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Patch Notes/2022-03-02

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Note: These patch notes combine the text of three articles from the DWD website:

Eternal Live Balance Update – March 2nd, 2022[]

Hello, I’m Patrick Sullivan, one of the designers on Eternal, and what follows is our latest set of live balance changes. We are fresh off our recent World Championships, and are set to begin our 2022 Organized Play season with an Expedition Open March 25th-27th. We feel that now is an ideal time for a comprehensive set of changes to both Expedition and Throne.

Both formats were on display at the 2021 World Championships, and our competitors showed up with a variety of factions, strategies, and the games themselves were excellent. This matches my own experiences in our live environment, and with the data we’ve received. In contrast to the most recent live balance changes, which were necessary to remedy an unacceptable situation, these are much closer to “quality of life improvements”, removing some power and improving the play patterns of a few definitional cards, along with a handful of buffs to underrepresented cards and strategies.

Nerfs[]

  • Dinosaur Nest – Now transforms at the start of your fourth turn, after playing three units (previously transformed immediately after playing the third unit)

Note: As Dinosaur Nest is a Micro Campaign card from Valley Beyond, refunds will be offered in Gold instead of Shiftstone

Dinosaur Nest was the most influential card in both formats from Valley Beyond, facilitating a number of strategies–Dinosaurs, “go wide” tokens, sacrifice-for-value, and nuts-and-bolts attacking decks. We appreciate a lot of what is going on here–the flavor, the decks it facilitates, and giving an appealing, inexpensive buildaround for a unit type disproportionately composed of more expensive cards. The card is a bit stronger than is ideal, but not to a degree that’s inherently problematic, and the World Championships featured a variety of novel reactive cards in an effort to manage it.

The power level is a secondary concern to the play pattern–the strength of Sheltered Valley, in conjunction with two of the three skills (Killer and Charge) having significant immediate impact. This is a lot of where the power comes from, and it is an incredibly stressful experience to be on the other side of. It also dampens a range of counterplay–you can’t be comfortable setting up blockers with Killer and Flying as part of the range, nor are sweepers promised to function against Charge.

We hope this change does a number of things all at once–reduce the overall rate, give players another turn to find a Ruin effect to prevent Sheltered Valley from emerging, reducing the strength of the second copy early in the game, but most importantly allow players to know the full shape of skills among the created Dinosaurs before decided how to best respond before Sheltered Valley is part of the equation.

  • Helena, Skyguide – Contract now gives +1/+1, Flying, and Endurance (was +3/+4, Flying, and Endurance)

Another card that has become a staple in both formats, Helena, Skyguide is one of the top performers from Cold Hunt. Though we still like the design in spirit, we wish the Contract was used more sparingly as a tactical combat option than a core part of facilitating bursty kills. With its stats, skills, and cost, we believe this card is still a plausible competitive option, but hopefully with a healthier total range of play.

Two long-time competitive hallmarks, Sediti and Xumucan are crowding out other options among five cost units. Part of this is their overall rate, combined with their pip requirements constraining other options in multi-factioned decks. With a slight reduction in rate, we hope to produce more satisfying counterplay and a wider representation of more expensive units.

The experience here was just a little too fast and intense, especially with multiple copies early in the game. The size of the transformed unit is not a trivial part of the card, and speaks to how easy it is to remove or block, already no small task with its ability to pick off smaller blockers.

Sideways buffs/nerfs[]

(Though the cards listed below are not strictly worse, they will still be eligible for refunds.)

  • Grodov's Burden – Now 6-cost, Your single-faction units have +1/+1 and Exalted. Spellcraft 3: Play Bury the past. Pay 6 to draw a card. If it’s a single faction unit, play it.

Grovod’s Burden is easily the most popular Market target in Throne, though that may say as much about Time’s overall popularity as it does about the card’s strength. That said, the card has proven slightly too reliable at grinding out long games of all types, from those centered around large units to those about card drawing and removal. Moving the cost from 5 to 6 removes a little bit of the overall rate and removes the interaction with Crack the Earth, a huge contributor to its current level of ubiquity.

In exchange, the card is giving +1/+1 to your single-faction units. This is a particularly appealing bonus to get when you’re taking advantage of Exalted synergies, and can help move a game towards its conclusion.

  • Talir, Timejumper – Charge, Inscribe, When a spell is played directly on Talir or a spell is played on the enemy turn, she travels to the start of the next turn.

Talir is picking up Inscribe and slightly different functionality. We believe the new text box is overall much stronger than the previous one, but all the different situations involving this card are tricky enough that we’re capturing in this category. This design is fun and evocative, and the combination of Inscribe and protection against slow sweepers like Harsh Rule should give some more room for exploration in competitive play.

Again, we are predicting that this version is a significant increase in power. Praxis midrange strategies have floundered in popularity and win rate compared to other Time options, and Heart of the Vault is that archetype’s most iconic card. We believe the power level of the Throne format is such that this will be an appealing option among many, not a hindrance to diversity as it has been in the past.

