About the Game
Hero's Hour is an accessible, yet-deep and content-rich Strategy Roleplaying Game. Take control of your hero, explore the world, build up your town, fight fast-paced battles, level up your hero and amass an army large enough to take out the opponents - before they take you out.
While exploring the overworld and developing your town and army are both turn-based, giving you time to think and plan out your next moves, in battles your units will do the best to fight for themselves in real time - all hundreds of them. Cast spells and give attack orders to swing the tide of battle - or just sit back and watch as your might unfolds.
Being on the faster side compared to other turn based strategy games, you may even be able to finish the hotseat games that you start!
Turn Based + Real Time
While exploring the overworld and developing your town and army are both turn-based, giving you time to think and plan out your next moves, in battles your units will do the best to fight for themselves in real time - all hundreds of them. Cast spells and give attack orders to swing the tide of battle - or just sit back and watch as your might unfolds.
Procedural Generation
Hero's Hour brings impactful procedural generation to the strategy game formula, ensuring that every time you play, there will be new areas to explore and strange buildings to enhance your hero or army. Seek out obelisks to start you on small procedural quests that send you around the world. You won't even be able to use the same build order each time you play the same faction.Features
- 11 factions with special mechanics, strengths and weaknesses
- 22 hero classes, with a special skill each
- 50 common hero skills
- 177 units (and 99 upgraded units)
- 80 unique unit abilities
- 166 artifacts
- 83 spells (+18 spells unlocked via skills)
- Dozens of impactful map buildings
- Local "hotseat" multiplayer
- Co-op with other players or even with the AI
Being on the faster side compared to other turn based strategy games, you may even be able to finish the hotseat games that you start!
Screenshots
11 images
Version Information
Steam Patch Notes
Official update history
Build 21161460
Dec 12, 2025
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It's been a long road since the Hero's Hour v2.0 update brought us to steam, and it's been some wonderful years of post-launch support. But recently, I've been putting together a team and started work on the next evolution of Hero's Hour: With so many sweeping changes, it had to be a sequel.
You can jump over to see the steam page, trailer and wishlist it now! Right here: Hero's Hour 2.
Not only will Hero's Hour 2 be a jump up in team size, it also goes to higher levels when it comes to quality - and thus development time. So it's not playable yet. But if you follow the steam page or the official Hero's Hour discord server, you'll be getting all the news about what I expect to exceed every parameter of Hero's Hour 1, once it's done.
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The team is composed of me, Lautaro Ariño who also worked on Hero's Hour 1, as well as two powerful indie developers known as Unleash the Giraffe. The project is being safekept by Hooded Horse. I am super proud to have reached a level where I actually am working on a game by the same publisher who has the current Heroes of Might and Magic game under their wing.
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So, to make sure to not leave Hero's Hour 1 players much too impatient waiting for this huge thing that's coming as soon as we can make it, I've put together a bit of a patch for Hero's Hour 1, too. Patch notes below:
Minor patch v2.8.3
ADDITIONS
Hero's Hour 2 advertisement added to main menu
Added healthbars to walls
Added unique sprites for Rank I, Rank II and Rank III of Faith, Carnage, Discovery, and Adventurer- to match other major skills
Added unique sprites for Rank II (and Rank III) of the following subskills: Life Summoner, Drown
16 more hero combat sprites added to the community made Hero Combat Skins pack
Map setup screen now allows picking which Rogue faction to play as without picking a hero (i.e. random hero from chosen Rogue faction)
BALANCING
Mana Spring now gives 3 mana per movement point spent instead of 1
Walls now get more hp the later in the game you are (+10% per week)
Walls now get even more hp when constructing buildings that improve the level of the walls
Walls now have a natural 2 damage reduction
Unit tooltips now display their damage reduction - called armor
Increased all unit's attack and armor by values depending on their rank and whether they're aggressive or defensive - leading to buffs to high tier units
BUG FIXES
Rewrote the code for aether spellpower bonus for summoning spells to be more safe
Increased the size scaling for Mare Nostrum to reduce bugs for higher numbers of players, and reduced max players to 5
Fixed a bug where sometimes Guardposts would spawn on coastlines
Fixed Potency spells only spending the mana of the original spell
Fixed a bug allowing lost heroes to gain xp by being rehired
Tailtoads no longer flop around while sleeping, petrified or frozen
Build 19872878
Sep 5, 2025
Some time ago, I started talking to a representative of Lava Potion studios - the team that made the excellent game, Songs of Conquest, one of the closest family members of Hero’s Hour, if we talk about game genres. Together we hatched a plan to add one of the beloved heroes from that game to Hero’s Hour. Cecilia thus joins the roster of Hero’s Hour heroes, becoming a General from the Order faction.
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She also gets her all own unit, the Conquest Minstrel. I always found the theme of musical units, which runs through the various Songs of Conquest factions, super interesting, and I’m happy to at least be able to have a nod towards that here. The Conquest Minstrel is a very rare unit, only really available for Cecilia - and playing her becomes a bit of a Challenge Run. On one hand, the Conquest Minstrels are really powerful support units - on the other hand, you’ll have to keep those few Conquest Minstrels you start with safe throughout the run, since there’s few ways to replenish them. I recommend the Resurrection spell, but I’m sure you’ll find other methods.
Other than this, v2.8.2 adds another hero, Amber, who changes the units in town into dragons (when used as your starting hero), graphical updates to several Rogue Realms units, rebalances some things, and does a bunch of bug fixes and minor changes.
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v2.8.2 has been a long way coming, mostly because of trying to spend my summer holidays as holidays, but also because I’m still pooling most of my available development time into something yet invisible and unknown, that you’ll all get to hear about soon enough.
Below, you’ll find the full patch notes:
ADDITIONS
Added a new General hero for Order, Cecilia
Added a new unit, the Conquest Mistrel, which can be accessed by playing as Cecilia
Added a new General hero for Order, Amber
Starting a game as Amber will change the hireable units in town to be serpentine (without RR DLC) or dragons (with RR DLC)
CHANGES IMPLEMENTED FROM SUGGESTIONS
Pyre heroes that replace the 5th tier unit will now replace the Demon Tamer instead of the Demon Carer, so that the Blood Cell won't lose its primary effect
Taverns in Rogue towns will now predominantly offer heroes from their own town
Cult of Muscle now procs after Conversion instead of before, meaning that the Herculean can't instantly get converted
Engineering now reduces cost of deploying Catapults
Reworked tavern UI to include a preview to see the starting and learnable skills for the displayed hero
Reworked unit creation screen to allow you to see what the unit will upgrade into before buying the upgrade
Reworked unit creation screen to allow you to see how many unit upgrade points are left
Rewrote the description of the Taming skill to clarify its effects when dealing with taming beasts that were not hidden, and clarified that the Taming unit ability only works on permanent beasts
Updated spellbook UI to better guide new players on how to use spellbook sorting when there's no spells for a tab
Minor improvements to some icons
BALANCING
Reap spell weakened by 12.5%
Life Reaper damage reduced from 175 to 150
Death Coil and Coil of the Dead both now have a harder time killing 10+ units at once
Stormbringer storms will now be less able to disrupt higher tier units if they do not get powered by casting spells
Doppelgangers that lose fights will not instantly be respawned next day. Just like Doppelgangers that run out of time, there'll be a full day of no Doppelganger before they reappear. Skill description has been updated to match
Amount of units carried by the Doppelganger now is reduced more slowly day by day
Reduced damage of the Salt Brine spell by 20%
Number of units created by Summoning spells reduced by a flat 15%
Units summoned by Summoning spells now have 5% less health and 5% less damage, returning to values as they were previous to v2.7
Units summoned by Summoning spells now take 2x damage for the first two seconds of their existence, and start with a two second attack cooldown
Ranged unit deadzones (area where any enemy unit will prevent the ranged unit from using ranged attacks) are now slightly smaller for Summoned units
Aeromancy, Terramancy, Pyromancy, Hydromancy and Summoning now each give +6 spellpower for their spells instead of +7 spellpower for their spells
Carver Stalls now give +2 ore each day instead of +1 ore
Carver Stalls can now recruit units for ore at an efficiency of 200 gold per ore instead of 150 gold per ore
Carver Stalls now cost 1000 gold instead of 500 gold
Reduced the chance of >summoned< fireflies proccing on-death effects from Destruction
Nerfed the number of units spawned by Infestation slightly, to balance for the new mechanics of Spore
Buffed the amount of XP gained by selling units at the Fort (overworld building)
FIXES
Fixed Hunter's Guild also showing beasts to non-hero regiments
Fixed Wrecking Reef and Brine Lighthouse crashing the game if the hero carried no units
Fixed Frozen Heart typo "freezy"
Fixed Banditry giving bandits on level-up instead of Mercenaries as specified
Fixed Town Perks being picked automatically if skipping picking them yourself, then passing the turn in a hotseat game
Fixed artifact tooltip displays when looking at an artifact you already own not being displayed correctly when using a non 100% UI scale
Fixed a crash caused by selecting a Rogue Realms hero in map selection, then turning off the Rogue Realms DLC and opening the map seleciton screen again
Fixed the estimation of weekly cost of units not taking into consideration the town Growth Modus, such as from Watering Well
Fixed slowdown on generating huge maps due to running out of unique adventure map buildings, especially likely to happen when using Frq. Adv. Building: High
Fixed Caravan Stables giving movement to the real Delirium hero instead of the avatar, in case the avatar is visiting the town
Fixed a crash when using the custom scripting function unit_transform()
Fixed exploit where you could continuously trick the enemy heroes into using all their mana by sending in tiny regiments against them
Fixed Aether Forge breaking if the hero learns all the spells of a specific element
Fixed a bug crashing the game when converting a town which had given a buff to the visiting hero
Fixed an error causing town conversions to not correctly build up new buildings
Fixed Spatial Rift allowing you to move units onto or off Lieutenants
Spatial Rift can no longer be learned by Lieutenants
Fixed Mountain Throne not working
Fixed Marble Birdbaths decreasing the spawn rate of Mountain Throne
If you leave units in the Village Monument window without hitting deposit and close the town window, the left behind units will be put into the town's garrison
Slightly improved the Village Monument UI
Tried fixing a crash related to the the hero tooltip for a hero carrying a bodyguards unit
Fixed queued level-ups on heroes not being saved correctly, being lost if saving and reloading before being used
Fixed a bug causing characters to be duplicated in some pieces of text in languages that did not use spaces
Fixed a bug that made the Gold Vein (made from the Earthen hero subskill Gold Digger) not produce gold
Fixed Liberty giving too few stats when using it to change points from a levelup that gave Morale, Luck, Entourage, Movement or Command
Fixed mods that add custom spells breaking the spells given by Wild Call, Firegating, Firetrapping
Fixed Wildren summoning Anima instead of Forest Spirits
Fixed a bug preventing the Docks to send heroes back to a boat that they had disembarked on via the Docks
Fixed a bug that made the Aether Vortex give Aether to non-Summoner heroes when skipping battles
Fixed a crash when a Spore town interacted with a non-hero regiment
Fixed a translation issue making several Vaults use the wrong name in translated versions of the game
Fixed Jars of Pandora picked up by Avatars giving the movement boost to the main hero instead of the avatar
[dynamiclink href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/1656780/Heros_Hour/"]
Build 17810964
Mar 21, 2025
The game is currently on sale on its own, as well as in a bundle together with our long-respected comrade game of Songs of Conquest. Additionally, the v2.8.0 Homestead update is also releasing today. Woohoo!
The v2.8 update is a culmination of several different development processes that all come together into a single, large update. Looking over the final list of changes, it is comparable to both v2.6 and v2.7 in size.
If you’ve already read the previous post about v2.8, you might expect this to be nothing more than repetition. But this is not so. While I expected v2.8 to be mostly done when I wrote that post, several things then happened to expand the update. The newer parts of the v2.8 update will be tagged with (new!).
First, let’s do a general overview of the different parts of the update, and then we’ll go into more detail.
Town Reworks
Faction Update
Rogue Update
Community Updates
Spells Update
To give an idea of how large the update is, if we ignore reworks and just focus on content quantity, the update adds 12 normal spells, 16 special spells, 17 units, 5 town perks, 38 town buildings, 4 overworld buildings, 27 new heroes and 16 new unit abilities. When it comes to skills, it either adds 8 or 44 new skills, depending on how you count the new class-specific skills.
Let’s dive into the changes in greater detail, then!
This was the original goal of the v2.8 update: To rework various aspects of the town that I felt caused clunky gameplay. Front and center was my desire to overhaul the building requirement system, that has been unpopular (from what I can tell) ever since v1.9 added in static building requirements. Before then, each game would have a shuffled grid of buildings and requirements. After v1.9, those requirements were frozen to always be the same - which reduced RNG, but highlighted that the system itself was bad.
Apart from building requirements, various other parts of how towns worked felt like they could use a rework. Thus, the following list of changes:
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New building requirement system and UI
There has been growing sentiment about the building requirement system for towns being bad. The general desire has been for all limitations for one building to require another to be removed - or most, anyway. My own issue with the current system is that as development has gone on, more and more buildings have been moved to be early on in the town’s development, which creates a flood of choices early on. Especially when a new development level was reached and - POOF - now you have 6 new buildings available - that felt somewhat off.
I’m trying out a new building requirement system which sorts buildings into three categories - commercial, warfare and magic buildings. Instead of building requirements either being a global amount of buildings built and/or a specific building, the new requirements are based around number of the various types of buildings built. So for instance, you might want to build Archmage Tribunal, but to do so, you’ll need two more warfare buildings and one more commercial building. This will still keep limits in place for building up your town and planning out your build order, while not being quite as limiting.
It also comes with a new UI which sorts the buildings in the three categories, which I hope will make it easier for new players to get an overview of their options.
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New system for upgrading units
Unit upgrades have been tough to balance. They’re very core to the game, with most units actually being pretty basic and only getting their interesting abilities once upgraded. As well, they allow the player to focus on what units they think are most core to their strategy. However, I feel like as the game is now, usually unit upgrades are something you get not because you want to, but because you need another building and the upgrade is cheaper than the other options - and otherwise, you’d rather steer for more impactful buildings. There’s also a lot of micro-managing of bringing your units back to town to get upgraded, and then returned to your main hero.
The new upgrade system seeks to improve this by removing dwelling upgrades, and instead creating a single two-tier building which allows you to upgrade units. Once a unit upgrade is bought, it affects all your units across the map instantly - no more micro-managing upgraded and unupgraded unit stacks! This also leads to a minor reduction in the unit stack clutter.
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Tavern rework
This one is a bit more experimental, and might change with more player feedback. There is a problem in how central the tavern is to the current way the game is played. It allows you to get more heroes for:
I’ve tried disincentivising getting the tavern early and hiring several heroes early by changing the cost, the availability of the tavern - neither seemed to really fix the issue. The building is simply too strong and also too necessary. I also do not enjoy the inconsistency of sometimes getting a hero that can do nothing, and sometimes getting one which gives gold each day or gets entourage - completely at random.
The new version of the tavern goes as follows:
Scouts are heroes in all ways apart from having skills and leveling up. You can even get xp on a scout and they’ll then level up when you upgrade the scout into a full hero. The scout is cheaper, too. Really, instead of trying to nerf the tavern, I’m now making it so that you don’t need it if all you really wanted was a scout - and the tavern, then, is more useful if you’re looking for a real hero to level up secondarily.
Other changes:
Reworked town perks
With the removal of the old town level system with thresholds for number of buildings constructed, a new system was required for unlocking the town perks. But I do actually like the new system, because it always felt a bit jarring that you suddenly got a town perk pop-up out of nowhere when you were actually planning on doing something else. Now, instead of them being unlocked after building X buildings, they’re unlocked when building specific buildings.
