It’s patch day! Which mostly means nerfs so no one is ever happy about it.

Almost every character has been rebalanced. This was to help some of the older characters who haven’t been touched in awhile while the rules of the system and general trends of hero statting have changed. Such as removing all the knowledge and skill templates. So hopefully you just remember who is good at what professions other than combat.

Also we’ve cemented a grouping who can be thought of as world bosses or something similar. Basically they’re not on the humanoid scale anymore and require fleets/armies to really hope to deal with. Such as the archons, agallias, and Echo Prime. Note this includes Decaelys, their stats are perhaps deceptive. Though you already know her plan was to just pick up a planet and take it somewhere else, so that should be a red flag.

The method was to just create a tier list and put people into their bracket which was later assigned a level range based on the ceiling of the strongest characters. So some nerfs/buffs might seem a bit wild and others barely changed. Also added more templates because it is tradition that as a game gets older we need longer and longer blocks of text on their cards.

-Regeneration changed kind of, still convoluted as hell.
-Summon template clarified. Variants added: Raise dead, Vloz Summoner.
-Synapses and their templates reworked. Affects Valdir more than Nevun though. Also the synapse template itself is now way worse.
-Slayer: No longer gives defense bonus. Now gives critical range. Still gives offense. Now has a minimum stamina to activate. Might add that to more templates.

Rule Change – Aura bonuses do not stack, instead the highest is applied

New rule – Buying vehicles/ships costs soldiers support staff to crew them. Also buffed the recruitment speeds to make up for this a little. Tanks and ground vehicles can only be crewed by soldiers unless otherwise specified.

Ships in the shop have been tweaked a little bit, but now reflect the crew cost as well as their capacity to carry ground resources. For now each capacity is a point of power. I suppose soldiers agree to bunk up but Hero units demand their own fully furnished apartments.

New rule – Missions cost stamina, available on player sheet next to characters for tracking. Stamina regenerates at 2 per week if the character assignment is “none”. Stamina cost is calculated after mission completion, there are no plans for any consistency at this time. If a character reaches 0 stamina they take -1/-1 per point of negative stamina and cannot use their templates.

Character exp value requirements tweaked a bit.

Also I was trying to launch the patch on a slow week but its never slow around here. So I waited until you weren’t mid-combat with the Phantoms. Re-assess as necessary.

 

Stories of Lore 45

 

Greetings Koda, with Lancaster away in the Fae Wilds operational command has fallen to you. Irae may have forgotten to tell her that once you go into the wilds…well most people don’t come back. That’s what makes it mysterious.

The trip to Diadem is apparently still ongoing. They aren’t able to set up the permanent portal so we can send more forces through. They have lost contact with Gunhild, Laenadra, and Eleazor. It turns out the ‘monsters’ Echo Seven was talking about are all advanced self operating machines ranging in size from ‘oh look a dog with a gun’ to ‘thats a mech’. It is exceptionally difficult to scan due to the entire ring being mechanical and emitting similar signatures to that of its inhabitants. Though with what we now know, we believe the entire ring consists of these creatures. They behave as animals but they have military firepower as a part of their construction. The ring itself is constantly shifting and our forces are getting spread out or new waves of creatures are being pulled in towards them. It’s a little chaotic.

The Hasao Tei are notoriously difficult to talk to, though not unreceptive. They’re just led by a group of very stern and serious people. They’re also a little secretive, despite taking several million people from our existing colonies to live with them they seem to like being in a quieter section of Cayetano. At the very least we’ve opened relations to building a highway to their city so people can come and go easier.

The nature of Enohas’ moon means that establishing a long term colony is not very feasible. While it might last a few years, I will caution that eventually the arcane moon can produce erratic effects on construction. Especially any power system. In a pinch it can be used, but I would just caution about the investment. A colony without atmosphere is a dangerous proposition on a moon that can sometimes shut everything off.

Kaylen sent one of her agents to speak with us since she herself went back to Thenica to continue recruiting. She’s also apparently hunting down another Phantom colony, the one run by Hyvory apparently. An opportunity came up she felt the need to capitalize on. She’ll be available for diplomatic relations later if you want her to try talking to the Revenants or House Song. The admiral is in the care of one of her lieutenants at the moment.

The VSS Phalanx is on its way to jydoq alongside the Sparrow. The VSS Pegasus has lost contact though they’re too far out of range to know more than ‘they stopped responding at all’. The VSS Raven has received the message you wanted them to take to Zero North successfully but they took advantage of the catphone to let us know they aren’t sure they’ll make it. They’ve already lost half their crew to pirate attacks, bandit kidnappings, and a freak accident involving a comet that apparently could not be detected on any sensors. The VSS Deimos doesn’t seem to be having any issues and are continuing on their trajectory.

 

Portal construction on the moon of Enohas has been getting underway. The exploration of the ring world via portal has also taken place. Though it turns out to be more difficult than we expected to set up a colony and a permanent portal. Particularly because the ring world is always shifting and moving various ’tiles’ around. Which is really bad for permanent portals since the calculations of where “Point B” is has to be entirely redone if it does this. Let alone if it does it every couple of days. Theoretically once Eleazor figures out where the keys go, we’ll be able to stabilize things. For now…that’s an ongoing problem. The deployable colony hasn’t even been dropped yet while everyone is running around trying to find some semblance of stability or where the guy with the keys even disappeared to.

