Gems of War News

We have made several improvements to the opening 3 battles of the game, to improve how the
puzzle game basics are introduced to new players.

● The opening 3 battles (The Stranger, The Knight, and The Dragon) now have short
interactive tutorials that will walk players through the key parts of the puzzle game.
● We have also given the hub for the opening 3 battles a visual update.
● When a player starts a battle, it will run through the conversation and then will load new
players directly into the battle.
● The load menu for each battle, will display what will be taught in that battle.
○ (Similar to the previous Pre-Battle menus).
● We have changed what parts of the puzzle game are taught in each battle:
○ The Stranger: Matching Skulls, and Dealing Skull damage
○ The Knight: Matching Mana, Casting Spells, Enemy Turns
○ The Dragon: Matching 4-Of-A-Kind, Revisiting Spell Casting
● At the end of the Stranger battle, New Players will now get the troop - Eleanor
● At the end of the Knight battle, New Players will now get the new troop - Prisoner Luther
● We have also given the Hero Creation menu a visual update.
● We have updated Eleanor's spell so it is more useful in general gameplay
○ Her spell now lets players choose a Colored Gem, and will destroy several Gems
of that Color.

Please Note: Prisoner Luther will be going into chests for all Players with Weekly Reset



We have now implemented a pop-up for XBOX players when they experience an issue making a purchase.



You will now be directed to go into the in-game Settings > Account, where you will now find a 'Check Purchases' option.

Pressing this will resubmit any failed purchase data. Should you press this and still fail to receive your purchase, please contact support with your purchase receipt and your invite code.

• We have changed the Landing Menu of the game when players load the game after a fresh install.
  
  • Updated the buttons for New Players and Returning Players
  • Improved clarity of Settings button in the bottom right corner of the menu
  • New Background splash image
• 
  

Enchantée: Destroy 100 Enchanted Gems.

• An Immortal would be removed from the team if they didn't match the Region restriction (even though the Immortal is from that Region).
  
• We have made some improvements to XBOX behaviour with how it interacts with the Shop to address the performance issues that some players were seeing.
  
• Bonus morale from Leaderboard was not being included in the Morale Bonus section (Blue text) on the Guild Wars Reward menu.
  
• Monoliths were incorrectly applying to some Guild War Battles
  
• Guild Keep Defense Bonus was not applying to Troops that were transformed or summoned on the defending team.
  
• Guild Wars where a Guild could face the same Enemy Guild more than once during a single event.
  
• We have made some improvements to Guild Wars to optimize performance.
  

Update 8.4 sees the return of Guild Wars, but we have fully reimagined and redesigned the system.

For a detailed breakdown of how to play Guild Wars, read about it here: Guild Wars Reimagined, by Sirrian.
Or for a quick explanation, check out: Guild Wars Game Guide.

[h3]How Often Will Guild Wars Run?[/h3]
The good news is that we’ve built the new Guild Wars to be quite flexible, so a given event can run from 2-10 days, and it is not tied to the weekly rotation of other events.

That said, everything in these patch notes refers to a Guild War that runs for 4 days - which is how we are going to introduce them. Initially, the plan is to replace Arena Weekends with Guild War events that run from Thursday to Sunday. This will allow us to gather feedback from everyone as we balance and adjust the system. After that, we’ll look to adjust the length and frequency of Guild War events to make it the most fun it can be.

Each day of a Guild War event will see your Guild facing off against another Guild to see who can score the most points and win. Each win will increase your Guild’s Rating on the leaderboard, while each loss will cost your Guild some Rating.

As for Arena Events - they’ll probably get a rework at some point in the future and return - but we do not have anything to announce at this time.

[h3]Is There Anything Unique About Guild War Events?[/h3]
Guild War Events have a couple of unique elements to keep each one fresh.

Firstly, each Guild War has an “Attacker Restriction” in place (don’t worry - defenders also have restrictions to keep it fair). This might be Troop Color, Troop Kingdom, or Troop Type. We have no plans at present to double these up and make complex restrictions that are difficult for forming teams.

