New expansion - Ice and Fire

[Zhuangzi]

So I never thought I'd see another King's Bounty game but here's this on facebook today. Strangely enough I am playing Crossworlds for the first time in well over a year at the moment. It's so much better than Warriors of the North, unfortunately!



1C Company announces the release date of King’s Bounty: Warriors of the North. Ice and Fire.

Ice and Fire is the official DLC to the released in 2012 King’s Bounty: Warriors of the North.

King’s Bounty: Warriors of the North. Ice and Fire is scheduled to be released digitally on January 30th 2014.

Ice and Fire features:

Creature skill system – lead your troops through dozens of battles and they will become stronger than ever!
Snow Elves – a new Elven nation that prefers snow and blizzard of the Ice Gardens instead of the green forests of Merlassar.
Necrolizards – a new kind of the undead, Lizardmen that have risen from the dead.
New locations to explore.
Over 20 new creatures.
Revamped creatures of King’s Bounty: Warriors of the North.
New items with unique attributes.
Over 20 hours of additional gameplay.

http://kingsbountygame.com/

My question is: is this DLC a SEPERATE 20 hour campaign or is it added on to the main WoTN campaign? Personally I'd rather a separate campaign so that I don't have to grind my way through the tedious WoTN campaign again...

[blacklegionary]

Let's hope it's a seperate campaign :)

[malcolmm]

It better be a separate expansion from WotN or I won't buy it. And it better be released in a much better state than WotN was.

I bought WotN when it was first released and also bought a copy for a friend a couple of months after release. By the time my friend and I felt the game was stable enough to play, WotN had been on sale for 50 - 75% many times. I want to support the developers of games I really like, but only for playable games.

[Zhuangzi]

It isn't a separate campaign. See the stickied thread at the top. I'm not happy about that either. It took my 90 hours to grind my way through the WotN campaign ONCE now they're adding 20 hours to that campaign? Christ.

[Mandea]

I finished this game twice. tedious, bland and so on. you fight against undead for most of the time, and it's not like CW where the troops are mixed and every fight is completely different, no, here the fights are too predictable. If they force me to play this game from the start just so I can access the new content, they can forget about it, I'm not going to buy it.

The problem is aggravated buy the fact the it's been so long between the release of the game and this DLC. it's pretty obvious most of us finished the game long time ago and we may not have saves on the disk (maybe steam keeps my saves, I don't know for sure).

[BB Shockwave]

Has there been any new patch for WOTN? I played it until the first patch, which barely did anything apart fixing the major crash-bugs, and actually ruined working skills. I gave up there and then, since it was as if I was beta-testing a game and my bug reports (and even bug fixes) have been ignored by the company as a whole.

I sincerely hope this is like Crossworlds - a fixed, much improved WOTN with new content. That way I can finally play the game without getting angry at bugs and churning through boring and not well-designed maps and quests.

Still, seeing the screenshots, the 20 new units will be mostly re-skins: undead Lizardmen with spears, blue phoenixes, repainted unicorns and druids and fairies. Are new models so hard to make?

[Fatt_Shade]

Not to mention that those `NEW` undead lizardmen are just copy/paste units from Red sands mod for CW.
NEW locations, as in they opened whole Demonis as in original game the Legend.
NEW unit creature skill system, also taken from red sands mod.
As far as I can see, only new thing here are cold elves (same models as old elves, with different talents of course), and maybe couple items/quests.
All in all done by 3-4 people over new year holidays for easy gold coins inflow from fans of this great franchise.
But if my predictions are true, this could easily be last time they take money from true KB players, and lose all future purchases :-(

[BB Shockwave]

Seriously? They copied a mod made by the fans, using the skins, too?

Btw, the new Snow Elves are terribly uninspired. Not even great new skins, like the Fauns or Paladins were in AP - they are simple palette swaps! Or just a change of the hues, like for the elf archer - seriously, he wears slightly more blue clothing, but even the pattern is the same! They couldn't even give snow elves a different skin tone? I could have made (and did make!) better new skins within less than a day using Photoshop!!!

