Although we made Artifact Classic and Artifact Foundry free alongside our announcements about those games last week and put them both on the same store page, the button to install or play Artifact Foundry didn't work (it incorrectly installed or launched Classic). This has been remedied and now anyone should be able to install either or both versions, and a final patch for Artifact Foundry has been released.

Artifact Classic and Artifact Foundry are two versions of the digital card game originally named Artifact, developed through a collaboration between Valve and renowned designer Richard Garfield. Artifact was designed as a deeply strategic card game, but without the limits of a conventional physical board. After a highly polarizing and ultimately disappointing initial release in November, 2018, a small team at Valve reworked the game into what would become Artifact Foundry, and the original game was renamed to Artifact Classic. Artifact Foundry was designed to address as many complaints about the original game as possible, while maintaining its strategic depth.

Economy

Game Modes

Artifact Classic Game Modes

• Full-deck draft gauntlets (build your deck out of a limited selection of cards, then win 5 before you lose 2).
• Constructed gauntlets (build your deck from the entire set, win 5 before you lose 2).
• Preconstructed event with a win-streak leaderboard (choose a pre-built deck, play until you lose).
• Single game constructed global matchmaking
• In-game tournament system
• Constructed bot play
• Tutorial

Artifact Foundry Game Modes

• 1v1 Hero Draft ladder (pick and counter-pick heroes against your opponent, then play with decks generated from those heroes, rank up based on skill).
• Constructed ladder (build your deck from the entire set, rank up based on skill).
• Tutorial (expanded)
• Single Player Campaign
• Constructed bot play
• Hero Draft bot play
• Bot puzzles (including support for player-authored puzzles)

Gameplay

Artifact, the Dota 2 card game, shipped in November of 2018. Despite good initial sales, our player count fell off pretty dramatically. This warranted a shift from the service/update development model we'd planned to a full reevaluation of the game's mechanics and economy. It's now been about a year and a half since the current Artifact team began work on a reboot in earnest. While we're reasonably satisfied we accomplished most of our game-side goals, we haven't managed to get the active player numbers to a level that justifies further development at this time. As such, we've made the tough decision to stop development on the Artifact 2.0 Beta. However, we recognize that both versions of Artifact still have players and still have value to the community. For this reason, we're opening both games up to make them available for free to everyone. Final releases of both Artifact Classic and Artifact 2.0 Beta (renamed Artifact Foundry) are now available. Technically Artifact Foundry remains an unfinished product, but most of what's missing is polish and art - the core gameplay is all there. While both games will remain playable, we dont plan to ship any further gameplay updates. Here's an overview of our final changes to Artifact Classic:

• The game is free for everyone to play.
• All players get every card for free. You will no longer be able to buy card packs.
• Paid players' existing cards have been converted into special Collector's Edition versions, which will remain marketable. Marketplace integration has been removed from the game.
• Paid event tickets have been removed.
• Customers who paid for the game will still earn packs of Collector's Edition cards for playing; players who got the game for free will not.

• The game is free for everyone to play.
• Players gain access to cards by playing the game. All cards are earned this way; no cards or packs will be for sale and Artifact Foundry cards are not marketable.
• All final card art that was in the pipeline is now in the game.

This patch is a part of a larger update to both Artifact Classic and Artifact Foundry (formerly Artifact Beta 2.0). See the full announcement here and an explanation of Artifact Classic vs Artifact Foundry here. Economy

• All players now have access to all cards without the need to collect them.
• Cards that players have already collected have been converted into gold Collector's Edition cards.
• Card packs and tickets are no longer for sale.
• Prized with entry fees events have been removed.
• Players who were registered in prized events have received Collector's Edition packs equal to the first place payout.
• Players with unused tickets have received 1 Collector's Edition pack for each unused ticket.
• If you recycle excess Collector's Edition cards, you now receive 1 Collector's Edition pack rather than a ticket.
• Packs and tickets have been removed from the reward track for new players. New players do not receive or earn any Collector's Edition cards.
• Existing players who had not yet completed their reward track may continue to do so. Packs and tickets on the track have been replaced with Collector's Edition packs.

• Matchmaking parameters have been tightened.
• The Call to Arms preconstructed decks have been slightly updated for better balance.
• Fixed a bug where the client sometimes didn't know it was your turn if you have initiative in lane 1 after both players had no heroes to deploy, and you finished shopping first.
• Fixed Blitz Timer timer not working in player-run tournaments.

Weve sent out the first round of invites! All invited players should immediately see Artifact Beta 2.0 on their accounts. We will keep you updated on additional invites (no timeline yet!), and will continue to work to support more people. Our localization team is hard at work and non-English languages will become available over the course of the Beta. Our first two areas of focus are Usability and Bugs. Feedback on other topics is welcome, but fixing these types of issues will let us grow the beta more quickly. There is an in-game tool to report any issues, and you can use the feedback email for anything that requires a discussion. Have Fun!

