This week we wanted to share with you some specifics about a feature we hinted at in a previous week- Alt Art.
When the the update drops, every current hero (and every new hero from now on) will have an alternative piece of art that you can unlock and use in your decks. When you go to the hero detail view, you will be given the option to unlock alternative art for 1,000 Fellowship.
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Let's take a look at each hero's alternative artwork...
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Core Set
Tom Took Tom Took's alt art will available for everyone to unlock for 1,000 Fellowship.
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For those players who bought the Shire Founder's Pack, Mithril Bundle, or Collector's Edition, you will have the following Alt Art already unlocked in the major update. This art will be exclusive to you as a reward for backing us during our Founder's Pack Stage.
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Aragorn Aragorn's alt art is available for everyone to unlock for 1,000 Fellowship.
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For those players who bought the Steward Founder's Pack, Mithril Bundle, or Collector's Edition, you will have the following Alt Art already unlocked in the major update. This art will be exclusive to you as a reward for backing us during our Founder's Pack Stage.
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Arwen Arwen's alt art will available for everyone to unlock for 1,000 Fellowship.
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For those players who bought the Istari Founder's Pack, Mithril Bundle or Collector's Edition, you will have the following Alt Art already unlocked in the major update. This art will be exclusive to you as a reward for backing us during our Founder's Pack Stage.
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Gimli Gimli's alt art will available for everyone to unlock for 1,000 Fellowship.
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For those players who bought the Istari Founder's Pack, Mithril Bundle or Collector's Edition, you will have the following Alt Art already unlocked in the major update. This art will be exclusive to you as a reward for backing us during our Founder's Pack Stage.
Click on the thumbnail to see the full size image...
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The Shadow's Reach Heroes
The Heroes from The Shadow's Reach, included free in the Core Set, grant access to unlock the following alternative art pieces.
Dwalin Dwalin's alt art will available for everyone to unlock for 1,000 Fellowship.
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Eowyn Eowyn's alt art will available for everyone to unlock for 1,000 Fellowship.
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Faramir Faramir's alt art will available for everyone to unlock for 1,000 Fellowship.
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Legolas Legolas' alt art will available for everyone to unlock for 1,000 Fellowship.
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The Shadow's Fall Heroes
The Heroes from The Shadow's Fall, available for purchase or for free if you bought the Istari Founder's Pack, Mithril Bundle or Collector's Edition, grant access to unlock the following alternative art pieces.
Dain II Ironfoot Dain's alt art will available for everyone to unlock for 1,000 Fellowship.
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Fredegar Bolger Fredegar Bolger's alt art will available for everyone to unlock for 1,000 Fellowship.
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Glorfindel Glorfindel's alt art will available for everyone to unlock for 1,000 Fellowship.
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Idraen Idraen's alt art will available for everyone to unlock for 1,000 Fellowship.
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Some Collector's Editions Still Available
If you missed out on the Founder's Packs and simply have to have those exclusive alternative art images, you still have a way to acquire them. Fantasy Flight Games is still selling a limited number of the Collector's Edition, which includes the Mithril Bundle, The Special two player limited version of the Table Top Starter game, The One Ring replica, art cards, sound track and Middle Earth player's mat.
You can acquire this special edition here at Fantasy Flight Game's webstore.
Twitch Stream
Don't forget that you can check out our Twitch channel at https://www.twitch.tv/ffigames every two weeks at 1pm Central US time / 6:00pm UTC.
Our next stream will be tomorrow, Wednesday, April 24th.
Next Update
Next week, we'll continue our series on the changes coming in our upcoming major update. When will these changes be coming? We have not yet announced the date these changes are coming, but will do so in the coming weeks.
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That's it for this week. Until we meet again, may the stars shine ever on your adventures!
FFI and Asmodee Digital
Weekly Update- April 16th Deck Building
Hail and Well Met!
As you continue to enjoy the new Campaign The Shadow's Fall and new Encounter A Feast For Trolls we wanted to focus on additional changes coming with our upcoming major First Time User Experience release that will be updating the UI, add new features and cosmetic controls.
If you missed the previous updates about this release, you can catch up by reading the updates from previous weeks including:
This week, we want to give you previews of changes we are making to the Decks Menu and how you build decks in the new update. Let's start with what you will see when you go to the Decks menu in the new system.
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You will note a few things here-
The Gallery- We've gathered the cards you own into a Gallery, with tabs inside the Gallery for displaying both your Heroes and other cards.
The Search Bar- In all sections of the gallery, you will see a side search bar that you can use for sorting your cards. Each of the search criteria can be toggled on and off so that you can combine them. The side bar will be context sensitive so that search criteria will be added or subtracted depending on where within the Decks menu you are. (Note the new icon for the Neutral Sphere.)
New Tabs- You'll note that in addition to the Gallery, there are tabs for:
The Deck Builder- Build your Decks here
Hero Packs- Check out Available and owned Hero Packs here
Sauron Gallery- Check out Sauron's cards here
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Card Gallery
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Here you will see the contextual differences between the Hero tab and the Cards tab, showing the criteria for searching, as well as changes to how cards are represented in the game. You'll now see physically if you have 1 or 2 cards, and whether those cards are locked or unlocked at a glance.
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Deck Building
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When you go to actually make a new deck, these changes carry over as well...
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However, when you go to examine your existing decks, you'll note that there are now two tabs—one for pre-built decks and the other for player custom decks. Our intention is that with our new update, we will be providing a few additional decks of differing types so that new players can try them out before making their own decks. In this way, if you have no intention to use pre-built decks, they won't clutter up your own custom deck list.
