EpicDuel PVP Game Design Notes

January 16, 2026

Gifting 2025's Grand Finale!

EpicDuel's latest Gifting event crushed records that were formerly thought as uncrushable! A staggering 59,244,280 gifts were given, which I believe is the most yet. In fact, our #1 Gifter, CactusChan, blew past all previous records with 8,000,000 gifts given! Also impressive is that the game held up (though with some struggling) with over 700 people Gifting online! I say this every year, but I mean it: Gifting would not work without the entire EpicDuel community coming together to celebrate this game and the connections we've all made on Delta V. Whether you're hardcore, casual, or OG fans returning to check out the game after a decade, you all help make this event great and keep EpicDuel in active development after over 16 years.

The Top 15 Winners for the 2025 Gifting season are:

1. CactusChan
2. Ditto
3. Alonzo Harris
4. l Fade l
5. Mandatory
6. NojuiceLeft
7. DIRE Xap
8. DIRE Penelope
9. mr vamprix.
10. Dexmah
11. zayo
12. BadWitch
13. Snowy Alexandris
14. Caddeus
15. Smoking Shadow

It's worth noting that of the gifts given, over 5,000,000 remain unopened! You will have 6 months from today to open your gifts before they are cleared from the database.

Since this was the first year we've recorded Faction contributions to the Gifting scores, we should highlight the top 3 Factions in this year's Gifting season:

1. The Balance Brigade
2. Royal Legacy
3. Dreaming Awake

This was fascinating information and shows the power of a united Faction working towards a common goal!

To honor the top 50 Gifters and top 15 Factions, new leaderboards have been added permanently to Titan's Peak. We had to excavate TWO new chambers to accommodate the new boards without proper permits so hopefully we don't run afoul or Titan or any Krampus warriors. Be sure to stop by and pay your respects (/bow) to the greatest Gifters of 2025 (and maybe all time). 

Post Gifting Styles

We've just added styles 937 - 951 to the style changer. If you browse the new styles, you'll notice a few are inaccessible -- styles 939 - 942 have been awarded to those who had a score of over 100,000 gifts in the most recent Gifting season.

Balance Changes / Other Changes

This was a change we tried about a week ago, but couldn't make the actual recommended change in time:

• (UA) Stun Grenade: Removed stun chance; disables target's Active Cores for 1 turn.
• (UA) Overload: Removed stun chance; disables target's Active Cores for 1 turn.

These are some new changes:

• Removed +1/+2/+3 stat boosts for focus levels 3-6
• Chairman's Fury P/E: 100% --> 50% Rage steal

We have also made changes to the PvP drop pool:

• Removed Bido's Beast Breaker (all variants)
• Removed April Fool's items
• Removed Darkwraith items
• Removed Evolved Frostbane items
• Removed Infernal Overfiend items
• Removed Overfiend Nemesis items
• Added Omega Wolf Shards to the PvP drop pool
• Added Void Shards to daily reward pool (Omega Wolf Shards are already in the pool)

What's Next?

Our priority since Gifting ended was to record the initial wishes for all the top 15 Gifters. This includes distributing Secret and Silver Secret packages and working through the initial phases of prize creation. This season we already have some fascinating ideas for new custom items that are sure to achieve legendary status in the EpicDuel community. We thank you for your patience as we roll out these prizes with each week's release.

Tags: Nightwraith

January 09, 2026

It's hard to believe that Gifting 2025 is nearly over, and what a season it has been! CactusChan appears to have an impressive lead at #1 with over 6 million gifts, but I understand that there are more Gifting mega-events planned before Gifting formally ends.

No is as good a time as any to remind you all to please open your gifts! There's no reason to wait, and clearing the database before a massive Gifting spree should help make the events go much more smoothly.

In case it was unclear, Gifting will officially end at the end of the day on Monday January 12th. I know this can be confusing to map to different time zones (we operate on EST), but the 12th will be the last full Gifting day. In other words, if you try to Gift on January 13th, you will be too late!

What Happens When Gifting Ends?

