Horn of the Abyss v1.6.0 with Factory wasteland terrain!
As announced earlier, the next Horn of the Abyss update is the version 1.6.0, which is live now. In this article, we will cover the main additions and changes in the 1.6.0 update. But first things first, let’s premise it with the following:
The 1.7.0 update with the new Factory town does not and cannot have a scheduled release date, however, the development is chugging along, and in January, you can expect another major news article where several new units from the lineup will be announced.
Obviously, as a non-commercial project, our manpower is limited, and we don’t always have enough of it readily available to keep the development pace steady. At the moment, we could use help from advanced 3D artists and animators. Those wishing to participate in the development of HotA can contact me directly by messaging Docent Picolan in the VK group contacts, or through e-mail: hotacrew@gmail.com.
Download |
Horn of the Abyss v1.6.0 |
What’s new in HotA 1.6.0?
Steel golem
Avid online players and stream viewers know that the guards of Experimental Shops have long been scarce challenge on the way to the reward. Shop tactics everyone knows by heart by now allow players to get Giants for their armies without suffering any losses, even with a very modest army. In the case of Harpies, the task is further reduced to simple click-through. The only resource required for success is time, as battles get drawn out to last dozens, sometimes hundreds of rounds. The 1.6.0 update introduces a range of solutions to deal with the problem once and for all.
First off, a brand new unit, the neutral Steel Golem, is introduced to replace the Tower’s Iron Golems in the Shops guard.
Interference secondary skill
Back in March last year, in update 1.5.2, the mechanics of the Resistance skill were changed to solve balance problems. Instead of a chance to resist a spell, it was made to reduce the opponent’s Spellpower. Directly replacing an element of the original game with a new one is not typical for HotA, but it was sufficient as a temporary measure. In 1.6.0 update, the new mechanics will be added as a brand new Interference skill.
Three new artifacts will be added to decrease the opponent’s Spellpower (no combination), with altered percentages and changed inventory slots:
Plate of Dying Light – Torso slot. Decreases the Spellpower of the enemy hero by 25% in combat. Relic, cost: 10,000.
Charm of Eclipse – Miscellaneous slot. Decreases the Spellpower of the enemy hero by 10% in combat. Minor, cost: 5000.
Seal of Sunset – Ring slot. Decreases the Spellpower of the enemy hero by 10% in combat. Minor, cost: 5000.
The Rampart heroes are joined by a Giselle, an Interference specialist. Her bio:
A fair took place once in the village where Giselle lived. An old druid from a nearby grove agreed to show the villagers a few simple magic tricks. Nothing he tried seemed to work out, but the old man was able to accurately pinpoint the grinning girl in the front row as the cause of his woes.
Factory Wasteland terrain
The biggest addition in the version 1.6.0 by the sheer volume of visual content will be a new terrain, the Wasteland. We shall touch upon it last, as some information, along with early screenshots, have already been published in previous publications. Still, the terrain has changed considerably since, as all necessary tile textures have been finished, a significant number of new decor created, the soundtrack composed, interactive objects added, and the battlefield with its obstacles finished.
Interactive objects of the Wasteland, by Agar, Don_ko, Docent Picolan, DrSlash
Here goes the full description of the Wasteland objects:
Derrick – Yields 500 gold in the first week and 1000 gold in any other. RMG value is 750, frequency is 30, generated on Wasteland
Warlock’s Lab – Allows players to transmute mercury, sulfur, crystals and gems into each other at the ratio of 1 to 1. RMG value is 3000, frequency is 100, generated on Snow and Wasteland, no more than one per zone
Prospector – Yields 500 gold or 5 sulfur once a week. RMG value is 500, frequency is 30, generated on Wasteland
Trailblazer – Reduces the movement penalty for Wasteland by 50%. RMG value is 200, frequency is 40, generated on Wasteland, no more than one per zone
Grave – When dug up, yields 500-5000 gold, or a random treasure/minor class artifact, and gives -3 to morale until the next battle. RMG value is 500, frequency is 30, generated on Wasteland
Horn of the Abyss 1.6.0 full changelog
[!] – Important Information.
[-] – Bug and error fixes and changes to previous elements.
[+] – Innovations.
HotA Bugs
[-] A bug has been fixed where a shooter stack going melee with a Sharpshooter’s Bow would cause syncing issues in online play
[-] A bug has been fixed where the algorithm for calculating hero paths took too long to resolve
[-] A bug has been fixed where the Cove would never appear as a random neutral city in custom scenarios
[-] A bug has been fixed where Black Market artifact tooltips would sometimes misbehave.
