Patch Note: 1.59.2 and a Letter from the Devs

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09_2016_patch_59.png

Patch Note: 1.59.2 and a Letter from the Devs

By: Ashmore 5 days ago

Original post on Bethesda’s forums .

Patch Note: 1.59.2

  • Starter Pack Now Available! – The new Starter Pack is available as a one-time purchase. It includes 10 packs of cards (at least one guaranteed Legendary card), a special Title, and three alternative art cards.
  • Main Menu Flow – New menu flow for easier navigation.
  • New Card Sellback System – If a card you have gets nerfed, you will have a limited time to sell back the card for its full crafting cost.
  • Changes to the Ranking system
    • Loss protection ends at The Lord
    • Ascending to next constellation requires a win at the topmost star
    • No bonus matches at The Warrior and beyond
  • Soul Gem Cap for Practice Mode – Instituted daily cap of 300 soul gems for Practice Mode rewards.
  • Wording Updates – Many cards have had their game text wording improved. These changes were made for clarity and consistency.
    • The most noticeable templating change is for cards that draw created cards like Plunder. Instead of “Draw two random items,” it says, “Put two random items in your hand.” This helps clarify that you don’t need items in your deck to play this card.
  • Creature Types – Two large creature types, Animal and Undead, have been split up for flavor and gameplay reasons. Creatures that used to be “Animal” are now Beast, Reptile, Spider, and Mudcrab. Formerly “Undead” creatures are now Spirit, Vampire, Skeleton, and Mummy.
    • Dawnbreaker still targets the same group of Undead, and Wild Beastcaller still gets the same range of Animals.
    • However, Bone Colossus now is a Skeleton that boosts your Skeletons, which is a gameplay change.
  • Card Balance Changes
    • Rift Thane – Back to 4/2 with Breakthrough when you and your opponent are tied on life. This was an unintended change in the last patch.
    • Wispmother – Does not copy itself even if it has cost 2. It will continue to work with other cards that have their cost reduced.

Bugs Fixed

  • Numerous AI fixes
  • Numerous localization fixes
  • Added error messaging to Friends system

Letter from the Devs
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Hello to all Legends players! The Dire Wolf Digital development team has been hard at work on various things, and I thought I’d give you an update on where we are and where we’re headed.

Tomorrow’s Patch

We’re rolling out a patch tomorrow that includes a variety of things. One of them is streamlining game navigation so that it takes fewer clicks to do what you want to do. We’re merging the functionality of the Play Menu screen into the Main screen, as several players have suggested. Here’s what it looks like:

Another change that is happening with this patch is a significant adjustment to the ranking system. What we’ve found is that the progression to the upper ranks is a bit too fast. We’d like to slow down this progression a little bit, so that achieving the mid-to-upper ranks feels like more of an accomplishment. Note that we’re still happy with the general way the system works, so we’re not performing an overhaul, just implementing a few tweaks, namely:

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1) We’re removing loss protection earlier for low-ranked play. We’ve noticed feedback from new players who perceive significant mismatches in the ranked system, and a lot of that is due to how quickly you’re climbing through the lower ranks. This change will make it easier for players to be matched against others of similar experience.

2) Reaching the top star in a constellation doesn’t immediately promote you to the next rank. Now, you must win one more game when you’re at the top of the constellation to ascend to the next one. This essentially adds 1 more net win required per rank, so 12 additional wins from rank 12 to Legend.

3) To make the upper ranks feel like even more of an accomplishment, we’re removing bonus matches from rank 5 and above. This will mean that more skill is required to ascend from those ranks, so each rank thereafter will be more notable and celebrated. This will also help some players from “over-ascending” from persistent play and getting into a situation where the matchmaker is unable to find good matches for them within or near their rank.

Creature Type Changes

Creature types are part of the game to provide flavor and to provide gameplay hooks that can be leveraged by other cards. When the Design team looked forward to see what kinds of cards we could make with the existing creature types, we found two that had issues. Undead and Animal contained too many different kinds of creatures to be useful.

We’re breaking up Undead into Skeletons, Spirits, Vampires, and Mummies. All of those types are more flavorful than a catch-all term like “Undead.” And, as an example, being able to design cards in the future that work with or buff Vampires specifically without working with other Undead such as Draugr offers both more opportunities for strong resonance as well as opportunities for new deck archetypes.

Animal, in the same way, included Beasts, Reptiles, Mudcrabs, and Spiders, and each of those can have flavorful distinctions. Everybody loves Mudcrabs, right?

So, in order to provide better gameplay and more flavorful cards in the future, we’ve split up Undead and Animal each into four different types. Wild Beastcaller has the word “Animal” in its game text, but it still summons the same creatures it did before (we just included all four new types).

Bone Colossus had the word “Undead” in its game text, and that’s one that we had to change. First of all, it looks like a Draugr (which we are calling Skeletons). Secondly, it creates Skeletons when you play it. He’s gone from being “the lord of all undead” to the Skeleton Boss. There are now more than half a dozen Skeletons in the game, more than enough to build a Skeleton deck.

Final note: Dawnbreaker still uses the word “Undead” and it will affect all four types of Undead.

