In another attempt to make battles more interesting and fair, today we revised the Rage mechanics and added several new concepts.

1. Crusade ability added - from now on players will accumulate rage only after they unlock this ability in Medieval Age.
2. Guerrilla - a new attack type unlocked in Classical Age allows an attack on enraged players totally anonymously! No one will be able to detect it was you, even your allies. It is also possible to do group guerrilla attack, but no one will know who actually participated, even the person who started it. When you are using Guerrilla attack:
   • your armies are not visible to anyone else - even your allies - when they move
   • you do not gain rage so others won't see it increase when you attack
   • your hero is displayed as generic while he/she marches - and in the reports
   • Guerrilla attack replays do not show damage and health so players will not figure out it was you by checking attack multipliers
   • you do not increase attack and plunder in rankings
   • you can attack anyone who has rage, despite diplomatic relations, except your own alliance members
   • not all players can attack enraged players - only those who are close, but the higher rage is, the bigger distance of possible attackers is with 100% rage allowing roughly whole continent to attack the target.
3. Heroic Onslaught does not increase rage, so you will not be afraid of retaliation in the form of Guerrilla if you are hunting for stripes.
4. Pirates' anonymity is now improved similar to Guerrilla.

An important thing to note: because you begin to gain rage after you unlock Crusade in Medieval Age, it becomes more beneficial to fight earlier in Classical Age because rage will not increase and you will not face possible retaliation in form of Guerrilla.

Today we launched Alpha Test Stage 8. This new version of the game features the addition of a new Culture Victory, a whole new Information Age, totally new world map exploration mechanic, new minigame and a lot of smaller additions.

Let's go into detail about everything step by step.

Culture Victory

Up until this Alpha only War Victory and Wealth Victory had been implemented - only two victories out of a total of six. Now we are presenting a third victory type - Culture Victory. In order to achieve this you will need to build the Pantheon (unlocked in Medieval Age) and then fulfill special tasks that will increase your country cultural prominence. When you do so, special characters will begin to appear in your town. These characters are of cultural professions and have their own troubles and doubts which you will need to dispose of so they could join your country in Pantheon to boost it's culural greatness - and eventually reach the Victory.

Information Age

As always, the new Age adds a whole lot of new buildings, units, technologies, upgrades, and so on. We had previewed some of the stuff earlier, but I will describe the key ones:

1. Energy! Information Age adds a sixth and final basic resource - energy. Energy is required by a number of things in Information Age. Oil still plays a significant role in this age, but energy is taking over as well. It also requires a power grid to transfer it between towns.
2. Atom bombs and Nukes! Now it's time for some serious destruction if you can reach this far. Beware though - your own people won't be too happy about it. You will also need a global resource Uranium, which is extremely rare.
3. Helicopters - better delivery and exploration.
4. Stealth Fighters and Bombers - now you can deliver some powerful ambush attacks!
5. Aircraft Carriers - allow your planes to reach further.
6. Highways - even better than railroads!

Places of Interest on the World Map

Apart from regular quest locations, global resources, and towns of other players now you will find some new places of interest on the world map. These places of interest do not require your hero, but do require some action on your side in order to claim a reward. For example, there is a desloate mine where you can send traders and they will salvage some resources. Furthermore, you can find multiple places of interest of the same kind so they are basically endless - you will be finding more and more of them as long as you keep exploring, unlike the quest locations which are limited.

Alpha 8 is getting closer and we are going to revise things a little bit. If you want to purchase a unique appearance for your hero, you had better do it now. When Alpha 8 is launched we will be removing these items from the Cash Shop.

No worries about losing them after the wipe, as items with the Enkord Cash sign will not be wiped.

We are removing these items from the Cash Shop to make the overall image of the game a little bit more fair, following the guideline that everything that can be purchased in the Cash Shop should also be available for free through in-game means.

It is possible that at some point we will re-introduce those removed items, as quest or other in-game rewards, but for now they will be gone for good.

All Enkord Cash spent from the 1st of June, 2017 until the wipe will be returned at Alpha 8 launch, regardless of when the launch actually happens.

So far we do not have an exact date for Alpha 8 deployment, but it is getting closer and closer. So we would like to encourage players to be more active and have more fun with this refund.

