We've finished development of the alternative monthly quests and are ready to do some playtesting. So, we're looking for a few brave souls who would like to put these through their paces before we push it out to everybody. IMPORTANT: This playtest is only open to people who have an Android device and already own a copy of the game. If you do and would like to playtest build 1.2.7 with the new quests and some other updates, please complete this playtester application form. We are planning on sending out the playtest build by early next week.

On a separate note, we've been in contact with Makeship about doing one or more plushies of some of the cuties in our game. If you're not familiar with them, they run crowdfunding-esque campaigns to do plushie versions of characters from various games and other properties. They're big fans of Return to Dark Tower and reached out to see if we'd be interested in doing it. We thought you all might have fun with it and decided to make a poll to help decide who we "plushify". I tried to include our most iconic characters and ones who I thought would translate well into a plushie. If you have other suggestions, feel free to shout them out in the comments below.

Meanwhile, nothing new on the production side of things. We got a look at the production samples for Coffers 2, i.e., the plastic versions of the tokens, and they look great (NOT FINAL).

We are locking down addresses in the BackerKit pledge manager. You should get a notice from BackerKit that this is happening and can make any last-minute changes now. After that, you will no longer be able to manually update your address. If you have any issues, please contact us at help+rtdt2@restorationgames.com and include the email address you used in BackerKit and the updated shipping address.

When it is about ready to go out, you will get an email from Quartermaster Logistics to verify your pledge address for shipping. Please make sure you "allowlist" shipping@qmlogistics.com so it doesn't get caught in any spam filters.

Production remains on schedule for fulfillment to begin in July.

In the meantime, have a look at the Covenant box bottom:

Production is moving along nicely. Some of you might recall from last time that this is a two-stage production process. Our regular manufacturer, Panda, is producing the printed materials and miniatures. They then forward those to our Tower manufacturer, Capable, for final assembly. Panda has already start on that process -- just got a photo of some of the monument miniatures today in fact. Here's a sneak peek:

As always, I'll let you all know if there are any changes to the timeline, and I should be able to post a pdf of the Covenant rules soon. To close things out, I thought I would also show off the final Astromancer spells, including the stellar art from Nastya Lehn:

Quick update to our retailers. We will be locking orders down on Friday, January 13 (sometime during mid-morning after I get up). If you have been continuing to take preorders or want to make any last-minute changes, now is the time to get that done. So, please go into BackerKit and finalize your orders.

We will NOT be charging cards at that time. We just need to lock down the counts to finalize manufacturing. We will charge cards for the orders when the games are ready to ship from the factory, which should be some time in March. (We will not charge for shipping until the games are ready to ship from the fulfillment hubs to you, at which time we will confirm the cheapest and best way to ship them.)

If you have any questions or problems completing your order, please contact BackerKit support. If you're still having trouble or have an unrelated question, please email help+retailer@restorationgames.com.

We've submitted an update to the app across the iOS, Android, and Amazon app stores, which should show up shortly. Here's what's new:

Updated the Tower event screen to clarify which seal to remove. Some folks have difficulty seeing exactly which seal to remove during the "A Seal Is Broken" event. The app screen now shows which seal should be removed.

Rebalanced four-player games to give more turns in earlier months. After gathering tons and tons of game data, we determined that the game scaled a little too difficult at four players. In a four-player game, players will not be able to get less than 8 turns in months 2 and 3. We also slowed down the foe cadence slightly. These changes only apply to heroic difficulty. If they result in you finding the game too easy, it's time to give gritty difficulty a try.

Added win/loss text to the End Game screen specific to the Adversary. Finally! You now get custom win/loss text based on the chosen adversary. No spoilers, but I think Isa's loss text might be my favorite.

Lots of bug fixes. Among other things, we changed the way Tower states are stored in saved games. Games could get stuck in an incorrect state if exited during an event chain that included a Rotate Tower event.

Polished a number of screens. (Gain 1 spirit if you can spot the changes.)

We hope you enjoy these updates.

First, let me apologize. Two months is too long to go without an update. I basically got busy with other things and didn't realize it had been that long (and I don't have a habit of regularly checking this platform like I do with KS). I'm sorry for letting that happen, and I will make sure it doesn't happen again.

Despite the silence, we've been working hard to put the finishing touches on everything. As mentioned in prior updates, we've been tweaking the monument sculptures. We thought they could be a bit more dynamic than the initial sculpts. Fortunately, the success of the campaign allowed us to take a few more liberties with the manufacturing process and give them a little more pizazz. Here are some images of a few of the revised sculpts.

The art is all finalized. The technical review of the Tower is complete. And we're moving along with updates to the app. I'm also happy to report that none of that work has impacted the fulfillment timeline. We still expect it to begin in July. There's always a possibility of getting a "spanner in the works", and we'll keep you posted if anything like that happens. In the meantime, thanks for your continued patience and have a great holiday season.

