Hey everybody! Justin Stocks, Lead Game Designer for Idle Champions back again with another Dev Blog during our Third Anniversary Celebration Third Anniversary Celebration . This time I want to talk about our next year of events in Idle Champions.



This week will mark the fourth time Highharvestide has come upon us. As we mentioned in our Dev Blog at the end of 2019, we've been planning some changes for Year 4 events for quite a while. While you will still be able to recruit and gear up three unique Champions during the event, including the brand new minotaur Champion Torogar Steelfist, our Year One Champion Stoki will no longer be available to recruit or gear up as part of the event.

We made this change for a number of reasons, but the primary one was to keep events of a fixed, manageable size moving forward. We wanted to avoid overwhelming new players with four (this year), five (next year), six (in Year 6 events), or more new Champions during each event, and the amount of effort required for year three events felt like a good spot to focus in on.



We understand that some players were looking forward to either recruiting or continuing to gear up their year one Champions during the events this year, and with that in mind, we've spent the past year making it easier than ever to recruit and gear up the Champions of your choice through the expanded Time Gate system and Patron chests. With Time Gates you can now pick a Champion from a full list, rather than just three random options, and the rewards have been improved with an additional gold chest and multiple silver chests. The Patron system offers an alternative method of gearing up event Champions via the Patron chests, which can contain gear for any Champions that meets the Patron's restrictions.

Moving forward players can expect us to, as always, monitor player feedback regarding these adjustments. We have already made some small changes based on community feedback, such as always offering at least one year one Champion during free weekend Time Gates.

We hope you enjoy Torogar and all of the other Champions coming your way in our Year 4 events. Thanks again for helping to make Idle Champions the great success it has been.

Feedback Wanted!

We know that this choice will not be popular with all players, but we always appreciate your feedback, so please let us know what you think in a Community Q&A or feedback post on the Idle Champions Subreddit, a post on the Steam forums, or on the Official Idle Champions Discord!

Hail Crusaders,

On Monday morning we were made aware of an issue affecting All Tier Easter Jeweled chests. From the launch of the event on Thursday until Monday at 11am PT, the All Tier Easter Jeweled chests did not have the ability to drop gear for the new Tier 5 Crusader Dr. Almquist. This issue was fixed shortly after we received the reports.

While the number of affected players was very very low, and many players who opened the chests would not have missed out on any contents at all, we feel that some compensation would be fair. Therefore, anyone who opened these chests during the time period they were bugged will receive additional free All Tier Easter Jeweled chests based on the number of these chests they opened (at a rate of 1 compensation chest for every 4 chests opened). Affected players will receive these chests the next time they reload the game or start a new objective.

We would like to extend our thanks to the players who reported this issue as soon as they noticed it.

Since July of last year we've had an item on our 'to-do list' that we've been pushing further and further back. First it was to make room in our development schedule for Feats, then came Patrons, followed by Patron Challenges & Advanced Effects Descriptions, Updated Time Gates, and Offline Progress.

It has been a busy 8 months! But we never forgot about finishing our balance update for our remaining Year One Champions, and today we're going to talk about the updates to those Champions coming with our v1.0 Launch / Spring Extravaganza Update tomorrow. This blog ended up being a bit of a longer one, so we've included a Table of Contents for you to browse.

Would you like to know more? Read on!

Table of Contents

• General Updates
• Ultimate Ability Change
• Level 'Soft Cap' Increase


• Champion Updates
• Deekin Scalesinger
• Gromma Nander
• Ishi Snaggletooth
• Dhadius the Scarlet
• Krond
• Hitch
• Birdsong
• Barrowin Undurr
• Strix Beestinger
• Azaka Stormfang

General Updates

As many players may be aware, Champions with debuff abilities are quite powerful in the current meta because they allow you to double-dip on their debuffs when you use ultimate attacks. Champions' base attacks take into account the debuff in their damage and thus that increased damage determines your BUD. When you use an ultimate attack it uses the BUD value for the damage and then applies the debuff again, allowing debuffs to double dip, something that regular formation buffs do not do. Unfortunately this is something that we feel needs to change, as it means that debuff Champions are simply too powerful compared to their non-debuffing counterparts. The biggest change in this patch is that debuffs will no longer apply to ultimate attacks. They will still apply to base attacks, and so still influence BUD just like normal formation abilities do, but ultimates will no longer double dip. This will not affect the BUD that players can obtain, but will affect the top area that players can grind to as ultimate damage may be drastically reduced. We will continue to monitor the results of this change over the coming days and weeks and take action to offset the lost progress if necessary.

Ultimate Damage Change

Ultimate attacks will no longer have their damage increased by debuffs on enemies. Affected abilities include, but may not be limited to: Minsc's "Go for the Eyes!" (ultimate debuff portion), Gromma's "Spiked Shell", Strix's "Poor Hygiene", Catti-brie's "Mark for Death", Donaar's "Command: Flee", Warden's "Hex", Aila's "Storm Soul/Storm Aura", Spurt's "Wa-speration: Skunky", Krull's "Plague: Pain", Minsc's "Favored Enemies", and Regis' "Ruby Weakness".

Level 'Soft Cap' Increase

New upgrades have been added for all Champions, increasing the soft cap to approximately e62/e63 gold.

Champion Updates

Deekin Scalesinger

Deekin's Story of Doom stacked a little differently from other support Champions so we tweaked how buffs apply to it to bring him more in line with the others. This necessitated a rebalance of all of his Story of Doom upgrades, so he should come out a little ahead of where he used to be with average gear levels. We also expanded his speed-up abilities through a new specialization choice and feat.

• Buffs to Story of Doom now apply to the post-stack value instead of the pre-stack value.
• Upgrades for Story of Doom have been rebalanced given the above change.
• The Epic Tale of Little Kobold specialization now increases the effect of "Story of Doom" by 100%, up from 50%.
• Added new specialization choice, Boss Wants Speed, which increases the effect of Confidence in the Boss by 100%.
• Added a new Feat to increase the effect of Confidence in the Boss.

Gromma Nander

No changes to Gromma this go-round as she was already tweaked somewhat recently in the Tanking Healing & Shielding Update and sees decent usage (though we will watch the effects of the ultimate damage change and tweak things accordingly).

Ishi Snaggletooth

We've shown Ishi a lot of love with boosts to her DPS and gold find. Some of her abilities that used to stack additively now stack multiplicatively, really rewarding you for building a non-human focused formation. We removed her two gold find-related specializations and replaced them with a single ability that boosts her gold find when she gets a killing blow. We've also updated her Friends to X specializations with new races, increasing her synergy possibilities.

• The Monsters Are People Too! ability now stacks multiplicatively instead of additively and we have increased the base stack size to 100%, up from 25%.
• Increased the base effect of Let's Find Some Treasure, however this ability continues to stack additively.
• The specializations Wait for it! and Clear 'em out! have been removed
• Upgrades for the above specialization have been removed.
• Added a new ability, Treasure Hunter, which increases the effect of Let's Find Some Treasure for 5 seconds after Ishi gets a killing blow.
• Added new races to the Friends to X specializations.
• The Friends to X specializations now stack multiplicatively.
• The gear in slot 2 which increased Global DPS now increases Ishi's DPS.
• Ishi's self DPS upgrades have been redistributed.

Dhadius the Scarlet

Dhadius got both some DPS and Support tweaks. A properly utilized Dhadius should excel at buffing high intellect, magic using Champions, with even his buffs now varying over time based on his trademark Practice Makes Perfect ability.

