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 | September 22, 2023 Draconic Warlord Battlepass Is NOW LIVE
The Draconic Warlord Battlepass is NOW LIVE! Login now to earn the latest collection of dragon/knight-themed weapons, armors, vehicles, morphs, bots, cores, and more crafted with care by Acatriel! Good luck and happy dueling to reach level 60 of EpicDuel's latest Battlepass season! So more of you know what you're getting into with the new bots and cores available in this season, the skill descriptions are listed below:
Other Changes
Gifting ClarificationLast week we posted about the return of Gifting. Though we try to be as thorough as possible with the rules and covering all scenarios, there are sometimes omitted. In this case, we forgot to mention the 1,000,000 Gifting score Founder rule from last year is still in play. This means that if you place in the top 15 with a score of 1,000,000 or higher, your Legacy item reward may be Founder Armor. As last time, this only applies to the top 15 places. If hypothetically, your score is greater than 1,000,000 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. Tags: Nightwraith |
| September 15, 2023 Gifting Returns 2023
As some of you guessed from last week's cryptic but not too cryptic post, Gifting is returning to EpicDuel December 2023. We had been discussing the possibility of it's return for awhile, but we were waiting until my condition had stabilized before committing. There's so much to prepare for this massive event that we had to plan ahead to make sure we could still provide some updates while creating Gifting content without burning out. To help mitigate the scope creep of our rewards in previous years, we are updating the prize structure of the event this year with new tiers and modified rewards. These will allow more people to qualify for big rewards while making sure we're not still working on fulfilling prize requests years after the event concludes. Please please PLEASE read these changes carefully if you're thinking of participating in Gifting! We don't want anyone to feel disappointed or mislead at the end of the event. We also don't want to negotiate with winners for different prizes, additional bonuses, or rule-bending changes after the fact. To prevent the issue of reselling custom item codes (even if you super-duper-pinky-promise you wont), there will be not prize codes provided for the top prize.
The reward chests will contain sets or parts of sets of items in a similar manner to the Secret and Silver Secret Chests from previous years. *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 will not be personalized like in previous years. A class-changing weapon counts as 1 item. 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). Cores attached the custom item or robot attacks can be customized, but their effects in-battle must have in-game equivalents. Additional rules from previous years apply:
In addition to those changes, we also want to add a bonus condition for prizes to reward power Gifters. The player with the most Top Daily Gifter wins by the end of Gifting will receive the option for a Legacy item (non-Founder). We would also like to implement an additional reward structure to add incentive for people to participate in giving without the need to climb to the top of the leaderboard. This structure would provide new rewards for Gifting at different thresholds, similar to a Battlepass, from 10K to 200K. More details will be listed as content is completed. We want to have more prize content visible earlier than previous years so Gifters will know what they're trying to win! We hope these changes will make Gifting rewarding to a larger number of players while also transitioning Gifting into a more sustainable event!
Gifting Clarification (Updated 9-22-2023)Last week we posted about the return of Gifting. Though we try to be as thorough as possible with the rules and covering all scenarios, there are sometimes omitted. In this case, we forgot to mention the 1,000,000 Gifting score Founder rule from last year is still in play. This means that if you place in the top 15 with a score of 1,000,000 or higher, your Legacy item reward may be Founder Armor. As last time, this only applies to the top 15 places. If hypothetically, your score is greater than 1,000,000 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.
Draconic Warlord BattlepassThe Battlepass development is still underway and expected to release next week. If you still have a few levels of rewards to grind out in the Cathedral Knight Battlepass, there's still time! It will also be your last chance for awhile to obtain many seasonal rares and PvP drops! Tags: Nightwraith |
| September 08, 2023 EpicDuel Coming Attractions 2023
The Cathedral Knight Battlepass is nearing its end, ready to make room for the Draconic Warlord Battlepass! The tentative plan is to remove the Cathedral Knight Battlepass next Friday and update it with the Draconic Warlord Battlepass. That should allow enough time to earn the last few levels of prizes in the normal and enhanced tiers. Although there is not update today, we wanted to outline the plan for the next few months, which will include new Battlepasses, a tournament, balance changes, and more!
Leaving SoonWhen the Draconic Warlord Battlepass goes live, there will be some changes to the availability of seasonal items and PvP drops. Seasonable rares will be reset to their regular release times. Many PvP drops, including the Dage drops will be removed from the drop pools.
Cosmic Carnage 2 Tournament
Enough time has passed since our last barrage of tournaments that we're finally ready to announce a new Cosmic Carnage 2 tournament coming in October! As in the past, Players will buy tickets to compete with each other to earn PvP victories, climb the leaderboard, and win exclusive rewards!