Top line item for this update is that we will be locking down orders for individual backers on October 31. Approximately 48 hours after those orders are locked down, we will be running the cards on file to complete your order. If you haven't completed your survey yet, please do so at your earliest opportunity. A few important notes:

1) You will still be able to update your address until we lock down addresses, which will be closer to when we are ready to ship.

2) If you have an issue finalizing your order now or need to tweak something after lock down, you will need to reach out to BackerKit customer service, who should be able to help you.

3) Retailer backers will not be locked down or charged at that time. We will lock down retailer orders a little bit later. I will notify our retailer backers as we get closer and have that finalized.

With regard to production, there is nothing exciting to show this time around. The big thing we are doing is finalizing the sculpts on the monuments. I hope to have those to show off for the next update.

The pledge manager seems to be running smoothly. Things are relatively quiet, and that's a good thing in this part of the process. We expect to keep the pledge manager open until mid- to late October, and will run credit cards approximately 48 hours after we close the pledge manager. We'll have a more definitive date in the next week or two. (Also, reminder for our retailer backers, we will not charge you until the games are getting ready to leave the factory, which will be several months down the road.)

If you have any trouble finding your survey, you can head to the handy survey recovery page HERE.

In the meantime, we're continuing to put the finishing touches on all the components. Final art is coming in for some of cards. We're getting ready for our "card council", which is a final editing pass on all of the game effects for clarify and consistency. And we're making some more refinements to the monument sculpts to make them as cool as possible. I'll post some of these final versions as we progress through the manufacturing process.

And finally, we get some cool stats in our BackerKit dashboard, and this infographic really stood out to me, so I thought I'd share. One of the things I love best about crowdfunding is how we can get our games to folks all across the globe that might never otherwise have a chance to experience them. It gives me a great sense of community and connection. And we're still only about 75% through survey completion.

The smoke test was a resounding success. Today, we will start sending out surveys to all backers. Due to the large number of backers, we will be sending these out in waves, and it will take awhile to send out that many emails. So, please be patient if you don't get your email right away (and please double-check your spam folder before reaching out to us).

For our returning backers, your checkout experience will be familiar. This is BackerKit's regular pledge manager platform. If you're new to the system, this update should give you all the information you need to complete your survey. It's a lot of information, and it can be a bit complicated in places, so please read carefully. And refer back to this update (or send other folks here) if there are questions.

In short, your BackerKit pledge manager experience has two parts. You'll complete a short survey. Then you'll finalize your order, enter your shipping address, and enter your payment information. This second half is just like shopping at a regular webstore like Amazon. Items included in your pledge level are already in your "cart", and the money you pledged in crowdfunding campaign is already in your "account". You'll "shop" for additional items and "spend"  your money.

If you have any problems completing your survey in BackerKit, please contact their support staff. They have excellent support and should be able to answer all of your questions. Please do not contact us about problems with your survey. It's not that we want to ignore you. Rather, it's important that we have one channel for dealing with survey issues so we don't miss anything and can have good visibility on any recurring problems. Rest assured, if BackerKit can't handle whatever issue you're having, they will, in turn, contact us, and we'll step in at that point.

If you have a problem, click on the "Need help?" link on your survey.

Your items and funds from the Crowdfunding campaign will already be in the pledge manager. BackerKit imports all of the data from campaign. So whatever items are included in the pledge level you backed at will already be in your cart in pledge manager. Likewise, the money you pledged in the campaign will already be in your account. If you are not adding anything beyond what's already included in your pledge level and you included all of the necessary funds in your campaign pledge, you can just check out. You will see any shipping charges added at that time.

You can upgrade your pledge level. If you backed at a lower pledge level, such as "Pledge Manager Access", you can upgrade your pledge to a higher pledge level, such as "Covenant Deluxe" or "Azkol's Bounty". You can upgrade your pledge level in one of two ways. The easiest way is on the very first screen of your survey, where you'll see a small link to "switch your pledge level".

Alternatively, you can do it by clicking on the name of your pledge level on the survey questions screens. This will take you to a pop-up with your pledge information with another link to "switch pledge levels".

You can add items to your order if you want to. If you want to get add-ons, you need to add them on the Add-Ons page. This is where you can add the individual expansions, sleeves, skull packs, etc. You can also use this screen to order multiple copies of things, such as an extra copy of the game if you want to give it as a gift. This page is for adding stuff to your order, not upgrading your pledge. IMPORTANT: You cannot add an item that is included with a higher pledge level than yours. For example, you cannot back at the Covenant pledge level and add a copy of the base game as an add-on. You would need to switch your pledge level to one that includes the base game.

