Legends of Ellaria

[Asid]

Progress Report - September
Wed, 11 September 2019


Dear Legends of Ellaria players,

This week we've polished many of the visuals and logics of Legends of Ellaria. These changes include indoor and outdoor environments of ancient dungeons, world map textures, and world map objects and creatures

Also, we're near the end of significant game optimizations. These optimizations will help Legends of Ellaria run faster, consume less memory, and support older hardware.



At the moment, we're focusing on connecting and testing the different parts that our team developed. Some of these parts include map loadings and player movement in the world.

Our next task is to finish the logics for multiple cities, conquering areas, quests, and the kingdom economy. With that in mind, we are getting closer to the next major update. Our next closed beta is expected at around October - November, and we expect the first Early Access update at around December.



Meanwhile, we visited GamesCom 2019 and met with interesting people. We received very positive feedback about Legends of Ellaria's concept and the upcoming features. We can't wait to finish the next Major Update.



We recently updated Legends of Ellaria RoadMap
 , so don't forget to check it out


If you own a copy of Legends of Ellaria but still haven't joined the closed Beta, please join us on our Discord server, PM us with @Admin and we will set you up! In case you don't have a Discord, you can also contact us here.

Thank you for the support, and we hope to build a great game alongside you.

See you in Ellaria,

The Larkon Studio Team

[Asid]

Our Latest Teaser Trailer
Thu, 12 September 2019


Dear Legends of Ellaria players,

In the past few months, we've added new RPG classes, new combat and AI mechanics, graphics and new features. We've also finished parts of the world domination version, destructible buildings, kingdom management, and new graphics.

We'd like to share some of these features with a new teaser trailer that we've made. This trailer contains some of our upcoming features, as well as content from older announcements.

Enjoy!

[Asid]

Progress Report -October
Tue, 29 October 2019



Dear Legends of Ellaria players,

As we're nearing the Beta release, we've made progress on Legends of Ellaria's logics. Among our achievements is the army movement, battles, sphere of influence, as well of huge optimizations on memory and CPU.

We would like to share with you some of the new World Management and Sphere of Influence logics.

Sphere of Influence

Any owned town, fort, or strategical building generates influence. This influence is transferred to other territories until it dissipates. having influence on a terrain tile will automatically "own" it, which gives you kingdom bonuses and allows you to build buildings on it.



The influence dissipates depending on the terrain type and connected roads. For instance, a flat terrain with roads will only lose one influence point, while a mountain will lose four influence points.


Army Movement

The army movement speed depends on the terrain's influence points, terrain type, roads, and the size of the army. For instance, a large army would move much slower than a regular army and would move even slower on enemy territory, giving a significant advantage to the defender.



Also, you cannot go past an enemy army or a fort. When moving one tile away from an enemy, you would have to either attack the enemy, retire to where you came from, or stay put and prepare a defense.

Since armies cannot go past forts or other armies, you can defend your kingdom by building "super defenses" on strategic locations, such as mountain passes and river crossings.

Places of interest

Each location, represented by HEX tiles, may contain one or several places of interest. These places may be towns, taverns, ruins, and camps. For instance, a location may contain an owned farm, your army camp, and a special quest location.



Hovering and clicking on a location will cause your player to fast travel to that location.

Battles

When you "walk" towards a defended location, you will start a battle, which will end once one of the sides is defeated or have retreated. The outcome of the battle depends on the hero, size of the army, and location. Each battle may last from a few in-game hours to several days and will involve multiple skirmishes.



You can choose to auto-resolve the battle by staying in the map view and wait for the outcome or to switch to First Person / RTS mode and command the battle by yourself.

If you win a battle, the remaining enemy armies will retreat to another location, while you will occupy and capture the battle location, along with all of its structures.

Along with these logics, we're working on the rest of the kingdom management, quests, a new city build menu, and army management. With that in mind, We are close to finishing the World Domination version, and we estimate that we'll publish the Closed Beta in November.

If you own a copy of Legends of Ellaria but still haven't joined the closed Beta, please join us on our Discord server, PM us with @Admin and we will set you up! In case you don't have a Discord, you can also contact us here.

Thank you for the support, and we hope to build a great game alongside you.

See you in Ellaria,

The Larkon Studio Team

[Asid]

Progress Report - January
Thu, 30 January 2020




Dear Legends of Ellaria players,

Based on Closed Beta feedbacks, we've completed many tasks during this month. We're nearly finished the next stable Closed Beta version.

We've also made progress in multiple features and locations both for the world map and game mechanics, and we're expecting the official Early Access version to be ready within weeks.

Along with game mechanics, we've made it possible to conduct large battles in First Person mode.

