11/20/2012

v0.9 is LIVE!!!

v0.9 Dev Notes

Pushed @ 7:30 (EST) on 11/20/12

Crafting

Overview
A crafting system has been added! Players can now combine 'Stones' and 'Essence' to create any card from the main sets!
Stones
Stones are the foundation of the crafting. They determine what you will build. They can be from a Card Type, Card Set or Bundle Set. Examples: Core Stone, Gear Stone, Spooky Stone etc.
Essence
Essence determine the rarity level and kingdom alignment of the item crafted. There is 7 different essences, each representing a Kingdom and Unaligned. The amount of essence added will determine the rarity level. The % of each essence added will determine the Kingdom alignment.
Crafting Level
There will be 10 crafting levels to start. At level 1 you can only craft commons. The more you craft, the more XP you earn, increasing your level. The higher the level, the more essence you can add when crafting, increasing the rarity of items you can make.
Acquiring Essence and Stones
There are a few different ways to acquire both essence and stones:
  • Scrapping: After you acquire a single card, any duplicates can be scrapped for Essence or Stones. Stones only drop on Uncommon+ cards. The amount of essence dropped is determined by the rarity of the item being broken down
  • Gem Packs: Any pack purchased with gems will always yield some Essence and sometimes Stones.
  • Daily Chance: Daily chests now can include Essence and Stones
Achievements
With this feature addition, 3 new Crafting achievements have been added for a total of 17 gems!

Singles Store

Singles for Gold
Say what? That's right. The existing singles shop has switched to be Gold prices only! It now rotates once an hour and everyone sees the same items (but don't worry, each persons single inventory is their own, meaning someone else can't buy your items). The Gold prices will be driven using a dynamic pricing model. The latest set will not show up in here.
Dynamic Market
Each card (based on rarity) will have a base Gold or Gem value attached to it, then, driven by the players demand and use rates the price will either increase, or decrease! Prices will update at a specific time cycle, which will be displayed in the shop.
Purchase any Single!
A *NEW* catalog of singles has been added. Now you will be able to search through any of the main card sets and pick up any card you want for a Gem price determined by the dynamic market! All sets are included after their pre-sale period.

Battle

Battle Mechanics
Mana Cost Altering Cards
All cards that affect Mana cost of other cards, now only affect the casting cost of cards in your hand. This change was done because many of the current reducing cards inadvertently caused a negative effect by lowering the cost of the cards already in play. Examples of this were Omni Cloak, Engineers Ring causing weaker creatures to be assembled by Dravkas, or Maelstrom Priestess lowering mana cost of spells that can get triggered by Arcanos' Visceral Flames ability.
If a card would trigger off the Mana cost of a card being played, it will go by the base cost always.
Battle FX
Added a whole bunch more battle effects for visual clarity of whats going on and feel, including:
- Magic vs Physical damage effect
- Hero enter animation
- Hero death effect
- A few status effect effects
- A few more battle UI effects

Guilds

**Note: This is a preview, some numbers might change before final release**
War Behaviour
The war experience has been revamped to make the war more interesting instead of just an energy race. Now when guilds go to war, each guild can only do 100 battles total with each member be capped at a maximum of 20 battles (out of the 100). The total number of wins at the end of the war, will determine the victor. For each battle win, gold will be added to a pot, which will be split based on participation. If your guild is victorious, each player will receive up to a 3x bonus to that gold amount. There will no longer be energy required to do guild battles. Honor will be accumulated after each win, and is independent from the war outcome. Quests have been removed so they don't conflict with trying to maximize your win ratios. In the event of a tie, the defending guild will be the victor.
Top Ranked Bonus
Top ranked guilds will receive an additional bonus amount of gold per battle.
Management
There are a few more management tools in place for guild leaders and members. You can now view daily, weekly and monthy averages for offensive and defensive rates as well as war participation %. Guild mates can now view and skirmish against each others defense decks.