We are happy to announce that we are moving to the next phase of the Beta! The Beta for the original game started too late and was too short. Weve decided to approach things a bit differently this time around by gradually inviting people to join us while we are still Under Construction.

Heres the updated road-map:

Welcome back to another round of shop talk! After our last blog post we received a lot of email which made it clear that people still had questions about the specific functioning of the new shop. A lack of clarity in our previous discussion also caused some confusion. Let's start by trying to clear up some misconceptions, then we'll give some more details on the new shop's current implementation, and finally show some updated cards.

Clarifying The UI

Populating The Shop

Item Reworks

• These boots are still a strong option for forcing or dodging match-ups in a lane.
• The switch from swapping with an ally to swapping with any slot gives more options.

• The old version of this card had the most requests for change since it could feel so suffocating.
• The new version is mostly good for use against heavy card draw strategies.

• This item clearly follows the old adage that the best defense is a good offense.
• Equipping this item makes a hero a huge target. Make sure to bait out your opponent's counters before equipping it.

Hero Reworks

• When Prellex enters the lane, she converts one of the Melee Creeps to a Mega Creep for an instant hit of extra power on the board.
• Deploying creeps on the right gives you a few tactical options when deploying. Outside of round 1 you can easily get a strong blocker in the 4th or 5th slot.
• Barracks helps empower many of the weak creeps blue tends to rely on by keeping them healthy and able to use their powerful effects more often.

• While Axe is no longer the stat juggernaut he once was, he's still extremely durable with great deployment options.
• With some setup, and the fact that it's repeatable, Culling Blade lets you lop the heads off several heroes in one round (repeatable cards are added back to your hand when cast, but are discarded at the end of the round). It's also fun to bluff holding so you can bait reactions from your opponent.
• Berserker's Call is still a beast and makes itemization for Axe extra powerful. It's a good idea to control initiative when Axe enters the board with it off cooldown.

• Ogre has become a popular hero to build around, just make sure you have enough Mana to cast both copies of your spell this round or you've wasted the cooldown.
• Repeatable cards are discarded at the end of the round, so you can't build card advantage the way you could with Multicast in the original version of Artifact. The increased level of predictability makes this version easier to use though.
• The Multicast ability doesn't modify the base card. Unlike cards which are innately repeatable, Multicast only returns the card to your hand one time. Normally repeatable cards can be cast until you run out of Mana or valid targets.
• While two armor makes Ogre a good option for offlane deployment, you may want to keep him in the safe lane instead to trigger Multicast frequently.
• Due to lower unit stats, Ignite is a great way to clear out small units from a lane.

Before we get into the blog, we wanted to share the results of last weeks poll. Arc Warden was the front-runner right out of the gate his lead seemed insurmountable. Slow and steady, though, Nyx started to creep up. Then, right before were going to close the poll, he almost overtook the front spot. In the end it was close enough that we figured why not add both! Now on to the shop! Feedback about the shop has been a bit more scattered compared to other parts of the game and the suggestions have ranged far, from tiny tweaks to a huge Dota-scale item shop with item recipes. We've found we also have a mixed mind about the shop. We liked some parts and had other parts we thought needed improvement. There are some side effects of the original implementation that pushed optimal item-deck building into a narrow space. It's a topic that we think would be good to delve into together. Let's break down what we did and didn't like, the goals we should have for the new version, and talk about the design trying to accomplish those goals. Remember to email us at ArtifactBetaFeedback@Valvesoftware.com to contribute to the discussion. What we didn't like:

• Players often felt compelled to stuff their decks with cheap items with the intent to buy them out so they had more control over the selection they saw.
• It was easy to jump to top-tier items, limiting how cool those items could be.
• Consumables could have a huge impact, but you could be unlucky with your selection.
• Some of the items felt too important (Blink Dagger, Town Portal Scroll, etc.)
• The wacky item prices required more math than needed.
• Three different slot types caused confusion for new players.
• It felt weird when the shop opened with no good options for the player.
• The "hold" option wasn't well utilized.

• Building up powerful heroes feels great.
• The flow of adding abilities to your hero over the course of the game, ending with an exciting final board state without starting off overwhelming.
• It was fun when players were able to adapt to their situation and make creative use of an item in the secret shop.
• You could evaluate what to purchase fairly quickly.

• Wed like you to have better access to your items compared to the original game.
• Items, in general, should have their cost reflect when they are useful in the game. Early items should help build small advantages and late game items should help close the game out.
• Wed like to keep the ability to find a random item that could help you out.
• No class of items, early or late, should be too powerful as to skew the selection one way or another.
• Less math.
• Required tools (Town Portal Scrolls) shouldn't be available based on luck.

• Displace is one of the few "random" effects we've added to the game. It pushes a unit randomly left or right 1 slot, but can only push into an unoccupied slot.
• Since you can displace enemy units as well as your own, you can often work out favorable match-ups with a little creativity.
• A few of our favorites are pushing a unit with a strong aura towards one of the edges of a lane, sliding any strong tower attacker into slot 1, or just pushing a blocker out of the way so you can smash a tower.

