Today’s exciting update sees 10 brand new cards arrive in Faeria, along with changes to constructed queues, mechanical updates, visual and UI improvements, and balance changes - not to mention your chance to win prizes from Alienware and Razer in the Fugoro Challenge!

New Cards

As you most likely already know, we are adding 10 new cards into today’s version of Faeria. 8 of them have been revealed over the past week, but we still have 2 left to announce… so here they are! Introducing: HellFire and God Hunter

• Click here to see all 10 of the new cards in their complete glory

These 10 new cards bring Faeria's card base to a total of 267 cards, 297 if you take into consideration the Pandora treasures. The task of extending the card base of an existing CCG has been an absolutely delightful experience for us. It's actually way more fun to craft additional layers to the game than it is pouring the foundations. It's a feeling we couldn't fully imagine until we experienced it. Faeria has some very unique gameplay. We've often felt as if we were exploring uncharted areas of gaming when creating it. We feel that our mastery over our own gameplay is infinitely better today than it was one year ago (thanks to all of our players who try to break the meta routinely, especially), and that improved understanding of Faeria helps us be more effective at creating good gameplay. Not only that, but it's also been a long time coming that we give Faeria more cards that are able to challenge the most seasoned deck builders among you. These 10 cards, and the dozens of other changes that we've applied to the card base with this patch, are meant to create more diverse and tense gameplay. We are super excited to see what the new environment will be like.

Constructed Queues Have Been Merged

The Ranked and Unranked constructed queues have been merged together to improve matchmaking quality. When queuing in Battle mode, you will be presented with two options:

• Casual (formerly Unranked)
• Ranked

The functionality of each is very similar to before, with a few key differences.

• The matchmaker will always take priority to match Casuals with Casuals, or Ranked with Ranked. However, in cases where that is not practically possible, Casuals may sometimes be matched against Ranked players.
• When a Ranked player encounters a Casual player, their opponent will have a special Casual medal displayed as their rank.
• Casual players can never be matched against God rank players

We’ve considered these significant changes from many different angles, and believe this is the best way forward that has the best interests of our players in mind. While we could have simply removed the Unranked option altogether and funnel all players into the same Ranked queue, we think it’s important for players to have the option to play without the inherent stresses involved with Ranked play. We also believe it’s important to preserve the ability for Ranked players to experiment with new decks in a Casual mode without being concerned with hurting their Ranking. With these changes, we believe we can accomplish those goals while also reducing the average amount of time a player must wait before beginning a game of Faeria.

Mechanic Adjustments

We’ve made various adjustments to the basic mechanics of Faeria in an effort to improve the overall intuitiveness and ease of understanding.

• Game effects can no longer target creatures that are about to die.
  • Example: If an Elderwood Hermit and a Farm Boy are being destroyed by a Firestorm, the Hermit will no longer buff the Farm Boy
• When a creature dies, its effects remain until the ability or event that provoked its death has been completely resolved.
  • Examples: Blood Singer will now always deal damage to the enemy when it destroys another creature and dies in the process. A Meteor that kills 3 opponent creatures and an ally Blood Singer will always deal 3 damage to the opponent, even if the Blood Singer is destroyed first.
• The order in which things occur on the board has been made more consistent and no longer requires the player to memorize the order creatures were summoned onto board. This affects:
  • Which creature harvests first when multiple are next to Faeria wells
  • Which creature is damaged first by Area of Effect damage from Slam, Firestorm, Groundshaker, etc.

These situations are now based on the order of the locations where these creatures are on the board. Location order starts from the top-left corner down to the bottom-left corner, then continues on the column to the right, always from the top to the bottom from the point of view of the active player (so this is actually inverted for you if your opponent plays a spell such as Firestorm).
This means that a creature in column 1 will always harvest before a creature from column 2 from the same well. Additionally: A creature above another in the same column will always harvest first. Note that since Ruunin's Shrine is being redesigned in this patch as well (see below), the influence this change has on how Area of Effect damage works should not be noticeable.

Visual improvements, user-interface changes and bug fixes

• The thickness of each player’s deck now changes based on how many cards are remaining.
• Jump and Charge have been given new icons
• Various changes to the UI have been made, including an increased thickness of the turn timer liquid.
• Power wheel has an entirely new set of animations! These include : pass the turn, turn timeout, start the turn, no more moves, and end turn button appearance.
• Power wheel liquid timer is now more reliable and its animations were corrected
• Fixed a crash that sometimes happened with the friend list when someone tried to add themselves as a friend. Be more outgoing!
• Various bug fixes
• Known Issue: We are aware of the bugs involving Failed Experiment and increased card costs, but were unable to finalize the fixes for this patch. It will be addressed in a later update.

Balance Changes

Neutral/Human

Healing Song 3f (was 4f) Draw a card and gain 5 life. (was 4 life)

Blue

Wavecrash Colossus 9f LL (was 8f) 7/7 Slam. Costs 1f less for each time you’ve harvested from an enemy well. Minimum cost: 5f (was 4f)

Green

Soulbound Sagami 6f FF (was 6f FFF) Sagami Elder redesigned into Sagami Huntmaster 4f FF 2/4 Gift - Teleport a friendly creature to a land adjacent to this creature. Ruunin’s Shrine redesigned 1f FF 2 health Structure Gift - Gain 3 Faeria. Last Words - Your opponent gains 3 Faeria. Oak Father 5/5 (was 6/6)Now has Slam. Primeval Colossus 16f FF (was 15f) 7/14 (was 8/12) Cost 1f less for each special land you have. Minimum cost: 6f Ancient Boar 6f F (was 4f FF)4/5 (was 2/5)Dash 2.If you control a creature with 5 life or more, costs 2f less.

Red:

Gift of Steel Now also gives a creature 3 life if it has a Combat ability. Boulder Thrower 7f M 3/4 (was 3/5) Ranged Attack. Slam. (Its former Combat ability has been removed) Volcanic Colossus 12f MM (was 9f) 7/7 (was 8/8) Now has Ranged Attack. Cost 1f less for each enemy creature that has died in combat. Minimum cost: 7f (was 5f) Ignus, the First Flame 8f MMM (was 4f) 4/4 (was 2/4) Whenever you select +1f from the power wheel, deal 4 damage randomly split among enemies. (was 1 damage to an enemy)

Yellow:

Soul Pact 0f DD Now draws 1 card. Gain 2f and deal 3 damage to yourself. (was 2 damage) Windstorm Colossus 10f DD (was 9f) 7/7 (was 7/5) Dash 3. Costs 1f less for each event you’ve played. Minimum cost: 5f (was 4f) Shaytan VampireNow has Dash 1.

Multicolor

Warstorm Champion redesigned 7f FFF MMM 4/4 Slam. Dash 2. Gift - Deal 4 damage randomly split among enemies. Give +4/+4 randomly split among allies.

Pandora

Clockwork YakNow has Dash 2.

Rarity Changes

We've swapped the card rarities of Flameburst and Lord of Terror to allow new players easier access to this deck-defining card.

• Flameburst: Epic -> Rare
• Lord of Terror: Rare-> Epic

To see how we compensate players for crafting values from card rarity changes, click here. Developer commentary: We'll be posting a link to developer commentary on the balance changes soon. Keep an eye out here for the link.

• The Faeria Team

[ 2016-11-30 18:13:13 CET ] [ Original post ]