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 | October 31, 2014 Halloween Harvest of Horror
This week, in EpicDuel, we've released a horrific harvest of terrifying yet tantalizing gear.
Coffinzookas
The dead are restless this Halloween, and they wish to rejoin the battlefield! These Coffinzookas were inspired by the work of Reki, who submitted them as a suggestion years ago. Better late than never? I'm happy I was finally able to squeeze them in this year, and I hope they were worth the wait.
These beastly bazookas are available for a limited time at Snork!
Paladin Armor!
Ever wanted to dress like Artix in EpicDuel? Now, thanks to G00ny, you'll have your chance to adorn yourself in classic Paladin armor! Visit Titan, who clearly ripped a hole in the fabric of the universe to claim the armor from Lore, to check it out!
Now you'll be able to take on the undead...if they ever show up in EpicDuel.
Bone Hazard Ahead
Yikes! That's kind of like an undead. Stop at Snork to pick up the limited quantity season Bone Hazard Armor!
Power Weekend!
After you're done collecting candy and partying off the sugar rush, hop into EpicDuel for Power Weekend! That means double XP and Credits all weekend! All you need to do to get this advantage is to log in and play!
Winter Preview
We're hard at work on this year's epic Winter release. We can't release too many details yet, but it will be guaranteed to be an event to remember!
And now, a special message from Artix about some amazing new cloth armor available from HeroMart!Armor T-Shirt Pre-Orders OpenPre-Order at HeroMart.com to guarantee yoursHiya guys! We found a way to get these amazing wrap-around armor T-shirts created. The process to create them is complicated and pretty expensive so we cannot just order a bunch of them like we usually do. So, if you want to get your hands on a 1st Edition Paladin or Legion Armor T-Shirt, lock in your pre-order at HeroMart now!
Real-life Undead Legion armor You have until production starts (We are estimating around November 25th-ish, Thanksgiving) to place your order and guarantee that you will get your shirt. We are going to produce all of the pre-orders at once and then ship in December. Includes exclusive items for AQWorlds!Each shirt comes with an awesome weapon and half of the "Legion Paladin" class. Combine both halves to create the full class in AdventureQuest Worlds! Themed after the shirts... we merged Artix's Paladin armor and Dage's Paragon armor together into a horrifying and powerful new class.
Get both shirts to unlock the Class!
Have a Safe and Happy Halloween!
Trick-or-Treat On! Tags: Nightwraith Browser PvP MMO Duel Combat Halloween Warfare Weapons Prizes HeroMart merchandise Shirt |
| June 03, 2014 Lionhart Cometh
Deep-space scans have detected an armada of unknown origin approaching Delta V. A single transmission was received before the ships disappeared from view, “I am Kaiser Saeva Lionhart, and I am coming to claim what is mine!” Saeva Lionhart and his forces are ready to take control of Delta V even if it means annihilating the existing population! In addition to an army of elite soldiers, Saeva is bringing his most powerful lieutenants, his children Immanence and Transcendance. Once again, Legion and Exile forces will need to unite to protect Delta V from this otherworldly army. This Friday, June 6 at "When It's Ready O-clock", prepare for the dawn of the Lionhart Saga!
This highly anticipated release will prominently feature artwork from Revontheus, the architect for many aspects of the release. If you enjoy it, be sure to thank him!
Fight Lionhart with...Lionhart! Before the full force of Lionhart’s army arrives on Delta V, you’ll have the opportunity to experiment with Saeva’s technology firsthand! Lionhart’s Avatar Bots (P and E), Lionhart’s Carnage (Physical mutating primary), and Lionhart’s Knowledge (Energy mutating primary) will be available for a limited time with the 10,000 Varium package. This incredible package includes 4 powerful weapons of destruction to help you defeat your foes and repel the invading forces.
These weapons will include a permanent active core Lionhart’s Shield. This defensive core allow you to encase your or your partner in a crystalline prism that prevents enemies from attacking. It literally makes the target untargetable and immune to any debuffs or attacks. This brief reprieve from damage allows you or your ally to deny your opponents from inflicting damage for a turn and forces a change of strategy. It is not possible to heal or buff an ally if they have this shield enabled. Lionhart’s Avatar Bots include two potent skills, Lionhart’s Claws, a devastating slashing attack, and Lionhart’s Roar, a special ability to unleashes a deafening roar that buffs the Rage of you and your ally. That's right, this new ability will be the first AOE buff.