The major milestone of Alpha 8 will be a whole new Information Age and the numerous tech, buildings, and units it will contain, including some unique ones like Energy (6th basic resource), Uranium (global resource which unlocks Atom Bombs and Nukes), Aircraft Carriers, and many more other interesting things. Another major improvement will be new plaсes of interest on world map, so world exploration will be much more exciting. There will be other smaller new things as well - a new minigame to say the least.

The Information Age is just around the corner and we feel it is a perfect time to tease you just a little bit with things that will be released with this new age and Alpha 8 launch.

Like always, this will be a bunch of pictures. Below you can see several Information Age hero outfits, along with some buildings and units.

Today we reduced construction time of all buildings by 30% - 45%. Higher ages received bigger reductions, but even in Stone Age time reduction is significant.

Half a year ago we did an experimental update increasing unit speed by 2 times - and it improved the game dynamics quite well. Therefore, we decided not to revert the experiment, but instead to make it permanent. This time we have decided to review building construction speed. There was an issue in the game where players researched more advanced buildings before they had a chance to properly build earlier equivalents - which means research outpaces construction. Hopefully, with today's update, it will be more balanced.

I know today's update might undercut our income. Shorter build time means less manuals used, and manuals are our #1 income generator. However, I hope this change will make the game faster, will improve its dynamic, and therefore the game will be more fun in general. Making the game more fun is always good as it will make players happier - and happy players donate better (hopefully) :)

That being said - the update is very sensitive, so please do post about your experience, how much faster the construction became, how significant this change was, how it affected your manuals usage, and so on. Your feedback will determine if this update will be kept as permanent or reverted later. Thanks in advance!

Today we added a new unit to the game called Militia. This unit is available right from the start in the Military Base in Industrial Age and is a basic melee unit which does not require sulphur.

This way players who don't have sulphur will be able to train some military units in Industrial Age, and not just Engineers.

In other news - we have launched a contest which allows you to win some Enkord Cash, so check it out.

Today we added the five remaining anomalies - so from now on you can complete the anomaly-related quests. You will be able to find maps that reveal the locations of those anomalies in chests and inside your towns.

These are the five new anomalies added today:

• Mire Anomaly
• Climate Anomaly
• Luminous Anomaly
• Lava Anomaly
• Deadland Anomaly

We also added another important thing - a detailed world map that allows you to view the entire continent in a larger and more convenient way. If the revealed map is not too big, it will also display icons of towns, resources, and quest locations.

Today we have added the long-awaited features of joint attacks of multiple armies. Most skilled players were able to perform it anyway due to some clock syncing, but it cannot be done by everyone else easily.

In this update there are two different joint attacks:

1. Joint attack from multiple towns of yours - you can send armies from multiple towns to hit the target at the same time. This could be useful when you send land troops from one town and ships from another. There is a chain icon added on the send army screen. The faster army in this case will depart later to match slower army.
2. Joint attack of multiple players - this way the slowest player or the one who is furthest away from the target launches the attack and shares reference to this attack with others. The others can join in with a single click and the army will match the initiating player in time.

Hopefully the addition will not only allow experienced players to perfrom joint attacks easier, but will also introduce less experienced players to them as well.

Let us know what you think about this new feature.

We have also cleaned up the report tab a little bit, adding "Important" tab which leaves out the non-essential events and allows you to focus on important stuff.

Finally - We have redesigned the tutorial and improved it for both new and veteran players. There are also numerous other changes accumulated in this update. So read on.

Redesigned Tutorial

We moved advisors in the bottom right corner so it now allows you to make the most of hints on demand and not so much "in your face". Gromus will only nag at crucial times and the rest can be learned only if you need it. The quest panel was redesigned as well to give clear and straightforward goals, so most of the Gromus popups are no longer necessary. Let us know how you like the new tutorial - if it is in the right direction. The next step will be to change the hints from other advisors in this way (which means eventually Zweistein won't nag about science, etc.)

For existing heroes, Bulat and Zweistein duplicates will appear in dwelling, but for new heroes it should now be fixed.

Redesigned World Map Exploration

This has been in our to-do list for over two years, but was so complex that we managed to implement it only now. When sending explorers you are now able to select the fog bit and the shape in any form - and it can send all explorers from all of your towns in one go. It also shows cells that will be explored by other explorers if you had sent them earlier.

