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October 23rd, 2018
Idle Champion Spotlight - Donaar 
Posted in Idle Champions.

Today, we're going to go into detail on our newest Champion: Donaar Blit'zen, the Dragonborn Paladin.

Donaar will be available in our next Year Two Event, Liars' Night, which launches TOMORROW (October 24th)! I hope this blog will give you all you need to know about our latest champion. But don't forget that Liars' Night is also a chance to collect and gear up Krond, the Half-Orc Fighter who recently got a big balance upgrade. You can read more about Krond and his new abilities in last week's Champion Spotlight.

How you can unlock Donaar:

Donaar is unlocked by playing Liars' Night, a limited-time event launching on October 24th and running until November 5th. Once you unlock Donaar, he swaps with Celeste or Regis (Slot 2).

Donaar will be sharing Liars' Night with last year's Champion, Krond, the Half-Orc Eldritch Knight. Don't worry - you will be able to unlock both of them if you haven't already unlocked Krond!

Who is Donaar:

Donaar is a member of the Acquisitions Incorporated's "C" Team. He is played by Ryan Hartman and will be featured on the main stage at this weekend's Acquisions Incorporated Main Stage game at PAX Australia!

This copper, draconic gentleman claims to know more than one hundred different dragons. Chromatic, metallic—just tons and tons of dragons—I’m hoping we can leverage some of these connections in our dealings. None of the dragons I’ve contacted have gotten back to me, but they’re probably just very busy right now. This is one of the busiest times for dragons… or so I’ve been told by my new best friend, Donaar Blit’zen.


Donaar's Design:

As fans of The C-Team, we were super excited to start working with their crew. Their attention to detail and love of their characters was clear quite quickly. Ryan came to the table with a TON of background info on Donaar and really helped bring the braggadocious Dragonborn to life. It is our hope that we did him justice, and that you become as enamored with Donaar and the rest of his crew as we are!

It's easy to see Donaar and think: Tank, right? He's a gigantic armored Dragonborn! However, the more we learned about him, the more we knew that to love Donaar is to understand that he might not serve your party in the best possible way. He's going to do things his way, cause he's the decisionist! Because of Ryan's love of using command to hilarious effect, we decided to double down on Donaar just doing whatever he thinks is best for the party.

Base Attack - Command: Donaar may have an enormous sword at his disposal, but his go-to attack is using command to compel enemies to do whatever he wants. He targets a random enemy and deals a small amount of damage while commanding them to do one of 4 possible things:
  • Hold: The target is stunned for 3 seconds.
  • Flee: The target is pushed back and damage dealt to it is increase by 100% for 10 seconds.
  • Fear: The target now has a 50% chance to miss on any attack for the next 5 seconds.
  • Drop Your Stuff: The target drops 50% more gold when it dies.

Formation Ability: Aura of Vitality: Every second, Donaar heals the champion who has lost the most health (percentage-wise). They will regain health over the next 10 seconds. He's there when you need him!

Formation Ability: Lead By Example: Donaar increases the damage of Champions in his column and those in the columns behind him by 100%.

Donaar's Specializations:

With Donaar's specializations, we wanted to give you the choice on how Donaar doubles down on his commands. He'll either use "Ohhh Yeaaaaah!" to increase the effect or duration of the commands or use "Everybody Cooool Out!" to allow his commands to affect a small area around the target each time.

Donaar's Ultimate Attack:


One of the best parts of Donaar's story when Ryan was relaying it, was his description of Donaar's "breath" weapon. Instead of exhaling acid, he instead vomits it "like a cat hacking up a hairball". As soon as we heard that, we knew we had our ultimate. Our resident Art Director Adam Kosh brought Donaar's hairball-hacking breath weapon to life in epic fashion. Donaar will cleave through a few baddies with his comically large sword Toothbrush, and vomit an acid pool that will deal damage to enemies that walk through it.

If you're at PAX Australia this weekend (or know someone who is) check the showbook for a code to unlock Donaar's Yum-Yum Hut chef variant outfit!

Donaar's Equipment



Slot 1: Giant Sword
  • Donaar's giant sword, Toothbrush, increases the DPS of all champions.
Slot 2: Toothbrush
  • Donaar's actual toothbrush, a bejeweled toothbrush he calls Percival, will increase the DPS of all champions. Tooth decay is a real problem when you're constantly vomiting acid!
Slot 3: Yum-Yum Hut Menu
  • The menu for Donaar's diner increases the effect of Aura of Vitality.
Slot 4: Decisionst's Coin
  • Donaar's role in the C-Team is the decisionist. It means that his vote counts twice. In our game, the decisionist coin buffs Lead By Example.
Slot 5: Eggy
  • Donaar's goddaughter Eggy/Chronaar increases the damage of his ultimate attack.
Slot 6: Cape
  • Donaar's regal and totally epic cape decreases the cooldown of his ultimate attack.