• Added a new ability, Together In Magic, which increases the effect of Skill Empowerment on Champions with a magic base attack.
• The Empowered Orbs specialization now also increases Dhadius' damage by 400%.
• The Empowered Empowerment specialization now also increases the effect of Skill Empowerment by 50% for each stack of Practice Makes Perfect that is active.
• The Chromatic Specialist upgrade no longer requires the Empowered Orbs specialization, so Dhadius will now more often cast the same elemental orbs in a row regardless of specialization choice.
• Dhadius' self DPS upgrades have been rebalanced.

Krond

Krond was already a pretty powerful evil damage dealer, thanks to his earlier rebalance when his event re-ran again in year 2 and the addition of more strong or evil Champions over the past year. We've made some small tweaks, but nothing major.

• Updated the advanced effect display of Survival of the Fittest to reflect that upgrades and equipment apply to the pre-stack multiplier value (a rare occurrence in the current meta).
• Updated the Cantrip: Shocking Grasp specialization to also stun the affected target for 3 seconds.
• Reduced the damage multiplier of the individual Cantrip: Fire Bolt fire bolts so that Cantrip: Shocking Grasp may be a superior choice vs. individual enemies.

Hitch

As the least-recently created Champion in the rebalance, Hitch needed quite a bit of love. While his Friendly ability was invaluable in the meta in the past he has fallen out of favor more recently. With that in mind we've completely redone his dagger throwing ability and added some big buffing power there that ramps up in certain situations. Since we want this new Hitch to focus on buffing others, we've removed his DPS tag and reorganized some of his equipment buffs and feats in order to emphasize his support role.

• Renamed Friendly to Natural Performer.
• Added a new ability, Ricochet, which gives Hitch's thrown daggers a chance to bounce off of their target and hit another target. Each time they do Hitch increases the effect of the "Natural Performer" ability. This effect can stack with each ricochet and the stacks degrade naturally over time. Due to years of intense practice (and some DM hand-waving), daggers can ricochet off of an enemy and then strike the same enemy again. There are buffs to this ability that increase both its ricochet chance and the bonus it provides.
• Replaced Hitch's self DPS feats with ones that increase the damage bonus from Ricochet.
• Added a new Feat that increases the odds of the Ricochet ability proc'ing.
• Added a new epic Feat that increases the number of daggers thrown.
• Removed many upgrades that increase the number of daggers thrown.
• Removed DPS tag.
• Changed the effect of Hitch's slot 1 and slot 2 equipment (to Buff Ricochet Damage Bonus and Global DPS respectively).

Birdsong

Birdsong is one of my personal favorite Champions, so I wanted to make sure that we addressed some of her long-standing issues in this update. The main issue she has is that while she's a decent buffer, her Song of Victory stacks are very difficult to consistently keep up, especially if she's not also your main damage dealer. To fix this we've added new specialization choices that add a secondary trigger for Tempo of Victory, each tuned with a certain situation in mind. Now even if Birdsong isn't your primary damage dealer she can keep her song-based-buff going long and loud. We've also given her upgrades some love to make sure she can stand tall as either a primary DPS option or a powerful support Champion.

• Individual stacks of Tempo of Victory are now multiplicative with each other instead of additive, and buffs to this ability apply to the post-stack multiplier.
• Added a new set of specializations:
• The new Soloist specialization increases Birdsong's damage by 400% and increases the base cooldown of Tempo of Victory stacks to 60 seconds.
• The new Concertino specialization causes Tempo of Victory stacks to also be triggered when any Champion affected by Song of Battle (including Birdsong) gets a kill. Stacks triggered in this way last for at least 10 seconds.
• The new Crescendo specialization causes Tempo of Victory stacks to also be triggered when any Champion affected by Song of Battle (including Birdsong) attacks a boss enemy. Stacks triggered in this way last for at least 5 seconds.
• None of these specializations affect the fact that Birdsong getting a kill will continue to trigger a stack of Tempo of Victory that lasts for at least 15 seconds.
• Added a new feat that buffs Tempo of Victory.
• Birdsong's slot 2 gear now buffs Tempo of Victory.
• Birdsong's upgrades have been rebalanced to increase both her buffing ability and her self damage, including new buffs for Song of Battle and global damage.

Barrowin Undurr

As one of our earliest "OP" champions, Barrowin's power has waned over time as we've tried one thing or another to fix her. She also suffers from being in the same slot as some powerhouse Champions that see a lot more use than she does. We've decided to double down on the niche that we want Barrowin to fill: the best support in the game for Champions that attack very very slowly. We've completely redesigned her Blessed Hammer ability in a way that directly emphasizes this core design, and given her a number of other small buffs as well.

• Barrowin's Blessed Hammer ability now statically buffs adjacent Champions based on the differential between her attack speed as theirs, causing Champions with slower attacks to receive a much larger buff.
• Barrowin's Healing Word ability will now buff Tank Champions in the column in front of her by half its normal amount.
• Barrowin's Even Temper ability will now trigger whenever any ally that is eligible for Healing Word is attacked (Champions in the same column or Tank Champions in the column ahead of her).
• Barrowin's ultimate now increases her attack speed by 2 seconds for 15 seconds following its use.
• Barrowin's base attack speed has been adjusted.
• Added a new Feat that reduces Barrowin's base attack speed.
• Rebalanced all buffs to Blessed Hammer.

Strix Beestinger

We expanded upon Strix's "Haunted" ability in order to increase her buffing ability in certain situations. If your team is having trouble defeating a boss, why not turn all those wipes into a good thing?

• Strix's Haunted ability will now persist its stacks through area changes, and can add multiple stacks for the same Champion if they are killed multiple times during an adventure.
• Strix's existing specializations have been completely removed and replaced with three new options.
• Added Anxious Fireballs specialization which increases Strix's base attack cooldown by 2 seconds and her damage by 300%.
• Added Echoes of the Past specialization which increases the effect of Haunted by 200%.
• Added Smelly Lunch specialization which increases the effect of Poor Hygiene by 100%.
• Updated Strix's upgrades (for Haunted, Poor Hygiene, Global DPS, and Self DPS).

Azaka Stormfang

No changes to Azaka at this time. We were hesitant to do too much too quickly; the ultimate changes will be a big adjustment in this update, and we wanted to hold off on changing players' other major farming technique at the same time.


These changes will go live as part of the v1.0 Launch / Spring Extravaganza Update. As always, we look forward to your feedback: let us know in a Community Q&A or feedback post on the Idle Champions Subreddit, on the Steam forums, or on the Official Idle Champions Discord!

We’re very excited to announce that our Spring Extravaganza brings a much requested quality of life feature - more Formation Saves!

For a while now, we received requests to expand the ability to save formations from our current three save slots to reflect the changes in formations needed over the course of a run, and also allow for more flexibility to try new formation combinations.

That’s why we’ve increased the number of formations you can save from 3 to 50.

Formation Saves FAQ

• Favorite Formations — The three side buttons remain, but are now ‘Favorite’ slots.
• More Formation Saves — Creating a new saved formation prompts a new dialog box where you can scroll through all 50 of your formation saves. From here you can load, overwrite, delete or favorite individual saves.
• Name your Formations — Saving a new formation will prompt you to name it, and you can rename one by tapping the little pencil icon on existing saved formations.
• Unlock and place — If you load a formation but you do not have all the champions unlocked, as you unlock them the game will attempt to place them in the correct slot (may be blocked by carts or other accompanying obstacles).
• Familiars — Familiar Saves remain unchanged. When saving a formation, all familiars assigned will be saved in the slot they are assigned to.