These amazing items are just a taste of the amazing assortment of weapons and armors that will be available in game as prizes, mission rewards, drops, and items sold at merchants. These weapons and bots will be available for a limited time through the Varium shop and at the Lionhart Soldier merchant for Varium! To make room for this new package, the Black Abyss and Blood Hawk packages will be leaving permanently. The Black Abyss Bots will be located in the Black Abyss Cache with the other Black Abyss items.
Overlord Overhaul
Because this new event is bringing focus to the Overlord Facility, this long-forgotten region is receiving a major overhaul. Charfade is working her painterly magic on the facility, creating the haunting, imposing military installation it was always meant to be. Be sure to explore the screens and experience the revamped region for yourself. There will be many more friends and foes to challenge here!
Rage Revealed Since it was first introduced, Rage has been a mystery to many players. You only see your Rage on your turn; the Rage of your opponents and allies remains a mystery until the attack is finally unleashed. You also have no idea how much Rage you accumulate from your attacks or from damage you receive.
In this Friday’s update, you’ll finally be able to see your Rage and the Rage of your opponents throughout the entire battle. The familiar Rage bar will still appear on your turn, but you’ll also have a permanent Rage bar with the rest of your vitals.
Fame Game Lately, we've been seeing more and more people abusing Fame. This is unfortunate as the feature has not served the purpose we originally intended. Our plan to address this issue is to remove Fame from the character page to an in-game system. Since our plate already overflows with Lionhart content, we may not have time make the transition this week. We apologize that fixing this has not been a priority, but we believe that moving this feature in-game will greatly reduce the amount of Fame harassment and exploitation to make it the fun and engaging system we always hoped it would be. Tags: Nightwraith Varium Package Promotion Lionhart Weapons Armors |
| March 07, 2014 Onward to War
War is approaching. A better war. A faster war. A war that more fully captures to epic clash of Legion and Exile forces. Though this new war was not quite ready to be unveiled today, we're still hard at work and hope to have a finished feature ready to go early next week. This Design Note post will reveal some new and exciting elements from the new war system. Server Stability Before we get into the meat of the post, I'll briefly mention the absense of Legion and Doom from the server select. Today we did a small update to patch some exploits and improve server security. Due to recent erratic behavior, Legion and Doom were taken offline. We do not yet know if we will bring them back, but we do know that those servers were old and underperforming. Epic and Exile (we should probably change their names now, huh?) will soon be upgraded to faster, more modern servers to improve performance, making additional servers unnecessary for the time being.
Onward to WAR! With the new war system, we wanted to emphasize accessibility. The current war has a lot of moving parts and can be quite difficult to grasp for a novice just learning the basics of dueling. Under the new system, the active war will be represented by a global war bar. This war bar provides general information about the conflict and quick-jump buttons to the main objectives.
When the war is over, the prize button will become active for the winning alignment! We'll get to that a bit later... Some war objectives may be familiar with a few key changes -- you'll notice the Control Array now has a shield over it. It's up to the alignment on offense to bring down the shield and capture the Array, while the defenders must stop the aggressors at all costs!
To defend or attack, Legion and Exile warriors will receive PvP war drops. Defenders will receive Dread Bombs while the attackers will receive Dread Shells. These drops can be used at objectives to gain influence for yourself, your Faction, and your alignment. This is also the primary mechanism for driving the war. To discourage hoarding, you will only be able to hold a maximum of 10 of each type of war drop in your inventory. If you choose not to participate in the war, you will be able to sell the drops with no sellback.
War drops can be used at war objectives, which will be scattered throughout the active region.
Clicking a war objective brings up a menu to use your war drops. You can use your drops for free, or upgrade them to a more powerful form for Varium. The more powerful drops can also drop from PvP battles, but at a much lower rate.
The objectives will show realtime destruction as they are used and abused by warring alignments. Small notifications will appear to broadcast your feats of valor for all to see!
Each objective has a different attribute -- providing interesting tactical decisions for either side of the conflict.
Defend your objectives or see them burnt to the ground! When the war ends, the winning alignment, along with the most victorious player and Faction will be displayed prominently throughout the region!
Cores With the changes to the war system, we'll be consolidating the existing regional influence-buffing cores into a sole War Commander core. This new limited-charge core will give 10 guaranteed war drops for battle victories.
This core will be available from prominent Legion and Exile NPCs in active war regions.
More Cheevos! Since some are already very close to attaining the 10th tier of certain regional war achievements, we've decided to bump up the difficulty with 2 more tiers for each region. We're even planning a super-special acheivement for reaching tier 12 on ALL regions, including Frysteland and the Infernal Mines (coming soon)!
During the war, you'll also have a change to earn the prestigious War Hero achievement by earning the most influence in a single day!