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Card Detail
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In the card detail view, you will see a modification of the existing format that gives clearer information about the sphere and set information. Additionally, if you don't own or haven't unlocked a current card, you'll be able to do so right there.
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Additionally, for heroes, you'll be able to select the card art within that screen as well.
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You can also learn more details about Sauron's cards.
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Summary
By combining unlocking, deckbuilding, card exploration and modifications all in one menu, we hope to make for a clearer game experience and hope that they will allow you to enjoy the game more fully.
Hotfix Updates
We made a few hotfix updates over the last week. You can check out the quick patch note update here. Of particular note are the network updates that should improve network stability and disconnect/reconnect behavior markedly.
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Glorfindel Update In addition, our Dwarven miners got a little overzealous and pushed forward a change to Glorfindel that we had originally intended to push forward at a later date, but we decided to make live now for playtesting feedback. We will be gauging this change to see how it affects game play. You will note that Glorfindel's power is now the opposite from what it was originally- if he takes damage, you lose a threat, and if you don't take damage, you gain fate.
Twitch Stream
Don't forget that you can check out our Twitch channel at https://www.twitch.tv/ffigames every two weeks at 1pm Central US time / 6:00pm UTC.
Our next stream will be Wednesday, April 24th.
Next Update
Next week, we'll continue our series on the changes coming in our upcoming major update. When will these changes be coming? We have not yet announced the date these changes are coming, but will do so in the coming weeks.
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That's it for this week. Until we meet again, may the stars shine ever on your adventures!
FFI and Asmodee Digital
Weekly News Update- April 9th, 2019 A Feast For Trolls Live!
A star shines upon the hour of our meeting!
A Feast For Trolls is available today, free to all players!
As we mentioned last week, A Feast For Trolls is available today. Can you avoid the cook pot in this free new Encounter?
The Trolls are Hungry—And You’re on the Menu…
You don't have to do anything to get this new encounter- just load up the game and go to the play menu. A Feast For Trolls is fully playable in both single and co-op play modes.
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Just a reminder that Encounters are typically more challenging than regular quests, but free for all players.
Patch Notes and Fixes
We've made a few updates to the game along with the release of A Feast For Trolls to improve game play. You can check out the exact patch notes here.
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Upcoming Network Fixes In addition to these fixes, we took a deeper look at network code based on some recent player reported issues. We've found a few network code issues that we will be updating in the coming days that will improve reconnect behavior and reduce disconnects in general.
Update Preview — Save Feature
This week, as part of our ongoing news updates on our major upcoming game update, we focus on our new save game feature. As always, be aware that these new features are works in progress, and likely will change before we release them.
One of the nice things that digital card games bring you is that you don't have to spend time worrying about board setup and gathering the proper cards in the proper place when you play. That way you can jump right into the action without worrying if you set things up properly or having to worry about cleanup after you play.
Another nice aspect of digital games is speed of play. Since you don't have to execute play manually, you can focus on just playing and have the action occur automatically based on your play decisions.
One of the things we've found with The Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game is that due to the complexity of the decision making, playing a quest can take anywhere from a few minutes to an hour or more for those players who agonize over every action. In multiplayer, this is exacerbated by players discussing courses of action and deciding the best way to move forward. While we are seeing shorter completions done in twenty minutes, some of you take up to 2 hours to complete a quest.
For this reason, it became pretty quickly apparent that we would want a save game feature. However, adding a save game wasn't as cut and dried as it first appeared. There were several tricky design issues that needed to be considered and resolved.
Due to the game being card based, we had to make a several critical decisions on how we wanted to go about implementing a saved game system. In multiplayer, these decisions get even more complex since we're juggling two players, their own deck state, board states, and Sauron's deck state. If you are in a saved state, your deck also cannot be altered, as you have played out certain cards in your deck at the time of the save. This meant some juggling of complex issues without breaking the game itself.
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Checkpoint Based System One of the things we decided early on was that the system would be automatic and save your game after each completed location. We wanted to keep the focus session based rather than creating an old school system where players have to consciously manage their saves as they play or promote the kind of play where you save your game literally after every round draw and simply quit and reboot if a single action doesn't go your way. We felt that would not be a good direction for game play.
When our save game feature goes live, the game will automatically create a save game checkpoint after you complete every location. This means that if you load up your game again, it will place you at the start of the last incomplete location where you left the game. If you don't like how you did in a single round and want to restart, or you disconnect for some reason, you will need to start that location over.
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Single Player Save Games will vary somewhat between single and multiplayer games. For single player, you will automatically create one save game per quest played. If you leave a quest, and return to the game, you can pick that quest again, and start at the last incomplete location where you left off. Please note that the deck you used in that quest will be locked until you complete the quest since you have that deck committed to that quest. You can still play with that deck in other quests, but you cannot edit it until you resolve the save game (by completing the quest or deleting the saved game).
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If you complete a quest, no save game is generated (since you completed all locations in the quest). If you don't want to play a save game, you can always opt to start the quest over, but this will overwrite your save game and generate a new save.
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Co-Op Multiplayer will function a bit differently from Single Player. You will have a Saved Games Tab for Multiplayer that allows you to save up to 10 saved games (this number is not yet final, but the number we're working with) that you can load up at any time in MP. You can play these cooperative saved games only with the original cooperative player.
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Just as in Single Player, the saved game will be automatically generated at the end of the last completed location.
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There are a few more subtleties to the save game system, especially how they relate to the deck builder, but we will cover that topic in a future update.
