Development Blog. - Closed test 1.3.0 - new casinos "Treasure Hunt" and "Battle Colosseum", plus Silver Tarot tweaks

Epoch Street version 1.3.0 adds two new casino games and adjusts Silver Tarot based on a tester's proposal. This post covers what's in each and what we decided along the way.

Treasure Hunt: 3 treasures hidden in 12 spots

"Treasure Hunt" joins the casino. Walk your piece around a small town and its rooms to look for treasure.

• 3 of the 12 spots (pots, chests, dressers, crates, barrels and back-alley corners) hold treasure. You can't tell which
• You can search up to 3 times. The moment you find any treasure the hunt ends, and you keep only that one
• Walk next to a spot and confirm. You're asked "Search this?", and answering yes searches it. Searched spots get a mark and can't be searched again
• Treasure is one of: a Sphere (Sphere Battle only), a Take-Me-Anywhere card, Lv×60G, Lv×20G or Lv×10G. All three can even be Spheres (never the same one twice)
• Only the player who landed plays, and there's no entry fee. CPUs walk to the nearest spot they haven't searched
• There are sounds for smashing a pot, breaking a crate and opening a chest, a jingle for finding treasure, and a dedicated BGM. We also put care into the look of the town: cobblestones, grass and wooden rooms

One decision to note: Treasure Hunt is now the only casino that can give you Spheres. The other casinos (including the ones played via chance cards) no longer hand them out. If Spheres stop showing up there, that's this rule, not a bug. A Sphere you find in Treasure Hunt is handed over right after the casino screen closes.

It works in online play too. Spectators can watch the search, but we don't reveal what was in the spots you didn't search.

Battle Colosseum: a giant piece stands against the attacks

The other new casino is "Battle Colosseum". The player who landed becomes the challenger, a giant piece that withstands attacks from everyone else (the attackers).

• The challenger's HP is set by stopping the HP dice. Dice show 1 to 9; you roll twice as many as there are attackers, and a lower rank earns a bigger bonus (your own rank in solo play, your team's rank in team play)
• Attackers go in seat order (skipping the challenger). Doubles are critical hits. The fight ends the moment HP reaches 0; the remaining attackers don't attack
• Nobody loses money. The winning side is simply paid. If the attackers win, each winning seat gets Lv×50G. If the challenger's side wins, they get Lv×50G plus one Take-Me-Anywhere card
• The screen is split: challenger on the left, attackers on the right. A banner on top shows everyone's prize for winning, throughout the fight
• At the end, a defeated challenger's giant piece shrinks; one that holds out charges at the attackers and counters. The winners cheer and the losers mourn. Cards and shares fly to the receiving player's sidebar
• In team play, teammates don't attack each other. The challenger's teammates line up on the challenger's side, and if that side wins, all of them are paid. If the other team is entirely bankrupt and there are no attackers, the screen still appears and the challenger's side wins by default
• In online play, the table waits for the challenger to stop the HP dice; the attackers' dice roll on their own

There's a new rule setting, Colosseum reward, for what the challenger's side gets on a win: Legacy (one Take-Me-Anywhere card) or Present (10 shares of the highest-priced area). In the presets, Default and Legacy use Legacy; Modern and Present use Present.

To check how it plays, we simulated 200,000 matches for the challenger's win rate (best-ranked / last-ranked challenger):

• 1 attacker: about 50% / 58%
• 3 attackers: about 44% / 55%
• 7 attackers: about 36% / 53%

More attackers make it harder on the challenger, but trailing players are rewarded more often. And as above, losing costs you nothing.

Silver Tarot adjustments

Based on a tester's proposal, Silver Tarot gets a Modern mode. New matches default to Modern, and you can pick Legacy to play as before (Chariot, Moon, Sun and the five "to whom" cards are identical in both).

• Lovers → Joker: instead of a heart mark, you get one Take-Me-Anywhere card
• Magician: shopping fees +30% now last 3 of the drawer's turns
• Strength: the target's shop prices go +5% (replacing the old construction rush)
• Death: the target's shop prices go −5% and they close for a day. If a rival's shops drop, it counts once toward the drawer's disaster trigger
• Star: a 50% share, added to other shares such as Super Lucky (capped at 100% in total)

The key change is that lasting effects now run until the end of the drawer's own turn. Before, the Magician, Death's closure and the Star ran "until the target's next turn". Now who benefits is clear just from watching the drawer's turn. You can switch between Modern and Legacy with the new "Silver Tarot" row in the Rules screen.

Closing

Treasure Hunt and Battle Colosseum are our own take on the original casino games, reshaped to fit Epoch Street's rules. If you notice anything, send it any time from "Game review / bug report" on the mode-select screen. Online play is between 1.3.0 builds.