The time has come to draw back the curtains and show you what you can expect from Beta 3. In this post you'll find wheat fields, all new building features, the redesigned research tree and more. In short, it's the full patch notes for Aether Kingdoms Beta 3.

Beta 3 will run on the Plains 2 server, at x1 speed. It starts Thursday 18 June 2026, 14:00 UTC, and is a full server. We hope to see you there next week!

Wheat fields and Map Generation

The center of the map is an important place to claim extra Objectives for your Empire. To further push players together and have some epic battles, we're adding a new tile type: Wheat Fields. Wheat Fields have 5 Farms, making them the highest food-providing tile in the game.

img_1.png A highly developed Wheat Fields tile

Together with Wheat fields, we've made some changes to the overall map generation:

  • Wheat Fields have a 1% chance to be spawned in on the whole of the map, but a 20% chance to spawn in the center.
  • Players can not spawn with a Wheat Fields tile, they need to be settled to acquire.
  • Spawn probabilities for tiles were updated so that the center gives an extra 0.5 resource fields per tile on average compared to outside the center.
  • The center now appears as a circle instead of a square.
  • Spawning now happens at 6 or more tiles distance from the center, providing a buffer area between spawns and the center.

img.png North-eastern border of the new map center

Full Barbarian faction

In the Start 2 server we're testing the first 3 Barbarian units. Here we're revealing the art for the faction. The Barbarians are a melee-heavy tribe, though their Warden and Chieftain do pack a punch.

img.png

The initial balancing for the Barbarians depends on the results of next week on the Start 2 server, so we're not yet showing any numbers.

District and buildings

Last week we announced the Fortification and Trade districts, as well as changes to district unlocks. Now it's time to detail what they do.

Fortification District

  • Carpenter
    • +5% per level to Industry when making a building
    • Town level 5, City level 10
    • District unlock
  • Fire Station
    • +4% siege damage reduction to any building in the City.
    • City level 10
    • District unlock
  • Stonemason
    • +1.25% increase of the Wall strength per level. This is a multiplier of your current Wall strength.
    • Town level 10, City level 20
    • Requires researching Masonry
  • Keep
    • +5% movement speed per level for reinforcements to villages and objectives
    • Town level 5, City level 10
    • Requires researching Fortifications

New districts

Trade District

Requires Mercantilism (Tier 4) to unlock.

  • Storage Depot
    • Provides capacity to store resources. Works as a Warehouse and Food Cellar at the same time.
    • Town level 30
    • District unlock
  • Caravansary
    • +10% increased merchant capacity
    • City level 10
    • District unlock
  • Trade Office
    • +1 field/hr for merchants per level
    • Town level 5, City level 10
    • Requires researching Organised Trade
  • Merchant's Guild
    • +0.1 exchange rate per level when not using Aether. You will be able to exchange resources for 2:1 without spending Aether.
    • Town level 5, City level 10.
    • Requires researching Guild Trading

Industrial District

Now requires Industrialism (Tier 3) to unlock.

Military District

  • Military Academy
    • +20% speed per level to troops after 20 fields

Redesigned Research Tree

A picture says more than a thousand words. Click on it to open the full research tree.

img_2.png The new Research tree

To accommodate for the higher number of researches, the base cost has been reduced from tier 3 onward. The scaling for research per tier was also reduced from 11% to 10%.

Features added

  • Faction featuress are expanded to include wall strength, merchant speed and merchant capacity.
  • The Humans faction gets a Wall strength of 2% per level, 14 base merchant speed and 1000 base merchant capacity.
  • The Barbarians faction gets a Wall strength of 1.5% per level.

Balance changed

  • Added a new Task category: join an Empire. 10 Aether each is awarded for joining an Empire with at least 3 and at least 10 members.
  • It's no longer possible to land more than 4 siege attacks on a target from the same village in a single second. Any sieges over 4 that land in the same second will be shifted up a second by the server.

Improvements made

  • The Kingdom's stock of Builders is now shown in the right sidebar.
  • Destroying a village will now show on the Timeline.
  • Conquering and losing an Objective will now show on the Timeline.
  • Completing or Repairing a Monument will now show on the Timeline of all current Empire members.
  • All buildings with level-based improvements now show their improvement values: Marketplace, Walls, Siege Workshop and Siege Academy.
  • Added two default message threads for new Empires that members will automatically join. Announcement (leaders post only) and General chat.
  • Added a button for Empire leaders to add/remove all members to/from a message thread.
  • The Culture page description was improved to explain the different uses of culture.

Bugs squashed

  • The Queue research button no longer shows on completed research.
  • Buildings now show the actual Industry value after completing the capstone research Engineering Studies.
  • Switching categories on reports now properly resets back to page 1.
  • A proper error is now shown when a player can't produce additional Nobles.
  • Icons on the Research Tree and Map will no longer be draggable to interrupt scrolling.
  • NPC factions now show the proper week number for when they'll spawn.

Hope to see you in game! Play Aether Kingdoms now!