September 18, 2026

Personal Best

The biggest change of this update is that most leaderboards will now display your own personal best score depending on category. Your name will show on the leaderboard highlighted in gold, even if you're not in the top 20. Places below 20 will show your actual rank relative to all other players. This change covers all Boss Breaker Boards, War Boards, and most of the all-time and daily boards. The rest will be completed next week.

One quirk to be aware of is because the all-time boards are on a delay and your personal high score is displayed live, the information may be desynchronized until the all-time boards update.

Ishmael Resupplied

The following items have been added to Ishmael! Since the Gamma Pirate gear is no longer available as a promo, the cores and robots have been added for purchase! We wouldn't want people to miss out on the awesome mimic special of the Gamma Pirate Parrot!

• Gamma Pirate Parrot Morph
• Gamma Pirate Parrot Morph CC
• Gamma Pirate Parrot 2026 P
• Gamma Pirate Parrot 2026 E
• Gamma Guts
• Gamma Brand
• Gamma Rage (Sidearm)
• Gamma Rage (Auxiliary)
• Gamma Rage (Primary)

Balance Changes

• Static Charge: Now usable even when you have full Energy
• Overload: Cooldown 2 → 1
• Frenzy: 0 Energy across augments
• Charon's Obol: When spared and you survive with 1 HP and reflect any excess damage from the attack that triggered the spare buff back to opponent. For example, if you have 100 HP, and your attacker hits you for 800 damage, you will be spared, but your attacker will take a reflected 700 damage! This damage is not fatal to the attacker (leaves them with 1 HP, consistent with other damage-reflecting abilities), but can really turn the tide of battle. 
• Shade Snare: Strike for 100% dmg; draining 25% energy for all attacks for 2 turns.(Every attack drains energy and not just melee attacks with the above change). Reduced snare energy cost from 80 → 50
• Infernal Binding: Reduced Energy cost from 100 → 60
• Bug Fixes:
  • Gamma Parrot's special copies Permafrost debuff
  • Permafrost and Tentacle Prison now labelled as Debuffs.
  • Charon's Obol no longer blocks Energy Parasite as Energy Parasite is not classified as a debuff.
  • We're still investigating a cooldown validation bug linked to Lotus Petal. While we gather more info, cooldown desynchs are now able to be corrected after 1 failed attempt.

Tags: Nightwraith

September 15, 2026

The Dead Speak

Over the weekend there were several reports of players with 0 HP who were still able to attack. "Zombie players" is not new to EpicDuel. Similar bugs have been popping up since the early days, but they've been extremely rare to nonexistent for awhile. It may be that alterations to the dead/alive checks made to accomodate skills that produce a killing poison or cheat death opened up some potential failure points. This patch adds additional safeguards to make sure that dead players stay dead.

If you notice something like this happen to yourself or someone else in battle, please report the bug, including as many specifics as you can recall (i.e. skills used, stuns, turn order, etc...). Even if you're not cheating by using 3rd party tools, abusing an exploit to gain an unfair advantage can still earn you a ban, especially if you do so repeatedly.

Critical Damage Adjustment

This bug was first uncovered through reports that Boss NPC Guard cores were not being factored in when the boss scored a crit against you. Further investigation led to discover a larger problem with critical damage calculations.

The Bug: When you land a critical hit, part of the damage math was being recalculated "from scratch" instead of building on top of the hit that was already happening. This meant that certain damage-reducing effects like the defensive Nightmare Boss Guard cores were getting wiped out the moment a crit landed. Those defensive bonuses worked fine on regular hits, but were ignored whenever the NPC enemy crit you. This was probably affecting other defense-boosting cores/skills but due to the relatively rare occurrence and complexity of calculation, no bug was ever reported. This bug was introduced when we made changes to the critical damage calculations months ago.

The Fix: Since the bug was introduced by the critical damage calculation changes, specifically separating the damage percent modifiers from critical damage, the best way to fix this was to revert most of the changes to the formula. Crits now correctly build on top of your normal (non-crit) damage calculation, adding only the extra damage a crit is supposed to add (from partially ignoring Defense/Resistance), instead of throwing away everything else that was already factored in. Any Defense bonuses, damage reductions, or skill-specific damage adjustments that applied to the hit will now still be there even if it crits.

Formulas

Old:

crit rebuilt from Gross Damage, dropping any adjustment made to damage along the way:
Damage Post Crit = Gross Damage − Crit Adjusted Defense
Crit Bonus = Damage Post Crit − Damage
Final = (Crit Bonus < Crit Min Increase) ? Damage + Crit Min Increase : Damage Post Crit

New:

crit builds on the fully-resolved damage, adding only the extra defense the crit ignores:
Defense Ignored = Defense − Crit Adjusted Defense
Damage Post Crit = Damage + Defense Ignored
Final = (Defense Ignored < Crit Min Increase) ? Damage + Crit Min Increase : Damage Post Crit

Examples:

Gross Damage = 1000, Defense = 500, Crit Ignores 30% Defense (default, under the 50% cap) → Crit Adjusted Defense = (0.70 × 500) = 350,
Defense Ignored = 150. Crit Min Increase = 56 (level 40).

