Update 9.0 Patch Notes

[Gems-of-War]

We have returned to the Underspire to add several new rooms for players to discover. We have also updated some Underspire menus to match the new UI style.

The example above shows a defeated new Treasure Room, which has left a Treasure Chest, awaiting collection.

• We have updated the following menus with the new UI style:

  • Underspire Main Menu

  • Underspire Shop

  • Deep Shrine

• We have changed the Goblin Merchant card icon on the Underspire map to be teal
  instead of red (due to the introduction of trap rooms, whose icons now have the red card
  icon)

Please note: That all new rooms will start appearing in Underspire after weekly reset. To allow players time to update to 9.0

Trap rooms are a new type of battle encounter/room that can appear in the Underspire. These new rooms consist of 4 enemy troops, including the new Enemy Trap Troops! These new Trap Troops are not collectible.

Trap rooms cannot appear next to each other along the path or at a dead-ends.

Enemy Trap Troops each have a theme and all create a new Heroic Gem – the Trap Gem. The Trap Opponents include:

• Spike (Bleed)

• Acid (Poison)

• Boulder (Stun)

• Mirror (Reflect)

• Flamethrower (Burning)

• Frozen (Freeze)

• Dart (Single-target damage)

• Pit (Knocks troops to the back)

Trap Gems are colorless Gems that, when destroyed, will do 1 of 5 effects:

• Stun all Player Troops

• Freeze all Player Troops

• Entangle all Player Troops

• Faerie Fire all Player Troops

• Create 3 Doomskulls

The negative status effects only affect the player’s team (even if the player destroys the Gem). Trap Gems do not drop randomly in battles; they are only created by Trap Enemies in Trap Rooms.

After defeating a Trap Room, a Trap Room Chest will appear for collection! These can contain items such as Cursed Runes, Writs, Chaos Shards, Ingots, and more.

In addition to the new Trap Rooms, we have added 6 new types of rooms that players may encounter.

Treasure Room

Find and defeat a Treasure Room for the chance to be rewarded items such as a random Book of Deeds or Shiny Dust. Treasure Rooms can appear anywhere in the Underspire.

Up to 20 Treasure Rooms may be found in each Underspire.

Oracle Room

Discovering an Oracle Room at a dead end will reveal a random 3×3 location somewhere within the Underspire Map, showing the rooms or passages in that space! This area is viewable only and cannot be interacted with. Intended to just reveal a section of the map you have yet to discover. Oracle Rooms can only appear in a dead-end room in Underspire.

Up to 2 Oracle Rooms may be found within each Underspire.

Trinket Room

Finding a Trinket room will reward the player with 2-5 random Trinkets. The Trinket Room can appear anywhere in the Underspire.

Up to 3 Trinket Rooms may be found in each Underspire.

Cursed Mine

Interact with this room to earn between 10 -20 Curse Runes. Cursed Mines can appear anywhere in the Underspire. No more than 1 Cursed Mine may be found in each Underspire.

Powder Room

Interact with this room to earn either between 2-4 Torches, or if the player is lucky – a Lantern. Powder Rooms can appear anywhere in the Underspire. No more than 1 Powder Room may be found in each Underspire.

Secret Passage

Interact with this room to open a secret door to a new location in the Underspire (which is unlocked and ready for battle). Secret Passages can only appear in dead-end rooms. No more than 1 pair of Secret Rooms may be found in each Underspire.

All of the new rooms (except the treasure room) do not have a battle in them, and so do not use a torch to explore!

Things to note:

• Of the new rooms, only Trap Rooms and the new Treasure rooms consume Lanterns/Torches

• Not all new rooms are guaranteed to appear, or up to their maximum number.

  • For example, there may be anywhere from 0 to 20 Treasure Rooms, and 0 Powder Rooms.

• These new rooms will not replace Treasure Guardians – they occur in addition to the Treasure Guardians

  • (i.e. you will get the same amount of Treasure Guardians as you did previously).

