BETA - Patch 0.100.0 now on the beta branch for testing

This patch is currently only available on the beta branch for the game, for beta testing. Here are instructions to switch to the beta branch:

1. Right click "Mage Tower: Call of Zadeus" in your Steam library.

2. Click "Properties" in the popup menu.

3. Click the "Betas" tab in the window that pops up.

4. Under "Private Betas" you will see an empty box, and a button that says "Check Code". Go ahead and type the secret code "magetowerbeta" with no quotes in the box, then click the button.

5. Accept the invite.

6. From the window with the "Betas" tab you got to in step 3, click the drop-down menu next to "Beta Participation" and select the option "mage-tower-beta-branch - A beta branch for testing the...."

You can discuss the patch and report bugs on the Mage Tower Discord here:

https://discord.gg/utkQYbhm8B

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BETA Patch Notes 0.100.0

After the big content patch, and the VFX/SFX patch, this patch focuses on fun and balance. Ventra has a new mechanic, and there are a lot of new cards and balance changes to improve player choice. Our goal is to release this patch at the start of May, just in time for the deckbuilder fest.

****Note: Your unlocked characters/subclasses may look different. Same with the way the difficulty select screen looks. Please read the two sections below for details.****

General Changes

Character/Subclass Unlock Changes

We're making Ventra unlocked earlier, and changing subclasses to be unlocked after run victories (instead of being tied to obscure achievements.) Subclasses often have tricky drawbacks, and we'd rather give the player the opportunity to get used to the default subclass first. And Ventra being unlocked earlier is more in line with other deckbuilders letting you try a completely different card pool early on.

-Ventra is now unlocked after you've dealt 200 damage in battles. -All subclass unlocks now happen each time you win a run with that character (Gideon or Ventra), instead of being attached to achievements. This will make some subclass unlocks easier, and some harder.

Difficulty/Mastery System Rework

We're reworking the difficulty system to be per-character rather than per-subclass. Subclasses aren't different enough from each other to justify their own difficulty tracks. This led to rubber-banding difficulty, where you'd win on a high difficulty with one subclass, then have to play on a low difficulty with the next subclass.

-Difficulty Levels are called "Mastery Levels" again. -Mastery Levels are now per-character (Gideon & Ventra), not per-subclass. This means you can now pick any subclass you want as you progress. -11 new Mastery Levels were added after the current four to give the player a smoother ramp up before Plights are unlocked. -Removed the "Bloodmight", "Elite Prowess", and "Titan's Vigor" Plights. They were folded into the aforementioned new Mastery Levels.

Other Changes

• 2 additional towns (with cards for sale) were added to the map. This should help add more card options and make it a bit easier to get a deck going early on.

Gideon

Gideon has too many cards that either have "Unplayable" or drain his hand size in some fashion. This leads to low hand sizes and reduced player options. We're deleting cards that have this problem, adding new cards, reworking cards, and editing Structures, all with the goal of increasing the player's options and cards in hand. Let's see the new stuff first:

Gideon - New Cards

New Mechanic: Salvo X - Deals X damage when drawn on your first turn. (A card with "Salvo 2" will deal 2 damage if you draw it anytime during your first turn, including in your starting hand.)

• Heat of Battle - 7-cost Ongoing Effect - Whenever one of your Defenders attacks, play the top card of your deck for free. • Ember - 3-cost Ability - Salvo 2. When played, deals 2 Enflame Damage and you draw a card. • Jack of All Trades - 5-cost Ability - Salvo 2.

  When played

  Deal 1 Arrow Damage. Deal 1 Enflame Damage. Gain 1 gold. Conjure a 1/1 Militia into play. Draw a card. • Warweaver (different from the deleted card with the same name) - 6-cost 1/X Defender - Has starting health equal to the damage you dealt on the first turn of this battle. Gets +1 Attack after each time it attacks. • Battle Plans - 0-cost Ability - At Gamestart, is added to your hand as an extra card and played automatically.

  When played

  Draw a card. Conjure two Maps to your discard pile. (Maps are 4-cost cards that let you Conjure 1 of 3 random cards to your hand of your choice.) • Hunter's Shot - 2-cost Ability - (Yes this is also currently a subclass card, we'll retheme or rework it later to be different. Adding it to the main card pool because Gideon needs a normal intuitive Level Up card.) Deals 1 Arrow Damage, but each time you play it its damage is levelled up.

