August Community Update

Official News
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Hi everyone!
Warlock here, the Community Manager from the 505 Games team!
Some may recognize me from my rare appearance in the forums and Community Update Blogs!

Popping in to say that the August Community Update is out!
You can read it here on the Website in it’s original format: https://puzzlequest3.com/aug-community-update/
or down below!

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August Community Update

Transporting you Into The Dreamhold!

It’s the final day of August! You know what that means, August Community Update !
Step into our blog, grab a refreshment, and cool off from the heat both here in the real world and in Etheria.

There are spoilers for Season 1.2 below, turn back now if you prefer to avoid them!

With 1.2 closing its door, our fellowship has lost the Dragonheart! Toragon may have put Etheria in a pickle when he broke it and tossed it somewhere unknown. Now the party must travel to the Dreamhold in search of the Fae!

Will they be friend or foe? We’re about to find out as the clock ticks down to our 1.3 Update release!

Roadmap – August Update

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We’re past the halfway point in 2022, which means we’re starting to focus on our Fall and Winter content!

Winter is just around the corner, bringing 1.4 and 1.5 with it. In 1.4 we’re very excited to bring you Adventure which is probably our favorite new game mode and will make a huge difference to the live events we can bring you! We’re also bringing you some much-needed extra uses for food and bringing in some changes that will definitely ease some other frustrations we know you’re feeling.

The 1.5 Update is still a little ways away, but we know we’ll be adding more cool stuff into Adventure mode. So, let’s leave the Fall and Winter updates for now. So sit back, relax, make the most of the Hawaiian shirt weather and let’s talk 1.3!

Update 1.3 might have a slightly shorter Season, but it’s absolutely PACKED with not only a Follower but also a Hero, the Season Archive and the Menus & Inventory Rework!

Masters of Destruction

Remember last month when we gave you all a sneak peek at our Warlocks? Here they are in action!

See the Male Warlock Intro!

Destroying, withering, and igniting all in their path, the Warlocks arrive with Season 1.3 on September 6th, featuring the Fae and Dark Elf. To add a little flair to their devastation, new Warlock Spells can be found in dungeon chests in Story Chapters I-XV!

Check out the Warlock Spells in Action!

It’s a Lewk!

Last month we teased the rework we’ve done to the inventory, but there’s so much more than that.

https://puzzlequest3.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/OldvsNewUI.gif.gif(image larger than 4 MB)

The new and improved Hero Tab is less cluttered, making it easier to read.

We’ve also cleaned up the game menus to have a much more logical order, we’ve added a little merchant friend up the top who will look after any offers you have and the button in the bottom right will be a quick link to your favorite mode!
Which brings us to…

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The new Battles tab!

We’ve created the Battles tab so that all of your action lives in one place: Story, Seasons, Hunts, Versus, Challenges, Events, and Skirmishes can all now be found in one central location. You can also pick your favorite mode and it will always be right in the big spot on the left (and it’ll be Story by default).

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Gearing up? We know the old inventory system wasn’t the easiest to navigate and wasn’t the most elegant thing to use, so we’ve revamped it. Now inventory sits in a grid system, making it way easier to see what you’ve got in storage and what’s equipped. You can filter easily and even see your spells and Minions right here!

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Not only did we want to improve upgrading and comparing gear by making it much clearer at a glance what’s happening, we also wanted to address how easy it was to accidentally salvage something you didn’t want to and how difficult it was to mass salvage.
Salvaging anything via this menu will first give you the option to mass salvage and will warn you if you’re about to salvage something that’s either a favorite or equipped gear.

Resh is the name, Buffs are the game!

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Our mystery “friend” has finally arrived! Resh is your newest follower, but we’re still unsure of his motives.

As a follower, Resh offers aid in the form of a % chance buff to you at the start of a battle. Additionally, Resh also offers mystery gifts! …For a price.

Though he may be guiding you through the Dreamhold, you may want to keep a watchful eye on this guy.

Feeling Nostalgic? Check the Archive

You can now enjoy older Seasons in the Season Archives, maybe you’re new to the adventure, or you want to refresh your memory with the ghosts of Seasons past.