For normal faction towns, such as the Order town, this is the Centre of Order, Palace of Order and Empire of Order.
Additionally, the town perks pop-up is displayed on top of the town window instead of removing the town window, and you’re able to click “wait” button to delay picking your town perk so that it does not interrupt you quite as much as before.
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5 new town perks
There’s 5 new town perks on offer. The Sponsor perk is shown above and gives access to a rare faction unit that normally would only be accessible by starting as a special hero. The Spell Research teaches more spells and teaches spells to heroes even when they’re not in town. Devotee Hall increases a spell skill for any heroes stopping by town, as a second Archmage Tribunal. Gallows decreases luck and morale of anyone attacking your towns or heroes. Finally, and most excitingly, Development Plan allows you to build any building in town way before you normally would be able to.
This contains various changes and updates to various factions. Arcane, Tide and Wild each get their own unique changes, while the rest of the factions get more general changes. This part was not originally envisioned when I started working on v2.8, but various changes within the town rework and rogue rework made clear that these changes were needed.
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Arcane faction skill rework
Previously, the Arcane class skills gave, respectively, a resource that can only be used in a single town building, or boring ore. This was way past due for a rework.
In v2.8, the Aether system has been expanded, and the skills now do something on their own, too. Aether is now granted in four varieties: Fire, Earth, Air, Water - and is granted by defeating various enemies. Usually, it’s kind of obvious what units give what Aether, like, the Spirited Fire giving Fire, and most human units giving Air.
Aether can then be used in one of three ways:
There’s 12 special spells that your Arcane heroes will learn by ranking up their class skills.
Additionally, the class skills have been renamed from Alchemy and Aethermancy to Aethercrafting and Aethermancy. The Alchemy name was simply too close in wording to the Alchemist hero class and the Chemistry skill.
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2 new Tide units, changed unit roster, the Bubble Shield ability
Tide has been a moderately popular faction, but never really due to its units. There were a couple of issues, that I had tried to work around previously in a rather awkward manner. Here, I’m mostly hinting to the Harpooner unit, which was so useless that I decided that players in Rogue Realms would get it without picking it, just so that it would have some use. Additionally, the Geyseral and Canceri units for tier 6 were way too similar.
The Harpooner and Geyseral are being removed from the Tide unit roster, replaced by the new Sirenaga (pronounced Siren-aga) and the Tidemancer. The first is a tier 2 aggressively statted unit with charge, and the latter is a back-line support unit able to give allies bubble shields and resurrecting fallen comrades. The Harpooner and Geyseral can still be found as neutral units.
The bubble shield ability is a new Tide-specific ability for the Spawnling, Sirenage and Tidemancer, which gives a shield that absorbs damage until it pops. This finally makes Spawnlings more survivable and helps Tide out during the early game.
Finally, the Tide caster class has been renamed from Pyromancer to Sailblazer. The old name was an attempt at forcing people to accept Tide as a fire-themed faction, but that never worked out. With the changes to the fire-themed units of the faction, it felt natural to finally retire the old, confusing name, and to finally accept that Tide is a water faction first-and-foremost, with air and fire second. The name, Sailblazer, should hold up this compromise well.
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New unit abilities, and changes for several faction units
I finally went and overhauled unit abilities for some of the oldest units with the least interesting abilities. Here, I’m especially referring to units which only had the passive, stat-altering abilities like Slow, Sturdy or Savage. These abilities will no longer show up in the units’ tooltips (since their effects can still be seen by looking at the unit’s stats). The units have been given more interesting abilities instead.
Druid gains the Long Ranged and Rooting abilities, while losing Summoning. The Wildspeaker still has Summoning.
Flamejuggler gains the Burning ability, while the upgraded Flame Stoker gains Explosive Shots.
Avalancher loses Terror, but gains the ability to Unit Thrower, throwing Goblins.
Dreamer gains the Long Ranged and Dreamstrike abilities. It loses Summoning, but the upgraded version still has it. Sopor also loses Confusion.
Divine Light ability is granted to: Friar, Crusader, Bladesinger, Djinn, Voodoo, Sunbringer, Archopriest, Panda, Teaknight, Bloomer, Monokero, and Prismatic.
Beastslayer ability is granted to: Jotun, Tarantula, Catabolite, Imp, Lizardcher, Apex, Tunnelrider, Archer, Kroll Bowman, Equestrian, Demise, and Strongarm.
Blackhearted ability is granted to: Lost Soul, Zombie, Rot Knight, Canine, Upgraded Demontamer, Minotaur, Shadowmancer, Absurdum, Shale Drake, Infernal, Black Dragon, and Larva.
Rage ability is granted to: Raider, Monster Trog, Cave Regent, and Shambler.
Terror ability is granted to: Cyclops and Watcher.
Evolve ability is granted to: Worm.
Interruption ability is granted to: Ophidian, Minewatch, Divine Monk, and Mountainguard.
Plating ability is granted to: Hoplite, Polar Cavalry, and Hillkeeper.
Inspiration ability is granted to: White Yeti.
Potent Soul ability is granted to: Torchbearer.
Salt Strike ability is granted to: Seamare and Crystallius.
Some of these unit abilities are new. We have the Rooting ability, which is akin to Rootcaller but the unit still attacks normally - and the Dreamstrike ability, which has a chance to make enemies fall asleep, its effect akin to the Slumber spell.
The Divine Light, Beastslayer, Blackhearted and Salt Strike abilities all give the unit increased damage against a specific type of units. In general, that bonus will apply against about 20% of enemy units - so the bonuses are going to be relevant rather often, but not in all combat scenarios. This occasionally brings a benefit to any player that positions their units correctly to intercept enemies that their units are strong against.
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Woodfae added as Wild’s tier 1 unit; Change to Symbiotic Grove
Okay, this takes a bit of explanation.
For a long time now, the most efficient way to play Wild has been to use the class skills to create a large amount of anima, and then making sure that you constantly move your anima back to town to upgrade them into forest spirits. When your forest spirits die, they create anima that you can then send back to town to re-upgrade as a sort of emergent infirmary.
This was really cool but also really clunky, taking a lot of boring effort in micromanaging heroes in ferrying back and forth units. Part of the reason for the rework to the unit upgrade system was actually to solve this type of micromanagement.
But the new upgrade system left the Wild strategy in a weird spot. Either, anima would always be auto-upgraded into Forest Spirits, effectively making Forest Spirits immortal - or they’d be really weak. Additionally, there was a long-standing issue where Forest Spirits could not be resurrected by the infirmary - because if the infirmary worked on Forest Spirits, you could duplicate them by upgrading their anima.
To solve this, there’s now a change so that the anima is a neutral unit, and instead Wild’s unupgraded tier 1 unit has been changed to the Woodfae. The Woodfae, just like its upgraded counterpart the Forest Spirit, create a permanent anima when they die. But since the anima cannot be upgraded back to a Forest Spirit and is a separate unit, all the problems disappear, and now Forest Spirits can be resurrected normally by the Infirmary. Additionally, the Woodfae is a rather sturdy unit what with being able to create anima on death even before it gets upgraded, so it works as a buff. It still gains flying by being upgraded - but upgrading is now less of a necessity.
But what about the cool Wild strategy of turning Anima into Forest Spirits? Well, the Symbiotic Grove has been updated to now also turn anima into Woodfae/Forest Spirits day by day - both for heroes inside and outside of town. Thus, the life cycle of the anima has been changed as shown above.
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New Subskill for Every Hero Class
For the longest time, there has been a lot of suggestions about giving heroes unique combat abilities. In v2.7, it became easier to mod this sort of thing. And for v2.8, I’ve gone and used this as the basis for a new set of subskills. Along with a request for a more consistent way of getting mana regeneration for casters early, the following set of subskills has been added.
In total, there’s 38 new subskills - one for each class - but they can also be considered two subskills with a unique effect for each class.
One set of subskills are the Warrior subskills, which are given to fighter hero classes. They give a stat bonus and a combat ability. For instance, Extinctor heroes gain access to the Decay Warrior subskill which gives +2 proficiency and Leech Life during combat; while Artisan heroes gain access to the Arcane Warrior subskill, which gives +2 defence, +1 proficiency, and makes the hero summon a small group of Scrolls around them at the start of combat.
The other set are the Mage subskills, which are given to caster hero classes. They teach the hero one or several useful spells, often at a reduced mana cost. Additionally, it makes them regenerate 3 mana each day. Mana regeneration plus a spell with reduced mana cost makes them really efficient spellcasters during the early game. Examples include Withermages gaining access to the Decay Mage subskill, which teaches a Deathripple which costs 12 mana instead of 16, and Summoner heroes gaining access to the Essence Mage subskill, which teaches Elemental Air, Elemental Rock, Elemental Fire and Elemental Water spells, each with mana cost reduced by 2.
While I think the Rogue Realms DLC worked perfectly as a large overhaul DLC that updated most aspects of the game, it fell a bit short on its potential of adding in 12 new factions. Adding in 12 new factions was never its goal nor something it promised - it promised to add a single new faction with 12 different towns - but still, we all had the dream, and woke up to twelve towns of varying quality and varying uniqueness. With v2.8, I’m trying to get the Rogue towns a bit closer to that dream of 12 unique new towns, that can, if not be called full factions, at least pseudo-factions.
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3 New Buildings for Each Rogue town
This change has been a much requested one. Previously, all Rogue towns had the same buildings. Boo! Made them feel less like 12 factions and more like a single faction.
Anyway, I’ve now added three unique buildings per Rogue town, which mimic the design style of the unique buildings per normal faction (i.e. Hostler, Counting House, Conscription Centre, Tower of Idolatry). That is, in total, 36 new buildings with different effects - most of them at least slightly unique.
I won’t go into detail about all of them here, because that’s a lot of buildings. I’ll just let you know I tried to develop on the various themes of the Rogue towns with the aesthetic and gameplay design of the buildings. Additionally, several of them use the new improved system for custom resources, such as the Scrap resource for Industry.
As an aside, the introduction of these new buildings have also made me go through the Rogue towns and remove various buildings from them. Thus, all Rogue towns no longer have all five of Colossus, Lieutenant Hall, Deity, Summoning Circle, Mercenary Hall - instead, each town only has two of the five, different ones depending on what town, with the latter 3 replaced with the 3 new unique buildings.
Changes to Rogue town expansions
Previously, the Rogue town expansions were tied into the town building progression system. The idea was that Rogue towns would give you the unique ability to really quickly get access to late game buildings if you went and focused on building your expansions. This, however, was not as interesting as I’d thought. Instead, the Rogue town expansions now work a bit more similarly to normal town income buildings - as in, each requiring the previous one. But instead of each of them having the same effect, they now have different effects, as follows:
Trade Expansion: Gives a town perk
Martial Expansion: Gives visiting heroes +2 attack
Artisan Expansion: Gives visiting heroes +2 proficiency
Urban Expansion: Gives visiting heroes +5000 xp
Changes to Rogue hero classes
Previously, Rogue hero classes were set up in the code as either fighter or caster classes. But before v2.6 reworked the hero class system, classes kind of did not exist, and each hero instead was either a fighter or a caster, independently of its class - with the Rogue heroes being half and half within a single class. This led to some strange situations after v2.6 where it wasn’t clear whether a Rogue hero was a fighter or a caster. Now, all of this has been aligned. Heroes of fighter classes do not start with spells, while heroes of caster classes do. Additionally, the starting spells of Rogue heroes have been updated to avoid duplicates.
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New Major Skills: Adventurer & Discovery, and four subskills
In an attempt to expand on neutral heroes, there’s now a new set of major skills for Rogue heroes, mercenaries and wanderers. Adventurer is the major for fighter heroes, while Discovery is for casters. Both give bonuses when interacting with resources and buildings on the overworld map.
There’s also four new subskills:
Herbalism allows finding invisible herbs across the overworld.
Split Branch allows picking a secondary unit for the hero to specialise in.
Liberty gives a stat bonus that you can freely allocate across the 10 stats.
Heirloom gives artifacts when the hero levels up.
There’s some fun interactions with Herbalism and Heirloom giving new interactables that the Adventurer and Discovery skills will trigger with. I’m sure players will also find a bunch of other synergies between this and various other skills.
With these, most Rogue and neutral heroes have had their skillsets updated. Additionally, the Menace heroes now have this as their “class skill”, further distinguishing them from necromancers.
24 new units for Rogue towns
There’s a set of 24 new units for the various Rogue town rosters. However, these aren’t finished yet. More news on them later. They will either be released as a later part of the v2.8.x update series or as part of v2.9.
They’re really interesting, and we had the community involved in voting for what unit concepts should be added and which should be discarded. So I’m really excited to bring them in when they’re done. Stay tuned!
The community is still going strong. While there haven’t been as many art marathons during the last half a year, the number and quality of those who enter has only risen. We’ve seen some really exciting stuff, and some artists have allowed their entries to be added to the game. Additionally, a lot of new suggestions, some 15 of which have been added to the game.
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A new hero for every faction and for every Rogue town
The result of the 10th art marathon is that the above set of heroes are getting added to the game. There were sooo many people who entered this time, and their work was rather incredible in quality too. It was honestly a bloodbath, seeing the 84 submissions by 20 different artists being cut down to this list of finalists. The finalists were picked mostly according to vote count, but secondarily in a way to make sure that each faction and each rogue town would get at least one new hero.
Credit to Freddy, DeadSaracen, DragonRose/AntRose, Lyolf, SleepyMage, Erridian, Revikatis, Hamastra and Medicine Melancholy.
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10 new dragon units, four dragon themed vaults
V2.8 is going to bring in a large update to the dragon side of the game. This includes 10 new units, most of which are dragons, the rest of which are dragon-themed. These dragons come from the 9th art marathon, some of whose artists allowed their art to be used for the game. Credit to DragonRose/AntRose, Erridian, Revikatis, Nayooom, Spider Glace, DeadSaracen.
Many of these new dragon units are accessed by a synergy between the Dragonking ability and the new Dragonsoul ability. This allows specific units to be granted via Dragonking in case the hero knows another specific skill. For instance, if the hero has both Dragonking and Leadership, they can get the new Featherdrake unit. This is because the Featherdrake has the Dragonsoul ability for Leadership. That ability also gives Featherdrakes additional stats during combat for each rank of Leadership, and gives heroes extra xp when ranking up Leadership if they’ve had Featherdrakes in their army.
Apart from Featherdrakes, there’s:
Finally, these new dragons can also be found in a set of new Dragon Towers. There’s four different dragon towers, each with a custom crafted encounter of various dragon units and support units. Dragon towers are predominantly found in secondary areas of the map, very rare in starting areas.
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15 new suggestions implemented
As usual, there’s been a bunch of new suggestions in the discord. A total of 145 new suggestions with 773 votes have been tallied and selected between, with 15 of them getting added to the game. These range from minor changes, like Balaenopteras getting Aquatic, to larger changes, such as new game options and a way to see the total cost of all units available in town. The largest change is that there’s now a much better system for managing artifacts.
4 new units
The people who win art marathons are given wishes as for something to add to the game. The two winners of the last marathon (their vote number was tied!!) both asked for units, and thus 3 new units are added to the game. The 4th new unit is tied to the Summon Salt Hawk (see below) spell, and is the epinomous Salt Hawk.
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Expanded Lore Document
For a while now, there’s been a semi-secret lore document bundled within the game’s files. This document has now been greatly expanded. It contains history, overviews, diagrams, stories and lore snippets for over a hundred heroes. I’ve also added a series of hand-drawns illustrations to make it feel less like a block of text. I don’t expect players to read this - but for those who are interested, you’ll find the 153 page .pdf within the game’s files.