• With its strong health buff this item can keep a fragile hero in lane for a long time.
• Demonic Archers are a great way to build up a creep imbalance in a lane. Only one is needed to start the ball rolling.
• Left unchecked, a lane full of Demonic Archers will make deploying heroes into a lane a painful experience.

• The 20-gold item tier has several items that immediately change the texture of a lane, either by making strong localized effects, or providing a large stat boost.
• Root Boots are great for deploying into a hero with mobility and exchanging favorably.
• Decay effects ignore armor, so they are great at cleaning out a lane clogged by armor buffed creeps.
• Root Boots are a great way to stop late-game lane hopping shenanigans.

This week we wanted to talk a bit more about the heroes in Artifact. These have been viewed as one of the strengths in the original game, but also as one of the missed opportunities. The most common concerns we hear are about underwhelming signature cards, lack of abilities, or heroes that fictionally dont fit with their kit. Our philosophy this time around is different, so wed like to go over some of the factors we use when evaluating hero designs.

• All heroes should have at least one ability.
• You should be excited to draw a heros signature cards.
• Signature cards should avoid being situational.
• Signature cards should generally be at their best when their corresponding hero uses them.
• Bonus if a hero has a small self-synergy.
• Its fine to have two abilities on a hero if at least one of them is a passive.
• Its fine to have strong active and passive abilities on the board. They create interesting threats to play around.

• This big body can absorb a lot of punishment.
• Reckless Charge can put this bulk to use, letting him redirect damage from soft targets.
• His active ability, Stop Hittin Yourself, lets him turn his attackers' strengths against them.
• Notes: His health was recently increased, and might be a bit too high.

• Green units tend to stick around in lane, so dont be surprised if you see Farvhan getting up to a big bonus from Pack Leadership.
• Prowler Vanguard makes it easy to create a creep imbalance, keeping your tower safe.
• Placing Prowler Vanguard in slot 2 with Farvhan in slot 3 is an easy way to build pressure in a lane.
• Prowler Vanguard has been feeling a little too expensive, and is likely to decrease to 3 Mana.

• Runic Instigation has been a fan favorite. One of our favorites was watching Mirana leap in, get refreshed, then leap back to her original slot!
• Runic Instigation lets you refresh creeps and also items on heroes. This makes JMuy great to splash with any color.
• Wisdom of the Elders can keep your hand full, and is a nice choice for an early runic instigation to start getting the cooldown to 1.
• JMuy is pretty hefty for a blue hero, giving you good deployment options.

This one came in hot so please forgive any gram badder, who would have guessed that doing all this remotely would be so hard? Anyway, lets get to it! Initiative The initiative rules haven't changed much, but the implications are different due to the round being shared across lanes. Players still take turns performing actions until both players pass in a row, and then you go to combat. This sequence continues across rounds, so while you can't control initiative across lanes you can still do so across rounds. There are more rounds per game, although each round is shorter. And "Get Initiative" spells still exist, although they have been renamed to "Quick." Mana There is now a single Mana pool that starts at 3 and increases by 1 per turn. Some cards and abilities are crosslane, but in general cards only affect the lane that theyre being cast from and you need a hero in lane to cast a card of their color. Mana costs have been reduced for low-end and mid-tier cards, but high-end cards remain expensive. If you want to blow up a lane it might be the only thing you do in a round. Balance in the original game with these high impact spells was tricky you had some decks that went from casting zero big spells to a big spell in every lane. Initiative + Mana = Harmony? Each action costs at least 1 mana, so without things like a refresh from CM, you can no longer delay turns for free - you need to weigh the costs of waiting to respond VS saving enough mana for your high impact spells. The combination of one shared mana pool and adding a mana cost for all actions has taken some of the weight from the initiative system in the original game. The initiative system was something that experienced players enjoyed immensely, but had a steep learning curve for new players and had some really negative side effects if it caught you off guard. Some players ignored initiative. Other players felt that controlling initiative was the main strategic concern, so we don't think this is a change that should be taken lightly. This disconnect may be responsible for the communication breakdown we see playing out in the community. We think that the current system gets to a similar place where the actions you take, and the order you take them are both very important without the big downsides of the learning cliff and the resulting struggles with lockout. New Defaults Weve been trying to move away the very technically-worded cards from the past. They were always very accurate, but sometimes it felt like you needed to be a programmer to work out what actually was going to happen. Cards and abilities will affect a lane unless stated otherwise. Any verb (stun, disarm, etc) lasts until the end of the round unless another duration is set. All cards with persistent effects are labeled as an enchantments, and last until dispelled. All permanent modifications are labeled as such. Arrows point forward by default but can be modified temporarily. At the end of the turn, or if you move the unit, its arrows reset. Keyword Changes Armor Armor in the old game caused some issues early in development we ended up doubling all stat values to compensate for how dramatic the impact of a single point of armor was. It also added a lot of math when you had multiple damage sources. Now each point of armor can block one point of damage and is refreshed at the beginning of the round. Cleave/Siege These used to be dependent on the unit being blocked to function. Now they are active all of the time. Feeble Feeble is new to the game, but we wanted to talk about it anyway so we could show off one of the basic hero reworks! Each unit attacking a feeble unit will deal excess damage to the tower instead. For example, if Debbi (4/3) is blocked by a unit (1/3), and uses "No Accident" leaving it with 1 remaining health, 3 damage will be dealt to the tower and her passive ability will trigger.