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(Eagle eyed viewers will spot a new MP feature in the above image. Now that we have more heroes available, we're adding a system to allow players to restrict duplicate heroes in MP games.)
Twitch Stream
Don't forget that you can check out our Twitch channel at https://www.twitch.tv/ffigames every two weeks at 1pm Central US time / 6:00pm UTC.
Our next stream will be tomorrow, Wednesday, April 10th.
Next Update
Next week, we'll continue our series on the changes coming in our upcoming major update. When will these changes be coming? We have not yet announced the date these changes are coming, but will do so in the coming weeks.
If you missed our other previews, you can find them here:
That's it for this week. Until we meet again, may the stars shine ever on your adventures!
FFI and Asmodee Digital
Weekly Update, April 2nd- Announcing A Feast For Trolls Release
Greetings fair folk!
Special Announcement - A New Encounter is Imminent!
A Feast For Trolls
We have a special treat for you. We'd like to announce the release of A Feast For Trolls, our next free encounter, on April 9th—one week from today.
The Trolls are Hungry—And You’re on the Menu…
Free to all players, A Feast for Trolls is the second Encounter for The Lord of the Rings™️: Living Card Game™️.
Like The King of Carrion, this new Encounter is an ultra-hard game mode tailor-made for veteran players. Unlike a Campaign, an Encounter is a single perilous Quest designed to be very tough to beat! Plus, every Encounter is free for all players to enjoy.
Here’s a taste—so to speak—of what you can look forward to in A Feast for Trolls:
Having helped the Beornings in several dangerous matters of late, they turn to you again for aid. So it is that, during a cool week in early fall, you join a patrol to scour the wooded hillsides near the eastern entrance to the pass across the mountains from the Ettenmoors.
Jarewulf, the patrol leader, hopes to clear out any Goblins or wolves that may have grown too comfortable in the area. He also hopes to find some clue as to the whereabouts of the lost expedition of Dwarves sent by King Dáin some months ago.
You’ve been on patrol only a few days when you encounter a band of Goblins. They don’t seem to be in the mood to discuss whether they’ve seen any Dwarves…
If you complete A Feast for Trolls successfully, two copies of an all-new card are added to your collection: the Dwarven Warrior.
Take a favorite deck—or build a new one—and head for the hills starting April 9th, when A Feast for Trolls comes to The Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game!
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Remember both that encounters are free to all players, and that they are typically more difficult than the regular quests. However, as part of general balance adjustments we are incorporating, this encounter will provide unique experiences at each of the Narrative, Adventure and Challenge levels so that you can choose the style of play that you desire (once that feature goes live with the bigger coming update).
Here are a few screen shots from the upcoming release to stir your imagination:
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Update Preview- Cosmetics
This week, as part of our ongoing news updates on the big upcoming game update, we focus on how to make the game unique to you!
We've always featured a few ways for you to customize the look of your game by choosing unique Avatars, Card Backs and Player Tags. In addition we're adding a few other areas for you to change the look of your game, including alt art for hero cards and unique vocal emotes to communicate with your gaming partner.
As part of our upcoming major update, we're wrapping all of the cosmetics into one location: The Vault.
So wait a minute? I thought cards are in the Vault? Currently, yes they are—but as part of our change to the UI, we're folding everything that has to do with cards, including unlocking them, into the Deck menu to allow for a streamlined and 'all in one' deckbuilding experience. We'll go into changes to that menu in a future news update, but that frees the Vault for us to focus exclusively on Cosmetics. Let's look at these changes in detail (keeping in mind that everything shown here is subject to change until actual release).
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The New Vault Menu
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The vault now offers three options for PlayerTags, Emotes and Card Backs.
The Player Tag tab is similar to the existing cosmetic menu in game, but with important clarifications to emphasize on how they function. Here you can mix and match avatars and frames to see how they look, and peruse available cosmetics that you have yet to unlock.
All cosmetic items will be available for unlocking with your Fellowship points, with each requiring 1,000 Fellowship. Please note that all cosmetics that were exclusive to Founder's Packs will remain exclusive, and only included here to illustrate functionality.
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Emotes!
In the current version of multi player, we rely on external chat services (such as Steam Chat or Discord) between players in game. We're looking at adding a lobby system chat so that players can meet in the multiplayer Play Menu and directly connect to try multi player games.
However, we will also be releasing an emote chat system so that players can communicate with other players directly in game. By clicking on your avatar, you will bring up an emote menu system that will allow you to communicate with your fellow player.
There will be seven emote options available, each indicating a basic message, but delivered in the voice and style of your favorite characters from Middle-earth. These include:
Apology
Caution!
Greetings
Guard
Take Action!
Thanks/Congratulations
Travel
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Of course, if you don't want to hear from your companion player, you can always choose to turn off their emotes.
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What is unique to The Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game is that you can either choose to have all of your emotes delivered by a single character, or create unique emote profiles where you mix and match your emotes from various characters.
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Emotes will be available for unlocking for 1,000 Fellowship required for each voice set.
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Ping
We will also be going live with a ping system so you can point out a specific location on the game screen to your partner. By combining Ping and Emotes, players should be able to communicate effectively with one another in game.
You may be wondering why we don't just have a simple chat system in-game. As mentioned, you can always use Steam Chat or Discord (or some other external text or voice chat option). In casual play, however, we are looking to limit the amount of verbal abuse that players can hurl at one another. Emotes combined with ping allow an in-lore way to communicate without devolving to possibly abusive and toxic banter, while players who know each other can make use of the external chat options mentioned.
