On Tuesday, we made some big announcements. Most of the incoming changes won’t matter until Full Release, but a couple will take effect next Tuesday. As a result, we have a few important things to go over in this week’s Wrap-Up! Let’s jump right in.
The Palantìr is Going Away You can read our reasoning behind this change in our full announcement here, but basically, the Palantìr wasn’t working the way we had hoped. As a result, we’re scrapping the feature. This means that we advise you to spend your Palantìr Views by next Tuesday, October 23, as the feature will be removed from the game after that. Gaze into the Palantìr while you can!
Hero Pack Unlock Everyone is getting all four available Hero Packs for free, with two copies of the player cards they include. They’ll be unlocked in everyone’s collection on Tuesday, October 23. As a result, everyone who previously unlocked said Hero Packs will be awarded 4000 VP for each pack they unlocked. The process will be similar to the previous Campaign unlock, so if there are any hiccups in the process, let us know by filing a HelpShift request.
Economy Change for Full Release The changes above are happening in anticipation of a bigger changeover at Full Release. We’ll be pivoting from a free-to-play model to a more traditional release at full release, based on expansions and a “Core Set,” something closer to the tabletop LCG model. You can read more about the details here.
Gameplay Hitches A small number of users have reported that some cards are “hanging” after they’re played, stopping or slowing progress in the game. We’re investigating this issue to find a fix.
Incomplete Challenges Some players have reported that some challenges are failing to complete even after they meet their conditions. We’re tracking this bug closely. If it happens to you, please let us know which specific challenges are failing to complete—it’ll help us track down and squash this bug.
Hero Threat Changes Eowyn, Faramir, and Gimli had a revision to their Threat Levels in our last balance patch. As of today, we've reverted this change to their original Threat Levels.
Deck of the Week—The “Can’t Do” Team User Kjeld put together this list as a post-game challenge. (https://steamcommunity.com/app/509580/discussions/1/3397295779082982670/)
Beyond your Heroes, no Units in this deck have any Willpower value, making every Objective quite the difficult task! How high can you score with this list?
An Update on The Economy of The Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game
We have always seen Early Access as an ongoing conversation with you, the players. Since August, we’ve carried on that conversation in a variety of ways—here on Steam, on Twitch, at shows and conventions—about card balance, visual presentation, user interface, and more, and we’ve taken your responses to heart.
One topic has come up again and again since launch. It’s something we’ve spent a great deal of time discussing internally: Economy.
We’ve been carefully considering the feedback from users regarding how the game is sold and purchased. After discussing various possibilities, today we’re ready to announce a few major changes in direction.
First off: The Palantír is going away. The Palantír was intended as a reward system—sort of a grab-bag for high level players who earned an extra reward for playing and engaging with the game.
In practice, however, the Palantír felt out of place and confusing. Put simply, it came across too much like a lootbox. We looked at ways to mitigate that, but we’re still not satisfied with the way it’s been implemented, and so, in one week, we’ll be removing it from the game.
As a result: We advise you to spend your remaining Palantír Views as soon as possible. You’ll retain all the Valor, cosmetics, and cards you already have or will get from the Palantír, but after October 23, the Palantír feature will be removed from the game.
That’s a big change, but not the only one we have in mind. We have something else in the works.
We want to bring the game’s economy more in-line with the tabletop LCG model. As a result, we will be changing how the game is sold when we come out of Full Release. We’re taking steps now to prepare for that changeover.
When The Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game enters Full Release, we plan to change the game from a Free-To-Play title to a more conventional game release. The content currently available during Early Access will become the basis for the “Core Set.” Following that, future Expansion Packs will give players new Hero Packs and quests as part of a single bundled expansion. We will detail the specifics of the new Core Set and Expansion Packs in a future news update.
From a practical standpoint, this changeover won’t mean much for Early Access users. During Early Access, new users will still be able to unlock access to the game through the Founder’s Packs, which will remain largely the same.
