BALANCING PATCH 5 - DECEMBER 2020

With the coldest of seasons beginning to descend upon Northgard, has Winter festival sprung to life once again! But the bitter cold winds, snow and perilous winters are not all that await us, as a number of huge changes to the plethora of clans vying for conquest have also arrived with Balance Update #5!

Check out what's new below!

GENERAL GAMEPLAY CHANGES

Shieldbearers

Defense 8 ⇒ 7

Eldhrumnir

Your units regenerate health during a feast .
Regen Health 0.05 ⇒ 0.03

Scabbard of Gram

Your Warchief wields the sword Gram. Enemies hit by Gram are frozen, along with the area around them. Gives +15% ⇒ +10% attack , +15% ⇒ +10% defense to Shield Maiden.

Chilling Aura

Enemies hit by Gram are frozen for 3 ⇒ 2 seconds, along with the area around them. They are slowed and their attack speed is reduced.

Guardian Path

Call to arms

Every six months, homeland sends you up to 2 ⇒ 3 Militia to help you defend your territory. You can have a maximum of 2 ⇒ 3 Militia in your territory.

Call to arms II

You can keep up to 4 ⇒ 6 Militia in your territory.

Call to arms III

You can keep up to 6 ⇒ 9 Militia in your territory.

CLANS BALANCING

The Clan of the Lynx

Trackers

Health 50 ⇒ 55
Recruit cost 30 ⇒ 25

Mythical Lure

A lure that attracts mythical beasts. They periodically come in groups hungry for some food . Each wave cleared increases population growth by 2 ⇒ 5%, up to 20%. Destroyed if an enemy colonizes the zone.

NEW You can assign up to two villagers on Mythical Lures to become hunters.

Poaching

Allows you to sell Hunting trophies in the Marketplace at the price of 2 ⇒ 1.5 Hunting trophies for 1 Kröwn .

Feral instinct

Trackers that participated in a mythical animal kill permanently gain + 1 ⇒ 2% attack power (max + 50%). Lost on death.

Hindering Arrows

Your Trackers fire hindering arrows, slowing targets hit.

Attack speed slow 20 ⇒ 30%
Move speed slow 40 ⇒ 50%

The Clan of the Ox

Starting Advantages

Your units are tougher, larger and eat more than the other clans, and have a 15 ⇒ 10% attack power and defense bonus .

Specialized civilian units have a 40 ⇒ 30% production bonus, except Loremasters.

The Clan of the Snake

Under Pressure

You gain + 0.5 Happiness and 1 ⇒ 0.5 Food for each military unit in a non allied zone next to or within an enemy territory.

Poison

Decreases target’s attack speed and move speed by 35% ⇒ 25% for 2 seconds.

The Clan of the Bear

Kindred Spirit

Having Kaija, the Armored Bear or Shield Maiden in an area increases local production by 15% ⇒ 10%.

The Clan of the Stag

Stone cost to build an Altar of Kings is reduced to 5. It gives + 2 ⇒ 3 Happiness and produces Fame .

The Clan of the Raven

Mercenaries

Recruit Cost 50 ⇒ 45 (which brings the total raid cost down to 200 ⇒ 180).

The Clan of the Dragon

Dragonmen

Attack Power 13 ⇒ 12
Health 75 ⇒ 70

SwirlAttack

Dragonmen sometimes execute a mighty swirling strike that damages all surrounding enemies.

Cooldown 0.5 ⇒ 0.8
Secondary target damage coeff 0.8 ⇒ 0.6

CHRISTMAS

Usual Christmas theme decorations on Permafrost map.

UI CHANGES

- Building’s window has been reorganized
- A new toxicity report system has been implemented
- A progression circle has been added above the calendar to show feast duration (disabled by default)
- A progression circle has been added above the calendar to show duration before obtaining a new villager (disabled by default)
- New pop-up added about community conduct (for the first multiplayer connection only).
- A confirmation button has been added for building upgrades
- Hovering over teammate's military path icons shows levels and how much experience they have
- Link to patch note in the main menu has been actualized
- An anti-aliasing option has been added to Northgard

GENERAL BUG FIXES

- You can’t buy Dragonmen anymore if you don’t have enough Dragon Essence.
- Drakkar should no longer cross the entire map.
- Minor bug fix on fight trails and FXs.

This update will download automatically from Steam. If you have any problems with regards to this update, leave a comment below or contact us at support@shirogames.com where our Support Team will do everything they can to assist.

Thank you to everyone who has provided feedback and suggestions over the last few months and of course, a massive thanks to our beta testers!

