The Road to Edain 4.8.4: Concept Updates

[The_Necromancer0]

Greetings, companions of Edain!

This month we would like to give you a look into what we have been working on and what we are planning for the future. We'll be doing this through a series of articles that will be released over the course of the month. In today's article we will be looking back a lot and then forward a little.

A Year in Review
2025 was a year of many ups and a few downs. To get the downs out of the way, two of our team members, Birds and Photti, retired from the modding scene. They had been the pillars behind the War of the Ring rework, and many of the new maps. We wish them the best of luck in the future. Thankfully, our team was reinforced by a new mapper, in a well known member of the community, )-(albarad.

Apart from this, Edain had a lot of ups in 2025. At the end of 2024 we released 4.8 which contained three huge parts: the Isengard overhaul, the Belfalas map feature, and of course, the FreeBuild gamemode. Ever since the announcement of 4.0, a free build mode had been one of the most requested features, and we were happy to finally be able to add it into the game, nearly 10 years after the release of 4.0. There's probably some moral about not being hasty there.

Can you recognize all the features?

However, such a colossal release also meant that we had to spend a lot of time tweaking and fine-tuning. In 2025, we released three patches addressing both issues that had been brought up from the 4.8 release and also some long-standing concerns. New art, new units, new mechanics, new starting positions, alongside numerous bug fixes. We wanted to thank everyone that provided feedback as they really help in making the mod better. This does mean that there will be no major release of Edain this December, no 4.9. But there will be one more patch version, and today we'd like to go over some of the smaller changes we'll be making in there.

Glorfindel
In the 4.0 conversion, Glorfindel was given the role of a tank, a hero that excels in drawing aggro and punishing enemies for hyper focusing. However that role never really settled properly and the recurring feedback from player was that tank heroes could feel unrewarding to play. In the last few patches we have been giving tank heroes a second look, adding utility to their kit to make their abilities feel stronger. As such, Glorfindel has seen the following changes:

• Purity Blade's AoE damage radius increased from 12 to 14. This will allow Glorfindel to more reliable hit units adjacent to his target
• Collect Starlight melee's reflect range increased. This will lead to melee units being more reliably hit.
• Glorfindel can now use all his abilities at once
• Release Starlight now reduces the damage of all enemies hit by 33% for 15 seconds
• Brilliant Illumination reworked into Grace of the Valar:  Glorfindel is the only elf who has seen the Halls of Mandos and returned to Middle Earth, bringing the blessing of the Valar with him. When he suffers a heavy attack, he will briefly gain quadruple armor and heal all nearby units in the area. This effect can only trigger once every 15 seconds.
• Glorfindel cost increased from 2100 to 2800
• Glorfindel is now recruitable from the Citadel

Misty Mountains Spellbook
As part of 4.8, the Misty Mountains Spellbook has a completely new set of buttons

Peasants of Rohan
Currently, peasants are not only very cost-efficient but also a relatively boring standard unit. They have slightly weaker stats than normal, are somewhat cheaper than normal, and can be recruited anywhere on the map, but recruitment takes a long time. Since it's extremely easy to issue draft orders for several hundred peasants using the rally call (formerly called the Attack Order), the upgrade system, especially the discounted banner bearers, which can actually be used to issue draft orders to all peasants, is largely ineffective. This results in peasants feeling very homogenous. To address this we have made the following changes:

• Peasants and Farmhand:
  
  • Construction costs reduced from 150/250 to 100/200 without Draft order, unchanged with Draft order
  • Construction time reduced from 55 seconds to 30 seconds without Draft order
  • Construction time reduced from 55 seconds to 45 seconds with Draft order
  • Damage reduced from 30 to 25
  • Life reduced from 159 to 127
  • Draft order bonus increased to +40% life and damage (drafted peasants thus have a slight increase in overall life compared to now, damage remains the same)
• Rally call no longer grants Draft order.
• Starting units replaced by peasants with Draft order.
• Banner bearer reduction from Draft order from 5/10/15% etc. to 10/20/30% etc.
• Gamling's To Arms! now additionally issues Draft order to all farmers in the target area.

The overall result will hopefully be a Rohan army that still uses peasants for harassment or emergency defense, but needs to be more strategic with its infantry. Flour mills in the fortress are safe targets for the now more valuable draft order, but they don't offer the advantage of recruiting on the map. Furthermore, anyone who only wants to recruit drafted peasants should expect a significantly slower start, as building multiple grain mills with conscription orders takes time. Banner bearers, however, are a better option, turning the cheap peasants into very cost-effective units and synergizing very well with the breeding horses for cavalry later in the game.
   

Theodred
Theodred has always had the problem that because his abilities were centered on his attack post, if you did not have one you could not use them. Additionally, both of his Attack Post abilities were permanent upgrades, so if you had all your posts upgraded you again had no targets for them.

As such, we are making the following changes

• Siege Garrison becomes Forward Outpost - Requires: Level 3. Theodred deploys additional resources to reinforce key positions. If used on an Attack Post, the target building will be fully repaired, can recruit Pitch Throwers and additionally spawns Pitch Throwers with each attack wave. If used on an Assembly Point, the target building can now recruit Captains of Rohan
• Repair Works becomes Muster of Rohan - Requires: Level 6. Theodred commands the Muster of the Westfold to draft new recruits. If used on an Attack Post, the target building will be fully repaired and will immediately spawn an attack wave with thrice as many soldiers as usual. If used on an Assembly Point, the target building's "Reinforcements!" ability will be replaced by Muster! which permanently replenishes nearby battalions and drafts nearby peasants.
• When Defense of the Riddermark is active, all attack posts are additionally manned by spearthrowers.

The goal with this change is twofold. First, we want to add some element of choice to Theodred. He will now have multiple valid targets for his abilities and temporary effects, which incentivises the player to carefully pick when to cast what ability. Second, this provides an alternate path for the player to obtain drafted peasants and Captains. Previously, Captains were only available from the King's Camp and, with the changes, Drafted Peasants would have only been available from drafted farms. We also hope that this also reinforces Theodred's position as a military commander of Rohan.

Unit Plates
Unit plates is an official submod coming with 4.8.4 which aims to improve the clarity of unit ownership during battles. A recurring piece of feedback we have received is that it can be hard to tell which units belong to which player during battles, this is especially problematic during large team fights or mirror matches.

The original BFME game developers implemented a very simple fix for that, called house colours. This mechanic replaced part of the textures on each unit with the colour you selected at the start of a skirmish. It could look a little cartoonish but provided very good clarity on which player owned which unit. This is something that we would eventually like to implement, however that would require creating hundreds of textures, which we don't currently have the capacity for. As such, we want to introduce a temporary substitute that sacrifices a bit of aesthetics to improve clarity during large battles.

Unit plates are a simple visual addon which appear under each model. This small circle takes on the player's colour which makes it easy to identify to whom they belong. This submod is MP compatible, which means players are individually in control of whether they want to use it.  Players in the same lobby do not need to all have it enabled.


That's it for now - we hope you liked this preview of upcoming changes and are excited for the other announcements that will be coming in the next weeks!

Your Edain team