Fear the Kitten

How’s everybody doing!?

The kitten will be making a return Summer 2023 - be afraid, be very very afraid.

I’ve been busy running the Soda City Trap Wagon. But I got some news!

The little time I have had for games I’ve pretty much spent playing Project Zomboid and Elden Ring. Remember how I rushed Elden Ring to complete it under 80 hours - well now that I got to take my time I am very much enjoying it - working on NG+4. Mostly just dreaming and waiting for the Stalker 2 release in December.

The ambitious project of developing Warsong has news too! I am currently building staff made up of AI to assist in generation of pixel art, portraits, assets, and descriptions. Story progression, dialogue, and lore building will be completed by myself (about 75% done). I am looking it ways to utilize an AI Storyteller similar to the way Rim World handles events - this could add a bit of rogue lite elements to the mix.

Best ride in town - dude even gets the door for you. Makes you feel like a total rock star! 5 outta 5

Tales from the Trap Wagon - quick fix!

Search and Rescue Wagon

This one is super wholesome! One of my clients reached out to me letting me know her friend needed help and a ride home. I get the contact information and the young ladies mom from out of state gets a hold of me to rescue her daughter. Her mom was super sweet! Typical safety drill is the client is instructed not to get into any cars until they see my phone with my text messages so the 100% know it’s me. Rescue mission was complete and everyone involved safe! The mom tipped me then this morning reached out and was like I’m sorry no one paid you so here you go!

You’re telling me I’m the rising content creator of the week and I barely have been live?

Thanks I guess

SInce the trap wagon is in the shop I figured I will continue working on portraits. So here is the Sodden Knight.

The Sodden Knight I believe is one of the most interesting characters you will come across. This knight has been trapped in a swap for years and years, so long immobile in his armored tomb that nature herself has began to reclaim the knight. Perhaps it’s magic or sheer willpower that keeps this knight alive in torment. Potentially, this knight can prove to be an excellent ally or enemy, or something worse. The Tale of the Sodden Knight is going to be a real treat.

I still think the helmet mask should cover more skin and I’m trying to find a way to express terror, hope, and pain at the same time. But it begins.

We got news from Warsong!

I know I know, I’ve been very busy so I hadn’t put much time in developement but the good news is I think I finally have overcome the massive hurdle of creating artwork. So I sort of learned how to do it-ish.

Anyways, while waiting between Uber rides I have the first round of character portrait drafts.

Let me introduce you to:
Riley the Witch
Shield-Maiden Eva
The Bastion
Old Persius

Couple weeks into Uber and I’ve been making a ton of money working less than 30 hours. Actually I exceeded what I thought I would make by a lot.

If anyone is interested in it for a side gig I got a few tips. Just understand my tips are exclusively geared toward earning tips verse fare.

1) Open and close the door for riders and luggage. I can’t stress this enough but the best way welcome folks is to literally get out of the car and greet them with a stunning door opening. Besides the welcoming factor, you also get out of the car and stretch but more importantly this is a good way to ensure nothing is left and nothing is scratched.

2) Clean car and make sure it smells cleans. Don’t saturate your car with a bunch of smell-good to mask s**t. Keep it fresh and subtle. Spend a few minutes after your shift and before doing a quick tidy and vacuum. I disinfect touchables and do quick a armor-all in key areas through out the night. Quick vacuum before each shift.

3) To drive tips you need to drive riders to the app. Once the rider walks away the app closes. If they give you a five star it prompts them to tip. When you arrive be sure to let them know you will get the door and mention if you loved the ride be sure to drop a 5-Star.

4) To further push tips without stating it, make sure you offer something of value. I have an aux cable available for the rider to put their own music on and it opens the conversation. Combine that with appropriate conversation and your halfway there. Address your riders by name and treat them with the same amount of respect you want. If they tip mid-trip I have a remote set to make the interior RGBs to go off to celebrate.