[-] A bug has been fixed where Spellpower would reset on double completion of combat
[-] A bug has been fixed where on random maps, objects with custom settings specified in the template (like Pandora’s Box with custom amount of gold) would fail to generate
[-] Objects now cannot be placed too far beyond the right screen border on G sized maps
[-] A bug has been fixed where the game could crash upon visiting creature banks
[-] The faulty background soundbite for the Altar of Thought has been fixed
[-] A bug has been fixed where music wouldn’t start in campaign videos
Gameplay
[+] A new terrain, the Wasteland, has been introduced with 125% movement penalty
[+] For all standard random map templates for online play, a 100 round limit on combat duration has been introduced, after which the attacker must flee, surrender or trigger quick combat; the limit can be altered in the map and template editors
[+] On all standard random map templates, monsters now only join for money, and only half the group for the price of the entire group; these settings can be altered in the map and template editors
[+] The speed of any creature affected by Advanced or Expert Slow has been increased by 1
[+] AI Value for Efreet Sultans has been increased from 1848 to 2343, and their Fight Value, from 1584 to 1802.
[+] The percentage for the Logistics secondary skill has been reduced to 5/10/20%, the effect of the Equestrian’s Gloves, to 200, and of Boots of Speed, to 400
[+] The effect of the Intelligence skill has been reduced from 25/50/100% to 20/35/50%
[+] The effect of the Mysticism skill has been increased from 2/3/4 to 5/10/15
[+] The value of the Estates skill has been increased from 125/250/500 to 250/500/1000
[-] Intelligence specialization now gives +1 to the scounting range for every 6 levels of the hero.
[-] The changes to the Resistance skill (increased by 5/10/20% chance of resisting an enemy spell) have been reverted; the skill, along with its corresponding artifacts, the Garniture of Interference (5%), Surcoat of Counterpoise (10%) and Boots of Polarity (15%), and the hero Thorgrim are now banned by default
[+] A new skill, Interference (reduces the Spellpower of the enemy hero by 10/20/30% in combat), along with its corresponding artifacts Charm of Eclipse (10%), Seal of Sunset (10%) and Plate of Dying Light (25%), have been introduced; for all heroes except Thorgrim, the starting Resistance skill is replaced by Interference
[+] A new hero, Giselle the Ranger, has been introduced with a specialization in Interference; starting skills: Advanced Interference
[+] A new creature, the Steel Golem, has been introduced
[-] Guard of Experimental Shops has been changed from 40-80-120-160 Iron Golems to 25-50-75-100 Steel Golems
[-] Guard of Churchyards has been changed from 6×20 Walking Dead to 6×15 Zombies
[+] A new object, Derrick, has been introduced; it yields 500 gold in the first week and 1000 gold in any other. RMG value is 750, frequency is 30, generated on Wasteland
[+] A new object, Warlock’s Lab, has been introduced; it allows players to transmute mercury, sulfur, crystals and gems into each other at the ratio of 1 to 1; RMG value is 3000, frequency is 100, generated on Snow and Wasteland, no more than one per zone
[+] A new object, Prospector, has been introduced; it yields 500 gold or 5 sulfur once a week; RMG value is 500, frequency is 30, generated on Wasteland
[+] A new object, Trailblazer, has been introduced; it reduces the movement penalty for wasteland by 50%; RMG value is 200, frequency is 40, generated on Wasteland, no more than one per zone
[+] A new object, Grave, has been introduced; when dug up, it yields 500-5000 gold, or a random treasure/minor class artifact, and gives -3 to morale until the next battle; RMG value is 500, frequency is 30, generated on the Wasteland
[-] For all mirror templates, Jeremy is now allowed, while Alamar, Jeddite, Labetha, Grindan, and Miriam are banned
[-] Ancient Lamps are now allowed in Tower starting zones on the Jebus Cross template
[-] Numerous changes have been made to the 8xm12a template
[-] Frequency of Dragon Utopias in Treasure Zones on the Spider template has been increased to 200
[-] AI value of melee attacks by shooter units has been reduced
[-] AI value of protection against the elements spells has been reduced
SoD Bugs
[-] The option to switch to the underworld in the world view on single level maps has been removed
[+] A bug has been fixed where, when ordering a hero to move across terrain types using the keyboard arrows, the hoof clatter soundbite would keep playing
[+] Certain animation flaws in online play have been fixed
[+] A bug has been fixed where translucent image elements in combat could turn black
[+] Keystone Tents and artifacts wanted by Seer Huts now cannot be generated beyond Border Guard on random maps
Graphics
[+] The positioning of monster sprites on the adventure map has been fixed; numerous improvements to the sprites themselves have been made
