🔥 Survival Mode Returns 🔥
🗓️ Survival Mode officially returns on February 15!
After reviewing participation data and community feedback, Survival Mode is returning with a new bracket-based structure and participation-driven rewards model designed to deliver fairer matches, stronger incentives, and healthier competition across all player levels.
While the system will be closely monitored over the next three months to fine-tune parameters, Survival Mode itself is officially returning as a core game mode - thanks to the SPS DAO funding the next phase.
Survival Mode is free to play
If you already have the cards needed for your chosen bracket, you can participate at no cost.
🧠 What’s Improved?
The previous version of Survival Mode struggled with uneven competition, unclear incentives, and low engagement in certain tiers. The updated system addresses these issues by:
- Survival cooldowns do not apply to ranked play, tournaments, or brawls
- Introducing clearly defined brackets for all player levels
- Aligning rewards with actual participation
- Improving playability through bracket-based cooldown adjustments
- Allowing rewards to scale naturally as participation shifts
🚨 Survival Mode Cooldowns No Longer Affect Other Game Modes!
Survival Mode has been updated so that card cooldowns now apply only within Survival Mode itself.
When a card goes on cooldown as a result of a Survival Mode battle, that cooldown does not carry over into other areas of the game. Cards on Survival cooldown remain fully usable in:
- Ranked Play (Modern and Wild)
- Tournaments
- Guild Brawls
This change removes cross-mode restrictions and allows players to continue using their cards elsewhere in battle while managing cooldowns exclusively within Survival Mode. Note: cooldowns on land staking still applies.
Survival Mode now operates independently, making the mode less restrictive while preserving its core risk-versus-reward mechanics.
🧩 Survival Mode Bracket System
- 11 brackets, with many variables ranging from league caps from Novice Level to Champion Level; a choice of Human Only Play or Bots Allowed Play; and finally other factors such as minimum level archons allowed and even liquidity bot difficulty.
- Each bracket features:
- Summoner and card level requirements
- Defined difficulty and automation rules
- Competitive environments tailored to different collection sizes
- Players select one bracket per season and remain locked in for that season
This structure ensures more consistent matchmaking and meaningful competition.
⚔️ Active vs Automated Brackets
Survival Mode brackets are split into two distinct groups, giving players the choice between fully manual competition or automation-enabled play.
🟢 Active Brackets
Active brackets are designed for player-vs-player gameplay only.
- Matches are played exclusively against other active players or team liquidity bots.
- Third-party automation is not allowed
- Focused on manual strategy, deck-building, and decision-making
- Available across multiple difficulty tiers, from Novice to Expert
🤖 Automated Brackets
Automated brackets allow the use of approved third-party automation services.
*Archmage, Xbot, and SplinterHub are approved, if you would like to participate as a 3rd party automation service, please contact
- Automation is permitted for match execution
- Brackets maintain defined caps, difficulty levels, and cooldown rules
- Participation and rewards follow the same participation-based model
- Available across Adept, Intermediate, Advanced, and Expert tiers
Players choose one bracket per season and remain locked into that bracket for the duration of the season, regardless of whether it is Active or Automated.
❄️ Cooldown Adjustments by Bracket Cap
Cooldowns now scale by bracket to improve card availability and match flow:
- Novice: 10% of standard cooldowns
- Bronze: 15% of standard cooldowns
- Silver: 25% of standard cooldowns
- Gold: 50% of standard cooldowns
- Higher brackets follow standard cooldown rules
The cooldown time for a specific card will be based on the card's rarity, level, and foil, and will be calculated based on a formula in the notes section towards the end of the post. (see Cooldown Formula)
🔮 Phoenix Ash Potions (Coming Later)
New Phoenix Ash potions will be applicable to reduce cooldowns in the future. These potions are not introduced at re-launch to give players a chance to get acquainted with the mode first.
💰 Survival Mode Rewards
- 850,000 SPS per season allocated to Survival Mode during the initial period
- Rewards are distributed based on participation, not fixed bracket payouts. These rewards will be determined based on a player's wins (r-shares) during the season, and be paid out at the END of each season.
- Brackets with higher activity earn a larger share of the total reward pool
- Rewards within each bracket are distributed based on match performance and staked SPS relative to the other players in that bracket.
This approach ensures rewards reflect where players are actually competing.
🥩 Percentage-Based Rewards Model
Survival Mode rewards use a participation-weighted, percentage-based distribution model rather than fixed SPS payouts per bracket. This ensures rewards scale naturally with actual player activity.
Instead of pre-allocating SPS amounts to each bracket, the entire Survival Mode reward pool is shared proportionally based on participation, measured by Collection Power (CP).
At the end of each season:
- Total Survival Mode CP is calculated across all brackets
- Each bracket’s share of the SPS pool is determined by its proportion of total Survival CP
- Bracket rewards are then distributed retroactively within that bracket based on player performance (rshares or equivalent metric)
In practice:
- CP from all Survival battles is summed per player
- Total CP per bracket is calculated
- Each bracket’s CP is divided by total Survival CP to determine that bracket’s SPS coefficient
- Within each bracket, player rewards are distributed based on their percentage of total bracket rshares
The reward calculation conceptually follows this structure:
800,000 SPS × (Bracket CP ÷ Total Survival CP) × (Player Rshares ÷ Total Bracket Rshares)
This system removes arbitrary reward allocations, encourages healthy competition across all brackets, and allows Survival Mode rewards to automatically adjust as participation shifts over time.
🕒 Initial Monitoring Period
For the first three months (~6 seasons), Survival Mode will be closely monitored to validate bracket balance, participation levels, and reward outcomes. Any necessary adjustments will be made based on real gameplay data. Future funding/rewards of the mode will then be determined by the SPS DAO.
Choose your bracket wisely — and see how long you can last. ⚔️
📝Notes
Cooldown formula:
| Rarity | Base lvl Cooldown | Max lvl Cooldown |
|---|---|---|
| Common | 360 hrs (15d) | 120 hrs (5d) |
| Rare | 300 hrs (12.5d) | 96 hrs (4d) |
| Epic | 240 hrs (10d) | 72 hrs (3d) |
| Legendary | 120 hrs (5d) | 48 hrs (2d) |
base_cd - (base_cd - max_cd) * cc / max_cc
Where base_cd is the base cooldown time for a 1 CC card of that rarity and max_cd is the cooldown time for a max level card of that rarity, both of which can be found in the table above.
Please note that a 1 CC card will use the Base cooldown from the table above and will not use the formula. Additionally, Gold Foil cards will have half the cooldown time of the equivalent regular foil card.
For example, a 300 CC regular foil Common card would have a cooldown of 180 hours or 7.5 days:
360 - (360 - 120) * 300 / 400 = 180
A 5 CC Gold Foil Epic card would have a cooldown of 78 hours or 3.25 days:
(240 - (240 - 72) * 5 / 10) / 2 = 78
⚠️ Disclaimer
All information provided above — including but not limited to brackets, cooldowns, rewards, percentages, quantities, formulas, names, and launch timing — is subject to change based on testing, participation data, and ongoing monitoring. Final values may be adjusted without prior notice to ensure long-term balance, fairness, and sustainability of Survival Mode.