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?

We have finally found some time to pay attention to Hero Perks. They have been active since we updated in Alpha 2, but at that time they were quickly hacked together just to see if they work. Now we have decided to sort them out a bit.

First of all, we have created new graphic icons for the major line of perks. There are some higher grade perks that can be unlocked after you pick regular ones for your hero - those are left for the future updates. For now we created icons for those which were already designed.

Furthermore, we have added descriptions of expected perk effects and marked which ones do not work yet. To my surprise, a lot of those perks are not working. But oh well, at least now we know what we have there right now.

In other news: Currently it is a hectic period - like always after a new Alpha stage launch - where new features produce a pletora of new bugs. So a large part of our time is being invested in those. But we are also moving forward bit by bit. We have finally started working on the interface - and one other cool thing I am not going to tell you - let it be my little secret :)

The Alpha 3 launch went quite well. We are in the process on making further plans for future development of Totem Tribe II: Jotun, and what we will have for Alpha 4. Maybe I will make a separate news post about Alpha 4 plans later.

The Stage 2 of the Totem Tribe II: Jotun Alpha test is over and we have successfully started Stage 3. We are currently inviting new testers into the game. If you are invited into Alpha 3, use the link below to join the game:

http://www.totemtribe.com/alpha/

If it says you don't have permission to access it, don't be upset, the Alpha 4 will come later on and we will be sending out a new wave of invites. Sooner or later everyone will have their chance to play.

Regarding invites - Alpha 3 world map is pretty small, just as it was in Alpha 2, but this time we plan to invite as many people as it will be necessary to fully populate the world map. I know some people do not like to be crowded, but this is a testing period. If there was ever a time to do all kinds of crazy stuff, it is now. Sorry for the inconvenience, but it is the price of being among the first :)

Our conclusions on Alpha 2

It is time to sum up our thoughts and experiences of running Stage 2 of the Alpha test for almost half a year with a little bit more details. It took much longer than expected because Alpha 2 was a stage of fundamental decisions:

• Codebase. We figured out our codebase was pretty bad and it was difficult to implement tweaks promptly. Testers found so many bugs and filed many suggestions, but when we tried to apply them it appeared that necessary changes took too much time to implement. We had a choice - either to continue to implement changes slowly or to take a break and seriously rework our codebase hoping that eventually it would make things easier. We decided to do the latter, and this resulted in a serious delay releasing Alpha 3 without many visible changes. We are not done yet on our codebase redesign, but at least we do see the whole picture and things will be simpler as time goes by.
• Interface. Even during Alpha 1 the majority of our testers criticized the game interface as being inconvenient and obscure. It was a priority feature, but due to situations mentioned in the previous section we failed to change the interface in Alpha 2. However we completed the necessary preparation programming and are about to redesign the interface in Alpha 3 updates.
• Community. The Alpha 2 community of testers was slightly larger than Alpha 1, but we were still able to keep the warm "family" atmosphere, although there were a few people that tried to ruin it. Most of the credit goes to the testers themselves though - they were great at keeping the right mood despite the presence of several upsetting situations. Guys/gals - you are awesome! :) It will be a challenge to keep it that way as more and more people come here, but I think sustaining the proper atmosphere is a key point to the game's success.
• Story. I know story and quests are very important to Totem Tribe folk and we really tried to release at least one new quest location with Alpha 3, but we were unable to do so without causing further delays. However, we have made all the necessary preparations that will allow us to release a new quest location at a later date. This will be done during an update, not during a wipe.
• Donations and premium items. Some people were very excited about Cash Shop and helped us with donations, and so we took steps to benefit those people by introducing various bonuses like Enkord Cash. However, refunded Enkord Cash spent during Alpha 2 resulted in too many premium items right from the start of Alpha 3. This skewed the results of early testing a little bit, and therefore we have made the decision not to refund bonus items on future Alpha wipes (Alpha 4 and so on) - only Enkord Cash will be refunded. This will prevent further skewing of the results during future Alpha testing. The bonus items will be refunded when the game reaches more stable stage - like Beta.
• War. Another important issue of Alpha 2 was battles. Some players felt uncomfortable when they were attacked unexpectedly for no reason. We analyzed those cases with proper attention and made some changes (like adding Shelter for units) to allow players to deal with those attacks. Some players asked us to create a separate mode or server for peaceful players alone, but unfortunately I must admit this will not happen. Totem Tribe is not a farm game or a city builder, and warfare was a crucial part of original Totem Tribe game. It will also play an important role in Totem Tribe II: Jotun. However we do realize the warfare is a very sensitive issue and we will always keep an eye on it, trying to figure out how to make it less stressful and more fun, providing more means to deal with damage.

