Hello! We are the Crucible Mod. What are we and what can we offer? After being one of the parties that worked on the private rebalance that was gifted to Ultimate Apocalypse (DoW Soulstorm) and became UA 1.89, we branched away and decided to carry on development under a new name. Why? To be able to do things under our own reputation and forge new friendships with other people in the DoW mod community. What can we offer? We are working closely with one of the most prolific model creators in the history of DoW. We also have dedicated people for balance, implementing new content, overhauling AI and overhauling the team-colour. Very soon we will also get back to hosting tournaments and regular streams with community players. There are no false promises with us. We don’t spend years promising a mythical new version and teasing stuff that we have no idea how to actually make. We have the people and the skills to actually deliver the Ultimate Experience for large scale DoW battles.

Report RSS Crucible v2.02 released!

Crucible v2.02 is out so let's have a quick chat about what is new. One word for the main news...CAMPAIGN!!!

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General banner 2

So the big news is undoubtable Oleg's main project over the last few months, fully reworking the Soulstorm Campaign. Full rework in terms of everything. Units are mostly all now swapped over to their Crucible balanced counterparts, the difficulty system is fully recoded (in game it's called easy, medium and hard but it really should be marked as normal, nasty and fucking brutal), and the strongholds have had huge amounts of work put into them. It needs to be said that this should be considered a first beta release but it is already pretty damn polished. It will only get better though in time.

Campaign

Onto races, there has been a plenty of things done but the most notable is SoB and IDH. For the rest, I'll leave people to take a gander at the changelog;

Docs.google.com

So starting with the SoB then. We have a new model for the Shrine of the Living Saint, but more importantly, SoB have gotten themselves a new economic building. SoB have had a terrible late game economy for forever but that kinda worked when SoB's late game infantry was damn near unkillable. Now that they have much better balance and have a larger selection of late game units available, they are now running at a big req deficit and mid game they are floating too much faith in an average game. We are introducing the Shrine of Prayer to bring things into better balance. They have a req income and scaling power cost, similar to the IG's Industry Command, but will also have a faith cost of 500 per instance built. Also...the models are damn fabulous. Thanks Kekoulis!

SoB - Shrine of Prayer

Onto the IDH. Me and Oleg had a chat and decided that IDH, for newer players in particularly, were a bit confusing and messy with their units and researches. Researches will be streamlined (or maybe reworked) for the next patch, but I have had a full rework of where units are purchased. There are no units with multiple production buildings and things have been shuffled around to be more logical. We have also totally scrapped the schematic system. If you are the right tier, you can immediately build any unit.

The Inquisition Watch;

Watch

The Astra Telepathica;

Astra Telepathica

And the Grey Knights Teleporter;

GK Teleporter

So a few things to note. Firstly, the Stormtroopers are no longer available from the Watch and are now built solely from the Astra Telepathica. We wanted to have a proper tier 1 ranged infantry unit unit to bridge the gap between tier 0 infantry and the tier 2 Tempestus Scions. We believe that the Acolytes, Scholars and Grenadiers are enough to tide an IDH player over to tier 1, where buffed Stormtroopers can then take over if needed. They have buffed health and damage, as well as being more expensive. The Acolytes also will gain access to medkits and grenades to help this rework.

Secondly, you will see that Grey Knight Strike Teams have been removed from the Astra Telepathica. Does this mean that you now have to wait for tier 2 to get them? No. The Grey Knight Teleporter can now be built in tier 1, although the only unit that will be available is the Strike Teams. Whilst this does mean that IDH players can immediately start building Interceptors, Purgators and Purifiers the moment they finish researching tier 2, we have counter balanced by significantly increasing the build time of the tier 2 research itself.

I'm really excited to see how this all changes the IDH experience.

A few other changes then; we have made further additions and reworks to Win Conditions. Firstly the restrict conditions. Due to popular demand, we have reworked Restrict: Relic Units, Titans and Game Enders and ensured that all three have AI only versions available. We have fully reworked the effects for all. Relic units will solely effect relic units (excluding titans) and titans will cover the titans themselves. As there are no overlaps, this will allow them to be combined in a proper modular system. The Game Enders now disables just the nukes themselves but will still allow the late game buildings themselves to be built. A much more elegant system than before.

