Sorcerer King Beta 4 Released

Biggest. Update. Ever. 400+ new quests. Huge crafting system improvement. New sovereign. Custom sovereigns. Graphical overhaul. Today is an excellent day.

Sorcerer King Beta 4 comes strapped with more new and improved stuff than most updates can even dream of. The full patch notes are crazy-long, and full of awesome stuff like improved tactical AI, new spells, whole new features like Enchanting, and more. They're not even padded with minor bugfixes! Well, most of those at least have jokes in the notes. Apparently programmers get triumphantly salty when they track down longstanding, complicated bugs. Who knew?

                                 

Among (many) other things, Beta 4 includes:

  • Enchantment system – Customize your items with elemental attacks, mana drains, impenetrable defenses, and more
  • Hundreds of new quests – Thanks to the folks who signed on to help implement quests, there are 400+ new ones to explore
  • Tinkerer sovereign – Unlock the full potential of the crafting and enchantment systems with the final premade sovereign
  • Custom sovereigns – Mix and match abilities, heroes, spellbooks, and skilltrees into your ideal avatar
  • Graphical overhaul – New forests and chasms, much improved lighting, and tons of animations and effects

Let us know what you think of the latest Sorcerer King patch here on the forums, come see us for our weekly livestream on Wednesdays at 3pm ET, and happy conquering!

38,895 views 13 replies
Reply #1 Top

:)

Reply #2 Top

That´s gone be legen... wait for it... dary!

Reply #3 Top

Love the changes so far.   Only worry is the enchants might be too much to give to the player, and could take away from crafting.

 

 

Reply #4 Top

Alstein: Yeah, we have to do alot of balancing, both by nerfing some of the enchanting items and boosting the coolness of crafted items.  We're really happy with the overal direction, though - hope you guys are too!

 

Reply #5 Top

Enchantment: Because You Thought 9-Essence Cities Were Overpowered

 

;)

Reply #6 Top

Wow the game has come a long way since I last had a go. I love the crafting and enchanting - although it wasn't enough to save my bacon. I got my ass handed to me by a roving army that hounded me back to the castle.

Time to try again

Reply #7 Top

On the coolness of crafted items- you have a lot of items in LH that are pretty cool that could be backported over.

 

 

Reply #8 Top

I played some last night and am impressed where you guys have taken the game. I can see myself playing this for many hours. On a side note regarding the art style, the little houses remind me of houses from the board game Monopoly - neat. Kudos to the overall vision and execution!

Reply #9 Top

Seriously, you guys are going to love beta 5.  So much stuff just missed beta 4.  Tons of new art assets and useful UI improvements and spells.

Reply #10 Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 9

Seriously, you guys are going to love beta 5.  So much stuff just missed beta 4.  Tons of new art assets and useful UI improvements and spells.
End of Frogboy's quote

When? Also: when the game will be released?  :grin:

Reply #11 Top

Game's shaping up great!

Love the enchanting option, though I get the feeling my favorite enchants will be getting some nerfing soon...I guess having an unhittable hero and 2k mana by the end of my 30th turn is asking for a bit much... :)

TINKERERS RULE!

Reply #12 Top

Yeah!

 

I have just finished my first game ever of SK.

 

I really enjoyed it despite the many bugs. Great game!!!! It might end up being very very good indeed.

 

A few notes :-

1. I had no idea that I needed to collect two keys to open the gates. This should be much more obvious.

1a. The final fight was too difficult in comparison to all the other fights including the lieutenants. So my kick arse army was ok vs the other armies but was wasted by the sorcerer. I expected a jump, in difficulty, but I didn't expect most of my units to be wiped out by a single spell.

2. I am not sure how I feel about the end fight where all of a sudden you receive new units - its a bit weird and confusing. I ran it through twice selecting different dialog options (very cool idea) but in both case I felt there were too many units on the field  which meant massive slowdowns, zoomed right out to see the battle field and having to learn to use units you haven't been fighting with all through the game.

3. No "heal army" spell which makes healing tedious and boring as you have to use the pitful heal spell a lot of times.

4. Ships are clunky - often when you want to board you end up over your head in the sea. Would be much easier if you had a embark and disembark button.