We hope you all enjoy this update and have a great holiday season!

- Shiro Games

Version 1.7d:

- fixed Customizable Shop not showing product list after loading savegame
- fixed Trash Chutes sometimes not being connected to paths anymore after loading savegame
- fixed a case where launch segments would not launch the train
- multiplayer: fixed a desync that could happen when spamming trees
- multiplayer: fixed a desync when building Splash Battle Ride targets
- multiplayer: fixed a case where players could have different research unlocked

Version 1.7e:

- improved decoration rating calculation speed by ~10%
- fixed a case where path signs would not remember their settings
- fixed Powered Coaster target velocity setting not working properly
- fixed trash bags not disappearing
- fixed trees not animating properly anymore after the game has been running for a while
- multiplayer: fixed decoration and rain protection ratings not working

Hello everyone,

We are amazed by your continuous positive feedback on the game! It’s heartwarming to hear how much you’re enjoying Yu and Kay’s story. We’re releasing today a second patch with some of your most pressing feature requests and some fixes to improve the experience.
We appreciate your feedback, your help reporting those issues and your patience as we fix them.

Version: 1.0.165

Feature addition and improvement:
• Automatic backup save before ending: a save is created for those of you who will want to go back and explore the game before the end. For players who have finished the game already, when loading your epilogue save, a backup save will be created before the take off, giving you a change to revisit.
• Co-op with Keyboard & Mouse and one controller: Ability to play co-op with Keyboard & Mouse + one controller (local).
• Accessibility: Option to disable camera wobble.
• UI: Ability to choose what button prompts are displayed

Bug fixes:
• Gloves upgrade: Fixed a bug where Yu says she has enough hyper rust to upgrade the gloves, although this upgrade is not accessible yet.
• Combat soft-lock: fixed a bug where the game characters would become unresponsive after using a Help in combat.
• Misc bug fixes

- A small correction on a bug that could happen to people with a small machine

FREE Hardcore Mode Update

Start the game again… but with all the upgrades you’ve received so far! How hard can it be if you’ve already mastered the game and defeated the final boss? There’s only one way to find out—dive into a whole new experience.

You’re alive… But not for long.

Deal with enemies coming at you from unexpected places through levels modified to be more challenging. Prepare to face all enemy types right from the start and devise a new, better strategy. Will you be faster than the first time? We doubt it. Prove us wrong.

Run in style*

No one said you can’t save humanity while looking great! Bundle up with the new Ghostrunner Winter Pack DLC and show off the Cold Snap Katana and Cold Blood Glove as you run through the levels of Dharma Tower. It’s time to bring instant death and suffering in style!

Dear survivors,

as an early Christmas present we now release the last update of Endzone for the year. Thanks to every one of you for the dedicated support, love and all the important feedback. We are humbled and truly grateful for that. Additional thanks to everyone who took the time to report feedback or bugs via email, STOMT or as part of the discussions on the Steam forums or our Discord server. This is super helpful to us.

Have the best possible Christmas in the current situation and stay safe!

Cheers,
Gentlymad

---------------

The last update for this year focuses on some requests that have been floating around the community for a long time, coupled with some fixes and changes to existing systems.
As you probably know by now, we take your feedback and suggestions to heart. Since this update comes a bit earlier than usual due to the winter break, we obviously couldn't include as much content as usual. So we focused on extending existing systems and crafting a so-called "quality of life" patch, so that the short development time is balanced by long-wanted features.

--- Added ---
Tutorial: Extended main tutorial with a new mission for the Water Point building.
Tutorial: Added 3 new tutorial modules: ‘Research’, ‘Radiation’ and ‘Water’.
Buildings: Added the Electric Water Pump. This is an upgrade to the Well and doesn’t require any manual labor.
Buildings: Added Water Point, a small building used to act as a place where settlers can go, to stock up on water. It’s similar to the Food Station. This building is useful if you have water production facilities far away from other workplaces and need to reduce the walking distances for your settlers.
Buildings: Added tool restrictions to the Town Center. You can now select what kind of tools your settlers are allowed to use.
Research: Added research utensils to the game. These utensils can be found when sending expeditions to ruins and other interesting places. Utensils are mandatory to progress in the technology tree. Look out especially for large and big ruins, as they are most likely to house these precious artifacts!
Research: Added overhauled research window. The new window features several usability improvements, makes better use of the overall screen space and displays your current research tier and the amount of collected research utensils.
General: Added 29 new potential village names, when creating a new session.
Side Missions: Added Electric Water Pump and Loitering Ban research missions.
Sounds: Added one new music track.

