Shades of Darkness

[mr.hackcrag]

The Dungeon town looks like it should be Necropolis town. When I see all these crazy colors in every town, I yearn for H2 town designs so much.

[Avonu]

Shades of Darkness Dev Diary

Nice to hear and see something about Dark Elves tactics but why Black Dragon looks like Sparkling Vampire from Twilight saga?

[Pol]

The video is super. However, thank to that purple, Erwan look little oddly ill.

Let see how successful will be Bug Squad Dep.

[Avonu]

70 minutes of 50 Shades of Purple gameplay (Russian)

Nothing new but you can see game performance (or rather lack of it ).

Few screenshots from video.

[Konfuzius]

Well, actually I liked what I see and Dungeon gameplay surely looks interesting.

[Avonu]

Another video, this time only 5 minutes long and shows few new things, as "new" neutral "classic champion" for example.

[Kalah]

Just a few days left ... Everybody clear their schedule for next weekend?

[hellegennes]

Just a few days left ... Everybody clear their schedule for next weekend?

Well, it so happens that it's Easter for the Orthodox church, so I'm guessing most of Eastern Europe will be waiting a few days more.

[Ell1e]

It's quiet here, I guess either most of you haven't gotten your expansion packs yet or this only applies to german versions.

In that case, yes, you read that right. Amazon pre-orders were sent out today in Germany. This resulted in people installing their games, getting confused about the "You totally have to uninstall your base game to install the expansion" message popping up and figuring, hey, the game probably knows what it's doing. So, erm, I can currently play the expansion, no problem. It's pretty nice, except for the five minute monologue at the beginning of Raelag's campaign. The problem is, I and everybody else who got their games early can't play any of the base game campaigns, since the game no longer recognizes them as unlocked.

It is awesome. I can definitely say that Shades of Darkness exceeded my expectations by far. I expected bugs, I expected crashes. I did not expect the base game to explode.

So, what are the chances of this getting fixed for the actual launch day? I have some hope, the new achievements don't work and there's no new altar of wishes content yet, so maybe, just maybe, all we need is some additional data...

[Avonu]

I have it since Monday.
All things related to Conflux (achievments, dynasty weapons, Altar of Wishes, unlock for maps from vanillia) are not working yet.

You need to uninstall H6 vanillia in order to install 50 Shades of Purple... maybe with patch 2.1 you won't need to do that... maybe.

There are bugs, like crashes in certain fights, wrong language sound files play played (one of character speak in German instead of Polish), Dungeon town screen show some wrong buildings when you upgrade basic version, mouse cursor is still blinking, etc.

50 Shades of Purple has:
- 2 campaigns, 4 missions each;
- 8 new multiplayer maps
(read: they are slighty changed maps from campaigns and Nelsham's Scar map was in Inferno campaign already, so this one is not new at all);
- 1 new neutral unit (Shadow Panther);
- 2 new bosses;
- 2 new pets
- 1 alternative Necropolis unit
(I didn't check yet but Spectral Dragon seems to be new champion - maybe only in Vein's campaign)
- 2 new sets (Assassin's and Windsword's)
- New Dynasty Weapon - Blade of Balance - I guess Vein's campaign has another one;
- New adventure map buildings:

Abyssal Seer
At the top of the ominous-looking tower, an old Dark Elf scholar offers to share his maps of the underground with you for 5000 Gold.

Shelter
When staying inside the Shelter, a hero can't be attacked.

Dark Elf Outpost
A group of Dark Elf spies have set up camp here to keep a close watch over the land. Many secrets await in the bowels of the tower. Defeat the guardians to get Resources and Artefacts.

Training Centre
Allows you to pay for upgrades to the visiting Hero's creatures. (Cost for Core creatures 75%, Elite creatures 150%, Champion creatures 225%)

Memory Mentor
Pay 5000 Gold to reset the visiting hero's ability trees.

Dragon Utopia
For several centuries, powerful dragons have lived in these ancient ruins. Only the foolish would dare venture inside.
(on default map it had: 6 shadow dragons, 4 black dragons, 7 spectral dragons)

And Dungeon Unique buildings on Adv. Map (just like Altar of Revelations for Haven):

Soulvenom Crucible
All enemy creatures suffer the effect of "Poisoned" at the start of the next combat.
Deals 50 Darkness damage every turn and reduces the enemy's Initiative by 5. The effect lasts 3 turns. Can be visited once per week.

Altar of Magic Disruption
Visiting Hero's creatures benefit from the "Immunity to Magic" effect during the first 3 turns of the next combat. Can be visited once per week.

Dark Elf campaign seems to be done quite well (first two maps are small, so no more boring gameplay like in vanillia) but story sometimes lack explanations - espacially information what's going on, what happened before (ex. why Raelag is drunk at the beginning? ), who is this or that character, etc.
Well, some details are spoken in Raelag's biography but how many players will look there?
I didn't checked Vein's campaign yet, so no clue how this one is going (but I have a feeling it will be much better then Raelag's).

[Kalah]

Thanks a lot, Avonu - we will soon have our H6 patches page updated as well.

Also, guys, thanks to Avonu we now have Shades of Darkness avatars available on this forum.

[Ell1e]

(ex. why Raelag is drunk at the beginning? )

I'm more confused how he manages to sober up between two textboxes.

Is the base game still playable for you?

[Avonu]

Maps from H6 and from DLCs are greyed and I have access only for DLCs campaigns. I didn't check it but I heard that, if you finish Prologue again, rest of campaigns will be unlocked.

But as I said - none feature related to Conflux is working with version 2.0, including H6 vanillia. We will see when patch 2.1 arrives... but downloading 2GB (including 50SoP game files which I already have on disc) is just wrong.

[Kalah]

The patch will be huge, yes - 2 Gigs, or thereabouts. I think they also had to drop the idea of making a cumulative patch within the time frame allowed, but since it's so long since the last patch was released, most people probably have it anyway.

Certainly, we as a Community must help each other here, by seeding the torrent I will create once the huge .exe file is released.

[Kalah]

Like I said ...

viewtopic.php?t=14059

[Magelord]

After Raelag enters the stairs in the very first scenario does anyone else have the problem where the screen is too dark to see properly as shown below?

[/img]

[frozd]

Try playing around with the graphic settings a bit or update your graphics driver. Oh well... I still have the white water bug even on the 2.1 patch and updated drivers. Thankfully it's not too dark it's too bright hahaha. Anyway hope you solve your issue, shame on Ubisoft, they're retarded sometimes.

[Magelord]

Try playing around with the graphic settings a bit or update your graphics driver. Oh well... I still have the white water bug even on the 2.1 patch and updated drivers. Thankfully it's not too dark it's too bright hahaha. Anyway hope you solve your issue, shame on Ubisoft, they're retarded sometimes.

Thanks for the reply partner. Yeah I went and updated both the Direct X and Graphics drivers then rebooted a few times. Pretty sure it is a patch issue as it started out fine and I played for a good 30 minutes before it went all dark on me.

[mordredrs]

I have 111 min of playtime and there's no issue.