Greetings Adventurers,
We’re excited to bring forth this update as our Q1 Quality of Life update. The main focus of this update was to level up the current set of characters skill sets and kits and make certain characters a bit more fun to play. We also have a whole host of global changes - Find skills can now activate on vehicles, we’ve made some changes to how Taunt works, and the dreaded misclick on the overworld costing you focus can now be refunded!
We’ve also made broad changes to the in-game encyclopedia, reworked tooltips to provide more pertinent information, added a few new settings, squashed a bunch of bugs and smoothed out a few areas of the game. We are once again asking the Kraken to drop more loot.
Global Changes
Passive Skills
We initially wanted passive skills to activate only on land, while traveling on foot. This was to help promote exploration and curtail any overreliance on vehicles. This ended up being a feel bad so we’ve removed that condition and “Find” skills can now proc on vehicles. We’ve also improved their chances of proccing in certain conditions and to bolster that they’ll now scale slightly higher with certain stats. This change should go a long way in making characters feel much more alive in playthroughs, as well as help address combat balance. Be sure to check out the in-game Encyclopedia to learn more about each of the skills and their improvements as we now provide more context on how or when they can proc.
- Find Alcohol, Find Herb, Find Scroll all now scale with Luck.
- Find Potion has been renamed to the more appropriate Craft Bomb. Functionally it is still a “Find” skill that can be activated on vehicles and scales with Luck.
- Nice Day similar to “Find” skills will activate on vehicles and scales with Luck.
- Refocus similar to “Find” skills will activate on vehicles and scales with Intelligence.
Taunt
We’ve had frequent feedback that Taunt is less viable in For The King 2 than it was in For The King. We want to improve Taunt while also preventing it from becoming a must-have strategy in every fight. As a result we’ve switched Taunt to consume a Secondary Action rather than Primary, this will allow tanks to taunt as well as get an attack off during their round.
Focus Refund
Have you ever been on the overworld, clicked focus and then said to yourself “Oops! Now how do I get my Focus back?” If you have, then good news! Focus Refund is now an option and players won’t be penalized for consuming Focus when not intended. In situations where Focus is refundable, the icon will look half empty. Be cautious though, if you consume Focus and do a major action, such as move, then it is no longer refundable.
Adventure Balance
[spoiler]The Royal Mines[/spoiler]
- >
- We’ve adjusted the pace of the world level in [spoiler]The Royal Mines[/spoiler] to remove some of the pressure that makes the mission feel more aggressive than it should have been.
Character Skill Changes
Woodcutter
With For The King 2’s combat involving more enemies, and longer battles we wanted to bring the Woodcutter more inline with his expectation of being a damage dealer. With this in mind we’ve improved the area of attack for Justice. The Woodcutter is now also flexing his woodcutting skills as they now convert Tinder Pouch Safe Camps to a Log Cabin.
- Justice now delivers wave damage and causes 100% attack damage to the target, the target's flanks, and 50% attack damage to the tiles directly behind the target and flanks.
- Log Cabin offers the party a chance to Rest, Meditate, or the new ability - Relax. Relax will fully replenish your health and focus, but will also give you the Lethargy curse. Don’t get too comfortable!
- Elite Door Bash has been returned to the Woodcutter’s kit.
Hunter
The Hunter has long been a fan favourite so we wanted to keep their identity intact. There has been lots of discussion around Called Shot and Focus. This hasn’t changed - Called Shot is the Hunter’s way of boasting his abilities and we didn’t want to stray from that. That being said, we wanted to bring Hunter up to the task of having to deal with more complex battles. Called Shot will now do double damage and can trigger on bows, handbows, and guns, while also being able to trigger on a wider set of abilities.
- Called Shot will now do double the damage output versus the previous 15% boost.
- Called Shot can now trigger on guns and handbows, previously it would only trigger on bows.
- Called Shot can now trigger on a wider set of combat abilities.
Shepherd
Since FTK2 launched the Shepherd has been a polarizing character in the community. The effectiveness, or ineffectiveness, of her Sheep has controlled the conversation. To remedy that we’ve updated Herd and the flock associated with the ability. We’ve upgraded the base sheep with a Taunt ability, added a secondary sheep that provides a Healing bomb, and increased the chances of the Big Bad Wolf appearing.
