8.5 Patch Notes

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Welcome to the 8.5 Patch Notes article.

This update, the spotlight is stolen by the new Journey, featuring Triss Merigold!

By progressing through it, you'll be able to unlock the new leader, as well as unique cardbacks, avatars and more.

8.5 also brings balance changes, that were focused on three goals:
  • Making the weaker stratagems stronger and more tempting to choose for your deck.
  • Buffing some of the less popular leaders and making them more versatile
  • Balancing new cards released in 8.3 update
To top it off, we introduce new Starter Decks, aiming to make it easier and more entertaining for the new players to join the game.

You can read on details and more changes and improvements below.
Changes:

Neutral:

Enchanted Armor:


ability changed to:

Order: Boost a unit in your hand by 3 and give it 2 Armor.

Ceremonial Dagger:

ability changed to:

Order: Damage an enemy unit by 3 and give it Bleeding (2)

Cursed Scroll:

ability changed to:

Order: Draw a card of your choice, then put a card from your hand at the bottom of your deck.

Armory is now a Location.

Ability changed to:

Resilience.

Deploy: Boost an ally by 6.

Order: Give 3 Armor to an allied unit.

Regis: Provisions changed from 13 to 12.

Land of a Thousand Fables is now a Location.

Ability changed to: Resilience.

Deploy: Play a Special card from your deck.

Order: Transform a special card in your hand into a random unit of the same provision cost from the same faction.

Operator: Provisions changed from 8 to 7.

Armorer's Workshop: Armor given changed from 1 to 2.

Traveling Merchant: Power changed from 4 to 5.

Wagenburg: Provisions changed from 5 to 4.

Iris: Shade: Provisions changed from 10 to 9.

Iris' Companions ability changed to:

Deploy: Draw a card of your choice, then Discard a random card.

If you have Iris in hand, choose which card to Discard instead.

Myrgtabrakke: Power changed from 4 to 5

Provisions changed from 8 to 7.

Monsters:

Dettlaff van der Eretein
: Initial Blood Moon duration changed from 1 to 2.

Unseen Elder: Power changed from 5 to 6.

Archespore: Power changed from 2 to 4.

Ability changed to:

Deathwish: Summon all copies of this unit from your deck to this row.

Foglet: Ability changed to:

Deathwish: Spawn Fog on opposite row for 3 turns.

Ancient Foglet: Power changed from 1 to 4

Provisions changed from 4 to 6.

Ability changed to:

Deploy: Boost self by total duration of row effects on the opposite side.

Whenever you apply a row effect, boost self by it's duration.

Cyclops is not restricted to the Melee row anymore.

Miruna: Power changed from 4 to 5.

Succubus: Category changed to Relict.

Urn of Shadows: Ability changed to:

Order: Trigger an allied unit's Deathwish ability.

Eredin: Power changed from 5 to 6.

Skellige:

Reckles Flurry
: Ability changed to:

Order: Split 3 damage randomly between all enemy units ignoring their Armor.

Charges: 3

Mask of Uroboros: Number of Crows changed from 1 to 2.

Coral: Power changed from 5 to 6.

Ability changed to:

Zeal. Order: Draw a card, then Discard a card.

Whenever you Discard a card, damage a random enemy unit by 2.

Dire Bear has new part of ability: Berserk 7: Affects only the opposite row.

Eist Tuirseach: Bloodthirst changed from 2 to 3.

Crach an Craite has new part of ability: Order: Damage a unit by 1.

Cooldown: 2

Armor Up: Provisions changed from 5 to 4.

Svalblod Totem is now a Location and has Resilience.

Bear Witcher Quartermaster now has Zeal.

Terror Crew Plunderer: Power changed from 2 to 3

Terror Crew Axe-wielder: Power changed from 2 to 3.

Harald Houndsnout: Provisions changed from 9 to 8.

Northern Realms:

Pincer Maneuver
: Ability changed to:

Order: Draw a Northern Realms card of your choice, then shuffle a card from your hand back into the deck and Spawn a Volunteer in your Melee row.

Charge: 2

King Foltest is now a Soldier.

Power changed from 7 to 6.

Provisions changed from 12 to 11.

New part of ability: At the end of your turn, boost a unit to the right by 1.

Queen Meve is now a Soldier.

New part of ability: When the Counter reaches 0, boost all allied units by 1 and reset the Counter.

Whenever this unit receives a boost, gain 1 Armor.

Poor Fucking Infantry: Power changed from 1 to 3.

Ability changed to:

Deploy: Spawn Left Flanking Infantry and Right Flanking Infantry on both sides of this unit.