Olympus' Wrath Battlepass
The Draconic Warlord Battlepass hasn't yet launched, and we already have the next Battlepass in-progress! This Greek Pantheon-themed showcase will feature some mind-blowing animations that push Flash to its limit!
Maybe More?Though EpicDuel ended 2022 with a new Battlepass, there was definitely something missing compared to the usual excitement and festivities that punctuate the Winter holidays on Delta V. This year, we hope to celebrate the close of another year of EpicDuel with the return of an old favorite... Tags: Nightwraith |
| August 25, 2023 Free Varium Bonus
Balance changes, a Battlepass preview, and free bonus Varium for all in this latest EpicDuel update! Free VariumStarting with today's update, all new characters will start with 500 FREE Varium and an additional 5,000 Credits. Existing characters will also receive 500 Varium and 5,000 Credits. Unlike previous Varium giveaways, there is no activity requirement to receive this. Even if your character has collected years of dust, you should still see this bonus in your inventory.
Balance Changes
Draconic Warlord Battlepass Preview
The Cathedral Knight Battlepass is still online, but that doesn't mean we're not preparing the next Battlepass -- this time with a draconic theme! When the current Battlepass ends there will be a brief cooldown before the next goes online, but the goal is to have little delay between the passes to make sure there are still strong incentives for battles and daily logins. Tags: Nightwraith |
| August 18, 2023 Arcade Token Exchange
Arcade Tokens burning a hole in your pocket, but you're burned out on ArcadeBots? Now, you can undertake easy missions to quickly exchange your Tokens for mountains of Credits!
Arcade Token ExchangeAfter years of Gifting events, PvP drops, and mission rewards, many players have an absolutely shocking amount of Arcade Tokens. Many have requested the ability to sell Arcade Tokens, however, in testing we found that because there were so many different sources for acquiring Tokens (drops, gifts, Varium, etc...) it wasn't possible to allow direct sellback for a consistent Credit price. To work around that limitation, we're offering 5 new mission chains (1 permanent, 4 daily) to allow players to cleanly exchange their Tokens.
While not as clean and concise as direct sellback, these missions should allow many players to efficiently reduce their Token surplus. If we can find a solution to the sellback problem in the future, we'll make the adjustment accordingly.
Bank Space BuffRunning out of space to store the latest Battlepass weapons? The Bank space cap has been increased from 2020 to 10,020, which should last quite a long time for even the most hardcore collectors! Tags: Nightwraith |
| August 14, 2023 Cathedral Knight Battlepass Bug Fixes
The Battlepass has been live for over a week so it's time for some much-needed balance adjustments and fixes.
Bug Fixes and Changes:
Bug Fixes:
Tags: Nightwraith |
| August 03, 2023 Cathedral Knight Battlepass is NOW LIVE
The Cathedral Knight Battlepass is LIVE! Login now to earn the latest collection of spring/knight-themed weapons, armors, vehicles, morphs, bots, cores, and more crafted with care by Acatriel! Good luck and happy dueling to reach level 60 of EpicDuel's latest Battlepass season!
Other Changes!In addition to the new Battlepass, we've introduced features and content including new achievements, expanded inventory cap, and more!
Tags: Nightwraith |
| June 30, 2023
EpicDuel's latest update is live with a super summer seasonal restock! That means that all seasonal rares are temporarily available at all merchants! This restock will last through the month of July to allow people to catch up on all their seasonal collections! This is also a reminder that the current Botanical Knight Battlepass will end at the end of the day July 5th. Don't fret, though, because the next Battlepass is in development and will launch as soon as possible.
Recover ProgressI'm (Nightwraith) still healing with more good days than bad as far a pain is concerned. It's curiously very hard to force yourself to rest. For the first few days I thought, "Sweet! infinite naps!" but that gets old quickly, especially when most visual entertainment is not medically advised. That said, I'm nearing the end of my recovery with an appointment with my ophthalmologist quickly approaching. I've been plugging away a few hours at a time on EpicDuel matters (Acatriel and Alina have been heroically doing the heavy lifting during my recovery!), but I'll be prepared to step back into my full role after receiving the green light from my physician. We still have a full Battlepass in the pipeline, and I can't wait to help get it into the game for you all to enjoy! Tags: Nightwraith |
| June 23, 2023
Howdy! This is Nightwraith again! It's been awhile, hasn't it? I'm still not 100% recovered, but I'm feeling healthy enough to release this update and write this post. In addition to the normal information about the most recent update, I'll also cover more details about my medical emergency and ongoing recovery.
