Greetings Underlords,

After a couple of weeks of silence we’ve at last completed work on our latest Minor Patch. 1.1.15 is a large update encompassing quite a few changes including some significant performance optimisations. We’ve been testing all the changes in this patch over the past two weeks and we’re finally happy that it’s stable enough for public release.

And don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter if you haven’t already, the first issue will be launching this month and if you subscribe you’ll be among the first to hear what’s coming in patch 1.2!

So without further adieu read on for the latest patch notes!

Performance Improvements

Major optimisations to underlying code which has resulted in significantly reduced Memory usage Up to 70% Reduced memory usage in-game compared to patch 1.1.7 (1.4GB from 4.8GB) Up to 83% Reduced memory usage on startup compared to patch 1.1.7 (627MB from 3.7GB) Up to 76% reduced initial game startup time compared to patch 1.1.7 (5.61s from 23.50s)

Refactored unit highlights to be called once instead of on every frame

Reduced the performance impact of unit shields

Improved bandwidth usage in Multiplayer games

Gameplay & Balance Changes

Frost Weaver (Potion & Unit)

The Frost Weaver has long been ignored by players in both Singleplayer and Multiplayer, and thus far he’s failed to fulfill his purpose as an on-demand tank. As such we’ve given him some significant buffs to his tanking stats while reducing his damage. He’s also gained a new ability which allows him to dramatically reduce the effectiveness of enemy units near to him.

Cost increased to 4500 gold (up from 3500)

Health increased to 9001 (up from 2200)

Movement speed reduced by 12.5%

Meltdown (Self DoT) damage increased to 250/second (Up from 3/second)

Basic attack cooldown increased to 3s (up from 2s)

Basic attack damage reduced to 100 (down from 120)

Frost Nova cooldown increased to 15s (up from 8s)

Frost Nova immobilize duration increased to 3s (up from 2s)

Deep Freeze (Stun on death) radius reduced to 2 tiles (down from 3)

Chilling Embrace Reworked: Now applies a stack every second to enemies in a 1.5 tile radius. Stacks reduce movement speed by 10% and attack speed by 15%. Stacks last 15 seconds and a maximum of five can be applied.

Ember Demon (Construct & Unit)

We’re continuing to tweak the Ember Demon to better position him as a consistent threat to your defences, we’ve once again increased his damage and improved the ability we added to him in the last patch (Immolation). In return we’ve increased his cost to make investing in Ember Demons a costly but hopefully rewarding endeavour.

Basic attack cooldown reduced to 1.5s (Down from 2.5s)

Basic attack damage increased to 80 (from 75)

Immolation damage increased to 5/s per stack (up from 3/s per stack)

Immolation stacking speed increased to 1.5s (up from 2.5s)

Immolation stack duration reduced to 5s (Down from 10s)

Cost increased to 7500 (Up from 5000)

Vampire (Unit)

The Vampire is intended to be a high risk, high reward blitzer. Sadly his survivability and damage in combat was leaving him more risk than reward. We’ve dramatically improved his stats to make him even more valuable, but be sure to keep him happy as you certainly won’t want this new and improved Vampire rampaging around your Dungeon.

Health increased to 2000 (up from 1000)

Basic attack damage increased to 150 (up from 100)

Reap damage increased to 250 (up from 100)

Reap cooldown decreased to 8s (down from 10s)

Deadly Strike damage increased to 150 (up from 100)

Blood need requirement slowed down by 40% (0.6/s instead of 1/s)

Vampirism heal % increased to 75% (up from 35%)

KO Time reduced to 20s (Down from 60s)

Highguard (Unit)

When you’re as highborne as he is you don’t want to dirty your hands!

No longer works in the Foundry

Midas Door (Defence)

The Midas door has a very exciting mechanic where you can exchange your gold for an effectively infinite health door. However we’ve found that the gold cost was far too high and this was extremely inhibitive to it’s use. As such we’ve dramatically reduced the cost for each point of damage it takes to make it actually usable!

Gold per damage cost reduced to 0.33 per point of damage (Down from 5)

Well of Souls (Defence)

We wanted to give the Well of Souls even more oomph when you activate it’s ability. As such we’ve change the type of wraith spawned to Archon wraiths which will heal themselves during combat, extending their duration while enemies are still around.

