In 2016, Blue Manchu released the Castle Mitternacht expansion items, introducing a bunch of new mechanics. And then… that’s it. No balance changes or new items, for years. Blue Manchu got busy with their next game. Leaving everything as-is wasn’t exactly the plan; luckily for Cardhuntria, The Knights of Unity are here to update the items and cards you’ve been using unchanged since 2016.

First, the big news: we are aiming to release a new expansion, “Celestial Forge,” in the first half of 2022. Some balance changes will accompany the new cards & items. We also have a really exciting new feature slated to release alongside the expansion, but we are not ready to reveal it at this time.

There will be a separate post previewing the expansion cards. This post is primarily about the balance changes. We will be conducting a public playtest of these changes soon (alongside the new items), and this is where we will be describing the changes and providing some developer commentary and context for the playtesting. (Details of the playtest–start and end dates, test server instructions, pizza reward amounts, and survey questions–will be provided elsewhere, likely on the forums, Steam forums, & Discord. Stay tuned.)

General Methodology

As much as possible, we don’t want to nerf things. Players work hard for their collections, and when your hard-earned legendaries become less powerful, well, that’s a bad feeling. Most of the time we’d rather address balance by powering up weaker cards, or by just adding new content. But there comes a time when something in the game is so out of whack that attempting to balance AROUND it will create more problems down the line. With that given, we felt the need to address a few long-dominant cards like Lycanthropic Form, Howl, Vengeance, and Bless. In addition, we’ve buffed a few things. These changes will debut alongside an entire new set of items, and are explained below, side-by-side with their current versions.

Forms

Most long-time players will agree that one of the current balance issues is that werewolves are a little… too good. They’re definitely pushed, and their kit is just far and away the most universally useful out of the forms. Vampires and spirits get good stuff but are far more likely to get a card they don’t want in a given situation. Another issue with forms is that the Vampiric Form card was just… less good for vampires than the tried and true Talented Healer. This is somewhat simplified, but anyway–onto the changes:
– Lycanthropic Form’s armor no longer protects against fire damage
– Vampiric Form has a new effect: “Add Penetrating to any Unholy Melee attack you play.”
– Monstrous Hide no longer protects against fire damage
– Howl no longer heals

Old Version	New Version

These changes will go some way to evening the forms, but perhaps even more crucially we are adjusting the card pools to try to bring them more in line with each other:

You’ll notice the absence of All Out Attack on the werewolf side, notably, but also that Ethereal Form’s kit is more utilitarian now. Vampires get Impaler (shout out to my boy Vlad), which has a cool new interaction with the form itself. We’ve also removed the form cards themselves from the pools. This change will make it so that no unwanted form has a random chance to prolong itself past its initial duration, and it also means that Howl will no longer have a chance to activate ‘free’ reliable armor, and that Medium Garb will no longer randomly stop you from drawing cards from your deck.

Vengeance

So, we know Vengeance is really good. But possibly the worst-feeling thing about it is that if you use low rarity wizard control effects against a warrior holding Vengeance–effects like Winds of War or Force Blast–the entire effect is undone by Vengeance. This is a level of control resistance that warriors, with all their mobility tricks, frankly didn’t need. The fix we found for Vengeance was to put a damage threshold on the trigger, so it hasn’t been nerfed at all in the context of most damage, but it no longer punishes chip damage.

And yes, we decided to bring this change to a couple similar cards. Martyr Blessing should still be quite powerful without being as unfun to play against, now, and the change to Elven Maneuvers actually allows us to ‘unnerf’ the card a bit!
– Vengeance now only triggers if 3 or more damage is dealt
– Martyr Blessing now only triggers if 2 or more damage is dealt
– Elven Maneuvers now only triggers if 2 or more damage is dealt. Duration increased to 3, filter depth increased to 4.

