Hi guys,

we’re happy that today we are finally releasing our big localization update for our Blackguards. The update contains the reworked Russian localization as well as the brand new Japanese and Korean language packages.

Have fun playing and don’t get lost in Aventuria!

PS: The patch will available in about 2 or 3 hours from now, so please don’t worry if it’s not starting immediately.

Best,
Your Daedalic-Team

Hi guys,

there are three new loca kits upcoming for Blackguards. First there is the reworked Russian localization, and second we are proud to announce that there will be a Japanese and Korean localization, too!

The patch including the new localizations will be available by the end of June 2014.

Best,
Your Daedalic Team

We are so happy to finally reveal that we are working on a sequel for our strategy RPG – Blackguards 2!

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Blackguards 2 will stay an SRPG focussing on turn-based, strategic battles with a group of scoundrels as anti-heroes. Some of the best-known Blackguards from the first game will be part of the team again – unfortunately, their lives didn’t go very well since then. Dwarf Naurim, for example, has rest on his fame as a successful gladiator and defeater of the Nine Hordes. He used his popularity for shady businesses and excessive parties and got quite potbellied – not a very good condition for battles, and so he hung up his axe and ditched his old gang, as long as they wouldn't yield any profit.

Wizard Zurbaran was even less lucky: His mistress could track down the former slave, who was able to escape his servitude. She shackled, mortified and sold him for one symbolic copper piece at the slave market.

Takate, on the other hand, is back among the forest people and arranges his own gladiatorial games, letting humans fight for their destiny, just as he was forced to. He believes that there are no challenges left, after he has defeated the Nine Hordes, and gets bored with sending others to their death.

Nevertheless, the fame of the defeater of the Nine Hordes seems to be everlasting – at least for the three survivors, as all others have found their end. Cassia, main protagonist of Blackguards 2, is looking for them: Cassia’s only goal is to rule from the Shark Throne at all costs, even if it’s only for one day. In the Blackguards she sees the fighters and the power she needs for her plans, even if they are a shadow of their former glory: Naurim became fat and lazy, but also more cunning; Zurbaran lost his self-confidence and Takate seems to have lost his killer instinct.

Together with Cassia the three remaining Blackguards will be the main characters of Blackguards 2. In many quests the group will travel through South Aventuria to fulfill Cassias dream.

Blackguards 2 will again be based on the RPG rulebook of The Dark Eye, but it will come along with some revisions, optimisations and simplifications. The gameplay will focus on turn-based battles once more – this time the players have to conquer Cassia’s lands and defend them against intruders when the need arises. As in a fraction-based game the enemies can recapture the territories from the Blackguards.

If not in a battle, players take care of a lot of quests and the development of their characters. As common in RPGs, the quests will offer optional and alternative plotlines.

Furthermore, Blackguards 2 will have new weapons, armor, enemies and stamina as additional battle resource.

On top of that, Blackguards 2 will involve mechanics that have been requested by players of the first game, like improved line of sight, cover and formation.

Blackguards 2 is planned to be released in early 2015.

The final part of our video guide series on Blackguards has arrived! In our fourth installment we explain the various types of decisions as they appear in the game’s quests, dialogues and combats and their possible consequences.

English: http://youtu.be/I69w1862byU
German: http://youtu.be/8uCApnEZ490
If you want to know more about Aventuria and The Dark Eye, there is also a series of lore videos by our partners from Orkenspalter, Nandurion and Ulisses Spiele (in German only for the moment):

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9lrD0EiOevQkNnl8XtIg9nhPjO7HBnyq

Here comes the third part of our video guide series to Blackguards. This time we cover the combat system in all explicit detail (including changes in 1.3) as well as equipment. If you wish for a better understanding of the combat rules in the game, no matter if you play the game or not, have closer look!

Deutsch:
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="/www.youtube.com/embed/I5M18MK9FOY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

English:
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="/www.youtube.com/embed/iB8aem2JCl8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Have fun combatting in Blackguards!

Your Blackguards Team

If you've been eagerly waiting for more content to Blackguards, then today's your day! "Untold Legends", the first DLC to Blackguards has just been released. You may pick it up directly here on Steam for a price of $5.99 / €4.99 / £3.99. All buyers of the Contributor Edition of Blackguards will get access to the content of the DLC automatically.

http://youtu.be/RTDhBl5PLuA
"Untold Legends" covers Takate's backstory and will shed light on why he became a gladiator in the first place. This events of his past are reaching out into the present, calling for revenge. Settle the score and accompany the Moha native into his homeland, the rainforest foothills, full of monsters and wild animals!

• Seven new quests
  
• Four new weapons
  
• Ten new battle maps and one proving ground that can be visited again and again to test your strategies, skills and items
  
• 25 songs added to soundtrack

The new quests will be available as new side quests and can be accessed during the third chapter of the game and forward.

If you already finished the main quest chain, you'll just have to repeat everything from your latest savegame to the final battle. The game will then automatically save for you. Load this savegame after the game returns you to the main menu. You'll find yourself on the world map and are able to access the new sidequests from there.

We just released the biggest patch for Blackguards yet, 1.3, introducing a lot of gameplay and balance changes. These changes were made by the feedback we got from you since the release of the game – so thank you for that! We think that the changed and added features will provide big improvements for the gameplay in Blackguards and sincerely hope that you’ll agree.