5) To push tips even further, smoothen your ride. Avoid holes, sudden brakes, and take curves gently. Keep it relaxed and straightforward.

6) Seal the deal - the most important parts are the pick up and drop off. Be sure to ask exactly where they want to be dropped off. Uber likes using drop zones but most of the time you can get them so close to the bar they can roll out of the car. The difference between .2 miles and the drop off point recommended by GPS is like .06 cents. But a $10 tip can triple your fare value.

7) Be real and open and close the doors. Seriously if there is one thing you can do it is open the door for your passengers to greet them.

I hover around 65% tips and 35% fare because of value. Uber obviously offers a simple, safe, and affordable way for drivers and riders to connect. I increase my value because my car is clean, welcome my clients, and I get them to A-B but they feel like rock stars while getting there.

Where’s Fear?

I have started with Uber the last two weeks and minus long nights it’s quite lucrative for my family. I had spent some extra time into figuring out the best way to maximize my money so let me introduce you to the “Trap Wagon.”

But don’t worry I will be streaming regularly every Tuesday night 8pm Est going forward. Be sure to catch it live so you can hear about my tales from being an Uber driver.

Much anticipated patch notes have arrived. https://www.infinityward.com/news/2022/11/modern-warfare-ii-season-01-patch-notes-and-warzone-2-0--launch

Incremental changes to weapons this time is far superior than the dumpster fire they had in the original Warzone. Glad the M16 got some buffs, not sure if the burst fire will be quick enough. Needs to be around 60ms between burst. STB got a smaller nerf than I thought it would get but the HCR remains untouched. If you have been sleeping on the HCR or have no idea what Im talking about it, its going to be a lovely long range option in Warzone.

Live tonight at 7pm to chat about it and then collect some wins. See you there.

Modern Warfare II Season 01 Patch Notes and Warzone 2.0 Launch Season 01 marks the launch of the free-to-play Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0 and the much-anticipated DMZ experience. We hope you’re ready to dive into new maps, modes, missions, and more.

T'was the night before 2.0,
Fear the Kitten's nearly ready to go,
There will be no stream tonight,
For rest is needed for the big fight,
Come by tomorrow at 7pm E S T,
For Warzone dubs that you want to see.

Fear has a fast Vaznez and a HCR so mean,
The legendary Xe as my team,
With throwing knives and maybe a stun,
We can scream together: kid get s**t on!

Taking kids lunch money in the new

Alcohol, cause of - and solution to CoD problems C'mon and hang out twitch.tv/xfearthekitten Tuesday Thursday Friday 9pm EST

I think I’m sold on the new Radeon 7900 XTX. Half the price of 4090 and roughly the same power… and coming in at 350 watts… wait it’s also the size of the existing 6000 series so I don’t have to upgrade a case. Yea this gonna be sweet.

AMD RX 7900XT and 7900XTX is HERE! Get an iFixit kit for yourself or someone you love at - https://amzn.to/3IDDkj9Get your JayzTwoCents Merch Here! - https://www.jayztwocents.com○○○○○○ Items f...

In case you missed it, check out the new CoD multiplayer footage over on twitch. Played pretty damn hard last night from 1130pm to 6am. I believe I got to rank 40 or somewhere around there, it all turned into a giant blur. I maxed out the FTAC and Lachmann 7.62 Battle Rifles and I gotta say the Lachmann is got to be my favorite weapon... Oh its a FAL so yea I guess that was obvious.

I didn't realize until much later in the stream that I was using my GPU to encode which caused the stream to skip a lot of frames which sucks. But the last 3-4 hours are pretty smooth. I did switch the encoding back to my CPU where it should be.

I will share some initial thoughts if you enjoy reading rather than listening to my fragmented thoughts during the stream but I will reserve a detailed analysis after a week or so.

If you are a die hard CoD fan or been playing the last few entries, there is zero reason why you shouldn't play Modern Warfare 2. The game is solid but it feels a tad bit slower than the last handful of entries. I quite like the speed of Modern Warfare 2 so I don't take it as a bad thing, but the game favors solid aim and fast target acquisition more than raw twitch and silly movement techniques.