For those of you who have been through this process before, this will be old news, but for the newbies, here is a rundown of the process after the Gifting season closes.

After Gifting deactivates, the leaderboard will finalize its list of top 50 Gifters and Gifting functionality will be disabled. Within a few hours after Gifting, emails will be sent to the top 15 winners to offer congratulations, gratitude, and begin the process of creating all the winners' prizes. If you are in the top 15 and don't receive an email within the first few hours, or we don't hear back from you for a day, we will find alternative means of contacting you.

Next, we will distribute the completed score tier items (Gamma Druid Collection) to all the qualifying Gifters. This should also be completed an hour or 2 after Gifting ends. An in-game announcement will pop when the process is complete (you will need to relog to see your items).

The Secret and Silver Secret Packages will not open until they are all distributed by the top 15 winners. This typically takes about 1-2 weeks for all the winners to decide so don't expect them in your inventory immediately after Gifting ends.

This season has been incredible so far, featuring the highest Gifting score of all time! This is great news, but also humbling as it sets a high bar for EpicDuel in 2026! Last year we stretched ourselves out way too far with the volume of prizes (there are still a few still in progress from the 2024 season!), but this year should be much more manageable. We hope for your patience and understanding as we work to fulfill the our obligations to the winners and all participants in this record-smashing Gifting season!

Gamma Druid Guardian

The Gamma Druid Guardian bot, which can be unlocked at a Gifting score of 250,000, is finally ready for a skill reveal:

• Gamma Smash P/E: 15% defense ignore.
• Gamma Maul P/E: 100% damage; copies all debuffs active on the user to the target.

This new ability should allow for devastating retaliation potential and serve as an amazing compliment to the Gamma Pirate Parrot's Mimic skill.

The Legend of Jolly Jack

Endless M4tr1x has some new missions for you. If you've been following along with the weekly item releases, you may have noticed some of the items are based on the components of a powerful, rare bot. Endless M4tr1x now has the means to help you assemble these parts and give them new life, if you have the Credits:

• Legend of Jolly Jack P
• Legend of Jolly Jack E

Endless M4tr1x has also added 2 new items to her shop to complete the set:

• Jolly Jack's Husk P
• Jolly Jack's Husk E

Balance Changes

• (UA) Stun Grenade: Removed stun chance; disables target's armor for 1 turn.
• (UA) Overload: Removed stun chance; disables target's armor for 1 turn.

New Achievements

In addition to the new Australia Day 2026 achievement available in the Achievement shop, we've added new achievements to account for the massive scores this year. I never thought we'd need an achievement for 6 million gifts, but here we are!

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a very specific skill interaction in which Kaijuzilla's special breath attack drains the target's EP to 0, then (UA) Energy Parasite is used against the target. If the Energy gain from the breath attack was 23 Energy, only the +23 Energy gain would be seen due to value clamping. Now, the battle engine will consider the net value so +23 Energy gain vs. a -90 Energy loss would set the target's EP to 0 instead of 23.
• Added automatic resolution to failed currency checks when the client/server Credit values are mismatched for any reason. The client will automatically set to the server value.
• Attempting to retrain if stats are below the base values will automatically reset stats to minimums.

Tags: Nightwraith

December 30, 2025

EpicDuel's 2025 Gifting season marches on into the New Year! Join the fun, and help us have an epic start to 2026!

Solo Nightmare

With this update you will be able to start any 2v1 NPC fight as a 1v1 fight. Simply press the "OK" button while waiting for an ally to join. All achievements and drops will be the same for this solo boss fight, but you will have the added benefit of being about pause the battle whenever you wish!

This functionality also applies to other duo bosses like Armor Hazard and Legendary Dage.

