Greetings,

Firstly, we want to say a massive thank you for all of your support this year. We're now sitting at over 2,000 Steam Reviews, have received amazing encouragement and feedback from the community and are so pleased to hear players are enjoying playing SKALD with Controller and on Steam Deck!

We know competiton is fierce and there are so many incredible games that have released in 2024, but If you're one of those players who've loved your time with SKALD, we'd humbly request your support in this years' Steam Awards!

We'd humbly like to request your support in the Outstanding Story-Rich Game Awards as we've loved hearing how much you've enjoyed the game's narrative twists and turns and are grateful for all the kind words!

Regardless of where you do cast a vote, though, we wanted to express our appreciation. Launching SKALD has been a dream come true and it wouldn't have been possible without your support.

That's not all from us, though! We've got something really exciting cooking that we'll be talking a lot more about before the end of the year!


AL

Patch notes

• Disabled being able to change to "window mode" on the Steam Deck
  
• Set Bard HP/level to correct amount (3). For already created characters, the HP amount will adjust next time you level up

Please note that this patch is currently only available for Windows players. The update will arrive on Mac in the coming days. Keep an eye out for your game to update to version Core 1.0.6c.

Strum your lutes RPG-fans!

A new major update is out: The Bard class, Steam Deck and controller support, more art, new portraits, raised level-cap and the list goes on (see full version notes at the end of this post).

We’re participating in the Steam Turn-Based RPG Fest this week and this means we’re going on sale with 25% off both the main game and the Reinforcement Pack!

Skald was already value-packed but this is just next level. Buy the game for yourself or as a gift and be sure to take the opportunity to upgrade to the Deluxe edition if you’ve not already done so!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1069160/SKALD_Against_the_Black_Priory/


I’m pretty happy to finally get the bard in there. It was one of the most frequently requested new features of the game and I agree that it really felt like something was missing without it. The class is a Rogue subtype that comes with its own, custom magic-school. They even play their lute while casting spells.

And did I mention that we added a good handful of new backgrounds as well?

And in case you’re tired of looking at the same old faces, we also added 11 new portraits for you to select! Huzza!

In addition to adding new portraits, we also took the opportunity to add a bunch of missing illustrations to the game. These are all by MechaBarbarian and I probably don’t need to tell you, they are stunning. Can you find them all?

This one was another frequently requested matter: Full controller and Steam Deck support! We even got the green checkmark from Valve telling you we’re Steam Deck supported.

All in all, I’m super happy with how the game plays using controllers. There’s still a handful of minor idiosyncrasies but RPGs are complicated and there are only so many buttons! I’m sure we’ll iron it out by the next update.


We’re aiming for a new major update around Christmas. I can’t say too much about it but it’s sure to make a lot of you happy and to keep you entertained for a long time. More info to follow.

I would also like to ensure all the crowdfunding backers who still have outstanding rewards that you’ll be getting more info on this soon. There’s a lot of moving pieces and I just need to be sure not to screw this one up. More info to follow (I promise).

So, what are all the “moving pieces”? Well I can’t really say anything other than that I’m lining up the next project for High North Studios. Sadly, it’ll be some time before I can tell you what it is, but I’ll say this much: If you liked Skald, you’ll LOVE this.

More info to follow!


FEATURES
– There are now a good number of different CRT-filters to choose from
– The game now natively supports controller play on PC and Steam Deck
– You may now use the mouse-wheel to scroll while mousing over menus and text fields
– The game’s playability on Steam Deck has been vastly improved
– You can now use the move-buttons / left joystick to deploy party members in the pre-combat party placement state (until now you’ve had to use the mouse).
– Pressing the “Swap Character” button (‘Q’ / RIGHT BUMPER) in combat, cycles through available targets
– Character level cap is raised to 25
– Certain enemies in the late game will now scale past level 20 making the end-game slightly more difficult
– Added new Bard class. This includes a new school of spells.
– Added new Backgrounds: Entertainer, Laborer, Monastic, Nomad, Snake-Cultist
– Fixed a bug where Horryn Guards roam around after you retake the city

ART
– Added a dozen new illustrations
– Added 10 new player portraits

MISC
– Fixed typos
– Improved font readability slightly
– Song of soothing now heals less HP
– Circle of Healing now heals more HP
– In general, all healing effects now heal a bit more on average

Greetings all!

As summer rolls into fall, it's time for a sign of life!

First of all, I've been a bit quiet over the summer as I've taken the time to rest and recover post-launch. Skald took a lot out of me and I was pretty burned out by the end. Thankfully, the game has been a success so it's been worth it.

However, I have indeed been fully back to work now for a few weeks and things are moving ahead with a new update!

I'll release more details as we get closer but as a little sneak-peak, I can tell you that I'm doing a huge lift for controller and Steam Deck play!

