Hello, Heroes!
The updates just keep on coming. This latest patch contains another big improvement to the game’s economy, as well as a rather fancy new feature, a bunch of bug fixes and some quality of life tweaks.
By far the prettiest part of this patch is the addition of our brand new Fancy Cards. These are super-rare versions of the collectible cards which you can find in packs or craft using Ink. They have brand new, custom animated card frames that get even more glorious as you level them up and a whole bunch of awesome VFX to make them stand out, both in your hand and on the board.
I’m happy to announce that we’ve also made some big changes to the crafting and salvaging values to make higher rarity cards much easier to craft. This makes powerful Epics or potentially deck-defining Mythic and Fabled cards way more accessible. You can check out the full list of changes below, and I hope you’re all as excited as I am about how quickly you’ll now be able to create those signature cards.
We’ve also redesigned some of our Quest rewards, as a few offenders were either warping the metagame or weren’t powerful enough to be worth playing in most scenarios. This is something that we will continue to iterate on over time, so please let us know what you think about the new versions.
There are also a bunch of small improvements and bug fixes which you can scroll down to see a full list of. Overall, the game will be much more stable and many of the more noticeable issues in the previous versions of the game have been addressed.
Unfortunately, a last minute issue has been discovered which means that we won’t be running any special Events (To The Max!, The Ol’ Switcheroo, etc) until it’s been resolved. This is our highest priority issue right now and we’ll look to get these back up and running ASAP.
Finally, as a thank you to all of our amazing beta testers, and to celebrate the launch of the awesome Fancy Cards, all existing players have been gifted two packs stuffed full of 100% guaranteed Fancy Cards. Fancy that! Just visit the crystal ball to collect your packs!
Sound off in the comments to let us know what you think. We’re all working hard on the upcoming Early Access update, so make sure to keep an eye out for more Steam announcements and check out http://www.fable-fortune.com, as well as our Facebook and Twitter for future updates.
Happy chicken chasing!
- Tom “Wimbles” Wimbush, Lead Designer (Mediatonic)
Features & Updates:
Fancy Cards:
Even though we’re really happy with how your cards level up and improve their appearance over time, we wanted to add an extra tier of awesomeness that collectors could strive to obtain. Fancy Cards are exactly that: super-rare versions of our existing collectible cards which look even better than their regular counterparts. They have animated card frames and a suite of new visual effects designed to make them truly stand out from the crowd wherever they are. Fancy units even have brand new, dazzling pedestals to perch on when they’re on the board.
You can find Fancy Cards in packs, but you can also craft them yourself using a wad (puddle? Pool? Splodge?) of Ink. Levelling up each Hero will also award you with Fancy versions of that Hero’s Basic cards at every odd level starting at level 7, so when someone hits you with a Fancy Ashes to Ashes, you know for sure that they’re a true Temple aficionado.
As with the card packs awarded for levelling up your Hero that we added in 0.3.2, existing players just have to log in and complete a game with any Heroes above level 7 to earn the applicable rewards for that Hero.
- Ooo, Fancy! - Fancy Cards have been added to card packs and the card crafting screens.
- Back to (Fancy) Basics - Fancy versions of each Hero’s Basic cards are awarded for getting each Hero to level 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, and 19.
- Only The Fancy Need Apply - Use the card collection search bar to search for ‘fancy’ or use the ‘Fancy Cards Only’ toggle on the card crafting menu to only see the Fancy Cards you have in your collection.
Crafting Costs & Salvage Values:
After doing some analysis on the rate of collection progression, one of the areas that we felt we could make big improvements was in how fast you were able to craft higher rarity cards. Our existing crafting costs and salvage values were weighted much too heavily towards the higher rarities. This meant that while salvaging a high rarity card would net you a lot of Ink that you could craft lower rarity cards, crafting a single Mythic or Fabled card was often a massive undertaking.
Our new crafting costs make it a whole lot easier to craft Epic, Mythic and especially Fabled cards. While we’ve had to also bring down the salvage values of the higher rarities, overall these changes will make it far easier to craft the Mythic and Fabled cards that you’ll need to round out your favourite decks.
- Rare cards - Salvage value reduced to 10 from 20.
- Epic cards - Crafting cost reduced to 300 from 500. Salvage value reduced to 50 from 100.
- Mythic cards - Crafting cost reduced to 600 from 1500. Salvage value reduced to 100 from 400.
- Fabled cards - Crafting cost reduced to 1600 from 4000. Salvage value reduced to 400 from 1000.
Miscellaneous:
- Click Me! - Mousing over a game mode portal inside the crystal ball now causes that portal to become highlighted.