We have tested as many as 50 soldiers in the field, and we're hoping to raise this number to hundreds. The battle consists of waves of attackers and defenders until one of the sides runs out of soldiers or retreats.



A battle is connected to the world view, so you can either resolve the battle by waiting for it to conclude, or by entering First Person and fight by yourself. We've also ensured that if the attacker has less strength than the defender, the attacker will have penalties and will have fewer soldiers in the field.



You can command your soldiers through RTS (Real-Time Strategy) menu, or through Attack / Defend / Follow quick commands from the first person. If you have enough soldiers and don't need to strategize, you can just rush forward with your soldiers set to follow you. You'll be constantly surrounded by your own soldiers as they get reinforcements.



We've also made new places of interest, armies, places with fixed bonus and places that you can build. We've also added one-time events, that disappear once you clear them.



We're still working on more concepts and places of interest, and we're excited about the results. We've created several times more exploration, locations, and logics than the legacy version.



As we're finishing more milestones, we're closer to a stable Early Access than ever. We'd prefer not to post an official date yet, but based on our expectations, the Early Access version may be ready as soon as within two weeks.

If you own a copy of Legends of Ellaria but still haven't joined the closed Beta, please join us on our Discord server, PM us with @Admin and we will set you up! In case you don't have a Discord, you can also contact us here.

Thank you for the support, and we hope to build a great game alongside you.

See you in Ellaria,

The Larkon Studio Team
 

[Asid]

The World Domination Is Out
Sat, 29 February 2020




Dear Legends of Ellaria players,

After one year of hard work, we're excited to publish the new World Domination update. This update contains the final piece of the game mechanics and changes the previous version into a new game.




The World Domination version (0.6.15.03) Contains

•   A new kingdom management
•   Multiple rogue factions, such as Bandits and Goblins
•   New city management, economy, and buildings
•   A new battle system, conquest, and "clear area" system
•   New places to explore. More will come
•   New graphics and characters


Known issues

•   The First Person camera is disabled
•   Dialogues and quests are disabled
•   Siege weapons and horses are disabled
•   Some framerate and optimization issues




Check out the previous announcements to see a more in-depth description of what we added

We're going to improve and add features in the following releases. Our first task will be to map and fix any new issues, polish the graphics and basic mechanics, and optimize LoE to run faster and with less memory.

During this time, we're gathering feedback about the new features that we should add and will post further announcements and discussions. We're planning to add happiness, crime, events, and other kingdom related features.

We would love to hear your feedbacks via steam discussions, Ingame Reports via F8, and reviews system.

In the meanwhile, if you feel nostalgic about the Legacy version of Legends of Ellaria, you can set LoE version through the Properties window.



If you own a copy of Legends of Ellaria but still haven't joined the closed Beta, please join us on our Discord server, PM us with @Admin and we will set you up! In case you don't have a Discord, you can also contact us here.

Thank you for the support, and we hope to build a great game alongside you.

See you in Ellaria,

The Larkon Studio Team


Version 0.6.15.04 Changes

•   Fixed pink screen when looking at the sun
•   Fixed some NPCs falling through the ground
•   Fixed floating rocks in caves
•   Balanced the areas where you can build cities

[Asid]

Optimizations And Tweaks Update
Sun, 29 March 2020



Dear Legends of Ellaria players,

In the past few weeks, we've made important optimizations to our game engine, as well as tweaks and fixes from discussions and bug reports.

These changes are a part of a long-awaited expansion of our gameplay engine, which will allow us to integrate the new quest systems and remaining features.



The first thing we focused on was to reduce texture and memory size. For that end, we've implemented a new system that loads textures in memory depending on where you are.

Another thing we've fixed is the pathfinding and movement logics. The citizens were colliding with some objects on their way to places, and enemies were jumping on top of each other when fighting in large formations. We've fixed these issues and also fixed followers and movement issues in small spaces.

As a bonus, we've also improved the combat animations and tweaked some elements of the combat, both for small and large battles.



In addition, we've changed much of our sky rendering, which improved the speed and also shows better clouds and skies.

Its been a busy month, as we went over multiple areas of LoE and reduced multiple overloads that were causing sudden frame rate drops, such as in combat or in cities. We also collected bug reports and fixed multiple bugs in management, logics, graphics and more. We'll continue to improve LoE as we go. Thank you for your help and for all the bug reports!

