What’s Kraken - Patch #86

Team Horizon

Jan 19, 2022

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Patch will be live Thursday, Jan 20th around 6:00pm EST!

Octavian isn’t the only one with 8 options! Now the player who goes first gets an additional card in their opening card selection, so they have eight rather than seven to choose from. This change should help keep things in tow with the player going second. Aside from that, there's just a couple small things this patch. No biggie. It’s not a large catch.

📺 Take a look at the glow! Red means ouchie boo boo, green means yay!

New Features ⭐

  • Added a Matches tab to profile pages, so you can see your match history.
  • Marketplace & Library filters are now saved in the URL, so you can bookmark your favorite filters in your browser 🌟
  • When previewing playing a card—or attacking with a unit—they will glow. Units that will be damaged will glow red and units that will be healed will glow blue-green.
  • The spacebar will now act like clicking the end-of-game "skip" and "continue" buttons. Check out this video to view qualitative feedback from our internal testing team on this subtle but effective feature.
  • Added an Advanced option in-game to make the spacebar end your turn and confirm your card selection.
  • Added a Live Channels section at the bottom of the menu screen that displays live Twitch streamers playing Skyweaver!

Improvements 🦾

  • Offset the damage preview numbers slightly higher on mobile, so your hand doesn't cover them as much.
  • Scaled down the "✖️" in X-cost spells in the market & library, so they don't touch the edges of the mana cost gem.
  • The Lifesteal animation no longer plays if you do zero damage with a Lifesteal unit.
  • Added a countdown for when you'll win the game in the VS screen due to your opponent failing to connect.
  • The account creation date under Stats on your profile page now shows the exact day (month, day, year).

Changes ⚙️

  • The first player will now receive an additional card in their opening card selection. This means they can pick their starting four cards from a selection of eight, rather than seven.
  • Removed tooltips that aren't related to the card you're hovering, and are only related to its attachment or a card it references. This change is intended to increase clarity. You can always see tooltips for attached & related cards by clicking on the main card and scrolling over.
  • Moved the hand up slightly to make playing cards easier on mobile.
  • If your account has been banned, you'll now see an error and a link for more info.
  • The number of Silver cards you'll receive from Leaderboard Rewards now always has a purple background, to prevent confusion where players thought they were going to receive gold cards from Leaderboard Rewards.

Bugfixes 🐛

  • The total number of unique cards available now auto-updates when we add new cards, so no more “/500 cards” labels 🙂
  • Fixed a bug where the Discord links didn’t work on mobile.
  • Fixed a bug where the Lore & Tooltips buttons couldn't be clicked & were miss-positioned on mobile.
  • Fixed layout issues on the "Get Conquest Tickets" page where page content would overflow horizontally.
  • Fixed layout issues where content and notifications would extend beyond the safe padding areas of the device/screen.
  • Fixed an issue where the "New" badge on articles would sometimes move to an already seen article.
  • Fixed a bug where tied ranked games showed random letters in the UI instead of showing your current rank unchanged.
  • Fixed a bug where the hero could get stuck rendering above its attachment & the end-of-game screens.
  • Fixed a bug where the game could crash if you disconnected & reconnected while the emote picker was open.
  • Fixed bugs where the wrong rank icons were being used in Ranked Discovery mode.
  • Fixed a bug causing the error "no state for simulate". What does that even mean!? 😂
  • Fixed Conquest Tickets using the wrong icon for the in-app purchases.
  • Fixed a MASSIVE number of issues relating to errors loading into the game, especially getting stuck on a screen with the Island & the Skyweaver logo.
  • Fixed a bug where you could get stuck on the VS screen.
  • Fixed a bug where the Card Selection timer would start before you left the VS screen.
  • Fixed a bug where the Advanced Options screen couldn't be used during Card Selection.
  • Fixed a bug where you could click End Turn through the Advanced Options screen.
  • Fixed a bug where reconnecting during your card selection would not show the card selection timer.
  • Fixed a bug where reconnecting during your card selection would keep the card selection cards facing backwards. Nani?
  • Fixed a bug where hovering a card with an attachment of a different rarity showed the wrong rarity for the attachment.
  • Fixed a bug where a Gold or Silver unit's attachment would look like a Base card if you returned the unit from field to hand after playing its spell.
  • Fixed the lore on Raise Arms 🙌
  • Fixed a bug causing the error “entity already contains a component of type ForegroundInhibitor”, usually related to reconnecting during card selection.