MORE New Gear in the AfterlifeThis week, you'll find another bounty of new weapons in Acatriel's shop in the Afterlife.
Like the last batch of items, these are also tagged Rare, so they're an excellent way to boost your collection and rarity score!
Experience Limit LiftedFor a very long time, there has been an experience cap on the amount that can be earned through a single duel victory. Normally this wasn't an issue as the cap war rarely hit, even with boosting, However, since I set Power Hour to run throughout my absence, this has made it possible to exceed the limit regularly. To address this, I've raised the cap substantially from 210 to 610. This should make it possible to shoot through the levels very quickly and earn Legendary ranks faster than ever until Power Hour reverts to its normal schedule.
Cathedral Knight PreviewIn addition to being responsible for this release, Lodrian/Acatriel has been busy creating content for the next battlepass! Check out this preview of new content that should be arriving within the next few weeks!
Because I'm still not 100%, I don't want to set a firm launch date for the new battlepass, but thanks to Captain Rhubarb, we have more tools for adding content more easily than ever so that should help avoid many expected bottlenecks.
Recover UpdateAs mentioned in Beleen's update almost a month ago, I had emergency surgery to fix a retina detachment. How did I notice this was happening? Well, I was going about my business one Friday afternoon when I noticed something "off" about my vision. I started developing a headache and just dismissed it as eyestrain and assumed it would be better the next day after a good night's sleep. I was mistaken. To give you an idea of what I saw out of my right eye, a grey veil slowing descending over my eye, I've created this visual aid:
After some quick Googling, I determined this was a classic symptom of a retinal detachment. Every article I browsed offered the same advice, "SEE A DOCTOR IMMEDIATELY!" This is because the condition progresses very quickly and can lead to total vision loss in the affected eye within a few days or, in some cases, mere hours. What causes them? Sometimes age. Sometimes head trauma. Sometimes just a random bad RNG from life. Unfortunately, I found this information on a Saturday, and most doctor's offices are closed on weekends. It's also very difficult to even get an appointment with a specialist without a referral. My only option was to immediately go to the emergency room of a local hospital. After a few hours meeting with some very nice doctors, receiving a battery of tests, and finally consulting with the staff ophthalmologist, the medical team finally reached a consensus that my retina had indeed detached, but the soonest they could address it was Monday. With a formal diagnosis, I messaged the bad news to Artix and Alina to determine the best course of action. Based on what I learned about the surgery and recovery, it could be at least a month before I could return to work so I was extremely worried how this would impact EpicDuel, its ongoing development, and the players. Thankfully, Artix and Alina were very supportive and understanding of my situation, and we were able to brainstorm a plan of action for the next few weeks while I recovered. Lodrian, Captain Rhubarb, Alina, and Beleen rallied to the cause to help with Design Notes posts, database updates, and art asset creation to make sure the game didn't just lie dormant for a month. We realized that fully formed weekly updates were not possible, but one content release every two weeks would allow enough time for everything to be prepared and tested with light guidance from me. When Monday arrived, I endured another round of tests, but this time more specialized for eyes. Emergency rooms have access to a lot of technology, but they tend to check EVERYTHING to get a general idea of what your problem is and to rule out other potential problems the patient may not have considered. Since I already had a diagnosis, the specialist could just focus on my eyes. The doctors and technicians thoroughly examined both of my eyes (retina detachments have about a 15% chance of occurring in both eyes eventually), and they confirmed the initial diagnosis: Not only was my retina detached, but it had been detaching for a while, just very slowly. Good! Excellent! I was nervous, but very excited to have this problem corrected to save my vision. Then...they told me to see another doctor on Wednesday. I was disheartened, and asked the doctor if she was confident the retina wouldn't detach fully while I waited. She assured me that because the detachment was on the bottom of my eye (I saw the grey veil at the top of my vision because everything you see is flipped and reversed), gravity would hold it in place for a while. Wednesday finally came, and with that, another round of tests. Though frustrated, I was relieved to finally be at an endpoint with this journey and that I still had some vision left to save after so many delays. The doctor was very nice and reassuring in his confidence that my problem could be corrected. Within a few hours, I was being prepped for surgery. For a detachment, doctors describe the worst-case scenario to prepare you for any outcome because they simply don't know the extent of the repair they'll need to perform until they actually get inside your eye. Fortunately, I only needed a scleral buckle procedure along with some cryo therapy to close a few tears and weld the retina to my eye again. A scleral buckle is a thin strip of silicon that's threaded around your eyeball and cinched like a belt to bring the retina back against your eye to allow it to heal. This is permanent. My eye has a belt forever. How did they get the belt around my eye? I made the mistake of watching a video. I do not recommend this. You ever tried peeling a grape? I don't remember any of the surgery because I had general anesthesia and was asleep for the whole process. The aftermath was also very fuzzy, but the pain was much less than I expected. On a scale of 1-10, the pain level was probably a 4 at most. Surprisingly, the doctor removed the bandage the next day. I was dreading what horrors lurked beneath the gauze, but to my relief, it just looked really red. My vision, however, was extremely blurry. My doctor told me that I could expect some improvement, but not much because my eye was a completely new shape. To this day, my vision still looks a bit like this:
However, my eye is much, much less red now, and the spooky grey veil that threatened to steal my sight is gone. There is a fairly high recurrence rate for detachments so I will become very good friends with my optometrist and ophthalmologist to continually observe any changes in my vision. I continue to use medicated eyedrops and have a pack of ice nearby constantly to relieve swelling. Also water. Lots of water. For many years I foolishly substituted caffeine for real hydration under the "lol game dev life!" mentality, but that era is over. For the first few weeks after surgery, I avoided screens as much as I could, and even now my monitor can give me a migraine if I look too long. Though I'm now rocking a trusty eyepatch, I can still feel my right eye try to move and scan text and focus in unison with my healthy eye which causes a decent amount of discomfort. The healing process is long, delicate, boring, and frustrating. My body feels ready to resume normal activities, but I can feel my eye lagging behind. "Strenuous activity" now includes carrying more than 10 pounds or walking to fast as I can immediately feel the pressure around my eye. I'm still a few weeks out from receiving new glasses to correct my vision. I haven't been as excited for anything so mundane in a very long time because now, my combined vision looks something like this:
My vision was already far from perfect, but now everything kind of looks like late 2000s video games with bloom everywhere or like watching a 3D movie without the 3D glasses. Text is still a major pain which really hurt my plans to catch up on reading throughout this recovery (thank you, audiobooks). That said, everything is getting better day-by-day, and this whole Nightwraith: Repair Mode saga is nearing an end. I'm thankful for Artix, Alina, Lodrian, Alley Cat, Captain Rhubarb, and everyone else at AE who rallied behind me to help support EpicDuel through this trying time. I'm also thankful for the players who stuck around and offered well-wishes and didn't instantly bail when they heard EpicDuel's main dev would be down for the count for many weeks. I'm anxious to return to full-time development soon, and I once again thank you bearing with me as I share this journey with you. Take care of your eyes, and duel on! Tags: Nightwraith |
| May 18, 2023 May the Fourth Forever
Performance improvements, bug fixes, and enough star sabers to stop an imperial army arrive with this latest update! May the Fourth ForeverWell, maybe not forever. We do have many more rare social media prize code drops to last throughout the month of May! Can you collect them all?
Animation OptimizationOptimization is rarely exciting but often a net positive and sometime necessary for sustained development. With so many custom skills and variants for different weapon types, our character timeline ballooned to nearly 10,000 frames. Over time, we've been able to trim this down to about 7,000 frames with this latest update. The biggest change was consolidating the alternative animations for the class-specific weapons when using sidearms and auxiliaries. Now, the weapons will quickly fade out and back in at the end of the animation. This streamlines the animations while drawing focus to the weapons being used. After all, what's the point of upgrading a fancy new sidearm if it's going to be hidden behind your other weapons? Optimization is an ongoing process, but this update was a major push forward in our battle against performance issues and file size!
Bug Fixes / ChangesThere has been a persistent bug impacting AOE cores such as Ultra Obliteration that would cause the client to freeze if used against 2 targets without enough energy. We tried for awhile to resolve this issue, but to keep this issue from remaining in game and freezing battles, a stopgap solution was introduced in the most recent update: All AOE skills have the same energy require when used against 2 targets as 1 target. This will affect cores and regular class skills. In a way, it makes sense to unify the cost for 1 and 2 targets since players do not have a choice weather to target 1 or 2 players with an AOE, it's an automatic increase is energy cost. This may perhaps make AOE skills more viable in 2v2 and Juggernaut battles. Tags: Nightwraith |
| May 06, 2023 Ultra Corsair Now Live
EpicDuel is live with its latest limited-time promotion: Ultra Corsair Gear!
Ultra Corsair PackageThis new 4,000 Artix Point package includes over 20 items! A great value on par with some of the 10,000 AP packages of the past. This limited-time promo includes the following items:
Cores (pre-equipped to the sidearms and auxiliary items in the package)
This package also comes with an exclusive achievement, the Ultra Corsair Crest! *Please note that this package does not include additional Varium.
