Shardbound News

Hello, Rangers! Welcome to another Weekly Development Update. A number of interesting topics to cover this week, so let’s dig right in!


Coming with tomorrow’s patch, we will be adding a new feature to Shardbound with the goal of encouraging faster turn-taking while also providing some extra accommodation for complex late-game turns.



Globally, turn timers will be reduced from 90 seconds to 75. However, your turns will add between Zero to Five seconds to the Time Bank, based on the time remaining when you end your turn.

If your turn timer reduces to zero, you will automatically start drawing from the Time Bank. If the bank empties, your turn will end.

Please note that the UI for this feature is temporary, as we wanted to get it into testing as quickly as possible. Please share your thoughts in our Discord, Subreddit, and Steam Forums - we look forward to your feedback!


You’d best space out your minions, because the Shockblade Smuggler is receiving her full art treatment this week. A member of the Duskwind Brotherhood like the Shanker and Buccaneer, she exudes the confidence and guts you’d expect from a free-spirited Sky Pirate!




We’re continuing to make balance changes to Shardbound based on match data and all of your fantastic feedback.

• Happy with the results of the first wave, we’ll be continuing the process of increasing health pools for ranged units, giving a bump to units like Cannoneer, Officer Showoff, Osprey Deadeye, and more.
  
  
• Some underutilized cards like Grand Defender, Plague Starter, and Menagerie will be getting some numerical buffs.
  
  
• A few units will get quality of life buffs, including allowing Tracker Primal to draw off an injured enemy hero and letting the Spearmaiden draw one of her two spears as a Warcry.
  
  
• A couple Spells will be getting some changes - Our adjustment to Ascension made it a bit too strong - it will be having its mana cost bumped up to 1. Slow Reflexes will be adjusted to require Line of Sight.
  

Check out the Patch Notes tomorrow for a full list of changes!


We’ve decided to make some changes to our release cadence to optimize our development.

Weekly patching comes with extensive overhead, logistics, and quality assurance testing. We’ve decided that some of that time would be better spent on developing more content and features. Additionally, we are flooding the pipelines with new art, and shipping it on a weekly cadence can actually slow down our speed of getting it in your hands.

As a result, we will be moving to a 2 Week patch cycle. After tomorrow’s patch, expect our next update to take place on July 25th.


We’ll sign off with Cirathiel’s fantastic winning entry from last week’s Fan Art Friday! She perfectly captured Vardan’s stern and powerful presence:



That’s it for this week! We’ll see you next time, or join us on Thursday for our Weekly Dev Stream at 4pm PDT!

- Your Friends at Spiritwalk

Hey there, Rangers! We couldn’t help but join in on the fun of the Steam Summer Sale, and just launched a new Bundle that’s available for a very limited time!



Until July 5th, you can head OVER HERE and grab the bundle for just 7 bucks. It includes 40 boxes at a 65% discount and throws in 2 Legendary Boxes to boot, each with a guaranteed Legendary card.

Why did we want to join the Summer Sale? Two reasons - first, we didn’t want the Shardbound community to be left out of the season of bargains, so we hope this is an exciting way to supplement your barracks. Secondly, the Summer Sale is a great time to discover new games, and we wanted to get the word out to new players about Shardbound!

We hope you’ll tell your friends it’s a great time to jump in and join our Alpha, and encourage them to pick up this sweet deal. We also hope you’re enjoying our recent balance patch and we’re eager for your feedback! Please keep it coming.

- Your Friends at Spiritwalk

+ Rankbreaker

• Health reduced to 4, down from 5.
  

+ Queensguard

• Melee transform reduced to +1/+2, down from +2/+3.
  

+ Outlaw Class Mech

• Base Health reduced to 3, down from 4.
  
• Upgrade (1): Now also provides +1 Health to counteract the base Health reduction.
  

+ Static Discharge

• Cost increased to 6, up from 5.
  

+ Medframe Tech

• Health increased to 4, up from 3.
  

+ Storm Class Mech

• Base Health increased to 8, up from 5.
  

+ Ascension

• Cost reduced to 0, down from 2.
  

+ Absolver

• Health increased to 4, up from 2.
  

+ Ardent Inquisitor

• Cost increased to 5, up from 4.
  
• Health increased to 6, up from 4.
  
• Proc damage increased to 3, up from 2.
  

+ Reckoning

• Cost reduced to 5, down from 6.
  

+ Life Lash

• Cost increased to 6, up from 5.
  
• Damage and Healing increased to 3, up from 2.
  

+ Kindle

• Stat gain increased to +2/+2, up from +2/+1.
  

+ Plainsguard

• Health increased to 6, up from 4.
  

+ Soultaker

• Health increased to 4, up from 3.
  

+ Ancient Caller

• Health increased to 3, up from 2.
  

+ Balos Ambusher

• Cost reduced to 3, down from 4.
  
• Attack reduced to 3, down from 4.
  

• The End Turn button’s underlying timer has been improved to measure the latency between the client and server, providing a more accurate timer with slower connections.
  

• The quantity text is now automatically selected when clicking the Change Quantity button in the store to make typing in a new number easier.
  

• Fixed some fallout from last week’s uncontrollable change that caused an issue when uncontrollable units wouldn’t attack adjacent targets in some circumstances.
  
• Fixed a bug where Crystal Queen wouldn’t transform targets she killed with her attack.
  
• Boxes earned while in the Treasury (via achievements, for example) now update the UI.
  
• Fixed a rare crash on startup when the client is unable to initialize the Steam SDK.
  

In case you’ve missed the news, we recently launched our Ranked Play system in Shardbound and the competition has been out in full force! Players have been taking their strongest armies into battle and climbing the ranks.

If you want to get started on your climb to the top, Ranked Play in Shardbound is simple - as long as you’re marked as “On Duty” when looking for a match, you’ll gain and lose Valor based on the outcome. Gain enough Valor, and you’ll level up through the ranks!

If you'd like more info, take a look at our May 15th Weekly Update.

The first players have reached Noble Rank - do you have the skill to join them? Join the competition now!