in case you Missed It: RECEnt Updates 

Heroes!

Ascension has rolled out some big changes over the past few weeks, and they’re live right this second to make your experience that much better. These range from Draft specific updates like Skill Card enhancements and Lucky Card improvements, to Worldforged Changes that help you get the enchantments you’re searching for. Draft will keep getting better as Season 8 continues. 

Here are the highlights:

Worldforged Changes

Worldforged Enchantments received improvements over the past few weeks that allow Heroes to grab them without the only way to obtain some of them be running the same dungeon or monster over and over. Now, in addition to finding Enchantments as drops, you can now also find Worldforged Enchantments from Worldforged Caches! 

Worldforged Caches are chests hidden in thematic locations throughout the world–and inside is a Worldforged Enchantment unique to that chest. These can be as simple as a chest hidden in the Wailing Caverns containing Serpent Form. The enchantment is always inside, so if you can open the chest, it’s guaranteed to have a Worldforged enchantment! All you need to open one is a Worldforged Key.

Worldforged Keys are forged from Worldforged Fragments: shards that you’ll get just from completing your favorite content, just by playing the way you want to play. These key fragments come from all forms of content. You can find key shards from Callboard Quests and Caches, from dungeons, raids, Mythic+, the open world, the Honor Vendor, in High Risk, and more. This means that just by playing and doing the content you enjoy, you’ll be making progress towards a key that can unlock any Worldforged Enchantment you find.

Now, rather than needing to run Wailing Caverns a hundred times, you can do the content you enjoy, get a Worldforged Key, and go grab Serpent Form.

But that’s not the only improvement!

1. Difficult to find Worldforged Enchantments that you haven’t unlocked yet now offer hints to their location! By mousing over the enchantment in the UI, you can get hints as to where you need to go to find it

1. Rare Creatures who harbor a Worldforged Enchantment now offer a 100% chance to drop it, due to their long respawn time
2. Non-rare creatures have an increased chance to drop their Worldforged Enchantment based on how close you are to them in level. The level requirement from all Worldforged Enchantments has been removed.

Skill Card Improvements

Silas Darkmoon’s UI now allows you to swap between specializations even if you don’t have them unlocked. 

In Season 7, Heroes could trade in Marks of Ascension for Hands of Fate and Skill Cards even if they didn’t have the Specialization unlocked yet. However, an unintended consequence of Silas’s new UI meant that option wasn’t available. It’s been added, substantially increasing the skillcards you can obtain at end-game without prestige! Heroes can now expect to see tons more skill cards, and have many more options to spending their Marks. 

This change ensures that you always have progress to make at end-game towards grabbing better cards. 

Additionally, Heroes can now rotate Silas’s available Skill Card Inventory with Darkmoon tickets! Using 150 Tickets, you can get an entire new page of Skill Card options, increasing the number of Skill Cards you can see in a day.

Silas will now rotate his Skill Card inventory either 24 hours after you rotate his inventory, OR 24 hours after you interact with him for the first time that day! This allows you to personalize his Skill Card rotation to your schedule, making sure you never miss out on a chance to see good cards.

Lucky Card Buff and Ability Variety Improvements

During these first few weeks of Season 8, Lucky cards were buffed to increase the likelihood they will show up in your drafts.

Additionally, An issue was fixed with ability variety. Abilities are meant to be weighted based on the level they were obtainable as it was in Season 7. This was not working optimally and resulted in it being harder to see certain cards lucky or just normal draft,

Logic changes to draft will continue to ensure a higher variety and even distribution of how often you see all abilities.

Mastery Improvements

Rolling most masteries will now allow you to choose from at least 2 options, starting at level 1. This means that if you roll something like Weapon Enhancement Mastery, you won’t only be able to choose Rockbiter, you will be able to choose between Rockbiter or Flametongue. This change expands the number of skills Heroes have to choose from at level 1, opening up more ways to play.