Version 0.6.17.01 Contains

Optimizations

•   Reduced required RAM and Texture memory by 50% - 80%
•   Improved Outdoor Framerate +30%
•   Improved RTS Framerate x2
•   Improved large battle Framerate x2
•   Improved NPC generation speed x2
•   Removed multiple sudden framerate drops


Tweaks and overhauls

•   Improved combat animations and combo sequences
•   Improved combat AI
•   overhauled pathfinding, followers and combat movement
•   overhauled sky rendering and looks
•   Moved the RTS build menu to the left


Fixes

•   "Not enough resources" was not appearing in the world view when trying to buy a building
•   Market and other structures were not visible after build
•   crystals in caves were blinking
•   Fixed multiple issues where canceling a building doesn't return the resources
•   Fixed multiple issues with Boar, Cave crawler and NPC animations
•   Fixed multiple pathfinding issues
•   Fixed some rain and wetness issues
•   Fixed lighting issues in city buildings
•   Fixed NPC behavior and mismatch animations in city
•   Fixed unknown buildings appear on empty maps
•   Fixed some invisible colliders

[Asid]

Release Window and Price Raise
Mon, 4 May 2020




Good day everyone!

It’s been a while since our last announcement, so first of all, we want to send our best wishes to you and your loved ones in these challenging times. We hope you are doing as good as possible under the circumstances. Stay safe, stay strong – we’ll get through this together!

That said, we’ve got great news to share. Although the coronavirus crisis has shaken our world as much as everyone’s, we are a small team, and thankfully we could adapt quickly to remote working. Thus, our development hasn’t been too badly affected by this situation… and we are ready to announce that our game is in the last leg of its development. After several years in Early Access, Legends of Ellaria will launch its full release version in middle Q3!

This announcement comes with a warning, though. As we explained in the Early Access FAQ, our plan was always to increase the price of the game as the game grew. Now that we’re close to full release, that time has come: the game is now bigger and better in every sense that when we launched in Early Access. Starting on May 7th, the price will be increased to 24.99$.

This is also a way to thank our Early Access supporters that have got us this far, so those who believed in us since the beginning end up paying less as a token of appreciation for their trust. You still have a few days with the Early Access price, though, so if you were on the fence on buying Legends of Ellaria, go jump at it now before the increase!

In the coming days and weeks, we will share more information about the full version of the game and its release. If you want to stay up to date, hit the Follow button, and Wishlist the game.

See you in Ellaria, adventurers!

[Asid]

Introducing the Studio
Thu, 7 May 2020



Good day, Ellarians!

It’s been some time since we started this journey together: Legends of Ellaria was released in Early Access almost 3 years ago, and in this time, the game has grown and evolved a lot. Before anything else, we want to thank you for your continued support.

As we announced a few days ago, we are slowly approaching full release, and we wouldn’t have made it this far without you. That’s why today, we want to start a series of weekly dev blogs: as a way to reach out and open our doors to you. We want to highlight some new features we’re working in, but not only that —also to explain some major creative decisions we made in the past, or the main challenges we’re facing now, as a way to give you some insight on such a complex (but fascinating) work as games development.

But before we go into that, we want to introduce ourselves a little bit, so we get to know each other. Larkon Studio, the team behind Legends of Ellaria, is a small indie studio founded by two friends, Arik Helman and Adrian Tache. We had been working together for some years for an art design company, and one day we decided to pursue our own dream. We are around 40 years old, with families and kids, so you can imagine that making that jump was a bit scary. We cut our teeth in Larkon Studios developing games and apps for third parties – but always dreaming of starting our own game and bringing some of these ideas to the design table. Ideas that, over the years, became the first game design document of Legends of Ellaria.

Our interests in games were very varied: Arik loves shooters, RPG and some grand strategy games, while Adrian is more focused in RPG, RTS and 4X Games. We decided that we didn’t need to renounce any of these influences: maybe we could find a way to put everything together in a melting pot, creating a game that defied classifications by genre. A game that brings together different mechanics in a unique gameplay experience, mixing roleplaying games with real-time strategy. That is how the concept of Legends of Ellaria came to be – and we are convinced that that was also what made the difference in the successful Kickstarter campaign that allowed us to start this project.

Reached that point, Early Access felt like the natural way to go for us. We were making three games in one, so to speak – a challenge that we knew would be easier with a community by our side that would support us and give us invaluable feedback. More than ever after the experience in Kickstarter, we just knew that this was a road we couldn’t walk alone. And time has proven us right: our great community’s feedback has shaped and changed the game mechanics so much that Legends of Ellaria is now not only different but better. We also want to thank all the people that have worked with us over the years: our producer Lisa, our graphics designers Jamie and Ronny, interns from QA and art schools, voice actors, freelance game designers… You are all a part of Ellaria now!

That’s all for today; in next week’s blog, we want to introduce you to the fantasy world of Ellaria and how it was conceived.

See you next week!

[Asid]

Introducing Ellaria
Thu, May 14, 2020


Good day, Ellarians!

