Age of Mythology: Retold Update 19.5934

Blood and Bones Pack Available Now!

This Age of Mythology: Retold expansion reimagines the visual language of battle through a suite of advanced, cinematic effects built to honor the scale and intensity of mythic warfare.

Dynamic blood splashes react in real time to the force and impact of each strike, scaling naturally across units, heroes, and creatures. As battles unfold, blood pools emerge where the fallen lie, while body transition effects chart the solemn passage from life to bone to dust.

For divine beings, blood follows different rules. Mythic creatures release prismatic essence unique to their pantheon, reinforcing the supernatural nature of godly conflict and setting mortal and divine forces apart on the battlefield.

As armies advance, blood footprints mark their passage, and the terrain bears witness to every clash. From intimate skirmishes to world-shaping wars, the battlefield becomes a lasting record of triumph, loss, and sacrifice.

Built as a purely visual enhancement, this expansion is designed for players who want their battles to feel heavier, richer, and more immersive, while remaining true to the strategic heart of Age of Mythology: Retold.

New Features

• Dynamic Blood Splashes: Real-time effects that scale with impact and damage
• Body Transitions: Fallen units fade from life to bone to dust
• Blood Pools & Footprints: Battles leave lasting marks on the terrain
• Mythic Prismatic Blood: Distinct visual essence for each pantheon’s creatures
• Enhanced Immersion: 37+ unique visual effects that deepen combat atmosphere

New Achievements

Owners of the Blood and Bones Pack DLC can complete 3 new achievements while playing with the new settings enabled.

Achievement	Icon	Description
Seeing Red		Use the “RED TIDE” cheat code to turn the water red while all blood pack settings are enabled.
Wet Ground		Reach 250 active visible blood pools during a single game.
Cleansing Rains		Use the Rain God Power to clear 100 visible blood pools with a single cast.

The settings that are required to be enabled for Seeing Red and Cleansing Rains are:

• Enable Blood Pack DLC Visuals
• Enable Bloodied Units
• Show Skeletons
• Show Blood Pools
• Show Unique Unit Visuals
• Show Bloodied Footprints
• Show Blood Impact VFX

New Exclusive Cheat

Owners of the Blood and Bones Pack DLC can use a new cheat code to spawn a unique version of Nezha.

New Settings – Choose how you want your Blood and Bones to appear!

There are 16+ settings that you can customize as part of your Blood and Bones Pack experience. Settings that modify the duration and quantity of effects may have a minor impact on performance on some systems. While first experiencing the content, you may wish to consider turning on the “Enable Prismatic Blood Pools” and “Show Prismatic Blood Impact VFX” if you would like to see more colors in the battles. Prismatic colors are disabled by default. You can also adjust the intensity of bloodied units’ appearance, which may improve accessibility if you find units harder to read during battle.

Demeter – Quality of Life Improvements

This patch brings a variety of new improvements to the Demeter Major God! You can read about the specific details of each change in the Balance section.

• New unique Fortress Unit – Amazon Archer. Hera’s Argive Patronage, when used for Demeter, grants free Amazon Archers.
• Harpy has moved to the Temple and has had changes to its Abduct action, including changes to its animation.
• Hamadryad has been rebalanced to improve its utility and now animates during transformations into tree form.
• Underworld Invasion now scales based on the number of Town Centers and Village Centers when cast.
• Sacred Land now functions in a similar way to Temple of Healing, with a radius heal to make it easier to use.
• Icarus and Midas have been changed to improve their balance.