If you aren't a big fan of CoD, maybe you're an old battlefield player or R-Six or CS player than I would say give this a shot. I think they found a real solid balance between the usual frantic CoD pace and more deliberate tactical pace that games like BF and CS seem to do well.

Now, if you never liked CoD in the past I highly doubt this game will change your mind.

The game is definitely more accessible, you don't have to grind as hard to get everything unlocked, and the weapon progression is smooth as hell. No more do you have to start a weapon with zero attachments, you unlock Global Attachments passively with any weapon, and then you unlock Platform Attachments for weapon groups as long as you use a weapon in that platform (eg: M4, Hurricane SMG, Icarus LMG are all M4 variants, as long as you use one you will share attachments for all).

We will be live again around 9pm tonight featuring my homies from Xe Tactical so feel free to hang out on the stream or join me in game.

Fear After Dark tonight starting at 1130pm live on twitch at twitch.tv/xfearthekitten

Come join me while I f**k about the Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer launch. Hey, if I play half as good as I did in beta it’s gonna be fire. We also got some catching up to do and I’ll talk about Warsong development briefly.

If all goes well I will attempt to get back on MW live Friday at 7pm, lobby will be open so feel free to join me!

xFearTheKitten - Twitch Hey y'all this is the original Fear the Kitten! Thanks for coming by, this channel supports BetterTV, Franker, and 7t emotes! Follow me and my community Myth Collective. Primarily play FPS and RPG games. Feel free to join our discord and join a game! Please follow and check out links below!

Where do we start!?

So I burned through the Modern Warfare campaign on Thursday and Friday and it was pretty good. I feel like a few of the mechanics we experience in the missions is what we will see in the DMZ mode.

Now I don’t see Call of Duty DMZ mode de-throning Tarkov in terms of quality extraction style shooter but this is most likely going to be the next best option.

I did the campaign on the hardest difficulty and it was more frustrating than fun. Not so much enemies just a few of the gimmicky things were such a pain in the ass… looking at you jumping from car to car like GTA.

Good news is it doesn’t matter what difficulty you play on the operator, cami, and xp tokens are the same. I’ll be getting on multiplayer Friday night when it releases so catch me there.

Next several weeks we will be streaming Call of Duty.

Over in Warsong, we have just been focusing on getting the systems right. The team has grown now we have Ap0thyic handling functions and schematics and the new clutch is Tanner who will be taking over the thankless job of data entry. Tanner brought some good ideas over and helped consolidate a few mor redundant mechanics.

With that being handled I am focusing on drumming up the story, lore, and characters which is a ton a fun. More on that layer.

Progress is slow. I even tried to speed up the project by blasting a Haste the Day playlist and entering the data is still just grueling. But it’s honest work I guess.

I run into a few walls, one being a special son of a bitch is status effects that effect maximums. The other is stacking effect routine checks are messy.

A lot of progress is me having to reclassify tables which doesn’t actually change game mechanics, it just effects how the framework prioritizes things or find look-up entries. Boring s**t.

Warsong Action system: Proficiencies, Abilities, and Spells.

This is most likely the last "feature" feature regarding the tables and modifiers for my game Warsong. We are going to down the long road of data entry and data refinement so we're just about at the point of a finished system.

What better way to round out the whole game talking about the bread n' butter, the classes.

There are 63 Classes and 18 Commander Classes for the player to pick from as well as 8 stock NPC classes. Every class has 10 unique proficiencies, 10 unique abilities, and 2 unique masteries. In addition to that, every archetype shares 1 or 2 proficiencies and abilities. (Martial Classes all have some common skills.) This means there are over 1958 unique skills in the game. Add that number to 125 unique spells and 350 unique status effects... I challenge you to find a tactical RPG that has this amount of depth.

So let's start with Tactical Points and Mana Points.

