[2020] Beta Patch Notes e1.5.4

Beta e1.5.4
Singleplayer Crashes

• Fixed a bug which crashed the game when the player attempted to pick up an item just before and during the hideout boss cinematic. Item interaction is now disabled during cinematics.
  
• Fixed a bug which prevented heavy infantry, skirmisher, heavy cavalry and light cavalry formations from spawning correctly in certain missions. This could cause crashes.
  
• Fixed a problem which crashed the game when the player transferred troops from one formation to an empty one and then gave a formation order.
  
• Fixed a crash that occurred while dragging-dropping items in the inventory.
  
• Fixed a crash that occurred when a player failed at romance bartering.
  
• Fixed a crash that occurred when an army leader died.
  
• Fixed a crash that occurred when forming caravans.
  
• Fixed a crash that occurred when clicking "take a walk around" after loading, if the save file was created while waiting in a village.
  
• Fixed a crash that occurred when the player bartered with bandits for safe passage.
  
• Fixed a crash that occurred when creating a kingdom.
  
• Fixed a crash that occurred with battle simulations.
  
• Fixed a crash that occurred when involved kingdoms made peace during a simulation.
  
• Fixed a crash that occurred when the main hero tried to marry someone within the same AI-led party.
  
• Fixed a crash that occurred when the player loaded a save file that was taken in the tutorial village menu in the tutorial phase.
  
• Fixed a crash that occurred when the main hero died with an active quest.
  
• Fixed a bug that made companions transport to another city while they were in the main hero's party. Also fixed a crash that occurred when the main hero clicked on the clan tab while the previously mentioned bug occurred.
  
• Fixed a crash that occurred while opening the Smithy in towns.
  
• Fixed some crashes and bugs that occurred when a nonplayer hero died in battle.

Performance

• Loading core assets separately to speed-up first meaningful render during game launch.
  
• Fixed CPU spikes on the campaign map caused by the distance checking algorithm.
  
• Various CPU memory leaks were removed.

Save & Load

• Clans are saved now. Clans added to XML will not be added to games that have already started and will only be available in new games. Deleting a clan from an XML will not affect save games.
  
• Save game files are now categorized by their game in the UI.

Art

• 5 new empire villages added.
  
• Various improvements on castle gates for better AI behaviours.
  
• Improvements to empire_town_j_siege's navigation mesh for better AI behaviours.
  
• There was a minor visual bug in Aserai parley scenes, about the flags getting into the walls. That bug was fixed on all the levels.
  
• Improvements to workshop scene props scaling.
  
• Visual improvements to Khuzait villages.
  
• Visual improvements on Vlandia keep model.
  
• Added rein rope simulation to chain_horse_harness.
  
• Northern light harness and Imperial riding harness were replaced with newer versions.
  
• Fixed visual issues on Sturgia and Khuzait keep banners.
  
• Improvements on some of the Empire villages:
  
  • Empire_village_f, empire_village_g, empire_village_h, empire_village_i, empire_village_j
• Fixed a visual issue on the board game.
  
• Fixed stair physics and some visual issues on one of the Empire towers.
  
• Fixed the player falling into emptiness issue in Empire dungeons.
  
• Fixed prison bars visibility issue in Vlandian dungeons.
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented smooth grass LOD transition.
  
• Improved quality of tree billboard rendering.
  
• Some GI updates were made to the empire_town_j_siege.
  
• Updated and enriched flora on the Tsagaan castle scene. Fixed barrier bugs and some physics issues which were preventing fall damage.
  
• Added a new male voice set.
  
• Added additional colours for skin, hair and eyes to the character creation screen. Various improvements on the textures and blendshapes. Also added bushy eyebrows.

UI
Changes:

• Town Quick Talks:
  
  • Players can now talk to notables in town centres, companions in taverns, and lords in keeps through the map conversation screen without a loading screen by using the "Quick Talk" button.
• Crafting screen changes
  
  • New visuals for the crafting final stage pop-up.
    
  • Stamina bars for smithing heroes so that players can see the stamina without hovering over each hero.
    
  • A "Civilian" icon will be shown if the crafted weapon is also usable in the civilian equipment set.
• Added a new icon to the inventory that shows the current hero's skills on hover.
  
• Added sorting to SP scoreboards and now heroes are shown at the top of their party lists.
  
• Added an option to swap character and mount places in the inventory for a more focused view of the equipped mount.
  
• Now if a locked item is removed from the inventory, it won't lose it's lock status when that item is added back to the inventory until the player removes the lock themselves.
  
