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 | December 19, 2013 A Legendary Release
Become Legendary Prepare for the most exciting evolution of EpicDuel since Omega! In addition to an impressive new Varium bundle, we're unlocking level 40! But what happens after you reach 40? Level 40 will allow all players to achieve Legendary status! This means you will continue to earn experience toward Legendary ranks, all the way up to 100! Each Rank will allow you to unlock points to invest in new stat categories. This part of Legendary mode is still in development and will be fully-released after the new year. This is partially because we want to make sure enough players have reached level 40 before turning it on, partially time constraints, and partially because of the next major chage to EpicDuel described below!
10x the Balance! Well, maybe 10 times the balance is a bit of an exaggeration, but this release, we're increasing key stats like health, energy, damage, and defense by a multiple of 10. This means that every point of stat investment will have a significant impact on your overall combat effectiveness. It also means that all the EpicDuel Maximum Damage videos are going to be posting some huge numbers!
In addition to looking impressive, multiplying the stats also gives us finer control for balancing skills. We're making all the adjustments we can before we go live, but we're also hoping that all the battling over the holidays up to level 40 will give us good information on further tweaks.
Blood Hawk Battlegear Mega-Bundle This release, we're unveiling the new Blood Hawk Battlegear Mega-Bundle! For the price of one 10k Varium package, you'll be getting 2 Blood Hawk Battlegear Mutating Weapons, 2 Blood Hawk Slayer Swords, 2 Blood Hawk Bots, and, of course, 10,000 Varium.
These weapons will be available in the one-stop Varium shop for a limited time. For those who would rather purchase the items piecemeal, Frysteland Valestra will be stocked with the Blood Hawk items in-game. These awesome items will come with some killer cores! Check them out: Hawk Guardian
This Active Core comes equipped to all the primary Blood Hawk weapons. When your health is critical, summon a wild Blood Hawk to come to your aid and deliver a devastating claw attack to your opponent!
Blood Hawk Claw
This Blood Hawk Bot skill allows you to summon the spirit of the mysterious Frysteland Blood Hawk to deliver a nasty attack with razor-sharp talons.
Armor Annihilator
As a Blood Hawk, use your metallic claws to temporarily disintegrate your opponent's armor!
Kawkaw!
Mega Mutations! This Winter, we decided to have a little fun with our new vehicle selection. Indead of riding a bike, you can actually become one of the creatures below! These designs are fully color-customizeable with entertaining travel animation!
Are you Yeti? How Yeti are you? This year you can be an actual Baby Yeti!
Soar above it all as a Blood Hawk!
Dino Hawks are the ancient precursors to the Blood Hawks. They can't fly, but their strong hind legs allow them to move quickly across the snowy landscape.
The final bike is a more conventional vehicle, concepted by G00ny and Smackey El Frog and vectorized by Charfade! It's powerful treads will allow you to tear through the frozen tundra with ease!
Artix Arcade Bonanza! Ever wished you could take your favorite items from another AE game and use them in EpicDuel? After this release, you'll have your chance as we unveil new Arcade games for AdventureQuest, AdventureQuest Worlds, DragonFable, MechQuest, HeroSmash, and OverSoul. By collaborating with the other teams, we've amassed a mighty hoard of legendary weapons!
New Arcade games also mean more Achievements and more leaderboards to dominate. With 6 Arcade prize pools respresenting the biggest AE games, you'll have plenty of reasons to farm Arcade Tokens over the Holidays!
Stylin'! Thanks to the help of Revontheus, we've been able to introduce 30 new Asgardian styles! Alter your looks to resemble a notorious trickster god or a mighty Asgardian warrior.
What more crazy styles will Revontheus create? I have a feeling they have something to do with a moose...
Into the New Year This Legendary release will be our last major release of 2013, but that doesn't mean we're slacking! We already have big plans for 2014, including a tutorial system to welcome and teach new players as well as features to keep the game fresh and exciting for veterans. All the tools we've added to EpicDuel over the years, especially this year, have really streamlined our processes and made delivering feature and content-packed releases easier than ever. We have very high hopes for the future of EpicDuel, and we hope you'll join us in making 2014 Legendary! Happy Juloffenblotten and Frostval from all of your friends at Artix Entertainment! Duel On! Tags: Nightwraith Legends Legendary balance Arcade styles Stats Frysteland Winter Holiday Level 40 upgrade Blood Hawk |
| December 12, 2013 Blood Hawks Inbound
A cold wind is blowing through Frysteland...actually a cold wind is usually blowing through Frysteland, considering its climate and all. ANYWAY! We've got big, BIG plans for this upcoming release, and as I mentioned last week, this release is so big we'll need 2 weeks to build it. That means, unfortunately, no release Friday, but next week will be incredible!