Old Version	New Version

The levers introduced here allow us to further refine the balance of these cards as needed without any drastic changes, and we’ll be watching them closely during playtesting. The damage thresholds here also introduce some more nuance to the valuation of armor. Sometimes that Reliable Mail will mean that your opponent’s Weak Chop doesn’t trigger Martyr Blessing when they’re checking for blocks

Misc

Finally we have a collection of miscellaneous changes; some buffs, some nerfs. The general goal here was to rein in some situationally obscene base game effects while maintaining general worth, while boosting some underpowered cards from Mitternacht.
– Shifting Block now draws a card (after applying the form)
– Acid Leak now only places acid under enemies
– Boo! now grants a Panic rather than a Dash
– Bless now targets up to 3 contiguous tiles (like Wall of Fire)
– All Out Attack now removes Penetrating & Unblockable, and adds Easy to Block 3
– Perplexing Ray is now Arcane

Old Version	New Version

Shifting Block’s low power compared to similarly costed blocks (especially at its rarity) made Castle Mitternacht shields unappealing. Throw in the extreme uneven nature of the old forms and it just wasn’t good. It might still not be top tier, but at least now it replaces itself, and with the form changes it might be quite strong now (we’ll see in the playtest).

Acid Leak and Boo! changes are more minor, intended to push the needle just a bit on Castle Mitternacht wizard items.

Bless is possibly the biggest nerf to the strongest card in the game, but mind that it can still accomplish what it used to (12 points of healing and 6 cards drawn over 2 rounds). You’ll just need to do a lot more work to get that maximum effect, and possibly make more tactical compromises.

The All Out Attack change may be completely unnecessary now that it’s no longer in the werewolf deck. That said, we were interested in a version of All Out Attack that can still do just as much damage as before, while requiring players to do a little more work for those combo kills. I’d say this is the most tentative change in this batch. Let’s see how it plays out in testing.

Perplexing Ray simply should have been Arcane this whole time, and that is being fixed now.

Conclusion

Feedback is, as always, welcomed, but more importantly we look forward to your participation in the playtest and accompanying surveys. We intend to iterate, possibly multiple times, over the course of the playtest. We haven’t changed PvP balance significantly since 2016, and we want to be very careful. Any of these changes is up for further modification depending on how testing goes.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you’re as excited for the upcoming update as I am!

If you want to get involved, make sure to read all the guidelines here: http://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/mitternacht-playtest-guidelines-rewards.10155/

There are rewards for playtesters, and the sooner we can confirm everything’s okay (or fix any issues that come up), the sooner we can officially release the content!

That’s right, you can create your own maps and play them against other folks on-line or against Gary (if you’ve joined our Card Hunter Club)! Players have already begun creating custom scenarios to battle with their fellow adventurers and we’d like to highlight a few of them.

First up, our very own Farbs created one he likes to call Zombie Wave Attack, based on a suggestion from another user, Hessian. As Farbs likes to describe it:

Pit your mp party against five waves of terrifying zombies.
Waves approach from two directions. There is no escape!
Hardcore players can attempt this with a single character.

Next we have Lance and his Treasure Island map. Unlike Zombie, whose success depends solely on surviving the onslaught, Lance introduces a grouping of four Victory Squares that must be occupied in order to win the map. They’re clustered here in the middle with room enough for each side (which is a ship, how cool!) to regroup if needed. That little island certainly looks too small to share!

Neofalcon also creates a scenario, The Forgotten Hoard, with a cluster of victory squares in the middle, but with different tactics in mind:

My goal was to make a map with multiple VPs where you could easily utilize character placement to make it difficult for your opponent to move characters onto VPs, with the tradeoff that holding the VPs leaves your characters very vulnerable to ranged attacks.

And last but not least is Jayce with The Unspeakable Forest Dungeon (gotta love these names!). This one is unique in that it splits up the Victory Squares into three locations: one on either side in addition to one in the middle, giving everyone a different mix of defensive and offensive options!

Your motivation is something about a dungeon carved into cave, in a forest, and there’s treasure involved somehow…fight the other player for it….or something.

As you can see, the combinations are endless and players can create incredibly different scenarios with each with a unique atmosphere. So what are you waiting for? Get cracking and let’s see what your imagination can dish out! And don’t forget to share them on our forums.

If you don’t happen to live in East coast Australia (AEST), here are some other times around the world for the reset:

• US East coast (EST): Mon 29 April, 19:00
• US CST: Mon 29 April, 18:00
• US West coast (PST): Mon 29 April, 16:00
• UK: Tue 30 April, 00:00

If you’re not in one of those time zones, I’m sure Google can help you!

To reiterate, here’s what’s going to happen:

• All existing Beta accounts will be reset to their starting values. 
• From now on, in-game pizza purchases (in-game currency) will cost real money (via PayPal).
• Any pizza purchased from this date will be re-credited to you when we launch and reset again, as well as after any other database resets that happen during Beta.
• We will start to invite a lot more people into the Beta.

