Everything Primal & More Unlocks!
almost 4 years ago – Mon, Feb 01, 2021 at 08:10:33 PM

Hey Hunters! 

We are approaching the final 48h of the campaign!!! :) To start the final days we are finally revealing the new add-ons for the game that you have chosen through the survey! 

Initially, we had plans for only one of them, but after listening to your feedback and receiving your amazing support we decided to go all-in and realize all of the following awesomeness ;) 

If you are interested in purchasing all the available add-ons for the game - Sleeves Bundle included - in one discounted package (more than 25% off MSRP), we have just added a new pledge level!!! Simply switch your pledge to EVERYTHING PRIMAL! 

More Unlocks!

We are not over! Today we are also adding more value to all pledges with 3 additional stretch goals unlocked:

Pan (a Hero from ELO Darkness) has some special quests for you! Do you already know her?

Pan was the first priestess of the cult of Eos, ancient deity of dawn and rebirth. She wears a beautiful mask made from iridescent feathers, as a symbol of her faith.  She displayed an extraordinary connection with nature, becoming the oracle of the temple of Hyris and keeping the sacred light burning in the temple for centuries.

As proof of her deity's benevolence, Pan is blessed with the gift of prophecy. For brief moments, she can gaze into the future and the past.

The Eos cult today is mostly known for the Bright Prophecy; speaking of a day when the old and the new world will no longer be able to coexist. The struggle for survival will start that day and it will take place on the border between the two worlds. Eos' light will show the path to be followed for a chance of rebirth.

The 'Eggs of the Elder' is a legend passed down for generations by the men of Alborea. The story talks about 3 fossilized eggs belonging to the primordial beast that dominated the ancient time.

According to the legend a great power is still enclosed inside them. No one has any idea about where you might find them. But more importantly, do they really exist? 

Players will have to uncover secrets, quest after quest, in order to guess which storyline and which quest-path will eventually lead them to the Eggs of the Elder.

What's coming next?

Recently, explorers reported contraddictory information about a new creature that appears to have Pazis' paws, Vyraxen's jawbone and Reikal's bad temper :) Is that possible?

Brace yourself for tomorrow's unlock!!! ;)

Reggie Games Team

New Nightmare Decks + Monsters Details!
almost 4 years ago – Sat, Jan 30, 2021 at 11:45:13 PM

Hey Hunters!

We are getting close to the final days of the campaign and every hour is getting more and more exciting! It's being a great journey so far and we will do our best to prepare an amazing finish :)

Let's go with today's unlocks! Here we are with 2 more Nightmare decks for the core monsters, reaching a total of 6 in the Core Pledge! In addition, going beyond our initial plans, we are also adding a Nightmare deck for all element categories in the expansions as well!

So, we currently have a total of 20 monsters (core + expansions + SG), having two different decks (for different aggression levels) + 1 extra Zekath deck + 9 Nightmare decks! It means a total of 50 different AI monster decks!!! 

And we are not taking into account "The Awakened" which is a very special one. We will reveal more details about it in the upcoming days ;)

As you already know, Nightmare decks enhance the abilities while keeping the personality of the monsters and they are designed to provide both a very high challenge and a further alternative AI deck to confront with. 

Let's have a look at some interesting features about today's bosses! :)

Morkraas is one of the largest monsters in the game and its combat style reflects its terrifying size: if you let it accumulate Struggle, Morkraas will end up squashing you to the ground! This is a perfect case in which the Unleash Ability is determined by the specific monster's Peril card.

How can we beat it? The objective card associated to Morkraas is very interesting since it opens to a possible strategy: you could exploit Morkraas' crystals back from the rear position in order to jump onto the monster and prevent its behaviours to trigger even without having a Plateau terrain on the board! Many cards and equipments synergize with this mechanics... it will be up to you to explore them ;)

Tarragua is built around the concept of Escalation and "empty decks".  Every time the monster empties its behaviour deck it gets extra Struggle! Every time a player empties his/her deck, Tarragua triggers its behaviour cards! Every time the monster empties its Attrition deck, it gets Struggle and it changes the composition of the Attrition deck, making it more dangerous! Tarragua quickly becomes enraged and when it gets to its Unleash Ability you will be trapped in its giant spider-mouth. Control strategy is the only chance you'll have!