The russian site has more screens up: http://kingsbounty.ru/gallery/screens

Undead beholders, even? And a blue Phoenix? Not really inspired. Frankly, from WOTN the only new unit I found interesting and well-designed was the Ice Dragon and its cute "babies".

[Zhuangzi]

Yeah, we're all long time fans of the series here, but I think that if 1C think we're going to pay for more copypasta then they may be in for a surprise. :-P

[Csimbi]

Warriors of The North seems to be a copy of the KB landscape with a few tweaks, new quests and such to hide those facts from you.
What I hope is that we will see new landscape; having to go through the exact same maps as before is getting very boring (and has no much replay value).
Plus, a working editor would be nice (the current one keeps crashing, half of the things have not been translated or unavailable as a whole compared to the Russian release).

[Anti-global]

As everybody said, this is just copy-paste disappointment. But I am not gonna lie, I haven't bought a single game in my life. I simply have no money to spend on virtual things.
But, if 1C Company managed to make NEW Kings Bounty that would be as good as The Armoured Princess (completly new world, and so on) and that would be cross-platform (would work on Linux natively), I would definitely buy it.

[Elwin]

Coming as a pirate and reaveling it on official forum? :P

[Anti-global]

At least I'm honest. They can Ban me, if they want...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ban_%28title%29

[Zhuangzi]

I bought KB Legend once, Armored Princess twice, Crossworlds once and Warriors of the North once. The only disappointment in there was WoTN and I still played 90 hours of it, so it wasn't the worst thing ever. However, I'm really not sure whether I'll be buying the new DLC if I have to start a new WoTN campaign to play it, which I suspect will be the case. The developers should have learned by now that LONG, GRINDING campaigns (TL, WoTN) are not as much fun as medium sized ones (AP, Orcs of the Marsh, other Crossworlds campaigns). KB had the best turn based strategy I ever played, pretty much, but it could get tedious eventually. 290 or so fights in AP was plenty. So why do I want an extra long WoTN campaign that will probably take 100 hours to grind my way through?

[Csimbi]

I bought KB Legend once, Armored Princess twice, Crossworlds once and Warriors of the North once. The only disappointment in there was WoTN and I still played 90 hours of it, so it wasn't the worst thing ever. However, I'm really not sure whether I'll be buying the new DLC if I have to start a new WoTN campaign to play it, which I suspect will be the case. The developers should have learned by now that LONG, GRINDING campaigns (TL, WoTN) are not as much fun as medium sized ones (AP, Orcs of the Marsh, other Crossworlds campaigns). KB had the best turn based strategy I ever played, pretty much, but it could get tedious eventually. 290 or so fights in AP was plenty. So why do I want an extra long WoTN campaign that will probably take 100 hours to grind my way through?

Meh, I like and I want my campaign long. The only problem I have is that it's the same maps all over again...

[Anti-global]

Meh, I like and I want my campaign long. The only problem I have is that it's the same maps all over again...

Exactly.

[Darkeonz]

The saddest thing is I hunger for new King's Bounty material, but I simply cannot play warriors of the north one more time. I was bored out of my mind. So I might just check out the new units on youtube.

[Csimbi]

The saddest thing is I hunger for new King's Bounty material, but I simply cannot play warriors of the north one more time. I was bored out of my mind. So I might just check out the new units on youtube.
+1

[Zhuangzi]

Okay, so $9 on steam is pretty cheap, so I'm considering it, but will I have to start and play through a new WoTN campaign to access the new stuff? Cos I'd be happy not to have to do all that again...

[ckdamascus]

Okay, so $9 on steam is pretty cheap, so I'm considering it, but will I have to start and play through a new WoTN campaign to access the new stuff? Cos I'd be happy not to have to do all that again...

Let me know if it isn't as buggy or if it is improved. A part of me wants to hit the button and become a tester again... another part of me says "don't fall for it".

[tantun]

Yeah you have to start from the beginning and this gave me a chance to play with the skald class. (I finished the game with the other two)

Overall I really liked the expansion, I am playing on impossible but since they know the first islands are boring, they really reduced the army sizes on those islands so game flows very fast.

