The action takes place prior to the events in “SpellForce: The Order of Dawn”, and this “prequel” immerses players in the lush and luxuriant fantasy world of Eo.

Similar to its successful predecessors, players create their hero from scratch and can then develop the hero’s skills during the campaign, complete quests, explore the game world and join forces with up to three characters to form a group of heroes.

The map in SpellForce 3 is divided into different sectors. The player’s base won’t grow arbitrarily, but always organically. Concretely, this means that the player can only conquer sectors, which are connected to the base or other, already conquered, sectors. This is important, because there is no “Global Economy”, but the distribution of resources will happen mechanically (resources are being transported via carts). The player can decide which raw materials he wants to collect, distribute and export in each sector and must therefore carefully plan where to build the sectors.

If, for example, the player defeats all the enemies in a particular sector and the bandit camp is captured, he can establish an outpost in this area. The player can then construct buildings in the sectors, exploit raw materials (wood, stone, food, etc.), transport goods and produce resources to then recruit new fighting units. Each outpost has a set number of workers who can be hired, so a core element of the game is to balance the sector economy and manage the sector to ensure the most efficient deployment of the available workers.

We don’t want to ignore the RPG component and want players to have the best gaming experience possible with SpellForce 3, so the micro management is not as hectic and fast-paced as in many other RTS games. Players can therefore enjoy both gameplay genres (RTS and RPG) in equal measure.

THQ Nordic and Grimlore Games have launched the first multiplayer beta for SpellForce 3, allowing players to put the fantasy real-time strategy meets RPG hybrid to the test, starting May 19th, 10:00 AM PST.

In this closed beta, developer Grimlore Games aims to finalize the game balancing, answering the kind of questions that keep them up at night, like: are human marksmen too strong, and is it too expensive to train orcish marauders? With player input, the results of the SpellForce 3 multiplayer beta will answer those questions and more, helping to make the game even better when it launches later this year.

The SpellForce 3 multiplayer beta will run for several weeks and receive a number of updates. The human faction will make its initial assault on May 19th, and will be playable on 1vs1-maps, with the orcs arriving a week later.

Here is the planned schedule in full:

• 19th of May: Humans, 1vs1
  
• 26th of May: Orcs, 1vs1
  
• 2nd of June: Elves, 1vs1
  
• 9th of June: all three factions in 1vs1 battles
  
• 16th of June: all three factions in 2vs2 battle
  
• 23rd of June: all three factions in 3vs3 battle
  
• 30th of June: One map from Singleplayer- campaign playable in the beta

Everyone who receives a key, will be able to play 24/7 until the beta ends in July 2017.

Key Features

• RTS/RPG Mix: Unique gameplay combining RTS and Top-Down RPG genres
  • RTS: the RTS part focuses on macromanagement (overall strategy, building a base/economy, conquering of zones, managing large groups of units)
  • RPG: the RPG part puts emphasis on micromanaging the party of heroes (skills of ALL heroes of the party have assigned keyboard bindings) in battles
    
• Create & Customize: Assemble your party of heroes and choose between numerous combinations of different skill builds
• Strengthen and Command Your Army: Prepare your troops and fight the mother of all battles. Moreover, players can utilize a wide array of strategic choices (like e.g. terrain, troop formations, visibility, scouting etc.) that would make Sun Tzu proud
• Epic Storyline: Unravel a deep and sophisticated story, eventually leading up to the events that cause the world-changing convocation ritual
• Rich Universe & Lore: Explore the world Eo and discover intrigues, secrets and a lot of loot for your hero
• Extensive Single-Player Campaign: 30+ hours, even more when you manage to discover all the things Grimlore put in the world
• Multiplayer: Strong multiplayer component with various modes - Play cooperatively or in versus battles