Finally, the update also includes a couple of updates to spells and other magical effects during combat.
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New spell graphics and higher clarity for spell casting
New effects for spell casts have been added. There’s a series of hand-drawn animations as well as better spell particles. The animations depend on the element of the spell as well as the power of the spell. That means that as your hero gains spellpower, the animations for casting the same spell will adapt.
There’s also a 300 ms lag time between casting the spell and the effect actually occurring. This makes the spell casting feel more impactful and allows the player to more easily orient themselves towards a spell to notice its effect. For instance, when the spell is not cast by yourself, but by the opposing hero, or by an effect such as Destruction.
Additionally, the graphics for units casting spells has been overhauled too, using the new elemental particles rather than the old squiggly blue lines.
New graphical effects during battle
Further along the lines of increasing combat clarity for magical effects, there’s now a new particle effect for units healing or resurrecting other units, which more clearly show who does what.
There’s also a new hand-drawn animation for explosions - one for the fiery type, and one for other explosive impacts, such as the AOE damage from Blaster units.
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12 new spells
Finally, there’s a series of new spells. The goal for these was to include effects that have not been seen before but that would still fit in as normal spells. I’m really really happy with the creativity of behind the recent spells, as I try to put more and more distance between the current design philosophy and the original quantity over quality philosophy of v1.0.
A good example of what I mean by that would be the four new Summoning spells:
Additionally, there’s four new salt spells, and four other misc. spells, including the Fireball Barrage spell that allows a group of your melee units to throw ranged fireballs instead of their normal attacks for a limited time.
If you’re not sure what “salt spell” means, they’re a series of spells added originally in v1.7 which each has a type of anti-magic property. As more spells were added, they became so rare that it made sense to expand their series. Anti-magic spells are quite core to offering counter-play against spell-heavy strategies - and most of them also have usage outside of that scenario.
BUG FIXES
UNIT CHANGES
OTHER CHANGES
So, that’s it. Another huge update along the lines of v2.6 and v2.7. I don’t know if I have another huge update in me for v2.9. Chances are that updates will continue to slow down and shrink down as time goes by. I think the game is just about as good as it can get without once more pulling up a bunch of the core tenets of its design - which I am once more getting more unwilling to do.
There has been some pushback to the changes made in v2.7, just as there was to changes made in v2.6. I don’t regret the choices I’ve made. I spent a lot of time thinking about each change that people might potentially dislike, so I can rest easy with my assessment of the pros outweighing the cons. But I know that that’s what it’s like to update a game so long after its “Final Release” - make some happy on one hand, and on the other, disappoint others.
As mentioned, I’m going to size down the breadth and depth of updates from here on out. Probably just do quality of life and polishing for some time. Maybe even focus mainly on balance, for whatever that is worth.
As always, thank you for trying out my game, and for those who hang around and support the community, doing art marathons or guides or videos - thank you too, from the bottom of my heart.
See you in the next announcement. I think you’ll find that one really, really, exciting.
-ThingOnItsOwn
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The v2.8 update is a culmination of several different development processes that all come together into a single, large update. Looking over the final list of changes, it is comparable to both v2.6 and v2.7 in size.
- Town Reworks
- Faction Update
- Rogue Update
- Community Updates
- Spells Update
If you’ve already read the previous post about v2.8, you might expect this to be nothing more than repetition. But this is not so. While I expected v2.8 to be mostly done when I wrote that post, several things then happened to expand the update. The newer parts of the v2.8 update will be tagged with (new!).
First, let’s do a general overview of the different parts of the update, and then we’ll go into more detail.
Town Reworks
- New building requirement system and UI
- New system for upgrading units
- Tavern rework
- Reworked town perks
- 5 new town perks
Faction Update
- Arcane class skill reworks
- 2 new Tide units, changed unit roster, the Bubble Shield ability (new!)
- New unit abilities, and changes for several faction units (new!)
- Woodfae added as Wild’s tier 1 unit; change to Symbiotic Grove (new!)
- New subskill for every hero class (new!)
Rogue Update
- 3 New Buildings for each Rogue town
- Unique resources for several Rogue towns
- Changes to Rogue town expansions
- Changes to Rogue hero classes (new!)
- New Major skills: Adventurer & Discovery and four subskills (new!)
Community Updates
- 10 new dragon units, four dragon themed vaults
- 15 new suggestions implemented, incl. new artifact management screen
- A new hero for every faction and for every Rogue town (new!)
- 4 new units
- Expanded Lore Document
Spells Update
- New spell graphics and higher clarity for spell casting
- New graphical effects during battle (new!)
- 12 new spells (new!)
To give an idea of how large the update is, if we ignore reworks and just focus on content quantity, the update adds 12 normal spells, 16 special spells, 17 units, 5 town perks, 38 town buildings, 4 overworld buildings, 27 new heroes and 16 new unit abilities. When it comes to skills, it either adds 8 or 44 new skills, depending on how you count the new class-specific skills.
Let’s dive into the changes in greater detail, then!
Town Reworks
This was the original goal of the v2.8 update: To rework various aspects of the town that I felt caused clunky gameplay. Front and center was my desire to overhaul the building requirement system, that has been unpopular (from what I can tell) ever since v1.9 added in static building requirements. Before then, each game would have a shuffled grid of buildings and requirements. After v1.9, those requirements were frozen to always be the same - which reduced RNG, but highlighted that the system itself was bad.
Apart from building requirements, various other parts of how towns worked felt like they could use a rework. Thus, the following list of changes:
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New building requirement system and UI
There has been growing sentiment about the building requirement system for towns being bad. The general desire has been for all limitations for one building to require another to be removed - or most, anyway. My own issue with the current system is that as development has gone on, more and more buildings have been moved to be early on in the town’s development, which creates a flood of choices early on. Especially when a new development level was reached and - POOF - now you have 6 new buildings available - that felt somewhat off.
I’m trying out a new building requirement system which sorts buildings into three categories - commercial, warfare and magic buildings. Instead of building requirements either being a global amount of buildings built and/or a specific building, the new requirements are based around number of the various types of buildings built. So for instance, you might want to build Archmage Tribunal, but to do so, you’ll need two more warfare buildings and one more commercial building. This will still keep limits in place for building up your town and planning out your build order, while not being quite as limiting.
It also comes with a new UI which sorts the buildings in the three categories, which I hope will make it easier for new players to get an overview of their options.
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New system for upgrading units
Unit upgrades have been tough to balance. They’re very core to the game, with most units actually being pretty basic and only getting their interesting abilities once upgraded. As well, they allow the player to focus on what units they think are most core to their strategy. However, I feel like as the game is now, usually unit upgrades are something you get not because you want to, but because you need another building and the upgrade is cheaper than the other options - and otherwise, you’d rather steer for more impactful buildings. There’s also a lot of micro-managing of bringing your units back to town to get upgraded, and then returned to your main hero.
The new upgrade system seeks to improve this by removing dwelling upgrades, and instead creating a single two-tier building which allows you to upgrade units. Once a unit upgrade is bought, it affects all your units across the map instantly - no more micro-managing upgraded and unupgraded unit stacks! This also leads to a minor reduction in the unit stack clutter.
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Tavern rework
This one is a bit more experimental, and might change with more player feedback. There is a problem in how central the tavern is to the current way the game is played. It allows you to get more heroes for:
- Scouting
- Moving around units
- Getting extra units
- Secondary heroes for leveling
I’ve tried disincentivising getting the tavern early and hiring several heroes early by changing the cost, the availability of the tavern - neither seemed to really fix the issue. The building is simply too strong and also too necessary. I also do not enjoy the inconsistency of sometimes getting a hero that can do nothing, and sometimes getting one which gives gold each day or gets entourage - completely at random.
The new version of the tavern goes as follows:
- You can hire “Scouts” even without building the actual tavern
- Building the tavern allows you to upgrade Scouts into full heroes
- Champion Statue etc. have been improved to offer even more heroes
Scouts are heroes in all ways apart from having skills and leveling up. You can even get xp on a scout and they’ll then level up when you upgrade the scout into a full hero. The scout is cheaper, too. Really, instead of trying to nerf the tavern, I’m now making it so that you don’t need it if all you really wanted was a scout - and the tavern, then, is more useful if you’re looking for a real hero to level up secondarily.
Other changes:
- Fewer units for hiring a scout
- Larger cost increase from hiring several heroes
- Heroes now level up when hired, making new hero levels more consistent, and giving you better control over their skill choices
Reworked town perks
With the removal of the old town level system with thresholds for number of buildings constructed, a new system was required for unlocking the town perks. But I do actually like the new system, because it always felt a bit jarring that you suddenly got a town perk pop-up out of nowhere when you were actually planning on doing something else. Now, instead of them being unlocked after building X buildings, they’re unlocked when building specific buildings.
For normal faction towns, such as the Order town, this is the Centre of Order, Palace of Order and Empire of Order.
Additionally, the town perks pop-up is displayed on top of the town window instead of removing the town window, and you’re able to click “wait” button to delay picking your town perk so that it does not interrupt you quite as much as before.
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5 new town perks
There’s 5 new town perks on offer. The Sponsor perk is shown above and gives access to a rare faction unit that normally would only be accessible by starting as a special hero. The Spell Research teaches more spells and teaches spells to heroes even when they’re not in town. Devotee Hall increases a spell skill for any heroes stopping by town, as a second Archmage Tribunal. Gallows decreases luck and morale of anyone attacking your towns or heroes. Finally, and most excitingly, Development Plan allows you to build any building in town way before you normally would be able to.
Faction Update
This contains various changes and updates to various factions. Arcane, Tide and Wild each get their own unique changes, while the rest of the factions get more general changes. This part was not originally envisioned when I started working on v2.8, but various changes within the town rework and rogue rework made clear that these changes were needed.
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Arcane faction skill rework
Previously, the Arcane class skills gave, respectively, a resource that can only be used in a single town building, or boring ore. This was way past due for a rework.
In v2.8, the Aether system has been expanded, and the skills now do something on their own, too. Aether is now granted in four varieties: Fire, Earth, Air, Water - and is granted by defeating various enemies. Usually, it’s kind of obvious what units give what Aether, like, the Spirited Fire giving Fire, and most human units giving Air.
Aether can then be used in one of three ways:
- Casting a random spell when entering combat with element and power based on the highest amount of Aether carried
- Aether Forge now offers appropriate bonuses for the various types of Aether
- Special spells with unique effects that cost Aether instead of mana
There’s 12 special spells that your Arcane heroes will learn by ranking up their class skills.
Additionally, the class skills have been renamed from Alchemy and Aethermancy to Aethercrafting and Aethermancy. The Alchemy name was simply too close in wording to the Alchemist hero class and the Chemistry skill.
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2 new Tide units, changed unit roster, the Bubble Shield ability
Tide has been a moderately popular faction, but never really due to its units. There were a couple of issues, that I had tried to work around previously in a rather awkward manner. Here, I’m mostly hinting to the Harpooner unit, which was so useless that I decided that players in Rogue Realms would get it without picking it, just so that it would have some use. Additionally, the Geyseral and Canceri units for tier 6 were way too similar.
The Harpooner and Geyseral are being removed from the Tide unit roster, replaced by the new Sirenaga (pronounced Siren-aga) and the Tidemancer. The first is a tier 2 aggressively statted unit with charge, and the latter is a back-line support unit able to give allies bubble shields and resurrecting fallen comrades. The Harpooner and Geyseral can still be found as neutral units.
The bubble shield ability is a new Tide-specific ability for the Spawnling, Sirenage and Tidemancer, which gives a shield that absorbs damage until it pops. This finally makes Spawnlings more survivable and helps Tide out during the early game.
Finally, the Tide caster class has been renamed from Pyromancer to Sailblazer. The old name was an attempt at forcing people to accept Tide as a fire-themed faction, but that never worked out. With the changes to the fire-themed units of the faction, it felt natural to finally retire the old, confusing name, and to finally accept that Tide is a water faction first-and-foremost, with air and fire second. The name, Sailblazer, should hold up this compromise well.
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New unit abilities, and changes for several faction units
I finally went and overhauled unit abilities for some of the oldest units with the least interesting abilities. Here, I’m especially referring to units which only had the passive, stat-altering abilities like Slow, Sturdy or Savage. These abilities will no longer show up in the units’ tooltips (since their effects can still be seen by looking at the unit’s stats). The units have been given more interesting abilities instead.
Druid gains the Long Ranged and Rooting abilities, while losing Summoning. The Wildspeaker still has Summoning.
Flamejuggler gains the Burning ability, while the upgraded Flame Stoker gains Explosive Shots.
Avalancher loses Terror, but gains the ability to Unit Thrower, throwing Goblins.
Dreamer gains the Long Ranged and Dreamstrike abilities. It loses Summoning, but the upgraded version still has it. Sopor also loses Confusion.
Divine Light ability is granted to: Friar, Crusader, Bladesinger, Djinn, Voodoo, Sunbringer, Archopriest, Panda, Teaknight, Bloomer, Monokero, and Prismatic.
Beastslayer ability is granted to: Jotun, Tarantula, Catabolite, Imp, Lizardcher, Apex, Tunnelrider, Archer, Kroll Bowman, Equestrian, Demise, and Strongarm.
Blackhearted ability is granted to: Lost Soul, Zombie, Rot Knight, Canine, Upgraded Demontamer, Minotaur, Shadowmancer, Absurdum, Shale Drake, Infernal, Black Dragon, and Larva.
Rage ability is granted to: Raider, Monster Trog, Cave Regent, and Shambler.
Terror ability is granted to: Cyclops and Watcher.
Evolve ability is granted to: Worm.
Interruption ability is granted to: Ophidian, Minewatch, Divine Monk, and Mountainguard.
Plating ability is granted to: Hoplite, Polar Cavalry, and Hillkeeper.
Inspiration ability is granted to: White Yeti.
Potent Soul ability is granted to: Torchbearer.
Salt Strike ability is granted to: Seamare and Crystallius.
Some of these unit abilities are new. We have the Rooting ability, which is akin to Rootcaller but the unit still attacks normally - and the Dreamstrike ability, which has a chance to make enemies fall asleep, its effect akin to the Slumber spell.
The Divine Light, Beastslayer, Blackhearted and Salt Strike abilities all give the unit increased damage against a specific type of units. In general, that bonus will apply against about 20% of enemy units - so the bonuses are going to be relevant rather often, but not in all combat scenarios. This occasionally brings a benefit to any player that positions their units correctly to intercept enemies that their units are strong against.
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Woodfae added as Wild’s tier 1 unit; Change to Symbiotic Grove
Okay, this takes a bit of explanation.
For a long time now, the most efficient way to play Wild has been to use the class skills to create a large amount of anima, and then making sure that you constantly move your anima back to town to upgrade them into forest spirits. When your forest spirits die, they create anima that you can then send back to town to re-upgrade as a sort of emergent infirmary.
This was really cool but also really clunky, taking a lot of boring effort in micromanaging heroes in ferrying back and forth units. Part of the reason for the rework to the unit upgrade system was actually to solve this type of micromanagement.
But the new upgrade system left the Wild strategy in a weird spot. Either, anima would always be auto-upgraded into Forest Spirits, effectively making Forest Spirits immortal - or they’d be really weak. Additionally, there was a long-standing issue where Forest Spirits could not be resurrected by the infirmary - because if the infirmary worked on Forest Spirits, you could duplicate them by upgrading their anima.
To solve this, there’s now a change so that the anima is a neutral unit, and instead Wild’s unupgraded tier 1 unit has been changed to the Woodfae. The Woodfae, just like its upgraded counterpart the Forest Spirit, create a permanent anima when they die. But since the anima cannot be upgraded back to a Forest Spirit and is a separate unit, all the problems disappear, and now Forest Spirits can be resurrected normally by the Infirmary. Additionally, the Woodfae is a rather sturdy unit what with being able to create anima on death even before it gets upgraded, so it works as a buff. It still gains flying by being upgraded - but upgrading is now less of a necessity.
