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Minor Features

Automated Store Rotation’s

We have now begun our overhaul of our in-game store to better and more frequently showcase exciting cosmetics and bundles for everyone. A new weekly and daily rotation system has been added so be sure to check back frequently.
In addition to this, we have added over 100 new cosmetic items to the rotation, and several new alternate art bundles that have never been seen before.

UI Improvements

With the new skinning system soon to be available, we have made many underlying UI system changes for the main menu that have resulted in various small improvements. Two examples are the more visible highlighting of the selected player deck, and a mini queuing panel that is shown beside the friend’s button while in-queue for a game.

Card Description Consistency Wording Pass

Thanks to Reuben and Kevkas, hundreds of cards have had their descriptions updated to be more consistent with each other and their effects. This has also fixed a large number of spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes.

Discard & Overcharge Targeting Changes

We have done a complete pass over all Overcharge and several Discard deployment / activation effects to now use targeting, allowing you to choose which specific card to Overcharge or Discard in the hand.
The updated cards include:

• Agent Coyle, Hellbringer
  
• Devil of Despair
  
• Splatterer
  
• Vah’Nash, The Ritual Master
  
• Yagron
  
• Asu-Ra
  
• Agent Coyle, Divine Demonic
  
• ALL OVERCHARGE CARDS
  

Balance Changes

Rift Run Rebalance

Thanks to all the thousands of Rift run games that have been played we have collected some excellent data on the various win rates of specific faction combinations, specific cards, and the overall pick rates during drafting. While overall the win rates for most common faction combinations were well within our expectations, there were a few key over and underperformers that we are hoping to address with a wide array of rarity changes.
Overseers were vastly overperforming other factions, with triple overseers especially being the single best purity combo. This was due to their high density of removal, evasive bodies, scaling threats, and easy synergies. With this update we are pulling back on Overseer’s removal especially in a massive way, as well as some of the top tier Champions. While at the same time diluting their 1P options especially by making some weaker cards more common.

Exiles have also received some similar changes, though their issues were often more to do with a few select cards being too common or impactful.

On the other end, Cult of Verore and Descendents of the Dragons have been consistently underperforming and have had a number of updates to see their most iconic tools appear more often, while also making sure some of their more niche cards are appearing less often as well as nobody wants their 5th Find your Way in the often tempo based Rift Run Format.

Other factions have also received many minor buffs or nerfs, and some of the rarest cards in the format have been made more common where appropriate now that the format has seen more playtesting.

Overall thanks to everyone who has played so far and we look forward to everyone trying out the new changes.

Card Balances

A number of minor and major card balance changes have been approved by our Patreon voters and will now go live.

Sacrifice Changes
Players have continued to dominate with decks that abuse various repeatable sacrifice engines from the command zone, especially in conjunction with Nero. Likewise these cards have heavily restricted the design space of "Sacrifice Matters" effects in future releases. So we are looking to nerf or limit a number of these cards that allow repeatable sacrificing.
Nero, Crypt Delver will not be nerfed this patch, however the card remains on our watchlist and will be adjusted if these changes are not enough.


Demon of Gluttony: Can now only sacrifice a Character once per turn.
Goal: Both reverts the card closer to its IW1 functionality and restricts the card from sacrificing more than once per turn, limiting the frequency of free sacrificing from the command zone, which both opens up design space and indirectly nerfs "sacrifice matters" cards like Nero.

Rita, Shadow Priestess: "Sacrifice a Character you control: Heal Rita 5 health." changed to "Sacrifice a Character you control: Fully heal Rita. Activate this only once per turn."
Goal: Restricts the card from sacrificing more than once per turn, limiting the frequency of free sacrificing from the command zone, which both opens up design space and indirectly nerfs "sacrifice matters" cards like Nero. The card receives a minor buff by now fully healing.

Mega Unit 03: Activated ability can now only be activated while deployed.
Goal: While the artificial Character requirement made this harder to use than other sacrifice engines, being able to stack multiple Barriers while in the Command Zone made it difficult to remove. This has been given a Deployed restriction rather than a once per turn limit because we think that it's ability to stack protection once you have deployed it is exciting for such a high cost unit.

