EpicDuel PVP Game Design Notes

February 22, 2012

Heartbreaker Saga Continues

For this round of missions, report first to NegaWraith for your orders. This will be a very dangerous endeavor for all those involved, mostly because you will be tangling with Alydriah's fearsome Alydroids! However, bringing down Alydriah’s citadel is worth the effort and the risk.

The time has come for action, Exiles. Administrator 12’s Legion Resistance has made all the necessary preparations. If you haven’t completed the Heartbreaker missions thus far, you’ll want to complete these missions prior to going forward.

This will also lead to the explosive conclusion of the Heartbreaker Saga, and its associated rewards.

From Broken to Mint

It seems like a lot of players are really enjoying the PvP drops. Have you won anything awesome this week? This week, to increase the excitement, we are adding a new class of item to the PvP drops: broken items! This may not seem like a bonus at first, but these weapons will be versions of Varium weapons, and some genius- say Ulysses- might be able to repair them to full functionality for a small Varium fee that is a % of the regular purchase price.

Founder Appreciation

With the EpicDuel anniversary coming up, we would like to give our Founders a special reward. In thanks for supporting us when we were a small project made by two young men working out of a two-bedroom apartment. Today, our staff has doubled and we work out of a small office. Movin’ on up, baby!

In appreciation of those who supported us in the early days, we are giving every Founder and Elite player a special item: the Founder Bike! Those with the Founder achievement will be able to ride in style on this exclusive hoverbike.  You can acquire this exclusive item by visiting Negawraith (who has been kind enough to stash these bikes) in Fortune City and taking the bike from his inventory.

Tags: Cinderella Heartbreaker NegaWraith Founders Broken Weapons PvP Drops Missions Bike

February 14, 2012

Happy Discount Candy Day Eve!

 Hope all of you are having a wonderful and love-filled Valentine’s Day, not-so-bitter Singles Awareness Day, anticipatory Clearance Chocolates Eve, or a great Tuesday. I’ve put heart socks on the Squidlings for the occasion, but I’m sure you’re having just as much fun as Mr. Squiddles.

Home Improvement

Due to the paint in his office still being wet, Raymus wasn’t quite ready to open shop last week, but he’ll (hopefully) get the contractors out of the building by Friday. He’s brought along with him some new housing features. Starting Friday, you’ll be able to see whose home you’ve invaded, and homeowners will be able to restrict access to their homes. If you own a home, you will now be able to restrict access to your home to make it private (only you have access), to your buddy list only, or just let everyone come in and track dirty mud all over your carpets!

We will also be slashing prices on home items! This means there's never been a better time to decorate!

Expanded drops

Following the success of the lowbie drops, we’ve expanded PvP drops to include weapons for everyone! You get a drop! And you get a drop! In addition to expanding the PvP drop weapons to include weapons for all levels, we are adding the Hoverbike and Assault Bot to the mix. Rumor has it that there may also be some "broken" items that are unusable. I wonder if there's anyone who could fix them?  Unfortunately, with the revaming of the drop system, the random credit bonuses and home prizes are going away forever. With mission rewards and power hour, there are many more reliable ways to get credits.

We’re also adding another dropped bot: the Rusty Assault Bot. Since it’s rusty and secondhand, this bot has similar effects to the Assault Bot, but he’s a little weaker. If you’re impatient and want to buy a refurbished bot, you can buy him (for credits only) at Junker.

We may be repurposing the arcade in future updates with minigames and other fun extraneous things to do (like "Battle Fruits"!).

NegaWraith!

In addition to Mr. Alexander, players will meet one of Administrator 12’s lackeys, a man nicknamed by the Exiles as “NegaWraith” due to his uncanny resemblance to the interstellar assassin Nightwraith. Could he be an asset? An enemy? What is his plan? These questions and more will be answered in Part II of the Heartbreaker Saga. See the Exile Soldier in the Bazaar (next to Titan) for more info and to begin Part II of the Heartbreaker Saga.

Name Campers

Word on the streets (of the Internet) is that Artix Entertainment is making its very first 3D game! Since space is limited, we're giving everyone who has ever purchased Varium in EpicDuel, along with members of the other AE games, a chance to grab your favorite name before anyone else! For more information, please check out http://artix.com/, your source for all things AdventureQuest 3D, and the future home of the Artix Entertainment portal. 

