Thank you all for continuing to play, share, and enjoy Flocking Hell! It’s been amazing to see so many of you take the mantle of the Bellwether and lead the flock against the demons. Patch #4 brings some major updates to keep things fresh and challenging. Snarebunnies are back and sneakier than ever with the brand new Hare Trigger island. To celebrate the occasion, our composer Simon Daoud wrote a new track, Meat the End! Combat now flows faster thanks to improved animations and dynamic damage stacking. Full details below, with the change log at the end of the post.

Before we begin, a HUGE shout-out to Draham, our new German community translator. Draham volunteered to review and polish the German translation of Flocking Hell, making the game more accessible in the process. Thanks Draham 💜


This patch introduces the second Snarebunny bonus level, Hare Trigger, along with its prelude, Nose for Trouble! Once again, you’ll face multiple waves of Snarebunnies, but this time their arrival depends on how you spend your turns. Every decision matters!

To celebrate, our amazing composer Simon Daoud created a brand new boss battle track: Meat the End. You’ll hear it in every boss fight from now on! Be sure to check out Simon’s Instagram[www.instagram.com] for more of his wonderful music, and remember that you can buy the OST through Steam.


Since launch, "go-wide" strategies (where you connect as many cities as possible) have lagged behind. Roads are expensive, and late connections suffer from diminishing returns. This patch gives them a major boost: reinforcements no longer reduce the size of reinforcing cities. For example, connecting 10 cities will gain a total of 225 size across all cities when the demons invade!

Two other changes also support going wide. First, demon legion size is now pre-calculated, removing a hidden penalty that punished large city networks. Second, all islands now spawn with exactly 12 cities (instead of 10–12), making cities closer together and synergy cards like Oracle easier to trigger.


Combat just got a lot snappier! First, I trimmed delays from key animations, including the "Reinforcements!" prompt, to keep things moving. Second, I added dynamic stacking to the damage multiplier. When large armies clash, up to 32 sheep attacks and demon swipes are now combined into a single animation. Battles are still fun to watch and now take about half the time.


You can now mouse over the Hell Gate to see the order in which the demon legion will attack your cities. Keep in mind that this order can change: as cities grow, demons will prefer smaller cities when distances are equal. For some bosses (like the Butchers), only the first city is guaranteed, and the rest are decided as combat unfolds.


Multiplicative effects are very popular right now. Two excellent examples are Balatro and Ballionaire, where the goal is to reach millions or billions of total points. Flocking Hell takes a different approach, focusing on small, important decisions and gradual growth.

That said, two cards (Crystalline Seed and Ritual of Growth) and the Geologist guide break this rule and can lead to runaway wins if drafted and stacked. To keep them exciting but make them less common, I’ve increased their rarities from rare to epic.


No patch is complete without fresh content! Alongside Hare Trigger, this update adds Tainted Quarry, a new island that puts small-deck strategies to the test, and two new Tradition cards that grow stronger as your campaign progresses.

Enough reading! Now go play 🐑😈

• Flocking Hell now has an updated German translation, thanks to Draham, our new community translator! If you’d like to help with any of the other languages, please email us at anna@sextantstudios.games.
  
• Check out the new boss battle music, Meat the End! Kudos to Simon Daoud, Flocking Hell’s talented composer, for creating this new track.

• Mouse over the revealed, active Hell Gate to see the current order in which the demons will attack your cities (it can change as you reveal more cities and as cities grow in size!).
  
• The combat at each city will take less swipes thanks to a new dynamic stacking damage multiplier, making combat faster
  
• Shortened several combat animations (such as the “Reinforcements!” prompt and the raze animation wait), making combat faster

• Demon legion [SIZE] is pre-calculated (previously calculated based on total starting city size). This should make Competitive and Competitive² harder!
  
• Each island will now have 12 cities (previously it was 10-12).
  
• Reinforcements now gain +5 [SIZE] for each connected city, but do not cost any [SIZE] for the reinforcing cities.
  
• Competitive and Competitive²: The first Snarebunny wave will now have 125 [DEMONSIZE] (previously 100).
  
• Competitive²: Demon legion is now larger than Competitive, and grows faster.

• Crystalline Seed [4], now epic (previously rare).
  
• Gembound Tradition [3] (rare), new card: “Gain 10 [CRYSTAL] for each time you played “Gembound Tradition” this campaign.”
  
• Hearthbound Tradition [3] (rare), new card: “This city gains +8 [SIZE] for each time you played “Hearthbound Tradition” this campaign.”
  
• Ritual of Growth [3], now epic (previously rare).

• Geologist, now epic (previously rare).

• Emberfrost Expanse (late-game), will now have 10 cities (previously 8), and they are no longer especially distant from each other.
  
• Hare Trigger (boss), new island: “The Snarebunnies attack whenever the Invasion Charm gets to 0! The charm drops by 5 whenever you assign to a mine, build a road, or play a card. (It does not tick down when you reveal a tile.) There are at most 4 waves. Until the last wave, your Crystal Blast only uses half your [CRYSTAL].”
  
• Nose for Trouble (late-game), new island: “There are 4 Hell Gates, located all over the island. One is active and the rest are dormant. Whenever you assign to a mine, build a road, or play a card, the active Hell Gate changes. Build a road on a dormant Hell Gate to close it.”
  
