-Fixed small localization issue.
-Fixed the reputation achievements issue.

Adjusted difficulty spikes

After 3 years of development before and almost 3 years during Early Access, Gladiator Guild Manager hit Full Release today!

First off, I need to let you know that 1.0 will have a new save game due to all the changes in the system. However, you can access the beta branch: “Early Access v 0.942” if you’re in the middle of the game and want to finish that one. Also, Tournament Steam Leaderboard is reset, giving you a nice clear chance to rise up in the rankings.

So last year we almost released the game but decided to take a few more months to add and polish a few things before we call it 1.0. This, of course, took 10 months instead, but that’s fine because we took the time to add many requested features which made the game a whole lot better.

If we learned anything from these 6 years of development, it is to listen to our audience. You all gave us so much awesome feedback and ideas that helped us shape the game into what it is. So, huge, huge thanks to the awesome community that formed around the game!

Full Release Trailer:
These are the features that have been added in the latest 1.0 update:

This was the most requested feature as well as the most reported issue. Gladiators would get random Traits in the shop, and you’d have to refresh it a lot to find good ones. Even then, it was not uncommon to spend thousands of gold on shop refresh and not find the ideal combination of Traits on the gladiator. So, we decided to make a system that will let you teach Traits to the gladiators using Mana Crystals and the new resource Trait Blueprints. Gladiators still get Traits in the shop, and they even have better allocation now, so gladiators only get Traits useful for them. But you can also teach them new ones and even upgrade Traits up to level 3. Gladiators unlock a new tier of Traits every 6 levels, and new Traits appear as you finish championships. After some recent feedback from Beta players, we even allowed teaching lower-tier Traits on higher-tier slots. So you can use tier 3 slots and teach gladiator tier 1 or 2 Traits if you choose to. This makes room for a lot more strategy and planning as you build your team. Maybe you want a team of melee fighters, so the Extrovert Trait works well as it gives bonuses for nearby friendly gladiators. Or you have a good tank with taunt, so you can give your ranged units the Mighty Chicken Trait that gives them big bonuses, but they run in fear when the enemy approaches them. And many other combinations that we’re sure you guys will find and we never thought of.
We have added a group of new Traits. Many of them have more advanced functionalities than the usual Traits we had till now. For example, there’s a Trait that heals allies around gladiators each time a gladiator blocks an attack. A Trait that gives the Taunt ability, making tanky gladiators without Taunt more useful, and many more.
We also reworked many of the existing Traits to have different functionalities that make them more useful. For example, Introvert used to give bonuses only when there were not many gladiators in the battle, but that is not useful in late game when every fight is with many gladiators. So now it gives a bonus if there are no friendly units around this gladiator, making this Trait useful for teams with only a few ranged backline units.

We had an issue with Universal Items (items that have no level, but some functionality that scales with gladiator level). They have 3 rarity levels, so if you see a basic (green) version in the shop, you pretty much just ignore it and wait for at least a rare (blue) or ideally epic (purple) version. That did not feel very good as seeing basic ones in the shop was just an annoyance. Now, only base (green) items appear in the shop, and you can upgrade them by investing in Workshop guild building and using new material Crafting Tools as well as other resources.
We also reworked a bunch of items to make them more useful.
Now, with this feature as well as the new Trait system, you can truly strategize and plan how to build a powerful and synergetic team.
We also edited some of the core code that is now allowing for items, Traits, and abilities to work with each other in ways they didn’t before. For example, you can teach a gladiator a Taunt Trait and then give them an item that sets units on fire when using an Area of Effect ability. So, since Taunt is an Area of Effect ability, now when Taunt from Trait occurs, it will also set enemies on fire.
We reworked the look of the guild and added a few new buildings:

