As promised in this developer diary, the latest patch for Logic Artists’ historical RPG Expeditions: Rome makes the game’s third act less linear, the legion battle system more transparent, and fixes a great deal of player-reported bugs. But beyond that, the patch also updates and rebalances many of the game’s skills and items in order to make battles less solvable and more exciting.
Here are the patch notes:
Bug Fixes
– Continued stabilization updates to address reported game crashes.
– Fixed an issue where a legion task would not be synced with a re-calculated navigation path, causing it to fail arbitrarily.
– Fixed incorrect team setup of two different tanneries that was preventing the player from capturing them under some circumstances. These tanneries are now correctly part of the Egypt team instead of the Nasamonian team.
– Fixed an issue whereby non-companion praetorians could get dialogue during or immediately after fights where they had been killed, and might possibly even show up with dialogue in a few specific world map events.
– Fixed an issue where the status effect from the Gracing Shot skill was removed after the first encounter.
– Changed the upgraded version of Gracing Shot so it now reduces damage by 25% but shreds Armour.
– Fixed an issue where praetorians who were renamed would revert back to their default names when they were dismissed during the Rome intermissions.
– Fixed an issue where characters with randomized names would get names.
– Fixed an edge case where the end of an encounter in Campus Martius triggered a one-liner dialogue and an autosave at the same time, which would create a broken save.
– Fixed an issue in the Pharaoh fight where the Iron Man autosave after combat would load into an incorrect state. Now the autosave is delayed until after the post-combat dialogue so it will work correctly.
– Fixed an issue where the side quest “A Tighter Ship” would not fail if not completed before the end of the Greece campaign.
– Fixed some gaps in the roofs of the Family Villa.
– Fixed a window decal in the Rome Streets still displaying when the building fades away due to camera collision.
– Fixed an issue with loot boxes being able to be opened from a very long distance away in the Mytilene Harbor level.
– Fixed an issue in the Gladiator School where chairs had the white interactable highlight when they were not interactable.
– Fixed a ragdoll physics issue with Caeso in the Senate encounter during the quest “The Die is Cast”.
– Fixed some characters being too close to each other in the Senate so that they could overlap each other. Spread them apart a bit more.
– Changed some cover in the Beach Village level from “High” cover to “Low” cover which fits the level geometry better.
– Also fixed an issue in the Beach Village where players could fall through a hole.
– Fixed that one of the level transition horses in the Beach Village only showed up at night.
– Fixed not being able to loot a chest in Beach Village.
– Fixed not being able to loot a chest in Gaul Coastal Village.
– Fixed a stack of cargo that could not be looted in the Your Money or Your Life random encounter level.
– Fixed that the names of Mysia and Troas were swapped around in the item description of the contract between Mithridates and Theophilus.
– Fixed a hex in the Quarry in Africa where characters could get stuck.
– Also fixed an issue in the Quarry where a barrel and loot box were overlapping.
– Fixed an issue with Pompeius clipping through his chair in his villa during combat.
– Fixed an issue where deceased hired Praetorians could be assigned to escort Decimus after the encounter.
– Fixed an issue with the Alexandria Assault mission where the encounter could become stuck if Deianeira was not in the party and Raia had not been brought along either.
– Fixed a visual bug when wearing the Egyptian Infantryman’s armor.
– Fixed an issue in Mytilene where characters could get stuck on a specific hex. Also fixed some misbehaving ladders in the same level.
– Fixed an issue in the Ambush where the equipment Thermus drops during his takedown would remain highlighted on the ground.
– Fixed an issue where equipment dropped by defeated enemies would keep the white highlight. Now the items enemies drop will just disappear.
– Fixed an issue with emblems appearing too small on the Clipeus shield.
– Fixed an issue where the Player Character’s “Looting” animation would not play.
– Fixed an issue in the Pyramid where the scroll could be collected before completing the encounter.
– Fixed an issue where all combat music and SFX would start to play again when losing an encounter.
– Fixed an issue on the world maps where points of interest would not get correctly marked as “discovered” which caused some odd behavior such as enemy attack icons not appearing on outposts, as well as other issues.
– Fixed an issue in an encounter on the Forest Overlook level in Gaul where an auto-save failed to be created at the start of the Preparation Phase.
