Dawncaster | The RPG Cardventure news & patch notes

Here we gooooooo - spoiler season is here 🥳

The first spoilers of our upcoming content expansion Nexus of Nightmares!

These cards are part of the mini expansion, which will be part of the Nexus of Nightmares update, available for free for everyone, regardless of purchase of the expansion.

Mini expansions develop existing archetypes with features of the last major card expansion (Synthesis), and open up new ways to play them, and improving the synergy between the new cards and the older sets.

It's looking to be a good one, so we're excited to share our designs with you over the coming weeks 🙂

The cards

🐶 Good Boy creates a new type of Ingredient, a special treat for those extra good companions that keep you in the fight!

🌈 Radiant Surge has the Knight return to our very first cards: The Surges. During NoN, knights will use these deceptively simple cards to fuel all sorts of powersuits and weaponry to great effect.

👯 Repetition continues the Seeker trend of finding new ways to replay a small set of card repeatedly.

🌩️ Shock Collar combines the two sub themes of our Arcanist archetypes, and adds and even darker shade to the mix with a card that lets the Sacrifice their companion to restore Health.

More spoilers will be released here over the coming weeks leading up to the release, so keep an eye on this channel ^^

If you were holding off on getting Dawncaster on Steam, now is a great time to consider picking up Dawncaster at a discount 🙂 Dawncaster on Steam is fully Steamdeck compatible, has extended art for every zone and saves your progress between all devices ⭐ https://store.steampowered.com/category/deckbuilders

Monster Mania Carddesign competition

There's only 7 days left to submit a card or vote on your favorite card design for this season of the Community Card design competition! This time, we will be introducing 5 monster cards designed by you (yes you!) to discover in the upcoming expansion 'Nexus of Nightmares'. So go out and vote (or design) right here 👇 https://dawnforge.app/contest/1773085405459?rarity=&banner=&category=&type=&prefix=&sorting=likesDesc&page=1

That's all for this update! -- As always, if you like what we're doing here, consider leaving us a 👍, it really helps the game grow!

Hail wanderer, today we're thrilled to reveal the next chapter in the Dawncaster saga!

Nexus of Nightmares

Our sixth expansion takes you to the dark realm between sleep and waking, where an ancient presence wakes from a long, deep, slumber. An event causing the fragile veil between dreams and reality to blur.

Nexus of Nightmares returns us to the regular DLC format; three new areas to explore, each with their own atmosphere, inhabitants, and secrets. New enemies with the singular purpose of extinguishing your hopes and dreams. To balance things out, you might also find aid from a new face to join the ranks of possible allies to fight the evils of Aethos alongside you.

Nexus of Nightmares will be available as a $5.99 expansion on iOS, Android and Steam in July 2026.

Synthesis Miniset

As always, the expansion launches side-by-side with a free mini expansion consisting of 64 brand new cards, available to everyone for free. These cards extend the archetypes introduced in Synthesis and offer new interactions, and new ways to break the game.

We'll start unveiling more details and cards in the weeks leading up to launch, so keep an eye on the Dawncaster Discord!

Thank you all for sticking with us on this journey. Dawncaster is what it is today because of you, and we can't wait to show you what's been keeping us up at night.

Until then, sweet dreams...

Hey all!

Patch 1.18.002 adds one of our most requested features - Achievements & Rewards!

Achievements & Rewards

We've seen the feedback about the initial phase of unlocks could feel slow / grindy to some, and we recognize that with over 5 years of content development, there is a lot to 'catch up' on.

This is why we added a new way to unlock Fateshards* faster in the beginning of your Dawncaster journey via Achievements. With over 100 achievements to discover and each granting between 10 and 250 Fateshards, there are new ways to quicken the unlocks of new cards, talents, portraits and more!

*Note: Fateshards are a completely free, non-purchasable indicator of our meta progression system.

For achievements you've already unlocked, Fateshards will be awarded retro-actively :)

Cross platform achievements

Achievements are shared between platforms, and even update your native achievements once earned on another platform. However, their rewards are granted just once per unlock (not per platform). In order to sync your achievements, make sure you are logged into our Unity Cloud account with the same credentials on all devices.

