DevDiary 15 Other Changes and Next Steps - Battle-Modders/mod-reforged GitHub Wiki

Dev Diary #15 - 26-Mar-2026
Uberbagel & LordMidas

In this dev diary we will go over various important changes that we have made since our first release dev diaries in 2024. This is not meant to be a full list of the changes, but rather only to highlight those that may be of the most consequence to returning players.

In update 0.8.0 we have removed the Weapon Mastery Standardization system (also known as the Applicable Masteries system). This system had been in place since the inception of Reforged and had its pros and cons. The main benefit was to streamline the usage of hybrid weapons. This is because the effects of "Weapon Mastery perks" in vanilla apply to actual skills, not weapons. So, if you are wielding a Sword/Cleaver hybrid weapon with Slash and Decapitate skills then the vanilla behavior is that the Slash skill benefits from Sword Mastery but the Decapitate skill requires Cleaver Mastery. Our Weapon Mastery Standardization system streamlined this so that in order for either skill to behave mastered you only had to pick one of the two masteries, either sword or cleaver mastery.

However, this system had its flaws, because of how some effects of the mastery perks are coded in a different way than others. This caused confusion and inconsistency when players noticed that they got some benefits of the mastery perk but not others. Eventually, we have decided to remove this system altogether and return to the vanilla system. But, since we have the Weapon Master perk available in Reforged, the streamlined behavior with hybrid weapons can now be achieved by picking this perk as it grants you both the mastery perks of the hybrid weapon in their entirety leading to no confusion or inconsistency.

In update 0.7.17 we reverted our changes to the three headed flail. Since the beginning of Reforged we had adjusted this flail's behavior to make 3 separate attack rolls, each for 33% damage but combine the entire thing into a single attack/hit. This was done so that modding other skills was easier as we have many skills that trigger based on hits/misses, and multiple hits per attack caused those skills to trigger more times or gain more stacks than intended. However, with this update we rewrote large parts of our codebase to make it compatible with the 3 separate attacks of the 3-headed flail, reverting it back to the vanilla behavior that players are familiar with.

In update 0.7.17 we adjusted the logic of how the game selects an injury upon dealing damage. In vanilla, an injury is chosen purely at random from all the possible injuries whose damage threshold you exceeded. So even when dealing extreme damage in a single attack, you had a significant chance to inflict only a minor injury like Ripped Ear. We have improved this logic to now choose the injury in a weighted random way based on how much damage was inflicted, with higher damage having a significantly higher chance of dealing more severe injuries.

In the early versions of Reforged we added an interesting twist to the Crippling Strikes perk which allowed you to inflict injuries on undead enemies. These injuries were thematic to the enemies, so a wiederganger or skeleton got injuries that would make sense on them. However, in version 0.7.17 we have removed the Crippling Strikes requirement. Now, all undead can receive meaningful injuries from any damage, but they have a higher threshold for receiving injuries, so Crippling Strikes still helps.

In version 0.6.14 and 0.6.15 we added three new origins to Reforged: Random Solo, Random Trio and Old Swordmaster. The Random Solo and Random Trio origins are a way to start with completely random characters for interesting twists on your playthrough. The Old Swordmaster origin is a full-fledged themed origin where you play as an aging swordmaster who must find students and train them in the art of the sword. The origin has unique mechanics and events.

In version 0.6.15 we tweaked various vanilla origins to incorporate them better into the Reforged perk system. Certain vanilla origins now guarantee the availability of certain perks on all recruits e.g. Peasant Miltia: Militia perk group, Northern Raiders: Adrenaline perk, Band of Poachers: Pathfinder perk, Beast Slayers: Fortified Mind perk.

In update 0.7.7 we made it so that a given camp will not change its tactical map layout upon saving/loading the game. Then in update 0.7.20 we made it so all battles with a given enemy party, not just camps, at a given world location will not change the battle map, even after saving/loading the game. Over time, many perks e.g. Professional, Promised Potential etc. have also been tweaked so that their random result is fixed on a per bro basis and does not change upon saving/loading the game. This deepens the "character" of the game and makes the world more believable and real.

An Uphill Battle Against Brigands

To add more visual variety as well as depth to the enemies you face and the loot they provide, in update 0.6.15 we implemented armor attachments for enemies. Now the majority of non-southern human enemies can sometimes spawn with standard armor attachments on their body armor.