If you got the free advantage tracking tokens pack, it will already be in your cart. You will see the "Set of 10 Advantage Tracking Tokens" in the add-ons section of your cart. If you believe you were supposed to get it for free and it is not in your cart, please contact BackerKit customer service, and they will assist you. (Reminder: You are supposed to get the tokens for free if you signed up for notification on the special sign-up page.)

We decided to manufacture more coins. We had originally limited the coins to what we had left over from the original campaign. However, we basically sold out of that stock in the smoke test. I didn't realize how popular these items are, and I knew folks would be disappointed if they didn't get a chance to add them. Therefore, we have removed the inventory and ordering restrictions with plans to do a new run of them. So, you will be able to add as many coins as you like to your order. If you were part of the smoke test and wanted to order more than one, you should be able to go in and add more to your order now.

We will leave the pledge manager open for about a month. You will get notification from BackerKit when the date approaches. Until we lock down the surveys, you can continue to go back in and make changes to your order, such as adding or removing items or changing your payment method.

We will run the credit cards after we lock down surveys. This will likely be within 48 hours after we lock down the surveys. These charges will only be for anything you added on and for the shipping charges. If you want us to run your credit card sooner for some reason, please contact BackerKit customer service, and they will be able to do that manually.

You can change your address up until we are ready to ship. Don't worry if you end up moving from your current shipping address. You can continue to go back into your survey and update your shipping address right up until the game is ready to ship.

Retailers have a few changes from these instructions. If you are a verified retailer under the "Authorized Retailers Only" pledge level, per the retailer terms, we will not run your credit cards until the games are ready to leave the factory. Please remember that you may not offer the game for sale for online customers until after the pledge manager and pre-order store are closed. We will notify you of all these dates before they happen.

I know this can seem like a lot to take in, but don't worry. It's not as bad as it sounds when you're reading it. And, most importantly, like I said at the top, BackerKit has excellent customer service and will be able to help you if you have any problems.

We have officially launched the pledge manager. Thanks for your patience while we got this set up. The pledge manager always starts with a "smoke test". Basically, the platform will randomly select 5% of backers to complete their survey. This will allow us to see if there are any problems before we open it up to the full backer pool. If you do not get a survey during the smoke test, don't worry. That's all part of the process.

If you are one of the backers involved in the smoke test, please complete your survey as soon as possible, preferably by Monday. This is your actual survey, so complete it accurately. As with all backers, you can continue to update or modify your survey until we lock it down (tentatively scheduled for mid-October). But this lets us identify and fix any problems before we send the surveys out to the rest of the backers. If you get a survey and have any questions or problems, BackerKit has world-class customer service, so don't hesitate to contact them with any issue you might have.

If there are no major problems, we will start sending the remainder of the surveys out next week, and I will post a full update on how to use BackerKit at that time.

We are doing a final playtesting round for Covenant materials. If you want to sign up to playtest, please read on.

IMPORTANT: This playtest is only open to folks who already have the base game and Alliances expansion and have an Android device. The playtest will run from Friday, August 26 to Monday, September 5th, and we are asking for playtesters to get in at least 2 games. Please do NOT sign up for this playtest if you do not meet the criteria.

If you do meet the criteria and are interested in playtesting, please sign up using this form by Wednesday.

As always, thanks for your support and helping to make this expansion the best it can be. We got some good feedback during the campaign and from our demos at Gen Con that we want to incorporate, so there will be tweaks if you playtested previously.

Let's start here: WOW!

When we decided to launch this campaign on BackerKit, a new crowdfunding platform, a lot of folks raised an eyebrow. It was a risk, to be sure. But we had a lot of faith in the BackerKit team, and they put up a heroic effort throughout the campaign indeed. But mostly we had a lot of faith in you, our fans. And you all blew us away with your energy, passion, and support for this project and this game. $2 million and 17,000 backers is an impressive achievement by any measure. So, all we can say is:

Now that the campaign is over, here is the general timeline until the games get into your hands.

As always, we'll continue to provide updates here as we move through the process, including finalized components and the like. Thanks again for your support.

As we head into the final 24 hours, we've managed to clear our final achievement: 15,000 backers! That is a tremendous achievement. Thank you all so much for supporting us, especially on this new crowdfunding platform. I guess you might say that sometimes, when you take a risk, it can pay off big. ** segue time! **

The Undaunted Aegis is a reimagining of a hero drafted while designing Alliances. We were looking to make an anti-hero, someone who dabbled in the dark side by playing with corruptions as a resource. Eventually that theme became the Haunted Recluse, but there’s plenty of room on the brink of despair, so we kept tinkering with the idea of a character that could center on corruption and playing close to the edge.

