Patch notes: November 30th, 2016

Announcements
#1

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



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.

Tiki Healer
2/6 (was 2/5)
Gift - You gain 6 Life. (was 5)

###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 Vampire
Now has Dash 1.

Ostregoth
Now has Slam.

###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 Yak
Now 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: Click here to visit our forums for a full rundown of all the balance changes by our design team.

  • The Faeria Team
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#2

The following cards are available for Full Disenchanting for one week:

  • Ruunin’s Shrine
  • Primeval Colossus
  • Ancient Boar
  • Boulder Thrower
  • Volcanic Colossus
  • Windstorm Colossus
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#3

The following bugged cards have been fixed:

  • Voice of Hunger, Oath of Oblivion, Doom Scythe, and Demon Wrangler were not operating correctly.
  • Shaytan Vampire had Dash 2, now it correctly has Dash 1
    -Windstorm Collosus incorrectly had Slam. It now does not.
1 Like
#4

A couple errors were fixed on the card preview images:

Annoying Gnat is correctly set to Epic
Doomsday wording has been changed, but still functions the same. Now says “Halve your life (rounded down)” instead of “Lose half your life (rounded up).”

1 Like
#5

I cant login now…

#6

Have you tried restarting Steam and Faeria?

#7

Why not Ignis!!! He is even worse than before now!!! And Warstorm Champion is now much worse as well! Why do they not get full disenchant, while Boulder Thrower and Primeval Colossus do???

#8

We encourage you to give both the new Ignus and Warstorm a try. Both are cards that saw very little play previously, and ones we’ve been wanting to give a bump for some time now.

We’re confident these cards are much easier to use now, and more powerful in general.

#9

They may be better to some people, but your “slogan” for full memoria refund is “if the card has had a major change” (or something along those lines), not “if it is made worse”. This is a major change for Ignis and Warstorm (complete rework for Warstorm and almost complete rework for Ignis), so I think that there should be a full refund for them both. Besides, Ignis is much worse in my opinion (Warstorm is OK), and I have tried him out.

1 Like
#10

I agree, I don’t have either of those cards but it only seems fair that those who c the crafted the previous versions because they liked them get to decide whether they still want the card.

#11

How about simply making it the creature that was first at the well that collects faeria. Why does it need to be so complicated?

#12

Then you still have to remember and keep track of which creature was first at the well. That’s added tracking complexity that we always seek to remove. With this system you will always know exactly what will happen when looking at any stage of the game and knowing no previous turns.

We’ve made a judgement call here, and have always done so in the past. There is no black and white “slogan.” The goal isn’t to give out free memoria any time we make a balance change - that would be severely suffocating to us during this Early Access period. We need to be free to make the appropriate adjustments to maintain the health of the game without flooding everyone’s inventory with crafting material. We feel we are already very generous in this regard, and often give the benefit of the doubt when it’s a close call of whether a design is better or wose.

Let’s be realistic here, there really were very few (if any people) actively using these cards on a regular basis. They simply were not good. The new versions are generally more versatile and powerful. How much better they are remains to be seen, but we will not be offering memoria refunds for them.

#13

Fine, fine. I understand. You don’t want people to get too much memoria for free so they keep making in-app purchases. And I know it is not you personally that makes the decisions. I’ll try Ignis some more, but my first impression after a couple of trials was that he is even more useless than before. Just +1 damage to his ability would’ve made him a good card… :cry:

P.S. This has nothing to do with my original comment, that is done with. I’m just wondering: How much sway do you Community Managers have with the devs? I just don’t want to waste my time posting in the future if you can’t do anything anyway. I’m not trying to provoke you here, I’m truly curious about this. :slight_smile:

#14

It’s more that we don’t want to give away memoria for free when it’s not really necessary. The entire reason we implemented the Full DE system in the first place was to be fair to players who become stuck with decks and cards they can no longer use. We implemented it because we do care.

We have routine direct communication with the developers and report player feedback and discussions on a regular basis. Consider us the eyes, ears, and on some occasions the mouth - after we brush our teeth properly.

#15

You are very fast to answer! Thank you.

P.S. May I ask what brand of toothpaste you use? :grin:

#16

I understand that remembering the order of the creation of your and your opponents creatures for mining and damage in the previous iteration was far too complex (and is in fact completely arbitrary as well). However, it is not too difficult to remember which creature you are putting next to a well first particularly if you are doing it with intent. This also gives a player more control over which creature he wants to have collect, which I think should be a part of the strategy. To me this makes sense, and adds to the strategy of timing and location of creature placement.

The alternative makes sense for damage, as AOE/board effects should occur “instantaneously”, and remembering unit placement of your and your opponents units across the board would be really difficult. But remembering which units are collecting is easier, since it can be done on a turn to turn basis and because the number of units collecting is usually not high. An “aura” could also be used to show which creature will do the collecting, or an animation could show which unit collects at the start of the turn, this would make things far more clear and get rid of the need to memorise anything.

Just some thoughts and ideas to consider for the future, if they have not been already.

#17

Also, it introduces an asymmetry of the board (well, really small, I admit) : the one on the left position for double collect will collect from the well, even if there is another of your creatures next to it; whereas on the right, if there is another creture next to the well, the double collector will not be the one to collect

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