Wintershield sees a celebration of maps in the Realms, symbolizing our paths through the new year. As part of this year's tradition, the Champions have purchased a map from a Waterdeep street vendor. And then it started talking...

Wintershield 4 introduces Baeloth the Entertainer, Drow Sorcerer, and proprietor of The Black Pits. Wintershield also brings back Artemis Entreri, the Human Assassin who first appeared in RA Salvatore's 1988 novel The Crystal Shard, and Nerys Kathon, Human Cleric of Kelemvor, and Hero of Baldur's Gate. Players have until Monday, January 4th at 12PM Pacific to complete their Wintershield 4 unlocks and objectives.

For more information about Year 4 Events and how they work, please check out our Year 4 Events Dev Blog.

New Champion: Baeloth the Entertainer

Baeloth Barrityl is the master of The Black Pits, the combat arena he claims is 'the best show in all the realms'. Baeloth captures hapless adventurers to fight to the death all for the sake of entertainment! When he's not commanding the attention of anyone near him, he's doing whatever he can to reinforce that he's one of the top five spellcasters in all the realms.

Baeloth is a Gold Find and Support champion, lightening the pockets of his enemies as he kills them. Despite his alignment, Baeloth is quite the team player buffing and exuberantly encouraging his fellow Champions, delighting in their triumphs on the field, and providing a swift resurrection from his indentured servant, the Djinn Najimm! When you want to add Baeloth to your formation, you can swap him with Jarlaxle (Slot 4).

II. Baeloth's Stats

Race: Elf (Drow)	Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Class: Sorcerer	Gender: Male
Age: 222	Affiliation: none

STR: 12	DEX: 14	CON: 16
INT: 19	WIS: 12	CHA: 16

Role: Gold Find, Support
Eligible for Patrons: Vajra Safahr, Mirt the Moneylender, Strahd von Zarovich
Slot: 4, (Jarlaxle)

Baeloth's Abilities

Baeloth's design has three parts, his gold-find taking the entrance fee to the Black Pits, his buff as his excitement for his allies' success grows, and his swift rescue of teammates who have fallen. With Chain Lightning enemies Baeloth drop extra gold when killed, and if enemies are killed by a Champion in the row ahead of or behind him, he feeds on this excitement triggering Cause For Celebration, and they explode in a shower of magical confetti, damaging and slowing enemies near them. His excitement level grows as more and more death and destruction occur around him, which increases his buffs to nearby Champions through building stacks of Morbid Excitement.

Finally, since he's a team player, with Generous Djinn he has commanded Najim, his indentured Djinn to keep everyone alive, which means anyone who dies gets resurrected and protected for a short period of time.

For more information on Baeloth and his abilities, check out his Champion Spotlight!

Year Four Variants

• Watchful Eyes — Only Champions with INT and WIS scores of 11 or higher can be used. Baeloth starts in the formation but he can be moved or benched.
  Reach Area 75.


• Rat Problems — The streets of Waterdeep have been overrun by deadly giant rats from Avernus! All beast enemies in the adventure have been replaced by Abyssal Rats throughout the adventure. Additional Abyssal Rats spawn in each area. Abyssal Rats start out by dealing 100% additional damage, but each time an Abyssal Rat attacks a Champion, the damage of all Enemies increases by 10% (multiplicative).
  Reach Area 125.


• The More the Merrier! — Baeloth starts in the formation and cannot be moved. An Ogre, a Shambling Mound and a Fire Elemental walk into a tavern appear in each area, while they are alive, they each grant a unique buff to the enemies.
  • Ogre — Enemies can only be damaged by Champions with Magical or Ranged base attacks.
  • Shambling Mound — Enemies deal 100% additional damage.
  • Fire Elemental — Enemies move 100% faster.
    
  This adventure has unique dialogue.
  Reach Area 175.

For information on previous years' variants, check out the Wintershield 3 blog.

Are you not entertained?! Prime spellcaster and the proprietor of the Black Pits, the premier fighting pit of the Underdark, and co-host of Improvised Champions. Maybe you played one of the most acclaimed Dungeons & Dragons video games of all time and recruited Baeloth into your party? Baeloth Barrityl is delighted to meet your acquaintance and is keen to get the back up of the benched champions to build another brilliant Black Pits to keep their skills sharp and allowing him to charge a modest fee for the masses' entertainment!

If you'd like to learn more about Baeloth the Entertainer, read on...

I. Baeloth the Entertainer

Baeloth Barrityl is the master of The Black Pits, the combat arena he claims is 'the best show in all the realms'. Baeloth captures hapless adventurers to fight to the death all for the sake of entertainment! When he's not commanding the attention of anyone near him, he's doing whatever he can to reinforce that he's one of the top five spellcasters in all the realms.

