Bad North (Switch) patch notes

2.00 (25 September 2019)

Upgrades / Meta Progression

• Added 4 new Items – Mines, Jabena, Philosopher's Stone & Holy Grail.
• Added Hero Traits – unique buffs for commanders.
• Unlock Items and Traits to equip your Starting Commanders.
• View details of all upgrades seen in the game in the new Codex view.
• Rebalanced all abilities that launch units (bomb, Warhammer etc.).
• Nerfed the Warhammer, tweaked it's targeting and added a 3rd upgrade level.
• Plunge attack is buffed and scales with Infantry level (veteran / elite).
• When losing an Item Island you can see which Item you would have won.

Campaign

• See enemy types you will face before playing a level.
• Number of enemy types correlates to total enemy numbers.
• Movement of the Viking Frontier is more controlled & moves faster in harder difficulties.
• Jabena Item allows one Commander to deploy on two Islands per Campaign Turn.
• Optionally allow restarting of levels, as an option when starting a campaign.
• Added checkpoint islands that provide a fixed point you can return to, rather than restarting your campaign.
• Very Hard difficulty is unlocked after completing Hard.
• Ability to delete old campaign saves.

Economy

• Gold is now deposited in a shared Gold Bank, rather than distributed to commanders.
• Total Gold in a campaign is more controlled, less RNG.
• Some rare Islands will have a high gold count, but corresponding threat level.
• Philosopher's Stone Item adds additional Gold into the economy.

General Combat

• Replaced the old red-shielded enemies with a new enemy type.
• Most enemies (including those with shields) can be knocked off of ships.
• Your archers are slightly more likely to target non-shielded troops.
• All archers (except brutes) are more likely to target stunned troops.
• Enemy archers are more likely to target shielded troops.
• Axe-throwers are more likely to target shielded troops with axes.
• Infantry are more responsive when ordered to retreat from enemies.
• Pikes are more able to form up near stunned enemies.
• Archers are better at targeting when close to terrain.
• Units are less likely to get stuck on sharp corners of terrain.
• Longships landing now do significant stun damage, instead of knockback.

Commanders

• Choose the look and loadout (item + trait) of your starting Commanders.
• See stats for kills and losses in the Upgrade screen.
• See home and death islands in the Upgrade screen.
• View dead Commanders in the Upgrade screen.
• Holy Grail Item allows you to resurrect one Dead Commander.
• Banner Icons altered to give visual representation of Commander Traits.
• Additional facial features, including new hair styles and gray streaks.

Controls

• Updated Camera controls for mouse / touch to improve responsiveness.
• Added alternate mouse behaviours for single button mice and touchscreens.
• Added alternate gamepad mapping.

Visuals

• New UI for all Island Rewards and Won Game.
• Updated unit outlines to be much crisper, especially with MSAA.
• Less visual clipping between shadows, tiles, longships and land.
• Tweaked coloration of the islands.
• Updated graphical effects for fire and smoke.
• Updated effects for bomb explosions.

Source: official website

1.06b (17 June 2019)

1.06b is just 1.06 but with a slight change to some metadata on the backend. No changes that are noticeable for players.

Source: Twitter post

1.06 (18 February 2019)

Bug Fixes

• Fix for reduced total campaign gold (introduced by 1.05).
• Fix for viking brute archers having too much stun damage (introduced in 1.05).
• Fix for Game Over being triggered if the final level is the only level left.
• Fix for blurry fatigue icon in loadout screen.
• Fix for gamepad movement pointer disappearing if rapidly reselecting units.
• Fix for certain enemies occasionally teleporting off of their ships when disembarking.

Polish

• Antialiasing is now improved on Switch.

Source: official website

1.05 (3 January 2019)

Polish

• Campaign Map updated with new visuals / animations / workflows.
• Various aesthetic improvements to the islands.
• Added several new island pieces to the island generator.
• Pathways between levels on islands are more visible.
• New fire effects.
• Various additional UI / flow tweaks.
• Improved Rich Presence for the platforms that support it.
• Miscellaneous UI polish.
• On Switch, there is a lovely sound when you return to the game from home screen.
• Squads will now exit the house and pretend they were helping, if they were replenishing when the battle was won.
• Corpses get highlighted like grass.
• Flee will popup an icon once the ship is considered fully fled (50% to the fog).
• Sparklier snow.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a very rare crash related to navigation.
• Corrected the %age completion on Game Over, so it's more accurate and doesn't show 100% if you lose the final level.
• Popups can be closed with the back button.
• Fixed issue where hover effects on soldiers stick when pausing / winning the level.
• Fixed issue where full squads could be sent to replenish.
• Possible fix for occasional soft-lock in the campaign map.
• Fixed a bug where clicking commander portraits in the map screen would result in incorrect audio.
• Fixed one issue that could cause an infinite loading screen on new Campaign.
• Possible fix for game sometimes hanging at start.
• Fix for archers sometimes shooting through cave walls.
• Fixed issues where units would occasionally stick on each other (introduced in 1.04).
• Fix for potential progression blocker if some soldiers made it into a house but the commander gets stunlocked on their way there.
• Fix for squads occasionally forgetting to follow their commander back out of a house.
• Improved handling of corrupted campaign save files.
• Fix for commander flags getting stuck on houses.
• Cycling through squads will show godrays, indicating the selected squad.
• Fleeing archers will be able to shoot from the ship before their commander arrives.
• Fix for the squad destination marker sometimes becoming invisible.