At the start of battle every class will start with their maximum amount of TP. TP is spent to use class abilities and proficiencies. A class proficiency is selected during the deployment and each turn the class must pay a certain amount of TP to maintain the benefit. There are a few abilities the player can use to recover TP but the primary way to recover TP is dealing and receiving damage.

Mana Points start empty at the beginning of battle. MP is used to pay the cost of spells. At the conclusion of each turn the character will regain a portion of their MP. There are few abilities that can be used to replenish MP as well as proficiencies and equipment that increase the MP replenishment rate.

Class Proficiencies:

Class Proficiencies are unlocked at certain class levels. These are designed to augment playstyles by reinforcing what the class is good at, or perhaps trading off some strengths to fill out weaknesses, or provide bonuses to certain equipment. Most of these are auras that can affect allies or enemies, some are straight stat adjustments, and others provide utility benefits. Tier 1 classes get access to a special class proficiency at level 20. Tier 2 - 4 receive a Nullify ability that allows the class to elect to not equip a proficiency. Remember, proficiencies have an upkeep that is paid at the end of the characters turn. If you do not have enough TP to pay the cost then you lose the effect. If you regain enough TP by the conclusion of the next turn the effect will turn back on.

If you look at the sample picture you will see proficiencies on the left that our Knight class has access to. These are designed to customize how you will use this one specific knight.

Unbreakable provides a buff to resistance to all Fighter Archetypes. It also effects the Knight. There is another smaller aura called Chivalry that passively heals allies with 15% HP, but it requires a shield and does not heal the knight. You can select that proficiency and not equip a shield and the TP cost will still be applied but you will get no affect. Now, there is Expert Melee which pushes the Knight class to be more offensive by providing damage buff while using 2 handed weapons via the Class Finesse and Poise. Since the Class is Tier 2 it has access to NULLIFY which is an ability that does nothing but has no passive TP cost. Its up to the player to decide what works best, be it due to equipment or perhaps a role to fill.

Class Abilities:

Abilities are the primary skills classes will use to attack, buff, debuff, apply crowd-control, clear crowd-control, heal, push and so on and so forth. Abilities are unlocked via individual Character levels. There are synergies amongst with in a classes ability list, but also across to other arch and subtypes. Abilities are one of the few ways to deal out Physical Effects like breaking your opponents hand to prevent them from attacking or staggering them to postpone their turn. One of the core mechanics of the game is the ability to push or pull your enemies across tiles and also move your own class outside of typical movement phase. Since an effective way to slaughter the enemy is to break through their lines and attack the back ranks it only makes sense to be able to shatter their positioning.

Lets look at the Knight, he has a couple stance abilities that alter his stats for turn for attacking or defense. Bash and Feint is an attack that pushes his enemy back 2 tiles but also pulls Knight 1 tile. This opens hole in the line but also move the knight out of the way for another attacker to now fill the gap. There is a CC and ranged option through Hilt Strike and Stomp. But then there is Shatter the Line that not only pushes the knight forward 1 tile, any FIGHTER type to the left and the right will push forward as well. If there is an enemy in front then a movement check is made and the enemy will either get pushed a tile or resist. Going down further is Rear Guard, which targets friend or foe up to 4 tiles behind the Knight (directional facing is important) which allows the knight to swap places. This can be an effective ability to reposition the Knight with an enemy that broke through the line or could even be used to get the Knight off the front line to heal up. Then at the end of the line the Knight as access to Chiara's Blessing which prevents 90% of physical damage to knight on the next attack and the final skill a minor healing ability that greatly increases a classes Poise and Constitution.

Class Mastery:

Class Mastery is unlocked at Class Level 5 and 13. Subtypes share a common mastery and then each class has two unique masteries. Class mastery provides powerful stat buffs, aura, and modifier for the individual unit.

To use a mastery one must accomplish a feat in a battle then the mastery effect will apply at the conclusion of the turn. Both can be unlocked in whatever order. These only persist in the battle they are activated.