Baeloth is a Gold Find and Support champion, lightening the pockets of his enemies as he kills them. Despite his alignment, Baeloth is quite the team player buffing and exuberantly encouraging his fellow Champions, delighting in their triumphs on the field, and providing a swift resurrection from his indentured servant, the Djinn Najimm! When you want to add Baeloth to your formation, you can swap him with Jarlaxle (Slot 4).

II. Baeloth's Stats

Race: Elf (Drow)	Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Class: Sorcerer	Gender: Male
Age: 222	Affiliation: none

STR: 12	DEX: 14	CON: 16
INT: 19	WIS: 12	CHA: 16

Role: Gold Find, Support
Eligible for Patrons: Vajra Safahr, Mirt the Moneylender, Strahd von Zarovich
Slot: 4, (Jarlaxle)

III. Baeloth's Design

The design of Baeloth was a fun conversation with Mark Meer, talented actor and co-host of our very own Improvised Champions, a play-by-play commentary of Idle Champions, airing Mondays at 1PM Pacific on our Twitch Channel.

Baeloth's design has three parts, his gold-find taking the entrance fee to the Black Pits, his buff as his excitement for his allies' success grows, and his swift rescue of teammates who have fallen. Enemies Baeloth damages with his Chain Lightning drop extra gold when killed, and if enemies are killed by a Champion in the row ahead of or behind him, he feeds on this excitement triggering Cause For Celebration, and they explode in a shower of magical confetti, damaging and slowing enemies near them. His excitement level grows as more and more death and destruction occur around him, which increases his buffs to nearby Champions through building stacks of Morbid Excitement.

Finally, since he's a team player, with Generous Djinn he has commanded Najim, his indentured Djinn to keep everyone alive, which means anyone who dies gets resurrected and protected for a short period of time.

IV. Baeloth's Abilities

Basic Attack

• Chain Lightning — Baeloth fires a bolt of lightning at a random enemy, which deals damage and arcs to another random enemy within a medium area of effect. Each time the lightning arcs it deals 20% less damage. Can arc up to 4 times total per attack, cannot arc to the same enemy twice.

Formation Abilities

• Paid Partially with Pain — Enemies affected by Baeloth's Chain Lightning drop 25% more gold when killed. Enemies can only be affected once.

• Cause For Celebration — Enemies killed by Champions in the column ahead of or behind Baeloth explode into magical paper confetti, dealing damage and slowing enemies near them by 50% for 10 seconds. The damage done ignores debuffs and is either half of the hit that killed them or one-quarter of their max health, whichever is higher. This effect can chain if the explosion kills an enemy, with the damage the chained explosions do being based on the damage from the previous explosion.

• Morbid Excitement — Baeloth is excited when the battle is going well. He buffs the Champions in the column in front of and behind him by 10% for each stack of excitement he has, stacking additively. He gains stacks in the following ways:
  • An enemy drops extra gold due to Paid Partially with Pain: +1 stack.
  • An enemy explodes in confetti due to Cause for Celebration: +2 stacks per explosion.
  • A chain reaction occurs due to Cause for Celebration: +3 stacks per chain-explosion.
  • A Champion in any column in front of Baeloth takes damage: +5 stacks per hit.
  • A Champion dies: +100 stacks.
  Stacks are reduced by 10% every 10 seconds. Max stacks start at 20 but can be increased with a specialization choice.

• Generous Djinn — Baeloth's Djinn servant, Najim, will bring any Champion that dies back to life at 1HP and make them immune to all damage for 20 seconds. For as long as the resurrected Champion lives, the party's damage is increased by 300%. This ability has a 60-second cooldown and if multiple resurrected Champions are alive the damage bonus stacks multiplicatively, with buffs applying to the post-stack value.

Specializations

• Baeloth's Birthday Party — The Morbid Excitement stack increases related to Cause For Celebration are doubled and the damage bonus of Morbid Excitement is increased by 100%./li>

• Over Excited — Increase the max stacks of Morbid Excitement by 200%.

• The Show Must Go On — Increase the duration of Generous Djinn's immunity by 10 seconds and increase the pre-stack damage bonus by 100% (to 600% per stack).

Ultimate Ability

• Now That's An Entrance — Najim streaks across the field, dealing massive damage to all enemies, pushing ones that survive back slightly, but more importantly increasing Baeloth's excitement stacks to max.

V. Baeloth's Legendary Equipment

Slot 1: Global DPS	Slot 2: Global DPS	Slot 3: Paid Partially with Pain
Slot 4: Morbid Excitement Damage	Slot 5: Morbid Excitement Stacks	Slot 6: Generous Djinn Post-stack Buffs

VI. Conclusion

What do you think about Baeloth? If you have feedback, let us know in a Community Q&A or Champion feedback post on the Idle Champions Subreddit, on the Steam forums, or on the Official Idle Champions Discord!