• Trait Crucible - Lets you upgrade gladiator Traits to higher levels
  
• Workshop - Lets you upgrade Universal Items
  
• Altar of Respec - Let’s you respec the main 6 stats of gladiators

You’ll need to buy and upgrade those buildings to get these functionalities, so you need to decide where to allocate resources for your strategy and team needs.
In options, you can now enable the Auto Pause-Play Timeline feature. It will automatically pause when important events happen, like: Quest appeared, Ring of Death is ready, Shop Discounts. It is fully customizable so you can set up if you want the panel of the specific event to open, which events it should pause for, and if you want the timeline to continue playing after the panel is closed.
This was requested by some people, so we made it. But in all honesty, we like playing without it. To us, it feels like the game is telling us in each moment exactly what to do. Maybe it’s personal preference. But the option is there and can be adjusted exactly the way that works best for you.
We also added general options to set the speed of the timeline as well as the default speed of the battle.

Finishing quests for any of the factions affects their reputation. Before this update, the reputation would only affect how many resources you gain for completing quests for that faction. But now, reaching a new high with a faction also brings you rewards. They will give you items and even units with high-quality Traits. Reaching a new low will make them try to sabotage you and rob your guild. But that’s not a big problem for a gladiator guild as you can always chase down their thieves and take back the resources they stole, resulting in losing even more reputation with them. So now there is a more conscious decision in accepting or refusing quests as many quests will increase reputation with one but decrease with another faction.
Another small improvement is that if you now refuse a quest, another one will appear in just two days, making it easier to ignore quests that do not serve your reputation goals.
We moved all resolution, screen, and graphic options to the game, with the addition of frame rate options that we didn’t have before.

We went through all the UI panels and polished them up to make sure it all looks nice, pleasant, and clean. One of the biggest UI changes aside from the Guild is the Gladiator Info Panel. There are 4 Trait slots at the bottom. Buffs are still on the right side of the panel. This is where things that affect them during battle show up, or some basic buffs like “Boss” or “Undead”.
We also added new sound effects to the UI experience.
We solved many of the issues, like gladiators getting pushed out of the arena, getting frozen in place after some system bugs, and much more common or less common issues that the game had.
Now, we were pretty greedy when it came to adding features to 1.0. We tried to squeeze the maximum amount of things and improvements in it. Even when we finished the main features, we noticed more things that we wanted to change or add. But the clock was ticking and there was less and less time till the release schedule. So, with many last-moment changes came a few issues as well. Luckily, our amazing community of beta testers found and helped us squish them. But if you do happen to run into any small issues that nobody else ran into yet, please report them and we’ll make sure it’s solved immediately.

So those are the main changes that came with the 1.0 update, together with tons of small improvements, fixes, and changes.

When we launched the Early Access almost 3 years ago, the game had 6 championship arenas and side quests that came with them. Since then, we added 6 more arenas, tons of units, and a dozen bosses. Side quests for each of them. Main quest chains for each of the 3 factions and unique endings for playing with any of them. Tons of regular, consumable, and universal items. Several batches of new Traits. A whole new mode of playing the game: Tournament Mode. And much more. Overall, about 60-70% of the content that the game has now was all added and polished during Early Access, and we have to thank you all for that! For support during Early Access so we could even take more time to add this content. And for all the amazing feedback and ideas, many of which ended up in the game and made it way better than it would have been if we just followed our original plan to finish the main content.

Back in 2018, Danijel and I (Darko) were hanging out at a local game dev conference where we started talking about making a small game together. I had this idea of a gladiator manager game for a very long time, but it never formed completely. Back in high school, about 15 years ago, I had an old Motorola phone with a turn-based gladiator game on it. It was a super simple game, but I loved the fantasy of it.
We talked about different ideas for games that we could make, and once I brought this one up, it immediately clicked as something that we’d both love to make. So we said, let’s take like 6 months and make this little gladiator game and see how it turns out. Almost 6 years later, here we are at the Full Release of the little gladiator game that was inspired more than 15 years ago.

(In December 2019, at the Game Up conference, Gladiator Guild Manager won first prize in the game competition, and we received an invitation to showcase it at Casual Connect London. Though you know how 2020 went, so there was no Casual Connect that year.)


