Puzzle Quest 3's 3.0 Update has arrived! But before we dive in, we wanted to share a quick word and...

Celebrate our 2nd Anniversary!

We can’t believe it’s already been 2 years since Puzzle Quest 3 officially went live worldwide! It’s been an amazing journey so far and we’re so excited to kick things off with our huge new 3.0 update which introduces the Gear System Rework, New World Map, and the next season of adventure in Etheria.

But that's not all - we are celebrating our birthday with a whole month of special events! Starting March 26th until April 30th, all adventurers can enjoy:

Free Anniversary Gift: Original PQ1 Portraits!

Sport your favorite Follower from the original game in the chat for free! Log in this month to redeem free in-game portraits based on the Followers of Legend from the original Puzzle Quest - available to redeem until April 30th.

Weekly Open Archives and Double Ancient Coins!

Take part in weekly unlocked Seasonal content to earn double Ancient Coins, starting with the original Season 1.1 on March 26th! Each week will unlock a new Archive worth double the coins. We'll also have matching Adventures each week for new heroes to join the fun!

Special Offers and Milestone Events!

In addition to the ongoing Anniversary reward and Archive events, we’ll have daily login and milestone events, alongside special anniversary offers this month, starting with our Anniversary Event on March 28th!

See our calendar below for all upcoming events as we celebrate this month!

Without further ado, let’s jump into the official 3.0 patch notes!

Matches with Green
When matched, randomly either gain a random Buff, or inflict a random Debuff on the enemy for 3 turns.

Gem of Dreams will spawn normally when fighting all Fae type enemies

Variant Gear Pieces are Gear pieces with a twist!

• A Variant Ability takes the place of a Gear piece’s original ability
• Variants effects count each other equipped variant of the same kind with no limit
• The Variant Gear piece will still also count towards its original gear set!

Gain 1-6% Power for each Positive Status Effect on you per Fae-Touched gear equipped

Variant Gear can be found in Season 3.0 Caches

At start of battle, convert 3 Green Gems to Gem of Dreams with a 70-100% chance to create an additional 3 Gems of Dreams

“A remnant of the first dragons who came to Etheria”

Field of Dreams (140 Green Mana)
Explode 3 Gems, then convert 2-8 Green Gems to Gems of Dreams

Conversion increases with Spell Rarity

Den of Nightmares (125 Purple Mana)
Deal X Dark damage, +15-27% extra for each negative status effect on the enemy

Dark Damage increases with Spellbook Level, Extra Damage increases with Spell Rarity

Efredi

Mighty
Might: 8-160 Speed: 5-100 Cunning: 2-40

Versus Spell: Burning Wishes (60 Mana)
Deal X Fire damage. If the enemy is already Burning, explode a random Red Gem

Mothling

Speedy

Might: 3-65 Speed: 10-200 Cunning: 2-35

Versus Spell: Invoke Dream (60 Mana)
Deal X Dark damage and spawn 2 Gems of Dreams.

“The Dreamhold has an intoxicating effect upon those who venture in… Better just lean into it.”

We have heard your feedback, and have made the following adjustments to Versus Tourneys!

• You can now fight yourself if you are one of the top players in a Tourney. Your opponent self will appear as a ghostly version to help signify that it is a copy of yourself.
• A player’s defensive loadout will not be updated in the last 24 hours of a Tournament
• Opponents that are taken from outside of the Tournament are now weaker.

• These opponents are provided in the event that the Tourney has not been populated with enough players yet so that players can get started on working towards their rewards without interruption.
• They should get phased out as stronger players in the Tournament are fought, but we will keep an eye on if we need to address these further.

• Heroes now receive a Stun Barrier after recovering from Stun.
• The Turns Taken Goal scoring has been updated

• 5 turns: 5%
• 5-7 turns: 0%
• >= 8 turns: -5%
• Penalty increases by 5% for every 2 turns afterwards, to a max of 50%.​

We don’t want to bring back the One-Turn meta, however we also don’t want players being forced to spend large amounts of turns trying to maximize their bonus to be competitive. By having a steeper penalty for longer battles, we aim to make the decision of which goals to target per battle more interesting.

