Hello, Heroes!
As you might have seen, tomorrow’s Early Access launch has been postponed while we navigate some administrative obstacles. We’re working hard to navigate these obstacles in order to hit our new launch date of July 25th, but in the meantime there have been some juicy changes in the works that we wanted to get out to you all as soon as possible. This is why we’ve just deployed an update that debuts the brand new reward structure for future PvP Seasons. We’ve also made it so that more Silver is being awarded from long matches.
Additionally we’ve made some more balance changes to bring the Shapeshifter and some other problematic cards in line while buffing up some underperformers. This should help create more deck diversity within the current metagame.
As always, sound off in the comments to let us know what you think and keep an eye out http://www.fable-fortune.com, as well as our Facebook and Twitter for future updates. If you have any questions or issues in the meantime, please don’t hesitate to get into contact with us on the Fable Fortune Help Centre.
Happy chicken chasing!
- Tom “Wimbles” Wimbush, Lead Designer (Mediatonic)
Features & Updates:
PvP Season Structure & Rewards:
In our quest to increase the steady flow of rewards from each and every play session, we have decided to overhaul the progression structure of the new PvP Season. There are now many more Leagues to progress through, meaning that you will need to invest more time into reaching the coveted Hero League, but as a reward for your efforts you will now earn up to 4 card packs’ worth of prizes on your journey from the bottom to the top of the League ladder.
In addition to packs and Silver, in future PvP Seasons you will now earn a matching pair of desirable cards en route to the Hero League. For example, during Season 6, by the time you’ve finished ascending through the Leagues you will have earned two Shining Knights to help power up your Morality decks.
The fun doesn’t stop there, either. From Season 6 onwards, everyone who competes in the Hero League will be able to earn exclusive Fancy Basic Neutral Cards that won’t be available anywhere else. For example, the reward for being in this coming Season’s Hero League will be a Fancy copy of Crowd’s Favourite, with a second copy being awarded to everyone who was in the top 75% of players. Now when your opponent slams down a Fancy Crowd’s Favourite, you know they were playing during Season 6.
At the top end of the reward table, the Hero League now also has a bunch more card packs available as well as additional reward brackets for being in the top 5, 3 and 2% to encourage fiercer competition among our most skilled and dedicated players. Top performing players will even be able to earn Fancy versions of the desireable cards to make their decks that much more bling.
Rewards For PvP Leagues:
- League 1: 125 Silver
- League 2: 125 Silver
- League 3: 125 Silver
- League 4: 125 Silver
- League 5: Core Card Pack
- League 6: 125 Silver
- League 7: 125 Silver
- League 8: 125 Silver
- League 9: 125 Silver
- League 10: 1 Desirable Card (This Season: Shining Knight)
- League 11: 125 Silver
- League 12: 125 Silver
- League 13: 125 Silver
- League 14: 125 Silver
- League 15: Core Card Pack
- League 16: 125 Silver
- League 17: 125 Silver
- League 18: 125 Silver
- League 19: 125 Silver
- League 20: 1 Desirable Card (This Season: Shining Knight)
Rewards For Hero League:
- Top 100%: 1 Fancy Basic Neutral Card (This Season: Fancy Crowd’s Favourite)
- Top 75%: 2 Fancy Basic Neutral Cards (This Season: Fancy Crowd’s Favourites)
- Top 50%: 2 Fancy Basic Neutral Cards, 1 Core Card Pack
- Top 25%: 2 Fancy Basic Neutral Cards, 2 Core Card Packs
- Top 10%: 2 Fancy Basic Neutral Cards, 2 Core Card Pack, 1 Fancy Desirable Card (This Season: Fancy Shining Knight)
- Top 5%: 2 Fancy Basic Neutral Cards, 2 Core Card Packs, 2 Fancy Desirable Cards (This Season: Fancy Shining Knight)
- Top 3%: 2 Fancy Basic Neutral Cards, 3 Core Card Packs, 2 Fancy Desirable Cards
- Top 2%: 2 Fancy Basic Neutral Cards, 5 Core Card Packs, 2 Fancy Desirable Cards
- Top 1%: 2 Fancy Basic Neutral Cards, 8 Core Card Packs, 2 Fancy Desirable Cards
Silver From Battles:
We’ve made some adjustments to the Silver that you get from battles so that you are rewarded with more for longer matches. We’ve also redressed the balance between winning and losing by awarding some additional Silver to the losing player.
- Time Well Spent - You will now earn more Silver from longer battles.
- Everyone’s A Winner - You will now earn more Silver when you lose a match.
Card Changes:
Alchemist:
Small(er) badda-boom.
Some slight tweaks to our beloved Miracle, who has surged in popularity over the last month with her hand-buff decks. While we’re closely monitoring her performance, we’re not convinced that she needs any significant tweaks just yet.
