Our last Creatures of Aether update on this blog was in December, but Creatures of Aether has been growing exponentially since then. Let’s highlight some of the updates.
Season 5
After launching Wrastor and the four mini-legendaries in December, we also launched a new Dungeon type called Prize Plunders. These are rare, free dungeons that you can sometimes find as a daily reward if you check the shop every day. Grabbing the shop tile gives you one pass to the dungeon that you must use before the day is over.
The Prize Plunders are a great way to get rewards!
The Prize Plunders have 4 bosses, one for each element, so you get to choose which boss you want to fight. Instead of standard battles, it has Prize Games which are one of the best ways in the game to grab a large amount of coins. You’ll have to use your cards wisely in order to open up all the chests and maximize your coin rewards.
Season 6
Season 6 launched on January 1st and introduced Sylvanos to the game. Like Wrastor before him, Sylvanos was a meta changing Rival as his ability completely changes the way you have to play against him. Sylvanos requires an elemental tile to use his ability, but once played on one, he can attack all cards on the board of that element from all sides. That’s right, any card with a number lower than his starting 3 value will get flipped.
Sylvanos also triggers a screen-wide homefield toward that element. Players can use Sylvanos either early or late into a match depending on their deck and what they need from him.
Later in January, we released four Shifter cards during Season 6. During Season 4 and 5, Avatar decks particularly with Etalus were seeing a lot of use on both the ladder and competitive play. We decided to nerf Avatar cards and give them more requirements while also introducing shifter cards as potential card to drop into their deck archetype.
Shifter cards change their element to match elemental slots and gain the buff. This is useful for when you need to get a certain element or want to use that triple slot that both you and your opponent had been avoiding.
Season 7
Season 7 started on February 1st with the release of Forsburn, the Exiled Flame. This Rival card is all about deception and you can get the most use out of playing him early.
When you play Forsburn, he creates smoke tiles in 3×3 grid around himself. At the end of your turn, you can teleport Forsburn to a smoke tile if you control him. Jumping to a new smoke tile allows Forsburn to trigger new flips. You can also play a “vanilla” card or a card without any abilities behind the smoke and hide the card from your opponent. They can try to flip it but won’t know the numbers that you hid. Forsburn is all about being sneaky and now you can be sneaky in Creatures of Aether as well!
After designing Forsburn, we decided to experiment more with the “vanilla” card design space. Before Season 7, epic vanilla cards were some of the least played cards in the game. Because while they had big numbers, they were often outclassed by Powerup or Avatar. To bring some luster and magic back to these cards we introduced two new abilities that both launched on February 15th.
The first ability is War Drums. If you control this card on the board, then your vanilla cards get +2 when they are played. You must control the drums when the vanilla card is played and your opponent can take the drums and use it for themselves. This creates an important card that both players can fight over.
The next ability that we released is War Horn. When this card is played, you can choose a vanilla card from your hand and place it anywhere on the board and then return it back to your hand. This ability synergizes with War Drums because the played card gets the +2 buff and retains it. Meaning you can play this card again later and get another buff from the same drum. War Horn and War Drum are most effective when played together and with some beefy vanilla cards. The combination of the three created a new vanilla deck archetype for us that is challenging the previous meta of either mono or avatar decks.
Season 8
Season 8 is launching today, March 1st, with the release of Kragg! Kragg is a powerful earth Rival that brings along his trusty rock from Rivals of Aether.
When you play Kragg, you get to choose anywhere on the board to place his rock. The rock prevents your opponent from playing on the tile. The rock tile also cannot be weakened if you play it on an elemental slot so homefield and scorch will not weaken it. You can however use homefield to make it stronger. The rock tile is something your opponent will have to play around because they know you will be looking to drop something strong on there near the end of the game.
Also launching today with Season 8 is Affection Level. It’s a new progression system for your cards! As you use your cards more, they will give you gifts as their Affection Level increases. Once you raise the level to 500, then you unlock a new Golden Skin for that creature!
There are two ways to raise the Affection Level. First, playing a match on ladder with that card grants you one Affection Level. You also gain one Affection Level for each card that you flip with that card during the match. Your favorite cards are going to love you back! Next, leveling up a card grants you 100 Affection Level. You can reach 300 Affection just by getting your card to Level 4! You can get another 100 by filling the xp bar past 4 and while your card won’t get stronger, you will get some Abyss Orbs for your hard work. Make sure you level up your favorites and show off your golden skins.
There has never been a better time to get into Creatures of Aether as Season 8 is just getting started with a new Rival Pass for Kragg. Get it on iOS and Android today!
Download on Google Play
Download on Apple Store
If you have been following our development, you may have realized that April 1st has slowly become the Rivals of Aether update day. What started as joke blog posts a few years ago grew into our first Rivals Direct in 2018, then the release of an entire free dating sim game called Lovers of Aether in 2019, then Rivals Direct 2 in 2020. Now we’re back for 2021 and we have to go even bigger and even better because I don’t value my sanity.
