Polytropos: A Tactical Odyssey news & patch notes

Hail, heroes!

Patch 1.2.0 was just released! This major update adds a fifth Patron, Hades, Lord of the Dead, to the game.

Hades brings new units, prophecies, and epithets that can bring death, inflict curses, and exploit the riches of the underworld. Hades' synergy Lord of the Dead allows a percentage of defeated enemies to join your army as phantoms. A new hero loyal to Hades, King Minos, has also been added in this update.

For now, Minos is automatically unlocked, so you can try out this new content right away. We are also excited to participate in this month's upcoming Steam Next Fest - please try out the latest demo build and share your feedback!

Patch Notes:

• Added Hades, Lord of the Dead, as a new playable Patron. Hades' synergy Lord of the Dead allows a percentage of defeated enemies to join your army as phantoms

• Added new hero: Minos. As Underworld Judge, Minos gains drachma by dismissing allied units (including phantoms resurrected with the power of Hades)

• Added new unit: Phantom. Phantoms are weak, inexpensive flying spectres.

• Added new unit: Lampad. Lampades are underworld nymphs. Their flaming torches fire ranged attacks with an area-of-effect splash.

• Added new unit: Psychopomp. Psychopomps guide souls to Hades. They automatically reduce the damage of nearby enemies.

• Added new unit: Cerberus. Cerberi attack simultaneously with each head, damaging three hexagons at once.

• Added new unit: Giant. Giants are slow-moving, durable, powerful units. They are shielded against ranged attacks.

• Added new unit: Necromancer. Necromancers are powerful ranged spellcasters who reduce the defense of enemies they shoot.

• Added new unit: Fury. As the strongest unit loyal to Hades, Furies can fly long distances and attack all adjacent enemies with their whips.

• Added new Phase 2 climax: Aloadae. The Aloadae, Otos and Ephialtes, are enormous, resilient giants who once abducted Ares.

• Added new Phase 4 climax: Eumenides. The Eumenides are underworld spirits of vengeance. Each sister of the trio brings unique torments.

• Added 5 new Hades epithets to increase the dreadful power of your heroes.

• Added 6 new Hades prophecies that use the underworld might of Hades to bring doom to enemies.

• Improved handling of invalid player settings files.

• Changed tutorial behavior. By default, tutorials now automatically pop-up the first time you encounter a new gameplay mechanic. This behavior can be toggled off if preferred.

• Fixed a rare bug that could cause the game to freeze when multiple commands were inputted in rapid succession

• Improved formatting of post Odyssey legacy results

Please enjoy all the changes! If you try out the demo during Steam Next Fest, I'd love to hear your feedback!

Hail, heroes!

Patch 1.1.4 was just released, upgrading the graphical quality of all Artemis units.

Patch Notes:

• Improved graphics for Huntress

• Improved graphics for Boar

• Improved graphics for Basilisk

• Improved graphics for Spartan

• Improved graphics for Cretan Archer

• Improved graphics for Golden Hind

• Improved graphics for Sorceress

Please enjoy the update!

Hail, heroes!

Patch 1.1.3 was just released, upgrading the graphical quality of all Ares units.

Patch Notes:

• Improved graphics for Barbarian

• Improved graphics for Peltast

• Improved graphics for Lycanthrope

• Improved graphics for Geogene

• Improved graphics for Amazon

• Improved graphics for Earthborn

• Improved graphics for Dragon

Please enjoy these graphical overhauls!

Greetings, heroes!

Patch 1.1.2 was just released. This patch adds a few bugfixes that should produce a smoother game experience.

Patch Notes:

• Fixed an issue where Charisma was incorrectly described as increasing prophecy durations during boon selection. The description now accurately reflects the actual effect of Charisma (provides kudos after each scene)

• Fixed a bug where opening and closing right-click expanded unit info panels during battles could prevent heroes from casting prophecies during their turns

• Fixed a bug where enemy boss encounters with multiple heroes would generate incorrect stats for the "sidekick" enemy heroes

• Fixed a bug where hero tooltips could display incorrectly in the post-battle summary page

• Fixed a bug where Hector was granting unlimited retaliations to all allied units. Hector now only grants unlimited retaliations to himself.

