This update introduces Resource Lending to the game. From now on, players will be able to lend resources on the world map within their domain to their neighbors. This should allow new ways for players to interact, as well as additional diplomacy around those resources.

What exactly is resource lending?

If you have a global resource within your domain on the world map, you will now be able to lend it to any of your neighbors. A neighbor is any player whose domain shares a border to yours. There should be no space or other players between the two of you.

Once you lend the recource to someone, it will act as if the cell with the resource is provided to that other player, and that player can do with it as if it were his or her own resource (i.e. build a structure on it and supply to their towns). Lending is instantaneous, although building the structure on it is not, just as if it were a normally owned resource.

You can also reclaim any lended resource instantly, although if the other player has supplied it to any of their towns, it will take 24 hours for the supplying structure to be deconstructed. It will be exactly as if you captured the cell with the resource from someone.

This update is much larger in comparison to previous ones. We have finally completely redesigned the espionage system, which will actually make full use of your spies and eliminate a cheat that allows you to figure out the whole enemy army with a single spy unit.

The spying mechanics are now built similarily to plunder, except instead of resources, spies accumulate "intelligence points", which after the spy battle determine how much information they are able to get.

• Spying for Buildings: Each spy can gather information to reveal one level of buildings. This means that if you send one spy, you will be able to see one random Level 1 building of the enemy. However, if you send 100 spies, you will be able to see random buildings totaling up to 100 levels. Multiple spying attempts might reveal different random buildings. You will not be able to get all the buildings with one spy anymore.
• Spying for Resources: Each spy defines the maximum amount of resources he can detect. For example, if you send one spy, and he can only detect 500 resources max, any additional resources the enemy town  has will show as "over 125" (500/4 resource types). If you want to know how much more, send more spies.
• Spying for Army: Again, intelligence points will determine the total price of spying the enemy army. If the intelligence points are enough to cover the whole army cost, you will see the whole army. If the intelligence points only cover a fraction, but not less than 75%, you will see rough estimates instead of hard numbers (few, many, etc.). If they cover 50-75%, you will see a percentage of units, one against another, for instance: Brave = 75%, Hunter = 25%, but it could be either 3 and 1 or 300 and 100. For 25%-50% you will only see unit types without any information about quantity. If it is less than 25% you will not be able to get any information at all.

I did not post a specific amount of "intelligence points" spies actually gather and specific corellation between those points and the actual information received because this type of information is subject to change. I don't want to be obligated to updating it each time in public.

Furthermore, battle reports now have similar information grades as espionage - if your army was very small and everyone is dead, you will not be able to know what killed you. This will also eliminate a "one explorer attack" cheat.

Another important change in this update is the game interface change. Since Alpha 1, people have been asking for the ability to collapse parts of the interface to have more visual playing space. This time it has been implemented. Let us know if this is what you wanted.

Exactly one year ago today we launched Alpha 1 of our game, Totem Tribe II: Jotun . Now it is time to look back and reminisce about things that have taken place over the last 12 months.

• ALPHA 1 was launched on the 22nd of October 2013, and only a couple of dozen players were invited. The game was far from what it is now - it had only Herald's Home, no other quest locations. There were no advisor quests, the Cash Shop was not available, and in general a lot of things were far worse than they are now. Those who played it, please leave us some comments about what other important things were not present :). Here is the old news post about Alpha 1.
• ALPHA 2 was launched on the 23rd of December 2013, two months after Alpha 1, and just in time for Christmas. We were able to release it so soon after Alpha 1 because most of the new features that were added were partially ready when Alpha 1 was released. In Alpha 2 we added Opposition Hideout, advisor quests, Cash Shop, and most importantly for some people - more horses! There were only a couple of horses in entire Alpha 1 release. There were more people invited to participate as well, maybe up to 50. You can read about it in: news post about Alpha 2 launch.
• ALPHA 3 took us significantly longer to release (2nd of June 2014) because there were so many additional features to be added. We added a whole new age - Classical, and an entirely new payment system which includes various rewards and bonuses.  The new Jungle climate zone was added, and random monsters were also new to this phase. The inhabitable space was doubled because of the new climate zone. We invited even more players this time - we now have over 200 players.  Here is the Alpha 3 news post with details. More importantly though, is the work that has been done behind the scenes. We can tell you that we have started to rework our codebase, which in the long run will allow us to do things faster and better..
• On the 11th of September 2014, we did not launch a new alpha stage, however we did add 2 new quest locations - which is a big deal for those players who have been fans since original TT1/TTG and who wanted more of the old-school experience.

