‘A week,’ I said. But I was bored. So actually… today.
Welcome back, companions. This is the last major update of DoW’s life cycle.
v. 2.7 Patchnotes
- Renate: +5% Str/Spd/Def growth
- Ramond: +3 HP
- Donagh: +25% HP growth
- C4: Boss instance of Ramond now has correct palette
- C6: Attempted to address issue where promoted Exiles would not raze settlements. Failed, but attempted anyway
- C6: Made Exile brigands more reliably raze settlements
- C9: Shop now sells Fire
- C12: Purge guy now two tiles north
- C12: Centre room marksmen now stationary inside fortified positions; centre room sages shuffled to form weird bandolier-looking formation
- C12: Instance of Ramond: +3 HP
- C14: Pulled back cavalry reinforcements closer to SE map edge
- C14: Removed two pegasi from E pegasus reinforcements
- C14: Removed one of the two reavers from the 9-10 NE axe+pegasus reinforcements
- C15: Jurechka: -3 Spd
- E-1: Removed jankiness of the opening eventing
- E-1: Swapped position of Wildbrand with a Seraph Knight
- E-1: Wildbrand now has Zorya Shield
- E-2: Merarchs now renamed to Captains
- E-2: Added four more unpromoted units to initial wave
- E-3: Corrected Ira’s intended attributes (+1 Str/Skl/Spd)
- E-3: Slightly cleaned up final eventing
- E-3: Credit sequence now plays intended theme
- E-3: Corrected Demon Surge to have intended Luna effect
- Slightly increased the support speed of many characters (largely those in Act 2)
- Corrected consistent geography of area where Kirsten grew up
- Corrected issue of Silver Sword hit (now 90, previously 80)
- Darkened tunic colour of Mercenary Ranger
- Corrected true death statuses of Estrelle (does not) and Andrea (does)
- New Repo item icons for Agovanje, Courtain, Hanger, Nibelung, Joyeuse, Kreshnikeve and Zabraven (LordGlenn), and Isamaa, Judita, Lacplesis and Komnene (CamTech)
Renate’s entire deal is meant to be that she’s cap-ramming Str/Def anyway, but her growths in those areas were a little too unreliable to be true to the concept. Speed came up, too, largely because the bevy of units in the 25-35% area had largely been nudged up a bit, giving her room to breathe in that area. Donagh gets a little something extra for green numbers and dopamine. Ramond was a little too ‘will die to a stiff breeze’ to really be effective in his intended role; Kalevi still has 8 defence on him, so it’s not like he’s lost his edge in durability; his C12 instance is boosted to match.
Thalassa comes with a Thunder now but maybe you want her to have a Fire, so now she can pick one up in the shop. C12 had slightly too much unpredictable 3-range death in the centre room, and there’s two nice little arrow-slit bunkers, so I set the marksmen in there and moved the sages so they won’t both fire back at Estrelle when she takes out the bolting guy; the purge guy, meanwhile, is now more easily sniped and a little less threatening. A little bit more freedom of movement in C12 goes a long way. C14 is generally a very well-regarded chapter, but did have a bit of an issue with jumping on the player’s head if they lingered too long in the east, so those reinforcements have now either pulled back closer to the edge or reduced in number.
Kirsten’s hometown of Saavo is in Meistrii province, not Kalju, as was implied by the plot. I apologise profusely for this immense lore error, and hope you can find it in your hearts to forgive me.
Trying not to kill Wildbrand in E-1 honestly took some doing, so she hangs back a little more now. It makes her squad more dangerous but also slightly reduces their threat range, and ensures that taking out Wildbrand herself (as she doesn’t share their squad) is going to be a deliberate move, like all the others. My Act 2 guys weren’t getting supports as quickly as I wanted, so a lot of them gain them +1 per turn faster.
I shuffled some things around in C6 that might make Carmilla’s goons more reliably burn shit, but honestly the NPC AI is just perplexing at times. They’re set to burn villages and sometimes do, but will sometimes just sit around instead. Positioning a couple of never-attack brigands toward the back may help, as their AI is more reliable. Similarly, the Second Sons behave like they have healing AI, even though they… do not. It is what it is, and it’s in keeping with them being self-serving mercenaries, I suppose.
For… some reason I had never looked at the item icon part of the repo, despite knowing it existed. It kind of hurts my eyes to squint at the tiny icons, but I gutted through it. Vanilla weapons remain the same, but now the S-ranks aren’t just FE8’s, the hanger isn’t a greenish, blunt-looking iron blade (we all learned together I am not good at icons) and so forth. I really like the way they look bigger and more imposing than vanilla’s, honestly; it helps them stand out.
If you’ve tried to play DoW before and been fucking annihilated, there’s also now an Easy Mode. I had originally planned to slacken timers, but ultimately they don’t tend to be that fast anyway, and besides, I really would have to play through them and find out the tempo and… I… don’t want to do that. Here is a broad-strokes solution, then, that probably won’t be an even difficulty curve but should provide a significantly more approachable experience. The perk of using a different patch for it is, if you start a DoW run but find it gets too hard, you can transfer your save to the Easy Mode ROM.
Easy Mode
- Pavel starts with a Lapis Gem, not a Ruby Gem
- All generic enemies have -3 personal bases (to a minimum of 0)
- +500 Gold to all bounties
- E-3: Gorgon magic reduced by 5
- E-3: Dreadlords Str/Spd reduced by 3
There’s also 0%, Min% and Max% growths, which… do exactly what you’d expect. Eventually I’ll probably staple together a Reverse Recruitment, if there’s demand.
So that’s… yeah, that’s it. I finished my ironman run, my first playthrough in about eight to ten months, and dusted my hands off and felt like, yeah, that’s that. Most of the rough edges are sanded over. There’s polish. I’m happy. I’ll fix any bugs but apart from that I think that’s just the game. Thanks for dragging me across the line; I really, truly could not have done it without your support.