BEEEES! OH GOD, NOT THE BEES!

Let me start out this week’s insect fact with a little anecdote. This weekend was completely spent on an assignment for my Environmental Studies class, and it was a review of the factors contributing to Colony Collapse Disorder. Being the sole Entomologist in the class (and pretty sure I’m the only Entomologist at my institution of Higher Learning), I ended going way off the deep end and wrote 10 pages for what I found out later was supposed to be a 2 page assignment. Suffice to say, I’ve been brain-deep in bee for the past few days. My conclusion for that paper is that further research is needed to quantify synergistic effects between pesticides and use measurement endpoints other than honeybee mortality to quantify the effect of chemicals such as imidicloprid, which confuses bees and the workers are likely to wander off and forget where their hive is. Also, the medicines used prophylactically to prevent bacterial infection may weaken the bees’ defense to the effect of chronic sublethal exposure to multiple pesticides, including those that prevent harm coming to the hive from Varroa mites. The parasitic mite Varroa destructor lives up to its name, and will wipe out a thriving colony in a year if left untreated. So, things are very unclear as how to manage the threats to honeybees.

One thing I found interesting that I actually hadn’t thought about before, is that the honeybee is an invasive species in North America, and there are over 4,000 species of native North American bees that can “pick up the slack” if we were to lose all of our honeybees. The bumblebee (genus Bomba) is actually a more efficient agricultural pollinator than the honeybee! 

Tags: Cinderella NegaWraith PvP drops Prizes Arcade Bot bots Heartbreaker Valentine's Day Homes Raymus

February 10, 2012

Drop Addendum

I would like to take this opportunity to address some questions I've been seeing about the new PvP drop system.

For this first iteration of the system, we will be releasing primarily low level weapons. Why add weak, lowbie items? EpicDuel is attracting more players than ever, but EpicDuel is a very, very complex game. Many players may duel for hours and not even realize that they can equip items like guns and bazookas, or that their default weapon can be sold for a new, shiny implement of doom. This drop system will make those first confusing few battles more exciting to new players and make it easier for players who are on a losing streak to reverse their fortunes.

Don't fret if you don't have any use for these weapons. You will still be able to sell them back for credits, and Titan has created a system that will be robust enough to offer hundreds of potential drop items for players of all levels to enjoy.

Hidden Arcade

One of the advantages of having a feature-rich, complex game like EpicDuel that we have THOUSANDS of lines of code that we can potentially improve upon or recycle. Sometimes this is easy, sometimes this is impossible and requires the old code to be thrown away and rewritten. In this case, we were able to use much of the old arcade code to help us build the PvP drop system. It doesn't work exactly like the arcade, but there are many similarities.

You may notice that the arcade pods scattered across Delta V were deactivated or removed from many screens. This was done because had to remove the old arcade code to make way for the new PvP drop system. The advantage is now there is no limit to the prizes we can offer, and all the chances to win will be completely FREE!

This also means that the prizes of the Hoverbike and Assault bot will be reassigned to the PvP drop system in the next update.

Where's Raymus?

Because the PvP drops have eaten up so much of our time, we didn't have enough left over to implement our housing changes. This means that Mr. Alexander will be sidelined until next week.

Tags: Nightwraith

February 08, 2012

Welcome to another week, my EpicDuel droogies! This week’s going to be a little short on content, but big on features that all players should find something to their liking!

Drip Drip Drop!

Starting on Friday, EpicDuel will feature PvP drops. Essentially, every PvP battle in EpicDuel will work like an arcade battle, and every time you defeat one of your friends (or a complete stranger), you’ll have a chance at adding something nice to your inventory. It could be a weapon, it could be a gem, it could be a useless tin can... it is a mystery! Who knows what your opponents could be hiding?

Inventory Clearance

We’re not implementing stackable items yet, unfortunately, but Mission Items like the Skull Card, or special items you get for missions will no longer count toward your inventory space. This should benefit players, especially low-level non-varium players who have had to find ways to clear out enough space for mission items. With gem drops, one could stockpile a little treasure with this update...