Showcase of Armor Attachments on Brigands

Nets are very powerful, especially when coupled with the various new mechanics in Reforged. So a rebalance of the nets was in order. We made a few design iterations and in update 0.7.7 we adjusted the Throw Net skill's Action Point cost from 4 to 5 and its range from 3 to 2 tiles. However, the Angler perk now increases the range by 1 tile. Goblins can still throw at 3 tiles distance. In update 0.7.3 we made huge beasts e.g. Unholds, Lindwurms, Large Ifrits immune to being netted. This applies to any beast who has a base reach of 9 or more.

In Reforged we envision daggers as viable sidearms, just like their use in real life melee combat. In update 0.6.15 we made swapping to/from a non-hybrid dagger a free action once per turn.

In update 0.5.0 we changed crafting recipes of throwables e.g. Fire Pot etc. to now craft 2 for the price of 1. We also made them about 30% cheaper to purchase. This should make crafting these consumables more competitive.

In update 0.7.17 we added an event called "The Turning of the Oaths" for regular origins (i.e. not Oathtakers origin) which triggers every few in-game days. In this event, Oathtakers present in your company take a random new oath, discarding their previous one. This should give oathtakers in your company more flavor and personality, true to their name.

In our Brigands Faction Expansion we split the brigands into various unit blocks and gave them a variety of different names. While this added flavor to the faction and also made each unit distinctly identifiable from the others, it also added a lot of new names for new players to identify and remember. In order to make this more palatable, in update 0.7.23 we have now caused the regular and tough versions of bandits to use the same names. Then in update 0.8.0 we have redone the bandit spawns from scratch with rebalanced tiers and better upgrading from lower to higher tiers. Now we have 4 unit blocks for bandits:

• Balanced block: Thug -> Pillager -> Raider -> Marauder (our Raider is slightly higher tier than vanilla Raider)
• Tough block: Thug -> Pillager -> Raider -> Marauder (same name as Balanced but different entity design)
• Fast block: Vandal -> Outlaw -> Highwayman
• Ranged block: Poacher -> Marksman -> Sharpshooter

Similarly for our Expanded Ancient Dead Faction we have improved the scaling of the tiers. For this we have removed the Miles unit which was placed between Auxiliary and Legionary. Ancient Palatinus has been renamed to Ancient Triarius to better visually separate the name from Ancient Praetorian. So now we have:

• Frontline: Auxiliary -> Legionary -> Triarius
• Backline: Legionary -> Triarius
• Elite: Praetorian -> Honor Guard

This has been in place since 2023 but it is often forgotten by players so we mention it as a reminder. In vanilla Battle Brothers, XP and loot is only awarded if you land the last hit on an enemy. 20% of this XP (known as the Killer XP) goes to the brother who landed the last hit and the remaining 80% is distributed equally among all brothers. This resulted in cheesy gameplay and sometimes frustrating situations where an NPC would land the final hit on an important enemy thereby robbing you of all the XP and loot.

In Reforged we have completely changed this behavior. Now, whenever a character dies, no matter how he died, his XP is distributed among the factions who dealt damage to him based on the proportion of the damage dealt by that faction. So, if your characters dealt 60% of the total damage to an enemy before he died, you are eligible to gain 60% of the XP from that enemy. Of this XP, 20% (known as the Killer XP) is distributed among the brothers who actually dealt damage to that enemy. This distribution is also proportional to the damage dealt by each brother. The remaining 80% is distributed among all brothers.

Similarly, in order to gain loot from an enemy, you no longer have to land the last hit. Instead, you have to ensure that you deal at least 50% of the total damage to that enemy.

In update 0.7.17 we added a feature to show the predicted hit-chance of enemies surrounding you when you attempt to move out of zone of control. Similarly, when moving into the zone of control of an enemy using Spearwall. These hitchances are shown in the tooltip of the previewed movement tile.

Information about potential attacks in movement tooltip

In update 0.7.17 we added the calculated chance to hit head and damage bonus in the hitfactors tooltip. This is helpful as various skills, perks and effects modify this chance and the damage on a case to case basis.

Chance to hit head and damage in hitfactors tooltip

In update 0.8.0 we show the list of craftables that can be crafted using an item in that item's tooltip. For this, we append the list to the existing vanilla tooltip entry which simply said that it can be used to craft items. This list utilizes nested tooltips so you can mouse over the name or the icon of the craftable to view its tooltip as well.

