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): Spare your life with 1 HP after a fatal attack. Prevents debuffs. Active up to 5 turns.
• Shade Snare (Primary Active): Strike for 25% Energy drain, draining 25% Energy for each melee 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