Updates from Mythron, October 2023

Hey all! It’s your favorite Sloth here again to give you a quarterly update to share what we’ve been up to and where we’re headed.

In case you missed it…

Before we dive into the exciting new things, here’s a recap of some of the things we’ve done since the last Updates from Mythron post:

• New cards designed by Kickstarter backers!
  • The first two waves of Kickstarter cards were released in the past two months, with the final wave releasing this month!
• Boss battles are back!
  • We released our first boss battle against Kaleos Reborn, using our new AI! We have another boss battle ready to go this month! Keep an eye out for updates over the next few weeks!
• In-game titles!
  • Backers have received titles matching their Kickstarter backer tiers and players have received custom titles for boss battles. More custom titles will be available soon!
• Gauntlet decks in friendly matches!
  • Any deck from gauntlet runs you’ve completed within the last two weeks can be used in friendly matches against your friends.
• Community surveys with emote rewards!
  • Surveys with exclusive emote rewards have been distributed in patch notes and in Discord, courtesy of F8, which have been extremely helpful in gathering feedback from the community! We hope to do more in the future and bake in support for feedback rewards within the client.
• Searchable tags in the collection!
  • Starting with patch 0.2.12, changed cards are tagged with their patch number (e.g. patched-0.2.12) and can be searched in the collection (you can enter patched to find all cards that have been patched across versions since then, or enter patched-0.2.15 to find the cards patched in that specific patch). Cards from the Kickstarter backer waves can be found by searching kickstarter, and there’s a tag for bug fans, too!
• Mac OS client officially supported on Steam!
  • It took us a while, but we managed to sort out the steamworks issues in the Mac build and were able to enable official support for the Mac OS Steam build!
• Steam Trading Cards are live!
  • Steam Trading Cards and badges are live! You can earn cards from in-game purchases, and can trade or buy them with other players in the Steam marketplace. Learn more about Steam Trading Cards and how they work here! We hope to enable achievements and other Steam goodies soon, as well!
• Snowchaser Plush Campaign!
  • We worked with Makeship to bring Snowchaser to life! These will only be available via this campaign (which will be ending very soon) and come with exclusive in-game rewards, so be sure to buy your own adorable Snowchaser plush and get some for your friends and family, too!

Makeship Snowchaser Campaign + Maui Strong Foundation

Last year, we asked on Twitter (back when it was still called Twitter) what kind of plush you all would like to see, and since Snowchaser eked out a win, we’ve been working with the fine folks at Makeship ever since to bring Snowchaser to life for you all! We went through many iterations of the design with their team to get it to where it is today, and he’s even more awesome in-person! The removable club and functional backpack are an awesome touch, and along with this epic plush, you’ll also receive a code to redeem an exclusive in-game rewards and additional perks:

• Exclusive “Summer” Snowchaser skin:

• Exclusive in-game titles
  • Plush Chaser
  • Snow Chaser
  • Snow Catcher
  • Winter Soldier
  • Winter Vespyr
• Snowchaser profile icon
• All Snowchaser emotes
• 10 Spirit Orbs
• 10 Vanar Spirit Orbs
• Priority access to the beta for the new client
• Bonus at the end of a successful campaign: Everyone with an active Duelyst II account and at least 1 ranked game in the last 30 days will receive 100 shards for every 20 plushes sold (a minimum of 1000 shards if we hit 200).

Additionally, we will be donating 20% of all proceeds we receive from this campaign to the Maui Strong Fund to support communities devastated by the recent Hawaii Wildfires.

The campaign has been extended until October 31st, and these plushes will only be produced if we can have 200 sold by that date. We’re already more than 28% of the way there as of this post!

This plush, and Duelyst II itself, only exist thanks to the support of our Duelyst community – we hope we can continue to bring more of Duelyst to life, and pay it forward to help those in need!

