Clash Royale is a mobile game that constantly receives updates. Most of these come in the form of new additions to the game’s card pool or balance changes to the game’s existing cards. While not as frequent, the game also receives updates that include actual features or changes to existing Clash Royale mechanics and functions. Recently, a batch of new features and mechanic changes have been implemented and I’d like to talk about them.

Current Clash Royale players should already know about what I’ll be talking about, but I’m writing this for those who have already quit the game completely. Most of the updates that I’ll be talking about improve the overall Clash Royale experience and I think a glimpse of the game’s current state may convince a few of those to come back.

Chest Contents Breakdown

Of all the updates that I’ll be talking about, this new feature has the least impact to game experience. Essentially, after opening a chest you’ll now see a summary/breakdown of what the chest had.

Prior to the update, when you open a chest, the cards are revealed by batch per specific card. Say your Silver Chest contained a Valkyrie and several Cannons – when you open the chest, either the Valkyrie would be revealed first and then the entire batch of Cannons or vice versa. Because of this, it’s quite easy for someone to skip over some of the card reveals if they double tap accidentally, especially when opening some of the bigger chests.

Now, chest openings still work the same way but you get a summary at the end, showing you all of the contents of the chest (including how many per card). This means that people can just skip through the card reveals real quickly and refer to the breakdown later. Again, the impact is not that significant but I like it a lot because I’m a stickler for detail.

The New Jungle Arena

Progression is an important element in video games – people need to feel that their time with a video game is not being wasted, that they’re actually achieving something. Currently, there are two trophy ranges wherein people can feel that there’s a lack of progression or progress is too slow: the Frozen Peak Arena (2300 – 3000 trophies) and the early Legendary Arena (3000 – 4000 trophies).

I spent a lot of time in both trophy ranges so what I’ll say is from first hand experience – going through Frozen Peak is a long and arduous process. Prior to Frozen Peak, progression is standard in that you advance to a higher arena that offers better rewards every 300-400 trophies that you earn. This sense of progression is halted just before the highest arena though, where you can get the best rewards that the Clash Royale has to offer. I say halted because the only difference at the 2400 trophy range and the 2800 range is the level of competition, but you earn exactly the same amount of Gold and cards.

Inserting another arena in between Frozen Peak and Legendary Arena fixes that. Once the new Jungle Arena is activated (in around three weeks), there is more incentive for players below 2600 trophies to actually move up as they will get more Gold and Cards, which in turn will help them get to Legendary Arena faster.

Personally, this doesn’t affect me at all as I’m already firmly planted in Legendary Arena. However, even just from my current clan, there are eleven members who are in Frozen Peak. Of those eleven, four would have already been in Jungle Arena had it been implemented now – four people who would be able to enjoy the better rewards. I’m excited for them, I’m sure that it will help them finally break through to Legendary.

Easier to Obtain Epic Cards

While less rare than Legendary cards, it’s actually harder to “get” Epic cards because of how card upgrades work in Clash Royale. Legendary cards are playable as soon as you get a copy of it – the tournament standard level for Legendary cards is just Level 1. But you need a bunch of copies of a particular Epic card if you want to use it at it’s best level – you need 16 copies of an Epic card to be exact in order to upgrade it fully to Level 4 (1 copy for Level 1, 1 more copy for the Level 2 upgrade, 4 more copies to Level 3, and 10 more copies to Level 4).

To illustrate, let me share my personal experience. I’ve been playing Clash Royale for months now and I started using the Poison card as soon as I got to Arena 6, but I was only able to upgrade it to Level 4 this past November 2016 when I got copies of it from the recently implemented Epic Chest. I’m not sure exactly how many but I think I got at least half of my Poison cards from the in-game shop at a steep cost – 2,000 Gold for the first purchase and a price increase of 2,000 Gold for each subsequent purchase if/when Poison appeared in the shop, which was very seldom. It wasn’t until after I spent weeks in Legendary Arena until I got a hold of enough copies to upgrade the rest of my Epics to Level 4.

Playing Clash Royale with underlevelled cards is not as fun as playing the game with a deck at full strength. While the idea of facing people with more powerful cards due to the card levels should be expected in standard battles, it’s not the case in Tournaments and Challenges where level caps are applied.

Without changing the rarity of Epic cards, SuperCell managed to make them more obtainable through three changes, the first of which is a straightforward price drop. Now, you can buy Epic cards at a price of 1,000 Gold when it appears in the Shop, with a 1,000 increase for each subsequent purchase. The contents of Epic Chests have also been adjusted to reflect the price change and to scale it based on the arena that you got it from. All these changes still rely on luck though.

The biggest change (and the one I like the most) is how Epics can now be requested and donated during Epic Sundays. This past Sunday, Clash Royale players can now request for Epic cards once a week, allowing some degree of control over what kind of Epics to get while preserving the rarity of Epic cards.

And this change even benefits players who aren’t looking for Epic cards by allowing them to donate the ones that they don’t use. Donating an Epic card will net you 500 Gold, which is a huge amount – you’d need to open around 8-9 Legendary Arena Silver Chests to get that much! I used to frown at getting copies of Golem and Bowler as I did not use them in my decks, but now I can donate them and earn 500 Gold.

Clan Chests

When I first started playing Clash Royale, my clan was merely a group of people who I can request Common and Rare cards from and play practice battles with. I didn’t enjoy practice battles much though, not until after practice battles were changed to feature cards fixed at Tournament Standard instead of their actual level. Tournaments were also centered around clans, but that was it – Clash Royale remained to be an individual experience for the most part. (It’s true that there are some clans who are actively playing the game as a “clan”, talking about strategies and taking practice more seriously to prepare for tournaments and the like but these are more the exception than the rule).

Just this week though, SuperCell implemented the Clan Chest. Similar to a Crown Chest, you unlock a Clan Chest by destroying towers and obtaining Crowns but this time around, everyone in your clan can obtain crowns for the Clan Chest and we have seven days to do this. The Clan Chest has ten “tiers”, with each requiring a certain number of crowns. The higher the tier of the Clan Chest, the more Gold and cards you can get from it.

The number of crowns that each clan member is contributing toward the Clan Chest is visible, so it can be good motivation for clan members to play more than they needed to before. You see, some people don’t play Clash Royale all the time, like myself for example – I usually only play if I have a chest slot open or if I’m filling a Crown Chest or if I’m playing Challenges; I rarely play the game outside of those situations. Now, there’s still a benefit to playing Clash Royale even if my chest slots are full and I don’t have a Crown Chest – any Crowns that I get goes toward moving our Clan Chest to a higher tier, whether I win or lose. My clan will benefit from my efforts, and I’ll benefit from their efforts as well.

Our clan is currently working to open it’s first Clan Chest and we’ve already gotten the needed 100 crowns to get it to Tier 1. Tier 2 requires 150 crowns (on top of the previous 100) and I hope that we’ve already gotten it to Tier 3 when this comes out. We haven’t reached the point of calling out members who have yet to contribute to our Clan Chest, but maybe it’ll be a good way to determine which members are inactive.

And these are the recent (and one upcoming) updates to Clash Royale that have made the game more enjoyable for me. Clash Royale is already one of the best games that I’ve played on mobile, and I’m glad to see SuperCell continue to find ways to make the game even better. Anyone who played Clash Royale before and quit should give this game another shot.

What do you think about the recent Clash Royale updates? Let us know what you think by leaving a comment or two below!