However, there is a practical change that we want to alert you to now. At the same time we remove the Palantír, we will be giving everyone all of the currently available Hero Packs, with two copies of each player card included in those packs. We’re unlocking them for everyone who has purchased any level of Founder’s Pack either previously, or new players leading up to Full Release. That means that if you have access to the game, you’re getting every Hero Pack next Tuesday, October 23.
If you’ve already purchased or unlocked any of the Hero Packs, we’ll be gifting you 4000 Valor Points for each pack you’ve unlocked. This process will be similar to the Quest Unlock from back in early September—we’ll simply add the Valor to players’ accounts.
So, what can you spend that Valor on? Valor cards will still be unlockable through Valor Points. We want Valor Points to serve more like Experience Points in an RPG. Instead of using those points to level up, however, you’ll use them to unlock new Valor Cards.
As part of our ongoing expansion plan, we will have new Valor Card releases coming several times a year. In fact, we’re happy to announce that an all-new set of Valor Cards will be coming next month.
That’s not all: The first of our new free Encounters, a brand new, ultra-hard stand-alone Quest, will be released for all users for free next month as well. We’ve previewed some of the things to come in this first Encounter, titled The King of Carrion, on stream at twitch.tv/ffigames. Head there for a first look.
That’s a fair bit of news, so let’s recap:
-The Palantír is going away on Tuesday, October 23. Use your Palantír Views now!
-All Hero Packs will be unlocked for everyone in Early Access on Tuesday, October 23. Players who already unlocked or purchased those Hero Packs will receive 4000 Valor for each pack they unlocked.
-The next round of all-new Valor Cards are arriving in November.
-The first Encounter, The King of Carrion, is arriving in November, free for all players.
Thank you to everyone who has joined us on this ongoing journey to full release.
The FFI Team
Weekly Wrap-Up: October 12, 2018
Happy Friday, all! We’ve got a round of card balances and some quality-of-life improvements to discuss this week. Plus: a Farmer Maggot-centered decklist and a guide on Level 2 cards. Let’s take a look!
Patches and Fixes
Store Connection Earlier this week, some users were experiencing issues attempting to connect to the Hero Pack and Campaign screens. We’ve fixed the issue. If you’re still experiencing problems, please contact us on Helpshift and we’ll have you sorted right away.
Longbeard Mapmaker Old Longbeard has been causing a number of headaches for players attempting to use his powers. We’ve fixed the major issues (including one that would sometimes crash the game), but we’re still tracking problems related to this card. If you experience any weirdness related to the card, please let us know either through Helpshift or on the Community Forums.
A Watchful Peace Yesterday, the Event card A Watchful Peace was bugged: It was working as and appeared as a Level 2 Spirit card, but it is intended as a Level 1 Spirit Card. Last night we implemented a hotfix to correct this issue.
Card Changes We implemented a large batch of card changes this week, including adjustments to Heroes’ Threat Levels, Player Card Resource costs, and Sauron Card Resource costs. You can find a full list of the changes here.
During Early Access, we’ll continue to make adjustments to cards based on player feedback, available use data, and internal testing.
Curious to hear our thoughts behind the changes? Check out Thursday’s stream at twitch.tv/ffigames!
Level 2 Cards FAQ Many users have asked about the Level system in The Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game. We've taken this feedback to heart, and before full release, we plan to make adjustments to expose the systems to players more transparently. Until then, we've put together this handy guide on Level 2 Cards in The Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game. Take a look!
Decklist of the Week User Oceans4Ransom was inspired by the new Tactics Ally Farmer Maggot and built this powerful Ally-centric deck to take full advantage of the unique Hobbit card. Oceans was able to get all 3 of the Hounds in play at the same time! How? You’ll have to play the deck and find out…
We have pushed the next round of card balance changes to the game.
These changes are all tweaks to existing cards— adjustments to Resource costs and Threat levels.