Scenario A: Damage Percent = 100

damage = 1000 − 500 = 500

Old Formula:

Damage Post Crit: 1000 − 350 = 650
Final Crit Damage: 650

New Formula:

Damage Post Crit: 500 + 150 = 650
Final Crit Damage: 650 

Result: Identical. With 100% Damage, both formulas have the same result.

Scenario B: Damage Percent = 130

Damage = (1.30 × 1000) − 500 = 800

Old Formula:

Damage Post Crit: 1000 − 350 = 650
vs. damage(800): 650 − 800 = −150 → below floor
Final Crit Damage: floor kicks in: 800 + 56 = 856

New Formula:

Damage Post Crit: 800 + 150 = 950
vs. damage(800): 950 ≥ floor
Final Crit Damage: 950

Under the new formula, the skill's 130% bonus now fully and consistently carries into its crit damage (950 vs. the old 856). A skill's own Damage Percent is active across normal and crit hits, and scaling risk is controlled separately via the CRIT_TOTAL_IGNORE_MAX cap rather than by selectively dropping modifiers on crit which create needless complexity. This change does making critical hits more powerful for skills with increased Damage Percent, which is why we changed the formula in the first place, but excluding those values had unintended consequences that needed to be resolved.

Tags: Nightwraith

September 12, 2026

EpicDuel rebooted today for a small balance tweak to the changes from yesterday's update. This sometimes happens when we try to rush too many changes at the last minute, but we promise to be more careful in the future, even if it means holding changes for a later update.

Balance Changes

Tags: Nightwraith

September 11, 2026

Ishmael's New Rides

In addition to the Talk Like a Pirate Day items from previous years, Ishmael has some brand new premium bikes, concepted by Charfade and rendered by Acatriel! Make a splash on the highways of Delta V with these hot new rides!

• Mantis Shrimp Bike
• Mantis Shrimp Bike CC
• Shark Bike
• Shark Bike CC
• Swordfish Bike
• Swordfish Bike CC
• Squid Bike
• Squid Bike CC

Boss Breaker Revamped

As mentioned in last week's Design Notes, we are revamping the Daily Boss Breaker and Boss Streak achievements to be based on a kill threshold rather than only awarding the #1. Each NPC will have its own kill count threshold that must be met to earn the new Daily Boss Breaker achievement.

The news thresholds are as follows:

• 2 kills — Nightmare Smoking Shadow, Nightmare Azrael's Guardian,
• 3 kills — Adjudicator, Azrael, Azrael’s Guardian, CactusChan, Leg Acatriel, Luthiel, Nightmare Acatriel, Nightmare Adjudicator, Nightmare Azrael, Nightmare CactusChan, Nightmare Luthiel, Nightmare Pumpkin Lord, Nightmare Dage the Evil
• 5 kills — Dage the Evil, Darkon, Legendary Delta Vault, Legendary Bido, Legendary Big Tuna, Legendary Caden, Legendary Captain Shoggoth, Legendary Charfade, Legendary Dage the Evil, Legendary Deuce, Legendary Endless M4tr1x, Legendary God of War, Legendary Merged Dragonoid, Legendary M4tr1x, Legendary Nightwraith, Legendary Slayer, Legendary Smoking Shadow, Legendary Titan, Legendary Void King, Nightmare Abyss Spider, Nightmare Shoggoth, Nightmare Charfade, Nightmare Charfade, Nightmare Husk, Nightmare Kartherax, Nightmare Nightwraith, Nightmare Titan, Pumpkin Lord, Legendary Dragonoid Brain, Mysterious Man
• 10 kills — Smoking Shadow, Zedmyr
• 15 kills — Admin 10, Admin 11, Armor Hazard, Delta Vault, Exile Leader, Iron Husk, King Alaric, Merged Dragonoid, Chairman Platinum
• 20 kills — Alexis, Alydriah, Dragonoid Brain, Edgar Boothe, Elite Yeti, God of War, Saeva Lionhart, Seth Juron, The Endless, Void King
• 30 kills — Dravax, George Lowe, Kartherax
• 50 kills — Abyss Spider, Captain Shoggoth, Noragh, Revontheus, Theon
• 100 kills — Davarril

The Daily Faction Boss Breaker threshold will work similarly to the individual daily Boss Breaker, but the boss kill threshold will be multiplied by 5.

Those who already received Boss Breaker achievements will see them converted into Legacy Boss Breaker/Legacy Boss Breaker Streak/Legacy Faction Boss Breaker achievements of the appropriate tier previously earned. Factions that already received Boss Breaker points will keep them.

These changes should encourage wider participation while discouraging cheating/excessive grinding.

Balance Changes

• Blood Instinct & Blood Shield: Removed Energy gain from all augments; HP cost down to 40 for all augments
• Azrael's Borg Heart Attack: Multi-use
• Lotus Petal: Heal for 150 hp; gain +10 stats immediately and gain an additional +10 stats for each attack; random skill placed on cooldown instead of disabled for the duration of battle
• Infernal Binding: Damage was incorrectly set to 50 rather than Primary damage.
• UA Parasite: Remove -100 EP drain

Alpha-Omega Valkyrie Prizes

You may remember from 2 Gifting cycles ago that we still owe a few Gifting tier prizes. We haven't forgotten, but we have been relentlessly busy. Since we were able to carve out a sliver of time to work on them, we sent out some of the remaining prizes.