Big Prizes! Winng a war is an incredible task, so the victors should receive equally incredible rewards! Never-before-seen weapons, armors, vehicles and amazing currency bonuses await those who triumph!
If you're the picky type, you'll have a list of 6 items to choose from when claiming your reward. The prizes will rotate between war events so the list will be ever-changing and always interesting! Expect an early release next week while we iron out the last of the bugs and polish the remaining features of our new war system! Thank you for your patience! We're confident the feature will be worth the wait!
Springtime Gear! Last but not least, remember to check out the seasonal rare Springtime gear, available at Naomi and Xraal!
Grab this awesome gear before it disappears back into the database aether for another year! |
| 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 |
| November 22, 2013 The Dark Harvest
It's that time again! Time for family, giving thanks, and, of course, battling to save the world! We've crammed so much into this release that we'll need to hold off on releasing today (Friday) and instead release next Tuesday! Sorry for the inconvenience, but we're sure this update will be worth it. New bots, weapons, missions, achievements, an incredible boss fight, and a new item bank system! There should be something for everyone in this latest harvest release!
Darkness Rises The evil Chairman Platinum was defeated by the combined efforts of Delta V's warriors and Elon Musk, but while his EbilCorp Factory was active, it stirred something terrible in the depths of Delta V's cavernous interior.
This mysterious region of Delta V is known as the Black Abyss. Years after the initial colonization of Delta V, Baelius' scientists concluded that there was nothing of value in this region so it was sealed off from all mining and exploration operations. At least, that was the official story. Once again, Legion and Exile forces are threatened by this fearsome new enemy. If it is not defeated, this may be the last Harvest Festival for the citizens of Delta V. Fortunately, new technology has emerged to help you prepare for the trials ahead!
Into the Black Abyss The dark substance that emerged from the Ebilcorp Factory site was unlike anything Delta V scientists have ever seen. Like most new discoveries, however, it was quickly adopted for the manufacturing of new weapons! The Black Abyss Battlegear will be available in physical and energy flavors from an NPC near the current site of the Wasteland's SolarWorld Factory.
Again, the Black Abyss Battlegear will be available in-game with a new, locked, active core. We'll post more about that as we finalize details. We are also restocking Rabblefroth with the seasonal Thanksgiving rares. Be sure to stop by and check them out if you missed them last year! In addition to new weapons, we will be introducing an exclusive new Varium package that will include 2 new bots, the Black Abyss Bots! In addition to dealing a devastating slash attack, it is also capable to unleashing powerful secondary skill. Again, we will post more details as they become finalized.
Mighty Missions An epic-sized release wouldn't be complete without new missions, and new missions wouldn't be complete without new achievements! Collect the new seasonal-rare Turkey Terminator achievement from any VendBot. It will only be available for a limited time so get it while you can. Also, the Hallowarrior Achievement will be leaving to make room for this new achievement, so if you haven't picked it up yet, now's your last chance!
New Achievements will also be available for completing the new mission chain related to the anomaly in the Black Abyss. One does not just walk into the cavernous depths of Delta V so level up and perfect your builds for one of the greatest challenges yet!
Bank Access Bots This release introduces the new BankBot system, more accurately described as a Bank Access Bot. Once the release is live, you will be able to load inventory items into a centralized "bank." This bank can be accessed from any BABot you have on one of your homes. To make access as easy as possible, we are gifting all players one free Basic BABot with 20 bank slots. This feature introduces a lot of changes to the current inventory system so I will list them as clearly as possible:
Stay tuned for more updates on this epic upcoming release! Tags: Nightwraith Black Abyss Bugs Turkey Thanksgiving Holiday Sale Cores Banks Inventory Bot Cores Weapons Achievements Boss Missions |
| November 14, 2013 Big Balance Bonanza
Prepare for one of the most comprehensive balance updates EpicDuel has ever seen! Every class will be affected as we focus on making battle more interesting, strategic, and fair. We understand that these changes can be rough, especially as everyone struggles to find new builds and strategies, but know that we're trying our best to keep all the classes fun, interesting, and competative. Balance is not my specialty, so I'll defer to our resident Numeromancer Rabblefroth. If you wish to comment about the changes or following the specific nuances of the changes, you can follow this thread in the AE forums! The following is a quote from Rabblefroth in the thread's first post. Hey everyone!
Black Friday Preview A dark force is awakening in Delta V. Elon Musk may have stopped the Chairman's Ebilcorp factory from destroying the planet, but he couldn't stop the evil Chairman from disturbing something that was better left forgotten.