The Realtor

We’ll be making improvements to the Housing system in EpicDuel, starting with the presence of a Realtor. Due to the increase in the housing market since the Exiles started returning to Delta V, there is an increasing demand for Realtors, who are able to lead customers through the benefits and risks of purchasing real property. One man, known simply as Mr. Alexander (or “Raymus” as it says on his deskplate) has stepped up to the challenge. Visit his office to learn more!

Heartbreaker Continued

We’re not continuing the Heartbreaker Saga this week, but be prepared for new faces (maybe someone who the exiles can use to their advantage?) and more chances to use that infinite mission item inventory space!

Teh Fixed!

Here is a comprehensive list of some of the minor fixes and features in this update!

Bad Aftertaste

Some insects store the toxic chemicals from the food they eat in their body fat, which makes them poisonous.  Think about the Monarch Butterfly caterpillar, a Nymph butterfly that is the classic example of this system.  It eats milkweed and stores the iridoid compounds from the plant on its body fat which makes the caterpillar nasty and poisonous. Insects that sequester toxins from their diet, such as caterpillars in the family Nymphalidae do so as a protection from predators. However, this leaves them open to parasitic and viral infection.

:3^^^>

Tags: Cinderella drops PvP bug facts Heartbreaker balance Finderbot Fixes Raymus

February 01, 2012

Hey Fellas, Have You Heard the News?

If you haven’t, that’s what the Design Notes are for! The Frysteland Arc is coming to a close- and I’ll thank all of you a billion times for making EpicDuel’s first in-game War a success! Now, though, we’re moving on to the next arc, the Heartbreaker Saga. This will be a month-long story arc, and arguably the darkest thing I have ever written for EpicDuel, so I’m excited. Are you excited?

Dream Maker

This week marks the release of another Player Suggestion Shop. Once Nightwraith has them all drawn, I’ll post the names of all the players whose dreams have come true by having a design in EpicDuel.  Nightwraith promised to draw until his hands are withered claws, so we should have a hefty amount of items for all classes.

Remember, all players whose designs are implemented in game will receive their item (regardless of price, level, or item type), as well as the EpicArtist Achievement!

Epic Artists

The results are in!  The following is a list of contributors to this suggestion shop.  This was one of the best batches yet so keep up the good work!

Despair - VectosAE
Rust Runeblade - Shasonic1
Hero's Heart Broadsword - Reki
Hero's Heart Mutating weapon - Reki
Crysaliss - Reki
Dragon's Breath - Reki
Hazard Blaster - Reki
Caterpillar Bugzooka - vypie
Dark Varium Blaster - vypie
Surgical Slicer - vypie
Toxic Chompers -vypie
Energy Steering Device- vypie
Golden Draconic Axe - Ganzdemon
Spirit Scythe - theraplawyers
Spirit Pike - theraplawyers

If your suggestion didn't make it in this time, take this as an opportunity to improve and submit new designs for future suggestions shops. It's also possible that we really liked your idea, but didn't have time to include it in this release. Eithery way, the next suggestion shop can't come soon enough!

Lost and Found!

Ever wonder what’s the best weapon for your level, or wonder where your opponent got that cool item? Just ask the Finderbot! The Finderbot is programmed with statistics on all of the items in EpicDuel, and he’s sorted them by level and type, with numerous filter options, so you’ll be able to find the gear you need much faster!

Preview Missions

I’m still writing the first missions that will introduce the Heartbreaker Arc, but I can tell you that you’ll need to start out in Old Fortune City to receive your first orders from the Exile Soldier and Exile Leader. Watch my Twitter for more info about where to go for story missions this week!

Sweet Insect Facts

Recently, honeybee (Apis mellifera) colonies have been in decline worldwide. The odd syndrome (named Colony Collapse Disorder) causes the almost sudden disappearance of workers from the hive in a short amount of time- this is caused by the worker bees leaving the colony when they recognize that they are diseased.

The current hypothesis for the cause of Colony Collapse Disorder is that it it is caused by several simultaneous plagues afflicting the bees, and with international bee commerce (eg. purchase of royal jelly from hives in China, import and export of hives across continents) the plague has a much higher rate of infection. A good candidate for a viral plague is the Deformed Wing Virus, which is spread by parasitic mites, Varroa destructor, who prey upon apian pupae. The pesticides used to control mite populations may increase sensitivity to DWV, but treated hives are less likely to succumb to Colony Collapse Disorder.