List of Craftables in Ingredient tooltip

In update 0.6.17 we added a keybind (default Ctrl) which you can hold while selecting a non-targeted skill to preview its use instead of triggering it immediately. This allows you to preview the costs of such a skill, e.g. Shieldwall, Take Aim, Rally the Troops, and the effects on your skill affordability, before using it. Then in update 0.8.0 we added a full-fledged mod setting which can be toggled on and off to change the default behavior from requiring confirmation or not. No more guess work or calculating whether you will be able to use another skill after using Shieldwall or Rally! You can just click the skill and the game will show you the affordability like any targeted skill.

Mod Option to enable confirmation for skill use

Many players prefer the vanilla style of hiding various bits of information such as enemy Hitpoints, Fatigue etc. with flavorful immersive words. In Reforged, we show these things as numbers instead. But, in update 0.7.4 we added Mod Options for players to customize this experience to their liking, hiding or showing the information as they please. While we were at it, we extended the feature so that you can even hide the information on your own bros during battle for maximum immersion.

Mod Options to customize the information in the tactical tooltip of entities

We have made some groundbreaking fixes to certain vanilla issues pertaining to crashes during AI behavior evaluation and logic issues during skill execution. In a nutshell, we have implemented ways for skills to determine whether another skill has any delayed effects queued, and account for this in the execution of its own effects. Similarly, we have fixed AI crashes that occurred due to delayed effects changing the state of the game. Even in vanilla delayed skill effects e.g. from Cascade, Aimed Shot etc. could cause crashes when used by the AI and killing a target. But this is all fixed in Reforged now. This was a monumentous amount of work but the results are worth it. We are now able to re-enable perks such as Follow Up and allow them to be lethal, which used to cause random crashes earlier but now is fully stable. We have also implemented fixes that should counter the famous Kraken crashes and many others.

A weak point of auto-resolved AI vs AI world-map battles is that you see instances of a few militia defeating a party of Lindwurms easily whereas in an actual combat they would stand no chance. In update 0.7.23 we improved the logic of these battles to increase the impact of units with high Strength by dealing any spillover damage from a kill to other units in the target party. This will make the auto-resolved battles more representative of how they would pan out in an actual combat.

In vanilla, when you evade an attack, you build 2 Fatigue. Therefore, when moving out of Zone of Control, you have to account for the Fatigue build-up that would happen upon evading the zone of control attacks. Vanilla does not account for this during the movement preview, which can result in a weird situation where you attempt to move and your character will spend Action Points but fail to move because upon evading the Zone of Control attack he was left with not enough Fatigue to perform the movement. We fixed this vanilla issue in update 0.7.17. Now fatigue build up due to zoc evasion is taken into account while previewing the movement and is shown to you in the movement tile tooltip.

One of the issues in large battles is fleeing morale cascades. One enemy flees, which triggers morale checks for all other enemies and this can lead to a chain fleeing event. This is a good feature to have, but if it happens too frequently or too easily then it makes battles less interesting. In update 0.7.0 we added a feature whereby the negative morale check triggered by watching an ally flee has a +1 Resolve bonus per non-fleeing ally on the map. This means fleeing morale cascades are still possible, but more controlled.

Over time we have also added new features and improved the capabilities of our framework mods. These mods are meant to be used by the entire community to help create better and more compatible mods.

• Dynamic Spawns Framework: Over the past 2 years we have added many new features and rewritten this framework from the ground up a couple of times to expand its capabilities. It provides robust means for modders to generate enemy parties dynamically based on the intended difficulty level.
• Modular Vanilla: We continue our quest to modularize and rewrite large parts of vanilla code to make modding easier for everyone. We have added many new features to accomplish vaious goals in a compatible way.
• Nested Tooltips: We have made significant improvements to the nested tooltips to make them more stable and versatile. Especially noteworthy is that it is now very easy to use any image as a source for a nested tooltip, instead of just text. We make now make use of this in various tooltips in Reforged.

One of the key principles in Reforged is that the quality of the features we add, including artwork and sound, must blend seamlessly with vanilla Battle Brothers. Therefore, over time we have continued to add new artwork and improve the one we had already added. As an example, we have improved the artwork for Halberd and added new artwork for Named Halberd, Named Voulge, Poleaxe and Named Poleaxe.

