Closed Beta Primer

Hi HEXers. As of today, we are now in HEX Closed Beta. Thank you to all of you who helped us test and improve the alpha client that we launched in Fall 2013. Together, we’ve seen it develop into what it is now; our plans are to continue to improve it throughout beta by adding features and polishing the game. We are dedicated to giving you the game that you, the players, want. Closed Beta is just the beginning of HEX, and we’re excited to have you with us for this momentous occasion.

What Happens Now?

Both Kickstarter and PayPal backers have received two emails. The email sent on April 16th communicated to players that their alpha accounts have been mirrored on the live beta hardware. The second email, sent today, provided a code to redeem on the in-game store for the backer rewards. If you have not received your emails by the end of the day, please register an account at Support.HEXTCG.com and open a ticket. Our Worker Bots will get you playing ASAP.

If you backed through Kickstarter or PayPal (including Slacker Backer), your account is already flagged for Closed Beta. You do not need a Beta key. We mirrored your alpha account to our closed beta servers in order to preserve your Family Name (formerly known as your Keep Name) and your passwords. Neither HEX Entertainment nor our partners can see your passwords. But, the first thing you should do is change your password (click the “Forgot Pass” link), and change it to a password that you don’t use anywhere else on the internet. Our system is secure, but we can’t guarantee the security of other websites you visit or places that require you to log-in. We want you to keep your stuff, not lose your stuff to some card-thieving bandit. So, before you even play your first game, please change your password. If you did not play in Alpha, an account was still created for you back in Fall 2013 when we sent Alpha invites, and your HEX account email is the email address that received the backer reward code. Please head to HEXTCG.com and reset your password to gain access to your account.

If you had problems resetting your password last week, that problem should now be resolved and you can reset your password through the HEXTCG.com website.

How Do I Download the Client?

Windows (XP, Vista, 7, and 8)

OSX Mac

Ok, I’m In the Game. Now What?

First, you’ll be asked if you want to change or create a Family Name, which is your name displayed within the game. If you played in alpha, you will have the choice to either keep your old name, or update your name. The only exception to keeping your old name is if your name does not fit the current naming convention requirements. If you did not play in alpha, you’ll have to create your name. You can see how it will display in the game in the second screenshot below. The deck’s Champion is Kranok the Orc Warrior, and the Family Name is HEXWilliam.

You’ll also be asked which Starter Deck you want associated with your account. This is the free one that comes with every HEX account, so this will be in addition to your backer rewards. You can choose from the Shin’hare, Dwarf, Orc, and Human decks. If you need help deciding, you can see all the decklists here.

What Was That About Rewards?

Ah, yes, you probably want your Kickstarter backer rewards. And we want you to have your rewards! So, head to the store and hit “Redeem Code.”

Once redeemed, that’ll deliver all your rewards to your account. If you have multiple codes, you can redeem multiple codes on one account. Your packs will be delivered, you’ll find your alternate art cards in your card manager, and anything else will be delivered to your Stash. Here, you can see which rewards will be delivered to you now and which rewards will be delivered in a future patch.

How do I get Platinum?

Each tournament requires a small amount of platinum that goes towards prizes for the players. To get platinum, you’ll want to click on the platinum plate on the Store tab inside of the HEX client. That’ll direct you to a Gameforge website where you can buy HEX platinum. In the future, we’ll be able to handle that all in-game.

One US dollar equals 100 platinum. Foreign currency, like the Euro, has been adjusted to have purchasing power similar to one dollar. In plain language, that means that the system is fair no matter which currency you use to pay us.

Time to Battle

Now that you’re in the game and have rewards, there are many ways to play. You can build Constructed decks in the Card Manager, or you can play with the Starter Decks you’ve received as a backer (make sure to put gems in those sockets first!). If you’re new to the game, you can download the Quick Start Guide and watch our How to Play video. For specific rules questions, you can check our Rules FAQ.

Hit Play Now in the game’s navigation bar to head to the Proving Grounds and try some pick-up games against other HEX players. If you’re looking to win some prizes, go to the Tournaments page and check out the Constructed, Sealed, and Booster Draft formats.

Thank you for everything. This project truly belongs to you, the players, as you made it happen with your support. We look forward to seeing you all in for day one. Now, for some Questions we believe will be Asked Frequently (QAFs):

Why Didn’t I Get My Kickstarter Email?

