2023 has been quite the year to be a tactics fan with the likes of Fire Emblem Engage, Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp and Persona 5 Tactica all landing on Switch. One of the year's very best in this genre though (if you ask us, that is), is Wargroove 2, a gorgeous sequel that we described as a "must-play" in our 9/10 review. Well, it has just landed itself an update.
Released last night, this patch brings the game up to ver. 1.2.5 and introduces some tasty new features for those who are interested in some multiplayer battling. As its name suggests, the "Multiplayer Ranking Update" brings (you guessed it) multiplayer ranking to the game. This keeps things nice and fair on the online play front, with matchmaking now informed by a player's ranking to hopefully produce a level playing field.
The update also brings about some changes to the quickplay map pool to speed up the waiting time for those wanting to dive into a game, switches up the balancing and also makes a good number of fixes.
The full patch notes were published on the official Wargroove site and we have collected them together for you to check out below.
Wargroove 2 Ver. 1.2.3 (Released 30th November 2023)
Multiplayer Ranking + Changes to Quickplay experience
This update we wanted to focus on improving Wargroove 2’s multiplayer experience. Now when you enter the Multiplayer section of the game, a new ‘player rating’ is now visible. This rating is used in matchmaking. If you haven’t played a quickplay match before the rating will start at 1200. After finishing a quickplay match, a new screen has been introduced detailing how your rating has changed based on the previous match.
(Please note: If you’ve already started ranking up on the Preview branch, the v1.2.5 release version will reset all rankings to 1200 for fairness across platforms).
We can’t wait to see players battling and sharing their rankings!
An important note on potential transition conflicts once the patch goes live – once updated you won’t be able to join lobbies, or continue ongoing games which were opened with previous patches. To finish playing any matches started during an update prior to v1.2.5, please access our “legacy” branch which will be staying as version v1.2.3.
If you were playing a match while the update went live, this shouldn’t have affected play, but you will need to update to the latest version on Steam to continue further matches.
Quickplay Map Pool
For this update we lowered the amount of quickplay maps in rotation to give players a better chance of learning them, and removed some maps which weren’t a good design-fit for quickplay. We will be rotating the pool of maps for subsequent updates/seasons, so for now, please find below the selection of quickplay maps now in rotation for this season:
- Wyvern Isles
- Brimouth
- Life in 19×19
- Moonlight Meadows
- Heartsong Gardens
- Dusty Oasis
- Ban Ban Beaches
- Harmonious Hideout
- Brimwin Valley
- Snowdrift Harbour
- Pearlescent Valley
- Lost in Riparia
Other updates to Multiplayer include:
- Quickplay will now play a different music when queuing for a match. Once a match has been found a notification sound will play.
- When a player abandons a lobby during quickplay, a more descriptive message is now displayed to the other player.
- Players now have 90s instead of 60s to ready when a quickplay lobby has been found
Balancing Changes
- Kraken: Cost increased (750g->850g) and they receive more damage from water units.
- Ragna: Tier 1 now charges at Medium speed down from Slow.
- Nadia: Both tiers charge at Slow speed now.
- Nuru: Nuru’s Tier 2 affects now all recruiting structures.
- Valder: Tier 1 now charges at Medium speed, up from Fast.
- Caesar: Tier 2 now charges at Very Slow speed, up from Slow.
The following multiplayer maps have seen tweaks in this update:
- Pearlescent Valley
- Lost in Riparia
- Moonlight Meadows
- Ban Ban Beaches Beyond
- Brimouth Channel
- Brightfall Plains
- Frostbite Plains
- Swamp of the Damned
Fixes
- Vespers groove has received several fixes and should now work as intended
- Fix bug that would sometimes prevent recruiting with the Enter key
- Fixed Zawan’s supercharged vines showing missing description when right clicked.
- Fix various navigation bugs when using arrow keys to navigate recruit/map lists
- Fix optional Kraken crit objective being wrongly rewarded in “Return to Eight-Arm Bay”
- Fix target portals not being available to use for team mates
- Fix crash bug that could occur if player placed Lytra at a specific spot during the second prologue mission
- Fix softlock that could occurred when player cancelled progress during tutorial campaign.