Something is returning. Something that has slept for thousands of years. Something that is very hungry. Stay tuned for more updates on this new threat! Tags: balance preview Thanksgiving Skills Weapons Black Friday Nightwraith |
| November 07, 2013 Shameless Self Indulgence
Prepare to party! This week, celebrate the birthday of EpicDuel's resident artist/assassin: Nightwraith. New missions, new weapons, and revamped skills await for your celebratory needs! As if that weren't enough reason to celebrate: the winners of the Creative Carving Contest will be announced in-game at Elon Musk!
Back to Party Business Visit me at my usual haunt in the Wasteland to investigate my stash of weapons and armors! Do you have your OneX6 Keys? No? We've got you covered -- you can either buy one directly or win one by completing a new mission. Be warned: I've been buffed to level 36 so I'm not the pushover I used to be!
The classic birthday missions are also returning, with a few new additions in case you've already completed the old ones. Complete them all for huge rewards!
Suggestion Shop In addition to hunting bounties and weaving baskets, I (Nightwraith) am EpicDuel's lead artist, but I don't mind sharing the spotlight with aspiring artists. That's why we're combining my birthday celebration with the introduction of a new round of suggestion shop weapons, created from ideas submitted from our creative EpicDuel community!
It's been way too long since we've done a shop like this so we're really going all out. We hope to have over 12 new weapons culled from the best of the best suggestions. Charfade and I are working as hard as possible to deliver more, but this is a thoroughly packed release. The weapons are still in progress so check back for a full list of items and their associated artist after we go live. If your suggestion was not selected, that does not mean it was terrible or we hate you -- it just means it may have to wait for the next suggestion shop. Hopefully it won't take a full year to do another one! I wouldn't be surprised if more items enter the game next week!
Arcadia It wouldn't be a proper birthday without a new Arcade Game!
Horrifying! Give it a spin and be the first to claim the grand prize! As with other games, Nightwraith's Nightmare will introduce it's own new evolving achievment and leaderboard!
Cheevo Counter Speaking of achievements -- we now have tracking for many of the daily achievements like the 1v1 and 2v2 automatch daily winners. Players who win the daily achievements multiple times will increment their number on the appropriate achievement.
Active Update To address balance this update, we will be tweaking a few energy numbers from last week's update, but we also have a far grander change in store: Converting all passive skills into active ones.
That means Blood Lust, Reroute, Deadly Aim, Shadow Arts, Adrenaline, and all the Armor skills will be converted into active skills. Blood Lust and Reroute will become Mark of Blood and Battery Backup respectively. The purpose of this change is to add strategy to battle. Currently, passives grant HUGE benefits with little sacrifice, especially for level cap players. Active skills require more sacrifice in terms of energy cost and turn cost. To compensate for these sacrifices, the effects of the skills will be modified. This change will affect all classes so we're really interested to see what new strategies emerge from this change.
Adrenaline
Hybrid Armor, Mineral Armor, and Plasma Armor
Reroute
Deadly Aim
Blood Lust
Shadow Arts
Contest Announcement
When this update goes live, be sure to visit Elon Musk for a list of the winning entries! The effort so far has been stellar with such short notice. We are currently in the process of judging entries and narrowing down the list of finalists! Tags: Titan Nightwraith Suggestion Shop Elon Musk contest Arcade Missions balance Skills Weapons Birthday |
| October 31, 2013 Musk Mania Continues
You've done it! The forces of Ebil have been vanquished from Delta V with the help of Elon Musk. This week, enjoy even more spoils of war with new weapons, new home items, balance improvements, new missions, and a new arcade game!
Musk and Ebil Gear! Try your luck at the new Musk Mania arcade game for Musk-tech and Ebil-tech loot not available anywhere else in-game!
Can you win the grand prize?
Pumpkin Hunt! Visit Musk to embark on an epic hunt spanning all of Delta V! Musk is preparing something special for you if you can complete all of his scavenger hunt missions and retrieve all the weird, wild pumpkins from the far corners of the planet!
Be vigilant! Some pumpkins will be harder to find than others!
Home Decor Some of those pumpkins mentioned above, as well as several new Musk and Ebilcorp-themed items will be available as home items for your decorating pleasure!
Not so intimidating now, are you, Chairman?
Balance Another change coming to this Friday's release is a balance update that will specifically address cores. For many builds, it is more useful to use a series of cores than to invest in particular skills and stats. For this reason, we are adding energy costs to many cores. This change will require you to think strategically about reserving enough energy to use all of your cores and necessary skills, adding variety and tactical choice to battle. This is not the last balance change we have in mind, but because it is quite a big change, we could not fit in any other adjustments this week. Look for more farther reaching changes in the coming weeks.