• The Underspire is being generated in the same manner as previously. It will not be any larger than the previous underspires – the new rooms will simply be replacing regular rooms/battles that would have been encountered while exploring.

  • We understand that Underspires are large, and we do not want to make the event any bigger than it already is.

• Lanterns only double rewards given from the Victory screen, and not any rewards given in Treasure Chests.

Final notes

Underspire Treasure Guardian troops:

This is feedback I (Jeto) have been sharing from the community to the team around, players experiences with trying to collect these troops. There are no changes coming in 9.0, but the team has shared that they are looking at introducing the Underspire Sentinel troops into the Soulforge in some way.

Tarot troops:

In future, the team are also investigating an additional new room based around the Tarot Troops, whether that is somewhere they can be earned or purchased has not been established, as it is just the beginning of an idea currently.
Came up from discussions with our awesome BETA

• It’s A Trap!: Defeat 10 Trap Rooms in the Underspire.

• Drums in the Deep: Find 5 Cursed Mines in the Underspire.

• Double the Powder: Find 5 Powder Rooms in the Underspire

• We have a new heroic Gem for a future Campaign.

  • This will not appear till that Campaign is live.

• We have made some improvements to how the ‘Upgradable’ filter works in the Troop Collection menu; it sorts troops better, based on the types of upgrades they have available.

• We have changed the Level Troop Tutorial to upgrade Prisoner Luther instead of the Priestess.

• The Guild Activity button on the Guild Overview menu, will now get a ‘!’ icon when there is a new activity to view.

• Players are unable to set up their Guild War defenses when using a controller.

• The max Upgrade option available was not behaving correctly if the troop only had a single trait upgrade available with traitstones.

  • The Ascend all button is still missing, and currently aiming for 9.2 at the earliest. Will update the Known Issues article when we have a confirmed update

• Troop Upgrade filter listed troops inconsistently.

• Rewarded Ads button was not appearing on mobile.

  • Rewarded Ads were not always running correctly.

• New players could experience a soft lock in-game by reaching the world map if they switch between inputs (e.g. Controller + Keyboard) during early tutorials.

• Guild ranks for a guild member’s promotion/ demotion were failing to display in the promotion/demotion confirmation popups.

• PvP Global Leaderboard rewards were not being mailed out at weekly reset for some players

• Text was not always appearing correctly in conversations for Russian and Simplified Chinese.

• Issue where PvP Goal bonus VP was not added to PvP Season total

  • We will be sending out global compensation for this, likely after the weekend

• Profanity filter for Guild Names and Guild Ranks to be consistent with Global Chat.

Final comment from me (jeto).. please save any questions till after the new Underspire is available to play, after weekly reset.

[TheIdleOne]

Very curious to see the new rooms in the Underspire, but not adjusting Underspire Sentinel drops/treasure guardian drop table too seems like a big missed opportunity.

[Anam_Cara]

@Gems-of-War

Tarot troops:

In future, the team are also investigating an additional new room based around the Tarot Troops, whether that is somewhere they can be earned or purchased has not been established, as it is just the beginning of an idea currently.

I’m really happy to hear this as it will make things so much easier for new players trying desperately to craft Wand of Stars!
Thank you!!

[NerdieBirdie]

Underspire is already a unique and fun gamemode (at least compared to other modes), and I think expanding on it like this will make it even better. Hope to see more unique modes like this in the future!

[awryan]

Guild push notifications not sending

Hi all, From Tuesday night (PDT) (or unfortunately, weekly reset as some reported), unscheduled push notifications for Gems of War will temporarily stop being sent. This means that even if you have Guild Alerts enabled in your in game settings, you won’t receive push notifications for: Pet Rescues started by Guild mates Guild chat General Guild activity Alerts to notify you the hourly tribute is available to collect are also affected. [image] This issue is occuring due to transitioning t…

Over a year since mobile notifications have actually worked. Will take another 2-3 months before ascend all button is implemented again. God knows how long it will take to get the pet rescue pool to work properly again.

