Hello folks, and it’s time for a bit of reading! After a reasonably long break, we’re here again as Rift Mode makes its appearance as the newest Duelyst format, with a nice casual flavour to it. Over the next few posts, I’ll be providing some feedback on the various aspects of Rift and suggesting some ideas for improvement as well. I firmly believe this is a great concept with a lot of potential, but not in its current state.



So, let’s begin with perhaps the one thing that has the single largest impact on the performance of your deck – the starter set. Content creator TacticalGMR kindly posted a video with all the starter sets, which we will refer to here:

There are many things that I would improve right here, which will ensure a good experience in the first few games of a brand new Rift Mode run. First and most urgently, there need to be better turn one plays globally. These are 39 card decks, and none have more than 6 2-drops, which essentially means that by design 50% of players won’t have a minion on turn 1. This is also not a forced issue – there are neutral 1- and 2-drops that could feature in these decks:

Moving to 3- and 4-drops. There is a copy of Putrid Dreadflayer in every deck except the one for the faction it does best with… the one with Killing Edge, Sabrespine Seal and Inner Focus. There’s one Sabrespine Tiger maximum for 4 factions – which sounds like a noble cause, were it not for the fact that Makantors, Revenants and Elucidators can now be drafted for every faction – this harsh limit on Tigers is curious, and misplaced, along with the remarkable absence of Repulsor Beasts from all decks. Couple this with the equally absurd lack of Ephemeral Shroud, and it’s easy to see that the system has been set up to fail at the first hurdle. The decks don’t need to be finely balanced, but the player is stuck with it for at least 10 games before they can change it substantially, and the starter quality makes the biggest impact on their decision to continue playing.

Moving on to… Necroseer. Why. That’s all, Your Honour. This is space in every deck for 1 – or 2-drops. The same goes for Bloodletter – I’m sure someone in the deck design team was gushing over the ‘creative’ synergies with its effect – but realistically, 95%+ players would just take a Brightmoss or a Hailstone, or a guarantee to have a first turn play over this silly card. No, it’s not a good meme, it’s just painful. Adding chaff to the decks just so they can be upgraded wastefully is cruel, considering you make everything cost either gold, time or money.

Cassyva and Zir’an in particular, need something to play with, while they build their decks up. Starting with a bipolar mix of Abyssian cards doesn’t do either general good, but the Lilithe-focused cards are a lot more synergistic than the Cass ones. I have put up sample starter decks for both here – I can do them for all the generals, but if the devs decide to stubbornly plough on with the current starters, then it’s a bit presumptuous of me to build all the others. The above image has a Cass starter deck that reflects her style as early tempo into late game machine. Zir’an, at the moment, is locked out of access to Healing Mystics, which I’m sure sounds rather odd.

Distributing resources somewhat equally is also a target to achieve with the starters. If a faction is starting both generals off with 3x Aspect of the Fox and 3x Chromatic Cold, and the others with 1 Sabrespine Tiger, 0 Repulsors, 0 Shrouds, then again, the system is set up to fail. Duelyst isn’t called ‘The Game of Removals’ by some for no reason, ya know.

Every run starting the player off with 3 to 5 upgrades I think is almost a necessity. Starter decks are both weak and ill-equipped to handle simple gameplay, and no free upgrades condemns you to grinding losses just to get a working framework, even before you start experimenting with cross-faction cards. It’s a domino effect that will result in people not wanting to continue. Speaking of which, the options for the upgrades need to be forcibly made a lot more cross-faction focused. I have seen upgrade packs where all cards were of the faction I was piloting or neutral – defeating the purpose of trying cross-faction mode. There’s nothing fun, new or spectacular about playing Trinity oath and Ironcliffe in Argeon, and everyone has faced a Reva with Zendo. Cross-faction decks is the biggest draw for this mode, so make it happen more. A lot more.

Lastly, there are many systems to provide rewards that do not end up back-creaking for CPG in the long run. Flat 5-10g per level up, progressively increasing rewards like Xg for hitting level X or a big reward for hitting a certain level cap, after which you can start a new run. We just need to agree right now that rewards are essential for a mode like this, and if not, then the $1.99 price really needs to be disabled or some extra cosmetic at minimum be added to the rift mode purchases. I’d rather there be small rewards than a free game mode without rewards.

So – takeaway points for this edition:

Starters should have 6 2-drops + 2 Shrouds for non-Vanar decks

No one should be seeing a Necroseer

Same for Bloodletter, chaff that solely exists to be upgraded is awkward

Some effort to be put into providing new alternate general-focused decks

Every new run should start with 3 to 5 upgrades

Heavy representation of cross-faction cards in upgrade packs

An effort to be made to provide some rewards

That’s all for now, see you around on the rifts of Mythron!