First Day minor fixes 20260922

New mode: Saga

A roguelite draft campaign against the AI. Find it on the "Versus AI" tab.

• Draft your deck from scratch. Every run starts with 40 random Common and Rare cards from the whole game, not just your collection. Then 10 blind swaps and 10 picks of 1 out of 3. Duplicates are allowed, the deck cap is 75.
• 10 heroes. Pick 1 of 3 (with one reroll): Thorn Knight, Thinking Beast, Forsworn Cultist, Lone Necromancer, The Cobbler, Wild Warrior, The Mason, Light Fingers, Troubadour and The Shadow. Each hero has starting gear, a favorite school and a unique perk. There are no classes in the Saga.
• 3 acts, then endless. Each act is a 12-column map with fog of war and a boss at the end. Nodes: Fight, Elite, Boss, Cursed Land, Ambush, Black Mass, Forge, Merchant, Architects' Guild, Camp, Tomb and Sanctuary.
• 6 enemy factions, 18 foes. Bandit, Veteran and Ataman; Warlock, Necromancer and Lord of Bones; Goblin, Orc and Skullcrusher; Cultist, Hierophant and Matriarch; Faceless, Outcast and Ancient; Plaguebearer, Rotting Alive and Lord of Rot.
• 30 new faction cards plus 2 tokens (Skeleton and Bone Shards), with art and texts in all 10 languages. They only appear in the Saga. Elites put Might into their deck, bosses start with Might on the table.
• Saga enemies cannot win by tower race: they have to destroy you.
• Arsenal: weapon, armor and accessory slots, 45 items in three rarities, Might slots, and a 3x3 grid of offerings (school x tier). Tier III of each school is locked until you find a tier III offering for it. Beat a faction boss to take one of its three offerings.
• Banners are extra lives. Losing a fight with a banner costs gold instead of ending the run. You get another try at a boss you lose to. Banners come from the start of the run, bosses, the Black Mass and the Merchant.
• Folios are rerolls, spent at the Architects' Guild, the Merchant, the Forge and on boss rewards.
• The Forge upgrades cards and gear, the Merchant sells cards, gear and banners and buys gear back, the Sanctuary removes cards, the Camp permanently raises your wall.
• Enemy buffs and your curses are shown before a fight and in the map header. Cursed Land now curses you after the fight, and the reward window tells you which curse you got.
• Card numbers include your gear and offerings everywhere: in battle, in your deck, in the draft and on reward screens.
• Might wears out. Each Might card lasts 2 to 5 fights on the table, then breaks. The Arsenal shows how many fights are left, and the fight result window tells you when one breaks.
• Cold is weaker in the Saga: enemy cards deal 30% less damage instead of half. Cards that work differently in the Saga have their own description marked "(Saga only)".
• The Forge now has a forging animation, and you can reforge gear for a Folio just like cards.
• Hero and enemy tooltips now show their favorite school, the one an enemy Ice Arrow will freeze.
• Account rewards: 25 gold and 10 XP per fight, 40 gold and 15 XP per elite, 120 / 150 / 200 gold, 50 / 60 / 80 XP and a card pack for the bosses of acts I / II / III, plus 10 mithril for the third boss, then a pack every 10 wins. XP counts toward your account level and its rewards. Rewards build up during the run and are paid out when it ends (fights shorter than a minute do not count). The current total is shown in the map header.
• Saga has its own music theme and is fully translated into all 10 languages.

Tutorial

• The tutorial is now 5 chapters (Basics, Building, Classes, Effects, Economy) with sandbox practice and pop-up hints. Each chapter pays 100 gold once.
• Basics was rewritten: you play your first cards right away, the explanations follow, and swapping your starting hand comes at the end.
• New Training Match next to the chapters: a normal match against an easy AI, with one context hint at a time. Hints can be hidden.
• New players open the menu on the tutorial tab once.

Skins in battle

• Attack skins now change the projectile you fire. Your own skin shows in every mode, your opponent's in PvP.
• Tower skins now change your tower on the table, in Duel and Chaos.
• New in the shop: Boulder attack skin and Woman Colossus tower skin.

Gameplay

• Chains 1 did nothing before. The chained card was played, the chain dropped and the hand refilled right away. Now the last chained card is not redrawn until your next card or your next turn. This also makes every Chains card a bit stronger.
• The Chains icon now stays until your hand actually grows back, so it no longer looks like a card went missing.
• Madness and other weakening effects now reduce exactly one number on a card (the biggest one), instead of every number at once.
• Spy Raid, Infiltrator and Providence now let you pick a card from the enemy's hand instead of just revealing it. Might cards cannot be banished this way.
• Starting hand swap in PvE (AI, Saga, training) has no time limit any more.
• Tactical Edge: 5 charges instead of 3. Its description now matches what it does: +4 damage from your third card of the turn.
• Tissue Rupture: now Veil 3 and 1 damage.
• Chain tax eased: the third card in a turn costs +3, every card after that +5 (was +5 / +10 / +15).
• Stockpile inflation is 15% weaker.
• Tower victory target is now 70-80.
• The Tavernkeeper AI was toned down. The AI now plays with slightly random pauses between cards instead of a fixed rhythm.

Interface

• When a card can't be played or discarded, a message above your hand now says why (not your turn, not enough resources, Silence, frozen school, and so on).
• Card hover now lists where each changed number comes from (for example "Damage +4" from a Might card).
• Spells now get their own entry in the battle log.
• Status tooltips now start with the status name.
• The Arsenal button in the main menu shows how many unopened packs you have.
• Chaos battle screen was brought in line with the Duel screen, with a proper "whose turn" banner.
• Hits on a tower now kick up dust and stone chips, and the camera shakes on big hits (15+ damage). Camera shake can be turned off in settings.
• Effect names in the profile statistics were fixed.
• 16:10 screens: the hand no longer covers the surrender button, spell book and battle log, and the deck builder header scales down to fit. 16:9 and wider screens are unchanged.
• Hero cards in the Saga grow with their text instead of spilling onto the buttons below.
• The "Play again" button was removed from the match result window: it did the same as "Back to menu".

Online and progress

• Account levels 2 to 5 now give 100 gold and a random card pack each, and every 5th level after that gives 100 gold.
• After a PvP or PvE match, your gold, level and rating in the menu update right away. Before, the menu kept showing old numbers until you visited the shop, and it looked like no reward was given.
• Deck edits are saved locally first and synced to the server in the background, so a bad connection no longer loses a deck. PvP waits until your decks are synced.
• If the connection drops while you are in the menu, the game now reconnects quietly. In queue, lobby or a match you get the disconnect window right away instead of a frozen table.

Fixes

• Fixed the hand sometimes staying 1-2 cards short until the next event when it held several copies of the same card.
• Fixed a crash when hovering some Saga items.
• Fixed the Arsenal layout stretching with long skin names.
• Fixed the "Mode" header turning into squares after switching to Japanese and back.
• Fixed the tooltip on the offering button showing twice.
• Fixed cards in hand covering the "Finish" button during the starting hand swap.
• Fixed Steam avatars from your last PvP match staying on screen in PvE matches.
• Fixed Saga enemy buffs and player curses that change starting income, stock, tower or wall: they were shown but not applied in battle.