A small patch with some minor tweaks and bugfixes!

• Removed certain cases where the Backstory Character Trait set would contain many Minor Traits
  
• Added the possibility of receiving 2 Neutral traits alongside a set of Minor or Major Positive and Negative Traits
  
• Added exclusion of 2h weapon (skill) buffing Traits with the One-Handed Trait and of Dashing buffing traits with the Peg Leg Trait
  
• Reduced physics impact on characters
  
• Trait reward widget now shows tooltip when hovering the entire button and the trait card doesn't block the button
  
• The following spears now act as "1H" even without shield (no more polearm mode): Fishing Stacca, All Tridi, All linolian stacca
  
• Timeline animation has been sped up a bit
  
• the trait Sick no longer causes interrupts or full damage reaction on the player
  
• When you had a bet open and start a Draft fight, you get refunded and a message appears saying so
  
• Apples and Rocks now have the Projectile trait

• Fixed investments not triggering properly
  
• Fixed a rare crash related to the Ambush event
  
• Fixed max HP (level up reward) not saving and loading properly
  
• Fixed issue where "missing icon" would appear on the timeline
  
• Fixed bug where the game would repair items when coming from main menu
  
• Fixed bug where the game would execute a shop hold when coming from main menu
  
• Fixed a bug where you couldn't access scollo upgrades with gamepad after an upgrade
  
• Fixed default string on Unforeseen Damage event
  
• Fixed a battle reroll crash related to the calendar
  
• Fixed payout on Ambush for slave backstory
  
• Fixed missing impatient crowd description
  
• Fixed issue where Omniscient would only reveal all battle panels after a battle reroll

We who are about to die salute you,
Jordy

It's already here - we bring you the Champion's Journey Update! This update introduces massive new feature: Character Traits, and much more!
Check out this overview video and get ready to unlock a whole new layer to the game.

• New: over 50 random Character Traits
  
• Added in-run trait rewards (Gained by winning Elite Fights and Tournaments)
  
• Added Character Trait Overview panel
  
• Added a Character Trait Trophy system to track your completion progress

• New Weight and Armor UI panel
  
• Added Player Weight system
  
• Added Light Weight class
  
• Added Heavy Weight class

• Added the concept of Bonus Skills: these allow you to go over 100 with any skill (all the way to 125)
  
• Added Base and Bonus skill overview panel
  
• New: item Traits: several item traits that give various Bonus Skill modifiers

• New feature: Timeline panel, shows upcoming rare events
  
• Added new Map: The City Market
  
• Added new Map: The City Slums
  
• New feature: Ambushes (dialog event that sends you into combat defending against bandits)
  
• Added many map areas and alleys for Ambush

• Weapon ranges are now more accurate and based on in-game distance units. Used by the AI to determine the attack distance
  
• Rerolling your character is now more seamless
  
• Backstories can now be rerolled up to three times before losing any heirloom and/or invested gold
  
• Balanced the gold and fame rewards for Elite, Tournament and Grand Tournament fights
  
• Tournaments and Grand Tournaments now reward 3 favor to all patrons
  
• Added a new Uniqye Rarity: Items dropped by Elites and other 'one of a kind-items' are now marked as Unique
  
• A message will now pop-up when a run victory can be claimed
  
• New item trait: Projectile (auto throw)
  
• New item trait: Throwing Weapon (bonus damage when thrown)
  
• New item: Throwing axes
  
• New item: Sickle
  
• Pilum now remains in 1h Spear mode even without a shield

• Potential fix on fights where the AI would spawn with the same uniform
  
• Fixed issue where the utility menu would disappear when cycling too quickly between the menus
  
• Fixed issues on several maps where you could get stuck or walk of the map
  
• Fixed issue where cheering during draft triggers an audience response in the chat
  
• Fixed issue on the War-event dialogue: shop prices are now updated correctly
  
• Fixed issue with auto repairing on the Blacksmith backstory
  
• Fixed issue where re-rolling matches would reset the healing price
  
• Fixed issue with audience favor on Grand Plaza and Terrantia City Center
  
• Fixed issue where multiple songs would play during the credits
  
• Overall improvements on the AI entering arena’s
  
• Several small bugfixes and QOL improvements
  
• Fixed various camera issues in third person with targets
  
• Fixed issue with gamepad controls (on certain maps)
  
• Many many many more!