Politics Changes

To ease up politics changes a little bit, the Chaos length is reduced from 48 hours to 24 hours. Republics has also been tweaked. First of all, the bonus was fixed. It was only +50% to resources for first town, while it should be +100%. It is correct now. The culture penalty for Republics is reduced from 50% to 25%, so now it will be a bit easier.

Gem Piles

Rage - this new feature was added to the game in the recent update. Rage indicates how aggressive a particular player has been recently toward other players.

So what does this mean exactly? It means that when some player does destructive damage to another player, his rage meter goes up and this is visible to everyone else looking at the player's towns. This can serve as a warning to other players to beware - or actually an introduction to attack, because attacking an enraged player earns you Colorado Stripes! Those stripes are essential for the War Victory. The more enraged a target player is, the more stripes you can earn! This does not cancel the fact that you can also earn stripes from players of a higher age than you.

That being said, attacking a highly enraged player which is also at an age above you will allow you to earn the maximum amount of stripes!

The Onslaught which targets enraged or higher-age players has changed to Heroes Onslaught and has a different icon for simplified identification.

Today we launched the Alpha Test Stage 7. This new version of the game is focused on story and lore improvements. There are a lot of changes, so read more for details.

Karfaree

It is hard to believe - but it has been over two years since we updated the main story part of the game - when Keepers Village and Ruins of New Kyiv were added during Alpha 3. We had plans to release Karfaree shortly afterwards, but eventually it resembled that Guns'n Roses album which was promised and delayed over and over, but eventually delivered, just like we deliver Karfaree right now!

This is a large quest location unlike any other. It has way more quests, characters, non-liner bits and interactivity than any other location in the game. Actually, in terms of interactive content, it is larger than all story quest locations combined (I am talking about Opposition Hideout, Keepers Village, and Ruins of New Kyiv together).

Ok, I will not take away the enjoyment of exploring it yourself, but will mention the key points of Karfaree:

• The story moves forward - you will meet the mysterious Jester in person.
• The design of the location is multi-layered - you will be returning here over and over because of other quests or something new that has appeared in the city.
• Unprecedented non-linearity - in most cases there are multiple ways to achieve your goal. You will have to play it at least 10 times with different heroes in order to see all of the branches in quests and conversations.
• Two dozen new characters, mostly new, but some you have already met before.
• A dozen new quests in Karfaree alone, not to mention other quests that now can be completed in Karfaree (i.e. Caves of Fear and Doubt) or quests that are influenced by, or have alternative solutions, because of Karfaree (i.e. Impostor Hero).
• The general theme of the game shifts to be more controversal, ironic, and adult. No longer we are pretending this is kids-friendly game.
• You can take part in Colosseum fights!
• You can take part in the Opera play!
• You can be jailed, have people fall in love with you, report a murderer or become one... numerous possiblities are waiting for you out there.

When you have played through it, please complete the survey:

All Enkord Cash spent from the 20th of October, 2016 until the wipe will be returned at Alpha 7 launch, regardless of when the launch actually happens.

So far we do not have an exact date for Alpha 7 deployment, but it is getting closer and closer. So we would like to encourage players to be more active and have more fun with this refund.

The major milestone of Alpha 7 will be Karfaree and progression of the story. Currently, Karfaree is bigger than Herald's Home, Opposition Hideout, Keepers Village and Ruins of New Kyiv combined in terms of interactivity and unique content. It is also quite non-linear. In order to experience all possible outcomes and branches in quests and conversations you may need to play it a dozen times.

Today we are celebrating the 3rd Birthday of Totem Tribe II: Jotun. It has been exactly 3 years since we launched the ALPHA 1 version of the game to the general public and now we are approaching ALPHA 7. Let's look back  and reminisce about things that happened during the last year.

We have had similar threads for earlier Birthdays, so you can browse them here: 1st Birthday, 2nd Birthday.

So - what were the major milestones of the past year?