Tags: Cinderella Finderbot Suggestion Shop Weapons Items Heartbreaker Missions

January 27, 2012

Legion Wins!

Congratulations Legion on a job well done! You’ve brought the Krampus under Alydriah’s rule, and destroyed the Krampus settlement.

To complete the Frysteland story arc, you’ll need to get orders from several characters, such as Valestra, Hank, the Krampus Technician, Commander Boothe, Alydriah, and a new face in Frysteland: Ylwa the Demon Rider. You’ll also have to face the terrifying Frost Demon Maia. 

Thank you all for making EpicDuel’s first war a reality, and working forward to the Heartbreaker Arc!

What about Exile?

We were prepared for the possibility that Exile would win. You guys fought the good fight, and things would have been a lot different. However, the Exiles are far from defeated, and will have a chance to strike back at Alydriah and her followers in the next story arc.

Tags: Cinderella

January 25, 2012

The end of the Frysteland saga, that is! As the War comes to a close, I want to congratulate each of you who participated and made the Frysteland war a success! Remember that your actions determined the outcome of the War for Frysteland, and influenced the storyline as a whole. I’ll be posting an addendum with the official announcement of the alignment winner, along with a description of the missions you’ll have to complete to discover how this arc concludes.

What's gonna happen to these little guys? You'll find out soon!!!

We’ll probably be revisiting these characters in a future arc, and I know some of you were interested in the mythology. Frysteland will remain open all year to visitors from all over Delta V, whether you're seeking conquest, information, or riches.

Since this marks the end of this particular story arc, we’ll be implementing the Aftermath missions, and making changes to the Frysteland screens to reflect the aftermath of the Frysteland conflict.

Also, all the seasonal rare frost weapons will be leaving for another year, possibly taken by the mysterious Titanfraggr for unknown reasons.

Traitors

I would like to confirm that an individual cannot have both the Legion’s Bane achievement and the Krampus Slayer achievement. Players who switched alignment to earn both achievements will lose the second achievement earned. So, if you killed 100 Krampus for the Krampus Slayer achievement, then switched to Exile to kill 100 Yeti and get the Legion’s Bane achievement, you would only get to keep the Krampus Slayer achievement.

This situation showed us that we need to overhaul the war system for the next epic war event to encourage loyalty, and punish treason more severely.

Broken Hearts

Following the Frysteland arc, we will be starting with the next EpicDuel story arc. As Alydriah was distracted by the conflict in Frysteland, the Exiles in Old Fortune City seized this opportunity to plan a counterattack at the Heart of Alydriah’s operations. Not much more I can tell you right now, except that this arc won’t hold back- it’s the darkest thing I’ve written for EpicDuel so far; I hope you are prepared for it!

With this story arc, we’ll be implementing a NEW Promotional pack to replace the Frost Destroyers. This promo which will be going live Friday will include Azrael Borg and Azrael's Curse. The Azrael Borg is a robotic wasp does that physical damage, and has the special ability to sting your enemy with it's unblockable serrated tail and deliver a Heart Attack!  Well, technically it's not a real heart attack, but it does drastically reduce the effectiveness of any applied buffs on your opponent.  It also has a physical primary attack in which it uses it's razor-sharp heart blades to give your opponents more than a broken heart!

The second part of the promo is the awesome mutating weapon, Azrael's Curse! This potent physical weapon forged as a warped marriage of technology and magic carries the Mark of Azrael, which offers a +5% chance to crit!

Tags: Cinderella balance Frysteland Yeti Azrael Curse Skill War Heartbreaker Valentine's Day Promotion Weapons

January 18, 2012

Winter Wrap-Up

We’re coming down to the end game for the Frysteland Conflict. Again, a BIG thanks to the thousands of you who supported us during this in-game war. Remember that the War for Frysteland will remain active until January 27th, at which point the winning side will be announced and the Aftermath ensue as planned.

