At IronOak Games we are passionately dedicated to making For the King II the best experience it can be for everyone. We've been closely listening to feedback and working hard to address various network issues and bring new content with the Dark Carnival update. We truly hope you enjoy these improvements, the new adventure, and the re-introduction of Bards.
Step right up and enjoy the endless fun that the Ringmaster has brought to Fahrul with his traveling band of misfits! From carnival tickets, clowns, games, and leaderboards galore - the Dark Carnival has something in store for everyone! The Dark Carnival attracts all kinds of sorts, and the Minstrel has been seen regaling her tales of splendor at many a pub; meanwhile, the Busker has his hat passing around as he entertains the crowds.
The Dark Carnival is an infinite dungeon mode that challenges adventures to put their skills to the ultimate test. Your goal is to conquer as many floors as possible before you meet your inevitable demise. Will you be able to unlock all of the mysteries of the Ringmaster? Many surprises await those who dare to enter. But, be wary of the many fates of the Dark Carnival, as the deeper you go the more twisted it becomes. Perhaps fortunes will favour you and the Wheel of Death will aid you as you try to escape your fate!
WATCH THE LATEST BOOK OF LORE & UNRAVEL THE DARK CARNIVAL
If you’d prefer to watch a short video that delves into the mysteries of the Carnival, simply watch our latest Book of Lore. It’s sure to give you a crash course in everything weird and wonderful the Dark Carnival has to offer.
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NEW DARK CARNIVAL CONTENT
We’ve been working hard to develop a ton of new content for you to enjoy! We don’t want to spoil everything, but on your adventure expect to find:
- New weapons
- New enemies
- New gear
- New achievements
- New environments
- New Lore Store unlocks
- New Markets
CARNIVAL TICKETS
In the Dark Carnival, Carnival Tickets are shared as a party resource. Located in the top left of the global header, parties will see how many tickets they have in any given room. Carnival Tickets are required to access the hallways presented at different times throughout your journey.
Spend your Carnival Tickets wisely. If you run out of tickets you may end up face to face with The Royal Droll.
WHEEL OF DEATH
Deep within the Dark Carnival is the Wheel of Death. A curious device that will manipulate the behaviour of the carnival itself. Certain paths will allow adventurers to take their fate into their own hands. Is it wise to collect wheel wedges, or use them as they arrive? Only time will tell.
BARDS
The sound of music is sweeping across Fahrul as the Minstrel and Busker arrive to help quell the Queen and tame the Dark Carnival. Bringing their entertainment and inspiration to every party they join, the fan favorites are making their welcome return!
NEW ENCOUNTERS
Bold new encounters lie within the Dark Carnival. Will they aid you in your quest to escape the Carnival, or are they more twisted machinations of the Ringmaster devised to end your party. Each party may need to look deep within themselves to see if they can pass these trials.
LEADERBOARDS
What good are fun and games if you can’t strive to be the best and showcase your parties abilities across all of Fahrul? Whether you take on the carnival alone, or with a party of your choosing, there is now a leaderboard to highlight your exploits.
Each month will also showcase recent champions, and their Stone Heroes will populate adventures in the overworld and Dark Carnival. Stay focused adventurers, for the memories of Fahrul will fade and new champions will be selected each month.
NETWORK UPDATES
In addition to bringing you a wealth of new content, we’ve also been hard at work to improve network stability by making improvements in three key areas. If you’ve already played the Experimental Branch, you may already be aware of these new additions. First, we have reduced the amount of data we are sending - which will improve reliable connections and reduce the potential for disconnections. In addition, we’ve also implemented two new key features to improve the reconnection experience: Auto-reconnect and Join-in Progress. More details on these areas below.
NEW FEATURE: AUTO-RECONNECT
We’ve implemented a system that will attempt to automatically reconnect players that get disconnected from their session.
If a player drops out of the session due to loss of connection, the game will attempt to reconnect them within a 30-second window. Players will now be able to reconnect seamlessly if rejoining within 30 seconds.
If a client rejoins after a crash, quitting the game or timing out on a reconnect, the host is informed with a party management pop-up that will allow them to reassign characters back to the player that disconnected.
NEW FEATURE: JOIN IN PROGRESS
Players now can join an adventure that is already in progress. This means you can join friends who have started an adventure already or rejoin a game if you were disconnected from the session.
Alongside these three improvements, we’ve also fixed a number of issues leading to online softlocks and desyncs. The overall online experience is greatly improved with this update. We remain committed to continuous improvement of our online experience and extend a huge thank you to our community, and everyone that has played FTK2, that has provided feedback and helped us improve our networking.
GAMEPLAY CHANGES
IMPROVED DUNGEON TIMELINE
To coincide with the release of Dark Carnival, the dungeon timeline has been improved. We’ve improved the descriptions and have added new icons and colours to depict rarity for the rooms that lie ahead. These changes are in both the Dark Carnival, as well as the overworld adventures.
IMPROVED LOOT DROPS
We’ve heard frequent feedback that it can be frustrating to not always get weapon drops that match your party composition. We’ve made a few adjustments that will now have loot drops detect if your party has appropriate weapons based on their class. The rate of detection will vary across the various difficulties, but you will now have a much easier time finding a wand for your Scholar or a better bow for your Hunter.
LORE STORE
We’ve removed the “Items” tab from the Lore Store. This contained the weapon families for certain weapons. These were in the Lore Store and intended to be a feel-good unlock that added to the player's experience. That hasn’t translated to the game as expected and caused confusion regarding weapons. The previously locked weapons are now part of the loot pool by default.