--- Fixed ---
Settlers: Fixed bug related to settlers when choosing a workplace near their home.
Settlers: Fixing settlers flagged as homeless after loading a game.
Settlers: Fixed settlers not being distributed during or after pausing the game.
Settlers: Increase Builder Profession Button is now no longer interactable if there are no free workers left.
Settlers: Fixed builders being removed as inhabitant from their own house while repairing it.
Settlers: Added periodical check and correction for settlers with invalid homes.
Settlers: Fixed a wrong profession distribution on savegames.
Settlers: Fixed performance lag in repair logic if needed resources were reserved and not available.
Settlers: Fixed started repair tasks not being properly finished.
Settlers: Several fixes to the workplace assignment behavior.
Settlers: Fixed builders being blocked by buildings that haven’t got all required resources.
UI: Fixed broken tooltip in construction info.
UI: End Screens are now triggered correctly in scenarios and tutorials.
UI: Fixed several broken hover highlights.
UI: Fixed incorrect settler selection in settler dialog.
UI: Save Game Menu now empties the description field every time it’s opened.
UI: Seed selection now highlights the seed and displays the tooltip correctly.
UI: Fixed missing text caused by the typewriting effect in settler dialogs.
UI: Fixed graphic of loading screen radiation sign.
UI: Fixed post pro effects and bad scaling of particle systems in the main menu.
UI: Fixed vanishing pie charts in Statistics.
UI: Tooltips for changing production limits no longer overlap with the actual values.
UI: Fixed wrong display of negative resource amounts.
Pasture: Fixing wrong animal herd types stored in savegame in case the herd types on the map change for some reason.
Pasture: Fixed error related to the Pasture and statistics.
Pasture: Fixed a problem with dying animals: when one animal died, another animal left the Pasture and a third one came in.
Pasture: Fixed dead animals not being removed from Pastures when no species was set.
Pasture: Fixed error when dismantling a Pasture.
Pasture: Fixing animal slaughtering when clearing Pasture.
Buildings: Fixed wrong button label in Water Tower.
Buildings: Fixed error in electricity networks.
Buildings: Fixed broken visuals on construction site ruin.
Buildings: Fixed visuals of tomato seed.
General: Fixed possible error when loading a savegame, related to the load system.
General: Fixed error with empty resource piles not being removed correctly.
Sounds: Fixed shelter click sound.
Tutorial: Fixed an error that caused tutorial missions to show wrong goals, when loading older, uncompleted tutorial savegames.
Wildlife: Wildlife is not spawned in a straight line anymore.
Wildlife: Added a minimum spawn distance for wildlife to the town center, to avoid spawning herds into the bus.
Expeditions: Fixed wrong advantage in gas station expedition.

--- Tweaked ---
Settlers: Builders now grab ongoing tasks when clearing construction sites.
Settlers: Adjusted builders to get hunger/thirst slower and work longer.
Settlers: Tweaked spawning behavior of repair tasks to be building dependent.
Settlers: Restrict the amount of spawned worker tasks to 20 per building/world task, to avoid scenarios, where a lot of workers would try to do the same task which was not very efficient.
Settlers: Settlers now only get food or water after completing a job.
UI: Left side of the statistics tab is now scrollable when needed.
UI: Game Overlays now (un-)pause the game when they are (de-)activated.
UI: Some adjustments to the main menu item selection.
UI: Improved several checkboxes for better readability.
UI: Map Seed and Village name are now randomized each time the session menu is opened.
UI: Reduced sandstorm damage to medium on ‘Hard Mode’ preset.
UI: Added settlers to the main menu, to make it feel more alive.
UI: Player can no longer change game speed while in “destroy resources” prompt.
UI: Slices of Pie Charts in statistics are now highlighted more prominently.
UI: Improved click detection for placing buildings. This should avoid accidental misplacement of buildings.
UI: Changed keyboard mapping for toggling through analytic view/heat maps to avoid issues with standard mappings for game overlays.
Buildings: UI entries in the building inspector are now hidden, if the corresponding building hasn’t been unlocked yet.
Buildings: Set all harvest cycles for plantation trees to 8 cycles.
Buildings: Irrigation Plant no longer resets its irrigation level to None if paused.
Buildings: Fill level of the water gauge now shows the amount of ‘reserved’ water.
Buildings: Removed ambience sounds from Fields and Plantations.
Buildings: Kitchen now correctly shows ‘Missing Raw Food’ as a warning.
Buildings: Added coal as a potential resource in the market.
Buildings: Pub now uses any kind of fruit for ‘Hard Liquor’ instead of only berries.
Pasture: Pasture inspector now outputs correct value for stored water if there is no water in the inventory yet.
Pasture: Animals marked for slaughter now wait for the herder before they leave the pasture after clearing the pasture or changing the species.
Pasture: Added two more working paths and made the existing ones blocking.
Pasture: Animal selection now stays with the last selected animal instead of switching to the next available.
Pasture: Meat and produced goods on pastures can now be radiated. Radiation is based on the supplied water and its radiation value.
Expeditions: Removed resource label from Expedition Rewards as the text clipped in several languages and the new approach is more streamlined.
Expeditions: Improved layout of expedition inventory during expeditions.
Expeditions: Added a settlement inventory to the loot screen at expeditions.
Research: Required knowledge points are now colored in red if there are not enough points available in the tech tree window.
Savegame: In the savegame slots in the Load Game screen you can now double-click on the screenshot in order to load the corresponding savegame.
Tutorial: Changed tutorial map.
Environment: Optimized the tree system to gain more overall performance.
Sounds: Tweaked global environment volumes.
Side Missions: Technology side missions now respect the amount of collected research utensils before triggering.
Trading: Traders now no longer bring special resources with them when they have only medium reputation.