• Rumor Mill (late-game), playing the fourth “Fake News” card will reveal 8 random tiles (previously 10).
  
• Tainted Quarry (late-game), new island: “When you fortify a city, gain 1 [SHEEP]. Whenever your deck runs out of cards, add a Curse to your deck at the start of the next level.”

• Hopefully fixed a bug where a player would lose the campaign but still kept going despite having 0 hearts left.
  
• The Scribe Charm will now correctly say “Scribe” in the UI (instead of “Clerk”).
  
• Fixed a bug where the Cartographer guide will sometimes crash a new island.
  
• City growth pop-up font color is now using the correct shade of green

Flocking Hell keeps growing, and I couldn’t be happier to welcome so many new players to the flock! Thank you for the love and feedback 💜 This patch brings exciting updates: a new difficulty mode for the bold, better chances at epic cards, two new crystal-focused islands, and a few balance tweaks to keep the game fresh.

(As always, the full change log is below.)


Full disclosure: my personal win rate on Competitive is around 40%. But based on your feedback, some of you are way ahead of me! A few brave souls even asked for a harder mode, so here it is.

In Competitive², your crystal production is reduced by 25% and imps start with +0.5 strength. Think you’ve mastered Flocking Hell? Time to prove it! 🐑😈😈😈


Epics are some of the most powerful and flavorful cards and guides in Flocking Hell, and in my opinion, among the most fun. But their strength means they can occasionally trivialize a run. Because of their rarity, I spend relatively little time balancing epics. If you find one that fits your build, your odds of winning go up significantly. That’s by design. They balance mayhem by their rarity.

However, I feel epics are a bit too rare at the moment. So in this patch, I’m slightly increasing their appearance rate. Previously, rare cards had a 5% chance to convert into an epic. That chance is now 7.5%.


Tunneler is the first rare guide that I designed. I was showcasing the game to designer friends and wanted something fun that breaks the game rules in an interesting way. Tunneler was a great fit, and it’s still one of my favorite guides. However, it’s clear that it’s weaker than other rare guides that were developed later in the design process (such as Potholer, which has a similar role). Therefore, I’m giving Tunneler a hefty buff, increasing the crystal gain and adding a tile reveal to every road build.


This patch adds two new islands with unique twists on crystal production. Roots of Industry starts with –25% crystal production, but you can boost it by connecting fortified cities. Veinbound makes all mines start with –10 max size (meaning you can’t assign sheep at first), but rewards you with free mine size as you connect cities. Both islands encourage hybrid strategies that blend mining and city building.

Related to this, some playtesters noted that many existing islands (like Jealousy) interfere with Flocking Hell’s core city-connection gameplay. Moving forward, expect more islands that support your building efforts, not just complicate them.


I really don’t like nerfs.

Nerfs are often used in multiplayer games to address frustrating or overpowered mechanics. Neither of these arguments is relevant for Flocking Hell, a single-player roguelite where every campaign has its own “meta”.

However, after much consideration, I decided to nerf Charming Ritual III, Comptroller, and Scribe (which is now named Clerk). All three provide consistent, predictable reductions to card costs, which creates two major design problems:

One, they make it difficult to design new cost-reduction mechanics. For example, Mason and Tinker often feel underwhelming by comparison to Comptroller and Scribe. Every new discount guide ends up being measured against these two, which limits creativity.

Two, they skew how I evaluate every new card. When I buffed city size cards in Patch #1, I had to balance them for both Scribe builds and non-Scribe builds. That added complexity complicates playtesting, slows down development, and restricts card design.

The end result is that Charming Ritual III, Comptroller, and Scribe limit future design space and make it harder to introduce fun new options. My goal with these nerfs is to keep them strong and enjoyable, while giving the rest of the game more room to grow.


New difficulty level: Competitive²!

• [CRYSTAL] production decreased by 25%.
  
• Imps spawn with +0.5 [STRENGTH].

Campaign

• The chance of a rare converting into an epic is now 7.5% (previously 5%)

Cards

• Charming Ritual III [2] (special), now gains the Scribe charm for 6 turns (previously 9 turns).

Guides

• Comptroller (rare), ability updated: “Building a road and assigning to a mine cost 1 less [SHEEP]. City growth and mine production reduced by 15%.” (previously “All actions cost 1 less [SHEEP]. City growth and mine production reduced by 25%”).
  
• Scribe (rare), now says “Playing common cards costs 1 less [SHEEP].” (previously “Playing a card”).
  
• Tunneler (rare), building a road through a mountain will now gain 30 crystals (previously 20 crystals) and will also reveal all adjacent non-mountain tiles.

Islands

• Emberfrost Expanse (late-game), slightly reduced the minimum distance between cities (from 3.5 to 3.25) and updated the description to “at most 8 cities”.
  
• Roots of Industry (early-game), new island: “Crystal Mines produce -25% [CRYSTAL]. Crystal Mines produce +10% [CRYSTAL] for each connected, fortified city.”
  
• Veinbound (late-game), new island: “Decrease the maximum size of all mine by 10.
  When you connect one or more new cities, the nearest mine is marked and gains 5 size.”

Bug Fixes

• The starting tile can no longer be on a farm or adjacent to the Hell Gate.
  
• Pioneers+ now correctly reveals a pasture next to an unrevealed city (as opposed to a pasture next to a revealed city).