We’re instead slightly reducing the damage dealt by Chain Reaction, which has proved a bit too reliable in clearing your opponent’s board. We’re also slightly upping Royal Fool’s stats to make it more appealing compared to neutral cards like Wardog.
Card changes:
- Chain Reaction: Damage reduced from 7 to 6.
- Royal Fool: Health increased from 1 to 2.
Merchant:
Have you been working out?
While Barter has started to see some more success, his units have remained mostly absent from people’s decks as there are more appealing Neutral units on offer. We’ve distributed a few stat increases to Debt Collector, Cabin Boy and Keelhauler to make better them stand out from their Neutral counterparts.
We’ve also reduced the cost of the mighty Horn of the Deep, as the Gold required was proving pretty prohibitive even when the payoff was so powerful.
Card changes:
- Cabin Boy: Strength increased from 2 to 3. Invested Strength increased from 4 to 5.
- Debt Collector: Strength increased from 2 to 3.
- Horn of the Deep: Cost reduced from 3 to 2. Invested cost reduced from 9 to 8.
- Keelhauler: Strength and Health increased from 6 to 7. Invested Strength and Health increased from 10 to 11.
Prophet:
+1.
We’re keeping a close eye on Sand, but one spell that we noticed has been underperforming is Wear Away. Wear Away has been struggling to take out the threats that it should be strong against, so we felt like it needed a little bump in power to make it more comparable to similarly costed effects.
Card changes:
- Wear Away: Damage dealt increased from 4 to 5.
Shapeshifter:
You again?!
Even with a cleaner design and a more diverse, less removal focused card pool, Crimson has continued to overperform. We’re starting off by toning down some of her effects that have proved to be either too powerful for their cost or too consistently unfun to play against.
As I said in my previous Shapeshifter design diary, Crimson’s removal suite is now extremely comparable to the Gravedigger’s. However, it is something that we are keeping a close eye on as we head towards Early Access.
Hero Power changes:
- Draining Rend: Self-healing reduced from 2 to 1.
Card changes:
- Blood Frenzy: Cost increased from 2 to 3.
- Surge of Fangs: Cost increased from 5 to 6.
- Timber Cleaver: No longer Stuns targets affected by its Big Entrance.
Neutral:
Woof woof.
That Dog sure was evil, wasn’t it? As a Morality (3) card, The Dog and its Good/Evil variants should represent some of the most powerful cards that you can play. However, one-shotting your opponent with a super-buffed pupper wasn’t exactly what we had in mind when we were picturing those awe-inspiring Morality (3) moments.
We’ve adjusted The Dog in a few ways. Firstly, we’ve given it a bit more Health so that it’s not a completely underwhelming play if you’re forced to deploy it before you’ve completed your third Quest. Second, Good Dog now only digs you up the best of the best Quest rewards. I’m talking about the extremely potent Now, That’s Magic, Empty the Tombs and Cheap and Cheerful, any of which could quickly turn a game in your favour. The Evil Dog, meanwhile, has been redesigned so that he can quickly annihilate a board of weak units but can’t KO your opponent quite so easily.
To touch briefly on Rush, we’re well aware of how hard effects like this can be to balance, however it does serve a vital role within the overall game by allowing you to react instantly to what your opponent is doing and fight back from a losing position. It is also an important tool for more aggressive decks to help push through those vital points of damage. We have no intention of removing Rush from the game, however we will continue to monitor the power of these effects over time to ensure that you cannot consistently deal a huge amount of damage to your opponent in a single turn without a lot of setup.
Prison Warden has also been toned down as it was previously essentially a powerful unit that also doubled as a removal spell and could go in any deck, which wasn’t exactly fun to play against.
We’ve also made some changes to other units which hadn’t been performing up to our expectations and provide more diversity to deck archetypes which aren’t seeing too much play right now.
Card changes:
- Cursed Warrior: Cost reduced from 5 to 4.
- The Dog: Cost reduced from 6 to 5. Health increased from 3 to 5.
- Bad Dog: Cost reduced from 6 to 5. Health increased from 3 to 5. Redesigned to “Rush. After this destroys a unit, it can attack again.”
- Good Dog: Cost reduced from 6 to 5. Health increased from 3 to 5. Now only Conjures Fabled Quest Rewards.
- Prison Warden: Now reduces Strength by 2 rather than setting it to 1.
- Rabble Rouser: Cost reduced from 5 to 4. Health reduced from 4 to 3.
- Rich Auntie: Cost reduced from 4 to 3.
- Yellowbelly Hobbe: Cost and Health reduced from 3 to 1. Strength reduced from 3 to 2.
Bug Fixes:
Cards:
- Abilities which affect specific units (such as Rosewight Barkskin) should now also affect the Fancy variants of those units.
- Blacksmith can now always be played from your hand, even if there are no other friendly units on the board.
- Minor text and tooltip amends.
- Silence now correctly removes Stun.