Lmao yup that pretty much sums it up!
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Indie Dead Monarchy: Open-World | Turn-Based | Mercenary Management | RPG - Fully Released May 19th 2023
- Thread starter Bantichai
- Start date
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2015
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- 19,282
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1037940/view/4024598238771833257
Dev Update #33: Build 21 (Roaming Patrols, Dynamic Portraits, New Factions)
(Experimental Build Update)
Hey guys,
The first of the free post-release content has been uploaded to the beta/experimental branch. A lot of work has been done under the hood as this update introduces quite a few major additions.
Here are the instructions on accessing the beta version.
Opting In:
- Right click Dead Monarchy.
- Select “Properties”.
- Select “Betas” on the left menu.
- Select “roaming - Experimental build” from the drop down list.
Roaming/Pathing Patrols:
- Roaming mobs, so now you have roaming enemy mobs that will roam around. I decided to not make them actively hunt down the player as there are already hostile random encounters however combat will trigger if you happen to not be paying attention and walk into the roaming mob or they path into you.
- Patrolling mobs, bands of militia will actively patrol the roads going between havens and outposts, these are neutral groups. You can choose to attack them by clicking on them to interact or leave them alone.
Both variants will have triggers for settlement conditions too. Time of day will also impact the hostile roaming patrols. IE if you path into them during the morning, you will spawn on opposite sides, if you path into them during night, it will be an ambush scenario instead.
New Factions:
These new factions will basically be utilising underused armour sets and perks. The first step was redistributing the armour sets that were originally all given to the sellsword faction to some of the new factions. The sellsword faction was basically just where I dumped all the standard armours in combination with specific sellsword armours. Balance wise, this would result in some sellswords with extremely weak tier 1 armour sets mixed in with other sellswords wearing ancestral tier gear yet both units would have similar stats. Whilst in some ways that is thematic, because of the sheer amount of armour sets, a lot of them you wouldn't really see and also diminished the power of the sellsword faction if you got lucky with tier 1/2 gear spawning on them.
Vagrants
(Level 6) = they use tier 1/2 standard light helmets and armours, they have extremely high movement thanks to Lightfooted Movement perk and also have Adaptive Strikes.
Looters
(Level 6) = they use tier 1/2 standard medium helmets and armour, they have Graceful Impact, so are quite tanky if you don't have the ability to hit consistently.
Pillagers
(Level 6) = they use tier 1/2 standard heavy helmets and armour, they have perks like Kinetic Impact so will punish the player when they (enemy unit) are hit.
Zealots
(Level 4) = These guys will use peasant outfits, so they have extremely low armour however they have Nimble Movement perk so they will still take a few hits. The distinct thing about Zealots though is that all units have Calculative Strikes, meaning they will always inflict bypass damage when flanking from left/right. During midgame despite wearing low armour, Zealots can prove to be a challenge if you are surrounded as you are bound to eventually be hit from the left/right and as such you'll take bypass damage.
Fanatics
(Level 4) = These guys will wear the monk and butcher outfits with menacing hoods. Light armour again but they will have a damage reduction perk along with Adapative Strikes meaning they will eventually hit.
Adventurers
(Level 11) = These guys fight somewhat similarly to sellswords as well but have their own set of perks, visually adventurers will make use of all the additional sellsword variant helmets/armour that were only available in marketplaces/arena rewards beyond Korburg (first haven) and not originally worn by sellswords. Adventurers will also make use of the standard tier 3/4 light/med/heavy equipment.
Sellswords will now exclusively wear ancestral (orange) gear instead of having the previous larger range of equipment, however this change only applies to armours, for helmets they still have a wider range.
Dynamic Potraits:
This took forever to get working but was something I've always wanted to do. Dynamic portraits, IE a portrait of each character that will get updated in real-time based on the equipment the character is wearing. A lot of things had to get reworked under the hood to get it working but it definitely beats the old static portraits.
Known Issues:
As this update is one of the largest updates ever, there are bound to be some issues. I've decided to upload it to the beta branch for initial feedback. This update will probably be in beta for a while since there are still additional UI features that I am planning to add and there are still issues that I need to fix regarding the roaming patrols.
- Opening a chest breaks the patrolling militia, they will eventually reset though.
- Loading back into the map from a battle (contract spawns) will break the pathing/roaming mobs, they won't have map icons and cannot be interacted with. Again, it will eventually reset as you do other battles.
That about wraps it up, unfortunately it is taking longer than expected however with the scope of this update there were bound to be issues. Once this update is released to the public build, I will then start working on the new cultural factions. The cultural factions update will probably release much later into the year, think Q4.
As always, a big thanks for all the support over these years.