[+] A large number of decorative objects for the Wasteland, such as Mountains, Limestone Lakes, Tar Lakes, Craters, Canyons, Stones, Shrubs, Bones, Skulls, Cactuses, etc., has been introduced
[-] Trees of the Rough terrain have been altered and made versatile enough to be placed on any terrain
[+] Large creature portraits have been fixed and improved
[+] Hero specialization icons have been fixed and improved
[+] Large resource icons have been fixed and improved
[+] Iron Golem sprites have been made sharper
Map Editor
[+] The Arena map mode which allows users to create maps targeted at a single battle between the players, with preparations
[+] The option to customize the level, reward artifacts, and the presence or absence of an upgraded stack in creature banks has been introduced
[+] The following settings for monsters in the Map Editor have been introduced: the exact mood, whether the monsters are willing joining for money only, the percentage of monsters to join, the number of stacks into which the monsters are divided, the presence of an upgraded stack
[+] Local Events can now be set to be triggered independently by human and AI players
[+] A new object, the Quest Gate, has been introduced; it requires players to complete a quest to be granted passage and does not disappear after a visit; for quests that require payment, it will be due at each pass
[+] Two new quest types for Seer Hut / Quest Guard / Quest Gate have been introduced: “Belong to a class” and “Return not before date”
[+] An option to set multiple quests per Seer Hut has been introduced as a sequence of quests or a recurring sequence of quests
[+] Scaling in the object pane has been improved
[+] The restriction of no more than 256 monsters with messages per map has been removed
[+] Map verification now takes into account the option to assemble/disassemble set artifacts when checking for the existence of an artifact needed in a quest
[-] Freezing when generating a random map on some systems has been fixed
Template Editor
[+] Town type selection setting has been introduced, allowing the generator to set the town type in a zone depending on the towns in other zones
[+] Such settings as monster mood selection, willingness to join for money only and joining percentage have been introduced
[-] Zone editing interface has been changed
[+] Dark interface skin has been introduced
[-] Errors when working with parallel connections have been fixed
[-] A bug has been fixed where Golden and Diamond Golems were absent
[-] Windows XP compatibility has been brought back
Interface
[+] The positioning of specialization icons on the Kingdom Overview screen has been fixed
[+] The positioning of the Market dialogue title text has been fixed
Miscellaneous
[+] New maps The Great Wasteland, Gold Rush have been introduced
[+] When using the terrain brush in the map editor, or during map generation, identical tiles no longer spawn next to each other
[-] On random maps, Ancient lamps can now only be generated on sand and snow, value 5000, frequency 200
[+] On RoE maps, random towns can now be Conflux and Cove
[-] Numerous fixes to maps and texts
The development of the Factory, the second town to be introduced in Horn of the Abyss and 11th overall in the game, is in full swing. As you already know, on April 28th, the Streamfest convention took place where some of the freshly developed content was unveiled. It included the following video, which, if one forgives the obvious shortcomings of hasty production, can be considered the second trailer for the Factory town.
Hi Liso!
The game has repetative crashes and blocks me from reloading the autosave what I played with. At this rate the game becomes unplayable. Needs serious hotfix asap.
Ok, so i’m not the only one with this problem.
every 5-6 turns the game crashes
Unfortunately, this is a problem with the latest version of HotA. But HotA team already have a hot-fix that should be available by the end of January. They will solve all these problems, just be patient. 🙂
Is the interference skill replacing the resistance? Or does the resistance skill reappear homm 3 complete-wise? The 1.6.0 crashed early at gameplay, and I got an error message that it is incompatible with homm3 hd, meaning I had to run it as HOTA on 800×600 from the hota exe, yet that one crashed at gameplay anyway with only error message “.error”.
Hi Bard, sorry your comment was detained by anti-spam plugin, i dont know why…
Yes, interference skill replacing the resistance. Now there is no resistance skill or artifacts in the game.
Try updating the HD mod. In January, version 1.6.1 will be released to fix the bugs.
Thanks a lot for the update
You’re welcome. But I’m not a creator, just a fan who created this H3 site. 🙂
Anyone have a mirror? can’t download it
Hi, here is alternative download: https://ulozto.net/file/U8k2Avymmexu/hota-1-6-0-setup-exe