- Optional objective in “The Fortress” is now properly fulfilled if enemy commander is defeated with the twin’s groove
- UI: Fixed Tenri’s groove icon
- Ultra widescreen monitors are now better supported
- Controller: Improved usability in editor by showing button mapping for functions like undo/redo and toggling symmetry tools.
- Improved visual readability of Vesper’s and Errol & Orla’s grooves
- Fixed issue that caused Ryota’s groove often not being available in Fog of War maps
- Neutral structures no longer take push/pull knock-on damage
- Fixed a bug which could cause desync and “Invalid unit order” crashes in multiplayer
- Fixed occasional crash after leaving multiplayer lobby screen
- Updated translations for the Power Gauntlet item description to match its actual properties
- Fixed a few spelling errors in all languages
- We have made some updates to the server to help with issues people have been having in multiplayer.
- Kraken units can no longer tentacle other tentacles
- Editor: Fixed issue that caused placed units to be invisible on very large maps
- Editor: Fixed crash issue with controllers that could occur when deleting triggers and conditions
- Editor: Fixed missing strings in “Units: Verbs used” condition
- Editor: Removed a few placeholder items in “Display tutorial box” action properties
- Editor: Fixed several objects being misaligned with the mouse cursor when placing
- Editor: Fixed “invalid config error” that could occur equipping certain items in the editor
- Editor: Fix neutral units causing crash when using Unit Action event trigger action.
- Editor: Fixed several inconsistencies with groove charge. The editor should now properly reflect the game’s use of groove in %.
- Editor: Fixed Valder’s (No Glove) and Lytra’s (No Harp) voice over lines being wrong.
- Editor: Several story props have been made available that were previously hidden
- Editor: Removed “Delete All Progress” option from editor
- Fixed issue that caused a certain fish not being unlockable when using Mercival’s groove
- Fixed crash that could occur in conquest mode when transitioning levels
- Fixed issue that caused items to be purchased immediately when selecting in merchant
- Fixed issue that caused a crash when purchasing discounted merchant items
- Fixed various typos in codex and game in general
- Fixed a visual gap in the tile info screen that appeared for several water units
- Fixed bug in “Firebird & The Oaracle” that would cause no music to be played during this level after skipping the intro
- Fixed issue in last mission that marked unsafe tiles as safe.
- Fixed buggy beach texture in “Ice Low Water” biome
- Fix custom difficulty description not updating properly on change
- Removed duplicate tracks from jukebox that had appeared under a different name
- Fixed crash that could occur when quickly clicking buttons in conquest menus
- Conquest: Fixed a merchant in Felheim conquest not being interactable
- Conquest: Fixed several issues in Saffron Isles prisoner event
- Conquest: Fixed issue in Training Camp events when player didn’t have troops available to train
- Conquest: Fixed issue in unit transformation event that caused dialogues to go out of order
- Conquest: Fixed issue that caused several events to not show their Fog of War status correctly
- Conquest: Unlock icon no longer shows exclamation mark when there’s nothing left to unlock
- Conquest: Fixed issue in item duplication event that could cause player to be offered the choice to duplicate more than once.
- Conquest: Fixed issue that allowed player to give money to Fritz, even if they had none.
- Conquest: During unit duplication event, player is now returned to the conquest map right away if they decline the offer
- Conquest: Fix soft-lock when player was facing a witch as the only remaining enemy with no means to defeat it
- Conquest: Fix issue that caused Emeric to have full groove charge on start of conquest
- Conquest: Fix issue that caused units to not retain their item abilities when they get transformed/changed to new unit types
- Conquest: Fix possible softlock after finishing the Donut + Fenris fight.
- Conquest: Fix artwork of training camps being swapped.
- Conquest: Fix occurence of unit stacking
- Conquest: Fix several issues in the Prisoner event map during the Saffron Isles conquest.
- Conquest: Fixed Amphibian Lucky Coin (“Alacrity”) to correctly show +1 movement instead of +2.
- Conquest: Fixed crash that could occur during the Unit Transformation event
- Conquest: Merchant dogs can no longer be moved by player