Areteion 1.0.17

Reasoning

Areteion launched as a game of tight puzzles: every turn a tricky situation to survive, and the rules were constrained on purpose to keep that tension up. Your feedback since launch, in the reviews and on the forum, has been clear about the price of it: too much randomness, too much to keep in mind at once, and setbacks that hit far harder than the mistake deserved. The sharpest form of it is a good run ended by something nobody could have played around.

Hero's Journey is where the game's long-term fun should live, and this patch rebuilds it around that. Every journey is now five challenges, so each one matters, and a run that dies takes five challenges with it, not eight. Argonautica is open from your first run instead of waiting behind a Labors win. Card rewards offer rarer cards far more often, with free rerolls for when an offer holds nothing your deck wants. And your runs now leave a mark: the Hall of Deeds fills a square for every Olympian you carry to victory in every mode, and its Chronicle remembers the runs themselves, won or lost.

The rest of the patch takes the swings out from under it. Storms and snow no longer occur. Curses arrive at severity 0 when your favor is at or above the round number, so favor is a defence you can choose to pay for instead of a roll you sit through. The board is bigger and opens wider, with the tiles around your start explored and empty. Undo takes back a misclick, as long as nothing has been drawn, explored or rolled since. The AI plays a much stronger, steadier game, and what it was handed is now a single number on the challenge panel: the Arete it starts with.

More freedom made everything cheap. When Power carries over between turns and a bigger board leaves room to grow, cards are easier to afford and Arete flows faster. So almost every card now costs more. This is not a nerf aimed at anyone's deck: it is the whole economy scaling up to match, so that your choices keep their weight without anything being taken away.

Highlights

• Hero's Journey: Every mode is five challenges long with two chances, Argonautica available from the first run, five challenge map layouts, free rerolls on card rewards, and the Hall of Deeds completion board.
• Bigger board: 9x9 → 12x12. 144 tiles instead of 81. Maps and starting positions are rebuilt for it.
• Persistent Power: Unspent Power now carries over between turns.
• Undo: New button that takes back your last action.
• Card costs: Almost every collectible card costs more, re-priced for Persistent Power and the bigger board. Full list in the Patch Notes screen in the main menu.
• Olympian curses: New severity 0. Keep your favor at or above the round number and the curse is announced but does nothing.
• Weather: Storm, Heavy Storm, Snow and Heavy Snow no longer occur.
• Might limit: 10 → 12.
• Starting position: 12 more tiles start explored, and all of them start empty.
• AI opponents: Play a much stronger, steadier game.
• Patch Notes: A Patch Notes screen in the main menu, listing every version back to 1.0.0.

Hero's Journey

Every mode is now a five challenge run with two chances.

Runs

• Argonautica: No longer needs a Labors win to unlock. Available from the first run. Odyssey still unlocks with an Argonautica win.
• Run length: Argonautica 7 → 5 challenges, Odyssey 8 → 5. Labors stays at 5.
• Chances: 3 → 2, in every mode.
• Argonautica, Odyssey: Battles run 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 rounds. No more challenges at a flat 12.
• Odyssey: The final challenge's opponent is about one difficulty tier weaker than before.
• Maps: Challenge maps are drawn from a pool of five hand-made layouts (the two Versus AI maps plus an isthmus, a gulf and a twin-bay map), each appearing in eight orientations with a varying coastline, most with two possible starts per side. Every layout leaves a land front at least five tiles wide between the two sides.

Rewards

• Card rewards: Hold more cards per challenge in every mode. Argonautica and Odyssey offer about as many per run as they did at their old length, and Labors matches Argonautica.
• Rerolls: Every card choice in a reward gets free rerolls of the cards it offers: two in Odyssey, one in Labors and Argonautica.
• Card offers: The draft and run rewards offer Uncommon, Rare, Epic and Mythological cards much more often, and Commons much less often. Cards shown on the last two offers are avoided on the next one.
• Collection cards: Every mode now pays 20 cards across its five wins, and rarer cards are scarcer.

Scoring

• Solo Rounds: Arete thresholds raised. Passing now asks 100 Arete at the first challenge and 50 more at each one after, with reward tiers at 1x / 1.25x / 1.5x / 1.75x / 2x that score (was 1x / 1.2x / 1.5x / 2x / 2.75x). Challenge 1 asks 100 to pass and 200 for every reward, challenge 5 asks 300 and 600. Difficulty raises every threshold, including the one that costs a chance, by 15% per point: 75% more Arete at difficulty 5, shown on the difficulty steps.
• Arete bonus rewards: Beating the opponent's final Arete needs a flat lead of +100 / +200 / +300 (was 1.5x / 2x / 2.5x their Arete).
• Run score: No longer counts the opponent's Arete advantage, so a challenge is worth the same whatever head start either side started with.

