serrasmurf wrote:personally i love the possibility to create my personal "standard" looking for fun cross-set synergy and having a higher chance of getting the cards you need (i think i was one of the people suggesting this 2 years ago

)
Thank you! Nice to hear someone appreciates the new 'limited' quest mode. Maybe I can give you some explanations on how it came to be and it works...
My history with Forge is a bit shorter than 2 years - in fact, 3 months ago I hadn't even heard of Forge. Then I accidentally stumbled upon this site, and discovered Forge.
Although I was initially interested in Forge mainly because of its Sealed Deck mode, I was impressed with the Quest mode. It seemed like a microcosmos emulation of what MtG is all about: collect cards, build a deck, then match your deck against opponent decks, then collect some more cards, and so on.
However, one glaring issue immediately struck me. You would be collecting cards from the full Forge cardpool all the time. For me personally, this was not ideal. For one thing, your card selection (especially in the early stages) would lack focus, both thematically and technically. But it also meant that I would be playing with lots of cards I didn't even know or care about.
So I thought: why not make a 'sub-game' where you can start a quest in a given time/environment and try to collect cards that were available then? That's what the quest mode changes try to emulate: you can, for example, start a quest in the
Urza's Saga Standard environment and gradually collect the key cards from that era, slowly building your killer Academy deck...or whatever. And when you're done with
Urza's era, you can unlock more expansions and move on (or backwards in time), if you wish.
And of course, all of this is fully optional. Uncheck the 'Enforce' box, and quest mode works just like before.
As observed, there are currently two inconsistencies:
1) The theme decks available in the spell store. The bottom line was that I had to either disable them completely in the limited quest mode or try to build tons more for all different eras (when available) and then add code to check which would be valid for the current format. Or just leave them as is, which I chose to do. If a theme deck is not 'in-format' for you, you can just ignore it in the spell store.
2) The opponent decks. Yes, your opponents are not currently restricted in any way in their deck construction, and here's why: if their deck building was being restricted by an arbitrary user-defined format, it might turn out that 99% or even 100% of the current quest decks are not valid for the format you defined. Meaning, you would have zero opponents to play in your quest!
There is a better solution: just move the current quest decks to different directory and build some new ones that are appropriate for your custom format. That is what I'm doing in the "godbook" quest I'm currently playing (i.e., a format that includes all formats from Unlimited to Alliances). There's a lot of literature and web pages with deck lists and descriptions that you can use as basis for building in-format decks for any given format.
Here's an example of how to do it - for example, let's say you want to play a "Shandalar" quest. You would define a custom quest that includes Unlimited, Arabian Nights, Antiquities, Revised, Legends, The Dark and Fourth Edition. Then you would temporarily rename your /res/quest/challenges and /res/quest/duels directories to something else and replace them with Shandalar duel decks and challenges - and in this particular example, you would be in luck, since I've already built ready-for-use Shandalar decks and challenges, complete with icons:
viewtopic.php?f=48&t=8365Maybe in a future version, there could be several base directories for different quest environments (or quest "worlds") and you could, when you start your quest, decide which one you wish to use in this quest. For example, the default would be the current quest decks and challenges. But you could pick "Shandalar" quest world, which would - maybe automatically set your format to Unlimited/Arabian Nights/Antiquities/Revised/Legends/The Dark/4th Ed - and use a different directory with the Shandalar quest decks and challenges instead of the regular ones in this quest. (I'm using the Shandalar example simply because Shandalar decks & challenges are already available.) And you could build as many custom quest worlds as you like, each with different opponent decks and challenges as you like, and hopefully post and share them.
There could even be an in-game feature that allows you to "travel" from one quest world to another to play different opponents and challenges.
Would anyone (except me

) be interested in seeing this?
serrasmurf wrote:personally i love the possibility to create my personal "standard" looking for fun cross-set synergy and having a higher chance of getting the cards you need (i think i was one of the people suggesting this 2 years ago

)
After some games however it's time for news sets to unlock and explore. Hence i'm curious how the sets unlock works as it hasn't happened to me yet..
Currently, it is a special 'reward' you can get by winning 50 duels. After every 50 won duels, you get the chance to 'unlock' a new set and add it to your format. You can select one out of a handful, and the sets are likely to be historically close to the ones that are currently in your format.
All sets have price tags attached to them, and you should better start saving up if you ever want to unlock Alpha or Beta...those two will cost more than a brand new house.
If you decline the chance to unlock more sets or simply don't have the cash, don't worry. You will get a new chance...after 50 more wins.