Card Unlocks All players will unlock cards playing in any mode. The pace should be such that players are excited by getting fun cards to play with, but arent overwhelmed when they see too many new cards being played by an opponent. Players that are new to the game, enjoy casual play, like to learn by doing instead of reading, or just enjoy a sense of progression would start in general matchmaking. They can grow their card pools while matching against opponents with a similar number of card unlocks, giving them a controlled environment to learn in. Hero Draft even pulls from the combined set of cards that you and your opponent have unlocked to keep things extra fair. Eventually these players can switch to Ranked mode and automated tournaments if they want to experience a more competitive environment. There will also be the option to jump right in to scrimmages and custom tournaments, these will let players set rules or allow any card sets they see fit. All players will probably enjoy these from time to time, but advanced players can start playing these immediately. Your Feedback After our call for suggestions about how to improve the game, we were overwhelmed by the responses, both in the quantity (it took us a week to catch up on reading them all and they're still coming!) and also the quality. The community took the task seriously and wrote in with a wide range of suggestions, from gameplay changes and features through to feedback on localization and possible founder benefits. We aren't able to respond individually to every submission, but we were able to compile a list of promising ideas from the community and get a sense of where people most wanted the team to spend their attention. Luckily that lined up well with the teams internal plans. Here's a taste of some of the things people asked for, and our current plans. Progression The most popular request outside of gameplay changes was for more robust progression systems. People wanted to feel like their time spent with the game was being rewarded, and also wanted a better measure of their competitive strength so they could see themselves improving. We would like people to be able to feel a sense of progression in the game through unlocking cards and other collectables in the normal course of play, without being forced to spend money, but we're still experimenting with different reward structures. For competitive play, we are working on a design similar to the Underlords ranked system, which we hope will provide people with goals to aim for, a clear path to get there, and a meaningful way to measure yourself against other players. We're also thinking through ways we might be able to connect these systems with Artifact's robust tournament support. Quality of Life Features Tracking your competitive rank is just one aspect of giving people the tools to improve at the game. We're also fleshing out player profiles, letting people track statistics about the games they've played, view match histories, and watch replays. Additionally, we're looking at frequently requested quality of life and social features, such as chat history, the ability to spectate friends, access to more game modes when challenging friends, and saving templates for tournament settings. Also in this odds and ends category is feedback that we got from many non-English speaking communities (sometimes read via machine translation!) that they would like to see a different approach to localizing hero names, preferring a transliteration of the English name, rather than literal translations of their names. We'll be talking to our localization team about this. Single Player A lot of you recognized the potential for telling stories about the DOTA world through Artifact and loved what we'd already done through comics and flavor text. We are doubling down on that effort through a single-player campaign which will both teach new players the game and continue the story that began with A Call To Arms. Tying in to our progressions systems, we want people to feel rewarded no matter which way they choose to play the game, whether it be in competitive play or the campaign. Looking forward to your thoughts!

I have some good news, some more good news, and some bad news. The good news is that after our previous post, we received a deluge of emails. More good news - its high quality feedback that people have clearly spent a lot of time thinking about. The bad news? Were slow readers, so its taking us a bit more time than we thought to thoroughly comb through all of your emails. But we are a determined bunch! Now enough chit-chat, lets dive in: One of the first heavy RNG components that players faced was the initial board setup. The Flop, as it used to be called, would randomly deploy the first set of heroes and lane creeps. Lets take an in-depth look at how deployment has changed. Board Layout The board still has 3 lanes, but each lane is exactly 5 slots. The slots also have a fixed position, so adding units on either end of the lane doesnt shift the positions of any units. There are some rules for deploying on top of units if the lane gets too full or if theres just something in your way, which youll find at the end of this post.
Lane Creep Deployment Before each round, a melee creep is deployed into the leftmost empty space in each lane.
Hero Deployment, First round Heroes are deployed in three stages in the first round.
Lets take a step by step look using this match-up.
Step 1, Mid - Both players choose one of their first three heroes. They can choose to deploy them in one of the three middle spots in the lane. The heroes and their deploy locations are simultaneously revealed. Wed like Treant to survive a few rounds to build up a creep advantage in a lane. Treant would make a juicy target if we put him in the off lane, and we have a chance that we might be unopposed in mid. Treants passive aura can affect the whole lane from the center position so our opponent might play center mid just to prevent that advantage. We might get lucky depending on where our opponent deploys. We are going to play our tree to the mid position.
Looks like our opponent saw through our plans!
Step 2, Off lane - Each player chooses their second hero (one player deploys to the first lane, the other to the third lane). The hero and their deploy locations are simultaneously revealed. This hero will be the most vulnerable since the enemy will be able to respond with full knowledge. We dont mind if Wraith King matches up against any of these enemies. So we can safely put him in our off lane. Bristle is nice to play in the second slot of any lane since you might get some free creep kills with Quill Spray. He can also take a hit so we would expect our opponent to play him now. We are going to play our Wraith King in the fourth position.
Lets see what our opponent chose.
Step 3, Safe lane Players now deploy their last hero into their safe lane (the lane their opponent deployed into in the previous round). You have full information about what you are facing now, so you can deploy your final hero to the most beneficial of the three available spots. Mirana is a good choice to put in the safe lane for better Sacred Arrow positioning and so she doesnt get killed. Because we deployed bounty last we are guaranteed we can take advantage of his track ability. Hopefully we get some cards to save him, but we are fine with the trade. We are going to play our bounty hunter to attack their Bristleback.
Lets see where Mirana went.
Not the best, but I think we ended up in a good spot! Hero Deployment, Subsequent rounds You still get an additional hero to deploy in the 2nd and 3rd rounds plus any hero that returns from the fountain. Later deployments have no restrictions on where heroes can be deployed. Additional placement rules