Final Kickstarter Wave

The final wave of new cards for the Kickstarter mini-expansion is coming this month! We’re a bit delayed with this wave due to some unforseen circumstances, but we should be able to release the remaining cards before the end of the month. Unfortunately, we were unable to contact our final Mythron Deity tier backer over the past few months. We discussed filling their final two slots with our own designs, but ultimately decided that we wanted to respect the spirit of this mini-set being for the backers (Letharus was our Dream Sloth backer slot), so this final wave will unfortunately be only 5 cards total, bringing the full mini-set’s total to 19 new Neutral minions. If our dear Mythron Deity returns, we will retroactively include their designs in this final wave and grant players that buy the final bundle those cards, as well.

Community-Run Tournament with Cash Prizes

We also wanted to shout out the awesome competitive tournaments that our community members have been running with subsidized prize support from Dream Sloth.

Calvin’s Epic Series 3 – Saturday, October 21st

Epic Series 3 is a $1500 prize pool tournament run over two days by Calvin starting on October 21st. Participants can enter for free and will receive a free skin, with top finishers additionally receiving exclusive in-game titles for the event!

How to enter:

• Sign up by sending your current in-game name and images of 1-2 deck lists to Calvin at least one hour before the tournament.
• It is appreciated to send your Challonge username in the DM as well.
• Entrants are seeded in order of MMR.

Schedule:

• Main bracket starts October 21, 2023 2:00 PM ET.
• Top 12 starts October 22, 2023 2:00 PM ET.

Server invite link:

• https://discord.gg/rsDwj7a4Sv

To learn more about the tournament and sign up, join the Epic Series Discord: https://discord.gg/rsDwj7a4Sv

Be sure to also check out Calvin’s Twitch channel: https://twitch.tv/duelystcalvin

Dream Sloth Labs

The Duelyst community is full of creative and industrious minds, and since Dream Sloth for us has always been about making our lazy dreams a reality, we wanted to help others do the same! Members of the team have used Duelyst II for academic projects, for internships, and for experience to put on their resume. Have an idea for something you want to build for Duelyst II? Want to organize a tournament or event? Send us an email at [email protected] with your idea to start a conversation!

Roadmap Status

As a refresher, here’s the roadmap we published last year shortly after the Kickstarter campaign ended, with the things we’ve completed in green and things in progress in various shades of yellow based on how far along we are:

We’ve been aggressively working towards the new client and a new expansion, both of which we hope to have some big news for by the end of this year!

Localization

We are in the process of searching for official translators for the languages promised in our Kickstarter. We also hope to enable the ability to natively support community translations, as well. Stay tuned!

Godot Client

Disclaimer: All footage here is a work-in-progress and subject to change!

Over the past few months, we’ve made some awesome progress on the new client – the big milestone we’ve hit is that we are now able to play full sandbox and networked games to completion in the new Godot client! Since it’s using the same Javascript SDK used in the current frontend to handle gameplay updates, any card changes/additions we make will automatically work in the new engine. We have been focused on functionality and being able to complete games, so there is still quite a bit of visual polish we need to do, but at the pace that we’ve been able to work on the client, we expect that we’ll be able to share a beta version of the client for users to test in about 3 months!

Up until now, our focus has been on the underlying tech and making sure games could be played to completion, with only minimal attention to the visual aspects of the game. Now that we have a working pipeline between the Javascript game SDK and Godot and game states can be reliably represented, we can start to focus on implementing the various animations and visual effects you’d expect in Duelyst, improving the visual aspects of the game, as well as making sure we have all the menus and functionality of the current client represented in the new one (and even some that aren’t in the current one… like a scrolling battle log).

We’re also looking at ways to change and improve the user experience. We recently enlisted the help of a veteran of the Duelyst community for her UX expertise – Alga! She has started to explore some new designs for improving and modernizing Duelyst’s UX, while keeping the same Duelyst feel. Here’s a sneak peek of one of her designs that we’ll be implementing and iterating on in Godot!

Be sure to join the official Discord to stay up-to-date on the latest progress!

Kickstarter Rewards Fulfillment

We have gotten quite a few questions through email about the remaining Kickstarter rewards and wanted to clarify the current status of all remaining rewards.

