Free Major Update: Blade of the Assassin (Version Number "1.1.13562")

[Gary]

We have released a Major Update, called "Blade of the Assassin".

This pulls together all of the new content and systems we have released in the Beta Branch since our full release and subsequent hot-fixes.

Your saves from the 1.0 version of the game will be unaffected.

Blade of the Assassin

You can read a post that describes all of the main new features here:

https://steamcommunity.com/games/551860/announcements/detail/3997439124946421327
This includes the following major changes:

• New Campaign: Blade of the Assassin
  
• 6 new vessels
  
• New achievements
  
• Partial Japanese and Chinese translations (90% and 40% respectively)
  
• Environmental modifier icons displayed in combat
  
• Enemy loadout information displayed as tooltips
  
• Faction improvements

There have been a lot of other fixes and improvements, and the list below covers everything else:

Bugs

• There was an instance of a pink (i.e. missing) texture in a specific battle. Coastal Bombardment now keeps its projectile references alive (as ship weapons do) so that required projectile visual effects aren't unloaded when the projectile hits a ship.
  
• Cult Cave-in quest didn't count as gate opening, so added gate opening +1 node at successful end of event.
  
• Barred north gate you shouldn't be able to get through in Mox Mortis that opened after completing the Haunted Seas.
  
• The boss for the pirate faction in 04_04 was not turning up as it was incorrectly switched to a Kraken.
  
• Cult Favour earned floater UI no longer appears when the Cult Favour UI is not visible or when loading into a saved game
  
• Fixed Cult Favour Vignette staying on if quitting while it is active
  
• Changed Quest Graph Runtime loading so that the Runtime nodes are all spawned and then are all loaded so that if their property bags reference each other, they link up correctly. This will stop warnings being triggered in the console during the Statue quest.
  
• Fixed Man-O-War ship front swivel gun deck rings not appearing
  
• In the "Lifeboat Ship Retrieval" quest it would not successfully complete if you accepted the AI's surrender, so have made that combats battlescenario never have the AI surrender, demand surrender or flee.
  
• Stopped ship movement arrows on the distance indication flickering when in shallow waters.
  
• Stopped an event that was supposed to be a one-off by switching the repopulator in the Cult Fortress map.
  
• CustomMap03 had the wrong repopulator, which meant that the one-off Samuel event could appear when revisiting that map.

Balancing

• Reduced the amount of crew you can get in battles 7 & 8 in the original combat campaign.
  
• Defeating pirate faction ships now gives a reduction in wanted level
  
• Stopped sea forts spawning in 12_08, rain from spawning in 12_01 and fog from appearing in 12_07
  
• Defeating a Kraken Cult Faction Boss will now remove a random negative mental trait (but not the 'stubborn convict' trait)
  
• Ports now have a small increase in price when the map they are in is under faction control.
  
• Made the 4 highest ship classes more expensive to combat the complaints that people are maxing out everything too quickly. Galleon increased by 50, Cruiser by 400, Warship & Man O War by 500

Miscellaneous Polish and Improvements

• Two of the events described things like "ripe fruits growing on trees" which isn't suitable for the Arctic biome, so added an arctic biome condition check on playing that outcome.
  
• Set up action tutorial in first combat that explains enemy section information.
  
• Added two new monologue images to the original combat campaign.
  
• Added a name to the secret puzzle island (based on the handle of the person who cracked the code first)
  
• In the first port tutorial, the mortar would always appear behind the tutorial box asking you to drag the mortar into place. This was a bit annoying, so changed the order in that ports shopkeeper (now appears third in the list)
  
• Added latest Newsletter names. Removed those people who have either unsubscribed, or the emails have had a hard bounce.

Thank-you for your support and feedback, it is greatly appreciated. Don’t forget to leave a review if you haven’t done so already!