• At least 10,000 gifts:
  Asgardian Champion Blade CC P
  Asgardian Champion Blade CC E
• At least 15,000 gifts:
  Alpha-Omega Valkyrie Greatsword CC P
  Alpha-Omega Valkyrie Greatsword CC E
• At least 25,000 gifts:
  Alpha-Omega Valkyrie Barrage P
  Alpha-Omega Valkyrie Barrage E
• At least 225,000 gifts:
  Alpha-Omega Valkyrie Morph
  Alpha-Omega Valkyrie Morph CC
• At least 250,000 gifts:
  Ascended Alpha-Omega Valkyrie Morph
  Ascended Alpha-Omega Valkyrie Morph CC
• At least 275,000 gifts:
  Ascended Alpha-Omega Valkyrie Bike
  Ascended Alpha-Omega Valkyrie Bike CC

Tags: Nightwraith

September 02, 2026

The Infernal Odyssey promotional package is NOW LIVE! Collect a beautiful trove of new armors and gear with a bountiful complement of powerful cores. This new promo is can be purchased with the 10,000 AP and 4,000 AP packages. The 4,000 AP packages comes with no Varium and no extra cores aside from those already equipped to the gear.

This new promo comes with the following new items:

• Hades' Armor
• Hades' Armor CC
• Hades' Warlord Armor
• Hades' Warlord Armor CC
• Hades' Royal Armor
• Hades' Royal Armor CC
• Hades' Infernal Sword
• Hades' Abyssal Sword
• Hades' Infernal Arsenal
• Hades' Abyssal Arsenal
• Hades' Infernal Gun
• Hades' Abyssal Gun
• Hades' Infernal Bow
• Hades' Abyssal Bow
• Hades' Infernal Bident
• Hades' Abyssal Bident

The new cores and their effects are listed below:

• Lotus Petal (Armor Active):  Set a random skill into cooldown for 40% less EP cost, +150 HP, +10 stats instantly and +10 stats added for each attack for 4 turns.
• Charon's Obol (Armor Active): Survive with 1 HP after a fatal attack, reflecting a portion of dmg. back at attacker. Prevents debuffs. Active up to 5 turns.
• Shade Snare (Primary Active): Strike for 100% dmg., draining 25% Energy for each attack for 2 turns.
• Infernal Binding (Primary Active): 85% dmg. against 2 targets, prevents Rage attacks for 3 turns.
• Legendary Shot (Sidearm Active): 110% dmg. Each use deals increasing dmg. by 10%, maxing out at 130%.
• Oblivion Blast (Auxiliary Active): 100% dmg., disables passive HP/EP regeneration for 3 turns. This does not apply to active regeneration skills like Field Medic, Frenzy, or any other skill that restores HP/EP with a single attack. This core was formerly listed as Legendary Bow, but changed to be more thematically consistent.

The Infernal Odyssey promo package also comes with a new rare Infernal Odyssey achievement with purchase!

Not included in the promo packages are 4 new Infernal Odyssey styles available at the character customizer for all!

Boss Breaker Revamp (In Progress)

The Boss Breaker leaderboards have been up long enough to collect and act on feedback. When we released the boards, we hoped to give players an insight into their PvE stats and provide and competitive outlet for those who needed a break from PvP. As is often the case, competition brings out the worst in people, discouraging daily participation. 

To combat this, we are developing an overhaul to the Boss Breaker boards and achievements to reward based on a boss kill threshold rather than a winner-take-all approach. These changes should make the achievements and board status attainable without devoting 20 hours a day to grinding or resorting to more nefarious tactics and catching a ban. These changes are in-progress and will launch as soon as they are finished. Those who currently hold Boss Breaker achievements will retain them, but they will be deprecated in favor of new achievements once the new system launches.

Enemy AI Reconfigured

Many hard NPCs of the Legendary and Nightmare variety have been reverted to the legacy AI routine. We made a change in the end of July to revert the AI of many extremely difficult NPCs, but we missed a few in that initial pass. Now, these boss-tier NPCs will use the old RNG AI patterns longtime PvE champions are used to.

Tags: Nightwraith

August 28, 2026

Infernal Odyssey Preview

Next week, you will be able to become king of the underworld with epic new Infernal Odyssey gear, themed after Hades, Lord of the Underworld. This package is planned to go LIVE next Wednesday September 2nd. and will come with a rare achievement and 6 new active cores with incredible, unique abilities:

• Lotus Petal (Armor Active): Sacrifice a random skill for 40% less EP cost, +10 stats for each attack for 4 turns.
• Charon's Obol (Armor Active): Spare your life with 1 HP after a fatal attack. Prevents debuffs. Active up to 5 turns. Buff expires early when your life is spared.
• Shade Snare (Primary Active): Strike for 25% Energy drain, draining 25% Energy for each melee attack for 2 turns.
• Infernal Binding (Primary Active): 100% dmg. AOE attack that prevents Rage attacks for 3 turns.
• Legendary Shot (Sidearm Active): 110% dmg. Each use deals increasing dmg. by 10%, maxing out at 130%.
• Legendary Blast (Auxiliary Active): 100% dmg., disables passive HP/EP regeneration for 3 turns.