Who will like this character: People who like to protect other players and are comfortable playing at some risk.

The Aegis’s playstyle revolves around acquiring and benefiting from extra corruptions. Since gaining corruption involves going critically low on resources, typically warriors, the Aegis’s banner ability allows them to quickly bounce back, and keep enough warriors to be able to avoid corruption when they need to. Carefully managing your corruptions and warrior supply makes for some interesting choices throughout the game.

Players losing the game upon getting the third corruption proved a tricky restriction when building a character centered around corruption. The Iron-Willed virtue gives the Aegis player a little extra wiggle room to play with when building up corruptions. Now you can sit at two corruptions without being quite as risky, or go up to three if you really want to push your luck.

Since the Aegis frequently wants to enter battle with the intent of picking up a corruption, we opted to depart from the traditional advantage-based starting virtue. Instead, the Ascetic virtue gives you an additional reward for not using advantages, which is frequently what you want to be doing anyway.

The Aegis’s other virtues let you gain corruptions more easily and benefit from them. In the late game, you may find it difficult to pick up new corruptions. Steeled can let you extend your protection to other players, and gain extra corruptions to fuel your abilities along the way.

Gritty will let you harness your corruptions for a discount, picking up other virtues quickly, or even acquiring treasure and extra warriors for free. (We recently renamed this to "Resolute" to avoid confusion with the gritty play mode.)

Emboldened will literally let you turn your corruptions to your advantage, letting you stave off even the most threatening foes … if you're already near to death anyway, that is.

(Also, FYI, it's typically pronounced EE-jus.)

Bazaar Monuments

When using the Covenant expansion, at the start of the game, the app will tell you to replace a different building in each kingdom with a foundation for a monument. Each type of building has two options. In this case, the kingdom without a bazaar will either be building the Nightmare Cage or the Arch of the Golden Sun.

The Nightmare Cage

The Heroes must end their turn next to skulls to generate offerings to this building. 

After it is built, the heroes may sacrifice warriors to this building in order to eliminate foes from the board. Additionally, the app will generate new dungeons to delve and retrieve valuable resources from within.

Arch of the Golden Sun

Building the Arch requires some forethought, as Heroes must stay in their space for an entire turn to create offerings.

Once built, the Arch gives a powerful event effect, and an even more powerful reinforce effect, both involving treasures. Each month, the Arch will deliver free treasures to a random hero. When reinforcing, players may spend 5 spirit to gain 2 treasures and a virtue. Better than reinforcing at a Citadel.

When we launched the game, we wanted to make sure that every game was different. Replayability was a primary design goal. We wanted to make sure folks were getting their money's worth. However, super-fans and keen-eyed players noticed a pattern after playing multiple games: The Adversary quests come out in the same order every time. Originally, we wanted to make sure that we could balance the difficulty of each month so that it scaled as the players got more powerful. After thousands of plays millions of bits of data, we’re much more comfortable with how monthly quests impact win rates and the overall play experience. We have a better understanding of when quests come out, what effects drive certain outcomes, and how we can scale their difficulty. With all that additional experience and knowledge, we knew we could get more creative in the Adversary's monthly machinations.

So get ready for a whole new batch of monthly adversary quests. We're still crafting these and haven't finished testing them and, frankly, we don't want to spoil the surprises. So no big list of what's in store, but you can get a hint of what's to come in the image. After we finish developing and testing, we’ll roll the new quests out in a future app update. Then, in all games (base and expansions), instead of a set roster of quests, the adversaries will change how they attempt to stop you, choosing randomly from multiple options. Overall, the quests will become less predictable. Each adversary will have a pool of quests that the app will choose from each month. Your next play against Ashstrider may not begin with a quest to prevent more Rivers of Fire. Instead, it might find you avoiding adding a swath of skulls to the board. 

This means that experienced players won’t be able to predict how each Adversary will respond to them. Now, regardless of the combinations you use, there will be more replayability both for the adversaries and the main goals.

Just about ever since we released Return to Dark Tower, we've heard one thing over and over again: This is the greatest game ever made and easily my favorite game of all time -- a true work of genius. ;-)

The second most common refrain was: I WANT MORE SKULLS!

Now, our company policy has always been to replace lost or damaged parts at no charge. But no matter how much I told folks that, they kept saying: I WANT MORE SKULLS!

I have to admit, I'm not sure I 100% know why you want all those skulls, but never let it be said that we do not listen to our fans. So, by popular demand, we have added a "Skull Pack" to our add-ons in the campaign.

Each pack comes with 10 regular skulls and 2 of each of the colored skulls (including the doom skulls from the new Covenant expansion). They will be randomly done in the two different sculpts from the base game.

The price during as part of this campaign is $5. We will have some additional skull packs available on our website after backers are fulfilled; the price later will be $7.

