Originally published at: http://gemsofwar.com/patch-1-0-9-preview-part-2/
1.0.9 is almost upon us. Read on and find out more!
In our first preview we detailed Hero Classes.
You can see the first preview here
In this second part, we’re going to cover all the other little features of 1.0.9, so we thought a blog & screenshot approach would be clearer.
Mail
We've introduced an in-game mail system.
Most of the rewards you receive in-game will now come via the mail. This includes login bonuses, defense rewards, weekly PvP rewards, VIP bonus rewards, and refunds (more on that below). You'll also receive guild invites in the mail now too!
Here we see the mail menu with a couple of unopened messages. Note the expiry time... Daily rewards expire in 24 hours.
Here we see a mail message with a couple of attachments to claim!
Chat
Yes, we heard you! We know you guys like to chat, so we've added an in-game chat system - a real one. It has LOTS of channels to join, and every Guild has their own real-time chat channel, for discussing secret guild stuff!
Chat will also send out global broadcasts when players hit milestones, like unlocking legendary troops, leveling kingdoms to 10, or completing quest lines within a kingdom.
This shows a chat message being displayed on the world map. We disagree with it however! You can also see a notification on the Mail icon on the right - we have mail! Tapping the speech bubbles will take you to the Chat Popup below.
And here we see a secret Infinity Plus Two production meeting taking place inside the actual chat screen.
Refunds
From now on, when we make balance changes to a troop with a net negative result (I kinda hate the word nerf, unless we're talking about nerf guns), we will offer a refund on that troop for a week. We'll announce any refunds in the weekly blog here at gemsofwar.com. This gives us the freedom to keep the game balance in a much more healthy state, and allows you, the player, to upgrade troops without fear of wasting valuable resources.
When troop is available for refund, a REFUND button will appear on the troop menu, next to the CRAFTING button.
All refunds will be delivered via in-game mail.
Treasure Hunt
We've made some changes to Treasure Hunt to make it more attractive to everybody! There are a whole bunch of changes that all work together, but here is a summary:
- * We've increased rewards by 20%
- * We've decreased turns down to 8, which seems to reduce the game length by about 10-20%
- * Every 15 moves you make earns a random Traitstone
Above, you can see we’ve added a payout table to the right hand side of the board, so it’s much clearer what each chest/bag contains.
And here we can see the fancy new result menu that shows your rewards, your turns, and a score of how well you did. Screenshot it for proof of your awesomeness!
Difficulty
Difficulty has moved from the Hero Menu to make way for Hero Classes.
You can now find it on a menu all its own, accessible from the World Map.
This makes a lot of sense, since the Difficulty setting is not really part of the Hero.
Unfortunately we found that some new players were turning the difficulty up and then getting into trouble so we've locked difficulty until you reach certain level thresholds.
Also, difficulty now only applies to Quests and Challenges. We have removed difficulty from both Arena and PvP Invasion/Defense. Now as you progress in rank from 15 to 1, and in Arena from 0 wins to 8 wins, the AI Combo Breaker will gradually turn off, to make the games fair (and a little harder).
For anyone wondering what the AI Combo Breaker is, it’s a clever little piece of code that biases the game in your favor, making sure the AI never gets too lucky with gems dropping in (unless YOU get very lucky first!). We think that anyone progressing up to the top ranks of PvP/Arena deserves a bit more of a challenge though, so now you will get a fair fight!
We’re happy to announce that Patch 1.0.9 will be arriving very shortly!
Servers will be down for the update at the following time:
- 11:00am Australian East Coast (AEDT) Thu Mar 10th
- 4:00pm West Coast USA (PST) Wed Mar 9th
- 7:00pm East Coast USA (EST) Wed Mar 9th
- 12:00am (Midnight) London (GMT) Thu Mar 10th
Please note this Preview only applies to an upcoming patch for Steam, iOS and Android versions of the game.
). Everything else (except glory, which I have enough of anyway (I got on average about 5000 glory a week the last 3 weeks)) I can get much quicker doing PVP.