February 05 2025
Long time no see! KDR Patch 3.4 is a major balance and systems update that is sure to shake up the gameplay flowchart and to allow for some creativity required in the early rounds, especially preventing the same early game happening every KDR- get your starter loot, then save and collect interest until you can level straight to medium loot and start actually playing the game. We've taken several steps to avoid this and to place more emphasis on the early game of KDR.
Notably, while these will be explained in detail below, we're doing interest nerfs, reworking low quality loot into starter packs, and overall bringing up the impact of low quality loot (now starter packs), as well as changing the pricing of almost all the loot pools.
The largest change this update is reworking low quality loot into starter packs. Every class now has their low quality condensed into three larger, themed starter packs. At the start of the KDR, you get a random starter pack to kick-off your run! These larger themed starter packs shouldn't entirely cannibalize your base loot, but instead provide you many more avenues for interesting deck building, greater depth of interaction, and more engaging decision making all together. Round 1 and beyond you're still able to purchase these starter packs- 6 gold! Here's an example pool, named "TUNAS!":
Sea Dragon Lord Gishilnodon / Glacial Beast Blizzard Wolf / Glacial Beast Iceberg Narwhal / Glacial Beast Polar Penguin / Nightmare Penguin / Penguin Ninja / Penguin Cleric / Penguin Torpedo / Penguin Sword / Tatsunoko
The theme is synchro summoning! Every class has three, and you won't know what you'll be building around until you start! Sometimes, you may even get forced into a meme pool to start with, so good luck!
Interest has always been an interesting addition to KDR. It allows you to make the decision to horde wealth so that you can gain a bunch over multiple turns, allowing you to make huge turns where you level up, get a bunch of skills, and grab high quality loot pools. Well- it was just too effective at doing this. Not only were players just ignoring the existence of low quality pools, they were also just not spending their gold at all, saving wealth to level to medium and start playing the game at that point!
Therefore, interest is being refocused as something you can use to opportunistically gain a little bit of an economical advantage here and there with more clever planning!
Interest is going from 2 gold every 5 gold saved to 1 gold every 4 gold saved!
Pool Prices
Trump's tariffs have hit KDR just as hard as any other country- the prices of pools have gone up! Medium now costs 6, high quality 9, staples still costs 3, removal/disruption costs 5, and engine cost 7! This change is intended somewhat as an experiment, just to see how this might impact the player's economy, as well as how it might change the pace of the game. Gold is more difficult to come by, and in general loot costs more- you're going to need to spend money to get wins in the early game, and since everyone may not be hording money to get to medium as fast as possible, there may be some changes in the vibes of mid-game KDR. There may be future changes to game pace, and this may end up getting reverted, we'll have to see!
EXP/Level Changes
While this system is a little less understood by some players, you gain 2EXP per round in KDR. You level up depending on what EXP breakpoints you hit, and each level you get a skill and a stat point. Currently, at 14XP (Level 4) is when you unlock high quality, and medium is available at 6XP (Level 2). These are going to be shifted upwards, unlocking medium at 8XP (Level 3) and high quality at 18XP (Level 5). This should extend the early-mid game of KDR, and you may not be able to finish an entire collection of cards every run now, lending a lot more gravity to the decisions you make during the shopping phase.
Every single class is receiving loot changes! It's mostly focused around low quality, but many have also received new support/changes to their medium and high quality pools. If I listed every change, this webpage would be a mile long!
Fisherman
Fisherman is moving to the marshes for some froggy fishing! It's receiving its low quality frog pool as part of its base loot and losing its underutilized cards to spice up the potential builds in the early game. Treeborn Frog + Mobius the Frost Monarch- scary!
Druid
Druid is getting almost a FULL rework to its base loot! The Bujin cards by far were the most impactful cards in the Druid class for almost the entire game, if not the entire game. We're removing the Bujins. They're cool, but the playstyle of Bujins are both boring and too powerful for base loot. While Druid is losing more than it gained in its base loot, the class has some powerful starter packs that are sure to change the way you play it.
Miner is getting "Epigonen, the Impersonation Invader" in its base loot.
Cyborg's skill is being changed to only Normal Summon a Level 4 or lower monster, and it's receiving some nerfs to its relic!
Ritualist
While player sentiment surrounding this class was that it was pretty strong, we have nerfed some of the most powerful pain points around the deck's mid to late game, and while it still summons a giant vanilla monster, it won't be able to access as much removal in the mid game, making it rely much more on big dudes beating your dudes up rather than punching you in the face really hard.
In Conclusion
While this update may appear smaller in size, the systematic changes and the rework to every single class' base loot has made this one of the largest updates we've done! Please be sure to give us feedback on the changes as you play, and REMEMBER TO POST YOUR REPLAYS!!!