100% Orange Juice makes waves again with the version 3.29 ~Extreme Alteration~ release!
Path to Secrets Returns!
Team Arnelle takes on Ellie's party in a watery showdown! Path to Secrets has been updated with brand new rewards for all players!
In addition, during the event, Bounty Hunt game mode has an optional duration limit of 30 chapters (after which players get ranked based on fame acquired).
Card Visuals Upgraded!
The highly anticipated card visual update is here! The way cards are drawn in the game has been rewritten from the ground up, making them much more readable and vastly upgrading the card art quality, while improving performance.
Previously, the in-game card art was up to 256x256 resolution. However, we've long had higher source files for the cards added to its game since its release, only missing high resolution versions of the original base game cards. In a stroke of good luck, OrangeJuice was able to recover those as well, so that every single card in the game has received a quality update, bringing to life never before seen detail!
We've striven to preserve the original look and feel of the cards, although they are actually rendered 100% anew. We hope you like them! Later this will allow for alternative card design, possibly even including seasonal card designs and animated frames, as well as new types of animations for the cards themselves in-game. This change will also later allow for moddable card designs, letting players implement their dream design.
While we were hunting the archives for all the high resolution assets, we also discovered something unexpected: an unexpected illustration for Mei's Red & Blue card art, which had gone completely unnoticed until now due to it having been delivered in an unusual format originally. Thus, Red & Blue has received their intended card art after nearly 10 years of a placeholder art!
Field Effect Countdowns Added!
We've also added a new way of showing a warning for upcoming field events! The game will now show a message when a field event will happen on the next chapter. Moreover, the amount of chapters until a field event's next occurrence is now visible on the field's INFO panel - which has also been made clearer and prettier to read!
Balance Changes
We've also made another round of balance changes to cards and units that have been on our radar for a while.
Chicken
Golden Egg now grants the trap setter stars equal to 100% of the ones enemy loses to its effect, if triggered by another player.
Dev note: We've wanted to give chicken a bit of a lift without making it uneven with its counterparts. This change specifically addresses how another player triggering Golden Egg did not benefit Chicken in any way, while making it more likely for some other player to win. Now Chicken players can be excited even if their egg is stolen!
Lucky Charm
Added effect: hand size limited to 1.
Dev note: Lucky Charm has been recognized to be too strong for a while, and we had multiple ways to address it. After lengthy discussion, we opted to keep its effect as is, but make holding onto it a more serious choice, as players will have to choose between Lucky Charm and all other cards they may draw.
Gift Exchange
Now a Max 1 card.
Dev note: Gift Exchange is one of the original "problematic" cards, in the sense that few units actually benefit from packing and playing it, and players rarely enjoy it being played, meaning its main use is simply causing chaos. While we don't want to remove this kind of ability from the game, being able to pack 3 of them has made playing in a way where you're not trying to win but simply messing with other players a bit too easy. We hope this change addresses it while letting people still use it for those scenarios where it serves their game plans.
Grain
All Guns at the Ready has had its effect changed:
Gain a Cannonball Counter and then pay all stocked Cannonball Counters. Deal 1 damage to a random enemy. If the enemy is KO'd, gain 1 Win and Stars equal to 3x their level. Repeat this once for every Cannonball Counter paid.
Cost has been lowered from 30 to 10 stars.
Dev note: While All Guns at the Ready has been hard to use, it's also been extremely powerful when blasted once in end-game at full charges. That's why we're aiming to address its swinginess. This change lowers the payout of the hyper, while also making it more accessible to play at any point in the game, including multiple times during one match.
There are also multiple other changes and fixes. Please see the patch notes for full changes!