Gideon - Deleted Cards

-Sage (No one liked this card and it had weird anti-synergy with other Renowned cards. Also it had "Unplayable" so it lowered your options.) -Dragon's Tower (This card could be powerful, but drained your hand a LOT. We may add this as an unlockable legendary card later because it can be fun, but it's too easy for it to lead to unfun game states.) -Darkflame (A card that synergized with Unplayable cards. However, the number of Unplayable cards is going down in this update. Also, this card was a bit annoying to set up.) -Rest (The current version of this card felt like a bit of a wash overall, but Rest may be used in a different capacity in the future.) -Tempest (This card had a lot of problems. Lowered your hand size over time, didn't have a lot of agency or combo potential to it. Just wasn't earning its rare slot. Replaced with the aforementioned more fun stuff.)

Gideon - Card Changes

All Structures - Structures now leave behind a "Salvage" card in your hand when destroyed. Salvage costs 2 and lets you draw a card, then Depletes itself. (Structures were a newer card type that also drained your hand size. They were a huge new player trap, as players would often pick "free damage" even if they would benefit more from getting a playable card. At least now the player can use Salvage to help get their hand size back up.)

Long Shot - Salvo 2 has been added to this card.

Gideon - Card Reworks

(Changing cards that just sat in your hand into cards you can actively play.)

● Enchanter - ⁃ Old: At gamestart, level up a random card (that exists anywhere) at start of battle. Unplayable. ⁃ New: 4-cost Ability card. When played, you gain 3 gold and level up a random card (that exists anywhere).

● Town Crier ⁃ Old: Boosts all your Renowned card bonuses by 1 as long as Town Crier is Renowned. Unplayable. ⁃ New: 2-cost Ongoing Effect card. When played, you choose a card in your hand and move it to the rightmost hand slot. While in play, Town Crier boosts all your Renowned card bonuses by 1.

Ventra

"Invoke" (which let you build up a big Defender) has been rethemed and reworked as "Wisps".

What are Wisps?

New cards summon "Wisps" of various colors to your "Ruins". *Once per battle* you can activate your Ruins to attack with all your Wisps, which deal damage and have special effects depending on their color.

The *once-per-battle* activation is the highlight. Think of summoning Wisps as filling a bucket with magical effects, then you pick the right time to spill them all out. You'll often think: "Do I cash my Wisps out now, or keep building them up for a later turn?" It's an addictive push-your-luck mechanic that adds strategy to the battle. It also allows us to push the effect's power level really high since it's a one-time activation.

What happens after you've activated your Ruins? Well, you can no longer summon Wisps this battle. But all your Wisp cards turn into something else useful.

Ventra - New Cards

(Note: These Wisp cards all require achievements to unlock, as they have a lot of tooltips and text for a brand new player. We find new players already enjoy Ventra with Enflame and Poison so we don't want to clutter the starting card pool with walls of text.)

(Note: All Wisps deal 1 damage to the closest monster when they attack, so I'm not going to repeat that for every Wisp description here.)

White Wisp - (No extra effect.) Blue Wisp - Gains 1 energy on attack. Purple Wisp - Gains a Shimmer on attack (lets you Conjure 1 of 3 random cards to your hand, then Depletes.) Gold Wisp - Plays the top card of your deck for free on attack. Shadow Wisp - Deals 1 damage to all monsters instead of just the closest one.

• Spirit Portal - 2-cost Ability. Summons 3 White Wisps, plus 1 for each other card in your hand that starts with S. • Visage - 3-cost Ability. Choose to summon 2 Blue Wisps or 2 Purple Wisps. • Phantom's Hold - 4-cost Ability - Summons 2 Gold Wisps. • Shadowflame - 2-Cost Ability - Summon 1 Shadow Wisp. • Beacon - 2-cost Ability - Choose a Wisp type and double the number of those Wisps. • Felgate [Legendary/Dungeon Only] - 9-cost Ability - Summon 3 Shadow Wisps and 5 Gold Wisps.