Since then, of course, we have had the great luck of finding people who made this idea into reality.
A publisher, Rafal Kokosza from GrabTheGames, who believed in the game early on.
A Kickstarter campaign allowed us to put some more time into the game before the EA.
Amazing and talented artist, Goran Pesic, who made all the art.
Animator, Budiharja Kusuma, who tirelessly animated everything, including 90+ units in the game.
Voice actors: Jordan Harrelson, Jordan Haro, and Sarah Ruth.
Music composers: Matthew Cohen, Brendon Bekker, and Pedja Mokan.
And many more who helped and contributed to creating this game.

We'd love to have you in our Discord Community[discord.gg] and hear your thoughts on the 1.0 version.

Again, HUGE, HUGE thanks to you and everybody who helped us make this game happen and finally reach the 1.0!


-Entertainment Forge Team

Update v0.947

Fixed:
- Aspect ratio issue for 16:10
- Universal item reward cost (previously always cost 40 when won in quests or other rewards)
- Boss, beast, or undead quirks are now visible on units immediately, not just when the battle starts
- Replaced all gladiator descriptions at the beginning of the game to simplify and shorten them for easier understanding

In update 0.946.9, you can now choose lower tier traits for higher tier slots. We also reworked gladiator buildings due to previous issues where they sometimes stopped giving buildings. Now, you get three buildings after each finished championship arena, with a better variety of gladiator types.

Unfortunately, because we had to edit how this works in the save game, we had to start from a clear save in v946.9. However, if you’re in the middle of a playthrough in beta, you can switch to the beta version called “beta pre-release v0.946.8 (before latest Trait and Gladiator Buildings Update - Save Purpose Only)” to continue with your previous save.

Let us know how the new trait options feel and if it’s easier to find the gladiators you need for your team now.

The beta of our biggest update ever is now ready! This is the same update that will push the game into full release on June 22nd. It's currently in English only, but our translators are working on it right now.
I’ll explain how to easily switch to the beta through a few clicks on Steam. We’d love to hear your feedback on the game as we’re doing the final balancing and polishing over the next two weeks. If you write us feedback, we can add you to the Beta Testers credits section. Just provide the name you want added.

Select the game in your library. Then click on the gear icon and Properties.
In that window click on the Betas tab. Next, click on the dropdown that currently says "None" and select "Beta Pre Release."
Your game will update to the beta version.

Keep in mind that Save files in beta will not be kept. We'll do a full save game clean at release to avoid any issues with all the new content.

If you encounter any bugs or issues, you can help us a lot by opening the console by pressing Shift + F3, clicking on a bug (if there is any), and sending us screenshots of it’s details.
Also, let us know if you find any overpowered combinations. With the combination of items and traits, there might be variations we haven’t considered that are too strong. For example, you can teach gladiators a trait that lets them taunt enemies, but it is considered an AoE ability, so it can be combined with an item that sets enemies hit by AoE on fire.


Here’s a short video explaining the new features:
We talked about new features in the last update, so I’ll just briefly list them here. We’ll go into details in the release update.

• New Traits System: Traits can now be learned and upgraded to higher levels with the new guild building, Trait Crucible, and the new resource, Trait Blueprints.
  
• Item Upgrading: A workshop can be built in the guild, allowing you to upgrade universal items to a higher tier using the new resource, Crafting Tools.
  
• 30+ new traits as well as rework of many previous ones.
  
• Rework of items, rebalancing, and changing functionalities of some.
  
• Altar of Respec: A guild building that lets you reset the stats of gladiators.
  
• Improvements to item and trait systems to allow for synergies that were not possible before.
  
• Timeline and default battle speed can be adjusted in settings.
  
• Auto Pause-Play Timeline: A feature that can be enabled in settings, which will pause the game or even open quotes, ring of death battles, or any events you set it to open. (We personally prefer to play without this, but it’s there as an option so everyone can customize their experience as they want.)
  
• Reputation Rework: Now, gaining higher reputation with a faction will get you item and even gladiator rewards, while getting a negative reputation will lead to the faction trying to sabotage you.
  
• We moved all resolution, screen, and graphic options to the game, with the addition of frame rate options that we didn’t have before.
  