Access the Archive in the “Battles” Tab. Everyone who purchased a Season Pass while a Season was active will have permanent access to that Season in the Archive and any player can get permanent access to the most recent past Season for Crowns while all older Seasons will be available for Gems.

Individual Seasons will also periodically open up for a limited time!

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For more detailed information about all of the changes coming to our 1.3 Update, please check back for the full patch notes.

CHANGES AND FEEDBACK

As a live-service game, we aim to refine the game with each update which includes fine-tuning features we release.

As a small development team, we always need to carefully balance our time. We are always listening to what our community and broader player base has to say and our team will always try to respond to questions and feedback we get in the moment. Sometimes that means we just need to communicate more clearly or fix a bug ASAP and sometimes it means reworking a game feature (or creating a whole new one!) to help address any points of friction you folks might be experiencing.

Ongoing at the moment are reviewing some of the feedback we’ve gotten back about Kingdoms and Kingdom Defense, analyzing some of the brand new data we’ve got for that game mode and taking a look at the balance of some of our spells and gear in PVP because, based on your feedback, it seems like we need to do a bit of a review there.

Like we said, we’re a small team, so we’re so grateful for the patience you folks give us and your positive, constructive attitude towards feedback.
Since it’s winter at the studio, we’re very happy for the warm and fuzzy feels.

Keep the feedback coming. We are very excited for you to jump into 1.3 and to see what we’re up to for 1.4! See you next month for the September Community Update!

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What kind of access can be purchased with Gems? Can we buy a Gold and Platinum pass for season 1.1 with gems?

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How can we get relics for closed seasons, say season 1.2?
I got every flametree relic I could get, but this is much too less to upgrade the already collected flametree gear.
In season 1.1 Eveline was allowed to craft Khazduli relics. In season 1.2 not.
Can we now expect those relics in Eveline’s crafting menue and as well sometimes as a reward in Daily Challenges?
Additionally you promised the season relics will be visible in the wallet!

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What does this mean? Sort of additional follower side quests, a replacement for them or completely new short story lines to experience?

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Thank you, good to finally see some news about the update. With it, there are some immediate things I’m happy about and some immediate disappointments.

Things I’m happy about:

  • Battles tab instead of World tab
  • Battles tab being moved to right, where it’s easier and more instinctive to press
  • Kingdoms getting their own tab
  • Customizable menus!
  • OFFERS BEING CLEARED OFF THE MAIN SCREEN
    • Forgive my use of caps, but this is such a monumental change in making this game feel more like a game and less an ad spammy money maker
  • Grid system for gear vault
  • Gear score nice and prominent, easier navigation between gears, spells, and minions, set bonuses nice and visible
  • Salvage changes
  • Design of the new follower
  • Addition of archive
  • Home screen has both player and hero name now

Things I’m disappointed about:

Followers

The follower rework wasn’t mentioned at all, and that it’s no longer even in the roadmap.
Update 1.2 said:

The Follower Update has been moved to a later update, with some additional Kingdom updates brought forward. We wanted to make sure that we didn’t compromise on either of those updates, so we made the decision to split them up and give them the space, developer and design attention they needed.

So the follower update was promised to us, then it was split up and pushed back specifically so it could be given more attention. But then, nothing in this update, not even a mention? Many of us have been waiting patiently for it with great excitement for a very long time. So this is disappointing.

The new follower is also disappointing compared to what many of us theorized about. We hoped for a glyph crafter, or an element/effect reroller for weapons, or numerous other exciting things. So to have a simple buffer (while nice) is disappointing in comparison. It doesn’t fix any of the major issues players have with the game, which is what the new follower could have done. Also, I can see a buffer being most beneficial for new players who are underpowered, so to get a buffer follower so late in the game might be a bit hard to make work well.

Gear Screen

  • The gear icons are so small now. This makes them hard to see and tap on.
  • Why does your hero feature so prominently on the gear screen? It’s not like you can see your equipment equipped on yourself? It would have been better to have take away the space given to your hero and used it for bigger gear icons instead.
  • Would be nice to have name of set under icon as well.

