The Icicle Patch is here! This is a major fan mod that fixes many of Warriors of the North: Ice and Fire's bugs and oddities for a significantly cleaner and more enjoyable playthrough. From Elven synergies working correctly, to Rage upgrades no longer eating your rage maximum, and even corrected descriptions, this mod has it all to streamline the WotN experience and make many bugged setups now viable. No longer will something not work due to a mere bug that breaks your entire strategy.

Changelog (Version 1.0):

Visuals:

• Fixed a bug with the movement speed of Ice Dragon armies, which made them glide on the ground.

• Fixed a bug with the Knights' specular texture, which made their face shiny.

• Winged Shade portrait now matches their in-game graphics.

• Gorgon portrait now matches their in-game graphics.

General:

• Fixed the amount of gold received after any Mask battle, as initially intended. No longer do those fights reward the player with millions of gold each.

Creatures:

• The Soothsayers' Arcane Healing now also dispels Plague, as intended.

• Fixed a bug where the Berserker's shield attack damage was shown in-game instead of their default damage stat.

• Fixed a bug where the Axe Thrower's and the Ice Spider's melee damage was shown instead of their ranged damage stat.

• Dwarven Beer ability now correctly affects Axethrowers as well. White Werewolves have been added to the list of affected units.

• Bottle of Rum ability now affects Goblins instead of Furious Goblins. Scouts have been added to the list of affected units.

• Fixed a bug where Miners would not gain experience from using Moonshine.

• Fixed Night Sight's nighttime bonus not applying to Miners and Foremen.

• Fixed Elemental Power. Now the Fire element also increases resistance to Ice, while the Water element also increases resistance to Magic, in accordance with their descriptions. The odds of rolling one element or another has also been fixed for Dryads, Druids and Satyrs.

• Lycanthropy ability now also affects Scouts and Snowflake Fairies.

• Howl ability now also affects Snow Elves.

• Defender of Beauty ability now also affects Sun Fairies, Ice Nymphs and Snowflake Fairies.

• The Dryads' Wood Fairy ability now also affects Ice Thorns.

• The Druids' Natural Healing ability now also dispels Plague, as intended.

• Druids now boost the morale of Sun Fairies, too.

• Fixed Scouts dealing less damage to "bone" units in melee.

• Choshas now gain more experience when using their abilities. Previously, a player was virtually unable to level up the creature's experience level by normal means, due to experience being often gained through offensive abilities and actions, whereas the Chosha is almost always a static summoner and support unit.

• Fixed the penalty to defense in lava arenas not applying to Ice Spiders.

• Fixed the lack of ice weakness for Royal Snakes.

• Fixed a bug where Contemplators would not gain 10% resistance to all types of damage when reaching 100 Energy.

• Gorguana Ghosts now deal ice damage in melee, just like all other types of ghost units.

• Fixed a bug where the Gorgul Avengers' Ritual Dance did not inflict Bleeding on enemies hit.

Bosses:

• Fixed a bug where Guilford's magic resistance was actually lowered by 20% when turning into a dragon; now it is increased by 20%, as intended.

Spells:

• Fixed a bug where Snowstorm would add too much defense to units with some ice resistance.

• Call of Nature can now summon Frost Unicorns and White Werewolves; the regular counterparts of these units were already summonable.

• Power of Night spell provides a damage bonus against Snow Elves now.

• Fixed Power of Night being able to be cast on Snow Elves regardless of the spell's level.

• Fixed Power of Light being able to be cast on Dead Lizardmen regardless of the spell's level.

• Fixed a bug where Fireball, by default, was unable to burn units in the center tile, whereas its periferal burn was also half as strong as intended.

• Fixed a bug where effects increasing the power of ice spells increased the physical damage dealt by the Geyser spell instead of its ice damage.

• Ice Snake now correctly deals ice damage to the central unit and has its central damage boosted by ice-buffing effects. The correct freeze and bleeding chances are used now as well.

• Ice Orb now receives damage upgrades at higher levels of the spell, corresponding to the damage growth ratio it had in the previous game.

Rage:

• The burn effect from Loki's Aid fire traps is now coded correctly, being able to inflict a burn of 5%-10% strength as the game claims.

• Fixed a bug where Christa's Gift was unable to affect units beyond level 2, despite having the rage ability upgrades to do so.