Your conclusions?

We are about to start deploying Stage 3 of Totem Tribe II: Jotun closed alpha test. Update will be deployed within 1-3 days timeframe and current progress will be wiped. Here are the details about update and it's deployment. Let's start with major features.

Classical Age

The biggest thing among what has been added is whole new age with whole lot of new buildings, units, upgrades, research and so on. As we surveyed our players, we have found out it was the most desireable feature so we focused on implementing it for alpha 3.

Here are some major ones detailed:

• Iron - a new basic resource introduced in Classical Age and you will be able to mine Iron.
• Sailing - now you will be able to research and build vessels if you have town aligned next to the river or sea shore. Naval market is available to trade between port towns, additionally naval transports can be used to drop the landing party on mainland town of different continent. That's in addition to regular war ships that can attack enemy ports.
• Upgrades - now you can build a forge and upgrade your Classical Age troops. Upgrades are expensive but still a way to spend excessive resources when you have full army but want to make it a bit stronger.
• Siege - some people are not gonna like this :) You will be able to build catapults - very expensive units able to break enemy buildings.
• The Wonder of the World - let's see how much resources can you pour into this 100-level monstrosity :)

Better Payments

We were surprised how our testers supported us with donations even despite the fact that some prices were quite steep. Therefore we decided to give more value for the money to people who donate to support the game. No, we did not lower the prices :) but we have added various bonuses that will bring you extra free items and Enkord Cash in various circumstances. Here is the list of features:

• For each 30000 Enkord Cash charged as single payment you will get a special Supporter's Package with random items worth roughly 50000 plus 2 unique items called Lada's Ward which will allow you to cast uninterruptable truce for 3 days. One item is for your own use, another one to give as gift to your friend.
• When you donate money, you can automatially send out Pysanka's to your friends and alliance mates. Pysankas are small locked chests with free items too.
• For recurring spenders we are introducing Enkord Cash Club which will give you extra 10%-50% of what you charge (half of it comes in Enkord Cash, another half is in random items). That's in addition to ordinary volume bonus and volume discounts in Cash Shop!
• A deferred payment option is added. This is useful when you want to donate more than $100 and want to get larger volume discount. This way you will be able to charge several smaller payments and accept them as one big transaction.

Those things are just a few steps in the marketing department which needs to be done in order to make the game successful financially. Our current players are pretty loyal, but if we want to reach out for wider audience we need to provide better monetization offers. Another small bit - some players asked us what is their place in the top donators list, so now you can see your place in your control panel in the transactions tab.

More Game Additions

It's been quite some time since we promised alpha 3 to come out soon, so I decided to break up the silence with details about alpha 3 update. More precisely - monsters.

In alpha 3 there will be random monsters here and there all over the place around your new towns. They will be appearing from time to time just like peaceful animals or items/chests.

While they are agressive by default - they won't attack your town on their own, because we felt there is no need for that as some players could be pesky enough with their attacks. Instead they will be wantering around your town, preventing your hero to explote the surroundings, open chests and tame animals.

By killing those monsters your hero will earn experience, plus there will be some random items dropped by them. When your hero is weak and has low level there will be few weak monsters spawning, but as he/she muscles up there will be more of them and more dangerous ones.

Now let's hope the next news post will be about specific alpha 3 launch timeframe :)

Today we have been deployed another update which will be final before the big Alpha 3 update. From now on we are fully commited to delivering the alpha 3.

There are still a lot of work to do, so don't expect alpha 3 in the coming weeks, but it's a finish line for it - all major features are done and we are now busy pulling it all together for a release, fixing smaller things.

I will remind you that when alpha 3 will be launched, all your kingdoms, heroes and towns will be deleted and you will have to start from scratch. However you will receive a refund in Enkord Cash points to your account and will be able to spend them again in alpha 3. We will make a news post in advance (roughly in a week before the wipe) so you will be aware of the coming total game reset.

So what is new in today's update?

Shelter. The major thing is Shelter now should be working. You will be able to hide your army so when your town is attacked, they won't fight and you will not loose it. Now you can hide there all your rare animals if you like. Even better, you will be able to enable auto-hide feature which allows to hide automatically all your troops that appear in your town. This way you can queue a lot of units before you go to sleep and be sure that when you get up, they won't be wiped one by one by some other player that attacked you at night.

Ambient Sounds. Some players complained that silent pauses in the game are not good, but making music play without pauses to allow hears to rest will make it annoying. Therefore we have made compromise - now there is a long pause between music tracks, but instead of silence those pauses feature environment sounds.