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Cardbacks
Cardbacks will now be available in the Vault directly with both your own and Sauron's card backs available to peruse and unlock. New card backs will be unlockable and requiring 1,000 Fellowship each. Please note that all existing unlocked card backs will remain unlocked and that this only applies to newly available card backs. Additionally, though we use the Shire cardback here to illustrate the concept, it will remain as an exclusive card back to those people who bought the Shire Founder's Pack.
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Alt Art
In addition to the above cosmetic options, in the card gallery itself, players will be able to unlock alternative art for heroes. Don't like the image we chose? Go ahead and pick alternative art pieces for each hero in the game. You can unlock each alt art piece for 1,000 Fellowship.
Please note that Founder's Pack owners will be granted exclusive alternative art for the basic four core set heroes upon the release of this feature. This means that the four basic core set heroes will, in fact, have three art options if you purchased one of the Founder's packs on release.
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Don't worry, we'll give sneak peeks at some alt art options in a future news update.
Twitch Stream
Don't forget that you can check out our Twitch channel at https://www.twitch.tv/ffigames every two weeks at 1pm Central US time / 6:00pm UTC.
Our next stream will be Wednesday, April 10th.
Next Update
Next week, we'll continue our series on changes to the game in our big upcoming update. We have not yet announced the date these changes are coming, but will do so in the near future.
If you missed our other previews, you can find them here:
That's it for this week. Until we meet again, may the stars shine ever on your quests!
FFI and Asmodee Digital
Weekly News Update- March 26th Scoring and Rewards
Adventure Awaits!
Patch Update We've pushed a patch out this morning with a number of smaller adjustments and fixes. You can check out the specific changes here.
We may issue more of these smaller adjustments and fixes as we continue and will mention them here when they go live. Check back here in the weeks to come for future fixes and adjustments.
Upcoming Updates- Scoring and Rewards
As part of our series on upcoming changes that will be included in our next major update, this week we will focus on the Scoring and Rewards system. As always, these changes are subject to change before we release, but we want to share these with you so you will know what type of changes to expect.
Our goal for these changes is to both incentivize players and to make all scores and rewards easily understood in their context. Let's walk through the changes...
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Valor Points become... Fellowship One of the upcoming changes is that we are changing valor points to fellowship. This change is being made to promote that the forces arrayed against Sauron are working together. You are rewarded not for acts of individual valor, but rather for your work arm in arm to hold back the forces of darkness. They won't be points, but rather simply Fellowship represented by the following symbol.
It is important to note that this will not at all change the amount of points you have. This is purely a cosmetic change as we will simply no longer be referring to Valor Points, but rather how much fellowship you have earned.
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Simplified Costs- no rarity Along with this change, we are getting rid of the old notion of rarity. This was a carry over from our old design that, from a design perspective made sense, but as many pointed out, in a PvE game, felt out of place and was hard for players to wrap their head around.
For this reason, we will no longer have rarity. When the update goes live, we will have only two types of cards- Standard and Legendary.
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All Common, Uncommon and Rare cards will simply become Standard Cards with a cost of 1,000 Fellowship to unlock.
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All Legendary cards will remain Legendary to denote how powerful and exceptional they are and will likewise remain at a cost of 3,000 Fellowship to unlock.
Please note that this will not affect your existing unlocked cards or point totals. If you already bought your cards at higher (or lower) costs, your points will simply remain and this will only impact future purchases.
(Eagle Eyed Players will notice other changes in the card detail screen, but that's a topic for another day.)
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Simplified Scoring Our original desire was to use scoring as a way to measure how you approach your play, but the complexity of the game meant that a lot of the ways we can measure how you play would end up preferring some play methods over others. One aspect of the game we really want to emphasize is allowing players to play the game how they want to.
Additionally, we saw an aspect of the game where players were simply playing to maximize score rather than simply defeat Sauron. People would play the game, but either be disappointed, or play in multi-player and berate others for not maximizing their scoring.
Additionally, if you failed, there was no measure of progress. You just got a flat score for failing, which didn't promote progressing or rewarding you for almost completing the game.
This was not what we had intended.
For these reason we are taking a different approach to score.
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Flat Score for Quest Completion All players will receive a flat score for completing a quest, and that score will be 1000 Fellowship. You will note that this means you will be able to buy a card after every successful completion of a quest. That's part of our philosophy of scoring that you should always be able to get something new when you complete a quest. Sure, you'll have to still save up for Legendary cards, but we feel that those cards should be worth playing a few times to unlock them.
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You'll be able to use those points for other things, but we'll cover that in a future news update.
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Failure Progressive Score State Currently, when you play the game, you get only a small reward for losing a quest, whether you completed all but one location or just one. We wanted to change that.
When the new update goes live, the game will award you 1000 Fellowship ÷ the number of locations possible * the number of locations completed. In practice this means that you will get a portion of the 1,000 possible Fellowship based on how close you come to completing a Quest.
For example, if there are 5 possible locations available for a player to complete, they will earn 1000 ÷ 5 * the number of locations they complete. If they complete, say, 3 of the 5 locations, they will earn 600 Fellowship, whereas if they complete 4, they will earn 800 Fellowship.
We feel that this will be more casual player friendly and encourage players who are making progress, even if they aren't beating a given quest.
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Before you see the score, however, we're adding a hint screen that will give you more insight into why you failed so that you can improve your play.
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Quest Challenges Wait, you are probably saying, how do I prove my prowess in playing a quest if I can't tell my friends I beat their 490 score? That's where quest challenges come in. Instead of scoring how you beat the quest and limiting your options on how to play to maximize that score, we've instead added quest challenges.