Blood Hawk Battlegear Bundle In the year since Alydriah was expelled form Frysteland by the Endless, the Krampus people have slowly begun to recover. In addition to the human toll Alydriah's cruelty took on the harsh Northern land, many indigenous species were devastated or wiped out by constant battling. One such species is the rare Blood Hawk. These creatures were used for centuries by the Krampus people for hunting and taming yetis. Thought extinct, they have returned in force to once again aid the Krampus people in keeping the cuddly but ferocious creatures in line. Now you will have the opportunity to own the Blood Hawk and the Spectral Hawk (energy variant) along with a host of avian armaments!
The Blood Hawk Battlegear Bundle will be available for a limited time. With this package you will receive:
We realize that the last package offered was not that long ago so we're offering the package items in-game as well. It's definitely a better value to get them all together in the bundle, of course, but if you've got a pile of Varium burning a hole in your pocket...you should probably seek medical attention immediately. If those weapons weren't enough to intrigue you, we have some special surprises in store. Stay tuned for more details!
You're Epic, But Are You...LEGENDARY? Next week, we're raising the level cap to...*drumroll* 40! Rabblefroth is hard at work smoothing the experience curve to make earning levels slightly less painful. But what happens after you reach 40 and max out all your gear? What then? Ponder the great mysteries of the universe? NO! 40 is just the beginning of a much longer journey as an EpicDuel Legend! After a player becomes Legendary, you will continue to earn experience as Legendary experience. Your level will not increase, but you will instead earn Legendary Ranks! Each rank earned will unlock a Legendary point that can be placed in a broad array of stats. These stats will be more specialized than Dexterity or Technology which influence a range of battle attributes. We haven't finalized the list, but we will build as many as we can by next week. The beauty is we can always add more later, unlike the current, more rigid stat list. Legendary players will be defined by a uniquely colored name, an icon in their interface, and several other minor aesthetic changes. We'll have more details as the systems are finalized and polished.
Achievement Overhaul Continued Work on the Achievement Overhaul continues as we wrap up a few features we didn't get to last week, in addition to fixing some minor bugs.
You will also have the option to switch view modes. If you don't like the new, larger style, you can always switch back to a more classically styled view to see more achievements at once.
Titan is also working on a new overall progress bar to see how many Achievements you have total. How close are you to earning them all? If you're close, we're about to make getting them all a bit more difficult with the next feature.
AE Arcade Bonanza! We're going all-out with the Arcade next week, offering several new games based on other AE games. Collect weapons, house items, and other intriguing baubles from MechQuest, HeroSmash, AdventureQuest, AdventureQuest Worlds, and MORE! Each of these new games offers a new achievement and a new leaderboard to dominate! To make it easier to acquire Arcade Tokens, we'll be softening the requirements for the daily missions. If you didn't already know, it's possible to earn Tokens from completing daily mission chains. Some can be a bit on the grindy side so we'll try to make it a more pleasurable experience to complete them.
Party Like They Do in Asgard As if everything else mentioned above weren't enough...ED Artist Revontheus is crafting some slick Asgardian styles to spice up this release. What does Asgard have to do with Frysteland? Well, they're basically space vikings and vikings lived in cold climates sooooo...yeah. Asgard!
Tags: Titan Winter Blood Hawk Weapons Items Armors Achievements Legendary Legends Frysteland Birds Varium Level upgrade Stat balance Gear Vehicles Cores Holiday Arcade |
| December 05, 2013 Winter Returns
Welcome back, Duelists! We hope you had a happy and safe Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, or last Thursday of November! Did you complete the Black Abyss Saga? If not, there's still time, but some big changes are coming this Friday to EpicDuel!
Achievement Overhaul The central feature of this latest release is a complete overhaul of the Achievement system. Over time, EpicDuel has released over 300 achievements in multiple categories. Some are seasonal, some are rare, some can only be earned once while other accumulate. We will be consolidating them all into one interface, divided into categories:
From this interface, you will also be able to track your progress in collecting all of the available achievements. To make this feature easier to access, we've readded the Achievement button to the main HUD. Also, you can purchase Badge-style achievements from the main Achievement interface now, instead of seeking out a VendBot.
Winter Rares Return Visit Hank and Valestra in Frysteland to browse a robust selection of returning seasonal rares!
These items will only be around for a limited time, so get them while you can! Speaking of rares, a lot of current seasonal rares will be leaving this Friday, including all the Harvest and Nightwraith seasonal rares. Rabblefroth's Thanksgiving rares will remain a bit longer, but all the Harvest and Nightwraith missions will also be leaving until next year!
Balance This Friday we will also be pushing out a balance update to address energy stealing skills like Static Smash and Static Grenade. Energy stealing skills will be capped to the target’s current energy, thus obeying the laws of thermodynamics.
Preview As I type this, Charfade is busily concepting new armors, vehicles, weapons, and bots for the upcoming winter release. It's going to be a super-sized mega release so we'll need two weeks to complete it!
Stay tuned for further updates!
