.
  • Fixed a bug that caused AI agents holding position to ignore a lone attacker harassing them. They can now break off in small squads to pursue and counter-attack the attacker, whether it's the player or a stray enemy, until the attacker is dealt with or retreats back toward their allies.
  • Fixed a bug that caused an automatic win when sallying out after a successful ambush battle in siege.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented bastard swords from being used as two-handers.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented troop positions from being restored when the Reset Deployment button was used in the Order of Battle screen.
  • Fixed a bug that caused troops with raised shields to turn their backs to incoming ranged attacks.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented ranged units with an Engage order from attacking due to continuous back-and-forth movement.
  • Fixed a bug that caused mangonels and trebuchets to consistently miss their targets under certain configurations.

 

UI

  • Added a new popup that shows hero portraits and information in a larger and more detailed manner when selecting Party Roles.
  • Adjusted the Stealth Tutorial conversation text and trigger conditions so that it is clearer that the mission can be started only during the night.
  • Newly unlocked crafting pieces now stay highlighted until hovering across them with a mouse instead of requiring just the closure of the crafting screen.
  • Changed the army's food tooltip to bring it closer to the party's food tooltip. Also added the daily food change.
  • Changed the default tab behaviour in Clan and Kingdom screens. Opening those screens now shows the tabs that were accessed last.
  • The max party size is now shown to the player when choosing a party leader for a new or existing clan party.
  • Added a tooltip to the "Resolve Decision" button in the Fiefs tab to inform the player that they can't interact with it during a siege.
  • Added D-Pad navigation to the search bar in the inventory screen.
  • Separated the kingdom and clan leader filters in the Encyclopedia Heroes page.
  • Tweaked the encyclopedia filters for clans and kingdoms.
  • Removed the text "Distance to army" shown in an army member's pop up once they joined the army.
  • Fixed a bug that caused locked sliders in custom battle to visually remain at zero after finishing a battle.
  • Fixed a formatting bug with tribute texts in the Kingdom tab.
  • Fixed a bug that caused siege engine icons to appear in front of the OoB deployment layer.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented the game menu from appearing after returning to the world map from a siege.
  • Fixed a text bug with the "Confirm" button in the barter screen.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the same alley name to be displayed twice inside the tooltip of notables in a settlement.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the formation icon to continuously jump between last two remaining troops in the formation.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented "None" (default) crafting pieces from being correctly placed at the beginning of the pieces grid.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the prisoner to be released when selecting the "Forget It" option in the execution prompt.

 

Kingdoms and Diplomacy

  • Fixed a bug in relation to consequences of hostile actions against villages. Previously, any hostile action carried a risk of starting a war. Now, war is triggered only if the village resists and the player chooses to attack. If the village does not resist, the action increases only the player’s crime rating.
  • Fixed a bug that allowed kingdoms to persist without any fiefs when a non-leader clan owned all the fiefs and defected from the kingdom.
  • Fixed a bug that allowed a party to join an encounter where both sides were enemies, which caused a never-ending war.

 

Settlement Actions (Town, Village, Castle and Hideout)

  • Removed the loyalty penalty for assigning a governor whose culture differs from the settlement’s culture.
  • Fixed a bug that caused your character to "die in battle" while waiting in a town.
  • Fixed a bug that caused your companions to behave as village workers when visiting villages.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented the auto recruitment in towns from working correctly.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the tavern keeper to suggest the same companion for different skill types repeatedly.
  • Fixed a bug that caused an agent to stand near the main hero if their target point was occupied by the main hero, for example, a throne.

 

Quests & Issues

  • Radagos and Galter are now only visible in the Encyclopedia during their related quests.
  • Conspiracy parties created by the main storyline conspiracy quests are now shown as part of a conspiracy clan instead of bandit factions.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented the target hideout from being revealed to the player during the Conspiracy Base of Operations quest.
  • Fixed a bug that caused another conspiracy quest to start right after finishing one.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented the gold looting of raider parties in quests: Escort Merchant Caravan, Set Sail and Escort The Fortune Seekers, Destroy Raiders, Caravan Ambush, Extortion by Deserters, Company of Trouble.
  • Fixed a bug that caused low frequency of the Escort Merchant Caravan quest.
  • Fixed a bug that gave the "Long live the Empire!" achievement once the "Defeat the conspiracy" quest was cancelled or failed.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented quest giver notables' power from decreasing upon failing Need Manual Laborers, Army of Poachers, Village Needs Draught and Notable Wants Daughter Found quests.
  • Fixed a bug that caused Village Needs Draught Animals quest to fail instead of cancel if the village hearth is not within the correct range.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the Army of Poachers quest to fail instead of cancel when the village is raided by an AI party.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented bandit parties from being created one by one during each town visit after defeating the first bandit party during the Escort Merchant Caravan quest.
  • Fixed a misleading tooltip shown when trying to present a Dragon Banner to a kingdom leader.
  • Fixed a bug that caused troops given to the player temporarily for a quest to stay permanently.

