Songs of Conquest News

[h2]Greetings Wielders![/h2]

A while back, we promised news, and today we deliver! Our next faction has taken root, literally. We’re excited to launch the Roots store page, giving you a first glimpse of what’s to come. Over the next few months, we’ll share more in a series of devlogs covering everything from troops and lore to biomes and abilities.

The Roots is our second faction DLC, bringing sentient vines, walking mushrooms, and the reanimated husks of fallen foes to the battlefield. If that sounds like your kind of army, be sure to wishlist it by clicking the banner below!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3511790/Songs_of_Conquest__Roots/?beta=0

But who, or rather what, are the strange creatures the Vanir call Roots? Deep in the dark Wyldwood of the Bleak East, an ancient, sentient colony of flora, fungus, and the bones of lost heroes thrives. Led by the enigmatic Tree Mothers, the Roots seek to expand their domain and, above all else, survive.

Unlike our other factions, the Roots do not consist of individuals with their own ambitions. They share a single mind, a collective consciousness that drives their relentless push to spread the Wyldwoods. Where Barya and Arleon are built on personal will and strategy, the Roots are bound by purpose—an unstoppable force of nature.

Sentient buildings, and dangerous creatures, they are all tools for a unified purpose.

The Roots understand that to lead their forces and communicate with other factions, they need intermediaries, and voices for the Tree Mothers. To fulfill this need, they create Vessels, repurposed corpses of the fallen, and given just a sliver of their former mind and essence.

The process is not perfect. The vast majority do not survive intact, their wills shattered by the transformation. These broken vessels, little more than husks of bone and vine-bound flesh, become mindless tools, sent into battle as relentless, undying servants of the cause.

I think this Arleon reconnaissance patrol might regret venturing into the Wyldwood.

More ancient than any other faction, the Roots are strange and twisted. Where did they come from? Why did they leave their former home, and why are they now mostly found in the Bleak East? Why does the dangerous Vildra hate them so much? Some of these questions, and perhaps more, will be answered in the two story-driven challenge maps that explore their past.

There will also be five Conquest maps, designed to introduce the new units, showcase how the faction plays, and bring their dark, swamp-infested biome to life. We’ll cover more about that in a future Devlog as it’s still a work in progress, but expect new map entities, dense shadowed forests, and plenty of creeping vines.

We can’t wait to see what you will create with all your new cartography toys!

It’s hard not to throw more fungi-dropping details at you, but the truth is that Roots is still a work in progress, even though production is going great! We see no issues sticking to our plan and expect to release the dark forests of the Roots this summer.

Now, before we continue, we want to acknowledge a mistake. When we released Vanir, we followed Valve’s recommended regional pricing, which we hadn’t done when we launched the base game. This led to an odd situation where the Vanir DLC cost more than what was reasonable in some countries. This wasn’t our intention, but rather an honest mistake on our end, and we understand why it felt frustrating.

We’ve taken your feedback to heart and are making changes. This time, we’re manually adjusting prices when we release Roots, ensuring a fairer approach. We’ve also corrected the mistake with Vanir, and price adjustments should roll out for the affected regions soon. Thank you for your patience and for keeping us accountable.

But back to Roots!

We can’t wait to share more about our newest faction in the coming months. Expect Devlogs covering unit rosters, giant creeps, tactics, essence, and new features. Stay tuned, and don’t forget to wishlist Roots now!

/Anders and everyone at Lavapotion

It’s still officially January, which means we can get away with saying things like, “Hope the start of 2025 has been great for you!” For us at Lavapotion, the past few weeks have been about getting back into the swing of things and planning the year ahead.
Looking at our roadmap, we’re happy to say it’s still solid. There are a few TBDs that we’ll have more to share about soon, but one thing is certain—2025 is shaping up to be an exciting year for Songs of Conquest!

Click on it to make it bigger, a nifty trick!

And before we get to what lies ahead, let’s take a look at what we just did. We released a new faction! The Vanir hit the shores of Aerbor, and judging by the stats, you liked it. Our Viking and Nordic folklore-inspired addition to Songs of Conquest sold above expectations.
Of course, despite all the playtesting, some things might still need fine-tuning. That’s part of the process and the joy of making something new. We want to say thank you for your support, your love for our new units, and the appreciation you’ve shown us.

You’ve so far recruited over 1.6 million of these stabby little ravens, well done!

But let’s look ahead. One of the most frequent requests since early access has been Sim Battles or simultaneous battles. We already released Sim Turns, but only one battle can happen at a time, which slows down multiplayer games.

One of our developers, Niklas, spent his Christmas working on it, and we’re proud to say that it's now ready for testing. It’s not fully done yet, but it’s close. There might still be a few small hiccups, but internal playtesting has been very promising (and fun). Now, we’re opening it up on the Public Test Realm right now, for everyone to enjoy, and if you find bugs, let us know by using our in-game bug report tool.

It’s right there in the game properties, sim-battles, just a few clicks away!

We plan to test this for about a month before rolling out a major update to improve Songs of Conquest for everyone. We promised multiplayer updates on our Roadmap, and this is a big one.
But that’s not all we’ve been working on. We’ve also made improvements to our random maps—most notably, they now have elevation, something they didn’t have before! It’s more than just a visual upgrade, though that part matters too. We’ve also tweaked the gameplay in ways we think you’ll enjoy. We made sure that not just the terrain is more varied but that pick-ups, buildings, and artifacts are more varied.

It might be random, but its’ definitely planned!

All these random map changes and more, besides go live on PTR together with the sim-battle feature. This really is the biggest change to our Random Map Generator in a long time and our goal is to make them feel random but a lot more true to the beautiful game that we want to show and more similar in both look and feel to the maps that we created for Conquest maps.

More hills, more water! You should get in there and enjoy the randomness!

And of course, we have to mention Roots, Q2’s star and the main focus of the team right now. Roots will be our second faction DLC, introducing the strange creatures and beings of the Wyld forests in the Bleak East. Ancient, mysterious swamp-dwelling beasts, skeletons held together by roots, and living buildings. It’s going to be wild.

But there’s much more to say, and we’ll be sharing those details in a series of devlogs, starting with the launch of the Roots Steam page, which is just around the corner.
Suffice it to say, that 2025 is shaping up to be quite a year, and we haven’t even covered everything yet. There will be console updates, a secret project we’ve been keeping under wraps, and much more. So stay tuned!

For now, jump into that Public Test Realm, try Sim-battles with a friend, and surprise them with your latest Vanir strategy. One that, for some reason, just involves a lot of pigs.
What are you most looking forward to? Have any questions for the team? This is the perfect place to ask, we’re always happy to chat.

Thank you,

Anders & the Lavapotion team