Talking about Mamuraak allows us to introduce a special mechanics that you can find in the Frost expansion: Frostbite. This mechanics emulates the condition of struggling and performing at low efficiency due to the hostile temperatures. Frostbite removes your cards from the game, making you more vulnerable to damage over time - since your deck gets shorter - but also removing important abilities from your deck. 

Not only the Ice terrain uses the Frostbite effect, but also the monster itself will trigger it many times during the game. What's important to underline is that if you find yourself with less than 6 cards in your deck, you are Frozen (permanently KO'd for that scenario)! You will need the right equipment to face the temperatures in the Frost lands! ;) 

Anyway Mamuraak is not only about Frotsbite. Given its huge size, it can perform formidable attacks. However, as you might expect,it is also very slow. From the gameplay perspective this is realized through slow reactions that most of the time trigger at the end of the round. Players will have the opportunity to play their turn without being interrupted by this colossus! But be careful, because if you find yourself in the front or rear position at the end of a round, you will risk a ton of damage! :)

While Mamuraak is very slow and it gives you all the time to play your sequence before reacting, Nagarjas is exactly the opposite. Nagarjas introduces a very special reaction symbol which indicates that the behaviour triggers when you discard a specific card type/color from your hand!

Building your sequence will involve highly tactical choices and risks! Moreover, the monster also has several abilities that force you to discard cards from your hand, which can give rise to incredible combos! Hunters, you have been warned ;) 

Reikal is a legendary species and it is said to be one of the ancient creatures that survived the great extinction. Many describe it as an immortal creature, impossible to be killed. Despite this is not true, it will be one of the most difficult challenges in the game.

First of all, its poison will slowly take your life points down: the Poison cards the monster adds to your deck are really nasty! They are cards you can only use to generate stamina, but when you do, you must suffer damage as well! In addition, Reikal will also use the number of Poison cards in your deck or discard pile to boost its abilities and damage.

Reikal is also very reactive and it will quickly turn its attention to you anytime you try to attack it. Finding its weak spots and managing to pull off combos against it will require a high level of team-work. 

Which monster scares you the most so far?

Tomorrow we will be back with more suprises ;)

Reggie Games Team

Expanded Lore + Campaign Details!
almost 4 years ago – Sat, Jan 30, 2021 at 03:22:06 PM

Daily Unlocks

Hey Hunters!

The campaign is maintaining a great pace! Your support, feedback and participation are amazing :) 

Let's dive into today's unlocks! First of all, we are adding another extra content picked from the survey as stretch goal: Expanded Lore, which also comes with a new narrative addition to the game, "the Secrets of Thyrea"!

The 'Expanded Lore' section of the Scenario book gives an in-depth description at monsters as well as at important elements in the background story of the game such as locations and relevant characters that appears in the campaign.

Since you showed us your interest in the game lore, we decided to add even more in a way that can also impact the game experience and the sense of progression and discovery during the campaign.

The Secrets of Thyrea are a collection of mysteries and truth to be discovered that players may have the opportunity to access based on their path through the story. The Secrets are associated to achievements and special unlocks (legendary quests included!), but they also reveal information that could be useful to predict what's happening in the main plot or in future quests. 

Will you be able to discover all the mysteries of Thyrea? 

We haven't finished with unlocks yet, because today we are also adding 24 new Upgrade cards, 4 for each hunter deck! This further increases the deck crafting options for each class. With every card being useful and interesting to be matched with gear and other cards in your deck, you will have a ton of fun finding your favourite playstyle!

Campaign Mode

Following your request, today we talk about the Campaign, taking an overview of the session structure and analyzing some of its main concepts!

The Campaign mode in Primal: The Awakening is a serie of 11-15 game sessions that will immerse you in the world of Thyrea through an epic adventure. Each game will be connected to the others with your choices determining the progress of your characters in the story. 

The campaign progress is marked by the advancement in the "Aggression track" on the campaign sheet. This is both a turn track for the campaign and a measure of the monsters' difficulty level, which constantly increases as you progresses through the story. The monsters not only will upgrade their stats and parameters, but they also change their deck of cards representing their abilities and their behaviour.