• All UI elements have been reworked to be cleaner, bigger, and more polished.
  
• The guild, especially, had a big rework.
  
• Countless bug fixes and improvements.

We’re super excited to hear your thoughts on the newest update! You can let us know what you think about Beta here or in our Discord[discord.gg] server.
Thank you so much for hanging on during this long development!

After about two and a half years in Early Access, with many updates and changes, we are confident that with the next big update, the game will finally be ready to earn its 1.0 Full Release title. The date for Full Release is June 22, 2024.

We had already wanted to push the game into Full Release last year but felt that more features and changes needed to be done before we did that. We wanted to give ourselves 4-5 more months. However, as game development goes, ideas for new features popped up, and we ended up extending development by another 10 months. However, we are happy that we did because the game is going to be incomparably better than it would have been 10 months ago. The biggest update with the most changes so far is still in development and will be coming to beta soon.

We are soon going to set the price of the game to $15, which we feel is going to reflect the final quality of the game. But we’ll be offering a very heavy launch discount of 50%. So, if you haven’t gotten the game yet, you might want to wait until launch as the price will be only $7.50 with the discount.


The update we’re currently working on is going to be the biggest change in the game so far. Here is the summary of the new features and changes:

• Complete rework of the Quirks system where you can now teach and upgrade gladiators' quirks (finding good ones in the shop is still important).
• Guild building that will let you unlock more quirks.
  
• A new batch of 30+ more Quirks.
  
• Reward system moved from battle to map menu and is clearer on chances to gain items.
  
• A guild building that will let you upgrade Universal items from green to blue and purple.
  
• A guild building where you can reset gladiator stats.
  
• Options to set resolution, frame rate, and more from the game.
  
• Rework of all UI elements. They are bigger, cleaner, and overall more polished.
• Gladiator and Item shop refresh buttons now refresh the whole shop, not just the first row.
  
• Item system rework so now items can send buffs with any type of attack.
  
• We had items for each attack type that increased damage against burning or frozen targets. Now, one item fits all attack types.
  
• We added items that can set enemies frozen or on fire with all attack types, allowing for many different strategies. For example, units with taunt with this kind of item can also set enemies on fire or freeze them.
  
• The timeline now has a Play and Stop feature that will fast forward until any specific event triggers it to stop. Triggers are: Quests, Ring of Death, Shop Discounts, Championship. They will pause the game and open the panel. But you can choose your own triggers in settings as well as other options related to the timeline.
• Reputation now goes from -600 to 1200. It’s balanced so it takes longer to reach maximum reputation.
  
• Factions now react to you reaching a higher or lower reputation, giving you rewards or trying to sabotage you. Now, there will be a reason to think about quests that you’ll want to accept or decline.
  
• XP is now shared with gladiators that die in battle so they don’t lag behind the team in case they are vulnerable and die often.
  
• Various bug fixes and improvements like pushing units through colliders, random starting gladiator setting, necromancer issues, and many more.

Most of the features we’re planning in this update will be available first in beta mode that will be ready in about 2 weeks. It’s going to be easily accessible with a toggle in the main menu. But only in English as we’re waiting for translators to get all the text ready in all the languages.
Once the beta is ready, we’ll notify you guys here with an announcement as well as on our Discord server[discord.gg], where we’d love to have you as we talk about and tweak the game into the full release version.
We’ll share more details on all those changes once the beta is ready.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on all this here in the comments or on our Discord[discord.gg]. After the 1.0 is out, that does not mean updates will stop. We still have plans to add more things to the game but we believe that after this update it will deserve to be called completed.

Thank you all so much for staying with us and supporting us all this time!


UPDATE: I just made a video showing how the new Trait System will work, and showing some of the new Traits and interesting ways of using them:

In the newest update v0.942, After Battle Stats and Enemy Team Items features are available by default. We thank you for all the feedback that made this feature possible. We’ve been told, and we agree, that this feature adds additional depth to the game as it allows us to really see what is happening in even the most hectic fights, allowing us to further plan and optimize gladiator teams. To understand which units are the highest damage dealers, to compare them with different items, compare and find the best results. To see which units are doing the most tanking, healing, and to determine how much importance each gladiator has in the team.
Now, After Battle Stats is localized in all languages and finalized for everybody to use.