It has been a landmark year for us.  We have been working very hard on this game for almost 4 years now and we have been flying blind.  However, this past year has finally allowed us to touch base with players and embed our belief that this game serves its purpose and is appealing to both its present and future fans. Now that we have support - the future of the game is more certain.

I almost forgot to mention that everyone receives a Supporter's Key, a Thank You Package, and 3 Lucky Coins as a birthday treat!

Now everyone go post your most memorable game moment of the year! :)

I am sure you all thought that we were on vacation due to the lack of updates recently, but you can rest assured that this is not the case - we have been quietly busy and  heavily focused on doing Alpha 4 content.  So I thought I would share, and shed some light, on what we are working on at the moment.

• New World Map. The new world map will be huge - hundreds of times bigger than the current Alpha 3 world map. A single region of the world map will be much larger than the whole world map as it stands now, with 4 regions making up one continent. We are working on this map right now, with the intent of launching it with the release of Alpha 4. You will notice that the landscape will be different too. We have added islands so that people whose starting location is close to the sea will be able to expand into the islands to prevent being locked away by others. We also plan to do some adjustments to the world mini-map which will only display the current continent, making  it more convenient.
• Rings and Amulets. These two category items were in the plans, but as of yet have not been implemented. Therefore, we decided we need to get to work on them. As you can see from those included in this threads artwork, our artists are currently working hard on designing these items. I can't say when they will be added into the game, but they are shaping up nicely as we speak.
• Medieval Age. It is not a secret that Alpha 4 will see the introduction of the new Medieval Age. There is a large amount of stuff that still needs to be completed before it is ready for release. The team is also busy working on missing content.

Now for news of something that we hope to have ready in the not-so-distant future - we have plans to redesign the espionage system and to have it ready to be included in the next major Alpha 3 update.  This is second on our priority list and will be tackled as soon as we are finished working on the Alpha 4 world map.  The new espionage system will also fix the lone attacker bug.

Finally, as there are some nice big wars going on, an important issue of town defense has been uncovered and I would invite all players who take part in the war to take part in that discussion as well.

The Top List function was introduced during late Alpha 1/early Alpha 2. However, today we have added a dedicated tab where you can conveniently check out where you are positioned. There are 3 global categories: Regional Country Ranking, World Country Ranking, and World Alliance Ranking.

Regional Top List shows the countries in your region in an aggregated leaderboard, where all categories add up to your total position.

World Country/Alliance Lists are more detailed. First, there are two different types - all-time and weekly lists.  Secondly, not only can you see how good you have been doing recently, you can also see how good you have been doing since the beginning of Alpha 3.

Furthermore, world rankings come from not just one, but from eight different top lists in each category:

• Population - total population of all towns in the country
• Domain - domain size of country in cells
• Science - number of science points generated
• Experience - experience points earned by hero
• Attack - total damage dealt to others as an attacker
• Defense - total damage dealt to others as a defender
• Plunder - total amount of resources obtained by plunder
• Profit - amount of resources obtained as a profit in market deals

To unlock the Top List tab you must first access it from your main dwelling.

It has been almost a year since we updated the quest/story element of the game. Today we are changing that. In this latest update we have added not just one, but two brand new quest locations to the game. To help get you started lets look at some of the details...

Those of you who have already completed the Opposition Hideout quest will need to go back and talk to Gromus again to unlock the two quest locations - Keepers' Village and Ruins of New Kyiv. Those who didn't will reach Gromus and talk to him anyway and locations will be unlocked the same way.

An important thing to note is that the conversation between your hero and Gromus and Co. is a lot more important than before - the choices you make during the conversation can easily make or break both quests and it contains important information which was not added as a useless filler. The new conversations are an integral part of the quest element of the game and should not be rushed through.