If you like what we're doing, please consider sharing this update and the game with your friends: we still rely on word of mouth more than anything.

• YOUTUBE
  
• NEWSLETTER[subscribe.jordylakiere.net]
  
• DISCORD[discord.gg]

And as always -we who are about to die salute you,
Jordy

With this last and final preview on the Champion's Journey Update, we want to reveal the new Character Overview, Weight and skill systems, a new map and reveal more character traits!


The Character Overview panel provides all the essential information about your character at a glance. You can access it in the Armory, the old shop panel can now tab between this and the shop itself.
On this panel you can review your character's skills, along with active item modifiers, as well as see the active Character and Run Traits.

In addition, the panel displays your current Health, Stamina, Stamina Regeneration, and Fame Multiplier. It also shows your Total Weight and provides a convenient overview of your Armor.


Player weight has been overhauled. All items have a newly balanced weight stat (previously Stamina Regeneration), and your total weight drops you into a category: Light, Medium, or Heavy.

Light and Heavy come with specific advantages and disadvantages. When you are Light you gain movement buffs, while Heavy gives you debuffs. Heavy does give you stun bonuses, and of course, you will be wearing much more armor and better weapon/shield.
These act as a threshold but within each class you get more and more of this buff/debuff, so going VERY light is still better than just barely light.

These weight classes give you a new choice to make: fight as a nimble and agile Aspirant, or go tank mode? You've now got a reason to take off certain pieces of armor, or take that smaller shield, even when in the late game.

We've also introduced character traits that are influenced by your total weight or influence your weight, it's all connected.


Hand in hand with weight, traits, item traits and more is the new Bonus Skill system. Your character overview panel shows your buffs at a glance, including a breakdown where they come from.

In this example, I'm a Light weight class, and I'm wearing 2 sandals which give me Swift x2
Some bonus skill can be negative too, and skills can now also go to 125 (but only via Bonus Skill)

With all these new mechanics, building a character has more depth than ever.

Welcome to the grand opening of a new arena in the heart of the Inner City! Located just next to the Grand Plaza, the City Market Arena offers a gathering spot for Terantians to witness thrilling battles and engage in lively market exchanges.

Let's have a look at another Major Positive, Neutral and Negative Character Trait!

It takes brutish strength to destroy's enemy's weapons and armor! You get +50% Durability damage when you are in the Light or Medium weight category, and a very tangible +100% Durability damage when in the Heavy weight category.

A good synergy is using an axe with bonus damage vs shields along with Brute Strength, and just smash right through shields instead of around them.

You thrive on the disdain of the crowd! Gain a damage multiplier equal to your negative Fame Multiplier (up to +50% damage). Remember that some armor and items influence your Fame Multiplier in a negative way, and so does hitting team mates... Get ready to embrace your inner demon and aim for the highest negative Fame Multiplier possible!

You are missing a right leg. Your right leg is permanently replaced by a Peg Leg (item)
-20 Bonus Movement Skill and you cannot dash!
Maybe later on we could add different types of peg legs you can swap out, what do you think?

We haven't revealed a ton of traits, in the mean time there's already well over 50. Ultimately it's up to you to discover them in-game.
The Traits get discovered as you play with them in a trait overview panel, and we've also added a little trophy icon that shows up when you win with that trait active: for the completionist, you have your work cut out!

In general, traits have been an amazing way to tie all the game's systems together or let them come forward in a more understandable way.


That's it for the previews of the Champion's Journey! Let us know what you think!

I'm happy to say, the Champion's Journey update is dropping tomorrow, September 16th 2024
along with a new Overview Video, if all goes well!!
We've been excited to get the character traits out there for a long time now - HYPE

Want to stay up to date on the game and studio's development?

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• NEWSLETTER[subscribe.jordylakiere.net]

As always,
We who are about to die salute you!

Jordy Lakiere

With this third preview on the Champion's Journey Update, we want to highlight the all-new Calendar, different Item Modifications and reveal a bunch of patron and career management traits!