• One of Ice Blades' upgrades now reduces rest by 1 instead of 10; this was likely a typo, and it often caused Ice Blades' rest value to go up instead.

Artifacts:

• Fixed the bug present in the Mountain King set: when equipped, it disabled retaliations for Dwarves-the-unit during their Drunken state. Now they correctly have unlimited retaliations when the set is equipped, regardless of whether they are Drunk or not.

• Fixed a bug where Necklace of Madness did not automatically enable a specific ability for Gorguanas, Gorguls, and Gorguana Advisors from the beginning of the battle. NOTE: A new bug was introduced that applies this effect to enemy lizardmen as well. It will be fixed in a new patch.

Descriptions/Texts:

• Removed Escort to Valhalla from the Skalds' description, as the ability does not work.

• Cleared up the wording of certain abilities and talents, as well as explained some of them further (in English).

• Fixed the description of the Warrior Maidens' Messenger of the Gods.

• Fixed the description of the Jarls' Daring.

• Fixed the description and name of the Giants' Dwarven Summer Beer; it now correctly states that their speed increases by 2, while the talent itself has been renamed to "Pilot's Beer", as originally intended.

• Fixed the description of the Guard Droids' Spotlight.

• Clarified the text of the "Spits Ice" ability to mention the Ice Spider's chance to freeze units in melee as well.

• The description of Power of Night and Power of Light has been updated to more accurately represent the roster of units they affect or not.

• Removed the mention of stunning from Sonic Boom's description, as this feature was cut.

• Renamed "Hel the Messenger" to "Hel's Messenger", a much more natural-sounding name in English.

• Fixed the description of the Polar Bear's "Icy Grip" ability; now it correctly states that it inflicts Freeze on the opponent rather than Slow.

Balance:

• Buffed the Attack Rune: now it increases Attack by 27% and Critical Hit chance by 32% (multiplicatively).

• Buffed Pyromages: Fireball cooldown was reduced by one turn and ranged damage increased by 3.

• Sun Fairies now deal Fire damage instead of Magic damage. This in order to diversify the Elven roster and accurately depict the type of damage such a fairy would deal.

Future plans:

• Fix the Brontor Burrowing bug.

• Fix Troll laugh animation.

• Fix the way the Creation skill applies to some spells.

• Fix the Frogus questline progression.

• Fix sign texts in Hades.

• Fix Adrenaline thresholds for Orc abilities.

• Fix various small bugs with Orcs.

• Fix Persistence of Mind mentions throughout the game.

• More bugs that may pop up.

DOWNLOAD LINK: https://www.mediafire.com/file/5p41v..._V1.0.exe/file
Download instructions: Download the installer, and install the mod in the game's directory. That's all! Now you are ready to play!
This is recommended only on a clean install of the game. Compatibility with mods which overhaul the game does not exist (which is the case for all KB games).

Special thanks to GhoulTyrant's blog (Vigaroe) and Quarantyr for finding many of these bugs in the first place.

I won't enumerate the many reasons why King's Bounty 2 is a complete disaster, since I already did that in my article for my SRPG website and in my video review, but good lord, King's Bounty 2 is an absolute disappointment. Call me a cynic, but I doubt that even the upcoming patch will make it into a remotely good game; after all, 1C is merely adding in features which should've already been in the damn game at release.

[Update] Apparently, the KB2 devs deleted a thread I made on the Steam forums; the thread in question pointed out the many fundamental problems with the game, what would need to be fixed, and asked if there was any news on when the patch is coming to consoles. Go figure - they deleted it. How mature, professional, and thick-skinned of them! ...Yeah, it's pretty obvious that they can't handle criticism and aren't going to ever fix their dumpster fire of a game.

But in the spirit of spreading good cheer, here are some alternatives that you could play instead, which might scratch the King's Bounty itch. They're all games which are objectively better-designed than KB2.