The jydoq warlords are kind of pushovers, without their old council or Merlan they don’t really seem to have people left with a strong sense of direction. However, after losing the duel with us, their entire leadership was found dead within two weeks. Grandmaster Kennae was distraught and came to yell at us for being a bit too bold. Though more importantly, he informed us that he is chasing something…strange around the jydoq worlds. After some mutual information swapping, he’s concerned the Phantoms found a new agent for jydoq. One that is currently operating on a small scale but has assassinated any rising leadership repeatedly. Part of his suspicions are aided by the fact that, and this slipped out in the conversation, apparently the Revenants absolutely adore Kennae and talk to him about all kinds of things.

Which led to something else that sounded important. According to Kennae, who says according to the Revenants…bit of a ‘friend of a friend of a friend’ trickle of information here actually. Anyways, rumor has it that Sakhessa is scrambling to keep jydoq together at the moment because us meddling there isn’t good for her. Merlan and the jydoq were projects of Arkaric’s personal interest. Now that Kanika is missing it falls to Sakhessa to maintain the jydoq situation until he gets back, and as we know Arkaric has a rule about working for him. All of his pawns can avoid being expendable only by being more valuable to him alive than their loss would benefit his other plans. Apparently Sakhessa is concerned if Jydoq falls apart she’ll fall into the ‘expendable’ category and he is notorious for expending people in ways they never see coming.

Which is why Kennae is a little upset with us, if we’re meddling than the Phantoms will meddle harder. He is fine with the Revenants since they can be discreet, though we just showed up and started throwing our weight around. To which end he cautions that we may wish to build more defenses. Because whatever is killing jydoq leadership startup plans has infiltrated some of their most secure facilities and somehow not left a trace. Which seems odd, given that they’re slime people. If they slide around the floor, there should be a trace.

Also Robert has been promoted to double CEO. To which end he reports that power gauntlets are a bit tricky to do with any level of rift technology, especially kari. He could draft designs for a piston based version of the concept but the recoil might damage the wielder just as badly unless it was wielded by a particularly large and slow figure who’d gain more advantage from the acceleration of the impact while still being able to withstand the force. Other designs can be summed up as “just enchant bull’s strength”.

We’ve started moving the turrets from Jamalia to the moon.

After a bit of surveying, you would think the merkas and arcurans are an endangered species with how many of them have been taken. They got uplifted so hard they just fell off their own homeworld. It turns out a primitive world with an endless war doesn’t have much population and we’ve been shipping them out for the last couple of years. Though the merkas are actually endangered, in the survey we found out that Valadeus led the arcurans to destroying those birthing trees the merkas rely on. Which pushed them even further to siding with Asmodan. We also discovered something peculiar, whereas Ilex created a male merkas to help alleviate the issues, Asmodan just used succubi. Which explains why they were so fiercely loyal to him.

The ones that remain on the planet live in an apocalyptic scenario where their extinction feels almost inevitable while the arcurans keep rapidly reproducing under the radiation of the arcane moon. There’s only maybe a dozen clans left that we can find – though I do mention they are known for being sneaky- and they’re all below a quarter of their original strength. Valadeus was even more ruthless than the arcurans had ever been before, it didn’t help that Asmodan was likely telling Valadeus where all of their warrens were from the other side. Their eradication is effectively complete. They live on only as Asmodan’s new minions.

The arcurans on the other hand are doing fine. The moon creates more of them, and they were on the winning team twice. It turns out both we and the Phantoms liked their crazy warrior culture and found it very useful. While there is only maybe three hundred thousand of them remaining on Enohas, they can reproduce rapidly since all they need is radiation from the moon. They’re actually fighting with each other right now because they ran out of merkas to pick on.

I’m honestly a little impressed at how quickly two demon lords broke an entire planet and made its people happily agree to slavery at their hands. Though demon lords are definitely a couple orders of magnitude more dangerous than anything that planet has ever produced.

Vaira and Yoshai have returned to the demon kingdom to find some candidates. What I have for you are of course the usual cluster of succubi who have had enough social problems that just being nice to them is an easy way to get their attention. Let’s just not tell them that we shipped Setal off like a sex toy gag gift to Ilex. There are some particularly promising candidates that seem like they have what it takes to get somewhere, but they have the problem of being tooooo good. Demons are notoriously sneaky after all, so not sure how much we can trust them, especially after that Ki’Ralcht mess. I really like this one weirdo demon we found though he’s hard to work with. But he’s a hippy who plays bass and I think me and him could write some tunes together. Oh right actual candidates, well we’re still filtering them out and seeing who works where.

