Fable Fortune - 0.3 Update Patch Notes - Part 1!

“Hello, Heroes!

I’m here with the full patch notes that accompany the gigantic 0.3 update that just went live. It’s easily the biggest update to the game so far, comprising big feature revamps, 30 brand new cards and hundreds of card buffs, nerfs, rarity changes and redesigns. Multiple Heroes have been reworked to provide a deeper and more engaging gameplay and deck building experience.

Basically, it’s huge. So huge that I need to split it into multiple posts!

So huge in fact that we’ve had to reset the accounts of everyone who is currently playing in the Closed Beta. This should be the final account reset that we will be performing, barring any unforeseen issues, so any rewards earned and progress made after the 9th should last forever, even through the launch of Early Access and beyond. As stated in our FAQ, everyone who has already bought packs via a Steam purchase will be fully compensated with an equivalent number of bought packs after the reset.

As a thankyou to all of our awesome Closed Beta players, after the reset anyone who logs into Fable Fortune between now and the 20th June will receive 5 card packs to help jump-start your collections with. This is a limited time promotion, so make sure to log in to claim your rewards.

Unfortunately, we’ve had a last minute issue discovered in co-op battles that means we’ll be delaying the start of the next co-op challenge until after we’ve deployed a hotfix. I apologise for any inconvenience and want to reassure you guys that we’re working hard on getting a fix up as soon as possible. In the meantime, PvP and Training will still be available as per usual, so jump in and start slinging chickens at each other!

Scroll down for the full list of changes then log in to see what’s new. For those of you who signed up to our Closed Beta, keep an eye on your inboxes as we’ll be sending out another wave of codes any time now. For anyone who didn’t manage to sign up: look out for future Steam announcements as well as http://www.fable-fortune.com and our Facebook/Twitter for more news as we head towards our recently announced Early Access.

Happy chicken chasing!”

- Tom “Wimbles” Wimbush, Lead Designer (Mediatonic)

Features & Updates:

Card Collection Revamp:

“I gave you guys a sneak peek into the work that we’ve been doing on this screen a while back, but I’m excited to say that the new and improved card collection is now live. Almost every aspect of this screen has been polished to provide a much more pleasant user experience. Check out all the juicy changes that have gone into this update below.”

• Soul Searching - You can now type into the brand new search bar at the bottom of the collection mat to search your collection for specific cards. Enter any part of a card’s name, rules text, Gold cost, Strength, Health, Rarity, Race, type, and more. You can even use logical operators (>, =, etc) to your search for cards that cost more than 3 Gold, or units that have more Strength than Health, for example.
• Deck Check - Deck lists have been rebuilt from the ground up to be easier to read and edit. You can now see most, if not all, of the cards in your deck at a glance. You can also see thumbnails of each card’s art, which Hero it belongs to, how many copies of that card are in your deck, and if that card is Fabled or not.
• All The Colours - Decks have also received a similar treatment to the deck list so that it is easier to see quickly how many decks you own for each Hero. They’re also much prettier. Good times all round.
• I Hereby Rename Thee - You can now rename existing decks by pressing the pencil icon below the name, typing in your new name, then hitting Enter to confirm.
• Brand Spanking New - After you receive a card that you don’t currently own, that card will be highlighted as ‘New!’ in your collection until you mouse over it. Each category tab will also display the number of new cards it contains. You can even use the search bar to look for new cards by typing ‘new’.
• What Does That Do Again? - Mousing over a neutral morality card in your collection will now display that card’s Good and Evil transformations so that you can make more informed deck building choices.
• Mission Complete! - Placing the final card into your deck will now trigger a sweet animation to make it clear that your deck is ready for action.

Pack Opening Revamp:

“Receiving and opening a card pack should be a real moment of delight, and we felt like we weren’t quite hitting that bar with our previous implementation. The Core card pack has been redesigned to be much more vibrant, and the pack opening process has been overhauled to provide maximum excitement.”

• Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger - The pack opening sequence is now much faster, more responsive and crammed full of explosions.
• Snazzy Packs - Brown and red is so last year. Dazzling azure blue with fancy gold trim is the new you.
• Fabled Fireworks - Cards of higher rarities will now produce increasingly awesome fireworks when they are revealed, making it easier to tell the different rarities apart.
• Brand Spanking New 2 - If you reveal a card in a card pack that you don’t already own, it will be highlighted as a ‘New!’ card.
• You Belong To Me Now - You will also be able to more easily see if a card is neutral or if it belongs to a specific Hero during the pack opening sequence.

Co-op Quest Selection:

“We want to make sure communicating with your co-op partner is as easy as possible when you’re not already on voice chat together. Alongside our existing pinging system, we’ve implemented some new UI so that you can now see which Quest your partner has selected when you’re picking your Quest in co-op. This allows you to make a more informed decision about which Quest you might want to choose.”

Economy Update:

“During the Closed Beta, we’ve been making use of an accelerated economy model designed to get cards into the hands of players more quickly to help with playtesting and gather data. As we head towards Early Access, we’ve made adjustments to bring overall progression speed back in line by reducing the overall amount of Silver gained from matches and introduced a cap of 1000 Silver that can be earned from matches per day. Card packs will also no longer guarantee an Epic card as well as a Rare card.

We’ve also taken the opportunity to remove a lot of the randomness from the crafting economy by changing Salvaging to no longer generate crafting items, and stopping items/Ink randomly dropping after some matches. To compensate, items will now appear much more frequently on the reward tables for collecting a certain amount of Medals/Seals during PvP Seasons and Co-op Challenges. Salvaged cards will also award more Ink than before. This should result in a much more stable crafting system that doesn’t depend so much on random drops to allow you to craft the cards you want.”

Card Changes:

Quest Rewards:

“Completing your Quest just wasn’t feeling satisfying enough, in part because the rewards that you got for doing so weren’t particularly desirable. This is no longer the case, as completing a Quest now rewards you with a spell card that cannot be acquired in card packs or other means.

Your first Quest completion will grant you a pretty strong spell that could net you a decent advantage, not to mention they give you access to abilities that your Hero might not possess. For example, completing your first Quest in the Circle of Death gives you:

Completing your second and third Quests give you increasingly powerful, and potentially even game-changing spells, like these:

This makes finishing your Quest a much more exciting prospect that also has the potential to propel you forwards into a win, or otherwise get you back into a game that you might’ve been losing. Head to each location to check out their new unique Quest rewards!”

Hero Powers:

“The balance of Good and Evil Hero Powers has always been extremely delicate. The way that Hero Powers scaled up after each Quest completion meaning that Good or Evil was often a much better choice at different points in the game. For example, the Evil Alchemist Hero Power was generally better in the early game, with the Good Power generally only matching it in the later stages. This results in extremely linear play patterns from game to game, as there was often a ‘best’ option at each juncture. This goes directly against the goals of the Morality and Quest system.

So, we made a pretty big change to the way Hero Powers work: the Good and Evil versions are now generally more powerful, particularly in the early game, but they no longer increase in potency with additional Quest completions. This makes your first Quest completion really important, but with the changes to Quest rewards and Morality cards (which I’ll talk about later!), additional Quest completions still afford you a lot of additional punch.

Be sure to check them out in game, as many Hero Powers also have improved VFX.”

Morality Cards:

“Morality cards have all received significant buffs and redesigns pretty much across the board. We want Morality cards to be some of the most powerful cards in the game as a reward for completing your Quests. Up until now they’ve been quite situational or only had uses in very specific decks. Now they’re much more appealing choices, to the point where you can even play a whole deck full of Morality-dependant cards using cards like Shining Knight to get an extra edge.”

Board Wipes:

“Previously, many of our board wipe effects like Surge of Fangs (a.k.a. public enemy number 1) and Leeching Swarm would only affect your opponent’s units. As stated in my last State of the Game Review, this has the problem of not only allowing you to come back from a losing position, but also helps you to annihilate your opponent when you’re already winning. This made them must-pick cards for every deck, rather than powerful tools that you want to use in specific situations.