Some of the team are currently working on adding more jungle into the game - take a look at this screenshot of the starting location in the tropics.

We have realised that the continents on the current world map are too small for intensive player-player interactions such as alliances or trade.  We do however feel that it is big enough to fit the new alpha 3 testers successfully as long as we  provide more space.  We have therefore decided that we are going to unlock another climate zone for players to start in.

The  team has decided that the tropics seem like  the best  choice as it will move  both the Northern and Southern inhabited zones closer together, which is why we  have started work on the tropical maps. You can see some of our progress in the picture above.  We have also redesigned the  tutorial location and hopefully the rest wont be long coming together.

Sorry for the lack of  updates and news lately. For the past few months I have  been really swamped with boring tech stuff while  the rest of the team have been making  good progress towards the Classical Age as well as putting together other features that we have planned for alpha 3. Our update rate will slow down for now as it is hard to add new features while  also fixing any outstanding bugs, so for the moment some bug fixes have been postponed.

In today's update we have added limited support for achievements and rankings. In fact achievements were working for some time before, but we have added some tweaks and we decided to announce them.

Just like alliances and diplomacy, they are in a half-working state too, but we decided to add them anyway to allow players to poke a stick on them.

Achievements can be viewed on hero tab in the third subtab on the left. They are split in 6 categories - click on one of the 6 medals below your hero to view them. Here I have compiled the list of (supposedly) working achievements.

Earning achievements improves your prestige and prestige level. Prestige level changes your hero background and arc from primitive one to a more developed and pretty. Overall prestige stat has no influence over gameplay, it is there purely for showing off (In the future player info screen will have hero's arc background too as another show-off point).

Also ranking were added. Unfortunately the top lists are not displayed anywhere just yet, but I have made a separate explanation thread about rankings.

It's been a while since we posted a news update so we felt it is nice to post a small summary of what is going on at Enkord right now.

The last few months since Alpha 2 launched I was investing heavilty into boring tech stuff which eventually allow us to start the total game interface overhaul. I do remember it was #1 complain since Alpha 1 launch and it still was the case for Alpha 2 - all those huge chat and progress boxes that can't be closed or minimized which take away your screen real estate and so on. Trust us, we hear you, it's not just simple to fix, hence the need for a serious tweaking inside the game.

Good news is if we will be able to pull this internal tech overhaul, we will be able to creat ant tweak game interface way faster, reacting promptly on your feedback. Unfortunately this postpones Alpha 3 launch a little bit, but hey, on Alpha 3 we plan to invite more testers than on alpha 1 and 2 combined, so it will be worth the wait!

Meanwhile our artists have been working on Classical Age art. For example on this picture you can see the Wonder you can start building in Classical Age to achieve Wealth Victory (one of the 6 possible victory types). It will have a whopping 100 upgrade levels and will require zillions of resources to build - you will need to be a very wealthy one, hence the victory name.

The testing was also too successful - our resless army of testers provided us a ton of found bugs, I am kinda scared to think how are we going to find the time to fix them all. Keep up the great work! :)

At the moment we are busy working on various internal things that cannot be seen visually but are essential for further progress, therefore we decided to unlock some alliance-related features.

Those features are incomplete and barely working - they were added a long time ago and only accessible via console commands, but we decided to unlock them now so people who are not scared to poke the ugly stuff could try it out.

We have listed possible commands here in our update log so if you want to try it out - read it carefully and see if you can do something with it. If those commands look Greek and you absolutely have no clue what to do with them - it's ok, they are not intended to be acceptable for everyone, so you can wait until we design a proper interface and popups for them.

If you want to discuss alliances and the alliance commands, you can post your questions in this news comment thread.

2013 was a very labour intensive year for the developers of Totem Tribe II: Jotun. The work done over the past 12 months has been crucial  for the fate of this project.  Releasing both the new website and alpha stage 1 was a huge turning point for the development team as our project started to shape up like a real game and not just chunks of code and content here and there.

The Website

We finally launched the website and started accepting donations from our loyal fans which meant that after 3 long years we were able to start investing money back in to the development of the game. It was a very important moral achievement for us - we are providing something that people want and people are willing to part with their money to support us even without trying the game.  You don't come across that much trust too easily these days.

For us, the website has been an integral part of the game right from the start.  It slowed the game development down a bit which is why it took us so much time to release the alpha, but it was essential in order to provide the necessary infrastructure for when our first testers started to play.  They had  already shared accounts in the game and on the forum, so adding their heroes avatars was not that hard when we came to the launch.