December 14th - Patch Notes
In preparation of the Three Brothers DLC, here are the fixes and balance changes in the patch released on December 14th. As of time of posting this, the patch will only be available on the default branch, Mono should be up by the time of release of the DLC.

Changes
- Reduction of network traffic when joining another player's game and when switching area. We hope this help fix disconnection issues some are experiencing.
- Tweaked Ultra graphic settings.

Fixes
- Gatherable interaction now properly re-enable themselve without having to reload the area when the gatherable reset.
- Fixed a situation where guest players would get their item stacks set to 1 when joining another player's game in network.
- Fixed the situation where the guest player in coop could sometimes wake up dead due to cold even though the menu said they would be fine.
- Fixed an issue where life would not be reloaded properly if the character had passive increasing their max health and a status effect was healing them.
- Fixed items falling through ground in some situations for client.
- Fixed counters sometimes hitting twice.
- Fixed gamepad focus lost when returning to the main menu from the option menu after cancelling changes.
- Completing the Soroboreans questline without being defeated will now properly grant the achievement 'They'll tell stories about this'.

Balance
- Scourge Cocoon recipe now gives two items instead of one.
- Special attacks with two handed axes had their Stamina increased by 25%.
- Poltergeist reduces Physical Damage by 40% instead of 50%
- Cage Pistol damage reduced by 5. (from 95 to 90)
- Chimera Pistol Damage reduced by 5. (from 95 to 90)
- Horror Pistol damage set to 60 Physical, 25 Decay and 45 Impact (down from 73.5, 24.5 and 67 respectively).
- Lightning Bullet damage and impact reduced to 160% (down from 200%).
- Master of Motion impact resistance and damage resistance reduced to 10 each (down from 15).
- Steady Arm passive skill's Impact Resistance reduced to 10, down from 15.
- Serpent’s Parry Stun Duration increased to 4 secondes (up from 2).
- Opportunist Stab Damage increase by 50%. It now does 3 times the damage if either Pain/Confusion are applied to the target, and 6 times if both are applied (Up from 2 times and 4 times respectively).
- Abundance enchantment now reduces hunger and thirst rate by 75% instead of 25%.
- Pristmatic Flurry Damage and Impact reduced by 20%.
- Vampiric weapons Damage increased by 25%
- Mace Infuse now grants the respective boon of the element absorbed (Warm for Fire, Cool for Frost, Blessed for Lightning, Possessed for Decay, Mist for Ethereal).
- Steel Shield value reduced to 100 (down from 200)
- Kazite weapons value reduced by 20% (except Fists).
- Weapons that applies a status effects do so 25% slower (Except for trinkets, Kazite weapons, Obsidian weapons, Challenger Greathammer, Mantis Greatpick, Phytosaur Spear, Withering Pole Mace, Spore Halberd, Savage Weapons and Ghost Reaper)
- Following up the previous point; Assassin Sword and Claymore applies Slow 25% slower and Bleeding 27% slower.
- Zagis’ Saw now applies Pain in one hit.
- Reduced Crimson Plate Armor set Frost Damage Bonus by 4 for every piece
- Thick Oil value increased to 6 (up from 4).
- Warm potions recipe now creates 1 potion (down from 3).
- Life, Astral and Endurance potion recipes now make 1 potion (down from 3).
- Elite Desert Veil and Master Desert Veil Weight set to 2 (respectively up from 1 and down from 3).
- Characters can now dodge 13 frames sooner after a running attack with gauntlets/fists weapons.
- Add 1-2 Sanctifier potions sold by alchemists in Cierzo, Berg, Levant and Monsoon
- Tsar Bow Impact increased to 30 (up from 21).
- War Bow Impact reduced to 25 (down from 30).
- Blue Sand armor set Elemental Resistances reduced to 20 (down from 25).
- Arcane Dampener pressure plate trap damage changed to 90 lightning instead of 10 Physical.
