HEX Update – Robes and Wizard Hats

Hi there, HEXers. As you saw this morning, Armies of Myth will launch July 14th, 2015!

That set comes with 250 cards, new equipment, chest opening, authenticator support, Gauntlet tournaments, and more!

This week, we’ll focus on equipment. Hundreds of equipment pieces will be available in chests, so let’s unlock what’s happening with all this new gear!

The Armory

Hello! Dan Clark here to talk about some new equipment pieces that will be coming out with our Armies of Myth release and related policies. We in the R&D team love this new set, and I am most excited about the hundreds of equipment pieces being released. Working those long nights tempering the swords, hammering the breastplates, sewing the pointy wizard hats has got me all worked up to see equipment in the hands of the players and what they like the most. Let’s begin!

Gear Up!

What we tried to accomplish with equipment was to take deck creation, customization, and creativity to a whole new level. When building your deck for PVE, you have six different slots on your champion: head, chest, gloves, feet, weapon, and trinket. Each piece of equipment buffs its corresponding card. Choose which pieces you want and gear up!

It’s a brand new way to play TCGs, and it was new to us too. Instead of building a set from scratch, making equipment is more like building sets upon a set, fancy hats and gadgets for each card that is either increasing its impact in games, offering synergy with another card, or opening up a whole new deck possibility. Equipment is meant to offer endless possibilities and potential in cards and decks. We want players to find a piece of equipment that goes into your current deck and really helps power it up, or a helm that makes you pause and scratch your head a moment wondering what are the possibilities, or a pair of boots that goes to some card you thought you permanently shelved that might just change your mind.

With this upcoming patch we will be releasing over 300 pieces of equipment (306 to be exact) with our chest loot system. If you don’t know what chests are, you receive one in every booster pack of varying rarity. You can use your in-game currency, gold, earned by playing HEX PVE to spin the Wheels of Fate and upgrade your chest. When you do that, you have a chance of receiving cards, equipment, and more. You can also open the chest at any time for free and see what’s inside. Wheels of Fate and chest opening are where you’ll find all the awesome equipment in this upcoming patch. (When we launch the PVE campaign, you’ll find even more equipment in the dungeons) The set the chest came from will determine which loot you can get. For example if you have a chest from a Shattered Destiny pack, then your chest will give you equipment or cards tied to Shattered Destiny. Since chests from each set have their own specific loot, that’s 102 pieces from each of our three sets. Each of these 102 equipment piece sets will have 40 commons, 30 uncommons, 20 rares, and 12 legendaries. Also chests will include brand new PVE cards that will each have 2 pieces of equipment drop from their respective chests.

The rarites of each piece are trying to abide to normal set rarity rules with new ideology behind some. Commons should be simple, ATK or DEF boost, keyword that works well with the original ability. Uncommons can add rules text; these are likely to show the card in a new light and include a small power upgrade. Rares are more likely to be impactful, taking cards that may not be frequently played and taking them in new directions, as well as stronger power upgrades. And legendaries should be interesting, splashy, and are most likely to help you win the game. Because they’re the most potent effects, legendary equipment is the hardest to obtain and common is the easiest to obtain, just like card rarity.

Now, let’s take a look at some of the cool new stuff we have in this release.



Fleet Feet- Common Boots

Your Quick Striders have, “Steadfast.”

A common rarity equipment that is simple and works well with the original design. Now you can both attack and defend with your swiftstriking troop.



Barbaric Helm- Common Helm

Your Savage Raiders have, “When this deals damage to an opposing champion, that champion sacrifices a random artifact.”

Common equipment that is giving you new utility to your aggressive orc deck. Offering a way to deal with the artifact heavy content in PVE can help eek out wins.



Mask of the Steel Assassin- Common Head piece

Your Murders have, “Rogues in your hand get cost -[(1)].”

This common piece of equipment lets you scour your collection to find the best rogues to mix into your deck. Something that hasn’t been touched on before in our PVP sets.



Transonic Screw Driver- Uncommon Trinket

Your Hex Engines have, “Artifact troops you control have Speed.”

This offers an option for a whole new deck archtype. Enabling an aggressive artifact deck that is giving you extra resources as well!



Guardian’s Aegis- Rare Chest piece

Your Deathless Guardians have, “Prevent all non-combat damage that would be dealt to non-opposing Warriors.”

Whoa look out, we got an extra utility piece here that not only helps out your other warrior troops, but also has interactions with Warrior Hero when navigating PVE campaign.



Fragment of Memory- Rare Trinket

Your Forgotten Monarchs have, “Socketed troops you control have +1[ATK]/+1[DEF].”

Introducing the new enabler for an all socketing deck. Plus with the forgotten Monach you are already looking to play a five shard deck. Full access to all the sockets!



Hood of the Dragon Cultist- Legendary Head

Each of your cards named Zeedu have, “Those cards get cost -[(1)].”

A power upgrade to the Legendary Dragon Zeedu. Now each of the cards you draw with his ability are even cheaper to play.