– Fixed an issue in the Pacification Quest “Protect the VIP” on the Forest Caravan level where the auto-save icon would not go away after the save was created.
– Fixed an issue during the quest “The Die is Cast” where not having enough Hired Praetorians could block an encounter from starting.
– Fixed an issue on the Cave Camp level where enemies were not being alerted properly.
– Fixed an issue in the player outpost where players could fall through the ground around the bath(s) area under specific circumstances.
– Fixed several issues throughout the game where speech bubbles would appear doubled above characters during dialog.
– Fixed an issue with the incorrect mouse cursor displaying when hovering over lootable corpses.
– Made projectiles freeze in mid-air when the game is paused instead of continuing to fly through the air.
– Fixed an issue where save files would not get created if save file names were too long. File names now have a capped name length.
– Fixed the numeric keys not having proper key binding icons.
– Set up a missing key display name for the + key, fixing many errors printed when opening the control options.
– Made throwing knives and pila at tier 2 and tier 3 return the same amount of crafting materials when dismantled as it costs to make them.
– Fixed an issue where injuries from the Rome intermissions could carry over into the Africa and Gaul regions.
– Fixed the Tier 3 Ancile Schematic erroneously crafting Ancile on Tier 2.
– Fixed Suppressing Shot not showing its skill range on the hex grid, and tweaked its targeting logic a bit to prevent it from targeting outside the grid.
– Fixed an issue where the camera could sometimes stay focused on the player character after the post-combat dialog in the Gravesite level during the Strange Alliances quest.
– Fixed a minor issue where as long as your legion was nearly at full strength, Turius Orestes would never mention how many injured or missing legionarii you had.
– Fixed an issue where the “skull” on the Scatter Threshold would not properly reset between consecutive legion battles.
– Fixed an issue on the world map where certain highlight icons would automatically be enabled after loading a save game, regardless of the highlight toggle state.
– Fixed an issue on the world map where army icons would not appear until you toggled the highlights off and on again.
– Fixed a visual issue during legion battles where the animation of the specialization leveling up was playing incorrectly.
– Fixed an issue where Legio Afrorum’s Injured and Missing Manpower displays were not updating correctly in the barracks UI.
– Fixed a mistake where the Legio Afrorum “Manpower” display in the Party Screen was using the “Max Manpower” tooltip instead of the “Active Manpower” one.
– Fixed a spot on the Africa world map where players were not able to walk through when they were supposed to be able to.
– Fixed an issue where the End Turn button would briefly flash on screen during non-player turns.
– Fixed the bow weapon skills Suppressing Shots, Half Draw, Assist, and Quick Shot applying double damage on attacks.
– Moved two deco characters in the Gaul Player Outpost at dawn and dusk that were overlapping with an NPC.
– Also fixed a weird specular transition on the ground behind the barracks at night.
– Removed a misplaced rock in the Gaul Player Outpost and fixed a rock from the Greece Outpost that was appearing in all outpost versions.
– Shield stacks no longer regenerate at the start of a character’s turn if Meddur’s Shield is in the non-active weapon set. This fixes an exploit where you could get your shield back by just swapping weapon sets.
– The warning tooltip in follower selection is now closed correctly when unhovering a slot.
– The time multiplier on the world map is now restored correctly after the player finishes treating their own character at the infirmary.
– Fixed “” mark-up tags appearing in some quest update notifications.
– Fixed a bad hex around the trireme’s mast.
– Updated the Select button in the Customization menu to be enabled even if the selected item is not visible because of the scroll view.
– Fixed some errors when unlocking customizations while booting the game.
– You can now properly hover over legions that are garrisoned.
– Fixed Roman Medicus NPCs looking like Velites on Lesbos.
– Updated some cover and fixed some hex grid and navigation issues in the Greece Mountain Camp level. The level was severely lacking cover in some areas and had some semi-broken paths.
– Fixed an issue where faction icons were not getting properly applied in the legion battle UI.
– Removed cloth simulation from the Egyptian Infantry Heavy Helmet since it caused errors and memory corruptions.
– Fixed some cover and some hex connections in the hex grid around the alley tree where you meet Lurco in Rome Streets.
– Also fixed that a lot of the flat roofs on buildings in that level were blocking clicks when they should not.