Please enjoy the changes!

Greetings, heroes!

Patch 1.1.1 was just released. This patch adds improved graphics for all Athena units, plus several UI and balance improvements.

Patch Notes:

• Improved graphics for Hoplite

• Improved graphics for Arachnid

• Improved graphics for Chariot

• Improved graphics for Sphinx

• Improved graphics for Gorgon

• Improved graphics for Automaton

• Rebalanced and increased the drachma reward value of enemy heroes in later phases

• Fixed UI issue where conditional abilities like the Chariot's Petrifying effect would sometimes show duplicate info cards in the right click info view panel

• Added limit to heroic rank of Blood-Stained epithet, so that units can only act again once per turn

• Standardized rounding behavior for all 64-bit integers (now always rounds to positive infinity)

• Fixed a bug where the Undying epithet could grant an incorrect number of Resurrects

• Fixed bug where purchasing a Mentor could allow a hero to gain more than 8 epithets under rare conditions

Best of luck in your future battles! As always, your feedback is appreciated!

Greetings, heroes!

Patch 1.1.0 is now live. This patch adds a new unlockable hero, Hector of the shining helm. Hector has unlimited retaliations in combat, and gains a 20% defense bonus.

Patch 1.1.0 also contains several bugfixes, balance updates, and polish improvements. See the full patch notes below for a detailed list of changes.

Patch Notes:

• Added Hector, the legendary Trojan warrior! Hector's Talent Shining Helm grants him an innate +20% bonus defense and unlimited retaliations. Use these abilities to protect your units, or win glory for yourself in battle!

• Updated Kudos tooltip in Hero panel to clarify the function of kudos

• Reduced cost of "Mend" prophecy from 10 to 8 Kudos

• Reduced base duration of "Synthesize" from 1 to 0.5 turns, and reduced zeal-scaling duration of "Synthesize" from 0.5 to 0.34

• Tweaked color balance and saturation of ground tiles slightly so that units show up more clearly

• Fixed issue where the starting prophecy tooltip in Odyssey setup did not properly account for hero's starting Zeal and Epithet modifiers

• Fixed rounding behavior on prophecy durations from banker's rounding (round .5 to nearest even number) to positive rounding (round .5 to larger number)

• Updated prophecy "Skepticism" to now remove enemy buffs, in addition to removing debuffs from allies. Kudos cost has been increased to 12 to match the increased power.

• Added tooltips to disabled prophecies that explain why the prophecy cannot be cast (e.g. not player hero's turn, not in combat, insufficient kudos, or insufficient health)

• Fixed bug in legacy progression level calculation logic where a negative discriminant in the quadratic formula was causing progression level to sometimes incorrectly be calculated as -2,147,483,648 instead of 0

• Updated default difficulty level from level 0 to level 1

• Fixed issue where hero info tooltip would sometimes show when an epithet was being hovered

• Added a semitransparent circle indicator around units hovered over from the turn order queue

• Increased Myrmidon speed from 5 to 6

• Increased Owl health from 6 to 7

• Increased Muse max damage from 10 to 12

• Fixed bug where hero epithet tooltips would sometimes display incorrectly during Odyssey setup

Hello!

Patch 1.0.9 has just been released. This patch contains some significant new updates to gameplay systems, including a legacy progression system and unlockable achievement trophies. For full details on what has been added in this update, please see the detailed patch notes below!

The legacy progression system tracks your progress across playthroughs, tracked separately for each patron. Eventually, this system will allow unlocking several new prophecies, epithets, and heroes. For now, Odysseus starts unlocked, and Achilles and Atalanta must be unlocked by gaining a level with Athena and Zeus, respectively. Higher difficulty levels increase the rate at which you gain legacy points, so challenge yourself for increased rewards!