- Sheep now has the Annoying ability which will Taunt until the end of their turn.
- The Healing Sheep also casts Annoying and will provide 20% healing to it’s neighbours when it explodes.
- Increased the chance of the Big Bad Wolf appearing.
- Big Bad Wolf can now cast Attack Up and Defense Up to go along with two different attacks.
Hobo
The point of the Hobo is to have nothing. This is something we want to stay relatively close to but we’re also aware that we need to make the Hobo more interesting and fun to play. Given the Hobo’s travels across Fahrul and their general lifestyle, we’ve given them a new ability called Scrounge.
- Scrounge allows the Hobo to Find almost any item in Fahrul.
- Often the Hobo will find a little bit of gold, herb, or scroll, but there is a chance they will find new weapons or attire as well.
Friar
The Friar being a new class to For The King we didn’t really know how people were going to take to them. From what we’ve seen they’ve been a big hit with many players, but with Cheers causing confuse to spread other party members, we understand many have been reluctant to take the Friar along on their journeys. With this update we’re doubling down on Cheers and making it so Iron Belly will also apply to allies, preventing confusion. With the improvement to Find Alcohol this should make for some pretty fun battles involving the Friar but may also open up avenues for Cheers being too powerful. We’re going to be watching out for how everyone takes to this change.
- Cheers now propagates Iron Belly when activated.
Blacksmith
The Blacksmith has been a favorite since For The King, and For The King 2 has been no different. With that in mind we didn’t want to get too crazy with their skillset, but we wanted to enhance the class’ ability to Tank—while also bringing something new to the table. With the changes to Taunt, tweaks to Steadfast to be more clutch, and their brand new skill, Mend, we hope the Blacksmith fills out their role a little better.
- Mend will prevent a breakable weapon from breaking for any party member.
- Steadfast now scales slightly with Vitality, Luck, Armor, and Resistance.
- Steadfast now has a higher chance to proc when the Blacksmith has lower HP.
Pathfinder
Another new character introduced with For The King 2, Pathfinder is either a staple for your party, or never in consideration. Their skill update will take place over two updates. Survey is often seen as a must-have skill but can be a bit nonsensical in how it activates so we’ve tightened up the requirements to make it a more contextually meaningful skill. Scout now scales with Awareness but remains largely untouched for this update. We have big plans for Dungeons in the upcoming months that will bring new changes to Scout. Pathfinder mains stay tuned!
- Survey will now find encounters from the current biome within a radius of 8 hexes. Previously, Survey could find POIs from much further away. This change was made to allow them to find more meaningful locations to the party’s current location.
- Scourge Haunts can now be discovered with Survey.
- Survey now scales slightly with Awareness and Luck.
- Scout now scales slightly with Awareness.
Stablehand
Stablehand has been a popular addition to For The King 2. Lots of players have been able to exploit Hardwork so our goal was to keep it fun, while maintaining what makes Hardwork a great skill. Hardwork will now chain with decreasing frequency during the same turn. This will make it less exploitable and more of a feel good when chaining multiple Hardworks together.
- Hardwork will always activate on its first attempt on last focus use.
- Subsequent activations become less likely with each activation in a given turn.
- Hardwork now scales slightly with luck.
Farmer
The Farmer has been one of the more polarizing characters in For The King 2. Early feedback was that the Farmer was a huge fan favorite and everyone (except the poor sheep) was loving the Scarecrow. Over time the conversation shifted a bit and the Farmer and Scarecrow fell a bit out of favor due to the rigidness of the Scarecrows placement. To alleviate that feedback we’ve moved Construct Scarecrow into a new ability called Last Straw. Last Straw will allow the player to choose where to place their Scarecrow. Now that the Scarecrow can live in the front and back row we’ve given him a new ability called Decoy. Decoy will have the Scarecrow absorb an attack that is targeted to a character to its left or right.
- Construct Scarecrow has been renamed to Last Straw.
- Last Straw will now activate at the start of the turn and allow the Farmer to place the Scarecrow in the front row or back row.
- Decoy will intercept a hit from an attack on a party member in an adjacent tile.
- Last Straw slightly scales with Strength, Vitality, Awareness, and Luck.