– Fixed an issue with the speculatores tent tutorial wherein the tutorial highlight was targeting the wrong UI element and would not always show up in the right position and size based on the player’s resolution and aspect ratio.
– Fixed an issue where tier 2 stratagems would apply both the upgraded effect and the base effect. Tier 1 and Tier 3 stratagems were acting correctly.
– Fixed the Sacred Grove worldmap event being able to assign a companion to a generic follower line, resulting in missing voice-over.
– Fixed the Tribute event saying that you spend the night with Caeso if you’ve romanced any companion previously, even if it wasn’t him. Also added a check to make sure Deianeira’s still alive before mentioning her.
– Fixed the Furious status effect not being removed when combat ends, so it won’t be present on Deianeira forever after you finish her personal quest.
– Fixed the worldmap event “Beach” having a dialogue option that may lead to an injury before the injury system is unlocked. That option is now correctly hidden until triage is introduced.
– Updated the Barrage skill to only restore attack actions on ranged attacks, so it matches its tooltip.
– Fixed the icons for abundant and scarce being swapped around in the trade menu so they didn’t match the tutorial pop-up.
– Moved a wagon between some buildings in the Fishing Village that was blocking a hex so you couldn’t get up to a certain roof and kill an archer if you attacked the Romans there.
– Fixed an island of hexes in the Fishing Village that was causing issues during the fight against Cassius and his men.
– Lurco’s spawner in the outpost of Legio Ferrata now overrides the equipment on him so he should no longer show up in toga throughout Gaul.
– Fixed the Greek warehouse enemies having bandit loot tables so they were dropping schematics.
– Fixed a minor issue where Vercingetorix might stick around in the Forest Meeting Site after Enemy of my Enemy instead of despawning.
– Fixed a bug where the Loot Wagon stratagem did not correctly update the loot bar in the legion battle UI. Note it was only the prediction display that was incorrect.
– Fixed a bug where Segmentata armor would sometimes drop in Asia Minor.
– Fix Crocea Mors having 0% chance to apply the Assessed effect. It now has a 50% chance to apply the effect.
– Fixed that the player’s portrait might not change based on a certain choice in Gaul if they were playing from a demo save from before skin color variations of portraits worked properly.
– Removed a sack on a roof at the lion hunters’ compound in Memphis that was blocking pathfinding and could result in the player getting stuck after the fight.
– Fixed an issue in the Dangerous Dunes random encounter that could cause players to get stuck on the map.
Updates
– Lowered the amount of conquered regions needed to complete the Gaul campaign from 13 to 9, and added a new legion colour theme (“Imperial Guard”) as a reward for optionally conquering all 13 regions.
– Loosened up the validation conditions for the main story quests in Gaul to allow the player to do In This Mess and End of the Aedui in a different order than originally intended, should they so wish.
– Quicksaving is now allowed in Iron Man mode, since Iron Man was already changed to allow manual saving. Also removed mention in the Iron Man tooltip of disabling manual saving, as that is not the case.
– Updated the catapult attack sounds to have better variations.
– Updated the Headshot ability to hit characters in both low and high cover.
– Made the customization UI refresh when opening the UI so that if unlocks have changed, the UI doesn’t have to be refreshed to see the new options.
– When the Player Character is hospitalized, the party will no longer consume water and food while time is fast forwarding on the world map.
– Added a Walk by Default option setting.
– Expanded the legion morale and experience tooltips with more explanation of how they work.
– Achievements now retroactively unlock when loading save files from older versions of the game or the demo that have already met the requirements.
– Added new inventory filters so you can sort your items by tier and quality.
– Added Crippled to the list of status effects that the Deathblow ability will apply its extra damage to.
– Updated the Scatter Shots Catapult ability to have around a 60% chance to knock down targets.
– Pushed back the fog of war in the Beach Village so that the interaction highlights on the horses used to exit the level aren’t hidden.
– Added an icon above Sextus’ crafting chest if you have items to pick up in the Outpost.
– Shrunk the interaction radius for Sextus’ crafting box.
– Changed the icon color for Regular quality items to a light blue to help differentiate them from Worn items at a glance.
– Adjusted the tool tip for the Ranging Shot skill to mention that it will reveal camouflaged enemies.