Hall of Deeds

• Hall of Deeds: New completion board, reachable from the Hero's Journey menu and the Profile. One square per Olympian per mode, filled by winning a run with that Olympian in that mode and showing the highest difficulty it was won at. Argonautica fills the square for both Olympians of the pair. Each filled square pays one card of that Olympian, once: Uncommon for Labors, Rare for Argonautica, Epic for Odyssey. Victories from earlier patches are already on the board and ready to claim.
• Chronicle: The Hall's second tab keeps the last 25 finished Hero's Journey runs, won or lost. Each shows its hero, final deck, every challenge with tier, score, rounds, rewards and top-scoring cards, and every chance lost. Above the list: best run score per mode, highest Arete in a single battle, earliest round an early victory landed on, and the card that earned the most Arete in a run. The same personal bests appear in a new Hero's Journey Records panel on the Profile, alongside lifetime run and early victory counts, once a run has ended.

Screens

• Menu: Rebuilt mode select. Argonautica is marked as the recommended journey. Difficulty is set on six numbered steps instead of a slider; hovering a step previews the opponent strength, solo round target and score bonus it gives before you pick it.
• Challenge select: Rewards are summarised instead of listed one line per item: the number of card choices first, the rarity requirements among them underneath, and card deletions on their own line. A Solo Round lists the score below which you lose a chance with its other reward thresholds.
• Challenge panels: Show the difficulty tier and the opponent's Arete head start together on one plaque, instead of the opponent's AI level. The tier rates the opponent at that head start, not the deck on its own. A bar and colour under the number grow with the size of the head start, which can go below zero, shown as the Arete you start ahead.
• Chances display: Names what the next defeat costs: One defeat allowed, or Next defeat ends the run once one is spent. Replaces the warning line that sat on every challenge panel.
• Deck: The card removal screen is rebuilt, with the header bar above the cards replaced by the screen title and the prompt and skip button under the deck. Your deck panel and the card reward screen name a deck size to aim for: 14 cards before the second challenge, 18 before the third, 22 before the fourth, 26 before the fifth. Removing a card that would leave you under it says so.

Demo

• Argonautica: Added to the demo, played with the four starter Olympians, including its trials, its Hall of Deeds squares and its leaderboard. Odyssey remains full game only. Cards earned still count toward the demo collection cap.

Features

• Undo: New button next to Help and Settings, takes back your last action. Available in Solo, Versus AI and Hero's Journey. Not in multiplayer, replays or the tutorial. Greys out after any action that draws a card, explores a tile or rolls a random effect, and at the end of your turn. Hovering it says why it is unavailable.
• Unbound keyword: Cards with Unbound can be placed on and move across both land and Sea tiles. Shown as a badge on the board, in card tooltips and in the Keywords list of the help overlay.
• Tiebreakers: A match tied on Arete is decided by total Favor, then total Might (ignoring the Might limit), then a coin flip. Matches no longer end in a draw. The end-of-match screen names the tiebreaker and both numbers.
• Card inspector: Rebuilt. The art is now shown as large as the window allows, with the name, tags, cost, rarity and the Olympian the card belongs to around it, and its keywords explained underneath. The card's frame takes its Olympian's colour. Hovering a card on the board also names the Olympian it belongs to, in that Olympian's colours, above its rarity.
• Patch Notes: A Patch Notes screen in the main menu, listing every version back to 1.0.0. Picking a version shows its notes, with links to each of its sections.
• Empty deck: Drawing a card while your deck is empty now shows a notice saying that nothing was drawn and that only card effects can put cards back into your deck. Later empty draws in the same match show a brief Deck Empty notice instead.
• Turn banners: The turn start and turn end banners name the turn number: "Ares's Turn 8", "Athena Ends Turn 5".
• Animation Speed: New sliders for Card Change in Hand, Card Change in Deck, Olympian Banner and Quest Fulfilled. Place Card is replaced by Card Transform, which controls a card changing into another card on a tile. Tile Effect now also covers influence flashes, and Stat Change covers the Arete and Favor counters.
• Tutorial: While an explanation highlights part of the screen, the rest of the screen dims. Combat now has its own explanation. The opening box names Arete as the goal of every game and highlights the Arete counter. The end screen has a Play Solo button, alongside View Board and Main Menu, which opens Solo with the Heroic Tales deck selected.