• Deploying a hero on top of another hero will bounce the old hero to deploy next turn.
• Deploying a hero on top of a creep will destroy the creep.
• When you play a creep card you can choose the exact slot in the lane to deploy it into.
• Playing a creep on top of a unit will destroy that unit.

• Armor works differently from the base game.
• Tower health is dependent upon the game mode.

When the members of the team decided to reboot Artifact we all did it for different reasons. Some of us loved the original game and wanted to see it thrive. Some of us liked the freeing sense of creativity you can have with a card game. Some of us love trying to figure out how something is broken and see it fixed. There was one unifying reason for all of us - we thought that there was something special in the game, and with hard work we could bring it to light. Thanks for the feedback over the last two weeks, it's been great seeing how many of you share those feelings. There is one class of concerns raised that we wanted to address specifically. Those from the founding players of Artifact - the people who played extensively and built a collection in the original game. There are some great ideas floating around for things we could add, and they mesh well with our own. We want to make sure that there are some incredibly cool and special things that we deliver to our founders, but we aren't ready to implement them yet. We mentioned in our previous post that we were focusing on gameplay first. That wasnt just a random choice - We wanted to make sure the game had a strong foundation to build upon. It's not going to look polished because we're going to be changing things a lot during this process based on feedback and data. It's really important to us that we take your ideas for how to improve the game into account, so please email them to ArtifactBetaFeedback@valvesoftware.com. We are going to read all of them. With all that said, lets look at some of the fun stuff to come! Also, speaking of things that arent finished yet, check out this sweet placeholder art. ;) Mirana

• Mirana has a pretty standard stat line for a Black Hero. (Stats overall have been scaled to around 60% of the original game.)
• Leap gives her excellent mobility and can be used defensively and offensively. You can select your landing spot so its possible to buff specific units and go for a knockout punch.
• Her include card, Sacred Arrow, is versatile and powerful. (Probably a bit too powerful right now, to be honest.)

• Wraith King looks fragile for a green hero, but his built in death shield makes him one of the most survivable units in the game.
• Reincarnation makes killing Wraith King a bad time for all the enemies in his lane.
• The Decay from Hellfire blast works similarly to regeneration, just in reverse. Unless a hero gets healing it often means death after two turns.

• With the increased amount of movement in the game, a cheap blocker like this little guy can really gum up your opponent's plans!

• As you might have guessed, this unit is hilarious.
• Does it copy both Passive and Active abilities? Of course it does!

• This is one of the few blue creeps with a big stat line.
• Bouncing returns a hero to be deployed next round, or a creep to the hand.
• You need to be careful not to bounce units with a strong deploy effect.

• So cute you might almost feel bad for killing your enemies.

This week we wanted to talk about the Artifact Beta 2.0, what it will include, and when it will happen. Weve been focusing on gameplay changes first. The biggest change is zooming out to allow players access to all three lanes at once. The majority of effects still work on individual lanes so they still maintain their identity, but its less likely that a player will get shut out in the same way they used to. Weve also focused on making the game easier to pick up. We arent selling cards, so you wont face an opponent with a stacked deck. Weve also added a new draft mode, Hero Draft, that gives you a taste of constructing decks without all the pressure. The beta will exist as a new executable and access will be granted to individual accounts. When we are ready to send out invites we will let you know the process. Heres the current road-map: [olist]

First off, we wanted to say thanks for all of your tweets, emails and posts. The continued interest in Artifact has been encouraging, and we sincerely appreciate all of the feedback! You might notice some changes soon we are starting tests on our systems and infrastructure. This shouldnt impact live Artifact but we wanted to give you a heads up. Expect more news after the launch of Half-Life: Alyx!

