May Patch Notes - 0.54

Hi mortals, it’s that time again - patch notes time. There will be a patch coming in towards the end of day May 10 (PDT). Read on for more information!

The TL;DR

This one is a big one - we’ve got fixes, we’ve got nerfs and buffs, we’ve got the Indiana Jones-style Divine Order changes before the door closes on them forever. A lot of this stuff is pretty predictable and based on player feedback, and the attempt, in general, to maintain the balance between being decisive without being too heavy-handed on balance. This week, we’ve also covered some back end stuff that we typically don’t disclose. This is in an effort to ramp up our transparency, but also so as to players you can start to get an understanding of what’s going on behind the scenes. Many of you noticed the game beginning to move much more smoothly, and we wanted to take the time to explain what went on there, and what our plans are for the future.

A note on First Turn Advantage - we’ve mentioned previously that we’re in agreement with the community’s consensus that currently, the player who goes first receives more of an advantage in the game. We’ve tooled out some changes to the Mana Pip system that we’re looking to test in a PTR - stay tuned for more on that as we finalize it.

Performance

You may have noticed in the past few weeks some improvements on the “game running more smooth” front. A lot of that has to do with the amount of memory being used to run the game itself. We’ve made a bunch of changes that have had a really significant impact on our performance, as you can see below:

Some major improvements that were made include:

Memory resource fixes: we’ve changed the way that certain processes get called up so that a lot more information is cached: some of you may have noticed for example certain cards that search from a deck, like Alastrina, were causing lags or freezes. That should no longer be the case moving forward.

Card fixes: we’ve optimized routines that apply card effects on every turn. Again this has made a significant impact on overall performance as well as the amount of resources that are required to play the game.

Changes that we’re making this week are mostly around getting things more streamlined in preparation for mobile, along with some improvements that further improve the “smooth as butter” experience that we want players to have:

Improvements for Sanctum: There have been some minor bug fixes applied to the Sanctum shop - not visually, but there have been some minor issues under the hood that this patch will help address.

Targeting highlights: all possible targets will start glowing to give better feedback to players about which targets are valid. This also includes God portraits - a lot of you have previously given feedback on this experience in the past, so we’re hoping it helps.

No more activating abilities via God: Abilities on relics now require activation on the relic itself rather than via the god. This change was done for better consistency across the UX and will help with the future mobile release.
Moving forward, stability and performance will continue to be a main focus of the team, if not even more so. This will mean sometimes we’ll have less to say in these patch notes, but we’ll endeavour to give you as much insight as is practical.

Balance

Changes this week include some nerfs to Anubians, regen Nature, and some other overtuned singles from other domains. We’ve also given the love to War that we promised, as well as introduced some neutral tools that will help deal with Anubian death. 

In general, we want to make sure we aren’t being too aggressive with our nerfs. We’ve heard feedback in general from both sides of the fence, and we want to make sure that we’re considered in our approach across the board. You’ll see a couple of notable exclusions from this list, including Land of the Dead, Dralamar and some other hotly requested nerfs. We have heard players on these, and we intend to continue monitoring how they interact with the meta to work out what the best call is for the long term. Future tweaks certainly aren’t ruled out, but our general process improvement moving forward is to take smaller more purposeful steps, and we hope you can understand this philosophy.

Text Changes

We’ve made small changes to the text of around 50 cards, from across the Core, Divine Order, and Mortal Judgement sets. These changes are to improve the consistency of wording across cards and do not have any impact on the function of these cards.

Nerfs

Alastrina, Prime Refractor - Text changed

• Change text from “Roar: Reduce the mana cost of cards in your hand by 1. Empower 3: Do the same for your deck.” to ”Roar: Reduce by 1 the mana cost of spells in your hand. Empower 1: Do the same for creatures in your hand.”

Reach into the Black - Text changed

• Change text from “Summon three random 1 mana Anubians from your void. Empower 1: Add a Pharoah’s Heirloom to your hand.” to ”Summon three random 1 mana Anubians from your void.”

Ludian Thespian & Ludian Jester (Echo) - Text changed

• Change text from → Echo. Tempt fate. Roar: Give +3 strength to another of your creatures to → Echo. Tempt fate. Roar: Give +2 strength to an other friendly creature.

Ecclesiastic Encourager - Stats reduced

• Change durability to 3

Sneaky Bruiser - Mana cost reduced. Stats changed. Text changed.

• Change mana cost from 6 to 5

• Change stats from 8/4 to 6/4

• Change text from Hidden for 1 turn to Hidden.

Barksworn Hunter - Text changed

• Change text from Echo. Roar: Give +2 strength to this creature, then it attacks a random enemy character. To Echo. Roar: Give +1 strength to this creature, then it attacks a random enemy creature.

Leydian Longpiercer (Barksworn Hunter Echo) - Text Changed.

• Change text from Roar: Give +2 strength to this creature, then it attacks a random enemy character. To Roar: Give +1 strength to this creature, then it attacks a random enemy creature.

Reject Dogma -Text Changed

• Change Empower text from “obliterate a spell” to “obliterate a card”

Wretched Vanguard - Text Changed

• Remove Frontline

Dagan, The Dawn Wolf - Text Changed

• Change stats from 2/3 to 1/3.

