Hi everyone! We’re busy preparing the game for our upcoming Kongregate launch, and now is as good a time as any to improve the early campaign experience. Coming up we have a bunch of changes in the pipeline, primarily to low-level priest cards and racial skills. Additionally, some (primarily multiplayer) cards that we feel didn’t end up quite where we wanted them after our last balance changes are seeing some tweaks.

All the changes below should be up on the test server by the time you’re reading this, so don’t hesitate to test them out! We’re very interested in hearing from players on two counts: first, how the changes affect the campaign; second, how the changes affect multiplayer. It’s possible some of our changes and additions are format-warping, and that’s why we’re testing them before implementing them. As always, actual gameplay-informed feedback will be much more valuable to us than theory-based reactions, so get testing! Flaxative will be collecting playtest reports and rewarding players with pizza for participating in the testing process. (Refer to this test server guide.)

 

Priests

First, let’s go over some mechanics changes.

Self Targeting

The biggest change we’re making to priests is a fundamental mechanical change to the way Assist (white) cards work. It used to be that some of these cards would say “May self target,” and that meant a priest could play those cards solo. You’ll notice if you log into the test server that there are now 0 cards with this rule. That’s because all Assists self-target now. Heal? You can heal yourself. Buff? You can buff yourself. A constant weakness of priests has always been that many of their strongest cards cease to function when their allies are dead or out of line of sight; we’re stripping that weakness away. Note that this change may make some cards too strong. We’ll keep our eye on that possibility over the course of the playtest.

 

Frenzy

Frenzy cards have had two problems historically. The first: besides Mass Frenzy, they couldn’t buff the caster. We’ve addressed this issue immediately above: Unholy Frenzy and Righteous Frenzy can both self-target now. The second issue: because frenzy didn’t affect magic attacks, the cards discouraged some types of builds—for the most part, if you carried frenzy, you wanted as many melee dudes as possible, as if you allied with wizards your frenzy cards became less valuable.

Frenzy now affects all damaging attacks. Magic attacks benefit less from frenzy—Frenzy X adds X to melee damage and X-1 to magic damage—but there is still some positive interaction.

Our hope is that this change encourages more diverse builds with one of each class, as well as more variety among damage wizard builds. Of course, most importantly, frenzy cards should become universally more useful in singleplayer.

Some cards with Frenzy thematically don’t work as magic buffing cards (not to mention any balance complications). Frenzy Aura, Horned Plates, and Blind Rage remain functionally identical, carrying the new keyword “Melee frenzy.”

Other frenzy-related changes:
• Unholy Wellspring now gives Frenzy 4 (instead of +3 damage to all attacks).
• Mass Frenzy now gives Frenzy 2 (down from 3).

 

New Priest Cards

The third exciting thing for priests is that a lot of their lackluster low-level cards are being replaced. Some of you may mourn the loss of hilariously poor cards like Wavering Faith and Bungled Heal, but we’re optimistic that the replacements will be more useful in the campaign. It would also be neat if some of them became borderline playable in multiplayer.

Let’s meet the new family (note: much placeholder artwork).

 

Armor Of Faith is basically a Rusty Armor you cast on someone. It can prevent more damage than Minor Heal restores, and it stacks with the target’s normal armor cards. It replaces Bungled Heal.

Surestrike Blessing replaces Wavering Faith as a cooler way to get around blocks and armor in the campaign. This is one we think we might have pushed too hard, so please, put pressure on it when you playtest.

Curse Of Fragility is a targeted, one-turn Vulnerable, replacing Bad Medicine.

I’m including Bad Luck here because it has changed so much it’s basically a whole new card. Blast enemy mobs with this cone to draw out or negate blocks en masse!

Consuming Spear is now Draining Chop—more interesting in singeplayer, still quite good. Besides, we felt we’d given vampires a bit too much range.

Avenging Touch used to be Touch Of Pain, a monster card that snuck into Attack of the Artifacts on two player items. It’s changed slightly (it no longer heals the user), and it’s also going to show up a whole lot more—I believe it’s on 10 items now instead of 2.

Two more cards bite the dust: Healing Benediction and Healing Presence. They’re being replaced variously by Healing Pulse and Avenging Touch.

 

Other Priest Changes

Cards:
• Cleansing Presence no longer heals enemies.
• Healing Pulse no longer heals enemies.
• Spear Of Darkness deals 3 damage once more.
• Minor Heal range increased to 6.
• Demonic Feedback self-damage reduced to 4; range increased to 6.
• Inspiration range increased to 6.

Items:
• Replace all Healing Benediction and Healing Presence with Healing Pulse
• Unskilled Divine gets Righteous Frenzy to replace Wavering Faith
• Empty Pockets gets Minor Heal, Minor Heal, Armor of Faith
• Totem of Totec, Eagle Bowl, Red Shaman’s Blade, Shadowleaf Maquah, Infernal Trinket, Beech Roots, Maple Roots get Avenging Touch instead of Healing Pulse.
• Flawed Relic gets one Avenging Touch to replace Healing Pulse
• Uncertain Juju renamed to Fragile Juju
• Uncertain Healing Orb to Sure Healing Orb
• Armor of Doubt renamed to Armor of Surety

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That should about cover it for priests.

Read about other upcoming changes here:
• Racial Skills
• General Changes

Remember to help us test these changes on the test server if you’re so inclined. Thanks for reading, and happy hunting! (Reminder: How to use the test server.)