• Added "Enable Tutorials" and "Reset Tutorials" controls to the campaign options window.
  
• Added new Scouting and Tactics perk icons.
  
• Added a dropdown for hero selection to inventory (similar to character developer).
  
• Added a quest icon to army nameplates if a lord in that army has a quest.
  
• Removed the "over the limit" warning if the player didn't make any changes in the party screen.
  
• Added hero's health and wounded information to hideout troop management window.
  
• Now query pop-ups can be closed with Enter or Escape key.
  
• Added wage of the party and tooltips to troop icons in the clan/parties tab.
  
• Added a confirmation query to "Disband Army" in Kingdom/Armies tab.

Fixes:

• Fixed the damage amount for throwing weapons showing incorrect values in some cases.
  
• Fixed the rotations of items in the inventory preview window.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused the army management window to close improperly.
  
• Fixed an issue in the hideout troop management window that caused troop counts to go negative.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused modifiers of items to be removed on party screen reset.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused the "Leave Members" button to be enabled while the player was in the tutorial stage.
  
• Fixed an issue in the crafting screen that caused smithing heroes to overflow out of bounds.
  
• Fixed an issue in the crafting screen that caused the order of smelting items to reset after smelting.
  
• Fixed an error in the item preview window that caused reins of a saddle to not be added.
  
• Fixed an error in the crafting screen that caused refinement recipes to not update on smithing hero change.
  
• Fixed an error in the conversation screen that caused wrong relation values to be shown.
  
• Fixed and improved encounter overlay food and morale values and tooltips.
  
• Fixed an error in the conversation screen that caused encounter parties to overflow out of bounds in some cases.

Battles and Sieges

• A bug in the tactical AI that caused a defending army to become indecisive between different tactical positions and go back and forth was fixed.
  
• Fixed some unintended behaviour of the battering ram that could stop it from delivering damage among other things.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused players to spawn as spectators in battles.

Character Development System

• Added 31 combat-related primary and secondary throwing perk effects to the game. This should complete all throwing perks in the current design.
  
• Added 25 campaign side Roguery perks.
  
• Added 31 campaign side Tactics perks.
  
• Added 40 campaign side Scouting perks.
  
• Added 38 campaign side Steward perks.
  
• Added 33 campaign side Trade perks.
  
• Fixed the following riding combat perks:
  
  • Mounted Warrior: Secondary effect was accidentally set as party leader effect. This is correctly set as a captain effect now.
    
  • Horse Archer: Corrected the perk explanation text.
    
  • Sagittarius: Fixed a problem which accidentally reduced ranged accuracy when it should increase it.
• Fixed an issue that caused players to start the campaign with 0 renown regardless of what was chosen in character creation.
  
• Fixed a problem with the epic perk of smithing which changed into another perk after save and load process.
  
• Fixed the levelling up of scouting skills of non-player party leaders.
  
• Fixed the levelling up of heroes when they didn't level up without their skill level up.

Clan and Party

• Clans will respawn their parties based on settlement location data rather than saved coordinates to avoid situations where data loss during loading could lead to parties glitching into the geometry of settlements. This change f.e. prevents enemy lords from spawning inside settlements and blocking the settlement’s gate.
  
• Healing skill did not affect the healing speed for larger armies. Instead of scaling healing rate with army size, it now scales better with medicine skill. This change should make the medicine skill more meaningful.
  
  • Changed healing for regulars from 0.2 + 0.2 x WoundedCount to a fixed 5 base heal.
    
  • Changed settlement healing for regulars from 8 to 10 settlement base healing.
    
  • Changed the skill bonus for healing regulars from 0.1% per skill level to 1% per skill level.
• Increased the lower boundary of the herd speed penalty players receive, if you have a high amount of animals in relation to your party size.
  
• Fixed some issues with the disbanding of dead non-player heroes' parties.

Armies

• Fixed a bug that caused NPC lords to calculate influence values wrong while thinking about creating an army.

Kingdoms and Diplomacy

• Added new clans.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused nobles to oppose some decisions they had proposed after some time.
  
• Fixed a bug that led to dead clan leaders being awarded fiefs through kingdom decisions.
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented minor faction leaders from being replaced once they were dead.

Settlement Actions (Town, Village, Castle and Hideout)

• Fixed a bug that forced players into the request entry menu of a castle when they stopped waiting there.
  
• Fixed a bug that enabled players to request a meeting at settlements with lords in their army.
  
• Artisans now offer troops like other notables.
  
• Stashes were added to player-owned castles.
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented the location character list of a settlement to not refresh after prisoners in the settlement were changed.
  