These are quest specific achievements that you can earn to get score bonuses, and they are available every time you play. While a few of these challenges are universal to all quests, there will always be unique challenges custom built for each quest that allow us to create unique and custom score bonuses that fit the narrative of each particular quest.
There will always be five challenges and each will add 200 Fellowship to your score, allowing up to double your potential score in an individual quest.
Here's a sample score screen with the challenges listed for a particular quest.
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Quest Rewards We want to incentivize you to play each quest more than once and for that reason, we're changing rewards. In the current game, you receive a reward for beating a campaign or an encounter. We've decided to make sure you not only get a reward for defeating a campaign, but also for every single quest you beat. Not only that, you will receive extra rewards for the first few times you beat a quest.
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First Time Play-through The first time you beat a quest, you'll receive a card reward (actually you'll receive 2 of each card). This will vary per quest and be tied to the narrative of that quest.
Second Time Play-through The second time you beat a quest, you'll receive an avatar cosmetic. Again, this avatar will be unique to the quest and related to narrative. It might be an ally, it might be a character who is part of the story.
Third Time Play-through The third time you beat a quest, you'll receive another avatar, but this one will be a dark avatar- featuring Sauron's minions, and again, tied to the narrative of that quest. We realize that earning 'bad guy' cosmetics isn't everyone's cup of tea, but for some players, having the ability to have a bad guy avatar appeals to their own inner shadow.
After the third time you play-through, you'll earn your standard score and any challenge related score. We won't add any additional bonus items.
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Incentivization
All of these rewards are great, but you are probably wondering how you'll know what you'll earn. For some people, they love the surprise, but for others, they want to know what they get for beating a quest.
For that reason, we're changing up the play menu to include a reward listing. If you really want to keep the surprise, just ignore this section of the menu, but if you are one of those people who simply must understand what they are earning at all times, you can simply click on a specific quest, hit the reward button and see exactly what you will earn- or have already earned- in each particular quest.
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But wait! There's More! You may have noticed in that above screen an item marked 'Hall of Heroes.' In addition to all of the rewards we mention above, you will also receive a bonus reward for successfully playing through a quest the first time with each individual hero.
All you have to do is beat the quest with each hero to earn the reward. This is a one time reward only, but since you earn 500 fellowship for each, it's very worthwhile to come back later and retry quests with new heroes to earn more Fellowship.
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And one more thing... If all of the above wasn't enough, we have added one more type of reward- The Hero Specific Challenge. For each hero in the game, we're going to be adding a specific challenge that this particular hero will need to overcome in order to earn a specific card reward for that hero. The challenges will be unique to each hero, and aim to capture the style of that hero's play.
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To understand what you'll need to do to overcome each hero's challenge, you will go to the Hero detail screen in the Deck menu. There you can find out the specific requirements you'll need to meet in order to obtain that hero's unique reward.
Twitch Stream
Don't forget that you can check out our Twitch channel at https://www.twitch.tv/ffigames every two weeks at 1pm Central US time / 6:00pm UTC (though keep in mind Daylight Savings time, which has already begun in the US, so this time might vary).
Our next stream is tomorrow, March 27th.
Next Update
Next week, we'll talk about cosmetics and some other upcoming items you'll be able to spend all that Fellowship on.
That's it for this week. We'll be back with more next week and until then may the winds blow ever in your favor.
FFI and Asmodee Digital
News Update, March 19th, 2019- New Tutorial Details
A star shines on the hour of our meeting!
The Shadow’s Fall Update We are now a full week after the release of the new campaign, The Shadow’s Fall, and we hope you are enjoying these new adventures.
We’ve been watching the comments and looking at the data and will continue to make adjustments and fixes as we see them. Please keep the comments and feedback coming as it really does help us improve the experience.
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The Shadow’s Reach Rebalance You may not have noticed, but we also did a balance overhaul of the original campaign, The Shadow’s Reach. Each quest plays a bit differently, especially the climax quest, Down the Anduin.. The quests should be easier to approach now in the Narrative mode of play and in all modes will ramp up progressively in difficulty across the course of the campaign. Check it out and, as always, feel free to send us feedback.
Development Roadmap- Tutorial
As mentioned last week, our primary focus at the moment is a major update including a number of changes. This week, we will focus on one of those changes—The Tutorial.
The current tutorial was always meant as a placeholder, and now we’re going back and completely revamping the tutorial system as part of our upcoming update. Let’s explore the planned tutorial changes.
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Basic Tutorial(First Time User Experience) The first time you launch the game, you will play a very short basic tutorial with our old friend, Bilbo. In this brief, light hearted adventure, you learn the very basics of play: placing cards, acting with both heroes and cards, and how the back and forth action that makes up the core game loop functions.
From here you will be given a choice to go to either the main menu, or straight to the play menu and the first quest in an entire Tutorial campaign.
The Lord of the Rings™️: Living Card Game™️ is a much more complex game than a typical casual card game, and that requires a more detailed breakdown of the various aspects of the game. For that reason, we’re dividing the tutorial into 5 separate quests (the size of a full campaign) that will both teach the game and serve as a prelude to Campaign One—The Shadow’s Fall. Each quest within that campaign will detail a specific aspect of the game, allow us to add new elements as you go, and learn each aspect in its own right.
This prelude tutorial campaign will appear on the main play map, just like any other campaign. This allows you to play through the tutorial at your leisure as well as drop back at any time for a refresher to brush up on your skills. Those who wish to replay the basic first time play tutorial can do so in the play menu (much like you can now).
