[Vince]

We finally released the first two chapters on Steam’s Early Access, which is a major milestone.  If you missed the news, the Early Access release gives you 10 locations, which represents about 60% of the game. Three more locations will be added after the New Year, and the remaining seven end-game locations will be released in the summer (we’re planning to start the final beta-test in April-May 2014).

So far, we sold 3,332 copies on Steam and 1,929 copies via our own site and GamersGate, generating $141,780. As always, we want to thank you for your support, patronage, and most importantly, for your faith in our ability to make a game worth playing.

To-date 6,107 people downloaded the demo on Steam; 417 bought the Early Access version after, i.e. 6.8% conversion rate, which, apparently, is pretty good (the industry standards are 1-5% for non-casual games), which means that we need to get the demo in front of more people.

The launch highlighted many issues and generated a lot of feedback, so we spent the last 4 weeks working on the first update. Due to some unforeseen problems, we won't be able to upload the new version to BMT until next week, but the update is out on Steam. We can provide the Steam keys if you want to try it out (In before "You sold out to Steam!!")

Notable changes:

• A long overdue tutorial. Now you can fight in a mini-arena against several opponents before you start the game, which will make it easier for new players to learn the system, without the story elements getting in the way and the need to make a new character every time you’re killed. It replaces the awesome difficulty mode, which wasn’t really that awesome or helpful.
• A new and improved character screen! Now with 50% more info! Must see to believe!
• 6 new traders in Maadoran with improved inventories and unique items to spend your hard-earned money on.
• Speaking of your hard-earned money, the economic reforms aimed to deliver prosperity have failed and wiped out everyone’s savings. So, no more running around with pockets full of gold. A free soup kitchen DLC will be added later.
• A truckload of bug fixes, balance tweaks, reputation adjustments, quest improvements. For example, now you can talk your way out of the ambush in the merchants guild’s questline, have more options  during the infiltration of Gaelius’ palace, options during the fight at the Antidas’ compound , Antidas dying now lowers the morale of the Daratan guards, reducing their attack and defense.
• More training. Earning more skill points and weapon bonuses has never been easier. Just talk to many ever-helpful NPCs (like Dellar and Feng) and they will gladly impart their wisdom unto you (may require high reputation and charisma, terms and conditions may apply).
• The crafting techniques you have now will no longer have to be acquired in-game as we don’t want you to invest valuable points into Crafting and then fail to find more than 2-3 techniques. New, appropriately rare techniques will be added instead. So, you keep what you have now as your standard set of techniques and get rare techniques if you’re lucky.
• We’ve started adding alchemical ingredients that you will be able to gather at different places.  The demo alchemist will stick around until we finish it.
• The game now features a built-in crash reporting system. Send us a crash report, and we will know when, how, and how the hell your game crashed!

Here is the full list of improvements, changes and fixes for Update 1. These changes apply to both the demo and Early Access version, except for unique EA quests changes.

(click to show/hide)

Improvements:

- Removed the "Awesome" character, added an intro screen with more info and an option to "train", which leads to a combat tutorial.
- Improved map screen, with clearer map buttons and more consistency with the other screens.
- Added a small help message on the top left corner with the game controls when you start the game.
- Added a small help message on the top left corner with combat controls when you get into your first fight.
- Added a new character screen with better information, including cost to increase skills, combat skill bonuses and the attack and defense ratings.
- Improved the character creation screen with new info from new character screen, font with capital letters for the character name, highlight and image for selected background (WIP), bigger character model, among other things.
- Added tags to skill levels, showing the profficiency with the skill (Unskilled, Novice, Journeyman, Proficient, Adept, Expert, Master). Some of them cover two skills levels, representing the different "stages" of difficulty in checks.
- Added description for unlocked techniques and potions for alchemy and crafting.
- Added a tip for mouse and key shortcuts when using the loot and trade screens.
- Improved camera position when starting the game, plus a better activation of the descriptive text.
- Added new cursors for different actions plus improved the look of many cursors.
- Added 6 new items with unique icons, name, lore and stats.
- Feng, Cassius and Dellar will give you unique training. Dellar and Feng after the charisma check, and Cassius if you are in good standing with him.