Ventra - Card Changes

-Poison Dagger was moved from Rare to Uncommon.

Ventra - New Artifact

-Skull Goblet - Your cards that Summon Wisps summon one more.

More Changes

Both Characters - New Artifact

-Old Hero's Bow - If you deal at least 10 damage (of any kind) on the first turn, Conjure a 2/4 Defender into play.

Enemy Changes

(We're changing the "starter" battles that appear near the start of a run to each have a "Miniboss" monster, as it typically makes the battles more interesting. Minibosses are huge monsters that show up later in the battle.)

-Kobold Captain - Greck is going from a 6/6 normal monster to a 9/5 Miniboss monster. -Phase Bats - All Phase Bats have had their attack values reduced by 1. Pincer is going from a 7/2 monster to a 2/11 Tenacious Miniboss monster. -Gravel Monster - Rockslide Titan is going from a 4/4 that creates 1/1s when you damage it, to a 16/16 Miniboss with Slow 1 and Crumbling (Slow makes it take an extra turn to attack. Crumbling lowers its attack when damaged.)

(That big enemy rework several patches ago left some of enemies weirdly balanced, especially at lower difficulties.)

-Glade Nymph - "Hedge Demon" was given +3/+3. -The Headhunters - "Sylla" and "Ryndax" were given +2/+2 at low difficulties. -Ruins Monument - "Hired Assassin" has 1-2 more health at low difficulties. -Sojourner - "Araxis, the Underworld" was given +3 health at low difficulties. "Fairholm" was given +4 health at low difficulties. -Bacchus Rattus - Removed 5 Plague Rats, there were too many and the battle was too long. -Ruins Monument - "Cost" (a hidden stat for monsters) was increased by 2. This is a nerf to the monster, slightly reducing the number of monsters that come after it. -Gloomtoad - Gloomtoad's health was reduced by 2 at all mastery levels.

Other Changes

-Level Up and Gamestart now have their own tooltips. -Icons were added for various tooltips that didn't have their own icon. -If your life is less than 20 after the tutorial, it will be set to 20.

Bug Fixes

-Fixed a bug where Structure cards could get stuck in hand. -Fixed a bug where Ascendancy wasn't dealing damage equal to double your gold, only damage equal to your gold. -Fixed a bug where Amplify was not working correctly with Dark Pact. -Fixed a bug where Dark Pact was sometimes dealing and displaying the wrong damage amount. -Fixed a bug where when you got a dungeon treasure, if the dungeon had multiple of that same treasure it would remove both from the treasure display (the area on the left part of the dungeon screen where it shows you what treasures are left). -Fixed a bug where Deathrings (during battle) would show that its Gamestart damage would be increased by Chaos Gem when played. (Doesn't make sense.) -Fixed a bug where the reroll button in Bazaars would not visually change their rune costs from 25 to 15 when you had Market Stall. -Fixed a bug where Split Decision was not working correctly with damage buffs. -Fixed a bug where the "Forward Tower" artifact would always trigger at the start of your first turn against Sojourner.

Minor Bug Fixes

-Fixed a bug where The Tidebringer was using Orc Warlord's "threaten" sound (the sound it makes when it approaches you.) -Fixed a bug where sometimes the Sojourner enemy's monster card could re-enter play after being destroyed. -Fixed a bug where hover/click sound effects on the Achievements screen would suddenly stop working. -Fixed a bug where Spore Cloud had a purple card frame instead of orange. -Fixed the "Resume Run" button making a button overlap sound when it was not available. -Fixed a bug where the "Bane of the World-Eater" Plight notification window was showing up on pre-battle screens besides the one for Zadeus. -Fixed a bug where Empyreal Lance would stay in one place for a long time before moving to the discard pile. -Fixed a bug where Level Up cards had their level number offset when looking at their upgraded version at the Blacksmith. -Fixed some cards like Arcane Well and Grim Rites having the deprecated "Scheme" tooltip. -Fixed "Craft" saying "Wrong Type" instead of "Wrong Cost" when you tried to select a card that costed anything other than 0 or 1.

Known Bugs

-Prize cards' gold costs aren't being displayed. This will be fixed soon. -Not a bug, but a menu option will also be added soon to activate the Game Log again.