When we launched Artifact, we expected it would be the beginning of a long journey, that it would lay the foundation for years to come. Our plan was to immediately dive into our normal strategy of shipping a series of updates driven by the dialogue community members were having with each other and with us. Obviously, things didn't turn out how we hoped. Artifact represents the largest discrepancy between our expectations for how one of our games would be received and the actual outcome. But we don't think that players misunderstand our game, or that they're playing it wrong. Artifact now represents an opportunity for us to improve our craft and use that knowledge to build better games. Since launch, we've been looking carefully at how players interact with the game as well as gathering feedback. It has become clear that there are deep-rooted issues with the game and that our original update strategy of releasing new features and cards would be insufficient to address them. Instead, we believe the correct course of action is to take larger steps, to re-examine the decisions we've made along the way regarding game design, the economy, the social experience of playing, and more. So what does this mean? Moving forward, we'll be heads-down focusing on addressing these larger issues instead of shipping updates. While we expect this process of experimentation and development to take a significant amount of time, were excited to tackle this challenge and will get back to you as soon as we are ready.

Item Card Changes:

• Blade of the Vigil: Cleave increased from +2 to +4
• Keenfolk Plate: Added "Equipped hero's attackers have -1 Armor"
• Stonehall Pike cost reduced from 6 gold to 5 gold
• Stonehall Plate cost reduced from 6 gold to 5 gold
• Barbed Mail cost reduced from 6 gold to 5 gold
• Assassin's Veil cost reduced from 6 gold to 4 gold
• Phase Boots cost reduced from 6 gold to 5 gold
• Broadsword cost reduced from 7 gold to 6 gold
• Keenfolk Musket cost reduced from 7 gold to 6 gold
• Chainmail cost reduced from 7 gold to 6 gold
• Fur-lined Mantle cost reduced from 7 gold to 6 gold
• Red Mist Maul cost reduced from 10 gold to 9 gold
• Obliterating Orb cost reduced from 10 gold to 9 gold
• Ring of Tarrasque cost reduced from 12 gold to 10 gold
• Cloak of Endless Carnage cost reduced from 13 gold to 10 gold
• Claymore cost reduced from 15 gold to 14 gold
• Platemail cost reduced from 15 gold to 12 gold
• Hero's Cape cost reduced from 15 gold to 12 gold

Private Lobby & Tournament Changes:

• Added Random Two Color deck option for private lobbies and tournaments. This gives both players different randomized 2-color decks in each match.
• Added Speed Timer option for private lobbies and tournaments. This allows players 10 seconds to take each action.
• Automated Open Tournaments are now 'Chaos Blitz'. Chaos Blitz is Random Two Color, Speed Timer, 8 player free-for-all lasting for 1 hour and 30 minutes

Bug Fixes & Other Changes:

• Hovering gold in the HUD displays the amount of gold spent but not yet revealed through playing items (this is a clue rather than an exact amount because of hidden information with Hold, Shop Deed, etc.)
• Fixed Rebel Instigator combat arrows not appearing sometimes
• Fixed issue with Plague wards spawn particles
• Fixed losing a few seconds from the action timer after deployment
• Fixed tournament draft replays not showing selected cards
• Fixed long persona names getting cut off
• Fixed crosslane targets sometimes not showing in Last Action text.
• Fixed Chat Wheel lines for Rebel Decoy, Pit Fighter of Quoidge, Zeus, and Beastmaster
• Reduced low end noise in deck building ambient audio
• Added particle effects for some passive abilities
• Slightly reduced draw card animation speed (time between draws remains the same)
• Slightly increased the time between Eclipse beams (intro/outro time remains the same)
• Improved stability
• Updated localization files

Unchanged:

• Still in it for the long haul

• Fixed the game engine pausing when bringing up the Steam Overlay.
• Added buttons to the HUD for viewing decklists.
• Fixed not being able to inspect heroes in Minimap.
• Fixed Marrowfell Brawler dialog not working.
• Fixed being able to get the Fought Well bonus in tied games.
• Visual improvements for Keenfolk Musket, Sow Venom, Fury Swipes, Corrosive Skin, and Hellbear Crippler.
• Fixed visual bugs with heroes sometimes overlapping during deployment.
• Thundergod's Wrath now shows its played card after the animation.
• Various stability improvements.

Reduced length of various animations and effects:

• Card draw
• Entering and exiting shopping
• When opponent plays an Improvement the camera no longer scrolls to the target lane
• Dimensional Portal, Defensive Bloom, Sow Venom
• Eclipse, Thundergod's Wrath, Poof

- Fix Mac clients not being able to connect to Artifact network. - Removed 60 seconds to surrender notification. - Fixed AI taking a few extra seconds to play when you pass.

