Alaloth: Champions of the Four Kingdoms Strongholds Update Live

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Written by ValH on August 22nd, 2022

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The Strongholds update is now live for Gamera Interactive's narrative-driven action-RPG Alaloth: Champions of the Four Kingdoms. As you may expect, this early access update adds customizable player strongholds to the game.

But while the developers are still iterating on that particular system, the update also overhauls the game's economy, tinkers with its item balance, and expands its quest content. Here's more on that:

Hello Champions!

Sunday is not the best day to deliver a massive update, said the PR experts, but hey, we were aiming to deliver strongholds before leaving for GamesCom and we did it! This is the first part of a major update which is super important considering the long term and the whole process in terms of balancing and polishing. This patch includes changes to the global economy sys and some other adds and fixes but doesn't require to start a new game!

IMPORTANT NOTE The game is playable usiing old saves as usual but issues can occurr from time to time. We are working try to prevent it, new saves will be bug free so if you spot something wrong, please consider this [i.e. Entering Free Mode could not stop enemy pawns or some UI elements as portraits or texts could be wrong

STRONGHOLDS

We were aiming to have strongholds by the end of the month, but we decided to speed-up things and go on with a first iteration of the sys, which is pretty cool. The stronghold has been thought to be a customizable personal hub, allowing players to plan their moves in a safe environment with the help of many different servants. The stronghold will be open to visitors, new characters will be available and new quests will be unlocked on the way. Taxes will be collected granted 10k gold per year.

• Councilor: the Councilor is in charge to recruit servants on your behalf. When the Councilor is tasked and a new servant is hired, players will have to wait around one week to see him in the stronghold
• Chef: the Chef grants the player the chance to cook recipes available in the cookbook in the comfort of a private kitchen
• Priest: the Priest will unlock the private shrine to respec your character using Orbs of Chaos
• Debt Collector: the Debt Collector is the one in charge to take care of taxes in your feud. A good Debt Collector can raise the amount of tax collected up to 50% per year
• Architect: the Architect is in charge to provide upgrades to the stronghold and to make it better and better with fancy furnitures. Fancy stuff will pop-up in his store time by time. Upgrading a stronghold will take 2 weeks
• Special Chars: unique characters will visit the stronghold granting new quests or asking for something from time to time [i.e. a special vendor with a unique stock, a unique QG and so on]

GAMEPLAY

We've put in a few important quality of life improvements, following your suggestions on our Discord server. We've worked on quests and the very good news is that we've finally put in all the contents we wanted, having more than 150 quests in place, now in their final shape with their final rewards. We've implemented the last 25 missing rewards today and there is just a bunch left still giving out money only [that were placeholders to let quests work]. This is a very important thing, because many players will notice big changes in their inventory as with everything in place, we've been finally able to determine the [almost] final level of rarity of each item. This means that what you see now is coherent with quests and tasks you can find all around Plamen and even if stats are not matching the real value/fancyness of the item/weapon, this will happen soon with the second part of the update. Moreover, we've added a new tracking sys with a cursor showing the direction for your tracked quesst [if any] that will be visible in the infobox of cities and places on the map.

As we said, saves are still working but we suggest to start over a new char to check what is changed and enjoy what is in now. We've even given a first pass to Grand Masters, changing their rewards. Not still working 100% but now they grant cool items basically lowering all cooldowns and in the future, they'll grant extra bonuses for the skillset linked to the respec of choice. Durability and repair costs have been iterated once again. Repair now costs 15% of the item value while selling an item to a merchant, will grant 40% of the item value to the player. Workbench have been iterated as well, considering the work done on all the items in-game. Repairing will be cheaper and workbench have been reworked accordingly.

