Soul Shards update for 5 October 2018

Hello,

The team keeps enthusiastically working towards the Early Access goals. Today's patch is foundational work, and does not have a lot of features visible to the players (but for a few bug fixes).

If you want to join the beta you can grab a key here: https://www.alienwarearena.com/ucf/show/1894359/boards/contest-and-giveaways-global/Giveaway/soul-shards-exclusive-closed-beta-key-giveaway

Help us with the testing!

We would love to have your help in testing some key features. For each feature you test, we would love to have your specific feedback about that feature:

• Closed Beta Chain Quest: There's a quest chain visible to all Beta players and featured in the Main Menu (Top-Right corner of the screen). This quest chain will reward you with some of the best cards in the game! So check them out and help us testing it at the same time.
• Participate in the Home Defense Tournament: Create the toughest Home Defense you can come up with and share it with the community. Several players have taken the lead and their home defenses are looking awesome!
• Nightmare Game Mode: Players have been doing great progress in advancing through the depths of the Nightmare game mode! Show us who can get farthest!

New Features and Content Updates

• Alpha and Beta Badge Nameplates: As a token of gratitude for their help, Alpha and Beta users have been awarded special Alpha and Beta badges that are visible right next to their names during gameplay.
• Backend is now independent from Steam: While the Steam experience is still identical to Steam players, we have laid out the foundation work to make the game independent from Steam. This is an important step in making sure we can run on other platforms like consoles or mobile devices.
• Automatic sync between Game Client and Web Client spell information: Spell information was being tracked separately between our web and in game clients. There's now a process to handle automatic exporting so there should be no inconsistencies now.
• Game Client/Web Server Version Check: We have introduced a new check that will allow the game client to check if the web server is compatible. If the check is not passed the client will show a message and the game will not run until the client is updated. This will avoid crashes due to outdated game clients.
• Web service authentication updates: We have added some more robustness to in game client authentication to the web server.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed swapped Video/Audio settings : Audio/Video menu selection was behaving erratically making settings navigation somewhat difficult.
• Turn score information fixes: There was a bug preventing home defense to properly show weekly turn scores.
• Changes in Steam User Name are now reflected in game: Previously the game would show the first Steam User Name that the user had when playing for the first time. Now changes in user name are properly synched.

Thanks for joining the community in this early phase. Your contribution (testing and feedback) is what will make this a great game! And remember, you can join us on Discord (https://discord.gg/M3q3Zbb) to get more information and updates!

Soul Shards Dev Team.