Feedback

As always, if you have feedback or questions, please do not hesitate to reach out on the Idle Champions Subreddit, Steam forum, or the Idle Champions Discord!

This morning we were working so hard to wrap up everything related to Grand Revel and trying to make sure that we could simultaneously activate Offline Progress for players with the latest update, and we forgot one key, crucial, important thing: an Offline Progress Dev Blog!

Our deepest apologies. Would you like to know more about how this latest system introduced to Idle Champions works? Read on...

Offline Progress FAQ

This week's update (v284) introduced the Grand Revel event along with another major feature, Offline Progress, for all players. This system simulates the time you spend offline; the idea is that Offline Progress will simulate similar behavior to if you had left your game unattended for the same period of time. Specifically, Offline Progress allows:

• Area Progression — While offline, your Formation will continue to progress at approximately one area per minute, assuming they could make that progress while online. This is based on players' average area completion time. This may be considered a bit slow for early areas, but works out when comparing to areas closer to your wall. If the enemies are able to kill your champions, progress stops in that area.
  
  Note: progress may be slower if your Champions are not able to kill enemies at the expected rate during simulation.

• Boss Loot Drops — Bosses drop exactly the same loot if killed during Offline Progress as they would if they were beaten with the game open and running. A total number of event tokens, chests, and gems earned in this way will be displayed when you log back in.

• Champion Leveling — If you are using Familiars to level up your Champions, they will continue to level your Champions while you are offline.
  
  Note: this will stop at Specializations, so you will want to level up your Champions and unlock your preferred Specializations before going offline.

• Challenge Progress — Progress in active challenges is simulated during offline progress whether for a special event or Patron Challenge.

• Farming Support — "Zorbu Farming" is simulated during Offline Progress, whether you stay in a single area or if you progress through multiple areas. An approximation of monster type kills is added to your progress. Other types of "farming" may not work as expected.

Thank You to our Beta Testers

We've been working on this feature since November 2019 and are excited to see it go live earlier today. We'd like to give a huge thanks to our Beta Testers who helped us through this process:

• Gaarawarr
• inmediasrays
• Jadisero
• KLED
• Mars
• Pokota
• Psylisa
• QuickMythril
• Ronin
• Sorce
• Thunder
• zeke640

Feedback

We will be keeping an eye on how Offline Progress performs now that it is live across all platforms. As always, if you have feedback or questions, please do not hesitate to reach out on the Idle Champions Subreddit, Steam forum, or the Idle Champions Discord!

It's been a long time coming, but it's finally here: the Tanking, Healing, and Offline Gold Update!

Many of these changes were discussed during Monday's Tanking & Healing Dev Blog. However, there are far more details below for anyone interested in digging in!

Note: the full list of changes is included in the in-game Change Log.

I. Features

• This update includes major changes to champion health, healing amounts, and monster damage. See the balance changes section for more details.


• Added new upgrades for all champions up to approximately e49 gold spent.


• The front-end now checks for invalid/no longer valid upgrades when loading champion data from the server. It will also purchase all unbought upgrades up to your champions' current level on load. This is to ensure that all new/changed upgrades are immediately available and to fix an edge case where you could miss out on upgrades by switching to the gamepad UI without having purchased earlier ones.


• Shield amounts are now shown on the character sheet.


• Shift clicking the area selector's left arrow goes to the first 5 areas. Shift clicking the area selector's right arrow goes to the highest unlocked area.


• Gamepad UI has been massively improved (Still in BETA)


• Hotkey F to show familiar slots. Clicking a slot with F held will assign an available familiar to that slot. Clicking the familiar button with F held will unassign all familiars. (Steam only)

II. Balance Changes

• Monsters in all campaigns now only increase their damage when the adventure story resets (eg. in areas 51, 101, 151, etc.); Monster damage is increased by 75% at each of these breakpoints.


• Champions' base health values have been completely rebalanced. Champions have been divided into four general categories: squishy, tanky non-tank, general tank, and durable tank. The Champion's category, plus the champions' con score, armor class, and bench slot, now determine each Champions' base health.


• Squishies (no bonus): Asharra, Azaka, Birdsong, Calliope, Catti-brie, Celeste, Deekin, Delina, Dhadius, Diath, Drizzt, Farideh, Hitch, Ishi, Jarlaxle, Makos, Minsc, Nrakk, Regis, Stoki, Strix, Vlahnya, Zorbu.


• Tanky Non-Tanks (~x2 base health): Barrowin, Binwin, Bruenor, Donaar, Jamilah, Krond, Wulfgar.


• General Tanks (~x3 base health): Evelyn, Nayeli, Arkhan.


• Durable Tanks (~x4 base health): Gromma, Tyril.


• Champions' health no longer increases as you level them up, only from upgrades, formation abilities, or other buffs.


• We've created a new outgoing Global DPS/Formation Ability curve that maps total gold spent on a hero to their relative Global/FA buff amounts. We've applied this curve to the Champions that have been rebalanced in this update, and will apply it to all other Champions in a future balance pass. In general this will result in a decent increase to the buffing ability of Champions in later seats and a small nerf to the buffing ability of Champions in earlier seats.


• Champions will now get an "overwhelmed" debuff when more than 15 enemies are attacking them (using the same definition of "attacking them" as other effects). The debuff causes them to take 10% more damage from monsters for each enemy attacking them above 15 (10% at 16 attackers, 100% at 25 attackers, 200% at 35 attackers, 250% at 40 attackers, 850% at 100 attackers, etc.). Some champions have abilities that increase the starting point or decrease the debuff. This debuff shows up as a FA icon on champions who are being overwhelmed.


• We've updated the formula that calculates your party DPS to be much more accurate, taking into effect things like Minsc's favored enemy, Barrowin's hammers, and Regis' damage type bonuses. This has resulted in ultimate abilities getting a healthy damage boost.


• Additional, as a result of the party DPS formula changes, offline gold, gold found in silver chests, gold from distractions, and gold from bounty contracts should now be more in line with gold earned while actively playing.


• Monsters and bosses now enrage slower and ramp up their damage bonus slower; effects that increase based on # of monsters attacking also ramp up along with enrage bonuses.


• We've done a pass through several adventures looking for monsters that are broken/OP/UP under the new champion health values. We may have missed some, so let us know if something seems unfair or underpowered!


• The Chained Up Ogre now attacks from slightly further away and does 40% more damage than other bosses.


• Monsters that attack with Fireball do 20% more damage than other monsters.


• Monsters that attack from range now do damage that is more comparable with melee monsters.


• Reduced the damage of the Lich and Father Kendra bosses.


• The Stone Juggernaut now attacks from further away and does less damage.

III. Champion Updates

You'll find the full list of Champion updates for this patch below. We are very excited to hear what you think of these changes! Feel free to jump onto the Idle Champions Subreddit, Steam forum, or the Idle Champions Discord and give us your feedback.

Celeste

Not much change to Celeste. We reworked her healing numbers to match the new tanking/healing curves and reduced the difference in healing/buffing between her two specializations so they can both be used depending on whether you need just a bit more damage or just a bit more healing (this brings her general design closer to more recent heroes, whose specializations have a smaller impact on their overall power).

• Mass Cure Wounds base healing amount reduced from 10 to 3 (6 with the Life Domain specialization; improved by gear -- see below).


• Reduced the base values of Celeste's healing loot from 25/87.5/150/275% to 10/30/50/100%.


• Reworked all of Celeste's upgrades that improved Mass Cure Wounds. Removed about 20 and re-positioned the remaining 6 among her levels up to 950.