We’re one week closer to the full release of Legends of Ellaria, and after introducing the team who made the game in last week’s blog, today we want to introduce you to Ellaria itself – that is, the world where the whole games take place. Ellaria shares a lot of common traits with other high fantasy settings: it’s a place inhabited by creatures of very, very different humanoid species, where magic and the supernatural play an important role. A land full of mysteries and terrible dangers, but also of glory to be found for the brave adventurer.

Ellaria is at a crossroad of a sort – a junction between worlds where you can hop across dimensions to different worlds. A long, long time ago, a forgotten civilization, as ancient as they were powerful, built portals to a myriad of other worlds. They disappeared, no one knows why – but they left their Golems behind to guard their portals and sacred locations.

Your character came to Ellaria after crossing one of these portals, fleeing from conflict in Mara, your own world. Mara was a thriving world where proud lords ruled over vast kingdoms. Their awe-inspiring powers were built upon the Riftstone, a material with strange magical properties. But these lords fought each other constantly to control the Riftstone, and their strife escalated so much that it became a worldwide conflict that spanned hundreds of years, until the powerful forces that they unleashed transformed Mara into a desolated wasteland. You found one of the portals of the Ancient and crossed it to Ellaria, along with your people, escaping from the total destruction of your world.

In this new world, you became ruler of your own faction – but just like you, many other races and factions fled their homelands and came to Ellaria. The goblins, who live in large packs and favor ranged weapons because their weak bodies can’t stand up a human in a square fight. The northerners, ruling the land from their strongholds, who despise magic because they fear it as a curse. The remnants of the Amerdan clan, bandits and outcasts now, roaming the land searching for their fortunes. The mysterious Golems, ever silent, ever waiting for their masters to come back. And who knows what other strange faces you can find in the isolated regions of a place such as Ellaria…

In Ellaria, there are no established religions as such; magic is at the center of spirituality in this world. Most people think that magic is a power to be harnessed, but some others, like the Northerners, consider it a curse that can only lead to war and death (just like happened in your world, actually). Magic is approached in many different ways depending on every culture; in a nutshell, there are several different schools of magic that come from different understandings of its spiritual nature.

This is just an outline; there are of course many details, plots and surprises in Ellaria… but we don’t want to spoil the whole thing, you’ll have to play it for yourself to find out! This setting was initially created by Adrian, although the feedback from the community helped to give it shape and details. And even if Adrian acted as the lead writer in the world-building stage and creating the main storyline, he’s now working with Arik and the rest of the team in writing and implementing the main and side quests.

The inspiration for Ellaria came from an old fantasy book that Adrian read years ago: it was about a world that became a wasteland because of the excessive use of magic. In that world, magic was not exactly something mystical and otherworldly, but a way of life – something that may consume resources, but that you use in your daily life. Adrian found that concept interesting, and it’s been lurking in his mind for years… but funny enough, he can’t remember the actual name of the book now! If it rings a bell for you, let us know in the comments!

In the coming weeks, we want to focus on some of the new features that will be implemented in the full version of the game: what they bring to the experience, how they will work, how they were designed and created…
For a start, next week we’ll discuss how kingdom management will work.

See you next week!

[Asid]

Kingdom Management
Thu, 21 May 2020

Good day Ellarians!

As you know, our goal with Legends of Ellaria was always to create a game that blended different genres together, taking some features and mechanics from real-time strategy, first-person RPGs… In order to channel these features into a coherent experience, we decided that the game needed to operate in two levels: in one as a hero, in another as a king. That is: in some parts you would be controlling your character in their adventures; in the second, you would have to manage your own kingdom.

That, however, faced us with one of the main challenges of the development of Legends of Ellaria: finding a good balance between the first-person and the kingdom management view. With “balance” here we mean a lot of things – in terms of pacing, we needed both to feel equally fun and exciting. Both systems needed to feel equally meaningful and useful, too, so there is no “optimal path” and you could freely choose how to play depending only on your playstyle and mood. Also, they needed to feel connected: since you can perform different tasks (quests, attacking enemies or building something) both on the world view and in first-person, and you can jump from one view to the other, transitioning between both modes needed to feel natural.

We approached this by balancing carefully the different pros and cons to every option, so as the player would never have an obvious choice. You will choose how to approach everything depending on every playthrough and every situation. For instance, let’s say you are roaming the world with your army and you cross swords with other war party. You can direct the battle strategically from the world map, waiting for it to resolve automatically, or join the fray in first-person to lead your men yourself. The second option is a bit harder and potentially more dangerous, but it can also tip the scales if the battle is undecided – after all, as a hero you are a force to be reckoned with! Another example is construction: you can build everything in the world view, and the city council will decide where to place your new building; or you can walk into the city and place it yourself. The second option is slower and maybe less practical – but on the other hand you can design your city exactly as you want.