As a bonus we have also added a new cut-scene at the end of the tutorial when Gromus leaves.  You might also notice that all of the cut-scenes now include sounds.

We would greatly appreciate your feedback and impressions on the new quest locations, and when you have completed each quest it would be great if you could submit a more detailed account of both new quests on a separate thread by clicking on the link below:

Today we re-balanced the battle system and provided additional tactical variety, allowing heroes to beat stronger opponents with the proper unit combinations. We have significantly tweaked the stats of most of the units as well as the hero.

As a result of this update, the battle side of the game has become more of a "rock-paper-scissor" type system. This means that one unit type is strong against one type and weak against another type. For example, a Hunter is strong against a Nomad, but weak against a Brave. A Brave, on the other hand, is weak against a Nomad, but strong against other stone-age infantry, and so on. Pay attention to bonus attacks to figure out which units are strongest against the target unit. It might require numerous battles to figure things out though, so look at the reports and replays if you want to dig deeper into the game mechanics.

Short example: With the re-balance, if you fight armies of the same value (in resources) but with units who have an advantage over enemy units, you can completely destroy the enemy, while losing only half of your army.

Hero bonuses and strengths have changed as well. Before the update heroes were leveling up too fast, resulting in heroes' strengths growing faster than that of their armies. The update resulted in some stats becoming stronger, while others have been weakened. Also, the amount of experience required to level-up has increased significantly. This will now more closely resemble the final game.

As I  warned in advance, all heroes were reset to level 1, all earned equipment items were removed (except those given at the start), and all hero perks and stats were taken away. We have given everyone ten Figurines of Enlightment to help with leveling up again (only heroes who were above level 10 before the wipe received them). Unfortunately, this step was inevitable to test the new hero/battle system from scratch. Hopefully you understand that this is an alpha-test and wipes and resets are part of the package and normal for this stage of the game.

For those who have played the original Totem Tribe, you will be pleased (or terrified) to hear that gems are returning by popular demand!

We had initially planned to add gems after all the quest locations were completed. However, since that may take years, we decided to add them now. From now on, all quest locations will have collectible gems. So far they don't have much of a purpose - but like in original Totem Tribe, collecting all of them in ALL locations will unlock something big. Since we currently only have two quest locations, naturally it will not unlock anything. However, if you collect them all you can brag about it :)

Let us know in your comments how quickly you were able to find all of the gems, how hard it was  and which ones were particularly tricky. Based on that feedback, we will decide how to hide them in future quest levels - harder or the other way around.

In Other News:

• I have redesigned things inside the game, so hopefully this time the discrepancy between promoted and regular buildings will be solved once and for all.
• The Temple is now upgradeable from Altar from here on in.
• There was a killer bug in the game which caused all random monsters to fight as mushrooms. This has now been fixed. From now on, expect the monsters to become much much stronger. We might even need to make them a bit weaker in future updates. Anyway - let us know in your comments how you progress with the monsters from now on.
• We have reworked the technical side of the battle system. Our next step would be to tweak unit stats and battle behavior. Expect the battle to become different in the future updates.

The first one to collect all the gems post here! :)

In Totem Tribe II: Jotun stage 3 of the alpha test we introduced you to the Classical Age and the Tropics, and invited plenty of new testers. We are now able to move forward - and announce that plans are being made for the next Alpha test stage. So what can you expected from us in Alpha 4?

Medieval Age!

This is going to be one large chunk of new content - a plethora of new items, buildings, and strategic resources. We are adding new units - foot, mounted, constructions, ships, and so on. But more importantly - we will introduce you to the  Preacher - a unit which will have special abilities that have not yet been seen in the game. You will also be able to max up  your hero to level 50 - the highest level possible.

The Classical Age, as it is now, will be revised to ensure a smooth transition for the player into the Medieval Age, which will significantly shorten the research times and allow you to move through this age faster.

A LOT of new testers

We had planned on inviting a lot of new testers to this phase, but we had to be careful because even though  we have opened up the Tropics, effectively doubling the amount of space available, the wold map is still quite small.  However, in Alpha 4 all those who have already signed up to be  testers will be included in the next batch of invites and we are hoping to be able to invite even more people than that as we are planning on introducing an invitation system so existing players can invite their friends and family automatically.