We've also fixed a few bugs specific to the following cards:
Staggering Blow
Recover Your Friend
Gloin
Greedy Fingers
Longbeard Mapmaker
You can find the balance changes below:
Cost Increase: Sauron Cards Goblin Pursuer (2 to 3)
Straggling Goblin (2 to 3)
Spiders of Mirkwood (2 to 3)
Cost Reduction: Sauron cards Creature of Darkness (1 to 0)
Pack of Wargs (4 to 3)
Goblin Warlord (4 to 3)
Cost Increase: Player cards Ranger’s Blade (1 to 2)
Spike Trap (0 to 1)
Warrior Sword (0 to 1)
Rorrhim Lancer (2 to 3)
Cost Reduction: Player cards Forest Snare (3 to 1)
Gondorian Shield (3 to 2)
Raiment of War (4 to 3)
Ranger Spear (3 to 2)
Round Shield (2 to 1)
Self-Preservation (2 to 1)
Beorn (5 to 3)
Guardian of the Forest (4 to 3)
Ithilien Lookout (2 to 1)
Tom Bombadil (5 to 4)
Westfold Outrder (2 to 1)
Reduced Threat: Heroes Eowyn
Faramir
Increased Threat: Heroes Gimli
These changes were implemented to respond to community feedback, player data, and internal testing. We'll continue to respond to feedback in various forms during Early Access.
EDIT: Star Brooch hasn't been changed! Sorry for the typo.
FFI
Weekly Wrap-up: October 5, 2018
Happy Friday! We have a few updates to share for this week’s Wrap-up, plus a sweet deck we built with the community on this week’s stream. Read on!
Connection Issues
As some of you may know, we experienced some downtime earlier this week. Certain players were reporting that the game would not progress past “Releasing the Nazgûl” on the loading screen.
The issue was resolved with a hotfix on Wednesday night. If you’re still experiencing issues, please verify your local files. If that still doesn’t work, please let us know by filing a request with Helpshift. We’ll get you sorted right away.
Upcoming Content
On this week’s stream, we talked a little about the incoming Encounters—the difficult single Quests that we’ll be releasing to everyone as free content coming soon.
These Encounters will serve as difficult puzzles, but they’ll also be the place that we experiment with the design of The Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game. You’ll see strange mechanics, cool objectives and enemies, and self-contained stories that wouldn’t otherwise fit in with the game’s narrative. Plus, they’ll take players to cool new locations. On Tuesday’s stream, we showed an exclusive first look at one of those new environments. Head to twitch.tv/ffigames to see!
Con of the Rings
Fantasy Flight Interactive will be at the upcoming The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game fan-convention, Con of the Rings! We’ll have computers set up so attendees can try The Lord for the Rings: Living Card Game. If you see us, say hi!
Deck of the Week
We cooked up a spicy level-2 Lore deck on Thursday’s stream and dominated Quest 3 on Hard Mode with it. Take a look:
2x Common Cause
2x East Road Rider
2x Guard of the Citadel
2x Ranger’s Blade
1x Sudden Riposte
2x Zigil Miner
2x Erebor Record Keeper
2x Imladris Caregiver
2x Ithilien Lookout
2x Lembas
1x Self-Preservation
2x Mablung
2x For Gondor!
2x Warden of Annuminas
2x Erkenbrand
2x Gandalf
Got a deck you’d like to see featured? Post it on the Steam community forums! If we like it, we may feature it here.
For Gondor! For Gondor…Again!
Enjoying last week’s new cards? User Shoreless certainly is, making good use of the powerful battle cry For Gondor and buffing his team twice against Ungoliant’s Spawn!
Have a great weekend, everyone.
FFI
Weekly Wrap-Up September 28, 2018
It’s been one month since we released The Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game! In this week’s wrap-up, we’re celebrating the occasion with new cards, music, bug fixes, thematic decks, and more! Let’s dive in.
New Cards An anniversary calls for some gifts. As a thank-you to all the Early Access players, we’ve added four new cards to The Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game: Farmer Maggot (and his three hounds), For Gondor!, Hold your Ground, and East Road Rider.
Everyone who unlocks The Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game during Early Access will receive a copy of each of these cards for no Valor. Once we go into full release, they’ll be added to the standard Valor Pool and will be unlockable through the normal means.
Are you building decks with the new cards? We want to see them! Post your lists in the Steam forums or the comments below.
