Claws & Jaws
Free Content Update
v3.4.35.37687
Hello Vikings!
With the open beta now complete, the Claws & Jaws update is ready to be released and change the landscape of Northgard.
Thanks again to all the players who participated in the beta, reported issues, shared their feedback, participated in the discussions, and helped us with the update !!
Here is what it brings:
What’s New
This update focuses on bringing novelty and exciting choices to the Northgard environment. It focuses mainly on two aspects: the addition of new wild animals and the rework of map generation rules.
Wildlife
First, we’re adding two new wild animals to Northgard to make encounters more varied and interesting and to present new opportunities to take advantage of them.
Foxes and Fox Burrows
Foxes and Fox Burrows are now part of the Northgard landscape and will present a challenge as a wild foe, as well as an opportunity to gain by closing the burrows and claiming the reward.
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- Foxes are a new wild animal. They have the same aggressive behavior as wolves but are less powerful, way faster, and attack in numerous groups. So keep an eye on them.
- Fox Burrow is a new building equivalent to the Wolf Den. It spawns new foxes that will attack the adjacent zones if left unchecked.
- Closing it will grant 25 Fame and 75 Kröwns.
Boars
Boars are a new wild animal and a new threat the clans might encounter.
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- Boar is another new wild animal you will encounter in Northgard. It has passive behavior similar to a bear but is even more powerful. If you attack it, it will fiercely defend itself and its territory.
Environment and Map Generation
Sheeps are NOT a new animal, but we’ve changed their spawn rules and reworked them to make them more useful, especially in later games, and to create new specific interactions with clans. The idea is to make the sacrifice for Food no longer the automatic and only use for sheep it is currently.
We also want sheep to spawn in further zones as an attractive later reward.
We’ve also reworked some map generation rules, especially regarding the hostility of spawn zones, to make it more fair for all players.
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Sheep
- Sheep now grants a -50% wood consumption reduction during winter in the zone it is in (-30% previously).
- When several sheep are in the same zone, this bonus increases (but multiplicatively).
- Sheep can now spawn everywhere on the map.
Wolf Clan
- When sacrificing a sheep for food, the clan will get 100 food out of it instead of 80.
Dragon Clan
- The clan can send a sheep to the Sacrificial Pyre to gain 4 dragon essences.
Eagle Clan
- The clan can sacrifice a sheep to trigger a boneyard in the zone, calling a maximum of 3 hawks.
Rat Clan
- The clan can sacrifice a sheep to light up the Purification Pyres for 60 days.
Lynx Clan
- The clan can sacrifice a sheep to get 60 Trophies (but no Food).
Owl Clan
- Sheep reduce the food consumption in the zone by 35% (25% previously).
- This bonus also increases for each additional sheep in the same zone. Also multiplicatively.
Goat Clan
- Following those changes on sheep, the Sheperd ability of Harvald (Goat Warchief) has been modified.
- The ability is now active, and captures all wild sheep in the neutral zone where Harvald is.
- The ability then has a 1 month cooldown.
Spawn Hostility
Until now, it was possible for different clans to face huge differences in hostility at spawn. For example, one clan could start with 1 wolf in zones around its town hall, while another starts with 3 wolves.
- All clans on a map will now start with the same level of hostility on adjacent zones (Adjusted depending on the number of zones adjacent to their townhalls).
- However, this hostility might still be composed of different animals and be split differently for each clan.
Environment Difficulty
With the addition of those new wild animals and the rework of the spawn, we’ve also taken this opportunity to adjust the environment hostility in the different difficulty modes.
- Environment hostility (foes and hostile wild units presence) has been slightly reduced on easy maps.
- Environment hostility has been slightly increased on extreme maps.
- Normal and hard maps hostility should be the same as before.
AI
We know AI faces many difficulties right now, and we’re actively working on it! With this patch, many new changes have been made to make the AI more aggressive, better at surviving, more reactive, and overall better.
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- AI Warband should not get stuck in a zone anymore.
- After decolonizing a player’s zone, in hard and extreme difficulty, the AI will continue pushing the assaults to the next zone until they reach the player’s town hall or are stopped.
- The AI will now use its civilian units to defend itself when attacked by foes.