New World Map

The  world map is currently too small to accommodate all of our new players. Alpha 4 will introduce you to our  new world map which has been designed for the final cut of the game. It will be at least 100 times larger than the current one. Single regions will be larger than the current whole world, so it is unlikely you that will be able to reach players in different climate zones.

That's it? What about new quests? ETA?

We have finally found some time to pay attention to Hero Perks. They have been active since we updated in Alpha 2, but at that time they were quickly hacked together just to see if they work. Now we have decided to sort them out a bit.

First of all, we have created new graphic icons for the major line of perks. There are some higher grade perks that can be unlocked after you pick regular ones for your hero - those are left for the future updates. For now we created icons for those which were already designed.

Furthermore, we have added descriptions of expected perk effects and marked which ones do not work yet. To my surprise, a lot of those perks are not working. But oh well, at least now we know what we have there right now.

In other news: Currently it is a hectic period - like always after a new Alpha stage launch - where new features produce a pletora of new bugs. So a large part of our time is being invested in those. But we are also moving forward bit by bit. We have finally started working on the interface - and one other cool thing I am not going to tell you - let it be my little secret :)

The Alpha 3 launch went quite well. We are in the process on making further plans for future development of Totem Tribe II: Jotun, and what we will have for Alpha 4. Maybe I will make a separate news post about Alpha 4 plans later.

The Stage 2 of the Totem Tribe II: Jotun Alpha test is over and we have successfully started Stage 3. We are currently inviting new testers into the game. If you are invited into Alpha 3, use the link below to join the game:

http://www.totemtribe.com/alpha/

If it says you don't have permission to access it, don't be upset, the Alpha 4 will come later on and we will be sending out a new wave of invites. Sooner or later everyone will have their chance to play.

Regarding invites - Alpha 3 world map is pretty small, just as it was in Alpha 2, but this time we plan to invite as many people as it will be necessary to fully populate the world map. I know some people do not like to be crowded, but this is a testing period. If there was ever a time to do all kinds of crazy stuff, it is now. Sorry for the inconvenience, but it is the price of being among the first :)

Our conclusions on Alpha 2

It is time to sum up our thoughts and experiences of running Stage 2 of the Alpha test for almost half a year with a little bit more details. It took much longer than expected because Alpha 2 was a stage of fundamental decisions:

• Codebase. We figured out our codebase was pretty bad and it was difficult to implement tweaks promptly. Testers found so many bugs and filed many suggestions, but when we tried to apply them it appeared that necessary changes took too much time to implement. We had a choice - either to continue to implement changes slowly or to take a break and seriously rework our codebase hoping that eventually it would make things easier. We decided to do the latter, and this resulted in a serious delay releasing Alpha 3 without many visible changes. We are not done yet on our codebase redesign, but at least we do see the whole picture and things will be simpler as time goes by.
• Interface. Even during Alpha 1 the majority of our testers criticized the game interface as being inconvenient and obscure. It was a priority feature, but due to situations mentioned in the previous section we failed to change the interface in Alpha 2. However we completed the necessary preparation programming and are about to redesign the interface in Alpha 3 updates.
• Community. The Alpha 2 community of testers was slightly larger than Alpha 1, but we were still able to keep the warm "family" atmosphere, although there were a few people that tried to ruin it. Most of the credit goes to the testers themselves though - they were great at keeping the right mood despite the presence of several upsetting situations. Guys/gals - you are awesome! :) It will be a challenge to keep it that way as more and more people come here, but I think sustaining the proper atmosphere is a key point to the game's success.
• Story. I know story and quests are very important to Totem Tribe folk and we really tried to release at least one new quest location with Alpha 3, but we were unable to do so without causing further delays. However, we have made all the necessary preparations that will allow us to release a new quest location at a later date. This will be done during an update, not during a wipe.
• Donations and premium items. Some people were very excited about Cash Shop and helped us with donations, and so we took steps to benefit those people by introducing various bonuses like Enkord Cash. However, refunded Enkord Cash spent during Alpha 2 resulted in too many premium items right from the start of Alpha 3. This skewed the results of early testing a little bit, and therefore we have made the decision not to refund bonus items on future Alpha wipes (Alpha 4 and so on) - only Enkord Cash will be refunded. This will prevent further skewing of the results during future Alpha testing. The bonus items will be refunded when the game reaches more stable stage - like Beta.
• War. Another important issue of Alpha 2 was battles. Some players felt uncomfortable when they were attacked unexpectedly for no reason. We analyzed those cases with proper attention and made some changes (like adding Shelter for units) to allow players to deal with those attacks. Some players asked us to create a separate mode or server for peaceful players alone, but unfortunately I must admit this will not happen. Totem Tribe is not a farm game or a city builder, and warfare was a crucial part of original Totem Tribe game. It will also play an important role in Totem Tribe II: Jotun. However we do realize the warfare is a very sensitive issue and we will always keep an eye on it, trying to figure out how to make it less stressful and more fun, providing more means to deal with damage.