Soft Launch

Cards

It’s patch time again! This week we have a number of balance changes targeting some particularly powerful and uninteractive decks in the metagame, as well as an exciting buff for the player who plays first. To offset some of the advantage the second player gets from being able to react and having more mana, we’ve given the first player an additional card in their opening card selection, so they can pick their starting four cards from a selection of eight, rather than seven. This helps to add more consistency to the first player’s early game, giving them an edge to help balance out the advantage of going second vs first.


Discovery Rates


Talonous (1040)

Talonous - Summon: If an enemy has stealth, gain +1/+2 and guard.

    Text: Summon: If an enemy has stealth, gain +1/+1 and guard. Summon: If an enemy has stealth, gain +1/+2 and guard.

A minor buff to an underwhelming card, now gains +1 more health when your opponent has a stealth unit in play, which should increase its viability a bit.


Honk (1077)

Honk - Play: Your hero attacks target enemy unit.

    Power: 3 2

A small power nerf to a card with a high win rate and versatility that was being played ubiquitously in Agility heroes. Honk would often perform as a removal spell, Banner source, and a way to push damage all tied into one package. We felt that it’s ability to push damage was a little too strong, especially considering that it often already traded 1 for 1 or 1 for 2 frequently.


Montage (1063)

Montage - Your hero attacks target enemy.

    Cost: 2 3

    Text: Ready your hero. Your hero attacks target enemy.

A berf/simplification here, raising Montage 3c to slow down some of the combos with Flock slightly and buffing the effect to make it simpler to use. Montage now allows your hero to attack an enemy target, meaning it can be used to hit Stealth units or the enemy hero directly, bypassing Guards, and can be used before using your normal attack for the turn, allowing that attack to benefit from the +1 damage from Banner as well.


Grim Reprisal (1066)

Grim Reprisal - Do 3 damage to target unit and 3 damage to your hero.

    Text: Do 3 damage to target unit and 2 damage to your hero. Do 3 damage to target unit and 3 damage to your hero.

A small reversion, Grim Reprisal is consistently among the top 3 Agility cards in Constructed, so we’re returning the face damage it deals to three, from two, which should be a minor nerf overall, especially since Cards like Disciple of Gusto have allowed Agility to manage its self-damaging effects a bit more.


Waterline (2017)

Waterline - Destroy the lowest cost units.

    Cost: 3 4

Nerf to a really powerful Wisdom removal tool, at four mana Waterline is likely to be far less appealing, but its ability to kill both wide boards of small units and multiple larger units (if they shared a cost) pushed it over the edge slightly, and it was by far the most played Wisdom card, so a Nerf felt reasonable.


Ill Will (2038)

Ill Will - Attach Hex to enemy units. Give the enemy's left and right-most cards in hand +1 cost and reveal them.

    Cost: 4 3

    Text: Attach Hex to enemy units. Give the enemy's left and right-most cards in hand +2 cost and reveal them. Attach Hex to enemy units. Give the enemy's left and right-most cards in hand +1 cost and reveal them.

With Waterline moving up to 4c, Ill Will moves down to the 3c slot, along with reducing the cost nerf effect from +2c to +1c, putting a bit more emphasis on the mass hex part of the card and offering an earlygame AOE option to replace Waterline in the 3c slot. The delayed nature of Hex’s removal effect is also thematic for Wisdom.


Octavian (2029)

Octavian - Inspire Water: Give the left and right-most cards in your hand -1 cost.

    Text: Inspire Water: Gain 1 mana. Inspire Water: Give the left and right-most cards in your hand -1 cost.