But what about the cool Wild strategy of turning Anima into Forest Spirits? Well, the Symbiotic Grove has been updated to now also turn anima into Woodfae/Forest Spirits day by day - both for heroes inside and outside of town. Thus, the life cycle of the anima has been changed as shown above.
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New Subskill for Every Hero Class
For the longest time, there has been a lot of suggestions about giving heroes unique combat abilities. In v2.7, it became easier to mod this sort of thing. And for v2.8, I’ve gone and used this as the basis for a new set of subskills. Along with a request for a more consistent way of getting mana regeneration for casters early, the following set of subskills has been added.
In total, there’s 38 new subskills - one for each class - but they can also be considered two subskills with a unique effect for each class.
One set of subskills are the Warrior subskills, which are given to fighter hero classes. They give a stat bonus and a combat ability. For instance, Extinctor heroes gain access to the Decay Warrior subskill which gives +2 proficiency and Leech Life during combat; while Artisan heroes gain access to the Arcane Warrior subskill, which gives +2 defence, +1 proficiency, and makes the hero summon a small group of Scrolls around them at the start of combat.
The other set are the Mage subskills, which are given to caster hero classes. They teach the hero one or several useful spells, often at a reduced mana cost. Additionally, it makes them regenerate 3 mana each day. Mana regeneration plus a spell with reduced mana cost makes them really efficient spellcasters during the early game. Examples include Withermages gaining access to the Decay Mage subskill, which teaches a Deathripple which costs 12 mana instead of 16, and Summoner heroes gaining access to the Essence Mage subskill, which teaches Elemental Air, Elemental Rock, Elemental Fire and Elemental Water spells, each with mana cost reduced by 2.
Rogue Update
While I think the Rogue Realms DLC worked perfectly as a large overhaul DLC that updated most aspects of the game, it fell a bit short on its potential of adding in 12 new factions. Adding in 12 new factions was never its goal nor something it promised - it promised to add a single new faction with 12 different towns - but still, we all had the dream, and woke up to twelve towns of varying quality and varying uniqueness. With v2.8, I’m trying to get the Rogue towns a bit closer to that dream of 12 unique new towns, that can, if not be called full factions, at least pseudo-factions.
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3 New Buildings for Each Rogue town
This change has been a much requested one. Previously, all Rogue towns had the same buildings. Boo! Made them feel less like 12 factions and more like a single faction.
Anyway, I’ve now added three unique buildings per Rogue town, which mimic the design style of the unique buildings per normal faction (i.e. Hostler, Counting House, Conscription Centre, Tower of Idolatry). That is, in total, 36 new buildings with different effects - most of them at least slightly unique.
I won’t go into detail about all of them here, because that’s a lot of buildings. I’ll just let you know I tried to develop on the various themes of the Rogue towns with the aesthetic and gameplay design of the buildings. Additionally, several of them use the new improved system for custom resources, such as the Scrap resource for Industry.
As an aside, the introduction of these new buildings have also made me go through the Rogue towns and remove various buildings from them. Thus, all Rogue towns no longer have all five of Colossus, Lieutenant Hall, Deity, Summoning Circle, Mercenary Hall - instead, each town only has two of the five, different ones depending on what town, with the latter 3 replaced with the 3 new unique buildings.
Changes to Rogue town expansions
Previously, the Rogue town expansions were tied into the town building progression system. The idea was that Rogue towns would give you the unique ability to really quickly get access to late game buildings if you went and focused on building your expansions. This, however, was not as interesting as I’d thought. Instead, the Rogue town expansions now work a bit more similarly to normal town income buildings - as in, each requiring the previous one. But instead of each of them having the same effect, they now have different effects, as follows:
Trade Expansion: Gives a town perk
Martial Expansion: Gives visiting heroes +2 attack
Artisan Expansion: Gives visiting heroes +2 proficiency
Urban Expansion: Gives visiting heroes +5000 xp
Changes to Rogue hero classes
Previously, Rogue hero classes were set up in the code as either fighter or caster classes. But before v2.6 reworked the hero class system, classes kind of did not exist, and each hero instead was either a fighter or a caster, independently of its class - with the Rogue heroes being half and half within a single class. This led to some strange situations after v2.6 where it wasn’t clear whether a Rogue hero was a fighter or a caster. Now, all of this has been aligned. Heroes of fighter classes do not start with spells, while heroes of caster classes do. Additionally, the starting spells of Rogue heroes have been updated to avoid duplicates.
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New Major Skills: Adventurer & Discovery, and four subskills
In an attempt to expand on neutral heroes, there’s now a new set of major skills for Rogue heroes, mercenaries and wanderers. Adventurer is the major for fighter heroes, while Discovery is for casters. Both give bonuses when interacting with resources and buildings on the overworld map.
There’s also four new subskills:
Herbalism allows finding invisible herbs across the overworld.
Split Branch allows picking a secondary unit for the hero to specialise in.
Liberty gives a stat bonus that you can freely allocate across the 10 stats.
Heirloom gives artifacts when the hero levels up.
There’s some fun interactions with Herbalism and Heirloom giving new interactables that the Adventurer and Discovery skills will trigger with. I’m sure players will also find a bunch of other synergies between this and various other skills.
With these, most Rogue and neutral heroes have had their skillsets updated. Additionally, the Menace heroes now have this as their “class skill”, further distinguishing them from necromancers.
24 new units for Rogue towns
There’s a set of 24 new units for the various Rogue town rosters. However, these aren’t finished yet. More news on them later. They will either be released as a later part of the v2.8.x update series or as part of v2.9.
They’re really interesting, and we had the community involved in voting for what unit concepts should be added and which should be discarded. So I’m really excited to bring them in when they’re done. Stay tuned!
Community Updates
The community is still going strong. While there haven’t been as many art marathons during the last half a year, the number and quality of those who enter has only risen. We’ve seen some really exciting stuff, and some artists have allowed their entries to be added to the game. Additionally, a lot of new suggestions, some 15 of which have been added to the game.
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A new hero for every faction and for every Rogue town
The result of the 10th art marathon is that the above set of heroes are getting added to the game. There were sooo many people who entered this time, and their work was rather incredible in quality too. It was honestly a bloodbath, seeing the 84 submissions by 20 different artists being cut down to this list of finalists. The finalists were picked mostly according to vote count, but secondarily in a way to make sure that each faction and each rogue town would get at least one new hero.
Credit to Freddy, DeadSaracen, DragonRose/AntRose, Lyolf, SleepyMage, Erridian, Revikatis, Hamastra and Medicine Melancholy.
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10 new dragon units, four dragon themed vaults
V2.8 is going to bring in a large update to the dragon side of the game. This includes 10 new units, most of which are dragons, the rest of which are dragon-themed. These dragons come from the 9th art marathon, some of whose artists allowed their art to be used for the game. Credit to DragonRose/AntRose, Erridian, Revikatis, Nayooom, Spider Glace, DeadSaracen.
Many of these new dragon units are accessed by a synergy between the Dragonking ability and the new Dragonsoul ability. This allows specific units to be granted via Dragonking in case the hero knows another specific skill. For instance, if the hero has both Dragonking and Leadership, they can get the new Featherdrake unit. This is because the Featherdrake has the Dragonsoul ability for Leadership. That ability also gives Featherdrakes additional stats during combat for each rank of Leadership, and gives heroes extra xp when ranking up Leadership if they’ve had Featherdrakes in their army.
Apart from Featherdrakes, there’s:
- Abyss Sovereign, which is gained via Dragonsoul Mysticism
- Pyroserpent, which is gained via Dragonsoul Pyromancy
- Cloud Sovereign, which is gained via Dragonsoul Aeromancy
- Sheepeater, which is gained via Dragonsoul Healing
- Featherdrake, which is gained via Dragonsoul Leadership
- Dragonturtle, which is gained via Dragonsoul Armorer
- Bloodwyrm, which is gained via Dragonsoul Carnage
- Tyrant Guard, which is gained via Dragonsoul Estates
- Dragonscroll, which is gained via Dragonsoul Sorcery
Finally, these new dragons can also be found in a set of new Dragon Towers. There’s four different dragon towers, each with a custom crafted encounter of various dragon units and support units. Dragon towers are predominantly found in secondary areas of the map, very rare in starting areas.
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15 new suggestions implemented
As usual, there’s been a bunch of new suggestions in the discord. A total of 145 new suggestions with 773 votes have been tallied and selected between, with 15 of them getting added to the game. These range from minor changes, like Balaenopteras getting Aquatic, to larger changes, such as new game options and a way to see the total cost of all units available in town. The largest change is that there’s now a much better system for managing artifacts.
4 new units
The people who win art marathons are given wishes as for something to add to the game. The two winners of the last marathon (their vote number was tied!!) both asked for units, and thus 3 new units are added to the game. The 4th new unit is tied to the Summon Salt Hawk (see below) spell, and is the epinomous Salt Hawk.
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Expanded Lore Document
For a while now, there’s been a semi-secret lore document bundled within the game’s files. This document has now been greatly expanded. It contains history, overviews, diagrams, stories and lore snippets for over a hundred heroes. I’ve also added a series of hand-drawns illustrations to make it feel less like a block of text. I don’t expect players to read this - but for those who are interested, you’ll find the 153 page .pdf within the game’s files.
Spells Update
Finally, the update also includes a couple of updates to spells and other magical effects during combat.
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New spell graphics and higher clarity for spell casting
New effects for spell casts have been added. There’s a series of hand-drawn animations as well as better spell particles. The animations depend on the element of the spell as well as the power of the spell. That means that as your hero gains spellpower, the animations for casting the same spell will adapt.
There’s also a 300 ms lag time between casting the spell and the effect actually occurring. This makes the spell casting feel more impactful and allows the player to more easily orient themselves towards a spell to notice its effect. For instance, when the spell is not cast by yourself, but by the opposing hero, or by an effect such as Destruction.
Additionally, the graphics for units casting spells has been overhauled too, using the new elemental particles rather than the old squiggly blue lines.
New graphical effects during battle
Further along the lines of increasing combat clarity for magical effects, there’s now a new particle effect for units healing or resurrecting other units, which more clearly show who does what.
There’s also a new hand-drawn animation for explosions - one for the fiery type, and one for other explosive impacts, such as the AOE damage from Blaster units.
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12 new spells
Finally, there’s a series of new spells. The goal for these was to include effects that have not been seen before but that would still fit in as normal spells. I’m really really happy with the creativity of behind the recent spells, as I try to put more and more distance between the current design philosophy and the original quantity over quality philosophy of v1.0.
A good example of what I mean by that would be the four new Summoning spells:
- Summon Dragonbreath summons a dragon that breathes fire and then dies
- Summon Wasps summons a swarm of wasps that deal damage to a lot of enemies
- Summon Titan Fist summons a series of fists that each picks a random enemy target, punching that target and any other nearby enemies
- Summon Fireflies summons a bunch of fireflies. This one works like other Summoning spells, but its usage is a bit different, what with fireflies killing themselves when they attack
Additionally, there’s four new salt spells, and four other misc. spells, including the Fireball Barrage spell that allows a group of your melee units to throw ranged fireballs instead of their normal attacks for a limited time.
If you’re not sure what “salt spell” means, they’re a series of spells added originally in v1.7 which each has a type of anti-magic property. As more spells were added, they became so rare that it made sense to expand their series. Anti-magic spells are quite core to offering counter-play against spell-heavy strategies - and most of them also have usage outside of that scenario.
Other Changes and Bug Fixes
BUG FIXES
- Fixing a bug that makes the enemy hero unable to cast spells if you do not have any spells yourself
- Fixing Tide of Temples having a hidden requirement to only work on Tide heroes who knew their faction skill
- Fixed a bug that allowed heroes to make temporary morale and termporary luck bonuses permanent by saving and reloading
- Fixed Week of Shields and Week of Invasion working incorrectly when the enemy AI attacks your army during their turn
- Fixed a bug that made units casting spells sometimes target the top left corner of the battlefield
- Fixed an issue where a hero could use their Doppelgangers to trigger interactable buildings several times
- Fixed Spire of Life and Death using the wrong sprite
- Fixed Province Guards mentioning Dizzy Tune and not Lovely Tune in the tooltip
- Fixed a bug that would make the game freeze when picking up a treasure giving a random spell if your hero already knows all spells in the game
- Fixed a graphical error related to getting heroes with negative mana
- Fixed one way in which heroes might end up with negative mana
- Fixed Mana Crystals subskill being able to use 0.25 or 0.5 crystals. It is now rounded to the nearest integer
- Fixed modded heroes who did not have their faction set being put into the wrong faction in case a faction mod was loaded, too
- Fixed using Lieutenant Hall increasing the cost of recruiting other heroes
- Fixed Raffe Rests getting restored in an arbitrary manner instead of restoring the closest Raffe Rest
- Attempted to put in a fix for a rare issue that caused battles to be considered as Won within a couple of seconds of battles starting
- Fixed King Tyrant Cal being shown as an unlockable hero for accomplishing the Wilderness Achievement
- Added a text to the tooltip for gold income detailing gold income from Exploitation
- Taxpayer units exploiting mines now still give taxpayer gold income, and this will show up in the gold income tooltip
- Prevented rare Obelisks on islands from freezing the game
- Fixed a bug that made roaming heroes on water maps only spawn on islands, not as pirates
- Put in a routine to re-generate any map in which you would not be able to reach the enemy's town (unless the map has a special win condition)
- Update to the sprite that shows that a unit is sleeping
- Clarified in Tower of Idolatry tooltip that it sells artifacts to *visitng heroes*
- Clarified in Doppelganger tooltip that xp sharing only goes one way
- Added in a blacklist of spells that can't be casted via random effects such as Release and Arcane Spire
- Removed Evolve from the Whimsy spell list - added Summon Wasps and Summon Titanfist to it instead
- Added the ability to use unit group names for lexicon unit search
- Updated the description of Horror to say that it gives -3 morale, as it was meant to
- Made Dark Carnivals a lot more joyous
- Updated the Soul resource tooltip to say that you get Souls while owning a Decay town, not a Soul Beacon
- Fixed an issue preventing the AI from correctly trading between all their heroes, instead only trading between all non-garrisoned heroes
- Fixed a translation issue for rare versions of mines
- Fixed a translation issue for the header for the Unclear and Clarifying Vision windows
- Fixed artifacts giving +1 Offense being able to give the hero unending amounts of Attack
- Fixed lexicon unit search working strangely with certain ability names
- Fixed lexicon unit search working strangely with certain living types
- Fixed starting factions being set incorrectly when leaving a game from inside combat
- Fixed starting heroes not being remembered correctly when leaving a game
- Fixed Doppelgangers not always being considered ranged/melee like the hero that created them
- Fixed Doppelgangers being able to get free levels whenever created if certain buildings were built in town / perks were unlocked in town
- Fixed an issue preventing the AI from correctly trading units between all their heroes, instead only trading between all non-garrisoned heroes
- Fixed a crash related to being above rank 100 in a skill
- Fixed a bug that gave you units when losing a battle to a Mudcaster Tower, Dragon Aerie or Brood Cavern
UNIT CHANGES
- Changed unit targeting so they now try to diversify their targets better instead of all targeting a single unit
- The Rally ability now clears fear, confusion and sleep, and now preferably targets units afflicted by those
- The Healer and First Aid abilities now clear poison
- Unit abilities Slow, Sturdy and Savage no longer clog up unit tooltips; similarly, Aquatic has been made part of Sirenaga innate ability, and those units no longer show the Aquatic ability on its own
- Made charge and leap slightly less inconsistent, especially at the start of combat
- Passive units now have increased range for healing
- Reworked penguins, giving them Freezing attacks and better stats
- Canpinceri now have Budding, creating Cribcrabs when they take damage, instead of Impenetrable
OTHER CHANGES
- Stat bonuses for the next battle are now shown in the hero's ledger tab
- Runes are now shown in the hero's ledger tab
- Customisation window now has priority over hero level-up, meaning that you use Customisation when the skill is picked even if the hero has more level-ups to go through
- Waterpower, Earthpower, Firepower and Airpower now show their rank as a number instead of as a roman numeral in the hero's ledger tab
- Fixed Rogue heroes being mixed between Fighters and Casters in spite of what their class would place them as
- Picked new spells for all (unlockable) heroes that started with the same spell as another hero from their class
- Lexicon now sorts spells by mana cost
- Increased the effect of Shadowlock spell
- Converting towns will now no longer sap all unit production from it, only sapping unit production from dwellings that are built in the town post-conversion
- Renamed the Fur Shawl in the Ruthless artifact set to Leather Cape
- AI will no longer waste time and mana casting spells that are uncastable, such as beam spells, when their hero is dead
- The Deathcoil and Coil of the Dead mechanics can now at most trigger once per second per unit
- Hegemony now no longer creates tier 1 units; instead, it stores the leftover value for proccing after future battles
- Updated various Adventure Map Buildings to give upgraded units according to the new unit upgrade system
- Updated the Entourage mechanic to give upgraded units according to the new unit upgrade system
- Updated the Weaponsmith to now unlock upgrades for units map-wide instead of just upgrading the units carried by the hero right now
- Improved Haberdashery interface for very high numbers of artifacts
- Hero mods that do not specify what unitgroup a hero should use, but do specify their class, will now use the unitgroup usually represented by that class
- Updated the description of the Ressurection unit ability to mention its limitations
- Updated Seb the Full’s portrait
Closing Remarks
So, that’s it. Another huge update along the lines of v2.6 and v2.7. I don’t know if I have another huge update in me for v2.9. Chances are that updates will continue to slow down and shrink down as time goes by. I think the game is just about as good as it can get without once more pulling up a bunch of the core tenets of its design - which I am once more getting more unwilling to do.