• Travelling Characters were added. They added some life to your stale towns. Some of them were trivial, while others were deep and even had large quests (think Necromancer). We are going to add more unexpected events to your towns in the future.
• ALPHA 6 was launched on the 23rd of March 2016. This was the biggest event of the last year and featured loads of new content. Industrial Age was introduced along with all those new units and buildings, and a pack of quest locations such as monster dens, a whole new desert climate, Tesla minigame and many more. You can review the news of alpha 6 launch here.
• Ongoing interface changes. This year we finally found time to improve game interface and to make it more convenient and less buggy and laggy. New minimap with icons, new build menu and upgrade screens were highly regarded by players and today we are also adding some more eye-candy to the interface. You can compare how game interface looked back in 2012 at our facebook page. In the future we also plan to redesign how advisors work, so all those annoying Zweistein popups will go away.
• Random Dungeons were evolutionary improvement over Random Caves , which were introduced during A4. The addition is 9 randomly generated dungeons which are different for each hero.
• Numerous balancing updates can be easily overlooked. They are those minor bits that might be hard to notice at first glance, but shape the game's fundamentals and make it fun to play. I am talking about things like Tavern building, prolonged beginners' protection which smoothed out the early gaming for newbies, destruction balancing which made it more reasonable, alliance balancing, improved movement speed of all units which made the game more fun, and finally - the most recent easier recovery from destruction. By the way, in today's update we have increased timers for easier recovery x2.
• Other updates - there have been dozens of smaller updates throughout the year and if you are really curious, you can find the list of all changes for the past 12 months in our update log.

Thanks to your support we were able to make it through another year, and closer to our ultimate vision of how Totem Tribe II should be. Yes, it may look like the game still needs a lot of work, and it's true, but we will do our best to make sure you have fun while we are slowly moving toward the full version release.

To celebrate today's Totem Tribe II: Jotun birthday, everyone receives gifts in the form of a Supporter's Key, Truce Proclamation, non-expirable Thank You Package, and 3 Lucky Coins.

There has been a lot of destruction lately and some players have suffered quite a bit. Therefore we have decided to make it easier to recover from it.

If some buildings were destroyed (completely or partially)  there is now a timer on such buildings which gives you a chance to rebuild cheaper and  faster. If you order the building upgrade until the timer runs out, today's update allows it to take 2x less time and resources to upgrade such buildings.

Let us know how if you were the one who suffered from destruction and tell is if it helps or not.

Recent balancing tweaks which involved Tavern nerf and awareness slowdowns (snails) impacted the overall game dynamics, especially things related to attacks. A lot of people complained about it so we have decided to try something.

Today's experimental update increases all world map unit speed, both reinforcements and attacks. This also involves exploration and traders speed.

• Land and aerial unit speed is increased by x2.
• Naval unit speed is increased too but not as much, something around x1.5
• Awareness effects rebalanced so they provide more in earlier ages and less in later ages
• Snail effect a little bit bigger

Keep in mind that this is an experimental feature to see how it will influence attacks and defense and overall game dynamics. It is not guaranteed to last forever and may be removed in future updates partially or completely. The final decision depends on player feedback - so post it in the comments below.

In other news: Karfaree is coming along, still planned for Alpha 7 launch. You can see the opera screenshot from corresponding Karfaree quest.

After we released random caves I had a lot of ideas for improvement which required re-evaluation of the concept. The dungeons we present today implement these revised ideas. Initially, we wanted to release them with Alpha 6 launch, but decided to postpone it and focus on monser dens instead. We have been working on these dungeons on and off for about half a year. They are now ready for the prime time.

So what exactly are these dungeons?

Dungeons are a number of quest locations scattered around the world map that can be found in different ways - just like caves and monster dens. Some of the dungeons can be found just by uncovering the world map with explorers, while others can be located when you find the appropriate map items in your towns or in the chests. The dungeons are not related to the storyline. There is only one quest associated with them and that is optional - but it is quite fun and rewarding if you complete it.

Randomness

Just like caves (and unlike monster dens), dungeons have different length and difficulty. But most importantly the dungeons are different for different players and heroes. Each player playing the same dungeon will experience different things - one player might be gathering items and another might be fighting monsters. There may be similar parts in different dungeons, but the bigger the dungeon, the less likely you will find exactly the same one again. Also unlike caves, dungeons are not as linear and may have different branches.

What's in them?

A lot of stuff. Despite not having "legit" quests due to their randomized nature, you will find lots of trademark Totem Tribe items . These dungeons were made specifically for the single-player type of players who have beaten the story locations, caves, and dens and are craving for more. However, if you are more into multiplayer stuff, don't dismiss these caves too quickly! There are plently of things in them, including rarer items like Blueprints and Figurines of Enlightment, so you have to give them a shot.

