Winter update, 2020

Cooperative gameplay

Players can now become friends in game by using the chat window. Clicking on a player listed in the chat channel will show the options available. A lord can now ask a friend for help for completing a quest, by entering a quest area and then using the new "Ask for help" option. This can happen straight away, without having to meet on the PVP maps or waiting for later content. If the friend accepts the request, its lord will be moved to the quest area entrance, and you can proceed from there, either by fighting the monsters individually or...together.

Armies can now merge under a leader. The group leader will have the authority to move the group and engage enemies. It will also be able to remove any army from the group. Any army can also leave on its own at any time. If an group of armies will engage an enemy, they will each deploy and control their own troops. To facilitate own/allied/enemy troops visibility on the field, the marker for each unit was redesigned yet again, with blue markers showing allied troops, green markers showing around your own troops and red markers showing around enemy troops. The experience will e distributed according to the contribution each army has made during the fight.

Multiple commanders and reinforcements

Having multiple lords can now be very helpful. A player can merge all its lords into a single army to deploy massive amounts of troops on the field or can hold them as backup.

Once a fight begins, it is possible that others "join in" on either side, to either help the attacker or the defender. The process can be repeated over and over, leading to potentially huge battles.

Each commander applies its specific bonuses only to its own troops, of course, but buffs can be cast on friendlies as well.

Wizard career

Players to choose to train their lords as mages can now fully play as a mage. A multitude of magic skills have been added to the skill tree.

The mage "features" will be:

• the ability to apply heavy magic type damage, which ignores armor and evasion

• units commanded by mages will receive massive, self regenerating shields

• units commanded by mages will be able to clone themselves, sending minions of potentially greater power against the enemy, without risking the life of the soldiers themselves

Choosing this type of training will add penalties to heroic and command skill training, so, it will not be possible to have a hero-wizard or command-wizard.

Overall, the mage career is designed to provide an easy start for players into the world of Lords of the Shattered Kingdom, giving the player time to understand the concepts of combat without risking the life of the lord and without a great need to build weapons and equip soldiers. The only issue will be generating spell scrolls in enough numbers.

New presentation of the skill tree and new skills

The old lists of skills to be trained were removed, together with the three buttons leading to them. Instead, a single button remains which opens the new skill tree interface. The new screen now shows the 4 skill groups available in game. Selecting a skill to be trained is now done from this interface just by clicking on the skill. If other skills are required, they will be trained first and a queue will be formed. Training a skill to a certain level will now require all previous skills to be trained to at least that level.

Adventure skills

Adventure skills are listed on the top right corner. These skills are "generic" and can be trained by all the lords without penalty and without incurring any training penalties. Some of the old command skills have been moved here, like the "Logistics" and "Vast armies" skills.

Additionally, there are some new skills:

• Personal Baggage, will increase the number of slots in a lord inventory by 12. The starting number of slots for new lords was decreased. All old lords will receive this skill pre-trained at level 3 when the upgrade is deployed.

• Big chests, will increase the amount of resources/ammo (not equipment) that a lord may hold in a single slot. All old lords will receive this skill pre-trained at level 3 when the upgrade is deployed.

• Diplomat, this skill will increase the amount of resources, weapons and favor received when completing quests.

• Looter, will make quest areas will generate bigger resource piles, for quests accepted by the lord.

• Treasure hunter, will make resource piles drop closer to the maximum value of resources. For example, at level 5, if a player picks up a pile of 10-50 gems, it is about 50% likely 50 gems will be picked up from the map.

• Large camp, this is basically an advanced logistics skill, allowing for even more reinforcements to follow the army.

• Armory, this will allow the lord to carry more weapons into a single slot at any given time.

Command skills

Command skills have been re-shuffled to give them more meaning and more focus. Penalties to magic experience were added and penalties to heroic experience were made more frequent and severe. Command lords are still the ones able to wield the biggest forces in the game, making them a very difficult opponent to defeat, but they consume vast amount of resources. Starting the game with a command lord is very very difficult, so they can be worn out fast. Only 2 new skills were added, and 3 others were changed:

• Armor improvements, basic skill that adds flat HP for soldiers

• Weapon training, basic skill that adds flat damage to all weapons.

• The Army command skill was changed to also give +2 extra groups of soldiers as reserves (similar to Vast armies, but more effective).

• The Military Encampment skill now gives + 15 soldiers per level, instead of the +5 it used to.

• Shooting practice now also gives +1 damage and +10% armor penetration per level, making command lords very effective archer users.

Heroic skills

Hero lords will still rely on their own strength and equipment to fight of enemies. Their troops will be able to use mixed gear with powerful augmentations. Easy to start and strong in PVE, the hero class received one new skill and has had a few altered:

• Antimagic, each level will reduce the magic damage taken by the lord by 40%, and troops by 20%. This is multiplicative, not additive, so at level 2, the damage reduction for the lord will be 64% not 80%. At level 5, the lord will have a resitance of about 97% and the troops of about 69%, making this class next to impregnable to enemy magic damage.