Now I know what my teachers in grade school felt like with me. Gems of War has so much potential to be great. But only willing to do the absolute minimum and too happy to get just a passing grade.
Gems of War has gone from A+ to C average at best.
Why do I still play? Because the core game is still fun for me. It’s the mistreatment of this game I love by the publisher that causes bewilderment.

[Jeto]

As shared before, until these tech debt tasks can be resolved, the team are not able to fix the notification issues.

Once that is done and I have any update from the team, I’ll be sure to share it.

@Jeto

To that, there are a number of tech debt tasks we are required to complete in the next few updates which have taken a chunk of what little capacity we have. The unfortunate effect of that is, some fixes and changes we want to make an release, get pushed out.

I know the notification issue is one of the older ones, and it appears to not be an easy fix from what the team have explained to me. They are aware though and do want to get it sorted, but these tech changes have push that task back.

[Darkborne]

I thought we were getting Bastions in 9.0? A way to personalize our home kingdoms or develop them even more? Unless something changed in development? Most players probably have at least one kingdom at level 30 by now and seeing Luther say, “This kingdom is at the maximum level,” is horribly outdated. Not being able to remember what stat bonuses kingdoms give is an unnecessary problem.

I appreciate the Underspire update, but not updating the drop rates or some other way(s) of getting the Sentinels is a huge missed opportunity. Enough of the nonsense. It took me tens of thousands of gems and almost two years to complete the set of sentinels.

That’s far, far, away from the average player. People need most kingdoms at level 16/26 for 25+ gem tributes and full clearing every week to maybe get all the sentinels. Absolutely ridiculous.

And the new flashiness of Underspire doesn’t have enough substance for me to pursue it. Let’s see how rare that random deed book is. Just a bunch of randomness that doesn’t really solve the main problem–everything besides torches, lanterns, badges, and Sentinels feels worthless.

[Jeto]

Don’t think at any point we have confirmed Bastions in any specific update. I have also posted recently that Bastions is releasing some time in 2026

[Zuul-Emo]

@Gems-of-War

These can contain items such as Cursed Runes, Writs, Chaos Shards, Ingots, and more.

@Gems-of-War

rewarded items such as a random Book of Deeds or Shiny Dust

@Gems-of-War

to earn either between 2-4 Torches, or if the player is lucky – a Lantern

Can you please just tell us what can appear in chests, and what the odds are? All this BS where we have to guess, or work stuff out ourselves is annoying.

On the other hand, it’s great to be told specific information like this:

@Gems-of-War

all new rooms will start appearing in Underspire after weekly reset. To allow players time to update to 9.0

@Gems-of-War

These new Trap Troops are not collectible.

@Gems-of-War

The negative status effects only affect the player’s team (even if the player destroys the Gem).

@Gems-of-War

Up to 20 Treasure Rooms may be found in each Underspire.

@Gems-of-War

Up to 2 Oracle Rooms may be found within each Underspire.

@Gems-of-War

Up to 3 Trinket Rooms may be found in each Underspire.

@Gems-of-War

No more than 1 Cursed Mine may be found in each Underspire.

@Gems-of-War

No more than 1 Powder Room may be found in each Underspire.

@Gems-of-War

No more than 1 pair of Secret Rooms may be found in each Underspire.

@Gems-of-War

All of the new rooms (except the treasure room) do not have a battle in them, and so do not use a torch to explore!

See how giving us specific info helps us play the game without getting frustrated at you? Please do more of that.

I think the new rooms look pretty decent. Not sure about the trap rooms, but balanced against the other stuff, I like it overall. We’ll see how it works in practice, though.