Additionally, we have made it so that enemy teams carry items in championships (and Tournament Mode). Only a few of the enemy gladiators will have items, making considering them and planning how to deal with them an additional challenge. Balancing has been adjusted accordingly so that the difficulty remains the same. If an enemy team has items, their levels will be lower by the exact amount of power that the items give them, making them equally powerful as before. The only difference now is that it might be worth paying attention to gladiators with items and perhaps eliminating them first if they present a serious danger.
We are already knee-deep in changing the Quirk System and redesigning the Unit Info Panel look. We talked about it in detail in the previous announcement that you can find here.
I'll briefly describe the idea behind it here. We noticed that in our game, quirks are way more important than just some side random stats. And that there was a lot of frustration with finding gladiators with quirks we’d like in the shop. So we decided to give them the deserved attention.

We are working on systems that will let you learn new quirks as gladiators are leveling up and even upgrade them, allowing further customization of characters as well as nice additional progression. In the gladiator shop, you’ll still be able to find units with good quirks and buy them, but you’ll also be able to find units that have empty quirk slots on which you can spend mana crystals and teach new quirks. They will be separated into 4 tiers based on how powerful they are. And each tier will unlock after 6 levels, providing a steady progression of your gladiators with meaningful choices during the whole game.
We’ll also be adding a set of new quirks to expand possibilities. Some of the new quirks will be more specialized than current ones. For example, there will be several quirks that are only for gladiators with shields, or only for gladiators with projectile attacks.

I will write down the quirks that we are considering making, so you guys can tell us what you think about them. And if you have some ideas for new quirks, we’d love to hear them.


There are many new quirks that will affect gladiator abilities. As we’d have 4 tiers of quirks, each unlocked after 6 levels (Level 1 (tier 1), level 6 (tier 2), level 12 (tier 3), level 18 (tier 4). So we decided to put all ability affecting quirks in tier 2. Then players could choose only one ability altering quirk for each unit, keeping other quirks important as well.

1. Healing Shieldbearer - 5% of the damage blocked heals allies within an area of 2.5 around this gladiator (Cooldown: 3 seconds).
2. Emberheart - Blocking a melee attack releases a heat blaze, damaging enemies within a 2.5 area around this gladiator for 5% of the blocked damage (Cooldown: 3 seconds).
3. Repulsor Spirit - Blocking a melee attack releases a force in an area of 3 around this gladiator, pushing enemies away and knocking them down for 0.5 seconds (cooldown: 15 seconds).
4. Defiant Retaliator - Blocking a melee attack knocks the attacking enemy down for 2 seconds (cooldown: 8 seconds).
5. Reflexive - Blocking a projectile reflects it back towards a random enemy with 50% of its damage (cooldown: 7 seconds).

1. Agile Vitality - Dodging an attack restores 5% health and 10% stamina.
2. Agile Empowerment - Dodging an attack increases the main stat by 50% for the next 3 seconds.

1. Foul Mouth - Taunts enemies within a 3.5 area around this gladiator every 12 seconds.
2. Chillheart - Once this gladiator is hit by a melee attack, the enemy will be frozen, preventing them from moving for 3 seconds.

1. Dual Focus - Each time the gladiator fires a projectile, they fire an additional projectile at a random enemy with 20% of the original projectile's damage.
2. Piercing Resolve - If a projectile kills an enemy, it will continue flying with the remaining damage points instead of being destroyed.

