Greetings Viceroys!
Today’s intro is dedicated to players with a short attention span.
What’s new:
- Cursed Woodland’s unique mechanic: Restless Spirits
- Rebalanced Cornerstones
- New event: Harmony Spirit Altar
- And more!
That’s all the essential stuff you need to know. Now you can play and discover the rest by yourself!
But if you want to learn a little bit more, continue reading for our design notes, the full changelog, and the community corner.
If you like the game and the updates, you can support us by letting your friends know about Against the Storm.
Play the game:
DEVELOPER NOTES
It’s already the 23rd bi-weekly update to Against the Storm, and as always, we have some exciting stuff for you! This time it was a bit more challenging to prepare because some of us went to gamescom last week (cheers to all the amazing AtS players we met there!), but we hope you will not be let down by the new content that’s coming into the game. Most notably - a Cursed Royal Woodlands revamp, 5 new perks, one new Glade Event, and a major Cornerstone rebalance.
First off - the Cursed Royal Woodlands revamp. This biome has been in the game for a long time now. It was introduced almost a year ago, in the first ever update just after the Early Access launch (and before that it was teased in the first public demo of Against the Storm), but it was never really that exciting or unique (aside from its visuals). What’s more, after introducing World Map Modifiers, it simply became redundant and had no effect attached to it whatsoever. So today we decided to change that.
Ghost of Blight Fighter Captain
From now on, the Cursed Royal Woodlands will have two unique effects. The first one, Cursed Battlefield, will reshape the forest - all Glades will be the same size, and no dangerous or forbidden markers will be visible. The second one, Restless Spirits, will spawn ghosts in some of the Glades. The ghosts will have special assignments and small tasks for you to complete.
The ghosts’ requests can range from trivial busywork (like cutting down more trees and delivering goods) to malevolent tasks of questionable moral quality (like starving villagers). Every ghost will reward you for your efforts, and some might become vengeful when you ignore them.
Cursed Royal Woodlands Glades
Overall, this biome is designed to be a bit more challenging and surprising than others. We wanted to give exploration a bit of a different spin in this environment and focus more on the lore and flavor of the region (as lore-wise it’s the place where the most tragic battles during the Great Civil War happened). With the Cursed Royal Woodlands done, we now also only have the Scarlet Orchard left on our list of underwhelming biome mechanics - this means that once we get around to fixing that, you can expect some brand new environments in the game.
But the biome revamp isn’t everything we bring you today. There’s also one new Glade Event - the Harmony Spirit Altar (it can be converted into a decoration!), and a major Cornerstone rebalance. Let’s talk a bit more about the latter.
Harmony Spirit Altar
For a while now we’ve felt that there are many perks in the game that fall into one of two categories: overpowered, and almost worthless. Such a division forms naturally in most balance scenarios, as players find meta builds and optimal tactics, but we wanted to at least shake up the most notorious ones.
Our philosophy is by no means that of total standardization - it’s good to have powerful synergies and perks you are genuinely excited about (and these wouldn’t be possible without some less optimal choices). But at the same time, we care about giving players a lot of different interesting options. It’s always more fun to choose between three Cornerstones you want, rather than always going with the one no-brainer perk with the best output. Our aim was exactly that - boost underperforming perks, nerf some overpowered ones, and encourage more diverse playstyles. The full list of perks can be found in the changelog below.
We hope you’ll enjoy the new changes. And if you’d like to share your ideas for upcoming updates, here are some useful links:
- Discord & Reddit - discuss the game with the community and share your impressions
- Feature Request Tool - suggest specific new features
Have fun and may the storm be gentle on you,
Eremite Games