Stability & Performance

• Minor general improvements to stability.
• Fixed a rare crash that could occur while processing favourite units to show in the post-game scores.
• Fixed a crash that could occur while rendering projected textures.
• Fixed a crash that could occur while checking the distance between two units.
• Fixed a crash that could occur when the PowerSingleModify type was performing its first update on a target unit that no longer exists.
• Fixed a network issue that could prevent some gameplay features from working on PlayStation 5.
• Fixed an out-of-sync that could occur when using Tsukuyomi’s New Moon while playing with at least one PlayStation 5 player and at least one of any other platform. It was possible to cause an out-of-sync by using the power on a Water Mill with only Husbandry, Irrigation, and Bow Saw as options. This would occur due to minor differences in sort order between the platforms when freely training up to 3 technologies.
• Fixed a bug that caused the Xbox client to incorrectly identify the current video memory usage stats. In most situations, this would not have any impact, but it could result in incorrect identification of when automatic texture resolution swaps (Mipmaps) were required.
• Improved texture management to correctly account for reserved video memory. The previous implementation could run into situations where allotted memory was never all used when there was a large reserve. The result was a drop to lower Mipmap levels as GPU memory filled up. Memory tracking has been improved to ensure usage and allotments are tracked more accurately.
• Fixed a bug that caused PlayStation 5 textures to appear at lower than intended quality due to the above issue with texture memory management.

Localization

• Updates to some translations to improve translation quality.

Graphics

• Improved the positioning of some impact effects that benefit both the new blood hit effects and the non-DLC hit effects.
• Adjusted position logic for Impact VFX in some situations to ensure better placement when pre-existing VFX is shown or when the new blood VFX replaces it.
• The Hamadryad now animates while transforming in and out of tree form.
• The Harpy will now swoop down to the unit it is abducting and carry it up, rather than teleporting it. The pickup timing has been adjusted to better align with the new animation.
• The Harpy now carries units with different attach points (using their target’s vfx_top attach point and the Harpy’s GenericAttachPoint). This does mean some units will appear to float a bit, but it fixes most cases where units overlapped the Harpy while previously carrying using the Spine attach point.
• Fixed the perspective camera angle on the Atlantean Caravan.
• Fixed a bug where units that died in the air could fall through terrain instead of colliding with it in some cases.

Audio

• Minor updates to improve how sound data is set up across the various sound banks. Including fixing up some naming and folder locations to improve consistency.

Hotkeys

• The Fortress Unit hotkeys now apply to Amazon Archer when relevant instead of Demeter’s Harpy.
• Removed Iron Grip hotkey from the Fortress.
• Hotkeys for Demeter’s Harpy and Iron Grip now function for the Temple.

UI

• Updated Settings for the Ultimate Fan Pack in the DLC tab:
  • Renamed the existing setting to “Golden God Statue Visuals” to clarify what the setting changes.
  • Added a new setting, “Player Name Treatment,” to control whether the player name visual treatment is shown.
• Many new settings for the Blood and Bones Pack can now be found in the DLC Settings tab. You will be prompted to go and take a look at these settings when you first launch the game after installing the DLC.
• Fixed a bug in the profile icon selection UI that caused the right-most icons to appear cropped.
• The “CluckCluckBoom” version of the Chicken used for the Chaos Event now appears as “Unstable Chicken” in both the game and the editor to help differentiate it from normal chickens.
• While offline, trying to access your profile will now show a unique error message indicating it is unavailable, rather than appearing as disabled.
• Perspective and Follow Camera buttons have been moved from below the hitpoints to below the information button. This change fixes the buttons moving off-screen when units have a shield health bar.
• Fixed some cases where the multiplayer lobby name would not update correctly on some platforms.
• Hamadryad, while stealthed as a tree, now shows the correct cost and history text matching the unstealthed version.
• Fixed some cases where popups related to DLC could appear on the console landing screen instead of waiting until entering the main menu.

Controller

• Fixed a bug that allowed players with a controller to enable auto-queued production on other players’ buildings.
• Fixed some cases where units appeared as targetable when they shouldn’t with some abilities (e.g., Harpy’s Abduct) while playing with a controller.