Your conclusions?

We are about to start deploying Stage 3 of Totem Tribe II: Jotun closed alpha test. Update will be deployed within 1-3 days timeframe and current progress will be wiped. Here are the details about update and it's deployment. Let's start with major features.

Classical Age

The biggest thing among what has been added is whole new age with whole lot of new buildings, units, upgrades, research and so on. As we surveyed our players, we have found out it was the most desireable feature so we focused on implementing it for alpha 3.

Here are some major ones detailed:

• Iron - a new basic resource introduced in Classical Age and you will be able to mine Iron.
• Sailing - now you will be able to research and build vessels if you have town aligned next to the river or sea shore. Naval market is available to trade between port towns, additionally naval transports can be used to drop the landing party on mainland town of different continent. That's in addition to regular war ships that can attack enemy ports.
• Upgrades - now you can build a forge and upgrade your Classical Age troops. Upgrades are expensive but still a way to spend excessive resources when you have full army but want to make it a bit stronger.
• Siege - some people are not gonna like this :) You will be able to build catapults - very expensive units able to break enemy buildings.
• The Wonder of the World - let's see how much resources can you pour into this 100-level monstrosity :)

Better Payments

We were surprised how our testers supported us with donations even despite the fact that some prices were quite steep. Therefore we decided to give more value for the money to people who donate to support the game. No, we did not lower the prices :) but we have added various bonuses that will bring you extra free items and Enkord Cash in various circumstances. Here is the list of features:

• For each 30000 Enkord Cash charged as single payment you will get a special Supporter's Package with random items worth roughly 50000 plus 2 unique items called Lada's Ward which will allow you to cast uninterruptable truce for 3 days. One item is for your own use, another one to give as gift to your friend.
• When you donate money, you can automatially send out Pysanka's to your friends and alliance mates. Pysankas are small locked chests with free items too.
• For recurring spenders we are introducing Enkord Cash Club which will give you extra 10%-50% of what you charge (half of it comes in Enkord Cash, another half is in random items). That's in addition to ordinary volume bonus and volume discounts in Cash Shop!
• A deferred payment option is added. This is useful when you want to donate more than $100 and want to get larger volume discount. This way you will be able to charge several smaller payments and accept them as one big transaction.

Those things are just a few steps in the marketing department which needs to be done in order to make the game successful financially. Our current players are pretty loyal, but if we want to reach out for wider audience we need to provide better monetization offers. Another small bit - some players asked us what is their place in the top donators list, so now you can see your place in your control panel in the transactions tab.

More Game Additions

It's been quite some time since we promised alpha 3 to come out soon, so I decided to break up the silence with details about alpha 3 update. More precisely - monsters.

In alpha 3 there will be random monsters here and there all over the place around your new towns. They will be appearing from time to time just like peaceful animals or items/chests.

While they are agressive by default - they won't attack your town on their own, because we felt there is no need for that as some players could be pesky enough with their attacks. Instead they will be wantering around your town, preventing your hero to explote the surroundings, open chests and tame animals.

By killing those monsters your hero will earn experience, plus there will be some random items dropped by them. When your hero is weak and has low level there will be few weak monsters spawning, but as he/she muscles up there will be more of them and more dangerous ones.