• Added a bindable key for typing a custom message on your tower in the active lane.
• Increased maximum custom message length.
• Increased visibility of chat wheel mute button.
• Replaced "Chat with Opponent" button on the end game screen with an "Add Friend" button if you are not friends with your opponent.
• Last action is shown as a mini card on the HUD.
• Fixed many cases of last action details not listing the targeted cards.
• Fixed glossary keywords not working when inspecting active ability actions.
• Fixed some cases where the last used AI deck was not saved.
• Added the ability to send and receive friend requests on the end game screen or using the steam icon in-game.
• Fixed various Call to Arms leaderboard UI bugs.

Game clock:

• After you receive the coin, the game clock now waits an additional 5 seconds before it begins ticking.
• The tournament timer now grants 30 seconds per round, down from 1 minute, and starts at 2:30, down from 3:00.
• The standard timer now grants 1 minute per round, down from 2 minutes, and starts at 3:00, down from 5:00.
• Draft gauntlets and Constructed gauntlets now use the tournament timer rather than the standard timer. (Call to Arms and Global Matchmaking use the updated standard timer.)
• Fixed a bug where animations that killed multiple heroes would start your clock ticking down before the animation finished.
• Fixed a bug where you could pass very quickly using the spacebar during a long animation, causing the opponents clock to start ticking down before the animation finished.

Hats:

• The imp's holiday hats have been put back in the attic.

Today's Build Your Legend Update focuses on skill rating, account leveling, and card balance.

Skill Rating and Account Leveling

Card Balance

Card Changes

• Base stats changed from 7/2/11 to 6/2/10.

• Base stats changed from 7/6 to 7/7.
• Blood Rage (signature spell) mana cost changed from 5 to 4.

• Mana cost changed from 5 to 4.
• Old Text: "If there is an allied green hero in this lane, allies have a 50% chance of surviving with 1 Health when they would die."
• New Text: "Active (Cooldown 1): Give a unit a Death Shield this round. May only be used if there is an allied green hero in this lane."

• Gust (signature spell) Old Text: "Silence enemy heroes this round."
• Gust (signature spell) New Text: "Silence an enemy hero and its allied neighbors this round."

• Gold cost changed from 7 to 5.
• Old Text: "Equipped hero has +2 Attack and Pierce."
• New Text: "Equipped hero has +2 Attack and Pierce. Equip Effect: Purge your opponent's effects from equipped hero."

• Finger of Death (active ability) Old Text: "Deal 8 piercing damage to a unit."
• Finger of Death (active ability) New Text: "Deal 8 piercing damage to a unit. Quicken." (Quicken means "reduce cooldown by 1, but not below 1".)

• Base stats changed from 4/6 to 4/7.

• Reactive Armor (passive) Old Text: "Timbersaw has +1 Armor for each of its attackers."
• Reactive Armor (passive) New Text: "Timbersaw has +1 Armor for each of its attackers. Each of Timbersaw's attackers have -1 Armor."

New Features

• Added Skill Rating. Skill rating is specific to a particular time period and game mode (draft or constructed) and ranges from 1 to 75. Once you've earned a rating, it will not decrease this season. Every matchmaking game outside of the Call To Arms featured event contributes to skill rating adjustments.
• Added account levels and unlocks. Every matchmaking game grants experience that contributes to account level. Increasing account level unlocks portraits and a number of event tickets and card packs.
• Added Quicken keyword. On activated abilities, this means "reduce cooldown by 1, but not below 1". (See Finger of Death in the card changes section.)
• Added Equip Effect keyword. On items, this ability will trigger immediately after the item is equipped to a hero. (See Jasper Daggers in the card changes section.)

Bug Fixes

• Fixed some words being underlined on ability tooltips in-game.
• Fixed the complete deck list not being visible for the opponent in Call To Arms gauntlet matches.
• Fixed some instances of Red Mist Pillager not showing their combat target arrows after being spawned.
• Fixed a number of other minor bugs and issues.
• Updated the localization files.

Today's Artifact 1.1 Update focuses on social features: a chat wheel, in / post-game chat, and brand new automated tournaments. Additionally, we've added leaderboard support to the Call to Arms gauntlet along two new decks: a damage-focused mono blue deck and an all-aggro all-the-time mono black deck. There are many other features in the update, as well as a ton of bug-fixes. Check out the patch notes and the update page for more details. This is the first major update of many for Artifact. While finishing this update we've also been working hard on the next update, that we expect to ship next week and which is focused on a skill-based progression system.

We've had an exciting few days watching everyone finally get their hands on Artifact. Alongside the strategic depth it's also been great seeing people explore the many modes of play. One of our goals in building Artifact was to capture some of the social energy and fun of playing games around the kitchen table with friends, and to bring those experiences online. Today we want to do a guided tour of some features that bring us closer to that goal: matchmaking through Steam Group Chats and user-hosted tournaments.