• Reflexes, bonus reduced from +2 to +1.

• Heroic might, effect doubled from +1 damage to +2.

• Heroic defenses was reworked to provide more hitpoints depending on the hp, evasion, armor values of used gear.

• Heroic protection was reworked to amplify the effect oh hp, evasion and armor values provided by the gear used on soldiers. Together with Heroic defenses, this will make units under the command of a hero have vast amounts of hitpoints.

Mage skills

Mages will be the class that is easiest to play when starting the game. The player will only need to focus on having an ample supply of spell scrolls by assigning workers to mage towers. having 2 mage towers in the starting castle will help. With enough scrolls, the mage lord will be able to blast its enemies with spells or summon clones that will swamp and destroy them. The old skills remain open and not penalized for all classes. They give the same bonuses as before. Losing the lord will remove almost all class specific benefits from the player, but then again, there is no need to actually have the lord on the field at all. In addition, some new class specific skills were added:

• Magic barrier, this is the cornerstone skill for the mage class. All units will receive an automatic and self regenerating shield when deployed. This is cast automatically, so the units are protected even before they get the chance to move, and this also does not need a spell scroll. As opposed to the Shield spell, Magic barrier is weaker but each unit is protected, not only the first one in the stack, effectively increasing the HP of a unit dramatically. When learning this skill, all heroic and command experience received by incurring or taking damage will converted to magic experience.

• Wisdom, will increase the number of scrolls that the lord can carry. This is further influenced by the mana required to summon a scroll, making starting scrolls "lighter" and advanced scrolls "heavier".

• Inspiration, will increase the number of slots that a lord has to put magic scrolls in.

• Robe mastery, will provide spell power based on the "Accuracy" attribute of cloth armor worn by the lord.

• Archmage, will increase the number of wizards that may assist the lord during the fight. This will now be capped at 20 with no skill, and training this skill will help increase that limit all the way to 120.

• Multicast, will give the lord the ability to consume multiple spell scrolls in order to increase its effective spell power when casting a spell. Without this, most buffs will be basically powerless.

• Magic pets, will add flat Spell power to a lord.

• Arcane magic, will auto-cast a weaker version of the Shield spell to the current unit whenever Smite or Shield is cast.

• Sorcery, will grant a small chance that no spell scrolls are used when a spell is cast.

• Wizardry, will limit the consumption of spell power when casting a spell, effectively allowing the lord to cast multiple spells in the same round.

• Magic clones, is a staple skill for mages. It will increase the number of clones on the field by 2 for each level and also give a small chance that no spell power is used during the summoning, allowing multiple casts on the same round. Initially, only 1 clone is allowed.

• Minions, will allow larger groups of cloned soldiers to be summoned. The initial limit is 20 soldiers per clone.

Only one spell was added, the Magic clone spell, with its "Improved", "Strong" and "Deadly" variants.

This spell is mage class specific. All human soldiers, with the exception of dagger warriors, will be allowed to cast this spell and create a duplicate of themselves. The duplicate will not inherit any buffs of the original, will have 0 armor, 0 evasion and 0 accuracy, will not be affected by any command or heroic skills but will potentially be more numerous. From a group of, let's say, only one soldier, a powerful mage will be able to create a group of 400 cloned soldiers. These clones will move right after the caster, without waiting a round, and before the caster on the next round. Because of their low accuracy/evasion/armor, buffs will have much higher effect on them. Additionally, clones of archers will not use any arrows at all, and will not require the lord to have any in its inventory. At highest skill level, a mage can summon 11 such 400 man clones on a field, with the ability to resummon if some are killed, making mages ideal fighters in PVE in the late game. Stronger soldiers will require more spellpower to create a large group of clones. The special, and more advanced variants of the spell, Strong clones and Deadly clones will alter the HP or the Damage of the clones to make them even more fierce.

Game balancing

The Smite spell

With the new mage career available, giving mages potentially huge spellpower, the Smite spell has been "capped" at a maximum damage close to 14000 per cast. The damage done by the spell will grow very fast as spellpower is increased, but as the output reaches 7000 the benefits will start to diminish greatelly. Training Magic Expertise and Smite Expertise will alleviate somewhat this effect and will allow for the spell to reach its full potential.

Buffs

The power of the buffs is now reduced if cast on stronger units. End-game level soldiers will benefit less from buffs, unless the spell caster is very proficient, with high spell power and a good mastery of the spell. The duration of the buffs is now limited by the total HP pool of the unit they are cast upon, and increased by high spell power and expertise levels. Debuffs work in a same way, so, hero and command lords will not be able to cripple an enemy with the maim spell, not so severely anyway.