Cheers,
Kevin.
- Joined
- Jun 21, 2018
- Messages
- 4,040
Been playing this all day. I feel bad for not giving it a proper shake when it released, but I simply wasn't in the mood for it. Anyway, it seems damn good. Quite clunky as you'd expect from a one-man effort, but at the same time, stuff like the mountainblade-like graphics and the excellent animations are very impressive. Getting a good hit in feels as chunky as it should, and the critical kill animations are very brutal.
My one main concern for the first few hours was that the wandering patrols, small camps and caves offered no challenge whatsoever while the bigger locations were completely impossible to handle, but venturing a couple of zones away from the starting area has solved that little issue. I'm still not sure about the power disparity of different encounters, but we'll see how things develop. The levelling system is very neat and I'm already thinking about starting over to plan out builds properly. On the surface, the game looks like a cargo cultish Battle Brothers clone, and although it is indeed very similar, it's more distinct than I thought it would be. Very cool so far.
It's a bittersweet feeling to come upon a game like this and realise that you've had the opportunity all along to play a good game and support a small developer who needs all the hype he can get, but along with everyone else you chose to ignore it. It deserves better.
My one main concern for the first few hours was that the wandering patrols, small camps and caves offered no challenge whatsoever while the bigger locations were completely impossible to handle, but venturing a couple of zones away from the starting area has solved that little issue. I'm still not sure about the power disparity of different encounters, but we'll see how things develop. The levelling system is very neat and I'm already thinking about starting over to plan out builds properly. On the surface, the game looks like a cargo cultish Battle Brothers clone, and although it is indeed very similar, it's more distinct than I thought it would be. Very cool so far.
It's a bittersweet feeling to come upon a game like this and realise that you've had the opportunity all along to play a good game and support a small developer who needs all the hype he can get, but along with everyone else you chose to ignore it. It deserves better.
- Joined
- Jun 21, 2018
- Messages
- 4,040
Trucking along, getting a better handle on how shit works and it remains fun. The main annoyance I'm facing at the moment is that I've run out of recruits from the two starting cities and it's a long long way to reach the third. I'd be fine with the trek, but any enemies outside the starting couple of zones wipe the floor with my party, so once I get there all I can realistically do is haul back again to find enemies I can actally fight. Character building in this game is excellent, so I want more dudes to build, but the game doesn't want to give them to me. 
I need to figure out when, if ever, the pool of recruits refreshes.
Edit: Seems to refresh every seven days or thereabouts. Welcome, new recruits!
Goodbye, new recruits!
I need to figure out when, if ever, the pool of recruits refreshes.
Edit: Seems to refresh every seven days or thereabouts. Welcome, new recruits!
Goodbye, new recruits!
Last edited:
AdolfSatan
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NotSweeper
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Achievements?
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Disgusting.
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Very much cooling on this game. I haven't played for a good week or so and don't have any desire to fire it up again. The grind is so bad. If you thought pre-DLC Battle Brothers was tiresome, wait until you try this.
The biggest problem is the lack of enemy variety - despite what the skaven illustration on the game's steam page might lead you to believe, Dead Monarchy is all humans, all the time. What's more, while the difficulty does ramp up the further away from the starting area you venture, all the roaming enemy patrols, and all the smaller enemy camps like mines, are exactly the same for each map section. In the starting area, you will be fighting 6x outlaws, over and over again. In the next area, you will be fighting 12x fanatics, over and over and over again. To be fair to the game, the character development system is cool and differently built enemies require different tactics, so it's not quite as monotonous as it sounds. But it's still really bad. Other fights are also available, in the form of a few bigger locations per area, and also arena fights in castles, but I never got stronk enough to fight them without losing half my team in the process.
Which leads me to the second problem: losing mercenaries is absolutely crippling. There are two reasons for this. One is that much of the fun in this game comes from levelling up your dudes. Like I said, the character development is really entertaining and allows you to specialise a dude into a given role to a much greater extent than most other tictacs games of this kind. The trouble is, of course, that this makes losing one that much more costly. The other problem is that picking up new recruits is unreasonably difficult. New recruits can be picked up from any major castle, which usually has about three to five on offer, of which at least one is likely to have shit stats. The pool of recruits takes ages to refresh, and castles are a long way away from each other, and this makes picking up new recruits a major pain in the ass. It's not limited by your funds, as it should be, but rather by your tolerance for tedious treks back and forth and your patience for waiting near a castle for in-game weeks at a time hoping for the recruitment pool to refresh.
