Awards on KeyChain: First Look
A first look at the Awards system coming to KeyChain: featuring Achievements, Badges, and Trophies!
KeyChain’s first major feature release is almost here, and trophy hunters and completionists alike will be especially keen to read about it! Fans of video games are no stranger to the concept of digital rewards as a means to celebrate player milestones and provide goals to strive for. KeyForge itself is no stranger to this concept either, with the community-made KeyTracker (and previously Crucible Tracker) offering achievements, and Ghost Galaxy having introduced Accolades to the Master Vault, celebrating accomplishments and milestones for decks.
KeyChain is putting its own spin on this as another way we hope to encourage players to return for more KeyForge organized play, joining our existing leaderboards, stats, and player progression systems.
Introducing: Awards
Awards represent the new overall feature and effort to provide players with digital rewards to chase, allowing them to add to their virtual collection of accomplishments over time. There are three categories of awards players can earn: Achievements, Badges, and Trophies.
Achievements
Achievements, identified by their hexagonal shape, represent players hitting key milestones for specific stats and goals. Achievements are tiered, and can be “tiered up” by reaching the next milestone for a given stat. The Bronze tier can be earned with relatively little resistance, the Silver tier indicates noteworthy accomplishments, and the Gold tier represents incredibly strong dedication and commitment!
However, we know that some of you out there go above and beyond for KeyForge (we love that!) so we couldn’t stop there. That brings us to the Ascension tier. Awards at this tier are — by design — not intended to be unlocked by everyone. For all intents and purposes we view the Gold tier as “the final boss”. If you’ve earned that, pop the champagne! The Ascension tier is the optional endgame for those who dare pursue it. Ascension tier achievements are always identifiable by their black and glowing Æmber colors.
Badges
Up for a side quest? Recognizable by their circular shape, badges are unlocked by completing certain tasks, either with in-game occurrences, outcomes, or attending specific events. Unlike achievements, badges are ‘one and done’. Once you earn them, that’s it — cue the confetti!
In addition to the badges above, you can learn more about one more badge if you tune into Archons Corner! We’d like to thank the AC crew again for inviting us to talk about KeyChain with their listeners.
Since badges currently rely on playgroup EOs manually reporting something was unlocked at an event, we don’t have too many of these in our initial release. However, we’ll keep tabs on how both players and EOs feel about them, and will use that feedback to steer future badge developments.
Trophies
Our final award category is trophies, which use a triangular motif. Trophies indicate accomplishments from top placements at tournaments. What sets trophies apart from achievements and badges is that they can be earned multiple times.
Since every tournament is different, trophies get distributed a bit differently depending on the number of participants:
A 3-5 player tournament would award a success trophy for the winner only.
A 6-10 player tournament would award trophies for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.
An 11+ player tournament would award trophies for 1st, 2nd, Top 4 finishers, and Top 8 finishers.
The specifics of how and when a particular trophy is awarded is also included in its description. We’ve also set aside a few extra very special trophies, locked in the KeyChain vault, to award players for earning some of KeyForge’s highest honors.
The Award Goes To…
We hope that you’re excited to dive into the world of KeyChain awards. It’s been something we’ve been looking forward to putting together for a while — it was even one of the first systems we started dabbling with going back to the site’s earliest stages of ideation!
Awards will be released into the KeyChain beta soon as part of Charm Drop 1: The Award Goes To…
“What’s a Charm Drop!?”, you ask? Well, that’s something else entirely we’d like to tell you about! Stay tuned for another update on Monday detailing KeyChain’s own delivery service for getting new goodies delivered to you. Stay tuned, and have a great weekend!
PS. We’ll be sending out our fourth wave of invites to the KeyChain beta over the next few days, welcoming in another batch of LGS playgroups into the world of KeyChain before Awards goes live! If you organize KeyForge events for an LGS based playgroup, you can fill out this interest form if you haven’t done so yet and wish to add your playgroup to KeyChain.
Everyone is also invited to join us on the KeyChain Discord server to keep on top of the latest updates and give feedback!