fheroes2 1.1.18 adds monster HP bars to Heroes of Might and Magic II battles, and five new bundled maps

The open-source engine for the 1996 strategy game also tones down the AI on easier difficulties, takes away most of its perks on harder ones and closes over 60 issues.

AI-drafted from 2 sources. This story was written with AI from the outside reporting listed under Sources, and checked by automated tools before it went up. The originals have the full detail.

fheroes2, the open-source engine that runs Heroes of Might and Magic II on modern systems, reached version 1.1.18 on 8 November 2026. You still need the original game's data files to play, and the GOG edition of the Gold release is the usual way to get them. What the engine adds on top is a steady stream of fixes and extras, and this release has a fair few.

Battles and the AI

The change most players will notice is a new option to show HP bars for monsters during battles, so you can see at a glance how badly a stack has been knocked about. The Marketplace and Trading Post dialogs gain an icon and a counter to help you get a better exchange rate.

The AI has had attention in both directions. The release notes say it has been improved in battle and on the adventure map but relaxed on the lower difficulties, and the changelog adds that the perks it gets on the higher ones have been reduced. Smaller fixes stop it casting Berserker when the target's nearest unit is not an enemy, stop AI heroes visiting shrines when they already know every spell, and stop them valuing a third level shrine above everything else.

Maps and the editor

Five maps join the bundle that ships with the engine: Eternal Winter, Dhalsivia Pirenaica, Tetra Conflict (version 1.2), Utopeia and Good Titans, Bad Titans. Four bundled maps are updated: Apocalypse to 3.9, Final Invasion to 8.1, Ravenhold to 1.9 and Eruption to 3.2.

Map makers get a reworked Auto Playtest dialog and multiline text editing in the Virtual Keyboard, which GamingOnLinux points out is handy for writing a map's story. The hotkey settings can now be filtered by category, and item deletion gets its own hotkey. Swedish, Brazilian Portuguese, Hungarian, Russian, Czech and Spanish translations are updated too, and the team counts over 60 issues closed since 1.1.17.

GamingOnLinux reports that the long wait for this version came down to personal matters for core team members, and that the team plans to go back to monthly releases. Builds and the installation guide are on the project's GitHub.

Sources

• fheroes2 version 1.1.18 (GitHub)
• Heroes of Might and Magic 2 project fheroes2 version 1.1.18 is out now (GamingOnLinux)

Image: Image: fheroes2 team, via GamingOnLinux