- Completely Unplayable - Cards in your hand that you can no longer play are now fully desaturated to make it easier to identify which cards you can play at a glance.
- Easy On The Eyes - Transitions between various screens in the game are no longer bright white.
- Funky Font - Damage dealt to units now uses an improved font.
- Just Add Shadows - The floating pieces of text on the main menu now have shadows.
- Just Add Sparkles - The crystal ball on the main menu now has some new sparkly VFX.
- Pick A Card - Mousing over cards in the deck list on the deck select screen now causes that card to be highlighted in the list.
- Wherever You Want - The area in which you are allowed to play cards is now much larger, preventing issues where cards were accidentally returned to your hand if you released them too high up on the screen.
Card Changes:
Quest Rewards:
Just say no to one-hit KO.
The one-two punch in the Crucible of playing Payoff into Team Spirit to buff up your units and one-shot your opponent is causing games to play out the same way too often and causing the PvP season’s metagame to become badly warped. These rewards also served to help out the winning player more than they helped the losing player stabilise and come back from a bad position.
As a rule we would rather not change Quest rewards mid-season, however in this case we think it is necessary to ensure a more enjoyable gameplay experience and broaden the range of viable decks.
We’re also changing some of the rewards in the Graveyard because Extraction was often getting stuck in the player’s hands as they struggled to find a use for it. We’ve moved Live Again up to be the second Quest reward as it could often swing a game in your favour and introduced a brand new reward for completing your first Quest.
Card changes:
- Extraction: Renamed to Guards! Guards! Redesigned to (1) “Add a 3/3 Over-Eager Cadet to your hand and draw a card.” Moved to be the first Quest reward in the Graveyard.
- Pay-Off: Renamed to Brandish and redesigned to (1) “Give a unit +1 Strength then set its Health to be equal to its Strength.”
- Live Again: Moved to be the second Quest reward in the Graveyard.
- Team Spirit: Redesigned to (2) “Give all units in your hand +2 Strength.”
Neutral:
She’s simply furious. Even more so than usual.
We had intended to redesign Furious Librarian a while back, however shortly before the 0.3 update went live we had to revert this design change due a bug. Since then she’s been using her pre-0.3 design, but now that the issue has been resolved we’re able to deploy her redesign. The new version is a fun card to try and build a deck around, so I can’t wait to see what you all come up with.
Card changes:
- Furious Librarian Redesigned to (3) 1/1 "After you draw a card, gain +1/+1."
Bug Fixes:
Cards:
- Art of the Deal no longer sometimes causes an error when played.
- Aura effects (Royal Officer, Standard Bearer, etc) are now correctly removed from other units when the parent unit is removed from the board.
Misc:
- After creating a new deck, you will no longer see cards for another Hero appear briefly before disappearing and being replaced by cards for your selected Hero.
- Bars on the gold curve graph in the deck editor are now scaling correctly.
- Cards in card packs now have their positions correctly randomised so that the rarest card no longer always appears in the bottom left.
- Card packs in a stack no longer clip through each other while in the Store.
- Card packs no longer appear dark and upside down during the match results sequence.
- Cards that are rewarded during the match results sequence are no longer tinted yellow.
- Invest cards no longer play the Evil transformation animation when played.
- Mouseover tooltips for cards now correctly disappear when you remove your cursor from them.
- New cards are now correctly flagged as ‘New’ if you earn them from playing a match.
- Placeholder UI will no longer briefly appear after entering the deck select screen.
- Playing multiple cards as your turn is about to end will no longer cause an error.
- Progress bars that were missing from several screens have been restored.
- Returning a unit to your hand will no longer cause that unit’s card to become invisible.
- Returning to the Store will always correctly default to showing you 1 pack rather than remembering your last selected amount of packs.
- Several missing or corrupted UI art assets have been fixed.
- Several common errors that are encountered during battles have been fixed.
- The design which appears on the red mat during pack opening no longer also appears on the main menu and the Store.
- The edges of the game mode portals in the crystal ball no longer flicker when moused over.
- The message telling you that your cards have levelled up will no longer appear after each battle.
Known Issues:
- ’Play’ text on the crystal ball does not disappear correctly during the transition into the crystal ball.
- Card packs given out in the gift box will occasionally appear enlarged.
- Fancy units with Invest do not appear as Fancy when they are on the board.
- Fancy cards that you cannot craft may occasionally appear in the ‘currently craftable’ filter on the card crafting screen.
- Some cards are incorrectly flagged as being 'New!' while in card crafting mode.
- Special Events will be unavailable until further notice.