KOTCL Dev Diaries - Expanding the Horizons. Again

Work is humming along

In the near future only rebalance news and patch-notes await us, and that’s not a lot. Since there’s really not much to talk about or show you, it would be good to put the diaries on hold.

On the other hand, work is really humming along, so if we stop getting in touch every Friday, people might think that the project has been abandoned and will lose interest in it. It’s what you call a dilemma…

BY THE WAY

If you don’t like playing test versions because you want a finished product, not something raw, I understand you; I’m just like you. But let me reassure you right now—the rebalanced story mode for Persival on the public_beta test branch is fully ready. It’s not some half-baked thing, it’s solid work. We’ll only start fine-tuning if the players want us to. But how will you know if you want us to fine-tune, if you haven’t played public_beta?

So don’t be afraid, try it out and have fun. And we’ll be working on rebalancing the other heroes following the same scheme.

Meanwhile

I’d like to tell you about some locations that didn’t make it into Knock on the Coffin Lid, but were still well developed because they’re mentioned in the game. Sounds interesting? I hope it does. In any case, let’s get started!

The West Coast

To the west of the Frontier, by the ocean coast, there are numerous islands and coves favored by pirates. The core of the pirates consists of fugitives from the Empire. However, unlike former bandits who fled the Empire and settled in the Heathlands to start a new, peaceful life, the settlers of the West Coast don’t intend to ever change their cruel, bloodthirsty ways.

They are joined by berserker dwarves who get restless in the depths of the Thundering Mountain and escape to start a life of adventure.

There are orcs there who couldn’t find their place in their homeland and decided to try their luck on distant shores.

You can also find plenty of elves who felt smothered by the strict rules in the Sunny City—lycans, lunar druids, death servants, blood mages.

Imperial ships, loaded to the brim with goods and gold, make their way in the ocean around Midian to do some good old trade, but the West Coast is always on their way reaping its crop from that endless stream. There’s nothing that can be done with that.

The Empire tried to extirpate the pirate plague many times. It came with powerful ships, it hunted down pirate vessels, assaulted pirate forts, and destroyed pirate towns. But each time, after the Empire left, the pirates returned.

"Tortuga"

Of course, this pirate kingdom has to have its own capital (and it does), but we haven’t actually come up with a name for it, haha! But for all intents and purposes, it’s the equivalent of Tortuga. You can hire pirates there, sell your loot, buy a ship, or trade anything you want. The capital’s location is always changing: every time the imperial fleet finds it, attacks it, and burns it to the ground, it reappears somewhere else—in a different cove or on a different island. And there are countless coves and islands along the West Coast. One can set up hostels, bars, brothels, and shops anywhere and very quickly as long as there’s demand.

Overall, it’s your familiar pirate setting — just with elves, dwarves, and orcs mixed in. Which is already fairly original in its own way, even though we didn’t deliberately try to make it unique; it’s not that level of world-building yet. If the Western Coast ever appears in a proper game set in the Midian universe, it will immediately get fleshed out with original details.

The Firebrother Monastery. Or Eastern Khaganate

Next time, I’ll tell you about the firebrothers’ monastery, from which they marched to the Northern Gate through the Rotten Bog and got stuck in the swamps. After all the troops left, some very interesting things started happening there.

Or I could tell you about the Eastern Khaganate.

Or should I just pause these little diaries until there's significant news, perhaps? What do you think?