New Items Added to Endless M4tr1x

• Jolly Jack's Skull P
• Jolly Jack's Skull E
• Jolly Jack's Wing P
• Jolly Jack's Wing E
• Arctic War Bear
• Arctic War Bear CC
• Arctic Warlord Claws P
• Arctic Warlord Claws E
• Arctic Warlord Axe P
• Arctic Warlord Axe E
• Arctic Warlord Staff P
• Arctic Warlord Staff E

Secret and Silver Secret Package Contents Reveal

We are pleased to finally reveal the full contents of the Silver and Secret Package contents below. Remember that your Secret and Silver Secret Packages will open some time after Gifting is completed so the winners have time to distribute their packages.

Silver Secret Package

• Frostbringer Armor A
• Frostbringer Armor B
• Frostbringer Armor A CC
• Frostbringer Armor B CC
• Frostbringer Greatsword P
• Frostbringer Greatsword E

Secret Package

• Frost Vindicator Armor A
• Frost Vindicator Armor B
• Frost Vindicator Armor A CC
• Frost Vindicator Armor B CC
• Frost Vindicator Greatsword P
• Frost Vindicator Greatsword E
• Frost Vindicator Arsenal P
• Frost Vindicator Arsenal E
• Frost Vindicator Revolver P
• Frost Vindicator Revolver E
• Frost Vindicator Rifle P
• Frost Vindicator Rifle E

Gifting Tier Prizes

We are finally ready to reveal the full prize list for all the Gifting score tiers for 2025! These prizes will be awarded at the conclusion of Gifting. We will announce when all the prizes are distributed, so you can relog and admire your hard-earned loot!

10,000 Gifts Given

• Gamma Druid Greatsword P
• Gamma Druid Greatsword E
• Gamma Druid Magnum P
• Gamma Druid Magnum E
• Gamma Druid Cannon P
• Gamma Druid Cannon E

100,000 Gifts Given

• Gamma Druid Armor A
• Gamma Druid Armor B
• Gamma Druid Armor A CC
• Gamma Druid Armor B CC
• Gamma Druid Arsenal P
• Gamma Druid Arsenal E
• Gamma Druid Bike
• Gamma Druid Bike CC

250,000 Gifts Given

• Gamma Druid Guardian P (Bot)
• Gamma Druid Guardian E (Bot)
• Gamma Druid Bear Morph
• Gamma Druid Bear Morph CC

2026

As we approach the new year, it's interesting to reflect on all the challenges and changes brought by 2025. This was a ROUGH year for the industry in general with mass layoffs, brutal mergers, game cancellations, and studio closures. Games have always been a risky business, but the fact that we were able to make it through to 2026 in this environment seems like an incredible accomplishment. A game is nothing without its players, and we couldn't remain online without all of you. Whether you're a big Gifter with a maxed out buddy list or someone who just logs in for a few battles and chat with friends, you keep EpicDuel open for business!

2026 will surely offer more challenges, but challenges can also bring growth and opportunity. We will meet the moment, and bring even more exciting content to this humble Flash RPG!

Duel On, 2026!

Tags: Nightwraith

December 19, 2025

We're less than 2 weeks into Gifting 2025 and we already have some incredibly strong performances on the leaderboard. Repeat Gifting top-finisher CactusChan is going strong with over 4.6 million gifts given with many other repeat top-finishers crushing the multi-million mark. With so much time left in this year's Gifting, the top 15 positions are still far from set in stone.

The recently-implemented Faction Gifting leaderboard has been interesting to watch as well, showing The Balance Brigade with a commanding 5.5+ million gift score. Dreaming Awake is close behind in 2nd place with Souls Requiem and Royal Legacy duking it out for 3rd. Overall, this was a fascinating addition to this year's Gifting event as it shows the potential power of Gifting as a team effort.

With more major Gifting events planned in the coming days and weeks of Gifting, it's exciting to speculate what the final totals will be for this legendary event!

New Items added to Endless M4tr1x

• Black Lotus Bow
• White Lotus Bow
• Holly Jolly Hatchet P
• Holly Jolly Hatchet E
• Holly Jolly Slayer P
• Holly Jolly Slayer E
• Jolly Jack's Leg P
• Jolly Jack's Leg E
• Jolly Jack's Scythe P
• Jolly Jack's Scythe E

Bug Fixes

During Gifting, with so many more eyes on the game, we tend to uncover many uncommon bugs created by edge cases that are hard to discover the rest of the year.