– Updated the tool tip for the Inspire skill if the Orator skill is also unlocked.
– Made some slight improvements to the ragdoll death animations so that when reloading a save file with dead NPCs, the corpses have a much lower chance to clip through the ground.
– Updated the Tackle skill so it cannot be used on knocked-down or defeated enemies.
– Updated the formatting of the date/timestamp on save files.
– Updated the Attacks of Opportunity and Untrained tutorials to have a slight delay when popping up so that the actions that trigger them can be seen before the tutorial pops up instead of during.
– The Overwatch skill will now be canceled if the character is disarmed while Overwatch is active.
– Ambiorix now drops his unique spear when killed, as well as a special sickle that can be used for the End of the Aedui quest.
– Changed when the Injury status effects tutorial will display.
– Added an option to adjust how long the notification pop-ups will be displayed.
– Updated logic so that NPCs sitting down don’t rotate to face the character when spoken to.
– Updated the Aid unarmed skill to have the same auto-selection priority as other Unarmed attack skills so that it should get auto-picked more.
– Slightly adjusted the behavior of the camera during the Awjila pre-siege dialog.
– Unarmed skills are now refreshed when selecting a character class to better reflect the class selected.
– Changed the character combat emote volume to be tied to the Voice Volume slider instead of the Master Volume.
– Changed the Quest Complete and Quest Failed pop-ups to use the UI Volume slider instead of the Master Volume.
– Increased the cooldown of the Fox Raid Travel Event from 14 to 28 days.
– Gallic Strong armor can now drop in the Gaul region.
– Changed the AI’s use of caltrops so it’s much more likely to always be thrown as the last thing in the round, making it less likely for the AI to sabotage itself.
– Added facial animation to the idle animations in the character creation scene.
– The Romans in Aqueduct level will now switch from defensive to balanced strategy after 2 rounds, so characters don’t just stand there and do nothing.
– Disabled “receive hit” emotes when Nasamones characters resist poison, to better communicate that they are immune to poison.
– You can no longer pin world map POI info panels that don’t have any interaction available, so they don’t stick to your screen annoyingly and hide the status panel.
– Increased the bounds of the hex grid in the Beach Village in Greece so it fully encompasses the corner to the left along the beach.
– Added a note to the Bleeding status effect description to explain that another stack is applied every tick.
– Disabled auto-saving when leaving an Iron Man game by quitting or loading.
– Drastically reduced the amount of legion experience that will cause Orestes to stop describing Legio Victrix as a bunch of rookies.
– Made some platforms in Mytilene not use the cutout shader, and made some of the big statues use it.
– Added a rotate node so Lurco rotates to face Ambiorix when meeting him in the warcave.
– Made the walls of the woodsman’s cabin as well as a few other assets in that level use the cutout shader, and added some black planes for the bottom part of the cabin to make it look right when faded.
– Set all Gaul interior furniture assets’ materials to not use cutout shading.
– Minor improvements to some cutout shading in the Pontus Warcamp, and added some extra bushes.
– Improved cutout shading for both temples in Memphis.
– Fixed the position for a sitting character in Memphis.
– Refined the contents of some flower boxes in Memphis and improved their cutout shading
– Hid some visible terrain at the southernmost trim next to the moat around the temple of Serapis and re-added some missing papyrus on the banks on the left.
– Added a camera plane next to gazebos on the far left in the Temple of Apollon, and fixed a tiny wall gap about 1 cm wide.
– Tweaked the world map player character to rotate a bit more slowly (not snapping so much to directions).
– Doubled the time before activating follow-mouse mode in the world map and in exploration, in case players are slow at double-clicking in the world map which would cause the follow-mouse mode to accidentally prevent the double-clicks.
– Added a check so release builds cannot open save-games that were made with newer release builds, since that very likely crashes the game (forwards compatibility is impossible, since we cannot see the future).
– The AI can no longer place banners on incapacitated characters, which would prevent the player from stabilising or reviving them.
– Removed a player choice and a Raia line that referenced a cut plot thread.
– Changed the pickaxes in the Temple of Apollon and the Pyramid to be Regular quality instead of Worn so they won’t get auto-dismantled if that option is enabled.