• All upgrades to Crusader's Mantle no longer require the War Domain specialization, meaning that between the two specs Crusader's Mantle's total value is much closer (just x2 from Life Domain to War Domain).


• Removed some of the global DPS upgrades that were associated with Life Domain and overlapped with War Domain spec upgrades.


• Celeste's healing achievement now requires only 20e6 health healed, down from 1e9, but it now only tracks effective healing and not wasted healing. The achievement has been reset for all players, but those of you who completed the old achievement will find it in the Legacy Achievements category.

Nayeli

We're pretty happy with how Nayeli works as a tank. We simply reworked her health to match the new tanking/healing curve and reduced the difference in buffing/tanking between her two specializations so they can both be used depending on whether you need Nayeli to buff a bit more or take a few more hits before dying (this brings her general design closer to more recent heroes, whose specializations have a smaller impact on their overall power). We also added a new tank-specific formation ability to Nayeli to help her protect the group against AOE damage in later areas.

• Oath of Devotion now increases Nayeli's health by 70, down from 300,000; it also moves her from a low end General Tank to a Durable Tank, providing at least 50% more health on average with her subsequent health increases.


• Replaced all health increasing upgrades and moved them around. There are now less health upgrades and they increase Nayeli's health by less. Nayeli also now receives health upgrades regardless of her spec, however she receives smaller upgrades with Oath of Vengeance compared to Oath of Devotion.


• All of the upgrades to Aura of Courage no longer require the Oath of Vengeance specialization, meaning that between the two specs Aura of Courage's total value is much closer (just x2 from Oath of Devotion to Oath of Vengeance).


• We have removed Nayeli's taunt upgrade. We like the general idea of the taunt and may add it back in a future balance update.


• Reduced the base values of Nayeli's health increasing gear from 25/87.5/150/275% to 10/30/50/100%.


• Nayeli's attack cooldown has been reduced to 6.7 seconds from 8 seconds.


• Nayeli's STR and CON stats have both been improved to 16 (from 15 and 13 respectively).


• Reduced the effect of Nayeli's level 55 global DPS upgrade from 200% to 100%, but added a completely new 100% global DPS upgrade at level 550 to compensate. Overall this bring's Nayeli's buffing ability in line with other support champions.


• Aura of Protection now also stacks when enemies or bosses begin to enrage. It counts each enrage increase as one additional attacking enemy.


• Added an upgrade at level 280 with Oath of Devotion spec that increases the max health of all other Champions in the formation by a 25% of Nayeli's max health. This includes other tanks (4 tanks in formation ~= tank-health level squishies and double-health tanks).


• Nayeli's tanking achievement now only requires 40e6 damage taken, down from 1e12. The achievement has been reset for all players, but those of you who completed the old achievement will find it in the Legacy Achievements category.

Calliope

Calliope's shields are quite powerful at delaying the death of tanks, especially under the new tanking/healing curves. As such, when a Champion is shielded by Calliope there is now a 15 second cooldown before they can be affected by her shield again. Calliope's ultimate overrides this limitation, and the shields still last until they are broken. College of Lore, instead of increasing the amount of her shields, now decreases the new cooldown by 5 seconds to 10 seconds total, meaning you can shield more often. The difference in subsequent upgrades between College of Valor and College of Lore has been removed, so that the two specializations are simply a choice between more frequent shields or slightly higher Bardic Inspiration buffs (this brings her general design closer to more recent heroes, whose specializations have a smaller impact on their overall power). Calliope emerges as a decent death delayer, and one of the few healer-types who can protect the majority of the formation from incidental damage.

• Song of Protection base value is now 100, down from 250.


• Replaced all upgrades to Song of Protection and moved them around. There are now far less upgrades and they all increase Song of Protection by much less. Removed approximately 18 upgrades and the remaining 6 have been distributed among Calliope's levels up to 1030.


• All upgrades that previous only unlocked if you chose the College of Valor specialization now unlock under College of Lore as well. Two upgrades that you previously only got under College of Lore have been removed.


• Calliope's "bracers" loot items (increase Song of Protection amount) have had their base values reduced from 25/87.5/150/275% to 10/30/50/100%.


• Fixed a bug where Song of the Protection's base value was being doubled when applied via her ultimate.


• Calliope's "bag" loot items now increases her ultimate damage, instead of further increasing the Song of Protection amount.


• Calliope's shield now has a 15 second cooldown before it can be applied to the same Champion again. She tries to cast it every 1 second.


• Calliope's College of Lore specialization now decreases the cooldown of Calliope's shield by 5 seconds (to 10 seconds total).


• Calliope's shielding achievement now only requires 60e6 damage shielded, down from 1e27. The achievement has been reset for all players, but those of you who completed the old achievement (hah! not likely!) will find it in the Legacy Achievements category.

Tyril

Tyril's original Wild Shape design had him creating big damage shields for himself with his ultimate, allowing him to survive much longer than he otherwise would have. This design has been refined in the rework. His ultimate attack now does AOE damage, and the shield it generates is a percentage of his max health times the number of enemies he hit, with bonuses for enemies killed. Time his ultimate correctly and he can create a shield that will allow him to tank for an extended period of time. We've of course adjusted his health increases to match the new tanking/healing curve, though he'll only gain tank-level health in Wild Shape spec. Tyril is essentially two completely different champions, depending on the spec you pick, so we've thrown some love at his Moonbeam spec as well and changed the way Moonbeam scales based on adjacent Champions. Moonbeam also has more, larger upgrades, making Tyril more competitive with Barrowin in more situations. His Moonbeam spec heal has also been rebalanced to match the new tanking/healing curves. Finally, Tyril's new "Forces of Good" ability ramps up the damage of your "Good" champions when he's under attack or the enemies are enraging.

• Wild Shape now increases Tyril's health by 265 (down from millions).


• Wild Resistance now only decreases damage taken by 10 (down from millions). It cannot reduce damage below 25% of the initial damage (up from 5%).


• Upgrades that affected Tyril's max health (Wild Shape only), Druidic Healing (Moonbeam only), and Wild Resilience (Wild Shape only) amounts have been rebalanced to the new tanking/healing curve. Approximately 24 upgrades were removed, and the other 13 were redistributed and rebalanced.


• Tyril's base attack cooldown in human form has been lowered to 4.7 seconds. It remains at 6.2 seconds in bear form.


• Increased Tyril's first global dps upgrade to give him an early game boost, added another 100% global dps upgrade at level 1000, and added and boosted several other upgrades for Moonbeam; Tyril's buffing ability now matches that of other buffers based on his total invested gold.


• Tyril's Wild Shape increases his "overwhelmed" starting point to 25.


• Moonbeam is now reduced by 0% for having 1 adjacent champion, 10% for 2 adjacents, 40% for 3 adjacents, 70% for 4 adjacents, and 90% for 5 or more adjacents.


• Tyril's ultimate attack with his Wild Shape spec (Shielding Bite) now does AOE damage in a small radius. After his attack, he creates a shield that is his max health times the number of enemies hit. Enemies that were killed by the attack count for triple. So for example, if his bite hits 10 enemies but only kills 2, he gains a shield that is his max health x14 (8x1 + 2x3). Note this shield still degrades by 1% of its original value per second, meaning that it expires after 100 seconds at the latest. The shield continues to degrade even if Tyril is benched, but doesn't degrade while changing areas/watching cinematics. If you use his ultimate again before the previous ultimate shield expires, the new shield overrides the previous shield completely, unless it would generate a smaller shield than what Tyril has remaining from the old one.