OK, who's getting some skulls?

You can manually increase your pledge amount to cover the costs of a skull pack today. Then, after the campaign is over, you will formally specify your add-on selections in the pledge manager (and be able to add additional items to your order).

We’ve made it easy for you to add our most popular add-ons (skull packs and the neoprene board) to your pledge. Use these buttons to update your pledge by the amount required for these add-ons. Once you get to the Pledge Update page, just click on the Confirm Your Pledge button and you’re done.

New treasures: Hero treasures

As our world grew, we thought it would be fun to name treasures after existing heroes. This way, even if they aren’t in the game, you can still get a little bit of what they do.

New hero: the Relentless Warden

“You cannot run faster than I can pursue”

The Relentless Warden was designed around the concept of a tracker/ranger -- someone who can stalk their quarry until it is defeated. This character is more cautious and tactical than the Brutal Warlord, but both help keep foes off the board through battling.

Who will like this character: People who like combat and straightforward hunting.

The Warden has a quarry token, which she used to mark her current quarry. Her banner ability allows you to either place your token on a new foe, making it your quarry or move your current quarry two spaces. At the start of the game, the only way you get your token back is to defeat your current quarry.

The Perceptive virtue gives you a +1 Wild Advantage against your quarry. 

The Guarded virtue allows you to lose 3 fewer warriors losses on each battle card when you Battle your quarry. So you can go in with a small strike force.

The Relentless Warden’s other virtues let you interact with your quarry in different ways. Inspiring lets you remove all skulls on or adjacent to your space after you defeat your quarry.

If a foe has become powerful, take Instinctive. This allows you to remove your quarry token from your foe to ignore its strike event when it comes up (the strike events of the other foes of the same type will still occur). But this can be a game changer against the Titan or a dragon.

Or, if you want to defeat your quarry faster, take Keen-Eyed, which gives you an additional +2 Wild Advantages against your quarry.

12,000 backers! Wow! This campaign keeps rolling along. Thanks for your continued support and helping us spread the word.

Meanwhile, the Restoration crew are at Gen Con, and we’re doing Covenant demos. Everyone whose tried it out has seen how much fun it is. You should see some more content rolling out after the show. Until then, let’s take a closer look at the village monuments.

Village Monuments

When using the Covenant expansion, at the start of the game, the app will tell you to replace a different building in each kingdom with a foundation for a monument. Each type of building has two options. In this case, the kingdom without a village will either be building the Colossus of Bjorn or the Endless Necropolis.

The Colossus of Bjorn

One of the most brilliant minds in the Four Kingdoms, Bjorn dedicated his life to creating this monument. Once built, Bjorn’s monument would have leapt to the defense of the Four Kingdoms, moving on its own. Unfortunately, its creator never saw it completed. Now it is up to you.

Heroes must lose 8 or more warriors in a battle to place offerings onto the Colossus. It demands sacrifice.

The Colossus is a sight to behold. When Heroes reinforce there, they may move the colossus to any space in the Four Kingdoms, taking themselves along. The warriors of the Kingdom are inspired by the Colossus and flock to the Heroes in that kingdom, bringing powerful blessings along with them.

Endless Necropolis

While conflicts between the Four Kingdoms were common, each warrior who fell in those battles was given a proper burial in the Endless Necropolis. Folk tales said that in a time of crisis, the souls and bodies of those warriors would rise to defend the Four Kingdoms. That time has come.

Heroes place an offering on this building any time they spend a treasure. Scrolls and other spenable treasures become much more valuable with the Necropolis in play.

After it is built, it becomes an infinite repository for skulls, no amount of skulls will cause the building to be destroyed. Additionally, if players want to get risky, they can leave skulls on the Necropolis waiting for its monthly event, where each hero gains warriors for each skull on the building.

We just blew through $1.3M, and we're feeling pretty lucky about what great fans we have.

“A cheater, but a charming one”

The Devious Swindler came into being early in the design process. We looked at elements of the game that were underused. In this case, the haggle die. At a high level, the Swindler wants to leverage the randomness of the game so we also designed them to use the market and treasure decks to craft high-risk/high-reward hero. 

Who will like this character: People who like big moments and aren’t bothered by luck.

“You can’t control everything. Sometimes you’ve just got to roll the dice.”

The Swindler’s banner ability is to roll the haggle die and gain the result. Half the time you get something. That’s what you get for gambling. 

The Inventive virtue lets you gain the advantages from treasures in the market. This virtue doesn’t count conditional advantages (so nothing from scrolls) but the ceiling is still high. If there are three undead advantages in the market, then you’re going to put a lot of hurt on Oreks. 