Each game session is divided into multiple phases: 

At the start of each game session, players check for any eventual special event (the book icons on the Aggression track!) and they resolve it by reading the corresponding page of the Scenario book.

Events are a sort of check points/milestones in the story where something big might happen! Players might be asked to make choices, spending resources to unlock new game content based on the achievements they have gained until that point in the campaign. 

However, the main activities that occupy the players from session to session are related to Questboard and Garrison phases. Let's focus on them to better understand the actual flow of a game session.

Questboard Phase

During the Questboard phase players must select a Quest card from the ones that are available at that precise moment of the campaign, based on their previous choices. Each Quest is associated to a boss-fight scenario in the Scenario book, with its own rules, objective and victory/defeat conditions.

Let's see an example of a Session 1 of our first campaign. Let's say that Vyraxen just ambushed us in the Prologue, but we managed to defeat it and survive, a great start! Now, after collecting the appropriate rewards as it is indicated in the Prologue, we are ready to play our first game session. After reading a narrative introduction, we are instructed to reveal Quest cards number 1 and 2, plus Contract card number 1. Here is the situation:

How do we choose the Quest we want to play? Despite its apparent simplicity, to the eye of an expert player this choice will be rich in consequences on both the campaign and the character progression. Since each monster unlocks different rewards and crafting options, we may select the next hunt based on the weapons we want to craft: we are already choosing the potential build for our characters!

Another thing to keep in mind is that each monster is also weak/strong against specific elements, so as the campaign goes on, our choices will also be dictated by the advantages/disadvantages we might have based on the equipment we want to use. 

Also, we should keep attention to the narrative element of the available quests since they might give some hints about what the rewards are and what the consequences for that mission might be on the campaign. Do you prefer to secure the villages near the Cost of Spikes or rather rescue the group of explorers at the Red Peaks who might have discovered something interesting? Quests expire as you advance in the Aggression track! Sometimes difficult choices have to be made and we have to deal with their consequences!

Finally,  another interesting aspect to take into consideration, are Contract cards! Every time you defeat a monster you earn an associated trophy (you can track this info on your campaign sheet!). In order to complete a Contract you have to follow specific requirement, which usually is to collect certain trophies or to spend specific resources. Rewards from Contracts can vary from gaining special items to unlocking quests or achievements.

Garrison Phase

There are two distinct challenges posed to the players during the Campaign mode: the actual boss-fights, and the optimal deck contruction.

As your character gains experience, you unlock new cards that enlarge your pool of available cards for deck building purposes. Creating the right synergies with your team will be crucial to succede. You will construct combos, balance defenses, manoeuvres and attacks based on the different monsters you will face. It is a game inside the game. A really rewarding one.

Speaking of deck construction, is difficult to think about it without considering the equipment and the weapon you choose to use. Your deck efficiency will highly depend on the gear you craft!

During the Garrison phase, players not only can upgrade and modify their deck composition, but they also have access to the Forge. Following the receipts showed in their unlocked Forge cards, they can combine common resources and elements they gained from harvesting monsters bodies, to craft new powerful equipment.

Once everyone has spent resources, crafted items, built their deck and equipped their gear, the group is ready to embark on the quest they have chosen!

There would be more things to discuss, like crafting potions using herbs, repair any depleted equipment, heal wounds that weaken your deck and other options you may unlock during the course of the campaign. Anyway, we hope this gave a good idea about the main part of the game outside of the fight.

Quest-paths and Grand Finale

Each quest you choose lead to unlock other specific quests that will be available for the next session. Your choices as you run through the campaign will determine the monsters you face, the rewards you can gain and the storylines in which you will be immersed.

Quest after quest, you will feel the progress and the consequences of your chosen path: maybe the explorers you saved will help you in a future hunt; maybe the relic you found will become an important element later in the campaign or the resource you invested in helping the village will allow relevant characters to survive monster attacks!  

Most Quests can be attempted more than once, but be aware that you have a limited number of failures before the campaign is over. Also, you always bring the wounds of the fight - in form of Wound cards - with you from session to sessions.

Whichever quest-path you take, the story will lead you to the epic finale. How you get there - with which equipment, achivements, completed objectives, knowledge etc - will completely change the gameplay and the game content of the final confrontation. 

