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[Kaje]

Beautiful, as always.

[gimli]

Beautiful, as always.

+1

[Jaysen]

Better late than never! Here is the newest blog post on specialized shops in Battle Brothers:

Dev Blog #67: Progress Update - Specialized Shops

A centerpiece of how individual settlements will feel distinct on the new worldmap of Battle Brothers is different buildings with a unique gameplay function. This week we’ll be taking a closer look at some specialized shops that are coming with the update in February.

Specialized Shops

If you’ve watched our Update Preview Video you’ll already know that every settlement now comes with a marketplace. The marketplace works as an amalgamation of what a variety of smaller traders peddle throughout the settlement. That is, all kinds of different goods and equipment that are regionally available. Apart from supplies, such as different kinds of food, this may also include weapons, armor and shields. However, the selection on the marketplace is limited to what those traders bought themselves and are now reselling, the quality is limited to what is commonly available to and affordable by the people living there, and the equipment may have been used before and look the part. You may even find the occasional great deal here, but to outfit your growing mercenary company you’ll eventually want to look elsewhere.



For those who have the crowns, there are specialized traders available for weapons and armor which have a much larger selection of quality equipment, brand-new but also quite a bit more expensive. These traders are the weaponsmith, the armorsmith and the fletcher. You are more likely to find these in the settlements surrounding fortifications than small fishing villages, and while the smithies are more likely to be found in settlements with good access to metal, you’ll find the fletcher in settlements with good access to wood.



Whereas the weaponsmith will have a large variety of melee weapons on offer, with a few throwing weapons thrown in, the fletcher specializes in ranged weaponry. The selection of ranged weapons in the game is still limited at this time, of course, but we’ll eventually add more of them that will then make their way to the fletcher as well. To make browsing specialized shops more interesting and also worth it later in the game, you’ll now be able to sometimes find unique named weapons on offer - for kingly prices, of course.



An even more specialized shop than those three is the kennel. You can pick up a wardog or two all over the land, but if your tactics happen to rely heavily on man’s best friend, you’ll want to head out to go to the source: one of only a few kennels across the land where the best dogs of war are bred and sold in large numbers. Kennels are usually part of smaller fortifications, so they’re worth visiting for reasons different than large castles. Dogs and their handler are yet to be added to the image you see above.

There’s a bunch more buildings coming, including one that will allow you to customize the appearance of your Battle Brothers to your liking. Return here, as we’ll be revealing them in future progress updates!

[Majestic7]

Customizing battle brothers makes me think of a barber,who will add facial scars and remove eyes for that nice rough look as well. Sounds good - maybe in the future we can order custom equipment from master smiths at a horrible price? I imagine a custom-fitted armor, for example, would be the best one can wear to battle.

[Jaysen]

hehe yes, it will actually be a barber

[gimli]

hehe yes, it will actually be a barber

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Greenbane]

A couple of updates which weren't relayed here:

January 22th: Progress Update – The Little Things
January 29th: Update Date Announcement, Pretty Pictures

So the Worldmap Update is coming out in about a month, on February 29th!

Jaysen, if you're around, how much work would be left after that till the full release?

[Jaysen]

Hey, sorry for not having postet those last updates - have cought an illness and other things *enter random excuse*-

After the big Patch we will most importantly do a rework of the combat maps, mostly visual stuff. We also want to add real obstacles like houses or Crypts and so on. On top of that we want to increase roster size and we are thinking about an injury system to go along with that bigger roster size so you have to cycle through your guys when they get wounded (xcom-style).
There is so much more that we want to do but i can already see some of the things will have to be cut. We will give a big lookout after the Worldmap Update is released

[Jaysen]

Here is the Update Announcement in full length, so its just one month away!

Dev Blog #69: Update Date Announcement, Pretty Pictures

February is almost upon us, time to announce a date! The worldmap update will be released exactly one month from now, on February the 29th. We’ll use the time until then for adding some more minor features and more content, as well as for bugfixing and balancing. As the release draws closer, Jaysen will also start a new Let’s Play series to give you a tour of how the game now plays.