Fixes

• Fixed a bug that caused Spider Eggs to be unkillable when cast by the Spider Lair God Power. A line of data from the Blood and Bones Pack bled through into the previous patch and caused this unintended behavior.
• Fixes for AI:
  • Fixed a bug that caused Deathmatch AI build orders to end when trying to build more houses than the build limit.
  • Fixed the missing implementation of the Japanese Deathmatch AI build orders.
  • Updated Mythic Age Deathmatch AI build orders to behave more correctly in some situations.
• Fixed a bug that could cause units entering the Stealth Action type to behave incorrectly.
• Fixed a bug that caused Lykaon Villagers to vanish after reaching Wonder Age.
• Fixed a bug that caused Maintain Train actions (such as Argive Patronage) to exceed build limits defined in Protounits by +1 unit if there was a unit training through normal training at the same time as a train from the maintain train action.
• Fixed a bug where the Ballistic Bounce used by Fated Arrows would not function correctly if the action that used the bounce was not the first action. This made it possible for the Medusa to use Fated Arrows. When performing a Ballistic Bounce, it will now look up the specific action rather than always using the first one.

                      Greek Pantheon

Major Gods

Demeter

• Starting as Demeter no longer grants an extra 10 Favor.
• Harpy and Iron Grip are now available in the Temple instead of the Fortress.
• New Amazon Archer unit!

• Ranged Soldier of Demeter. Elite long-range archer with exceptional Line of Sight. Effective against infantry and provides modest pressure against buildings. Limited to 10. Vulnerable to cavalry and fast attackers. Benefits from ranged soldier and armory improvements.
  • Mythic Age unit trained at the Fortress.
  • Population: 2
  • Training Time: 12 seconds
  • Train limit: 10
  • Cost: 85 Wood, 65 Gold
  • Hit Points: 160
  • Movement Speed 4.0
  • Line of Sight: 30
  • Armor: 15% Hack, 20% Pierce, 99% Crush.
  • Ranged Attack: 13 Pierce + 2 Divine.
  • Rate of Fire: 1.9 seconds
  • Attack Range: 26
  • Damage vs Buildings Multiplier: 2.2x.
  • Benefits from the same types of upgrades as Toxotes.
  • Free units can be trained when playing with Hera, selected by using the Argive Patronage technology.
  • Strengths
    • Exceptional range and Line of Sight enable safe focus-fire and zone control.
    • Reliable damage profile versus most human units; small divine component ensures consistent contribution to high-armor targets.
    • The modest building multiplier allows meaningful pressure when massed (without replacing dedicated siege).
  • Weaknesses
    • Limited to 10 units; cannot be the sole backline plan in long games.
    • Vulnerable to cavalry dives and fast melee units if not screened.
    • Susceptible to siege splash and concentrated ranged fire; requires spacing and protection.

Developer Note: We hope you enjoy trying out this new addition to Demeter! We felt that the Harpy didn’t fulfill the role of the Fortress unit, and have been working on this as an additional iteration to improve Demeter’s gameplay. The Harpy is still available from the Temple, which means Demeter has even more options for how to diversify your army.

Minor Gods

Pan

• Thorned Walls (Technology): Thorned Walls no longer benefit from damage increases that were applied to buildings from Copper Weapons, Bronze Weapons, and Iron Weapons.

Developer Note: These technologies were applying a damage increase to all building-type units. If the Thorned Walls technology were researched after the other technologies, it would make no difference because the damaging action didn’t exist yet. Copper Weapons, Bronze Weapons, and Iron Weapons now apply to LogicalTypeBuildingsNotWalls instead of all buildings to ensure walls do not experience this inconsistent application of damage increase.

Hestia

• Hallowed Woodlands (Technology): adjusted with the following changes,
  • No longer adds the ability to transform into Hamadryads, as that is now baseline.
  • New effect:
    • Reduces Hamadryad transform time from 10 seconds → 6 seconds.
    • Increases Hamadryad Hitpoints by 30%.
    • Increases Ranged Attack damage (all types) by 30% (16 → 20.8).

Developer Note: These changes improve the utility and viability of Hamadryads; the original effect had to be moved into the baseline unit. These additional buffs provide a modest boost to the Hamadryad, making it a desirable technology without making the unit incapable of its job before the technology is researched.