Fixes:

- Vitus now gives you the steel ingots.
- Poison Wine quest: Fixed issue with selecting the option of going to the outpost from Rhaskos stash.
- Fixed combat exploits on the ordu camp.
- Fixed issue which broke the outpost quest dialogue as a praetor.
- Fixed issue with weight number being purple instead of red when you were over the weight limit in several resolutions.
- Leon has the gold you paid him when you kill him.
- Antidas properly gives you his ring when you make him emperor in IG3.
- Fixed observatory tile passability, so you can no longer "fly".
- Fixed issue with Iola dialogue breaking when you didn't unlock the experiment option.
- Fixed "invisible" icons on Hermon's gang.
- Fixed issue with crossbow legs and arms attacks didn't give a penalty.
- Fixed issue with the endings sending you to the main menu after killing Carrinas in HD2, instead of going to Maadoran.
- Fixed the doors in Lord Varus house in Maadoran.
- Fixed issues with broken cameras in the IG combat by trial fight and the praetor fight against the assassins.
- Fixed problem with being left close to Gaelius after coming back from the pass.
- The bomb at Neros place will leave you with 1 HP if your health is 15 or lower.
- You'll no longer get Maadoran character endings if the city had a "big event".

Changes:

General

- Lowered Cassius combat skills.
- Increased SP from completing the vignette from 5 to 10.
- Changed the SP gain from Teron questlines from 10-10-20 to 15-15-15, giving 5 SP more in total.
- The arena champion now has a custom cuirass with an unique name and description.
- Added combat and civil SP pools.
- Adding civil skill points, still a work in progress.
- Tweaked Teron Gang skills, and removed one member.
- Coltan has reduced combat skills, but has better poison on his weapons.
- Slightly tweaked Dias and Agatai.
- Slightly increased the effect of poison at the mine.
- The merchants now have limited inventory.
- Added crafted items and alchemy ingredients to merchants.
- Cut prices of all items by 4.
- With 1 point in trading you now sell your things for 15% of its value.
- Reduced starting gold.

Crafting

- Removed metal restrictions for upgrades.
- Increased metal bonus to weapon damage and armor DR from 0-1-2-3-4 to 0-2-4-6-8.

Combat

- New formula for shield bash gives better chance to push and also to knockdown enemies.
- Bigger shields have a better chance of bashing the opponent.
- Bigger shields have a much better chance of blocking ranged attacks, progression went from 5-10-15-20 to 5-15-25-35.
- Reduced shield THC penalty from 5-10-15-20 to 0-5-10-15.
- Rebalanced shield DR bonus from 4-5-6-7 to 3-5-7-9.
- Increased strength bonus for block from 2 points to 5 points.
- Shield and helmet THC penalty now stack.
- Rebalanced helmet THC penalty, usually lower.
- Rebalanced helmet vsCS, lower for cloth and open leather helmet, higher for closed metal ones.
- Swing THC penalty reduced from 10 to 5.
- Double Tap damage is now reduced by 2 instead of 3.
- Cleave CS bonus increased from 25 to 35 (compared to a regular attack).
- Whirlwind THC penalty increased from 10 to 15.
- Decreased counter-attack from dodge from 6, 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, 42, 48, 54, 60 to 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50.
- Increased full block from block from 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32, 36, 40 to 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50.
- Decreased bypass from dagger from 10, 16, 22, 28, 34, 40, 46, 52, 58, 65 to 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50.
- Nets now cost 4AP to throw, but have a higher THC to score. Also, it's easier to entangle block users (10 bonus).
- Net effect now lasts one more turn, defense penalty is down from 30 to 25 for dodge and from 30 to 20 for block. Attack penalty down from 30 to 25.
- All bows AP increased by 1, but in turn deal more damage.
- All crossbow loading times increased by 2, but in turn the deal way more damage and have a better chance of knockdown.
- AoO now only happen once per turn instead of 2, but chance is higher.
- Changed barbed arrow DR multiplier from 3 to 4. Changed piercing arrow DR division from 3 to 2.

Quest HD1

- Now you can mention to Dellar that it's a blue steel smelter if you found out that.

Quest IG3

- You now get an option to back away to a more "defensive" position, or a dexterity + critical strike check to kill Antidas.
- Antidas dying lowers the morale of the Daratan guards, lowering their attack and defense.
- Lowered Antidas combat skills, they were too high before.
- Tweaked Dellar stats and equipment.
- There's only a single IG team that goes with you to the fight, balanced for the fight (stronger than the weak version, but not as much as the elite one).
- Now Carrinas gives you a high level neurostimulant along with some other chems.