Bonded: Boost self by 3.

Lyrian Arbalest: Power changed from 3 to 4.

Siege Tower: Vitality and boost changed from 3 to 4.

Inspired Zeal: Boost changed from 1 to 2.

Scoia'tael:

Invigorate
: Ability changed to:

Order: Boost 5 units in your hand by 1.

Charges: 2

The Great Oak: Power changed from 7 to 8.

Scoia'tael Neophyte has new part of ability:

Order: Transform an allied Elf into Elven Deadeye.

Munro Bruys: Ability changed to:

Zeal. Order: Transform an allied Rowdy Dwarf into a Dwarf Berserker.

Charge: 2

Vrihedd Vanguard: Power changed from 1 to 2.

Cat Witcher Adept: Power changed from 3 to 4.

Nilfgaard:

Morvran Voorhis
: Power changed from 6 to 7.

Lockdown: Provisions bonus changed from 13 to 14.

Imperial Formation has new part of ability:

Whenever you play a Soldier, give it 1 Armor for each adjacent soldier.

Damien de la Tour: Power changed from 5 to 6.

Stefan Skellen: Provisions changed from 10 to 9.

Vreemde: Provisions changed from 7 to 6.

Vrygheff: Power changed from 3 to 4.

Vivienne de Tabris: Power changed from 3 to 4

Masquerade Ball will now only progress for Aristocrats played on your side of the battlefield.

Emhyr Var Emreis: Ability changed to:

Zeal.

Deploy: Draw a card, then move a card from your hand to the bottom of your deck.

Whenever your opponent plays a unit, give it Spying.

Order: Seize a 1-power enemy unit with Spying.

Devotion: At the end of your turn, refresh this card's order.

Combat Engineer is now a Soldier.

Power changed from 3 to 4.

Toussaint Knight Errant: Power changed from 2 to 3.

Rico Meiersdorf will now also change his power when he is in the deck.

Syndicate:

Back-alley Chemist
: ability changed to: Zeal. Order: Give an allied unit Poison and gain 2 Coins.

Horst Borsodi: New part of ability:

Fee 1: Give an allied unit Vitality for 1 turn.

Ewald Borsodi: New part of ability:

Fee 1: Give an enemy unit Bleeding for 1 turn.

Salamandra Mage is now a Mage.

Roland Bleinheim: Tooltip now correctly specifies that a unit needs to gain Poison in order to get Coins.

Cleaver: Armor changed from 2 to 0.

Whoreson Junior: Ability changed to:

Insanity.

Deploy: Damage a boosted enemy unit by 6. Gain a Coin for every point of excess damage dealt.

Devotion: Damage an enemy unit instead.

Fee 3: Destroy an enemy unit with 3 power or less.

Halfling Safecracker: Removed Intimidate

Power changed from 3 to 4.

Damnation: Provisions changed from 8 to 7.

Greater Brothers: Armor changed from 4 to 5.

Professor: Damage changed from 3 to 4.

Pirate's Cove: Ability changed to:

Order: Spawn Sea Jackal on an allied row.

Charges: 2.

Boris: Power changed from 3 to 5.

Grand Inquisitor Helveed: Power changed from 5 to 6.

Keeper of the Flame: Ability changed to:

Deploy: Boost adjacent units by 1.

Tribute 4: Boost all units in this row by 1 instead.

Decrease this card's Tribute cost by 1 for every allied Cleric.

Sacred Flame: Added Firesworn category.

Tiger's Eye: Number of Coins changed from 4 to 5.

New Features:

Support for 60fps
on Apple M1 (Silicon). User can switch between 30 and 60 via Options.

(Search for Power Saving option)

New Journey
  • New character - Meet Triss & Condwiramurs Tilly - powerfull mage & talented seer
  • Rewards - a lot of rewards to unlock in standard and premium paths
  • Contracts - unlock even more ornaments by playing matches with your favourite outfits
  • Story - images drawn from Condwiramurs dreams about Triss life, added each week with new quests
New starter decks

Cards with names, tags and keywords containing Latin letters with diacritics (e.g. ą, ê) can now be searched for using basic Latin letters.

Visual improvements for using orders of premium Stratagems. Added new visual effects for Tiger's Eye, Basilisk Venom and Engineering Solution.

Game Fixes:

Journey story art is now shown correctly on mobile devices.

Game boards are now scaled correctly on mobile devices when previewed in the Play Menu and the Deck Ornament Picker.

Dandelion: Vainglory is now able to target and destroy Saber-Tooth Tiger: Stealth.

