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!