We do want to hold off on announcing any rewards for being on the winning side due to the issues we’ve had with “turncoats”- we want to encourage you to support your side, even if you don’t end up victorious in the end, and we will be adding incentives toward that end. Also, I know that many players wanted us to extend the Frysteland War, but we have a lot planned for the Aftermath and the next storyline! After all, if a special event lasts too long, it's no longer a special event, is it?

The Aftermath

We’re stockpiling content for a big release next week, including the missions for the Aftermath. Implementing a war event is quite challenging, so removing one and transforming the world is also an ordeal. Legion and Exile are still battling, so we still must prepare for either outcome! I have quite a bit written already, including a bunch of new missions, but your actions can completely change what happens during the Aftermath. During this period and beyond, the Frysteland NPCs will behave as normal NPCs (with the exception of the Boss NPCs).

In addition, we’ll be adding a bunch of PERMANENT Frysteland weapons for your battling pleasure!

Factions Going on a Diet!

The War for Frysteland has given us a great opportunity to reflect on our Faction/Alignment system and its role in EpicDuel's gameplay.  We have concluded that Factions are great, but almost incomprehensibly confusing.  War Points, War Flags, Influence, War Kills, Token Donations, etc are mysteries to all but the most hardcore players. We really loved the simplicity of the War event being one number that goes up with all players being able to easily view their individual contribution. Thus, one of our goals for the new year is to retool and streamline Faction scoring to better integrate all the disparate systems into each other. We'll be posting more to clarify exactly what changes we're making and how they'll effect the Legion/Exile conflict, Factions, and individual players.

You’re a Heartbreaker

We’ll be bringing back the Heartbreaker weapons in anticipation of Valentine’s Day. We’re also hard at work preparing for our next Epic storyline! I’m really REALLY excited about this one, folks. So far, we’ve started dealing with some pretty interesting issues, including the nature of the identity of one of the characters you already know and love!

Challenging!

By popular request, and to halt the issue with dummying, challenge battles will no longer count toward your win record. This will also allow people to test builds against friends for fun, or to test builds. You will not receive credits, experience, or battle tokens for challenge battles, they will just be for fun or for completing challenge missions. Random battles will still count toward your battle record, as will normal NPC fights.

Where Are the Bots?

A lot of players have been asking about the lack of credit-only bots, and the simple answer is that adding bots with the current system is extremely difficult. All the bots do not work like regular weapons -- they use custom code that is very complex and inefficient. Bots are an amazing feature and we would love to fill the game with tons of unique bots with crazy skills and attacks, so this is a frustrating situation for us as well as they players.  One of the programming team's short-term goals is to streamline the code for bots to make them easier to add. Once this happens, we can increase the quantity and quality of bots to provide both Varium and credit-only players with equal opportunities to acquire powerful bots.

Alydriah Descarl Opposes Free Expression!

In his Design Notes post, Cysero established that ArtixEntertainment is against SOPA/PIPA. These are bills introduced in the US legislature that seek to prevent online piracy, but represent a gross abuse of power by the United States Government. These bills, if passed, would give the US government the power to take down websites suspected of hosting copyrighted material without due process. For example, Twitter could be taken down because of one user using a comic book character (like, say, Batman or Deadpool). Individual web users face serious consequences as well, with performance of a copyrighted work (eg. a video of yourself covering a popular song) becoming a felony with punishments up to 5 years in federal prison. Even works that fall under Fair Use or Satire or derivative works face serious legal consequences.

This could spell doom for a company like ArtixEntertainment, because- while we do not support piracy or distribution of materials to which you do not own the copyright- our games are filled with popular culture references. Games like HeroSmash and Pony vs. Pony are just one big pop culture reference! EpicDuel is not immune- we have several references to other media (eg. the “Cake” achievement references Portal, Banana armor and Too Big! reference Don Hertzfeldt, The Lawman shares his name with a Motorhead song and is a dead ringer for Lemmy Killmister). Also, you could face legal penalties for recording yourself battling in EpicDuel, adding a song to the background, and posting it on YouTube. This is a serious issue, and I hope that, if you’re in the US, you will urge your congressperson to vote AGAINST SOPA and PIPA. You can learn more on Americancensorship.org 

If we don't defeat SOPA and PIPA, the Internet will become a much smaller, less interesting, and ultimately less useful place.

