After months of development, a new update is finally out! So what's in the package? Let's see!

You know that in one of the previous updates I've made all tools last shorter. So already you are not guaranteed to make it through the whole war with just one crowbar. However, I've felt it wasn't enough.

It is clear that the developers of this game have simplified a lot of things because they wanted to keep the focus on the story. However, if you've made it as far as this mod, then some additional complications probably won't stop you, right? So I decided it was a good time to give the lock picking a complete overhaul.

From now on, your survivors will perform differently when operating a lock pick. I will not open up all the cards, but just know that there are 7 lock picking tiers now, Arica occupies the masterful S tier, Boris resides on the bottom F tier, and everyone else is somewhere in between. Lock picking tier influences both how long the picking will take, and how successful it will be. There are now 4 possible picking outcomes: "succeeded and kept the lock pick" (a rare occasion only for the top tiers), "succeeded and lost the lock pick" (default and the most possible outcome), "failed but kept lock pick" (lock picking can get complicated. Try again), and "failed and lost lock pick" (Boris, you butterfingers, not that again!). Every outcome has its own speech; the fourth outcome "lock pick broke in process" will actually happen in the midst of the progress; and the whole thing is as exploit-proof as possible.

"But why does it matter if I always use a crowbar, not a lock pick"? I'm glad you asked! Because you should know: now you will be using those lock picks, and there are two reasons for that:

• You can't craft a crowbar any more. I mean, I can understand a lot of simplifications in crafting, but a crowbar? How do you craft a crowbar?? Now you don't. Can still buy it though (more traders will have it). But it's still not a silver bullet, because...
  
• Now you can only use a crowbar on doors - not containers. Yes, citizens of Pogoren have finally learned that padlocks do a very bad job protecting their belongings, so now to open a locker, you will need a lock pick (or a few 😏). Doors can still be opened with a crowbar as usual.

Of course, changes this severe can not go without some re-balancing. So, now the lock picks are a lot cheaper both to craft and to purchase; as for the crowbar, it is now much more plausible as a weapon - and while we're at it, let's talk more about combat.

AAO old timers will probably say, "but you have overhauled the combat already". And that's true - however, before it was more like an intuitive nerf, almost like "I'll just go ahead and reduce these numbers 20% down". It was because for the life of me I couldn't comprehend the formulas used in close combat, how damage is calculated, how instakills work etc. But now, after weeks of research and tremendous help and inspiration from my amazing tester BlazingBlizzard, I know it all. It would take way too much space to lay it out here, so instead I have completely rewritten the "Combat" page on TWOM wiki: here[this-war-of-mine.fandom.com].

You can go ahead and get acquainted with it to understand this game's combat better (and to learn some new insights - for example, did you know that Henrik is actually a top-tier fighter?), but have in mind that the numbers will differ tremendously in this mod (unsurprisingly). As for this mod, here are a few things that changed.

• No unarmed instakills for anyone. Yes, even Roman and even from the cover.
  
• Shovel has been nerfed dramatically. Being the most easily obtained, Day 1 melee weapon, it is now just slightly better than the fists; I wouldn't count on it with your instakill desires, unless you have Roman on your side. Still no backstab instakills though.
  
• Crowbar has been promoted. Since now you can only buy it, it is now better than shovel; some better fighters can even use it for instakills, and the best ones can even perform a backstab instakill with a crowbar.
  
• Hatchet had been tuned down a tad. It is still the most powerful weapon in terms of damage. But to perform an instakill, one should have enough muscular strength so the blow would be both precise and powerful. It is better than Crowbar, but you should only bring it if you plan a face-to-face combat. Otherwise, your best friend now is...
  
• Knife - now the best weapon for stealth ambush. A knife is lighter than a hatchet, meaning it's easier to deliver a deadly blow. So now it is the only weapon that will allow instakills to the mid tier majority of potential fighters.

And once again, now the weapons line up as:

Originally posted by author:

Fists -> Shovel -> Crowbar -> Hatchet -> Knife

And that order is followed when auto-equipping weapons, too.


You probably find this change devastating, because you are very used to the fact that you can take a hatchet to the scavenging and deliver guaranteed killing blows from hiding, no matter who the scavenger is. Well, wait until you read the next section because I have even more awesome surprises for you!

From the day 1 of working on this mod, I've been bugged by both my own mind as well as a certain fella named Kenny about an easy exploit this game offers. Known among some as "Excuse me", this exploit means that you can very easily grab the goodies from the trader's locker (for example, Military Outpost guy), suffer almost no consequences, and come back a few days later to repeat. While it's the safest and easiest way to get tons of loot, it can take the challenge right out of the game, which is kinda the opposite of what we're trying to achieve here.

Previously I've tried to defeat this exploit by making Military Outpost loot less valuable, but obviously, it does nothing with other traders who are still vulnerable to your sticky hands, and this situation begged for a better solution - which I finally managed to find.

