SFO: Grimhammer II Wildwood Update Showcase
Added 2020-03-07 15:44:59 +0000 UTCHello Everyone!
Venris Here!
Since even before the Shadow and the Blade DLC dropped, we’ve been working on our massive Wood Elves update and faction overhaul. Originally meant to be released alongside our previous Beastmen overhaul, both were eventually deemed too large to be developed and released at the same time. But now the Wood Elves are finally ready, and boy do we have a ton to show to you today!
The BETA for this update is up! It should be save compatible with full release but it may change depending on beta progress.
BETA LINK HERE
The full release of the update will be coming next Friday (13.03.2020) at 8pm CET during a livestream, along with future update plans.
This update will also not be save-compatible with previous versions! We will as always be posting the previous version of SFO HERE.
Changelog in works can be found HERE.
Outpost rework: We’ve done a huge rework to the Wood Elf outpost system and how their faction expansion works. We wanted to simulate taking new territory as the Wood Elves expanding Athel Loren’s borders, eventually covering the world in one giant forest like in the ancient times. To achieve this, Wood Elf outposts can now be upgraded to the max level of each settlement, so tier 3 for minor settlements and tier 5 for major. However, these outposts start out very weak and vulnerable, and are not very strong on their own. They only have one new building slot per tier, and the main settlement chain doesn’t even have a garrison, they only come from buildings! Instead, the main power in your held territory comes from the new…
World Roots System: An all new mechanic for the Wood Elves, based around the Geomantic Web from the Lizardmen. All major settlements on the map are connected, just as with the Geomantic web. Starting from Athel Loren itself, as you expand out and connect provinces to the Worldroots in Athel Loren, you gain access to very powerful provincial edicts. These, like the Geomantic Web, are tied to the max level of the connected settlements. Meaning that as you push out from Athel Loren’s borders and capture surrounding land, the forest will slowly take over, ending with your new provinces being closer in power to the core of the forest itself!
Amber Rework: Amber as well has been somewhat reworked. All of SFO’s previous mechanics for gaining Amber are staying in, however Amber is now spent only on specific technologies, main settlement upgrades, and special events! Not even the Oak of Ages requires it any longer, but we’ll get into that later. You can acquire it from quests, missions, special settlements, events and more!
Waystones Resource: Waystones are a new resource used for a variety of purposes. They can be gained via the Oak of Ages, battles, certain special buildings, and events! Each source will give you a certain amount of Waystones per turn. They however get depleted by a minor amount by characters being assigned to (now more powerful) offices, or by selecting powerful god blessings for your lords. They can also be spent as a one-time cost on new technologies and…
Midwinter Rites: Built to work with SFO’s previous Wood Elves seasons system, the Midwinter Rites are a new selection of 4 rites that the Wood Elves have access to. These are very powerful and cheap, only costing a small amount of gold and waystones. However, there is a catch. Outside of the Winter season, the costs of these rites increase greatly! In Summer, it can be as much as 5x the cost! These Rites are meant to help you persevere through the harsh Winter season of Athel Loren, speaking of...
Season rework: We’ve slightly changed how the season system operates, to make things a bit smoother and less jarring! For those of you who don’t know, in SFO every 6 turns the season in Athel Loren changes. Spring and Summer are where the Forest is at the height of it’s power, and when you will want to plan most of your offensive actions. Autumn is where the forest begins to wind down, and Winter is when the forest lies dormant, and you should look to play defensive. The effects for each season have been changed, and along with Midwinter rites there is also now the Summer Sacrifice event, a dilemma every Summer that has 20 randomized options! Also, Orion no longer dies during Winter! Hooray! Instead he just gets massively combat debuffed and slowly loses HP during combat in Winter.
Oak of Ages rework: Upgrading the Oak of Ages and the benefits it provides have also been changed. Instead of requiring Amber, the Oak now requires a large amount of money and has an extremely long construction time. However this construction time is lowered with every province you connect to the World Roots system mentioned above! In addition certain buildings can also lower the Oak’s construction time. However, be careful. Upgrading the Oak of Ages will no longer go unnoticed, and vile, malicious forces may seek to assault the forest once each upgrade has begun. Upgrading the Oak, along with providing more Waystones and buffing armies in region will also unlock…
Reworked Technology Tree: The Wood Elves tech tree has now been massively expanded! In addition to the vanilla section, we’ve added two entirely new sections of the tech tree, with 48 new technologies in total! The first new section is quite literally a tech “tree”. Modeled after the Oak of Ages, the central pillar of this tree unlocks alongside upgrades to the Oak, each level unlocking powerful army abilities, many of which activate when fighting in Forest battles. Each level also unlocks several side-branches of the tree, with a variety of buff purchasable with Amber. The other new section is the Map of Athel Loren. Unlocked with landmarks specific to each settlement in Athel Loren, these techs give a variety of buffs for a large Waystone cost. Finally, the “gods” section of the vanilla tech tree has been reworked with new effects focused on buffing the faction on the campaign map as a whole.