Tags: Cinderella SOPA PIPA Freedom Frysteland War bots turncoats aftermath Missions Weapons Items

January 12, 2012

Friday the 13th in Frysteland

Hi there, Epic Duelists, it’s nearly Friday the 13th, the time of year when the AE MMOs have special visits from mustachioed gentlemen. Usually of the top hat wearing variety. But just because we don’t have a Big Musical Guest and our newest Mustachioed Gentleman doesn't wear a hat, doesn’t mean that our players have to be unfortunate this Friday the 13th.

Balance Changes

We’ve implemented a new system that allows us to to track how changes we make affect overall balance on the live servers- we call it “The Balance Tracker”. Obviously the Creative Team did not come up with that name. What this means for you is that we’ll be able to track who's beating who at each level, which will show empirically which class is "superior" at each level.  This will give us easy to read data we can use to make adjustments to class balance a lot quicker and improve balance in modes like 2v2 or Juggernaut which are difficult to balance on the developer server. The longer this system runs, the more data we'll receive, the better decisions regarding balance we'll be able to make.

We are also making an adjustment to Hybrid Armor - many players have complained that the skill is useless since in order to reap the full benefit of the skill, players must waste a turn switching armor type. Hybrid Armor will now passively endow both defense and resistance, with the defensive skill split between the two. For example, if your Hybrid Armor gave you +12 defense OR resistance at level 33, it will now give you +6 defense AND +6 resistance! This is intended to be neither a buff nor a nerf, but simply an adjustment to how the skill works.

Like a Boss

Players will now be able to challenge the new War Bosses, King Alaric and Commander Edgar Boothe. For this release, you will be limited by alignment for challenge purposes, and both Alydriah and Aldhagrimm will have a special alignment-specific mission for you involving these Juggernauts.

Both Boothe and Alaric are 2v1 Bosses, so you’ll have to team up with an ally to defeat them. Both you and your ally must belong to the same alignment at this time. During the Aftermath and forward, players will be able to challenge Boothe and Alaric regardless of alignment. Defeating either one of them will reward you with 200 War Points, plus a chance to receive a bomb or perfect gem!

Speaking of achievements, we’ve had an issue with players switching sides to get both the “Krampus Slayer” and “Legion Bane” achievements, leading to some players believing we were rewarding disloyalty and punishing founders of long-standing factions. I can assure you that this was never the intent- we’d intended to give each side a unique experience in the Conflict for Frysteland. To reinforce the concept of alignment loyalty, we are considering a couple options, including removing one achievement or merging the two achievements in question into one “disachievement” worth 0 rating points and marking that player as a traitor.

We don’t want to simply punish turncoats, and we do wish to reward the players who have remained loyal to their alignment and factions. We’re still figuring out the best way to go about that now and going forward for future events in which each alignment offers a unique experience.

The Aftermath

The Frysteland Conflict will soon be over! On January 27th 2012 the Frysteland War will be over, and the winning alignment announced. As I said, your actions determine the fate of Frysteland and the Krampus people- as well as the baby Yetis!

I’ve already been hard at work at figuring out what’s happening next, so give it your all, people!

I do want to thank you guys for participating and pointing out areas for improvement. This was the first time we did something like this in-game and there are bound to be places where we could have played things differently. Thank you.

‘Cus Tonight We’re Riding a Black Unicorn...

In AdventureQuest Worlds this Friday at When It’s Ready O’Clock, Goth rocker and familiar face to ArtixEntertainment Voltaire will be once again appearing in a Friday the 13th event promoting his latest album Riding a Black Unicorn Down the Side of An Erupting Volcano While We Drink From a Chalice Filled With The Laughter of Small Children.

My obsession with Voltaire and Deady is well-documented (followers of me on Twitter have seen my hand-knitted Deady Bear, and I have two signed copies of the album (one of which Deady also signed, because he will not eat me) so you might see me in-game!

Tags: Cinderella Frysteland Voltaire Friday the 13th Warbosses Balance Tracking Hybrid armor

January 04, 2012

An Epic New Year!

Welcome back, EpicDuelists. I hope you all had a great holiday and had a great time ringing in the New Year of 2012! The staff is back in the office, and are all grateful for the time spent with friends and family during this holiday season. Now that we’re refreshed, we’re ready to begin the Final Phase of the Frysteland War!