These skill descriptions are tentative and may change before the package goes online.

Gamma Pirate Leaving Soon!

When the Infernal Odyssey promotional package goes LIVE next week, the Gamma Pirate promotion will leave the shop for good! The robots and cores will return, but the gear itself and the included achievement will be rare!

Faction Coup Countermeasures

To help protect Factions from the risk of a compromised founder account, we've implemented the following changes:

• A founder cannot delete their own Faction without first removing all members.
• Kicking 3 members in one day now trips a circuit breaker that blocks additional kicks for 5 days. This is meant to limit damage if a malicious party gains access to the founder's account. This cooldown also offers founders a small period of reflection to reconsider a drastic permanent action like Faction deletion.
• Members leaving the Faction of their own volition with not increment the daily removal count.

However, for all the countermeasures we add to protect Factions from malicious activity, we cannot protect accounts from poor security practices like weak passwords or account sharing. If you haven't updated your password in awhile, now would be a great time to update to a complex password. Account sharing, in addition to being against the Terms of Service, is a huge security vulnerability regardless of how much you trust the other party.

If you think you will be taking an extended break from the game, an existing option is founder step-down in which the current founder passes the title to another *trusted* member of the Faction. We emphasize the "trust" here because if you hand the Faction over to someone who then passes the founder title to another random person you don't trust or know at all, what happens next is totally out of your control.

Balance

Skills:

• Tactical Grenade : +20 Energy gain/drain to all augments
• Blood Shield: Increase HP sacrifice from 40 → 60
• Blood Instinct: Increase HP sacrifice from 40 → 60
• EA1 Concentration: +55HP → +70HP.

Cores:

• Consecrated Fire: Buff removal: 100% → 80%
• Techstalker Tremor P/E,Telekinesis: Duration increased to 4 turns from 2.

Tags: Nightwraith

August 19, 2026

The Technomancer Showcase Battlepass is NOW LIVE! Login now to earn the latest collection of weapons, armors, morphs, bots, and more based on stylish cyberpunk gear that Delta V has been lacking lately.

We broke one of the standardization rules we set awhile back for Battlepasses by offering cores in as rewards, but the concepts fit so well with the theme of the showcase, we couldn't resist. So you all know what you're getting into with the new bots and cores available in this season, the skill descriptions are listed below:

Overclock: Decrease target's cooldowns by 1.
Underclock: Attack for 85% dmg. and increase target's cooldowns by 1.
Malware: 85% dmg., gain any Energy your target spends on skills and cores for 3 turns.

Technomancer Hexabot P

• Hexabot Cannon P: 100% Physical damage from Hexabot's cannon, gain 25% dmg. reduction for 1 turn.
• Hexabot Gas Grenade P: 100% Physical dmg., boosts effectiveness of HP poisons by 25% for 3 turns.

Technomancer Hexabot E

• Hexabot Cannon E: 100% Energy damage from Hexabot's cannon, gain 25% dmg. reduction for 1 turn.
• Hexabot Gas Grenade E: 100% Energy dmg., boosts effectiveness of HP poisons by 25% for 3 turns.

These epic new skills are sure to shake up the game's current balance!

Infernal Odyssey Preview

It's been a long, long time since we rolled out a new promotional package and this next one is spicy indeed! Become the king (or queen) of the Underworld with this new Infernal Odyssey set coming soon! This new package will come with new cores, gear, and an achievement!

In the meantime, get the Gamma Pirate gear while you can before it vanishes into the irradiated abyss!

Balance Changes

• Robots
  • Anubis Incantation P/E: 1 turn warm-up
  •  Infernal Overload: Damage: 125% → 120%
  • Heart Attack (all variants): Damage: 110% → 100%, removes 100% of buffs → removes 65% of buffs, multi-use
• Cores
  • Laser Sights: +80% damage when attack is deflected → +70% damage when attack is deflected
  • Azrael's Torment (all variants): Damage: 85% → 100%, removes 100% of buffs → removes 80% of buffs
  • Color Blast/Egg Rain type attacks that are triggered by a strike can now be triggered by Azrael's Will.
• Bounty Hunter
  • Blood Lust (UA 1): 15% Damage to HP/EP → 13% Damage to HP/EP
• Cyber Hunter
  • Plasma Grenade: 105 Energy → 125 Energy
• Tech Mage
  • Technician (UA): Scaling: 4.80 → 9.50
• Mercenary
  • Blood Commander (UA): Base Value: 21 → 18, Scaling: 5.40 → 9.25

Bug Fixes / Changes

• Faction Founders/Officers can view each member's daily all total Influence for the current war region.
• Hexabot Gas Grenade P/E no longer mini-Rages on use.

EpicDuel Down Time

The BattleOn Portal, EpicDuel, and the forums will undergo scheduled maintenance on Tuesday 8/25. The downtime will begin anytime between 12:00 PM and 4:00 PM EST. Once the servers go offline, maintenance is expected to last for approximately 2 hours before everything is back up and running. Hopefully sooner, but you know how this sometimes goes!

Interested in playing EpicDuel?

Check out the Artix Games Launcher!

Tags: Nightwraith

August 07, 2026

Achievement Expansion

By request we've added more tiers to some popular achievements. 