I am on the fifth island atm, lots of new units, vikings new unit is very cool. Lots of tweaks for the old units.

I havent encountered any crash or bug till now.

So if you are fan of this game like me, you should buy it. 9$ is very cheap for hours of game play.

[tmtapani]

I am liking this expansion as well. Very much so. I'm now only finishing the first island but so far the experience and flow of the game has been miles better than the normal campaign. Hell, they even fixed some typoes I normally would've ran into thus far. Always a plus in my book.

[Csimbi]

Okay, so $9 on steam is pretty cheap, so I'm considering it, but will I have to start and play through a new WoTN campaign to access the new stuff? Cos I'd be happy not to have to do all that again...
I saw this game at a friend. It's a DLC that replaces some previous files and adds a new fire_and_ice session.
There's a new button in the main menu, which will change the game into the fire and UI (you can switch forth and back).
When you start a new game with the Fire&Ice UI, the original campaign starts though - the exact same way it did before. Therefore, I did not bother playing it longer than two minutes...
I'm not going to pay for this meself, sorry 1C; give me a GOTY on disk and I will revisit my decision.

[Zhuangzi]

I am liking this expansion as well. Very much so. I'm now only finishing the first island but so far the experience and flow of the game has been miles better than the normal campaign. Hell, they even fixed some typoes I normally would've ran into thus far. Always a plus in my book.

Bought on your recommendation :)

[Zhuangzi]

Played for 30 mins and I have a weird bug. I'm not getting any xp from fights so I am still stuck on level 1 after the training fights and one ordinary stack. Is this happening for anyone else? Obviously I can't play the game like this...

[Metathron]

Played for 30 mins and I have a weird bug. I'm not getting any xp from fights so I am still stuck on level 1 after the training fights and one ordinary stack. Is this happening for anyone else? Obviously I can't play the game like this...

Oh god I remember that...:rolleyes:

I'm also postponing my decision to buy while waiting for others to provide more feedback, precisely because of sloppy development we witnessed in WotN.

[camelotcrusade]

Zhuangzi - are you playing an original savegame or ice and fire game? If it's an original campaign, don't forget to clean out your addons and mods folders. One of my spells was crashing the game until i remembered I had some mods in there. I fixed it by using steam's "verify local integrity cache" and removing files without a newly modified date.

If it's an ice and fire game my advice probably doesn't apply. The expansion has its own sessions folder, so mods to the original campaign probably won't affect it. Not sure though, haven't tested it.

Also yes, you have to play the WoTN campaign over again from the beginning. New stuff is mixed in, some of it right away.

[Zhuangzi]

Zhuangzi - are you playing an original savegame or ice and fire game? If it's an original campaign, don't forget to clean out your addons and mods folders. One of my spells was crashing the game until i remembered I had some mods in there. I fixed it by using steam's "verify local integrity cache" and removing files without a newly modified date.

If it's an ice and fire game my advice probably doesn't apply. The expansion has its own sessions folder, so mods to the original campaign probably won't affect it. Not sure though, haven't tested it.

Also yes, you have to play the WoTN campaign over again from the beginning. New stuff is mixed in, some of it right away.

Well, I wanted the camera mod so I found the files in the WoTN folder and copied them into the new Ice and Fire folder. I'll delete them and see if that helps.

EDIT: Fixed! The problem wasn't the camera mod, but the interface mod which I copied across as well. I can't even remember what that interface mod does now, but it messes up Ice and Fire, so don't use it! Thanks for your help :)

[ckdamascus]

Did a verify file and checked to make sure no patches were on. So far the game is MUCH easier even on Impossible but I am not complaining!

I only played a little bit on the first island but so far I like it and no bugs yet (then again, the game was fairly stable until mid-way or broken quest bugs).

Very glad I bought it (so far)!

[Csimbi]

The expansion has its own sessions folder, so mods to the original campaign probably won't affect it.
Wrong. Mods are loaded as well (as they should), but the mods should be updated (things will be broken as some files might be older).

[camelotcrusade]

Wrong. Mods are loaded as well (as they should), but the mods should be updated (things will be broken as some files might be older).

