Since we have recently added artifacts, we are now able to expand on this and add a whole new side to the game - Treasure Hunting! Similar to fishing, you will be able to excavate for treasures here and there.

Let's do a breakdown of new things added in today's update.

The Archeologist

This is where it all begins. If you go to Keepers' Village you will find a new character there - The Archeologist. There is a small quest that you need to complete for him and then he will teach you how to dig for treasure at various spots in the world.

The Treasure Spots

We decided to distract ourselves from bug-fixing and optimizations for a bit and work on new stuff for a change. Therefore, after releasing random caves, we began working on the item system. Today's update is the first glimpse at it - Artifacts!

What are Artifacts?

Artifacts are similar to regular equipment items wearable by your hero, except they have extra stats (up to five). The stats will allow you to make your hero even stronger if you can gather up powerful gear. 

Artifact Traits

Artifacts add additional prefixes and/or suffixes to the regular item name depending on their power and traits. There are almost 100 different traits that could spawn on an artifact item, varying from a simple stat increase such as strength, to something more exotic - like a chance to pick up two items instead of one during your adventures. Not all of them are working though, so expect bugs.

We have been working on these caves off and on for almost a year. Finally we are ready to release them. This started as a little quirk to have something for people to do while they were waiting for the tasks to finish, but grew bigger and bigger with various features as time flew by.

This is the  "surprise" I was referring to months ago. It was originally planned to be released with Alpha 4, then by New Year's Day, but was completed only now - since we had to rework our quest system to get it running.

So what exactly are those caves?

There are number of quest locations scattered around the world map that can be found in different ways. Some of the caves 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 caves are not related to the storyline, there is only one quest associated with them and it is optional. They are more like "Lonely Iceberg" level in original Totem Tribe - you can safely skip them, but you can explore them for fun.

Why "Random"?

It's Sneak Peek time and today we are going to reveal some Totem Tribe II: Jotun Industrial Age work-in-progress.

While the programmers and I have been busy with boring tech stuff, our artists and musician have been working hard and have created some things that can now be shown to the public. The artists - and especially the musician - are always ahead of others in terms of content. So don't be surprised to hear they are already working on Industrial Age.

Below you can see several Industrial Age hero outfits, along with some buildings and units. Furthermore, you can listen to the music tracks that will be released in the game by the time you reach that age.

It has been a while since we released our last update because we have been heavily reworking the tech behind our game story/quest systems. Today we are releasing new quest functionality along with a lot of changes accumulated since the last update. This is what prevented us from working on Karfaree and more quests.

This new quest system is very unstable so expect a lot of bugs and weird behavior when testing quests and quest items/objects. Quest objects are all those single-player-like functionality items - chests, animals and monsters inside your town, little activities like fishing, and of course quests and conversations. So please pay attention to these and report any bugs sighted here on the forum.

Once again - for those who do not read that much text:

TODAY'S UPDATE IS BUGGY, SO DON'T BE SURPRISED - REPORT BUGS ON FORUM

Another thing you will inevitably notice - the fog is back almost everywhere and you have to clear it again. This is a known issue and a side-effect of today's update. You have to clear the fog again.

Quite some time has passed since we announced that more invites would be going out to new players and we have finally started sending out invitation emails.  It has been over two months since we made the announcement, but we are only now getting around to sending out the invites. 

Unfortunately, for those waiting for their invitations, we will be sending out fewer than we had initially planned. This is due to the fact that the game code turned out to be less stable than we had thought.  Because of this we will be inviting new players in smaller groups to ensure the game can handle the load.  The good news is that you can see a lot of new settlements in the western part of Abenia.  The bad news is that there should have been a whole lot more.
At the moment invitations are being sent out to those who registered on our website back in 2009/2010 - back then we had no idea if or when Totem Tribe II would be released.  It will be a little while longer before we can start inviting those that have registered more recently and players of our other games. 
However, if you really really cannot  wait a minute longer, then leave a post in the comments below (please don't start a new thread) and I will let you in.  But do keep in mind that this is alpha so expect bugs.
P.S.  Dont forget to say hi to one another in the comments below.  Veterans welcome our new players, the tropics will be getting pretty crowded quite soon! 