Soundtrack And what kind of party would it be without a little music? The soundtrack for The Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game is now available! You can head over to the soundtrack’s Steam page to download it. We also added the soundtrack in FLAC files to the download page. If you purchase it, you’ll receive both the MP3s and the FLACs.
If you already purchased the soundtrack or received it as part of the Collector’s Edition, you can head over to the soundtrack page to download the FLACs, free-of-charge. Enjoy.
Bug Fixes We’re continuing to refine the LOTR:LCG experience as we work to squash the few remaining bugs. Here’s what we worked on this week.
Connection Issues We’re happy to report we’ve resolved the ongoing connection issues plaguing some users, preventing them from logging into the game. If you’re still having issues, please file a HelpShift request using the chat button in the in-game settings menu. You can post requests here, if you’re having trouble finding it in-game.
Card Collections A small number of players experienced issues with the Core Set of cards. We’ve changed the way we store card data, which should resolve these problems.
Minor Bugs We’ve resolved a bug that was causing the game to crash during the mulligan phase in rare occasions. We’ve also resolved an issue that was causing crashes when users conceded from the game.
Sauron’s AI We’re at work discussing the issues users have brought up regarding bugs in the AI. We’re working to address some of those problems, but we expect it to be an ongoing process. We’ll update you as we have more to share, but know that we’re listening.
Card Balances We’re working on the second wave of card balances now, looking mostly at Allies. We’re gathering data on how cards are played, paying attention to the conversation around certain cards, listening to internal feedback, and more.
4:3 Aspect Ratio We’ve resolved some of the issues with the 4:3 aspect ratio version of the game; the map screen is no longer cut off, the main menu is fully visible, and the narrative screens are complete, as well. We’re still working on the Victory Screens, which are still cut off. If users are playing in 4:3, they can access the settings menu after a Quest by hitting the escape key and return to the main menu. We hope to have this fully resolved soon.
Deck of the Week This week’s deck comes from user En9a9e, who has built a list all around the Ranged Keyword. It’s no slouch in the combat-focused Quests, and it relies on Tom Took to protect its Heroes with his unique ability. On stream, we conquered Quest 2 on Hard mode with this list—and it’s a good place to try out Hold Your Ground, Farmer Maggot, or the East Road Rider, too!
2x Galadhon Archer
2x Galadriel’s Handmaiden
2x Gandalf
2x Imladris Caregiver
2x Man of Dale
2x Westfold Outrider
1x Favor of the Lady
2x Raiment of War
2x Unexpected Courage
2x Warrior Sword
2x A Watchful Peace
2x Beorn’s Hospitality
1x Borne Aloft
2x Feint
2x Lembas
2x Rain of Arrows
Got a deck you’d like to see featured? Leave it in the comments or the Steam Community Forum!
Have a great weekend, everyone.
FFI
Patch Notes 9/28
As always, this patch will go live during the scheduled downtime at 6 AM UTC.
Today marks one month since we released The Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game! We thought we'd celebrate with some new player cards added to everyone's collection. Other than that, we've squashed a few bugs and added the soundtrack to Steam for purchase. You can read more below.
NOTE: We expect this downtime to take a bit longer than usual, probably closer to an hour. Thanks for your patience!
-Added four new cards to all players’ collections! Farmer Maggot, Hold your Ground, For Gondor!, and East Road Rider will now appear in all collections. Anyone who unlocks the game during Early Access will receive these cards. At Full Release, they’ll join the Valor Card pool.
-We’ve had very infrequent issues with player cards not showing in collections and issues saving custom decks. We’re changing how player and Sauron cards are stored in order to fix these issues.
-Fixed a bug that sometimes occurred during the Mulligan phase in Quest 1, Location 1.
-Fixed a bug causing players to get stuck on a black screen after failing a Quest and electing the Back to Quest Map button.
-The soundtrack for The Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game is now available for purchase! Head over to its Steam page to download it.