Public Order Rework: Wood Elf Public Order now functions a bit differently from other factions. Their public order now affects leadership, replenishment and campaign move range in addition to tax rate. This makes having high PO as the Wood Elves very strong. However, having high public order as the Wood Elves also inflicts a Public Order debuff. Meaning the higher your PO gets, the faster it starts decreasing. You’ll have to work extra hard to get those top-level PO buffs as the Wood Elves! Public Order has also been renamed to Forestation, to represent the expansion of the Forest.
Foreign Territory Weakness: Wood Elves are now always weaker when fighting on foreign territory, representing their affinity for their forest home. When fighting on foreign territory they now receive debuffs to melee attack, leadership, armor, and missile damage. However, these debuffs can be removed through various effects, or can be overcome with buffs from events like The WIld Hunt!
Reworked Offices: As mentioned above, Offices have been reworked for the Wood Elves. They now require a set amount of Waystones every turn to be occupied, but their benefits and buffs have been greatly increased!
New Units!: 4 new Legendary Units for the Wood Elves: The Heralds of Talyn, melee-focus Great Eagle riders; Vauls Champions, a unit of Longswords and the only heavy-armor inf for the Wood Elves; the Ashenhawks, a Orion-only unit of anti-large Waywatchers; and Durthu’s Wargrove, a Durthu-only unique unit of Treemen with custom sword models made by Shawmuscle! These units are recruitable from the 4 landmarks in Athel Loren. Additionally two new basic units are getting added, a new light cav unit for the Wood Elves called Glade Striders, and a new Tree unit called the Grove Guardians!
Heralds of Talyn
Grove Guardians
Vaul's Champions
Ashenhawks
Durthu's Wargrove
Glade Striders
New Hero!: The Shadowdancer has been reworked from a Legendary Unit in SFO into a Hero! She’s now a single-entity duelist with a focus on abilities that can alter her stats, send out illusions, or damage herself for additional buffs.
New Skills: We’ve added over 20 new skills to the various lords and heroes of the Wood Elves! 5 new lord skills based around god-related blessings, and 2 new skills for all lords, one for Elven lords and another for Treeman lords. Finally, each of the existing Wood Elf heroes have received new skills too. 4 new skills for Branchwraiths, 5 for Waystalkers, and 6 for Spellsingers!
More campaign variation: Orion and Durthu’s campaigns are now more distinct from one another. Orion is now focused on the Wild Hunt, gaining charge bonus while in foreign territory and having 0 upkeep while in Spring! Durthu on the other hand gains a new special dilemma with multiple choices to choose from.
SO MUCH MORE: Just for the Wood Elves there’s: Model changes to vanilla units, new abilities, changing ammo types, a new raze option, tons of balance changes and effects reworked, and even more!
General SFO:
There’s not much coming to SFO outside of Wood Elves and general balance changes with this update, but there are some small, important things!
First of all, Shawmuscles new Bloodthirster model is in! Check it out here!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1730162734
We have also now put in a 200% regen cap in base SFO. There should be no change in most situations, hitting the 200% cap is very difficult
Two mods by Anyndel integrated into SFO:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1983237410
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1988775074
Changes in faction relations to stop order-blobbing on the campaign
And much more!
But wait, where are the new Wood Elf LL’s you promised?: Currently, we have all of the new Wood Elf LL’s (Drycha, Ariel, Sisters of Twilight) ready to go in terms of tables (AKA everything needed to get them in-game), but currently we’re not happy with the way they look in terms of visuals and unique models. We have ideas and new models in the works for them, but we decided we weren’t going to hold back the whole update to wait for them. They will be coming at a later time, or possibly one may be implemented between the beta and full release of the update.
That’s all for this update, we here at the SFO Team hope you enjoy it, as we’ve put a ton of thought, work, and creativity into this one! A big thanks to Shawmuscle for creating all of these fantastic new models for the Wood Elves, and to everyone else on the team who helped contribute to the update!
Also, thanks to your generous support we are expanding and more standalone projects will be possilbe in near future!
Hail to you Patrons! We would never be here if not you!
Venris out!