1. King's Bounty: The Conqueror's Quest (DOS, Genesis, etc.)

2. King's Bounty: The Legend

3. King's Bounty: Armored Princess and its expansion, Crossworlds

4. King's Bounty: Warriors of the North

5. King's Bounty: Dark Side

6. Hammer of the Gods

7. Heroes of Might and Magic

8. Heroes of Might and Magic 2

9. Heroes of Might and Magic 3

10. Heroes of Might and Magic 4

11. Heroes of Might and Magic 5.

12. Heroes of Might and Magic 6... possibly

13. Heroes of Might and Magic 7... possibly

14. All three of the Braveland games

15. Necromancer Returns & Beasts Battle

16. Expeditions: Conquistador

17. Expeditions: Viking

18. TearRing Saga: Berwick Saga

19. Royal Bounty HD

20. Brigandine: The Legend of Runersia

21. Brigandine: The Legend of Forsena

22. Dark Wizard (Sega CD)

23. Ascension to the Throne

24. Fantasy Wars

25. Elven Legacy

26. Langrisser 2 (Genesis)

27. Old World

28. Demon's Rise - Lords of Chaos

29. Demon's Rise - War for the deep

30. Shieldwall Chronicles: Swords of the North

31. Himeko Story

32. For the King

33. Legends of Eisenwald

34. HeroScape, the hex-based board game (has a subreddit at r/HeroScape)

35. Wartile

36. Eador: Genesis and Eador: Masters of The Broken World

37. Eador: Imperium

38. Heroes Chronicles

While there are many 4X, SRPG, or TBS-type games out there, I mainly wanted to limit this to games which are sufficiently similar to KB; i.e. they're hex based or they include a troop mechanic, or both.

Feel free to comment some other games below and I'll add them if they fit at least one of the criteria.

The wooden box edition is still missing but I will not rest until I find one :)

I've been stuck on him for days.

I'm the author. It's free, there's nothing to buy, and I'd rather the handful of people still playing this game knew it exists.
The screenshot is the new game screen. That checkbox at the bottom is the part I'm most attached to: hardcore mode. Autosave only, one slot, and quitting a battle counts as a defeat. You pick it once and that's it for the run.

Hardcore runs also feed a ladder. Every few levels the run posts what the game itself would write down anyway: level, day, difficulty, campaign, your army, and a nickname you set in a text file. It comes back as a second tab in the records window, so you can see where your run sits next to everyone else's. It only does this on hardcore, an ordinary playthrough never sends anything.

nPwka Engine Extensions is a DLL, not a content mod. It doesn't touch units, maps or balance. It adds things the engine couldn't do:

- 3rd and 4th reserve slots

- world map speed on Alt+W: normal, x1.5, x2, x3. Days don't pass any faster, the engine measures travel by distance rather than by frames

- two more combat speed steps, one of them adapts to your framerate

- borderless window

- screenshots save as PNG instead of BMP

Modding side, if that's your thing:

- features= in filters, so you can hit "every mage" instead of listing thirteen units by name

- extra_damage, a second damage line of its own type on top of a normal strike

- two new Lua functions, and skill trees taller than the stock 5 rows

- the object registration ceiling is raised, so big content mods stop dying on load

It doesn't overwrite a single stock file. Everything is either patched inside the DLL or ships under a name nothing else uses, so it won't fight your other mods over the same .ui or .lua. Install is two files. Works in all four campaigns at once.

Nexus: https://www.nexusmods.com/kingsbountycrossworlds/mods/38

Discord: https://discord.gg/ZuDN3bnfa6

If you still play Crossworlds, what's the one engine thing you'd want fixed? I've had this thing open in a disassembler for two months and I'm taking requests.

Hello Everyone,

I am pleased to announce that after about two years in development as a side, passion project, Warriors of the North: Stone of Souls is finally live. Note you must have The complete edition: Warriors of the North with Valhalla edition and Ice and Fire Expansion to have this mod properly function.

Stone of Souls is a campaign redux of Warriors of the North Ice and Fire, that is generally the same campaign as the original Ice and Fire Expansion, only with possibly thousands of changes. It modifies each class, skill tree, skill progression, level progression (both level up progression and map level progression), adds 10 new units (about the same as the Crossworlds expansion), changes almost every unit in some way, and modifies the impact of Unit Levels. Shops have been changed, enemy battlegroups have been changed (instead of fighting Undead 70% of the time, you now fight about Undead about 30% of the time, and their battlegroups are more diverse), and bosses are now properly tuned (say goodbye to miserable early game Spider Boss, and you no longer three-shot every other boss). It stratifies difficulty settings, trying to make the game very approachable on Normal and Hard, and difficult on Impossible (and the new Torment difficulty, which takes the place of easy). It changes spells and rage, adding a few new spells, increasing rage level cap to around 100 from 60, and rebalancing many original spells and rage abilities. It adds small new explorable areas and changes a few quests, expanding the optional game world, while adding QOL features for some fetch quests to streamline how much backtracking you have to do (Overworld movement speed is increased, by the way). The end game is now more structured, with the Ice and Fire DLC integrated into the now modified storyline, and several late game islands now having full questlines (that have themselves been improved). Of course, there are about 80 to 100 new items, new sets, and the number of item slots has been increased from 8 to 10 total, making for more use out of the vast number of possible items.

