Patch Notes: April 29, 2026
Two weeks. Six versions shipped (V7.2 through V7.7). A persistent territory mode, a leaderboard rebalance that actually rewards the grind, a tutorial hub that pays you to learn, and a UX pass on every menu that touches the lobby.
Siege of Invictus — Sector War Launch
A new persistent territory mode now spans all 6 Invictus sectors: Primus, Simia, Conflux, Lux, Vox, and Haven. Each sector has its own leader, defenders, perks, and contested districts.
- Sector Map UI with district-level art and live state.
- Sector-specific bounties feed directly into the daily board.
- Leaders defend, contenders contest, districts shift live.
Bounty Board Expansion
The board doubled in scope. 7 daily bounties now rotate on a deterministic UTC seed across 4 different scopes.
- Personal, server-first, community, and clan scopes all live.
- Server-first races use atomic DB-level winner locks. First to finish wins. Everyone else can verify the math.
- Referral bounties added — referral codes plus an apply-referral flow.
- Progress tracking unified across personal, community, and clan goals.
Leaderboard Fix — Volume Matters Again
The Rift Rating formula was rebalanced. Total wins now drive rank instead of pure ELO. The math: 9 times the games equals 9 times the climbing power. Grinders pass hot-streak players. That is the whole point.
- Minimum threshold raised from 5 games to 10 games plus 5 wins/losses to appear on the board.
- One-time recompute ran on deploy. Every eligible rating adjusted automatically.
- Rift Rating breakdown tooltip rebuilt: ELO share, Win Rate (capped at 30 games of confidence), flat +5 RR per win, and Win Streak bonus.
- Tooltip math now matches the server exactly.
Tutorial Hub Overhaul (V7.5)
The new Tutorial Hub tracks your progress and pays you M-Credz for completing each section. Total earnable: 19 M-Credz across two paths.
- "How to Play" walkthrough — +5 M-Credz.
- "Card Guide" deep dive — +14 M-Credz.
- Card Guide rebuilt with search bar, table of contents, and scroll-gate progress tracking.
- 11 sections total: card-anatomy, abilities, persistent, self-scale, advanced, strategy, schools, hero-abilities, artifacts, battlefields, and Siege of Invictus.
Tutorial Walkthrough Polish
- Visual pass: phase badge, pink accent, cleaner step framing.
- Tooltip viewport clamping fixed for narrow phone PWAs.
- Guest tutorial fires on first visit for any non-authenticated user.
- Tutorial copy rewritten for clarity across V7.3, V7.4, and V7.5.
Guest Onboarding Spotlight
- "Join the Rift" popup for new visitors.
- TOS modal cleaned up.
- New users get auto-assigned Rifter#### IDs plus a welcome banner with the editor pre-opened.
- TOS step 1 explains the auto-assigned Rifter ID system.
Shop & Bounty UX Pass
- Cleaner shop layout with consistent glass-bar styling across sub-menus.
- Bounty board readability and claim flow polish.
- Lobby-as-authority enforced — every page now matches the lobby layout.
CDN & Card Pool Cleanup
- 309-card release pool strictly enforced on all new pack purchases.
- Card name corrections: Enforcer → Enforcer's Collection, Fleet Admiral → Fleet Admiral's Order, Pharaoh → Pharaoh's Standard.
- Player collections untouched. Nothing was removed from owned cards.
Siege Hotfix (V7.4)
- Stability fixes for sector contest edge cases.
- District state sync corrections.
Rift Rating Tooltip
Hover the leaderboard's rating column for the full breakdown live: ELO share, Win Rate (capped at 30-game confidence), flat Wins bonus, and Win Streak.
The Headline
Six versions in two weeks. A persistent territory mode, a leaderboard that respects the grind, and a tutorial hub that pays you to learn. The board is live. The math is fixed. Pick a sector.