Greetings Infinity Warriors!
We’ve got quite a lot to talk about in this week’s post related to the upcoming 1.4.12 update that should be hitting the PBE servers within the next week or two. Since there’s a lot to go over, we’re going to dispense with the preamble and jump right into it. Here we go!
Overhaul of Rift Run Win Count RewardsDraft mode is going to get a big revamp in 1.4.12 with the Rift Run Win rewards being significantly improved. Draft has always been a fun mode to play, but we felt that the cost/reward balance for playing it did not provide players with the right incentives for competing in draft. Having a decent 10 win run in draft and getting a “single rare & 3 uncommons” as a reward may at best feel like a non-event for seasoned players, and at worst, may feel like a big punch in the face for newer players that are breaking double digit wins for the first time.
With that said, Draft mode starting from 1.4.12 will see a major upgrade to the reward tables. Below is a sneak preview of some of the “before vs after” reward ranges that players can expect to see soon:
- Guaranteed Rare starting at 5 wins (vs 9 wins before)
- Guaranteed Epic starting at 10 wins (vs 18 wins before)
- Guaranteed Legendary starting at 21 wins (vs 35 wins before)
- For higher win runs, there’ll now be Gold and Infinity border drops, including rare, epic, and legendary premium drops, which we’ll let you discover for yourselves…
The goal of these changes is to make Rift Running more attractive for players of all skill levels - newer players to Draft mode will benefit from lower barriers to gaining Rare, Epic and Legendary cards, while the very best Rift Runners can fight for premium cards as well as the very exclusive Infinity border cards.
Increasing your win count will also increase the rarity of the premium cards that are awarded. All cards obtained through Rift Run rewards, with the exception of Infinity cards, will remain
TRADABLE.
To reflect the significantly increased benefits of Rift Running, including win count rewards and upcoming weekly leaderboard rewards (see below for more details), we will also be adjusting the cost of playing Draft mode to 2500 IP or 85LP.
Weekly Rift Run Leaderboard RewardsBesides significantly better rewards for Rift Run win, we will also be cranking up the competitive elements by introducing enticing rewards for each week’s Draft leaderboard winners. As a starting point,
the Top 50 players on the weekly draft leaderboard each week will be awarded a combination of tradable premium cards as well as a bundle of our new “Penta Pack” card packs (more on Penta Packs below).
The #1 Rift Runner for each week will also be rewarded with
3 Infinity Border cards to reflect their PVP prowess. Below is an outline of the various tiers of items that can be won from the initial weekly draft leaderboard rewards.
| Position | Rewards |
| 1 | 3 Infinity Border cards & 3 Tradable Rare+ (Gold or Foil) cards & 5 Penta Packs |
| 2-5 | 2 Tradable Rare+ (Gold or Foil) cards & 5 Penta Packs |
| 6-25 | 1 Tradable (Gold or Foil) card & 5 Penta Packs |
| 26-50 | 1 Tradable Foil card & 3 Penta Packs |
Introducing the Penta Pack1.4.12 will also see a complete revamp of the card packs that are available via the in-game store with the removal of all existing booster/blister packs, and the introduction of a new kind of card pack called the
Penta Pack. One of the biggest challenges that we had when first starting out in Infinity Wars was that even though we wanted to buy card packs to grow our collection and construct better decks, we really had no idea what packs to buy to effectively get the cards we wanted.
The expansion based booster packs were confusing to new players who were not familiar with what cards dropped from which boosters and for players that wanted to target cards from specific factions, there was no good way to do so with booster packs. We saw that new players were frequently asking in global chat about “what packs should they buy?”, which further reinforced our view that the existing booster pack designs and packaging were not very intuitive.
For more experienced players, the 15 pack booster pack format typically dropped a deluge of common/uncommon cards, and even with a guaranteed rare+ in each booster pack, the chance for getting a specific epic/legendary was so miniscule that it discouraged players from buying additional packs.
With the goal of solving the above issues in mind,
we have designed the new Penta Packs which we hope will provide more clarity to players in terms of which packs to buy and why, as well as provide an overall higher drop rate for rare, epic and legendary cards. Below is a brief synopsis of the new Penta Packs taxonomy:
- Each Penta Pack will consist of five cards (hence the name Penta Pack) with each pack containing at least a guaranteed rare+ card (the other 4 cards can also drop rare+ but are not guaranteed).
- The chances for getting an epic or legendary card in a Penta pack will be significantly higher than that of the old style booster packs.
- There will be a minimum of 10 different kinds of Penta Packs available in the store at all times including:
- Core Penta Pack – Has a chance to drop any card in the game.
- Expansion Penta Pack – Has a chance to drop cards from an expansion set.
- 8 different faction Penta Packs – Will only drop cards from a specific faction.
- All of the 10 Penta Packs described above will have a chance to drop premium cards with similar drop rates to the old booster pack formats.
- On a regular basis (bi-weekly or monthly), we may also introduce or rotate promotional Penta Packs that may, for example, have a better chance of dropping premiums, alt art, etc. These kinds of promotional packs will never be permanent and will change on a regular basis.
- The price for the Core Penta Pack and the Expansion Penta Pack will be set at 150LP or 3000IP per pack.
- The price for each of the faction Penta Packs will be set at a significantly higher price of 450LP and will not be available via IP purchase. Faction Penta Packs cost more because they allow players to draw from a much smaller pool of faction targeted cards, allowing you to more easily acquire cards to complete a specific deck/combo.
For those wanting to purchase existing Booster/Blister packs that are currently available in the store, we encourage you to do it now or sometime before 1.4.12 is rolled out onto the live servers sometime in the next few weeks. Especially the Star Trek Blister Pack, Star Trek Phase One Pack, and the Omni Collector’s Pack since the cards from these packs will not be available in the new Penta Pack format. Realign LP pricing to USDWe will be adjusting the price of LP by realigning it to a US dollar base vs the current Australian dollar base. Back when the value of LP was first tied to the Australian dollar several years ago, the AUD vs USD conversion rate was almost 1:1 but has since devalued by over 30%.
What else is going on with the Infinity Wars Team?Since the announcement in late December of the partnership between Lightmare and Yodo1, we have continued to scale up the size of the Infinity Wars product team, adding an additional 12 members to the IW team ranging from developers, game designers, artists, project managers, support staff, and of course, the community managers that you’ve all been interacting with you over the past two months.
The new features announced today in the upcoming 1.4.12 release is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what we have planned. You can all expect to see more content and features coming out for Infinity Wars on a much more regular basis as the new team ramps up their efforts to bring you a better game!
See you all on the battlefield!
RikkiTikki
