Update 1.5.1 (27 March 2020)

Changelog posted in the game forum by user ERISS.

Update 1.032 (26 March 2020)

NEW GAME +
- Load your final save game after beating the campaign to start NG+
- Start with all the character progress and arsenal intact
- Face more powerful standard enemies that leave behind more essence
- Encounter rare overpowered Essence Conduit enemies that just GLOW with power
- Essence Conduits are larger, and much meaner than their standard counterparts
- Essence Conduits drop MASSIVE amounts of essence if you manage to defeat them
- There's a higher chance of Essence Conduits spawning in each subsequent NG+ run
- Each subsequent New Game+ run becomes harder, but yields higher rewards

COMBAT SYSTEM
- Parrying and blocking no longer in input queue
- Failed parry penalty decreased by 20% You can now break the counterattacks of shielded enemies with a kick and stagger them
- Blocking has been revamped
- Block no longer has a cooldown
- Block-breaking attacks no longer does damage, unless you don't defend at all
- Parry-breaking attacks will cause damage
- Parry- and block-breaking attacks from the enemies are less frequent
- The Old Blade has been boosted to make the early game combat less punishing
- The Coffer Hammer no longer blocks unblockable attacks - it delivers an unblockable heavy attack instead
- More consistent enemy staggering and throwing off ledges

MISCELLANEOUS
- Difficulty tiers have been re-balanced and work more in-depth - received damage, enemy attack speed, phial healing amount, and phial number after respawn is affected
- Brightness setting slider has been introduced in the menu
- Some of the Catacombs enemies have been re-deployed in new positions
- Scorpions will take longer to turn around
- Small scorpions are easily staggered
- A bug causing the Jurmum Arena bosses not to spawn on rare occasion has been tracked down and squashed with extreme prejudice

ACHIEVEMENTS
- Complete achievement system overhaul to make sure all unlock properly
- Corrected descriptions to The Gravekeeper, Jurmum's Garbage Collector, Gotta Catch - Them All, and Winston Wolf achievements
- Some problematic enemies excluded from the achievement requirements
- New achievement: Groundhog Day - complete NG+ for the first time
- New achievement: A Challenger Appears - complete all challenges
- New achievement: Winner's Don't Do Drugs - kill 10 Essence Conduits

Update 0.21 (24 March 2020)

Freeplay Overhaul
- Freeplay has seen many changes and should feel very different now than it used to.
- Leaf cutters make their way to freeplay, along with climbable plants!
- New rainforest map Embankment
- Difficulty has been tuned and and extra difficulty option added that affects how quickly and how far the games difficulty will change
- Optional victory conditions have been added allowing you to set goals (these also affect the difficulty as you approach victory)
- Freeplay setups can be saved, and can also be shared via a string
- Ubers have been rebalanced bringing them to a fairer difficulty level. They have also been altered to be strong / weak against various enemy combinations
- As difficulty increases, creatures will now get stronger (rather than just more numerous) and will have much less food reduction

Extra Levels
- We will be bringing regular extra missions to the game apart from the main campaign. Here we have allowed ourselves more freedom to do things in a more game-like fashion rather than true to nature, like we strive to be in the story.The first 3 maps will be released a month apart!
- Aggrandise launches today! Command a Formica ereptor colony featuring the fierce trap jaw ants and carefully choose your targets as your colony grows large enough to take on a large foe!
- More are on the way - follow our social media for details!
- Third Tier Challenge Mode
- Phorid flies are tiny, inconspicuous-looking insects that could easily be mistaken for fruit flies but are far deadlier. They lay their eggs between the armoured carapaces of insects, in particular your ants, leading to a time where they will be less effective followed by inevitable death as the larva eats away at the innards.
- All ants have a chance of fighting off the flies when they are attacked, but level 3 mediae and majors have a 100% chance to fight them off.

First Tier Achievements
- We have also added a bunch of achievements for the first tier levels of the game. This includes New Home, Subjugation and the first formicarium challenge. Multiple achievements have been added for various difficulties and challenge modes. There are the generic achievements, such as finishing a level on a specific difficulty, but also tasks that have specific conditions to achieve. Check your achievements from the in-game menu.

Optimisation and Balance
- On top of all these additions there has been a raft of optimisation changes made that should also improve performance. Some areas have also seen balance changes including area-of-effect (AOE) attacks, insane difficulty on 3.2 Front Line and many others. Many of these changes are listed below.

