Oversky is filled with a vast variety of floating creatures, but none so great as the wondrous skywhale. While most wander sedately through the skies, their focus merely on feeding their massive bulk, the most ancient skywhales take on a deeper intelligence that drives them towards a more lofty purpose. These wise and venerable creatures are unique, driven not only to personal goals, but to stand against the corruption of the Oversky by outsiders who seek to despoil its clouds and slaughter the gentle skywhales where they float.
Now, since the discovery of the Oversky and subsequent exploitation of its abundant natural resources, only a few of these magnificent beasts remain. One of the most notorious of these has been given a name by those who have been unfortunate enough to encounter its ferocity: Mobie.
Balance changes
- Azure Skywhale
- Card rarity changed from Epic to Legendary
- Name changed to Mobie, Azure Skywhale.
One of the most iconic cards of the Oversky is being shifted into the Legendary slot. It’s been made clear to us this card is creating an environment where players feel too vulnerable when playing specific decks or playstyles that involve investing Faeria into large, powerful creatures. We believe that by decreasing the prevalence of this particular card, players can feel more comfortable playing a wider variety of decks.
- Earthcraft
- Changed to transform one of your existing lands.
This change aims to make it slightly more difficult for Green supported decks to ramp so quickly to the high color thresholds necessary to play very powerful cards, while at the same time providing a small degree of increased utility. By design, Green is meant to have the most powerful land ramp in the game, but we’d like to see more diversity in the ramp cards players choose to include in their decks.
- Flash Salmon
- Now has Divine (Cannot be targeted by events or abilities)
Flash Salmon is one of our favorite cards from the Oversky, but we’re not entirely happy with how effective it can be combined with cards like Demon Wrangler in aggressive Yellow decks. Rather than Salmon be so frequently used as sacrifice fodder, the addition of Divine should see them more often disappearing… in a flash.
- Sky Yak
- Faeria cost increased from 3 to 4
Without the proper tools available, a board half-full of Sky Yaks can be extremely difficult for many decks to deal with. We’re making it a little more of a task to reach that point in the game by increasing the Faeria investment required.
- Dune Drake
- Increased from 3/4 to 4/4
- Desert cost increased from 1 to 2
Dune Drake has an interesting history. It’s very likely that, after this patch, this card will become the single most adjusted card on the live servers. After observing the effects of its latest incarnation, we’re moving full circle back to the Dune Drake of March 2016. With the recent change to Flash Wind, we’re no longer concerned with aggressive decks using Drake in a very unfriendly way. The goal of this change is to provide another option for Yellow Flyer decks to include, and make it a more sensible card to draft in Pandora. Dune Drake has had a long journey - at times completely dominating the meta, but we hope he’s finally found his happy place in life.
Disenchanting
Earthcraft will be disenchantable at full value for one week after today’s patch. Skywhale will be moved to Legendary, and player collections will be adjusted to contain only one.
As Oversky cards are neither craftable nor disenchantable, no other compensation is needed.
Localisation
After today’s patch, Earthcraft’s text, Flash Salmon’s text, and Skywhale’s name will be set to English across all languages. We apologize for the lack of translation, but we plan on making a significant pass to all languages at some point in the future to fixing these issues and more.
Only five cards?
Yes, we recognize the amount of changes today are small in number - but we believe the impact will be significant. We’ve heard many voices from the community lamenting the dominance of the Skywhale. We are not interested in furthering the frustration of our players by keeping such an unpopular card so readily available. Today’s changes should allow more deck types to come out of hiding and explore the meta more freely.
We’ve had a long time to observe the current meta in both casual and competitive environments. Overall, we believe a decent amount of healthy deck diversity already exists. Top decks are often varied from one tournament to the next, and the competitive ladder meta is at a place where it is still shifting slightly week to week. That does not mean we believe the state of the game is perfect by any stretch, but we hope today’s patch only increases the amount of diversity players encounter.
As always, we continue to read, watch, and listen to your thoughts. Thank you for your feedback, and we’ll speak to you again soon.
- The Faeria Team