Some more examples: you can gather resources both by using different specialized buildings or thanks to the loot you get during your first-person adventures. But you don’t have to go yourself to every quest – you can assign them to your heroes, managing the whole affair from the world view. Your buildings allow you to grow your population and hire more soldiers, which in turn you can form armies with and lead into battle to attack other kingdoms or defend yours. Your kingdom gain bonuses when you capture certain special buildings and expanding your borders by strengthening your sphere of influence. Even your royal advisor has a two-sided nature: the dialog menu that advise you in the world view is literal character that you can meet in the first-person view!

To cut a long story short, it took a lot of iteration and fine-tuning, but we’re satisfied with the final results: in Legends of Ellaria you have to be both a hero and a king, and both things feel equally engaging and satisfying. As you can see, this interaction between the first-person and world-view systems create a game loop that keeps you moving you from one mode to another. However, we’re still halfway there with kingdom management, and some of the systems we have mentioned won’t be ready until the full version of the game (which will release soon!). At the moment, you can build towns, buildings and complexes, manage and expand your kingdom and attack or defend fortified positions. You can also explore, fight and gather resources in first person mode, but you can’t assign quests to your heroes yet.

In the full game, you will be able to unlock new buildings and types of troops through research. Quests will also be much more important, as their outcome may influence your kingdom as a whole; and you will be able to assign them to a party of your heroes (or go in yourself for a greater reward… and a hardest challenge). We are in the implementation stage of the quests: the custom-made quest engine works since a few versions ago, but we’re improving it so it works with multiple locations and different heroes; the quests are all written and designed, the code is ready for the most part. In the main story, you will start with a small kingdom, making it grow until it becomes a major power in the world.

We are looking forward to seeing how you shape your kingdoms and approach your adventures in Ellaria. Will you choose to be a brave warrior king like Aragorn, leading your troops to battle and taking part in dangerous adventures, or a clever tactician who rules from your throne like Havelock Vetinari? Maybe a mix of both like Julius Caesar – someone able to build an empire, but who doesn’t shy from blood and conquest?

Ellaria is waiting for you!

[Asid]

Factions and Diplomacy
Fri, 29 May 2020

Good day Ellarians!



A couple of weeks ago, we introduced to you the world of Ellaria and its different factions, but focusing on their lore and origins. In this week’s dev blog we want to expand on what each of them bring to the table in terms of gameplay. You will have to find a way to deal with them to carve a place in the world for your kingdom, either by keeping them under control through diplomacy or by defeating them in the battlefield. But Ancients, Goblins, Northerners and Bandits are quite different in their behavior and capabilities – so you will need a different approach for every faction.

We can’t go into too much fine detail because figuring out how to deal with every faction is part of the fun, of course; but we can at least outline how the different factions work. Just like you, each faction will adapt to their situation, looking for resources, trying to grow their kingdoms… They will have their own heroes, and eventually they will send them forth to race you to get riches and treasures like ancient and powerful devices. There will also be quests involving some of these factions which will have an impact on your relations with them – you can help them out to get in their good side… or, on the other hand, fulfill certain deeds to mine their power.



Diplomacy will also play a part, and each faction will approach it differently. Bandits, for instance, will try to keep their heads low, making themselves strong in their fortresses and strongholds without trying to expand their borders. Goblins and Northerners, on the other hand, are warrior cultures who will always test your strength and won’t hesitate to jump at your throat if you look vulnerable – unless you have gained your friendship, of course! The Ancients are a passive force, happy to be left alone – but terrible if you awaken their ire. That’s all the factions we know about for the time being -- but who knows, there might be surprises further down the road…

We have not yet implemented diplomacy options, but in the full release version, diplomacy will be a useful tool for you as a king and ruler. For a start, you can establish trade routes between factions, which will give you different bonuses to resources and/or research. This bonus affects your resource genereation and it’s cumulative: the more trade routes and the more resources, the more profit you get.
Once you are allied with a faction, you can even recruit their soldiers to help you at war. Even though we have not conceived diplomacy to be at the core of Legend of Ellaria, it is intended to be helpful and push you to make clever decisions. That’s not to say that it’s just a side thing: there will be different points in the main storyline where you can advance choosing a diplomatic route instead of taking arms.

Both the diplomacy and combat artificial intelligence systems of the different factions have been always one of our main focus in developing Legends of Ellaria. We knew that, for the game and its world to feel really alive, we needed its inhabitants to feel as authentic as possible – each faction needed to be unique and engaging. To be quite candid about this, it’s been a real challenge – but at the same time we have not found any major roadblocks: we’ve been working hard, iterating and improving every system, to get every feature as near perfect and balanced as we humanly could within the limited time that we had and without blowing the scope of the game too much. We are satisfied with the results, but the ultimate judges will be you!

In next week’s dev blog, we will talk about heroes, quests and exploration of the world.