Pitfall Trap will now trigger correctly when the opponent plays a Trap.

Sigi Reuven will no longer count the unique gangs from its original deck when played by the opponent through Cantarella.

The Adrenaline effect will now work correctly for Gerd and Salamandra Mage when played from the hand.
 
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Thank you.

The new patch buff a bit to the following Archetype:
1. SK Witcher
2. NG Soldier
3. SY Firesworn

I do not sure about MO Foglet

However, the following deck still in top tier.
1. MO Viy due to add 1 Viy tutor if play first (Cursed Scroll)
2. SK Warrior and SY Lined Pockets are weaker but still playable. (Joachim Ball is unplayable now)

what do you guys think?
 
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Easy pass on this Journey.

Interesting buff on Iris' Companions, but I doubt it will make the card playable outside of memes.
Looking forward to hopefully seeing less Lined Pockets. :D
 
The change to iris Companions is really nice but the question is does it also work with Iris Shade or only the normal Iris (i guess only with vanilla Iris)

I doubt that the change to Dandelion Vainglory will make it really playable but it adds a nice flavor to it.

But do you guys really think that Double Cross with a 17 Provision Bonus is fine, such a high provision bonus should only be applied to really underperforming Leader Skills but not to 1 that let's you play a additional Card that most of the time even ends up being a high Provision Gold.

The Nerf to Eist also doesn't really solve the "broken" interaction with Blaze of Glory, if you really want to keep that combo in the Game you might should consider switching the Skills between Hjalmar and Blaze of Glory to give the opponent at least a chance to kill Eist before the damage and summon from Graveyard combo goes off.
 
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They forgot to add the targeted poison for the Basilisk venom stratagem. Quite a huge change.
+ I would really love if Iris companions would work with both Iris cards, as it could work for skellige.
 
The change to iris Companions is really nice but the question is does it also work with Iris Shade or only the normal Iris (i guess only with vanilla Iris)
I am fairly certain it works for all versions of Iris, just like Zoltan's Company (giving armor to all dwarves in a row) works with all versions of Zoltan card.
 

rrc

Forum veteran
Such a non-committal changes to ST. It is disheartening to see even SK to get so many buffs and ST getting a hard snub in this patch. Hopefully in the next patch ST will get a fair share of buffs. Except for the Invigorate change nothing in this patch is any good to ST player. The Oak buff should have been on provision and not on the power. I kind of felt that Slama was very indifferent when he discussed about ST buffs in the patch notes and I can see why. Why the hell Waters of Brokilon is 12P in this era?

BTW, why the hell they decided to buff Miruna who was already bloody powerful and with the bloody buff to the strategem, it is going to be broken as hell already with the buff.

At least I can mess with Invigorate for this patch till something meaningful happens to ST in the next patch.
 
So, Quadruple Joachim Ball is bye bye, unless players manage to fit some Aristocrats that are played on their side. Doubtful, but we'll see. NG will most likely again be one of the worst factions. I doubt the buffs to Soldiers and IF will make NG Soldiers a tier 3 deck.

LP SY will most likely be relegated to a Tier 2 deck. Still somewhat powerful, but the nerf to Safecrackers is huge.

Eist got a nerf, but how significant that is, I don't know. Harder to setup him for value, but he still plays for too many points.

Other than the Journey, I am honestly not looking forward to this new meta/patch. Roughly the same decks will be roaming around. I hate that 2 out of 3 games I play almost always ends up with the opponent using Yrden, which is a very toxic card that should be reworked or removed completely.

Maybe the new reworked stratagems might be worth testing. And Whoreson Junior, which now seems playable at least, rather than useless as he was initially. Still don't like how Meve was reworked either. And Eldain remains untouched despite being as broken as Eist. Meh...
 
Did you guys fix Gerd Adrenaline? It only works at 5, not at 4....
What do you mean that it only works at 5, not a 4? He is a downside Adrenaline 3, that's means you can't play him as 4 last card from hand if you want to avoid Adrenaline effect. That's how Adrenaline works...
 
I don't like Miruna change, it is still random. This would be better
"Deathwish:Seize highest enemy unit with 4 or less power."
 
What do you mean that it only works at 5, not a 4? He is a downside Adrenaline 3, that's means you can't play him as 4 last card from hand if you want to avoid Adrenaline effect. That's how Adrenaline works...
It's been bugged for a while now but should be fixed now: "The Adrenaline effect will now work correctly for Gerd and Salamandra Mage when played from the hand." (Last sentence in the patch notes)
 
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