• Tyril's "Shielding Fury" achievement has been restructured. Now requires Tyril to create a shield greater than 50x his max health. The achievement has been reset for all players, but those of you who completed the old achievement will find it in the Legacy Achievements category.


• Tyril's equipment has been adjusted. Slot 1 has been changed from Self DPS loot into max health increasing loot (10/30/50/100). Slot 2 has been changed from Self DPS loot to Global DPS loot. Slot 4 has been changed from Buff Moonbeam/Wild Shape to Buff Moonbeam/Wild Inspiration (both formation buffs). Slots 3, 5, and 6 are unchanged in this balance pass.


• Added a new buff that unlocks if you choose the Wild Shape specialization. "Wild Inspiration" increases the damage of all Champions within 2 slots of Tyril by X%. It is much less of a buff than a well-placed Moonbeam, but still enough to make Tyril a decent buffer while tanking, assuming you can lay out your formation correctly. Various upgrades have been added to Tyril's upgrade tree to buff this ability.


• Added a new formation ability called "Forces of Good" that increases the damage of all "Good" champions in the formation for each enemy attacking Tyril (and/or each boss/monster enrage stack active). This FA is only available when you choose Tyril's Wild Shape spec.


• Added an upgrade to Tyril's Wild Shape spec that increases the max health of all other Champions in the formation by a 25% of Tyril's max health. This includes other tanks (4 tanks in formation ~= tank-health level squishies and double-health tanks).

Arkhan

We wanted to use this opportunity to completely redesign Arkhan, morphing him into the bad-ass group-leading force of nature that he is in his tabletop appearances, and always was intended to be in our game. To that end, we've redesigned him with the idea of a "Tank DPS" in mind. We've removed nearly all of his existing abilities ("First in Line", "Loyalty", "Chango Unchained", "Chango Restrained") and replaced them with new ones. With "Rage of the Dragonborn," Arkhan's damage ramps up drastically when more enemies are attacking him by changing his attack to hit more and more enemies -- for example, Flame Breath becomes his basic attack when 16 or more enemies are targeting him! Through his brand new specializations, Arkhan's damage is increased in ways that no other Champions' are. "Bulk Up" increases the effect of formation abilities that target him, and "Usurped Power" causes positional formation abilities that target champions adjacent to Arkhan to *also* target him, regardless of their normal restrictions. A new formation ability called "Rising Anger" increases the damage of evil champions when Arkhan is under attack (go go Krond!). Finally, we've adjusted Arkhan's gear to better suit his new build, including giving him the game's very first Gold Find loot item. We hope that with these changes, Arkhan could conceivably be used to build some very interesting formations.

• Arkhan's level cost curve has been reduced from 68% per level to 28% per level. This gives us more levels to work with for the same gold cost.


• Removed the First in Line and Loyalty formation abilities/upgrades, along with the Chango Unchained/Restrained specializations. Also removed Arkhan's gold increasing upgrades (but don't worry, his new equipment more than makes up for it).


• Reworked Arkhan's health increasing upgrades to match the new tanking/healing curves. Also added some additional upgrades that increase Arkhan's health at higher levels. These increases are all independent of your specialization choice, so Arkhan is always super tanky.


• Arkhan's "overwhelmed" starting point is 25, instead of 15.


• Added an upgrade to Arkhan's tank spec that increases the max health of all other Champions in the formation by a 25% of Arkhan's max health. This includes other tanks (4 tanks in formation ~= tank-health level squishies and double-health tanks).


• Added a new upgrade called "Rage of the Dragonborn". When Arkhan attacks, his attack is based on how many enemies are currently attacking him. With 0-5 enemies attacking, he does his normal single target swing. With 6-15 enemies attacking, he does a small cleave with each attack, and his attack damage modifier is increased (5x modifier). With 16+ enemies attacking, he does a massively damaging flame breath attack (20x modifier).


• Rage of the Dragonborn also stacks when enemies or bosses begin to enrage. It counts each enrage increase as one additional attacking enemy.


• Arkhan's specializations have been completely reworked. You now choose between the following specs: "Bulk Up: All formation buffs Arkhan receives are increased by X% if he's in the front column of the formation" or "Usurped Power: When in the front column of the formation Arkhan now receives any positional formation buffs that are received by those adjacent to him at X% efficiency, even if he doesn't meet the positional requirements. (Doesn't apply the same FA twice if he already gets it)."


• Arkhan's Flame Breath ultimate attack has been removed; he now unlocks Chango Unchained regardless of specialization.


• Arkhan's personal achievement now requires that he attack with Flame Breath 10,000 times. Since his ultimate has changed, this means he must attack with Rage of the Dragonborn while tanking 16+ enemies X times in order to earn the achievement. The achievement has been reset for all players, but those of you who completed the old achievement will find it in the Legacy Achievements category.


• Added a new formation ability called "Rising Anger" that increases the damage of all "Evil" champions in the formation for each enemy attacking Arkhan (and/or each boss/monster enrage stack active). This FA is available in all specs.


• We've made some changes to Arkhan's loot to match his new build. His Global DPS item in slot two is now Self DPS. His third slot item now increases global gold find instead of the defunct First in Line FA, and his fourth item increases the effectiveness of his specializations.

Gromma

We like the *idea* of Gromma, she just needed some tweaking to get her numbers right. With her tough tortle shell, she's tanky no matter which spec you pick, so she can fulfill the role of front-line support if the adventure or variant calls for it. We've pumped up her Grandmotherly Love ability to the extreme, so if your DPS is on the young-end of the spectrum, she's definitely worth considering for a buffing slot in your formation. We've also looked at each of her specializations and made some tweaks to each, focusing on her Tanking, Support, and DPS ability for Circle of the Mountain, Arctic, and Swamp respectively. Her tanking kit has been redesigned, with a completely new "Spiked Shell" mechanic, as well as other new formation abilities for buffing the party's health and the damage of neutral champions while Gromma is under attack. We also threw a new formation ability into her Circle of the Swamp spec so that she can benefit from a portion of her Grandmotherly Love ability.

• Added numerous upgrades to Grandmotherly Love and Global DPS, bringing Gromma's buffing ability up out of the doghouse and into a respectable range.


• Removed a number of the odd discrepancies in Gromma's upgrade tree that were based on her specialization. Aside from buffs to her specialization-specific abilities, her upgrades should be more uniform across her three specs.


• Added health increasing upgrades to Gromma to match the new healing/tanking curve. These upgrades exist independent of her tanking specialization.


• Gromma's outgoing global and formation buffs have been matched to a new target curve. Other champions will be adjusted to this new curve during a future balance pass.


• Gromma's base attack cooldown increased to 6.9 seconds from 4.6 seconds. If you specialize Circle of the Swap her Melf's Acid Arrow attack has the original 4.6 second cooldown with a +50% dps modifier so that the attack damage remains the same.


• Added an upgrade to Gromma's tank spec that increases the max health of all other Champions in the formation by a 25% of Gromma's max health. This includes other tanks (4 tanks in formation ~= tank-health level squishies and double-health tanks).


• Gromma's Hardened Shell upgrade now decreases the effect of the "overwhelmed" debuff system by 25%.


• The Spiked Shell upgrade (Circle of the Mountain spec 2nd ability) has been reworked. Now instead of taking a percentage of Gromma's damage, enemies that attack Gromma are debuffed by a "Pierced Armor" effect. This effect can stack up to 25 times, and by default causes enemies to take 100% more damage per stack (stacking additively). This makes enemies squishier and squishier the more then attack Gromma, making them easier for your other Champions to defeat.


