It isn’t listed in the most recent set of patch notes on the Ultima Forever forums, but Mythic quietly pushed a small in-game patch to Ultima Forever game clients a couple days ago that significantly overhauled a key aspect of the in-game economy: the free daily rewards that one accrues (on a daily basis, natch) simply for logging in to the game long enough to claim them.

Here’s an image of the daily reward screen from the initial release version of the game:

A gradual accrual…

As you can see, by the end of the eight-day daily reward cycle, one would have accrued 17 bronze keys, 6 silver keys, and one of eight Virtue tokens. I’m told that there’s a fairly significant reward that comes with collecting all eight Virtue tokens; the 64th day of gameplay should prove pretty special for players. Still, at best, this was a fairly marginal accrual of keys…and, in fact, after the recent key conversion update (instead of 5 silver keys for 15 bronze, the game would give you 6 silver keys for 18 bronze), you wouldn’t have been left with enough bronze keys at the end of an eight-day cycle to trade up to silver keys.

However, this afternoon, the Ultima Forever app brought something to my attention:

App notifications usually annoy me. This one did not.

Now, a couple of days ago, the game had indeed downloaded a small patch at launch; Mythic has architected Ultima Forever in such a way as to be able to push small tweaks and adjustments to it without having to go through the full App Store approval process. This update, however, was – despite the small number of megabytes likely needed to effect it – fairly significant. Behold the new daily rewards:

A significant boost!

Now, at the end of an eight day cycle, one will have collected a mere 11 bronze keys…but also 31 silver keys! Which, given the recent adjustments to repair costs in the game, make it significantly more viable as a free-to-play title, and also further alleviate the already-greatly-reduced pressure that in-game equipment repair costs put on players.

Well played, Mythic! Thou hast gained an eighth!