This massive patch is the final piece of the puzzle for Mage Tower 2's main gameplay loop! It adds Bazaars, which let you attach artifacts to your favorite cards. This lets you Frankenstein your favorite cards into uniquely powerful monstrosities, making every run and every deck memorable. The patch also improves the new player experience, with two new easier Mastery levels and many changes to simplify and improve gameplay for new players.
New Content:
Bazaars - There are now three Bazaars in the world. Bazaars sell normal cards, risky "Black Market" cards, and new artifacts that enhance specific cards. With the 13 black market cards and 33 card-modifying artifacts, you'll be able to customize your deck like never before. Bazaars are like a worktable where you can craft your deck and make it more unique to you. Take your favorite Defender and make it attack infinitely while spawning explosive barrels on each attack. Or take your favorite Wizardry and reduce its cost and make it reusable! Bazaars make each run and each deck more unique and memorable.
New Cards - Added 12 new main set cards. (Several of which add a new strategy of "burning" the opponent's deck to death.)
New "Black Market" Cards - Added 13 new "black market" Bazaar-exclusive cards.
New Bazaar Artifacts - Added 33 new Bazaar-exclusive artifacts that modify cards.
New Player Experience:
New Masteries - Two new easier Mastery levels have been inserted before the current ones, so now there are now 8 mastery levels instead of 6. This should make the game much more accessible to new players. Your completed Mastery levels for each class will get bumped up by 2 as long as you've completed at least one run with that class. (So if you've already won Mastery 6 for a class in the old version, it will count that you've completed Mastery 8 in the new version, because they are identical.) Your Zadeus Tentacles will be bumped up by 2 as well when this happens.
Traveling Merchant - Now after every time you defeat an enemy, the Traveling Merchant will visit you. The Traveling Merchant lets you purchase cards or a get a dungeon clue from a faraway town. (So you now automatically get to draft a card after every battle, which makes things easier for new players and helps with bad world spawns.)
Enemy Spawn Time - Enemies spawn less frequently at all Mastery levels. (33% more time between spawns.) This will let players explore more easily without being swamped by enemies.
Basic Monsters - The original basic monsters (Orc/Warlock/Demon/Giant/Demonspawn) were removed and replaced with Goblin, Fel Wyrm, and Goblin Barracks. Goblin and Fel Wyrm have no abilities, and Goblin Barracks shuffles 3 Goblins into the monster deck when it attacks you. This change is to simplify the monster board and make the game easier to understand for new players. It also lowers pressure from cards like Warlock and Demon (which had abilities that triggered when they got angry.) Goblin Barracks also gives you some room to breathe for a turn, as it only threatens 2 immediate damage.
Simpler Encounters at Low Masteries - At Mastery Levels 1 and 2, most enemies now have only 2 unique monster cards in their deck. (So that new players don't have to read so many new cards every battle.) The rest of the monster cards are rolled out over successive Mastery levels.
Lower Monster Stats at Low Masteries - Many monster cards now have lower stats at lower Mastery levels. This should make the lower Mastery levels much more accessible to new players.
Life Regen - You now recover an additional 2 life after battle up to Mastery 6, then an additional 1 up to Mastery 8.
Quality of Life/Interface:
-Made the player's hand of cards fan out more, and made the cards easier to mouseover and select.
-Added a key to the map screen (click the Map button or press A to access the map.) You can overlap location types in the key to find and highlight all the corresponding locations on the map. (Important for finding Bazaars and Obelisks.)
-Fixed a visual bug that sometimes caused arrows to look like they missed their targets in battle. (The damage was always being assigned correctly, this was just a visual bug fix.)
Other Changes:
-The requirements for most achievements have been halved. (So you should unlock them twice as fast now.)
-All one-time-use cards (Defenders, Equipment, Permanents, Schemes, and Wizardries) now have a slightly increased chance to be shuffled higher in the player's deck compared to other cards. It's only a small chance to get shuffled one slot higher, but it helps mitigate bads draw ending a run, which was a slight problem when using these cards. It's only a small change in variance, so it still feels like a randomized deck.
-There is a new resource called "Magic Dust" that is exclusively used to escape from enemies before battle. This replaces the option of paying with Bloodrunes. This lets a player run from battles without worrying about spending Bloodrunes they could be saving for the Bazaar.
-Max hand size reduced from 9 to 7. (Remember you trash the excess cards, not discard them. In practice, you will almost never be forced get rid of a card you would have wanted to play later. This change is to clean up the UI and make it more apparent to new players that they can thin their deck by holding cards in hand. People were already holding unwanted cards in their hand to thin their deck, this isn't really going to change how that plays out.)
-Trading Posts - (Late game unlockable feature.) You must now select a single Trade which will only let you buy cards from Trading Posts that correspond to that Trade. The simple explanation is "If you want to buy a specific Wizardry card, you must now select the Trade that lets you buy Wizardry cards." There's a new "Trade" button next to the dungeon and map buttons that lets you do this. You also get extra resources for your selected trade. (This change is to lessen the analysis paralysis of having to keep track of five trade resources at once and all the potential cards you could buy with them. Now it's just a single impactful decision instead of having to constantly re-analyze things.)
-On the new Trade screen, which you can access once you unlock Trading Posts, you can also see all the buildings you've built.
-Added temporary title screen music.
-Player life and life regeneration values changed around. 5 less life at all Masteries. You now get +2 health regen at early Masteries (as mentioned in a previous bullet point), but -2 at the highest Mastery. This is mostly to compensate for the easier achievement unlocks adding a lot of extra health and health regen and making the highest mastery level too easy.
Card Changes:
-Royal Treasury was changed from a Common to a Rare.
-Removed Ascending Essence and Circus Bear.
-Golden Golem now no longer gives 2 gold when discarded, only on death. (It was extremely overpowered with Enchanted Tome, and didn't synergize with much else.)
-The "Siege" prize card you can get from an artifact now deals 4 "Enflame" damage instead of it generically dealing 4 damage to the monster deck.
Achievement Changes:
-Added four new achievements that count the number of buildings you've built. These achievements are to unlock The King's Banner, Blast, Wicker Man, and Poison Daggers.
-Wizard's achievement for 500 points now unlocks Doom Bolt instead of giving +1 Bloodrunes.
-Brewmaster's achievement for 500 points now unlocks Flare instead of giving +1 Bloodrunes.
-(Note: These new achievements will only unlock after you win or lose a run.)
Enemy Changes:
-Kobold Captain's "Greck" monster is now 5 for a 6/6 (was 2 for a 4/4.)
-Phase Bats' "Pincer" monster is now 5 for a 7/2 (was 2 for a 4/1.)
Bug Fixes:
-Fixed some weird bugs that could happen in the following run if you died against Irko.
-Fixed a bug where sometimes the Class Select screen music wouldn't stop playing after you left that screen.
-Fixed a bug where Sea Wyrm's card draw amount would be doubled if it started the game in play from Outpost.
-Fixed a bug where the resource/cost icons on "Trading Post" screens were misaligned.
-Fixed other miscellaneous bugs that may not have been listed here.