Persephone

• Underworld Invasion (God Power): adjusted with the following changes,
  • The effect now scales depending on how many Town Centers, Village Centers, and Citadel Centers you have active when casting the power. Each of these buildings that you have active when casting the power increases the quantity of units by 25, up to the existing cap of 99 units. This means you need to construct at least four Town Centers and/or Village Centers to fully benefit from a cast.
  • Updated the list of units affected by the God Power:
    • Added Umibozu and Tiger Cavalry as valid units to spawn.
    • Removed Militia, Petrobolos, Helepolis, Siege Tower, Catapult, Roc, Roc Landed, Ballista, Nidhogg, Fire Siphon, Tartarian Spawn, Siege Crossbow, Axe Cart, Pioneer, and Kitsune.

Developer Note: These changes to the Underworld Invasion power are intended to ensure the cost to cast is appropriate and that players are less incentivised to bypass the downsides by destroying all but one Town Center before casting.

• Sacred Land (Technology): adjusted with the following changes,
  • Standing on the farms is no longer required to gain the healing benefit.
  • The healing effect now acts similarly to the Temple of Healing effect, with a radius and applies to anything tagged with LogicalTypeHealed.
  • The healing effect range is 10 around each farm with a trickle heal of 0.5.
  • This radius can be observed after upgrading with the technology.

Developer Note: The Sacred Land technology was a little too hard to use. These changes will make it easier to benefit from the technology and provide a minor boost when choosing Persephone.

Hera

• Argive Patronage (Technology): now spawns the new Amazon Archer unit while playing as Demeter instead of the Myrmidon. Unchanged while playing as Zeus. The free Amazon Archer units still obey the 10-unit cap when spawned from this technology.

Developer Note: The change to make Argive Patronage provide the unique Demeter unit made sense. Part of the reason the change was not made to apply it to the Harpy unit previously was that we already had the Amazon Archer in the works!

Myth Units

• Hamadryad (Hestia): adjusted with the following changes,
  • Hamadryads now gain their ability to transform into a tree without requiring an upgrade.
  • Ranged Attack Hack damage: increased 10 → 16.
  • Ranged Attack Crush damage: increased 10 → 16.
  • Now has standard damage multipliers against other units, 2x damage against myth units, and 0.5x damage against heroes.
  • Ambush attack trigger radius increased 10 → 15.
  • Ambush attack damage area increased 16 → 20.
  • Transformation time has been adjusted to 1.5 seconds, along with animation updates.

Developer Note: These changes increase the base stats for the Hamadryad and make it a far more viable unit to compete with other choices against enemy units. Hamadryads are intended as a unit that deals damage with its Ambush Attack, but are also capable of fighting as part of an army, more so with the new changes to the technology.

• Harpy (Demeter): adjusted with the following changes,
  • Can no longer abduct landed flying units (e.g., Roc and Zhuque).
• Medusa (Hera): can now be affected by the Fated Arrows technology.

Hero Units

• Icarus (Demeter): has been adjusted with the following changes,
  • Area of Effect radius reduced from 3 → 2.25.
  • Ranged Attack Pierce damage reduced from 9 → 8.
  • Range Attack Pierce against flying reduced from 11 → 9.5.
  • Pierce Armor reduced 30% → 25%.
  • Rate of Fire adjusted 1.2 → 1.4.

Developer Note: Icarus, as a flying hero, was a little too strong and versatile. These changes temper his effectiveness, bringing him closer to other heroes.

• Midas (Demeter): has been adjusted with the following changes,
  • Midas’ Touch is now a 60-second cooldown hidden ability to increase its consistency.
  • When units are converted to gold by Midas’ Touch, they now become attackable to the caster and allies.
  • The player who first defeats the golden unit gains +50 gold.

Developer Note: The ability needed a bit more attention to improve its usability. You could encounter situations where units were turned to gold and left in an enemy base, which would become a new gold source for the enemy. This change means you can gain the gold reward faster by quickly swapping to the affected unit.

                       Egyptian Pantheon

Developer Note: The Egyptian Pantheon has been in need of some minor improvements to improve its viability. These changes tweak a few areas that should improve the experience when compared to other pantheons.