Bugfixing and balancing doesn’t make for good content in blog updates, sadly, so this week we’re a bit short on material. Let’s look at some pretty pictures instead!

Pretty Pictures

Most of the worldmap visuals are finished now. There’s a few settlement locations left to be done, like the harbor, but at this point it’s more polishing than creating new assets. Take a look at one of our new environments, the steppe. It’s modelled after terrain you’d find in some southern European countries, like Spain. With a drastically different look from the tundra and snow you can find in the north, it makes for more distinct regions in the world and more variety as you travel it. How much steppe there is, and where it is exactly, changes with each world you generate.



Swamps also received an overhaul. Looking more dreary now, they can be found in small to medium stretches more or less all over the world. Traversing them has become slightly faster, but travelling on dry land is still preferable. That ground fog is actually animated, and they have quite a lively sound ambience.



Mountains are still not something you want to cross regularly, as it takes a long time and is costly in terms of supplies. To make it easier to distinguish them from hills, all mountains now have snow caps. Should you make it to the top, you’ll be able to see far across the land - useful perhaps if you’re looking for something.

Hills are now a common terrain that can be crossed at decent speeds. Settlements at hillsides often have an economy based around mining, like the one in the picture below. Goats are held here as a source of food, and you’ll be able to purchase goat cheese in the settlement. The gem mine will also likely make caravans from here juicy targets for bandits, which in turn means good job opportunities for mercenaries.



Noble houses are quite a bit more active than the Landsknechts of old, especially when it comes to defending their territory. This picture shows a company of soldiers led by a knight battling against a horde of marauding orcs. Speaking of orcs, they had all their sounds redone and a lot of new ones added to bring them to the same level as goblins.

[ThtblovesDF]

Lovly, already had a lot of fun with the game and those updates look sweet.

[Anvilfolk]

The size of that battle though!

If I had to point out one thing that I wasn't incredibly excited about in the last few updates is that the village screens seem to have a lost a bit of their grit. The game had this really gritty atmosphere that kind of went away with more colour and cleanliness, if that makes sense!

Can't wait to play the next update though!

[Jaysen]

Time for a new progress post, this time we have the long awaited visual character customization in the mix:

Dev Blog #70: Progress Update - Customizing Appearances, Nighttime Vista

Work continues on balancing, bugfixing and adding more content to the game for the update on February 29th. We’re also adding some more minor features, one of which we’ll take a closer look at today: the ability to customize the appearance of your Battle Brothers.

The Barber

The barber offers his services in a building you’ll be able to find at the larger cities around the world. Whether you’re looking for someone to cut hair, trim beards or sell you dubious potions to lose weight, the barber has you covered for a modest fee.



With the barber we’re adding the ability to customize the appearance of any characters in your roster to your liking. Getting to know your Battle Brothers and bonding with them as they accomplish heroic feats or flee like cowards is part of the fun, and now you’re able to grow that axe guy who saved everyone a suitably majestic beard, or shave clean the head of the coward who runs at every battle. Some players have expressed that they’d like to mold characters to their likeness, or to that of characters from their favorite book or movie, and that’s possible now as well. And like all buildings in the game, the barber, too, helps settlements feel more distinct in the services that they offer.



Nighttime Vista

As the sun sets and the moon rises, as your men drag through the snow in the dark, settlements are now visible as beacons of civilization from afar, for they light torch and candle.

[Jaysen]

In this weeks update we have the new tavern building and also parties lieaving tracks on the worldmap:

Dev Blog #71: Progress Update - Taverns & Tracking
Two more features join the list for the update on February 29th this week. Taverns are a hub for information and mood management of your men, and tracking allows you to follow or avoid other parties on the worldmap more easily. That leaves us with only one more feature left following these that we really want to include in the update, and that’s a better tutorial as you start a new campaign. But for now, let’s take a look at taverns and tracking!