Quest MG1

- Rebalanced checks. They are more flexible, but slightly harder. More uses for charisma.

Quest MG3

- Added streetwise and persuasion options to avoid the ambush.
- The ambushers are two instead of three.
- Made dexterity and sneak checks to get away slightly harder.

Quest TG6

- Reworked the situation at the Legatus office so you can get more options than just critical strike if you lack streetwise.

Quest AG4

- Made thieves inside the temple harder.
- High Charisma makes the second disguise check easier.
- Increased the perception check to find the secret entrance to the temple from 6 to 7.
- Increased the dexterity check for killing the two thieves with CS.
- You can now loot back the 200 gold you gave the beggar.
- Fixed issue with CS check against the beggar.
- Lowered the checks to convince Levir to let you go.

Quest AG6

- Re-equipped the IG soldiers with more "lore friendly" equipment.
- IG soldiers are stronger.

Miltiades Teron

- Changed the named of Servants to Thugs.
- One of the thugs has a healing salve for looting.
- Changed the axe of one of the thugs from iron to bronze.

Also, we’re working on Achievements (will be added in the next update). The first batch is 65 achievements tracking your adventures and glory, but we’ll probably have around 120-150 due to the high number of different things you can do in-game. Sneak preview:

- Interrogator

- On His Lordship’s Secret Service

- "Good Morrow to You, Magistrate!"

- Under New Management

- “And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger... And you will know I am the Lord when I lay My vengeance upon you."

- Killed more people than malaria (for men of much violence and fans of Justified)

- "Is life always this hard?"

Well, that’s about it. So, go try the updated demo and let us know what you think. Thank you again for your support. We would have never made it this far without you.

[Oscar]

Updated the post with the changelog.

[Brandon]

So far, we sold 3,332 copies on Steam and 1,929 copies via our own site and GamersGate

To-date 6,107 people downloaded the demo on Steam; 417 bought the Early Access version after, i.e. 6.8% conversion rate, which, apparently, is pretty good (the industry standards are 1-5% for non-casual games), which means that we need to get the demo in front of more people.

That's excellent news.   


So how do we go about getting one of those Steam keys if we are BMT orderer?      

[SnallTrippin]

Was wondering what this update was, nice!

[Oscar]

So how do we go about getting one of those Steam keys if we are BMT orderer?      

We had this thread running for quite some time now:

http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,3516.0.html

[AbounI]

Good Lord, what an update 

[Dewey_Master]

• The crafting techniques you have now will no longer have to be acquired in-game as we don’t want you to invest valuable points into Crafting and then fail to find more than 2-3 techniques. New, appropriately rare techniques will be added instead. So, you keep what you have now as your standard set of techniques and get rare techniques if you’re lucky.

- Increased metal bonus to weapon damage and armor DR from 0-1-2-3-4 to 0-2-4-6-8.

- Rebalanced shield DR bonus from 4-5-6-7 to 3-5-7-9.

- Increased strength bonus for block from 2 points to 5 points.
 

Wow! I was actually intending today to request the first three changed I quoted above. The combination of point allocation and in-game events to upgrade abilities (as is now done with crafting) was something I rather enjoyed with the trainers in Arcanum. Hopefully that means balanced weapons can remain as AP-lowering rather than THC-raising, especially if it is as rare/difficult as advertised. The two point intervals of DR, especially for shields, should be helpful for block and high armor characters.

One question: what is the "strength bonus for block" as I don't remember that being discussed previously?

Thanks again! I am very excited to play with the changes!

[Brandon]

We had this thread running for quite some time now:
http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,3516.0.html

 


This is like Christmas come early!  And I don't even like Christmas! 

[Elthosian]

Hey guys,

Are you planning to add sounds for when you click the dialogue options? Dunno if I am the only one but I prefer when there is such feedback for clicking stuff, like when you navigate the menus and so, of course it isn't something essential but I figured I could said it over here.

Btw, love the new character creation screen, though are the other four archetypes getting their own banners? It's not like they could get any organization's but the soldiers doesn't fit as well IMO, suppose it's a placeholder or something.