5. It is annoying how the enemy will set up shop right in your territory without the player being warned or having the castle attack the enemy.  Usually the first time you know that the enemy is nearby is when a huge army of harbingers is attacking your castle.

 

Reply #13 Top

I just finished a game as Tinkerer. Normal magic and difficulty, random map.

 

1. The sovereign skills given extra (ice) enchanments for your items does not work or at least they did not show up in the crafting section.

2. The crafting section should sort the ingredients into bins e.g. what others have said bin the items and write the number of avaiable items. Clouded topaz = 2 units. Further there is no need to show ingredients with no buff. For example I had a lot of crystal decanters giving no buff or at least the flavour text said so. 

3. The crafting section, would it be possible to sort the ingredients into offensive, defensive and miscellanous effects. This way you do not need to look through thousands of ingredients, when looking for the inititative buff or fire attack buff. 

4. Drogon is way overpowered. In my game he was dealing 100-200 normal damage and with a critical he could give as much as 900-1000 damage. I do not know what kind of mechanic as nearly had all the Drogons skills. Further the combo with Polar-thing (drawing your enemies near) and the surround attack-thing makes the game far too easy. You only need to buff Drogon with some initiative, execute the Polar-thing and do the surround attack. PS. you also need the Kill-move-kill thing (last skill in the upper line). I think the kill-move-kill thing was nerfed because yesterday Drogon could do multiple kill-move-kills-move-kills e.g. killing an entire army by himself - now he can only kill-move-kill two times (or maybe three times). 

My DROGON could solo this game ALONE. Well, I guess he is kind of a lone wolf. 

5. There are far too few diamonds. Therefore the goodiehuts popping up near mines (Sovereign skill), are essential. 

6. Tactical combat - Way to easy at the moment. Only once did I notice that the SK was casting spells and he should be present it in all combat involving darklings, urxins etc. excluding beast and bandits. 

6. Tactical combat - UI. Would it be possible to divide the window with the skills and items. I find it rather tedious, ugly and not nice to have to scroll down to find the skill I want to use, and not the gimpy healing items or the non-working tactical summon item. 

6. Tactical combat - There was an item making it possible to summon a fire demon (or something, do not remember, the shape was a bottle). It is not working. You cannot click even if it was shown in the window. 

7. I need a short-cut menu in strategic view to often used spells like place road (which still have the pillar of flame icon), and enchant hammers etc. The short-cut could be with keys or could at least be shown in the upper top - next to dooms day counter and resource number. 

8. The help section lists to Death Lash.

9. I had the option to build two kinds of Pikemen. The first pikeman had 10 attack and 30 health, while the second Pikeman had 11 attack and 18 health. 

 10. Path-finding is crazy. Your own units can move onto the same tile as your allied units (minor factions). Further the allied unit (minor factions) units seems to be rather idiotic/ dumb as they often just stand in the middle of nowhere, because they are so fine they only want to move on roads and does not want to go into cities (pass through the cities). This is a P - A as my own units had to step aside and move into the wilderness, while the IMPerial soldiers, YETies and the Ceresa-thingies was too scared to step aside from MY roads. I eventually solved the problem by building a lot of roads around them, so they did not need to touch the dirty ground. ;)

11. In my game I shared the same corner of the world with the SK. After walling him with a lot of outposts  I was free to explore. 

12. Outposts are way to overpowered (and boring). I mean the game basically boils down to 1. build a lot of outposts around the SK to wipe out all his gimpies (2-3 outposts fully upgraded should do the trick at every outlet), strengthen your hero/army. Bash the door down into the SK LAir. 

13. Why is Falling Star costing 150 mana. In beta 3 it was only 135 mana. Is this spell really worth spending all this mana compared to Wraith of God or Pillar of Flame. I did not try it as I am not a big fan of useless spending. 

14. Tinker, I think is really interesting. I hope the other sovereigns get the same love (remake). Especially the wizard needed one in beta 3. 

15. In my game I had the Napskin-guy (cannot remember the exact name) and Varda (the flying horse-thing). I can see that Napskin have been nerfed as there is now a cool down of 5 turns to use his Dark Spread. I believe it should be lowered to 3 turns, because at 5 turns most combats are over. Varda seems to be really whimpy, I had to buff her up with some Sovereigns Sword and Legendary Armor just so she at least could survive a darkling fight. 

