The ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC for Battle Brothers has been released into the world!
Find it on Steam, GOG or Humble Store.
You can find a detailed explanation of what is contained in the DLC here.
The new music tracks by Breakdown Epiphanies have been added for free to the soundtrack on Steam and GOG for every current and future owner.
Enjoy!
The release of the ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC is just around the corner – it’s launching on Thursday next week, the 29th! Time to recap on all of the many new features and content additions that are about to arrive with both the DLC and the free update to version 1.2 of Battle Brothers.
You can find the DLC on Steam here and on GOG here. The DLC will also be available as a Supporter Edition with a fancy Kraken banner and painted shields!
Here are detailed introductions of what is about to come.
New mechanics and content
New opponents
As well as many minor additions and changes
And then, of course, there’s even more new things which we haven’t covered much in our dev blogs, such as new contracts, a bigger world, new music tracks and new achievements!
The ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC for Battle Brothers is set to release on the 29th of this month. Let’s take a first look at gameplay footage today!
Sit back and enjoy as developer Jaysen will talk you through changes and additions while trying not to die horribly. Just keep in mind that this is a preview and not the final DLC, as we’re still busy working on balance and polish.
In the first episode we talk about crafting, new traits and new settlement situations while making use of one of the newly added weapons!
In the second episode of our ‘Beasts & Exploration’ Let’s Play series, developer Jaysen and his Battle Brothers encounter one of the new beasts and craft a first item at the taxidermist!
We’ll be releasing new episodes every few days and will let you know on Twitter and Facebook!
The ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC is set to release on the 29th of this month and by now it’s essentially feature-complete. We’ve moved on to thoroughly test, balance and polish everything, but there’s still so many interesting smaller things we haven’t even talked about yet. Let’s shine a light on some more of these this week!
A mercenary’s life isn’t easy, and seeing the man to the left split in two by an orc and the man to the right mauled by an unhold does put a strain on the psyche. People react differently to this, and so we’re introducing several new traits that characters can gain and lose over the course of a campaign depending on how their time with the company goes, what their background is and what other traits they have.
For example, a devastating loss against orcs may result in a character starting to fear greenskins and having less resolve when in battle against them. A sentiment that most people who played Battle Brothers can sympathize with. But as he grows in experience and is hardened by battle, he will eventually overcome his fear and lose the trait again. At the same time, another character may handle the loss quite differently, become more determined and start to hate greenskins instead, gaining a bonus to resolve when fighting against them. All in all, the number of new character traits has now climbed to be 16 – good, bad, and combinations of the two. Most of them have event interactions, some unlock additional options in events, and many of them can be gained or lost by events.
Speaking of events, we’re currently at 52 new ones for the game. There’s still time left until release, so it’ll likely end up to be even more in the end. Alongside these events we’re also adding a lot of new illustrations and updating a couple of older ones with more high quality artwork.
As you may have guessed, that illustration on the left is related to one of the upcoming legendary locations.
As part of the free update accompanying the upcoming ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC, we’re doing a balance pass on all of the character perks. The objective isn’t to make the game any easier or harder, but to further improve build variety, especially in the late game. You’ll find a list of all perk changes in the changelog once the update is live, but there’s two perks, one old and one new, which we want to talk about in more detail.
The ‘Hold Out’ perk stands out as the least-picked perk in the game currently; it benefits you only in a specific situation you want to avoid as much as possible, while at the same time you can pick other perks instead that actually help you to avoid getting into that situation in the first place. We’re going to entirely replace the ‘Hold Out’ perk with a new perk called ‘Resilient’. If you’re one of the few people that liked to pick the old ‘Hold Out’ perk, fret not, for you can now get the same effect without having to spend a perk point for it by drinking an ‘Iron Will Potion’ which can be crafted at the taxidermist from relatively common ingredients.
The new ‘Resilient’ perk reduces the duration of any negative status effect with a finite duration by one turn, up to a minimum of one turn. For example, the ‘Bleeding’ or ‘Poisoned’ status effects both have a duration of two turns, which get reduced to one turn. Of course, with a shorter duration, those two effects will also inflict less damage to a character. And quite importantly, some new status effects, like being ‘Charmed’ by a Hexe, also get their duration reduced by one turn. It’s not necessary to have the perk in order to beat the Hexe at all, but it is one possible counter and can be quite helpful if you otherwise struggle against opponents which rely on negative status effects to make your life hell.
And speaking of making your life hell, enemy bases are more proactive now in sending out parties to intercept anyone that threatens them and that they can realistically take on. Camping right next to a bandit hideout to wait for morning may not be the best idea anymore, and even locations infested by undead may send out parties come night. On the bright side, if a base sends out a party to intercept enemies, their garrison will be weakened, and in some cases only a skeleton crew will remain. You can use it to your advantage by splitting a large enemy force in two, or even attack while a third party is luring part of a garrison away!
Join us again next week for some moving pictures. Our very own Jaysen will start a new Let’s Play series with the ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC and explain all of the new features and content as he encounters them.
The ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC is set to release on the 29th of this month with a bunch of cool features that you can learn about here. That’s great, but there’s actually even more coming than covered by this feature list. Let’s take a look at some smaller things that come with the DLC and which we haven’t talked about yet.
There’s a new character background in town: The Beast Slayer. Experienced in both melee and ranged combat against beastly opponents and monstrous adversaries, the beast slayer is a versatile background similar to the sellsword, but more affordable. Of course, he comes with his own events and interactions with other backgrounds, and some expert knowledge on beasts and their lore to share with you.
There’s several changes incoming on how wages for characters work, so let’s break them down.
First off, the base wage for a couple of backgrounds has been adjusted to be more in line with their actual worth as defined by how often they’re picked by players. In addition, every individual character now has a certain idea on how much they want to get paid – there’s a small random factor on the daily wage demands of all characters, and so you’ll find cheaper and more expensive recruits also within the same background, and even if they don’t have the ‘Greedy’ trait.
Finally, the wage progression has changed. While previously you paid 2 additional crowns per character level, you’ll now pay a cumulative 10% of a character’s base wage for every level after the first and until the 11th, and then 5% of a character’s base wage for every level afterwards. In effect, there’s less wage pressure in the beginning, which gives you more leeway to actually explore the world earlier and find all those new beasts and locations. Low tier backgrounds have also become cheaper to employ in the long term, but high tier backgrounds have become significantly more expensive to keep around if they reach veteran levels, which gives you more of a reason to diversify your company composition in long campaigns.
As you’ve previously learned, the DLC will introduce a bunch of new weapons. People have been asking about whether there’ll be named variants of those weapons as well – and the answer is yes, of course. Take a look!
It’s not just new weapons, it’s also stylish new armor, all of which can be further customized with the new armor attachment system. We’re filling some gaps in the armor progression, and we’re also introducing some high tier light armor as part of a larger effort to make light and medium armor more of a viable choice for some character builds.
Join us again next week to learn about even more changes and additions of the upcoming DLC and the accompanying free update to Battle Brothers!
We round off our collection of new opponents for the upcoming ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC with the introduction of our largest enemy yet. It’s a giant beast, a creature that has lived throughout the ages and is at the very top of the food chain. Unleash the Kraken!
As an attentive connoisseur of last week’s release date announcement (November 29th!), something might have caught your attention: There’s three fearsome boss type enemies coming. Each one is guarding a different legendary location, and as it so happens, one of them is the Kraken. We’re not going to spoil the other two in dev blogs, but we’re taking a closer look at the tentacled horror today as an example of what to expect.
The Kraken is a remnant of a different era. Its age numbers in millennia, and it has spent much of its life slumbering beneath the surface of the swamp it inhabits. The tentacled horror is myth and a legend that few have seen with their own eyes, and people have been born and grown old living atop a slumbering Kraken, for it awakens only every few years to feast. The Kraken has countless tentacles that stretch on forever below the surface, and each tentacle has a dim light to lure prey. Those lights are the origin of many a tale; in the thick fog of the swamp, Irrlichts, or ghost lights, promise company and a warming fire, only to lead men to their doom. Worse still, the tentacles will wrap around their prey, crush them and drag them through the muddy water into the gaping maw of the Kraken, where they will meet a gruesome end.
The Kraken is firmly situated in late game territory. It’s an opponent to test your veteran party against, and quite possibly the end of many an ironman run. Most of the Kraken is below the surface when fighting it, and you can only guess as to its actual size. Individual tentacles reach all over the map, and they will disappear into the mud and water of the swamp only to appear again at another place. As the Kraken feeds, a many-toothed maw will slowly rise from below the waterline to gorge itself.
From the perspective of this giant beast, your group of tiny mercenaries is but food, and so it will start combat by moving its tentacles to wrap around your men and drag them towards its maw to feed. Being dragged through the swamp is a hellish ride, and your men better start attempting to free themselves along the way by hacking at the tentacle that holds them tight. Nearby brothers-in-arms can help as well. If you fail at freeing your men in time, and they end up next to the maw at the end of their turn, they’re done for. The maw will shred them mercilessly in a single turn.
If you hurt a Kraken enough, either by destroying several of its tentacles, or by injuring the head, it will get enraged and let you know with an ear-deafening roar. The Kraken understands now that this is no longer about feeding itself, but about defending itself. The tentacles show teeth and begin to snap at everything and everyone. They continue to wrap around your men and drag them towards the maw, but they do it so tight now that they slowly crush and suffocate their victim along the way, meaning that your men will lose hitpoints at every turn they end while entrapped like this.
Should you manage to beat the Kraken, you’ll not only get the treasure it guarded, but you’ll be able to craft items from its remains, and you’ll unlock it to appear as a regular albeit rare enemy in swamps across the wild for your epicly long campaign.
Thanks to the overwhelmingly positive response to last week’s release date announcement, and many people expressing their desire to support us even beyond the asking price of the ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC, we’ve decided to also offer it as a special Supporter Edition. This Supporter Edition will be priced at $19.99 and include a new player banner and shields with a Kraken motif as a thank you from us to you.
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