Monitoring the Meta

Beyond the creature type changes mentioned above, we don’t have any other card changes at this time. However, we are currently spending a bit of time evaluating the metagame and we’re preparing to make some changes, possibly even before the end of September. We carefully consider card changes but we’re not resistant to them, either. We want to take full advantage of the digital medium to bring you an exciting strategy game that doesn’t get stale. And if that means applying a little grease to a few cards from time to time for metagame tuning, we are more than willing to do so, if we feel like the game will overall be significantly healthier.

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Ramping to Release

Finally, we want to mention a bit about the release roadmap.

Coming soon, we plan on releasing another patch that will finally bring a working chat system into the game. We’re putting some finishing touches on the tablet versions of the game. (And speaking from experience as an early tablet playtester, Legends is extremely enjoyable in a relaxed position on a comfy chair or couch!) We’re planning to have both iOS and Android versions ready in the next couple of months, though we may do a regional release for a few weeks or a month as a test run, before going global.

Community

Before signing off, I’d like to extend a hearty thanks to our players. We have some truly outstanding community members and content creators who are active on Twitch, Reddit, YouTube, and elsewhere. We don’t always get a chance to interact with you but know that we’ve been reading your posts, listening to your podcasts, watching your streams and YouTube videos, and the design team regularly discusses community feedback. So thank you for your involvement!

Signing off,

Paul “Merakon” Dennen

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9 Comments

Ashmore 5 days ago
Changes will be uploaded here as soon as the patch goes live.

I’m so curious about the alternative card art, that looks awesome.

Lokheit 5 days ago
Does the Wispmother change count as a nerf for “getting the gems back after nerf”? I probably won’t sell them as I’m attached to the fun times with the deck, but just curious if this was considered a nerf or a bug fix.

Also… I get that it was mostly about the Bone Colossus but… if they made text changes to clarify stuff, will Dawnbreaker list every creature type it can target? Or still say “Undead” and the player has to guess? Also, I Draugrs aren’t technically skeletosn…

DarkVaati 5 days ago
Really looking forward to seeing the new menu flow and knowing the price of the Starter Pack, although I suppose it’s going to be 5€ (or $5) just as the one Blizzard launched for Hearthstone a few days ago. In that case, I think I’ll lose my F2P condition and pay for it, since I’m enjoying the game enough and 10 packs plus a guaranteed legend is a nice collection boost for such a little price.

On the other hand, I’m curious about the exact meaning of the ranking mode changes, since the wording is confusing. I like the snake constellation concept, because it’s different from HS and allows you to experiment with various decks through the entire season without worrying too much about losing a few games. I’d like the system to remain this way; specially if they’re already adding an extra required win at the end of each rank.

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Finally, wording and localization updates were needed and will always be welcome. I may even switch back to Spanish for a while to see if the card names make more sense now.

Calvo 5 days ago
Lokheit wrote:
Also… I get that it was mostly about the Bone Colossus but… if they made text changes to clarify stuff, will Dawnbreaker list every creature type it can target? Or still say “Undead” and the player has to guess?

I would dare to claim that there is not much to guess. After all, these undead fantasy creatures are not specific to TES and established at least since centuries, in all kind of media. So, it is kind of “general knowledge”. I don’t think we need more text there.

Quote:
Also, I Draugrs aren’t technically skeletosn…

Well, can their type be considered as Mummy?

1 Reply
Lokheit 4 days ago
Well, Draugrs are now Skeletons instead of their own type or even mummy, I guess they just wanted the Bone Colossus to have an effect over them (and one of the Draugrs spawns a true skeleton on Last Gasp). Also, Dawnbreaker explains what an Undead is when you hover over the card which is a good thing for clarification.

Also the Wispmother change apparently doesn’t count as a nerf as it wasn’t included on the list when you start the game and there doesn’t seem to be any compensation.

Final note: Some cards changed their art, my Ice Storm spell now looks much better!! EDIT: Redoran Enforcer and Trebuchet too and it seems like Winter Grasp is now using the old Ice Storm art.

belzabuth 5 days ago
sweet, ima by my starter pack for that legendary and card art.
sounds interesting.
keep up the good work, i really like this card game and even in Beta this is my main card game now!!

thank you

Calvo 5 days ago
Some more detailed info with a .

1 Reply
Ashmore 5 days ago
Yes, I’ve added this to the news.

Calvo 4 days ago
Lokheit wrote:
Well, Draugrs are now Skeletons instead of their own type or even mummy, I guess they just wanted the Bone Colossus to have an effect over them (and one of the Draugrs spawns a true skeleton on Last Gasp). Also, Dawnbreaker explains what an Undead is when you hover over the card which is a good thing for clarification.

Well, it is a typical balance act between lore and gameplay mechanics. It is fine like this. And the hint with Dawnbreaker is indeed nice.

Quote:
Also the Wispmother change apparently doesn’t count as a nerf as it wasn’t included on the list when you start the game and there doesn’t seem to be any compensation.

Yes, it was considered as bug fix and not a balance change.

Quote:
Final note: Some cards changed their art, my Ice Storm spell now looks much better!! EDIT: Redoran Enforcer too.

Trebuchet, Redoran Enforcer, Winter’s Grasp and Ice Storm got updated art. (Source: )

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