We're also adding a good handful of bug-fixes and minor features as well as adding in some character options, portraits and a dozen illustrations that we didn't have time to get in there before launch.

This update will drop at the end of September (and a week earlier on the experimental branch so stay posted)!

Beyond that, the road-map for the rest of the year is pretty much laid and there is some really cool stuff coming up that I can't wait to share with you! But one thing at the time...

Cheers!

AL

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1069160/SKALD_Against_the_Black_Priory/

Hello,

Firstly, we want to take a moment to say a massive thank you to everyone for the support!

SKALD is sat on Overwhelmingly Positive based on over 1,600 reviews, activity is flowing on our social media channels and the feedback we've received has been incredible.

To celebrate, we've taken 10% off SKALD until August 19th! This also applies to the Deluxe Edition which has received a deeper discount, and it means you can get the Reinforcement Pack and Official Soundtrack at 10% off as well! So if you haven't visited the Outer Isles yet, there's never been a better time.

We've also put together a brand new video that shows off additional sections of the game. And we'll have more to talk about in the near future!

Have fun out there!

Got Bugs?

Our Discord community is thriving and very helpful. We have FAQs there as well as a helpdesk and channels dedicated to feedback.

We also check in on the Steam discussions regularly so feel free to leave questions there.

Finally, please consider reporting to the Raw Fury customer support desk. All tickets there also get consolidated and sent to me.

Thank you for your continued support!

AL

Our latest update is now live, please see the version notes below for full details.

• Spellburn's damage no longer scales with Spell Aptitude - Attunement gained does.
  
• The Herald should now be quite a bit harder to kill
  
• The cleric spell Holy Light now purges invisibility
  
• If you've started the quest to find Froggert when you defeat the Father, Marsa will show up in Horryn. She's standing on the main square at the western corner.

• Now, by default, right clicking an empty tile does not cause a pop-up to appear with info on the tile's light-level and stealth modifiers. This makes it easier to use the right mouse button to highlight interactable objects. The feature can be turned back on under Settings -> Gameplay -> Show Stealth Info
  
• Screen-shaking effects can now be disabled under Settings -> Display -> Screen Shaking

• Defending condition has wrong timing description ("Lasts until end of combat"). It in fact lasts until the start of next turn.
  
• Hammer of Light, Holy Judgement and Holy Lance did not add Spell Aptitude to the damage output.
  
• The 'S' in "Select a maneuver to perform" flickered between upper and lower case.
  
• The VSYNC setting was not saved between sessions if disabled
  
• For non-numeric difficulty settings (such as "Ignore Encumbrance") the setting was incorrectly shown as "Enabled" in some cases
  
• Trying to adjust VSYNC on Mac should no longer cause the game to freeze
  
• Casting a spell while on a boat on the overland would freeze movement until you selected a new character
  
• During resting and Crafting you could use hotkeys to go to states like the character-sheet or inventory. This has now been disabled as it would cause crafting ingredients to disappear.

Our Discord[discord.com] community is thriving and very helpful. We have FAQs there as well as a helpdesk and channels dedicated to feedback.

We also check in on the Steam discussions regularly so feel free to leave questions there.

Finally, please consider reporting to the Raw Fury customer support desk[rawfury.atlassian.net]. All tickets there also get consolidated and sent to me.

Thank you for your continued support!

What a week! Skald went live to sterling reviews from both audience and press! I've been working around the clock since then trying to onboard new community members, staying on top of social media and preparing todays Update (Version 1.0.4d). See below!

Due to the amazing momentum we've been building since launch, we've agreed to extend the launch discount until June 13th. So if you have this game wishlisted, consider picking it up before the summer starts (to help you keep out of the sun)!

Also, if you’re enjoying the game PLEASE consider leaving a review. We’re above 700 reviews now and the Steam algo is all about it so please keep them coming!

NOTE: Some of you may have noticed that we posted and then removed a post very similar to this on Wednesday. This was because we tried to update the game and were very quickly made aware of a bug that interfered with some people’s saves. As a result we rolled back the update as well as the Steam post.


As I said, I'm working double time to patch bugs and act on feedback. I've also fixed more typos than I thought humanly possible. V. 1.0.4d should and is the first in a series of updates intended to consolidate the game after launch. We'll keep a rapid cadence for now with no more than 2d7 days between updates.
Version notes at the end of this post to avoid spoilers!


We've added an experimental branch for Steam - PC. We'll be uploading new builds here about a week in advance of the Default branch and I sure would love to have your help in testing it! To join it, read this! Note that as of today, this week’s experimental branch is in sync with the Default branch.
We’ll likely be adding a new experimental build early next week.

Do you have bugs?