• Freezing breath (Circle of the Arctic spec 2nd ability) has been substantially buffed. The base effect now increases damage monsters affected by Sleet Storm take by 400%, up from 25%. Further upgrades to this ability ramp up the bonus damage even more.


• Acid Splash (Circle of the Swamp spec 2nd ability) has been buffed from 25% to 100%. Buffs to it have been removed.


• Gromma's Circle of the Swamp specialization will receive additional dps buffs compared to her other spec, making it a viable DPS spec in the right circumstances. If you choose this specialization, Gromma will also learn a new FA called "Love Thyself" that increases her damage by 75% of her maximum Grandmotherly Love buff.


• Added a new formation ability called "Shades of Gray" that increases the damage of all "Neutral" champions (lawful, true, and chaotic; doesn't include neutral good or neutral evil) in the formation for each enemy attacking Gromma (and/or each boss/monster enrage stack active). This FA is only available when you choose Gromma's Circle of the Mountain spec.

Barrowin

Barrowin's reign of terror over other buffing champions is finally over. It was good while it lasted, but if you live by the hammer, you die by the hammer, and the nerf hammer has brought Barrowin's buffing ability back in line with other Champions. Blessed Hammer has had the way hammers stack adjusted. Instead of stacking multiplicatively with each other, each additional hammer provides a flat multiplier to the blessing: 1x for 1 hammer, 3x for 2 hammers, 7x for 3 hammers, and 15x for 4 hammers. This still provides for a 230,000%+ buff with 4 hammers at max level and with decent gear, but it's a far cry from the game breaking 1e15% buffs that the ability was providing before. To make up for the nerf, Barrowin's attack speed has been slightly lowered, increasing your chance to get an extra hammer stack once in a while, but in general her ability to buff has been brought more in line with other Champions in her seat. With her increased survivability when she's in the tank link, Barrowin is an excellent healing choice for formations with multiple front-line slots and a cluttered 2nd column. Her ultimate has also been redesigned to give your formation a quick boost of power and survivability whenever you desire.

• Barrowin's base attack speed has been lowered to 4.1 from 4.4 seconds.


• Reduced the base effect of Healing Word to better match the new health/healing curves.


• Upgrades to Healing Word have been rebalanced. Removed approximately 8 upgrades and distributed the remaining 5 among Barrowin's level curve.


• Added to and adjusted Barrowin's set of Global DPS upgrades.


• Barrowin's slot 1 loot items now buff Global DPS instead of Self DPS.


• Barrowin's slot 4 loot items (increase Healing Word amount) have had their base values reduced from 25/87.5/150/275% to 10/30/50/100%.


• Added a new FA ("Divine Aid") at level 210 that increases Barrowin's max health by 50% of the max health of the Champion in her column with the highest max health. This can count Barrowin herself, so if there are no other Champions in the column, or all Champions in her column have a lower max health than her, she increases her max health by 50% of her own max health. This effect also increases her "overwhelmed" point to 25.


• Added a new FA ("Even Temper") at level 325 that increases Barrowin's attack speed by 1 sec whenever she has been attacked in the last 8.2 seconds.


• Blessed Hammer's stacking is no longer purely multiplicative. Instead, each hammer provides a flat multiplier to the base buff amount: 1x for 1 hammer, 3x for 2 hammers, 7x for 3 hammers, and 15x for 4 hammers. Additionally several upgrades have been spread out across Barrowin's levels more evenly. All in all, the ability should be as good as comparable support champions with equal gear at 2 hammers, slightly worse at 1 hammer, and still best in class at 3+ hammers.


• Barrowin's ultimate has been reconfigured. She throws her hammer at a random enemy, stunning it for 5 seconds. This also instantly sets all adjacent champions to *6* hammer stacks (the 5th stack adds another 16x and the 6th another 32x, for a total buff 63x the "base" Blessed Hammer amount; these stacks override any existing stacks) and a 10x normal health shield to all champions in her column.


• Barrowin's shielding achievement has been changed to a healing achievement. Requiring 120e6 damage healed, down from 1e22 damage shielded. This must be effective healing, not just any healing ticks. The achievement has been reset for all players, but those of you who completed the old achievement will find it in the Legacy Achievements category.

Evelyn

Evelyn didn't require much maintenance. She's intended to be squishier than Nayeli or the other buffer tanks, but with more buffing potential. We added health upgrades to keep her in line with the new health/healing curve, and adjusted her upgrades to improve the scaling of her Divine Prayer buff effects.

• Added health increasing upgrades to Evelyn to match the new healing/tanking curve.


• Buffed Evelyn's Global DPS upgrades, and added another one near max level. Adjusted her upgrades to Divine Prayer as well to get her on-par with other tanking buffers.


• Added an upgrade that increases the max health of all other Champions in the formation by a 25% of Evelyn's max health. This includes other tanks (4 tanks in formation ~= tank-health level squishies and double-health tanks).


• Steadfast Might now also stacks when enemies or bosses begin to enrage. It counts each enrage increase as one additional attacking enemy.


• Evelyn's axe gear (slot 1) is now global DPS instead of self DPS.

Donaar

Donaar was designed after most of the tanking and healing update was laid out, so his changes are minimal. Mostly just tweaks to his healing values to bring him in line with the new health curve.

• Donaar's healing ability has been rebalanced in line with the new health curve. This has resulted in several upgrades being removed, and several being heavily nerfed.


• Reduced the base values of Donaar's healing loot from 25/87.5/150/275% to 10/30/50/100%.

IV. Changes

• Potions of Heroism (health potions) have been added back into chests. The effects have been reduced to 50%, 100%, 200%, and 300%, due to the change in the health scaling curve.
• Bosses now spawn in lower 2/3rds of spawn area so tall bosses are less hidden.
• Added equipment shininess border to the champion info menu.
• Added buttons to inventory sliders to allows single increments and decrements.
• Added mouse wheel support for sliders.

V. Fixes

• Fixed the description of the number of eyeballs bobbing in the Large Potion of Clairvoyance.
• Familiar count text now always remains on one line.
• Fixed a bug where Azaka's Weretiger progress bar would disappear.
• Fixed a bug where the Chief Yorb boss monster could be plane-shifted away by Vlahnya's Ultimate, rendering the level un-completable.
• Fixed event dialog boxes being in the wrong spots when graphics are not yet loaded.

Hey everyone, Justin from the Codename Entertainment development team here. Today I'm going to talk about something that has been a long time in the making.

I. What's Going On?

It's finally time! The long awaited tanking and healing update -- or as the community has lovingly nicknamed it, the "Shielding, Healing, and Tanking (SH&T)" update -- is almost here. This update includes changes to tanks, healers, and monsters, and is designed to provide more interesting and varied choices for dealing with the inevitable mob of monsters that constantly attacks your formation.

TL/DR: — I've decided to put the TLDR at the top of this post, since it is quite extensive. When we began to talk about this patch in earnest, we've seen quite a bit of concern about this patch changing the game completely, but in reality the changes are focused primarily on the part of the game near "your wall" -- the point at which enemies start to reach your formation on a regular basis. Prior to that point in gameplay the effects you'll feel from this update will be fairly minor. At your wall, in general, Champions won't be able to take as many hits, but if properly spec'd and healed they can pull you a few extra areas further than if they weren't there. This update also includes improved offline gold, ultimate damage, and upgrades for a soft cap increase up to approximately e49 gold.

We are aiming to have this update released this week, though as always unforeseen issues have the potential to delay it, so don't bet the farm on it.