After receiving a lot of feedback on the website, we made a decision to start the closed alpha test earlier than planned, in order to start receiving feedback on the game itself as soon  and as fast as possible.  We had initially planned to release the alpha with opposition hideout and advisor quests in place but decided to launch it as soon as the tutorial was ready and it was well worth it.

We wish you a merry Christmas, a happy New Year and have made a present in form of launching stage 2 of Totem Tribe II: Jotun closed alpha-test.

In addition to those people who were invited earlier, a new wave of testers will be invited this time. Now we have invited some veteran players from our other online game called GUNROX to test how regular casual players will feel playing alongside hardcore players and fix the problems that could possible arise out of this.

The progress of the stage 1 is wiped and everyone will start from scratch.

Here is the list of major changes in stage 2:

1. New quest location called "Opposition Hideout" was added. There you must find Gromus and other opposition leaders in their hideout and in order to do so you must solve a quest - there are several different ways to do that which can result into puzzle solving, item finding or monster fighting - depending on which path you will take.
2. Over 50 of various advisor quests added that become available after you finish tutorial - talk to Bulat or Zweistein and they will help you build up your town step by step generously rewarding you for your progress. You will receive over 50 items from those quests so even if player haven't donated anything and has no Enkord Cash will be able to properly jump-start his/her country.
3. Cash Shop is added where you can spend Enkord Cash received for your donations in case those 50 items from advisor quests won't be enough. The Cash Shop is initial version, so might be buggy - report us any problems.
4. Fishing was added - once you find all of the fishing pole components and assemble it, you will be able to fish for various species.
5. The balance of the game was revamped significantly - prices and requirements of buildings, units, technologies was changed to make it smother and more balanced. Plus a lot of minor things too many to mention. We will see how it turns out.
6. Two new buildings and one new unit were added. The buildings are the Secret Cave where you can train Caveman (a new unit but one you might remember from original Totem Tribe) and the Petroglyph where you can convert excessive stone resources into science points increasing your research. The Secret Cave is an alternative to the Witchdoctor Shack, therefore, you will have to choose whether you want Witchdoctors or Cavemen in your country.
7. The world map has more strategic resources now, especially horses.
8. Less important changes mentioned in our changelog thread on forum.

Please note, that this is still a closed alpha test and after stage 2,  stage 3 will be implemented and your progress will be reset again. If you are not ready to play a very limited and buggy game - please wait until the later stages.

If all goes well we plan to launch stage 2 of Totem Tribe II: Jotun closed alpha test early next week. Currently we have implemented all planned major features and doing minor fixes and testing.

Stage 2 means the following important stuff:

• New Quest location - "Opposition Hideout"
• A dozen for advisor tasks (50+) with a lot of rewards from them - over 30 items.
• Cash Shop will be added with ability to spend your Enkord Cash received for donations.
• Fishing will be added.
• New wave of testers will be invited.

There will be a lot of smaller stuff, we will post detailed changelog when update will be launched.

IMPORTANT: Current world will be wiped and all your game progress will be lost. Stage 2 will start from scratch. We have warned you about this several times, but here we mention it again.

The new quest location is almost done - it has a puzzle, several packs of enemies and few quests that can be solved in various ways but we have one thing missing before we can call it done and this is what we are working on right now - the fishing!

Caught fish can be used to turn into food to feed your people, use it to tame animals, solve quests and so on - it will be integral part of the rest Totem Tribe experience. It won't be a separate minigame, but rather optinal tasks integrated into the rest of the game. We planned to do the fishing later but it was required for one quest in this new quest location so we decided to take time and implement it properly.

Basically the fishing is the last big thing that separates us from launching alpha stage 2. Once we will implement it - it's tweaking and deployment and we are all set!

What do you think about having fishing in the game? How detailed should we make it? Do you rememer the fishing quest in original Totem Tribe? Tell us about your fun fishing moments in real life if you had them :)

Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Holiday Season! In this news post we will shed some light on what was going on since we revealed our plans for closed alpha stage 2. Like we mentioned in our previous post, we need to make major stuff like Advisor Quests and new quest location called Opposition Hideout before we will launch the next alpha stage.

The good news is

The fact that we are going well on schedule gives us hope to be able to launch Alpha-test stage 2 before Christmas and make some nice present to those people who will be invited.

I know a lot of Totem Tribe die-hard fans played the first game more than once (and some of them more than dozen times!) and with alternative ways to solve quests you will have more fun replaying the same level several times to see all outcomes. Hopefully increased replayability of this approach will be a nice cherry on top.

What do you think about non-linear quest solving? Is it something you wished in original Totem Tribe when playing through it second time around?