Damage cost per wraith increased to 200 (up from 150)

Now spawns Archon Wraiths instead of normal Wraiths, Archon Wraiths only last 15 seconds out of combat but heal for great amounts whenever they attack

Prospector (Ritual)

Cast time reduced by 50%

Duration doubled to 20s (up from 10s)

Vision radius around revealed objects doubled

Revelation (Ritual)

Revelation now gradually reveals parts of the enemy Dungeons over 20 seconds, if during this time the whole dungeon is not revealed the ritual ceases.

UI changes

Added the colour in brackets to position for multiplayer lobbies allowing players to determine where their starting location will be.

Audio and Visual alerts added for rituals being activated

Removed spectator mode text in Multiplayer which could overlay on the chat box

A population status indicator will now appear when your attracted population equals half of your maximum.

Unit job assignments are now shown in the Information panel

Hotkeys will now work when the UI is hovered

Visual Changes

Several visual changes related to team colouring of the standard core

Added several unique icons for Empire Units

Level Changes

Level 6 – Attack squads will now only attempt to rally, they will not attempt to dig on their way

AI Changes

Workers will not as readily chase enemy workers

Misc Changes

Overhauled resolution settings – should now provide all resolutions that your device can support

Allowed the game to load when unfocused meaning you can now chat to your friends and load a match of WFTO!

Core under attack alerts now trigger more intelligently, taking into account how rapidly a core is losing health

Renamed the John Theme to Korvek

Bug fixes

Fixed an issue where the highguard would show an incorrect name tag on the information panel

Fixed an issue where possessing a unit while a cutscene played would cause the camera to become stuck and prevent progression

Blade loti will now correctly hide themselves from enemy units.

Fixed an issue where beasts that were removed from the Arena would immediately be returned to it

Fixed an issue where the unit panel was not checking for whether a unit is a prisoner on initialisation meaning that units that were in a special state were showing up as owned units

Fixed an issue where resolution and display number were not correctly updating on a reload

Fixed an issue where the “Core under attack” alert did not play for clients in Multiplayer

Fixed an issue where the barrier in Level 13 would continue to exist after using the Kenos ritual after a save/load

Fixed special warbands not working of clients in Multiplayer

Fixed an issue where saving and loading on Level 5 before the replacement walls objective would cause the camera to lock during that objective

Fixed an issue where disabling subtitles while a subtitle was on screen would cause that subtitle to be displayed permanently

Fixed an issue which prevented workers from repairing friendly rooms that had become damaged.

Fixed an issue where units were able to escape from the Arena and attack

Fixed an issue where Revelation remained permanently in Multiplayer

Matriarch’s spirit army should now work correctly

Fixed an issue where the worker would get stuck in the dig animation forever after a depossession

Fixed the Witch doctor’s heal

Multiple fixes to the appearance of the sanctuary

Fixed an issue where the Ember Demon could leave a body that could be grabbed by workers

Reimplemented the Shaboozey achievement

Fixed an issue where Core themes could change on a save and reload after being claimed by another player

Fixed an issue where the game would sometimes not start in Fullscreen

Fixed the Glacial Door walls sometimes being penetrable

Fixed a few issues with the Spirit chamber and it’s appearance

Fixed issues where clients couldn’t take actions in possession in Multiplayer matches

Fixed volcanic bridge not tiling correctly

Fixed an issue where the Gold Vortex would not animate

Passive AOE no longer inflicts damage to allied units

Necromancer’s “raise” ability no longer raises units that are unrecyclable i.e. Wraiths, Ghouls, Ember Demon

Fixed a visual issue with Empire owned Taverns on Campaign level 2 and Skirmish level “Seastead”

Fixed a visual issue on Level 8 where certain siege doors were not using the correct wall connectors

Fixed an issue where Artefacts did not correctly change to their identified appearence

Fixed a multiplayer issue related to random start locations

Fixed an issue where clients could show the wrong position

Fixed several issues with spectator mode on clients

Super units should now always be respawnable for client

Fixed several issues with rendering defences

Fixed an issue which could cause the veins of evil to present with missing aspects

Fixed a number of shader issues on the OSX Build of the game

Portraits of corrupted heroes in Level 6 have been corrected

Fixed a critical crash that was known to occur on Level 8 and Level 10

Several fixes to prevent crashing in Multiplayer

That’s it for this patch keep your eyes peeled for more coming in the future and be sure to subscribe to our newsletter to hear what’s coming in patch 1.2!

Until next time Underlords,

– WFTO Team

Click here to discuss this update on our forums