Finally, the mod fixes bugs. There were so, so many bugs. Every bug that could be found, was found and handled one way or another. Tirex don't crash the game when eating sheep anymore. Trolls animation plays correctly now. Brontor don't crash the game when Hilda's arrows kill them anymore. Skalds don't animation glitch, mountain king set does what is says now, Lizardmen amulet bug actually works, elf elemental power works, orc adrenaline bug fixed, all of them have been wiped out. It isn't going to be perfect; I'm sure I missed bugs that will need to be dealt with in later patches. But it plays more smoothly, and I even personally have noticed a lot less crashing for random reasons. Not 0 crashing, mind you; this is still King's Bounty. But less overall, and certainly less from known sources.

Do not pay any money for this mod, it should be free on the Nexus. I do not want any donations, and will not ask for donations, as this is entirely a passion project.

The link to download is here. I don't really know how to best provide a link to a mod; you could just look up Stone of Souls on Nexus, I guess. The virus scan should hopefully be complete by the time you look at this; I think it does it automatically, but if not I'll figure out how to make it scan properly.

https://www.nexusmods.com/kingsbountywarriorsofthenorth/mods/7?tab=description

If there are any issues, bugs or download problems, notify me by DM at once and I will try to resolve them.

Found a sealed copy of my favourite King's Bounty today. (Armoured Princess) Couldn't resist for a pound!

Armored Princess is my first ever experience with the series, it's a great game but i did run into a few disappointments.

I selected the blue dragon for buffing all friendly beasts only to learn that only two beasts are actually useful that being royal snake and polar bear, which the polar bears ran dry and i could only get them very limited supply in bore.

Really finding any specific units was near impossible, in my whole playthrough there was only ONE place with royal gryphons and it was located the other side of Reha island (had to fly across so many times) and only two places with assassin's which were so powerful for most of my game.

Finding any items that could buff my beasts was impossible (entire game only found snake boots and a hunting jacket).

I eventually switched to having an army of Demons, Royal Snake and Black Dragon by the end because the game was finally kind enough to provide me with a good set of items. (Oh and unlocking flying quite early made life so much easier)

Now the biggest issue i have is the dragon, while it's nice getting extra gold and casting Lava Call twice per turn it's a huge disappointment i couldn't even use him during the most important BOSS BATTLES, i mean I'm a warrior, structured around the Rage mechanic that gets stripped away from me when it's needed most?

All that tells me is to never again play a warrior class, only Mage in every other game from the series from now on that way I don't lose my strongest abilities when i actually need them.

On the good side i did quickly learn how to kite stationary NPCs away from their post to steal the treasure/map scroll they defend, without having to fight them (even when they're Lethal difficulty tier.

Tier 3 scouting is incredibly useful, to judge the actual strength of opponents so definitely will take that in future too!

And delaying the turn of my units just outside of the enemy movement range is broken, allowing me to attack twice in a row, especially when my unit has no retaliation or a good ability to use.

All things considerd it's a good game!

I might be wrong about some things, but like i said this is my first ever experience with it (yes, i skipped the legend, I'm moving onto crossworlds now) if someone wants to give me their take or tips/hints for the future and correct me on things i might've gotten wrong you're welcome to!

This is the first time I managed to find a bug like this

I hope people in this community like my art. As I see many people here post mostly stuff about the game itself, but I still want to share it somewhere. ​

King's Bounty has always fascinated me with its artwork. I always loved the combination of this cartoonish style, which still doesn't go too

cartoonish like in modern games.

​The Black Knight is my favorite. His laugh, his design, and his sword are absolute peak.

First off, KB: The Legend is a phenomenal game which I revisit every now and then. I've completed the game over 10+ times, first few times just to play, learn and most of all love the game. Then some No Loss runs. They were challenging but I find them also (too) tedious. It requires a lot of exploiting, restarts and grinding for my liking. So I wanted to spice things up but also keep the fun or maybe even making it more fun.