Minor Gods

Bast

• Sacred Cats (Technology): Increased Farm Gather Rate from 5% → 8%.

Ptah

• Shifting Sands (God Power): Reuse cost reduced from 50 → 40.

Sekhmet

• Bone Bow (Technology): Chariot Archer Line of Sight increased from 2 → 4.

Myth Units

• Petsuchos (Sobek): Increased damage against myth units multiplier from 2x → 2.5x.
• Scarab (Sekhmet): Added a 10% damage bonus modifier against buildings.

General

• A data error will no longer appear during game startup related to Spider Eggs when the Data Validation config is enabled.
• Updated Doxygen and the VS Code Extension to match the latest changes.
• TMModels files (.tmm and .tmm.data) have been adjusted from version 35 to 37. Files using version 35 onward will continue to load. Previously, versions had to match exactly. This means any mods that use models will continue to load, but it is still recommended to update your mod’s models to the latest version.
• Updated the TMModel documentation (BANG documentation/ModelSystem documentation/TMModel_documentation.pdf) to detail binary format changes matching version 37 (previously version 35) and additions to the FBX Import setting.
• Updated AnimXML and SimDatabase documentation (BANG documentation/ModelSystem documentation/AnimXML_documentation.pdf and SimDatabase_documentation.pdf) to reference the recently added AssetPack and DLCTheme logic types. The new attribute popcornfxBloodFootprintName has been noted; it is used to swap the footprint VFX for titans to show bloodied footprints when below 80% health, with the Blood and Bones pack enabled. The AssetPack logic is used for showing the Golden Statues. The DLCTheme logic is not currently used by any units yet; once the Aztec Pantheon launches, there will be a couple of units that have alternate appearances that require the Blood and Bones pack to see.
• Added a new document under BANG documentation/ModelSystem documentation/Popcorn_VFX_Documentation.pdf with some basic details about the version of PopcornFX used by the game. Modders with access to PopcornFX may be able to use the information in this document to investigate adding new effects.
• Added a new Technology Tree effect attribute “uiShowIfMajorGod” that can specify a Major God name and only show the effect on the Minor God selection screen if the effect matches the named Major God. This was used for the Argive Patronage changes to ensure the correct version was shown when playing Zeus and Demeter, preventing both from being shown simultaneously.
• The AutoRangedModify action type now has a new optional ShowBloodHitVFX flag that turns on playing the specified impact effect in the protoaction whenever the units modified list is updated. This is currently used to make the Centaur Volley ability show periodic splashes on affected units while the blood pack is enabled every ~3 seconds.
• New trigger functions to work with Blood:
  • int trGetBloodGroupID(string bloodGroupName): Gets the blood group ID for a specified blood group name.
  • string trGetNameForBloodGroupID(int bloodGroupID): Gets the string name for a blood group ID.
  • int trSpawnBloodAtPosition(vector position, float scale, int bloodGroupID): Spawns a blood pool matching the blood group ID at the specified position. Returns the blood pool manager ID.
  • int trSpawnBloodAtUnit(int unitID, bool preferSplat): Spawns a blood pool at the specified unit (if possible). Returns the blood pool manager ID.
  • void trSpawnBloodAtSelectedUnits(bool preferSplat): Spawns blood pools at all trigger selected units.
  • void trDespawnAllBloodAt(vector position, float radius, bool fadeOut, bool forceRapid, bool ignoreVisibility): Fades out blood at the position for XZ radius around the area. When not fading out, the blood is instantly removed. When fading out, you can also make it fade out faster with forceRapid, and control whether players have to see it before it fades with ignoreVisibility.
  • void trDespawnAllBloodByBloodManagerID(int bloodManagerID, bool fadeOut, bool forceRapid, bool ignoreVisibility): Fades out the specified blood by its unique ID. When not fading out, the blood is instantly removed. When fading out, you can also make it fade out faster with forceRapid, and control whether players have to see it before it fades with ignoreVisibility.