Will you survive the Awakening? ;)

Reggie Games Team

Legendary Quests Unlocked!
almost 4 years ago – Thu, Jan 28, 2021 at 11:33:13 PM

Hey Hunters!

Today we unlock another special content for the game that we have chosen based on the community feedback: Legendary Equipment!!!

For balance reasons - and also because the idea has been very successful in the survey - we are adding a unique legendary quest associated with legendary rewards for all the elemental category in the game!!!

Artwork is currently in development. In the meantime, here is the content list ;)

In addition, it would be impossible not to include Legendary equipment for the additional hunter classes in the expansion as well ;) 

What's a Legendary Quest?

Legendary Quests are scenarios that players unlock based on their character class and the specific achievements they gain during the campaign. These quests feature a more in-depth story and they are thought to further immerse you into the lore of Thyrea, into its legends, its myths and its mystical aspects.

Legendary Quests are strictly related to Legendary equipments. Most of these quests have the objective to uncover ancient relics, epic weapons or gear which have important connections with the history of Thyrea. These rewards are unique, powerful and often dangerous as well!

Here is an example of Curse cards related to a legendary weapon. These cards are added to your deck if you equip that sword. If you want to hold its power in your hands you will have to deal with Curse cards weakening your actions. Will you be able to live with them and to exploit the curse at your favor?

We hope you enjoyed the unlocks! Tomorrow we will take a closer look at the Campaign mode and how the Expansions are integrated in the core game.

There are still 5 days left until to the end of the campaign and we still have a lot to reveal! 

For now, have a legendary day ;)

Reggie Games Team

New Nightmare deck + Components Upgrade + Asia Shipping Update!
almost 4 years ago – Thu, Jan 28, 2021 at 12:11:57 AM

Hey Hunters! 

We want to thank you for the great participation in the survey! In these hours we are still collecting votes from many of you about the content you would love to see in the game.

Most of the options we had in mind have been really well received so far - we are glad you appreciated them! - and for this reason, since we know it's difficult to select only a few of them, we decided to go for more than 3 additions! They will be offered through both stretch goals and add-ons! It is going to be a great week! ;)

Now, let's reveal today's unlocks!

New Nightmare deck

While many beasts avoid magnetic storms, Jekoros thrives on it. Its horn catalyses the electric shocks that are generated in thunderous weather conditions. Electricity is well stored within its body, and Jekoros uses it to generate striking attacks. Its heart is the center of its abilities. Some describe it as a blazing fire during tempestuous nights, others believe its heartbeat foments raging storms across the Splintered lands.

A new Nightmare deck is added to the game! Jekoros is the largest monster in the thunder element category and it is one of the most unpredictable and dangerous creatures in Thyrea. 

Jekoros is built around the concept of Attrition: other than a unique behaviour deck, it brings 5 special Attrition cards that completely change the Attrition deck composition. 

When a player reveals one of Jekoros' Attrition cards, if the player has not enough defenses on his/her sequence, not only suffers damage, but it also resolve the special ability text of the Attrition card.

These cards make the monster unpredictable and a lot of fun to engage with. Fighting Jekoros and pulling off attack sequences will be very dangerous and risky: defense cards to avoid attrition have never been so useful! 

Extra Unlocks

The linen finish not only enhances the beauty and the elegance of the cards, but also improves the resistance of the material. Thanks to your amazing support we are able to apply this finish to all cards in the game (included expansions and stretch goals)!

As many of you requested, we are including an Expedition scenario for all monsters in the game. This means you can pick the creature you want and fight it in a dedicated one-shot scenario outside the campaign!

Asia Shipping

To all of our Asian backers: we are glad to announce that after talking to our fulfillment partners we are including a shipping hub in Asia into our plan. Thus, we are able to reduce the shipping cost range for China/Hong Kong/Machao (updated cost: 25€-35€) and Rest of Asia (updated cost: 55€-65€). Shipping is a very expensive matter for both backers and creators; we are more than happy to find cheaper solutions for everyone. 

That's all for today! We really look forward to the days to come! ;)

Let's keep the hunt going,

Reggie Games Team