The Joyful virtue is all upside - ignoring the closed on the haggle die when reinforcing. There’s no reason not to haggle every turn. You won’t always get something, but you’ll never get punished for using it.

The Swindler’s other virtues let you mitigate luck. If the haggle die isn’t going your way, get Fortuitous. It gives you a reroll of the haggle die each time you roll it and lets you choose which result to keep.

If you’re getting harried by foes, take Calculating, which lets you ignore all warrior and spirit losses from critical hit battle cards. This combos with several different new mechanics in Covenant, or some companions from Alliances. You might be hoping for this crits.

Finally, you can take Opportunistic, which gives you a blessing every time a player buys a treasure from the market (blessings are a short-term +1 Wild Advantage). Sometimes those treasure just can’t stay in the market. Opportunistic lets you generate value from other players’ actions. 

New Corruptions 

Let’s talk about everybody’s favorite part of Return to Dark Tower: corruptions. The most important thing about them is that you lose the game if you would ever get a third one. (Well, depending on which hero you’re playing, he said forebodingly.) But one of the subtle aspects of them is their effects. Often, they can have only a minimal impact, but every once in a while, they can really “THROW A SPANNER IN THE WORKS” as Hakan would say.

For Covenant, I thought it might be cool to add some new corruptions to mix things up. And I thought it might also be “fun” if the effects hit a little harder and weirder. I quickly found, as I started writing them, that the ideas were tumbling out of me. In no time, I had a cool twelve. After just a bit of playtesting, it was clear that this was working. Of course, there was a good bit more development, and a few of them ended up getting changed. But overall they are a great new addition to the game.

I’m particularly excited that they offer players another simple way to tweak their desired difficulty. You can sprinkle just a few into the corruption deck without too much trouble. Or you can swap the original deck for the new ones wholesale for some truly perilous play. After all, it’s one thing to lose a spirit after you Reinforce at a bazaar and a whole different matter if you can’t Battle level 2 foes. You’re so vain….

I also really like the little story they tell with just a name. You’ve become Inobservant? I guess you didn’t see any of the goodies drop when you hit the foes hard enough. Normally too cautious to roll the haggle die when you Reinforce? Well, you’re hero isn’t – they’re Reckless.

It’s always a treat when one of the smallest parts of the game has a big impact. Have fun storming the Tower when you’re Timid.

Let's start with the big goal we just hit: $1 million dollars. On a new platform, for a second printing, that's a huge achievement. It's a testament to the effort of all of the folks who contributed to making this game, the amazing support and work by the BackerKit team, and, of course, our amazing fans. Thank you so much for making this happen. While we're on the subject of goals....

When we were designing Covenant, we noticed that some of the Main Goals didn’t work as well with this expansion. Some were confusing or required exceptions; some where effectively impossible. Rather than just tweaking a few, we took it as a sign from the Gods of Light that we should just do them all. So we set about writing all new Main Goals when playing with the Covenant expansion.

Important caveat: These are in early development, and we are just starting to test them (since they require a new test version of the app). It's likely that a few will change, but here’s the "elevator pitch" for the new main goals as they are now:

Gleb - Gleb the Outlaw King suggests finding his former allies. "They like to be on the move so you'll have to know where and when to find them." (Gleb will not be a companion at the start of the game).

Grigor - Grigor the Unbreakable suggests defeating the Tower's champion. Destroy the adversary's most powerful minion to lure them out of the Tower.

Hakan - The Tower is protected by a spectral spirit that haunts a lost tomb. Building monuments will help Hakan triangulate the tomb's location. Build three monuments to reveal the secret dungeon, then complete it!

Letha - Letha the Dryad thinks if we do not merely halt the wastes but reclaim them, the tower will open. Complete a monument and reseed the wastelands in that kingdom with siege trees.

Miras - Miras tells you "The Adversary has wards that make it hard to attack them. Our advantages won't work. We're going to have to do this the traditional way - with strong arms and boots on the ground. Station your warriors strategically about the kingdoms. I'll summon the Adversary when you're ready."

Tomas - Tomas has collected Gems of Power and tries to ferry them hidden among ordinary caravans. Guide these caravans to their villages to activate the gems.

Vasa - Vasa The Divine communes with the gods of light, but they are limited in their influence. Complete all monuments to return the gods to their glory so they can smite the Tower.

Yana - Yana tells you that the Adversary has grown too reliant on its foes. If you defeat 10 foes, the Adversary will have no choice but to leave the Tower. (Yana will not be a companion at the start of the game.)

Zaida - Zaida speaks to you in a dream. Spend treasures that match the adversary’s traits to work a spell to draw the Adversary out.

As you can see, with this batch of main goals, we're really trying to push the envelope of what they can look like and offer a wide variety of objectives to test your mettle. So, which one's the first one you're going to try out?