• The same access rules will be applied to all player clan members in a settlement. If a player doesn't have access to the lord’s hall, their clan members (family members, companions) will spawn in the tavern. Once access is gained, all clan members will appear in the lord’s hall.
  
• To fix some potential bugs after releasing/donating prisoners to settlements, a code refactor was made for the party screen.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the request meeting button to be greyed out even if there are nobles inside.
  
• Fixed a problem with having negative or more than 100% disguise probability values when the player wants to sneak into a town.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the Land Tax policy tooltip to display incorrect numbers.
  
• Fixed a bug that led to notable supports not being updated during the game.

Quests & Issues

• The “Prodigal Son” issue quest has been implemented.
  
• The "Village Needs Draught Animals" issue quest has been implemented.
  
• “Lord Needs Horses” quest will now cancel correctly if the quest giver is imprisoned.
  
• Fixed an issue with the "Inn & Out" quest that caused it to not provide any rewards to players even when the quest was completed successfully.
  
• Players will be able to sell poachers characters to progress in the “Manual Laborers” quest.
  
• Some dialogue updates were made to the “Company Of Trouble” quest.
  
• The “Needs Help With Outlaws” quest will fail if a raid starts in the quest settlement or war breaks out between the player and the quest giver's faction.
  
• Quest NPC skills for “The Spy Among Us” quest were updated. NPC's will have higher skill values and they will scale according to quest difficulty.
  
• The “Needs Access to Village Commons” quest will cancel if a raid starts in the target settlement. Players are now allowed to simulate the quest battle.
  
• Improvements & fixes related to “Notable Wants Daughter Found” quest:
  
  • Rogue characters and their equipment are changed.
    
  • New dialogues and new ending added to the quest if a raid starts in the village that the rogue and the daughter escaped from.
    
  • New pop-ups are added when entering the quest villages based on the village status.
    
  • The quest will be cancelled if war breaks out between the player's and the quest giver's faction.
    
  • Fixed a bug that caused quest pop-ups to appear multiple times.
• Improvements & fixes related to “Manual Laborers” quest:
  
  • Added a prisoner transfer limit (random between 50-80). Players won't be able to trade unlimited prisoners.
    
  • New dialogues were added to the quest.
• Improvements & fixes related to “Escort Caravan” quest:
  
  • Every time the quest caravan exits a town, the caravan leader notifies the player about where the caravan is going.
    
  • Bandit parties are divided into 3 levels. Each wave will appear based on chance when the caravan exits a settlement.
    
  • Bandits will not spawn in front of the town gate.
    
  • Quest time limit added.
    
  • Fixed a bug that decreases the caravan party's speed too much after winning a hard fight.
    
  • Some dialogues are updated. Now the quest giver gives the info about the reward amount.
• Improvements & fixes related to the “Family Feud” quest:
  
  • New dialogues were added after the quest fight.
    
  • Agent behaviours were improved after the fight.
    
  • Fixed a crash that occurred when the player opened a conversation with the target notable via the Quick Talk button.
    
  • Fixed some camera-related bugs while multiple conversations were active.
• Fixed a bug that caused the ”Train Troops” quest to be cancelled if the borrowed troops are selected for Rival Gang quest battle.
  
• Fixed a bug that causes players to get double quest rewards after completing a quest with an alternative solution.
  
• Alternative solution companion reward experiences are tweaked in all quests.
  
• Improved main storyline kingdom creation quest logs.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the quest parties in “Caravan Ambush” quest to remain still after battle.
  
• Fixed a bug related to the "Caravan Ambush" quest that caused caravans to get stuck in towns.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the player to be stuck in the tutorial when the player loaded an autosave that was taken in battle with Radagos.
  
• Fixed the bug that let Story Mode heroes die in battles.
  
• Fixed a bug that made Radagos disappear on Tutorial Phase.

Conversations & Encounters

• After trading with a caravan, the player now returns to the greeting dialogue instead of the map screen.
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed players to open conversations with prisoners without entering a settlement.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the army menu to open after talking to an army member and initiating combat through dialogue. Instead of the army menu, the encounter menu will open.
  
• Fixed a bug that froze the game when quick talk dialogue and Rescue Family quest Radagos dialogue conflicted.
  
• Many of the conversations that were using the old mission system were changed to the new quicker conversation system.
  
• Added clan leader noble titles in dialogue boxes.
  
• Ensured player's children have met the player to avoid an awkward conversation.
  
• Expanded post-battle comments for army battles where the player was a participant.
  