Let’s look at each of the tutorial quests, and the elements of the game they detail in more depth.
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Quest 1 - Core Concepts
By the time a player has finished the first quest, they should understand the core elements of gameplay. To accomplish this, the core concepts quest tutorial will focus on the following items:
Round Structure
Upkeep
Adventure
End of Round
Resources
Card Types
Characters
Heroes
Allies
Enemy Types
Enemy
Boss
Objectives and Hazards
Sauron Resources and Hand
Board Setup
Travel and Traveling
Contextual Keywords
Quest Progression
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Quest 2 - Advanced Concepts
In the second quest, we focus on more complex elements of gameplay, and how to improve your overall skills when facing off against Sauron. When you are finished playing this quest, you should have enough understanding of the game to hold your own. Individual aspects of play covered in this quest include:
Defense and Guard(and how they are key to your game play)
Fate
The Fate Meter
Fate Events
Sphere Identity and Differences
Unique Cards
Specific Keywords and their context
Card Powers
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Quest 3 - Nuanced Concepts
In this third quest, we will cover aspects of the game that are a bit more complex and how they impact your play. By playing this quest, you should be able to learn all the tools you need in order to beat any quest you encounter. Specific elements of play covered in this quest include:
Attachments
Event Card Play
Preparation Card Play
Treachery Cards
Traits
Deck Size
Hand Limits
Summoning and how it impacts play
The History and Glossary Features
Dual Sphere Decks and the impact of Dual Sphere Cards
Specific Keywords and their context
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Quest 4 - Deck Construction
This fourth quest takes you to the deckbuilder, where we walk you through the aspects of building a good deck, the impact of different types of cards, and the best way to develop your deck building skills.
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Quest 5 - Applied Practice (A Quest)
This last quest in the prelude campaign is a specially built replayable quest built for new players to try all of the skills they gained in the earlier tutorial quests. Here you put all of those skills to the test. You can play this quest like any other, though you will find the difficulty curve to be a bit more forgiving than later adventures.
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General Tutorial Notes Beyond just the tutorial, there are a lot of other tools that we’re building into the game to aid learning to play, including context tips, hint text if you can’t figure out what to do, and better responsive elements to signify what is happening and why. Our goal is for you to have full situational awareness while playing this fairly demanding game.
When?
When will you be able to play this new tutorial? The short answer to this is… not yet. The longer answer is that the number of changes we are implementing are considerable, and will take time for us to fully complete, test, play, and balance before we deliver them. Since the tutorial is part of a number of changes we’re implementing, we will make it part of that larger release and announce when it is coming when they are complete.
In the mean time we will showcase some of these elements in upcoming Twitch streams. You can check out our twitch channel at https://www.twitch.tv/ffigames every two weeks at 1pm Central US time / 6:00pm UTC (though keep in mind Daylight Savings time, which has already begun in the US, so this time might vary).
Future News Updates In the weeks to come, we will detail other aspects of the big update to come. Next week we will detail the coming revamp of the scoring and reward system and how we think it will be a big boost to gameplay.
That's it for this week. We'll be back with more next week and until then may the winds blow ever in your favor.
FFI and Asmodee Digital
Weekly News Update- March 12th, 2019
Salutations, heroes of Middle-earth!
The first expansion for The Lord of the Rings™️: Living Card Game™️ The Shadow’s Fall has been released! You can check out the first quest, The Silver Claws for free, or purchase the full expansion and receive the other four quests as well as the four hero packs, which introduce four intrepid new heroes and their associated cards to add to your decks.
We hope you enjoy this pack and look forward to more to come.
Purchasing the Expansion
Update! The DLC store is now live. You can purchase the expansion directly here.
You can also purchase the expansion in-game in the Expansions menu.
To do so, simply go to the Expansions menu, click on The Shadow’s Fall expansion and click on the button featuring your local price to purchase.
Build Notes and Updates
Be sure to check the build notes for this release as we made a number of them. You can read the change log here.
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Campaign 1- The Shadow's Reach, Rebalanced
In addition to the all new Campaign, The Shadow's Fall, we've gone back and done a major re-balance of Campaign 1- The Shadow's Reach. You find that on Narrative mode, the game is more approachable, while on other modes, the difficulty ramps more evenly throughout. This isn't the end of our rebalancing efforts, as we have more coming in our future updates, but this is a major change to the first campaign that you should can play and enjoy as we build our way toward eventual Final Release.
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Dúnedain Hunter Changed Prior to Release
We'd like to thank one of our players, Kjeld, who recommended a change to Dúnedain Hunter to include Surge when it is played. We liked the idea so much that we went ahead and made the change for release. Of course this makes the card slightly more powerful, so we raised his resource cost to 1 to compensate.
Coming News Updates
In the coming weeks, our news updates will focus on detailing the upcoming first-time user experience adjustments which includes the tutorial, user interface, experience and balance adjustments.
Next week we will go into more detail specifically on the upcoming new Tutorial revamp that we’ve been working on. The amount of work is pretty extensive, including a complete overhaul of the current tutorial and expanding it into a full tutorial campaign detailing both basic and more advanced aspects of play. We’re excited to tell you more about it.
That's it for now, we'll be back with more next week and until then may the winds blow ever in your favor.
FFI and Asmodee Digital
Weekly Update, March 5th, 2019 — Campaign 2 Details Announced!
Well met, brave heroes!
This week we have some big news for you. We're announcing the release date and all the important info on Campaign 2: The Shadow's Fall.