We’ve now changed the majority of these effects to now affect ALL units rather than just your opponent’s. This makes them really powerful when you’re losing, but seriously detrimental when you’re already winning. Aggressive decks are now much less interested in these types of effects, but controlling and midrange decks are still very likely to put them into their decks.”

Rarity Adjustments:

“With all of the card design changes happening, we also felt that this was a good time to revisit each card’s rarity.

Part of rarity’s role in Fable Fortune is to make sure that you guys get your hands on cards that are important to a whole range of decks quickly by making them Basic or Common, and that rarer cards are more niche and are introduced to you after you’ve assembled a solid foundation. We also ensure that cards at lower rarities are easier to understand and allow those at a higher rarity to be more complex, so that newer players don’t get overwhelmed when they start playing.

With all that in mind, a whole bunch of cards - too many to sensibly list here - have had their rarities adjusted so that they better fit this schema. You should now be able to see a good selection of universally strong yet straightforward cards at low rarity, with increasingly crazy cards that drive particular strategies at high rarity.

We also made some adjustments to each Hero’s basic deck as part of this change, as several cards have shifted into or out of the Basic rarity.”

Cards Swaps:

“While we were looking into this latest set of card changes, there were a few cards that we disliked the existing designs of and couldn’t find a suitable alternate design for. Fortunately, we had a few cards held in reserve that we were happy to swap those cards out for while we work on new designs for them. This effectively means that there are some brand new cards in the game! Specifically:”

• Knight - Good As New Recruits Has been removed and replaced with Self Defence Training - (3) “Give Deflect to your units with 1 Strength.”
• Prophet - Recharge Has been removed and replaced with Sand Fury - (4) 5/4 “After you target this unit with a spell, gain +2 Strength.”
• Shapeshifter - Track Prey Has been removed and replaced with Mistress of the Hunt - (5) “Summon three 1/1 Wolves.”

New Keyword - Conjure:

“As I said in one of the new card spotlights, Conjure is our new keyword mechanic that encapsulates all of the existing ‘Choose 1 of 3 cards and add it to your hand’ effects. For example:

In game terms, those cards still do the same thing that they did before, but it’s an effect that we like so much that we want to streamline our terminology and be able to build other synergy effects around important mechanics like Conjure in the future (After you Conjure, Your Conjured cards, etc) so we decided to create a new keyword.

Be sure to check out the detailed list of card changes below to see which cards have been updated.”

Heroes:

Alchemist:

We need more stat changes, stat!

“Miracle’s supposed to be a master of stat manipulation, but she was previously leaning heavily on some of the most powerful single target removal spells in the game to keep up with her opponents. This was mostly due to her lack of spells that help her come back when she was already behind.

To remedy this, spells like Bottled Rage and Unstable Brew have been redesigned so that they can double as both buff spells and pseudo-removal spells under the right circumstances to give her more flexibility. Liquid Fire has been redesigned to be a cheap board wipe spell, and Chain Reaction has received a slight bump in power to help her claw back from a bad spot.

We’ve also done more to make her units play more nicely together while also being more reliably powerful. Flask Golem now affects a card in your hand rather than a unit on the board, making it a more appealing play on most board states. It also synergises really well with the redesigned Vial Flinger, which has been bumped up to Mythic as a powerful payoff card for the hand-buff effects that the Alchemist can make use of. Similarly the Royal Fool has been changed so that he rewards you for stocking up your hand with Vials. Vials that you can then use on the updated Leech to spawn an army of Oozlings.

SYNERGY.”

Hero Power changes:

• Devious Concoction (Evil): You now have the choice of all four Vials at all Morality levels.
• Enhanced Concoction (Good): The Enhanced Vial added to your hand now costs 0 at all Morality levels.

