Shardbound News

Hey there Rangers!

Another week another Dev Update! Hope you’re all having a lovely Monday, so let’s dive right in!



We’ll be patching the game on schedule tomorrow @ 11am PDT. Expect to see the usual balance changes in this next patch. Duskblade’s Poison now only works on full health targets, allowing players to play around it and making it more situational.

Zephyr Monk’s Warcry now gives adjacent allies +3 Movement, hopefully giving it more playability.



The Tutorial has gone through a bit of an overhaul to shorten its length to get new players into the game more quickly! We’ve decided to kick off the story proper when we launch single player chapters, not try to do double duty with the tutorial.

Cannoneer is the newest minion with full suites of animation and voiceover! Go check her out in the Card Details!


We’ve added a couple more card transitions into the mix to help newer players understand what’s going on.

On enemy card discard, the card is now revealed.


Cards added to the deck from a target will now animate from the target to the deck (i.e. cards generated by Stellar Replicas). On enemy card overdraw, the card is now revealed and burned!



Now that the art pipeline is filling up and have multiple units in the works, we’ve been showing off a ton of art on streams, here are the highlights!

Spirit Binder

Baffling Presence

Pile of Tomes

Seedsinger

Concord Artisan

Tune in August 17th for the next Dev Stream! Make sure to follow us on Twitch and get notified when we go live! If you missed the last Dev Stream, watch the VOD!



The Mac build has started closed testing. There is currently no timetable for release, but we’ll make sure to keep you posted when we know! If you want to join the effort in testing the Mac build, drop us a line at [email protected].

Catch ya later, Rangers!

- Your friends at Spiritwalk

• Hungry Gnarbek now has art!
  

+ Juro

• Card text changed to “Ability (2): Dash up to two tiles, dealing 1 damage to enemies passed through. Transform into a Primal.”
  
• Primal card text changed to “Ability (2): Dash up to two tiles, dealing 1 damage to enemies passed through. Transform back to Juro.”
  

+ Astral Champion

• Health increased to 6, up from 2.
  
• Now only gains bonus Attack based on the cost of the card it draws, instead of both Attack and Health.
  

+ Cannibal

• Bloodtoll effect changed to dealing 3 damage to an ally, instead of destroying a friendly minion.
  

+ Disciple of Almast

• Card text changed to “Your hero ability becomes Chosen Blessing.” (Note: this is so that Disciple of Almast’s effect can now now be granted to Heroes other than Vardan, in case of a clone or in Blame the Deck or whatever).

+ Guerilla Raider

• Health reduced to 4, down from 5.
  

+ Plating Specialist

• Warcry effect now grants +3 Health, up from +2 Health.
  

+ Primeval Exalt

• Attack increased to 6, up from 5.
  
• Health increased to 6, up from 5.
  

+ Radiant Scion

• Attack reduced to 2, down from 3.
  
• Supremacy bonus increased to +3 Attack, up from +2.
  

+ Rook

• Attack bonus lasts for a full round, up from just the turn it moved.
  

+ Spirit Binder

• Card text changed to “Warcry: Bond to an enemy minion, while either are bound, neither can act.” (Note: Now uses the Bond keyword and mechanics - cases that previously ended Spirit Binder’s effect, such as Canal or Stone Prison, no longer end it).

+ Stellar Replicas

• Adds 2 copies to deck, down from 3.
  
• Draws 2 cards, up from 1.
  
• Cost increased to 4, up from 2.
  

+ Tracker Primal

• Health reduced to 3, down from 4.
  

+ Thrall Mutation

• Now also restores 1 Health to your hero in addition to its other effects.
  

+ Vaast, the Last Pilot

• Health increased to 4, up from 3.
  

+ Zieger-1

• Attack increased to 10, up from 9.
  

• Heroes will now play Concede VO when conceding (except Juro).
  

• Enemy card draw is now animated.
  
• Enemy card bounce is now animated.
  
• Cards exiled due to overdraw now visually burn away.
  
• The Time Bank UI is now hidden in matches where turn time is infinite, such as bot matches.
  
• The amount of time banked when you end your turn has been increased to plus +2/3/4/5/6 seconds per 10/20/30/40/50 seconds remaining beyond critical time, up from +1/2/3/4/5 seconds.
  

• Fixed a bug where cloned Moons or Stars (from Puppeteer or Echo of Light) would not recombine when next to each other.
  
• Raptor Class Mech and Storm Class Mech now have their correct keywords.
  
• Fixed a rare bug with Hadrien where Hadrien would take an incorrect amount of damage when protecting an ally with splash.
  
• Fixed a bug where the displayed ability cost for Chosen Blessing, the ability granted by Disciple of Almast, was 0 instead of 2.
  
• Fixed a bug where units that can move through enemy units (Wraith, Baffling Presence) would display the yellow attack highlight in some cases where they did not have a valid attack target.
  

Hello Rangers!

Hope you’re having a lovely Monday, here’s another Dev Update!



