Dev Diary #27: Primal Fury Tomes

Age of Wonders 4

Rule a fantasy realm of your own design! Explore new magical realms in Age of Wonders’ signature blend of 4X strategy and turn-based tactical combat. Control a faction that grows and changes as you expand your empire with each turn!

Hello, my name is Luis and I am the main gameplay designer for Primal Fury. Today I will be going over the two new tomes you can unlock in this new content pack, and what they provide. [url=https://youtube.com/live/Zgie2rlLiF8]Watch the latest Primal Fury First Look as we explore the tomes![/url] The two new tomes are the Tome of the Fey Mists and the Tome of the Stormborne. They are Tier II and Tier IV respectively and both have the Astral and Nature affinity. [h2]Tome of Fey Mists[/h2] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43512488/a3bef647f71a875e08aa839e75b2e79dc4bb2f9f.png[/img] The Tome of Fey Mists is all about placing otherworldly mists into the world around you so that they can protect and enhance your units. These mists make your units hard to hit and, with the fey touched transformation, grant them random positive status effects as well! Spells like [b]Lingering Mists[/b] can place a [b]Misty[/b] effect for 3 turns on a target province that reduces vision ranges for units in the affected province, while also making them invisible to perceive by units outside and inside the Misty effect. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43512488/bbdf5c70ebae9e25f94fb25b9fb23342cf8f7a3a.png[/img][img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43512488/b180b2bf822b264930cffa9701ab20503a25bd2b.png[/img] Provinces affected by this [u]Misty[/u] state create mist clouds in combat, which apply a new status effect called [b]Clinging Mist[/b] to all units ending their turn in the mist, enemies included. [b]Clinging Mists[/b] increases evasion to all attacks, including melee, by 20% and potentially stacking up to 3 times. The effect is countered by the [b]Marked[/b] status effect, so factions like the Reavers have a few tools to counter this. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43512488/d725cf89b98346a6fff8c7488742cc375d466954.png[/img] [b]Fey Embrace[/b] allows you to place these mist clouds on a location of your choosing during combat, allowing for greater control of who gets [b]Clinging Mist[/b], as well as giving two random positive status effects to units. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43512488/16e8474e142dbab4269a7a82e54354e56d18fed1.png[/img] And [b]Staves of Mist[/b] grants your support units the [b]Fey Blessing[/b] ability. This is a free action ability that heals 10 Temporary Hit Points, grants a stack of clinging mist and gives them a random positive status effect. This is also the hero skill ability granted by this tome. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43512488/33ee011c7459a712aedd6de6854504b7f243a84b.png[/img] Now, with all these mists going around you don’t really want your enemies to benefit from them. That’s when [b]Feytouched[/b] comes in. This minor transformation lets you avoid the penalties to vision granted by [b]Misty[/b] and the accuracy penalties of [b]Clinging Mist[/b]. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43512488/db4c0811f9a12f1a008efea129d056e9b0d7ce97.png[/img] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43512488/487d14aecb2c21628e85dd8eafb485370b2e2a55.png[/img] This transformation also gives a new passive, which all Fey now have by default, called [b]Fey Guile[/b]. This new passive grants units that end their turn on mist clouds or on obscuring obstacles (like trees and bushes), a random positive status effect. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43512488/974173bdb4ec6b404ba4722b4935e3526061927e.png[/img] This tome contains a new Fey unit, a strategic summon called the [b]Mistling[/b]. This unit is a Tier III skirmisher and was partly designed as a counterpart to the Gremlin. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43512488/cd86b0209f42b347f25ea80b949421917fe381df.png[/img] While the Gremlin unit teleports to a random position when attacked, the Mistling has Misty Strike, a single melee attack that teleports it 3 hexes away from its target after attacking. This makes it great for the hit and run tactics skirmisher units excel at. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43512488/33cc76b64f83f90d23a1d26a18a0cde4cabf907f.png[/img] Their other ability is Fey Trick. It deals Physical, Blight and Lightning damage as well as having a base 90% chance of applying a random negative status condition to the enemy it hits. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43512488/1e69142a76106a8320e52b20f40b632916e744c5.png[/img] On top of this, the [b]Mistling[/b]’s Trail of Mists ability creates a mist cloud below themselves at the end of their turn, which triggers their [b]Fey Guile[/b] ability to gain a random positive status. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43512488/e73c0d70cbdddb6e6337e392649f1602b1edffef.png[/img] Last thing I want to mention from this tome is the Special Province Improvement, [b]Feywater Pond[/b], which when built grants +3 Mana per adjacent Forester as well as covering the whole domain of the city in which it is built on with the Misty effect. Here’s what it looks like: [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43512488/5da3fffd8f772443d6c2bf45bbeace40b5c4069c.png[/img] [h2]Tome of the Stormborne[/h2] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43512488/7ca945ee9b3e06aaa46f88b36207069b3070a571.png[/img] The second and final tome in this content pack is all about storms, lightning and harnessing the storm’s power over the sea. [b]Lightning Storm[/b] is a combat spell that uses the power of the storm to place the Wet condition on all units in combat and then deals deadly lightning strikes to enemies! [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43512488/2e6bc6a96004b003f686b30969e0a0344090cbf3.png[/img] You can also place Wet on all units in a province with [b]Downpour[/b]. It applies [b]downpouring[/b] to a province for 3 turns as well as turning that province into a Swamp. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43512488/4608f8e7b9d9cff1886c57ccfd23389ddb8de186.png[/img] [b]Downpouring[/b] gives all units in the province Wet and Slowed in combat, reducing their lightning resistance and their movement. Though Amphibious and Water Moving units are not affected by this. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43512488/defcd5bc94b6aa442cfeb23ab9e14668fe7ed249.png[/img] Which brings us to the Major Transformation of this tome, the [b]Naga Form[/b]: [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43512488/1d262ab9f7eaec2ae636e2c673e113d482583a32.png[/img] This new transformation makes all racial units embrace their serpentine side, with a transformation that for the first time removes a part of a unit's body and then replaces it with something else, in this case a coiling naga tail. This transformation gives a lot of benefits: [list] [*] Fast Movement in combat and in the world map. [*] Immunity to the Electrified status effect. [*] Amphibious movement for entering water faster without slowing down or embarking on a transport. [*] Slip Away, which once per combat revives them immediately after they go down. [*] Blight and Lightning resistances. [/list] The downside being that riding a mount without legs is a hard endeavor, so cavalry units lose their mount. Heroes and Leaders affected by this transformation also lose their Mount and Leg slots. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43512488/67d8b1a02b8a7ff6b6dca7a111985a752daf09c2.png[/img] [b]Bounty of the Sea[/b] and [b]Stormport[/b] are economic research skills made to work on coastal cities. The first is a Sustained City Spell that doubles the resources from Coastal Province Improvements, which makes it an ideal spell for cities with a lot of coastal sectors. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43512488/4c15fd0d73a14cbc4c1986f97a2ec3840b301aed.png[/img] The second is a city structure that rewards having multiple coastal cities. [b]Stormport[/b] grants a flat mana gain plus extra mana and gold for each stormport built in cities with a coastal province. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43512488/816861ccdfa2adf548459d2faaf210c5327aba62.png[/img] This tome also unlocks a new racial skirmisher Tier IV unit, the [b]Stormbringer[/b]. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43512488/8e5ade194575472153fb7f930b851eeed728d132.png[/img] It is a potent skirmisher specialized in hitting multiple targets and applying Electrified. Its Storm Strikes ability not only deals damage to the target but can also hit up to two other units for 20% of the damage dealt and it has a base 90% chance to apply Electrified to all those it hits. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43512488/e43ba1f4970b16b879f9276691c0c75c09c76e77.png[/img] The [b]Stormbringer[/b] can also throw its storm trident, which hits up to 3 units in a line and guarantees they receive a stack of electrified while dealing a decent chunk of damage from a distance. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43512488/44ddfb6a59ec9ae668ca56ecf4870abad7d15bf6.png[/img] Being in the same tome as the [b]Naga Form[/b] Major Transformation this unit was made with it in mind, and art did a fantastic job with it! [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43512488/a2b8f8d4c6ef99608a906574c51ac0cf52827044.png[/img] And we don’t want the heroes to lose out on the fun of striking multiple enemies, so the Hero Skill Arcing Weapons allows a Warfare Hero to apply the bouncing strikes from Storm Strikes to all melee and physical ranged base abilities. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43512488/ceab336fdd5a0085ce7ec883c8fdb25cb5e5891a.png[/img] And with that we went over all the things the new tomes unlock. I hope you enjoyed the dive into these new tomes and are excited to try them out when this content pack releases on the 27th of February! Join us next week as our art director Rich takes us over the art for Primal Fury. [h2]Wishlist Primal Fury now![/h2] https://store.steampowered.com/app/2401850/Age_of_Wonders_4_Primal_Fury/ [i]Be the first to get information about Primal Fury:[/i] [list] [*] Share your thoughts on the [url=https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/forums/age-of-wonders-4.1129/]Forum[/url]! 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