Open Play

Tournaments

Fixes

• Fixed a crash that would happen when exiting while in game.
• Fixed a crash that would happen at very high (>4k) screen resolutions.
• Fixed a crash that would happen when resolving some spells.
• UI movies now play from memory instead of disk improving menu performance on low end systems.
• Fixed Sucker Punch's effects timing.
• Updated the localization files.

Fixes

• Fixed a crash that would happen sometimes when the game lost focus.
• Fixed a crash that would happen when hovering over cards or towers when a game ended.
• Fixed a Mac OS crash that would happen when running in high resolutions.
• Fixed some Market prices listed in the client being incorrect.
• Fixed some issues in the deck editor when playing through multiple draft gauntlets in one session.
• Fixed some display issues with the effects for Remote Detonation and the imps.
• Updated the localization files.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnVuzZYdwIQ We're proud to launch Artifact and its first set Call to Arms. We also have a new comic and a trailer to get you started. This is the first of many adventures and stories in the world of Dota and we are excited to start this journey with you.

This is only the beginning...

Small Update:

• Fixed a bug where the opponent's Deck Tracker was completely filled at game start in Gauntlet and casual matchmaking games. It is intended that you can see the opponent's full deck list during tournament games to reduce the value of scouting. You will also be able to see the full opponent's deck list in private lobbies. In other modes, the opponent's Deck Tracker will update based on what cards you've seen, and cards you know to be present (e.g., hero signature cards).
• Added the Deck Tracker keys to the key binding menu.
• Added an in-game comic viewer to the client.
• Updated the localization files.

Artifact is coming to Steam in just two days! In the meantime, we're happy to launch the first in a new series of Artifact comics, called Prelude. Artifact is more than just a Dota card game it is a shared universe with a storyline that will deepen the history, expand the world, and change the fates of the heroes of both games. We'll also be releasing a second comic called Call to Arms on launch day, which sets the stage for a series of events that will transform the world of Dota forever. Don't forget to come back and check it out. We're also updating the beta, once this afternoon's stress tests have completed. Pre-loading will be available tonight!

11/26 Beta Update

Features

Features

• You can now recycle cards into event tickets at a rate of 20 cards to 1 ticket. There is a "Recycle Cards" tab accessible from the collection. Note that each card will currently show "N/A" where the market price would be until the market is open. Sort by market price will sort by mana cost until the market is open.
• You can now play bot matches and Call to Arms without claiming your starting package. This lets you try more of the game before you reach the point-of-no-return on refunds.
• Added an AI difficulty selector.
• Added some premade decks to the bot's deck selection options to make it easy to quickly practice against various opponent color combinations.
• Added a new cursor and cursor size settings control.

Deck Editor Fixes

• Leaving the deck editor by pressing the Artifact logo will now prompt to save changes.
• Fixed an issue where dragging an unowned hero into a deck that already contains that hero would remove the hero that was in the destination slot and then fail to add or arrange the new hero.
• Fixed a Card Collection crash on MacOS 10.14.1.

Draft Fixes

• Fixed some issues related to losing connection to the Artifact Network while drafting.
• Fixed an issue where closing the draft screen wouldn't always take you back to the correct dashboard page.
• You can now abandon a draft gauntlet before you register a deck.
• Added additional sounds and effects to the draft screen.

In-Game Fixes

• Fixed some issues and improved performance when summoning >300 units at a time.
• Improved the effects for Crippling Blow, Trebuchets, and Lucent Beam.
• Improved the voice-over quality for Jolixia, Meepo, and Kanna.
• Fixed an issue that would cause debris to persist in strange places when improvements are destroyed.
• Fixed Pick Off panning back to the previous lane too quickly after the spell's damage resolved.
• Fixed some display issues when inspecting cards in a 16x10 aspect ratio.
• Fixed a missing sound during board destruction.
• Fixed a crash that would happen when you disconnect from a game while hovering a card.
• Fixed an issue that would sometimes result in visual corruption of card and tower stats when in wide lanes in non-standard resolutions.
• Brightened the visibility of the heroes in the fountain display on the HUD.
• Updated the textures for pathing cards.

UI Fixes

• Significant improvements to general UI performance and responsiveness.
• Fixed some crashes and bad behavior that would happen when mashing the keyboard in various parts of the UI.
• Fixed a crash that would happen while in the settings menu or the credits.
• Fixed the Global Matchmaking deck loader not showing the most recently-used deck on game launch.
• Fixed an issue where some players with lots and lots of Steam friends would experience massive performance degradation.
• Added new high-resolution menu backgrounds for players in 4K.
• Added new effects to claiming rewards from an event.
• Added a display for the number of unopened packs remaining to the pack opening screen.
• Pushing Find Next Match after a Gauntlet game will now take you to the correct Gauntlet page instead of the main menu.
• Improved visibility of the matchmaking cancel button.
• You can no longer restart the tutorial while opening a pack, or while matchmaking, or while in a private lobby, all of which caused crazy things to happen.
• Shared decks are now shown at the top of a deck loader's listings.
• Updated the localization files.

Hotfix

Hotfix for game input bug after leaving ESC Menu