II. Champion Health & Monster Damage

One of the biggest issues this update addresses is the disparity between Champion health and monster damage, especially in higher areas. Prior to the update, Champion health very quickly outpaces monster damage, resulting in even the squishiest of Champions being able to tank high level enemies for far longer than they should.

After the update, Champion health has been completely rebalanced. It starts lower and no longer increases with each level-up. Tanking Champions gain health through upgrades, and non-tanking Champions can gain additional health through new formation abilities that tanking Champions get. Monster damage also only increases when the adventure story resets (in areas 51, 101, 151, etc.), meaning each time you go through you need more tanking and healing power (in addition to damage) to keep up. In general, the curves are a lot shallower, so Champions have less health but monsters do less damage as well. This has resulted in your DPS being the much more important metric for if you can or cannot go further.

Minor tidbits:


• Healing and shielding abilities have been adjusted to match the new lower health values.
• Loot items that affected health, healing, or shields have also been adjusted.
• Health potions (Potions of Heroism) have also been added back to the pool of possible chest contents.

III. Overwhelming Attacks

A key tenant of this update is that tanking Champions should be able to stand fast against a small number of enemies without any issues, assuming they're getting some healing, but against overwhelming force you'll need some hefty tanks and healing. A new mechanic, "Overwhelming Attacks," causes Champions to take more damage when they begin to be overwhelmed by enemies. For most Champions, they can handle up to 15 enemies without any issue, but some tankier Champions have a higher break-point.

IV. Offline Gold & Party/Ultimate Damage

We've updated two of our primary algorithms: Party Damage and Offline Gold.

For Party Damage, the damage number displayed in the top-left corner of the game has been updated to take more effects into account, including things like Barrowin Hammers, Minsc's Favored Enemies, Champions with cleave and AOE attacks, and so on. This has resulted in a more accurate representation of party damage, which has translated into an increase in Ultimate Attack damage across the board, since Ultimate damage is based on party damage. The days when your base attacks do more damage than ultimate abilities are (hopefully) in the past.

The other change is to Offline Gold. The new algorithm also accounts for all of the same things the party damage does, resulting in a more accurate gold per second estimation. This has resulted in increased gold from offline time, bounty contracts, silver chests, and distractions. We will continue to monitor these numbers and make further tweaks as necessary.

Other Minor Changes:


• The enrage mechanic for bosses has been rebalanced so that damage ramps up more slowly.
• Abilities that power-up based on the number of enemies attacking also increase based on enemy enrage stacks.
• The game now automatically buys non purchased upgrades on load. This fixes a couple of edge cases with the Gamepad UI.
• Speaking of which, the Gamepad UI will be updated with new graphics and tweaks in this update.
• We've rebalanced the buffing multiplier curve and applied the new curve to all the tanking and healing Champions affected by this update. The curve will be applied to everyone else over time (the largest impact will come with next year's major balance update). In general this will result in a softening of the buffing ability for Champions in earlier bench seats, and an increase in the buffing capability of Champions in later bench seats, however only a few Champions have been changed at this point.
• We've added new upgrades for all Champions up to approximately e49 gold.
• We've made minor tweaks to some monsters and encounters to make them work better in a post tanking & healing update world.

V. Champion Updates

We've taken this opportunity to rebalance all tanks and healers currently in the game. This includes the Base Champions Celeste, Nayeli, Calliope, Tyril, and Arkhan, as well as the Event Champions Gromma, Barrowin, Evelyn, and Donaar. Some of these Champions have received only minor tweaks, while others (like Arkhan and Barrowin) have received more significant reworks. A summary of the changes are listed below. The full details will be included in the change log for this update.

Base Champion Updates

Celeste

Not much change to Celeste. We reworked her healing numbers to match the new tanking/healing curves and reduced the difference in healing/buffing between her two specializations so they can both be used depending on whether you need just a bit more damage or just a bit more healing (this brings her general design closer to more recent heroes, whose specializations have a smaller impact on their overall power).

Nayeli

We're pretty happy with how Nayeli works as a tank. We simply reworked her health to match the new tanking/healing curve and reduced the difference in buffing/tanking between her two specializations so they can both be used depending on whether you need Nayeli to buff a bit more or take a few more hits before dying (this brings her general design closer to more recent heroes, whose specializations have a smaller impact on their overall power). We also added a new tank-specific formation ability to Nayeli to help her protect the group against AOE damage in later areas.

Calliope

Calliope's shields are quite powerful at delaying the death of tanks, especially under the new tanking/healing curves. As such, when a Champion is shielded by Calliope there is now a 15 second cooldown before they can be affected by her shield again. Calliope's ultimate overrides this limitation, and the shields still last until they are broken. College of Lore, instead of increasing the amount of her shields, now decreases the new cooldown by 5 seconds to 10 seconds total, meaning you can shield more often. The difference in subsequent upgrades between College of Valor and College of Lore has been removed, so that the two specializations are simply a choice between more frequent shields or slightly higher Bardic Inspiration buffs (this brings her general design closer to more recent heroes, whose specializations have a smaller impact on their overall power). Calliope emerges as a decent death delayer, and one of the few healer-types who can protect the majority of the formation from incidental damage.

Tyril

Tyril's original Wild Shape design was based around creating big damage shields for himself with his ultimate, allowing him to survive much longer than he otherwise would have. This design has been refined in the rework. His ultimate attack now does AOE damage, and the shield it generates is a percentage of his max health times the number of enemies he hit, with bonuses for enemies killed. Time his ultimate correctly and he can create a shield that will allow him to tank for an extended period of time. We've of course adjusted his health increases to match the new tanking/healing curve, though he'll only gain tank-level health in Wild Shape spec. Tyril is essentially two completely different Champions, depending on the spec you pick, so we've thrown some love at his Moonbeam spec as well and changed the way Moonbeam scales based on adjacent Champions. Moonbeam also has more, larger upgrades, making Tyril more competitive with Barrowin in more situations. His Moonbeam spec heal has also been rebalanced to match the new tanking/healing curves. Finally, Tyril's new "Forces of Good" ability ramps up the damage of your "Good" Champions when he's under attack or the enemies are enraging.

Arkhan

We wanted to use this opportunity to completely redesign Arkhan, morphing him into the bad-ass group-leading force of nature that he is in his tabletop appearances, and always was intended to be in our game. To that end, we've redesigned him with the idea of a "Tank DPS" in mind. We've removed nearly all of his existing abilities ("First in Line", "Loyalty", "Chango Unchained", "Chango Restrained") and replaced them with new ones. With "Rage of the Dragonborn," Arkhan's damage ramps up drastically when more enemies are attacking him by changing his attack to hit more and more enemies -- for example, Flame Breath becomes his basic attack when 16 or more enemies are targeting him! Through his brand new specializations, Arkhan's damage is increased in ways that no other Champions' are. "Bulk Up" increases the effect of formation abilities that target him, and "Usurped Power" causes positional formation abilities that target Champions adjacent to Arkhan to *also* target him, regardless of their normal restrictions. A new formation ability called "Rising Anger" increases the damage of evil Champions when Arkhan is under attack (go go Krond!). Finally, we've adjusted Arkhan's gear to better suit his new build, including giving him his very own Gold Find loot item. We hope that with these changes, Arkhan could conceivably be used to build some very interesting formations.