Great second day to the campaign and we're marching onward. Let's get right to it and have a look at two more monuments.

As we revealed last time, there are two monuments associated with each basic building. Today, we're talking about the sanctuary monuments: the Moonstone Temple and the Argent Oak. If your kingdom gets assigned one of these, you'll have to get it built or head elsewhere if you need to get rid of those corruptions.

Moonstone Temple

The ancient art of astromancy used to be more prevalent. Given the right focus, it is said that astromancers could even move the stars in the night sky. One such focus was the Moonstone Temple. There, it is said that one could even stop time.

To gain offerings for this monument, you must finish a battle without using an advantage. None, not a single one. On the one hand, this is entirely within your control. On the other hand, you know it's going to come at cost. Choosing when you can take the hit will be crucial in getting it built without risking a loss.

After it is built, the Moonstone Temple can be very powerful. The built monument will trigger events that grant every hero a blessing (something we looked at in the Astromancer update). And it's enhanced Reinforce effect is the strongest effect we've ever put in the game. Spend the spirit, and you can Battle and Cleanse any number of times in a turn.

Argent Oak

The Druid’s Circle passes down the oral tradition of the Argent Oak, an ancient tree that grew to the heavens. The druids would come to this oak in times of trouble, and it would provide guidance and comfort. With some sacrifice, this tree may be revived to fight back against the Tower.

To gain offerings for this monument, you must gain a corruption, simple as that. (Reminder: It's a trigger, not a cost -- so you can't just choose to gain a corruption.) Again, you'll have to carefully balance when you're willing to pay the price and avoid sliding down a path to defeat while building it.

Once built, the Argent Oak is a powerful defensive building, allowing the players to come back from the brink of defeat. It's event lets the player who just took a turn to remove all skulls on or adjacent to them. (Though, as always, be careful camping out next to skulls lest foes strike before the event triggers). It's enhanced Reinforce effect lets you save spirit by spending items to remove corruptions instead. 

And let's also take a moment to check out those gorgeous sculpts by Pat Fahy and Josh Suyemoto. Can't wait to see some paint jobs on these.

Quick look at a brand new kind of treasure: wands. Up until now, treasures have been either something you can use again and again or something you can spend for a one-time effect. In the Covenant expansion, we introduce wands. These treasures use a new resource, charges. Each starts with a number of charges when you acquire it, has a way to get more charges, and has an effect that you can spend charges to trigger. In this way, you can use the item over and over again, but you'll have to decide when to try and recharge the wand. This keeps with Covenant's general design philosophy of presenting the players with difficult choices between the typically optimal play and a less optimal play that provides an alternate benefit.

We've blown through the $600,000 achievement, and the campaign continues to roll along. With the heroes in the Covenant expansion, we really wanted to offer totally new playstyles that will feel very different from the existing heroes. We also wanted to explore some classic tropes that weren't represented in the game. No doubt about it -- we needed a wizard. Enter the astromancer.

“The stars will guide us through the dark months ahead.”

The Reverent Astromancer is our nod to Gandalf, Elminster, Merlin, and all the other classic spellslingers. Although other characters touch upon a magical heritage, we wanted a character that wielded spells and grew in power as the game went on. 

Who will like this character: People who want to feel clever and who like to plan ahead.

“I have visions of what I need and where to be.”

The Astromancer’s banner ability is to remove one skull that is on or adjacent to his space. So ending a turn in the right location is key. This also allows you to save Cleansing for buildings with two or three skulls.

The Pious virtue is the core of the Astromancer, granting you the ability to prepare a number of spells equal to the month. You need to be able to think ahead for the whole month and decide what you think you’ll need.

The Well-Versed virtue gives you a blessing if you removed a skull with your banner ability. Blessings are a new mechanic. They grant you +1 Wild Advantage until the end of your next Heroic action so it will come in handy if you are Battling or Questing on your turn. 

The Astromancer’s other virtues let you do wondrous things with your spells.

Zealous gives you a blessing whenever you cast a spell. Later in the game, you could gain a handful of wild advantages.

If you want more power, take Exalted. This gives you access to four new spells called Invocations. These are more powerful spells that you can use for the rest of the game.

Or, you can take Bounteous, which gives you a treasure once per turn when you cast a spell.

“My spells are my life.”

But a wizard is only as strong as their spells, and we wanted to give the Astromancer some wild ones. We put a lot of time into designing effects that were a little less straightforward and required a little more forethought to optimize. Here are the Astromancer's spells and invocations.

Ritual of Warding: Place a Protection token in your space. These tokens negate wasteland and foe spawns in that space. You can try to just guess where they might show up, or you can lay down some preemptive protection in key spaces that you don't want to get blocked off.