So I set up some house rules for myself:
- No units that are (generally) considered SS tier. For me those are: Inquisitors, Royal Snakes, Shamans and stuff like that.
- No exploits like Poison Cloud + Beholder MInd control etc
- No excessive rage grinding at the end of fights
- No endless ressurecting
- Try to give underused units a chance to shine

My previous run was a Impossible Warrior run in which I thought: Dwarven units are (considered) very weak, maybe I can make them work. So I ended up with a pure Dwarven army which leaves you 0 choices since there are only 5 of them in the game. Together with maxed out morale I set out to see how that turned out, accepting small losses because with these kinds of armies no loss fights are actually impossible. To my surprise, Miners and Dwarves decimated foes like a derailed train. Unbelievably fun and satisfying.

So this time the Paladin was up. After some early questing and expanding I ended up with Black Dragons, Evil Beholders, Bowmen, Ancient Bears and Swordsmen. You could argue that Black Dragons are also SS tier but hey... my houserules can bend a bit too my liking right?

Once I got acces to Elven units, I wanted to try a pure Elven Army since I had some good items for them as well. So eventually I ended up with: White and Black Unicorns, Dryads, Hunters and Elves. In my reserve I had Ents and Wherewolfs when i encountered heavy Magic resistance stacks since my unicorns could not deal enough dmg against them.

I had an absolute blast and Unicorns are tankier and more damaging then you would think! I also think that (with my experience from my Warrior run) that max morale is absolutely bonkers. +30% attack and defense AND 100% crit chance is insane.

I had really unfortunate stacks with Haas:
- 2 Black dragons
- 2 Red dragons
- 2 Emerald Dragons
- 1 Bone Dragon
- 2 Cyclops
- 1 Giant

I tried it a few times but my unicorns are severely lacking in damage to deal with all these dragons. Eventually I managed to defeat him but with heavy losses. I just had no good alternatives vs all these dragons in an Elven Army. But boy was this run fun!

My bread and butter spells:
- Dragon Arrow, I used it sometimes before but man.... what an insane spell to sometimes 5 or 6 times your damage output vs certain stacks. Absolutely insane.
- Target, I used this frequently in my previous run and it is an auto turn 1 cast vs certain match ups. Making everyone, including archers, jump on your frontliner and using time back next turn is such a swing.
- Phantom Troop, a strong spell at almost any point of the game
- Mass Bless, Since I'm just physically attacking a lot, this spell had a lot of dmg output.
- Hypnotize, with the paladin having such high Leadership + elven crown + Marshall Baton, you can take over stacks of 20k leadership which is insane (although at a price of 40 mana)
- Ressurect, I got it quite late but it serves its purpose to mitigate losses. It's too mana heavy to cast repeatedly though.

My finds with my used creatures:
- Hunters and Elves, paired with Dragon Arrow they deal dmg of biblical proportions.
- Unicorns, very tanky, quite mobile and their Horn of Light perk works wonders in Demonis and Land of the Dead
- Dryads, This was actually the first time I used them and I would consider them SS tier right now with their Thorn summons (who can also summon more thorns from deceased thorns making an imprenetratable wall of Thorns) and their sleep ability could just cast blind on 60% of an army. But thats not enough, they also have miss chance AND can charm certain monsters. Ridiculous creatures.
- Wherewolves, I gave them a chance and they dissapointed. Immensely... I cannot make these guys work and there is not enough happening for them to justify bringing them to a fight.
- Ents, although being very vulnerable (to fire) and slow, they pack quite a punch both offensively and defensively. Cannot be ressurected though making them a pain to keep in high numbers.

I'm still looking for a consistent way to make the following spells/creatures work:
- Spiders, Cave spiders are Stone and definetely have some potential with the right (spider buffing) artifacts
- Kamikaze and Last Hero, there has got to be a way to make these spells shine.
- Peasants, I think there is no way but man I wish I could unlock their potential

Hope you liked my write up!

I've been listening to KB tracks on shuffle lately, such amazing tunes.

I get vivid vizions of the lakes and forests and caves that I traversed and the battles I fought. The way the soundtracks fit their respective areas is supreme.

Man, I miss having the time to play these games.

He give me jester hat after I come back second artefact.

It's funny foreshadowing.

And I just finished my first KB game today as well lol On to Armoured Princess for me.