Conquest Anniversary

Happy anniversary, Tainted Grail: Conquest! Today, it has been released exactly a year ago into Early Access (June 18th 2020) – so we thought we would take a moment to recap all that has changed through all this time and more!

As many of you may know, this game is based off a board game – one of the most successful board game Kickstarters in 2018! Already during the ongoing funding of the board game, the digital adaptation was announced while development was ongoing since late-2018.

Before we go ahead through a small write up of the timeline, just keep in mind, I am not affiliated with Awaken Realms Digital and this is not an official article. I hope you enjoy it! :)

## Pre-Alpha, Dec 2019

In December 2019, the game was released in a closed pre-alpha to backers with a limited 2-3 hour demo of the digital Fall of Avalon campaign. The early game was MUCH different from what it is today, most distinct differences, apart from the obvious graphics update, was a different scale and an utterly different combat mechanic!

The very first iterations of the game were more leaning towards the boardgame and a player/world representation known from civ games, such as Civilization.  Traversal of the overworld was separated into distinct “turns” that restricted the amount of distance your character could travel and explains the origin of the wyrdcandle burntime counter! At that time, the Wyrdness was a dynamic texture over the map and did NOT support a height map – so the gameworld was totally flat! And as if that wasn’t enough, it was littered with loot piles.

Combat was a simple 2D card-battler, where both player and the foes were displayed as icons with their respective stats, statuses and intents. Cards separated into 2 groups (blue and red) and displayed as small hexes with different energy costs. The different card types filled two different “ultimate abilities” that could be triggered once filled, much like the modern version. Back then, it supported the player and up to 3 foes!

Check out the pre-alpha gameplay of the early campaign demo:

* 1
* 2
* 3

## The way to the early access

The months following the closed pre-alpha release were relatively quiet, but a lot of the feedback from the closed alpha was used to reevaluate and redesign certain features of the game. The most prominent changes during this time were the adjusted character/world scale ratio that required rework of all assets and maps, the brand new combat was reworked to be the full 3D experience we know today – at least somewhat, and hex cards were exchanged for proper cards, supporting up to 5 entities on either side. Furthermore, the turn-based movement on the overworld was removed and only maintained for timers (such as candles).

Additionally, the Conquest mode was announced. The idea for the Conquest mode was a result of an intention to increase the base(/village) building aspect of the game, but the inherent conflict of having a base vs. venturing out on an adventure in a grand campaign.

“*Actually, after a few tests and discussions, we realized that our combat system works really well on its own. After some further prototypes it turned out that this unique mix of an RPG and a roguelike is a really fun game out on its own. Full of neat combos, unexpected quests, and hard, satisfying exploration. This is how Conquest was born.*”

Moreover, Conquest turned out to be  a great tool to test various randomized setups, while allowing for the team to involve players more into early testing of various game mechanics without spoiling the story for them - all aiding to refine the basic gameplay for the campaign. For this mode a new random map generator along with different biomes were implemented, along with cosmetic items - which, in that stage actually were equippable armors and weapons you could acquire in the run, and all with gameplay effects a lot like runestones, today. Those were removed  and replaced with runestones and turned into pure cosmetics to give players more control over character appearance, as well as circumventing the problem with swords/staffs equipped for unfitting classes and requiring different atk animations. To name a few all time favorites:

The “Mantle of Despair” that cost a fortune and - didn’t do anything and it was said to ONLY work for smart people, which unfortunately didn’t seem to be the character.

The “Mirror Blade”, the weapon that almost single handedly wiped out the use of equippable weapon items, because it simply couldn’t be nerfed to not be OP. Initially it duplicated all cards played, later every 4th card and added a lot of basic damage to your character.

Mid April 20, the game was put into a very closed beta for a handful of volunteers on the discord server to test said changes and provide additional feedback. Conquest started out with a single class, which had 2 ultimate abilities, like in the pre-alpha version, but was quickly split up into two separate classes – the brawler and the guardian (now Wyrdhunter and Pathfinder).

## Early Access release, June 2020

On June 18th 2020 the game was released with a complete overhaul and rebuild of the campaign demo and the first public version of the Conquest mode with 3 classes: Brawler, Guardian and Berserker (now called Wyrdhunter, Pathfinder and Berserker). Initially, Conquest consisted of 3 distinct huge areas, each with its own boss and once opened by slaying the previous boss the player could freely leave/reenter it, and a final boss fight at the Menhir.