There are three common reasons you did not receive your Kickstarter rewards email:

1 – Your SPAM filter caught it and put it in your Junk Email box. How rude!

2 – Our mass emailer doesn’t allow for role-based email addresses. So, emails like Webmaster@, SysAdmin@, and so on couldn’t go out. For a complete list, click here.

3 – You changed your email since the end of the campaign and we didn’t know! Oh no! Luckily, we can get that sorted out through our Worker Bots at Support.HEXTCG.com. Register and open a ticket with your name, email, backing level, and transaction ID to request an account change.

Where’s the Auction House?

This feature is currently in development and is a priority with our team. We’re committed to providing this as clearly players want to trade their cards, and the economy around HEX is a crucial part of the game. These types of features require a ton of testing because players need to feel safe and confident when using these features. So, our teams are busy making sure that our marketplace is bulletproof and we hope to have that available to players shortly.

VIP and Weekly Drafts

Every Champion-and-above redemption code comes with a free 3-month free VIP subscription. The game will deliver a free pack to your account every week. In addition, VIP provides a monthly tournament with great prizes. We are putting the finishing touches on the VIP code distribution system and will send those in a separate email sometime in the future. Initially, we outlined that VIPs would not stack. Now, they will stack. You will be able to redeem those codes for your free 3 months of VIP, and you can stack them as you would like. So, redeeming 2 codes would provide your account for 6 months of VIP.

All Dungeon Crawler, Collector, Guild Leader, and Raid Leader have 1 free Booster Draft per week for a year. These are sent to accounts via tickets. All Squire-and-above redemption codes also have 3 free Booster Drafts from meeting one of the Kickstarter stretch goals, also distributed by tickets. You will see these tickets in your Stash, and you can mouse over the tickets to see their expiration date.

As outlined in the Kickstarter, the weekly draft tickets expire after 7 days, so make sure you’re logging in and getting your free draft! You can always mouse over a ticket to see when it expires.

Gold and Treasure Chests

You’ll notice that a free treasure chest comes with every booster pack you open. Treasure chests contain rewards like pieces of equipment, as well as exclusive rewards like alternate art cards. Treasure chests vary in rarity and can always be opened for free. But, players can also choose spend gold (in-game currency) and spin the Wheels of Fate to potentially upgrade their treasure chests! Currently, players can earn gold through playing tournaments. Since PVE has yet to be implemented, we needed a way for players to earn gold in order to upgrade their treasure chests. Players aren’t yet able to open treasure chests yet, but we are working on that feature and hope to have that in soon.

Treasure Chests have different rarities and players can choose to spend gold (in-game currency) to spin the Wheels of Fate to potentially upgrade their chests! The Wheels of Fate upgrade treasure chests to higher rarities and award other unique prizes such as sleeves, alternate art cards, and even an occasional legendary card. Wheels of Fate spins cost gold based on the rarity of the treasure chest you are trying to upgrade. In the future, you will be able to earn gold primarily through PVE activities. For now, in order to get gold into your hands, we are rewarding all tournament participants with gold.

Dungeons and Raids

Dungeon and Raids are currently in development. We have our R&D team and HEX Apprentices improving the decks every single day, and we have tested some dungeons within the client thanks to our hard-working engineers. We needed the game’s core systems in place before we could begin to build out dungeons, and now we’re in a place where we can start working on implementing the PVE experience. We can’t give a date at this time, but PVE is coming soon. Much of the work– like ordering hundreds of art pieces for PVE cards and designing the dungeon decks– has been completed. We don’t feel the game is complete until PVE is in it, and now that the game’s core systems are in place, the HEX team will be working hard to open up the world of Entrath to you.

Tournament Reconnect

Players cannot yet reconnect to tournaments. This is a feature we’re aggressively testing and should have it in very, very soon. What currently happens is that players will reconnect to the match being played, but be dropped from the tournament. We understand that you may occasionally lose connection or your computer may hiccup, causing the game to close. When this happens, we treat it as a customer service issue and want to do right by you, the player. In that situation, you should register at Support.HEXTCG.com and open a ticket with your Family Name and Tournament ID. You will keep all the cards you’ve collected so far and we will provide you a ticket for entry into the tournament that you were in. The goal of this is to provide customer service while we work to implement tournament reconnect, not to allow players to intentionally crash their games and submit fraudulent refund requests. Players will have a limited number of these requests that they can submit, and we will evaluate them on a case-by-case basis.

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