Localisation

• Spanish: next turn shows the number of commanders available as per other languages.
• German: Added missing translation for "Ready for action" in the upgrade screen.
• Various languages: Fixed text clipping on "Fled" or "Dead" on the end of level screen.

Balance

• Plunge can now drop from a height of 2 at upgrade level 1 and 2.
• Slight buff to archers.
• Replenish can begin before all units make it to the house, if some are delayed.
  • Fixes progression blocker if commander is stunlocked.
• Early game enemy types appear a little sooner.

Features

• Easy Difficulty mode.
• Gamepad layout cheatsheets.
• Loadout / Deployment order is retained from turn to turn.
• Game will detect if you trap yourself on the campaign map and trigger a game over.

Performance

• Improved Island Generation so failures are less likely
  • Should reduce the chance of having islands stuck under the fog.
• Improved some framerate spikes due to garbage collection.

Source: official website

1.04 (2 November 2018)

Optimizations

• Various improvements to overall framerate.
• Reduction in framerate spikes.
• Improved / reduced loading times, especially when returning to a save game late in the campaign.

Bugs

• Fixed issue where the squad select UI would scroll incorrectly with gamepad.
• Fixed issue where duplicate squad order markers could appear.
• Fixed houses still burning sometimes when returning to an island.
• Fixed issue where portraits would sometimes become corrupted (show as plain white).
• The "Move" command no longer gets deselected when you toggle rapidly between squads.
• Commanders can no longer get stun-locked when attempting to flee if some of their squad are already on the ship.

Improvements / Tweaks

• Updated app icons.
• "Game Saving" icon / spinner shows for longer.
• Highlight effects on flee / replenish.
• Slight buff to basic pikes.
• Fleeing an island resolves halfway to the fog (reduced waiting time).

Switch

• Pinch zoom no longer snaps to max zoom erroneously.
• Pinch zoom is smoother.

Source: official website

1.03 (26 September 2018)

Balance

Note: Some of these balance changes (marked with a *) will only take effect after starting a new campaign.

• Archery skill Volley is more predicatable, powerful and can do stun damage.
• Pike skill charge has been slightly nerfed and made more consistent.
• Max enemy types per level is increased to 4*.
• Final level can contain all enemy types and has modified generation rules*.
• Reduced randomization on island difficulty*.
• Slightly reduced end-game difficulty on Normal*.
• Modified how numerous some late-game enemy types are, in particular axe-throwing and large bow-wielding enemies.
• Recruitable Commanders come with progressively more gold throughout the campaign*.
• Stun system has been tweaked and large enemies are no longer immune to stun damage (though still very resistant to it).

Bugs

• Fixed issue where foliage highlights could become extremely bright.
• Fixed issue where volleying with no archers would cause the squad to become unresponsive.
• Fixed issue where the local commander could be dismissed.
• Squads are less likely to get stuck when moving past / through each other, especially when replenishing.
• Fixed an issue where broken units could cause all their neighbours to become broken.
• Fixed dotted line curves in squad selection and upgrades screen for 4K systems.
• Modified trigger conditions for "Nightwatch" trophy so it will trigger if you win an island that partially took place during the night (previously it would only trigger if you ended the level at nighttime.
• Fixed an issue with the "Folk Hero" trophy that could prevent it from triggering.
• Fixed issue where docking / undocking Nintendo Switch could cause commanders display to be misaligned in the map view.

User Interface

• Updated squad selection UI to make it less likely to dismiss your first commander by accident.
• Added commander gold to the squad selection screen.
• Game Over screen shows number of Vikings Killed.
• Warhorn and Replenish will default to the closest non-burning house when playing with Gamepad.

Source: official website

1.02 (14 September 2018)

Bugs

• Fixed issue where Pikemen occasionally change direction for no obvious reason.
• Improved units ability to move past their friends.
• Pikemen can no longer be interrupted mid charge.
• Fixed issue where unit dying or getting stuck on the way to ship might prevent the squad from fleeing.
• Fixed an issue where units might not register as dead (would freeze and be ignored by other units), preventing the level from ending.
• Fixed issue where corrupted Terrain follows players through multiple islands.
  • This may have looked like units could walk through walls / some areas were non-navigable.
• Replenish is more reliable, with units getting killed on their way to the house.
• Fixed issue where archers sometimes get stuck firing at nothing.

User Interface

• Campaign seed shows up in pause / campaign options.
  • Use this when reporting any bugs / issues to us, and they will be easier to reproduce!
• Gamepad: Upgrades Menu opens with button press (removed navigate down from map, because it was confusing for new players).

Source: official website

1.01 (3 September 2018)

Bugs

• Fixed an issue that would stop enemies spawning, cause the island to never end.
• Fixed an issue where enemy units can become unresponsive, regardless of how much you hit them.
• Fixed an issue that caused units to be invisible / corrupted.
• Items will no longer respawn in the inventory.
• Fixed an issue that caused some islands and / or initial load screen to load forever.
• Fixed numerous small issues with gamepad UI.

Nintendo Switch

• Fixed a severe framerate drop (5-10fps) that could affect the following locations:
  • Campaign Map
  • Upgrade Menu
  • Squad Selection
  • Coin Assignment

Source: official website