Optimisations
- Projectiles have been significantly optimised (very noticeable with rapid fire wood ants)
- Substantially reduced the cost of rendering the Isolepis Cernua (spiky plant)
- And many more! See previous patch notes from beta testing for extensive details

Balance
- Black ants now take 20% less damage from AOE attacks
- 3.2 Front Line on harder difficulties will spawn less environmental creatures and more higher level army ants
- Formicarium challenge 3 has been made much easier on harder difficulties:
- Reduced the number of resource refills the enemy colony receives across various difficulties (now 0/1/2/4 down from 0/1/5/10)
- Reduced reload quantity to 1800 (down from 2000)
- Resource reloads will now appear gradually (10 per second) rather than instantly
- Reduced size of cricket drops on harder difficulties
- Damage falloff implemented on wood ant mortar, uber basic attacks and some whip spider attacks. This deals less damage the further away from the epicentre of the attack the creature is (reaching zero at the very edge)

Selected Improvements
- Multiple frame rate limits added
- Added an option slider for a darkened square behind resource counters for visibility
- Markers should feel more responsive with faster movement between different markers, more ants at the end of the marker and far fewer ants waiting at home to head to the marker
- Camera zoom now interpolates very rapidly
- Visuals added for leafcutter major auras
- Difficulty levels have been added for Formicarium challenges 1 and 2
- Trail calculations have been updated. Should lead to more ants at the end of trails, more consistent flows and less ants waiting underground
- And many more! See previous patch notes from beta testing for extensive details

Selected Fixes
- Significantly less ants getting caught on corners
- Corrected an error that could cause creatures to get stuck at the entrance to ramps
- A previously dormant patrol route behind the player’s nest has been reactivated in 3.2
- Fixed an issue where workers could survive their tiles being deleted if they have the “evasive” skill
- After purchasing a queen ability, all queen cool-downs need to recharge (prevents switching queen abilities during formicarium challenge exploit)
- Ladybirds now immune to many crowd control effects to prevent them being affected whilst eating an aphid
- “Attack when favourable” creatures (such as mantis and jumping spider) now take nearby allies into account when deciding to attack or not
- Improvements to ant crowd movement - particularly in combat
- Mole crickets now take room size into account when selecting a room to spawn in
- Improvements to collision detection with difficult shapes
- Battle arena now only removes creatures that are not in combat
- Ubers will no longer ignore the nest invasion setting in freeplay setup
- Moved all pebbles off walkable area in the original Hungry Spider level
- Fixed a visual error with the wood ant projectile splash
- And many more! See previous patch notes from beta testing for extensive details

Alpha 3 Hotfix 3 (29 March 2020)

Added:
- Esc key now hides the construction menu and help window
- Post processing is now disabled for Intel GPUs by default

Fixed:
- Crash when a builder has arrived on a finished construction
- All the workers stuck on the field are now free to go!
- Crash when everyone in town wants the same ox
- Some coastal areas had passable buildings/fences (will be fixed only for new games)
- Crash when putting down some buildings near water
- No ploughs being built if there's a wagon order in queue
- Crash after cancelling construction (in some cases)

Update v20.03.29.01 Soul Saga (29 March 2020)

Features
Persistent Archipelagos:
- Archipelagos now retain their layout and item placements throughout the day and are reset at the start of each day.
- If you return to an archipelago the same day, your airship will enter at the exact point you left at.

On-Foot Grumplin Invasion Quest:
- Approaching a Grumplin Invasion base will now load into an on-foot scene where you explore a Grumplin outpost and defeat the boss at the end to complete the quest.
- There is now only 1 Grumplin war camp spot per invasion quest (instead of 5 per invasion quest).

Dynamic Resolution Settings:
- Resolution settings will now dynamically filter the available options based on the supported full-screen resolutions of the current display.
- Changing the resolution settings will now immediately change the game settings without an application restart.

Bug Fixes
- General: Loading an auto-saved game would permanently progress an entire day.
- Settings Menu: Sound Effect and Music volume slider previews would only work the first time the menu was opened.
- Other minor bug fixes and performance improvements.

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Update v20.03.29.02 Soul Saga (30 March 2020)

Adjustments
- The effect for being too far away from land has been adjusted. It is now a solid black vignette (instead of a subtle red vignette).

Bug Fixes
- General: Fixed a bug where using a controller while delegating Guildmembers would cause the user interface to break.