Feed Handler’s Gloves- Legendary Gloves

Your Savage Lords have, “Dinosaur troops you control have Crush, Lethal, Skyguard, Speed, and Steadfast.”What a Savage Lord! With equipment we are able to give more power and options to different troop types that we weren’t able to do inside of sets.

PVE Cards and Equipment

Last March, we released our first PVE content in the form of The Frost Ring Arena. And with that we took away some lessons from that release and the equipment with it. Never before has a TCG offered so many options to modify, personalize and customize your cards as equipment offers. With the number of equipment being released, it makes it more likely that some card or combo that’s distorting the experience might slip through the cracks. There’s a difference between a powerful card and something that trivializes content. Extinction has potential to be very strong against PVE content that heavily features troops, but the game is still able to be played in the way we want and have a challenging experience. A card like Curse of Oblivion can spoil the PVE experience. The effect in PVP is perfectly fine. Some decks in PVE need to have more than 4 of a card to achieve our vision of the encounter, but if Curse of Oblivion can remove 20 or more cards from the deck easily, we have to evaluate if we want players to have access to that. During the Kickstarter campaign, we said we would not change PVP cards once they’ve been opened in booster packs unless it’s fixing a glitch or bug. That’s why Curse of Oblivion and Subtle Striker are not allowed in PVE as we will not change them and they do trivialize PVE content.

As of the moment we have over 900 pieces of equipment from Shards of Fate, Shattered Destiny and Armies of Myth that will be coming out with future releases. Some you’ll see released in this upcoming patch; others you’ll see in the dungeon campaign when that feature launches.

Common cards and some uncommons have 1 piece of equipment. Legendary cards, rares, and some uncommons have two pieces of equipment. So, a Legendary card is actually four cards—the card itself, card with equipment A, card with equipment B, and card with both equipment A and B. In that way, each set has approximately 740 different “cards” and testing the combinations is mathematically 740! (factorial, which basically means 740 x 739 x 738…). When we put that into Google calculator, it threw out infinity as the answer. Even if half of the combos are invalid due to equipment slot overlap, it’s still infinity. With the (near) infinite number of card and equipment combinations per set, it’s impossible to test all of the corner cases and unintended interactions. In the rare case where something slips through our testing and trivializes PVE gameplay, we will change PVE card and equipment when we feel it’s necessary for the health of the game.

Lessons From Arena

Tinkerer’s Robes adds the game text to War Machinist that “each time an artifact enters play under your control, deal one to each opposing champion and troop.” This has been more powerful than we had hoped. When you play Extinction, there’s tension from destroying your own troops and being only able to generate the effect once. With War Machinist, you can play artifacts from your hand to wipe only the opponent’s board, and then save up more artifacts to do it again the next turn if necessary. Yes it can be fun to run over the computer but really a “fun” experience is something that is challenging and engaging. If something in PVE is pulling away from that goal, than we will be re-examining the way that it plays. Tinkerer’s Robes will be on the list of changes that will happen with this upcoming patch and a few more minor tweaks can be found on the patch notes on release day. Not all changes are going to be for power reasons; there can be small things like art updates or equipment type changes where no real functional change to game text has happened. Our goal is to provide the best experience possible. Therefore in the rare case that we feel as a change to PVE related card and equipment necessary for the health of the game, we are likely to do it.

Also the rarity breakdown from the arena was slightly off. Moving forward, we believe that each equipment’s rarity is correctly placed and the frequency should also be appropriate. Legendaries should be harder to obtain and more sought after than common pieces.

Caveat Emptor

One last bit that we would like to drive home. Caveat Emptor is Latin for “let the buyer beware”. We want players to engage in the auction house and the economy to flourish, but PVE content is subject to change. Mind you this will only happen in rare occasions and we will always be trying to spot the dangerous combinations that can affect PVE in a negative way before it gets out the door and into your hands. Our goal is to make sure that the PVE experience is the best that it can be. Therefore, this means if a PVE only piece of equipment or card is endangering that, it is subject to change. Well that’s it for this article. Hope you enjoyed the previews and can’t wait to get in and try on your new equipment.

-Dan Clark

Armies of Myth Lore Update

Where did the first necrotic come from?

What was human society like before Hex struck the planet?

Why has the shin’hare Exalted Emperor ruled for over 150 years?

The Armies of Myth lore update will answer these questions and more. We describe eight locations that have played important roles in the history of Entrath. Perhaps you will even be able to visit some of these locations in the future…

VIP Weekend

June VIP is happening from the 26th through the 28th . This tournament features the Sealed Deck format with two Armies of Myth alternate art cards as prizes! Due to Armies of Myth cards not currently being available in the game, winners will receive these cards at a future date. Players will not receive these cards at the end of the event, nor will there be an item in your stash as a placeholder for these cards.

Check out the dates, times, and prizes in our VIP announcement from early this week.

That’s all for this week. Please leave any questions or comments in the forums, and don’t forget to Follow us on Twitter, Like us on Facebook, Follow us on Twitch, and register on our forums.

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