[NerdieBirdie]

@Darkborne Jeto’s post for reference:

Update Forecast

Bastions is next year now and not 9.0 - 9.0 is not a MAJOR update, despite the milestone version number. If it could have been 8.95 instead, it would have been but alas, not possible.

[Jeto]

They will be listed in the game guide. The patch notes is just a shortened list of the main changes. The game guide will go live with the update.

[awryan]

@Jeto

As shared before, until these tech debt tasks can be resolved, the team are not able to fix the notification issues.

Once that is done and I have any update from the team, I’ll be sure to share it.

It was revealed also that the starting issue was the change from an outside company doing it (which worked fine for years) to (I assume) doing notifications in house. Which hasn’t even worked for seconds in the span of 14 months. Gems of War is a mobile game without working notifications on the cusp of 2026. It’s 100% a publisher call to invest money into it. The fact that they don’t see value in it is what causes me mistrust about how long they plan for GoW to still exist.

[Zuul-Emo]

@Gems-of-War

These new rooms will not replace Treasure Guardians – they occur in addition to the Treasure Guardians

• (i.e. you will get the same amount of Treasure Guardians as you did previously).

@Gems-of-War

We understand that Underspires are large, and we do not want to make the event any bigger than it already is

@Gems-of-War

There are no changes coming in 9.0, but the team has shared that they are looking at introducing the Underspire Sentinel troops into the Soulforge in some way.

@Gems-of-War

In future, the team are also investigating an additional new room based around the Tarot Troops, whether that is somewhere they can be earned or purchased has not been established, as it is just the beginning of an idea currently.

Also, details like these are good to hear. Thanks for getting ahead of any complaints and letting us know you do understand how we feel about stuff.

[Namour]

Given the results and feedback from the 2025 Customer Survey…..i’d really been hoping that they would have reworked the Treasure Hunt rewards…

[Darkborne]

Update Forecast

Bastions is next year now and not 9.0 - 9.0 is not a MAJOR update, despite the milestone version number. If it could have been 8.95 instead, it would have been but alas, not possible.

You were right, and I apologize. This wasn’t a Major update like you mentioned, just one last patch before the end of the year. But I am getting confused, and this Underspire update threw me off guard. I will give it a chance, it’s just that the game mode requires a lot of time and gems to get the most out of it, and it’s just difficult to manage nowadays.

[Jeto]

Redoing treasure hunt rewards requires a total Treasure Hunt overhaul; this would be a major update when it does happen.

[Zuul-Emo]

@Gems-of-War

The Ascend all button is still missing, and currently aiming for 9.2 at the earliest.

OK, it is WILD that it’s taking that long to add back such a feature, that was only removed by mistake during a UI change, according to you. I’m glad it’s coming back, just seems crazy it’s gonna be a while.

Thanks for the other bug fixes, though.

[Namour]

I don’t quite understand why they can’t leave the mechanics of the game completely untouched, and just adjust the loot tables for the potential rewards, which are shown on the right.

Struggle to understand how this can be ‘major’…..oh and if they are thinking of changing they mechanics of the gameplay, this would be a major mistake and a waste of time.

[Jeto]

Didn’t mention any mechanics changing. Treasure Hunt is one of the oldest systems and when changing the rewards, we will be overhauling the whole system. I have already asked about this repeatedly and the rewards will not be changed separately until we update the game mode as a whole.. again, the gameplay mechanics would not change.

This is also veering off topic for this 9.0 thread

[Zuul-Emo]

@Jeto

we update the game mode as a whole

@Jeto

the gameplay mechanics would not change

I think there’s some confusion about the difference between these two things.
I think you’ve said before that there is a planned “landing page” or something, which you’d go to before starting a treasure hunt. I assume the update to the game mode would be stuff like that, not changing mechanics. It’s just that when you say the mode is gonna be updated, people will think you could mean changing the mechanics.
But yeah, we don’t know what’s planned, and it’s not in this update, so best to worry about that another day.

Roughly when is update 9.0 due out, please?