🍂 SoW Fall Update - November 2025

Posted on November 16, 2025 by ReadyAimReid

The past eight months have been a sprint to modernize Secrets of War. From clans and combat rewrites to anti-bot hardening, we've stitched together everything needed for our next large-scale play sessions.

This Fall Update recaps the most impactful changes shipped between March and November 2025. If you haven't logged in for a while, this is your field guide to the new systems.

Season Highlights

Clan Warfare Arrives – Brand-new clan services, leader controls, cooldowns, and toplists turn alliances into strategic weapons.
Combat Overhaul – Battle scaling, injury tracking, AP economy, Bloodbath events, and friend-or-foe protections make every fight readable and fair.
Security & Live Ops – Captcha gating, anti-bot detectors, community guidelines, and refreshed moderator tooling keep the world healthy as we scale.

Updates

Here's a tour through the biggest improvements since March:

Organization

Published community guidelines and a transparent anti-cheat policy to set expectations ahead of Alpha-1.
Rebuilt moderator and admin dashboards with paged logs, richer stats, and anti-bot alerts so the volunteer crew can react quickly.
Formalized clan leadership workflows (lead handoffs, resign/disband flows, cooldown displays) to empower player-run organizations.

Gameplay

Clans now include rosters, rank displays, join gating, cooldown timers, and bot-backed seed data so every faction can coordinate.
Combat was refactored with AP-driven scaling, attacker injury systems, damage breakdowns, factory downgrade chances, and safer friend-or-foe checks.
Live world events expanded: Bloodbath, Bot Army surges, shrine puzzles, cave/forest event refreshes, and shrine reward tweaks keep the map fresh.
The economy tightened through exchange bank rebuilds, market copy clean-up, jackpot tuning, and factory upgrade/downgrade safeguards.

Product

Unit shop UI was rewritten with modal buying, warnings for low stock, mobile-friendly panes, and balanced defaults.
Captcha checkpoints, headless-browser detection, and fresher login flows protect the experience without slowing legitimate players.
Guess-9 and Jackpot games received new dashboards, timers, and mobile layouts, making live events easier to follow on any device.
Market, shrine, and map dashboards now surface concise, delimited summaries so high-volume data stays readable.

Engineering

Performance instrumentation landed everywhere: cached toplists, optimized queries, richer stats pipelines, and Sentry-backed alerting.
Anti-bot defenses integrate across the stack with headless detection, captcha frameworks, rate guards, and explicit audit logs.
Infrastructure and CI tightened via Windows dev parity, dependency upgrades, artifact caching, and Brakeman/Turnstile fixes.

Community & Live Ops

999 Jackpot, Guess-9, and casino dashboards now broadcast odds, payouts, and community play counts in real time.
Daily/weekly toplists track shrine tributes, factory upgrades, captures, and gathering so players can chase fresh goals.
Moderator tooling exposes bot detection, skips, breakers, and action caps, letting volunteer GMs resolve issues fast.

Feedback

Jumping back in or already testing? Tell us how the Fall changes feel on Discord.

Thanks for rallying with us through Fall!

The Secrets of War team

❄️ SoW Winter Update - January 2025

Posted on February 7, 2025 by ReadyAimReid

January has been a big month as we push toward our MVP. We're thrilled to welcome SinRopa, a talented game developer, to the team. With their expertise, we're making significant strides toward a playable MVP.

Rebuilding nearly a decade of work from the original Secrets of War is no small feat. The team is committed to preserving the SOW Legacy gameplay and dynamics. At the same time, we're refining the pacing, fun, and economy to fit the modern web gaming experience.

Our Core Tenets:

Stay true to SOW Legacy – "For the players, by the players" never rang more true in the early days of Secrets of War. Players guide the roadmap and the world they want to play in.
Play-to-Win – Players should earn their success through gameplay, not purchases.
Built to Last – We are building more than just a game, but an organization to sustainably continue the work and restore great games lost to time.

We're working hard to set a 24-hour play test soon where we'll gather feedback and learn from players. Stay tuned for the official play test date!

Updates

We've made a ton of progress over the past few weeks, focusing on core gameplay improvements, expanding the world, and strengthening our development pipeline. Here's what's new:

Organization

Welcomed SinRopa to the team as a developer.

Gameplay

Deep pane shopping now works at in-game map points.
Disabled navigation keys when in deep panes to prevent accidental movement.
The map now has proportionally balanced tiles and types for better gameplay flow.
Resource gathering for metal and energy is now live.
Introduced cave and forest events to make exploration more dynamic.
Added bank deposits and withdrawals for better resource management.
Map resets now occur at 12 AM & PM UTC on the left and right sides.

Product

Updated social links to improve accessibility.
Added friendly URL redirects like /visit/discord for easier navigation.

Engineering

Implemented Windows development support to streamline work across environments.
Logging player events, including movement and actions like gathering and purchasing.
Integrated a CI testing pipeline to ensure stable updates.
Added third-party API callbacks for future integrations.

Feedback

Have thoughts on the latest updates? Let us know on Discord! Your feedback helps shape the game.

Thanks for your continued support!

The Secrets of War team