In order to add more variety to the runs, a few more bosses were added over the course of the first months of EA, to allow alternating between them, after the initial 3 (Golem, Derenheim Winterbane and Lord of Serpents), Vran’s Warband and the Emissary of the Deep (aka the Kraken or giant abomination) were added. The latter was since replaced by Dullahan, who mostly maintains the same boss mechanics.

Over the course of the first months of early access a lot of content was added, from the very first iteration of the difficulty system, “Corruption”, over the first Moonring classes, to the first events along with a lot of visual overhauls and balancing.

Check out the EA-release gameplay of Tainted Grail here:

* Conquest
* Conquest2
* Campaign

## Seeds of Corruption, October 2020

In October 2020, the first major update was released. This added the first playable tutorial and main story snippets, the journal, neutral cards, introduced runestones instead of weapons and armor, came with an entire overhauled village and UI and major updates to the map generation, and much more! Unfortunately all those changes broke the campaign demo, which had to be completely rebuilt from scratch - yet again! Shortly after, the team decided to split the game into two separate products, for several reasons. Just to name a few of those:

* Focusing resources on the Conquest mode would help developing better tools for the campaign, as maintaining both games in one product meant a lot of maintenance to prevent updates to one of them to break the other, which would divert resources.
* Expanded scope of Conquest might have required a price increase along the way - a lot of people voiced their interest solely being in the campaign mode, so splitting allowed customers to simply buy the part of the product they were interested in, without needing to pay extra for an “unwanted” game.

## How have things changed?

### Classes

As mentioned earlier, the game started out with a single playable class with 2 ultimate abilities, a blend of Pathfinder and Wyrdhunter. In the preparation for Early Access, this class was split into the two separate classes, and the Berserker was added. The original classes were balanced and reworked, Guardian/Pathfinder, for instance, got his passive changed from keeping a single card on hand between turns to the “Focus” passive ability that he has today and a few cards were tested. For instance, the Children of Morrigan (warriors), initially, had a few "Taunt" cards, that would allow you to trigger enemy attacks in your own turns, however they turned out to be too specific to be usefull in general, while Pathfinder got a lot of his infitie loops removed.

After EA release the very first Moonring class to be added was the summoner! Back then actually more like a blend of the Blood Mage and summoner with unlimited level scaling of minions, offering hp for summoning them, autoactivation of them and promotion through ultimate ability. Soon after the class was split into the overall Summoner and Blood Mage, and in October 2020, the Moonring faction was completed with the Necromancer. Originally, all classes were supposed to have unique skins for their minions, however more pressing matters were prioritized - but that doesnt mean its not going to come in the future!

The last faction to be implemented were the Watchers of Tuathan (during development codenamed Fallen Kamelot). And nothing about them was officially revealed up until the release.

See the early Moonring classes here:

* First Summoner
* First Blood Mage

### Wyrdness

The Wyrdness mechanic is one that probably has undergone the most changes and test over time. In the very first pre-alpha release, the Wyrdness slowly decreased your characters sanity, while it added temporary debuffs on damage, and finally, put a curse on your character, that limited your energy that had to be removed by other means. In the early access version that was changed.

Apart from an overall debuff that granted +50% incoming damage while being in Wyrdness and elevated XP and Wyrdstone gains, another surprise feature was added: When in Wyrdness, the lootpiles that were distributes all over the map had a chance of triggering an encounter - where you fought a chest! Yes, a chest. The Chest would automatically break down after 2-4 rounds and release 1-4 rats hidden inside it! If the timer ran out, the rats attacked in the same turn, however, if you defeated the chest before the timer ran out, the rats would spawn and wait for their next turn. Remember this feature for later...

The loot chest fight was removed soon, while only the buff/debuff effect of wyrdness stayed.

In January 2021 the mechanic was revised and replaced with the Wyrdcard mechanic to give the different burnlevels of candles various bonusses and penalties to make it less of a bineary effect.