Now let's hope the next news post will be about specific alpha 3 launch timeframe :)

Today we have been deployed another update which will be final before the big Alpha 3 update. From now on we are fully commited to delivering the alpha 3.

There are still a lot of work to do, so don't expect alpha 3 in the coming weeks, but it's a finish line for it - all major features are done and we are now busy pulling it all together for a release, fixing smaller things.

I will remind you that when alpha 3 will be launched, all your kingdoms, heroes and towns will be deleted and you will have to start from scratch. However you will receive a refund in Enkord Cash points to your account and will be able to spend them again in alpha 3. We will make a news post in advance (roughly in a week before the wipe) so you will be aware of the coming total game reset.

So what is new in today's update?

Shelter. The major thing is Shelter now should be working. You will be able to hide your army so when your town is attacked, they won't fight and you will not loose it. Now you can hide there all your rare animals if you like. Even better, you will be able to enable auto-hide feature which allows to hide automatically all your troops that appear in your town. This way you can queue a lot of units before you go to sleep and be sure that when you get up, they won't be wiped one by one by some other player that attacked you at night.

Ambient Sounds. Some players complained that silent pauses in the game are not good, but making music play without pauses to allow hears to rest will make it annoying. Therefore we have made compromise - now there is a long pause between music tracks, but instead of silence those pauses feature environment sounds.

Some of the team are currently working on adding more jungle into the game - take a look at this screenshot of the starting location in the tropics.

We have realised that the continents on the current world map are too small for intensive player-player interactions such as alliances or trade.  We do however feel that it is big enough to fit the new alpha 3 testers successfully as long as we  provide more space.  We have therefore decided that we are going to unlock another climate zone for players to start in.

The  team has decided that the tropics seem like  the best  choice as it will move  both the Northern and Southern inhabited zones closer together, which is why we  have started work on the tropical maps. You can see some of our progress in the picture above.  We have also redesigned the  tutorial location and hopefully the rest wont be long coming together.

Sorry for the lack of  updates and news lately. For the past few months I have  been really swamped with boring tech stuff while  the rest of the team have been making  good progress towards the Classical Age as well as putting together other features that we have planned for alpha 3. Our update rate will slow down for now as it is hard to add new features while  also fixing any outstanding bugs, so for the moment some bug fixes have been postponed.

In today's update we have added limited support for achievements and rankings. In fact achievements were working for some time before, but we have added some tweaks and we decided to announce them.

Just like alliances and diplomacy, they are in a half-working state too, but we decided to add them anyway to allow players to poke a stick on them.

Achievements can be viewed on hero tab in the third subtab on the left. They are split in 6 categories - click on one of the 6 medals below your hero to view them. Here I have compiled the list of (supposedly) working achievements.

Earning achievements improves your prestige and prestige level. Prestige level changes your hero background and arc from primitive one to a more developed and pretty. Overall prestige stat has no influence over gameplay, it is there purely for showing off (In the future player info screen will have hero's arc background too as another show-off point).

Also ranking were added. Unfortunately the top lists are not displayed anywhere just yet, but I have made a separate explanation thread about rankings.

It's been a while since we posted a news update so we felt it is nice to post a small summary of what is going on at Enkord right now.

The last few months since Alpha 2 launched I was investing heavilty into boring tech stuff which eventually allow us to start the total game interface overhaul. I do remember it was #1 complain since Alpha 1 launch and it still was the case for Alpha 2 - all those huge chat and progress boxes that can't be closed or minimized which take away your screen real estate and so on. Trust us, we hear you, it's not just simple to fix, hence the need for a serious tweaking inside the game.

Good news is if we will be able to pull this internal tech overhaul, we will be able to creat ant tweak game interface way faster, reacting promptly on your feedback. Unfortunately this postpones Alpha 3 launch a little bit, but hey, on Alpha 3 we plan to invite more testers than on alpha 1 and 2 combined, so it will be worth the wait!

Meanwhile our artists have been working on Classical Age art. For example on this picture you can see the Wonder you can start building in Classical Age to achieve Wealth Victory (one of the 6 possible victory types). It will have a whopping 100 upgrade levels and will require zillions of resources to build - you will need to be a very wealthy one, hence the victory name.