Also, each Guild War introduces a Shiny Legendary Troop. You can win Shiny Tokens for this Troop in the Guild Wars reward track. Tokens for these new Shiny Legendaries will go into Shiny Chests 2-3 months after the event.

[h3]
Please Note: The first Guild Wars event will be taking place from the 28th of March. This is to allow Guilds a chance to set up their Keeps or decide to opt-out of the event if they do not wish to participate.

[/h3]


We have 2 new Achievements for this update:

• Talkin' 'Bout A Revolution: Be in a Guild that wins the day in a Guild War.
  
• Tangled: Destroy 100 Entangle Gems.
  

Existing broken achievements are still going to be addressed and updated in future. Currently hoping for 8.5 but that is to be confirmed.

It is not as simple as just editing the text for the existing achievements and linking them to a new task.

• Updated the Guild Popup Menu to match the new UI style, and added Guild Wars as a permanent option on the left-side of the menu.
  
• Updated Polymetis' spell icon art.
  
• A new set of Dragonite Dragons, and their weapons will be going into the Soulforge with the weekly Reset.
  
• Updated the Guild Activity screen to include new Guild Wars features
  

• Skipping past the Wandering Merchant system popups by repeatedly pressing A on the Load Screen.
  
• Comic panels would slide in twice during the Tutorial quests.
  
• Completing all 3 Tasks in a Campaign would sometimes not let you select the Bronze Task if you play with a controller
  
• Added safeguards and fixes to improve stability on XBOX.
  
• Resolved some issues with the in-game Store on XBOX.
  
• Soft lock in Daily Plunder
  
• Among other smaller issues
  

With todays hotfix, we have resolved the following issues:

• 
  
• ‘Touch by an Angel’ achievement not progressing
  
• Xbox, Playstation and Switch: Selecting a Dungeon door, then pressing the back button quickly, prevented you from being able to start Dungeon battles
  
• Mobile: Rewarded Ads were missing
  
• Fixed text on some screens where the text cut off or was otherwise incorrect
  

As PvP Seasons progress, and we add more Immortals, we wanted to include a means for players to have a chance to target the Immortal Souls they need. Introducing… the Epic Burning Chest!

• Epic Burning Chests will rotate weekly and contain the following:
  • Seasonal Featured Immortal Souls
    
  • 3 Randomly Selected Immortal Souls (that rotate weekly)
    
  • Bronze, Silver, and Gold Icons
• Epic Burning Chests cost 25 Burning Marks
  
• The weekly limit for purchasing Burning Marks has been increased from 2 to 4, to allow players to target using Epic Burning Chests.
  
• When tapping on the Burning Chest button off the PvP World Map, it will now bring up a popup menu so players can decide which type of Burning Chest they will open (similar to the regular Chest Menu).
  
• In the Epic Burning Chest Menu, players will be able to see which 3 Immortals are available in the chest.
  

[h3]Normal Burning Chests[/h3]

We have made some small improvements to normal Burning Chests:

• We have lowered the chance to get a Silver Mark, but increased the amount of Silver Marks earned to 60 from 50.
  
• We have improved the chance to get Gold Marks slightly
  
• We have improved the chance to get an Icon
  

We have made some further improvements to the Kingdom Quest Map system.

• We have added Mini Bosses to Kingdom Quests
  
• Quests with Mini Bosses will only contain the Mini Boss battle (reducing the number of battles to complete in kingdoms)
  
• We have broken stories up into story arcs – so only a number of locked quest nodes will appear on the Quest map, ending with either a Mini Boss or a Boss.
  • Quests nodes will remain on the Quest Map once the Quest is completed.
• We have sped up the animation in conversations by 50%
  
• We have adjusted conversations to play a little differently –
  • Play the End Conversation for the recently finished Quest.
    
  • Show the next Quest node unlocking on the Quest Map.
    
  • Play the Start Conversation for the new Quest.
    