Just like we promised in our Alpha 4 deployment news, we have delivered refund bonus items to those players who donated earlier and decided to play Alpha 4 again.

Unfortunately, these items require an existing country on the server so we have announced the refund on Alpha 4 deployment and gave over a month for players who wanted those items to create their countries on our new server. Today we are delivering those items. Because we have to do it manually, the procedure will be one-time only. We are sorry, but you will not receive the items unless you already started playing Alpha 4 before today.

Also we are unable to provide gift Lada's Wards this way. So, instead of giving one regular and one gift Ward per each $30 charged, we are giving you two regular Wards. As promised, the upper limit of bonus items will be $100 so you will receive a maximum of 3 packs of items.

Speaking about other news and current game development process - Things have been going slowly lately because of the season's holidays, changes in the team (someone left, someone joined), and a number of technical tasks that unexpectedly popped up while we were sending out massive invites and a flood of new people were joining in.

We hesitated to invite a lot of new players because we needed a proper moderator reporting system in place so people can have abusers reported and punished promptly without their spoiling the fun of the game. (Especially considering that already there were several incidents of newcomers, not accustomed to our friendly atmosphere, behaving aggressively and insultingly). This kind of behavior is unacceptable, but also inevitable with a large number of players. All we can do is react as fast as we can. Hence, the requirement for this system.

The launch of the Alpha 4 and Medieval Age went well - without critical crashes - although there were plently of bugs related with medieval buildings, units, techs, etc. Today's update fixes a large number of those issues, as well as shedding some light on our current progress.

Today's update changes

• Huts/Houses/Cottages - There will now be 10 buildings allowed per age and their bonus is 1% per level. However, the reduction of construction time capped will be as low as 50% (was 20% before)
• Hut and Tower construction times and prices are roughly reduced twice
• Awareness ability now gives +2 cells per ability and has a proper description (icon to follow soon)
• Population has increased for Medieval buildings to compensate for the large amount of huts and their bonuses
• Seminary requirements for Theatre and Opera House were swapped
• Palisade level 10 wood price is reduced to fit level 18 Lumber Shed storage limit
• Communality has been renamed to Collectivism
• You can no longer hide resources from plunder with traders. When the enemy attacks and there are no resources to plunder, they will rob your traders standing in the market.
• Descriptions have been added to medieval buildings
• Fixed bugs for various Medieval buildings like storage which were not recognized in various requirements, Seminary hiding tech tab and allowed to be built along with Library and so on.

What are we up to now?

Currently we are working on a proper moderation system which will allow players to report abuse/insults with a single click - which allows us to punish the offenders quickly and easily. This ability is the only thing standing in the way of the team sending out a large number of invitations to those people who have registered on the website and our past players from our other games. If you are one of those waiting for it - hang in there - we are working on it.

We are still working on the long-promised "surprise" that should have been a Christmas present, but it was too complex to have it ready  in time. So the Christmas present is the Alpha 4 launch like we had initially planned :) The "surprise" update will come after the New Year.

Today is launch day for Stage 4 of Totem Tribe II: Jotun Alpha-test.  One of the major features of this stage is the introduction of a new historical era  -  the Medieval Age. There are a lot of important details about today's update so you need to read on (especially if you are experiencing new stage start for the first time).

As is the case with the introduction of every new Alpha stage, the game has been wiped and all of your progress, including your heroes and achievements, are lost. Unfortunately this is necessary because when we introduce new dramatical changes to the game (like the addition of a  new age) we have to start the game from scratch in order to test it properly. We have had to do this for the previous Alpha stages and this will be repeated in the future. However, the Enkord Cash that you have spent so far is now back in your account. You can read more about this at the bottom of this news post.

So what is Alpha 4 all about?