Royal Wedding Royale  What happens in a video game creators wedding, stays in... nope. It goes right onto YouTube. This actually happened. Inspired byAdventureQuest Worlds weddings, the groomsmen wore Knight armor over their suits and you will not believe what happens next. The only thing this wedding is missing is you... and we are going to fix that! Join us at sundown on Friday the 13th for a very special AQWorlds in-game wedding event!
 If you find it worthy, please like and share this video. Tags: Nightwraith Frysteland Juloffenblotten Hank Valestra Achievements Winter Seasonal Rares Weapons previews Wedding Artix snow Frost |
 | December 06, 2012 Omega MarathonNow it can be told: the official release date for Omega is Changes to NPCs Today we wanted to go over some changes to how NPC fights will work in Omega. We want NPCs to fill the purposes of: 1) training or testing builds 2) gaining credits 3) furthering missions and the storyline They currently fill some other purposes that we want to move away from, including padding battle records, faction farming, and leveling. Some of the changes are as follows:
Enhancements We know there are still many questions about what we’re doing with Enhancements, but we’re not quite ready to talk about this in-depth yet. We will say now that the new system will allow for much greater customization than before, and will involve equipping passive effects and active abilities to your weapons. Additionally, we will be providing compensation for those that have enhanced weapons in the current system. We’ll provide more specifics soon.
Omega Obliteration! We would like to kick off our new development phase with not one, but TWO promotional packages. These designs were inspired by devoted EpicDuel player and aspiring artist TrizzzCentrino! You can choose from the Omega Obliteror set, which features an energy sword plus a mutating weapon!
OR if physical damage is more your thing, you may select the Omega Onslaughter!
All of these weapons will offer 2 new weapon skills (one active, one passive) to give you an edge in Omega. We will explain what these skills are and what they do as soon as we finalize the details! Speaking of promotions: Check out Heromart's Coming Soon page for details on the upcoming "Are You Yeti" shirt! This epic garment will come with not one, but TWO yetis for you to play with for the upcoming release!
The Frozen North Alydriah has been up to no good in her captured territory. However, there is one bastion of hope in this shattered land:
Titan stands watch from his mountain lair in Frysteland. Many displaced Krampus have taken shelter at the foot of this mountain fortress, seeking some respite from constant harassment from Legion troops. Alydriah is smart enough to steer clear of this mysterious refuge, but not so fearful that she wouldn't taunt the gods of Delta V through more indirect means. What new cybernetic terrors has Alydriah created in during the Legion's occupation of this region? Would Alydriah burn Frysteland to the ground just to annoy Titan? How many cheeseburgers do you think Titan has hidden up there?
I guess you'll have to login to find out!
Easy on the Eyes As we mentioned earlier, the early game experience is getting a drastic overhaul, starting with the login and class selection screens. We will also be refreshing the look of the base armors and styles to reflect this graphical overhaul. This might not be tremendously exciting to our veteran players, but it will make EpicDuel 1000% more appealing to new players, expanding the total number of active players, which means more opponents for you!
WHY NO UPDATE?! With all the changes to the database structure and game code, we literally cannot release before it's ready. Also, preparing a weekly release would divert time away from development on Omega, and we cannot spare a second at this point! On that note -- Code Sorcerer, away! Tags: Titan promotions Omega Frysteland Winter Obliterator Onslaughter Yeti HeroMart Shirt Enhancements Stats code TRizZzCENTRINO Update Holiday Seasons Epic Skills Weapons alydriah |
| November 20, 2012 Reason to Be ThankfulRabble's Bounty So you roughed up Rabblefroth pretty good last week, eh? Apparently, you knocked his massive backpack over and forced him to unload a bounty of new harvest-themed seasonal rares!
Since we were strapped for time, we asked the kind artists at AQW to lend a hand and we received enough assets to create a veritable cornucopia of new weapons! We tried to add enough EpicDuel flavoring to make them appear uniquely dangerous, while retaining that festive holiday feel that AQW artists do so well. Visit Rabblefroth in the Wasteland to inspect his holiday wares before the Harvest ends and the cold winds of the North descend upon the citizens of Delta V.
Are You Yeti? That's right! The cuddly-but-deadly creatures from Frysteland are alive and well and will be returning to EpicDuel this December. There's no better way to rub this oversight in Alydriah's face than by wearing it on a slick navy blue t-shirt.
*Shirt logo colors are not finalized. We are still working with the printers to get the best possible quality. Look for the "Are You Yeti?" shirts in HeroMart within the next few weeks. Be sure to follow Faith's Twitter for ongoing developments!
Omega Marathon Note: Today's update is not Omega. This section of the DNs is a preview of our current progress on Omega. As part of the Omega release, we will be returning to the frozen tundra of Frysteland to check in on Alydriah and her latest plans for the region. Check out some of the awesome concept art Charfade has been working on as we prepare to revisit this arctic wonderland.
I've seen a lot of questions on the Tweetbooks and Facespace about the purpose of these class designs, and I will clarify right now that they are not new classes, but revamped versions of the base classes (Hunters, Mercenaries, and Mages). This is to create a better experience for new players and make the game feel fresh again for veterans. Balancing 6 classes is no simple task, and we would rather tighten that balance than add 3 new classes. Plus, we feel it would be much more interesting to increase the diversity of play styles for all the existing classes so a Tech Mage plays completely differently from a Bounty Hunter and so forth. One way we hope to achieve this is by eliminating or modifying overlapping skills. We hope to make several changes in the Omega update that will make this diversification easier to implement and balance which we will elaborate upon as more details are finalized. That's all from me for now. Happy dueling and Happy Harvest! Be sure to take time and reflect upon all that your are thankful for and cherish those close to you! Tags: Omega Nightwraith RabbleFroth Weapons harvest alydriah Frysteland Wasteland previews Yeti |
 | January 25, 2012 This is the End, Beautiful Friend...The end of the Frysteland saga, that is! As the War comes to a close, I want to congratulate each of you who participated and made the Frysteland war a success! Remember that your actions determined the outcome of the War for Frysteland, and influenced the storyline as a whole. I’ll be posting an addendum with the official announcement of the alignment winner, along with a description of the missions you’ll have to complete to discover how this arc concludes.
What's gonna happen to these little guys? You'll find out soon!!! We’ll probably be revisiting these characters in a future arc, and I know some of you were interested in the mythology. Frysteland will remain open all year to visitors from all over Delta V, whether you're seeking conquest, information, or riches. Since this marks the end of this particular story arc, we’ll be implementing the Aftermath missions, and making changes to the Frysteland screens to reflect the aftermath of the Frysteland conflict. Also, all the seasonal rare frost weapons will be leaving for another year, possibly taken by the mysterious Titanfraggr for unknown reasons.
Traitors I would like to confirm that an individual cannot have both the Legion’s Bane achievement and the Krampus Slayer achievement. Players who switched alignment to earn both achievements will lose the second achievement earned. So, if you killed 100 Krampus for the Krampus Slayer achievement, then switched to Exile to kill 100 Yeti and get the Legion’s Bane achievement, you would only get to keep the Krampus Slayer achievement. This situation showed us that we need to overhaul the war system for the next epic war event to encourage loyalty, and punish treason more severely.
Broken Hearts
Following the Frysteland arc, we will be starting with the next EpicDuel story arc. As Alydriah was distracted by the conflict in Frysteland, the Exiles in Old Fortune City seized this opportunity to plan a counterattack at the Heart of Alydriah’s operations. Not much more I can tell you right now, except that this arc won’t hold back- it’s the darkest thing I’ve written for EpicDuel so far; I hope you are prepared for it!
With this story arc, we’ll be implementing a NEW Promotional pack to replace the Frost Destroyers. This promo which will be going live Friday will include Azrael Borg and Azrael's Curse. The Azrael Borg is a robotic wasp does that physical damage, and has the special ability to sting your enemy with it's unblockable serrated tail and deliver a Heart Attack! Well, technically it's not a real heart attack, but it does drastically reduce the effectiveness of any applied buffs on your opponent. It also has a physical primary attack in which it uses it's razor-sharp heart blades to give your opponents more than a broken heart!
The second part of the promo is the awesome mutating weapon, Azrael's Curse! This potent physical weapon forged as a warped marriage of technology and magic carries the Mark of Azrael, which offers a +5% chance to crit! The Heartbreaker weapons will also be returning, and you can buy them from Alydriah’s Heartbreaker Bot in her Fortune City Spire or from Exile Leader in Old Fortune City.
Balance Tweaks (Postponed Until Next Week)
We'll be making another small balance adjustment for this update. One that is confirmed is removing the effect of Support on Deflection to Technology. This should increase the usefulness of this stat while reducing the "Swiss Army Knife" status of the Support stat. Tags: Cinderella balance Frysteland Yeti Azrael Curse Skill War Heartbreaker Valentine's Day Promotion Weapons |
| January 18, 2012 The AftermathsWinter Wrap-Up We’re coming down to the end game for the Frysteland Conflict. Again, a BIG thanks to the thousands of you who supported us during this in-game war. Remember that the War for Frysteland will remain active until January 27th, at which point the winning side will be announced and the Aftermath ensue as planned. We do want to hold off on announcing any rewards for being on the winning side due to the issues we’ve had with “turncoats”- we want to encourage you to support your side, even if you don’t end up victorious in the end, and we will be adding incentives toward that end. Also, I know that many players wanted us to extend the Frysteland War, but we have a lot planned for the Aftermath and the next storyline! After all, if a special event lasts too long, it's no longer a special event, is it?
The Aftermath We’re stockpiling content for a big release next week, including the missions for the Aftermath. Implementing a war event is quite challenging, so removing one and transforming the world is also an ordeal. Legion and Exile are still battling, so we still must prepare for either outcome! I have quite a bit written already, including a bunch of new missions, but your actions can completely change what happens during the Aftermath. During this period and beyond, the Frysteland NPCs will behave as normal NPCs (with the exception of the Boss NPCs). In addition, we’ll be adding a bunch of PERMANENT Frysteland weapons for your battling pleasure!
Factions Going on a Diet! The War for Frysteland has given us a great opportunity to reflect on our Faction/Alignment system and its role in EpicDuel's gameplay. We have concluded that Factions are great, but almost incomprehensibly confusing. War Points, War Flags, Influence, War Kills, Token Donations, etc are mysteries to all but the most hardcore players. We really loved the simplicity of the War event being one number that goes up with all players being able to easily view their individual contribution. Thus, one of our goals for the new year is to retool and streamline Faction scoring to better integrate all the disparate systems into each other. We'll be posting more to clarify exactly what changes we're making and how they'll effect the Legion/Exile conflict, Factions, and individual players.
You’re a Heartbreaker We’ll be bringing back the Heartbreaker weapons in anticipation of Valentine’s Day. We’re also hard at work preparing for our next Epic storyline! I’m really REALLY excited about this one, folks. So far, we’ve started dealing with some pretty interesting issues, including the nature of the identity of one of the characters you already know and love!
Challenging! By popular request, and to halt the issue with dummying, challenge battles will no longer count toward your win record. This will also allow people to test builds against friends for fun, or to test builds. You will not receive credits, experience, or battle tokens for challenge battles, they will just be for fun or for completing challenge missions. Random battles will still count toward your battle record, as will normal NPC fights.
Where Are the Bots? A lot of players have been asking about the lack of credit-only bots, and the simple answer is that adding bots with the current system is extremely difficult. All the bots do not work like regular weapons -- they use custom code that is very complex and inefficient. Bots are an amazing feature and we would love to fill the game with tons of unique bots with crazy skills and attacks, so this is a frustrating situation for us as well as they players. One of the programming team's short-term goals is to streamline the code for bots to make them easier to add. Once this happens, we can increase the quantity and quality of bots to provide both Varium and credit-only players with equal opportunities to acquire powerful bots.
Alydriah Descarl Opposes Free Expression! In his Design Notes post, Cysero established that ArtixEntertainment is against SOPA/PIPA. These are bills introduced in the US legislature that seek to prevent online piracy, but represent a gross abuse of power by the United States Government. These bills, if passed, would give the US government the power to take down websites suspected of hosting copyrighted material without due process. For example, Twitter could be taken down because of one user using a comic book character (like, say, Batman or Deadpool). Individual web users face serious consequences as well, with performance of a copyrighted work (eg. a video of yourself covering a popular song) becoming a felony with punishments up to 5 years in federal prison. Even works that fall under Fair Use or Satire or derivative works face serious legal consequences. This could spell doom for a company like ArtixEntertainment, because- while we do not support piracy or distribution of materials to which you do not own the copyright- our games are filled with popular culture references. Games like HeroSmash and Pony vs. Pony are just one big pop culture reference! EpicDuel is not immune- we have several references to other media (eg. the “Cake” achievement references Portal, Banana armor and Too Big! reference Don Hertzfeldt, The Lawman shares his name with a Motorhead song and is a dead ringer for Lemmy Killmister). Also, you could face legal penalties for recording yourself battling in EpicDuel, adding a song to the background, and posting it on YouTube. This is a serious issue, and I hope that, if you’re in the US, you will urge your congressperson to vote AGAINST SOPA and PIPA. You can learn more on Americancensorship.org If we don't defeat SOPA and PIPA, the Internet will become a much smaller, less interesting, and ultimately less useful place. Tags: Cinderella SOPA PIPA Freedom Frysteland War bots turncoats aftermath Missions Weapons Items |
| January 12, 2012 Frysteland the 13thFriday the 13th in Frysteland Hi there, Epic Duelists, it’s nearly Friday the 13th, the time of year when the AE MMOs have special visits from mustachioed gentlemen. Usually of the top hat wearing variety. But just because we don’t have a Big Musical Guest and our newest Mustachioed Gentleman doesn't wear a hat, doesn’t mean that our players have to be unfortunate this Friday the 13th.
Balance Changes We’ve implemented a new system that allows us to to track how changes we make affect overall balance on the live servers- we call it “The Balance Tracker”. Obviously the Creative Team did not come up with that name. What this means for you is that we’ll be able to track who's beating who at each level, which will show empirically which class is "superior" at each level. This will give us easy to read data we can use to make adjustments to class balance a lot quicker and improve balance in modes like 2v2 or Juggernaut which are difficult to balance on the developer server. The longer this system runs, the more data we'll receive, the better decisions regarding balance we'll be able to make. We are also making an adjustment to Hybrid Armor - many players have complained that the skill is useless since in order to reap the full benefit of the skill, players must waste a turn switching armor type. Hybrid Armor will now passively endow both defense and resistance, with the defensive skill split between the two. For example, if your Hybrid Armor gave you +12 defense OR resistance at level 33, it will now give you +6 defense AND +6 resistance! This is intended to be neither a buff nor a nerf, but simply an adjustment to how the skill works.
Like a Boss
Players will now be able to challenge the new War Bosses, King Alaric and Commander Edgar Boothe. For this release, you will be limited by alignment for challenge purposes, and both Alydriah and Aldhagrimm will have a special alignment-specific mission for you involving these Juggernauts. Both Boothe and Alaric are 2v1 Bosses, so you’ll have to team up with an ally to defeat them. Both you and your ally must belong to the same alignment at this time. During the Aftermath and forward, players will be able to challenge Boothe and Alaric regardless of alignment. Defeating either one of them will reward you with 200 War Points, plus a chance to receive a bomb or perfect gem! Speaking of achievements, we’ve had an issue with players switching sides to get both the “Krampus Slayer” and “Legion Bane” achievements, leading to some players believing we were rewarding disloyalty and punishing founders of long-standing factions. I can assure you that this was never the intent- we’d intended to give each side a unique experience in the Conflict for Frysteland. To reinforce the concept of alignment loyalty, we are considering a couple options, including removing one achievement or merging the two achievements in question into one “disachievement” worth 0 rating points and marking that player as a traitor. We don’t want to simply punish turncoats, and we do wish to reward the players who have remained loyal to their alignment and factions. We’re still figuring out the best way to go about that now and going forward for future events in which each alignment offers a unique experience.
The Aftermath The Frysteland Conflict will soon be over! On January 27th 2012 the Frysteland War will be over, and the winning alignment announced. As I said, your actions determine the fate of Frysteland and the Krampus people- as well as the baby Yetis! I’ve already been hard at work at figuring out what’s happening next, so give it your all, people! I do want to thank you guys for participating and pointing out areas for improvement. This was the first time we did something like this in-game and there are bound to be places where we could have played things differently. Thank you.
‘Cus Tonight We’re Riding a Black Unicorn...
In AdventureQuest Worlds this Friday at When It’s Ready O’Clock, Goth rocker and familiar face to ArtixEntertainment Voltaire will be once again appearing in a Friday the 13th event promoting his latest album Riding a Black Unicorn Down the Side of An Erupting Volcano While We Drink From a Chalice Filled With The Laughter of Small Children. My obsession with Voltaire and Deady is well-documented (followers of me on Twitter have seen my hand-knitted Deady Bear, and I have two signed copies of the album (one of which Deady also signed, because he will not eat me) so you might see me in-game! Tags: Cinderella Frysteland Voltaire Friday the 13th Warbosses Balance Tracking Hybrid armor |
| January 04, 2012 Frysteland Final PhaseAn Epic New Year! Welcome back, EpicDuelists. I hope you all had a great holiday and had a great time ringing in the New Year of 2012! The staff is back in the office, and are all grateful for the time spent with friends and family during this holiday season. Now that we’re refreshed, we’re ready to begin the Final Phase of the Frysteland War!
Frysteland Final Phase EpicDuel’s first war is approaching the final stretch, and your allies will need everyone pulling together to assure victory! I know you guys have all been working diligently- as of the writing of these design notes, over 15,000 unique characters have competed in the Frysteland War! There have been real-life wars with fewer participants! You guys have all done a magnificent job, so regardless of which side prevails, you all deserve to be commended for your efforts! However, the war is not quite over. To bring that final push, we’ll be releasing the long-promised missions, along with the War Bosses, Commander Edgar Boothe fighting for the Legion, and King Alaric fighting for the Krampus! Could this final phase turn the tide? Only one way to find out! ------ King Alaric the Technologically Inept is a fair and just warrior-king. Known as the Child-King, Alaric rose to power during the Uprising at the age of 15, following his father Callan the Decent’s death during the Haze of Iwona. Under the tutelage of his great-aunt Aldhagrimm the Erudite, he’s grown to follow in the footsteps of his grandmother, the great King Andra the Merciful, who was murdered by Baelius. ------ We’re coming down to the wire here, people! If you’re Exile, don’t let those yetis down! If you are Legion, do not disappoint your leader!
There, I fixed it! We’ve received a few complaints about blue stars not showing up on character pages, and we’ll be fixing that as soon as possible! We’ll also be fixing the issues of duplicate achievements, and war achievements not updating correctly.
Balance Update! The following is a brief rundown of the balance changes that will be implemented in the next release. We're still in the process of testing them, so this list is subject to change!