Card changes:

• Bottled Rage: Redesigned to (1) “Give a unit +2/-2.”
• Chain Reaction: Damage dealt increased from 6 to 7.
• Flask Golem: Redesigned to (2) 2/5 “Last Laugh: Give a unit in your hand this unit’s Strength.”
• Lab Assistant: Strength increased from 4 to 6.
• Lab Assistant (Good) Lab Physician: Strength increased from 4 to 6.
• Lab Assistant (Evil) Lab Maniac: Strength increased from 4 to 6.
• Leech: Redesigned to (5) 5/5 “After you play a Vial on Leech, summon a 1/1 Oozling and apply the same effect to it."
• Liquid Fire: Redesigned to (2) “Deal 2 damage to ALL units.”
• Recipe for Success: Cost reduced from 5 to 4.
• Royal Fool: Redesigned to (6) 6/1 “Big Entrance: Gain +1 Health for each card in your hand."
• Unstable Brew: Redesigned to (2) “Set a unit’s Strength and Health to 4."
• Vial Flinger: Redesigned to (4) 2/4 “Big Entrance: Deal damage equal to this unit’s Strength.”

Gravedigger:

Digging. Digging never changes.

“Temple has received relatively few card changes compared to some of our other Heroes. Her selection of removal spells remains strong, as does her ability to return dead units to the battlefield. There are some changes worth highlighting however.

Crypt Ghoul’s transformations are now seriously intimidating. Crypt Baron can trade for multiple big units on your opponent’s side of the board, and the Crypt Reaper can be a huge Rush threat if you have enough other units on the board. Damned Legion has received a slight buff as it needed you to do a bit too much work to have it be worth playing before. Stench of Death no longer deals damage to your opponent to reduce your ability to burst down your opponent from high Health. Morbid Arcanist has also had its stats reduced slightly, as a potential 0 Gold 6/6 was a bit too good on most boards.

From The Grave has been redesigned, as it can be quite unpredictable, making it hard to justify dedicating slots in your deck to. However, it was an effect that we still liked and felt very in keeping with Temple’s theme, so we changed Headless Norman to have the old From The Grave effect as a Safeguard ability. Being able to repeatedly summon dead enemy units under your control can be incredibly powerful, and the baseline of getting a decent set of stats to go along with that ability makes him much more appealing than From The Grave could ever be.”

Hero Power changes:

• Enslave (Evil): Redesigned to (2) “Summon a 2/1 Raging Corpse with Rush that dies at the end of the turn.”
• Resurrect (Good): Redesigned to (2) “Summon a 1/1 Shambler and a 1/1 Crumbling Corpse with Rush that dies at the end of the turn.”

Card changes:

• Crypt Ghoul: Cost raised from 5 to 8. Strength decreased from 4 to 2. Health increased from 5 to 8.
• Crypt Ghoul (Good) Crypt Baron: Redesigned to (8) 2/8 “Destroy any unit damaged by this unit."
• Crypt Ghoul (Evil) Crypt Reaper: Redesigned to (8) 2/8 “Rush. Big Entrance: Gain +1 Strength for each other friendly unit."
• Damned Legion: Health increased from 4 to 6.
• From The Grave: Redesigned to (4) “Give your units “Last Laugh: Summon a 1/1 Shambler."
• Headless Norman: Redesigned to (7) 7/5 “Safeguard: Summon an enemy unit that died this game."
• Morbid Arcanist: Strength decreased from 6 to 5. Health decreased from 6 to 5.
• Plunder the Tombs: Redesigned to (1) “Conjure a Hollow Man."
• Stench of Death: Now deals 3 damage to all units instead of all characters.

Knight:

The peasants are revolting.

“Marshall’s had many cards dedicated to specific Peasant synergies. This meant that if you didn’t want to play a Peasant deck, you had a smaller pool of options than most other Heroes. While we want the Knight to be summoning lots of units, we don’t want to force those summoned units to be Peasants; certainly not at the expense of overall deck diversity.