Medieval Age - We have added a whole new age to the game which you can access as soon as all of the Classical Age techs have been researched. Just like the previous ages, it has a lot of new features, like buildings, units, tech, upgrades, global resources, and so on.  However, there are also a number of unique things that we added that were not available before the Medieval Age

Priests and town capturing mechanism - you will be able to train a unique unit - the  Priest. Priests will allow you to  capture your enemies. Once captured, the town will belong to you forever just like the one you built from scratch. The capturing process is very complicated, because the reward (and damage done to your enemy) is huge.  It will be way harder than capturing a new town on your own, but it is too lengthy to explain it in this thread, so I will more than likely start a separate thread with a detailed explanation on this subject.

1. Catacombs -  we have had a lengthy brainstorming thread on an idea about how to defend your country when you are away and catacombs were the result of it.
2. Pirates! - this new privateering feature will allow your sailing ships (no rower) to plunder anonymously under pirate colors - your victim will never know who it was that attacked them.
3. Wonder of the World. Because of the upgraded capacity of the new medieval storage buildings and with the ability to have 2 world resource sheep in your domain (which is simplified by the fact that your neighbors can lend you resources too) you will be able to build a level 100 of the Wonder of the World which is a necessary  condition for  the Wealth Victory, however, the victory mechanic itself has yet to be implemented . But hopefully we will be able to implement it by the time you get to level 100 (which, believe you me, is not an easy task).
4. Courthouse - this allows you to reduce  the corruption (inefficiency) in any particular town.
5. Chaika - a new ship which can not only explore, but also spy on  port towns.
6. Pilgrim - a medieval age settler which can both walk and swim thus allowing you to settle on islands.

There are numerous smaller things that I haven't mentioned here and I will leave it up to you to find them on your own.

New Big World Map

We have decided to launch Alpha 4 next week. Hopefully we will release it next Monday.  All of your progress so far in the game will be lost, so if there is anything that you haven't tried yet in the game, now is the time to do so.

So if players  want to go mad attacking other players, now is the perfect time to try it before the wipe.

An important note to donators - all  Enkord Cash will be refunded after the wipe for the Alpha 4 launch.  So for those who have any Enkord Cash laying around in their accounts, now is the time to treat your hero to some extra blueprints or speed ups. 

As for new features in Alpha 4 - for those who haven't been following our news posts there will be some major additions. We will be adding the Medieval Age with new techs, buildings, and units. There will also be a completely new world map and the plan is to make it hundreds of times bigger than the current one. A single continent will be comparable to the size of the current world map of Alpha 3.

We did not think we were going to do additional serious updates until Alpha 4, but we have changed our minds. We added two new features - Protectorate Mechanic, which allows one player to become the protector of another, and an Invitation System, which allows existing players to invite their friends into the game RIGHT NOW.

Let's talk about them in detail.

Protectorate Mechanic

If you do not belong to an alliance you can ask another (stronger) player to become your protector. This is a relationship between two players, not between alliances. When in a protectorate relationship, players cannot attack each other and the protector can collect a levy from the reinforced town of the player in protection. A levy is collected as a percentage of that player's resource income in that town. Collection is not instant and continues until the reinforcing army's baggage is filled. Afterwards, protector can recall their troops to deliver the collected resources to their towns and send fresh troops for further collection.

This mechanic will allow players to establish a profitable relationship between weaker and stronger (or aggressive and peaceful) players, where one player is providing troops and another is paying for protection. Plus this relationship will be in a  format which will allow everyone to see it and it may act as a warning sign for  plunderers and attackers to beware.

This update introduces Resource Lending to the game. From now on, players will be able to lend resources on the world map within their domain to their neighbors. This should allow new ways for players to interact, as well as additional diplomacy around those resources.

What exactly is resource lending?

If you have a global resource within your domain on the world map, you will now be able to lend it to any of your neighbors. A neighbor is any player whose domain shares a border to yours. There should be no space or other players between the two of you.

Once you lend the recource to someone, it will act as if the cell with the resource is provided to that other player, and that player can do with it as if it were his or her own resource (i.e. build a structure on it and supply to their towns). Lending is instantaneous, although building the structure on it is not, just as if it were a normally owned resource.

