Ragnarok Mode
To introduce a challenge for the already established house/players while still allowing for reasonably sane progression for newer players, the current hard mode will be renamed “Ragnarok Mode”, and a third mode will take its place in allowing progression between level 32-52 with barebones equipment, and 52 with reasonably high end craftable equipment. This new middle difficulty will hopefully give the middle ranked houses and players a more even progression.
You might have noticed the sheer difficulty of hard mode at the moment, this occurred so that we could begin the slow transformation of NI into a three stage difficulty. No doubt this mode will continue to be refined through the constant efforts of the dev team and new challenges will be developed. We do hope now that some level of understanding will occur as to why we made the present hard mode so difficult.
The theme of the third mode will be that it is King Ragnar's army, is out to seek vengeance for the Nord Prince's death. The difficulty will range, approximately, from the Nord Commander wave in wave one to slightly above the old Thor wave for King Ragnar. We hope players will embrace this new challenge and enjoy the work we are doing.
As for Ragnarok Mode, we've already unveiled some of the changes that were originally planned for it (Multi-projectile weapons, Explosive Mjolnir, increase in overall difficulty, adding crushthrough, etc), but the general change is that the enemies encountered are no longer ordinary “Nords”, and are as strong as one would expect immortal gods to be, (with some aspects seeming like blatant cheating) with the intention being that only the most organized, well equipped, and lucky players will be able to defeat them.
Additional servers have been added in order to make Ragnarok mode as available as possible. As we go forward, we will be continuing this effort.
Hero Classes
These classes take all of the class points that you accumulate between levels 39 to 52. As a result, you forgo being a hybrid in exchange for a very powerful specialisation. The stats of these classes have been designed so that you get the most if not all of the hybrid benefits plus extra. These characters are very powerful and each of these classes have been assigned special weapons, items and armours. Many new items have been added to these classes and additional items are also forthcoming.
Commando: Zwei-hander - Commando specialises in two-handed weapons. Royal Guard - Commando specialises in shielding. Duelist - Commando specialises in one-handed weapons.
Sharpshooter: Chosen Marksman - Sharpshooter specialises in crossbows. Aventurier- Sharpshooter specialises in one-handed weapons. Pavise Champion - Sharpshooter specialises in shielding.
Skirmisher: Halberdier - Skirmisher can wear heavier armours and lasts longer in a fight. Master Peltast - Skirmisher specialises in throwing weapons. Marauder - Skirmisher gets a bonus to power strike and polearms.
Sniper: Warden - Sniper gets a bonus to archery proficiency. Ranger - Sniper gets a bonus to iron flesh and better armour. Sentinel - Sniper gets a proficiency bonus to one-handed weapons and power strike.
The Auto-Updater
We would like to introduce the NI Updater - the purpose of which is to compare the latest online version of NI with the local files and then download any new files if required. At present, the auto-updater will only work for windows 32/64 operating systems (sorry Apple users!). The auto-updater will be updated ( ;D ) in the future so please bear with us while we work on it.
Updates to the NI Updater will be delivered separately to the main mod and will bring extra features such as the ability to launch the game regardless of install location and method (eg Steam) as well as being platform independent.
To use the auto-updater please place it in your modules folder of Warband and run it from there. Your antivirus may block the app so you may have to allow it.
General Changes Only people who are alive, or have died at least once in the server contribute to bot count, instead of just counting all players (Work in progress!) (Working!) Map updates & 7 new maps + Release of Hyper's Hell Donator enemies added New Nord faces!! Changes to Nord AI Banners updated Everything in place for our first House Tournament More bug fixes and general gameplay changes than we could list… Moar Nord Rangers