There has been some pushback to the changes made in v2.7, just as there was to changes made in v2.6. I don’t regret the choices I’ve made. I spent a lot of time thinking about each change that people might potentially dislike, so I can rest easy with my assessment of the pros outweighing the cons. But I know that that’s what it’s like to update a game so long after its “Final Release” - make some happy on one hand, and on the other, disappoint others.
As mentioned, I’m going to size down the breadth and depth of updates from here on out. Probably just do quality of life and polishing for some time. Maybe even focus mainly on balance, for whatever that is worth.
As always, thank you for trying out my game, and for those who hang around and support the community, doing art marathons or guides or videos - thank you too, from the bottom of my heart.
See you in the next announcement. I think you’ll find that one really, really, exciting.
-ThingOnItsOwn
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1656780/Heros_Hour/
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/51529/Songs_of_Heroes/
Build 15503955
Aug 27, 2024
Here we are - v2.7.0 is now live on the main branch! Concurrently, the game is now on sale to celebrate!
Please note there are minor save compatibility issues (no crashes expected). If needed, you can access v2.6.3 via the Steam beta branch.
The Progression update focuses on the two main forms of progression in the game: The maps and the heroes. This is a really large update, perhaps even larger than the v2.6 Great War update. Not only that, I believe this might be the best update the game has seen since v1.4. It changes so much of how the game is played in the direction of there being much more to explore - whether we are talking literally about map exploration or figuratively about exploring the various avenues of hero skill synergies.
The headlines of the update are as follows:
If you want a development log about what’s changed and some thoughts about why, you can go check out the previous announcement - or you can see the short form of the patch notes below.
It’s been a long development process stretching across 23 pre-releases, and I want to thank everyone who played and gave feedback on the features as they were being worked on. It is thanks to them that we now all can enjoy this wonderful update. Oh, and thanks to the wonderful community artists who submitted ideas and designs for the various community art updates.
Now that v2.7.0 is out, I can start working on v2.8. I’m doing my best to make sure the next update will be a lot smaller than the last two updates, both of which have been much too big.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1656780/Heros_Hour/
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Map generation completely overhauled
All maps have been replaced. Some new maps share name or shape with old maps
New UI for setting up games
5 new win conditions for some maps (incl. 5 new buildings)
New system for creating templates for the random map generator
Resource piles now have different levels of wealth depending on what part of the map they spawn on
Maps now generate with cliffs
Two new terrains: Gold Beach and Dreamscape
New large terrain art assets for all terrains
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The game now uses Skillsets instead of Skilltrees for hero progression by default
Sorted all current skills into 47 major skills and the rest into subskills
Reworked the following skills: Tactics (now called Strategist), Champion, Aeromancy, Swiftness (now called Wind Pace), Weightless Soul (now called Wing Master), Fortune, Terramancy, Heavy Soul (now called Stone Heart), Enchanting, Swordsmith, Armorsmith (now called Shieldsmith), Pyromancy, Leadership, Armorer, Hydromancy, Offense, Mysticism, Summoning, Avatar, Engineering, Wisdom, Demoralise (now called Horror), Tragedy, Mastery, Scouting
Added 2 new major skills: Carnage, Faith
Added 54 new general subskills: Affinity, Gambler's Wheel, Inspiration, Lucky Star, Grave Guard, Life From Death, Demonic Reduction, Demoncaller, Possession Cataclysm, Fireleaper, Inferno, Heroism, March Onwards, Persistence, Plating, Lifelink, Aggression, Manalife, Underdog, Grand Physician, Vigour, Belch, Digest, Spit, Betrayal, Survival, Stormbringer, Luckyguards, Life Aether, Jewelsmith, Mana Drain, Demon Blood, Rainstorm, Sapper, Swallow, Conversion, Elite Guard, Brawn, Skepticism, One on One, Dragonform, Guard of None, Dragonslaying, Prism, Customisation, Whimsy, Productivity, Nobility, Forceful Strike, Cult of Muscle, Gold Teeth, Putrid Air, Undying
Added 36 new faction subskills: Salary, Royal Tribute, Old Mirth, Elven Artillery, Lunar Rites, March of Nature, Mage General, Spire Attunement, Scholar, Coil of the Dead, Frost Lich, Turn Living, Ritual of Power, Venomus Demonicus, Great Feast, Sandcaster, Hero's Horde, Ritual of Flesh, Swamp Silver, Bog Witching, Scale Lord, Doppelganger, Tunnel, Dragon Whisperer, Ways of the Sea, Pearl Crown, Fire Dance, Gold Digger, Carve Guards, Earthen Eternity, Uphold Tradition, Serene Meditation, Tea Master, Umsql, Cult Recruiter, Romance
Added 23 new skills for Rogue Realms: Chemistry as a new major skill, and 22 subskills: Mana Crystals, Buying Life, Golden Blood, Dragonskin, Bestial Fury, Life summoner, Rootcaller, Questing, Analysis, Test the Flesh, Research, Midlife Crisis, Spore Spreading, Budding, Neurotoxin, Mychoral Guard, Artillery, Mechpriest, Inspiring Drum, Energetic Jam, Peace Binding, Province Guards
Moved several subskills from Rogue Realms exclusivity to be part of the base game; of the old Rogue Realms exclusive subskills, only Call Beasts, Chemistry, Infest, Tinker, Lovely Tune, Exploitation and Crystal Assembly remains locked to Rogue Realms
Designed new skillsets for all heroes
Changed which skills and subskills heroes start with
Changed, on a skill to skill basis, how many ranks a hero can learn, and what requirements exist for the skill
Added 64 new spells for the new skills
12 new units added: The Blood Golem, Medician, Mercenary, Nighthowler, Herculean, Terraformed, Questing Raffe, Aether Witch, Vulpella, Life Reaper, Blood Aspirant, Rune Beacon
15 new adventure map buildings added to the game
Sea towns have been added as a special type of Brine town for players owning Rogue Realms DLC
Added 6 new spells: Nightmare, Dream, Slumber, Detonate, Reap, Root
Hand Designed Skirmishes - these were previously randomly generated
Improved default boat during naval combat
Divine Vessel spell now creates a unique boat with unique overworld and in-battle graphics
Lizardfolk heroes now create Turtles instead of Boats at the docks. These have a unique overworld and in-battle graphic
Most factions get unique new walls during sieges (by DeadSaracen)
All factions get a new unique look for their first aid station warmachine (by SleepyMage)
Updated art for Crusader, Paladin, Bloodsucker, Firestinger, Corruptor, Boneliath (by DeadSaracen)
Updated art for Enclave units by AntRose
Implementing 2 minor graphical updates + 1 overhaul to the pheromones subskills (drawn by AntRose)
All hero classes now get a unique silhouette for their artifact equipment screen
Guardposts made by Mason now are guaranteed to give their units to the hero defending them when attacked, instead of there being a chance for the enemy to attack the guardpost but not the hero, or a guarantee for this to happen if the hero was uncamped
Bodyguards/entourage losses are now calculated differently and more accurately
Now all types of entourage units regenerate at 15% each day
Week of X unit can no longer roll into technical units such as gods
General artifact set and Champion Statue now give +1 Entourage instead of the Bodyguards skill
Entourage time scaling now limits entourage units during early game for longer
Rogue Statue now gives +3 daily movement instead of the Logistics skill
FOW can now be cleared to the very edge of the map
More player colours
Units with damage reduction now show small glimmers during battle
Lorane now starts with Nighthowlers
Obelisk visions now look different
Tide now starts on Gold Beach terrain, and Delirium starts on Dreamscape terrain
Reduced the frequency of Death Coil killing huge amounts of units by increasing the damage dropoff per jump
Hex and Toadify spells are now Water-school instead of Earth
You can now see what a unit will bloodwarp into by holding B while looking at an expanded unit tooltip
Transformation from Apothecary no longer clears curse of undeath from Malediction or Bane
Air Shield now stacks with units that already had Ethereal, and stacks with itself when cast multiple times
New sprites for the following artifacts: Mesmer's Wall, Batal's Gloves, Ruby Band, Ring of Power, Conjurer's Cape, Champion Banner
Reduced the amount of Firepower/Waterpower/Airpower/Earthpower given by artifacts to 1/10th, to match the new spellpower mechanics
Changed the effect of some artifacts to no longer give +1 skill point, but instead to use proficiency/entourage/command
- Mesmer's Eye
- Rabbit's Feet (daily gold income)
- Tusk's Immortality
- Rogue Trousers
- Bluepearl Ring
- Locket of Death
Removed Learning from a series of artifacts and replaced it with an Experience rate bonus. These are nerfs
- Ring of Victory
- Regal Tunic
- Pompous Crown
- Artisan Helmet
- Tusk's Helmet
- Mandel's Gem
Special artifact bonuses such as "Shadowbetrayal", "Grizzly Guard" and "Unit Speed" will now show up in the UI as skills and will now have tooltips explaining their effects
Most units have had their living status sorted into more accurate categories (undead, human, draconic etc), and you can now see a unit's living status in its tooltip
Heroes now have a per-hero setting for living status
Some new living status categories have minor buffs or debuffs, such as Plants taking double damage from the burning status
Improved various aspects of the Manage Heroes screen
Warmachines now show tooltips when you hover your mouse over them during combat
Tailtoads and Snowbeards now have their damage scale correctly and display correctly
Infernal Gate is now weaker for armies with very few units (less than 100 unit power)
Units that transform still retain proficiency bonus; this includes Lacks
AI now prioritises fighting an enemy hero head on over teleporting home to defend their town from that same threat
AI now prioritises developing and defending their strongest towns first, and will no longer become confused when two towns close by each-other both are threatened
Higher levels of AI now prioritise hiring two heroes immediately when the tavern is bought
Projectile Protection now also reduces ranged attack damage by 25% and is now named Deflection
Fighter hero classes now gain Knowledge slightly faster
Extended the differences between Mob Strength: Low and Mob Strength: High advanced map setting
When hovering over the hero's movement bar in the HUD, the number of tiles in the current path is shown on the map
Forts and Citadels that require more creature dwellings to build now also show other requirements in their tooltips.