Resource harvesting

The resource presence on the quest maps has been drastically reduced. It will be harder for the player to procure raw materials just by running regular quests. There are some exceptions. Quests that require an item to start, like "Improve weapons" for example, will still produce large amounts of resources. Instead, the player will have to focus on collecting the resources that are present on its own maps (starting map and the barbarian lands), or on any of the PVP maps. Resources on the open PVP maps are still abundant. Training the appropriate gathering skills from the Adventure skill group will greatly enhance the process of raw material collection.

Resources will no longer be collected from a range, but the player will have to move on top of them to collect. However, the game will generate paths ignoring resource collision, allowing the player to move and collect all resources along a path, or completely ignore the resource piles if they are deemed "too low" to bother with.

Building changes

The level of the buildings was scaled by a factor of 5. Blacksmith level 1 for example is now blacksmith level 5. This was done to ease transitions between building levels, as owning a blacksmith level 2 was to great of a jump from a level 1 blacksmith and required a lot of resource stockpiling. The upgrade will now gradually happen over a period of time. The total construction time has only slightly been increased, but the construction price is now substantially higher.

The blacksmith received an interface similar to the blacksmith, to allow customization of a soldier directly within the blacksmith.

Worker costs for the barracks, blacksmith and mage tower have been changed and substantially increased. Furthermore, working the building at full capacity, or close to that level, will make the workers cost extra, putting a strain on the economy. Wise allocation of the workforce, with the ability to "sprint" some extra resources in times of high demand, will now be a very important factor. Due to this change, gold has become an even more sought after commodity.

Plunder changes

The option to send plunder to "City hall" has been removed. Instead, plunder will be used directly from the building, if present, to construct upgrades, or from the city hall. Plunder can be manually sent only to houses, to generate taxes, or to the blacksmith, to instantly be able to build weapons.

The new leveling formula for buildings will allow higher amounts of plunder to be sent to the buildings, and the conversion rate of plunder into gold has been enhanced. However, houses will generate almost no taxes if no plunder is sent to them. Empires that battle and bring home large amounts of plunder to distribute to the population will have more of the precious gold available.

Battlefield looting

Human enemies will now have a chance to drop some of their equipment after they are defeated. The equipment will be available for looting after the battle, as items. Lower tier items will drop more frequently, allowing starting players that play well to use only the dropped items, as well as providing high level players with the opportunity to loot items which are otherwise not available via quest giver shop, quests or blacksmith. This is also meant to counter somewhat the reduction in raw materials available.

New PVE opportunities and challenges

All quest giver huts will now have a new "Gather resources" option. As the player runs quests and kills enemies, the area around the quest giver will see an increase in security. The player may choose to trade some of that security for a special hidden area that only contains resources of the type chosen by the player. There are no monsters, just resources. Furthermore, to help the collection process, and allow players that want to be away from the keyboard a bit but not turn off the game, entering such an area will display a counter of collected resources and an estimate of total value. Clicking on the estimate will make the lord automatically run around and collect the resources from the map. When all resources are collected, the lord returns to the starting point.

If a player desires a PVE challenge, in the same "Gather resources" tab of a quest giver hut, there is now the option to secure the area. The player can then select a difficulty ranging from 50% of a regular quest from that quest giver up to... 100 times harder. Even for high level, endgame, players the starting quest giver hut can provide an impossible mission if the setting is turned up too high. Managing to completely clear the hidden area of all enemies will provide a nifty security boost as well as large amounts of quest giver favor.

In these special regions, the size of the resources piles and the strength of the enemies will increase as the player ventures further from the starting point.

There is no penalty for canceling any of these missions, so feel free to take them and play around with the settings.

Siege weapons changes

Balistas now ignore enemy armor and evasion completely, but do benefit from their own accuracy. The chance of them hitting has been increased, but the whole process is still luck based and no damage estimation is provided by the game.

Catapults have been changed in a similar way, but their chance to hit is dramatically lower then for the balistas. They will be overall less effective in combat against regular units, but will still do better against large groups of enemies.

This is just an intermediate step. Further iterations of the game will see the siege weapons receive special abilities that will have them perform the classic roles in combat, as area of effect / artillery weapons.

Quest giver shops

Shopping for high level items will now be less tedious, as all trades will now require only one base item, favor and some gold. If the player wants, let's say, 200 top tier "Cloth armor", they need to start with 200 basic "Cloth armor", and of course plenty of gold, and then visit the 4 appropriate quest giver huts to upgrade the items 4 times. Coupled with the "Secure the area" option under the new "Gather resources" tab, the player will be able to farm favor and then do the desired upgrades without working through low level content and without calculating how many initial items are actually needed for the desired number end items. The price of the upgrades however has been increased.

Some low level trades have been added to high level quest givers, for those players that wish to focus on the Knight Domain and Knight Estate maps.

Free crystal

As the game progresses, the amount of free crystal given out to starting player will decrease. The value has been changed to 7500, which is still 75$ worth of premium currency, or 75 months of free premium account benefits in game. This number shows our commitment to still add more content and proceed to develop the game further.