The patch will be applied automatically through Steam should you have automatic updates for Blackguards enabled. A full list of changes can be found below.


Patch 1.3 - Changelog

• Added an NPC to Neetha who gives advice to new players.
  
• Added an additional autosave at the beginning of every fight. This also applies to each fight in a series of fights.
  
• Some minor bugs in cutscenes have been fixed.
  
• Some dialogues have been fixed.
  
• Some text- and NoKey-errors have been fixed.

• Fixed a bug where enemies wouldn't stop respawning in the second last fight.

• A parry tooltip has been added to character portraits when hovered. Blue “Parry” means that parry is still available for that unit. A red “Parry” will mean it is not available any more during this round. If no “Parry” is shown, no parry will is available to this unit at all.
  
• Hit chances are now displayed more prominently inside the ring menu when hovered.
  
• Reworked the display of item stats.
  
• Added detailed battle log option to show individual dice roll results of your characters.
  
• Added detailed information on effects of special abilities.

• Reduced the hit chance of Hammer Blow and increased AP costs to learn it.
  
• Clarum Purum will now provide additional resistance against poison.
  
• Equipment from the advanced character creation is now correctly transferred to flashback fights.
  
• Hit chances are now always displayed, regardless of what skills a character has.
  
• Warcraft and Animal Lore have been reworked to provide better passive stats instead of showing your hit chance.
  
• The difficulty of the chapter 3 flashback crypt lice fight has been lowered.
  
• Added a teacher for mages to the Mengbilla arena.

Have fun with the changes!
Your Blackguards Team

Humiliated. Enslaved. Thrown into the dust of the arena to die.

This is the heritage of Takate, native of the Moha, before he joined the Blackguards. But even now the wounds of the pasts still hurt. It's a pain that only revenge will ease.

With the "Untold Legends" DLC the Blackguards will once again return and follow Takate's tracks into the darkness of his past. A past that lies in the foothills of the rainforests in Southern Aventuria, where staying alive is a feat of its own due to beasts and monsters of the wild.

• Seven new quests
  
• Four new weapons
  
• Ten new battle maps and one proving ground that can be visited again and again to test your strategies, skills and items
  
• 25 songs added to soundtrack

The DLC will be available on March, 4th 2014 at a price point of €4.99 / $5.99 / £3.99 directly through Steam. Players who already bought the Contributor Edition during the Early Access will get the DLC for free.

Hi Blackguards players,

with the help of a lot of very good feedback from you - thanks for that - we have decided for some changes we would like to make to the game with next patch. Our impressions are that the communication of the ruleset / understanding the rules, being able to make choices based on detailed feedback and some re-balancing are what the game would benefit the most from.

Thus, you will see some bigger alterations to the gameplay with the next major patch 1.3. The most important of those are:

• Hit chances will now always be visible. By everyone and against everyone. With every ability. - This is inteded to allow you to make better choices at any time and no longer have to guess what you hit chances are, no matter if you skilled 'Warcraft' or 'Animal Lore' or not. Those talents will be reworked accordingly to give better passive stats against opponents of the corresponding type, so that investing AP into them will still be worth it.
  
• A mouse-over text will show you whether a certain character is still able to parry in this turn or if the parry is already gone. Blue = can parry. Red = can't parry. - It's a very important game mechanic that a character is only able to parry once a turn. Characters who cannot parry are only able to evade, which is in most cases less likely to succeed. Exploiting this mechanic allows for a much more tactical approach in battle, so it should help you to have a better overview on who's more vulnerable right now.
  
• Detailed battle log. - You'll be able to optionally activate a 'verbose' kind of battle log that will show you the dice rolls the game made, so you are able to investigate in retrospective what exactly worked and what did not. Based on that feedback you should be able to make better skill and item choices for you characters.
  
• Skill (talents, spells, abilities) descriptions will be reworked to show the exact benefits and disadvantages. - This is yet another change to allow you to make better choices, especially before investing AP into a certain skill, but also when using one.
  
• More clear item descriptions, better comparability. - The way item stats are shown will get a complete overhaul to allow for better stat comparison and understanding.
  
• Autosaves between follow-up battles. - It was often requested that saving the game between two follow-up battles should be possible. We'll adress this by auto-saving the game before any battle now.
  
• Equipment changes in flashback fights. - Some players mentioned that flashback fights were really tough because they didn't get the equipment their characters we're skilled for. This will be solved by granting players the needed skills and weapons temporarily.
  
• Reworked skills - Alongside the changes to the talents 'Warcraft' and 'Animal Lore', the abolish poison spell 'Clarum Purum' is too weak because poison can simply be applied again and again if the attacker hits, forcing the caster to cast 'Clarum Purum' again and again to no significant avail. 'Clarum Purum' will thus be reworked to grant posion immunity for some turns, based on the spell's level.
  
• Some balancing changes regarding items and spells. - We'll provide details in the patch changelog.

We're sure you'll like the upcoming patch. We cannot say when the patch will hit at the moment, but stay tuned as we will announce it once we know for sure.

Thanks for your feedback and, most of all, playing Blackguards!
Io for the Blackguards Team