• When a body part fails to load due to a network slowdown or a missing asset, the armor falls back the basic style. This allows the player to continue playing and dueling even with unloaded armor parts.
• Hide text field in style change interface when an armor with a custom head is equipped.
• When selling a stackable mission item (i.e. Omega Wolf Shards) or core that becomes stored in multiple stacks, all identical stacks will sell and be removed from the Inventory. Previously, one stack would remain after the sale even though all items were sold for the correct Credit amount in the transaction, resulting in an Admin Kick if the player tried to sell the remaining stack.
• You can now complete missions with a split stack of mission items. For example, if the mission requires 10 Omega Wolf Shards and you have a stack of 5 and another stack of 5, the mission will accept both stacks for mission completion.
• It was possible to accidentally sell your equipped item in a bulk sale if the equipped item matched items in your inventory. This was rare because equipped items tend to have unique configurations, but it will no longer be possible.
• If you retrain with an invalid skill configuration and get kicked, your skill tree will be reset to its class default. This should resolve an issue affecting players with old characters who have obsolete skill configurations.
• Snuggle Panda achievement should now correctly award with Panda Hoodie purchase from Heromart.

Tags: Nightwraith

December 12, 2025

EpicDuel's 2025 Gifting season is nearly 5 days in and already our Gifters have put up unbelievable scores! We already have 6 Gifters with over 1 million gifts given, and from what I hear, the Gifters are just getting started!

I always think, in the weeks leading up to Gifting, that THIS will be the year that we host a party and nobody shows up. Between last year's massive prize payload and this year's much more muted offerings, I nearly convinced myself that EpicDuel Gifting had peaked. In this case, I'm happy that the EpicDuel community has proven me dead wrong!

I'm especially impressed that the server was able to remain online after the heavier Gifting sessions, though it just barely held on. The best way you can help reduce server lag is to open your gifts whenever possible! This table has swollen to nearly 10,000,000 entries so if people don't start opening their gifts soon, we'll need to start do it manually, which will mean more random server shutdowns and more downtime.

Gifting Leaderboard Update

Now you can track your Faction's progress on the Gifting leaderboard with the "Factions" radio button on the main Gifting leaderboard!

New Limited Items Added to Endless M4tr1x:

• Black Lotus Blade
• White Lotus Blade
• Jolly Jack's Arm P
• Jolly Jack's Arm E

I wonder why she's selling random body parts. That's odd. I wonder if they will be used for something grander?

Quality of Life

• /openallgifts - open all gifts (100,000 limit). Do your part to minimize lag: Please open your gifts!
• New Setting: Hide Other Names - Select to hide other names, faction names, and rating stars to help reduce lag in busy rooms.
• Button added to the mail interface to claim all reward mail.
• /openmail - claim all reward mail. This includes daily, level-up, and rank-up rewards.

Bug Fixes:

• (EA) Proton Cannon: Only healed +50 HP instead of +200 HP if the user had Critical Heal equipped and was below 30% HP.
• Gamma Pirate Mimic: No longer copies Botanical Entrapment from the target. Was not properly flagged as a debuff.
• Kaijuzilla Nuclear Breath: Appeared to give back more energy than it should because the Energy gain was based on the raw bot damage instead of the actual damage.
• New Settings options were not saving on initial login and needed to be re-toggled to take effect.
• Added measures to prevent Gift count in the mail interface from freezing under heavy server traffic.

Tags: Nightwraith

December 08, 2025

EpicDuel's 2025 Gifting event is NOW LIVE! Login now and claim your daily reward and join the Gifting fun! Remember to review the rules posted in this megapost here!

Also, remember that opening gifts will work differently this year! There is no more /open1000gifts command. Instead, you can open your gifts from a button inside your mailbox. This handy button will show you how many gifts you have and allow you to open up to 100,000 Gifts at once. We may reenable the /open1000gifts if the extra convenience is required, but we will need more time to fully decouple the command from the old system. We also plan to implement a way to open all other gift mails like Daily Login and Level Up rewards.