We've added a Calendar to the game: it shows you a timeline for upcoming events.
This directly links to The Spectacles Update which introduced rare fights at certain weeks. With the Calendar, you can better organize your career strategy and make informed decisions that will have a positive impact on your journey.

We’ve introduced various new item traits to the game. Many are stat buffs or debuffs, with each one affecting a new bonus stat (more on that later) for a specific skill.

Another example is Throwing Weapon and Projectile (experimental). In this line we've also added a new item: Throwing Axe.
A related small QoL feature with the Pilli is now it still acts as a 1H spear even when you don't have a shield, so you can still easily throw it.

A small but flavorful change: the items unique to Elites introduced in The Spectacles Update are now marked a new tier: Unique!

We're thrilled to introduce a bunch more traits! This time will focus on minor positive traits!


There are 4 Patron Traits (so far) and they have effects that scale by your positive Favor with that specific Patron.

Each of these effects scale up to you having 100 Favor:

• Alluora's Boy: Reduced Favor decay (up to +3%) after battle with all other Patrons. You gain Favor with all other Patrons (up to 25%).
  
• Joridus Apprentice: All your Weapon Skills increase, up to +35.
  
• Valerius Coupons: Up to +25% Shop Discount
  
• Mazza's Star: Up to +50% Fundraises rate of conversion.

The following traits primarily focus on the career management aspects of the game. They can affect your character's skills, influence battle traits, adjust shop prices, and more.
These are some examples of Minor Traits, which means they can also be gained during your run as rewards.

• Blacksmith's Friend: Significantly more fights have the Battle Trait "Insurance".
  
• 1H Weapon Expert: Influences your 1H weapon skills. +5 Base Damage if Weapon Skill above 50. +10 Base Damage if Weapon Skill above 100
  
• 2H Weapon Expert: Influences your 2H weapon skills. +5 Base Damage if Weapon Skill above 50. +10 Base Damage if Weapon Skill above 100
  
• Dodgy: +30 Bonus Dashing Skill.

We are currently still in the debugging and polish stage of this update. To help us out we're running closed tests - do you want to help out and play this update early?
Are you good at breaking the game, have a feel for balancing, love bug reporting & giving feedback? Join our Discord (link below) and write an application in #closed-test-application

That's it for preview #3 of Champion's Journey! Let us know what you think!

Want to stay up to date on the game and studio's development?

• DISCORD[discord.gg]
  
• YOUTUBE
  
• NEWSLETTER[subscribe.jordylakiere.net]

As always,
We who are about to die salute you!

Jordy Lakiere

With this second preview on the Champion's Journey Update, it's time to talk about how traits are generated and embedded in the game. We'll also reveal 3 new traits and a brand new feature of the game!

The highlight of the Champion's Journey update is the introduction of random character traits, which brings a whole new depth to the game - check out Preview #1 for the introduction. Here's how they are added to the game:

At the start of each new run, Aspirants will be assigned a random set of traits known as Character Backstory Traits. Traits can be Minor and Major, and Positive, Neutral or Negative.

A character gains a set of traits which more or less balance each other out. So you could get 1 major positive trait, 1 neutral, and 2 minor negative traits, for example.

These traits not only diversify each playthrough's strategy (or at least add a serious curveball) but also just significantly enhance the game's variety by offering different experiences every time. In short, now there are not just 7 backstories but 7 backstories each with millions of variants.


Some of the new Rare Fights introduced in The Spectacles Update (Elite Fights, Tournaments) now reward you the choice between 3 random minor positive traits, so your character can also develop during your run.
You are allowed to skip this reward holding out for a better trait later on, up to a total of 4 run traits for any character.

We're excited to introduce 3 new major traits: one positive, one neutral, and one negative.


You must have had plenty of milk growing up! As a Giant, not only are you physically larger, but you also deal +10% more damage. Throughout your run, your equipment's total weight is categorized into light, medium, or heavy. Thanks to your size, you can carry more gear, giving you a +10 to the heavy weight category threshold.
If you love smashing things in the arena or just enjoy causing chaos, the Brawler trait is perfect for you. With this major neutral trait, you'll deal +5 more damage when using destructible items and another +10% when your weapon’s durability drops below 50. When the Terantian spectators sense the brawler in you, they’ll toss more destructibles into the arena, giving you even more opportunities to smash, bash, and dominate the fight with!
Your weapons will however take 25% more durability damage and break sooner.


