Heroes 5.5 RC17f update with new scouting system for creature banks

Author: Liso1 February 1, 2023 0 Comments

Heroes 5.5 RC 17d has been released (b and c were small ‘internal’ patches), in this release there will be a new scouting system for battle sites (creature banks) and a lot of balancing for ARMG excessive randomness in PvP. Also significantly more freedom in movement with town gate and instant travel (closer to Heroes 3, but more balanced).

Heroes 5.5 RC17e was released after RC17d to fix game breaking issues:

• fixed mage vault and arcane tower battle sites not working
•  fixed artifacts no longer being provided on duel template
• bonus change: protection perk in shatter dark also gives +1 luck

Heroes 5.5 RC17d update changelog:

Adventure Map and ARMG

• battle sites can now be scouted before they are entered, native tier1 creatures are required in the army to be able to scout, for every building scouted a tier1 creature has a chance to die, the chance to die depends on weekly growth. The scouting skill decreases the chance for creatures to die
• changed a lot of AMRG army blueprints to have more balanced composition of troops (no elder druids+master hunters for example, or no huge shooter stack with tiny melee stack), this change does not affect armies regenerated by mapmixer as that application has its own algorithm.
• changed various ARMG army blueprints to have some wolves, black knights, mummies, manticores or arcane eagles mixed in for increasing variation.
• added new system for mana reduction of neutral caster stacks under AI control, the more they split the less mana they have, for example 1 elder druid stack can cast 3 lightning bolts, 3 druid stacks can cast only one lightning bolt each, while 4 cannot cast lightning bolt at all.
• reduced difficulty of neutral stacks in zone 2 of loopbeta and loopalpha templates
• slightly increased monster power of ARMG setting ‘medium’ from 1.7 to 2, now relative strength between settings is exactly 1,2,3,4,8
• fixed utopia level battle sites not being harder after month 6
• sanctuary map objects now also give +250 experience for every hero level, when any hero visits them for the first time.
• fixed heroic difficulty tooltips not showing resources were changed to 15,15,7,7,7,7,15000
• fixed graves and wagon rarely giving crazy amount of ore
• fixed various critical script bugs in campaigns on heroic difficulty level such as quroq mission not working

Skills

• Instant travel now costs 25 mana and only 15% movement, Town gate now costs 10% movement
• First aid tent cleansing ability is no longer gained from defense but requires light magic instead
• increased ATb reset for mass spells to 0.33
• slightly increased effectiveness of all dmg spells on basic and sometimes advanced level to reduce shatter strength to 16% dmg loss per mastery level.
• reduced weaken and detain perks to -15% instead of -20%
• reduced effect of lowering SP below level none when a spell is shattered to -15% or -30%
• twisted avenger also gives some druids (same logic as forest guardian, but no daily druids)
• rain of arrows now has -3 levels dmg penalty instead of +3 levels bonus
• resistance perk in shatter dark is renamed vial of lifeblood and gives vial of lifeblood artifact for resurrecting tier 2, new icon and -2D bonus.
• fixed heart of darkness artifact not working properly
• fixed dark ritual not working on day1
• nerfed retribution to give +3% dmg per morale and increased bonus for necro to +3 attack
• changed herald of death to adventure skill
• vitality now gives 2hp instead of 3hp, after all buffs to defense this buff is reverted
• removed -1A penalty from preparation, after combat retal dmg nerf it was no longer needed.
• changed navigation to master logistics, now upgrades to tier4 reinforcements in addition to boosting ship movement, changed icon
• fixed logistics reinforcements sometimes not adjusted to exact base weekly growth
• fixed 50% reinforcement bonus from slave market not actually working
• fixed logistics reinforcements not working after month 1
• hero base melee dmg is slightly nerfed according to following logic:
  • Dmg at level 30 = average weekly growth * (0.55 + (0.05 * tier))
  • Dmg at level 1 = ‘Dmg at level 30’/30
  • previously there was no consistent logic applied and no perfect avg growth of tier 1-3 was used.
    causing dmg to be relatively higher mainly to tier 1-3 and 7, not producing a proportional increase in dmg with every tier, dmg to tier 4-6 has barely changed under this formula, while dmg vs tier 1-3 went down by -15% and vs tier 7 by -10%,
  • atb resets for combat skills are changed to avenging strike 0.15, retaliation strike 0.3 and chain attack 0.45

creatures

• reduced dmg reduction from bloodrage to 15-20-25% and increased rage loss by 5%
• confusion reduces rage by 20 per mastery level, possibly negative rage issue has been fixed
• cyclops +25HP +1A, untamed cyclops +25HP,+2A,-1D, bloodeyed cyclops +15HP, +5dmg
• thunder thanes +1D,-10HP,+1maxdmg
• all centaurs +1 HP at rage level 1
• increased wheeling attack dmg of brisk raiders to 50%
• elder druids, high druids -2 shots,
• master hunters +2 shots, sharshooters -1 shot,
• assassins +1 shot,
• shadow matriarchs +1 shot,
• gremlin saboteurs +1 shot,
• archers and marksmen +1 shot,
• haven t2 building costs -5o +5w, training grounds +5o, monument -5w
• fixed some inconsistencies in gold cost of high tier units: fire dragon -100, cyclops unupg -400, green drag +100, unupg wyv +100, shadow drag -100
• clarified desc of battle rage ability
• clarified desc of mana drain

heroes

• grawl also summons a stack of hellhounds in battle
• sorgal also summons a stack of dark raiders in battle and starts with +1 raider, but no longer has the reinforcements bonus
• ebba also summons a stack of bear riders in battle and starts with soldiers luck, no longer has atb buff
• maeve starts with advanced defense
• orlando now really doesn’t have vampirism spec
• melodia starts with both hunters and water elementals, but no blade dancers
• reverted dbc change on xerxon

artifacts

• lifted treeborn quiver to major artifact
• lifted shantiri armor to relic artifact
• lowered windstrider boots to major artifact