16. Nice Duck-initiative. ;)

17. The Archivist and Onyx Throne, are they supposed to add to Skill and Lore. If yes, I think they are only partially working, because by moving the sliderI could reduce Lore and SKill to nada (zero) - at least it was shown as nada in the slider-window.

18. Strategic view. There seems to be a glitch, where yields do not appear even if your Pioneer can settle. Further the map showed no yields and still a SK Fortress popped up next to my outposts. WTF - WFT. 

19. Crafting section, is it possible to make a filter in the list (to the right), so you do not need to see three exactly the same versions of leather boots!!!!!

20. Crafting section, I believe that you should make an extra section titled "Summoned ingredients". And why are shields placed in the other-section. Are they not part of the Armor-section.

21. Will it be possible to modify your people (either by magic or genetic engineering). I mean human and people are quite boring as they are. I would love to see some tinkering with people... (ehm sorry). I just miss my pariden and not these wuss-minor factions. 

22. Darklings. Why do Darklings every F time have to shift even if nothing good results. I mean they can shift to the end of the world - this does not change their destiny as cannon fodder.

23. Tinker, nice touch with the sadle bags. I just wish there also was some kind of hope-device like a Walkman playing music or maybe a little portable television. Seriously, just add a magic TV or maybe a duck family. Everybody loves a duck family, so they should be happe => giving more hope => giving more strength to fight the wuss SK.

24. World, were are the big monsters? I have not seen Earth elemental or other elementals. Nor have I seen dragons. With dragons I do not mean these wumpy wiss A drakes. I have seen bandits, wolf, darklings, urchins, trogs, trogs with arches, umberdrought?, harbringers, wannabe-fallen enchanters, Gandalf wannabe wizards, the shiny lights with no offensive capability and just waiting to die, maybe a merchant/knight, spiders, trolls, ogres (with 150 healts!!), wargs, wolf. Did the SK just decide to kill all the fun monsters e.g. dragons and bigger elementals. And where are Vetarar or the snake thing in chasm? 

Maybe make events to make them appear.

25. I think the DM is working. At least I got a lot of events regarding my honor, scoundrul, courage etc. I just wish these intangibles was not set in stone - meaning at least make it possible to charm the world into believing I am not an honouralbe person or maybe make them believe I am the most couragous man alive. Should there also be other events not related to the intangibles e.g. Blood Moon, Undead rising, Return of the Emp - I mean, Dragons etc. )

26. I wish the screen space was better used in the quest window. You have all this space and you only make a tiny little window in the bottom, where you need glasses and need to scroll to see everey word. Would it be possible to make the text window bigger and maybe place it more toward the center.

27. In my game today I experience two crashes to desktop. I do not know if it was due to playing a game started with the beta 4, and continued iwith the game in beta 4.2. I was messing in my crafting window during the crashes. Guess the DM and SK teamed up and decided I should not be more powerful. 

28.  Sorry for my rambling and bad eNgliSh. I just finished the game on an empty stomach. Maybe you should incorporate a timer/watch telling the player to get some food. ;)

29. I want more variety between the sovereigns. It becomes boring playing the same game with the same set of standard buildings and units. Of course you might need common basic buildings and units (work camp, watch towers, barrack, library, soldier, scout, pioner etc.), but I want more custom designed units for each sovereign. Wizard should have access to battle mage (right now Magician Academy does nothing except fool you) and his units and buildings should be more mana based - somehow. The same goes for the other sovereigns.

30. Where are the world dominating spells - like destroy every crystal craig or spawn a lot of (small) fairies in the SK dominated lands.

31. Why is it not possible to attack units, when they are standing on shads, mines etc. This way you can do shit about F darklings destroying your source of mana income. 

32. Poster above, complaining about the heal army spell. There is a spell called Wellspring healing your army. It can be used both strategic and tactical. 

33. Hope something useful can be extracted from this wall of text. '

 

Overall the game is going in the right direction. Keep up the good work.

 

Edit: Just noticed that there are 3 items 6. Of course they should each be labelled as 6, 7, 8. But I am too tired right now to change the numbers.