Event Champion Updates

Gromma

We like the *idea* of Gromma, she just needed some tweaking to get her numbers right. With her tough Tortle shell, she's tanky no matter which spec you pick, so she can fulfill the role of front-line support if the adventure or variant calls for it. We've pumped up her Grandmotherly Love ability to the extreme, so if your DPS is on the young-end of the spectrum, she's definitely worth considering for a buffing slot in your formation. We've also looked at each of her specializations and made some tweaks to each, focusing on her Tanking, Support, and DPS ability for Circle of the Mountain, Arctic, and Swamp respectively. Her tanking kit has been redesigned, with a completely new "Spiked Shell" mechanic, as well as other new formation abilities for buffing the party's health and the damage of neutral Champions while Gromma is under attack. We also threw a new formation ability into her Circle of the Swamp spec so that she can benefit from a portion of her Grandmotherly Love ability.

Barrowin

Barrowin's reign of terror over other buffing Champions is finally over. It was good while it lasted, but if you live by the hammer, you die by the hammer, and the nerf hammer has brought Barrowin's buffing ability back in line with other Champions. Blessed Hammer has had the way hammers stack adjusted. Instead of stacking multiplicatively with each other, each additional hammer provides a flat multiplier to the blessing: 1x for 1 hammer, 3x for 2 hammers, 7x for 3 hammers, and 15x for 4 hammers. This still provides for a 230,000%+ buff with 4 hammers at max level and with decent gear, but it's a far cry from the game breaking 1e15% buffs that the ability was providing before. To make up for the nerf, Barrowin's attack speed has been slightly lowered, increasing your chance to get an extra hammer stack once in a while, but in general her ability to buff has been brought more in line with other Champions in her seat. With her increased survivability when she's in the tank line, Barrowin is an excellent healing choice for formations with multiple front-line slots and a cluttered 2nd column. Her ultimate has also been redesigned to give your formation a quick boost of power and survivability whenever you desire.

Evelyn

Evelyn didn't require much maintenance. She's intended to be squishier than Nayeli or the other buffer tanks, but with more buffing potential. We added health upgrades to keep her in line with the new health/healing curve, and adjusted her upgrades to improve the scaling of her Divine Prayer buff effects.

Donaar

Donaar was designed just prior to most of the tanking and healing update being laid out, so his changes are minimal. Mostly just tweaks to his healing values to bring him in line with the new health curve.

VI. What do YOU Think?

As always, we're excited to hear what you think of these changes. Feel free to jump onto the Idle Champions Subreddit, Steam forum, or the Idle Champions Discord channel and give us your feedback.

Additionally, both our Subreddit Community Q&A and Weekly Livestream will be focused on the Tanking & Healing Update this week, so we will hopefully be able to answer all your questions!

Well met everyone! Justin here. I'm the lead systems designer on Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms. I wanted to take some time to discuss some upcoming changes we're making to chests, loot, and potions. I'm going to be on our weekly stream tomorrow, February 8th, to discuss these in more detail, so watch for that.

We've been hearing for a while now from many players, both spenders and non-spenders, that the experience of opening chests in Idle Champions isn't ideal. Too many duplicates, too many sub-par potions, and taking too long to get the gear you want. We want to address those concerns as best we can, so we've put together the ultimate chest, loot, and potions update.

Before we begin, there are five main goals that we had for this update:

1) We want to make chests more fun to open.
2) We want to make chest packs more desirable and more worthwhile to purchase.
3) We want to make duplicates show up less. More upgrades! Less filler!
4) We want to make duplicates you do get more worthwhile.
5) We want all potions/buffs to be desirable so there are no bad items in chests.

So what are we doing? Well, several things, actually:

1) Guaranteeing upgrades (if possible) in every chest. While we're not changing the distribution of rarities in chests, we are making it so that every chest contains at least one upgrade, if possible. This means that if you open a gold chest, and you don't have all of the rare loot for the champions that the chest drops loot for, you're guaranteed an upgrade. Keep in mind, if you don't have all the uncommon items, this upgrade may be an uncommon, so we're not promising a rare upgrade in every chest (until you have all of the uncommon items). It's also important to note that if you have all the rare loot from that chest, we're not promising an epic in every chest, but when you DO get an epic, we'll guarantee that it's an epic you don't already have (unless you have them all). This change will make it so that it's literally impossible to not have a fully rare'd event Champion within 10 event chests, and if you purchased chests, a fully epic'd event Champion within 50, though in actuality the average number of chests for each is much lower. The purpose here is to remove the bad luck that people can sometimes experience if the RNG gods are not in their favor.

2) Guaranteeing shiny loot in purchased packs. We want to reward people who purchase chest packs for real money. After all, without them we wouldn't be able to continuously release new content for the game (or even keep the servers on). With that goal in mind, we've restructured the chest opening screen so that purchased chest packs are displayed separately from normally earned chests. When opening chests from a chest pack, your progress through the pack will be displayed, and a number of "shiny" card slots will be displayed on the pack. We'll distribute the shiny cards that fill these slots throughout the chests in the pack, so you've always got something to look forward to with your purchase. As a thank you to our existing purchasers, we'll be distributing "Potions of Shininess" to people who have bought chest packs in the past. You can find those in your inventory and they can be used from there to shiny-ize one piece of loot you own at random.

3) Increasing the power of loot levels. Right now it takes 1000 loot levels to double the effect on a piece of loot. We're reducing the number drastically so that earning duplicate loot can have more of an impact on your game. We don't have a final number for you yet, but we're hoping to strike a good balance between not being too OP and not taking forever to come into effect.

4) Adding Blacksmithing Contracts. Speaking of loot levels, Blacksmithing Contracts are new buffs randomly earned in chests. They can be used from your inventory on a specific Champion to increase the loot level of one of their pieces of loot at random. They come in all rarities from common to epic, and increase the loot levels the same as if you'd earned a duplicate item of that rarity. The ability to target your loot level upgrades (including on event Champions which you otherwise could not improve) should be an interesting new avenue of optimization in the game.

5) Other Potion Drop Changes. We're removing the Potion of Heroism from the drop table in chests, because health is pointless right now (more on that in a future dev blog). We're also adding a new rare drop: the Potion of Specialization. This new potion, when used on a specific Champion, will reset any specialization choices you've made on that adventure, giving you a do-over in case you want to change your mind later on. Finally, we're removing the Potion of Fire Breath from the drop table. Now, wait, I know what you're thinking! Don't panic! We're adding a NEW Potion of Fire Breath back into all chests, and your old, existing potions will still work the same way as before, so if you've got a stockpile it's still around and you can still use it. The new type of potion will turn your mouse-clicks into mini-ultimates. Each click will do damage to enemies based on your party DPS rather than a fixed percentage. This means that these new potions will crush through normal trash mobs, instead of tickling them like before, while also still be useful at destroying bosses that your Champions are having trouble with on their own. The big difference is that with the new potions you won't be able to push forward infinitely (given infinite potions), which was a balance concern for us that we are happy to finally address.

6) Potion Duration Changes. Oh, one final thing about potions. We've gotten a lot of feedback from people saying they don't feel useful because they expire so quickly. With that in mind, common potions will now last 5 minutes (up from 1 minute), uncommon will last 15 minutes (up from 2 minutes), rare potions will now last 60 minutes (up from 4 minutes), and epic potions will last until you reset your adventure. These changes will be retroactive to all your existing potions except for the old-style Fire Breath potions. Sorry!

7) And About Offline Gold. We're finally taking a pass on offline gold gains, bounty contract gold gains, and silver chest gold gains. They're too low in many cases and we're hoping to solve that with this update.

So that's about the long and short of it. What do you think? We'd love to get your feedback on the steam forums, in discord, in-game chat, and on the stream tomorrow. We're hoping to get these changes out very soon, but nothing is set in stone if you guys have a really great idea that we didn't think of (or steal already while lurking in the chat).

Until next time!