Update 3.0 will be our first new update introducing new Achievements for all platforms. There are 5 new achievements that are being added, which are:

• Divine Intervention: Defeat the Scourge of Light (Season 1’s Final Boss)
• Apocalypse Then: Defeat Yog'Thadassa (Season 2’s Final Boss)
• A Dream Broken: Complete all Chapters of the Story in Season 3.0
• Going on an Adventure: Complete 10 Adventures
• Rogue’s Gallery: Collect 15 Portraits

Rest assured that if you have already completed Season 1 and Season 2, then Divine Intervention and Apocalypse Then will unlock automatically when you first run the 3.0 update.

Cartographers of Etheria have finally finished the most detailed map of Etheria so far. The world map has been completely overhauled to provide 4x the detail of the previous world map, along with being able to take a closer look at any point of the world map.

• As the world map is now larger, map nodes can now be more accurate to the story that is taking place
• Zooming in and out of the World Map also changes the camera tilt

• Zooming further out looks more flat like a world map
• Zooming in adds more tilt to the camera, showing off the depth and detail of Etheria

• Map Nodes have a shiny new base

• Replaced “Level an Item” Quest Pass Task with “Win a Dungeon Battle”, this may require a daily reset to take effect, before the task is replaced.
• “Upgrade an Item” Quest Pass Task also triggers on fully honing pieces of gear.
• Updated Goals for getting any gear to a specific level to trigger on battle scroll levels instead.
• Updated Goals involving getting elemental items to specific levels, and replaced them with the equivalent rarity.

We have also added in some new Goals to complete in Season 3.0 and later, including:

• Completing Adventures
• Collecting Portraits
• Collecting Portrait Frames
• Visiting Merchants during Adventures
• Unblocking Blocked Paths during Adventures
• Collecting Fae Gifts during Adventures

As some players in Versus may have noticed, in certain circumstances an activatable Hero Gem can be spawned by the enemy that only the player can use. In order to level the playing field, we have introduced Gem Ownership - where a gem can only be used by the character that spawned it. This Gem ownership is denoted by an Icon in the gem help display, as well as an idle effect for gems owned by an enemy.

• A Gem can only be activated by the character who owns it (no more stealing the other player’s Treasure Gems in Versus!).
• If an owned Gem is destroyed by the opponent, there may be a limited effect for the owner, but the full effect of the gem won’t be triggered.

• Rage Gems will grant the Owner Rage, but won’t explode
• Juju Gems will give the Empower Juju buff, but won’t spawn new gems
• Shield Gems will give the Owner a Barrier, but won’t destroy the column
• Shadow Gems won’t spawn new Purple Gems
• Treasure Gems will give the Owner Greed, and possibly spawn another, but won’t destroy the Row & Column
  • Imp Gems will give the Owner Brimstone and their opponent Wither, but won’t explode
  
  • Heroes will now receive a Stun Barrier when recovering from Stun
  • This applies to your own Heroes, as well as Heroes in Versus
  

  Damage reflected by the Reflect status effect is now considered Non-Lethal damage, leaving the recipient with at least 1 Life remaining (even if at 1 Life)

  
  • Resource descriptions for Shards, Runes, Scrolls, Glyphs, and Relics have been updated to match their new functionality
  • Added a continue button to the map screen for seasons that use the map.
  • Battle reward menu now shows the bonus resources gained due to stats, altars, and kingdom titles.
  

  Increased the number of available Loadouts from 8 to 16

  
  • Plague Witch ‘Infuse Poison’ can remove Hero Gems (Imp Gem)
  • Godslayer Weapon explosion now gives Mana
  • All issues relating to Reflect have been resolved by the change to non-Lethal Damage
  • Fixed PvP opponents not including the stat boosts from their spell collection
  • Adventure Energy purchased in the shop is no longer lost on daily reset
  
  • End Turn" appears/remains when there are matches available
  • Salvage All text is now appropriately pluralised
  • Updated loading screen tip for hunts to be clearer
  • Fixed percent complete display for seasons showing incorrect values
  • Salvaging items in the reward screen now shows the correct number of items being salvaged
  • Added missing replay button to story complete panel in the Season Archive
  • Spell pages gained in reward menu now exclude page count from previous levels in the total, to match the display in the spell info menu
  