See you next week, Ellarians!

[Asid]

Heroes, quests and exploration
Thu, June 4, 2020



Good day Ellarians!
In some of our previous blogs, we have mentioned a few times your heroes. They are powerful NPC companions that will be key for you to succeed as a ruler in Legends of Ellaria. To put it in a nutshell, they can do almost everything that you can as a king: they can take on quests, attack other armies and guard locations. They are, essentially, your most trusted generals and advisors, like the Knights of the Round Table were to King Arthur.

Heroes are one of the features of Legend of Ellaria that will significantly improve in the full version of the game (to be released soon, remember!). Right now, they are controlled by their own AI, and they come with their own gear that you cannot change. They act as a "premium AI," so to speak, which can take care of some things for you. You cannot be leading troops everywhere, for instance – sometimes, it just won't be efficient for you to go to every battle personally. In those cases, you can send your heroes to lead the army for you, controlling them in the world map the same way you control your character.

Heroes also have classes, skills and abilities, and they level up and get more powerful by taking part in quests and battles. When heroes lead an army, they make it more powerful, allowing them to defeat bigger armies. At the moment, you can send them to do certain quests, but not to take them to quests with you – although they can join a battle to help your side.

Right now, that's all they do – but we plan to flesh them out much more. For a start, we're planning to make heroes controllable, so you can "possess" them and do quests by yourself. Taking into account that heroes have character classes, skills and abilities, this means that you will get to experience incredibly varied gameplay: tired of ruling a kingdom? You can become a destructive elemental wizard, a swift archer, a fearsome warrior… and experiment with different gameplay styles at any moment.

Heroes are especially relevant to quests – and not only because you can send them to clear quests for you, but also because in order to get the very best of them, you need to complete a few special quests. Thing is, there will be two different types of heroes: the less powerful ones will be randomly generated, but the really strong companions are a certain number of special heroes… who will only join your army if you help them before.



Now, it's common for quests to end up feeling a bit like a chore – please take this package to this town, or go fetch ingredients for me, or clear this area of monsters… We wanted the main quests to be more fleshed out than this; let's take a look at how an actual quest would look like without spoiling interesting details of the story. For instance, a quest might require us to track down a sorcerer to his secret hideout. Then you infiltrate the tower, trying not to alert the guards, and when you face the sorcerer and try to talk him into coming with you without giving trouble… well, things go south from there, and you need to use your wits and not just your own magical skills to get out of this situation.
One of the best things about these quests is that they will take you to explore the world of Ellaria in the first-person view – which is not only rich but very, very big! Ellaria spans on multiple world maps (which are not all available right now; we will release them one by one further down the road). Each map is divided into tens to hundreds of hex areas, and each hex area is at least 1 km2, with several locations and places of interest, as well as multiple treasures and some hidden items. You will find several biome types, such as hills, mountains, and you will also find unique biomes in later maps. Every Hex map is divided into several sub-areas, so if you build a farm in the world map, switch to the first-person exploration and walk to it, you will find the farm, but also two more places of interest or wild animals at least.

But the most interesting thing about these areas is that they are affected by their location: for instance, you are most likely to find goblins in hexes controlled by them. When you conquer these lands, they will change to farmlands (or bandits if your kingdom has a high crime rate!). And how big are these hexes? It will take you several minutes to cross a whole hex – and that's if you don't get distracted with something interesting on your way… or stopped by enemies attacking you! You can spend an hour on each hex, and that's just exploring.

As you can see, Ellaria will be a rich, big world for you to explore, and not just with your own characters but with several others, so you never get bored of it. That was all for today; we'll be back next week with another blog – but this time, we want you to decide what we talk about. Send us your questions in the comments section or through the forums, and we'll pick the most interesting ones and answer them in a Q&A next week.

See you soon, Ellarians!

[Asid]

Community Q&A - Part1
Thu, 11 June 2020



Good day Ellarians!

We’re back with a new entry of our blog series about Legends of Ellaria, its full-release features and its development process. Last week we discussed heroes and quests, and how exploration will feel in the final version of the game. We also invited you to send us your questions about the game so we could do a Q&A this week. We have received so many questions through Steam, Discord, social media, etc. that we couldn’t fit them all in just one post, so we have decided to break it into two weeks; here you have the first selection of questions; the rest will be answered next week. Thanks to everyone who dropped by to say hello and ask about the game!

QUESTION: Will we only be able to control the "king"? Will we be able to take over anyone in the army? Your character is the ruler of their own faction, so yeah, you can definitely control the king! As for other characters, you will be able to “possess” your heroes to control them directly in first-person view, just as you do with the main character. Controlling simple NPCs (foot soldiers, etc.) won’t be possible.