Fame Achievements

• Legendary Superstar: Awarded for earning 50,000 Fame.
• Epic Legendary Superstar: Awarded for earning 75,000 Fame.
• Mythic Superstar: Awarded for earning 100,000 Fame.
• Eternal Superstar: Awarded for earning 125,000 Fame.
• Cosmic Superstar: Awarded for earning 150,000 Fame.
• Infinite Superstar: Awarded for earning 175,000 Fame.
• King of all Superstars: Awarded for earning 200,000 Fame.

Housing Tiers

• Landlord Tier 1: Awarded for owning at least 1 home.
• Landlord Tier 2: Awarded for owning at least 5 homes (current 5 home achievement).
• Landlord Tier 3: Awarded for owning at least 10 homes.
• Landlord Tier 4: Awarded for owning at least 15 homes.

Daily Missions

• Added tiers 12 - 20 for completing 200 to 1000 daily missions.

War Update

Wars that have ended since the 1v1/2v2/Juggernaut split will now show the total results from the 1v1/2v2/Juggernaut instead of leaving those sections blank. 

Mission Changes

• Search functionality for mission/mission group name or mission-giving NPC name
• When accessing a mission from the "Available Missions" section of an NPC's option, closing or clicking the X button will take you back to the NPC's "Available Missions" section. This seems more in line with expected behavior.
• If you do not meet mission completion prerequisites for a mission, the interface will display which mission group you need to complete.
• Jump to NPC in missions immediately opens the Mission interface to the mission you were trying to accept.

Quality of Life

• Admin messages will show up in the chat text box in yellow.

Bug Fix

• White Knight P/E should now be purchasable with the prices of 5,000 Varium or 5 Balance Tokens.
  
  

Battlepass Status

The Technomancer Battlepass is still in development. We hoped to have it ready by next week, but there is still uncertainty with all that's left to do. To be safe, the start time has been set to August 19th, which should give us a decent buffer to wrap up any outstanding issues. Ideally, it would release next week as planned, but we want to be sure it is 100% ready.

Tags: Nightwraith

July 30, 2026

Boss Leaderboard Update

The centerpiece of this update is a major expansion upon the Boss leaderboard from last week. This update will feature 4 new leaderboards:

• Faction All-Time
• Faction Daily
• Streaks
• Best Times

The new Faction Boss Breaker achievement will be given to the Faction that wins the daily Boss Bounty. This award is obtained by the Faction with the most daily boss kills as an aggregate of all its members. In the case of a tie, the Faction with the highest Influence will win.

The new Streak Tracker leaderboard will record the number of days in a row an individual wins the Boss Breaker achievement. The leaderboard will display the longest streak and current streak. Winning the Boss Breaker achievement 5 days in a row will count as a streak. Every 5 days after that will update the achievement. This leaderboard will be blank as of this update until enough streak data has been collected.

The Best Times leaderboard will records the best all-time completion times for each boss, including the round number and actual time. This board will be unpopulated at first since we just added the appropriate boss tracking in this update!

Winners of the new achievements will receive in-game mail at the end of each day.

AI Adjustment

After the AI update last week, some found our smarter NPCs a bit too smart, always choosing the perfect strategy to negate your defenses and resist your best attacks. To address that, we've created multiple AI profiles designed to fine tune intelligence for each NPC. Now some NPCs will be closer to the "classic" NPC AI, particularly Legendary and Nightmare bosses (already quite challenging), in which the NPCs randomly roll a skill/attack.

TheAlonzoHarris Shop

TheAlonzoHarris Shop has updated with the following CC items:

• Sea King's Wrath CC
• Sea King's Terror CC

Bug Fixes / UX Improvements

• NPC drops with drop rates now shown on the NPC's stats panel.
• Clicking the names on the Faction and individual leaderboards in the Boss Slayer leaderboard will jump to the Faction page or character page respectively.
• Boss Slayer leaderboard button added to the main interface.
• The end of battle screen will now count war drops you've banked towards your total cap. Previously, this appeared as a bug if you had already maxed out your war items but they were banked. You would never get a drop because the server saw the items, but the client would not until you unbanked the items. A helpful note will alert you if you have banked war items.

Tags: Nightwraith

July 24, 2026

Nightmare CactusChan drops

Challenge Nightmare CactusChan in the Wasteland desert for a chance to receive new Nightmare drops based on CactusChan's previous Gifting prizes!

• Nightmare Cactus Crusher P - 10%
• Nightmare Cactus Crusher E - 10%
• Nightmare Cactus Conflagrator - 2%
• Nightmare Cactus Corrupter - 2%
• Nightmare Pachycereus Pringlei - 3%
• Nightmare Stenocereus Thurberi - 3%
• Nightmare Malediction - 5%
• Nightmare Anathema - 5%

Remember, to battle Nightmare CactusChan, you'll first have to progress in the mission chain Nightmare in the Desert!

Daily Boss Bounties

View the Boss Slayer Leaders on Slayer in the Barrens for the latest daily boss bounty! Defeat the selected boss the most for the day to receive the Boss Breaker achievement! New boss bounties are selected at the end of the day when the leaderboards reset. To recognize boss duo teams, we will award achievements to the top daily boss battlers in the event of a tie.

