Elemental: Fallen Enchantress Developer Diary and Screenshots

With the Fallen Enchantress public beta test kicking off in three days, Stardock has treated us to three new “official” screenshots and a new developer diary penned by lead designer Derek Paxton that covers the standalone add-on’s ten different factions. Here’s a summary of what changes from faction to faction:

Base Stats

Each race has different base stats. Amarians (the race of Pariden) have the highest intelligence, Trogs (the race of Yithril) have the highest strength. The stats are the starting point for the sovereign, champions and your armies. It will be easier to use heavy armor and weapons if you have the strength bonuses the Trogs offer, likewise your units will have more hit points if they are Ironeers (the race of Gilden) rather than Amarians.

Unique Units

Each faction has ten pre-designed unit types. These units automatically upgrade as new weapons become available. There is, for example, one archer unit. But that archer unit will use the best bow the player has. Units that are already created can upgrade their weapons armor, though it isn’t cheap.

Each faction has three unique pre-designed units. Tarth has the Clan of the Crow instead of archers. These unique units always have different equipment or traits and are usually better versions of that sort of unit, though they may take longer to train.

These unique units are our favorites for each of the factions, but you can create your own. If you want a unit like Capitar’s Silver Swordsmen for Yithril then you can create a Yithril unit with the same traits. Or you can create a new mix of traits for your units.

Faction Traits

Each factions has two traits, one always grants them access to a tech so the factions have different starting techs (and therefor different starting improvements, etc) and the other trait affects the faction as a whole. Gilden’s trait halves the production cost of weapons and armor, Yithril’s improvements the Strength and Constitution of their units, etc.

Players can create their own factions and pick from a large number of faction traits and add an additional trait if they select a faction weakness.

Sovereign

Each faction has a sovereign whose traits and weaknesses are as important as the faction itself. Choose a powerful fighter like the Warlord Verga if you want to go battle monsters toe to toe. Choose those that gives bonuses to their armies like General Carrodus if you want to improve the champions you find and soldiers you train. Or choose one of the magic focused sovereigns like Procipinee or Ceresa if you want to rule with magic.

And as with all of the above, you can always make your own.