Arenas

Limited Arena
- Now allowed up to 8 rares (was 4). This was done to give a little more flexibility to different deck strategies.
*NEW* Rotating Arena
- The Kingdom and Skirmish arena's have been removed and in their stead the new 'Rotating' arena has been added. This arena will cycle through a new set of rules every 48 hours to keep the battle fresh! The kicker to this is, the top players at arena rotation will earn GEMS or GOLD! To prevent against leaderboard camping, AI losses WILL affect your rating, just at a much decreased rate, currently 25% of the normal rating that would be exchanged.
Current Rule Sets
  • Tier 1 Standard
  • Tier 2 Standard
  • Alliance Standard - Standard rules only using cards of the same alliance as your Hero
  • Minimalistic - No cards with Mana cost 4+
  • Pauper - Max of 4 Uncommons, the rest must be commons!
  • Vanilla - All heroes start with 12 HP and 2 mana with no abilities!
  • Tier 3 Limited
  • Singleton - Can only use max of 1 of a specific card, 60 card decks
Payout
Currently the top 5 players will earn Gems, the remaining top 50% will earn varying amounts of Gold.

Hero Tweaks

Dravkas
Assemble
- assembled Constructs now have a mana cost equal to the gear they destroyed
Master Artificer
Whenever an ally gear or Alchemy Creature with Mana cost [Value] or more enters, Dravkas gains 1 ^, 1 Charge or 1 Mana
Arcanos
Ice Blast
- Now costs 3,4,5 charges (was 4,5,6)
Amarus
Undead Warcry
- Now costs 6 charges (was 5)
Petrice
Sprinkle Dust
Target creature gains Dust and Petrice gains 1 Mana
Hero Prices
We have reviewed, and changed (hopefully for the last time) the Hero Gold prices. We felt they got too pricey and kept a lot of our players out of reach of trying new and cool strategies. We have lowered the T2 Gold price to 15,000 Gold and T3 Gold price to 50,000 Gold. There will no longer be a sale value on Gold prices, only the first Gem purchase of a hero in each tier. (For those who already bought Hero's for greater prices, please see the end of this patch list :))

Card Tweaks

Eve
Summon Abomination
Now costs 2 mana (was 3).
- The abomination token now has a mana cost equal to its power
Blessed Champion - Available for trade-in
"On enter: your Hero gains 3 HPthis creature becomes Blessed 3 (when it dies, its Hero gains 3 HP)."
Reason: BC had far too much value for his Mana cost compared to other creatures. As an alternative to increasing the cost, we chose this route which offers a few ways for the opponent to deal with it.
Maelstrom - Available for trade-in
"For each random enemy creature and enemy Hero, deals 4, 3, 2 and 1 ~ damage to it respectively"
- Now costs 4 Mana (was 5)
Reason: With the ability to wipe the enemy's board AND deal damage to the hero directly, this was hands down the best burn spell in the game. We chose to limit the targets so you cant always guarantee a side wipe while still damaging the enemy hero as oppose to increasing the mana cost to get within reason of the capabilities.
Core
*Redesign* Ancient's Revenge
- Now called Ancient's Will


Collection Page

Collection page has been revamped to include filters for better searching capability. It now includes the option to scrap cards for crafting purposes.
Foiling
The foiling mechanic will be switching in this update. No longer will you trade in a certain amount of cards to receive a foil version, instead it will be moving to a Gem payable cosmetic upgrade. This is so it doesn't conflict with the new scrapping and crafting mechanic. The costs are now as follows:
  • Common - 5 Gems
  • Uncommon - 10 Gems
  • Rare - 15 Gems
  • Epic - 20 Gems
  • Legendary - 25 Gems

Bugs/Minors

- Abominations now come in with a Mana cost equal to the corpses they destroyed
- There is now a different effect for Magic Damage as opposed to Physical Damage
- Fixed the Dravkas 1009 error, which should also fix the shatter error
- Discards that are forced due to card drawing now properly go to the discard pile
- Fixed a bug with removal of abilities that wouldnt remove Overrun or Corpsecraft
- Tweaked the foil effect a bit
- Adjusted the way a - HP buff works. If they would receive a negative HP buff it would always take it off their max and current if it wouldnt kill them. It can now kill them. Cards affected: Selfless Adept, Morphing Remains
- Added "Light" and "Dark" alliance filters under the deck editor kingdom selector
- Added Mana cost filter in deck editor
- Realm Sworn Bard and Grizzle Beast now costs 50k Gold to match the Dragon (was 25k)
- Fixed hero star tutorial glitch that caused people to get stuck

GEMS!!

And last, but certainly not least we want to thank all our loyal and committed players as well as our new players that have just joined us! To celebrate this immense content update and to help cover some of the changes that may have affected players in a negative fashion, we will be awarded Gems to all our players! Just like the last Gem payout, every player will receive some. VIP players (those who have supported us with any real $ purchases) will be receiving an extra amount for their dedicated support! Thank you all! (Amounts are still to be determined)

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