Peasant specific cards are now mostly out, and Marshall has a much firmer focus on generally summoning a lot of units and then buffing them to overwhelm your opponent. Blacksmith and Standard Bearer are good example of this, now able to turn any unit into a significant threats quickly, not just Peasants. There are still some powerful cards that support playing Peasants specifically, but also pump up other units too. The redesigned Veteran Battler and the new Self Defence Training buff up units that only have 1 Strength, so Peasants count, but so does everything else with 1 Strength, from Ferryman to Scarecrow. Because of this, the deck-building possibilities are much deeper than before.

We’ve also spent some time developing some more dedicated midrange cards. Post-change Hearty Breakfast, Big Pig, Inga, Sergeant of the Shovel and Muster all represent a solid amount of value and/or board presence for their cost. This has really helped to diversify Marshall away from just being a one-trick pony.

Peasants can also now Guard, as preventing them from Guarding was always a difficult interaction for newer players to understand and didn’t add a whole lot to the game.”

Hero Power changes:

• Conscription (Evil): Redesigned to (2) “Summon a 1/1 Peasant Sapper. It has, “Last Laugh: Deal 2 damage to a random enemy."
• Recruitment (Good): Redesigned to (2) “Summon a 1/1 Peasant Medic. It has, “Last Laugh: Give 2 random friendly units +1 Health."

Card changes:

• Angry Mob: The two summoned 1/1 Peasants now also gain +1 Strength.
• Big Pig: Health increased from 5 to 6.
• Big Pig (Good) Battle Swine: Redesigned to (5) 4/6 “Last Laugh: Summon a 3/3 Guard Pig."
• Big Pig (Evil) Boardozer: Redesigned to (5) 4/6 “Rush. Adjacent units have +1 Strength."
• Blacksmith: Redesigned to (6) 3/3 “Big Entrance: Give another friendly unit +1/+1 for each other unit you control."
• Good As New Recruits Has been removed and replaced with Self Defence Training - (3) “Give Deflect to your units with 1 Strength.”
• Hearty Breakfast: Redesigned to (2) “Give a unit in play and a random unit in your hand +2/+2."
• Inga: Redesigned to (7) 4/7 “Rush, Deflect. At the end of your turn, gain Guard."
• Knighthood: Redesigned to (3) “Give a friendly unit +1 Strength and Deflect."
• Master of Bacon: Cost raised from 1 to 2. Strength increased from 1 to 3.
• Muster: Redesigned to (2) “Summon a 1/1 Peasant. Draw a card. Give a friendly unit in your hand +1/+1."
• Rally the Troops: Your units now gain +2 Strength this turn instead of +1 but you no longer draw a card.
• Ride Them Down: Cost raised from 4 to 5. Damage dealt increased from 2 to 3.
• Sergeant of the Shovel: Redesigned to (3) 2/3 “At the end of your turn, summon a 1/1 Peasant."
• Standard Bearer: Redesigned to (4) 1/4 “Adjacent units have +2 Strength."
• Veteran Battler: Redesigned to (4) 3/4 “After you summon a 1 Strength unit, give it +2/+1."

Merchant:

Poor little rich boy.

“Barter’s been suffering a bit during the Closed Beta so far. His units haven’t really been in a position to prop up his early game so that his powerful but expensive spells can take over late. However, he has a strong core identity that we’re able to build around so we’ve made some changes targeted at shoring up those weaknesses.

Debt Collector and Black Market Dealer are now potent early plays that can generate you an advantage as you transition into the later portions of a game. Intrepid Lookout and her transformations now represent a lot of value after you’ve completed your first Quest. The Art of the Deal is now a great spell for buying you a turn or two while you set up a big Invest card. Reaver now enables you to regain a lot of lost tempo when you play him by enabling you to also potentially play another really expensive card for free.

We’ve also made some cost adjustments to alter the power level of a few cards. Set Sail and Cast Away are now one Gold cheaper (which makes Set Sail a total of 4 Gold cheaper!) so are now more appealing options. Pressgang has had its cost bumped up by 1 to curtail a bit of its snowball potential, as one good Pressgang that early could run away with the game before your opponent was able to respond.”