For you... well, not everything goes your way. With this major negative trait, you’ll have a -20% chance of favorable outcomes in most randomized effects: events, discounts, match information, item drops, bribery attempts, and even disarming. As if surviving the arena wasn't tough enough!
Oh, and it always seems to rain around you.

Not everyone is as trustworthy as you, and some Terantians are eager to take advantage of your success. As you navigate the treacherous streets after battle, beware of bandits lurking in the shadows, waiting for the perfect moment to strike! Danger could be hiding around every corner...

An Ambush is a random event which will take you to new parts of the city of Terantia to fight off any looters that dare to fight you.


We are currently in the debugging and polish stage of this update. To help us out we're running closed tests - do you want to help out and play this update early?
Are you good at breaking the game, have a feel for balancing, love bug reporting & giving feedback? Join our Discord (link below) and write an application in #closed-test-application

That's it for preview #2 of Champion's Journey! Let us know what you think!

Want to stay up to date on the game and studio's development?

• DISCORD[discord.gg]
  
• YOUTUBE
  
• NEWSLETTER[subscribe.jordylakiere.net]

As always,
We who are about to die salute you!

Jordy Lakiere

With the recent Spectacles Update having been a massive success, we are excited to already start showing off the next version of We Who Are About To Die! Introducing the next major update: Champion's Journey!

This update contains a few major character-oriented features that change the game completely, yet again. We are adding a good deal of QoL, bugfixes and - of course - content, but the most prominent features are oriented around the player character, the mainliner being Character Traits!

Traits are randomly added to your character, and impact your character in all kinds of creative and interesting ways.
Character Traits are positive, neutral or negative, and there are minor and major types indicating the impact on your run. It could be something as simple as a stat increase, to as run-altering as missing an arm.

Backstories already have inherent traits that are always the same, so with these new random character traits on top, the game is about a million times more replayable.

Take a look at current roster of traits above (most likely still to be expanded). I've even numbered them to fuel some speculation on what these trait icons might represent! We will reveal traits post by post.

In today's preview, we'll reveal these 3 traits! All three are major traits, one positive, one neutral and one negative.


Your taunt/cheer now becomes a buff that temporarily increases effectiveness and aggression of all your allies in combat. Born Leader is a trait that will guide your run to large group battles with allies.

A neutral trait: an Owakhan Mask Spirit follows you. You gain a unique Owakhan Mask that you cannot unequip - it haunts you!

How it happened, we'll leave up to you - but you are missing a left arm. You cannot equip left-arm armor, 2-handed weapons or a shield, but are more effective with 1H weapons. Good luck!
You can imagine the deep impact this has on a run, we also imagine character traits will be deeply connected to challenge runs the community invents (especially once Sandbox is added).


In the gang-owned back-alleys near the Inner City you may find a seedy fight or two from time to time. Even if they may be hosted by those dwelling in the underbelly of Terantia - coin is coin...


Over the last few months I've actually been teasing traits here and there in creative subtle ways. What was not so subtle however, was the shop in Inner City that has traits on the wall as a little easter egg! Did anyone notice?


Pictured:Developer Lino thinking about Rome in Köln. (Linolians - get it?)The entire team is at Gamescom 2024! If you're in the industry and want to chat, search for a We Who Are About To Die shirt!

That's it for todays preview! We have been working hard even while in the last stages of The Spectacles Update, so that means Champion's Journey is well on its way.
We'll talk more on how traits are generated and embedded in the game in the next posts, as well as revealing some more features and traits in the Champion's Journey update!

Want to stay up to date on the game and studio's development?

• Join our Discord: http://discord.gg/8PEutcdwf5
  
• Sign up to our long-term newsletter: https://subscribe.jordylakiere.net/Newsletter
  
• Subscribe on Youtube (video previews coming later): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWNMvD_XLJ3unATX8O7aWJg

As always,
We who are about to die salute you!