1. Wound Specialist - Damaging an enemy causes them to bleed, inflicting [additionalStat_1] damage per this gladiator's level indefinitely. (20% effectiveness for AoE abilities).
2. Toxic Personality - Damaging an enemy poisons them, causing a loss of [additionalStat_1] stamina per this gladiator's level for 5 seconds. (20% effectiveness for AoE abilities).
3. Wildheart - The first time the gladiator attacks, the damage is increased by 150% (40% effectiveness for AoE abilities).
4. Critically Lucky - Each time the gladiator deals damage, there is a 20% chance to deal double the amount of damage (40% effectiveness for AoE abilities).
5. Knockout Artist - Each time the gladiator deals damage, there is a 10% chance to knock down the enemy.

1. Lifeforce Alchemist - Healing friendly units also restores 20% of the healed amount as stamina.
2. Vigor Alchemist - Restoring stamina to a friendly unit also heals the unit for 30% of the restored stamina.
3. Cleansing Alchemist - Casting a healing or stamina restoration spell on a friendly unit also removes one negative buff from them.

1. Ascending Summoner - Each time this gladiator summons a unit, they gain a 10% increase in their main stat, (Max 40%)
2. Regenerative Summoner - Each time this gladiator summons a unit, they restore 20% of their own health.
3. Vigor Summoner - Each time this gladiator summons a unit, they restore 30% of their own stamina.
4. Lifebind Summoner - Each time this gladiator summons a unit, they lose 20% of their max health, but the summoned unit is 35% higher level.
5. Arcane Archer - Each time this gladiator summons a unit, they fire a projectile at a random enemy, dealing damage equal to 200% of this gladiator's main stat.

1. Mighty Beastmaster - Gains a 10% main stat bonus for each friendly beast in the team 1 second after the battle starts (Max 80%).
2. Resilient Beastmaster - Increases max health by 5% for each friendly beast on the team 1 second after the battle starts (max 40%).
3. Mighty Awakening - The gladiator starts the battle stunned for the first 4 seconds but gains a 50% main stat increase and a 20% increase in max health.

1. Raincaller Martyr - The gladiator changes the weather to Rain 1 second after the battle starts, then dies.
2. Windbringer Martyr - The gladiator changes the weather to Heavy Wind 1 second after the battle starts, then dies.
3. Mistweaver Martyr - The gladiator changes the weather to Crimson Mist 1 second after the battle starts, then dies.

We're still thinking about those 3 quirks. The idea is to add them to tier 4, which can only be learned at level 18. So, only if you have a team that leans towards one of the main stats (Strength, Agility, or Intelligence) and also has some quirks that give bonuses for one of the three main weathers. Then picking up one of the Martyr quirks and sacrificing one of the gladiators for each fight would work and give your team a huge boost. It could be somewhat OP, but the team would need to be very specific to take advantage of it, so it might be an interesting option to have. Otherwise, losing a gladiator to change weather is usually not a good idea.

1. Beast - The gladiator regenerates health and stamina 10% faster.
2. Colossal - Max health increases by 30%, but movement speed decreases by 70%.
3. Mobile Marksman - Gladiator is able to move at 30% of the speed while shooting.
4. Adaptive Marksman - Able to shoot arrows even when the enemy is next to this unit.
5. Long Arms - Increases ability range by 1.

We are still working on the new Quirk system and haven’t started implementing new quirks yet. So they might change as we see what works or doesn’t. And some of them we might not be able to make due to technical limitations of our existing code. But those are the ideas we’re striving towards.

And we’d love to hear what you guys think of them. Would you change any of them? Are there any favorites? And do you have any ideas for new quirks? (Or Traits. I keep swapping those two terms now that they changed the name to Traits in the game lol)


We will keep you updated on how this feature goes. You can join us on Discord[discord.gg] to stay in touch. Once ready, it will again be released in Beta. Also, with this feature, we are getting pretty close to a Full Release that will happen in a several months.

Thank you all for all the amazing feedback and support!
-Entertainment Forge Team

We are working on redesigning the Unit Info panel and how Quirks work. We want to share our plans and ideas and to ask for your feedback. We thought of some ideas that we believe will improve the game for both more customization and overall more enjoyment, and to solve a few issues the current design has.