Okay, thanks for clearing that up Csimbi. Should you put all mods in the original /sessions/mod folder then? Would mods put into the expansion folder only affect the expansion I'm not using any right now, I just want to know.

@CK I've found about 5 bugs so far (I can't help it :roll:) and I sent them in a PM to sneaksie and asked him if there's preferred way to report them Nothing major so far, the most annoying one is that getting +1 runes from combat experience doesn't appear to work (your rank info screen still says 0 runes). I just reload when that happens and try for a different bonus.

Edit - one more kinda major bug, the skald isn't getting combat exp for using his songs. Likely a bug becuase everybody else gets exp for using abilities. It's kinda hard to level him that way.

[Zhuangzi]

Well, putting the interface mod in the Ice and Fire directory messed up my game, but it's still in the 'addon' folder and that doesn't seem to be a problem. The camera mod is in both directories and it is working. Incidentally, I don't know what the devs never incorporated the camera mod into the game properly. I realise that there are graphical issues with the edge of the map when you're fully zoomed out, but who cares about that?

[aghiuta]

Tried the new DLC but i did not get the flying horse from the first valkyrie, did they change the wings awarding location? like moved it to the end of the first 4 islands? or did i just hit a bug.
I play with no mods.

[Csimbi]

Tried the new DLC but i did not get the flying horse from the first valkyrie, did they change the wings awarding location? like moved it to the end of the first 4 islands? or did i just hit a bug.
I play with no mods.

I guess flying would break the DLC island...

[MattCaspermeyer]

Tried the new DLC but i did not get the flying horse from the first valkyrie, did they change the wings awarding location? like moved it to the end of the first 4 islands? or did i just hit a bug.
I play with no mods.

Apparently, you don't get wings until you get your last Valkyrie - see here:

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gamer.ru%2Fking-s-bounty-voin-severa%2Fpro-lyod-i-plamya-ili-chto-novogo-v-king-s-bounty-voin-severa&act=url

/C\/C\

[Csimbi]

Apparently, you don't get wings until you get your last Valkyrie - see here:

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gamer.ru%2Fking-s-bounty-voin-severa%2Fpro-lyod-i-plamya-ili-chto-novogo-v-king-s-bounty-voin-severa&act=url

/C\/C\

Wow. I did not think this game could get any more boring. Congrats for proving me wrong!

[Zhuangzi]

I've only played through Nordlig so far, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. Maybe they have improved WoTN after all :cool:

[aghiuta]

yaay my first crash, happened when i used rage vortex to hit an enemy and detonate a mine adjacent to him at same time (the mine was from adrenaline skill of orc catapult).
confirm the bug for the mine: 3 more tries to explode nit (2 by enemy 1 by my spell) and it causes the game to crash.
And the ice dragon has a bug, when he lvls up it says +10% summon and the button shows the increased summon leadership but the ammount actually summoned is still the basic one.

[nekator]

Wow. I did not think this game could get any more boring. Congrats for proving me wrong!

Yep, not really a smart move, since we´re playing the game from scratch once again, to force us to go through it, without the wings..

[shcrus]

Actually it gets "better" in the new island, one lizard crash the game just by casting one spell, and a fight is needed to see most of the new content. . .

[Zlorfik]

Actually it gets "better" in the new island, one lizard crash the game just by casting one spell, and a fight is needed to see most of the new content. . .

The crash is not even bound only to one of the new spells by the lizards. I have tested the first lizard fight multiple times (as can be seen on steam discussion) and the game not only crashes when the lizard troop of advisors uses Power of the Scruggs skill, but also randomly when the enemy hero casts normal spells like dispel on a Chosha.

I generally really like the expansion for several reasons:
- New Units (Gorgons & Contemplator are really awesome! Like beholder styles anyway))
- Better units already on first 4 islands
- Call of Death spell (I like summoning)
- new content I have not been able to access due to said crash
- Kamikaze spell (&Orc catapult bomb) fixed as of latest patch

For those of you with a negative comment:
I can fully understand you but If you look at the crossworlds editor, you see that the whole messing up of King's Bounty already began with the addition of the orcs campaign. Generally, they just take the same old files and smash some new things in there. There is more and more files without really thinking about a restructuring. So the more content they release, the harder it gets for them to keep it bug free. That's not an excuse for the game breaking bugs we have, no it's more of a hint for them to start from scratch when considering a next king's bounty.

