Hey, everybody. We've been working hard on new content but we felt it was important to take a beat to finesse what's already here.
This patch contains new features that we hope will address your feedback. We made meaningful changes to give more agency to players, with QoL features, a lot of rebalancing, and bug fixes.
Our key goals:
Give all players more agency.
Turn down difficulty a notch while providing a challenge to those who want it.
Making sure King of Time is a sustainable king on high-end difficulties.
Making sure reported bugs are fixed.
New features/QoL:
You can now re-roll the king you're facing in the next battle. The re-roll button appears when you move your mouse to the bottom right corner of the screen, on top of the enemy preview.
You can now re-roll blessings.
During a battle, there is now a Surrender current battle option in the pause screen. It should increase the pacing of the game when you know you'll lose a fight or just want to intentionally lose a life for strategy reasons.
You can now go straight to your current king's perk screen from the after game menu.
Game start and post-run sequences are now faster.
Camera movement between states is now more dynamic. Losing lives and ending runs should all be more snappy.
When you beat a difficulty in the game, you will get a stamp to all difficulties that come before it.
Regressed plots will now show a "regression counter" on their tooltip so you have more visibility on its actual level.
Walls now display an HP bar during battle.
Improved Level Up animation for clarity and juiceness.
Perk button will now pulsate whenever you have a new perk. This was added after we learned that several difficulty complaints came from people who didn't know perks existed.
Balancing:
All difficulties should now give more XP (from +10% to +20% depending on the difficulty).
Bastion's damage was heavily buffed.
Orbiter's base HP & damage were buffed. Its behavior remains the same, but we're now seeing it as Time's tanker unit.
Warper was rebalanced. Its stats are now higher, and its minions will inherit 50% of all buffs it gains. Though it’s only 50%, the minions’ base stats are now much stronger. The result is a drastic improvement in early-game performance and base-run scaling, especially on harder difficulties.
All Trapper stats were buffed.
All Mangler base stats were buffed
Cauldron now properly works with Bastion.
War Horns decree now properly affects Warper's Minions.
Amplifier now properly grants Paladin's bonus HP buff.
Early game buffer was increased (meaning scaling will take a couple more years before it fully hits you)
Base troop multiplier was decreased on all difficulties (this means roughly 5%).
However, on higher difficulties, you will still face a challenge.
King difficulty was mildly tweaked down (we've personally beaten King difficulty with no perks with all kings before posting this).
Added Minion as an independent Time enemy troop, leading to more enemy variety.
Warper enemy "cost" is higher, which means fewer will appear in the mix of an army.
Defender enemy "cost" is higher, which means fewer will appear in the mix of an army.
Shaman enemy "cost" is higher, which means fewer will appear in the mix of an army.
More Lab Rats should appear in the Enemy Progress mix.
Enemy Progress and Time strengths were re-equated with the other kings. Bear in mind, however, every build has its own weak spots.
Fixes:
Regressed plots now retain their status when Migrated.
Wallmaker's walls no longer disappear (visually) when Regressed.
Bunker decree buffs no longer appear on support buildings besides Amplifier.
You can now wage war & make peace after waging war & making peace with all kings simutaneously.
Fixed decree grouping during late late game (when you have 10+ decrees).
Fixed an issue with Concabulators + Shrines + Portals that caused the game to soft lock.
Fixed a glitch where Paladins would reapply all their HP buffs every time a game is loaded.
Fixed a recurrent visual glitch in fonts on menu headers.
Steamdeck: In shops, the Merchant card is no longer on top of the Re-roll button.
Bastion attacks now play intended SFX.
Let's talk about agency
We've been trying to find that sweet spot between giving you strategic autonomy and the game's chaotic RNG fun. We are aware of the requests to be able to pick your starting kings. This is something we've contemplated several times and that will be implemented in the "custom mode" we're cooking. In this patch, we're adding the battle re-roll feature, which is a major change to the game's RNG that will allow you to finesse your build with A LOT more agency, while retaining the unexpectedness 9 Kings is all about. If you want, you can always quick restart to get a new set of kings. But we want to be clear that, currently, this is not how we envision the game to be played. Our main goal is to make any set of kings be viable, and to let unexpected combos you never thought of surprise you. We'll keep working hard on balancing to make this happen. And we'll watch you play with our hearts open to change our minds and think of new fun ideas to improve the system.
Let's talk about difficulty
We've been in a bit of a pickle on this one. Some people think the game is too easy. Some people the game think is too hard. One of the challenges of having 9 base difficulties is that it's not always easy to convey our vision to players. On this patch, we're working hard to make that vision clearer and make sure the game appeals to everyone. It's worth noting we've noticed some people are frustrated that they're struggling on Prince difficulty. But the main point of the 9-level base difficulty system is that everyone can have fun in whichever way they please. Prince is now a bit harder to address the feedback of the players who wants a bigger challenge, but Duke difficulty is still there for you, providing exactly the same experience and rewards. Also, it's ok to chill and play on Peasant forever if that's what you want! There are many different ways one can enjoy 9 Kings and we really want to keep that spirit going. For clarity, here's how we've envisioned the game difficulties:
Peasant: CHILL
Squire: VERY EASY
Knight: EASY
Lord: MEDIUM-EASY
Baron: MEDIUM
Count: MEDIUM-HARD
Duke: KINDA HARD
Prince: PRETTY HARD
King: HARD
King II and on: VERY HARD
Kng IX I and on: POSSIBLY UNWINNABLE
This patch comes with some game changing improvements. Some of which will give players more agency. Summed with all other tweaks and fixes, it will hopefully improve everyone's experience and make this the funnest 9 Kings build yet. We're still working hard and we'll keep tweaking. Please keep us posted and share your thoughts with us. We're looking forward to sharing all the new content we have lined up.
Steam Reviews: Your Feedback Matters
We've been reading through all your Steam reviews, and we appreciate the feedback we've been receiving. It's really important to us! Please continue sharing your thoughts, so we can know to focus on for each upcoming patch and make 9 Kings the best game it can be. We'll keep balancing the game and improving at every patch.
After downloading the patch, please start a new run, as your previous run won’t have the updates stored and they may cause conflicts. If you experience any issues, please email us at report@sadsocket.com.
Please join us on Discord and Reddit. You can also find the 9 Kings wiki page here for information on the game! Love, Sad Socket team
Love,
Sad Socket team
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