The difficulty level for opponents in the mercenaries game mode now changes in steps of 3 instead of 2. Holding down control will change the step to 15 instead of 10. The max level that will be stored in savegames has been increased to 150 (up from 120).
The droprate of mercenary cards in the mercenaries game mode for non-legendary bosses now has a minimum of 1%.
Mercenary bosses that don't have hardcoded setups are now treated as proper bosses, instead of regular custom ones, and as such can be levelled up and will have the same droprates as hardcoded bosses instead of having the lower droprates for custom bosses.
The maximum level that non-random and non-custom mercenary bosses can be selected at will either be 3 + the maximum level at which this boss has been defeated, or the highest multiple of 3 that's smaller than player level / 3, whichever of these two values is highest. This mainly affects newly unlocked bosses for players that have a high level already, so that the lowest levels of these new bosses can be skipped.
Lowered the minimum mercenary boss attack value for custom bosses from 8 to 5, as this was interfering with the attack penalties that bosses received when they had multistrike, randomstrike, cerberus or hydra passives.
Lowered max number of decks a player can have from 63 to 36 as the old number would have too much of an impact on savegame file sizes.
The 'trader' and 'account' entries on the main menu have swapped places.
Fixed several errors on the battle setup screen that occured when entering this screen while having no decks. The screen will no longer allow access to the 'premade deck' section when players have no decks.
The back button on android devices now has functionality on the boosts and settings screens.
Fixed a bug on the combat screen that resulted in the active turn display being incorrect.
Implemented savegames. While in alpha, compatibility with older versions is not guaranteed and might result in (partial) savegame deletions in the event that future game updates contain changes to the savegame data format. A warning system is in place that can detect some savegame corruptions and warn players. If there's need for a warning, it will be shown on the main menu. The old savegame system is no longer in use.
Added 87 achievements, whose progress can be tracked in the profile screen. Achievements are spread over 13 sets, and within each set, one achievement is considered the set achievement, whose progress depends on the progress of other achievements. Each achievement has 4 tiers which all reward a random card, boost or mercenary. Set achievements reward copies of the legendary cards.
Implemented player experience gain. Gaining levels will increase the maximum score of boosts that can be used during combat. At specific levels, content will be unlocked : flagship (3), boosts (6), unpredictable game mode (9), events screen (12), mercenary cards and game mode (15), trader screen (18). The trader screen will show the locked error message on the main menu if players are below level 18, but the screen itself is not yet active.
The game over screen will show any newly unlocked achievements, and has received a button to go to the profile screen. Experience gained, as well as remaining experience needed to reach the next level are shown when games have been won.
The profile screen will show buttons to go to the flagship editor, the boosts screen, and the mercenary screen once those elements have been unlocked.
Implemented flagship unlock system. By default, only the basic spawns are available as ship choices. The combat boost section is also unlocked by default. Additional ships become unlocked based on what ships players have in their card collection. Since new players start out with 40 cards of each race, several ships will be unlocked as a result. The 6 additional upgrade slots for the race of the flagship being edited become unlocked through achievements of that race.
Implemented mercenary unlock system. Bosses based on the basic spawns are available to new players, all other bosses will have to be unlocked. Unlocking happens on a per-race basis and depends on the highest levels at which bosses have been defeated + 3. When this value reaches a certain threshold (which goes up based on the number of already unlocked bosses), a new random boss of that race becomes available. The profile screen has a section dedicated to showing the progress of mercenary boss unlocks per race.
The 'explore' entry on the main menu will temporarily set players to level 25, grant 4 copies of all cards as well as boost and mercenary tokens, all for testing purposes. Clicking this menu entry will disable savegame functionality for the remainder of the session.