Most rewards that are feasible in the current client have been delivered to backers. The following rewards have not been delivered for any backer yet:

• Backer exclusive replace animation
• Backer exclusive profile icon
• Backer exclusive golden profile icon
• Backer exclusive golden cardfront
• Name in credits
  • Credited as a designer

The replace animation, cardfront, and in-game credits are planned for the new client. We are still searching for an artist for the exclusive profile icons, and will be able to deliver those once we have the new art commissioned (if you know someone or are someone who would be a good fit for these profile icons, please let us know by emailing a portfolio sample to [email protected]).

All other rewards should have been delivered (or will be delivered imminently). The following list can be used for reference, with the full set of rewards broken down by tier from the campaign page, and the ones that should have already been delivered highlighted in green (please email [email protected] if you are missing any rewards that you should have according to this list):

Supporter

• “Founder” Discord role

Mythron Disciple

• “Founder” Discord role
• 10 Spirit Orbs
• Titles:
  • Mythron Disciple

Mythron Acolyte

• “Founder” Discord role
• 25 Spirit Orbs
• Titles:
  • Mythron Disciple
  • Mythron Acolyte
• Skins:
  • Kickstarter Healing Mystic
• Backer exclusive profile icon

Mythron Warrior

• “Founder” Discord role
• 50 Spirit Orbs
• Titles:
  • Mythron Disciple
  • Mythron Acolyte
  • Mythron Warrior
• Skins:
  • Kickstarter Healing Mystic
  • Kickstarter Primus Fist
  • Kickstarter Primus Shieldmaster
• Backer exclusive replace animation
• Backer exclusive profile icon
• Name in credits

Mythron Patron

• “Founder” Discord role
• 80 Spirit Orbs
• Titles:
  • Mythron Disciple
  • Mythron Acolyte
  • Mythron Warrior
  • Mythron Patron
• Skins:
  • Kickstarter Healing Mystic
  • Kickstarter Primus Fist
  • Kickstarter Primus Shieldmaster
  • Kickstarter Dancing Blades
• All four premium Battle Maps
• Backer exclusive replace animation
• Backer exclusive profile icon
• Backer exclusive golden profile icon
• Backer exclusive golden cardfront
• Name in credits

Mythron Noble

• “Founder” Discord role
• 120 Spirit Orbs
• Titles:
  • Mythron Disciple
  • Mythron Acolyte
  • Mythron Warrior
  • Mythron Patron
  • Mythron Noble
• Skins:
  • Kickstarter Healing Mystic
  • Kickstarter Primus Fist
  • Kickstarter Primus Shieldmaster
  • Kickstarter Dancing Blades
  • Kickstarter Saberspine Tiger
• All four premium Battle Maps
• All premium emotes available at beta launch
• Complete faction recolor bundle of your choice
• Backer exclusive replace animation
• Backer exclusive profile icon
• Backer exclusive golden profile icon
• Backer exclusive golden cardfront
• Name in credits

Mythron Emperor

• “Founder” Discord role
• 250 Spirit Orbs
• Titles:
  • Mythron Disciple
  • Mythron Acolyte
  • Mythron Warrior
  • Mythron Patron
  • Mythron Noble
  • Mythron Emperor
• Skins:
  • Kickstarter Healing Mystic
  • Kickstarter Primus Fist
  • Kickstarter Primus Shieldmaster
  • Kickstarter Dancing Blades
  • Kickstarter Saberspine Tiger
  • EXCEED mech skins
  • All 18 MK II General skins
• All four premium Battle Maps
• All premium emotes available at beta launch
• All profile icons available at beta launch
• Complete faction recolor bundle of your choice
• Backer exclusive replace animation
• Backer exclusive profile icon
• Backer exclusive golden profile icon
• Backer exclusive golden cardfront
• Name in credits