The first daily bounty will be, appropriately enough, Nightmare CactusChan!

Battlepass Enhancements

In preparation of the upcoming Technomancer Battlepass, we've added some polish and perks to the Battlepass systems.

• Battlepass Enhanced button shows Varium price.
• Enhanced pass grants 20% more Battlepass XP. During Power Hour, this increases to 40%.
• Battlepass rewards now show a description of Robot/Core abilities.
• Challenges will display increased XP.
• Challenge progress/completion notifications are queued so when you progress multiple challenges, you will see each popup in a queue. A max of 5 popups will display, with additional popups appearing as the visible ones are closed or disappear on their own.
• Challenge popups now show whether it's a daily or weekly challenge.
• Completed challenges receive a unique popup animation.

NPC AI Overhaul

EpicDuel's NPCs were due for an upgrade. Maybe few of the current players remember, but NPC's were basically lobotomized in the Omega update. NPC AI was one of the last features to be carried over and it was drastically simplified in the transition. Before, NPC's had much greater battle context and complex assessments for the ideal skills vs ideal targets. To catch up with 2026, we've performed a major overhaul of NPC AI. We may need to adjust this further as we get more battle feedback (there are over 200 NPCs so sorting out all the potential quirks in one week is impossible), but it should make NPCs more compelling opponents and more intelligent partners.

• RNG Rewrite
  Before: NPCs picked what to do using a mix of random chance and random shuffling. Even when one option was clearly better, there was a real chance the AI would pick something worse just because RNG said so. Healing only kicked in at a flat 30% HP.
  After: NPCs now weigh every possible move, basic attack, skills, healing, shielding, on the same scale based on how much good each one would actually do in the moment. Whichever option scores highest wins. No more coin-flips between an obviously good move and an obviously bad one.
• Optimization
  We also cut out a bunch of duplicate, unnecessary calculations the AI was running behind the scenes. This doesn't change how NPCs behave, but it does make the server work less hard to get there. A necessary change for more complex AI behavior.
• Smarter Targeting
  Before: if an NPC had a single-target skill, it almost always aimed at the same "default" enemy, even if another enemy was an easier target.
  After: the AI now checks every enemy individually for single-target skills and can go after whoever's most vulnerable, instead of always picking the same target out of habit. (This doesn't apply to AOE skills.)
• Heal Plz
  If a partner drops below 25% HP, the AI will prioritize healing them, even if it normally wouldn't bother at that point in a fight, unless the enemy is also nearly dead (under 20% HP), in which case the NPC will go for the killing blow. Basically: heal when the fight's still close, but always take the kill when possible.
• Finish Him!
  Before: the AI only recognized a "finishing move" opportunity based on percentages: if an enemy was below 20% of its own max HP. That meant some low-HP enemies who were actually one hit away from dying didn't get flagged as finishable, and the AI would sometimes heal instead of just ending the fight.
  After: the AI now directly compares how much damage a move would deal against the enemy's actual remaining HP. If a move would likely kill, it gets a big score boost that beats out healing or anything else so NPCs are much better at recognizing "I can end this right now."

TL;DR: NPC enemies and allies used to make randomized choices based on battle condition (current HP/Energy, cooldowns). Now they compare their options directly, recognize real kill opportunities, manage their resources better, and make smarter calls about when to heal versus when to attack in both 1v1 and 2v2 fights.

Quality of Life

• War Leaderboards now allow you to click through to the character page or Faction page of the leaders.
• Factions will allow you to click through to the character page of members.
• Added "Shop" identifier to NPCs on the Map interface that have an available shop
• Inventory and Merchant interfaces now show if items have cores equipped with colors and icons.
• Favorited or Locked items now have icons to indicate status rather than (*) or (x).
• Rearranged Settings options for improved organization.

Thank you for your patience as we work diligently to improve the EpicDuel experience!

Balance

• Overload and Overload (EA) cooldown increased to 2 as an unblockable skill, especially one with stun, is too powerful to leave with 1 cooldown.

Tags: Nightwraith

July 17, 2026

Nightmare in the Desert

Visit CactusChan in the Wasteland outskirts to accept his list of requests to summon his fierce Nightmare form and send that sadistic succulent back to the shadow realm!

Defeating Nightmare CactusChan will yield the following new achievements:

• Nightmare Cactus Conqueror
• Nightmare Cactus Slayer

After we launch a new boss, people frequently ping me to ask who, if anyone, defeated it first. Now there will be no more wondering since we have a Boss Slayer Leaderboard at the Slayer and a new Nightmare boss announcement system! Now, all players will be alerted whenever someone defeats a Nightmare boss. This feature can be disabled by unchecking the "Show Boss Updates" option from the Settings menu.

TheAlonzoHarris' Shop Update

TheAlonzoHarris' shop has been updated with the following Sea King items!

• Sea King's Disruptor CC P
• Sea King's Disruptor CC E
• Sea King's Disintegrator CC P
• Sea King's Disintegrator CC E

One in a Million

The next One in a Million achievement has been awarded to xAshx who won a very lucky Juggernaut match.

Next Week

EpicDuel will enhance the Boss Leaderboard with daily boss bounties (earn the most daily defeats of a random boss). Also, NPCs will receive a general upgrade to their AI routines to make them better allies and more threatening opponents!

