We've listened to your feedback and decided to make Sovereign Casting more fun and useful. We've also addressed numerous bugs and issues that you've brought up.  Read on for more info.  

Please note: We strongly encourage you to start a new game with this patch.  

Major Changes

• Sovereign Casting - You can cast Sovereign spells without using the unit's turn.

• Spell Balancing - Rebalanced spell effects and casting times to generally make them more useful during gameplay.

• Sell items for mana: You may sell equipable items for mana in the "equip" screen by rolling over the item and clicking on the small icon in the upper right corner.  The sell cost varies according to the item's quality.  This feature allows you to generate more mana during the game and is great way to clean up your inventory after upgrading your gear.

UI Improvements & Visual improvements

• Updated to highest Kingdom City level art assets (model, textures, tile design).

• Optimization pass on graphical assets to improve performance

• New particle effects for various units and spells

• Crafting Window popup now sorts units by combat rating rather than their creation order.

• Art pass on the existing stamps to mostly add more trees and hills

• Visual improvements on the pre-made maps to mostly add more forest terrain types

• New appearance for the "Syndicate Enforcer" unit

Balance & Tweaks

• Casting Sovereign Spells no longer takes the unit's turn for both AI and player units

• Balanced spells to go along with the new Sovereign Spells casting system

• Items can be sold mana in the Equip window. Sell cost are relative to the item's quality.   Quest Items and Crafting Ingredients are not sellable.

• Buffed some of the creatures spawned by Sorcerer King. Mid-game spawn groups will have more Trog Archers and Wargs.

• Guardian's "Pathfinder" ability changed to '+2 Moves for all Units'

• Increased the Maul Buff effect on the defending unit.

• Increased the Frost Dragon's movement from 1 to 3

• Reduced the amount of Platinum Ore from the 'Resource Harvesting' ability

• Updated several pre-made maps to better balance the number of Rivals

• Rival Heroes, unique units, and the Sorcerer king cannot be charmed by an resistable charm spell.

• Blizzard Spell Recipe only takes 1 x Radiant Topaz

• "Domination" spell now costs Mana and Doomsday

• Default item mana resale value is now 3 instead of 5.

• The Fire Elemental's "Soul Burning" ability had been reduced to -30% hp & -10% hp if resisted (was 40%, 20%). If "Soul Burning" is resisted, the targeted unit will now take partial damage.

• Reduced "Summoning Master" Enchantment to give 1 Tactical Regen for 10 mana

• Campaign -- dropped the production cost of the "Tower of Mastery" from 3000 to 1800 labor. The Tower of Mastery can now only be built once.

• Tinkerer "Forging" Ability - removed some of the Plate Armor and Ring recipes

• Updated the stats for the +XP rings (Ring of the Tutor and Band of Insight) to be closer aligned to their crafting requirements.

Bug Fixes

• AI Improvements

• Rivals are more likely to build pioneers if they have only one city and no current pioneers.

• Fixed bug where Lieutenants would start exploring instead of attacking the player's city.

• Fixed bug where Lieutenants that were targeting cities would sometimes go after shards, but get stuck since they are not allowed to step on the shards.

• When the player's threat is high, Lieutenants will now occasionally target units and not just cities.

• Fixed an issue that caused the Pariden, Ice Lords and Frozen Realm Rivals races to always spawn "Imperial Pioneer" as their pioneer unit during late game.

• Rival pioneers will now seek proper city locations

• Fixed the run speed and tactical scale on Rival Pioneers.

• Fixed cases of disappearing Tile Yields.

• Added a notification for when player unlocks the Enchantment Tab in the Crafting Window

• Fixed 'Terrain Movement Cost' abilities to take all terrain types into account

• Fixed a bug where Rival Heroes, tasked with defending their capital city, weren't set to the appropriate level (now level 25 - was level 1)

• Fixed a blocked tile issue with the Desert tactical map.

• Fixed a bug in the Random Map Generation system that caused rivers to overlap rivers and rivers to split chasms.

• City Upgrade: Cities can no longer upgrade onto tiles with a goodie hut, monster lair, or quest location on them.

• Starting Sorcerer King Strongholds are no longer spawned on Quest Locations.