- Primitive Satchel can now be sold for 9 silver.
- Primitive Satchel can now be decrafted into 2 Hides.
- Blood Leech (the combo from Dagger Slash + Blood Sigil) now do as much damage as Extreme Bleeding instead of Bleeding.
- Light Kazite and Shadow Light Kazite sets Stamina Use and Movement penalties have been removed.
- Light Kazite and Shadow Light Kazite Armor and Boots Weight changed to 6 and 4 respectively.
- Copal Boots and Copal Helmet (including Green version) Protection increased to 2 (up from 1).
- Shock Armor set now provide a bonus of 10% Impact damage for each pieces.
- War Memento enchantment Fire damage increased to 35% (from 25%).
- Elemental Discharge durability cost changed to 4% instead of a flat 5.
- Runic Blade and Great Runic Blade Stamina cost of attacks has been reduced by 22%.
- One handed Swords and two handed swords special attacks Damage increased by 15% (Excluding the two handed sword neutral special attack).
- Crumbling Anger enchantment is now applicable on the Zagis’ Saw.
- Favorable Wind enchantment is now applicable on Kazite weapons.
- Virgin Boots Movement penalty removed.
- Virgin Helm Mana cost penalty removed.
- Virgin Armor Stamina cost penalty removed.
- Pressure plate traps now have an arming time of 0.8 seconds.
- Imbue effects that are applied to main weapons are now also applied to daggers as well. (excluding Improved Runic Blades).
- Galvanic Bow nerfed from 41 damage to 37 damage.
- Galvanic Chakram buffed from 32 damage to 35 damage
- Hex Touch abilities have been given 25 impact, up from 0.
- Zhorn’s Hunting backpack now provides 50% preservation bonus, down from 75
- Light Mender's backpack now provides 25% preservation bonus, down from 75
- Light Mender’s Lexicon value is now 1000 silvers, up from 300
- Shadow Kazite Helmet mana cost penalty is now 10%, down from 15
- Raw boozu meat is now worth 15 silvers, up from 8
- Amplified Rage now grants 35% bonus impact, down from 50
- The Tsar set now offers 14 protection, up from 10
- Wolf Medic boots and helm now give 0.05 health regen per second, up from 0.
- The indigestion status can no longer prevent tea consumption
- The Elemental Resistance status now gives 20% elemental resist, down from 25%

December 15th - Patch Notes
Changes
- Optimisation on arrow collision detection and melee weapon hit detection to reduce garbage collection.

Fixes
- Fix some instance where the quest 'Liberate the sun' would be marked as active even though it was completed.
- Fix a defeat scenario spawn position in The Grotto of Chalcedony where it would place the bag through a wall.
- Fix issue where building in progress would count as completed in some quest conditions.
- Fix issue where Gastrocin enemies would activate their drop table on dead too many times.
- Fixed the behaviour of one of the boss fights.
- Fix various Localisation issues.
- Fix various stuck spots in the Caldera region and its dungeons.

Balance
- Adjust rewards in the Gladiator Arena
- Brawn passive skill increases stamina by 25 instead of 15.

HOT FIXES FOLLOWING DECEMBER BALANCING PATCH

Following December's Balance Update, we have seen a number of concerns raised regarding certain changes. We hear you and appreciate your feedback, and as a result, we have rolled back to the previous lobby kicking system until a better solution can be implemented and have made some other minor adjustments based on what has been shared with us so far.

- Temporal Anti-Aliasing has been deactivated by default. (It’s called TAA in options). It sometimes makes the game blurry on some computers.
- The ‘confirmation’ button for upgrading buildings is now deactivatable in the options.
- Cross-play is now available for conquest co-op (Steam, Gog and Origin).


BUGFIXES

- Lures that have been demolished will no longer show up and cover other events.
- Fixed some UI issues with relics.