1. New full-fledge Quest Location called "Opposition Hideout". It is already present on the world map, but there is nothing in it yet. This location will be like your typical level in original Totem Tribe where you explore and solve puzzles. It will be somewhat like Herald's Home, except Herald's Home was introductionary and thus  pretty small and basic.
2. At least one random Quest Location on the world map. Random Quest Locations will be similar to regular Quest Locations except they are much smaller and unimportant to your overall story progression  - they only have some challengs and rewards but nothing critical to the story - they will be added to make World Map exploration more rewarding.
3. Advisor Quests. At this moment after the tutorial is over you are pretty much all alone and don't really know what to do. Advisor Quests will be given by your advisors - Bulat and Zweistein and by doing those you will learn how to jump-start your country and manage it properly (at least from the beginning). It will also net you a lot of reward items to speed up your buildings, boost your production, etc.
4. Cash Shop will be added. People will be able to spend their Enkord Cash to purchase useful items and we will test our monetization stuff.
5. Stone Age will be heavily rebalanced. Although I am constantly tweaking time, prices, and other stats of the game, for the next alpha stage there will be bigger changes - different specializations will be mutually exclusive - War, Expansion, Science, Culture, etc.
6. The game will be wiped. All your progress will be lost and we will start on the fresh map. Unfortunately major changes are not possible without resetting your progress.
7. New testers will be invited. We will invite more testers both from people who donated to the game and also among veteran players from our other hardcore online game (GUNROX). We need the latter to see if it will be easy for casual players to stand against hardcore ones as we want this game to be fun for both kinds of people.

I know one major question remains unanswered - when Stage 2 will begin? Unfortunately it is unknown at the moment - there are many bugs found that needs to be tested and these features mentioned above will take some time to implement and polish, so you better stock up with patience again :)

In other news - we've just uploaded a significant bugfix update to the alpha with detailed changes listed in our update log.

So what next? For now we have to take a deep breath and focus on sorting out the feedback and fixing all those bugs found. Alpha testers will see those changes in timely automated updates to their game. We also plan to add new features systematically, because bugs can be fixed endlessly, but new content needs to be done as well.

For today's update we have added portraits to the website, so when you post, your hero portrait will be displayed next to your message. Hopefully this will make the website conversations more personalized and colorful.

As for the gameplay changes - we've fixed the overloaded server bug - hopefully people can create new countries now. Also Idol of Fortune should be fully functional now - with proper set of rewards that change each time, and sequentive play days are also recorded towards Jackpot and Super Jackpot wheels. Let us know if it is working for you now.

I has begun.

The game is pretty rough and has LOADS of bugs, but letting real people in will help us to locate and find those bugs. The game is not by any means represent the final product at this moment, so if you got the invite and not ready for bumpy ride and want smooth gaming experience - PLEASE WAIT at least until beta.

To those who really wanted by haven't got the invite yet - don't worry, we will invite you as soon as technical possibility will allow. We can only let people carefully one by one to gauge the load on the server. Letting too many people too soon will complicate the testing process.

The current alpha version of the game have a lot of limitations. Some of the most notable ones are:

• Story mode is limited only to Tutorial which is about 2 hours long (depends on how you play it)
• We have only first two ages available - Dark Age and Stone Age.
• Possible game resolutions is limited only to a low ones for now.
• You can only start in Nothern or Southern Graasslands - other climate zones are not ready yet.
• A lot of features are not implemented or roughly implemented - they will be improved and implemented over time.
• World map is pretty small - since the alpha-test stage will not involve too many people.

There are still minor things left, plus we will have to do some in-house testing prior to letting people in, but if all goes well, first people from outside of our team will stand their feet in the world of Teya again. Very likely that next news post will be about first people getting in. Are you as excited as we are? :)

In the other news: I've added feature to change your account nickname. It will be able enabled with game launch for everyone (one-time rename), but I will also need to have it tested, so if you want to change your nickname - let me know here in comments and I will enable it for you right away.

In original Totem Tribe we had a lot of animals wandering the islands. There were not too useful and was more like a scenery than something you can interact with. This time around most animals will be useful.

In the previous news post we got some nice ideas about animals and we are glad to announce that some of them will make it into the game!

So what purpose will the animals serve this time around?

Ok, you might ask how can one tame them? Actually there will be more than one way to do that. First of all you can do it the Totem Tribe way - by finding proper items that can win them over. For a dog a simple bone could be enough, but for others it might be something more complicated. On the other side, if your hero is charismatic enough, some animals might join him/her on sight without doing anything!

Furthermore, if you are evil - you can kill them and take their meat. You hero must be strong or dexterious enough to do that and have proper weapons.