I for one LOVE the principe of this game as it combines so many elements. Actually, it's like a really advanced form of chess, combined with roleplaying aspects. It would be really sad if there would not be anything similar in the future and at the moment, it seems 1C is the only company having this kind of gameplay. That sort of forces fans of the genre to buy the game, even if it is in a bad state.

And for the copying part: I've looked it up by myself and it seems to be true that they copied content from a mod, but I don't think that is too wrong: If a company provides the means to mod, they also have the right of creating their own version of it and sell it. Look at other companies: Valve with Portal, and Team Fortress, Bethesda with the Dawnguard and Hearthfire DLC, etc. There are plenty of examples so I'll stand on 1C's side for that part.

[Csimbi]

Wonderful.

[Seymour Butz]

The crash is not even bound only to one of the new spells by the lizards. I have tested the first lizard fight multiple times (as can be seen on steam discussion) and the game not only crashes when the lizard troop of advisors uses Power of the Scruggs skill, but also randomly when the enemy hero casts normal spells like dispel on a Chosha.

Semi-related question regarding the lizardmen: are there undead versions of every lizardman unit — undead tirexes, brontors, and so forth — and do they all have different abilities from the living ones? I ask because I keep hearing these new abilities mentioned.

[Zhuangzi]

Semi-related question regarding the lizardmen: are there undead versions of every lizardman unit — undead tirexes, brontors, and so forth — and do they all have different abilities from the living ones? I ask because I keep hearing these new abilities mentioned.

I certainly haven't seen any of those units yet, and I'm up to level 50 (Grotland or so). Plenty of useless looking reskinned units for sale in various shops though :razz:

[Seymour Butz]

I certainly haven't seen any of those units yet, and I'm up to level 50 (Grotland or so). Plenty of useless looking reskinned units for sale in various shops though :razz:

Oh dear, have you seen any necro lizards then? I know that there are at least undead versions of gorguanas and gorguls. Alternatively, have you played Red Sands? I think Ice and Fire has the same undead lizardmen as that mod.

Edit: Never mind, I found two (http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/203358/ss_57c62c1bc696ff7eacd2c929bf3a448a3c065e7a.1920x1 080.jpg?t=1391094288) screenshots (http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/203358/ss_85f4a71bae6746eb8df29f3c89b084c8a1fed547.1920x1 080.jpg?t=1391094288) which clearly indicate that necro lizardmen are their own full faction with undead versions of most if not all lizardman units. Based on a third screenshot (https://impulsestore.gamestop.com/images/product_gfx/kbicefire%283%29.jpg), it would appear that they appear primarily in Marshan Swamp, which makes a certain intuitive amount of sense, as it was full of undead in The Legend and lizardmen were native to swamps in Armored Princess.

Still can’t find a list of their talents or abilities though, so if anyone could help out on that point, I’d be very grateful. Can someone at least tell me what the passive abilities ‘necro lizardman’ and ‘ancient rage’ do? Normally I’d just play the game but I’m in the middle of Crossworlds, so that’s a long, long way off (and sadly I started my campaign before I had heard of Red Sands).

I certainly haven't seen any of those units yet, and I'm up to level 50 (Grotland or so). Plenty of useless looking reskinned units for sale in various shops though :razz:

I hear the complaint about reskinning a lot, and I won’t say it’s illegitimate, but since I play King’s Bounty mostly for 1990s Heroes nostalgia, I find the reskins give the game a sort of old school RPG charm, y’know?

[Zhuangzi]

Well, I dunno when we get to Marshan Swamp but after level 50 (Iceland) now and the game if far too easy on Impossible Mage, as usual.

[aristobal]

Did anybody play for max scores in records? How much did you get? 2000 is easy to reach. May be you did more?