Forged of Blood Patch v1.3.4613 Available

Back in August, Critical Forge released their turn-based tactical RPG Forged of Blood. And now, upon reflecting on some player feedback, the developers bring us a new major patch that adds an in-game codex packed with lore and tutorials, along with some other features that include achievements, follower bribes, and spell saving. Here's a look at the new stuff:

Hello!

We’ve been fairly quiet in the last few weeks as we focused on implementing a number of big features that pushed our game out to 1.3. While we would have liked to push out the 1.2 patch earlier, some of the systems are already tied together so we had to power through and make sure everything works together in our latest patch, and here we are, so on to the big updates.

The Codex

One of the largest features we’ve implemented in this patch is the inclusion of the Codex - a repository of lore, mechanical definition, and tutorial entries that are searchable and interlinked. This was a pretty massive undertaking as it required the implementation of a new system and complete overhaul to much of the lore text to fit our intended format, as such this is something we will continue to edit, expand, and refine as we go along.

In this patch we’ve included a bit of the ancient history of Attiras and provided some additional lore context to the creatures, factions, and our main protagonists. We’ve also entered in a pretty comprehensive list of definitions and mechanical explanations of the many features and mechanics in the game along with the main tutorial slides from before. As mentioned, we will be adding on to it in the coming patches, and while we have our own backlog, your comments will help us prioritize what entries need to be put, edited, or elaborated on.

Spell Saving and Loading

Having implemented a spellcrafting system as massive as ours, one of the most requested quality of life features has been the ability to save a spell that you have crafted for use on other characters. This was a bit tricky but we’ve managed to make it work with the caveat that saved spells can only save that particular instance of the spell; which means that you will still need to manually level up your customs spells, and if loading the spell into a character with a lower magurite control stat, you will need to adjust the levels accordingly. This is of course due to the custom spells being custom to each player’s making.

For returning players, you will note a slight change in the Spellcrafting UI with the Save/Load section being added on the bottom. Spells will need to be crafted and confirmed as before, once the name is confirmed, clicking the Save button with the spell selected will open the Spell Save menu. This will function just like the game’s Save/Load function from here on out. Loading a spell will overwrite the selected spell, and saved spells will only be available to the appropriate energy type. Once saved, spells can be used across multiple characters and campaigns as they will function much like a saved game. Happy crafting!

Bribes.

Now, to address the many concerns that have been expressed by players regarding the brutal nature of our Philosophical Index and the Distance Threshold for each character, we’ve been working on a couple options that are more in line with my lore and game design intent. While we work on the much larger and time consuming feature we have planned, this patch adds a couple “bribe” options to the warning dialogue that pops up when you followers are unhappy. You will now have the option to respond, and with enough gold in your treasury you will also be presented with two tiers of bribes to alleviate your follower’s discontent over your decisions. As they say: money talks - even in Attiras.

Achievements.

Finally, we have also put in the achievements many have been waiting for! There are 87 achievements in total for you to earn in-game.

Known issues:

Random dialogue threads leading out from the PDT warnings may trigger a null response with the wrong portrait and character name, but the chosen shift will still take effect. You can verify this by checking the character PP position in the Tri-axis Philosophical Index once the dialogue is over.

PDT warning values are still undergoing testing internally and may be subject to change in future patches.

Certain achievements that only need a specific numerical checks will be earned when loading a saved game (e.g. Number of territories or gold amount in treasury). Other achievements that require a specific event will require that event to be triggered again to earn (e.g Finishing Act 1, or completing a specific quest). Also, most achievements can be earned via the War of Claims and Attiran Conquests, with specific exceptions called out in the descriptions.

With this patch focusing on implementing the biggest new features we’ve been working on for weeks, we will go through and deal with the litany of smaller bug fixes in the coming week. The addition of new features will also bring a small chance that older saved games may be corrupted - our internal testing has proved otherwise but we would be remiss in not accounting for that possibility once the patch is out en masse.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you will enjoy everything we’ve put into this patch. It’s been a few weeks of non-stop work to get everything together.

Cheers!
Igor