Alchemist
Alchemist being another new playable character in For The King 2 we were really excited to see how players were able to get this chaotic class into their party formation. However, most of the Alchemist conversation was centered around the activation chances for Find Potion, now renamed to the more meaningful Craft Bomb. To improve their kit we’ve slightly increased how often the Alchemist finds bombs, so we’re going to let them cook some more and see what everyone thinks of their viability now that they'll be much more crafty.
- Greater chance of Crafting Bombs in more scenarios.
Herbalist
I think it’s safe to say that the Herbalist is sitting pretty high up in the tier list. Starting with Party Heal and Find Herb is a pretty strong combination. The Herbalist may not be perfect, but with the global changes to Find Skills we want to see how they perform before making any drastic changes.
- Find Herb now scales slightly with Luck.
Scholar
Similar to the Herbalist, the Scholar is pretty strong out of the gates. With the Scholar’s Find Scroll benefiting from the global changes to Find Skills we’ve pretty much left the Scholar as is.
- Find Scroll now scales slightly with Luck.
Gameplay Changes
Overworld
- Ambush encounters on the Overworld will no longer reveal the enemy map prop while the player is walking to the ambush location.
- Fixed an issue when using the Treasure Map the camera would pan but the clouds wouldn’t open to reveal the chest location.
- Improved walking animations when leaving a town with a follower, ending a turn on a hex with a full party, walking from a boat to land, and improved companion walking animations.
- Fixed the issue with non-thematic enemies spawning on water.
Combat
- The combat timeline now includes more status effects, and not just tick damage based icons.
Dungeons
- Tinder Pouches can now be used at any rest phase. Previously they could only be used at the end of a floor on multi-floor dungeons.
Kraken
- Fixed the issue where killing the Kraken with a damage over time status was preventing the achievement from unlocking.
- Defeating the Kraken, by killing its head, will drop good loot. Defeating a tentacle will now drop a random herb.
- Improved visuals for Kraken fight.
Online
We continue to work and improve the overall network stability, primarily around disconnecting. We are currently working on a broader change to online that we hope to share details on soon. With this update we’ve resolved a handful of desync and sotflock issues, added Hong Kong as a region to the available servers, and from a UX perspective off-turn players will now see encounter roles and outcomes.
UX/UI
To improve readability and game information we’ve made broad changes to our tooltips as well as our popcorn text. In-game tooltips, and the in-game Encyclopedia, now contain much more detailed information aimed at providing more context on various aspects of the game. Popcorn text now contains the matching icon to the text. This change is to improve the visual consistency as well as better inform players on what’s happening in real-time. The combat timeline will now also show more status icons for any active statuses. Previously the timeline only showed status icons for statuses that provided tick damage.
- Popcorn text now shows matching icons.
- Most tooltips have been fully rewritten to provide more context. These can be seen during an adventure and in the encyclopedia.
- Item Card Blur - In Gameplay settings we’ve added an option for Item Card Blur. This blurs out the scene when looking at an item card to improve the focus of what is being looked at.
- Fixed a bug where removing a character while Class Info is open leaves the Class Info box behind.
- Fixed an issue where devoting to sanctums would have the popcorn text appear twice.
- Fixed one of the issues in combat where the screen could go black.
- Fixed an issue in combat where visual fx wouldn’t appear on subsequent uses.
Encyclopedia Changes
With all of the character improvements the Encyclopedia saw a big improvement under Special Abilities. The changes to abilities and tooltips required a big change to the Special Abilities > Skills section in the Encyclopedia. Each skill has its own detailed breakdown of what stat it can scale with, effects, activation requirements, and conditions that may prevent activation.
Achievements
- Fixed the issue where watching the ending cinematic wasn’t always triggering the achievement.
Controller
As we work on our console version of FTK2 we will be doing ongoing work to improve the controller experience.
- Removed diagonal pathways in combat to improve the north/south and east/west traversals when selecting tiles on the battle grid.
- Improved the controller button press cooldowns to improve the controller experience.
- Fixed an issue on controller where the player was unable to regain control after dismissing a tutorial during a scourge event.
- Fixed the issue where controller couldn’t select rewards in certain situations.
- Fixed the issue where controller couldn’t use repair or reclaim services in ports.
All players will need to have updated to the latest build to play together in multiplayer.
We will continue to work on and improve the game so please stay tuned for further updates.
Thank you for your continued support!
⚔️IronOak Games
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