Soothing Word: One hero in your space replaces a corruption with a new one. With the gnarly new corruption effects, sometimes cycling a corruption is as helpful as removing it (and a lot cheaper).

Aura of Friendship: When you Reinforce at a building this turn, you can treat it as any building. Fundamentally, this spell can save you some movement, particularly helpful as wasteland tokens build up across the board or when you need a particular Reinforce effect and don't have that monument built yet.

Winds of Change: Put any number of treasures from the market on the bottom of the treasure deck. Then refill the market. For when you can't wait around for a New Wares event and especially handy when the Devious Swindler is hunting for advantages (but we'll talk more about them later).

Bounty of the Gods: Gain 3 random quest items, and lose 2 of them. Lose the other at the end of your turn. One of the wilder effects, sometimes it will be just the item you need, and some times you'll get to move siege trees that aren't even in the game. Either way, tons of fun.

Bestow Blessing: One hero gains a blessing. And their most straightforward effect. An advantage when you need it.

Commanding Rebuke: Place a foe that is in your space in any other space. Potent ability that sets up another hero's champion virtue or just hucks a nettlesome foe out of the way while you're trying to work on the main goal.

Smite the Wicked: Remove a savage or lethal foe. An interesting effect, very powerful, but only works in situations when you might already be at some risk. Are you going to let that dragon level up just so you can smite them next turn...?

Abate the Darkness: Remove a seal, return any skulls to the supply, replace the seal. A great way to clean out the Tower a bit and refill the skull supply when it's running low.

Celestial Jaunt: Place yourself on any space with a quest marker. A more potent but more situational movement ability, it can come in very handy as the board fills up with wasteland tokens.

Yowza! We blew through our funding goal and unlocked our first achievement. Clearly, our fans remain the best around.

One of the things we were excited about when we decided to use this platform for the new campaign was BackerKit's attention to the social aspects of crowdfunding. (If you haven't done so already, check out the Discussions page and see how robust the community conversation is.) One of those aspects is the Community Achievement system. It's a little different than the ad hoc stretch goals we've used in prior campaigns. It's new to us, and we're going to explore all the cool things we can do as we move through the campaign. Importantly, since we already unlocked every stretch goal in the universe (and a few extras) in the first campaign, we're going to be focusing on the fun: unlocking updates with deeper dives on the content, backer polls, maybe even a little lore and worldbuilding.

So, without further ado, let's start things off by having a closer look at our first two monuments....

Since this is our first up-close look at monuments, let's talk a little more about how they impact the game. When using the Covenant expansion, at the start of the game, the app will tell you to replace a different building in each kingdom with a foundation token for a monument. Each type of building has two associated monuments. For the citadel, these are the Cenotaph of the First Prophet and the Tower Shard. So, if this is your home kingdom, you're starting the game in an empty space with a sad foundation token in place of your citadel. That's right, no more first turn potion for you. This also means one less building in each kingdom to hold skulls.

You definitely start in a bit of a deeper hole when playing with this expansion. But when you build them, you can really turn your fortunes around. (You can complete a monument by taking the Build heroic action in its foundation space when it has 3 offerings on it.) A completed monument counts as a building, including holding skulls and granting a Reinforce action (including special new enhanced Reinforce effects unique to that monument). It's all about deciding which monuments you're going to focus on building.

So what about these two monuments...?

Cenotaph of the First Prophet

Azkol’s first prophet built this as a tribute to his lord, before Azkol went mad. Now it stands as a testament to the Gods of Light, reaching towards the sky. The knowledge of all prophets that came after is stored within.

To gain offerings for this monument, you must defeat a foe in a wasteland. This presents two challenges. First, you have to get a foe to a wasteland if it's not already there. This can be done with a potion of the siren's song, the cloak of stars, and similar effects. Second, you need to enter the wasteland to Battle it (unless you have the oakstone bow, for example).

After it's built, the Cenotaph's enhanced Reinforce effect allows players to gain access to virtues from heroes outside the game! If you want to see how your favorite Spymaster virtue works on a different hero, then this monument is for you. The completed Cenotaph also generates events in the app that grant spirit to heroes in that kingdom.

The Tower Shard

For generations, pilgrims from the Four Kingdoms journeyed to the site of a glorious battle, where a piece of the original Tower fell, a scarred wedge. Eventually the site was sanctified and became a shrine to the Gods of Light.

To gain offerings for this monument, you must defeat foes adjacent to the Tower. Like it's counterpart, this might require some clever maneuvering to get it done.

After it's built, the Tower Shard's enhanced Reinforce allows you to trade spirit for potions. But its true power come from the Aura of the Tower Shard, which causes foes to tremble in battle. For the rest of the game, all foe critical hit battle cards are replaced with benign cards that can even aid you in Battle.