The Iron Oath Update #54 – Company Renown and Upgrades

Curious Panda’s gritty turn-based RPG The Iron Oath will have you managing a mercenary company. And as such, the game’s latest Kickstarter update lets us know how that will work by explaining the ins and outs of the Renown system and highlighting some of the upgrades you’ll be spending your renown points on. Check it out:

Hey everyone, we hope you’re all doing well! In today’s update we’re going to be talking about the specifics of how you go about upgrading your company, and what type of options are available.

Renown and how to purchase Company Upgrades

Upgrades can be purchased via the management menu by spending Renown Points. Renown is a secondary resource that you primarily earn by completing missions. It can also be acquired during certain overworld encounters based on the outcome (like helping someone out). Renown is essentially XP for your company and is a measure of how well-known you are. After reaching certain thresholds of total Renown you will gain a Renown Point which can be spent in the upgrade screen. There is no limit to how many renown points you can acquire, so given enough time you will be able to upgrade everything you possibly can.

We decided to go with this type of resource/upgrade system because the game already had quite a few elements that put a drain on your coin, and we want to ensure that the player is always able to improve their company over time, regardless of how rich or poor they are. Aside from upgrades, your total renown also plays a part in determining which type and difficulty of missions are available to you. Special organizations and Houses won’t entrust their tasks to just anybody, and you will need to reach a certain amount of renown before you gain their attention.

Spending your Renown Points

To spend your points, you can head into the ‘Company Upgrade’ screen to purchase whatever is most relevant to your current situation. Each upgrade costs 1 Point, however some upgrades require you to have amassed a specific amount of Renown, or to research certain prerequisite upgrades beforehand. Some upgrades are broken up into 2 or 3 segments and can be purchased multiple times to increase the effectiveness of that upgrade.

Upgrades are split up into 4 different categories. The General tab covers things that have to do with your company and caravan as a whole, such as training faster horses and increasing roster capacity.

Expeditions has upgrades related to dungeon exploration and combat. From here you can increase the amount of provisions you can take with into a dungeon (as well as providing a better selection of provisions), and other things like improving your scouting efficiency in the exploration phase.

The Council tab is where you can hire a Battlemaster, Emissary and Spymaster and unlock their various unique actions and passive abilities (here is an older post on the council, we’ll have a deeper dive into it at a later date once we feel ready to make a video about it).

The final tab is Alchemy, which is where you research magical incenses for you to burn when camping, providing you with various primary and secondary effects that aid you in combat and dungeon exploration. We’ll go over this part more in our upcoming ‘Camping’ update which will likely be one of the next two.

On the art side of the game things are progressing steadily as we get closer to finishing all the enemies and characters that we plan to launch with. Here are two newer timelapses for those who like to see the process[…]