When these changes go live, anyone that used Lore to purchase the weapon families will have their spent Lore refunded.
ENEMY FOCUS BONUS
Enemies being able to use Focus is a bit of a divisive topic in the community. Our initial goal with enemies and focus was to show that enemies have evolved since the events of For The King. We were a bit overzealous with Focus and that has lead to periods of unbalanced gameplay and frustration. With that in mind we’ve removed Focus from lower level enemies and boss minions:
- Druid
- Mystic
- Witch
- Skelly Brute
- Skelly Cannon
- Boss/Scourge Minions
EVASION BALANCING
Evasion meta has been running hard with a couple of bugs. Namely players could overclock Evasion above the cap of 95, and there are generally too many ways to raise evasion. To bring evasion back into expected ranges we’ve fixed the bug with player stats able to go higher than 95 and we’ve reduced the amount of evasion provided by statuses. Evasion gear is still handing out the same evasion benefit, but spells and pipes have had their evasion reduced. The three evasion statuses will now apply 15 → 25 → 35. Previously the high side was granting 50 evasion. The Smoky Pipe and Fine Smokey Pipe will also grant these more appropriate evasion ranges.
ACHIEVEMENTS
Players have been able to get into states where they complete the requirement to unlock an achievement and the achievement stays locked and prevents the player from being unable to meet that first-time condition again. This has been corrected and players who were missing certain achievements should have them unlock correctly on next start up. Some achievements may need to the condition to be met again.
COMBAT
- We made a small tweak to the combat camera transitions during hit animations. If you’ve played a bunch you’ll notice a much smoother/quicker combat flow.
- We’ve added new animations to a variety of player skills - Party Heal, Mend, Justice. We’ll continue to add more in future updates.
- Characters with Attack Down would heal the opponent if their max damage value was negative.
- Fixed the issue that 2x2 enemies (ie Trolls) would only have statuses applied if their primary tile was targeted.
- Improved how Bleed status was being communicated on the combat timeline.
KRAKEN
- Fixed the issue where the Kraken could still be found after killing his head the first time.
MERCENARIES
We’ve lowered the base price of all mercenaries that are found in town shops on the overworld.
Mercenary shop prices scale up in the Dark Carnival as Mercs will not leave the party until their demise, or if they are affected by the Hangman.
ENCOUNTERS
- One of the Devious Enchanter outcomes had his worst outcome switched from Skip Turn to Max Focus Down.
UX/UI
- When shopping in Markets the selected items will now show the current quantity for each player. Helpful to see who is really hoarding all the Godsbeard!
- Fixed an issue where the Overworld would go blurry if the application window was resized during combat, or in a dungeon.
- Updated various icons throughout the game.
- We’ve improved how the Load Game Browser and Continue Preview present information about the previous game run.
- Adventure pathing - After completing an adventure the Adventure Map will now draw a line to the next story adventure.
- Added the lobby name to the chat window.
- Chat window can now be collapsed and moved around.
- Chat window "!" icon has been updated and moved to the global header. Notifications will now present as a red icon on the header.
SCOURGES
Scourges have undergone some changes to allow their abilities to affect the Dark Carnival, and in-turn, dungeons in the overworld adventures. We’ve also made some improvements to how they spawn in the overworld. This will be most noticeable in the second adventure, The Primordial Oak. We have plans to improve scourges in an upcoming update. Please let us know how their spawn patterns feel now so that we can make sure to update them closer to being line with game design and community expectations.
- Bogdrinker[list]
- Overworld ability now applies poison & acid to combat tiles.
- Now has a chance to consume, or turn, sanctums after each dungeon room. Sanctums will be destroyed on encountering in dungeons if the Foul Priestess haunt is active.
- Darkness will now consume the dungeon and combat timelines.
- Ghost followers will now be removed when the Hangman dies.
- The Royal Droll has been confined to the Dark Carnival… for now.
DIFFICULTY SETTINGS
- No actual changes to the difficulty settings themselves, but we have moved the custom rules into a slide out to improve the visual layout during adventure selection.
SETTINGS
- We’ve added a “Reflections” option under the Graphics settings. This will allow players to have more control over reflection settings which could lead to performance gains on certain machines.
OPTIMIZATION
- Improved load times at the start of the game.
- Reduced memory footprint of certain fonts and textures to improve memory usage.
- Improved performance for FX on lower quality settings.
OTHER BUG FIXES
- Fixed the issue where earned Lore Points were not being saved for the Host if the Host disconnected during a loading screen.
- Fixed clipping on Queen’s Apprentice & Queen’s Novice Robes.
- Fixed the Hanged Soul’s portrait not being centred.
- Fixed the level 3 Pirate Maurader’s eye patch.
- Fixed the cosmetic Lucky Suit clipping on the Friar and Hobo.
- Fixed the Pickpocket mask clipping on the cosmetic Merling Skin.
- Fixed a debug string on the Gallows in the fourth adventure, The Hangman’s Noose, if certain conditions were met.
- Fixed the Reload action using the incorrect animation.
- Fixed an issue where quest Mercs or NPCs would join the party and appear in the next dungeon room.
- Fixed an issue where using a consumable would trigger the animation twice.
- Improved the visuals around status affects and how they are being cleaned up after combat.
- Fixed Bird Steal attack missing effects.
- Fixed the animation for Heroic and Plump characters when using Volley attacks.
- Fixed certain weapons not having the correct physics resulting in wild ragdoll events.
- And more!
Thank you for your continued support!
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