Tags: Nightwraith

July 10, 2026

This week has been mainly focused on preparation for some very epic releases on the horizon, including a nightmarish rematch against CactusChan!

Passive Queue Adjustment

The new passive queues' 1v1 matching system has been adjusted slightly. It was giving lower level opponents NPC matches before attempting to find a real human match. 

TheAlonzoHarris' Shop Update

TheAlonzoHarris' shop has been updated with new CC versions of fan-favorite seasonal rares. This time we're focusing on the Sea King set!

• Sea King's Executioner CC P
• Sea King's Executioner CC E
• Sea King's Star Saber CC P
• Sea King's Star Saber CC E

Seasonal Rares Leaving

Next week on July 16th, all the seasonal rares that were added to the shops last month will be reset to their normal schedule.

Gift Cleanup

Next week Thursday July 16th, the last of the remaining Gifting gifts will be deleted.

Coming Soon!

Prepare yourselves for a rematch against CactusChan! You'll need a friend for this one.

Also, development of the new Technomancer Battlepass is underway!

HeroMart Summer Sale

2026 Summer Mix & Match Buy 3, Get 4th Item FREE Deal! Ends 2026-07-26 11:59 PM EST. Build your own bundle and score big this summer! For a limited time, when you buy any 3 eligible items, you’ll get a 4th item FREE no codes, no hassle. (Bundles do not qualify since they already include a bulk discount) Add 4 qualifying items to your cart, and the discount applies automatically at checkout. & Don’t forget to use your AQW Infinity Kickstarter Thank You Deal! Save 15% with code KICKSTARTER15 at checkout.

Follow this link to learn more!

Tags: Nightwraith

July 06, 2026

Passive Queuing System

This is the most significant change to one of EpicDuel's bedrock systems in a long time. Now, instead of joining a formless void while waiting for battle, you can still move around freely and chat with your friends until a match is found. Certain actions like retraining, changing class, challenging an NPC, and unequipping items will end your queue.

To achieve this, some changes to matchmaking were made, particularly in 2v2, where matchmaking was already very complex. To accomodate this complexity, you will now see "Balancing Teams" text indicating that 4 eligible players have been found based on basic level criteria, but the match is not quite ready to start yet. Sometimes the system will determine that the eligible players are not actually eligible due to previously matching too many times, faction affiliation, or other reasons and the search will continue. The match will stall start after ~45 seconds of no matches if not enough players are found passing all criteria and NPCs will be used to fill the slots as before.

Balance

In to mitigate first strike advantage in 2v2, the starting Brace Bonus has been extended to 3 rounds. The starting Rage bonus has also been increased to 30% in 2v2.

We've reimplemented cost scaling for AOE skills and cores starting a 20% at level 1. However, instead of being a flat cost increase for all levels, the cost increase actually diminishes with more investment, eventually stopping at 7% at level 10.

Sample AOE Skill Cost Progression:
Level   1-target   Multiplier   2-target cost
1        100           1.200           120
2        120           1.186           142
3        140           1.171           164
4        160           1.157           185
5        180           1.143           206
6        200           1.129           226
7        220           1.114           245
8        240           1.100           264
9        260           1.086           282
10      280           1.070           300

To further address the overpowered nature of free AOE cores, an Energy cost of 100 added to:

• Dualism
• Revolver Revolution
• Ultra Obliteration

NPC versions of those 3 skills added to high-level 2v2 NPCs:

• Nightwraith (40)
• Titan (40)
• Big Tuna (38)
• Charfade (40)
• Bido (40)
• Brachylagus (40)
• Rabblefroth (40)
• Exile Soldier (39)
• Legion Soldier (39)
• Transcendence (38)
• Immanence (38)
• Deuce (40)
• Necronaut Clemek (39)
• Necronaut Paz (39)
• Acatriel (40)
• Big Tuna (40)
• Necronaut Clemek (40)
• Necronaut Paz (40)

Buddy Status

Your buddy list with now update with 3 more user statuses including AFK (away from the keyboard), DND (do not disturb), and in-battle. DND will supercede these other statuses.

Also, when unlinking from an ally, your ally will also see a message indicating the link was broken.

Tags: Nightwraith

June 26, 2026

EpicDuel is LIVE with a new All-Time Boss Leaderboard! Jump to the Slayer and discover who the greatest boss breakers on Delta V truly are!

Delta V's Greatest Hunters

Whenever we release a new boss, I'll have several people ping me repeatedly trying to figure out who the first people to defeat it were or if anyone was able to defeat the latest monster at all. No more! For your information and my sanify, I've introduced a new Boss leaderboard available at the Slayer NPC in the Barrens. With several exciting new bosses on the horizon, this feature was more necessary than ever. The new board shows daily and all-time defeat amounts. There are no rewards currently for the daily boards, but all the architecture is in place to expand this feature into something very cool and exciting. Maybe a daily boss bounty to see who could defeat a certain bost the most in one day? Or extra rewards for the first person to defeat an hourly boss? The possibilities are endless!

Mission Reward Boost

Missions offering Arcade Token rewards have been increased to a minimum of 10!