-On that note: Added FLAC files to the soundtrack. If you’ve already purchased the soundtrack or received it through Collector’s Edition, you’ll be able to download the FLAC files now. Moving forward, anyone who purchases the bundles or the soundtrack itself will receive both the MP3s and the FLACs. EDIT: Apologies—the soundtrack only comes with the Collector's Edition, NOT the Mithril Bundle. We're sorry for the confusion.
The Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game Soundtrack Now Available
Hi All,
The soundtrack for The Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game is available now! You can download it here.
Composed by Minnesota native Steve Gernes, The Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game soundtrack contains 18 tracks of epic fantasy-themed backing music used in the game.
It will be available in MP3 format.
Enjoy!
Thanks,
FFI
Weekly Wrap-Up: September 21, 2018
Hello everyone, and welcome to this week’s Wrap-up. This week, we’ve added localization to the game, distributed Palantírs to all users, and more! Let’s dive in.
PALANTÍR VIEWS
As you may already know, we had a particularly annoying bug related to scoring that prevented players from hitting max scores on Quests. After diagnosing and correcting the issue in a patch, we distributed 5 Palantír Views to all activated users as a thank-you for having patience during that time. Those Views were automatically added to everyone’s account. Feel free to spend them or save them!
PATCHES
Connection Issues
We’re continuing to diagnose and correct a handful of remaining connection issues.
Scoring System
As stated above, a bug was preventing players from achieving a max score on Quests. We’ve reverted the scoring system to its old form in order to correct this issue; however, this doesn’t mean we’re done tweaking scoring. The system will continue to change moving forward until we’re happy with its balance.
LANGUAGE AND LOCALIZATION
We have officially added German, Spanish, French, Italian, and Simplified Chinese text to The Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game! Voiceovers will remain in English, but all narrative text, card text, and menus have been translated.
These translations are still a work-in-progress, and we’re already compiling a list of known bugs to be corrected. If you notice something amiss, feel free to tell us in the Steam Community Forums. Thanks for your patience.
Moving forward, we’ll look at other languages. We currently have plans for Portuguese and Korean, and we may add more.
UPDATE TO STEAM FORUM
Today, we created a sub-forum for decklists and card discussion as well as a section for bug reporting and feature requests. Starting next week, we’ll begin organizing old topics into their respective sub forums. Feel free to post general feedback in general discussions, as well as any questions you might have for the devs or players that don’t fit into a sub topic.
DECKLIST OF THE WEEK
Beating Hard Mode without a Lore Hero? User TheGamesWhitman says “Challenge accepted.” Try this low-curve list if you’re brave enough to challenge Sauron with limited card draw and healing!
HEROES
Aragorn, Legolas, Tom
ALLIES
2x Erebor Watchman
2x Galadriel's Handmaiden
2x Guard of the Citadel
2x Wandering Took
2x Barliman Butterbur
2x Rhovanian Outrider
2x Rohirrim Lancer
1x Erkenbrand
1x Beorn
2x Gandalf
ATTACHMENTS
2x Warrior Sword
1x Favor of the Lady
2x Unexpected Courage
1x Shield of Rohan
EVENTS
2x A Watchful Peace
2x Feint
1x Will of Steel
1x Spear Wall
Got a deck you’d like to showcase? Post it in the forums! If we like it, we’ll share it.
Have a great weekend, everyone.
FFI
Localization Added to The Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game
We have a special announcement to share: Five new languages are now available in The Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game! In addition to our regularly scheduled downtime, we implemented support for French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Simplified Chinese. Card text, UI elements, menus, and narrative screens will all be localized—basically, any text in the game will change. Voiceover elements including narration and card/character dialog will still remain in English, Khuzdul, or whatever language they are already in.
The languages went live in the game after the scheduled 6:00 AM UTC downtime, so make sure you update your game before playing. We've updated the Steam page to reflect the changes. You’ll be able to set language within the game’s settings menu: Just click the little gear and select language, and you’ll be good to go.
Since this is Early Access, we fully expect some amount of polish will be needed and that some areas of localization may not be fully optimized. We’ll continue to work on these translations, fixing any missteps or missing text as it shows up.
