Incepted abilities

We’ve added the first 2000 (out of a total of 3000) Hero abilities to the first genesis block. This represents a major milestone in the development of Deckbound cards for play in Deckbound Heroes. We’ll be adding demo (and later incepted) abilities for the other card types in the course of the beta as well as adding to the existing 2000 Hero card abilities.

Deckbound cards are incepted into a genesis block of abilities and select abilities near to their location. Because of this, abilities can appear on more than one card but will do so at different levels and in different combinations. Levelling up your cards allows you to unlock more abilities per card and gives you more potential deck options.

The first batch of incepted abilities are built using ability types that you’ll be familiar with if you’ve previously used the demo abilities. There are some variants that are new and some that have been removed or simplified, but the core set of abilities have been well tested in the course of play on the demo collection.

Certain abilities show as “globally locked”, these are abilities that we haven’t yet launched and will be released as we add other card types (Structure, Rune and Minion) to the game. Some of these will interface directly with those card types so don’t currently make sense for Hero card-only play.

Because you can now use the naturally incepted abilities on your cards, we’ve removed the demo collection from Hero cards. If you’d already built decks with demo abilities you’ll need to build new decks with the incepted abilities on your cards.

XP and Levelling

When you play and complete a game of Deckbound Heroes you receive an amount of XP based on how the game ended (currently 7,500XP for a flawless 2-round win, 5,000XP for a 3-round win, 900XP for a loss and 500XP if you lost in 2 rounds).

All XP and card levels will be kept when the game moves from beta to full release. We’ll be tweaking specifics of XP awards, level intervals and ability points costs, but your cards are your cards and their level history and XP will be retained.

The XP you receive through completing games is credited to both the cards in your deck and to your player account. Cards that participated more in the game (i.e. were played more efficiently) receive more XP than others, though all cards will receive some XP in games that they were included in. We’ll be releasing more information about player XP in the course of the beta.

XP is currently granted on the basis that we anticipate using for ranked match games (i.e. those played in competitive ranked games in matches where you use the same deck across multiple maps) even though the current format is casual and single game. We’ll update the release notes for the game with changes to the play formats and XP rewards as we change them, but we anticipate that the current XP granted per game is more than what you would ultimately receive for casual non-match games.

Map changes and games

We’ve changed the mechanics on the Fogaiel’s Pit and Kraetan’s Refuge maps to provide better deck building variety and challenge.

Kraetan’s Refuge now features an automatic “resurrect oldest destroyed outpost at the start of the next turn” map ability when there is more than 1 destroyed outpost, and doesn’t feature outpost burnout.

Fogaiel’s Pit has been reworked to use outposts that do damage (they previously did healing) but the outpost damage power reduces when they are distressed or critical. Players also receive a “Resurrect an outpost (cooldown 6)” ability when they enter the game. We’ve also removed outpost burnout from this map.

In addition to matching in casual games against other players we’ve added AI bots that will match you if there’s nobody available. You should always be able to get a game.

Deckbound Heroes - game server

• changed: round win condition (a player with 0 or less health) is now evaluated after every action so that as soon as a player reaches 0 health they lose the round or game and any secondary actions will not be cast

• changed: Kraetan's Refuge - replaced outpost burnout with 'resurrecting rocks'

• changed: Fogaiel's Pit - replaced outpost burnout with bonus ability 'Resurrect an outpost'

• changed: Fogaiel's Pit outpost abilities changed to damage with decreasing power in distressed and critical states

Deckbound Heroes - game client (build 10316)

• changed: turn number now reads round turn number, not game turn number

• changed: start of turn log messages now read 'Round X, Turn Y'

• changed: improved readability of opponent ability text

• changed: Fogaiel's Pit outposts glow more when healthy

• added: map features information panel now shown in top left status area - clicking on the panel shows more information about the feature

• added: outpost abilities show modified power in ability panel

• added: show end of game XP in 'game over' screen

• fixed: outpost panels now show maximum health correctly

• fixed: neutralize abilities can no longer be cast at player-owned outposts

Game & Collection Manager

• added: deck builder now caches last 500 loaded cards (massively improves load time when editing decks)

• added: changes effecting your decks (eg. points changes or removed demo abilities) are now shown on the deck list and in the game launcher