This was a change that was spurred into effect by certain decks, but long term honestly felt near inevitable. Being able to generate mana is an incredibly abusable ability, and it was only a matter of time until Octavian broke something. While we do enjoy combo decks, combos using octavian were very grindy, often taking 3-5 minute turns to establish a win while the opponent was forced to watch without any hope of interaction, making for a pretty miserable experience. This change still leaves the door open for some combos via discounting your hand, but limits the possible range they have, and allows Octavian to get more value from a few water spells, as it now generates twice the effective ‘mana’ but the change from raw mana gain to discounting cards in hand should make it less abusable overall.


Grover (2033)

Grover - Summon: Discard a 1 cost unit of each element from your deck.

    Text: Summon: Discard 1 cost and less units in your deck. Summon: Discard a 1 cost unit of each element from your deck.

A toning down of a particularly scary card, Grover’s ability to instantly turn a 30 card deck to a 15 card one in a single trigger made decks built around it a bit too consistent and allowed them to turbo out particularly scary plays a bit too quickly. Grover now only discards one 1c unit of each element, which still allows it to set up rainbow synergies like World Tree and Sky Phoenix effectively, but limits the amount of deck thinning a single Grover trigger can provide, requiring decks seeking to take advantage of Grover to either copy it to get its trigger off twice, or adjust their strategy to be a bit slower to compensate for its reduced deck thinning ability.


Archivist (2045)

Archivist - Inspire Spell: Give your hero +1 health.

    Text: Inspire Spell: Give your hero health equal to the spell's cost. Inspire Spell: Give your hero +1 health.

    Traits: None banner

    Health: 4 3

Another change to a particularly scary card, and one that was contemplated for a while. While cards like Archivist have proven sustainable in other games, when combined with Skyweavers uncapped mana, the amount of passive healing archivist offered scaled too effectively into the lategame, leading to extremely stally and long games when combined with spells that possessed scaling costs like Study, Smite, Invest, etc.


Twist & Turn (2050)

Twist & Turn - Dust target unit to draw  and summon a unit of its element for its player. If it's an ally, give it +2/+1.

    Text: Dust target unit to draw and summon a unit of its element for its player. If it's an ally, attach Barrier to it. Dust target unit to draw and summon a unit of its element for its player. If it's an ally, give it +2/+1.

A small buff to an underperforming card which was at the literal bottom of win rates in Wisdom, allowing it to buff the unit it summons (if it’s an ally), making it a bit more effective in Constructed and Discovery alike.


Xythe (3007)

Xythe - Your hero has wither.

    Power: 1 2

    Health: 3 2

Xythe was a little too good at destroying a lot of small units or nullifying large units. When combined with it’s attached spell’s ability to apply Chains and Wither damage, removing blockers or Hero Armor, it felt too versatile. We’ve opted to reduce its health by 1 to help players destroy it with Banner and cheaper removal more easily. We’ve given it 1 more power to compensate with its newfound fragility, and bring it into line with its sister card Cube Jr.


Nature's Grasp (2003)

Nature's Grasp - Summon two Elderwood with +1 health. Attach Roots to enemy units.

    Text: Summon two Elderwood with +1 health. Attach Roots with +1 cost to enemy units. Summon two Elderwood with +1 health. Attach Roots to enemy units.

In playtesting we found this card to be extremely impactful and disruptive, often ending in essentially a turn 3 win against aggressive strategies. We like cards that provide counterplay to aggro, but Grasp felt too efficient for its cost, so we removed the increased cost from Roots.


Disciple of Gusto (1100)

Disciple of Gusto - Your hero cannot lose health during your turn.

    Power: 4 3

Disciple has a high win rate in Constructed and Discovery. It provides a Banner source and lets you hit large units with your face worry free. We love that aspect of the card, but the overall Stealth/Banner/Shroud package coupled it’s ability to push damage was slightly too powerful. As such, we’ve reduced its power by 1 to make it less potent.

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