Units:
New art:
Fatigue Wizard
Stockmoore's Warehouse
Blind Priestess
Bee Hive
Thorn Thruster
Tiny Rafflesia
Nurturing Sprite
Vinculi
Bee Keeper: Nerfed to spread 75% of the health buff instead of 100%
This also solves the Mushroom Mender + Bee Keeper combo cleanly without removing the interaction or adding other conditions
Heroes:
Auris now has her own fancy island!
All hero islands are now animated
Zapzap Thriving Trees quest reworded to more clearly state the nature units need to be bought
Bugs:
Ancestral Keep: would temporarily lose health when selling off units
Miracle Enchantment: would not always apply start of combat effects of the new enchantments
Other:
Matchmaking change: Bigger opponent pool and decreased difficulty bumps
The most common feedback we receive regarding the ranked system is how there's these hard walls people hit once they enter a new matchmaking bracket, because you'll now be facing mostly opponents of your rank or higher. We're now testing a change that increases the pool of opponents to include the lower rating bracket as well until you're at rank 1400 (where you just face the highest bracket: 1000+). What does this mean? Twice the amount of boards and variety in the pool, half of them from opponents in a lower matchmaking bracket. Games should now feel even more diverse, slightly easier and with a more gradual power curve as you rank up! This is an experimental change and will likely lead to some inflation.
Tier 1 Enchantment encounter is now a big shop instead of single random
16 new encounters and a few changed for every faction, including Basic
The encounter system was still very similar to what it was before EA release (with a smaller unit pool). This leads to a strange balance in shops. Another reason some shops have more "single random" options than others was because of their power level when synergies come together. Right now, all shops have a random option on Tier 1 (because of pool size, this only has units from 1 tier while other shops combine units of 2 tiers), and all factions have a triple random shop on every other tier with a variety of appearance rates. Let's see how this plays out!