EpicDuel PVP Game Design Notes

October 02, 2026

Added to Thalyssa

• SteamTech Arsenal P
• SteamTech Arsenal E
• SteamTech Bazooka P
• SteamTech Bazooka E
• SteamTech Artillery P
  • SteamTech Cannon P: Rain down physical attacks from a hovering airship; 20% defense ignore.
  • SteamTech Blast P: Deal more damage based on how much EP you have left, up to 120% for 0 EP.
• SteamTech Artillery E
  • SteamTech Cannon E: Rain down energy attacks from a hovering airship; 20% defense ignore.
  • SteamTech Blast E: Deal more damage based on how much EP you have left, up to 120% for 0 EP.

Added to Alonzo Harris

New!

• Ghoul Cannon 2018 CC 2026
• Ghoul Cannon 2018 2026
• Spectral Blaster 2018 CC 2026
• Spectral Blaster 2018 2026

Returning!

• Stun Cannon CC 2026
• Stun Blaster CC 2026
• Stun Cannon 2026
• Stun Blaster 2026
• Ghoul Cannon 2019 CC 2026
• Spectral Blaster 2019 CC 2026
• Ghoul Cannon 2019 2026
• Spectral Blaster 2019 2026

Balance Changes

• Revenant's Wall (Armor): Increase Resistance by 65% for 3 -> 4 turns.
• Hardened Armor: Damage Reduction 35% -> 30%; Added 30% damage reflection.
• Anubis Incantation: Warmup 1 -> 0; Detonates for 67% of targets current energy
• Energy Harvest
  Deal 85% -> 100% damage, stealing 20% HP and 50% Energy, disabling melee attacks for 1 turn.
• Hunters' Eradication: Remove target's armor (1 turn), target's sidearm (2 turns) and auxiliary (3 turns).
• Saw Strike P/E: Rip through 25% -> 30% of your target's defense with a 20% crit chance.
• Underclock: Attack for 85% -> 100% damage and increase target's cooldowns by 1.
• Whiteout: Deals 100% -> 110% damage
• Titan's Shroud / Titan's Shroud (NPC) / Force's Shroud: Now only increases the chance you will block an incoming attack and no longer affects your opponent's chance to block your attack. Removed Damage Reflection.

Critical Change

Critical strike formula reverted to remove to the defense-ignore cap, but reverting entirely to the formula earlier in the year is not idea as it contained many blind spots that produced inaccurate results. People were mostly used to the old formula since it was in use for so long that nobody thought anything of it. I'll share some simulated scenarios below to clarify the differences between the old and new formulas.

Classic early 2026 formula: damagePostCrit = grossDamage − critAdjustedDefense, no clamp on ignorePercent.
Current new formula: damagePostCrit = damage + defenseIgnored, ignorePercent clamped to 0–100.

Simulated Scenarios: grossDamage = 1000, target Defense = 500, base ignorePercent = 30% (no crit-ignore gear unless noted), attacker level = 40 → critMinIncrease = 56.

Results:

1. Identical. In most cases, you will never notice the change (100% damage, nothing else going on).
2. This is the NPC Defense core bug that was fixed by the new formula. The core is worth 400 damage reduction on a normal hit (500→100), but Classic's crit comes out exactly the same as #1's (650), totally ignoring the core. Current correctly shows a 400-point difference (650→250), matching the core's actual value.
3. / 4. — Classic's crit damage is the same 650 in every scenario, regardless of the skill's own damage%. Classic's crit output never changes unless grossDamage or Defense change. It's blind to everything else in the pipeline. Current scales appropriately: a 130%-damage skill crits harder (950) than a 70%-damage skill (350), proportional to their actual power.
5. Combining the core and a 130% skill, Classic still lands on 650 (same constant as every other scenario) as it ignores both modifiers. Current shows 550, correctly reflecting both.
6. With enough crit-ignore gear stacked to push raw ignorePercent to 120%, Classic's critAdjustedDefense goes negative ((1-1.2)×500 = -100), which flips the subtraction into an addition, and the crit does more than full gross damage (1100, exceeding the 1000 raw hit entirely). Current's clamp caps ignorePercent at 100%, so the worst case is "crit ignores all Defense" (1000). It can never exceed the hit's own gross damage.