Balance

Match rules

• Might limit: 10 → 12.
• Domus: Boon "Gain influence over up to 7 nearby tiles" replaced by "Shuffle your hand into your deck, then draw as many cards".
• Starting position: The tiles next to your starting 9 explored tiles start explored as well, 12 more tiles. Explored only, not under your influence, and all of them start empty: no encounters, monsters, game animals, gifts of nature, fish, barbarian camps or pirate hideouts.
• Weather: Storm, Heavy Storm, Snow and Heavy Snow no longer occur. Only Sunny, Rain and Heavy Rain are in the rotation.

Map

• Game animals: Count as enemies for every effect that targets, damages or counts enemies. Spawn about 50% less often.
• Gifts of Nature: About 10% fewer on the map.
• Hillfort, Kurgan Encampment, Satrapal Garrison, Pirate Hideout: Arete 250 → 400.

Olympian effects

• Severity 0: New severity, no effect. Blessings come out at severity 0 at 0 Favor with the chosen Olympian, curses at Favor equal to or above the round number: 6 at round 6, 8 at round 8, 10 at round 10, 12 at round 12. The Olympian is still drawn and announced, and nothing happens. Severities 1 to 4 are unchanged. Blessings and curses from card effects still roll 1 to 4 and never come out at 0. The More info table lists the Favor needed to cancel a curse outright.
• Round effects: Blessings and curses from the round now count towards The Olympieion, Oracle of Dodona and the Sphinx's riddle, alongside the ones you invoke from cards. Effects silenced at severity 0 do not count.
• Sent by Zeus (Zeus): Cost reduction by severity: 0/1/3/5 → 0/3/6/9.
• Gift of Triton (Poseidon): Cost reduction by severity: 1/2/3/4 → 0/2/4/6.
• Volcanic Eruption (Hephaestus): Text: "A volcano erupts under your influence" → "A volcano erupts on an empty tile under your influence". No change to how it picks its tile.
• Maenad's Fury (Dionysus): Text: "Then shuffle the costs of all cards in your hand." → "Lose 1/3/5/7 Arete for each Invocation in your hand."

AI opponents

• Head start: Bonus blessings removed. An opponent's whole head start is now its starting Arete, plus the flat +1 Might and 2 extra cards every AI gets. Opponent strength is unchanged otherwise.
• Playing strength: The AI plays a much stronger and steadier game, in demo builds as well.
• Opponent ratings: Every Versus AI and Hero's Journey opponent has been re-rated against the new card costs and the 12x12 board. Some opponents are now rated well above or below where they sat, and difficulty steps that pick by rating pick different opponents.

Versus AI

• Starting rating: 1200 → 1000. Card reward milestones move down with it: 1050, 1098, 1144, 1188 and so on (was 1250, 1298, 1344, 1388). Ratings and milestones already earned are unchanged.
• Maps: Both maps redrawn for the 12x12 board: about 60% land, 40% sea. Starting positions are 7 to 10 tiles apart (was 4 to 8), both sides are mirrored, and every starting position has a Sea tile among its 8 surrounding tiles.

Card Changes

Every collectible card re-priced for Persistent Power.

• Direct damage Invocations: Strike, Brutal Strike, Fangs of the Wild, Intoxicate, Rampage, Ram and Rake and Flurry now deal their damage from a card you select, which gains Arete for anything it destroys. Strike and Brutal Strike: "Select a character you control. It deals 2 / 5 damage to a random adjacent enemy." Fangs of the Wild: "Select an Animal you control. It deals damage equal to half your Artemis favor (rounded down) to a random adjacent enemy." Intoxicate: "Select a character you control. A random adjacent enemy loses half of its Movement (rounded up) and takes damage from it equal to half of its current Health (rounded up)." Rampage, Ram and Rake and Flurry keep their areas and numbers, dealt by the selected card.
• Unbound: Added to Butterfly; Eros, God of Desire; Icarus, the Reckless; Falcon; Buzzard; Orion, the Great Hunter; Selene, Goddess of the Moon; Britomartis, Ever-Evasive; Temple Owl; Iris, Rainbow Messenger; Angelia, Spirit of Messages; Seagull; Bellerophon, Rider of Pegasus; Theseus, Slayer of Minotaur; Glaucus, Sea Wanderer; Perseus, Gorgon Slayer. Euphemus, Runner on Waves: "Can be placed and move on ANY tile, land or sea." → "Unbound".
• Renamed: Swift Huntress → Woodland Huntress. Swift Mercenary → Hoplitodromos. Antilochus, Swiftest Greek → Antilochus, Nestor's Son. Euphemus, the Swift → Euphemus, Runner on Waves.

The other 143 changes are listed in the Patch Notes screen in the main menu.

Bug Fixes

17 bug fixes, listed in the Patch Notes screen in the main menu.