You can also reclaim any lended resource instantly, although if the other player has supplied it to any of their towns, it will take 24 hours for the supplying structure to be deconstructed. It will be exactly as if you captured the cell with the resource from someone.

This update is much larger in comparison to previous ones. We have finally completely redesigned the espionage system, which will actually make full use of your spies and eliminate a cheat that allows you to figure out the whole enemy army with a single spy unit.

The spying mechanics are now built similarily to plunder, except instead of resources, spies accumulate "intelligence points", which after the spy battle determine how much information they are able to get.

• Spying for Buildings: Each spy can gather information to reveal one level of buildings. This means that if you send one spy, you will be able to see one random Level 1 building of the enemy. However, if you send 100 spies, you will be able to see random buildings totaling up to 100 levels. Multiple spying attempts might reveal different random buildings. You will not be able to get all the buildings with one spy anymore.
• Spying for Resources: Each spy defines the maximum amount of resources he can detect. For example, if you send one spy, and he can only detect 500 resources max, any additional resources the enemy town  has will show as "over 125" (500/4 resource types). If you want to know how much more, send more spies.
• Spying for Army: Again, intelligence points will determine the total price of spying the enemy army. If the intelligence points are enough to cover the whole army cost, you will see the whole army. If the intelligence points only cover a fraction, but not less than 75%, you will see rough estimates instead of hard numbers (few, many, etc.). If they cover 50-75%, you will see a percentage of units, one against another, for instance: Brave = 75%, Hunter = 25%, but it could be either 3 and 1 or 300 and 100. For 25%-50% you will only see unit types without any information about quantity. If it is less than 25% you will not be able to get any information at all.

I did not post a specific amount of "intelligence points" spies actually gather and specific corellation between those points and the actual information received because this type of information is subject to change. I don't want to be obligated to updating it each time in public.

Furthermore, battle reports now have similar information grades as espionage - if your army was very small and everyone is dead, you will not be able to know what killed you. This will also eliminate a "one explorer attack" cheat.

Another important change in this update is the game interface change. Since Alpha 1, people have been asking for the ability to collapse parts of the interface to have more visual playing space. This time it has been implemented. Let us know if this is what you wanted.

Exactly one year ago today we launched Alpha 1 of our game, Totem Tribe II: Jotun . Now it is time to look back and reminisce about things that have taken place over the last 12 months.

• ALPHA 1 was launched on the 22nd of October 2013, and only a couple of dozen players were invited. The game was far from what it is now - it had only Herald's Home, no other quest locations. There were no advisor quests, the Cash Shop was not available, and in general a lot of things were far worse than they are now. Those who played it, please leave us some comments about what other important things were not present :). Here is the old news post about Alpha 1.
• ALPHA 2 was launched on the 23rd of December 2013, two months after Alpha 1, and just in time for Christmas. We were able to release it so soon after Alpha 1 because most of the new features that were added were partially ready when Alpha 1 was released. In Alpha 2 we added Opposition Hideout, advisor quests, Cash Shop, and most importantly for some people - more horses! There were only a couple of horses in entire Alpha 1 release. There were more people invited to participate as well, maybe up to 50. You can read about it in: news post about Alpha 2 launch.
• ALPHA 3 took us significantly longer to release (2nd of June 2014) because there were so many additional features to be added. We added a whole new age - Classical, and an entirely new payment system which includes various rewards and bonuses.  The new Jungle climate zone was added, and random monsters were also new to this phase. The inhabitable space was doubled because of the new climate zone. We invited even more players this time - we now have over 200 players.  Here is the Alpha 3 news post with details. More importantly though, is the work that has been done behind the scenes. We can tell you that we have started to rework our codebase, which in the long run will allow us to do things faster and better..
• On the 11th of September 2014, we did not launch a new alpha stage, however we did add 2 new quest locations - which is a big deal for those players who have been fans since original TT1/TTG and who wanted more of the old-school experience.

It has been a landmark year for us.  We have been working very hard on this game for almost 4 years now and we have been flying blind.  However, this past year has finally allowed us to touch base with players and embed our belief that this game serves its purpose and is appealing to both its present and future fans. Now that we have support - the future of the game is more certain.