  • void trDespawnAllBlood(bool fadeOut, bool forceRapid): Despawns all blood. When fadeOut is false, it will all disappear immediately.
  • int trSpawnSkeletonAtPosition(vector position, int bloodGroupID): Spawns a skeleton matching the blood group ID at the specified position. Returns the blood pool manager ID.
  • int trSpawnSkeletonAtUnit(int unitID): Spawns a skeleton at the specified unit (if possible). Returns the blood pool manager ID.
  • void trSpawnSkeletonsAtSelectedUnits(): Spawns skeletons at all trigger selected units.
  • void trDespawnAllSkeletonsAt(vector position, float radius, bool fadeOut, bool forceRapid, bool ignoreVisibility): Fades out skeletons at the position for XZ radius around the area. When not fading out, the skeleton is instantly removed. When fading out, you can also make it fade out faster with forceRapid, and control whether players have to see it before it fades with ignoreVisibility.
  • void trDespawnAllSkeletonsByBloodManagerID(int bloodManagerID, bool fadeOut, bool forceRapid, bool ignoreVisibility): Fades out the specified skeleton by its unique ID. When not fading out, the blood is instantly removed. When fading out, you can also make it fade out faster with forceRapid, and control whether players have to see it before it fades with ignoreVisibility.
  • void trDespawnAllSkeletons(bool fadeOut, bool forceRapid): Despawns all blood. When fadeOut is false, it will all disappear immediately.
• New Trigger options allow use of these in the Editor:
  • Blood: Spawn Pool At Position
  • Blood: Spawn Pools At Units
  • Blood: Despawn All Pools At Position
  • Blood: Despawn All Pools
  • Blood: Spawn Skeleton At Position
  • Blood: Spawn Skeletons At Units
  • Blood: Despawn All Skeletons At Position
  • Blood: Despawn All Skeletons
• Impact Effect Data now has two new tags:
  • bloodoverride: When this tag is set to a valid popcorn effect name, it will automatically swap the hit VFX to the named alternate effect if the blood impact VFX is enabled.
  • prismaticbloodoverride: When this tag is set to a valid popcorn effect name, it will behave in a similar way to the bloodoveride tag. It is expected that a bloodoverride tag exists when you specify one or more prismaticbloodoverridetags. Each entry requires a color attribute that allows protounits of each color to match correctly with the VFX to be shown.
• A new blood.xml file defines all the blood groups that are used by each unit. This file is enabled for additive modding. It mostly interacts with the protounit tag “bloodgroupoverride”. And the protounit new flags “PreferSkeletonAsBonePile”, “BloodIgnoresCollideableRestriction”, “BloodOverlayEnabled”, “BloodOverlayDisabled”, “PreferBonePileWithSkull”. Some additional hidden behaviors vary by unit type to adjust the scale or position of effects.
• Blood overlays will not appear while some shader effects are active on units, e.g., stone, gold, and clay.
• New OnHit Effect Type “KillReward” lets you turn anything into something that can be killed to gain an amount of a specific rewardType resource. This has been used as part of the rework for Midas’ Touch.

Investigation

As always, we are continuing to track issues reported by the community for future updates.

For other known issues, please visit this page to see what’s being tracked!

Coming Up…

As the Blood and Bones Pack arrives, this update sets the stage for what’s coming next for Age of Mythology: Retold. Adding a visual layer to every battle, it creates scenes that evolve naturally as the fight unfolds. Blood splatters, blood pools, and bone piles tell the story of your ongoing battles, highlighting your victory or defeat. The Blood and Bones Pack is an evolution for Retold players, and a fun lead in to our next big release.

With that in mind, the team’s attention is now fully locked on the final piece of this Expansion – Obsidian Mirror. Thank you for continuing the journey with us—we’re excited to share what’s reflected on the other side very soon.

DISCLAIMER

Please note that this list is subject to change and should not be considered a comprehensive list of all the known issues we’re tracking. The above is to inform you of the team’s current priorities, which will change as other issues arise or take precedence.

For the latest updates and announcements, please visit our social channels.