Things that can be found in the random caves:

• Monsters - Ghosts, Skeletons, Zombies, Flying Coffins, Spiders, Worms, Muscards.
• Items - plenty of useful items including Blueprints and Figurines of Enlightment, although don't expect them to be found easily ;))
• Secret buttons and switches
• Collectable hidden objects required to unlock deeper parts of the dungeon - timed for the first time!
• Puzzle sequences
• Secrets! Let's see if you can find at least one on your own
• Gems
• Traps - defused differently than the ones in caves.
• Other quirks put there to block your progression or just for fun.

How to access them?

Today we are introducing the new behavior of town population - your townsfolk will no longer aimlessly wander around their buildings, but instead will be doing their duty.

The workers will go to the resource facilities and deliver resources to storage. Then others will deliver resources from storage to the construction site. Some citizens will work at the construction site, knocking their little hammers. Occasionally, citizens will show their superstitious respects when passing by the religious buildings like the altar or temple. I could go on and on, but it is better to see it than to read about it.

While this feature does not add any functionality to the town and is basically one big eye-candy, it makes the town feel more alive and pleasant to look at. Also - this is the first step toward visualizing battles - so stay tuned for that future update.

Finally, I have to mention that this is the first big undertaking from our recent programmer Spoon, who had before this been busy with minor features and bug fixes. He would love to hear your feedback about today's update - so don't hesitate to post it in the comments. Cheer him up to motivate him for future undertakings :)

Today's update focuses on making alliance defenses more accessible and convenient, but by doing so, it also changes a few other things.

First of all this update fixes the Tavern. The Tavern was so good that players hesitated to report its bugged features and enjoyed it instead. This is bad of course, and the hangover will be significant. From now on, the Tavern will be increasing speed of reinforcements by +10% per level up to +200% at maximum level, making total maximum speed of reinforcements 300% (100% default + 200% bonus), thus basically increasing speed by x3 (not x11 like it was before bug fix). Also, the Tavern will no longer speed up naval and aerial reinforcements.

In order to compensate for the Tavern decrease of power, we looked around and found that powering up the Lighthouse was a natural step. The Lighthouse bonus to all naval armies sent from the town increased from 1% to 2% per level. Furthermore, an additional +10% speed bonus was added to reinforcements, which is similar to the Tavern bonus, except it works for naval units only. This will make seashore towns a little bit more desireable.

Since the Tavern fix made the reinforcements much slower, we added another feature which will give more time to react on incoming attacks. First of all, enemy armies are slowed down when they are detected, not when they enter your domain. This adds an additional 2 to 8 cells around your domain, depending on your tech. This is especially helpful if your country is squeezed from a side by a neighbor town, thus making your domain small and enemies detected very late.

Furthermore, the slowdown of enemies on your territory is increased from x2 to x3, which means they will move slower once detected, giving even more time to react and put defenses in place.

The crafting system and crafting idols introduced a year ago have their share of positive and negative moments - and now it's time to share some thoughts about improving them and making them more exciting.

While we have in some ways succeeded in bringing attention to the idols by adding the shaman/blacksmith and his quest, apparently it was not enough. Lets take a look at each idol in detail:

• Repair Idol - probably the most used one. No matter how you put it, your favorite gear needs to be fixed.
• Disassembly Idol - useful to those players who want to save on ore and crystals by disassembling unused gear to fix useful ones later.
• Enhancement Idol - while its usefulness is debatable and some people may argue that the prices are too steep, this idol can turn useless artifacts into better ones or good ones into exceptional. It's just up to your luck and whether you are willing to take the chance.
• Crafting Idol - actually, the crafting idol is the most useless one and I bet no one is using it apart from completing the quest. If not - please post in the comments, I would love to hear about it.

So the improvement of the crafting system will come from improving the item crafting. How so? By adding some items you will not be able to obtain otherwise!. Take a look at these:

(click the picture to view full size)

Take a look at these Samurai item sets - you will be able to craft these items from ores via the crafting idol! To make things more interesting, some crafting items will be unlocked only after you find the appropriate recipes - and finding more recipes will improve your chances of crafting that item.

These items can be ONLY obtained through crafting and there is absolutely no way to get them in other places. This will motivate players who want unique stuff to use the crafting idol. The items will not only look cool but will also have higher base stats - which will also make them perfect candidates for turning into artifacts to improve even more!