The testing was also too successful - our resless army of testers provided us a ton of found bugs, I am kinda scared to think how are we going to find the time to fix them all. Keep up the great work! :)

At the moment we are busy working on various internal things that cannot be seen visually but are essential for further progress, therefore we decided to unlock some alliance-related features.

Those features are incomplete and barely working - they were added a long time ago and only accessible via console commands, but we decided to unlock them now so people who are not scared to poke the ugly stuff could try it out.

We have listed possible commands here in our update log so if you want to try it out - read it carefully and see if you can do something with it. If those commands look Greek and you absolutely have no clue what to do with them - it's ok, they are not intended to be acceptable for everyone, so you can wait until we design a proper interface and popups for them.

If you want to discuss alliances and the alliance commands, you can post your questions in this news comment thread.

2013 was a very labour intensive year for the developers of Totem Tribe II: Jotun. The work done over the past 12 months has been crucial  for the fate of this project.  Releasing both the new website and alpha stage 1 was a huge turning point for the development team as our project started to shape up like a real game and not just chunks of code and content here and there.

The Website

We finally launched the website and started accepting donations from our loyal fans which meant that after 3 long years we were able to start investing money back in to the development of the game. It was a very important moral achievement for us - we are providing something that people want and people are willing to part with their money to support us even without trying the game.  You don't come across that much trust too easily these days.

For us, the website has been an integral part of the game right from the start.  It slowed the game development down a bit which is why it took us so much time to release the alpha, but it was essential in order to provide the necessary infrastructure for when our first testers started to play.  They had  already shared accounts in the game and on the forum, so adding their heroes avatars was not that hard when we came to the launch.

After receiving a lot of feedback on the website, we made a decision to start the closed alpha test earlier than planned, in order to start receiving feedback on the game itself as soon  and as fast as possible.  We had initially planned to release the alpha with opposition hideout and advisor quests in place but decided to launch it as soon as the tutorial was ready and it was well worth it.

We wish you a merry Christmas, a happy New Year and have made a present in form of launching stage 2 of Totem Tribe II: Jotun closed alpha-test.

In addition to those people who were invited earlier, a new wave of testers will be invited this time. Now we have invited some veteran players from our other online game called GUNROX to test how regular casual players will feel playing alongside hardcore players and fix the problems that could possible arise out of this.

The progress of the stage 1 is wiped and everyone will start from scratch.

Here is the list of major changes in stage 2:

1. New quest location called "Opposition Hideout" was added. There you must find Gromus and other opposition leaders in their hideout and in order to do so you must solve a quest - there are several different ways to do that which can result into puzzle solving, item finding or monster fighting - depending on which path you will take.
2. Over 50 of various advisor quests added that become available after you finish tutorial - talk to Bulat or Zweistein and they will help you build up your town step by step generously rewarding you for your progress. You will receive over 50 items from those quests so even if player haven't donated anything and has no Enkord Cash will be able to properly jump-start his/her country.
3. Cash Shop is added where you can spend Enkord Cash received for your donations in case those 50 items from advisor quests won't be enough. The Cash Shop is initial version, so might be buggy - report us any problems.
4. Fishing was added - once you find all of the fishing pole components and assemble it, you will be able to fish for various species.
5. The balance of the game was revamped significantly - prices and requirements of buildings, units, technologies was changed to make it smother and more balanced. Plus a lot of minor things too many to mention. We will see how it turns out.
6. Two new buildings and one new unit were added. The buildings are the Secret Cave where you can train Caveman (a new unit but one you might remember from original Totem Tribe) and the Petroglyph where you can convert excessive stone resources into science points increasing your research. The Secret Cave is an alternative to the Witchdoctor Shack, therefore, you will have to choose whether you want Witchdoctors or Cavemen in your country.
7. The world map has more strategic resources now, especially horses.
8. Less important changes mentioned in our changelog thread on forum.

Please note, that this is still a closed alpha test and after stage 2,  stage 3 will be implemented and your progress will be reset again. If you are not ready to play a very limited and buggy game - please wait until the later stages.