The dark world of Nightmare Frontier is about to expand. Mark your calendars, the game's very first DLC, Wicked Harvest, arrives on October 26, bringing new threats and fresh challenges to overcome. Here is everything you need to know about how the new expansion works.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qjlh5FfthWk

Designing the Wicked: what happens when you take a mechanic all the way.

Howdy, Ringleaders. Wicked Harvest adds twelve new monsters, twelve one-of-a-kind trophies to cut off their corpses, twelve mini-boss fights, a new upgrade tree in the Hideout, and a questline about an old man who wants those monsters' hearts in jars. The store page is live. Here are a few words about how we developed this DLC.

We knew what we wanted out of this DLC from the beginning, not just more enemies or more items, but fights that play by different rules and give you a different tactical challenge.

Nightmare Frontier runs on a set of sharp, aggressive mechanics: rooting, burning, bleeding, regeneration, summoning, hazards that rewrite the floor under you. On a rank-and-file Dreadweaver every one of them is deliberately rationed. Those monsters come five at a time, mid-raid, while you're trying to reach extraction, so each mechanic has to stay readable and survivable on the move. That is the right call for the enemies that fill a city. It also means you have never met a single one of them at full strength.

So the brief to the design team was simple: let's take the basic mechanics and crank them up to 11. Not tuned to be shrugged off in passing. One monster, one idea, pushed as far as it will go, with an entire fight built around it.

That idea turned into the whole DLC. Past a certain point a mechanic stops being something you play around and becomes the thing you have to solve. That is the Wicked challenge.

Just turning up stats isn't interesting, so we set a hard rule: you shouldn’t be able to win the fight with a standard strategy. Each of the Wicked is built from four parts:

• Its signature mechanic pushed past reason, far enough that it stops being a modifier and becomes the puzzle.

• One new ability that belongs to that monster alone and fits the kit it already has.

• Minions: ordinary Dreadweavers drawn to the same Fear. You never fight it alone.

• A lot more health, so killing the Wicked version becomes a challenge in itself. You won't take this one down in a single turn the way you can with most Dreadweavers, which are always just part of a bigger party. You have to get ready before the fight and counter this enemy with your build, or you'll be swallowed whole.

Wicked Deadwood. Roots every unit on the map, so you can't move for the whole fight.

Regular Deadwood roots whatever stands next to it. Speed drops to zero, and you spend an action tearing loose. Local, readable, and it gives you a different tactical challenge.

Wicked Deadwood roots every unit on the map. Not its neighbours. All of them, every turn, yours and its own.

Nightmare Frontier is a game about movement: advance, flank, shove, reposition, run for extraction. Take that layer away and every reflex you have is illegal. You fight out of free actions and ranged abilities, loadouts you'd never look at twice become correct, and characters you'd call situational become load-bearing. With that one change we give you a completely different tactical challenge. That's what we were chasing across all twelve.

• Wicked Cannon Head walls the street off with mortars and hands every other monster an explosive charge, so every kill you make is a bomb you just lit.

• Wicked Puppets come as a bound pair. Kill one and her sister brings her back at full health. Both, same turn, or don't start.

• Wicked Sawbones fully regenerates every wounded monster each round. Nothing you leave standing stays hurt.

• Wicked Wendigo heals to full at the end of every round and grows stronger for each hit it takes.

• Wicked Pete sets your crew alight with a Burning, then makes every monster fire-immune and explosive on death.

Plus Gunspider, Manifold, Mr. Cactus, Slaughterbrand, Gnawer and Pumpkin Head.

Wicked Cannon Head: you'll see where the shells land. That's the good news.

Wicked Puppets: come and play with us. Forever... and ever... and ever.

A Wicked never ambushes you. It sits on its own node with a description, and stepping on it opens a conversation in which "no thanks" is a valid answer. Nobody loses a run to a boss they didn't choose to fight.

A Wicked only surfaces once you've been killing its ordinary kin. Put enough regular Gunspiders in the ground and something much larger notices. After every successful raid they relocate to a different District and a different depth, rooting themselves in Congregations: those frozen crowds who were all struck by the same terror at the same moment. Only a handful are in reach at once, and the Alchemist marks what he can smell out on your map. Put one down and it's gone from the frontier for good.

The Alchemist is a shrivelled lunatic in a foil hat running the Serpent Apothecary, and he'll move his entire laboratory into your Hideout for a steady supply of Black Hearts. Every heart he cuts open comes with a story: what Fear grew it, and what it cost the people who died making it. We added this because we wanted to explore the lore of the Fears themselves, and talking through each one of them while hunting the Wicked seemed like an awesome place to address that topic.

Collecting the hearts of the Wicked also had to give a sense of progress, so we added a whole skill tree in the Hideout with some new mechanics. Killing the Wicked is what unlocks them:

• Lazarus Springs: Manifests Lazarus Puddle anomalies throughout the City, where a random fallen Party member can be dragged back from death during a raid..

• Quicksilver, Alkahest, Azoth and Ether Founts: locations that upgrade your gear for free, one rarity tier at a time.

• The Sleeping Slabs: crew who stay behind and rest come back with bonus movement, a buff or an immunity they didn't have yesterday.

And the heart banks the moment it stops beating. No carrying it to extraction, no losing it when the run goes sideways.

While developing the main game we saw that pieces of Dreadweavers make awesome items, so we wanted to explore that further and let you collect a unique trophy from each Wicked, a one-of-a-kind Legendary item. The Spider Carapace gives you extra arms and a storm of lead down your line of sight. The Wendigo Frontlet Upon taking damage: Unit gains +1 Melee DMG Mod. The Wooden Wig (my personal favourite, since you wear it on your head and it looks hilarious) which gives you additional rope jump.

Wicked Sawbones. Finish what you start, or it puts it back together.

Wicked Pumpkin Head. We're releasing around Halloween. Some decisions write themselves.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5027550/Nightmare_Frontier__Wicked_Harvest/