Changed the depth at which the Devour text is drawn, to be drawn on top of instead of underneath blood particles
Made the resources given by Buried Treasure more controlled; now a certain number of piles will always give gold and a certain number of piles will always give rare resources
Reduced the power of Buried Treasure for starting areas for small maps
Amount of resources, amount of artifacts, and power of artifacts given by roaming heroes now scale with their level
In battles where you gain more unit power than lost, the game will no longer phrase it as losing a negative number
Oligarchy now affects entourage units
Rewrote the tooltip for Statue of Physique to explain that heroes need to know Might or Ardour to be affected
Updated the Elemental Crystal spell in Sample Mods to now use the new, more straightforward mod functionality for summoning spells
Prevented the AI from casting Swift Retreat randomly during battles
Updated the text in the window that explains army limit size
Extended "Force Symmetry" to also guarantee same results when opening chests
Extended "Force Symmetry" to also guarantee placing the same artifacts
Reduced the variability of undead units by half, tieing the outcomes to specific heroes
Heroes who specialise in undead units now have a significantly higher chance of creating those undead units
The Idol unit will no longer become converted by Blight Ritual
Updated lists of faction units for Custom Skirmish to include v2.6 and v2.7 extra-faction units
Improved the tooltip for towns; the size of the small buttons, and the area for the cursor within which the tooltip will stay active
Increased the Command of structures that use a lot of unit power, such as the Arena (by +1 command for each 25k gold worth of units)
All Units list in Lexicon can now search for unit names or ability names
All Units list in Lexicon can now filter for unit tiers
Adjusted distance that AI is able to find buried treasure, making it more dependent on number of clues that they have found
AI heroes now keep track of cooldown for individual spells during combat, increasing the time between casting the same spell twice
Made it possible to right click units into and out of unit conversion buildings
Changed how gold cost of Training Grounds is displayed
Added Wildren Shrine to Wild's lexicon page
Combat will now end faster when fighting Betrayal units that are out of health
The mana display on the HUD now more accurately shows mana pct when you have between 0-20% mana
Adjusted the number of units summoned by summoning spells to scale more accurately, incl. a lower number of units for low spellpower, incl. fewer units summoned by a single unit casting a summoning spell
Blight Ritual will no longer convert your hero's specialty unit if the hero has the Mastery skill
Reduced occurrence rates of unlockable heroes to 1/3rd of main heroes
Inner Health can no longer be cast on Undead units
Increased the stats of catapults that are used during defense
Added a description of heroes specialisation unit and starting spells to map selection and lexicon
Siren Song has been made more powerful, its effect increased by 25%
Changed how fear works, making it less likely to affect high power units
Added fear resistance. Each time a unit is terrified, the duration of its next fear becomes shorter
The fear from Wail is now strongly reduced by fear resistance
Morale now additionally shortens / lengthens duration of fear
Halved the rate at which Tailtoads inflict freeze
Increased the attack cooldown of Psychotrophs, Sludge Spitter and Absurdum units
Fireflies burst damage now reflects their attack damage
Increased Fireflies' attack damage by 50%
Reduced Betrayal proc chance from 100% to 100% for player owned and 80% for neutral owned
Gilded Pearlshells now have a slightly lower proc chance for both Petrification and Midas Touch
Incinerate now deals 150% damage to burning units instead of 200%
Buffed stats of following units: Dragonworm, Farmer, Child of Midas, Hound Dog, Hound Tamer, Imp, Glutton, Anima, Forest Spirit, Militia, Halberdier, Spawnling, Deckmate, Soulmage, Lich
Nerfed stats / increased cost of following units: Slickspitter, Sneagle, Malcorvid, Infernal, Hellgoat, Sorcerer, Psychotroph, Sludge Spitter, Absurdum, Kroll Bowman, Freshling, Songblade
Halved the power of Entourage so it now works like its description and how it was meant to work
Entourage can no longer give more units than the total power of all your real units on all your heroes and towns
Reduced the xp cost of summoning demons to 1/3rd of what it is
Demonology now summons slightly more demons early in the game and slightly fewer units later in the game
Reduced the mana cost of Necromancy by 1 mana
Reduced the scaling of Necromancy with number of enemy units by 20%, but increased its base strength (same change as what happened with Demonology)
Reduced the AOE of Freshling attacks
Increased the base health and damage of Shadowcasting and Shadowcloning copies, making these skills less reliant on several ranks
Number of Boneguards created by a Bane hero now scales with their level: Number = hero level + 6 * bane rank
Taxpayer unit ability now gives +5 gold per power instead of +2 gold per power
Increased health of Ophidians, Monster Trogs and Hollow Champions
Increased health and damage of Corpseeaters, and health of unupgraded Zombies
Removed high level summoning spells from the list of spells that can be cast by Release
Reduced the proc rate of release slightly for Amberodes (from 20% to 17.5%)
Reduced the duration of Insensate for units not owned by any players to 75%
Buffed Goblin health by +5 and Voodoo health by +3
Gave leap units a very short immunity time after landing from a leap
Reduced the power of Possession from units that do not belong to any player by 33%
Infirmaries are now able to heal any unit that can be hired in town, even if those units are not faction units
Nerfed the cost and thus difficulty estimation of Wildren unit
Increased Slickspitter cost; decreased Slickspitter growth
Increased Venom Darter cost
Increased Agony Beetle cost
Neutral Roaming heroes now either have half mana, or 30 + one quarter of their mana, whichever is lower
Reduced the damage of Cannonneers manning the turrets of Tide walls for neutral encounters
Reduced number of Cannonneers manning the turrets of Tide walls from 3 to 2
Greatly increased Health and Damage of Sorcerers
Halved the duration of the immunity given by Swift Retreat
Changed summoned/miraged units with Midas Touch turning into golden statues to now just leave normal corpses to fix an unintended gold gain
Warding now protects against Comet Strikes
Projectile protection and range reduction now works against Arrow Rain
Avatar now scales off the average of the mana cost of the spell and the actual mana spent on the spell; this reduces the number of units created up to by 50% in case all of the spell's mana cost is paid by Buffer or similar mechanics
Limited the effect of gold stacks spawned by battle turning into Artifacts to only happen via Hunter or Plunder
Reduced number of Runescribes manning the walls of neutral Earthen combat encounters
Flying units that do not belong to any player now can only use their pick-up-and-kill ability on units with 25% less health than before
Fixed low rank units turning into Wretched units when turned into undead despite weaker options being available
Nerfed amount of Soul power gained from combat to be more flat, closer to 20 per combat
Improved Dragon Temple's rate of upgrading dragons by 4x
Dragon Temple can now upgrade summoned dragons and entourage dragons, but only for the duration of that battle
Warding now protects against Comet Strikes
Projectile protection and range reduction now works against Arrow Rain
Changed the way that Summoning spells scale with spellpower, unit cost, etc. Overall, they are now a bit weaker but scale better lategame
Nerfed the secondary effect of the Hunting skill (giving artifacts when fighting beasts that did not come from Hidden Beasts)
Increased the time to attack for Ranged units with Wind-up, more accurately halving their attack speed
Reduced damage of Cultists and Spiritists
Increased Venom proc chance for low tier units, mostly affecting Cultists, Spiritists and Venom Darters
Reduced number of Grey Boys on avatars slightly for avatars after the first
Forbidden Tome can now at most give +10 knowledge
Units that summon units summon fewer units (see "Minor Changes: Adjusted the number of units summoned by summonings spells to scale more accurately")
Doubled the resources given by Commercial Centre town perk
You may now specify unique targets for bloodwarping and other similar effects when doing unit mods by adding in a new line called "Elite Target: Nameofunit"
Heroes can now have their living status set
Global variables can now be read and changed by prefacing a variable with an @ instead of using the global_read() and global_set() functions
New function to make heroes unavailable by conventional means, allowing creation of special heroes
Complete overhaul of skill modding
New modding custom scripting functions:
- find_object_index(name)
- find_sprite_index(name)
- add_sprite(filename,number_of_frames,x_origin,y_origin)
- draw_sprite(sprite_index, image_index, x, y, x_scale, y_scale)
- draw_sprite_outline(sprite_index, image_index, x, y, x_scale, y_scale)
Two new functionalities:
- put @ before the variable name in variable_exists() to check if the named global variable exists
- array_create() and list_create() can now take any number of arguments to instantly put inside the list/array
Technical unit groups for the various factions now get generated BEFORE mods are loaded, allowing you to use these groups with mods
Implemented support for replacing unit sprites along with the new Unit Edit format
Implemented support for replacing unit sprites without using a Unit Edit data.txt file
Reduced the hard disc use when showing the battle menu
Docks building will no longer show up in the middle of battlefields when fighting near a docks
Heroes who gain knowledge when leveling up also gain the +10 to current mana
Fixed rooted units still being able to use Charge
Removed the graphical effect of True Strike (archery bonus) on Blaster attacks hitting own units
AI will no longer use Devour Own indiscriminately in fights against the player
Fixed a bug that might make the AI pay for a hero without getting them
Fixed AI not prioritising tavern for players with Rogue Realms installed
Fixed autobattle spellcasting simulations sometimes making a battle a loss that was a win before the spell simulation
Fixed Paradisic Meadow showing +1 bonus while giving a +2 bonus
Casting Chaos while in a naval battle will no longer scatter units into the water
Fixed a bug that made unlockable heroes have different town building layouts than other heroes
Fixed a bug that made Mercury Boosts draw half souls instead of full ones
Fixed Hydra Heralds not triggering correctly if dying in a battle that an enemy initiated
Fixed several other post-battle effects not triggering correctly when battle was initiated by an enemy
The daily ore income from Carver Stalls now is displayed correctly
Setting all players to be on the same team will no longer trigger any achievements
Taming now works correctly after autocombat
Fixed High Unit Growth advanced map setting quadrupling unit growth instead of just doubling it
Fixed a bug that would sometimes leave roaming heroes stuck on treasure
Fixed Swift Retreat giving immunity when used by an AI that wouldn't use it to retreat
Heroes with Infest can now interact with buildings that have already been visited specifically to Infest them
Fixed Buried Treasure giving 2x as much sulphur as other rare resources
Made sure that the Watering Well unit growth now rounds down when at 0.5 instead of sometimes rounding up and sometimes rounding down
Fixed a bug that made units with leap underestimate or overestimate how far to charge / leap, especially when dealing with units with taunt
Fixed Potency spells showing up in the Spellbook special spells tab
Fixed a bug that allowed Shadowlocked or Petrified units to leave the battlefield in rare scenarios
Fixed a rare bug crashing the game on the Last Week map
Fixed a bug that would sometimes end a battle before a unit with Splitting or Potent Soul could use its on-death ability if that unit were the last unit fighting on its side of the battle
Fixed flying units not scaling the walls even when permitted to or when the walls were breached
Fixed Soul Beacon mercury boosting showing a different amount of units than what is actually given
Fixed a bug that made the resource lost pop-up animation not show the number -1
Fixed a bug that would crash the game when Haste was offered in a scroll or pandora
Fixed a bug related to Pearl-searching particles being spawned off screen and piling up
Chaos unit ability can no longer teleport units from boats into the water
Fixed an exploit where you could force the Batal artifact set bonus to always proc by just not clicking the level-up button on your hero
Fixed Soul Beacon not triggering each day in Hotseat PvP games and for the AI
Fixed the tooltip for Pheromones spell stating that the spell deals damage when it in fact does not
Fixed new Unit Edit files not correctly desyncing abilities from base unit and upgraded unit
Fixed the Rogue artifact set bonus shadow heroes not syncing caster/fighter abilities
Fixed a bug that would crash the game when Haste was offered in a scroll or pandora
Fixed a bug related to Pearl-searching particles being spawned off screen and piling up
Changed summoned/miraged units with Midas Touch turning into golden statues to now just leave normal corpses to fix an unintended gold gain
Fixed Soul Beacon mercury boosting showing a different amount of units than what is actually given
Fixed a bug that made the resource lost pop-up animation not show the number -1
Fixed being able to dig for buried treasure while your hero is mid-movement, which would mess up the revealed treasure
Fixed a graphical error in the Carcass sprite
Fixed Academy being able to give lessons to avatars, which wouldn't do anything
Fixed typo in description of Second Wind and Chaos spells (batte instead of battle)
Fixed Diplomacy not combining separate stacks of identical units into a single stack
Fixed some UI overlap issues with the hero window
Fixed a bug that sometimes would have combat end before all units had deployed if enough units were killed at once
Fixed casting Transform on low tier units making the game lag and eventually turn them into random, higher-power units
Fixed Resurrection prioritising non-permanent units instead of prioritising permanent units
Fixed a bug that would make summoned units that had been hexed able to be resurrected into permanent units
Fixed a bug that meant that Balistas firing very far would deal no damage
Units can no longer drown in naval combat if they are victorious
Fixed a bug where certain buff spells could be repelled by Warding
Fixed a bug where certain v2.6 units were not considered technical units when playing without Rogue Realms
Fixed Entourage units not being considered when the AI is deciding to flee
Fixed Necromancy not giving mana to avatars when using the Drain option
Fixed the daily gold income of Exarch set bonus not being displayed in the gold income tooltip
Fixed Wildren Shrine and Loss Shrine not being translated correctly
Fixed a bug that made Forbidden Tome give one more knowledge than the number of spells you knew
Made sure mana regen is described as an integer in the tooltip for Knowledge even when the hero has the Regeneration skill
Fixed Lieutenant Hall not giving the same hero as what is displayed in the UI
Fixed a bug that would allow you to duplicate Delirium heroes
Fixed an occasional crash when the AI was trying to protect a town they'd town-portaled to
Fixed a bug with the save file compression algorithm that would prevent the final 1-128 values not be recorded when compressing a grid
Fixed certain combat encounters having no command (such as catapults) - now 1 command is minimum in all cases
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1656780/Heros_Hour/
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/30963/Heros_Hour_Collection/
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/42688/Sandwalkers__Heros_Hour/
View on Steam
Please note there are minor save compatibility issues (no crashes expected). If needed, you can access v2.6.3 via the Steam beta branch.
The Progression update focuses on the two main forms of progression in the game: The maps and the heroes. This is a really large update, perhaps even larger than the v2.6 Great War update. Not only that, I believe this might be the best update the game has seen since v1.4. It changes so much of how the game is played in the direction of there being much more to explore - whether we are talking literally about map exploration or figuratively about exploring the various avenues of hero skill synergies.
The headlines of the update are as follows:
- New, more compact maps with height differences, win conditions, and an open number of player slots
- New skill system sorting skills into categories and adding 120+ new subskills
- New units, new spells, new adventure map buildings, new art upgrades
- Various QoL improvements and balance changes
- ~70 bug fixes
If you want a development log about what’s changed and some thoughts about why, you can go check out the previous announcement - or you can see the short form of the patch notes below.
It’s been a long development process stretching across 23 pre-releases, and I want to thank everyone who played and gave feedback on the features as they were being worked on. It is thanks to them that we now all can enjoy this wonderful update. Oh, and thanks to the wonderful community artists who submitted ideas and designs for the various community art updates.
Now that v2.7.0 is out, I can start working on v2.8. I’m doing my best to make sure the next update will be a lot smaller than the last two updates, both of which have been much too big.
