Alteil: Horizons
Shutdown Message
Alteil US is officially shut down.
There, I said it! I don't have much to add from my previous farewell message. That's probably because I've spent most of the time since I wrote that with my head down working. As I said then, about when we decided to wind down, I was given a bunch of opportunities in my non-Alteil career that I couldn't turn down. I was thinking the two week extension would give me some time to hang out in chat and get my thoughts in order - but actually things picked up even more for me in the past two weeks. Also, my infant daughter has just learned to crawl, so - CHAOS. In any case, to minimize the risk of say something inelegantly now that I already said much better before, I'll keep this short.
I want to thank everyone again for sticking with us through the Alteil project in all its stages, evolutions and incarnations. I hope everyone had good fun along the way, some interesting peeks behind the curtain, maybe met an online gaming buddy or two, or otherwise got something valuable from your time here. All of us at Apocoplay and Core Edge Japan certainly did, and that, most of all, is why I'm always thanking all of you. Iczers, I salute you!
I will keep the Facebook page active, and I'll post any news on other Alteil related projects. The Alteil Japanese team, Core Edge Japan, is still at it, and I'll still help them out any way I can and give them access to my translations and game data, so it might be worth it to check back every now and again. But until then…
This is Logress, the last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off.
A Message from Logress. Of Doom!
Literally.
Since I started on Alteil in 2007 - oh, wow that's 10 years ago - I've had a lot of jobs. I've been a GM, the game manager, the game producer, the project manager, the product manager, one of the game designers, a programmer... I've pretty much done everything at some point. But, no matter what hat or hats I wore there was only one goal - make Alteil successful. Since all of you are here, and many of you have been with me for a good chunk of the ride, I'll give you all a bit more of an explanation.
You can check that out on my very exhaustive news post here...
The gist is - I promised not to give up on Alteil until we had tried everything within reason, but it looks like after ten years of playing Alteil, we've finally run out of cards and SP. As of today, Gran will no longer be for sale. Alteil will remain operational for the next 90 days, and for the last month we'll make it a free-for-all, with everything in the shop costing 1 FM. On May first, the Alteil Horizons servers will cease operation.
I've said this so many times over the years, but what made Alteil worth it was all the amazing players we met along the way. On behalf of the entire Alteil team, Coreedge Japan, and my family, thank you for taking this journey with us. It has been an honor.
FLOWER OF WAR EXPANSION AND DLC ARE LIVE
Our new 60 card expansion is live! You can also get 5 card packs and a bunch of extra stuff at a reduced price with the Flower of War Intro Pack DLC!
There are also a bunch of events and limited time sales in the card shop this weekend, so take a look!
LAUNCH EVENTS
-Flower of War are immediately available in the Shop, treasure battles, the lotto, and the free daily lotto.
-In fact on launch all players will have bonuses to get new Flower of War cards in battle!
-The 4 beginner’s Pack Steam DLC’s will be 30% off, which makes them less than 7 bucks. Remember, these each come with 500 Gran on top of the pre-built deck and other goodies!
-FM bonus +50% FM all weekend
-Material bonus +50% To material rate / rarity all weekend
-Card Shop Pre-built sale All Horizons Core Legal Pre-builts normally priced at 1500 Gran will be discounted to 990 Gran through the weekend. — This includes Dragons and Dolls, our two newest pre-builts
-Holiday Avatar BG available in the shop this weekend only for 1 FM
-Flower of War 5 of 7 – Starts Friday – 20 Point Cards for participation, and a copy of the 3-star Cursed Spear Master Anri for completing 10 or more battles!
To preview all the cards, you can hit the "?" next to the Flower of War Pack or Boxes in the Shop, or click on the 'All Cards' tab in the File Editor and search by Expansion - 'Flower of War'.
Remember, Flower of War is available now in the shop (Gran only -- FM prices in two weeks) and treasure! Come take a look!
IMPORTANT - Some users have reported an issue where the new cards don't appear in the steam client. You must navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Alteil Horizons\browsercache and clear that folder to fix the issue, or try the browser version at home.alteil2.com
--Sean
New Card Expansion: FLOWER OF WAR launches on December 23rd
The Great Betrayer, Durendal has fallen to the Land of the Dead – and taken over!
Having wrested control over the Land of the Dead from King Zugateroza, Durandal commands the armies of the dead to march! The limitless waves of undead crash against the walls of both the Solar Kingdom of Folrart and the Duchy of Crest! Having never before witnessed such evil, the Mercenary Kingdom and the Barbarians break off their war and join forces to assist the kingdoms to the north in their battle against death itself!
This is a new chapter for the Realm of Lavato – FLOWER OF WAR
FEATURES
-All New regular 60-Card set!