- AI now handles its happiness correctly and will assign units to happiness production buildings.
- AI is now better at evaluating the outcome of a fight and how much strength it needs to win, so it should no longer send armies to die in fights against neutral factions.
- Raven clan AI no longer builds a harbor as its first building, but when needed.
- Dragon AI now correctly differentiates between thralls and villagers when assigning them.
Conquest
With this patch, the new main Conquest battles of the Owl Clan are now available.
New conquest battles:
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- Titanmachy All clans start with a Guardian of Realms. If two guardians meet, they have to fight to the death. When a guardian dies, its clan is eliminated. Make yours the best and defeat the others before they become too strong.
- Age of Vampires Your Warchief and the Erlking are the two last remaining nightwalkers. There can only be one left. Kill it before he gets to you.
- Battle for Midgard Yggdrasil is under attack from many realms. Portals are awakening, and armies are coming to destroy it. Resist the assaults and close the portals to end this.
Diplomacy and Balancing
Diplomacy
Following changes made during the previous patch, we want to reward cooperative actions between clans of a team to help them increase their relations faster and to encourage support actions.
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General
- When feasting for their team, a clan improves its relationship with all the affected ally clans.
Squirrel
- Meals prepared by the Squirrel for their allies improve their relationship with the affected clans.
- Rumor-Mongering now also increases all relation gains by +100%.
Stoat
- When collecting a Levy for their team, the Stoat clan improves their relationship with all the affected clans.
Rat
- When healing ally units, the rat clan improves their relations with this clan.
Bear
- When Kaija and/or Borgild provide an ally zone with the Kindred Spirit production bonus (fame 200), they improve their relations with this clan.
Clan Specific Balancing
Following changes made during the previous patch, we want to reward cooperative actions between clans of a team, to help them increase their relations faster, as well as to encourage support actions.
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Horse
We’ve received much feedback about the Horse clan. We do not buff it outright because the clan can easily snowball and become unstoppable if Warchiefs are too easy to get. In the meantime, we agree with the sentiment that Horse currently is very spawn-dependent and can fall behind with a spawn without any Ruins and Shipwrecks.
With those changes, we want to address and mitigate this spawn dependency while limiting the kickstart the clan can get on a very good spawn (with two ruins, for example).
- Both Warchiefs now cost only 100 Kröwns to recruit (150 previously).
- Horse clan when exploring Ruins and Shipwrecks will only get half of the Kröwns any other clan would get.
- But they also extract ore from those. [list]
- Exploring a Ruin provides +5 Stones.
- Exploring a Shipwreck provides +5 Iron.
Raven
Since the previous changes on the Raven, we’ve seen many complaints about the toxicity of the “Giant spam” - a move consisting of building the Raven Relic and constantly sending raids of just 1 mercenary + 1 giant. Thus keeping the raid cooldown at its lowest while harassing and dealing massive blows to the targeted clan(s) economy.
We agree with this sentiment, and we want to make it less efficient while also allowing the targeted clans to punish the Raven by countering and fighting back against the raids.
But - as we experimented with this during the beta and have noticed some negative impacts - we still want Raven’s relic and the raids to be attractive and an exciting play option.
- Raids [list]
- Each mercenary killed during a raid increases the raid cooldown of the zone by +20 seconds.
- Sons of Hrymr (giants) power depends on the number of mercenaries sent with them.
- Killing a Son of Hymir sent on a raid increases the raid cooldown of the zone by +120 seconds.
- Silos now also count as a source of Food when the zone is raided.
[*]Relic - New additional effect
Raids now collect resources from the zone when they arrive rather than when they leave (making sure to obtain the resources of the raid even if the whole raid dies).[/list]
Ox
- After unlocking City Building, zones can be improved even if they do not contain the maximum number of buildings.
Rat
- Last Stand Shaman ability (Weapon Forge) effect is now capped to a maximum +300% Dmg increase.
Bear
- Winter Festival now reduces the clan units’ food consumption during winter by -30% instead of boosting food production.
Other
- Some of the Dwarf faction units now attack at distance.
Improvements
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- Many optimizations.
- The game uses less CPU resources.