Play now:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1656780/Heros_Hour/
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40741272/0ba1ae480f8fe548a8fc6a53644d3c51bcce58eb.png
PATCH NOTES SUMMARY
MAP GENERATION REWORK
Map generation completely overhauled
All maps have been replaced. Some new maps share name or shape with old maps
New UI for setting up games
5 new win conditions for some maps (incl. 5 new buildings)
New system for creating templates for the random map generator
Resource piles now have different levels of wealth depending on what part of the map they spawn on
Maps now generate with cliffs
Two new terrains: Gold Beach and Dreamscape
New large terrain art assets for all terrains
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40741272/a4a594e29f70f724801fc47350dd122165e6abfe.png
SKILL SYSTEM REWORK
The game now uses Skillsets instead of Skilltrees for hero progression by default
Sorted all current skills into 47 major skills and the rest into subskills
Reworked the following skills: Tactics (now called Strategist), Champion, Aeromancy, Swiftness (now called Wind Pace), Weightless Soul (now called Wing Master), Fortune, Terramancy, Heavy Soul (now called Stone Heart), Enchanting, Swordsmith, Armorsmith (now called Shieldsmith), Pyromancy, Leadership, Armorer, Hydromancy, Offense, Mysticism, Summoning, Avatar, Engineering, Wisdom, Demoralise (now called Horror), Tragedy, Mastery, Scouting
Added 2 new major skills: Carnage, Faith
Added 54 new general subskills: Affinity, Gambler's Wheel, Inspiration, Lucky Star, Grave Guard, Life From Death, Demonic Reduction, Demoncaller, Possession Cataclysm, Fireleaper, Inferno, Heroism, March Onwards, Persistence, Plating, Lifelink, Aggression, Manalife, Underdog, Grand Physician, Vigour, Belch, Digest, Spit, Betrayal, Survival, Stormbringer, Luckyguards, Life Aether, Jewelsmith, Mana Drain, Demon Blood, Rainstorm, Sapper, Swallow, Conversion, Elite Guard, Brawn, Skepticism, One on One, Dragonform, Guard of None, Dragonslaying, Prism, Customisation, Whimsy, Productivity, Nobility, Forceful Strike, Cult of Muscle, Gold Teeth, Putrid Air, Undying
Added 36 new faction subskills: Salary, Royal Tribute, Old Mirth, Elven Artillery, Lunar Rites, March of Nature, Mage General, Spire Attunement, Scholar, Coil of the Dead, Frost Lich, Turn Living, Ritual of Power, Venomus Demonicus, Great Feast, Sandcaster, Hero's Horde, Ritual of Flesh, Swamp Silver, Bog Witching, Scale Lord, Doppelganger, Tunnel, Dragon Whisperer, Ways of the Sea, Pearl Crown, Fire Dance, Gold Digger, Carve Guards, Earthen Eternity, Uphold Tradition, Serene Meditation, Tea Master, Umsql, Cult Recruiter, Romance
Added 23 new skills for Rogue Realms: Chemistry as a new major skill, and 22 subskills: Mana Crystals, Buying Life, Golden Blood, Dragonskin, Bestial Fury, Life summoner, Rootcaller, Questing, Analysis, Test the Flesh, Research, Midlife Crisis, Spore Spreading, Budding, Neurotoxin, Mychoral Guard, Artillery, Mechpriest, Inspiring Drum, Energetic Jam, Peace Binding, Province Guards
Moved several subskills from Rogue Realms exclusivity to be part of the base game; of the old Rogue Realms exclusive subskills, only Call Beasts, Chemistry, Infest, Tinker, Lovely Tune, Exploitation and Crystal Assembly remains locked to Rogue Realms
Designed new skillsets for all heroes
Changed which skills and subskills heroes start with
Changed, on a skill to skill basis, how many ranks a hero can learn, and what requirements exist for the skill
Added 64 new spells for the new skills
OTHER NEW CONTENT
12 new units added: The Blood Golem, Medician, Mercenary, Nighthowler, Herculean, Terraformed, Questing Raffe, Aether Witch, Vulpella, Life Reaper, Blood Aspirant, Rune Beacon
15 new adventure map buildings added to the game
Sea towns have been added as a special type of Brine town for players owning Rogue Realms DLC
Added 6 new spells: Nightmare, Dream, Slumber, Detonate, Reap, Root
Hand Designed Skirmishes - these were previously randomly generated
COMMUNITY GRAPHICS IMPROVEMENTS
Improved default boat during naval combat
Divine Vessel spell now creates a unique boat with unique overworld and in-battle graphics
Lizardfolk heroes now create Turtles instead of Boats at the docks. These have a unique overworld and in-battle graphic
Most factions get unique new walls during sieges (by DeadSaracen)
All factions get a new unique look for their first aid station warmachine (by SleepyMage)
Updated art for Crusader, Paladin, Bloodsucker, Firestinger, Corruptor, Boneliath (by DeadSaracen)
Updated art for Enclave units by AntRose
Implementing 2 minor graphical updates + 1 overhaul to the pheromones subskills (drawn by AntRose)
MINOR CHANGES
All hero classes now get a unique silhouette for their artifact equipment screen
Guardposts made by Mason now are guaranteed to give their units to the hero defending them when attacked, instead of there being a chance for the enemy to attack the guardpost but not the hero, or a guarantee for this to happen if the hero was uncamped
Bodyguards/entourage losses are now calculated differently and more accurately
Now all types of entourage units regenerate at 15% each day
Week of X unit can no longer roll into technical units such as gods
General artifact set and Champion Statue now give +1 Entourage instead of the Bodyguards skill
Entourage time scaling now limits entourage units during early game for longer
Rogue Statue now gives +3 daily movement instead of the Logistics skill
FOW can now be cleared to the very edge of the map
More player colours
Units with damage reduction now show small glimmers during battle
Lorane now starts with Nighthowlers
Obelisk visions now look different
Tide now starts on Gold Beach terrain, and Delirium starts on Dreamscape terrain
Reduced the frequency of Death Coil killing huge amounts of units by increasing the damage dropoff per jump
Hex and Toadify spells are now Water-school instead of Earth
You can now see what a unit will bloodwarp into by holding B while looking at an expanded unit tooltip
Transformation from Apothecary no longer clears curse of undeath from Malediction or Bane
Air Shield now stacks with units that already had Ethereal, and stacks with itself when cast multiple times
New sprites for the following artifacts: Mesmer's Wall, Batal's Gloves, Ruby Band, Ring of Power, Conjurer's Cape, Champion Banner
Reduced the amount of Firepower/Waterpower/Airpower/Earthpower given by artifacts to 1/10th, to match the new spellpower mechanics
Changed the effect of some artifacts to no longer give +1 skill point, but instead to use proficiency/entourage/command
- Mesmer's Eye
- Rabbit's Feet (daily gold income)
- Tusk's Immortality
- Rogue Trousers
- Bluepearl Ring
- Locket of Death
Removed Learning from a series of artifacts and replaced it with an Experience rate bonus. These are nerfs
- Ring of Victory
- Regal Tunic
- Pompous Crown
- Artisan Helmet
- Tusk's Helmet
- Mandel's Gem
Special artifact bonuses such as "Shadowbetrayal", "Grizzly Guard" and "Unit Speed" will now show up in the UI as skills and will now have tooltips explaining their effects
Most units have had their living status sorted into more accurate categories (undead, human, draconic etc), and you can now see a unit's living status in its tooltip
Heroes now have a per-hero setting for living status
Some new living status categories have minor buffs or debuffs, such as Plants taking double damage from the burning status
Improved various aspects of the Manage Heroes screen
Warmachines now show tooltips when you hover your mouse over them during combat
Tailtoads and Snowbeards now have their damage scale correctly and display correctly
Infernal Gate is now weaker for armies with very few units (less than 100 unit power)
Units that transform still retain proficiency bonus; this includes Lacks
AI now prioritises fighting an enemy hero head on over teleporting home to defend their town from that same threat
AI now prioritises developing and defending their strongest towns first, and will no longer become confused when two towns close by each-other both are threatened
Higher levels of AI now prioritise hiring two heroes immediately when the tavern is bought
Projectile Protection now also reduces ranged attack damage by 25% and is now named Deflection
Fighter hero classes now gain Knowledge slightly faster
Extended the differences between Mob Strength: Low and Mob Strength: High advanced map setting
When hovering over the hero's movement bar in the HUD, the number of tiles in the current path is shown on the map
Forts and Citadels that require more creature dwellings to build now also show other requirements in their tooltips.
Changed the depth at which the Devour text is drawn, to be drawn on top of instead of underneath blood particles
Made the resources given by Buried Treasure more controlled; now a certain number of piles will always give gold and a certain number of piles will always give rare resources
Reduced the power of Buried Treasure for starting areas for small maps
Amount of resources, amount of artifacts, and power of artifacts given by roaming heroes now scale with their level
In battles where you gain more unit power than lost, the game will no longer phrase it as losing a negative number
Oligarchy now affects entourage units
Rewrote the tooltip for Statue of Physique to explain that heroes need to know Might or Ardour to be affected
Updated the Elemental Crystal spell in Sample Mods to now use the new, more straightforward mod functionality for summoning spells
Prevented the AI from casting Swift Retreat randomly during battles
Updated the text in the window that explains army limit size
Extended "Force Symmetry" to also guarantee same results when opening chests
Extended "Force Symmetry" to also guarantee placing the same artifacts
Reduced the variability of undead units by half, tieing the outcomes to specific heroes
Heroes who specialise in undead units now have a significantly higher chance of creating those undead units
The Idol unit will no longer become converted by Blight Ritual
Updated lists of faction units for Custom Skirmish to include v2.6 and v2.7 extra-faction units
Improved the tooltip for towns; the size of the small buttons, and the area for the cursor within which the tooltip will stay active
Increased the Command of structures that use a lot of unit power, such as the Arena (by +1 command for each 25k gold worth of units)
All Units list in Lexicon can now search for unit names or ability names
All Units list in Lexicon can now filter for unit tiers
Adjusted distance that AI is able to find buried treasure, making it more dependent on number of clues that they have found
AI heroes now keep track of cooldown for individual spells during combat, increasing the time between casting the same spell twice
Made it possible to right click units into and out of unit conversion buildings
Changed how gold cost of Training Grounds is displayed
Added Wildren Shrine to Wild's lexicon page
Combat will now end faster when fighting Betrayal units that are out of health
The mana display on the HUD now more accurately shows mana pct when you have between 0-20% mana
Adjusted the number of units summoned by summoning spells to scale more accurately, incl. a lower number of units for low spellpower, incl. fewer units summoned by a single unit casting a summoning spell
Blight Ritual will no longer convert your hero's specialty unit if the hero has the Mastery skill
Reduced occurrence rates of unlockable heroes to 1/3rd of main heroes
Inner Health can no longer be cast on Undead units
Increased the stats of catapults that are used during defense
Added a description of heroes specialisation unit and starting spells to map selection and lexicon
BALANCE CHANGES
Siren Song has been made more powerful, its effect increased by 25%
Changed how fear works, making it less likely to affect high power units
Added fear resistance. Each time a unit is terrified, the duration of its next fear becomes shorter
The fear from Wail is now strongly reduced by fear resistance
Morale now additionally shortens / lengthens duration of fear
Halved the rate at which Tailtoads inflict freeze
Increased the attack cooldown of Psychotrophs, Sludge Spitter and Absurdum units
Fireflies burst damage now reflects their attack damage
Increased Fireflies' attack damage by 50%
Reduced Betrayal proc chance from 100% to 100% for player owned and 80% for neutral owned
Gilded Pearlshells now have a slightly lower proc chance for both Petrification and Midas Touch
Incinerate now deals 150% damage to burning units instead of 200%
Buffed stats of following units: Dragonworm, Farmer, Child of Midas, Hound Dog, Hound Tamer, Imp, Glutton, Anima, Forest Spirit, Militia, Halberdier, Spawnling, Deckmate, Soulmage, Lich
Nerfed stats / increased cost of following units: Slickspitter, Sneagle, Malcorvid, Infernal, Hellgoat, Sorcerer, Psychotroph, Sludge Spitter, Absurdum, Kroll Bowman, Freshling, Songblade
Halved the power of Entourage so it now works like its description and how it was meant to work
Entourage can no longer give more units than the total power of all your real units on all your heroes and towns
Reduced the xp cost of summoning demons to 1/3rd of what it is
Demonology now summons slightly more demons early in the game and slightly fewer units later in the game
Reduced the mana cost of Necromancy by 1 mana
Reduced the scaling of Necromancy with number of enemy units by 20%, but increased its base strength (same change as what happened with Demonology)
Reduced the AOE of Freshling attacks
Increased the base health and damage of Shadowcasting and Shadowcloning copies, making these skills less reliant on several ranks
Number of Boneguards created by a Bane hero now scales with their level: Number = hero level + 6 * bane rank
Taxpayer unit ability now gives +5 gold per power instead of +2 gold per power
Increased health of Ophidians, Monster Trogs and Hollow Champions
Increased health and damage of Corpseeaters, and health of unupgraded Zombies
Removed high level summoning spells from the list of spells that can be cast by Release
Reduced the proc rate of release slightly for Amberodes (from 20% to 17.5%)
Reduced the duration of Insensate for units not owned by any players to 75%
Buffed Goblin health by +5 and Voodoo health by +3
Gave leap units a very short immunity time after landing from a leap
Reduced the power of Possession from units that do not belong to any player by 33%
Infirmaries are now able to heal any unit that can be hired in town, even if those units are not faction units
Nerfed the cost and thus difficulty estimation of Wildren unit
Increased Slickspitter cost; decreased Slickspitter growth
Increased Venom Darter cost
Increased Agony Beetle cost
Neutral Roaming heroes now either have half mana, or 30 + one quarter of their mana, whichever is lower
Reduced the damage of Cannonneers manning the turrets of Tide walls for neutral encounters
Reduced number of Cannonneers manning the turrets of Tide walls from 3 to 2
Greatly increased Health and Damage of Sorcerers
Halved the duration of the immunity given by Swift Retreat
Changed summoned/miraged units with Midas Touch turning into golden statues to now just leave normal corpses to fix an unintended gold gain
Warding now protects against Comet Strikes
Projectile protection and range reduction now works against Arrow Rain
Avatar now scales off the average of the mana cost of the spell and the actual mana spent on the spell; this reduces the number of units created up to by 50% in case all of the spell's mana cost is paid by Buffer or similar mechanics
Limited the effect of gold stacks spawned by battle turning into Artifacts to only happen via Hunter or Plunder
Reduced number of Runescribes manning the walls of neutral Earthen combat encounters
Flying units that do not belong to any player now can only use their pick-up-and-kill ability on units with 25% less health than before
Fixed low rank units turning into Wretched units when turned into undead despite weaker options being available
Nerfed amount of Soul power gained from combat to be more flat, closer to 20 per combat
Improved Dragon Temple's rate of upgrading dragons by 4x
Dragon Temple can now upgrade summoned dragons and entourage dragons, but only for the duration of that battle
Warding now protects against Comet Strikes
Projectile protection and range reduction now works against Arrow Rain
Changed the way that Summoning spells scale with spellpower, unit cost, etc. Overall, they are now a bit weaker but scale better lategame
Nerfed the secondary effect of the Hunting skill (giving artifacts when fighting beasts that did not come from Hidden Beasts)
Increased the time to attack for Ranged units with Wind-up, more accurately halving their attack speed
Reduced damage of Cultists and Spiritists
Increased Venom proc chance for low tier units, mostly affecting Cultists, Spiritists and Venom Darters
Reduced number of Grey Boys on avatars slightly for avatars after the first
Forbidden Tome can now at most give +10 knowledge
Units that summon units summon fewer units (see "Minor Changes: Adjusted the number of units summoned by summonings spells to scale more accurately")
Doubled the resources given by Commercial Centre town perk
MODDING
You may now specify unique targets for bloodwarping and other similar effects when doing unit mods by adding in a new line called "Elite Target: Nameofunit"
Heroes can now have their living status set
Global variables can now be read and changed by prefacing a variable with an @ instead of using the global_read() and global_set() functions
New function to make heroes unavailable by conventional means, allowing creation of special heroes
Complete overhaul of skill modding
New modding custom scripting functions:
- find_object_index(name)
- find_sprite_index(name)
- add_sprite(filename,number_of_frames,x_origin,y_origin)
- draw_sprite(sprite_index, image_index, x, y, x_scale, y_scale)
- draw_sprite_outline(sprite_index, image_index, x, y, x_scale, y_scale)
Two new functionalities:
- put @ before the variable name in variable_exists() to check if the named global variable exists
- array_create() and list_create() can now take any number of arguments to instantly put inside the list/array
Technical unit groups for the various factions now get generated BEFORE mods are loaded, allowing you to use these groups with mods
Implemented support for replacing unit sprites along with the new Unit Edit format
Implemented support for replacing unit sprites without using a Unit Edit data.txt file
BUG FIXES
Reduced the hard disc use when showing the battle menu
Docks building will no longer show up in the middle of battlefields when fighting near a docks
Heroes who gain knowledge when leveling up also gain the +10 to current mana
Fixed rooted units still being able to use Charge
Removed the graphical effect of True Strike (archery bonus) on Blaster attacks hitting own units
AI will no longer use Devour Own indiscriminately in fights against the player
Fixed a bug that might make the AI pay for a hero without getting them
Fixed AI not prioritising tavern for players with Rogue Realms installed
Fixed autobattle spellcasting simulations sometimes making a battle a loss that was a win before the spell simulation
Fixed Paradisic Meadow showing +1 bonus while giving a +2 bonus
Casting Chaos while in a naval battle will no longer scatter units into the water
Fixed a bug that made unlockable heroes have different town building layouts than other heroes
Fixed a bug that made Mercury Boosts draw half souls instead of full ones
Fixed Hydra Heralds not triggering correctly if dying in a battle that an enemy initiated
Fixed several other post-battle effects not triggering correctly when battle was initiated by an enemy
The daily ore income from Carver Stalls now is displayed correctly
Setting all players to be on the same team will no longer trigger any achievements
Taming now works correctly after autocombat
Fixed High Unit Growth advanced map setting quadrupling unit growth instead of just doubling it
Fixed a bug that would sometimes leave roaming heroes stuck on treasure
Fixed Swift Retreat giving immunity when used by an AI that wouldn't use it to retreat
Heroes with Infest can now interact with buildings that have already been visited specifically to Infest them
Fixed Buried Treasure giving 2x as much sulphur as other rare resources
Made sure that the Watering Well unit growth now rounds down when at 0.5 instead of sometimes rounding up and sometimes rounding down
Fixed a bug that made units with leap underestimate or overestimate how far to charge / leap, especially when dealing with units with taunt
Fixed Potency spells showing up in the Spellbook special spells tab
Fixed a bug that allowed Shadowlocked or Petrified units to leave the battlefield in rare scenarios
Fixed a rare bug crashing the game on the Last Week map
Fixed a bug that would sometimes end a battle before a unit with Splitting or Potent Soul could use its on-death ability if that unit were the last unit fighting on its side of the battle
Fixed flying units not scaling the walls even when permitted to or when the walls were breached
Fixed Soul Beacon mercury boosting showing a different amount of units than what is actually given
Fixed a bug that made the resource lost pop-up animation not show the number -1
Fixed a bug that would crash the game when Haste was offered in a scroll or pandora
Fixed a bug related to Pearl-searching particles being spawned off screen and piling up
Chaos unit ability can no longer teleport units from boats into the water
Fixed an exploit where you could force the Batal artifact set bonus to always proc by just not clicking the level-up button on your hero
Fixed Soul Beacon not triggering each day in Hotseat PvP games and for the AI
Fixed the tooltip for Pheromones spell stating that the spell deals damage when it in fact does not
Fixed new Unit Edit files not correctly desyncing abilities from base unit and upgraded unit
Fixed the Rogue artifact set bonus shadow heroes not syncing caster/fighter abilities
Fixed a bug that would crash the game when Haste was offered in a scroll or pandora
Fixed a bug related to Pearl-searching particles being spawned off screen and piling up
Changed summoned/miraged units with Midas Touch turning into golden statues to now just leave normal corpses to fix an unintended gold gain
Fixed Soul Beacon mercury boosting showing a different amount of units than what is actually given
Fixed a bug that made the resource lost pop-up animation not show the number -1
Fixed being able to dig for buried treasure while your hero is mid-movement, which would mess up the revealed treasure
Fixed a graphical error in the Carcass sprite
Fixed Academy being able to give lessons to avatars, which wouldn't do anything
Fixed typo in description of Second Wind and Chaos spells (batte instead of battle)
Fixed Diplomacy not combining separate stacks of identical units into a single stack
Fixed some UI overlap issues with the hero window
Fixed a bug that sometimes would have combat end before all units had deployed if enough units were killed at once
Fixed casting Transform on low tier units making the game lag and eventually turn them into random, higher-power units
Fixed Resurrection prioritising non-permanent units instead of prioritising permanent units
Fixed a bug that would make summoned units that had been hexed able to be resurrected into permanent units
Fixed a bug that meant that Balistas firing very far would deal no damage
Units can no longer drown in naval combat if they are victorious
Fixed a bug where certain buff spells could be repelled by Warding
Fixed a bug where certain v2.6 units were not considered technical units when playing without Rogue Realms
Fixed Entourage units not being considered when the AI is deciding to flee
Fixed Necromancy not giving mana to avatars when using the Drain option
Fixed the daily gold income of Exarch set bonus not being displayed in the gold income tooltip
Fixed Wildren Shrine and Loss Shrine not being translated correctly
Fixed a bug that made Forbidden Tome give one more knowledge than the number of spells you knew
Made sure mana regen is described as an integer in the tooltip for Knowledge even when the hero has the Regeneration skill
Fixed Lieutenant Hall not giving the same hero as what is displayed in the UI
Fixed a bug that would allow you to duplicate Delirium heroes
Fixed an occasional crash when the AI was trying to protect a town they'd town-portaled to
Fixed a bug with the save file compression algorithm that would prevent the final 1-128 values not be recorded when compressing a grid
Fixed certain combat encounters having no command (such as catapults) - now 1 command is minimum in all cases
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Build 13911730
Apr 1, 2024
Here are the patch notes for the various minor updates. v2.6.1 was only live on beta - v2.6.2 was released a couple of days ago, and v2.6.3 is a small hotfix patch on top of that.
