The hero colors will be red, blue, yellow, green, orange, purple, aqua, and rose (pink).

800x600 resolution displaying 65,000 colors.

All new pre-rendered art. Hand drawn art is no longer in the game, but we’re sticking with the ‘bright and polite’ art style for which NWC is famous. All art in the game is being redone for the new resolution and color depth.

8 new town types. Because H3 takes place in Erathia, we wanted this new land to have its own personality. Towns in Erathia will be similar to those in Enroth, but not the same. We’re taking the liberty of mixing things up. Towns will be ‘new’, but not necessarily different.

16 hero types. Each town will have two hero classes (might and magic types) with which it is associated. Relationships between heroes and towns will be slightly different. In H2, heroes defined the town types. In H3, towns will define the hero types. For example, in H2 there was the Necromancer’s Town/Castle. In H3, we’ll have the Necropolis where you can recruit the Necromancer and the Death Knight. You will not be able to customize heroes beyond their artifacts, but heroes will be more individualized.

128 individual heroes. Each hero has unique starting skills, spells, creatures, and a special ability. No more ‘generic’ heroes.

Castle Captains have been replaced with actual ‘Heroes’. This is done by ‘garrisoning’ a hero (moving a visiting hero into the garrison slot of a town).

Heroes will have a ‘paper doll’ inventory system for equippingartifacts.

More skills. Among other new and different skills, four spell schools will be implemented as Secondary Skills. There will also be a Tactics skill allowing players to arrange their creatures as desired before combat begins.

More artifacts. Of note is the addition of the ‘Grail’ replacing the Ultimate Artifact. Upon finding the ‘Grail’ you take it to a town for a special town upgrade. Each town type has its own unique ‘Grail building’, but only one town per map can have a grail upgrade.

More spells.

The combat screen is 60% larger than it was in H2. We simply kept creatures the same size as they were in H2 and took advantage of the increased resolution (same for the Adventure Screen, now with 45% more visible terrain).

With the correct skills, players can now control the Catapult.

Four war machines: Catapult, Ballista (targets creatures), Ammo Cart (extra projectile shots), and First Aid Tent (heals some hit points for the top creature of a stack)War Machines can be attacked and destroyed.

Seven slots for creatures.

About 56 creature types, each with one upgrade. Including neutral creatures, there are a total of 118 potential creatures to recruit.

Flying creatures now have limited flying range.

Quests. Players will be able to acquire quests seeking artifacts on the map. Rewards vary, but one option is to carry the quest artifact to the next scenario during a campaign.

Creature generators on the Adventure Map can be flagged. This adds bonus creatures to those generated each week in towns with like creature generators.

Heroes recruitment and Thieves Guild information is now found in the Tavern.

Introduction of the Town Hall. All town construction is done from the hall. Upgrades to the Hall increase town income.

Three different road types for faster hero movement.

True alliances between players, disallowing the option to attack your ally.

New and different win conditions.

Underground map level to match the above ground map.

Multiplayer is being expanded to 8 players. When it is not your turn, we players can scroll the Adventure Map, view their towns, heroes, etc.