• Campaign:

• Blocked off several areas where 'Summon Boat' allowed players to skip past parts of the map

• Removed 'Harvest Mountain' from the list of available spells

• Fixed a bug on Unit Details Window where entire inventory would reset its position after equipping or using an item

• Fixed bug where if you won a battle via Sovereign spellcast, the Sovereign spellcast button would be disabled in the next battle

• Fixed problem loading game from saves with hypnotized units.

• Fixed for several problems involving hypnotism and teleporting units to cities

• Crafting Window categories remember their collapsed state.

• Harbringer's projectile impact effect now plays after the projectile actually hits the target.

• Spider Riders now shoot from their bow, not their feet.

• Tactical battles are now paused when you open screens over top of the battle (e.g the Options Window). This prevents a stuck turn problem.

• Updated various particle effects that were involved in the final battle to increase performance

• Fixed 'Summon Air Elemental Scroll' item, which now properly brings an Air Elemental unit into battle

• Spells

• Wizard's "Clairvoyance" abilities now give the proper give Mana boosts

• Fixed 'Howl' tooltip to show the correct Attack Bonus value (was saying +0)

• Fixed the "Recruit Bandit" spell description to say it costs "Doomsday" rather than "Gildar"

• Fixed a bug in "Mantle of Fire" where the fire damage buff was permanent on the unit, stacking everytime you cast it on them in subsequent battles.

• Necromancer's "Summon Wraith" spell now properly does it's intended AOE effect when brought into battle.

• The "Howl" ability no longer stacks bonuses based on the unit's group size (ie. a single soldier gets the same attack bonus as a group of 5)

• Soulburn's "Sacrifice" effect is no longer avoidable.

• The Sorcerer King's spell "Freeze Foes" now has the proper Enchantment icon

• "Lower Land" scroll can no longer be cast on Shadow Mountains

• Naphaz "Form of Mist" now properly makes the unit immune to physical damage

• Ifris "Volcanic Wall" now does fire damage to the target units

• "Divine Shield" now gives full protection from Arcane attacks & "Arcane Arrow" now does Arcane damage.

• "Aura of Entropy's" particle effect and gameplay effect now work properly. That is, enemies in your territory take 20% damage at the start of a battle.

• "Summon Wisp" and "Shadow Warg" AOE effects are now working properly

• Wisp heals adjacent allies

• Shadow Wargs can strike Fear in adjacent enemies

• Misc text and icon fixes

• Fixed a tactical battle crash with projectile spells that targeted "All Enemy Units".

• If Steam is not running, the MetaRealm will open in a browser and not try to open the Steam overlay.

• Fixed grid lines on popup tooltip portrait

• The Sorcerer King can no longer be targeted by the 'Kill' spell

• Guardian's "Geomancy" now properly gives the "Restore Land" spell

• Wizard Skill Tree: Swapped the position of Ice mage and Fire Mage skills

• Curgen's Bane

• Added some more references to make sure the player learns a bit about it prior to the ending cinematic.

• Fixed the Spawn Rating for the second part of this two part quest. Is now "Medium" (1) instead of "Deadly" (3).

• Fixed a problem where once Clerics had reached a high enough initiative they could no longer cast "Blessing" or "Divine Shield" on their first turn in tactical combat

• Fixed a problem where some dialog box text was getting trimmed (e.g. the outpost upgrade window).   

• Avenger Champion: Fixed Martyr's Wrath, Strike, and Prayer such that the Vengeance tooltips and ability effects are working correctly.

• Fixed issues with several fire breath spells (e.g. Dragon's Breath) the prevented them from being cast if friendlies were in the area of effect.  Now friendlies are ignored (both when targeting and applying the damage) which allows these spells to be cast in those situations.

• Fixed a problem that prevented Cloudy Diamonds from displaying in several trading quests.

• Fixed the Pioneer tooltip from listing the "'Minimum Distance between Cities'" as 1 more than the actual limit

• The City Details Window will remember if you were on the Build or Train tab rather than always defaulting to the Train tab.

• Fixed graphical issues with the Swamp Giant and Ice Lord Pioneers units

• Fixed a bug where a Tangled Web + Maul combo resulted in the mauled unit always being killed.   When a "Maul" attack is completed, the defending unit will properly have their 'Maul Buff' modifiers removed.