New Home Screen

I’m sadly not fond of the changes. I honestly didn’t find it cluttered before. It was nicely laid out and very usable. Now, it just seems very empty. What use does this menu even really have any more? It seems like a lot of its functionality was taken away.

Some dislikes:

  • Gear being a tiny icon on the left side of the screen (too small and have to reach across the screen to tap it
  • Swap Hero changed to icon instead of icon with text and being moved to top (liked it how it was before, felt nice and was functional)
  • Quest Pass is a bit oddly located. Why is it pushed down from the top of the screen, leaving that gap? I think it would look a lot better flush against the top right of the screen.
  • The text for the currencies is bigger, which is nice, but the old design for displaying them was prettier
  • Absence of shortcuts to seasons and story battles
  • Chests seems smaller?
  • Smaller exp bar, that still lacks numbers. If it’s smaller, then there definitely needs to be the exp numbers to make up for it, because it’s just impossible to make an accurate estimate of how much exp you still need.

New Battles Tab

The tiles look nice, but they’re so colorful and have so much going on that it’s hard to focus on the text on them. Also, there’s too much important info on the same screen. It was nicer when things were divided up into their own tabs. The long season box to the left looks nice, but I’m not fond of all of the little squares. Also, everything should fit on one screen without having to scroll over, so that shows that there is too much on one screen.

One thing I’ve noticed about the overall design of this game: you seem to be trying to replicate mobile tiles like Windows does, and no. Just no. Please, those tiles are such an awful design, so please stop trying to copy them. You’re still doing a decent job with design, but the sooner you move away from the idea of the tiles, the easier of a time you’ll have coming up with a better, more unique design. One that is more functional and fits the game better.

New Hero

Was disappointed that the new female hero has so much skin showing. Her design seems like a throwback to the skimpy, sexualized outfits of the old days, which is disappointing after we got so many good but covering designs (female Necro is the only exception). I understand that the design for this class was supposed to be less covering to show off the muscles and tattoos, but there are ways to design outfits that show off muscle without being basically tiny boob armor and a loincloth. I know it’s too late to do anything about this class now, but hopefully an alt skin provides a more covering outfit, as I would like to play as the female class, being female, but don’t want to have to look at her skimpy outfit. Also, wish she had more glowing tattoos like the male version.

As a note though, I did appreciate how muscular she is, and her horns and color scheme are cool.

Conclusion

So, those are my preliminary thoughts on what we’ve been shown so far for this update. Really appreciate that the team is looking at all the feedback and taking it into account. More communication would definitely be appreciated (like the communication from the last day or two!). Just knowing you hear us and are working on things is often enough. Thanks for continuing to work hard on improving this game. It’s much appreciated by all the players

–
(Ps, isn’t this update in the wrong section? Shouldn’t it be in the official news section? It would be easier to find there, so that’s why I wanted to mention it.)

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W R O N G … T H I S I S W O R S E

is my feelings

I literally cannot describe how much I hate the new inventory system.

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Any word on extra inventory space?

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I’m there with you. To put into my own words…

The new system gives no information, it just takes up space. I open the gear vault and it’s just a pile of tiles with icons of various gear. This would almost work if you could hover for info. But that is not a thing, even on PC. Just a bunch of pictures of lord knows what.

The spell vault is worse because you cannot even tell the rarities of your sea of spell tiles.

Any list of gear/spells in a game should give information of some sort. Otherwise, just skip it.

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Thanks for the update, lots of good stuff but:

This new inventory is not good. I’m salvaging most of the items when I opened a chest for not to open new inventory screen. It’s hard to figure out spell rarity. I still can’t figure it out how to see gears in groups (other than highlighted in all gear).

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LOL I’m doing the same thing

Is the button I’ve clicked on and is now highlighted in yellow on the middle of the screenshot the button you’re looking for?

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It will come there after clicking on and item equipped on your hero. In this case it shows just the rings on the right hand side.

IMO having this selected should be the default setting. There should also be a tooltip pointing it out as it’s not obvious.

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Thanks a lot :slight_smile: