EpicDuel PVP Game Design Notes

October 17, 2025

It’s that time of year again: time for an official announcement of Gifting 2025! The new Gifting Event will go LIVE Monday December 8 and last until Monday January 12! This year’s event will include many changes to the reward and requirements! For this post, we will provide a list of updated rules and prizes so PLEASE read these changes carefully if you're thinking of participating in Gifting! If you find that this year’s rewards are not to your liking, you are welcome to sit this one out.

Master Policy

The final word of all rules and regulations is Nightwraith. If something is not explicitly covered in these Gifting rules, Nightwraith has final say to approve or deny any requests not explicitly outlined in these rules.

These rules are for the upcoming Gifting season. They do not apply retroactively, and they override rules from previous seasons. If someone was able to do something or get something 1, 2, or 5 years ago, it doesn’t matter since only these new rules apply!   

Mailbox Bloat

The changes to the basic gifts will be maintained from last year with some structural changes: We are trying to separate Gifting gifts from the player mail. If the new system works as intended, instead of opening mail to receive gifts, you will be able to open gifts from a button inside the mail interface. This should significantly reduce the login lag commonly experienced during Gifting.

Like last year, the possible gifts will be limited to Credits and Arcade Tokens. Items that were formerly in the prize pool will be available for purchase at a holiday shop. While it may not be as thrilling as unwrapping rare items, this approach ensures smoother performance and easier inventory management.

Rewards

While the 2024 Gifting season was successful, that success came at the cost of increased development responsibilities as we created and distributed more custom prizes in one year than the last 5 years of Gifting combined.

This year, we are adding back some previous reward options like hairstyles and replica items. Though the rewards are more generous, please read this section carefully. We don't want anyone to feel disappointed at the end of the event. We also don’t want to engage in any post-Gifting negotiations to find loopholes or other unreasonable requests. Also, this year, like last year, there will be no prize codes provided for the top prize.

Gifting Streak Tiers

One of the main contributors to the inflated scores of 2024 was a change to the Gifting Streaks. Since a 100% Global Gift for the top tier was far too generous, we are introducing 3 new Gifting streak tiers above 200: 250, 300, 400, 500. Global gifts will cap at 50% at the new top streak tier. This change is not retroactive as the achievements will not be awarded to higher streaks from previous years.

The updated Gifting streak tiers and their global gift chances will be as follows:

• Tier 11: 50%
• Tier 10: 45%
• Tier 9: 40%
• Tier 8: 35%
• Tier 7: 30%
• Tier 6: 25%
• Tier 5: 20%
• Tier 4: 15%
• Tier 3: 10%
• Tier 2: 5%
• Tier 1: 0% 

Good Standing

You will only be eligible to receive a prize if your account is in good standing. If you are permanently banned during or after the Gifting season, you will not be eligible to receive your prize(s), even on your alternate accounts.

Other malicious behaviors like account sharing, cheating, or trying to pre-sell prizes to other players outside of the game may also negate eligibility for rewards.

The Top 15

The top 15 Gifters in this event will be eligible to receive one Legacy item. We will no longer offer bonus items for each additional million points this year.

*A Legacy item is any EpicDuel item aside from Founder Armor that is no longer available in-game. It could be something from a phase like the Gamma Bot or a permanent rare like the Bunnyzookas. Participants in the top 15 at the end of the event may choose 1 Legacy item. These items may have light personalized touches to them. A class-changing weapon counts as 1 item.

Please note: Personalization that includes CPU-taxing effects may affect the in-game performance for you and other players. We will try our best to optimize the items, but there are limitations to Flash’s rendering capabilities. Please consider this when conceptualizing your prize.

The #1 Gifter at the end of the event will be eligible for a custom item in addition to the Legacy Item they already earned for being in the top 15. The custom item grand prize can be an item from any existing category. If it's a category of item that has P and E variants, the opposite variant can be created as a recolor. Customization requests can be refused if they're deemed unreasonable or illegal (copy-written material, offensive, etc...) or if they exceed the limitation of the game (creating excessive lag, too large, too complex). Unlike last year, cores attached to the custom item or robot attacks CAN be customized for the #1 Gifter as long as their effects in-battle must have in-game equivalents.

Finally, we will be retaining the bonus awarded to the player or players with the most Daily Gift Leader achievements: The option for an additional Legacy item (non-Founder). Unlike last year, if there is a tie for the most Daily Gift Leader achievements, the winner will be determined by the total score achieved on the days they received the Daily Gift Leader achievements. For example, if player 1 and player 2 both have 4 Daily Gift Leader achievements, but player 1 had a score of 500,000 on each of those 4 days, while player 2's Daily Gift Leader achievements were earned with scores of 100,000 on each day, player 1 would qualify for the extra custom prize.

No Ties

This year there will absolutely be no ties. In the event of a tied score, the tie will be broken based on the first person to achieve the score. This can be determined easily by receipt logs.

If 2 or more people qualify for the most Daily Gift Leader achievements, the winner will be determined as described in the section above. 

Founder Armor Rule

This year, those who achieve a Gifting score of at least 2,000,000 AND place in the top 15 may request Founder Armor as a prize. We raised the threshold this year to combat the oversaturation of rares, compensate for score inflation, and provide an additional incentive for scores over 1,000,000.

Hypothetically, if your score is greater than 2,000,000 but you're still in 16th place, you will unfortunately not be eligible for the Founder Armor. Additionally, though this is a rare scenario, if you place in the top 15, and have the original Founder Achievement, but not the armor, you may request Founder Armor as your Legacy item.

Please note that this rule does not mean you may request Founder Armor in addition to another Legacy Rare. It simply means that the option to request Founder Armor unlocks if you place in the top 15 and have a score of over 2,000,000.

Score Tier Prizes

The intention for introducing these score tiers was to incentivize people to gift who aren't necessarily competing for the top 15 spots or even a daily 1st place. These tier rewards don’t seem to have achieved that desired outcome in the years we've offered them, and tier rewards involve much more work creating and distributing items during an event that already requires a lot of work and attention. Additionally, the huge workload from 2024 Gifting cut deep into our prep time for new rewards. This year, we will offer far fewer tiers with modest rewards.

This year, the score tiers will be:

• 10,000
• 100,000
• 250,000
• 1,000,000

The most interesting change is that the 1,000,000-point threshold will award an unmodified Legacy Rare (aside from Founder) of the Gifter’s choice.

Faction Prize

This year we will be offering a new reward to the Faction with the highest Gifting score. The player with the highest score in the winning Faction will serve as representative to request a Legacy Rare item (other than Founder) for the entire Faction. This item may be personalized with the Faction flag or Faction colors. Factions may only be eligible if their Influence is 100,000 or higher.

New Epic Supporter Achievements

Since the Epic Supporter achievements have been active for most of 2025 already, we are refreshing these achievements with special variants for Gifting. These new achievements will be introduced late in November to replace the current Epic Supporter achievements for the duration of Gifting.

Reward Summary:

• The #1 winner may have a customized prize item with personalized core animation with their prize.
• Top 15 Gifters are eligible for 1 Legacy item with light personal modifications.
• Gifters with a score over 1,000,000 may request an unmodified Legacy Rare aside from Founder Armor. This extends outside the top 15.
• The Faction that has the highest total score at the end of Gifting and has at least 100,000 Faction Influence is eligible for a personalized item aside from Founder Armor. The highest scoring member of the Faction will decide on the item to share with the Faction.
• Those in the top 15 who have a score over 2,000,000 may also request a custom hairstyle. This style may be kept as a personal or offered in-game for a price. It can be shared with the other 15 winners and members of the winner’s Faction with over 100,000 Faction Influence.
• If you are in the top 15 and have a score of over 3,000,000 you may request personalized active/passive cores for your personalized items. The cores must be appropriate for the item (Armor cores for armor, auxiliary cores for auxiliary, etc...) and based on existing core abilities. For balance reasons, we will not create a unique skill or more powerful version of an existing core.
• Personalization may be refused for being excessive in terms of scope or impact on game performance.
• Those in the top 15 may also request an item/achievement transfer from one character they own to another owned character. The number of transfers equals each million points achieved by the by the end of the event.
• The Gifter with the most Daily Gift Leader achievements will receive a personalized Legacy Rare.
• Winners may offer prizes to up to the other player in the top 15 plus the members of their Faction (up to 25) who have over 100,000 Faction Influence.
• You may request the base version of your prize as a bonus. For example, if you wish for a personalized Delta Armor, you may also request the base version. However, you will not be able to share that base version.
• No replicas will be created this year, even if it’s a very small variation of another item.
• No prize codes will be offered to the winner this year.
• If you request a Physical variant of an item, you may also receive an Energy variant and vice versa. For example, if you request the Bunnyzooka, you may also have the Energy Bunnyzooka.
• If you request a Physical variant of an item and the Energy version does not exist, a new Energy version will NOT be created.
• If you request a Physical variant of an item, you may NOT request the Energy variant of a completely different weapon.
• Armors do not have P or E variants, but you may NOT request armor + an item.
• The prize item can be any sword, sidearm, auxiliary, home item, armor, vehicle, mutation, bot, or class-specific item that has ever been available in-game. Founder Armor may be requested if the one who placed in the top 15 has a score of over 2,000,000.
• The item must have been available in EpicDuel at some time, however, items from other AE games may be permitted as eligible items if the developer for that game permits it. If the item must be recreated from scratch, like converting an AQ3D item to a 2D item, the item may not be used as a prize.
• You may NOT request the custom reward of a Gifting winner from a previous year or this year.
• If your requested item originally included an achievement (i.e. Infernal Slayer), you will NOT also receive the achievement if you request the same item.
• The item may have any core available in-game equipped to it as long as it's of the proper category (i.e. no auxiliary cores on primary weapons, etc...).
• Core graphics and animations for Legacy items will NOT be customized.
• For balance reasons, skills cannot be modified (i.e. additional damage, % effectiveness, cooldown, damage type, cost, etc...).
• Please consider your prize carefully because once the item is in-game, there will be no revisions permitted except for bug fixes. 
• The most prizes someone could receive are if they placed #1 with the highest gifting score of over 1,000,000, were in the Faction with the highest gifting score, and had the most Daily Gift Leader achievements. That person would have 5 total prizes: 1 custom for placing 1st, 1 personalized Legacy Rare for placing in the top 15, 1 personalized Legacy Rare for having the most Daily Gift Leader achievemnts, 1 personalized Legacy Rare for being in the highest scoring Faction, and 1 unaltered Legacy Rare for having a score of over 1,000,000.

We will work with all winners to help create the best rewards possible, but these limitations are necessary to prevent the scope of the rewards from expanding too far and eclipsing the rest of EpicDuel’s development. We tried to include as much information as possible for this post, but there still may be more changes (or things we forgot) before Gifting begins. 

Prize Sharing

Unfortunately, extremely generous prize sharing opens a dangerous market for selling items outside of the game. We've even seen people trying to pre-sell their rewards they haven't even earned yet! There are many scammers that try to sell rewards from past years that simply take the money and run. For that reason, we are setting a limit on the ability to share rewards to only the top 15 other winners for the 2025 Gifting season and the members in their faction (up to 25) who also have at least 100,000 Faction Influence.

Winners will not be able to share past rewards, but they can offer them in a shop. Items offered in a shop must be sold at a minimum quantity of 50 and a minimum price of 5,000 Varium. Winners from previous Gifting events will not be able to share anything.

Top 15 Secret and Silver Secret Package Bonus

This year we will award additional Secret and Silver Secret Packages based on placement in the top 15 at the end of the Gifting event.

• 1st = 5 Secret / 10 Silver Secret Packages
• 2-5 = 4 Secret / 6 Silver Secret Packages
• 6-10 = 3 Secret / 4 Silver Secret Packages
• 11-15 = 2 Secret / 2 Silver Secret Packages

The top 15 winners may distribute their additional packages at their discretion, but they will need to keep at least one Secret and/or Silver Secret package in their inventories until they are opened to receive the items when the packages open. Packages will open several weeks after the Gifting Event ends to allow plenty of time for the distribution to take place. At the end of Gifting, excess Secret and Silver Secret packages will transform into items that can be redeemed for Credits.

Legacy Secret and Silver Secret Package Bonus

As a bonus this year, much like last year, we will allow Gifters in the top 15 to use their Secret and Silver Secret Packages to claim Secret and Silver Secret rewards from previous years. This means if you want the Secret/Silver rewards from 2019 and 2020 in addition to the rewards from this current year, you will need to retain 3 Secret and 3 Silver Secret Packages in your inventory. If you wish, you will also be allowed to transfer those rewards to other people, Gifting them the Silver or Secret Package for previous years.

Daily Gift Legend and Daily Gift Legend 2025 Achievements

Some of the most esoteric achievements are those awarded to those who finish in the top 15 and also win the top Daily Gifter achievement for multiple years in a row. Those who won top Daily Gifter in multiple Gifting seasons between 2018 and 2025 are also eligible for a special achievement. These have to be expanded each year and can be hard to track so I'll post the new achievements for the latest season of Gifting here:

• Daily Gift Cosmic Legend Won top Daily Gifter in 7 Gifting seasons between 2018-2025.
• Daily Gift Cosmic Epic Legend 2025 Placed top 15 in 2025 and won top Daily Gifter in 7 Gifting seasons.
• Daily Gift Eternal Epic Legend 2025 Placed top 15 in 2025 and won top Daily Gifter in 6 Gifting seasons.
• Daily Gift Ultimate Epic Legend 2025 Placed top 15 in 2025 and won top Daily Gifter in 5 Gifting seasons.
• Daily Gift Supreme Epic Legend 2025 Placed top 15 in 2025 and won top Daily Gifter in 4 Gifting seasons.
• Daily Gift Epic Legend 2025 Placed top 15 in 2025 and won top Daily Gifter in 3 Gifting seasons.
• Daily Gift Epic Champion 2025 Placed top 15 in 2025 and won top Daily Gifter in 2 Gifting seasons.

Gifting Concierge

If you are new to gifting, you might now know that there is a prominent player who has acted as a Gifting concierge for the last several Gifting events. Gifting is typically a very chaotic time in EpicDuel so this role helps to keep major Gifting events from conflicting with each other and depriving the participants of their rightful rewards. You may know him as Smoking Shadow, and if you are interested in hosting a major Gifting event, you will want to get in touch with him:

In-game: Smoking Shadow
Discord: mihawk98
Twitter: Mihawkplayss

Tis the Season to Be Wary

Gifting is a joyful time in EpicDuel, but it also brings out nefarious scammers who want to take advantage of other players. Don't risk your EpicDuel account or bank account for a stranger online who promises you great rewards or free Varium. Though times and technology change, the adage holds true: if someone is promising you something that seems too good to be true, it probably is! 

Grand Finale

I want to cap off this post by stating that this will be the last Gifting event in EpicDuel with custom prizes. We have enjoyed working with past winners making your grandest visions become reality, but we simply do not have the resources to deliver a host of custom prizes every year while also continuing to develop the game. We already have some ideas to keep the Gifting competition alive and thriving without burning out our development staff. In the meantime, we wish you the best of luck in the Gifting 2025!

Tags: Nightwraith