Nightfall Buffs:[]

Nightfall makes its return to Expedition with the 3/2/2022 Draft Pack update. We identified a few designs to receive straightforward buffs to make the cards more plausible in Expedition and Throne. Nocturnal Observer has an interesting package of incentives and synergies, Extinguish could be a fringe playable removal spell depending on the shape of the format, and Baying Serasaur and Bloodscent Avisaur are both popular designs that could potentially give a new dimension to Dinosaur synergies. Even if any or all of these cards fall short in constructed, they are materially more powerful in Draft, providing that format with a significantly different experience to explore alongside Cold Hunt.

Non-Nightfall Buffs:[]

A handful of old favorites that were short for constructed are getting a bit of a boost. All of the above cards incentivize an interactive game and facilitate strategies that are popular but not currently a part of the competitive experience. Torq and Jotun Birth Song both speak to bigger, more synergy-driven version of Yeti, Tattoo Dragon and Jawbone Greatsword help support Fire midrange strategies with novel incentives and synergies, and Shatterglass Mage is the type of aggressively slanted, interactive, dynamic midrange card that’s generally healthy to have around in larger doses. Lastly, Word of Sol is a novel, fringe option for a certain class of deck that doesn’t appear much in the current live environment.

To celebrate the return of Nightfall, we will be offering a special discount on the Night Lurker Totem in the Eternal Store!

From now until March 9th this totem will be available for only 500 Gems! Pick yours up today!


Expedition Format and Eternal Draft Packs Card List[]

As part of the March 2022 Live Balance Update, We are also updating the Eternal Draft Pack and the draft pack order.

This update to the Eternal Draft Pack focuses on the return of the Nightfall mechanic. You can read a quick Nightfall refresher here. If you’re looking for tips on how to get started with or improve your drafting, check out this post!

The cards new to Expedition with this update, and the full contents of the draft packs can be seen below.

Draft Pack Order:[]

Eternal Draft Pack Cold Hunt Cold Hunt Eternal Draft Pack

Expedition Legal Sets:[]

Cold Hunt Hour of Glass Revelations Eternal Draft Pack

Legal Promo Cards:[]

Cards New to Expedition This Update:[]

Eternal Valley Beyond Patch Notes 3/2/22[]

Today’s patch includes a variety of bug and card fixes. The full patch notes can be seen below.

Bug Fixes:[]

  • Fixed an issue where Intrigue units didn’t properly update their cost when the player reached 5 power
  • Fixed an issue where Deleph, Free Prophet would fail to trigger in some circumstances
  • Fixed an issue where Huntmaster Vikrum didn’t change ownership of a unit’s attachments when returning it
  • Fixed an issue where Ghodan Cold-Heart would fail to deal damage if it drew a Fate card
  • Fixed an issue where Ramba's Challenge could grant an enemy unit Invulnerable through Aegis
  • Fixed an issue where some Aegis-granting abilities occurred after Orene's Scepter’s ability
  • Fixed an issue where Ravenous Wurm didn’t immediately update its stats when stolen
  • Fixed an issue where Gatecrash Trooper failed to draw a card when drawn by Draconic Looting
  • Fixed an issue where curses played by Restrained Action didn’t reveal Stealth units
  • Fixed an issue where Brigade Hall’s ability didn’t play VFX at the selected unit
  • Fixed an issue where Hidden Crusader didn’t trigger when stolen by things like Madness
  • Fixed an issue where Grand Suppressor didn’t suppress Manacles’ summon
  • Fixed an issue where Grand Suppressor attempted to suppress Ky, Awakened Master’s ability
  • Fixed an issue where Feeding Time would kill the additional pig played by Glen Fasciata
  • Fixed an issue where Invasive Species copied itself before triggers like Nullblade could affect it
  • Fixed an issue where Recruitment Effort failed to trigger from cards being discarded from the market
  • Fixed an issue where Rule the Skies could deal 6 damage to non-Flying units if previously played on one
  • Fixed an issue where Lifesteal could fail to heal the full amount when Deadly units were multi-blocked

Card Fixes:[]

  • Removed an inaccurate Infiltrate hanger from Bloodsucking Skeeter
  • Corrected non-English text for several cards and buttons
  • Corrected inconsistent templating on some daily quests
  • Corrected inconsistent templating on cards that make units unable to die
  • Corrected inconsistent templating on cards that create units that will sacrifice themselves at the end of the turn
  • Corrected inconsistent spelling of Judgement in card names.

As always, we appreciate your feedback and support as we continue to improve Eternal. If you encounter an issue or need help, please drop us a line at Support@DireWolfDigital.com so we can see what’s up.

If you’re enjoying Eternal, please take a moment to rate & review the game to help spread the word to other players!

And don’t forget to sign up for the Dire Wolf Newsletter to get one free Eternal pack each week, as well as all the latest news and announcements from Dire Wolf!

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