The thing about Quirks is that we designed them to be a passive thing on units, sometimes negative, sometimes positive. Just something to make units a little different and unique. But they ended up being essential to building a good team. They are so essential that players would rarely even bother buying units unless they had great Quirks. What led to countless refreshing of the shop in search for the right units. It often ended up in spending thousands of gold and sometimes not even finding a satisfying unit. We thought of some solutions, like hiring a scout that would find specific units with high-quality Quirks, but it all felt like patching up something that could be designed better from the start.

So, we thought of treating Quirks as upgrades on units. Almost like passive abilities. We’re thinking of renaming them to Traits as they would always be positive and serve to improve units. This is how it would work:

At the start, each unit would have one tier 1 Trait. All Traits would be separated into 4 tiers based on how powerful they are. Then, at levels 6, 12, and 18, each unit can learn another Trait until they have the maximum of 4 Traits. When you level up the unit to one of those levels (6, 12, 18), you can choose the Trait of that specific tier that you want to teach them. We’d also have a new guild building that is related to Traits. Upgrading this building would unlock new Traits to the list that can be learned. And each upgrade would require reaching a certain championship arena as well as resources (wood, iron, and stone). So, as you progress through the game, you’re getting more options.

In shop units would either already have some Traits on them, or they would have empty slots where you can select the Traits yourself. For example, level 12 units might have the first Trait already set, and two empty slots. Or maybe 2, or all 3 are already set. Units with empty slots would be more expensive. So, it will still be worth checking the shop and finding units with Traits that are a good fit for that unit, but if you can afford a unit with empty Trait slots you can craft the unit exactly to your liking.

We also redesigned the Unit Info Panel to be clearer and to fit the new design. This is how it looks at the moment:
In addition to this mechanic, we’d also introduce an option to upgrade Traits. Our current idea is that there are global Trait upgrade points that you can spend on any unit. And you would get those points by finishing arena championships or reaching new reputation levels.

Now, we have two ideas of doing the upgrades and would love to hear which one you like more. Since you have 4 tiers of Traits, upgrading a Tier 4 Trait like “Healthy and Powerful” is not the same as upgrading a Tier 1 Trait like “Glass Cannon”. We can either make upgrades of lower-level Traits have a bigger improvement effect, making those low-level Traits a lot more powerful after upgrading. Or we can have them all increase in power proportionally, but to upgrade a higher tier Trait it would cost more points. We are leaning towards the second design choice, as this way it would feel really good when you manage to upgrade a Tier 4 Trait into something amazing. And we don't have to make those upgrades less effective than lower tier upgrades. This way, it would also make sense to give more Trait upgrading points for completing higher-level arenas. For example, finishing the first arena (Graveyard) would give 2 Trait upgrading points, while finishing arena 6 (Iron Mountain) would give 5 or more points. But let us know what you think.
Upgraded Traits would increase the power of the Trait and, in some cases, even add functionality if needed. For example, a Trait like "Dragon Blood," which makes units immune to fire, has no way of becoming better unless we add another functionality. In this case, upgrading it once would also make the unit immune to frost, and upgrading it to the maximum level 3 would make the unit immune to poison as well. While other Traits that provide stats would usually just improve those stats. For instance, "Healthy and Powerful" would give more main stat points for each level of health simply making it better at what it already does.

For Tournament mode, we’d adapt this design so you get Trait points each time you finish a boss battle every 2 rounds instead of at the end of each championship.

We feel that this design will allow more customization and make the game more fun. It will provide a nice additional thing to upgrade, making unit leveling feel more rewarding as you’re aiming to reach each new 6 levels and increase the power of that unit. It would solve the endless shop refreshing to search for units. It would solve the issue of the beginning units needing replacement as you go through the game because your beginner units usually don’t have as many great Traits. And it would make finishing each arena championship more rewarding as you know that after winning them, you get to make your units more powerful in an interesting way.

We’d love to hear your opinion and feedback about these changes. Write us here in comments or join us on Discord[discord.gg].

Also, we're thinking of adding another group of new Traits (Quirks) together with this update. If you have any ideas for new ones, we'd love to hear them.

Thank you!
-Entertainment Forge