Jordy Lakiere

An unexpected, short but sweet patch today:

• Fixed (or at least drastically improved) a bug in melee weapon collision detection. Weapon attack collision should be more consistent now, eg. attacks phasing through shields and weapon blocks failing.

It took a long time to find, but ladies and gentlemen, we got 'em.

We who are about to die salute you,
Jordy

Another patch! Mostly fixing bugs but also more balancing changes.

• (Hopefully) fixed issue where a reinforcement soldier could get stuck in the rocks, and would not resolve to victory. *
  
• Fixed issue where your weapon would get destroyed in career menu if you weapon broke in Draft
  
• Fixed issue where Classic aiming didn't work (esp Up/Down aiming) on Draft and Linolian Theatre. (Your character would be locked looking up most of the time) **
  
• Fixed bug where skills didn't train properly
  
• Fixed attacks over 10 damage never interrupted the AI while attacking
  
• Fixed issue where your gearset was indestructible on Uniformed (incl Draft)
  
• Fixed issue where your gearset inherited your real career menu gear's durability on Uniformed (incl Draft)
  
• Fixed issue where AI had too low attack-distance and would run into you constantly
  
• Fixed issue where named Elite's got a randomly generated name
  
• Fixed a case where your spear could flip after attacking over-arm
  
• Fixed UNI_ showing up on the unit names for Uniformed matches

• Introduced some difficulty back through many tiny tweaks. EG: AI attack a bit more, chase a bit more, predict location better (meaning its harder to backtrack). Player movement has been further tweaked
  
• Damaging AI now has a scaling chance to interrupt them during attack, 0% chance at 5 damage and 80% at 30+ damage.
  
• Proximity Tooltips (third person mainly) now show up on the bottom right of the screen in the same spot
  
• Pressing ALT to stab now instantly locks your attack
  
• Elites have slightly less armor durability (-10%)
  
• Khunda the Pillager now spawns 3-3-1 minion waves.
  
• Small nerfs to Survival, 1vsMany and Rabble payouts
  
• Hid the unecessary audience engagement value. Just says "bored", "ecstatic" etc now
  
• Small visual changes to Inner City

*if it still occurs, you can force close the game and replay the match, it is fairly rare so second time should work.
** If there are other instances of this please let us know, it is related to map so include a name of the map or screenshot!

We who are about to die salute you,
Jordy

Ave Aspirants! Here's a quick new update!
We put a lot of effort into upgrading Draft, since everyone seemed to really like the idea. We'll do more with it in future but you can now enjoy quite a list of improvements and expansions already.

In this update we are introducing a brand new culture, the Dormorii. This is a culture of warriors based in Dormorum, which is known for being a fishing industry hub. Between land disputes and control over the river Terant, the Dormorii are a long-time enemy of the Empire of Hania and routinely raids their border around the city Terantia.

For now these have gotten some basic equipment, enough to create a new faction for Draft! We will expand the Dormorii later. Can you spot the inspirations of real life cultures we mixed together? Drop a comment!

The second major goal in this update was combat balancing, especially the new dominant strategy of just holding sprint and backtracking, to avoid almost all possible damage.
The new dynamic combat is working out great, but obviously too strong: anything overshadowing other playstyles is not great - it makes even dashing pointless for example. So we did a list of changes to both AI and player to bring some lethality back into the game.
We also did quite a bit of general balancing after all the great feedback on The Spectacles Update, and of course, as usual, many bugfixes.

• Draft now has reinforcement based spawning
  
• New Draft Faction: the Dormorii
  
• New Draft unit: Captain
  
• Main Draft units split into 2h and 1h/Shield
  
  
• Visual overhaul of Draft field battle map (the city background, grass and foliage overhaul, lighting and scene improvements)
  
• New Draft variation: Sunset
  
• New Draft variation: Rain
  
• New Draft fortification/ballista variation
  
• The battle area in draft is wider, reinforcements spawn closer
  
• Draft now has a better intro sequence with a camera fly-over
  
• New waves on Draft are indicated with a text prompt
  
  
• Audio improvements on Draft
  
• Draft no longer rewards fame for combat performance
  
• Draft equipment per faction has been balanced more, some adjustments
  
• Drastically reduced memory footprint of Draft map
  
• Made the map border indicators a bit less... ugly

• General improvements to ballista efficacy (likely still to improve later)
  
