The Iron Oath – Early Access Patch and Video Interview

The latest early access patch for Curious Panda’s turn-based mercenary RPG The Iron Oath fixes a heap of bugs, tinkers with the game’s balance, and introduces a few quality of life improvements, like being able to skip the prologue.

But before we get to the actual patch notes, you might also be interested in this recent video interview from The Escapist featuring two of the game’s developers:

And now, the patch notes:

Hello mercenaries! Today’s patch is a pretty big one with many bug fixes, balance changes, and QoL features (like skipping the prologue!). Be sure to update your client.

Going forward, our plan is to patch as needed on Fridays. Next week we’ll be focusing on three commonly requested things: repairing gear, comparing items in the market to equipped gear, and the ability to see when your merc’s salary payments are due (so you can plan accordingly). Here are the patch notes for this week:

Patch Notes for 0.5.141

Fixes

• The damage from Burns now increases based on the number of stacks applied
• You can no longer cycle through temporary allies when viewing character sheets within party select (there was a crash you could trigger during the final fight of the prologue by doing this)
• Dismissing characters from the company will now update the UI to accurately reflect the current number of active units
• Dismissing characters from the company will now properly pay them the coin required to do so
• Available contracts in a city will no longer change upon leaving and re-entering the city, or saving and loading
• When an enemy is rooted, they will no longer pass on their turn if they have a viable target to attack
• The Huntress’ Overwatch upgrade that increases its range to 3 is now working as intended
• Fixed a bug where if the Huntress killed an enemy with Overwatch, the next 2 enemies would take their turn at the same time
• If the target of the Guardian’s Judgment ability dies, the channel will be aborted
• The number of stacks for the Guardian’s Radiance passive is now properly displayed on the status icon
• When exiting a dungeon, the dungeon details tooltip will no longer get stuck on screen if you happened to be mousing over it as the overworld loaded
• Spectral Weepers will no longer fear their own allies
• The control maps for Wait and Guard are now shown correctly in the Options menu
• You can now open the escape menu in areas you previously could not (during AI turns in combat, and during dialogue events)
• The Charion Behemoth’s death animation is now visible
• Channel length now updates properly in the ability’s tooltip when upgraded (note: the initial channel length of some abilities is still off – this is being investigated)
• Can now enable debug settings by setting the value for DebugEnabled to True in the config file
• Skeletons that are summoned by necromancers will not be able to act until the next round of combat
• The point cost of incenses are now displayed in the company upgrades screen
• The Resuscitate upgrade for Healing Trance now works properly (previously it would only restore bleedout points if the target was knocked down)
• Re-enabled the Dreadknight’s Pull of The Void ability
• The House Skirmisher should now deploy their Spearwall ability a bit more intelligently (The Skirmisher’s AI still needs some fine tuning though)
• Fixed a scripting error that displayed a character’s name as “0” during the introduction of the ‘Direct Action’ quest
• You can now target Sleeping allies with a Basic Attack in order to wake them up
• Certain Noble quests will no longer crash upon accepting them
• When loading a save file, the encumbered icon will no longer display unless you are actually encumbered
• Potentially fixed a crash that could occur when a player character died with certain buffs/debuffs applied to them
• Fixed a potential crash when channeling certain abilities
• The Risen Bonecrusher’s Shield Bash attack will no longer Stun the target if they evade it
• After Waiting with a character, you will no longer be able to Wait a second time in the same round (doing so previously would forfeit their turn)
• The Stormcaller’s Rainfall ability no longer applies multiple instances of wet terrain on a single cell
• Fixed a soft lock that could occur if all party members died except for one who was charmed
• The damage previews for Skewer, Sweeping Spear, and Holy Barrage now work
• The Wet debuff has been altered to do 50% bonus damage, instead of a forced critical (there still is an issue where units that run through wet terrain are not given the debuff)
• When using the Huntress’ Hone and Overwatch abilities, you are now required to target the Huntress in order to use them (no more misclicks!)
• Potentially fixed an issue where characters of the same class could have different base Speed values
• Fixed an issue where a character who was ‘Waiting’ as the previous fight ended would incorrectly start the next fight at the back of the turn order

Additions and Changes

• When starting a new campaign, you can now choose to skip the entire prologue, giving you immediate freedom of where to go
• Added a large font option for dialogue
• Holding spacebar will now quickly skip through all dialogue, only pausing when there are multiple dialogue choices available
• You can now close the dungeon provisions window by hitting the same key used to open it
• Added a new company upgrade called Draft Horses which increases your available storage space
• Your storage space now defaults to a capacity of 25, with all items contributing to it regardless of their type (previously it was based on whether or not you were encumbered in a single category)
• Added a Scouting Report to the party select screen, displaying which enemies you can potentially face (currently this only works for dungeons, not overworld encounters)
• You can now see the environment/tileset during the party select screen
• During the party select screen, you can now view the character sheet for people that are already assigned to the party without having to first remove them (hover their portrait to bring up the button)
• A skull will now display over an enemy’s health bar to indicate if the attack will be a killing blow (in addition to the red glow we previously had)
• Enemy groupings are now more varied with a few other enemies mixed in (where it makes sense to do so)

Balance

• The frequency of overworld encounters has been reduced, but have been made more difficult (more enemies)
• Removed the temporary immunity that was applied to your characters when they were repeatedly afflicted with the same status effect
• The Stormcaller’s Wind Surge ability now cleanses all negative conditions (instead of only a few specific ones)
• The Stormcaller’s Rainfall now heals for a small amount over time (in addition to its previous effects)
• The Pugilist’s ‘Mind, Body and Soul’ ability now heals for a small amount (in addition to its previous effects)
• The Valkyrie’s Skewer has had its damage reduced from 135% to 125% (based on Power)
• The Valkyrie’s Sweeping Spear has been buffed from 100% to 135%
• The Huntress’ True Sight ability no longer requires line of sight to the target and has infinite range
• The Pyrolancer’s Return To Cinder ability now does damage equal to 60% of Power, increased from 20%
• The damage of the Pyrolancer’s Infernal Pillar ability has been reduced to 150% of Power, down from 175%
• The damage shield granted by the Guardian’s Safeguard ability is now 50% more