We're sure you have a few questions on your mind and we're here to give you answers.
When is it coming out?
You'll be able to play Campaign 2 on Tuesday, March 12th, one week from today! The date is set and we're excited to get Campaign 2 into your hands.
How much will it cost?
The Shadow's Fall Expansion can be purchased in the Expansions Menu for $9.99USD (prices vary with your local currency). If you are an Istari Founder's Pack or Mithril Bundle owner, you will get this pack added to your inventory for free.
Where can I get it?
You can purchase the expansion directly in the game. Simply go to the Expansions menu and click on The Shadow's Fall expansion pack. From here you can review the contents of the expansion and add it to your collection.
What Do I Get?
Let's take a look at what you get in The Shadow's Fall Expansion...
Enter Four New Heroes
The Shadow's Fall expansion includes four intrepid new heroes to aid in your quests, each in their own new Hero Pack.
The King Under The Mountain From the Iron Hills to the Lonely Mountain, Dáin II Ironfoot rules the Dwarves of the north with wisdom and integrity...
Dáin, son of Náin, adds a powerful new Leadership sphere Dwarf Hero from the Iron Hills to your fellowship. As long as Dáin is not exhausted, he boosts every other Dwarf in your group.
He brings with him a set of unique cards including:
Iron Hills Miner A stout Lore sphere dwarf ally who, while not as mighty as his brethren, causes Sauron to lose a Shadow when he arrives.
Cram This is a Leadership sphere answer to Lembas, and a potential lifesaving card for double Leadership decks.
Ever My Heart Rises This Spirit sphere attachment reduces your Threat by 2 every time you travel, making it a useful item to have in your deck.
Erebor Battlemaster This Tactics sphere Dwarf ally starts small but has the potential to become very powerful when he's joined by his brethren by gaining 1 attack for every other Dwarf in play.
The Unsung Hero Fredegar Bolger is as quick-witted as they come. The Hobbit uses cleverness and stealth to elude enemies on the road to victory...
This new Lore sphere Hobbit Hero is a useful willpower hero who has the Power to grant other heroes and allies guard, allowing you to double up on a Guard or allow another character to act and guard during a single turn to better protect your fellowship.
Fredegar brings with him a Hobbit themed set of cards for your collection...
Hobbit Bounder This 2nd level Lore sphere ally is tough and capable, coming into play with Guard activated.
Hobbit Pipe This Spirit sphere attachment allows you to draw a card every time you lose Threat, making it a very useful addition to threat control decks.
Curious Brandybuck This Tactics sphere Hobbit ally is versatile and has a powerful revenge ability to remove any non-unique Enemy.
Raise The Shire This Leadership sphere Event card allows you play a random Hobbit ally to the board. Think of it as a hobbit form of Sneak Attack.
The Light of Hope Noble Glorfindel is one of the Elven-wise. With unrivaled courage and wisdom, he stands as one of the Dark Lord's greatest foes...
This mighty Spirit sphere Elf Hero rivals Aragorn for his versatility in the game. At the end of each round he takes damage, he adds 1 fate point, while if he takes no damage, he reduces your threat by 1.
Glorfindel brings along with him several Elf themed cards...
A Light From Within This Level 3 Leadership sphere Event gives every Ally 1 Willpower and 2 Health.
Emissary of the Valar This level 2 Spirit sphere Event gives every Noldor +1 Attack and Willpower as well as Block for a single round.
Elven Blade This finely crafted Tactics sphere Attachment gives you an additional point of Attack and Health, but only if you are an Elf.
Imladris Minstrel This Lore sphere ally has the power to restore 1 Health every time an Enemy is defeated. She is a great combo card with Faramir in cooperative play.
The Warden of Arnor Armed with knowledge of the wild lands, the Ranger Idraen defies the unnatural magics of the Dark Lord and his minions...
This Dúnadan Tactics sphere Hero adds combat power to your fellowship. Her Vanquish ability allows her to act twice per round if she defeats an enemy, though she gains this power only once per round.
Idraen is one of the secretive rangers of the north, and brings with her several ranger themed cards...
This powerful 2nd level Tactics sphere Ally is both a powerful fighter and able in quests. However, this power comes with risk, as he brings with him a non-unique random enemy when he enters play.
Dúnedain Trap This 3rd level Lore sphere Attachment can be used to exhaust a non-unique enemy for a round, but since it returns to your hand, you can use it again and again, and against an array of enemies.
Ranger Cloak This useful Leadership sphere Attachment adds to your Health, but also adds to your Willpower if you are a Dúnadan.
Sarn Ford Sentry A useful Spirit sphere Ally for any deck, this Dúnadan ranger is tough to defeat due to her Block keyword.
That rounds out the Hero Packs for The Shadows Fall, but there's more....
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The Shadow's Fall Campaign
This second campaign for The Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game adds a whole new series of five quests to explore and overcome. In this direct sequel to The Shadow's Reach, you will leave the golden leaves of the Forest of Lórien as you are commanded by none other than Galadrial and Celeborn to uncover the reason for the Orc activities in Mirkwood.
Along the way you'll meet friends, both old and new, uncover a new threat to the free peoples and face off against your most challenging adversary yet. Fraught with new perils and challenges, The Shadow's Fall creates all new experiences for you to resolve and showcases all new game behaviors and gameplay.
We'll give you a bit of detail on the very first quest...
The Silver Claws The Elves of Lóren have held a council. They are concerned with the news of Spiders and Orcs working together in southern Mirkwood. With no word from Radagast, you are sent to seek him out and gain his counsel.