A couple weeks ago we introduced the Time Bank and want to thank everyone for providing feedback. We'll be making some tuning changes that will be coming in the next patch.

We've got some card changes in this patch as we continue to work on balance adjustments.
Astral Champion is being adjusted to have normalized health while allowing for the excitement of variable attack strength. It now only gains bonus Attack based on the cost of the card it draws and is fixed at 6 health.

We also made a quality of life change to Cannibal, giving it more flexibility in its deployment:
Before // After


Lastly, a variety of underutilized cards, such as The Rook and The Zeiger-1 to receive buffs to get them into the mix. Check out the patch notes tomorrow for more information!



In our last livestream we talked about the art pipeline opening up and what's to come. We have a ton of units at different stages of development, including concept, modeling, rigging, and animation. Here are the highlights from the stream:

Soultaker: Cannoneer: Grand Wyrm Primal: Zephyr Monk: Stonecall Seedling:

Dev Livestreams will be every other week for the foreseeable future, on the Thursday before we patch, so make sure to tune in!



Everyone's favorite hungry dino will be getting the full art treatment this week! Make sure to check him out in the Card Details to see his full suite of animations and voice lines.





We've also been working on fleshing out the visual states of cards during different gameplay events, improving viewability and helping newer players understand what’s going on. Enemy cards have animations when cards are being drawn, bounced, and exiled.



Catch ya on the flip side friendos,

- Your friends at Spiritwalk

Hey there Rangers,

In our most recent patch (Patch #48, 7/11) we made a change to Shardbound that wasn't recorded in our Patch Notes. The change was that 'First Win of the Day' no longer triggers when winning a game in Training Grounds bot matches. We apologize for any confusion or frustration caused by this change as it was not intended to be hidden from the community and was an oversight on our part. We have a strong philosophy on transparency and want to continue to develop this game with you guys, the players!

The reason for this change is that FWotD is intended to be a reward for those entering Matchmaking and not just a 'login reward'. We were seeing a majority of players playing Training Ground bot matches, then going straight into MM, which is not its intended purpose.
The FWotD reward is for PvP games and if you're matched with a bot you will be rewarded for that win. Hope this clarifies any of the confusion and, of course, if you guys have any questions we're happy to answer them! We always want to be forthright with the community, so thanks for bringing this to our attention!

- Your friends at Spiritwalk

• Shockblade Smuggler now has art!
  

+ Ascension

• Cost increased to 1, up from 0.
  

+ Blightlasher

• Health increased to 8, up from 7.
  

+ Cannoneer

• Health increased to 5, up from 4.
  

+ Ghost Blade

• Health increased to 4, up from 3.
  

+ Grand Defender

• Attack increased to 3, up from 2.
  

+ Queensguard

• Base Health increased to 5, up from 4.
  
• Melee transform reduced to +1/+1, down from +1/+2.
  

+ Officer Showoff

• Health increased to 4, up from 3.
  

+ Hungry Gnarbek

• Attack increased to 5, up from 4.
  

+ Menagerie

• Now summons five spirit primals, up from four.
  

+ Osprey Deadeye

• Health increased to 4, up from 3.
  

+ Plague Starter

• Health increased to 6, up from 5.
  
• Rat stats increased to 2/2, up from 1/1.
  

+ The Prodigy

• Warcry effect now transforms a minion into another minion that costs 2 more, up from 1 more
  

+ Snarling Mastiff

• Health increased to 6, up from 5.
  

+ Slow Reflexes

• Now requires line of sight.
  

+ Snap Dragon Cadet

• Health increased to 4, up from 3.
  

+ Spearmaiden

• Card text changed to “Warcry and Deathhowl: Add a Throwing Spear to your hand.”
  

+ Tracker Primal

• Now draws a card for each injured enemy, instead of only for minions specifically.
  

+ Warp Specialist

• No longer exiles itself.
  

+ Weavebreaker

• Cost reduced to 4, down from 5.
  
• Health reduced to 4, down from 5.
  

Developer Note: Time bank is ready for testing! This feature is designed both to encourage people to take faster turns where possible, while also providing more total time when needed for those particularly complex late game board states. Please note that the UI for this feature is temporary, as we wanted to get it into testing as quickly as possible. Let us know what you think!

New Feature - Time Bank!

• Max turn time reduced to 75 seconds, down from 90.
  
• Critical turn time now begins at 25 seconds, down from 30.
  
• Ending your turn while you have more than 25 seconds left will bank time, with more time being banked the more available time you have when you end your turn.
  
• A maximum of 5 seconds can be banked per turn.
  
• The bank can store a maximum of up to 30 seconds at a time.
  
• If you have any time available in your bank when your turn time reaches zero, it will begin to drain the your time bank instead of ending your turn.
  

• Bot games no longer count for wins in the user profile.
  

• Fixed a bug that could cause some friends in the social panel to not be sorted correctly.
  
• [In a hotfix since last patch] Fixed a network stall when reconnecting to a game under certain network conditions.