EpicDuel PVP Game Design Notes

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

June 19, 2026

EpicDuel is live with new rares, new quality-of-life features, and a major change to damage calculations!

Quality of Life / Other Changes

We've made some significant changes to the Inventory and Finder interfaces to make sorting and finding items easier than ever. 

• Favorite and Mutating Weapon filter buttons added to Inventory interface.
• Mission/Miscellaneous items are now searchable in the item finder.
• Finder now shows core type and core description on rollover.
• Finder now shows bot thumbnails with skill descriptions on rollover. Ideally all categories will soon show an item thumbnail to preview items before jumping to the shop.
• Data cleanup to hide deprecated items that can no longer be acquired. Data cleanup is ongoing to properly tag items based on rarity and method of acquisition. There were and likely are still many items that are available in shops that are incorrectly tagged and thus hidden from the Finder.
• Spreadfire core added to Dage the Evil.
• Spreadfire (Aux) core added to Alydroid. 

Faction Alts Removed

As stated in a previous post, all alts in Factions have been removed. For the purposes of this update, an alt is another character that is on the same account that is a member of the same faction. If you had 5 alts in an account (including your main), then 4 will be removed, leaving the account with the lowest character Id (first created). This has been a rule for a long time, but only recently have we had the means to enforce it directly and dramatically. Attempts to get around this rule will be harshly enforced against the player and faction involved.

TheAlonzoHarris' Shop

TheAlonzoHarris' Shop has been updated with the following items:

• Darkeater Breaker CC P
• Darkeater Breaker CC E
• Darkeater Annihilator CC P
• Darkeater Annihilator CC E

Critical Strike & Rage Interaction Update

Due to ongoing complains about high damage from certain skill combinations, we've made several adjustments to how critical strikes interact with other damage mechanics to reduce their upper limits from their present extremes. These extremes became especially pronounced after new skills were introduced that guarantee critical damage. However, rather than a targeted nerf to the force-crit skills, we opted to reduce the overall impact of crit/defense ignore stacking with some mechanical changes.

Defense Ignore Cap:

Critical strikes now have a maximum combined defense ignore of 50% across all sources. Previously, equipping cores and skills that each independently stripped defense could stack beyond this threshold. The 50% cap applies to the sum of the base crit ignore (30%), passive core bonuses (Massive Strike), and active skill defense ignore (Icy Overkill) combined.

Damage Percent Adjustment:

Skills that deal bonus damage via a percentage modifier (such as 115% damage skills) will no longer have that bonus reflected in the critical strike damage ceiling. The crit calculation now uses the base damage value before percentage bonuses are applied, meaning crit and damage percentage bonuses each do their own independent work rather than amplifying each other.

Rage and Critical Strike Interaction:

Critical strikes and Rage attacks will now be evaluated independently. When a Rage attack already deals more damage than a critical strike would produce, the Rage damage is preserved without an additional critical bonus on top. When a critical strike would deal more damage than the Rage attack, the critical damage is used instead. Whichever is stronger wins, but they no longer combine to push damage beyond their individual limits. A critical Rage used to be an unexpected bonus, but predictable crits made this combination too powerful.

I fell asleep. What does this all mean?

Stacking crit-boosting cores with defense ignoring skills will be less effective, especially when combined with Rage.

Formula:

For the Wiki folks those who love to deep dive into the formulas, here is a detailed breakdown of damage before and after this change.

Scenario: An attack does 115% damage with 30% defense ignore. This attack crits on a Rage. A passive boosts critical defense ignore by 15% (additive).

Before:

Gross damage = (596 × 1.15) = 686
Defense = (0.70 × 337) = 235
Defense after Rage = 235 - (0.4233 × 235) = 235 - 99 = 136
Damage = 686 - 136 = 550
Defense ignore = 30 + 15 = 45 (uncapped)
Crit adjusted defense = (0.55 × 136) = 75
Damage post Crit = 686 - 75 = 611
Crit dmg. increase = 611 - 550 = 61
Min. Crit increase = 30 + 26 = 56
(61 > 56, use Damage post Crit)
Final damage = 611 

After:

Gross damage = 596 (pre-damage percent)
Defense = (0.70 × 337) = 235
Defense after Rage = 235 - (0.4233 × 235) = 235 - 99 = 136
Damage = (596 × 1.15) - 136 = 686 - 136 = 550
Defense ignore = (30 + 15) = 45
Defense ignore  = (45 + 30) = (capped at 50)
Defense ignore cap = 0.50
Crit adjusted defense = (0.50 × 136) = 68
Damage post Crit = 596 - 68 = 528

Rage comparison:
Damage post Crit (528) <= damage (550) → 550
(Higher damage is chosen, rather than stacking)
Final damage = 550

Coming Soon

We've got some amazing content in the works for release this Summer including new epic boss battles, new mission, npc AI enhancements, and more quality-of-life features!

Tags: Nightwraith