Discord[discord.gg] is by far my favorite community and it's thriving and very helpful. We have FAQs there as well as a helpdesk and channels dedicated to feedback. If you have very serious bugs that stop you from playing the game, reach out to me personally in a DM in the Discord @SkaldRPG.

We also patrol Steam discussions constantly so feel free to leave questions there.

Finally, please consider reporting to the Raw Fury customer support desk[rawfury.atlassian.net]. All tickets there also get consolidated and sent to me.

• The life-length of combat pop-ups can be adjusted under Settings -> Gameplay -> Combat Pop-Up Length [Needs Testing]
  
• Whether to give XP to downed characters after combat is now a setting in Settings -> Difficulty -> “XP For Downed Characters”. It is now set to “Enabled” for all difficulties except High.
  
• The recipes listed under and ingredients “Use in” entry are now hyperlinked.
  
• When selecting new spells, you can see all the spells in the relevant school. The spells that are currently locked are marked with a gray padlock.
  
• Feats that increases the tier of a spell school now lists all spell available to that school

• Added some error checking to achievement setting
  
• Fixed about 150 typos
  
• Slightly improved mouse interactions with multi-tile prop hitboxes.
  
• Made it so that spell aptitude increases both the min and max value of the damage / healing output.
  
• Further worked on improving performance and limiting FPS-drops
  
• Versioning no longer says pre-launch
  
• Made the breath-holding puzzle under the lighthouse easier by adding 1 turn to the breath holding duration
  
• Increased the Vitality provided by healing effects.
  
• I made the ground tiled darker to improve readability and reduce bleeding.
  
• Removed a few unnecessary uses of the “C-word”

• Pressing the button ‘2’ while naming saves caused the dialogue window to close.
  
• The Steam Cloud file was visible in the save folder
  
• Dropping items on tiles like open doors or on tiles with hidden script triggers did not cause the “bag” icon to show.
  
• Hospitallers could not use heavy armor
  
• Some players had the game start fine and then made a save and quit. Upon starting again the game would hang after the logo reveal – before the menus loaded in.
  
• Ilya in Firgol had “Hound” set as her race.
  
• The issue with the two guards in the cellar under Oleg’s house should not be less pronounced
  
• Some props (like trapdoors) were missing labels (names)
  
• Tried again to fix item weight bug
  
• Circle of mental restoration stunned targets
  
• There was a formatting issue in the credits menu with the Raw Fury names (the tabulation was too big)
  
• Selecting a new character with a potential level up while in the Feat screen did not trigger the level up pop-up
  
• Certain equipable items (jewelry) would be tagged as stackable and equipping them would cause the entire stack to be equipped. These stacks should now be split up upon loading as non-equippable items can be tagged as stackable.
  
• In some very narrow cases, if Iago was somehow knocked out in the Father fight, he would occasionally NOT spawn in the sea-cave after leaving the party.
  
• Fixed a bug where the crafting station in the brewery in Firgol was boxed in.
  
• We fixed a bug where users running Mac Standard builds on Steam were not able to run the game. They would be informed that an executable file was missing.

• Enabling VSYNC on MacOS causes the title to be unresponsive. Please disable VSYNC.

Have a great day!



Anders

Hi there!

We’ve set up an Experimental Branch on Steam for PC. The purpose of this branch is to post builds and updates there for live testing before we make official updates! This is SUPER helpful to us as we are small team and there is no substitute for high volume testing!

We’ll be looking into adding Mac and doing it for GOG as well but one step at the time!

To join the branch:

• Turn off steam cloud saves. Right click on the game and choose properties, then go to General and unclick the steam cloud saves.
  
• Back up their save data. Found at “C:\Users\USER\AppData\LocalLow\High North Studios\SKALD_ Against the Black Priory\SaveFiles” copy the SaveFiles folder and put it on the desktop for example.
  
• Go back to steam, right click on Skald and select Properties. Select tab Betas. Type in the pass: experimental and hit the button Check Code. Now select the branch from the drop down list.
  
• Enter password: “ experimental”
  
• Restart steam to trigger steam client to download the update
  
• Please note that going back and forth between the Default and Experimental branch could POTENTIALLY cause issues with save files though we’re of course doing everything we can to avoid that.

Any feedback from playing on the Experimental branch should be reported to the feedback_experimantal_branch sub-channel on the Discord[discord.com].

See you in the Outer Isles!

AL

Hello!

It's only been a few days since launch but we're so excited about the reception to SKALD: Against the Black Priory from the community, content creators and press.

We know that a lot of the community have questions about the game and we've arranged an AMA with Anders tomorrow, 5 June at 4pm BST/5pm CEST over at https://www.reddit.com/r/CRPG/

We hope to see you there!

Don't fret if you can't make it for the live Q&A, you can add your questions to the post over on Reddit right now and Anders will answer them during the AMA.

Thank you so much for all your support for SKALD, it's been overwhelming in the best way.