Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes announced

Stardock have announced *deep breath* Elemental: Fallen Enchantress - Legendary Heroes, a standalone expansion to their standalone expansion. But while Fallen Enchantress was Stardock's mea culpa for the problems surrounding Elemental: War of Magic, Legendary Heroes promises to expand upon FE's solid foundation. It promises new maps, monsters and an enhanced levelling system.

The purpose of the expandalone is to change the way Champions work. According to lead designer Derek Paxton, "In Legendary Heroes, the champions seek you out based on your fame. Your kingdom gains fame through a variety of means and as a result, the player's affinity with champions is now tied to the choices their Kingdom as a whole makes."

"Players will immediately recognize that the world has changed," Paxton continues. "Besides just looking a lot better, the battles are far more intense. Units have a lot more skills to choose from in battle and the maps are much more varied. We redid virtually all of them."

A post on the developer's forum runs through the new features:

• "A new Champion progression system. Instead of random traits your champions have a trait tree that they can select traits from as they level up, grow your champions the way you want."
• "The ability to recruit special non-human champions. Champions aren't just humans anymore. Rare opportunities or quests may unlock champions of various monster races that can choose traits and use equipment."
• "New tactical combat options. Swarm gives a bonus for every ally that surrounds the enemy you are attacking. Be careful where you stand as even weak creatures can become dangerous in groups (especially those with traits that improve their Swarm bonus). Weapons all have special abilities and every faction has a special ability they can use in combat so even lowly spearmen have 2 special abilities they can use in addition to their normal move and attack options."
• "New monster types like the Banshee who is immune to physical weapons, or the Garagox who knocks enemies back with each hit (which makes it difficult to get swarm bonuses and control the battlefield)."
• "New spells and abilities. New range types have been added that allow for adjacent and line spells and abilities. Use Wall of Fire in tactical to create a line, 7 tiles long, to block allies from enemy units. Master necromancy to summon up to nine different skeleton units at once with the Raise Skeletal Horde spell. Use Resoln's Wraith Touch to drain life from a nearby enemy or Altar's Rush ability to forfeit their attack to get an extra action."
• "A new scenario. Relias has returned to warn the kingdoms of what he discovered in the East, but there is little time left. The war has begun."

Due in April, the expansion will be free for anyone who bought War of Magic before 31/10/2010, cost $20 for owners of Fallen Enchantress, and $40 for everyone else.

Thanks, VG247 .