Celestial Forge Rebalance Info

Hark, Card Hunters!

In 2016, Blue Manchu released the Castle Mitternacht expansion items, introducing a bunch of new mechanics. And then... that's it. No balance changes or new items, for years. Blue Manchu got busy with their next game. Leaving everything as-is wasn't exactly the plan; luckily for Cardhuntria, The Knights of Unity are here to update the items and cards you've been using unchanged since 2016.

First, the big news: we are aiming to release a new expansion, "Celestial Forge," in the first half of 2022. Some balance changes will accompany the new cards & items. We also have a really exciting new feature slated to release alongside the expansion, but we are not ready to reveal it at this time.

There will be a separate post previewing the expansion cards. This post is primarily about the balance changes. We will be conducting a public playtest of these changes soon (alongside the new items), and this is where we will be describing the changes and providing some developer commentary and context for the playtesting. (Details of the playtest--start and end dates, test server instructions, pizza reward amounts, and survey questions--will be provided elsewhere, likely on the forums, Steam forums, Discord. Stay tuned.)

General Methodology

As much as possible, we don't want to nerf things. Players work hard for their collections, and when your hard-earned legendaries become less powerful, well, that's a bad feeling. Most of the time we'd rather address balance by powering up weaker cards, or by just adding new content. But there comes a time when something in the game is so out of whack that attempting to balance AROUND it will create more problems down the line. With that given, we felt the need to address a few long-dominant cards like Lycanthropic Form, Howl, Vengeance, and Bless. In addition, we've buffed a few things. These changes will debut alongside an entire new set of items, and are explained below, side-by-side with their current versions.

Forms

Most long-time players will agree that one of the current balance issues is that werewolves are a little... too good. They're definitely pushed, and their kit is just far and away the most universally useful out of the forms. Vampires and spirits get good stuff but are far more likely to get a card they don't want in a given situation. Another issue with forms is that the Vampiric Form card was just... less good for vampires than the tried and true Talented Healer. This is somewhat simplified, but anyway--onto the changes: - Lycanthropic Form's armor no longer protects against fire damage - Vampiric Form has a new effect: "Add Penetrating to any Unholy Melee attack you play." - Monstrous Hide no longer protects against fire damage - Howl no longer heals

These changes will go some way to evening the forms, but perhaps even more crucially we are adjusting the card pools to try to bring them more in line with each other: