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Paradox Development Studio’s successful medieval grand strategy game, Crusader Kings II, has seen the release of its latest DLC. A cart-full-of-dead amount of new events and mechanics relating to sickness and health have been added on. It arrives with a considerable patch for all owners of the base game as well.

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Crusader Kings II has never shied away from portraying the more unsavory parts of the medieval era to players; torture, maiming and plagues have long been a mainstay of the game. The theme of The Reaper’s Due is life and death, prosperity and destitution, and the main focus of the expansion is giving players options to try to cheat death and deal with apocalyptic plagues. Court physicians may heal characters from grave illness or, if your doctor is not-so-talented, let your illness take you to the grave. Additionally, provinces now can prosper if carefully managed but may suffer depopulation due to war and disease and players can use new tools like hospitals to try to keep their population from suffering too much.

There’s a lot of overhaul and expansion of systems in place. For one, disfigured characters now having their portraits reflect their less-than-perfect appearance. I played a bit earlier and was pleased to see lepers wearing masks and one-eyed characters eyepatches. Torture has also gotten way more specific, depending on character’s culture and traits, prisoners can be subjected to all sorts of very unpleasant experiences. It’s good, rather macabre stuff that adds an extra layer to Crusader Kings II’s already quite effective emergent storytelling. More content in between marrying off children and trying to use my claims to expand my kingdom is always welcome in my book.

Oh, and characters can now have cats as pets. And potentially become a crazy cat person. Though, personally, I was more thrilled to find that pet owls are also a possibility.

As with all other major DLC releases, a somewhat hefty patch also landed today for all owners of Crusader Kings II. There’s scores of balance changes, bug fixes, quality of life improvements as per usual. Most notably, however, is the inclusion of changeable game rules: players can now set up a lot of major parts of the game to their liking including if certain events show up, when and if the Mongols invade and if mechanics like defensive pacts are enabled. There’s new UI changes and a few more decisions too. Another exciting change is game optimization, resulting in much better performance.

You can see the rather massive list of changes in the patch and full DLC features for yourself here.

You can grab The Reaper’s Due through Paradox’s Webshop or Steam. There’s also a new music pack for all of you who like to grow your dynasties while listening to heavy metal. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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8 comments

1mHfoksd1Z Aug 26, 2016
Hello guys.

Did anyone try this DLC? I've heard that Conclave kinds "destroyed" the game (I don't own it and I'm not sure if I want to buy it because of the bad reviews), does this DLC fix those issues?
Is it worth buying Conclave if I also have this DLC or should I just skip it? From what I've read in the first few dev diaries some time ago this DLC should be a pretty good one.
1mHfoksd1Z Aug 26, 2016
Ok, thanks for the reply. So, from what you said it looks like Conclave is working fine now, and it's configurable. It means that I will buy it, since it is on sale. I really like the idea of a "council" that you have to fight. And yes, at some point the game became too "easy" because you could just steamroll through the entire map, and keeping those regions and their rulers happy wasn't that hard once you had enough experience managing realms in this game. It looked unrealistic too me and Conclave addresses some of the issues in this case. I'm really happy that it works fine now.
Mountain Man Aug 26, 2016
I think a lot of people didn't understand Conclave. They were used to ruling without resistance whereas Conclave introduced some realistic politics into the equation.
Brian [Linux] Aug 26, 2016
If I want to turn off shattered retreats and coalitions will that disable achievements? I really detest these and will probably stick with 2.4.5 if that is the case.
Purple Library Guy Aug 27, 2016
Bring out your dead!
"I'm not dead yet!"
slaapliedje Aug 28, 2016
So now if you could have someone play Plague Inc vs Crusader Kings 2, how much of a blast would that be? I wish I had more time to get into CK2, Hearts of Iron 4 Seemed a bit quicker/easier to get into. CK2 sounds really awesome and I think my steam account says I've played it for hours, yet it's mostly that I've loaded it up, tried figuring out how to play it, then closed it down, and that makes me sad.

I'm going to attempt to get it a shot again now that I've bought this as well.
1mHfoksd1Z Aug 29, 2016
Quoting: slaapliedjeSo now if you could have someone play Plague Inc vs Crusader Kings 2, how much of a blast would that be? I wish I had more time to get into CK2, Hearts of Iron 4 Seemed a bit quicker/easier to get into. CK2 sounds really awesome and I think my steam account says I've played it for hours, yet it's mostly that I've loaded it up, tried figuring out how to play it, then closed it down, and that makes me sad.

I'm going to attempt to get it a shot again now that I've bought this as well.
This happened to me too in the beginning. It looked like a really complex and enjoyable game but it also looked a little bit overwhelming and I felt that it would take too long to get into it... I tried it a few times just to load up the tutorial and exit the game forever after a while... but eventually I've got a few days with too much free time and nothing to do and all I did those days was play CK2 and it felt like I was playing the best game ever :D It quickly became one of my most favourite games and now I have so many hours put in that game... (more than it's shown on Steam, I played alot in offline mode)
It's a really good game and it's constantly receiving new features which is awesome... and the mods are absolutely amazing as well. There's HIP (Historical Immersion Project - must try!!!), AGOT (A Game of Thrones), EK (Elder Kings - a The Elder Scrolls mod) and so much more that I have not tried yet
slaapliedje Aug 29, 2016
Oh, I knew about the Game of Thrones one, but not the Elder Scrolls, and will definitely have to check out the Historical Immersion Project.

My problem is when I do have free time, I spread it out across far too many projects (like getting my Amiga / Atari computers set up and play around with them, or trying to teach myself scripting, etc.) It's getting to the point where I need to build myself a schedule around having fun and getting things done. Sad, I know.
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