The Knight gains Protector buff if he blocks a total of 50 damage in battle, this grants an +Def% aura to other allies. The second master Defensive Stance is unlocked once the Knight takes a total of 100 damage. This grant him a +15% advantage when defending. (advantage is a percent bonus to attack or defense)

Our final notes here regarding the Knight class is the players ability to take a standard front-line unit and be able to specialize it in attacking or defending, let it me frontline vanguard unit designed to push enemies back and allies forward, or it could even provide pinch healing, backline support, and/or be an aura beacon to buff other fighter classes. Our goal is to give the player all of the tools and toys and let them decide how they want to do warfare.

I added class previews for martial class Shadowblade and caster class Terrormancer.

The tables are finished! The goal this week is to crush it on Unity and get all of the data entry done. I guess at that point I could probably start providing an actual dev log for Warsong. The artwork will be a forever monkey on my back but I am not sweating, art and visuals is basically the last thing that has to get done.

Things I can't help but think of is the UI and how and what should be displayed. What is too much info? Can I provide a balance between a clean menu system that has a ton of accessibility to deeper game elements. Hell keymapping, transitions, and schematics are generally banging around my head.

I did want to clarify the Class Leveling and Character Leveling system.

They are completely separated and have two very different functions in the game.

Class Leveling:

Each class has it's very own Class-XP meter, classes are awarded XP for just about everything they do whether it's kills, healing, dodging, or blocking. The finishing blow obviously awards the most XP possible. Class leveling is completely perpetual and never resets even on death.

Let's say you have three Knights and you use one Knight in battle. When the Knights Class levels up all of your Knight Classes level up. Let's say all of your knights die in battle at Class Level 7. When you go to hire or change someone's class to a Knight they will be at Class Level 7.

What does Class Level do? Class level determines the stat growth for a class, each level the player is awarded 1 Attribute point to be placed into either Poise, Faith, or Constitution. Class proficiencies are unlocked at certain levels, these are usually passive Aura or buffs that influence the role of the class. Also, to change to a new class the class must reach a certain minimum level.

In the greater strategy its up to the player if they want to invest in tons of different classes or specialize in a few. Either way I want to eliminate the need for grinding so there are plenty of places to play catch up.

Remember, permadeath is very real in Warsong, hence this system helps equalize it.

Character level:

Every individual character has a their very own character level as well. The XP granted comes from victories in battles and dungeons, as well has all damage/healing given and taken. There is also a training option via the camp.

Character level is very important as the Class Tactical Abilities, Spells, and equipment are unlocked based on the character level.

Remember the permadeath things, yea when the character dies thats it for him or her.

But don't fret, there are upgrades via the camp that allow you recruit characters with higher levels, training that can boost levels, and a few other options to level folks up. One thing you will not be able to do is higher or train a level higher than your highest level.

Here is the thing to remember, since Class stats are based on Class Level your classes will never be underpowered. They may not get all of the advantages of having a full spell book or every class ability, but they are still very competitive.

Rounding out some of the last parts to the combat system is the Morale System. If you been following since the beginning I did talk about this briefly as way to help speed up play.

The system has been adapted slightly but the intended usage has not changed.

Morale represents the whether victory or defeat is imminent. If you have been beating the snot out of your enemy, instead of chasing them down and having to defeat every single unit the battle will end. Rather than losing every single deployed unit when you are getting your ass kicked you will at least get the units that route back.

There is still plenty of room for dramatics since the gauge is shared by both teams, you can effectively fight an entire battle of attrition down to the wire. The goal here is to prevent drawn out one sided battles and briskly increase the pace of a turn-based game. On the theory-crafting side this will help attain an average battle length being between 5-7 rounds.

So how does it work?

The morale meter governs the total HP, MP, and TP points available to everyone. For every 1% increase to morale you will gain equal bonus to HP, MP, and TP. On the other hand every 1% decrease will reduce the totals. Once the accumulated total reaches -50% the team will suffer from the Shattered effect and will route at the conclusion of the next round.