Frysteland Final Phase

EpicDuel’s first war is approaching the final stretch, and your allies will need everyone pulling together to assure victory! I know you guys have all been working diligently- as of the writing of these design notes, over 15,000 unique characters have competed in the Frysteland War! There have been real-life wars with fewer participants! You guys have all done a magnificent job, so regardless of which side prevails, you all deserve to be commended for your efforts!

However, the war is not quite over. To bring that final push, we’ll be releasing the long-promised missions, along with the War Bosses, Commander Edgar Boothe fighting for the Legion, and King Alaric fighting for the Krampus! Could this final phase turn the tide? Only one way to find out!

------

King Alaric the Technologically Inept is a fair and just warrior-king. Known as the Child-King, Alaric rose to power during the Uprising at the age of 15, following his father Callan the Decent’s death during the Haze of Iwona. Under the tutelage of his great-aunt Aldhagrimm the Erudite, he’s grown to follow in the footsteps of his grandmother, the great King Andra the Merciful, who was murdered by Baelius.

------

We’re coming down to the wire here, people! If you’re Exile, don’t let those yetis down! If you are Legion, do not disappoint your leader!

There, I fixed it!

We’ve received a few complaints about blue stars not showing up on character pages, and we’ll be fixing that as soon as possible! We’ll also be fixing the issues of duplicate achievements, and war achievements not updating correctly.

Balance Update!

The following is a brief rundown of the balance changes that will be implemented in the next release.  We're still in the process of testing them, so this list is subject to change!

• TLM - Replace Maul with Stun Grenade
  • Keeps stun skill; removes easy, low cost damage skill
• TLM - Replace Hybrid Armor with Mineral Armor (New skill - passively gives physical defense)
  • Reduces inherent tankiness of TLM
• TLM - Replace Technician with Blood Shield
  • Reduces ability to be more tanky + increase damage output + heal
• CH - Replace Technician with Plasma Armor (passively gives energy resistance)
  • Gives them a reliable passive with better defensive options
• Bunker Buster/Plasma Canno
  • Weaker at lower levels, stronger scaling for high levels
• BM - Replace Technician with Energy Shield
  • Gives BM higher energy resistance
• Artillery Strike - Remove stat requirement
  • Bring it in line with other multis
• Improve Fireball & Plasma bolt
  • Slightly weaker early levels, scales much better mid-high levels
• Slightly reduce passive Armor skills’ defense/resistance
  • Evens out scaling per skill level, make it slightly less powerful

A Winner is You!

Congratulations to all of you who entered the First Ever EpicDuel Holiday House Decorating Contest! The following characters’ houses have been judged by the staff and testing team (the judges are: Charfade, Practel, Ashari, Illuminator, Lycus, and ME!) Using a super-secret method that we are not allowed to discuss under penalty of noogie, the following in-game characters have been selected for the sweet prize of an achievement and home item!

In no particular order:

Elf Priest Jzaanu for “EpicRestaurante A la Duel”

Smackie El Frog for “Smackie goes BOOM!”

Buffy A. Summers for “Home For the Holidays”

Invicticus for “Santa’s Humble Abode”

Sparticus for “My ED FAMILY and HANDS ACROSS ED PROJECT”

VIX for “VIX’s BOMB for Christmas!”

ManThong for “Happy Holidays Legionnaires!!”

G00NY for “In Excess”

Sergei Petrovich for “Seasons Greetings”

Mokta 3 for “The Hope and Joys of Christmas”

Dr Jekyll for “Only One Shovel!”

BadWitch for “Is the season to be jolly :)”

Santa ClawZz for “A house full of wishes!”

AVA for “Happy Holidays”

Appleeno for “Christmas Morning”

African Warrior for “All Welcomed”

Basicball for “Basically Basicballs Barrens Base”

Battle Elf for “December 24th!”

Captain Notorious for “Santa Claus Apartment”

Azht3b.Bethza for “StreetWorrion Street for Eve”

Prizes will be visible on the next Server restart! If you see your name up here but did not receive your prizes, please let us know!

Tags: Cinderella Frysteland balance Bugs New Year contest Legion exile War