Taverns

Taverns with the capacity to serve a mercenary company can be found in larger settlements, cities and castles, and the odd small village along trade routes. Laughter can be heard coming from it pretty much around the clock, as it’s one of the few buildings that can be entered both day and night. It’s also the first instance that we’re using small atmospheric images in the UI, as you’ll see below, and the idea is to have a whole bunch of them complement the events in the game as we skin the UI later down the road.



Although taverns aren’t the most critical of buildings, they nevertheless fill with the services they offer what was previously a vacant spot in the world of Battle Brothers. These services revolve heavily around beverages, and they’re talking to the patrons for news and rumors while sharing a beer, and paying a round for your own men in order to get their spirits up. We’ll look at each of them in detail.

As you enter the tavern, you’ll immediately pick up some talk amongst the patrons. What they talk about comes in different categories, and we may add additional useful ones as the game progresses in development.



Patrons can talk about potential work for you that they’ve heard about - as the world has become a bit larger now, it’s quite useful to get directions to people that are looking to hire sellswords so that you have a better idea of where to head next.

Patrons can also talk about nearby hidden locations. If you’ve played previous versions of Battle Brothers, you may remember contracts that have you find locations based on vague directions. Those type of contracts aren’t in the game anymore, but that same mechanic is now used for entirely optional locations, potentially full of treasure, you may head out to plunder on your own. The level of directions that individual people can give will differ, so it’s sometimes useful to get directions from several people in order to better pin down where a location might be. You can pay a round for everyone in order to loosen their tongues and have them share more news and rumors with you.

Finally, patrons will also give you flavor responses that tell you more about their situation, the lore of the world and the settlement you’re in, and news about what's happening in the realm. They may also share light gameplay tips, such as soldiers explaining the advantage of high ground or talking about their experience of fighting goblins and how best to approach it. These types of responses depend heavily on where you are, so you’ll more likely be talking with soldiers at castles, and fishermen at fishing villages. We want the world to feel more lively, more lived in, and this is another step towards that goal.



The other service available at taverns is paying a round for your own men. This will generally lift everyone’s spirits and make them forget the horrors of battle for a while, but it comes with its own risk and reward.

Every time you pay a round and the men cheer to different things, there’s a chance that the mood of people improves, but also of them getting drunk. Mood is more important now as we attached additional benefits and penalties to it, and it should become more interesting in general as we do a minor rework of how the mood system works in the future. Being drunk, on the other hand, is a new status effect quite detrimental to combat effectiveness, although it does make people more brave. It doesn’t persist for long, but is succeeded by a hangover, which is a more mild debuff. Whether people get drunk or not heavily depends on their traits. For example, strong and tough characters don’t get drunk easily, whereas tiny and fragile characters do. All this then comes down to the decision of how many rounds you want to spend for your men in order to increase the mood of the company vs. the increasing risk of them getting drunk and being severely handicapped the following day.

Tracking

All parties now leave tracks for you to follow that look like footprints on the map. Different factions use their own footprints so that you can see at a glance whether it’s humans, orcs or beasts who moved though. Footprints also scale with the size of the party, so you’ll have a rough idea on how many individuals it is that you’re tracking. Note that we’re still experimenting with the visuals right now, so it may end up looking slightly different in the game.



We’re adding the tracking mechanic in order to give you a better idea on what’s happening around the limited radius of vision you have on the worldmap, and to introduce new gameplay opportunities. Even if you lose sight of a party now, you’ll still be able to follow their tracks. You can also potentially follow the tracks of the bandit raiders you just bested back to their camp, and you have more options to both find and avoid parties on the worldmap. Don’t follow large orc or goblin tracks if you aren’t prepared for what lies ahead!

[Anvilfolk]

Good grief, Battle Brothers's next update with basically be Battle Brothers 2! Can't wait!

[Jaysen]

hehe yes, it certainly feels that way especially as we have reworked basically every part of the worldmap After the big update we will return to smaller and more frequent updates though.