-The entire set launches as HORIZONS CORE LEGAL, changing the landscape of Core dueling instantly!
-Flower of War is also Set 14 according to Legacy numbering
-New Mechanic — Create a card in target area — lets you summon a card that’s not in your deck.
LAUNCH EVENTS
-Flower of War will immediately appear in the Shop, treasure battles, the lotto, and the free daily lotto.
-In fact on launch all players will have bonuses to get new Flower of War cards in battle!
-The 4 beginner’s Pack Steam DLC’s will be 30% off, which makes them less than 7 bucks. Remember, these each come with 500 Gran on top of the pre-built deck and other goodies!
-FM bonus +50% FM all weekend
-Material bonus +50% To material rate / rarity all weekend
-Card Shop Pre-built sale All Horizons Core Legal Pre-builts normally priced at 1500 Gran will be discounted to 990 Gran through the weekend. — This includes Dragons and Dolls, our two newest pre-builts
-There will be a new STEAM DLC – Flower of War Combo Pack – includes 5 packs at a discount plus an exclusive Ishtar Avatar, 300 Gran, 5 Point cards and a Draft ticket.
-Holiday Avatar BG available in the shop this weekend only for 1 FM
-Flower of War 5 of 7 – Starts Friday – 20 Point Cards for participation, and a copy of the 3-star Cursed Spear Master Anri for completing 10 or more battles!
UPDATES
-Now is a great time to check out all of the new features that have been added through the various small updates we've done since launch!
-Drafting, a beta offering on launch, is now a full-fledged game type
-Legacy Challenge - feature the Legacy Expansion of the week in your deck for big battle rewards!
-NPC's now give normal XP and treasure to beginners
-Shop Upgrade - search and card preview
-Additional DLC packages, including a Refess (yellow) Dragon deck and a Lawtia (purple) Magic Doll deck
-Flower of War cards will include new skills never before possible in Alteil!
STORY
The Cursed Legions are on the march!
In Folrart, Lapierre retires and passes on the holy sword Lantylit to the young protege Ishtar. But her unhealthy obsession with the Emperor of the Silver Sun, Verlaat, brings a new dark side to the Shrine Knights. A new group of nobles rises to power in Folrart, who align themselves with the imperialistic ideals of their Emperor. Hailing from the neighboring kingdoms saved from the undead by Verlaat, they owe him total allegiance and make his power unimpeachable.
Balheart, the general of the strongest Barbarian tribe, Leleua, decides to break off his war with the Mercenary Nation and lead his Barbarian armies north to aid the Solar Kingdom against the undead. He calls for the aid of generals and high ranking warriors from allied tribes, famous for unpredictable battle tactics and abilities beyond imagination!
Meanwhile, the rebuilding Wizard kingdom has begun assembling new Paladins, including the shocking Thunder Paladin Rudolf, and deadly Flash Swordswoman Sistine. The true identity of the Cursed Legions’ leader is not lost on them…
Meanwhile, ground zero for the rising undead is Crest! The last defender of Crest, Yug, has new armies and purpose fighting the limitless waves of the Cursed Legions.
Without the master of all undead – Undead King Zugateroza – the Cursed Legions bow to the Wizard Kingdom’s ultimate traitor — Durendal! True Immortal Durenal now has the power to take on the four great nations of Lavato, all at the same time!
Black Friday Sale
New Pre-built! GOLDEN DRAGONS - with Bastandora! 1500 Gran launches at HALF PRICE on Friday
But, that's not all! we also have-SEASONAL PACKS - 20% OFF-CORE LOTTO - RARITY UP and 20% OFF - Steam versions of the Magic Dolls and Golden Dragons packs, that includes a bunch of bonus gran, avatars and tournament tickets on top of everything else*But that's not all, for the first time in ...a while... there will be NEW CARDS FOR SALE - the previously Kickstarter Exclusive EX: SLAVE OF BATORA Pack
Reckless Immortal HelcurasOne of the toughest to kill level 3 units ever seen, and one of the hardest hitting. Counter Skills like his are triggered whenever he gets hit and survives, allowing you to counterattack immediately!
Poison Lover RosettaRosetta has the unique power of forcing an enemy unit to spend his turn attacking a unit of your choice. It must be one of yours, but considering the number of cards that have special powers that trigger when they are hit or killed, and also that having control over when your units die also gives you control over when your Soul Skills are triggered, this is a great strategic asset.
Lord of Wei KanyuKanyu is a powerful destructive force all on his own. His Cry of Wu, unleashes an aura of power that can literally destroy those who hear it. Not only is it targeted, but it also bypasses armor, and is used each turn automatically in addition to his normal skills. Add that to his multi-attacking action skill, he's quite capable of killing three enemies in one turn!