Bugfixes
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- Added security to avoid 4v2 ranked lobby
- Raven - Added security to avoid mercenary from raid to stay on a tile
- Snake - Fixed lore not unlockable in Clan Knowledge
- Snake - Fixed Rapacious Exploitation not healing if an ally was on the same tile
- Snake - Fixed an issue where mythical animal from Mythical Lure wasn’t killable if scared during the spawn by Scorched earth
- Snake - Fixed Scorched earth not granting ressources if used in snake territory
- Snake - Fixed Black Market not giving back ressource for the Snake trades
- Stoat - Fixed convert cost with Marches of Britany
- Stoat - Fixed Altar of Volvinius on duchy not increasing kröwn levy
- Dragon - Fixed Thrall not working in conquest mission SHard of Misfortune
- Dragon - Fixed Thrall UI on ship not disappearing if killed by the Kraken
- Dragon - Fixed Thrall UI on ship visible in the fog
- Dragon/Stag - Thrall and boat reward are granted even if the clan doesn’t start near the sea
- Stag - Fixed Glory of all clan not giving 30% of fame when unlocked
- Squirrel - Fixed achievement Just a little help for my friend not unlocking
- Ox - Fixed Heimdall’s Hunting Pauldron artifact dealing damage to Valdemar in conquest mission The Cursed if other foes was on the tile
- Lynx - Mythical lure can be placed on other tile then the Town Hall in conquest mission Lands of Oblivion
- Owl - Fixed Guardian of the Realm placement on Naströnd tile not destroyed
- Kraken - Added food icon on the fishery in the build menu
- Kingdom - Fixed an issue where monk stop healing if the Monastery change (upgraded, destroyed) while healing Vedrfolnir
- Kingdom - Anchorage can be build in conquest mission Gold Rush
- Kingdom - Fixed peon healing during fight on Town Hall tile
- Conquest - Fixed Draurg event in conquest Rough Seas
- Conquest - No more event conquest in conquest mission Gold rush
- Conquest - Fixed infinite spawn in conquest mission Cataclysm
- Conquest - Fixed pathfinding not taking in count destroyed tile in conquest mission Cataclysm
- Conquest - Fixed scout progression UI in conquest mission Lands of Oblivion
- Conquest - Added security to avoid a tile to not being colonisable in conquest mission Shard of Misfortune
- Conquest - Fixed some map generation in conquest mission Inner sea
- Conquest bonus free upgrade can be used without upgrading the Town Hall
- Conquest - Fixed bonus iron/stone not sending iron/stone
- Conquest - Fixed military forge not available when a military building from another clan was accessible
- Conquest - Fixed skin not showed
- Rig’s Saga - Fixed a crash in mission 8 when the clan of the Bear was killed by foes
- Rig’s Saga - Fixed performance issue after healing Vedrfolnir
- Story - Fixed camera zoom after cinematics
- Fixed an issue with pathfinding making some unit going out of the territory when not authorized (militia, civils)
- Fixed a crash when selecting a Town Hall of a player that was deleted in the creative editor
- Fixed Rat event notification for sickness villager
- Fixed Vedrfolnir freeze when loading a save right after healed
- Fixed villager disappearing when repairing a port and destroying it
- Fixed crash when claiming the artbook Town Hall skin (the skin was unlocked)
- Fixed crash if a player has special character in his name
- Fixed crash in the report system when down page after writing some word
- Fixed Vedrfolnir not healed if the first building that healed it was modified (upgraded, destroyed)
- Fixed ability that target a tile not clickable if the unit is on a tile where the ability can’t be used (Sentinel for Falconner, Scorched earth for Signy)
- Fixed group selection not shown after loading a save
- Fixed free Odin’s forge with operative dwarves
- Fixed Operatives Dwarves not forging after repairing a forge on fire while assigned to it
- Fixed the SFX for the Upgrade zone button looping
- Fixed lore step when all lore are unlocked
- Fixed some localization issues
- Fixed some text issues
- Fixed some UI issues
- Separated team can’t be choose if the map is balanced
- Added security when loading a coop conquest
- Added a toggle for Levy/Overwork SFX in the option
Known Issues
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- Eagle - Foraging knowledge description doesn’t mention Fox Burrows, but the effect does work.
- Some localization are missing
