Going to be 15 late stream team, traffic has defeated me but I’m running into the office. Can’t wait to see you all after my break!!!
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Brief stream recap:
- 5.3 preview stream coming next week
- Christmas event will be bigger than 6th anniversary; anniversary was really small due to COVID messing with things
- Showing off Baphomet, releasing next week
… had to get off from this point, feel free to add anything else!
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the update is next week as well
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That was pretty much the stream.
So… as the preview stream is next week, I’ll be up for stream notetaking duties as usual. Will be a bit odd going into this one cold turkey and writing from scratch for a change.
I’d agree with that. Update might be as soon as shortly after the stream ends. At worst, there’s only going to be a couple of days of lag between the preview stream and the update launching. Too close to Christmas to push all the holiday content back any further IMO, especially if there is a holiday advent calendar (which from today’s streams sounds like there is one).
10 Likes
In the middle of the first ever Guild wars + Tower of Doom week. That should work out well.
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Our 5.3 stream is today!!! (With guest Ozball!)
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Starting time in some generally used unit like GMT would be nice
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The stream is likely starting at its usual time, which would be 20 minutes from this post.
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6:30 pm PST
9:30 pm EST
next day 3:30 am CET
next day 11:30 am JST
2 Likes
02.30 GMT 
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5.3 Update Stream Summary
December 14, 2020
Stream has ended.
Warbands
- Aimed at newer players, gives pre-built teams that are ready to be played.
- Five warbands, each with their own theme/playstyle.
- New banners and team slots for experienced players.
- Purchased with 50 WarCoins from the shop, each. (New tab on top of shop screen).
- Once purchased, players can buy booster packs for 15 WarCoins for that warband. Gives traitstones, souls, additional copies of warband troops randomly.
- WarCoins can be obtained via the adventure board, login rewards, and directly purchased through the shop as a microtransaction.
- Warbands can be cycled to offer new warbands by the devs in the future.
Shrines
- Completely optional offer-based content.
- New type of offer for gold plus additional resources.
- Current shrine is Shrine of Cunning (can change in future).
- Gold from all battles fill the shrine (1 to 1 ratio, not deducted from player battle winnings).
- When the shrine is half full, the offer becomes purchasable as a microtransaction.
- The offer improves if the shine becomes full.
- Once full, the offer will expire in 48 hours, at which point the shrine will reset. The same offer will repeat until the shrine changes in a future update.
- Offer is based on the player’s account level.
Tutorial Changes
- New account tutorials have been reworked.
- Player will be asked if they have experience with match-3 RPG games. Based on choice, the tutorial sequence will be different to be more user-friendly.
- Reworked tutorial for describing traits.
Arena Changes
- The epic troop will now be picked first, and then descending in rarity to common last.
- The chosen arena team is now shown before starting the arena run.
- A player may re-roll the team once per run (1000 gold paid). Retiring the run resets the re-roll counter.
- There is now a confirmation button for purchasing end-of-run arena offers, in case of misclicks.
VIP Chest Changes
- VIP chests will no longer yield traitstones as the result of the key being consumed. Traitstones may be given as bonus rewards (30% chance) on top of the troop pulled with a key.
- Mythic troop drop rate has been improved from VIP chests (1.67% rate).
Bug Fixes / Misc. Things
- Christmas theme/music is back in the game for the holiday season.
- Lesser Orbs of Growth can be crafted into Gold Rings in the Soulforge (3 to 1 rate).
- Greater Orbs of Growth can be crafted into Crowns in the Soulforge (3 to 1 rate).
- A Tower of Doom crash when using scrolls to clear rooms with unlock scrolls has been fixed.
Other Notable Information
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WarCoins being given to new players through a new player login calendar. Experiences players will have then awarded through an upcoming special login calendar reward.
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Warbands will not be offered until 5.3 is forced onto all platforms because of this week being a Guild Wars week.
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No plans to increase the number of keys used per chest opening over 200, because of server strain issues and poor internet connection potential issues on mobile platforms.
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Switch version of GoW is being updated from 5.0 → 5.2.5 today. 5.3 will be in a future update.
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Medal issues with kingdoms at Power 21+ (ex: Mist of Scales) causing erroneous Daily Deal offers is not fixed with this update. Devs are aware of the issue.
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No changes to medal loadout UI or attaching to teams in this update.
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Update launching within the next 48 hours.
23 Likes
If this doesn’t include weapons/hero class xp then this is 
straight out of the gate.
It’s like Pepsi teaching kids that all they need to drink/ eat is soda and chips when they need fruit and vegetables in their diet instead.
New players need hero class xp and need to learn to know how to play the game that you no longer know how to play…devs. 
7 Likes
Odd that they made the campaign harder, then added content for beginners that may require investment to complete.
Oh wait. I get it.
One hopes the war bands team are as useful as the team builder ones. I mean, everyone uses that feature.
3 Likes
sniff sniff
I smell…lootboxes.
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This post exists only to qualify my “like” of Lyrian’s post — it is solely to thank this valued community member for summarizing the stream, and is in no way a “like” for any of the content described.
This update looks like complete to me.
I’ll amend my position if needed after playing — but it doesn’t even look like I’ll be able to access most of the content unless I spend real money (a non-starter for this type of “content”) — and are we even sure that these Warbands are new troops? Nowhere has that been stated, to my knowledge, so it seems very much to me like these might just be teams made by the team generator (as Lorien jokes) of existing cards. And then, you know, you can buy copies of them, traitstones for them, etc… with direct cash, bypassing chests.
And if I’m wrong — if these are new troops and Warcoins are the only way to get them (and improve them?), then this bypasses the usefulness of keys. Now THAT is the devaluation of a currency, my friends.
I REALLY hope I am just a dumb orc who misunderstands what this is at present, and what that portends…
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I ended up sleeping through the preview stream.
So… if I’m reading this right, its designed for new players, but Warcoins are still going to dilute the Adventure Boards even more for everyone else that has outgrown them, even mid-level players?
2 Likes
GARBA5.3 UPDATE
Want a more positive post? Give me something positive to post about.
As the stream ended, Lyranica asked me for the TL;DR and if there was anything that was super relevant for her to be aware of in the update. I looked over the notes and told her “no”. The update looks like it is oriented towards newer players and there is not really much here for the vets outside of the arena QoL tweaks (nice for those who wanted them).
I don’t believe that it was answered on stream, but I think there were no exclusive troops in warbands, just the new banner for that warband. I did not see any new troops presented on-stream when the feature was shown off.
The new shop tab exclusively uses WarCoins and this currency can be purchased with real money, but I believe these troops can be improved in the usual ways via keys and traitstones, especially if there are no exclusive troops.
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Wish I could help, but I can’t think of anything.
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