Restrict win conditions


We have also added the Victory Points win condition. This will give each player or team a counter that counts up whilst they are in ownership of a crit location. When you lose the point, the points will decrease at approx half speed. Holding multiple crit locations will double/triple etc the point increase speed. We're super excited to see how people enjoy using this. We think it's a far fairer and more fun system than the counter just resetting to zero whenever a crit is lost.

Victory Points WC


Anyway, I have rambled on for far too long. Enjoy and come say hi on our Discord!

Discord button   600px 2

Post comment Comments
mateuszmielech
mateuszmielech

Great mod sofar. I have just start to play campaign. Its great too see heroes able to upgrade them. I got elite heretic squad. Its now stronger then UA and able to fight not just only cap. I have tryed Eldar campaing as well. At UA they were zombies doing allmost nothing. Here ... Well. U made them a bit overpowered. I hope that elite champions from map are not just a single unit not capable to do anything in therms of battle. I will be back after work and see how it works. Guys i hope that you will not abbandon campaign when you will adn new patch. Youre doing just great. Cant wait to see new patches from you. :)

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mateuszmielech
mateuszmielech

Champions who can be apart of sqyad. Great job. That will be a great fun. :)

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Guest
Guest

How are you supposed to beat this campaign? Playing CSM at the moment. I've taken most of the Deldar territory, but I've hit a point where I cannot possibly win the match due to the enemy base being roughly 10 steps from my starting area, and no matter how many times I destroy stuff, its full strength again 1 turn later.

The campaign itself is doomed to failure, as they attack the same territory every single turn, somehow with a stronger force despite being annihilated (literally the victory condition) every. single. round. Still, they come back with another +1 to their strength, despite having territories that would generate no resources.

The internal balance seems fine, but this campaign needs work. I can't even get to a point where I can go attack others, because the AI somehow gain strength when losing, meaning I will eventually be forced to lose when they show up with multiple squads of elite infantry, jetbikes, and herores already built alongside a base that is halfway up the map already (Tristam Plains) compared to the 2 CSM squads (4 models total) and 1 defiler that I am allowed.

What kind of balance is this?

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Eskalia23 Author
Eskalia23

What difficulty are you playing on? The difficulty is a lot harder than it used to be and easy, for example, is no longer a pushover. That said, the campaign is considered a beta so a lot will be changing/getting improved etc. IF you want to be more involved with providing campaign feedback, come to our discord server.

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Guest
Guest

Is there an option to change campaign settings?

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Guest
Guest

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Uriel_Ventris5300
Uriel_Ventris5300

Firstly...fantastic efforts here. I've had this series for years, my son used to watch me play DoW when he was a lad and has now directed me to all this awesome work. Really love it!!
However...when it comes to campaign...I'm not my son, my head and fingers don't move fast enough to keep up with the inevitable onslaught that happens on 'Easy'. I understand you've beefed up the difficulty but could you not have just left 'Easy' as, well, 'Easy'? People who want the added challenge can do so on other difficulties but there are those of us who enjoy playing at snails pace (it's the only pace I know), enjoy taking our tactical time deciding what to build next etc. I absolutely loved the campaign and thought it would be brilliant with all the units etc now available but it's unplayable and therefore unjoyable.

Maybe I'm in a very small minority but that minority exists. I watch the XPGamers current IG campaign and there are enough comments on there about how difficult it is to play with these beefed up difficulties.

Is there any chance 'Easy' can just go back to 'Easy' and leave the other two difficulties as is for those who enjoy that crazy gameplay?

That aside, keep up the fantastic work and thank you :)

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iranoveroprah
iranoveroprah

Late reply, but I just downloaded the mod too, and I agree. I just want to relax on easy and take things slow when I play. It's pretty much impossible to do that unless you want to get rolled now. I tried this mod because I heard it was better than UA, but this is a dealbreaker for me. I guess I'll be going back to UA.

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