– Changed the poison cloud particle effect to spawn in world space so it doesn’t appear to stick to the character like cotton candy.
– Added key binding options for “See Skills” and “Compare” in the inventory.
– Improved the legion mission info panel: Separated “Requirements” from “Costs”, such that you can tell what you lose and what you just need to have. Also put all icons in line.
– Changed the Category of the Hunting Ground POI from “Travel Resource” to “Repeatable Mission”.
– Updated all pristine armour visuals to include either a Roman, Greek, or Gallic cape (if it fits visually). Non-pristine versions no longer have capes.
– Updated crafting and replenish costs to better reflect the importance of items and tacticals power.
Balance Changes
– Reaper no longer restores movement points.
– Clear Path now restores 2 movement points instead of 3, but it now also restores movement points to self.
– Burned now reduces Health Max by 10% instead of 20%.
– The Pharaoh’s Staff will now apply Venomous only to the wielder and two random allies.
– Each hit with Zairichi’s Labrys will now only mirror 20% of the damage dealt to an adjacent enemy character.
– Only the first killing shot with an Interrupt attack using Eurytus’ Bow will not end the stance, which will allow for just one more Interrupt attack per round.
– Traitor’s Mail is now a Light Armour to be less defensive in stats and be usable by all classes. (Please note this will only function for new instances of Traitor’s Mail.)
– Removed the possibility of dropping tier 2 items early in the game.
– Adjusted drop rates for Legendary and Good legion battle loot caches.
– Massively decreased the drop chances of pristine items over-all.
– Fixed all multi-attack skills to apply their half-damage debuffs after damage calculations, so they don’t end up dealing way too much damage. For example One-Two combined with Reckless (+100% damage) ended up dealing a total of 300% weapon damage, while it should only have dealt 200%.
– On a similar note, fixed the Spin Attack damage calculations applying its 20% damage debuff too early. Now the debuff is applied after all damage calculations, making 5 spin attacks add up to 100% of the full attack damage and not insane damage if the spin attack was combined with e.g. Reckless.
– Updated the Brace skill based on feedback from the demo. It now restores Armour instead of Shield Strength and it now also applies Deflecting.
– The AI can no longer use throwing knives if enemies are next to them. Also improved the camera panning a bit when snapping to the knife projectiles.
– Bandit archers no longer apply Harried with their basic attacks.
– Reduced how often enemy archers use Fire Arrow and Poison Arrow.
– The damage of tools has been reduced overall.
– Pristine and unique items’ base stats have been increased across the board.
– Enemy Heavies, Supports, and Militias now have 2 more movement points on Hard difficulty, similar to the movement changes that occur on Insane difficulty.
– Reduced all starting Health to 10 and set it to be capped at the same level for all classes BUT all armours and helmets now grant an amount of Health as a base stat to balance that out. (Please note character Health changes will be applied upon level-up.)
– Updated the Newsreader in The Die is Cast siege to be a rich brute civilian so he has more Health, and set him as a leader so he stands out a bit more. Also added a water pickup close to the start area at the plaza. Finally, removed quite a few Legio Ferrata soldiers around the barricade setup in the alleys.
– Dismantle can now be deflected and be a glancing blow again.
– Tackle now has only 1 charge since it rendered the Knockdown skill all but useless.
– Reduced the injury severity of injuries incurred in several world map events.
– Increased the cooldown on several world map events to 4 weeks.
– Increased the cooldown on the Revenge of the Boars world map event from 14 days to 21 days.
Twitch Functionality
– Added a failure message for refresh authentication in the Twitch menu. Also fixed a bug with refresh authentication when storing the refresh token.
– Added option to disable Twitch notification sounds.
– When viewers buy denarii, a notification will now appear in-game.
– Prettified the Twitch options menu a little.
– Added a new option for disabling combat actions independently of the rest of the extension being active.
– Fixed issue with all dialogue choices appearing as blank if you picked a choice when voting using the numpad and then restarted the poll. Disabled the input for selecting choices while the vote is visible.
– Fixed an issue where a lot of strings showed up as “???” in the extension.
– Fixing an issue with the Twitch box button not increasing size with text.
– Fixed an issue where the portraits weren’t showing up correctly in the Twitch extension.
– Added option for disabling the retarget action.