Ultimate Stat Boost PackThough there are many passive cores available in EpicDuel, it can be difficult to know what to buy and where to buy it when crafting a build. Since stat-boosting cores are great for providing noticeable improvements in damage output, defense, healing, and more, we assembled many of the most common permanent stat cores into one convenient package. This new 10,000 Artix Point package contains over 40 passive stat-boosting cores to cover all the main gear categories. To provide added value, the package also includes 10,000 Varium to give players everything they need to create a highly competitive build.
Tags: Nightwraith |
| April 28, 2023 May the Fourth 2023
EpicDuel is live with 2 new 4,000 AP promo packs, new PvP drops, new styles, and new prize code star sabers for the entire month of May!
New PromosEpicDuel can be very intimidating for new players. After 15 years of development, there are so many weapons and cores that it can be difficult to know how to best spend your hard-earned credits and Varium. To provide a boost to new and returning players, we've introduced two new promotional packs for 4,000 Artix Points each: Stat Boost Pack
A quick way to optimize your build is to equip potent passive cores to boost key stats like Strength, Dexterity, Technology, and Support. Many new players don't even know such cores exist! This package includes many of the most common Passive boosts to provide tangible boosts to struggling builds.
This pack also includes 2 of each of the following limited-charge stat boost cores:
Grenade Pack
Grenades are useful Primary Active cores that can offer a quick offensive advantage in battle. This pack includes two of each limited charge grenade core.
If these packs are successful, we hope to introduce more packages bundling other useful cores and items to improve shopping convenience for new and veteran players alike.
New PvP DropIf you don't want to wait until Monday to start collecting saber swords, we've added 8 new weapons to the PvP drop pool!
As of this update the April Fools weapon drops have been removed from the PvP drop pool.
May the FourthStarting May 1st at 12 PM (EST), a new prize code will be posted to Nightwraith's Twitter for a new rare saber sword. The next code will be posted at 5 PM (EST). This will be the schedule until all codes are depleted! There should be enough quantity of each prize item to last a while, but they won't last long and there will not be any reposting. Good luck, and May the Fourth be with you!
New StylesAs an appetizer for the upcoming Ultra Corsair promotional package, we've introduced eight new styles to complement the set once it's finally released! Tags: Nightwraith |
| April 14, 2023 Botanical Battlepass Now Live!
The Botanical Knight Battlepass is LIVE! Login now to earn the latest collection of spring/knight-themed weapons, armors, vehicles, morphs, bots, cores, and more crafted with care by Bido and Acatriel! This Battlepass will last from today to June 6, 2023. Good luck and happy dueling to reach level 60 of EpicDuel's latest Battlepass season!
Varium Sale EndAs of this latest update, the Spring Varium sale is now over in EpicDuel after over a week extension.
PvP Drop AdjustmentThe overall drop rate for PvP items was somewhat overtuned over the last few weeks, so it has been adjusted to be lower in the latest update. Tags: Nightwraith |
| March 31, 2023 Botanical Knight Battlepass Preview
The Botanical Knight Battlepass is on schedule to be released next week with new cores, styles, weapons, armors, and more! The expected release date is Friday April 7 as soon as it's ready. The release has been postponed until next week to allow enough time for thorough development and testing.
PvP Queue TimeTo encourage faster matchmaking, the queue times for PvP matches have been reduced, especially in 2v2. This means that if a human match is not found, an AI opponent will be chosen faster. While priority is given to human matches, getting into battles to get rewards feels better than waiting at a loading screen. The level range of AI matches has also been increased from 36 to 38.
Drop Rate UpdateSince the 2023 Dage drops are dropping less frequently than intended, we've updated the the drop weights to give preference to the new items while increasing the overall drop rate. In anticipation of April Fool's Day, we've added the following items back into the drop pools: Weapon Drops
Home Items
Tags: Nightwraith |
| March 21, 2023 Ancient Legion Arsenal
The Undead Legion's latest arsenal has arrived in EpicDuel! Collect over 50 new items that can be earned through PvP victories! These drops are seasonal and will leave for the season after a few months.
New PvP Drops Fight and win PvP duels for a chance to receive these new weapons!
New Home Item Drops Fight and win PvP duels for a chance to receive these new home items!
New Collection MissionsVisit Dage the Evil's avatar on Delta V to accept the new collection mission chain Dage's 2023 Arsenal! If you complete all the missions, you can earn thousands of credits, new rare weapons, and an new achievement: Dage Collector 2023! Tags: Nightwraith |