Please Note: We will be rolling out the updated Questlines with Mini Bosses over time, so only Broken Spire is available on release. Adana and Zhul’Kari to follow shortly, and then more later. As we roll these changes out we will also be:

• Adjusting several quests that had 3 battles in them so they now only have 2 battles.
  • Class Quests will be unaffected by this change.
• Reviewing the quest rewards, and updating them to include a XP booster for Mini Boss Quests. (We will make sure that the number of Kingdom Income Bonuses remain the same).
  

We have updated the Reward screen after finishing the battle to match the new UI style for the game, as well as including improvements.

• Rewards separated into 2 groups – Major and Minor Rewards.
  • Major Rewards are the rewards that are either rarer or more special when earned. In the new menu, they will appear larger along the top row of the menu
    
  • Minor Rewards are the more common rewards that can be earned in a battle, and live in the bottom row of the menu.
• Both Major and Minor Rewards are slidable in case players receive more rewards than can fit on the menu normally.
  • Gnome-a-Palooza we’re looking at you…
• All rewards for a single reward type (e.g. Gold, Souls, etc.) will be combined together in a single reward.
  
• Any reward that comes from multiple sources will have a sack icon over it (similar to the loot icon on Gnomes). When a player interacts with that reward it will bring up a popup that will display all the sources that the reward came from.
  
• Rewards that contribute to a shrine or level, will have a progress bar appear underneath them to display the progress they have after the new rewards are added. For rewards that may have 2 Shrines that progress them (due to Deep Shrines), each progress bar will appear separately.
  

Please note: We’re aware that there’s feedback that the text size is too small, particularly on mobile. We’re doing a pass of both the new battle rewards screens and existing screens across the game so that we can increase the size where it’s too small and take the time to make sure the text fits nicely in all languages the game supports. We will include these improvements in a future update.





We have 3 new Achievements for this update:

• Touch By An Angel: Destroy 100 Angel Gems.
  
• Boo to You: Destroy 100 Ghost Gems.
  
• Thunderstruck: Match 100 Lightning Gems.
  

• We have added some new Heroic Gems to the game for future Campaigns.
  
• In the Daily Plunder menu, we have made it easier to continue Daily Adventure Battles, the Adventure’s slide-out will display after returning to the Daily Plunder menu from completing a battle for the Adventure.
  
• We have made some small improvements for Special Weekly Goals:
  • When players have rewards that are collectible, a button will appear in the Daily Plunder menu (replacing the ? help button on the Weekly Goal section), and it will display how many tiers are available
    
  • Any Troop that contributes to Weekly Goals will have the point icon at the bottom of the Troop’s portrait (similar to Legends Reborn).
    

• We have made further changes to fix the issue where the Blood Frenzy buff to enemy teams would apply to the whole team whenever an enemy Troop was summoned or transformed.
  
• We have fixed the issue where a trait summoning a new Troop in Blood Frenzy PvP would cause the game to soft lock in some situations.
  
• We have made additional changes to fix the issue where Pharaoh Khafru’s legendary trait would sometimes cause the game to soft-lock.
  • We will continue monitoring this so please let us know if you experience it in 8.3.
• We have fixed an issue where in PvP the opponent’s Immortal Troops would take on your own Troop’s Traits even if the Immortal Troop Level didn’t allow for them to have the Traits unlocked.
  
• We have fixed an issue where the left hand side event buttons would disappear from the world map if you navigated to PvP by going to the Dailies menu > select the daily task > Go to task > play a battle > return to world map
  
• We have fixed an issue where old accounts that hadn’t completed the tutorial and are returning to the game would sometimes get stuck looping through the intro quest battles.
  
• We have fixed an issue where an “Inactive Reminder” notification would pop up even if you had already played that day.
  
• We have fixed an issue where if you had scrolled up in chat to read older messages, you would be sent all the way back to the bottom of the chat when a new message was posted.
  
• We have fixed an issue where if you were looking at the oldest message and scrolled down you would have a big block of empty chat space at the bottom of the latest message.
  