There are three ways to influence morale:

Some commanders have abilities that directly increase or decrease morale. Most of the commanders have conditions that if met can increase or decrease morale as well. The CPU faction has their own conditions as well.

The second way to raise and reduce morale is through accumulated damage dealt per milestone.

The last and final way which has the highest threshold is based on when the defeated characters level. The gauge is divided up between all individual character levels on a team, with the largest chunks being portioned to the highest level character. This is not based on the class level.

Your highest level characters are more effective, but how much risk do you put them in?

Further refined the attack and defense system due to a few unforeseen formulas. One of the draw backs of separating damage tables by governing attributes causes a bit of redundancy when introducing the weapon scaling verse fixed weapon damage.

So the current system will display 3 damage types for each class - STR-based, DEX-Based, and WIL-Based. This will give you a good indicator when selecting weapons to see what scales the best. Weapons can scale with STR DEX and/or WIL. These are derived from the primary attributes and influenced by the secondary attributes. This number is used to calculate ability damage and spell damage/power. (note: Im not 100% if I will use weapon scaling to affect class abilities —- edit. To expand on this, the abilities are all ready balanced around characters primary attributes. I would love for abilities to scale off of weapons but until I’m near the end of inspecting all of the effects and conditions I’m not sure I will be able to balance it. But regardless of the type of class weapons play a massive role as it’s one of the few ways to reliably gain TP hence the reason why you most likely would want weapons that best scale.. unless your pursuing secondary effects.)

Where things get interesting is when you apply the weapon scaling. I created a new table called the converted damage which combines any applicable scaling into the final attack number. The converted damage is completely isolated so there are no spells, abilities, or passives that can influence this number which is fantastic for the player to know exactly how much damage they can deal.

So lets talk about Damage, Pe*******on, and Panktration.

When you make an attack onto a target this is the order of the attack and defense calculations:

Attacker has 12.7 DexDam and 2.57 StrDam. They're using a cutlass which scales with Dex at .9 and Str at 1.0 and is Slash damage type. Their converted damage will be 14.

((12.7 * .9)+(2.57*1))

Their weapon also grants 20% Pe*******on, slash damage type, and a class passive grants 4 panktration.

Pe*******on is a percentage of damage that will completely ignore defense.

Every weapon has a various damage type and all armors have +/-% resistance to certain types of damage. This defense value is applied separately from the classes Physical Resistance.

Panktration is bonus damage applied separately at the end. Panktration cannot be resisted or blocked, as long as the hit connects panktration damage will be applied.

The image below will show you how the final calculation is met.

The first check is if the defender parrys - he doesn't. Pe*******on damage is applied first at 2.8 damage. Next the defender has 7% resistance to Slash type so he resist .98 damage leaving a balance of 13.02. The next check is the defenders physical resistance which is a generous 38.2%. This reduces the attack down to 8.85 damage. Then panktration value of 4 from the attacker is added. Then the defenders panktration value of 2 is added.

The final damage dealt is 15 (since we round final number down): 2.8 PenDam, 8.85 dam, and +4 pank. The attacker takes +2 Pank damage from the defender.

The final stage will be the TP stock - the attacker recovers TP proportioned to 90% of damage dealt. The defender recovers TP at 50% of damage received.

With most of the framework set up in Unity for Warsong I discovered I can run simulations to see how classes and attributes play out. I’ve been doing it by hand with a calculator and pencil.

So I’ve decided to experiment with using critical states for classes.

The 3 archtypes every class is sorted by are Fighters, Martial, and Ranged. They are further grouped by Offensive / Defensive Fighters, Rogue / Scoundrel Martial, and Archery / Caster for the ranged classes.

Critical states are generally a status that gets auto-applied when a condition is met. Character has less than 10% HP left their animation changes and maybe they have a bonus to defense.

