16 January 2023 , 12:53
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The patch for the popular super hero themed card battler, tentatively pencilled in for Tuesday, January 31, is set to make several rare cards easier to find – and cheaper to buy.
Developer Second Dinner is planning Marvel Snap monthly updates – dubbed Series Drops – that will make it easier for players to obtain their favourite Marvel Comics characters to add to their deck. Every Series Drop will bump some Series 5 cards (the rarest ones) down to Series 4, and in turn, some Series 4 will drop down to Series 3 (the most common). Each drop down the rankings makes a card 10 times more likely to be unlocked in Collector’s Reserves, and cheaper to buy via the Token Shop (more on why this probably won't work later).
This Marvel Snap January update will see Series 5 cards Valkyrie, Super-Skrull, Bast, Shuri and Black Panther heading to Series 4. Meanwhile, Series 4 cards Luke Cage, Absorbing Man, She-Hulk and Titania are dropping down to Series 3. In a blog post about the update, the developer explained that a deciding factor in choosing which card to drop is how long they've been in that Series; the longer a card has say in Series 5, for example, the more likely it is to drop down the ranks.
The current exception to this ethos is Marvel Snap's 'Big Bads' – Thanos and Galactus. The dev says that while "all cards will eventually become easy to obtain through enough Series Drops," there are no plans to drop these two down a series. "They’re just too dang epic," apparently.
The January update is also rolling out a long-overdue feature that was supposed to launch before the end of last year; the ability to battle friends. Although Second Dinner warned that if it runs into "last-minute issues" the studio "may choose to delay [the feature] for a little longer to make sure things work correctly”.
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Marvel Snap is available on iOS, Android and PC. There has been no word on a console version yet, but, like Call of Duty, and FIFA 23 we can all hope that one day they'll be a Nintendo Switch port.
Please ease the end-game grind
I’m sure I’m not the only one who's got to the point in Marvel Snap where the game has just run out of steam. I’m out of card unlocks in the progress path, the Collector’s Reserves are becoming increasingly spaced out, and the rewards are paltry at best.
I do the daily missions more out of habit than for fun, and all my decks are basically constructed to make them easier to do. And don't get me started on the Token Shop: pressing your face against the virtual window and seeing all the beautiful cards you’ll never be able to afford because tokens come from the same useless loot boxes as the cards.
Your options are beginning to feel Moby Dick-esque. That is to say, a whale, or like Ahab chasing some great beast (those ever elusive Thanos and Galactus cards) and slowly losing your mind.
Although Second Dinner has said it's looking at revamping the Token Shop – and the Series Drops feel like a step in the right direction – what really needs to be reassessed is the way the progress path works. Although I have a horrible feeling that it's not a bug but a feature.