ECONOMY

This is probably way more important than anything else at the mo. We've iterated every single item in-game, adjusting numbers a bit but working on in-game values to start. Doing like this is a bit weird, but for a number of reasons we're forced to do this kind of work to balance things properly. So, as we already said, this first round was mostly to align available rewards and avaialble items with a ratio, focusing on the progression of all systems together blending the proper way. Prices have been generally lowered and made consistent even if you are going to find items that will be still higher/lower in terms of stats, with the proposed value/rarity.

This will be fixed in the second round, but you can already see improvements around, making the whole thing way more coherent. Consumables, weapons, shields, armors, trinkets, belts, rings, cloaks: everything has had a first rework and even if we've tested things a bit, this week will be useful to gather feeds and data for the future updates. As usual, don't panic if something seems broken: we can revert and even if we'll be out for GamesCom and the team is going to take a break, we'll be available for emergencies.

NEXT

We are leaving for Germany today, have a great week! We have 50+ meetings for Alaloth and we hope to come back with enough info to be able to draft the long term plan heading to the full release. A few publishers would like to jump-in, investors are asking about our future projects and we are in the middle of a huge puzzle, trying to find the best way to solve it. Considering our past experiences and the actual situation, we'll be very careful with the next steps. The game is doing well, feeds are cool and we feel, now more than ever, to have something unique to push here. So no rushes and we'll keep you posted as usual [we realized just yesterday how many updates & patches we've sent out in one month and how many channels we handle real time trying to answer to every single question we receive...]. Happy to confirm that we are completely aligned with the roadmap we've shared and we'll probably be able to speed-up things in September, with the things scheduled [M&K anyone?].

CHANGELOG

• Strongholds are here! [with 7 achievements]
• New quest available Venomous Strike
• Overviews are now shown in a frame, supporting all resolutions the proper way
• A new pop-up shows now the total required cost when repairing the equipment
• Quest icons in World Map are now bigger
• Active quests titles and their statuses are now shown in the locations' info boxes on the World Map
• A new marker has been implemented on your pawn, to show you the right direction to the tracked quest [when possilbe]
• First round of iteration for global economy has been done. More than 700 items checked
• Quest Woe of a Stubborn can be completed as intended
• Quest A Whole New World had a typo in one of the characters name, now fixed, and its update notifications are now properly shown after each step completion
• Lesser Cloak of Vigor can now be equipped properly, showing the right cloak model on you character
• Quest The Hunt has been fixed and now do fails when conditions occurr
• Quest Imperial Intolerance makers have been fixed and now the quest is doable as intended
• Grand Masters' rewards have been iterated and are now more powerful and unique. More on the way
• In Thilaris a Quest Giver, not showing the proper 3D model, is now fixed
• Some POIs names in Codex have been fixed, as many other typos around. Proof in progress
• Blacksmith showing doubled blueprints in Winterleaf has been fixed
• VFX and SFX for eating/drinking actions are now shown in Inventory view, making it more clear when you eat/drink something directly from that UI, out of the FA
• The Citadel overpaint and navmesh have been improved, some unwanted obstacles to the player navigation have now been removed
• The Harbingers have been iterated to have more challenging fights
• Hashak overpaint has been iterated and improved [do you see the arena?]
• Timelines in strongholds have been improved
• Quest Troubles of a Merchant removes QI correctly when completed
• Frostsong has now its icon and card properly displayed
• Quests The Wold Rider, The Woods Keeper, Condemned, Accused, Exiled, have now their markers correctly displayed
• A Northern Voyage interactable item is no longer interactable during combat, as intended
• Bosses Xamoth and Drag'Drimin aren't spawning anymore if their FA has been already claimed by anyone, as intended
• Quest Nature's Keepsake reward is now as intended [showing 3 rings of the same kind]
• A few 1H weapons showing wrong assets in size, have been fixed
• Quest Lost on the Frozen Trail interactable in Silvermoor is now properly working
• Quests A Lovely Gift and Queen of the Dead have now their day/night indicators properly shown in World Map
• Cosmetic improvements on almost every in-game environment
• Misc performance fixes

Share the love and stay tuned!

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