TheAlonzoHarris Shop

TheAlonzoHarris' Shop has been updated with the last of the color-custom Darkeater gear. Put your Balance Tokens to good use and complete your collection!

• Darkeater Consumer CC P
• Darkeater Consumer CC E
• Darkeater Devourer CC P
• Darkeater Devourer CC P

Critical Reconsideration

I had several players bring to my attention that our latest attempts to address critical damage were well-intentioned, but overly complex and confusing, and I agree. I got caught up chasing windmills and trying to be too clever guarding against overly-specific interactions. Thus, the ultimate solution is to simply base all crit calculations on the pre-boosted damage. This accomplishes the initial goal mitigating extreme damage stacking just fine and is easy to understand. As a final guard, these is still a max cap on critical defense ignore of 50.

Below are several scenarios to demonstrate how the new formula works:

Scenario 1 — 115% damage, 30% defense ignore, Massive Strike

• gross damage = 596
• damage = (596 × 1.15) - 220 = 686 - 220 = 466
• ignore % = (30 + 15) = 45
• crit adjusted def = (0.55 × 220) = 121
• damage post crit = 596 - 121 = 475
• crit damage increase = 475 - 466 = 9
• critMinIncrease = 56
• 9 < 56 → final damage = 466 + 56 = 522

Scenario 2 — 115% damage, 30% defense ignore, Massive Strike + Rage

• gross damage = 596
• defense after rage = 220 - (0.4233 × 220) = 220 - 93 = 127
• damage = 686 - 127 = 559
• ignore % = 45
• crit adjusted def = (0.55 × 127) = 70
• damage post crit = 596 - 70 = 526
• crit damage increase = 526 - 559 = -33
• -33 < 56 → final damage = 559 + 56 = 615

Scenario 3 — 130% damage, no defense ignore, no Rage

• gross damage = 700
• damage = (700 × 1.30) - 300 = 910 - 300 = 610
• ignore % = (30) = 30
• crit adjusted def = (0.70 × 300) = 210
• damage post crit = 700 - 210 = 490
• crit damage increase = 490 - 610 = -120
• -120 < 56 → final damage = 610 + 56 = 666

Scenario 4 — No damage % increase, 20% defense ignore, Rage 30%, Massive Strike

• gross damage = 700
• defense = (0.80 × 300) = 240
• defense after rage = 240 - (0.30 × 240) = 168
• damage = 700 - 168 = 532
• ignore % = (30 + 15) = 45
• crit adjusted def = (0.55 × 168) = 92
• damage post crit = 700 - 92 = 608
• crit damage increase = 608 - 532 = 76
• 76 > 56 → final damage = 608

Scenario 5 — No damage % increase, no defense ignore, no rage (baseline crit)

• gross damage = 700
• damage = 700 - 300 = 400
• ignore % = (30) = 30
• crit adjusted def = (0.70 × 300) = 210
• damage post crit = 700 - 210 = 490
• crit damage increase = 490 - 400 = 90
• 90 > 56 → final damage = 490

Hopefully this is the last update to this formula.

Tags: Nightwraith

June 22, 2026

EpicDuel is LIVE with a suprirse Monday release with a small calculation adjustment to Critical damage and 2v2 automatch limits.

2v2 Automatch Limit

To prevent exploitation of predictable 2v2 automatches, we're limiting the hourly automatch to 10. This applies to linked and unlinked matches.

Critical Calculation Adjustment

After reviewing the calculation adjustments from last week, I determined that the battle engine was implementing a superfluous cap for defense ignore since the skill-driven defense ignore is already happening outside crit defense ignore calculations. The 50% cap for crit defense ignore is still in place to be consistent with max Rage defense ignore. The difference is small but noticeable, but better for consistency. Here are 2 examples to demonstrate the new calculations:

Scenario 1 — Adaptive Offense (50% defense ignore, crit)

gross damage = 700
defense = (0.50 × 300) = 150 (skill-driven) defense ignore applied)
damage (normal) = 700 - 150 = 550

// Crit calc (no applied defense ignore):
ignore % = (30 + 0) = 30
adj ignore % = 0.30
crit adjusted def = (0.70 × 150) = 105
damage post crit = 700 - 105 = 595

// Guard check:
damage post crit (595) > damage (550) → guard does NOT trigger
crit damage increase = 595 - 550 = 45
crit min increase = 56
45 < 56 → final damage = 550 + 56 = 606


Scenario 2 — Fire Rain (20% defense ignore, Rage 30%, crit, Massive Strike)

gross damage = 700
defense = (0.80 × 300) = 240 (skill-driven) defense ignore applied)
defense after Rage = 240 - Math.round(0.30 × 240) = 240 - 72 = 168
damage (normal) = 700 - 168 = 532

// Crit calc (no applied defense ignore):
ignore %= (30 + 15) = 45
adj ignore % = 0.45
crit adjusted def = Math.round(0.55 × 168) = 92
damage post crit = 700 - 92 = 608

// Guard check:
damage post crit (608) > damage (532) → guard does NOT trigger
crit damage increase = 608 - 532 = 76
crit min increase = 56
76 > 56 → final damage = 608

Again, the difference is small, but the purpose is the same -- limit the impact of stacked critical boosting skills. 

Tags: Nightwraith