OH, also, it seems it's not possible to create female characters anymore (at least for me), looks like a bug though because the "slot" where the female gender button was is still there.

Thanks in advance, can't wait to play this new version a bit more 

[Oscar]

Wow! I was actually intending today to request the first three changed I quoted above. The combination of point allocation and in-game events to upgrade abilities (as is now done with crafting) was something I rather enjoyed with the trainers in Arcanum. Hopefully that means balanced weapons can remain as AP-lowering rather than THC-raising, especially if it is as rare/difficult as advertised.

We'll have both. The balanced one will be a "default" technique that you will unlock just by raising crafting, and the AP lowering one will be a very rare, high level technique that you will need to find in the world.

One question: what is the "strength bonus for block" as I don't remember that being discussed previously?

It's something that was always there but that people never knew it existed. You will be able to check it on the new character screen

[Oscar]

Hey guys,

Are you planning to add sounds for when you click the dialogue options? Dunno if I am the only one but I prefer when there is such feedback for clicking stuff, like when you navigate the menus and so, of course it isn't something essential but I figured I could said it over here.

We might, we still have quite a lot of work to do on sounds.

Btw, love the new character creation screen, though are the other four archetypes getting their own banners? It's not like they could get any organization's but the soldiers doesn't fit as well IMO, suppose it's a placeholder or something.

Yep, placeholder

OH, also, it seems it's not possible to create female characters anymore (at least for me), looks like a bug though because the "slot" where the female gender button was is still there.

Damn, missed that one. In any case, it's only for the 768 height of the interface. Please switch to a resolution smaller than 768 height or higher than 900 height for character creation as a workaround.

[puppyonastik]

So far, we sold 3,332 copies on Steam and 1,929 copies via our own site and GamersGate, generating $141,780. As always, we want to thank you for your support, patronage, and most importantly, for your faith in our ability to make a game worth playing.

To-date 6,107 people downloaded the demo on Steam; 417 bought the Early Access version after, i.e. 6.8% conversion rate, which, apparently, is pretty good (the industry standards are 1-5% for non-casual games), which means that we need to get the demo in front of more people.

Out-fucking-standing, Gentlemen! I'm beaming proud of you all! This (hopefully) bodes very well for the final release of the game!  May the Iron Tower stand tall for decades! :/ultra-patriotism:

[Brandon]

- Reduced shield THC penalty from 5-10-15-20 to 0-5-10-15.
- Rebalanced shield DR bonus from 4-5-6-7 to 3-5-7-9.
- Increased full block from block from 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32, 36, 40 to 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50.

Block definitely feels much better so far.
Having zero THC penalty on the buckler is very helpful early game.

[Elthosian]

Hey guys,

Are you planning to add sounds for when you click the dialogue options? Dunno if I am the only one but I prefer when there is such feedback for clicking stuff, like when you navigate the menus and so, of course it isn't something essential but I figured I could said it over here.

We might, we still have quite a lot of work to do on sounds.

Btw, love the new character creation screen, though are the other four archetypes getting their own banners? It's not like they could get any organization's but the soldiers doesn't fit as well IMO, suppose it's a placeholder or something.

Yep, placeholder

OH, also, it seems it's not possible to create female characters anymore (at least for me), looks like a bug though because the "slot" where the female gender button was is still there.

Damn, missed that one. In any case, it's only for the 768 height of the interface. Please switch to a resolution smaller than 768 height or higher than 900 height for character creation as a workaround.

¡Gracias Oscar! It works nicely now, and I am really looking forward to see how you keep improving the interface as the game gets closer to release 

[Darkthia]

So far, we sold 3,332 copies on Steam and 1,929 copies via our own site and GamersGate, generating $141,780. As always, we want to thank you for your support, patronage, and most importantly, for your faith in our ability to make a game worth playing.

To-date 6,107 people downloaded the demo on Steam; 417 bought the Early Access version after, i.e. 6.8% conversion rate, which, apparently, is pretty good (the industry standards are 1-5% for non-casual games), which means that we need to get the demo in front of more people.

Thats fantastic!

You know that adds up to a total sales number of 5261 copies sold, which is actually the same as the average sales figures for such Indie mainstays as Jeff Vogel. And the games not even out yet!