Patchnotes for 1.18.002

UI / UX

• Bounties and achievements can now be viewed in their own panel, available from the home menu

• Fixed various issues with the controller input that would skip level up screens

Balance Changes

• Chromatic Breath can no longer be found in card rewards

• Arboreous Forms talent now requires 1 Dexterity and 1 Intellect

• Arboreous Forms talent now conjures a Beastform at the start of the turn rather than imbue a Master of Forms

Bugfixes

• Artifacts created by Explorer's Trick should no longer remain in your deck after combat

• Tuned the Arboreous Forms talent and added the DEX / INT requirement

• Underling now correctly Subjugates a Humanoid enemy when the player has the required gold

• Chromatic Breath (Drake Familiar's ability) no longer adds chain to the enemy

• Fixed various tooltips and card phrasings

• Various improvements to localization

• Fixes to the screenreader support (in particular the ability to start a run in the Sunforge)

That's all for this week's patch! More is coming for Dawncaster so stay tuned! Also, we're about to kick off our next Card Design competition over on the Discord, so if you fancy yourself a card crafter head on over to our #card-brewery channel. The announcement will be up early next week!

Hey all!

Patch 1.18.001 adds all 5 winning card designs of the Bandits of Blightwood competition to the game! For all the winning designs, join our Discord or discover them for yourself in game right now.

In addition, 2 more 'Signature Cards' have been added to celebrate community members who've made their mark on the game. Either via participating in community events, offering constructive feedback or being a general positive presence in our Discord :)

We're about to start a brand new competition at the start of next month (March), so if you fancy yourself a card crafter, you're invited to join and see if your card makes it into the top 5!

For all card designs of this competition, visit the Dawnforge over at https://dawnforge.app/contest/1763575008921?rarity=&banner=&category=&type=&prefix=&sorting=likesDesc&page=1

What else is new in patch 1.18.001:

• We've reworked various UI elements for better legibility

• You can now set the card pop out zoom size to make the text more readible on large screens and Steamdecks. (Settings > Gameplay > Popout zoom level)

• Addressed a few issues with the Sunforge game-mode

• Addressed various issues with Achievements not firing correctly

We're continuing on our work to incorporate Achievements into the meta progression system and we'll likely be able to add this in next week's update.

That's all for this update! If you like what we do here, consider leaving us a review :D

Bugfixes

Screenreader

Hey everyone! Thank you for all the feedback since launch. As the title says, this patch is all about controls; making Dawncaster feel right on mouse/keyboard and controller. Next up will be the meta progression system, but for now:

Controls Overhaul

Based on your feedback, we've completely reworked the control scheme for Dawncaster on Steam. We recognise this wasn't where it needed to be yet, so rather than incremental fixes, we overhauled the entire setup from the ground up.

What's changed:

• Improved controller support across the board with new bindings, quick keys, and on-screen key references.

• Removed all textual references to taps or swipes. The experience now feels native to mouse/keyboard and controller.

• Added new options that make better use of your screen space, including tooltips on talents and tooltips on focussed cards during combat.

Other Changes

• Instant dialogue text: Option to instantly display dialogue text, now available in the settings.

• Toggle keybind hints: Option to turn off visual keybind hints in the settings.

• Achievement fixes: Fixed various achievements that weren't triggering correctly (more on achievements below).

What's Next?

Our focus for Patch 2.0 is the meta progression system. With over five years of content development for Dawncaster, this system can be extra daunting for new players.

We'll be adding more sources of Fateshards for faster early unlocks; including tying them to achievements. Players will be able to delve deeper into the various reward tracks at a faster pace.

We still believe the game should always offer something to play for; a reward that awaits beyond the satisfaction of a won run. But that feeling should be reserved for the many optional bonuses like portraits, while the playables (cards, talents, and weapon powers) should be more accessible to encourage less anxiety about spending your points and more experimentation.

As always, thank you for playing Dawncaster! And if you like what we do here, consider leaving us a review.

- multiple broken achievements fixed. - fixed controller interactions in some areas. - fixed some missing localization for screenreader support. - fixed cloud save sync giving a error after already getting a success - Improved startup message when starting with screen reader ( For this temporarily localization has been disabled there) Have any feedback or bug reports? Join the discord and let us know! https://discord.com/invite/pfeMG9c