Showcase of Halberd, Voulge, Poleaxe and their named variants

In vanilla the named Warbrand and barbarian weapons are somewhat underwhelming compared to other named weapons. This is more true in Reforged where we have new named items such as Longsword and Kriegsmesser. Therefore, in update 0.7.23 we have tweaked the named versions of Warbrand and Barbarian weapons to be more competitive. We have done this with a lot of care so as not to make them unbelievably stronger than before, but just enough that they are meaningful weapons when they roll well and you find one at the right time in the campaign.

Over time we have made a lot of tweaks to deepen the logic with which the dynamic perk trees of characters are generated. Along with improvements to the Dynamic Perks Framework, we have added the ability to scale the changes of various perk groups appearing on a certain character based on the projected attributes of that character. Projected attribute means the value that that character is expected to have at level 11 when increased every level. For example, characters with higher projected ranged skill will have a higher chance of rolling ranged perk groups like Bow whereas those with higher projected Melee skill will roll more melee-capable perk groups, and so on.

In our quest to counteract the most egregious cheesy things, one of which is going into Alp fights completely naked, in update 0.6.15 we added the "Naked" effect. This effect triggers during battle when not wearing any body armor and inflicts a 50% Resolve malus, as having all your private parts exposed puts in you in a rather nervous situation. Barbarians and Wildmen, however, do not suffer any penalties from being naked.

Naked effect

The Brigand faction scales very poorly into the lategame as it is the easiest faction in the game and the difficulty of their vanilla spawns reaches a plataeu not too long into the game. In order to enable brigands to still occasionally provide opportunities for interesting encounters in the lategame, in update 0.6.14 we added a new higher tier location for them.

Tier 3 Brigand location

In update 0.7.0 we added a new effect to the Falcon. When you release a falcon, all of your characters gain +20 Initiative until the start of their turn in the next round.

Falcon Released effect

• In update 0.8.0 we did a complete overhaul of our dynamic spawns for all the factions to bring the spawns more in line with vanilla style and scaling. You should see more balanced and believable spawns going forward.
• In update 0.7.23 we added a bite skill for Necrosavants so that even when disarmed they can attack.
• In update 0.7.7 we added a zone of control attack to the Ijirok.
• In update 0.6.15 we adjusted Recover to no longer be usable after moving or using any skill in a turn. Recover is available to all humans in Reforged and does not require a perk point.
• In update 0.7.23 we adjusted the vision of the helmets in the game to better match their visual art. This is mostly a flavor change but it may have a small impact on balance here and there.
• In update 0.7.0 we removed the First Turn Initiative feature.
• In update 0.7.17 we removed the Pauper perk group from Indebted to make them different from other low-tier backgrounds. Instead Indebted now have significantly wide attribute min-max attribute rolls in all their attributes which means you can find a really skillful indebted. This is a nod towards the life that this indebted had before being enslaved.

Reforged 0.8.0 was in development for nearly a year with many slowdowns due to real life issues. Now that this big update is out in the wild, our next priority will be to do a complete balance pass on all the features we have added so far including perks, enemy design and so on. Therefore, the next major build will focus on a Balance Overhaul. We have collected a large amount of feedback from our playerbase, and look forward to more feedback from both old and new players to help achieve the best balance possible in the next update. We have identified certain things that need priority attention:

• Action Point manipulation overload. There may be too many sources of Action Points manipulation during combat leading to high bursts of damage in a small amount of time. We should temper these possibilities to slow down combat somewhat and make it more tactical and grounded.
• Dead perks. There are certain perks that are almost never picked because they are either bad or exist in a space where there are always more impactful options. Examples include Deep Impact and Dismantle.
• Pole-type weapons inconsistency. Perhaps this game needs a complete rethinking of pole type weapons to streamline the disparity between all 2-tile weapons. Some weapons such as Billhook are considered "Polearm" whereas others like Longaxe are simply considered "Axe". There may be a design where all of these weapons can be considered Polearm + some other weapon type to expand the possibilties of perks they can use and streamline their identity as 2-tile weapons. We will explore this direction in detail and hopefully can implement reimagined identify of 2-tile weapons and their perks.

Once we are done with the major balance overhaul, we will continue with expanding other vanilla factions.