Patch Notes:

• Added legacy progression system that tracks cross-run progress, allowing new gameplay content to be unlocked

• Added unlockable trophies, an achievement system that also rewards legacy progression points. Note: These are not setup as Steam Achievements in the demo, but will be in the full game release

• Added Unlocks to main menu, where unlockable game elements can be toggled and patron legacy levels can be viewed

• Added Catalog to main menu, where all heroes, units, prophecies, epithets, and trophies can be viewed along with brief descriptions of each.

• Added stat-tracking system, recording progress within and across playthroughs

• Improved graphics for Owl unit

• Fixed bug where enemy Muses were not able to buff adjacent allies

• Fixed bug that occurred when attempting to hover over unit detail tooltips during odyssey setup

As always, feel free to comment or contact us if you have any questions or feedback. Hope you enjoy the latest improvements!

Hello!

Patch 1.0.8 is now live. Patch 1.0.8 includes a new crisis log, recording every action taken during a crisis. This should make it much easier to track everything happening during battles!

The patch also adds graphics improvements for several Zeus units and a visual bugfix.

Patch Notes:

• Fixed bug where Calydonian Boar and Medea displayed at double the intended size

• Updated graphics for Centaur

• Updated graphics for Muse

• Updated graphics for Pegasus

• Updated graphics for Minotaur

• Added Crisis Log

Please enjoy the new additions!

• Improved graphics for Eagle
• Improved graphics for Harpy
• Improved consistency of AI damage calculations
• Fixed a bug where the 2nd fastest unit wouldn't show up correctly in the turn order preview

• Improved graphics for Achilles.
• Improved graphics for Odysseus.
• Added new sound effect for fire breathing attacks.
• Updated how hero epithets are applied to allied units. This fixes a bug where the Lion-Hearted wasn't correctly increasing army health. This change also causes hero buffs and debuffs to display both during and outside of battles.
• Fixed an issue where unit swap and tutorial sounds were playing on the Music audio bus rather than the Sound Effects audio bus.
• Added labels to reroll and health boon previews indicating the exact amount of rerolls/health to be granted as rewards.

• Added new Phase 1 Climax option: Striges, cursed bloodthirsty owls.
• Added new Phase 3 Climax option: Medea, the cunning sorceress.
• Improved look and feel of buttons and background panels.
• Fixed an issue where music transitions would wrongly be extended when multiple actions were performed in rapid succession.
• Improved formatting of boon previews in scene selection.
• Updated styling of dialog titles.
• Updated icon for Climax encounters.
• Allowed right-clicking the active unit panel during a crisis to pull up the full unit info display.
• Capped max FPS to 60 to limit CPU/GPU usage.
• Fixed an issue with hotkey bindings where the "Escape" key could not be bound.
• Added fullscreen support – the default gameplay setting is now fullscreen, with a settings toggle to revert to Windowed mode.
• Added a setting to hide unit "Action Status" icons during combat.

• Added new crisis topography: Reverse Ambush.
• Added a more comprehensive preview of boons associated with each crisis.
• Fixed an issue where undo/redo buttons wouldn’t display correctly on Steam Deck.
• Added support for right-clicking units during crisis scene selection to view their full information.
• Added support for right-clicking units on the post-crisis summary screen to see their details.
• Increased Barbarian's health from 5 → 6.
• Renamed Arachnid's "Slowing Shots" ability to "Ensnare".
• Renamed Sorceress's "Fire Shots" ability to "Explosive".
• Reduced Amazon's health from 50 → 45 and damage from 12-18 → 12-16.
• Increased Arachnid's value from 100 → 110.
• Increased Huntress's health from 3 → 4.
• Reduced Hoplite's value from 70 → 65.

• Halved the amount of drachma granted from rerolling with the Circumspect epithet
• Significantly increased the amount of health for the phase 4 enemy hero Talos
• Added new crisis topography: Bottleneck
• Increased the volume of many sound effects
• Increased the size of the tutorial icon, and altered the tutorial hint sound effect to be more noticeable
• Added a note to the pause menu indicating that progress is automatically saved after every action
• Added some key bindings for waiting and defending in a crisis. A dialog was added to the settings menu listing these default key bindings. (Adding support for customizable key bindings is planned in a future update)