Candit's Thrall: Stats increased from 2/2 -> 5/5. Text changed to "When Candit's Thrall is killed or Sacrificed by an effect you control, draw a card."
Goal: Candit's Thrall has always struggled as an extremely low statted sacrifice fodder due to its high cost and low payoff. Likewise CoV requires more solid bodies to compete in Rift Run. So alongside the nerfs to a number of sacrifice engines, we want to significantly buff Candit's Thrall and bring it in line mechanically with cards like Rita's Thrall that trigger off being killed by a friendly Mass Death etc.

Splatterer: Add "Activate this only once per turn."
Goal: Splatterer has been having an outsized effect in Rift Run, especially as a commander, being extremely difficult to stop or predict with multiple activations. This change will allow for the card to remain reasonably common but reduce some of the most high risk/reward plays.

Volatile Genome: Add Exile 6.
Goal: With the large recent nerfs to Scramble we have seen some minor Volatile Genome play, but wanted to give it a minor boost via the exile mechanic, foreshadowing its effect but reducing its cost. We expect this'll now be a heavy hitter in most demon heavy decks.

Scramble: Cost decreased from 9 -> 8
Goal: The recent nerf to Scramble has been very effective at removing it from high level play as planned, and we believe it is safe to revert the cost increase so that it can be slightly more efficient for casual play and Rift Runs.

Scepter of the Deep: Increase morale cost of the flying Demon tokens to 4
Goal: Scepter of the Deep has shown itself to be a solid Control option in both Rift Run and Constructed, however we wanted to slightly increase the morale cost of the Demon tokens to increase counterplay in situations where the artifact is destroyed.

Enyah of the Infinite Possibilities: Add a minimum deck size restriction of 60 cards when using her as a commander.
Goal: As the cardbase has gotten larger with the release of new sets, and the number of multifaction cards especially has increased, Enyah has moved from a gimmicky deckbuilding restriction to a constructed powerhouse that will only get more power with additional releases. By adding a larger deck size restriction, this should help bring her back to her former power level until more permanent solutions like set rotation are implemented.

Unstable Bomb Bot: Changed "At the end of turn," -> "At the start of combat,"
Goal: A long requested change to bring the card closer to it's IW1 functionality, especially so that it can be used defensively to blow up a board state before combat. Should help buff Genesis in both Rift Run and potentially constructed.

Karckk: Now moves to the front of the Assault Zone when overcharged 6+ times.
Goal: A quality of life improvement so that Karckk can better make use of his Unstoppable and large stats to clear the way and be used as a game finisher in Rift Run or Constructed rather than languish at the back of the Assault Zone.

Marina, Touched by Infinity: Stats increased from 4/4 -> 8/8.
Goal: Early versions of lifelink being tested during Intrigue's development scaled with the Character's health, rather than healing for a fixed amount, this meant that early lifelink Characters were extremely understatted. Since the change to lifelink, most lifelink Characters except Marina have had their stats increased to a reasonable level, and so we believe its time to do the same with Marina, especially to help her to be useful in Rift Run.

Never Forget the Fallen: Remove the Beast clause.
Goal: 2 Purity Warpath is one of the most insular double purity cardsets, limiting deckbuilder creativity and helping reduce its power somewhat in Rift Run. Never Forget the Fallen as an already expensive and double purity card we believe is a safe candidate to make it a bit more flexible to work for decks that don't purely run Beast Characters.

Bugfixes

General Fixes

Fixed the replay system not supporting targeting the same card multiple times, resulting in the game replaying differently.

Fixed deck covers for a deck not saving after restarting the game.

Fixed the Console not unloading when closing it, which caused heavily reduced frame rates.

Improved main menu support for aspect ratios smaller than 16:9, now those with inferior technology can enjoy the menus, In-game support coming soon.

Fixed Purified Purpose quest incorrectly completing when using a mixed purity deck.

Fixed the item displayer in the inventory showing the incorrect item image after browsing card items.

Fixed input handling still working when the console or bug reporter screen is open. This stopped cycling of selected cosmetic card variations in the deck builder, and escape handling for underlying panels.

Card Fixes

Fixed Vasir's Strategem not working with an empty hand.

Fixed Xac’s transformed card art to now show the Lord of the Pit artwork.

Fixed Luftkrieg Xi, Anti-Air Array from damaging friendly Flying Characters.

Fixed Mega Unit 01 to return its pilot to its original zone instead of the support zone.

Fixed Covert Battlesuit losing its keyword effects after combat with the opponents Fortress.


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