Warped Genius AlbertA cruel scientist, Albert makes for a multi-purpose debuffer in your deck. His ability to erode Max HP makes it very difficult for the enemy to tank your front line, and can spell the end for unliving units like Undead. *Because of low price, cards cannot be resold in Steam DLC of pre-builts
UPDATES 11/21/16
Last week actually had three separate updates and upgrades, but they were a bit smaller than what we’ve been doing lately so I decided to sum them up in one post.
BugFixes
-The ‘Timer Bug’ should be fixed now.
-Some users were having trouble battling in a Draft tournament, this has been fixed
-the ‘no soul skill’ crash bug
-general stability tweaks
Features
-Singles Card Shop – you can now mouseover the card image to see the standard mouseover of the card, with skills and stats.
-Card Shop – There is now a glowing ‘Question Mark’ icon by the description all of all packs, boxes, prebuilts and anything else that contains cards. Clicking on it brings up every possible card you can get in that product. If it’s a fixed card product, like a prebuilt, you’ll also see the number of copies. Mousing over the cards gives the card details as normal.
-You can now EXIT a draft. There is a little ‘x’ in the upper right of the draft bar in arena. Simply click it, confirm ‘yes; and you will exit an incomplete draft. This allows you to ‘cut your losses’ and keep your drafted cards as if you had a 0/5 record, without wasting any time or losing any RP. It works well if you don’t feel you have the cards to build a good enough deck, or if you drafted such good cards you want to have them in your regular collection right away. You keep your cards, but the draft ticket (draft packs) is not refunded.
-Draft Packs now will almost never have duplicate commons, which should make building a deck a lot more fun — NOTE, due to the nature of this fix, it will be phased in over the course of the week.
I’m actually making a pretty good dent on the old to-do list, so if you seem a Dev in chat or in game, be sure to give us your ideas for improvements and new features! You can also, of course just email logress@apocoplay.com
–Sean
11/10/2016 Update
We pushed another patch live last night, here's the list!
-Fix for the 'after set phase hangup'
-Tournaments no longer expire after 24 hours (or ever)
-Tournament search is now 60 seconds instead of 30
-Fixed Draft Deck Bug
-Added visual progress bar for Draft Tournaments
-Tutorial Update - We Incorporated some of our player's feedback into the Tutorial
There were also some general stability updates, and the Tutorial Update will involve a tiny update to the Steam Client which should happen automatically. Notice that two of the list are suggestions from our community! That's no coincidence, we take our player feedback extremely seriously.
--Sean
11/7.2016 Update
Saturday night we uploaded another patch. Since it was primarily a general stability patch, I didn't announce it until I was sure it worked. Two days of checking the server logs and playing later, things are looking super solid!
We've already got the next patch done, this one covering some minor bugs and other reported issues. That will probably go up tonight.
Since we're turning around these changes pretty regularly, this is a good time to report anything, or just give us some suggestions! To make sure Alteil is as good as it can be, we'll continue to listen to the community and impliment the great ideas of our players!
--Sean
11/7/16-11/13/16 5 of 7 Event!
Honored Iczers,I am pleased to announce that we will be hosting a 5 of 7 event beginning this upcoming Monday at 12:01AM (EST). It will end on Sunday 11/13/16 at 11:59PM (EST).
To participate, all you have to do is play a duel on 5 of 7 days during the duration of the event. This only includes human opponents, so take a break from beating up on our poor NPCs and duke it out with one another! Duels must last at least 10 turns in order to count for the event-so give it your best shot and stick it out until the end of each match! Remember, Core legal files get a substantial boost to rewards in terms of cards, materials, and FM!
All participating players will earn 5 point cards (can be exchanged for any normal rarity card in the game) and 1 copy of Seasonal Beltorat Light Cavalry.
We will have 2 additional tiers of prizes for participating players who play additional matches above 5 of 7 requirement. These additional matches can take place on any day-just make sure to play on 5 of the 7 qualifying days to begin with.Players that participate in at least 10 matches during the duration of the event, will score an additional 5 point cards (total of 10) and receive 1 copy of Seasonal Lycanthrope [Echidna]
Finally, players that go above and beyond and participate in 20 matches during the event will earn 10 more point cards (total of 20), and 1 copy of Seasonal Aqua Sorcerer / Mystere
That's it! Good luck and I hope to see you in the arena.-Romdeau
11/5/2016 Updates
-NEW FEATURE - added Core search. Now, for the first 60 seconds of searching, if you're playing Core you'll only be matched with other Core.
-Fixed a problem where users were not being alerted on battle start if their deck was incomplete,
-Began applying user feedback to the tutorial
-General bugfixes