Mythron Conquerer

• “Founder” Discord role
• 250 Spirit Orbs
• Titles:
  • Mythron Disciple
  • Mythron Acolyte
  • Mythron Warrior
  • Mythron Patron
  • Mythron Noble
  • Mythron Emperor
  • Mythron Conqueror
  • Additional in-game title of your choosing*
• Skins:
  • Kickstarter Healing Mystic
  • Kickstarter Primus Fist
  • Kickstarter Primus Shieldmaster
  • Kickstarter Dancing Blades
  • Kickstarter Saberspine Tiger
  • EXCEED mech skins
  • All 18 MK II General skins
  • Chromatic Jax Truesight
• All four premium Battle Maps
• All premium emotes available at beta launch
• All profile icons available at beta launch
• Complete faction recolor bundle of your choice
• Backer exclusive replace animation
• Backer exclusive profile icon
• Backer exclusive golden profile icon
• Backer exclusive golden cardfront
• Name in credits
• Custom skin for a card of your choosing
• A free Spirit Orb given to 1000 random accounts in your name

Mythron Champion

• “Founder” Discord role
• 250 Spirit Orbs
• Titles:
  • Mythron Disciple
  • Mythron Acolyte
  • Mythron Warrior
  • Mythron Patron
  • Mythron Noble
  • Mythron Emperor
  • Mythron Conqueror
  • Mythron Champion
  • Additional in-game title of your choosing*
• Skins:
  • Kickstarter Healing Mystic
  • Kickstarter Primus Fist
  • Kickstarter Primus Shieldmaster
  • Kickstarter Dancing Blades
  • Kickstarter Saberspine Tiger
  • EXCEED mech skins
  • All 18 MK II General skins
  • Chromatic Jax Truesight
  • Diamond Serpenti
• All four premium Battle Maps
• All premium emotes available at beta launch
• All profile icons available at beta launch
• Complete faction recolor bundle of your choice
• Backer exclusive replace animation
• Backer exclusive profile icon
• Backer exclusive golden profile icon
• Backer exclusive golden cardfront
• Name in credits
  • Credited as a designer
• Custom skin for a card of your choosing
• A free Spirit Orb given to 1000 random accounts in your name
• Design a neutral card for the Kickstarter mini-set using existing assets

Mythron Deity

• “Founder” Discord role
• 250 Spirit Orbs
• Titles:
  • Mythron Disciple
  • Mythron Acolyte
  • Mythron Warrior
  • Mythron Patron
  • Mythron Noble
  • Mythron Emperor
  • Mythron Conqueror
  • Mythron Champion
  • Mythron Deity
  • Additional in-game title of your choosing*
• Skins:
  • Kickstarter Healing Mystic
  • Kickstarter Primus Fist
  • Kickstarter Primus Shieldmaster
  • Kickstarter Dancing Blades
  • Kickstarter Saberspine Tiger
  • EXCEED mech skins
  • All 18 MK II General skins
  • Chromatic Jax Truesight
  • Diamond Serpenti
• All four premium Battle Maps
• All premium emotes available at beta launch
• All profile icons available at beta launch
• Complete faction recolor bundle of your choice
• Backer exclusive replace animation
• Backer exclusive profile icon
• Backer exclusive golden profile icon
• Backer exclusive golden cardfront
• Name in credits
  • Credited as a designer
• Custom skin for a card of your choosing
• A free Spirit Orb given to 1000 random accounts in your name
• Design a neutral card for the Kickstarter mini-set using existing assets
• Design a neutral card for the Kickstarter mini-set with brand new art
• Design an emote featuring your new minion*

* items with an asterisk should be available over the next two months.

Future Plans

Here are just some of the things you can expect in the coming months:

• Enable community content
  • The work for being able to share your own lethal puzzles in under way and should be available in future updates! Along with sharing game states, we hope to be able to implement custom rules and game modes in friendly matches.

• New expansion testing underway!
  • The design team has a few drafts for our first major expansion under way! We will be refining the theme and cards over the next few weeks and hope to be able to start teasing some information about the theme and cards over the next few months!

• New Client
  • We’re going to continue to hammer away at building the new client and hope to get some public beta testing soon!

Final Thoughts

Player feedback and bug reports have been absolutely vital in helping us improve the game, and although we haven’t been able to address all of the issues that are brought up in a timely manner, we’re doing our best to track and prioritize everything that comes up. Thank you to all the community leaders and players that have helped us by identifying bugs, reporting issues, and suggesting new features! Please continue to provide us that feedback through Discord or Canny so we can do our best to make Duelyst II awesome! 🙂