• Added new comments to frequently encountered conversations.
  
• Fixed the bug that caused some nobles to talk like the main hero's brother.

Other

• Fixed some troops appearing older than they should.
  
• One of the Battanian companion templates was using armour that was too high tier. It now uses a weaker one.
  
• Body armours with arm, leg covers now provide more armour to those parts. Armour pieces have been rebalanced and recalibrated. Most troops now use different armour pieces that are balanced for their tier and troop type.
  
• Some behaviour of advanced training melee NPCs has been fixed.
  
• Tournament participants don't spawn near other participants anymore.
  
• Added notifications for prisoners who escape from our settlements or our party.
  
• An issue with the taskbar icon of the game was fixed.
  
• Troops belonging to a faction will use faction colours instead of civilian colours in civilian scenes.
  
• Players can use ALT + LMB to escort a party.
  
• Added encyclopedia entries for imperial factions.
  
• Fixed typos, gave lords and minor faction heroes a minimum riding skill of 100 to make sure they can ride assigned horses.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused villager parties to go to a castle or town while disbanding.
  
• Removed a shield from Tacteos that was unsuitable for his character.

Multiplayer Design & Balance

• Crush Through:
  
  • Increased crush through energy threshold.
    
  • Made it slightly easier to crush through with 2h maces in relation to the energy threshold change.

Game Modes

• Destroying siege equipment granting gold during warmup is fixed.

Map Related

• Druimmor Forest was fixed in terms of barriers, exploits and visual bugs. Proper barriers have been applied on cliffs and roofs. Also, there are some fixes made in Ruins of Jawwali, which includes having matching rock and cliff textures, fixing the barriers around unused areas and fixing the navmesh problems.
  
• Physics problems like getting stuck in the wooden columns and visual bugs are solved in the skirmish scenes Trading Post and Town Outskirts. Many exploitable situations are eliminated.
  
• Fixed many possible causes for crashes in Baravenos Encirclement.

Other - Miscellaneous

• Fixed a condition where the rider's animation state gets broken when the mount gets killed while the rider is mounting
  
• Player was not losing any score on suicides, fixed.
  
• The number of missiles in quivers while selecting a character fixed.

Server & Network

• Clan game creator no longer crashes upon returning to the lobby.

UI

• Added dead teammate indicators.
  
• Added sorting to MP clans tab.
  
• Now party member names will be shown in a different colour in the 'ALT' behaviour in MP battles.
  
• Small tweaks and improvements.

Both UI

• Added UI Scale control.
  
• Changed the "Show Banners On Friendly Troops" option into a slider that controls the opacity of these banners.
  
• Added a new (or old depending on how you look at it) Warband style 3 part crosshair.
  
• "Finalize Chat" key is now re-bindable.
  
• Separated general kill-feed (top right) and personal feed (centre middle) controls in the options.
  
• Gauntlet memory and performance improvements.
  
• Fixed some layout issues that appeared in panels that come out of frame.

Performance

• Significant performance improvements for the animation system. This will benefit situations with lots of animations such as battles and very populated town scenes.

Animations

• Idle and standing animations of agents now always start from the beginning instead of a random location, for both better visual effects and optimisation.

Combat

• Chasing agents followed the same path, which caused them to move in a line. Now they spread out a little bit, which looks more natural.
  
• Agents surround enemy agents and choose a position based on the weapon length of the enemy. If the enemy had a longer weapon like a spear, the surrounding agents moved a bit far from the enemy. Now they compare the enemy's weapon length with their weapon length and move closer if the enemy's weapon is longer.
  
• Cavalry:
  
  • Reduced the angle of possible rear ups.
    
  • Increased rearing damage threshold a tiny bit.
    
  • Braced spears can now also rear-up cavalry.

Other

• Fixed, when someone mounts a horse that is running away, the horse becomes unattackable beyond map borders.

Modding

• A new cheat "reserve_houses_in_settlement" that activates all houses in a settlement has been added for testing purposes. The cheat reserves and adds 1 dummy NPC to all houses in the settlement that the player is currently in - making them easily accessible. The reserved tag for the houses is not cleared after saving, so use the cheat with caution.
  
• Welding multiple navigation mesh vertex pairs enabled.
  
• Level names for the scenes can now be renamed from the Scene Editor.
  
• Some formation orders that were omitted from public namespace were added for use in mods.
  
• Improved moddability of the UI assets, now UI assets are separated into modules so mods can either add new assets or overwrite existing ones.
  
• Improved sprite sheet generator performance.

Known Issues
https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?threads/known-issues-updated.401168/