QUESTION: How deep is the dialogue system with NPCs? Heroes and other important NPCs will have their backstories, related quests and opinion on events happening in the world that you can explore through dialog. Smaller NPCs won’t have real dialogs as such.

QUESTION: What feature are you guys most excited to complete? Probably this answer would be different in different stages of the development -- but right now, we’d say that the quests, as well as the dialogue and storyline choices related to them. After working hard in creating Ellaria and its multiple locations, we’re incredibly happy to be able now to fill it with stories and people so it feels like a living place. The same applies to events that affect directly your playthrough, altering your kingdom production, hiring soldiers, and changing your alliances with other factions.

QUESTION: Is the leveling going to be like The Elder Scrolls, where one character can do anything, they just have to level the right skill up -- or are you going to have specializations where each class can do certain things? The leveling is more similar to The Elder Scrolls: you can choose to focus on one class or on multiple ones; there are no limitations on the skills, proficiencies and attributes that you can choose, but there will be a limited amount of points to spend for each level. We think this system is the right one for players to mold their characters as much as possible to their playstyle.

QUESTION: How long do you intend the story to be? The main story will span through multiple quests, NPC stories, and maps. You won't have to go through it in one go, mind you -- there are several side quests that will help you advance. All in all, there are four chapters, with each chapter spanning through an entire map, making the main story quite long.

QUESTION: Will diplomacy be available with all the factions? There is a diplomacy system indeed (you can read more about it here [link]), but not all the factions are “approachable” through diplomacy. Some factions will just not talk to you, while some will have limited dialog options. Others will allow trade and alliances – but only if you are on their good side.

QUESTION: What type of itemization can we expect (armor sets, epics, uniques etc.)? There will be armor sets and unique items, as well as special items that are so powerful that will cost a fortune. But that’s only characters’ items – along with these items, we're working on unique items that will boost the strength of your army as a whole, or produce resources for the entire kingdom.

QUESTION: Will they support the game with expansions or new worlds? We're planning to add modding support and expansions after full release. We're also planning new locations and races.

QUESTION: Is there an intrigue or relationship system similar to the Mount & Blade saga? Not at the moment. There are some quests that will affect your relations with factions or heroes depending on the choices you make, though.

QUESTION: Will there be a cooperative multiplayer? We’re not working on it right now, but it’s not out of the question either. It will have to wait at least after full release, mind you.

Thanks for reading this far, and see you next week with more questions, Ellarians!

[Asid]

Community Q&A - Part2
Thu, 18 June 2020



Good day Ellarians,

and welcome back to our weekly dev blog about Legends of Ellaria!
Last week we opened up this blog to your questions in a Q&A, but we couldn't fit them all in just one post, so we saved some for this week. Without further ado, let's go with your questions about how the full release version of Legends of Ellaria will be!

QUESTION: Can you explain how the leveling system will work in more depth?
As it's common in roleplaying games, you gain experience points (XP) by completing quests or performing certain tasks. When you get enough XP, your character levels up and gain points that can be spent in improving your Attributes (Strength, Dexterity, etc.), class Proficiency (Warrior, Mage, etc.), or Skills. These Skills give you specific perks, such as new spells or boosts to your abilities (like a +10% bonus to Melee). You can spend these points however you like – you can combine classes to get a jack-of-all-trades character build, go min/max for a super-optimized character… that's your choice!

QUESTION: Will heroes have their own personality, goals and methods?
Each hero has their own backstory, and you will need to complete certain tasks to hire them. Once they pledge their loyalty to you, though, they won't break their vow nor betray you. And about their methods, it's you who issue orders after all!

QUESTION: Will there be leadership skills to inspire your army in combat?
There is an army morale system and an army strength system. When you gain victories, complete, or use special items, your army's morale will rise for a limited time – which in turn makes your army stronger. On the other hand, if you start losing battles, you will lose morale, which will make your army weaker. There are other events that can affect your morale, like curses. We're planning to add a leadership skill that will give you a bonus to both your kingdom and your armies.

QUESTION: What about civilians – do your leadership skills affect them in any way?
For now, we don't have any rebellion or loyalty/disloyalty mechanic based on your or your heroes' skills. There is an equivalent to the moral system of your army, though: there are events that affect the happiness of your population. Low happiness increases crime, which can generate enemies who will raid your cities.



QUESTION: Can I be evil?
You can choose evil paths in some of the quests. You can also run your kingdom in an "evil" way. There is no Karma system that will tag you as "evil" at the moment, mind you.

QUESTION: Is there a main quest to be completed, or is the game a full sandbox?
Yes, there is. Although Legends of Ellaria is a sandbox with no end or time limit, your quest follows the main story that will take you to different maps and make you face unique enemies. We can't give you more details on that at the moment, though, or we would spoil all the surprises!