Net Result: Classic's crit number is structurally disconnected from key elements that comprise a hit's damage, and only reacts to grossDamage and Defense. The current formula's crit number tracks the actual hit including modifiers. Classic may have "felt" correct due to familiarity, but by ignoring key modifiers it was actually inaccurate.

Other Changes

• Battle engine now supports limits for core uses beyond 1. Skill button tooltips will also show remaining uses for skills with multiple uses in battle.
• Rage start bonus: 30% in 2v2 → 35%, 20% in all other modes → 25%,
• NPC Rage enabled only for 1v1 and 2v2 battles. To prevent change from overpowering NPCs, their Rage rates will be 50% less than human rates. This change was made because NPCs have extremely low win rates against humans in 1v1 and 2v2 (only 5% in 2v2) and even worse outcomes with a human partner in a 2v2 with 2 humans vs 1 human, 1 NPC. This change should help human players who pair with NPC partners as well as making battles less predictable.
• Formula information including base values, max values, and divisors added for Block, Deflection, Critical, and Stun tool tips.

Tags: Nightwraith

September 29, 2026

When one bug is fixed, more will take its place. When I fixed Lotus Petal, I added extra measures to make sure cooldowns were more strictly enforced. Because some robots like Gamma Bot and Mini Rex have variations that reuse data from other bots, an unforseen consequence of this fix was that cooldowns would fail to trigger for those bots. For example, when you click a skill for Infernal Android PxE, the game thinks a skill for Infernal Android P should be in cooldown. Since that button isn't in your inferface due to you not currently using that bot, the cooldown cannot trigger.

I've combed through the hundreds of robot skill entries and I believe I've fixed all the problematic bots. I'm sorry this happened, but this is simply and inevitability with such a broad change to an integral system like cooldowns, and there is simply no way to test all 200+ robots in the game at a pace quick enough to surface these bugs before an update.

Additional Fixes

• Tactical Reload / Tactical Reload (Auxiliary): Expected behavior restored. This was broken for the same reason the bots were broken. These skills are exceptions to normal cooldown rules so they had to be accounted for.
• Brace: Cooldown removed. This cooldown appeared as part of the broad cooldown change. Again, this was because Brace was always an exception to rules and standardization "broke" it's normal behavior.
• Retrain/Level Up UI: The + and - buttons have been realigned with the corresponding stats. When I rearranged the UI, I didn't account for the necessary scale change to the buttons. Generally, the game's UI just needs more breathing room, but that's a broader change for another time.

Added to Kraggor

When testing the robots, I noticed that the Pyro Fly and variants were not sold anywhere due to being seasonal. Since robots have direct impact on balance, they should not be so restricted. Therefore, I added non-rare versions of the Pyro Fly bots to Kraggor, following the same precedent set with the Yeti bots.

• Pyro Fly
• Plasma Fly
• Infernal Fly
• Magma Fly

Tags: Nightwraith

September 28, 2026

Balance Change

Tremor Blast/Techstalker Tremor/Telekinesis/Saevussax Evisceration/SteamTech Grenade:

• Descriptions updated for displayed duration to match actual duration.
• These skills will reduce the chances of the afflicted player to block incoming attacks to 0%, and the chance that they will be blocked by anyone they attack to 30%.

These skill were granting 100% chance the person debuffed by them would be blocked. This was found to be too powerful, but these skills have worked this way for quite some time. Often we'll change a skill as a bullet point in a balance update, but because the skill isn't in the current meta, it will be ignored until someone finally tries it out and learns it's actually the most OP thing ever. That seems to be the case here, but I didn't want to update without a better solution to a larger problem with similar skills.

We've always faced a challenge with probability-altering skills as the impact is hard to *feel* over the course of a duel unless they're incredibly strong. Probability being what it is, even a large boost might not yield the expected results due to repeated bad rolls. Also, multiplicative passives tend to be much less impactful for evenly-matched players. If your block chance is 2%, then a 50% multiplicative boost is only +1. Additive boosts can be more impactful across all matchups, but risk being overpowered.

To finally address this, after 17+ years, I've added Block/Deflection/Stun chances to the stats page.

Probability Display

I've added the ability to finally see probabilities in the stats page. Block/Deflection/Crit/Stun will display the offensive values (i.e. chance that your target will block you).