I’m thinking of taking it a step further and using to reward certain classes performing well. Example if a Rogue class manages to dish out 3 back attacks with out getting hit they get the Flourish status. Flourish grants the rogue double movement on their next turn but also raises their Evasion for the remainder of the round.

Give me ideas.

I feel like this will create a system where High Threat targets can present themselves so you may attack someone you wouldn’t normally. Also, this helps create more diversity within the class groupings outside of just different abilities.

Let's talk about the campaign features in Warsong. Now, a lot of this is going to be heavily influenced by my technical prowess so there are plenty of things that might change. I believe the core aspect will remain no matter what since the entirety of the core is the driving factor behind the game. Until I can create a separate PvP version.

In the main campaign, you will have access to the Main Camp where upgrades, crafting, training, recruiting, and interacting with your camps story characters take place. Most things done here are either completed or reset every in-game week. Outside of the camp you will have access to the Campaign map or Overworld map. From here, you will have access to various nodes ranging from Story Battles, Dungeons, POIs, and a handful others. You are free to explore different nodes, as events unfold some of these nodes will vanish and others will open up. However, the game will advance one week as soon as you finish a story battle.

Let's talk about the different nodes in depth:

Story Battles:

Field Battle - Typical 15v15 battle where the deployment zones are large so the player has the room to place each unit exactly how they want. Goal is to route the enemy or defeat each unit.

Skirmishes - Up to 15v15 battles that have various conditions that effect deployment, unit availability, and win/loss conditions. A good example is an ambush where the player is forced to deploy in the center of the map and is surrounded.

Assault/Defense - These are a series of battles you must fight in succession. You are able to bring a reserve roster in that can be used to replace wounded or killed units. You will not be able to return to camp in-between the battles. Typically, you have a variety of battles that you can pick that provide bonuses and penalties for each fight but also are tied to the overall story. An example is during a siege on a small fort, you have the option of taking on the enemy head first at the gate, or finding a path through the mountains. The path is easier but you lose out on an opportunity to gain a new story character.

Though you can field 15 troops plus 1 commander and the main player, its very important to have depth in your roster.

The other nodes:

Dungeons - Consist of two types, standard dungeons and challenge dungeons. You can deploy up to 6 troops to delve deep inside the dungeons. You will lose these troops for the week. Standard dungeons feature light exploration and smaller combat engagements. The rewards consist of gold, equipment, and spells as well as the only way to obtain Augments other than crafting. Dungeons feature additional restrictions and modifiers to spice things up. Example, an old apothecary can be explored but the units will take poison damage each turn so speed is of the essence.

Challenge dungeons are a more hardcore experience with heavy restrictions that are designed to challenge the most tactically aware commanders. Good news, there is no perma-death during the challenge runs.

POIs:

The POIs range from burnt farmsteads to aqueducts to town, temples, and docks and even forest glens ect ect.

Most POIs are revealed to you but as you visit these other POIs, Story Battles, and Dungeons may be revealed.

There are three types of POIs - Story POIs are main story related, Optional POIs consist of side stories, lore, and commander stories. Then there are the Event POIs which range from random battles, shops, characters, and story-altering events.

Lastly there are Shrines, Encounters, and Places of Power. These are never revealed unless certain conditions are met in a week. I will work on a system to somewhat randomize the conditions. But a good example, if you lose less than 1000 HP across you team in a single week a Place of Power is revealed.

Encounters happen as soon as the condition is met, you get a little lore but potentially items, story characters, and troops.

Places of Power grant you a free Class level up as well as 2 Character levels.

Shrines allow you to reallocate attribute points as well as grant a bonus point.

Either case of all three, you must assign a commander and two units to the POI in which you lose them for the week.

It is not expected for each player to attempt to every single node available to them, and most likely not possible as the story reacts to player choices some doors shut and some doors will never open. Almost all of the critical story events are tied to the story battles, but the other nodes can influence what happens so its worth a few playthroughs. Majority of the games lore is told through the POIs and descriptions so it worth checking out!