A Winner is You! Congratulations to all of you who entered the First Ever EpicDuel Holiday House Decorating Contest! The following characters’ houses have been judged by the staff and testing team (the judges are: Charfade, Practel, Ashari, Illuminator, Lycus, and ME!) Using a super-secret method that we are not allowed to discuss under penalty of noogie, the following in-game characters have been selected for the sweet prize of an achievement and home item! In no particular order:
Prizes will be visible on the next Server restart! If you see your name up here but did not receive your prizes, please let us know! Tags: Cinderella Frysteland balance Bugs New Year contest Legion exile War |
| December 19, 2011 Frysteland War ContinuedFirst of all, I want to congratulate each and every one of our players who have participated in the Frysteland War so far. The war is still going on, so be prepared for even more goodies and ways to defend your side. This conflict is far from over! Remember, your actions WILL determine the fate of the Yetis and the Krampus people permanently. There are consequences to your actions, so fight well, EpicDuelists! We've got a lot to do this week and not much time to do it! We plan on releasing Thursday, but depending on progress, we could release as early as Wednesday. I apologize in advance if anything in these DNs don't make it for this release, but we're aiming high and we're willing to stock up on enough caffeine to make it happen!
There Will Be Bugs As with most new features, bugs are inevitable. We’ll be fixing a few things for this next update- the War schedule will be synchronized with the daily events from here on out, and many people were finding it more difficult to defeat the Yetis than the Krampus, so we’ll be balancing out the War NPCs. The Cryostaff and Kringlebot will both be returning to Hank, and Frostbane is being set to Permanent Rare.
New Threads This week, we’ll also be introducing two new armors for purchase, the Frost Reaper armor for Legion players and the Beast Rider armor for Exile players. Equipping this armor increases the amount of War Points you earn for your cause by 20%. They will also offer an 11% chance to deliver a defense variant of FrostBite, which can apply to the attacker if they hit you with a normal strike while you have the armor equipped! Moar War! We’re adding THREE new War Ranks to bridge the large gaps between ranks, which should make ranking up a little bit easier for all players. Some of you may notice that you have a different rank that you had before, but that will be a good thing since some ranks are easier to obtain than before. We have also readjusted the rating points that the higher-end achievements award. We’ll also be implementing missions that will award points toward the war- remember, missions take forever to test, so if it’s a late night release don’t be too disappointed. Hope I don’t disappoint!
NPC Improvements Since many were having trouble getting those Krampuses and Yetis to cough up War Bombs, we are increasing the drop rate for all NPCs, with the stronger NPCs offering a significantly higher chance to drop. We’re also implementing an Ice Gem drop that can be exchanged for credits, with more valuable Gems being dropped by higher level War NPCs. We might be implementing a drop armor from War NPCs, but that depends on how much art Nightwraith and Charfade get done- you may have noticed that the areas are pretty art-heavy and Nightwraith and Charfade can only do so much with the hours in a day! Also, the NPCs are pretty strong and silent right now, but we will be adding in the battle text soon! Maybe I’ll even take some time this week to write even more conversation into their text!
The Night Before Juloffenblotten
Tags: Cinderella Juloffenblotten Frysteland War drops NPCs Armor Yeti Krampus Titanfraggr |
| December 06, 2011 The War for FrystelandBrace Yourselves: The Battle Begins!Hello there, EpicDuelists! Hopefully this week’s Design Notes will answer all those questions I’ve been getting since the last update. We’ve been working diligently on the big Juloffenblotten update!
The War for Frysteland We’ve been slowly introducing players to Delta V’s Frozen Northlands- Frysteland- and its inhabitants the Krampus. Now, you’ll recall that the Krampus have a long tradition of Beast Riding, making them uniquely able to harness the power of the corrupted Yetis threatening Legion and Exile targets alike. If only you could get them on your side…
Since the war requires alignment, Factions will become important for proving your loyalty. To that end, faction creation costs are getting slashed so even more players will be able to support the cause! Aldriah and her Legion forces have moved into Frysteland and seek to corrupt the Yetis to add them to their war effort as biological weapons. Only the Krampuses have stood in her way, but now they are poised to fall to this latest Legion assault. The Exiles hope to sway the last remaining Krampuses to join their cause by assisting them in pushing Alydriah out of Frysteland for good! In addition to the direct storyline quests (written by yours truly, so blame me if there are quest types you don’t like), defeating certain enemies will add points to your side’s War Leaderboard. Those loyal to the Legion will need to crush the Krampuses to demoralize them into submitting to the Legion. Exiles, seeking the loyalty of the Krampuses in their rebellion will need to defeat Yetis that have been corrupted by Legion manipulation and Alydriah's fierce Arctic Guards. There will be plenty of enemies for each level, but higher level foes will yield bigger points! Additionally, completing quests for either alignment will earn you BIG points toward your cause!
Checking your progress will be a snap, with leaderboards at both the Legion Outpost and the Krampus Village displaying the “Most Wanted” list of those players who contribute the most toward the war, and you can earn the “Most Wanted” Achievement!