I almost forgot to mention that everyone receives a Supporter's Key, a Thank You Package, and 3 Lucky Coins as a birthday treat!

Now everyone go post your most memorable game moment of the year! :)

I am sure you all thought that we were on vacation due to the lack of updates recently, but you can rest assured that this is not the case - we have been quietly busy and  heavily focused on doing Alpha 4 content.  So I thought I would share, and shed some light, on what we are working on at the moment.

• New World Map. The new world map will be huge - hundreds of times bigger than the current Alpha 3 world map. A single region of the world map will be much larger than the whole world map as it stands now, with 4 regions making up one continent. We are working on this map right now, with the intent of launching it with the release of Alpha 4. You will notice that the landscape will be different too. We have added islands so that people whose starting location is close to the sea will be able to expand into the islands to prevent being locked away by others. We also plan to do some adjustments to the world mini-map which will only display the current continent, making  it more convenient.
• Rings and Amulets. These two category items were in the plans, but as of yet have not been implemented. Therefore, we decided we need to get to work on them. As you can see from those included in this threads artwork, our artists are currently working hard on designing these items. I can't say when they will be added into the game, but they are shaping up nicely as we speak.
• Medieval Age. It is not a secret that Alpha 4 will see the introduction of the new Medieval Age. There is a large amount of stuff that still needs to be completed before it is ready for release. The team is also busy working on missing content.

Now for news of something that we hope to have ready in the not-so-distant future - we have plans to redesign the espionage system and to have it ready to be included in the next major Alpha 3 update.  This is second on our priority list and will be tackled as soon as we are finished working on the Alpha 4 world map.  The new espionage system will also fix the lone attacker bug.

Finally, as there are some nice big wars going on, an important issue of town defense has been uncovered and I would invite all players who take part in the war to take part in that discussion as well.

The Top List function was introduced during late Alpha 1/early Alpha 2. However, today we have added a dedicated tab where you can conveniently check out where you are positioned. There are 3 global categories: Regional Country Ranking, World Country Ranking, and World Alliance Ranking.

Regional Top List shows the countries in your region in an aggregated leaderboard, where all categories add up to your total position.

World Country/Alliance Lists are more detailed. First, there are two different types - all-time and weekly lists.  Secondly, not only can you see how good you have been doing recently, you can also see how good you have been doing since the beginning of Alpha 3.

Furthermore, world rankings come from not just one, but from eight different top lists in each category:

• Population - total population of all towns in the country
• Domain - domain size of country in cells
• Science - number of science points generated
• Experience - experience points earned by hero
• Attack - total damage dealt to others as an attacker
• Defense - total damage dealt to others as a defender
• Plunder - total amount of resources obtained by plunder
• Profit - amount of resources obtained as a profit in market deals

To unlock the Top List tab you must first access it from your main dwelling.

It has been almost a year since we updated the quest/story element of the game. Today we are changing that. In this latest update we have added not just one, but two brand new quest locations to the game. To help get you started lets look at some of the details...

Those of you who have already completed the Opposition Hideout quest will need to go back and talk to Gromus again to unlock the two quest locations - Keepers' Village and Ruins of New Kyiv. Those who didn't will reach Gromus and talk to him anyway and locations will be unlocked the same way.

An important thing to note is that the conversation between your hero and Gromus and Co. is a lot more important than before - the choices you make during the conversation can easily make or break both quests and it contains important information which was not added as a useless filler. The new conversations are an integral part of the quest element of the game and should not be rushed through.

As a bonus we have also added a new cut-scene at the end of the tutorial when Gromus leaves.  You might also notice that all of the cut-scenes now include sounds.

We would greatly appreciate your feedback and impressions on the new quest locations, and when you have completed each quest it would be great if you could submit a more detailed account of both new quests on a separate thread by clicking on the link below:

Today we re-balanced the battle system and provided additional tactical variety, allowing heroes to beat stronger opponents with the proper unit combinations. We have significantly tweaked the stats of most of the units as well as the hero.

