Shuffle up!

Today we wanted to share some exciting improvements to cards coming soon to ZOR.

Before diving in, the goals for these changes are:

• Every card upgrade should provide a choice

• Giving more meaning to initial upgrades beyond the puzzle of how to spend your XP wisely

This update will get us half way to the first goal, addressing the more critical early part of the upgrade tree. In a future update we want all max upgrades to be a specialization choice, and also explore the idea of upgrades to crafted cards.

Now for the details!

Movement Card Changes

Here is how we are rearranging the movement upgrades to meet that second goal:

Lazy is now the single root of the tree, and upgrades into Walk, Explore or March. On the surface they all seem to have the same value: 1 food per action in different amounts. However, there are pretty significant gameplay differences between those numbers, and now each branch will now have its own upgrade pool with a unique identity.

While Lazy is still a bad card by design, upgrading it will be a commitment to which direction the deck will take. Slower with more utility? More expensive with explosive capabilities? Playing it safe? Also note the astrolabe perk which adds a second lazy card becomes much more interesting!

Three Branches

Motivation Changes

This free card in the start deck has been in the game since the beginning, and plays an important role in providing relief to the game's many difficulties. Knowing it is coming, and choosing when to use it adds depth and variety especially early game.

Late game it loses it's impact a bit, and it may seem odd that it doesn't upgrade, so In the next update Motivation can be upgraded into one of two specialization options:

• AdjustedDeterminationIncreased to 4 Actions

• Inspiration: Exhaust, so only usable once, but gives an XP

Inspiration is the bolder choice, as the XP is hugely valuable. It will also tempt you to trick it out of the discard pile using cards like second wind or rested. The question is, can you survive the pain of losing all those free actions?

Harvest Cards

Upgrading harvest cards will finally give a variety of results each run instead of the same three choices. Four new harvest upgrades have been added, and greed has been moved to the triobelisk as it makes much more sense as a second powerful but costly harvest card than the staple in your deck.

The TLDR

• This update will add 8 movement and 4 harvest cards

• The initial upgrade branches have been overhauled

• Triobelisk now contains a variety of card types, and some strong cards have been moved there

• Several cards have been balanced

Some dense information in this one, I hope you all appreciate it and are excited to dive in to this huge meta shake up. Next diary will cover the rest of the new content including a new challenge, new astrolabe nodes, and a new Slorf!

Thanks for tuning in, Clint and Gavin