Remember: your performance determines the outcome of the war! The first quests will be available at Holiday Hank or Winter Alydriah depending upon your alignment.
Frost Gear Solid
This week will also see the return of the old Frost weapons, as well as a new crop of weapons for the season. One exception will be Frostbane, which will be retired and marked as permanent rare. Congratulations to those who got it while it lasted! Remember, some of these Frost weapons will be credit-only, so all players have reason to be merry!
Insect Fact: Eggs Many things lay eggs, including most insects. For the most part, an insect mom lays her eggs shortly after mating, but other species delay egg laying, and the eggs hatch immediately after being laid. In social insects, the entire colony will care for the offspring, some of which will be the result of mating, and some the result of parthenogenesis, which is the development of an unfertilized egg into an individual. The Pacific Beetle cockroach has a range from Asia toward the Americas, and lives quite happily in Hawaii. This insect is unique in the sense that it is the only insect to display true viviparity- that is, egg laying or development does not occur, and the offspring complete larval development within the female.
-----Intercepted Transmission from Alydriah to Legion Commander Edgar Boothe-----
Tags: Cinderella Frysteland Juloffenblotten snow Winter Factions War |
| November 29, 2011 A Frosty Design NotesWelcome to another Design Notes, EpicDuelists! I hope all of you US players enjoyed your time with friends and family and got stuffed on turkey and ham (or tofurkey if you’re so inclined). Here in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s getting colder, and we’re introducing our Winter event.
Last chance for 11/11/11 and Delta Weapons This week, the 11/11/11 cheevos, missions, and Nightwraith’s personal items will be going seasonal rare. This will also be the final week we will be offering the Delta set in the 10K varium package. What is its replacement? Keep reading! The Christmas/Winter seasonal house items will be returning in this update as well.
Frysteland The mountainous continent to the North of the main continent of Delta V was called The Northlands by the colonists to the planet, but the indigenous people already had a name for it- Frysteland. Today, the area remains a strategic location for both Exile and Legion interests, and players will be able to ally with some famous faces in this battle. One familiar face players will see in Frysteland will be jolly baker and weapons dealer Hank! Hank and Valestra prefer to spend the holiday season together in their Winter Abode, far from the stresses of city life, where Hank can bake Juloffenblotten cookies and Valestra can make delicious hot chocolate, and afterwards cozy by the fire, watching the yetis hunting rabbits outside. However, Hank’s gotten word that Arctic Commander Edgar Boothe is planning something big this Juloffenblotten... and it’s not a lute berry pudding. Also making the journey from Fortune City to the Frozen Northlands is Alydriah Descarl. Since she’d begun to corrupt the wildlife, Descarl has planned to use these more powerful and violent animals to destroy anyone- human or otherwise- who would stand in her way. Although this week is just an introduction to the storyline, we hope to make this future releases a full-fledged Winter event the likes of which you have never seen! The idea is that players will be able to choose alignment specific quests to determine the outcome of the storyline! What is this? Quests based on alignment? Yes! Members of both the Exiles and Legion will battle each other, as well as the corrupted Yetis to win over the allegiance of the Krampus people.
New Promo? With the Delta Weapons going rare, they will be replaced with the Frost Destroyer mutating weapon AND the Frost Slayer broadsword! These beautiful and powerful mutating weapons will be available with the $50 10K varium package starting this Friday!
This set of amazing weapons will come with the ability called Frostbite, which is a chance to cause your opponent to "leak" energy for 3 turns. If you have Baby Yeti and one of the new Frost Destroyer or Frost Slayer weapons equipped, your Yeti will also gain this ability!
En Espanol! We've had Portuguese support for EpicDuel for a few weeks now and it has really helped us refine the localization system. Now, we're ready to expand to new languages. Starting this Friday, EpicDuel will also have support for Spanish language in game!
South for the Winter It’s not just Hank who likes to be warm and cozy during the winter- many animals migrate, including the Monarch butterfly. Perhaps the most recognizable insect in North America, the bright orange butterfly will begin flying from North America toward Mexico and Central and South America, where they will overwinter in huge clusters, huddling together on a tree, often forming clusters that cover entire trees! This migratory behavior is not noted in populations outside of continental North America, as populations in Australia do not migrate very far, and they do not migrate at all in Hawaii. Also interesting is that Monarch butterflies are one of the few insects that are capable of crossing the Atlantic ocean, and they are becoming more common in areas like Bermuda, where the plant they consume as larvae- milkweed- is a common ornamental plant. The consumption of milkweed as cateripllars make the adults distasteful to predators.
Child’s Play Platinum Supporter Thank you for your support! Thanks to you, players, ArtixEntertainment is once again able to be a Platinum Supporter of Child’s Play Charity! We cannot express how deeply grateful we are to be able to support such a wonderful institution in this way! Tags: Child's Play Charity Promotion Juloffenblotten Frysteland Winter |