Big News! As with all new campaign releases, the first quest is always free, so all players will be able to try out this new quest, even if they don't own The Shadow's Fall.
From here you will be adventuring across Southern Mirkwood facing new foes, overcoming new challenges and fighting in desperate new fights against terrifying new adversaries.
That's not all! There's more to explore in The Shadow's Fall.
Triple Sphere Decks
With the new hero pack release, you now have the ability to create triple sphere decks. You definitely give up the diverse versatility of a standard deck when you take this option, but you make up for it with access to very powerful third level cards. To celebrate, we've added the following Level 3 cards to the Vault for you to unlock and use.
New Triple Sphere Vault Cards!
Finally, all players will have access to unlock new Triple Sphere cards in the Vault. These include:
Strength of Arms Rarity: Uncommon Cost: 750VP
This level 3 Leadership sphere Event readies each of your exhausted characters on the board when played.
Ride Them Down! Rarity: Rare Cost: 1,500VP
This level 3 Spirit sphere Event causes your characters to inflict an equal amount of damage each time they use their willpower to progress objectives.
Ioreth Rarity: Legendary Cost: 3,000VP
This level 3 Leadership sphere Ally brings the Willpower level of Arwen and the ability to restore 3 Health to Characters.
Citadel Plate Rarity: Rare Cost: 1,500VP
This level 3 Tactics Attachment gives powerful armor, additional Health and the Block keyword to the Hero you attach it to.
That's it for this week, we'll be back next week and until then may the dawn ever great you gladly.
FFI and Asmodee Digital
Weekly Update, February 26th- New Cards Live
Glad Tidings!
The newly announced cards from last week are live. We hope you enjoy them and continue to give us feedback as you try out the new keywords.
If you need a refresher as to what those cards are- you can check out the previous week's posting here.
A clarification from last week, Ambush allows players to negate the reciprocal damage from Counter and also bypass Block, giving it some versatility for melee characters, especially against more powerful enemies.
Update Work Continuing
This week the team continues our ongoing work creating a new Tutorial campaign as well as preparing UI/UX enhancements and balance adjustments for future release. Come back next Tuesday for news updates on these and more.
FFI on Twitch
In the meantime, for more information you can check out our Twitch streams every other Wednesday at 1pm US Central time (7pm UTC). Our next stream is tomorrow, February 27th where we'll be playing with the new cards and answering questions.
That's it for this week, but may you have fair skies and warm winds until we next meet.
FFI and Asmodee Digital
Tuesday News Updates- February 19th
Well met and glad tidings!
As mentioned Friday, we're shifting the news updates to Tuesdays. This week, we have a special announcement! We're releasing additional Vault cards next week, February 26th, to all players for unlocking. This is part of our ongoing second major Vault card release, which expands the number of player cards you may use to build your decks.
As always, these cards are part of our Early Access development and are subject to change once live in play.
Here they are for your perusal and planning for future decks. What cards are you unlocking?
Back to the Dark
Rarity: Uncommon VP Cost: 750
This second level Spirit card allows a player to simply straight up defeat a non-unique foe. This powerful card is gives Spirit players new options in tough combat situations.
Legacy of the North
Rarity: Common VP Cost: 375
This Leadership card allows players to gain resources quickly when they have a deck centering around Dúnadan heroes and allies.
Hands Upon the Bow
Rarity: Uncommon VP Cost: 750
This second level Tactics card grants a new keyword, Ambush. Ambush is a powerful new ability that allows characters to bypass the Counter keyword and take no reciprocal damage from characters with Guard active.
Rivendell Blade
Rarity: Uncommon VP Cost: 750
Lore cards aren't normally where you'll find weapons, but this blade fashioned by the master craftsmen of Rivendell, grants Lore players the power to remove Block from any creature they strike for the remainder of a round. This can be a powerful way to bring down especially tough enemies like Trolls or armored foes.
Celduin Traveler
Rarity: Common VP Cost: 375
This character is a standard Spirit ally with no special powers, but capable of helping either with combat, or willpower as needed and a small level of staying power.
Veteran of Nanduhirion
Rarity: Common VP Cost: 375
This stout Dwarf gives new options to Tactics players. This character uses the Counter keyword, which inflicts 1 point of damage on any unit that attacks it in melee. With a 2 attack and 5 health, this character has good staying power, but with a low resource cost, he starts with 2 damage already inflicted upon him. If you want him to last, you'll need to back him up with additional healing.
Cloak of Lorien
Rarity: Common VP Cost: 375
This level 2 Lore card grants both the new Ambush and Block upon any character it is attached to, making it invaluable to players who double up on their Lore heroes.
Erestor
Rarity: Rare VP Cost: 1500
The unique Noldor ally Erestor is a versatile level 2 Leadership ally whose power is to discard a card in order to gain a resource and add 2 to a player's Fate Meter. With 6 health, he has a better than average staying power.
Enduring Valor
Rarity: Rare VP Cost: 1500
Our Neutral card for this vault release, Enduring Valor is a special attachment that gives the right Hero or Ally the ability to automatically gain the Guard keyword whenever it exhausts. This gives a powerful card the ability to both act and gain Guard in one round- though beware, as this ability makes this card a primary target or foes.
The last Vault cards for this set are level 3 cards that we will make available in the upcoming The Shadow's Fall expansion as this will be the first time players will be able to make a Level 3 deck with 3 heroes from the same card Sphere.
That's it for this week. Feel free to reach out with feedback on these cards here on the Steam community forums or on discord.
May you enjoy only glad tidings until we meet again.