Hero Power changes:

• Risky Investment (Evil): Redesigned to (2) “Reduce the cost of a card in your hand by 1 and add a Gold Piece to your hand."
• Secure Investment (Good): Redesigned to (2) “Add a Gold Piece to your hand and give a unit in your hand +1/+1."

Card changes:

• Black Market Dealer: Redesigned to (4) 4/3 “Big Entrance: Conjure a Merchant Card."
• Cast Away: Cost reduced from 6 to 5.
• Debt Collector: Redesigned to (3) 2/4 “After this deals damage to a unit, add a Gold Piece to your hand."
• Intrepid Lookout: Strength decreased from 4 to 2. Health increased from 5 to 6.
• Intrepid Lookout (Good) Intrepid Explorer: Redesigned to (5) 2/6 “Big Entrance: Add a copy of a unit to your hand and give it +1/+1."
• Intrepid Lookout (Evil) Intrepid Sniper: Redesigned to (5) 2/6 “Big Entrance: Gain Strength equal to the number of cards in your hand."
• Pressgang: Cost raised from 5 to 6. Invest cost to summon 2 units reduced from +5 to +4.
• Reaver: Redesigned to (8) 5/5 “Big Entrance: Draw a card. It costs (0)."
• Set Sail: Day 1/2/3/4: Cost reduced from 5 to 4.
• The Art of the Deal: Redesigned to (2) “Return an enemy unit to your opponent’s hand, and a friendly unit to your hand."

Prophet:

Pump up the tempo.

“Sand has only had one speed up until now: slow. Healing naturally promotes a more reactive style of play where you’re trying to build up incremental advantages by keeping your units alive while your opponents die. His focus on healing meant that Sand’s games tended to run very long, and also that there wasn’t a lot in his section of the collection for players who wanted to do anything other than heal.

We’ve taken some steps to shift Sand away from midgame value units into a more proactive mode. Minion, like Apostle, is now an intimidating early game play when backed up by buffs and heals. Fanatic now gives you easier access to the healing -> damage conversion that the Avenging Disciple used to offer, which allows you to turn cards like Oasis and Healing Beam into straight-up removal spells. Meanwhile Avenging and Energising Disciple are now stand-out mid-game units that help you to take over the game in different ways. The brand new Sand Fury, in combination with cheap buff spells like the new versions of Repair Drones and Blaze of Glory, can easily become a force to be reckoned with, particularly in co-op.

We’ve also removed Zeal as a keyword. It was a mechanic that we originally envisioned appearing on a lot of Sand’s cards, however it is one that we’ve found over time has a very limited number of ways it can be used (mainly Strength buffs/debuffs). Much like the addition of Conjure as a keyword, this doesn’t mean anything in gameplay terms, only that the card text on Apostle is different from before.”

Hero Power changes:

• Energise (Good): Redesigned to (2) “Heal a unit for 2 or a Hero for 4."
• Incite (Evil): Redesigned to (2) “Heal a character for 2. If it’s a unit, give it +1 Strength."

Card changes:

• Blaze of Glory: Redesigned to (2) “Give a unit +2 Health, then fully heal it."
• Eradicate: Redesigned to (3) “Destroy a unit with 5 or more Strength."
• Fanatic: Redesigned to (6) 6/6 “Your cards and effects that heal now deal damage instead."
• Leeching Swarm: Redesigned to (5) “Deal 3 damage to ALL units. Heal your Hero for 3.”
• Minion: Redesigned to (3) 3/3 “At the start of your turn, if this has less than 5 Health, gain +1/+1."
• Protect the Prophet: Health buff reduced from 3 to 2.
• Recharge Has been removed and replaced with Sand Fury - (4) 5/4 “After you target this unit with a spell, gain +2 Strength.”
• Repair Drones: Redesigned to (1) “Give a unit: ‘At the end of EACH turn, heal this unit for 1. Draw a card.’"
• Replicating Shard: Strength reduced from 2 to 1. Health increased from 3 to 4.