However, on the other side of things, obviously the Phantoms are also making plays to retain Valadeus’ territory. Asmodan in particular seems to be sponsoring someone rather quickly…too quickly…as if he knew Valadeus was going to die very soon. I’m starting to notice a tend with the demon lords. Sakhessa is quite loyal to Kanika and more interested in keeping things together despite her history of ‘whoopsing’ her empire off the map once before. Illdath was cranky but just wanted to sit in his puddle and be left alone, and Elder Black is just some old guy who probably spits cliche wisdom at them. Both of the demons are kind of psychopaths though. Valadeus was the one who schemed against Barachiel for us after all.

Anyways, Asmodan’s new puppet is specifically not associated with him. To everyone else’s perspective at least, I know this game well enough to know that he would not be making this much progress this quickly without help from the Phantoms. They’re thought to be somewhat independent and self made, though to an extent he is. This new greater demon has taken over several of Valadeus’ assets through both economic manipulation and straight violence using a host of minions. I’m just saying, we might throw a wrench in Asmodan’s plans if his new pet were to have an unfortunate accident in his bid for power while he’s still vulnerable.

So as it turns out, if the hauler drone goes into the ichor after you set it up as one of your pawns, it is left alone while you are in it but if you aren’t it is broken down for parts since it is not operating and is thusly just biomass.

Also I’m back. It turns out my consciousness is backed up throughout my psi-cystal bones like yours. While losing that much of it wasn’t good, it was restorable. Now to grapple with the existential question of whether or not it’s really me or just a copy with  me….meh I’m over it. Now put on this sweater. Learned? I learned not to get into a fight with a super soldier who has fought everything he was pointed at for over a millenia. Well I already knew that but he didn’t accept my surrender. I have a feeling Xilca is Nelta’s problem child.

Moving on, Craylin just stood around awkwardly. Rhazin might as well have said “yaaaas queen” when he heard Valdir’s call. He seems excited to bite some shit now.

Also what did you want to name the colony you wanted to put on the gold planet? Also the colony system you purchased is just sitting around in the warehouse, same as last time you asked. Though they just shipped it out to the ring world expedition that is already going fifty kinds of sideways. Quite literally, the floors and wall move. The new New Age director suspects it has something to do with the fact that the ringworld’s ring would be permanently facing the sun  at rather close proximity if it couldn’t flip its layers around. Option B is: The people who built the terlim are just whackjobs with wrenches.

Also yeaaah if you want to preserve people while you take over their minds you are going to need people with larger brains to hold the both of you. That’s more of a pandem thing.

Also it turns out the jydoq are highly resistant to psionic manipulation, probably since that is their primary means of communication and they’ve been an interstellar race long before us. That being said, they’re both dead now apparently. Irae seems to be keeping tabs on that one.

The FTL trap that was at Auwana is definitely a sahad thing. It is basically a preloaded counterspell basically, since we know what spell allows FTL to even happen it appears Decaelys set a rigged counterspell to stop that specific thing from being cast if they got close enough. Kind of simple in concept really…actually Renjala might be able to do this one. He can actually cast the same spell thanks to his bind with Eden. I dunno if Irae can though.

Also sent a bunch of data to New age on black holes. The lab on Zenaka 04 is still doing fine, it just doesn’t have Grinhys or Vasia overlooking it. So the team is kind of slowly but steadily making reasonable scientific process. Actually all of New Age is dealing with the loss of the Heretic as most of their big experiments and crimes against humanity were on that thing. Si Yeon has sort of taken over and she’s a little more reserved than Vasia.

We set up the trade route as asked. So far not much is happening with it but we just got it going. Also built those ships you wanted.

So it turns out extracting Michael is harder than we thought, while he’s there posing as a slave the issue is the slaves aren’t exactly allowed to just leave. Under Sakhessa’s rule basically they’re well off but it’s not quite like Renjala’s vision. They don’t go anywhere unless it is approved and disobeying gets  your ass beat. So we’d need a ship and to get into the warrens where he actually is.

Though he does know that Sakhessa is still in possession of the White Lion but he isn’t sure where the Inaji went. He also reports that it has been fairly uneventful lately, he isn’t exactly invited to command meetings but he works at the docks so he can see where ships are coming and going from. Sakhessa is playing very conservatively right now, she just wants to build her city and reinforce the system. Though more turrets and ships are built every week to further enforce the warrens base. So she’s ‘turtling’ I believe Aryn calls it. We did take a headcount though so we have an updated tactical intel of their defenses as of this month.

Captain Andel suggests getting one of those fancy mobile shipyard carriers that “everyone” seems to have these days. Everyone being Lancaster and other economic super powers. He would not stop waggling his eyebrows at me the entire time. I, exasperated, may have casually suggested that he should just steal one. He suddenly took off and the last we saw of The Nomad it was on a trajectory for Thenica. Sharen space in particular. We might want to stop him, by now people have noticed that the Nomads seem to always be working with the federation of Lancaster.

As for planetary surveying, Aryn just hacked the New Horizons database. Did you know there is a planet with an alarming presence of gold somewhere out there? I mean that’s not ship building materials but you can definitely trade that for ship building materials. Also the flotilla is on its way to an asteroid belt to look around for some resource rich asteroids.

Also what thing do you mean a couple cycles ago? They’ve answered a lot of questions while you come and go from your weekend retreat. At least that’s where I assume you go when we can’t get in contact with you.