• Change text from Blitz. Regen 1. When a creature is healed, give +1/+1 to it. To Blitz. Regen 2. After a creature is healed, give +1/+1 to it.

Surpassing Blast - Text Changed

• Change text from: “Deal 2 damage. Empower 3: Deal 4 damage instead.” To “Deal 2 damage to a creature. Empower 3: Deal 4 damage instead.”

Sword Breaker Sage & Rustmaker Sage - Text changed

• Change text from “Echo. Roar: Remove 2 durability from your opponent's relic.” To “Echo. Roar: Remove 1 durability from your opponent's relic.”

Curse of Greed - Text Changed

• Change empower cost from 1 to 2

Thaeric Extortionist

• Change stats from 2/1 to 1/1

Prophet of Doom - Stats Increased

• Change stats from 1/4 to 2/4

Eucos in Eclipse

• Change text from “Give each creature -1/-1 and soulless.” to “Give soulless and -1/-1 to each creature.”

Valka’s Foreguard - Stats Increased

• Change stats from 3/3 to 4/3

Lykaios Postulant - Text Changed

• Empower gives +1/+2 instead.

Savage Strike - Text Changed

• Change text from Deal 2 damage to an enemy creature. Empower 2: Also, deal 1 damage to each other creature. To Deal 1 damage to each creature. Empower 2: Then, deal 2 damage to an enemy creature.

Over-Honed Spear - Stats Reduced,Text Changed

• Change text from: “Blitz. After you attack with this relic, destroy it.” To ”Blitz. After you destroy a creature with this relic, obliterate that creature instead.”

Lupine Fanatic - Stats Changed

• Change stats from 1/2 to 3/1

Skollkin Valkyrie- - Stats Increased

• Change stats from 1/3 to 2/3

Unrestrained Power - Mana Cost Reduced

• Reduce mana cost from 3 to 2

Writhing Spirit - Stats reduced, Text Changed

• Stats from 3/3 to 2/2

• Change text from Roar: Obliterate a card in your hand. To Roar: Obliterate a card in your hand, and draw a card.

Mobilized - Text Changed

• Set Empower Mana cost to 3.

Shieldmaiden Scout - Stats increased

• Change stats to 3/6

• Change text from “Frontline: After this creature takes damage, give +1 strength to empower creatures in your hand.“ To ”Roar: Pull a random creature from your opponent’s hand to the board, then attack it.”

Remnis, Unscrupulous Gatemage - Text Changed

• Change text from Roar: Summon a random 9 mana creature for both players. To Frontline. Roar: Summon a random 9 mana creature for both players.

Pyre Shaper - Mana cost reduced

• Change mana from 2 to 1

Changes

Ironborne Distruptor - Text changed

• Change stats to 3/2

• Change text from “After this creature attacks a god, your opponent discards a random creature from their hand with mana cost 3 or less.” To ”Roar: Destroy your opponent’s relic.”

Balthazar, Blood Magus - Text changed

• Change stats from 1/3 to 2/3

• Change text from “At the start of your turn, reduce the cost of your god power by 1 until the end of the turn.“ To “Roar: Increase by 1 the cost of spells in your opponent's hand for one turn.“

Gleamweaver - Text changed

• Change text from “Roar: Confuse an enemy creature.“ To “Roar: Obliterate 2 cards in any void.“

Raider Captain - Card Changed

• Change text from: “ Roar: Randomly give +1+1 to a friendly creature.” To “Roar: Give blitz and protected to a friendly creature.”

The Academy of Mystic Arts - Text Changed

• Change text from ”Backline. Can't Attack. After you summon a creature with 1 health, reduce by 1 the cost of the highest mana cost spell in your hand.” To ”Frontline. Can't attack. After you summon a creature with 1 health, reduce by 1 the cost of the highest mana cost spell in your hand.”

Brink Watcher - Text changed

• Change text from “Once per turn, this creature gains +1/+1 after a creature leaves the void.” To ”Once per turn, this creature gains +1/+1 after a creature leaves the void. Roar: Obliterate a creature from your opponent's void.”

• Change mana cost from 2 to 3

Bug Fixes

We know that a big piece of feedback we’ve been receiving has been on the number of bugs in-game. This is something that we spoke about during our recent AMA and it’s something we are committed to addressing in both the short and longer-term. We’ll have more to share in the coming weeks about what we’re doing to improve on this front, and we appreciate the patience around it up until now.

• Kadmos, Son of Lysander: Will now correctly buff the chosen one.
• Unannounced Arrival: Correctly benefits from spell boost now.
• Eucos in Eclipse: Will apply its effects in the correct order, resulting in creatures getting soulless before being destroyed and now properly obliterated.
• Soldier of T’artes: Will now only move the position of the chosen one if it's in the deck.
• Assassin’s Aim:’s hidden is no longer removed if applied to Hidden for a turn creatures.
• Dead King’s touch: Can now correctly target high health creatures
• Malissian Magistrate: Will no longer remove the afterlife icon from creatures that already had an afterlife effect.
• The Nemean Lion, Chieftain of Impulse & Sage of Renewal: All now wait until a played card fully resolves before activating.

If you've gotten this far, thanks for your time! As always we appreciate your ongoing feedback, and look forward to hearing your thoughts on this incoming patch.