 

Crafting

  • Increased the cut and pierce damage values of Decorated Warsword Blade, Decorated Short Warsword Blade and Decorated Long Warsword Blade crafting pieces.
  • Reduced the cut and pierce damage values of Bent Razor Head and Exceptional Eastern Glaive crafting pieces.

 

Audio

  • Fixed a bug that caused campaign sounds to persist after certain actions, like pressing ESC and continuing.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented battle music from being played when storming the enemy keep.

 

Other

  • Improved the accuracy of heroes' locations in the Encyclopedia.
    • Added clearer hints such as “Hero in a party while imprisoned” or “Hero's party at sea while imprisoned”
  • Switched the crossbows used by Sword Sister and Veteran Sword Sister.
  • Changed Besiegers' Blues random event's third option to increase morale by 20 instead of decreasing it by 20.
  • Improved the bow and arrows used by Khuzait Khan's Guard.
  • Replaced the Sturgian Druzhinnik Champion's horse with a Noble Horse. 
  • Increased One Handed skill and decreased Two Handed skill of Vlandian Pikeman.
  • Adjusted the shields of militia equipment sets to improve the balance.
  • Made Empire-culture shields available in shops.
  • Adjusted the shield used by the Corsair Chief.
  • Fixed a bug that caused Aserai Mamluke Regular to spawn with an extra spear.
  • Fixed a bug that allowed the town population to consume felt as food.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented Townsmen battle equipment from containing weapons.

 

Crashes

  • Fixed a crash that occurred when rendering images in texts of some languages.
  • Fixed a crash that occurred when a party disbanded and player tried to select a new leader.
  • Fixed a crash that occurred when entering a battle where all troops of a certain formation class were set to arrive as reinforcements rather than spawning immediately.
  • Fixed a crash that occurred due to incorrect soundtrack loading.
  • Fixed a crash that occurred when starting the Sally Out battle mission.
  • Fixed a crash that occurred when starting another fight against villagers after finishing a previous one.
  • Fixed a crash that occurred due to texture cache cleanup when closing the game.
  • Fixed a crash that occurred while loading a siege mission, due to an error in thread timing.
  • Fixed a bug that caused an infinite loading screen if a query popup opened during it.

Multiplayer

Game Modes

  • Added formation targeting to the Captain mode. Captains can now issue targeted charge orders to all formations (infantry, ranged, cavalry).

 

Other - Miscellaneous

  • Fixed a bug that caused the mangonel reload animation to reset when stepping back from assisting in the reload.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented the synchronization of destructible elements, preventing players that joined the battle late from seeing the broken meshes.

 

UI

  • Made minor adjustments to the placement of damage texts, health bars, kill feed,... to minimize overlap.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented long usernames from appearing fully in the kill feed.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the voice chat icon to be shown to spectators.

 

Crashes

  • Fixed a crash that occurred when adding or removing a friend on PlayStation.

 

Modding

  • Weapon flags are no longer read as true when their value is given as false.
  • Added the ability to enable or disable navigation faces with their indices.
  • Added a new "Modding Animation Resources" module which, when enabled, corrects the animations of dogs and cats.
  • Added support for defining stealth equipment for heroes other than the player from .xml files.
    • In response to the community request by Sly.
  • OnDeploymentFinished is now a mission object and mission behavior callback that is called for all mission types after the initial troop spawn.
    • If you have a custom deployment mission controller behavior (which you add to the Mission as a behavior) and which extends from the DeploymentMissionController abstract class, then you need to call Mission.OnDeploymentFinished(); when you finish spawning the initial troops and when the deployment phase is completed.
    • If you don't have a deployment mission controller behavior and if you just have a custom mission controller (which controls the mission flow), then you need to call Mission.OnInitialSpawnCompleted(BattleSide) during or after mission loading is finished. It could be in "AfterMissionLoadingFinished()" or within "OnMissionTick()".
    • Both pathways notify the mission that all initial troops and deployable entities are spawned. So the mission sends notification messages to all mission objects and behaviors to initialize themselves accordingly.
  • Map event-specific checks (e.g. IsFieldBattle and IsSallyOut) have been extracted into separate classes derived from MapEventComponent. 
    • This enables modders to implement custom map events by creating their own MapEventComponent classes and attaching them to map events.
  • Fixed a bug that caused overridden skill values to be wrong for a skill template given characters.
  • Fixed a crash that occurred in the multiplayer lobby when using a mod that utilized mpclassdivision.xml merging.
  • Fixed a crash that occurred in the material editor when the assigned texture name contained uppercase letters.


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