To facilitate this update, many abilities are now available at level 1, and their Skill Cards have been removed. This allows you to shape your Hero how you want, and use Skill Cards on essential abilities vital to what you want to play.

•  Rip is now a level 1 ability. The skillcard has been removed. Your Darkmoon tickets, Golden Darkmoon Tickets and Gold (if applicable) has been restored if you purchased this card from the Darkmoon Ticket Rewards.
• Claw is now a level 1 ability. The skillcard has been removed. Your Darkmoon tickets, Golden Darkmoon Tickets and Gold (if applicable) has been restored if you purchased this card from the Darkmoon Ticket Rewards.
• Swipe (Cat) is now a level 1 ability. The skillcard has been removed. Your Darkmoon tickets, Golden Darkmoon Tickets and Gold (if applicable) has been restored if you purchased this card from the Darkmoon Ticket Rewards.
• Mage Armor is now a level 1 ability. The skillcard has been removed. Your Darkmoon tickets, Golden Darkmoon Tickets and Gold (if applicable) has been restored if you purchased this card from the Darkmoon Ticket Rewards.
• Concentration Aura is now a level 1 ability. The skillcard has been removed. Your Darkmoon tickets, Golden Darkmoon Tickets and Gold (if applicable) has been restored if you purchased this card from the Darkmoon Ticket Rewards.
• Cat Form is now a level 1 ability. The skillcard has been removed. Your Darkmoon tickets, Golden Darkmoon Tickets and Gold (if applicable) has been restored if you purchased this card from the Darkmoon Ticket Rewards.
• Demoralizing Shout is now a level 1 ability. The skillcard has been removed. Your Darkmoon tickets, Golden Darkmoon Tickets and Gold (if applicable) has been restored if you purchased this card from the Darkmoon Ticket Rewards.
• Flametongue Totem is now a level 1 ability. The skillcard has been removed. Your Darkmoon tickets, Golden Darkmoon Tickets and Gold (if applicable) has been restored if you purchased this card from the Darkmoon Ticket Rewards.
• Seal of Wisdom is now a level 1 ability. The skillcard has been removed. Your Darkmoon tickets, Golden Darkmoon Tickets and Gold (if applicable) has been restored if you purchased this card from the Darkmoon Ticket Rewards.
• Recuperate is now a level 1 ability. The skillcard has been removed. Your Darkmoon tickets, Golden Darkmoon Tickets and Gold (if applicable) has been restored if you purchased this card from the Darkmoon Ticket Rewards.
• Meditate is now a level 1 ability. The skillcard has been removed. Your Darkmoon tickets, Golden Darkmoon Tickets and Gold (if applicable) has been restored if you purchased this card from the Darkmoon Ticket Rewards.

Performance and Stability

Over the past week, a huge focus has been placed on general performance and stability updates to reduce the number of crashes on Ascension. In order to fully benefit from these updates, you’ll need to uninstall and then re-install addons through the Launcher! Please make sure to do so to ensure you’re working with the latest updates.

As Ascension moves into the future, we’ll keep a big focus on these issues to reduce FPS drops and improve the performance of the game.

What’s Next

Skill Card Caps Change to Skill Gem Caps

Currently, Heroes are able to slot Skill Cards based on Card Rarity: you can slot up yo 3 Rares, 2 Epics, or 1 Legendary. But not all rarities are created equal: for example, Fear is a 3 Gem ability, whereas other legendaries are 1. 

In order to increase flexibility and open up new ways to slot cards and give you more control of your build, the old Skill Card Caps are being replaced with Gem Caps!

This change, expected to come within the next week, Skill Card limits will be based on how many rarity gems they cost, rather than a static number. This will drastically increase the flexibility of using Skill Cards. Once the update goes live, you’ll be able to slot the following:

• Up to 3 Legendary Gems
• Up to 5 Epic Gems
• Up to 6 Rare Gems

This update opens up flexibility for how Heroes choose to slot Skill Cards, opening up the possibility for many more builds to fully benefit from Skill Cards