Sorcerer King 1.1 Changelog

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.



86,067 views 30 replies
Reply #1 Top

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

this means that the SK can do it to. It should definitely make things more interesting.

 

Sell items for mana: You may sell equipable items for mana for 5 mana in the Equip Screen.  This feature allows you to generate a bit more mana during the game and is great way to clean up your inventory after upgrading your gear.  


In addition to euipqble items, it would be nice to be able to sell all the gems that accumulate in the inventory that are never used.

 

Reply #2 Top


Sell items for mana: You may sell equipable items for mana for 5 mana in the Equip Screen.  This feature allows you to generate a bit more mana during the game and is great way to clean up your inventory after upgrading your gear.   
End of quote

 

Best thing ever.

Tinkerer has sooooooooo many leather gear from Transmutation, I think it started blocking new items from the same spell. Number of potions don't increase even if spell gives them to me.

 

Hoped to see fix of Guardian's "Revive Land" which gives "Restore Land" instead, because I wanted to play her next. But, oh well. 

Reply #3 Top

Good stuff :thumbsup:

Reply #4 Top



 


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

 

 




End of quote

 

YES!!!

Reply #5 Top
these are fantastic changes! So, um, ETA?
Reply #6 Top

Quoting XWerewolfX, reply 5

these are fantastic changes!


So, um, ETA?
End of XWerewolfX's quote

Thought they said in the stream yesterday that it was opt-in today, another possible opt-in on Tuesday and then final release next thursday.

Reply #7 Top

You can still avoid a great deal of the campaign content with the falcon. I hate using it for anything else because it doesn't have the scout trait to not let it get attacked and it's useless for anything but mountain and water exploration.

Just wanted to point that out

Reply #8 Top

Just started an opt in game as the wizard. Got varda, not tandis as hero, and the focus choices at the start of the game didn't appear. It just went straight to the map.

Reply #9 Top

Quoting Borg999, reply 8

Just started an opt in game as the wizard. Got varda, not tandis as hero, and the focus choices at the start of the game didn't appear. It just went straight to the map.
End of Borg999's quote

Borg999,

take a look at Fix for the 'No intro quest for custom souvereign' bug

Reply #10 Top

Opt-in is now available.

Instructions on opt-in are at top of changelog.

Reply #11 Top

Quoting Thecw, reply 9


Quoting Borg999,

Just started an opt in game as the wizard. Got varda, not tandis as hero, and the focus choices at the start of the game didn't appear. It just went straight to the map.



Borg999,

take a look at Fix for the 'No intro quest for custom souvereign' bug

End of Thecw's quote

 

Thanks!, I'll give that a try.

 

SD..this shouldn't be happening.

Reply #12 Top

The removal of a unit's turn with spellcasting is a major change, and I love it!

Reply #13 Top

I agree. Great change!

Reply #14 Top

For anyone playing this weekend, I'd love to hear feedback on mana-balance with the new casting system.  In my playthroughs I seem to have TONNNSSS of excess mana (we brought those numbers down initially to encourage casting with the old system), so I'm thinking about upping those costs on Monday to balance things out.

Thoughts?

Reply #15 Top

I played a guardian game (not all the way through) and I didn't have a lot of excess mana really. I did use it to buy troops but I was comfortable with the level and I didn't have any wrath spells to use. 

I didn't make it to the end of the game though so maybe I'd have more by then

In fact, I felt like I didn't have enough mana sometimes but it felt just about right to me.

The no-turn casting sovereign casting is much much nicer. I can finally summon that bear and not worry about someone getting slaughters. I actually played through some battles and didn't just autoresolve.

Reply #16 Top

Did 1.1 add a "write a review" request?  I did the opt-in this morning.  First thing after starting it up was a Rate Sorcerer King! review request.  First, I already wrote a "recommend" review.  In the past I have down graded reviews if the game solicits it or wrote a bad review because of the solicitation.  It is something I can only think of mobile titles doing.

I like this game, and I even liked War of Magic, but why Stardock?

Reply #17 Top

Yeah, I don't like that review request and it was even more annoying since I already had done so.

 

Soliciting for reviews is a bad idea and I can see it backfiring. 

Reply #18 Top

Unfortunately SK didn't sell too well and has a pretty bad review score, so I can see why they'd do it. But it would be more tactful to do so on the exit screen (like sharewares of old). Couple with some nice art and I think it might even crack a smile.

Reply #19 Top

Quoting hedetet, reply 18
Unfortunately SK didn't sell too well
End of hedetet's quote

How do you know that? I am not criticizing with this question; rather, I am genuinely asking if that has been officially mentioned somewhere.

Reply #20 Top

No official data, but steamspy says about 12k copies and usually it's fairly accurate.

Reply #21 Top

Every developer I've spoken to has verified that assumption, too. Steamspy is definitely accurate. How do they fix that? Some of the Steam reviews have some truth to them. Replayability and bugs are the biggest culprits. Which is too bad, because what's there is extremely fun, if not a bit flawed. 

I hope to see those numbers turn around and for Sorcerer King to find its audience. 

Reply #22 Top

I think the game would find a larger audience if people actually cared about whatever world it was set in. few people know who tandis or galor or peregan is, and even after playing this game for 100 hours and liking it I'm not really interested in learning more about them

 

it's kind of irrational, but people would probably be more attracted to the game if the characters were recognizable (like if they used the Lord of the Rings universe instead of the Elemental one)

Reply #23 Top

Played some Servo after getting irritated by the review request.  My comment may have distracted the thread.  When Servo crashed (a first for me in that game), I switched back to Sorcerer King and started the Guardian on a smaller map.  The past week I had started a few games with that Sov., probably played about 1/3-1/2 before opting in today and starting new.

After playing off and on today, I finished. Here are some thoughts:

I kept forgetting about Sov. casting.

Maul units are now worthless/not fun, when my bear died, I wasn't bothered - I loved Ben in previous games.

I like all the movement the Guardian has now.

Guardian has 2 fertile/restore land skills, but I only found one in my spellbook for shadowlands.  After I researched a spell could I get settle spots that weren't shadow lands. And why do hills affect fertile city placement?  Maybe I want a shining city on the hill.

Selling items for mana, where to begin. A lesson in opportunity cost and sunk costs.  I debated on using every weak or minor potion because they are 5 mana.  I crafted some leather gloves to get mana to cast a global spell. Funny thing is, I still kept useless weapons because if I needed mana, I'd grind old armor. Maybe 10 for weapons, 1 for leather gloves? or keep the five and 1 for armor/rings?  Overall, It does need a better interface on selling, the x in the corner was odd. If I wasn't looking to sell I wouldn't have bothered with it. I like the concept of selling; it just made me do odd things.   Honestly I should have been hustling to sell, I never had enough mana.  I always have a spell I want to cast.

 

Reply #24 Top

How do you sell the stuff for mana?  I couldn't figure out how to do it.

Reply #25 Top

Quoting Trojasmic, reply 24

How do you sell the stuff for mana?  I couldn't figure out how to do it.
End of Trojasmic's quote

As part of the item's icon itself there is now a little X (upper right corner IIRC), click that.