v2.6.1
Fixed a rare bug where an obelisk would generate an obelus ON TOP of the buried treasure
Scrying achievement text now reads "Find an obelisk treasure with no clues apart from the first obelisk"
Fixed a bug that might cause a boat or a resource to be generated on top of a coastline even when there was an empty tile available
Rearranged credits so all of them are visible
Added some new community credits and updated publishing credits
Credits are now larger and better spaced
Removed debug feature that made artifacts draw lines to other artifacts of the same set when holding backspace
Fixed a crash related to defeating hostile pirates
Fixed a crash that would occur when entering a battle while being tabbed out of the game
Fixed a bug that would make units flee more rarely unless you held your cursor above the HUD at the top of the screen
Fixed the placement of tooltips that just move a bit above the top of the screen to not be cut off at the top
Fixed a bug making the "Skilltrees: Off" advanced map setting a bit more random than intended
Fixed a typo that made Fus Sofu and Kop Laka not start with the right spell (Summon Seastar)
Fixed various issues with custom modded units using sprites larger than 24x24
Added some code to make sure that hero units that respawn after death have the correct color and angle
Fixed several issues with random events not occuring correctly during battle, which would, for instance, make all AOE projectiles land in the same spot, or make boats suddenly move strangely during naval combat
Fixed the behaviour of swimming units with ranged attacks. Units can no longer use ranged attacks while swimming
Swimming units now spend less time under water before jumping back up onto the ship
Slightly increased width of Town UI window
Made sure the Summoning Circle will not create units that should not be created by random effects
Increased the size of Wyvern
Reworked Reviving Legend achievement to now require 5 artifacts of a single set
Fixed the Ancient Power achievement to now correctly trigger at 3 artifacts of a single set
Fixed a rare situation where checking for abilities in custom scripting would lead to a crash
Fixed unitskins breaking across mods in case canvas extension is used by a single mod
Fixed a rare bug with backwards compatibility for corrupted saves, which would make the game crash whenever the player pressed the Load button
Made sure that Hostile Pirates would generate unique heroes and armies instead of rerolling the same results again and again
You may now place Rogue towns using the tilemap editor
You may now place settlements using the tilemap editor
Improved the display of what towns are available in the tilemap editor
Using mods will now always export unit group .pngs, even if not using unit group mods (since unit mods might also go into unit groups on their own)
Fixed an issue that made neutral unit mods not correctly add to the right unitgroup when using Rogue Realms
Faction mods now correctly add Hero Class lore to their classes
Fixed rare issues where a hero would get the wrong entourage units when having a specialty unit that had no unit groups - now Puk Aro, for instance, will no longer gain Great Hydra as entourage units
Made sure that faction heroes will use faction units for entourage units if their specialty unit did not belong to any unit group
Amtio now represents the Carrion unit group, and Fromage now represents the Pond unit group
Fixed an issue that would sometimes delete artifacts in the hero's inventory
Fixed a bug with Tailtoads fighting against Fireflies that could make the game hang forever
Fixed Tailtoads' death animation
Fixed a bug causing corpses to not reach the final frame of their animation when playing at 2x battle speed
Fixed a bug causing spell casts to sometimes fail when holding your mouse above a unit while selecting the spell from your spellbook and also your resolution was low
Improved the casting of Firegating and Firetrapping
Fixed a typo that prevented the flying unit air drop and teleswapping unit abilities from working
Fixed a bug related to achievement unlocking that would slow down large maps tremendously in the late-game
Fixed a bug related to flying units getting stuck on the top, bottom or right edge of combat during naval battles
Fixed living units' aura colour being coloured the wrong colour
Fixed units occassionally moving strangely during naval combat
Fixed unit corpses not moving along with their boats
Fixed swimming units occassionally moving at supersonic speeds
Increased the size of the naval combat battlefield and reduced the distance between the boats at the start of battle
Fixed a bug that made the right-side units during naval combat not be placed correctly at the start of battle
Losing skill points in Tactics, Mastery, Bodyguards and Oligarchy now correctly changes command, proficiency and entourage
Fixed a bug that made Entourage and Proficiency gain from Mastery and Bodyguards doubled
Reduced the frequency of Snowbeard and Tailtoad projectiles will freeze the enemy unit
Midas Touch now applies via Snowbeard and Tailtoad projectiles, as they should
Fixed a rare bug which could crash the game when playing on very large battlefields without any enemies left and using units with infinite range
Fixed the following spells which could make immobile units move: Swift Retreat, Army of Giants, Gigantism
Fixed the following effects which could make immobile units move: Echoes artifact set bonus, Chemun tea, Swiftness skill, Rallying, Combat skill (only relevant for modding)
Made the following unit effects no longer make immobile units move: Fast, Light, Flimsy, Flying, Mutation
Switched position of Dragonking and Blight Ritual for RR Puk Aro skilltree
Magmoles are now significantly stronger
Mirrored game files for units now accurately depict the units' stats
Fixed names for some rogue dwellings being switched
Fixed priority of modded heroes spec units when two units have the same name
Updated art for the Arachnian as well as most of the new Ants introduced in v2.6.0
v2.6.2
Fixed a rare bug that could cause a crash when playing as Tide, not having any pearls, and using the Classic town screen
Fixed a crash related to the updated Teleswap ability scripting
Fixed an issue with faction mods that would occassionally make hero portraits for the 5th and later added faction have wrong portraits used
Fixed an infinite stall bug caused by Snowbeards fighting against low-tier enemies
Reduced the frequency of Snowbeard and Tailtoad projectiles will freeze the enemy unit EVEN MORE
Fixed a bug that would occassionally crash the game when a hunted hidden beast was about to respawn
Fixed Reveal full map not working correctly for hotseat
v2.6.3
Fixed a crash that led to faction mods being unplayable for non-English language games
If mods crash the game before reaching the main menu, they now get automatically turned off next time you open the game
Changed unit edit mods to now be able to just edit a few attributes without causing a crash
Patience achievement now just requires winning on the Patience map - the time limit is removed because it led to a lot of issues
View on Steam
v2.6.1
Fixed a rare bug where an obelisk would generate an obelus ON TOP of the buried treasure
Scrying achievement text now reads "Find an obelisk treasure with no clues apart from the first obelisk"
Fixed a bug that might cause a boat or a resource to be generated on top of a coastline even when there was an empty tile available
Rearranged credits so all of them are visible
Added some new community credits and updated publishing credits
Credits are now larger and better spaced
Removed debug feature that made artifacts draw lines to other artifacts of the same set when holding backspace
Fixed a crash related to defeating hostile pirates
Fixed a crash that would occur when entering a battle while being tabbed out of the game
Fixed a bug that would make units flee more rarely unless you held your cursor above the HUD at the top of the screen
Fixed the placement of tooltips that just move a bit above the top of the screen to not be cut off at the top
Fixed a bug making the "Skilltrees: Off" advanced map setting a bit more random than intended
Fixed a typo that made Fus Sofu and Kop Laka not start with the right spell (Summon Seastar)
Fixed various issues with custom modded units using sprites larger than 24x24
Added some code to make sure that hero units that respawn after death have the correct color and angle
Fixed several issues with random events not occuring correctly during battle, which would, for instance, make all AOE projectiles land in the same spot, or make boats suddenly move strangely during naval combat
Fixed the behaviour of swimming units with ranged attacks. Units can no longer use ranged attacks while swimming
Swimming units now spend less time under water before jumping back up onto the ship
Slightly increased width of Town UI window
Made sure the Summoning Circle will not create units that should not be created by random effects
Increased the size of Wyvern
Reworked Reviving Legend achievement to now require 5 artifacts of a single set
Fixed the Ancient Power achievement to now correctly trigger at 3 artifacts of a single set
Fixed a rare situation where checking for abilities in custom scripting would lead to a crash
Fixed unitskins breaking across mods in case canvas extension is used by a single mod
Fixed a rare bug with backwards compatibility for corrupted saves, which would make the game crash whenever the player pressed the Load button
Made sure that Hostile Pirates would generate unique heroes and armies instead of rerolling the same results again and again
You may now place Rogue towns using the tilemap editor
You may now place settlements using the tilemap editor
Improved the display of what towns are available in the tilemap editor
Using mods will now always export unit group .pngs, even if not using unit group mods (since unit mods might also go into unit groups on their own)
Fixed an issue that made neutral unit mods not correctly add to the right unitgroup when using Rogue Realms
Faction mods now correctly add Hero Class lore to their classes
Fixed rare issues where a hero would get the wrong entourage units when having a specialty unit that had no unit groups - now Puk Aro, for instance, will no longer gain Great Hydra as entourage units
Made sure that faction heroes will use faction units for entourage units if their specialty unit did not belong to any unit group
Amtio now represents the Carrion unit group, and Fromage now represents the Pond unit group
Fixed an issue that would sometimes delete artifacts in the hero's inventory
Fixed a bug with Tailtoads fighting against Fireflies that could make the game hang forever
Fixed Tailtoads' death animation
Fixed a bug causing corpses to not reach the final frame of their animation when playing at 2x battle speed
Fixed a bug causing spell casts to sometimes fail when holding your mouse above a unit while selecting the spell from your spellbook and also your resolution was low
Improved the casting of Firegating and Firetrapping
Fixed a typo that prevented the flying unit air drop and teleswapping unit abilities from working
Fixed a bug related to achievement unlocking that would slow down large maps tremendously in the late-game
Fixed a bug related to flying units getting stuck on the top, bottom or right edge of combat during naval battles
Fixed living units' aura colour being coloured the wrong colour
Fixed units occassionally moving strangely during naval combat
Fixed unit corpses not moving along with their boats
Fixed swimming units occassionally moving at supersonic speeds
Increased the size of the naval combat battlefield and reduced the distance between the boats at the start of battle
Fixed a bug that made the right-side units during naval combat not be placed correctly at the start of battle
Losing skill points in Tactics, Mastery, Bodyguards and Oligarchy now correctly changes command, proficiency and entourage
Fixed a bug that made Entourage and Proficiency gain from Mastery and Bodyguards doubled
Reduced the frequency of Snowbeard and Tailtoad projectiles will freeze the enemy unit
Midas Touch now applies via Snowbeard and Tailtoad projectiles, as they should
Fixed a rare bug which could crash the game when playing on very large battlefields without any enemies left and using units with infinite range
Fixed the following spells which could make immobile units move: Swift Retreat, Army of Giants, Gigantism
Fixed the following effects which could make immobile units move: Echoes artifact set bonus, Chemun tea, Swiftness skill, Rallying, Combat skill (only relevant for modding)
Made the following unit effects no longer make immobile units move: Fast, Light, Flimsy, Flying, Mutation
Switched position of Dragonking and Blight Ritual for RR Puk Aro skilltree
Magmoles are now significantly stronger
Mirrored game files for units now accurately depict the units' stats
Fixed names for some rogue dwellings being switched
Fixed priority of modded heroes spec units when two units have the same name
Updated art for the Arachnian as well as most of the new Ants introduced in v2.6.0
v2.6.2
Fixed a rare bug that could cause a crash when playing as Tide, not having any pearls, and using the Classic town screen
Fixed a crash related to the updated Teleswap ability scripting
Fixed an issue with faction mods that would occassionally make hero portraits for the 5th and later added faction have wrong portraits used
Fixed an infinite stall bug caused by Snowbeards fighting against low-tier enemies
Reduced the frequency of Snowbeard and Tailtoad projectiles will freeze the enemy unit EVEN MORE
Fixed a bug that would occassionally crash the game when a hunted hidden beast was about to respawn
Fixed Reveal full map not working correctly for hotseat
v2.6.3
Fixed a crash that led to faction mods being unplayable for non-English language games
If mods crash the game before reaching the main menu, they now get automatically turned off next time you open the game
Changed unit edit mods to now be able to just edit a few attributes without causing a crash
Patience achievement now just requires winning on the Patience map - the time limit is removed because it led to a lot of issues
Current Release
Not available
System Requirements
OS
N/A
CPU
Dual-core 2Ghz CPU
RAM
512 MB RAM
GPU
AMD Radeon HD 6250 or better DirectX11 compatible graphics card
How to Install
1
Download all files
2
Extract the .ISO file to a folder (use WinRAR or 7-Zip)
3
Mount the ISO file (double-click or right-click → Mount)
4
Run setup.exe
5
Launch the game from desktop shortcut or Start Menu
Troubleshooting tips
• Run Redist/_CommonRedist installers if game won't start
• Add folder to Windows Defender exclusions
• Run as administrator
Download
Direct link available
Size
399 MB
Password: cracked-games.org or 123
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Download Hero's Hour for PC with a direct link or via torrent. Get the full version of Hero's Hour for free. Hero's Hour is a RPG released by Benjamin "ThingOnItsOwn" Hauer.