  Fixed upgrading spells to any Plus rarity not triggering upgrade goals

  
  • Preview Spell missing buff from Spellbook
  • Leaving game in background causes black background
  • PQ3 client is causing some devices to overheat (iOS/Android/Xbox Series X)
  • Attribute bonuses displaying incorrectly when viewing tooltips
  • Risen Gems affecting linked gem matches
  • Gear rewards in Seasonal Cache display as duplicates with different chances
  
  • Xione will no longer craft Spells that you already have at Ancient Mythic
    • If there are no Spells Xione can craft, you will see an error message stating there is no valid Spells available

  • Kingdom Defense bosses now have a -100% Healing Bonus, and no longer receive healing from any source
    • This is to fix an issue where an error could occur when a Kingdom Boss receives healing during the battle.

  
  • You can now rearrange your Spells by dragging and dropping them into the slots you want them to be in
    • On controller, you can do this as well, but for ease of use you can press R2/RT while over an equipped Spell to open a drop down list of your other equipped Spells to swap with.

  • Added a Gear Set option to the Gear’s Vault Filter
    
  • Elements in a Filter will now start disabled and display all items.
    • When an element is selected, it will now display all items of that element, rather than having to disable all elements first

  • The Item’s Quality display will now toggle on the item’s panel, instead of opening a new panel, when viewing the individual Quality of item stats.
    • This replaces the Item Icon & item stat display

  Quality Display updates

  • Toggling the Quality display will toggle the display on both the selected and equipped item’s display
  • The Base Quality value of an attribute is displayed in bold in front of the range
  • Slightly increased the size of the quality entries, along with some text colour adjustments to make it more readable
  • Compare icons on individual stats will persist when toggling the Quality display
  • If the base Quality of an individual attribute is maxed out, it will display as mythic red.
  • Spells in Event Rewards will now show the number of Pages that can be collected
  • Blocks for displaying information for Status Effects, Spells, Item Effects, etc. in the Prebattle screen and during Battle will now resize themse

  lves to fit their content better, rather than trying to fit within a preallocated amount of space.

  

  Various improvements to memory usage

  
  • Risen Gems affecting linked gem matches
    • These matches will now unlock themselves

  • Fix issue where the Power, Vitality, and Mastery values was using a level higher battle scroll than it should’ve.
    
  • Battle Scroll levels for attributes were being treated as one level higher than intended (capped at 50).
    • For example a level 30 scroll was giving level 31 attribute values.

  • Season Goals not progressing from Season Weapon or Amulet of the First
    
  
  • Fixed issue where when a toggle was active, the interactive visuals wouldn’t trigger until it was toggled off again
  • Fixed default placement of various enemies in the Bestiary
  • Fixed instance in the Bazaar where an icon would be in front of the text
  • Variable Frame Rate option was not working correctly
  
  • Fixed the Gear rewards in Seasonal Cache displaying as duplicates with different chances
  • Fixed Item display in the Gear Set menu where rarity frames were not displaying correctly on equipped items
  • The stats icon is not visible in the pre-battle screen in various game modes
  • Fixed issue with Open Season Archives with a double coin bonus having issues.
    • Open Archives running in April **now have double coin bonus activated again.**

  • Fixed upgrade effect not being cancelled when pressing B/Escape when upgrading followers
    
  • Fixed element icon appearing in front of the minion-level text
    
  
  • Offers costing Crowns made their way into the Kingdom Bazaar. This has been removed.
  • New Achievements that went into 3.0 are now available on iOS
  
  • Preview Spell missing buff from Spellbook
  • Leaving game in background causes black background
  • PQ3 client is causing some devices to overheat (iOS/Android/Xbox Series X)
  • Attribute bonuses displaying incorrectly when viewing tooltips
  • Random Spell packs in the shop can give owned max spell pages
  • Spells that buff power are giving lower Power than intended.
    • Fixed in 3.1.0

  • Warlords Shoulders reflect causing death and not leaving 1HP