As a result of this update, the battle side of the game has become more of a "rock-paper-scissor" type system. This means that one unit type is strong against one type and weak against another type. For example, a Hunter is strong against a Nomad, but weak against a Brave. A Brave, on the other hand, is weak against a Nomad, but strong against other stone-age infantry, and so on. Pay attention to bonus attacks to figure out which units are strongest against the target unit. It might require numerous battles to figure things out though, so look at the reports and replays if you want to dig deeper into the game mechanics.

Short example: With the re-balance, if you fight armies of the same value (in resources) but with units who have an advantage over enemy units, you can completely destroy the enemy, while losing only half of your army.

Hero bonuses and strengths have changed as well. Before the update heroes were leveling up too fast, resulting in heroes' strengths growing faster than that of their armies. The update resulted in some stats becoming stronger, while others have been weakened. Also, the amount of experience required to level-up has increased significantly. This will now more closely resemble the final game.

As I  warned in advance, all heroes were reset to level 1, all earned equipment items were removed (except those given at the start), and all hero perks and stats were taken away. We have given everyone ten Figurines of Enlightment to help with leveling up again (only heroes who were above level 10 before the wipe received them). Unfortunately, this step was inevitable to test the new hero/battle system from scratch. Hopefully you understand that this is an alpha-test and wipes and resets are part of the package and normal for this stage of the game.

For those who have played the original Totem Tribe, you will be pleased (or terrified) to hear that gems are returning by popular demand!

We had initially planned to add gems after all the quest locations were completed. However, since that may take years, we decided to add them now. From now on, all quest locations will have collectible gems. So far they don't have much of a purpose - but like in original Totem Tribe, collecting all of them in ALL locations will unlock something big. Since we currently only have two quest locations, naturally it will not unlock anything. However, if you collect them all you can brag about it :)

Let us know in your comments how quickly you were able to find all of the gems, how hard it was  and which ones were particularly tricky. Based on that feedback, we will decide how to hide them in future quest levels - harder or the other way around.

In Other News:

• I have redesigned things inside the game, so hopefully this time the discrepancy between promoted and regular buildings will be solved once and for all.
• The Temple is now upgradeable from Altar from here on in.
• There was a killer bug in the game which caused all random monsters to fight as mushrooms. This has now been fixed. From now on, expect the monsters to become much much stronger. We might even need to make them a bit weaker in future updates. Anyway - let us know in your comments how you progress with the monsters from now on.
• We have reworked the technical side of the battle system. Our next step would be to tweak unit stats and battle behavior. Expect the battle to become different in the future updates.

The first one to collect all the gems post here! :)

In Totem Tribe II: Jotun stage 3 of the alpha test we introduced you to the Classical Age and the Tropics, and invited plenty of new testers. We are now able to move forward - and announce that plans are being made for the next Alpha test stage. So what can you expected from us in Alpha 4?

Medieval Age!

This is going to be one large chunk of new content - a plethora of new items, buildings, and strategic resources. We are adding new units - foot, mounted, constructions, ships, and so on. But more importantly - we will introduce you to the  Preacher - a unit which will have special abilities that have not yet been seen in the game. You will also be able to max up  your hero to level 50 - the highest level possible.

The Classical Age, as it is now, will be revised to ensure a smooth transition for the player into the Medieval Age, which will significantly shorten the research times and allow you to move through this age faster.

A LOT of new testers

We had planned on inviting a lot of new testers to this phase, but we had to be careful because even though  we have opened up the Tropics, effectively doubling the amount of space available, the wold map is still quite small.  However, in Alpha 4 all those who have already signed up to be  testers will be included in the next batch of invites and we are hoping to be able to invite even more people than that as we are planning on introducing an invitation system so existing players can invite their friends and family automatically.

New World Map

The  world map is currently too small to accommodate all of our new players. Alpha 4 will introduce you to our  new world map which has been designed for the final cut of the game. It will be at least 100 times larger than the current one. Single regions will be larger than the current whole world, so it is unlikely you that will be able to reach players in different climate zones.

That's it? What about new quests? ETA?