As a part of the "Pogoren vs. Thieves" program, in which the citizens have already changed their locker padlocks for something better, the traders took an additional security step and placed the actual combination locks on their lockers! They used to be careless and throw their stock in the piles all around the place - now they are vigilant and put all of their stuff into the lockers protected from the petty thieves by the top-notch security solution. The only way you're opening that lock is if you know the combination - and you will never know it, guaranteed. There is of course a line of speech for trying. So with that, Military Outpost is now perfectly stocked again, and Bojan doesn't seem eager to share the combination from his locker with you - so make sure to bring something valuable to trade for.

But that's not it! After all the title says "Exploits" (plural). The other vile exploit I've tackled in this update is the "illegal material stashes". You probably know that you can start building some fitting and leave it unbuilt, which will prevent the thieves from taking your stuff at night. In the morning, you can cancel the building process and get your ingredients back safe and sound. Guess what... No more 😈

Now if you put a blueprint on the floor without starting working on it, by morning it will simply vanish. You will get your resources back... provided they won't get stolen. The logic behind this is "why can't robbers take the ingredients simply lying on the floor?". If you start working though, there are two phases of the process:

1. From the start to about half of progress: It is still considered that the resources can be taken away from this construction. Fitting built for less than 50% will vanish by the next morning (with resources returned).
   
2. From half of the progress to the end. At this point, the resources are considered too invested into the build to be taken away. You can not cancel the building from this point forward; however, the construction will wait to be finished for as long as needed. So as you can see, you will never find yourself in a "damn, I've almost finished it and the day ended!" kind of situation.

The logic above works for fittings. For item building, which tends to be quicker, all interrupted progress will get reset at the end of the day, giving you resources back if possible. I'm looking forward to hearing the reports of beating Pilgrimage with this new logic! And speaking of challenges...

There are 5 new challenges in this update. Some of them introduce revolutionary stuff: new mechanics that you haven't seen before. So below all 5 are listed, starting from the least exciting one:

• Goodbye Franko - Franko, the door-to-door trader, has managed to escape the city. You still have Katia who can bargain better than anyone, but without Franko it's her who will be forced to turn into a door-to-door trader instead.
  
• Resilience - After a short break in the beginning, the night attacks on your shelter will become progressively worse with each day - to the point where you will be forced to leave all your survivors on guard. Winter is not coming, but autumn will be getting chilly.
  
• Back to basics - In this challenge there are no electric parts in the whole Pogoren. You are left with only the most basic fittings. It's late autumn. The long, suffocating winter is soon to come, after which you have to be prepared for frequent and violent attacks on your shelter.
  
• Paranoia - The war has taken a heavy toll on your survivors' sanity. They see ambushes everywhere they go. They will refuse to go to the same location twice, at least for a few days. At the very least, you don’t have to worry about winter and fighting blockings. Not in this challenge. Here your main enemy is your own mind.
  
• Pacifism - Your survivors vowed to never attack anyone, with shelter protection being the only exception. They will refuse to equip weapons, and they will hold back to absolutely everyone in a fist fight.

That means now all 15 scenarios have challenges to them!🎉To celebrate this, I’ve redrawn all scenario pictures from scratch, so they would better reflect the challenge’s core. I’ve also added handy indicators on every picture aimed to display the main features of each challenge, so now you will have an easier time choosing your next suffering.

And on top of that, some of the older scenarios have been re-balanced, some starting groups have been changed to make sure that every challenge can only be beaten by blood, sweat and tears.

• I've put "Slow" into "Slow but steady". Now in this challenge your elderly survivors will run quite slow, resulting in their inability to outrun any enemy.
  
• Fixed a couple of typos.
  
• Fixed several vanilla bugs that would result in console log flooding, making it difficult to diagnose problems.
  
• Now, if the survivor has been wounded when removing rubble with bare hands, they will interrupt the process, so you could decide if they should proceed and take more risks.
  
• Fixed a bug where by mistake bombings would destroy a bit less locations than was intended.
  
• Kids can now get traumatised and have more pessimistic diary notes as a result (vanilla mechanic that's been cut out from the game - now returned). On the other hand, they now stand a bit better chance to get a good ending.

It's a lot of new stuff for one update, huh? I would probably be forced to release it in small portions and wait for feedback, if it wasn't for BlazingBlizzard, an absolute veteran of TWOM with whom we got together on Reddit. Not only did she inspire me to make this update, but also she volunteered to playtest every new challenge, providing extended feedback, and check every new feature, helping me to catch pesky bugs that are unavoidable when you go this deep into modding the game mechanics.

So, my eternal gratitude to BlazingBlizzard, and to the rest of you guys, now you know who to blame for the challenges being as tough as they are: now I know that at least one person has beaten them! 😜