What about any other Donaar Details I'm looking for?

Donaar is Chaotic Good, a member of the Acq Inc "C" Team, and his stats are as follows:
Str: 18 Dex: 8 Con: 14 Int: 10 Wis: 10 Cha: 16

TL/DR- Final Donaar Thoughts

Donaar is a goofy, braggadocious buffoon, and we love him as a support/healer. He uses his Command ability to deal random effects to random enemies because he's the decisionist, darn it! He buffs the damage of those in his column and behind him, making him a row 1 or row 2 stalwart. He also heals the Champions in the formation who have lost the most health, keeping them fighting longer. His ultimate attack will bring a tear to your eye, his eye, and anyone unlucky enough to walk through the mess it creates!

We'll be watching the discussion online and on discord to see how well she's received, so let us know what you think on Facebook, Twitter, or on the official Discord! If you are enjoying Farideh, consider checking out the C-Team broadcasts
October 17th, 2018
Idle Champion Spotlight - Krond Rebalance 
Posted in Idle Champions.

Krond was originally released during our first Liars' Night event in 2017. Initially, he was seen as a powerhouse thanks to his strong Ultimate. Unfortunately, an error in the calculations for the Ultimate happened to sneak through our QA pass, so we had to dial him back. It was all downhill for Krond from there. We don't normally like to "nerf" champions, but the bug presented us with a choice we had to make and so we toned down his power. Between that tweak and the design idea that we could split the power level of his cantrips between 3 equipment pieces, he was seen as a sub-par Champion for much of the past year.

As we started our TLC pass for Liars' Night, we had a discussion on if we should wait for a big rebalance pass, or use the coming event to give Krond some redemption. We decided to take some time to work on him now, bringing some newfound glory to our Half-Orc Fighter. These changes are live in the game as of the Grand Tour 6 update today, so everyone who has Krond can have a week to get used to him before he's available for everyone in Liars' Night Y2 starting next week!



We started by looking at Krond's slot, and how it has grown this year. Evelyn is a go-to tank in the meta, so a sub-par DPS just wasn't going to cut it. Additionally, Krond is a CNE-exclusive Champion, so we have a bit more leeway to make major changes to the character. Given that, we wanted to take a look at the champion from the ground up.

Survival of the Fittest

Knowing what is coming in the upcoming Tanking & Healing update allows us to do a bit of future design with nu-Krond. We started by creating a new Formation Ability titled Survival of the Fittest. Because everything in his design is tied to his specializations, we wanted to give him a "build around me" ability that might make you think about a different formation. We decided that Krond has been looked down on for so long that he's probably pretty cranky. He's missed out on a TON of adventures and he's ready to create his own crew. Survival of the Fittest was born from that idea: Krond's damage is increased 100% for each champion in the formation (multiplicative) who is Evil (Arkhan, Jarlaxle, and Makos at the moment), or has a Strength score of 16+ (Arkhan, Azaka, Barrowin, Binwin, Donaar, Jamilah, Krond, Minsc, Tyril, and Wulfgar). Eventually, this should allow Krond to create a new formation type, focusing on heavy hitters and evil Champions.

Ability Scores & Alignment

Given his new focus on strong and evil Champions, we imagined Krond benched from almost all adventures and quietly stewing and working out. We increased his Strength to 18, and tipped his alignment from Chaotic Neutral to Chaotic Evil. That's right. Nu-Krond isn't messing around!

Equipment

We wanted to break Krond's equipment away from the focus on his specializations. So we merged the 3 equipment items that each boosted a single cantrip power into one equipment item that boosts Krond's chosen cantrip. With the 2 extra equipment pieces we gained, we gave Krond another self DPS equipment item and an item that increases his bonus from Survival of the Fittest, pumping up his power level.


Base Attack

In balancing his damage, we decided to shave a half second off of his base attack cooldown, lowering his cooldown from 5.75 seconds to 5.25 seconds. We also doubled his base attack damage.

Cantrips

We buffed upgrades to Eldritch Strike to give Krond's follow-up attacks more of a kick, positioning Krond as a DPS who excels at longer drawn-out encounters. We also increased the damage modifier of Krond's Thunderclap and Fire Bolt cantrips, though his Shocking Grasp is still the best bang for your single-target buck, if that's your thing.


Ultimate

While Krond's original ultimate packed quite the punch, we had to dial it back in a major way shortly after he was released. We've fine-tuned his Arcane Charge for a better balance between over-powered and feather-tickling.


In the end, our entire focus was to pull Krond out of the DPS dead zone and get him in fighting shape. As we mentioned above, we're aware of some of the tanking & healing updates we'll be making, and we were able to take into account how much better new Arkhan is going to be. We're confident you'll be satisfied with nu-Krond's power level, and even happier when nu-Arkhan comes around in the coming weeks. We'll be watching the discussion online and on discord to see how well he's received, so let us know what you think on Facebook, Twitter, or on the official Discord!