• We have fixed an assortment of smaller issues.
  

As the game has several daily activities, we have consolidated most of them into a central location – the Daily Plunder Menu.

• Daily Plunder contains the following: Daily Path Tasks, Adventure Board, and Kill Tasks, all in a single menu.
  
• Daily Plunder has replaced the Adventure Board button on the World Map (the button is now called “Dailies”).
  
• Using the button will take players to the Daily Plunder Menu.
  
• The Daily Plunder Menu will use the quest map for the weekly kingdom, where all Adventures and Path Tasks for the day are visible on the map at different locations.
  
• Interacting with an Adventure will slide out a panel which will display all the battles and rewards for that Adventure. There is also a Fight button allowing players to jump directly into battle from this menu.
  
• Interacting with a Path Task will slide out a panel which will display the Path Task and a description. The “Go to Task” button at the bottom of the panel will take the player to a game location to help complete the task.
  • Players will still be able to view and use Path Tasks from their Path Menu.
    
  • The Path Tasks in both Daily Plunder and the Path menu will be identical (i.e. we haven’t added extra tasks).
• Adventures and Path Tasks, apart from the fact that they can be found in the Daily Plunder Menu, are in all other respects the same as before
  
• Interacting with the Daily Plunder Menu while a slide-out panel is visible will close it.
  
• In the bottom left corner of the menu is the Daily Path Task Progress.
  
• In the bottom right corner is the player’s current Kill Task.
  
• When either the Daily Path Task or Kill Task is completed, players will need to manually collect the reward from this menu.
  • If it is not collected by Daily reset, the reward will be sent out automatically.

• After completing an Adventure or Task, players have a chance to trigger a Buccaneer’s Bounty.
  • The whole Adventure must be completed, not just a single Adventure battle.
• Buccaneer’s Bounties are a new real money offer that appears for a limited time (10 minutes) before disappearing.
  
• Only one Buccaneer’s Bounty can be triggered per day.
  • It is possible to not trigger a Buccaneer’s Bounty for the day since this is intended to be a rare encounter.
• Buccaneer’s Bounty will offer one resource such as Shiny Keys, Bronze or Silver Icons, Dragonite or Burning Marks.
  • The resource chosen is random, though some resources may be more common to encounter than others.
• A new Buccaneer’s Bounty cannot be triggered if an existing one is already running.
  • E.g. If a player triggers a Buccaneer’s Bounty near Daily reset, they will not be able to trigger a new Buccaneer Bounty for that day until the previous one is completed.

• Special Weekly Goals are rare events that may run during celebrations or special holidays.
  
• Similar to the Weekly PvP Goals, they have several tiers, each giving a Reward when achieved. Some tiers may contain very valuable rewards!.
  
• Special Weekly Goals have 25 Tiers for players to earn over the week.
  
• Completing all Tiers of a Special Weekly Goal will give a unique reward, such as a new Troop, Pet, or rare Orb.
  
• Players can progress in the Special Weekly Goals by playing any non-training battle.
  • Special Weekly Goals will require players to Kill any Enemy, Kill an Enemy of a specific Color or Destroy Gems of a specific type (Colored Mana or Skulls).
• Gems of War’s 10th Anniversary celebration will be using the first Special Weekly Goals!
  

We have 2 new Achievements for this update:

• Wither & Decay: Destroy 100 Decaying Gems.
  
• Weekly Plan: Complete all Tiers in a Special Weekly Goal.

• We have updated the reward menu for Quests to match the new art style.
  
• We have added a new Heroic Gem to the game for a future Campaign.

• We have fixed an issue where Pharaoh Khafru’s legendary trait would sometimes cause the game to soft-lock.
  
• We have fixed an issue where the Blood Frenzy buff to enemy teams would apply to the whole team whenever an enemy Troop was summoned or transformed.
  
• We have fixed a visual issue where Icons in the Resource Wallet were not updating to reflect the amount of Icons players actually had.
  
• We have fixed an assortment of smaller issues.