Again, the last blog post covered this in a lot more detail with questions and answers. If you still have questions, post on the forums!

Note: we pushed the date back 24 hours.

We’ve been working hard on the closed Beta: fixing bugs, finishing features and preparing the game for more players. It’s taken longer that we had hoped but we’re ready to start scaling it up. Good news everyone! This means that if you’re still waiting on the Beta list, you are much more likely to get in soon!

So this is a heads up. In the very near future, we plan to:

• reset existing Beta accounts back to their fresh, starting state
• allow existing Beta testers to buy pizza
• begin offering special closed-Beta only deals with exclusive figures.

I know you all are filled with all sorts of burning questions so let me try and answer what I believe are the big ones:

I signed up for the Beta but I’m not in yet. When will I get in?

After this database reset we plan to start inviting a LOT more players.  We can’t guarantee an entry date, but we’ll be doing our best to get as many people in as fast as possible. As always, your best bet is to make sure you are on the Beta application list by signing up. It only counts once so doing it again won’t hurt.

What exactly is an account reset?

An account reset returns all existing accounts to the state of a new player. Items, characters, multiplayer stats and adventure progress are wiped. Your account name and password will remain the same though.

Why are we resetting accounts now? 

Beta is still a testing phase of the game and we need to periodically reset the database to clear out old, bad data. For example, we’ve just removed a bunch of old items from the game and we need to clear these out of people’s item collections.

Accounts will be reset at least one more time before the game is released and possibly more. That’s the beauty of Beta testing!

When exactly will the upcoming account reset happen?

Very soon! We will definitely let everyone know at least one week before it actually happens.

What is Pizza anyway?

Besides being the greatest food known to humankind, Pizza in Card Hunter is a kind of currency. In return for delicious, delicious pizza your GM will give you:

• Gold – an in-game currency generally earned by selling items you find in game
• Treasure Hunts – extra adventures not on the main campaign path
• Figures – new skins for your characters (these do not affect gameplay, but they look fantastic!)
• Starter Packs – sets of multiplayer-ready characters with pre-equipped items
• Treasure Chests – random sets of items
• and possibly some other new things we’re still working on…

Every item in Card Hunter can be obtained by playing the game for free! Pizza can only accelerate your game progress, unlock new adventures, or affect cosmetic changes.

Pizza will cost money now – what happens to my pizza when the game resets again?

Any pizza that you buy for actual money will be re-credited to your account each time the database is reset. You can buy pizza confident that you’ll be able to use it when the game finally goes live, as well as during Beta.

How do I get the exclusive Beta figures and what are they?

The exclusive figures are a human warrior and human priest. You can see them lingering around this blog post. You can get the warrior by purchasing a $20 or more in pizza and the priest by purchasing $50 or more.

What happens to the exclusive Beta figures I get after an account reset?

These figures will stay in your collection.

Do these figures affect gameplay? Will I be disadvantaged if I don’t buy them?

Nope, they’re just awesome looking.

Do I have to buy pizza during the Beta?

No, the game can always be played for free!

Will Pizza prices or in-game prices change during Beta?

It’s possible that we’ll adjust the prices of things during (or after) Beta. However, we’ll try to minimise these changes.

I signed up for the Beta but I’m not in yet. Will I get a chance to buy the exclusive Beta figures?

Yes! We will get a key to you before the Beta ends, so you will get a chance to buy the exclusive Beta figures.

If you have any questions not answered here, please ask on our forums – they’re the best place to find out more about the game!

This time we will be giving out 50 keys our forums and 50 keys on our Facebook page. The contest starts now and will run until midnight this Friday (March 8th) EST. And, as an added bonus, we’ll be distributing an additional 100 keys to those beta list sign-ups as well!

To enter, post in our forum or post on our Facebook page!

So the question is, what is one of your favorite rp gaming moments? It doesn’t have to be about a character death or a miraculous triumph (though it could be), just a moment where everyone was having an absolute blast!

Just jot down a short paragraph and post your response on our forums or on our Facebook page and by midnight, Thursday (Sydney time, GMT+10) and we’ll pick 20 of our favorites for a Beta Key! DON’T POST YOUR RESPONSE IN THE COMMENTS TO THIS POST – use the forums or Facebook please.

Remember, just a paragraph will do as I’m sure we’ll have *plenty* to go through. Now get crackin’!