Stats page now display's the player's Block chance for each opponent.

Stats page now display's the player's Deflection chance for each opponent.

Stats page now display's the player's Critical chance for each opponent.

Stats page now display's the player's base Stun chance for each opponent.

To view your own chance to block an attack, deflect, etc... view the stats page of your opponent(s).

I'm not 100% happy with the current implementation, but I wanted to get this feature in to enable transparency as quickly as possible. The current presentation will likely change once I settle on a more intuitive solution.

Other Changes

Tired of tracking cooldowns of everyone in battle in your own head? Well, you can put that scrap paper away and relax a little bit because cooldowns and warmups are now visible on the stats page of all human characters in battle.

Finally, Azrael's Borg Heart Attack and other skills that diminish buffs now affects Lotus Petal.

Tags: Nightwraith

September 25, 2026

This week the seas were rougher than usual on Delta V as we battled and finally defeated the pesky Lotus Petal bug! It turns out, this bug didn't have much to do with the skill at all! In fact, the cooldown error was due to viewing an NPC's, or another player's stats page. That caused the game to mistakenly target one the NPC's skill buttons for cooldown instead of yours so the skill put into cooldown by Lotus Petal would never go into cooldown. The self-correction would also fail because the game was trying to correct a button you didn't have. With this bug fixed, we'll leave traces in for another week to make sure the bug is 100% fixed (sometimes fixing a bug creates another one...or 2...or 20).

Even with all that, we were still able to release some fresh content for ye land lubbers!

Thalyssa's Bounty

Visit Thalyssa in the West Naval Yard for the latest Talk Like a Pirate Day gear!

• SteamTech Tank
• SteamTech Tank CC
• SteamTech Airship
• SteamTech Airship CC
• SteamTech Sword P
• SteamTech Sword E
• SteamTech Blaster P
• SteamTech Blaster E
• SteamTech Grenade P x25: Grenade that confuses target, lowering Crit, Block, and Deflection chance for 4 turns.
• SteamTech Grenade E x25: Grenade that confuses target, lowering Crit, Block, and Deflection chance for 4 turns.

Next week will be the grand finale of our Talk Like a Pirate gear, and we saved the best for last!

Added to The Challenger

Missed the Battlepass? You're in luck, because The Challenger has added Anubis to his collection. You have another chance to get one of the best anti-NPC bots available! 

• Anubis Incarnation P
• Anubis Incarnation E

Bug Fixes/Changes

• Skills set into cooldown by Lotus Petal would sometimes not enter cooldown state.
• PMs no longer hidden behind the NPC boss leaderboard
• NPC skill buttons still showing in your Inventory after you die
• NPC skill tooltips no longer use your stats and buffs to reflect skill values.
• Not a bug, but we added a message whenever you equip a core to an item notifying you that equipping a core removes its sellback value. This should clear up confusion when people try to sell back a core after equipping it and notice it has no sellback value.

Tags: Nightwraith

September 21, 2026

Lotus Petal Debugging

This is a persistent one, isn't it? The interesting thing about this particular bug is that it may have been present for awhile in other skills that force a random skill into cooldown, but because they're not often used, the bug rarely has a change to occur.

We've added more tracking to get to the bottom of the rare but persistent Lotus Petal bug. Now, if you get the dreaded Cooldown Validation bug after using Lotus Petal, you should see a debug trace in your battle log. That should provide important information that can help us determine exactly what is going wrong in the code and where to look for it. There's also a change some of my changes have fixed the bug fully, but we'll keep the debug messages in for now until we're 100% confident in bug resolution.

Please use the Artix Bug Tracker to report issues so we can fully document and fix them. Social media and Discord or the "pass along to NW" method are decentralized and inefficient as critical information is often lost along the way.

Personal High Score Boards

We've completed the process of adding Personal High Scores to the Fame, Code Redeems, Rating, and Rank leaderboards. We've also added a bit more room to the rank fields that were being cutoff.

Report

One weakness of our in-game reporting system is that you must be in the same room as the person you're reporting. This means it's very difficult to report someone in a crowded room or if you miss your chance in battle. You can now report players using slash commands. Type "/report character name" to open the popup to file a report.

Tags: Nightwraith

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