• The ballistae now also auto rotate down and upwards
  
• The range of the ballistae on Draft is increased
  
• The range indicator decals for the ballistae are removed on Draft

• Your character now immediately and continuously rotates to the camera aim when attacking, improving aim (esp on Spear, but everything)
  
• Fixed bug where when targeting the forward attack aim was way off to the left (oops)
  
• Reduced up and down aiming min and max (esp on Classic)
  
• Reduced the minimum speed debuff going backwards (so moving backwards you are now faster, both sprint and walk)
  
• Increased the range of the "backwards" debuff, so now when moving sideways you are slowed down quicker
  
• Slightly increased stamina cost for sprinting
  
• Stamina Regen minimum (at 0 skill) is increased slightly (meaning more Stam regen the start of a run)
  
• Attack stamina cost is now scaled more with attack speed - attacks cost less than before when at low stamina
  
• Slowed down skill experience gains to compensate for longer fights and to make training gear more useful

• AI will now sprint more (using the new mechanic as player, also a bit more dynamic)
  
• AI will now sometimes continue their movement towards their target during an attack reducing attacks that got nowhere near you (harder to just backtrack and be safe)
  
• AI will now aim predict further on left moving targets to compensate for their weapon being in their right hand
  
• AI will back off less often when in attack range
  
• AI will now have a cooldown for picking up shields so they don't run off immediately and there are more openings for the player
  
• Reduced friendly fire damage
  
• Prophet fight now has 2 additional minions
  
• Owakhan Twins now wield slightly better weapons but have slightly lower skill (to give a better reward for a difficult fight)

• Added new item: the Dormorii Daka (A falx like 1h sword)
  
• Added new item: Dormorii shield
  
• Added new item: Dormorii Kalas Helm
  
• Various small tweaks to existing equipment (Myrodon Mace, Bong mace is now a Dormorii mace, ...)
  
  
  
• Destroyed weapons are now removed during the fight, optimising the game
  
• Early- and mid-game maps have a chance to re-appear on bracket levels 20 and more
  
• Removed the 50% cut on the bet rewards for the Slave backstory

• Fixed an issue where on 2h weapons, the physics state did not reset properly (causing undesirable very floppy attacks sometimes)
  
• Fixed issue where shield could disappear after a Uniformed matches
  
• Fixed a bug where Wildcard was not properly increasing in level
  
• Fixed a bug where the AI sometimes walked to their target instead of running
  
• (most likely) Fixed bug where your armor could still take damage during Uniformed (Draft) and Insurance matches
  
• Removed some of the NPC movement/rotation jitter
  
• Polearm bash no longer drains a lot of stamina
  
• Multihits no longer cost much more stamina as regular hits
  
• Fixed issue with the ballistae where the loaded weapon would not allign correctly
  
• Fixed issue where the ballistae would continue to shoot after the fight
  
• Fixed issue where player could not navigate to certain scolo upgrades with gamepad
  
• Fixed issue where enemies in the Great Pit could not get passed certain points in the map
  
• Fixed issue where event Unforeseen Damage damaged weapon when coming back from a battle with battle uniformed trait
  
• Visual fixes on the Great Pit
  
• Fixed issue where return button could be pressed multiple times after battle
  
• Fixed issue where the bet win with x% amount of favour would not pay out
  
• Fixed issue where the bet 'surviving allies' was not registering on tournaments
  
• Fixed issue with battle trait impatient crowd where it would use a different time than communicated on the battle panel
  
• Fixed issue where audience favour was locked after round 1 tournament
  
• Fixed bug where the player feet would sometimes continuously rotate in place when targeting

As usual, probably missed stuff, so go find out in-game! :)

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We who are about to die salute you,
Jordy


Bonus! We Who Are About To Die is set in a new universe I created years back for a roleplaying campaign. The original version was closer to the middle ages, but for WWAATD I started exploring that same world in its antiquity.
Here's a first look (ever) at the full(?) world map. The red marked area is the main landmass of the Empire of Hania, and the arrow points to the city of Terantia - city of wine and games, where the entire game takes place. Draft battles -- for now -- happen just outside Terantia.