QUESTION: Will there be a New Game+ option?
Not as such. You can re-play specific chapters of the main story, though. When restarting a chapter, you will always start with the same XP and completed tasks that you had when you reached that point for the first time. That feature is meant for you to try different choices and approaches. Let's see an example: in a first playthrough, you can try building a military kingdom, researching the most powerful units, and conquering everything on your wake. On a second playthrough, you would follow the mage's path, investing heavily in your magical academy and making mages the core of your army surrounded by a multitude of weaker military units. You would also complete some quests to enlist golems to your army to act as your tanks. In your third gameplay, you can focus on the economic side, making ludicrous amounts of gold and using it to hire mercenaries instead of keeping a standing army. Or you can repeat chapters to experiment with different choices that would change the storyline.

That's it for today! Next week we'll dive into the real-time strategy part of the game, discussing battles and their gameplay, the kind of tactics you can use, how the enemy AI will be…

See you then, Ellarians!

[Asid]

Ellaria - RTS Combat
Thu, 25 June 2020



Good day, Ellarians!

We are back again to our weekly dev blog about Legends of Ellaria. After two weeks of answering your questions (you can check our Q&As here https://store.steampowered.com/newshub/app/621070/view/2489876169932442978  and here https://store.steampowered.com/newshub/app/621070/view/2414440242053953496 ), we’re back to our regular schedule of dev blogs. Today, we want to explore another key feature of our game with you: the real-time strategy battles! As you may already know, Legends of Ellaria is a one-of-a-kind type of game. It’s neither an action RPG or an RTS, but a unique blend of all these genres and mechanics. We want to discuss a little bit more about what managing your units in combat in real-time really means.

First of all, remember that Legends of Ellaria is all about choice. Once you are about to enter a battle you’ll have to decide if you want to fight alongside your soldiers in the battlefield or if you prefer to take a strategic view, so you can guide your troops from distance. Either in first person or in RTS mode, you won’t be able to position your troops before battle; instead you will have some time until you clash with the enemy’s army that can be used to issue orders to your troops. When the blades start to crash, keep in mind that you may also command your troops to attack, defend or to follow another thanks to a shortcut. The target of those orders will be the center of your screen so be careful where to position the camera before shouting an order!

But while fighting on the battlefield may be more epic, doing it in the RTS mode might help you to save more of your soldiers’ lives! At any point during combat you can switch to the RTS menu with a classic overview cam. The UI will remind you some of the genre’s classics, like StarCraft: you will be able to select individual units or multiple one by clicking and dragging on the screen and, then, issue the same three orders that we explained before.

Keep in mind that, while in RTS mode, you can command your troops in some different ways . You can use filters to select specific units (i.e. archers) or you can select individuals or groups and command them to follow orders. Picture yourself in battle: after weakening your enemies with your archers, you order your infantry forward into close combat, locking the enemy in its position. You are ready for the final blow: you send a platoon you had reserver to flank the enemy troops and attack it in their most vulnerable point, outnumbering them in the battlefield.



Legends of Ellaria offers you a wide variety of troops with different strengths and weaknesses, so you will have to choose wisely how to approach every combat. First, we would like to emphasize that units can be upgraded through research (hunters, militias, swordsmen, royal guard) or the academy (mages, golems) but you may also get some mercenaries, unlocked through quests. Mercenaries will cost twice as much as training a soldier and their upkeep is three times higher… but they don’t consume any manpower, meaning you can hire as many as you want.

Going back to our regular troops, militias are the cheaper (and weaker) units: useful for reducing crime in your kingdom, but not as good in the battlefield.Archers are good piercing armors but lousy in melée combat. Swordsmen are one of the most important units, able to hold their ground against most opponents. And if you want to push for the best of the best, the Royal Guard is the highest level knight with and exceptional armor and melée weapons.



You will also need to add some variety to your army to ensure that you cover every possible situation. And here’s where the Academy comes to your rescue. This building will allow you to train golems (basically walking tanks), mages and other specialized units will come in handy. You will be able to upgrade the academy through quests, discovering ancients or investing in magic.

Just a few more quick notes about units. First, unlike your heroes, they are supposed to be expendable troops, and thus they do not gain XP or level up during the game: the only way to upgrade them is through research upgrades for your army. And second, be aware of the economy side of building and maintaining an army. A strong soldier may cost as much as 10 weaker soldiers, but won't necessarily win a fight against 10 weaker soldiers. The point is you'll have to balance your army between few elite soldiers, or a horde of weaklings that will lose soldiers in each battle. If you do have the manpower and plan on winning battles through numbers, you should take care about the upkeep costs; because you will need to pay wages and feed your soldiers, and may go bankrupt before you win the war.

See you next week, Ellarians!