Faction Rewards

To add some incentive for Factions to gift aside from the leading Faction, we're offering incentives for the 2nd and 3rd place factions. We will also try to add a place to display top Factions on the Gifting leaderboard before the end of Gifting.

• 1st Place - In addition to the Faction reward, all eligible members receive 1 Secret Package and 1 Silver Secret Package
• 2nd Place - All eligible members receive 1 Secret Package
• 3rd Place -  All eligible members receive 1 Silver Secret Package

Fameall

Did you know there is a way to get Fame FAST? Type /fameall into the public chat field to fame all eligible players on your screen!

Gifting Streak: Global Gifts

We've updated the Global Gift percentages to be more generous at the higher end, maxing out at 75%!

Tier 11: 75%
Tier 10: 60%
Tier 9: 50%
Tier 8: 40%
Tier 7: 30%
Tier 6: 25%
Tier 5: 20%
Tier 4: 15%
Tier 3: 10%
Tier 2: 5%
Tier 1: 0%

Alonzo's Rares

Prominent EpicDuel community member and stream Alonzo Harris generously offered his personalized items be offered by Oz in Central Station!

• Brigade’s Inferno
• Alonzo’s Pulse
• Brigade’s Guardian
• Alonzo’s Shadow

Balance Changes

• Legendary Rank Adjustments:
  • +20 Primary Damage → +10
  • +20 Gun Damage → +10
  • +20 Aux Damage → +10
  • +20 Bot Damage → +10
  • +20 Defense → +10
  • +20 Resistance → +10
  • +20 Medical Mastery → +10
  • +50 NPC Crusher → +60
  • +50 NPC Armor → +60
• Underdog Adjustments:
  • Underdog I: Grants +1 to Dex/Tech
  • Underdog II: Grants +1 to Str/Dex/Tech
  • Underdog III: Grants +1 to Str/Dex and +2 to Tech
  • Underdog IV: Grants +1 to Str and +2 to Dex/Tech
  • Underdog V: Grants +2 to Str/Dex/Tech
  • Underdog VI: Grants +3 to Str and +2 to Dex/Tech
  • Underdog VII: Grants +4 to Str/Dex/Tech
  • Underdog VIII: Grants +4 to Str and +5 to Dex/Tech
  • Underdog IX: Grants +5 to Str/Dex/Tech
  • Underdog X: Grants +5 to Str and +6 to Dex/Tech
  • Underdog bonuses end at Legendary Rank 55 instead of Rank 79, meaning the last Rank at which you can get an Underdog bonus is Rank 55.
• Robots:
  • Gamma Parrot Punisher P/E: 100% dmg → 105% dmg; 10% Energy steal
•  Cores:
  • Gamma Rage (primary): Adds a 15% flat Rage boost for every primary attack.
  • Gamma Rage (Sidearm): Adds a 15% flat Rage reduction for every Sidearm attack.
  • Gamma Rage (Auxiliary): Adds a 15% flat Rage reduction for every Auxiliary attack.

Quality of Life

• New options added to Settings:
  • Hide Gifting Notifications - This hides all notifications for gifts given, global gifts, and gifting streaks.
  • Hide Prize Notifications - This hides ALL prize notifications. This includes post battle prizes, Arcade prizes, mission rewards, and more.
  • Hide Battlepass Notifications - This hides the pop-up notifications for Battlepass challenge progress.
• You can swap through skill augments even after 1 point or more is invested in that skill tree node.
• You will retain your hairstyle when you class change or gender change as long as you own the style you are changing to. While many styles are linked across class and gender so buying one style grants access to all styles for that style number. However, some styles, particularly older ones, are not linked so buying the male version of Hunter style 13 only grants access to that one style. If you change class to a Mage without owning the male Mage style 13, you will revert to the default style.

Tags: Nightwraith