In a new update, indie dev Shiro Games has pushed out a major patch to their popular and addictive Viking RTS Northgard. Not only will players have access to the Clan of the Raven, further gameplay changes have been added based on community feedback. Check out more about Clan of the Raven and the gameplay changes in the patch notes for Northgard ’s update below. Via Steam :
The Clan of the Raven:
Great explorers and merchants, their mighty fleet allowed them to be the first to land on Northgard. They are strong trade partners if you don’t mind their constant scheming. Brash and swift, they will often be found roaming where you least expect them.
The Ravens can Colonize new tiles with either Food or Kröwns. This plays to their strengths as merchants. You can take advantage of their buffs and optimize your production of Kröwns then expand rapidly, or just work towards an economic victory...
You have access to a clan specific building, The Harbour. This replaces the Longship dock, allowing you to recruit Sailors but also to explore coastal areas of the map and send recruitable Mercenaries on targeted raids!
Changes to other clans
Along with designing a new clan, we’ve also been reading through your suggestions and ideas and adding them to our list of things to do. Here are a few tweaks that we’ve made to the clans that should change the way you play a little.
The Stag Clan
They can now build the Hall of Skalds without upgrading their Town Hall.
Their Thane fame bonus has been replaced with additional Supplies.
The Goat Clan
knowledge "Healthy Food" has been replaced by "Barricades" which increase civilians resistance by 10% per building in the area.
All Clans
The Happiness bonus for Wealth (Kröwns stocks) has been removed, it is now a Raven-specific knowledge.
Here we’ve made some clan specific changes to address some balance issues, but also just to make each clan more unique and interesting to play. This will be an ongoing process, but we’re interested to see what you think about these changes.
Gameplay changes
Forgot to build a Mine? You can now increase the maximum number of buildings by 1 if you’re willing to part with some Kröwns... This can only be done once per area.
The price of recruiting warriors now varies: the first warrior will cost 20K, the second 25K, the third 30K and so on. If one or several of your warriors are killed, the price will revert to the corresponding level. This change is designed to balance the cost/power ratio of larger armies.
We have improved the ability to micro-manage combat and fixed several bugs related to fight handling. Feedback wanted!
By popular demand, we’ve added Ctrl+1-9 shortcuts to allow creating groups of units or memorizing buildings!
We have increased the time it takes to colonize the Yggdrasil. This will allow the AI (and other players) to contest your claim!
Sailors’ tools can now be improved.
More Fish can be found in new maps.
The Great Explorers achievement has been fixed!
The AI has been significantly improved.
The developers state that the lion’s share of gameplay changes come from keeping an eye on the forums. However, they plan to spend their time focusing on multiplayer for the next few months. “This will probably mean that we’ll be pushing less major updates of content or mechanic changes, but it will mean that you won’t have long to wait before you can crush your friends into the snow!”
In addition, the devs promise a few more non-PvP tidbits on the way: “there are some shield maidens in the pipeline, another clan to come and a stack of other more important gameplay elements that will be pushed as often as we can stop testing out our PvP version in the office,” they stated.
Are you looking forward to playing the new Clan of the Raven in Northgard ? Or do you have your fingers crossed until PvP hits? Feel free to let us know in the comments section below.
