I noticed some change using the Speedy Smelters/Crafters artifact.
Previously it was enough to use the artifact when the smelting progress was near the end to instantly produce the alloy as the artifact would make it jump several percentages on the progressbar.
I'm not sure if it was a bug or a feature, but this was how it worked.
Well, not anymore.
Right now the progress percentage is not jumping when I enable or disable the artifact, just make the progress faster.
I guess this is the intended behavior, but I didn't read any info about this change on the changelog.
Is there anyone else who can confirm this change?

I noticed the same thing. Now I'm not sure I even want the Speedy Crafter card. Might use it to upgrade another card. Kind of a bummer, I liked the way that worked.

that's fishy

I didn't expect the ability to swap it in and immediately finish the craft to last forever.

To get the effect, it needs to be equipped before the craft starts and remain equipped until it finishes. If it's swapped out at any time, it has no effect for that craft. I suspect that this will eventually change and that the effect will be prorated based on how long it was equipped.

From mail with Fizzer from April 26 about a bug concerning this:

But now in today's update, you need to have the artifact equipped for the entire duration of the craft to get its benefit.

Right now the progress percentage is not jumping when I enable or disable the artifact, just make the progress faster.

To get the effect, it needs to be equipped before the craft starts and remain equipped until it finishes. If it's swapped out at any time, it has no effect for that craft.

But now in today's update, you need to have the artifact equipped for the entire duration of the craft to get its benefit.

Could we agree on one definition, because you are all saying something different.

нυвα suggests: The artifact effects all active smelts/crafts as long as it is equipped. If I equip it for a minute, I get a minute worth of speedup.
Master JZ suggests: The effect only triggers if a new smelting/crafting process starts and if I unequip the artifact while the process still runs, it would revert any already achieved speedups.
Fizzer's quote suggests: Well, I don't now for sure because you could interpret his sentence differently. It isn't crystal clear what exactly the update changed.

I have only an uncommon Speedy artifact lying around so I'm not sure if I can really see the effect myself. Just looking at the progress I could argue both ways, or in other words, the effect seems small enough that I don't really see a difference. Either way, comparing the Speedy artifacts with other passive artifacts, the definition I interpreted based on нυвα's post actually would be the fairest, because all of those passive artifacts that influence income of some sorts boost this income exactly for the time it was equipped. Smelting/Crafting wouldn't be any different in this regard.

If the update is that you need to have it equipped from before the start of the craft till after it finished the Value of the card has gone from a important one to almost useless for Active players! Pretty crappy that it is not a "prorated" application! Yes I do agree that say you have 15 minutes left on a 1 hour build it should not instantly finish the progress if you have card upgraded to 15%. If Prorated it would make the timer move %15 faster for those last 15 minutes saving you 2.2 minutes.
The reason this is a big deal for active players that use passive cards like me is I will be half way through crafting a item that takes 2 hours and finally get enough money to upgrade a army camp with my passive upgrade army camp card. well now I have to wait another hour to upgrade the army camp or lose all time invested in the crafting taking place. Or I can choose to leave card active and lose an hour of more troops I would be gaining. this totally changes my play style! which all the different types of cards were supposed to let people create there own play style. to me it makes no sense to force a passive card to be active the whole time instead of just prorating the "timer" while the passive card is "active in the slot....
This current update has basically turned a PASSIVE card into what is really an ACTIVE card since the card now has to be locked in for a set amount of time for the benefit... The army camp was only one example of the potential lost. other passive cards like hospital boost can't be switched to which means I don't save as many troops when attacking if I am "locked into my "passive" . I could go on but I think the 2 examples show the snowball effect of being locked into a "passive" card. it's like I now only have 2 card slots instead of 3. and when beating the last 25% of a map this makes astronomical difference's in the speed of completion of the map. Fizzer please please please update the card asap to be prorated!!!

Edited 5/2/2021 11:21:18

Please let me know if I didn't explain this new unnecessary predicament well enough. This was not just a Nerf or a Buff that gently pushes players to do things in a way that was always intended. This was a Game changing Style of Play changing event. which if not changed means alot of time and thought invested in which cards to keep and which to upgrade has been wasted... And for some players even money spent on buying cards also. All for no reason because to fix the bug of instant completion all that had to be done was a simple prorating effect. Passive cards should not need to be locked in especially when there percentage is so low to active cards. and the fact that it is a "passive" card...

This behaviour is consistent with general WZI mechanics tbh. If it worked differently to date, the free ride is over. It's Beta folks ... things are going to change. Sine invocation of game, Market Raid got a nerf, Fog Buster got a nerf, some of the Techs (notably the 200% cache bonus) got a nerf.

Passives having low % benefits is how this game rolls.

This was not just a Nerf or a Buff that gently pushes players to do things in a way that was always intended. This was a Game changing Style of Play changing event. which if not changed means a lot of time and thought invested in which cards to keep and which to upgrade has been wasted... And for some players even money spent on buying cards also.

Same for MR & FB ... some folks collected and/or bought them, and now they're worth less (reduced power in game) than they were before. And if you're buying Artifacts ... well ... it's a crap shoot out of the gate. You click an artifact level and get ?some random artifact?, so doesn't seem like a great way to get good artifacts unless you're doing it just to get the right level of fodder to upgrade something you already have.

There have been dozens of "Game changing Style of Play changing events" since WZI started (some good, some not so much). And there will likely be more.

Welcome to Beta! (;

Seriously though, you need to be careful before you use all those Artifact cards as fodder to upgrade to 5 Epics or 1 Legendary, b/c that same artifact could get nerfed next month. Or it might be buffed, but no one's going to complain about that ... but this is actually the case for Actives; and I contemplated using all my Actives as fodder for a long while, and did use some, actually, but now that they got a buff, some are useful again. So glad I didn't Fodder them all.

EDIT:
Just saw Fizzer's note below ... NICE. So stay tuned & see what changes in the next update!

Edited 5/3/2021 18:24:07

I am working on improvements to this for the next update.