Approaching release, another feature was tested, but never officially implemented: The Wyrdstalker. He was a Fore-Dweller ghost that occasionally spawned in the Wyrdness. The longer the player stayed in Wyrdness, the more often he would spawn, until, at some point, the Wyrdstalker would charge and chase the player. He would only disappear when leaving the Wyrdness or fighting him. He was designed to scale with player level and additionally grow stronger, everytime he was defeated.

### Difficulty

The very first iteration of the difficulty scaling, “Corruption”, was implemented and allowed players to increase the difficulty by sacrificing themselves to the menhir, at the end of the run. Over the course of the development a few different approaches to unlock additional content with difficulty scaling have been tested, such as adding more enemies or bosses, however, adding additional moves to enemies rather than totally new enemies proved to work better, as players already knew the general behavior of the mob. Additionally removing difficulty increase as part of the story progression prevented locking out players who enjoyed a more casual experience.

Speaking of difficulty, through its development, Tainted Grail has bounced a bit back and forth on the difficulty scale. In the very first iterations the game was tough. You really needed to put in a lot of effort to survive and the difficulty increase between tiers (areas) was huge. At one time during pre-EA, when rats first got their “Herd Instinct” passive (-30 Armor + 30 damage for every ally), they were killing machines. You usually met a group of 2-3 (remember Lootchest fights here!) rats with each of them dealing 1-3 hits for somewhere between 9-36 damage, plus being in Wyrdness meant taking +50% incoming damage - all because Marcin (Awaken Realms CEO) thought the game was too easy - which is why this death notification was implemented in the early game!

### Events

Closing in on the first big milestone of the EA development (The “Seeds of Corruption” update) occasional timed events were added to aid experimenting with additional game mechanics, as they all offered different twists on some game mechanics and rewards in the form of cosmetic items for participation.

The first event was released in Mid-August 2020 - The Reign of the Rat - at the time a very feared opponent, for reasons explained above (Difficulty). This event required players to clear as many regular runs with the Rat King as the final opponent, as possible, while making him stronger every time you defeated him.

The second event (Near Death Revelation) introduced some differences to the regular gameplay, putting players on a special event map with only 3 fights, and rewarding them with 10 level ups after each fight before the big boss, the Herald (now known as Mistbearer). The event was basically an exercise for players to build the most efficient deck against him first week as Brawler/Wyrdhunter, next week as Guardian/Pathfinder to min-max the damage you deal to him. This yielded useful information for balancing certain card interactions, as well as shaped the infinite health boss high score fight that is implemented today.

The final event of the early access was the Halloween event, where the player again would be set in a custom map, and have 10 minutes to level up their characters as much as possible and collect as much candy (instead of wealth) as possible. After 10 minutes (counting both overworld, as well as combat), the final boss, Dullahan would spawn. Dullahan would, just like the herald, have infinite health, but drop additional candy for each turn you survived against him. During this event the “autoplay berserker” was very strong, as he could finish fights within a few seconds due to initial armor reduction, free hits and on-kill effects that required little input from the player.

### Honorable Mentions

I have a few more things I'd like to mention, that didn't quite make the cut:

Moving enemies - In a brief period there were tests with enemies moving on the overworld, so unsuspecing players could be suprised by monsters suddenly charging them! It was removed due to the difficulties with pathfinding on a randomly generated map - but we might see it in the campaign!

Origin of the Menhir endboss - during the first iteration in pre-EA, the Menhir boss was added with the word "He will probably be impossible to beat", as he had been granted 10K of HP... a few hours later he was slain into bits and pieces! -- Never underestimate your community! ;D

## Gallery

A little gallery of pictures from various stages of the game!

* Early development build ~April 2019
* Overworld of the pre-alpha campaign ~December 2019
* Combat of the pre-alpha w 2 card types (red/blue) and 2 ultimates ~December 2019
* Reworked scale overworld ~April 2020
* First 3D combat with the initial 2Ultimate class. Enemy (left) Lord of Serpents, early boss for tier 3, since replaced by Mistbearer. Enemy (right) early version of Blooddrunk. ~April 2020
* Reworked UI and Water added ~August 2020
* The Reign of the Rats event! ~August 2020
* Enjoying the lush beaches at Avalon ~November 2020
* Changing to a new renderpipe ~December 2020
* Adding verticality to the map ~March 2021
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