Battle Brothers suffered from this problem as well, where it was often not worth it to take a difficult fight if even one of your high level bros kicked it. It's much worse here, where suffering a casualty not only means losing what's essentially a traditional RPG party member you spent a lot of time and effort thinking up a build for, it's also a major hassle to even find a new recruit to replace him, let alone a good one. The Battle Brothers brothers, by comparison, are both more limited in what you can build them into, and much more plentiful in the gameworld. In BB you can put your warband through the Darwinian grinder where only the strongest survive, but that's not really a viable tactic in Dead Monarchy, where any new recruit has a) significant inherent value due to scarcity, and b) the potential to become a specialised powerhouse with a couple of levels in him. This dynamic naturally leads to savescumming whenever someone dies, which simply kills a game like this.
The upshot is that despite being released in full Dead Monarchy still plays very much like an early access game. The core of the combat system is pretty damn good, similar to Battle Brothers but with its own identity. The rest of it is miles below even BB's barebones gameplay. I would say it's worth picking up for a couple of hours of fun (the low price helps), but don't expect anything more.
The biggest problem is the lack of enemy variety - despite what the skaven illustration on the game's steam page might lead you to believe, Dead Monarchy is all humans, all the time. What's more, while the difficulty does ramp up the further away from the starting area you venture, all the roaming enemy patrols, and all the smaller enemy camps like mines, are exactly the same for each map section. In the starting area, you will be fighting 6x outlaws, over and over again. In the next area, you will be fighting 12x fanatics, over and over and over again. To be fair to the game, the character development system is cool and differently built enemies require different tactics, so it's not quite as monotonous as it sounds. But it's still really bad. Other fights are also available, in the form of a few bigger locations per area, and also arena fights in castles, but I never got stronk enough to fight them without losing half my team in the process.
Which leads me to the second problem: losing mercenaries is absolutely crippling. There are two reasons for this. One is that much of the fun in this game comes from levelling up your dudes. Like I said, the character development is really entertaining and allows you to specialise a dude into a given role to a much greater extent than most other tictacs games of this kind. The trouble is, of course, that this makes losing one that much more costly. The other problem is that picking up new recruits is unreasonably difficult. New recruits can be picked up from any major castle, which usually has about three to five on offer, of which at least one is likely to have shit stats. The pool of recruits takes ages to refresh, and castles are a long way away from each other, and this makes picking up new recruits a major pain in the ass. It's not limited by your funds, as it should be, but rather by your tolerance for tedious treks back and forth and your patience for waiting near a castle for in-game weeks at a time hoping for the recruitment pool to refresh.
Battle Brothers suffered from this problem as well, where it was often not worth it to take a difficult fight if even one of your high level bros kicked it. It's much worse here, where suffering a casualty not only means losing what's essentially a traditional RPG party member you spent a lot of time and effort thinking up a build for, it's also a major hassle to even find a new recruit to replace him, let alone a good one. The Battle Brothers brothers, by comparison, are both more limited in what you can build them into, and much more plentiful in the gameworld. In BB you can put your warband through the Darwinian grinder where only the strongest survive, but that's not really a viable tactic in Dead Monarchy, where any new recruit has a) significant inherent value due to scarcity, and b) the potential to become a specialised powerhouse with a couple of levels in him. This dynamic naturally leads to savescumming whenever someone dies, which simply kills a game like this.
The upshot is that despite being released in full Dead Monarchy still plays very much like an early access game. The core of the combat system is pretty damn good, similar to Battle Brothers but with its own identity. The rest of it is miles below even BB's barebones gameplay. I would say it's worth picking up for a couple of hours of fun (the low price helps), but don't expect anything more.
So instead of making easy (relatively) to replace bros, combined with low power curve (again relatively, low level bros aren't useless in BB once you level 2-3 times which happens very quickly) - they made a game where your team members are hard to replace AND the difference between low level and high level is huge. Facepalm. I wonder if they made it on purpose thinking it is better somehow? Possibly it is a case of cargo cult. Let's make game similar to BB but without understanding how important elements of balance works.
BTW, I never found losing bros problematic in BB, even playing ironman. I'm not that good, I lost bros but no more than one, maybe two bros at once - relatively rarely. This is past early game because early game is, as you called it, Darwinism, in game form. However early it doesn't matter much. Later, with reserves all you need is to gain total levels/exp faster than you lose it. It isn't a problem if half of your company doesn't die on a semi-regular basis.
BTW, I never found losing bros problematic in BB, even playing ironman. I'm not that good, I lost bros but no more than one, maybe two bros at once - relatively rarely. This is past early game because early game is, as you called it, Darwinism, in game form. However early it doesn't matter much. Later, with reserves all you need is to gain total levels/exp faster than you lose it. It isn't a problem if half of your company doesn't die on a semi-regular basis.
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