Storefront Cleaning Next week, to refresh the Varium store, we are clearing out the following Varium packages:
Exile package Legion Package Dread Package If you have not already picked up one of these exclusive and powerful packages, now is the time to do so. Next week, they will no longer be available in the Varium store or in-game. Also, the items featured in the packages will be available for resale if you need the extra loot. Again, this change is not happening until NEXT WEEK so you still have another week to pick them up before they're gone! We wanted to announce this a week in advance so it didn't take anyone by surprise! Tags: balance Arcade Weapons Elon Musk SolarCity SpaceX Tesla Nightwraith |
| August 22, 2013 Mission Overhaul
Dragon Returns It's that time of year again! Time for Summer to slowly ease out into Fall. Time for students to go back to school. Time for...DRAGONS!
The classic Dragon and Back-to-School items will be returning to The Slayer, along with the Charbinger weapons and Harbinger Armor from last year's Dragon's Reckoning Saga! Some of these are limited quantities, so better move fast! It's All About Timing Rabblefroth's programming skills have allowed us to put seasonal items on a schedule. This means that items like the Heartbreaker weapons or the Independence Day gear will automatically stock in the shops without requiring a restart. This means we'll never have to worry about forgetting to add something as the list of seasonal content grows every year. This will also give players a larger heads-up before we add and remove gear from the various shops. Mission Overhaul Those of you who have been around awhile have probably noted the lack of missions lately. The existing system has a number of flaws that make adding missions cumbersome. For one, NPCs do not support more than 4 missions. With a small-ish cast of NPCs, this means if we want to add more, we have to move or remove missions. Another reason is that mission are hard to find. Aside from players who closely follow the Wiki and these Design Notes, most players would only stumble upon missions through luck. Even after finding a mission, there is still the matter of navigating the mission chain, which is often unclear. Because of those flaws and because so few players were able to experience the missions we were adding, we made a conscious choice to stop adding new missions until we could build a better system.
Now, we finally have that system! From the Mission button at the bottom of the main interface, players can view a directory of all available missions! This will allow players to view different mission categories like Permanent, Seasonal, and Daily, view details about those missions, and jump to the NPC offering them. As a minor housekeeping task, we have grouped many existing missions into chains, altering them slightly to flow together naturally. We also filled several gaps in term terms of missions for low to mid-level players (1-20) so players getting familiar with the game will have more opportunities for credits!
Because this is new system with many changes and opportunities for critical bugs, we will not be offering Daily missions this release. If everything works with few or no bugs, however, we could see Daily missions very soon!
Finding Mission has never been easier! With a little time and effort, you'll be rolling in credits! Tags: Nightwraith Missions Dragons Weapons |
| August 08, 2013 Fire Ze Missiles!
Covering Fire! EpicDuel is finally rolling out the heavy artillery for the Dread War. Capture and upgrade turrets to fire upon opposition War Objectives within the various regions of Delta V. Turrets can be upgraded by filling the control bar. The more heavily an alignment dominates a turret, the further it will upgrade. To fire a turret, simply click on it as you would an NPC. You can then select an option to fire the turret, select your target, then fire. The turret will fire in real time and those on the target screen will see the impact! Remember, you can only fire turrets that your alignment controls so it is imperative to capture and hold turrets to maintain a tactical advantage in any region in which they are present.
Titan's Triumph Soon we will be celebrating the birthday of everyone's favorite Delta V demi-god: Titan. This mighty being uses technology so advanced, it is indistinguishable from magic. Some believe he created Delta V through sheer force of will. These people are quickly dismissed as fanatics, but there is no denying his awesome power. Visit Titan in his Frysteland lair to collect new mutating weapons and a mighty new sword: Titan's Triumph. These will be limited in quantity so you had better be quick!
Hmmmm...seems a bit sketchy.
Also returning will be Titan's Burger Bike! Omnomnomnom. The image speaks for itself.
Core Continuum We are adding additional Active Cores to the roster of Charge Cores. Each use in battle will deplete a Core charge. We're hoping to have enough time to implement some completely new Charge Cores for your battling enjoyment. Could they be Titan-themed? Perhaps...
VendBot Upgrade One of the oldest and most prolific NPCs in EpicDuel is the humble VendBot. These little guys have seen the evolution of EpicDuel from the earliest Alpha days to the modern Omega phase. In that time, they've traded their inventories of obsolete boosters to Cores. Their old technology can barely contain the demand so they've been refitted for extra capacity to provide you with the latest and greatest hardware upgrades, serving as a one-stop core shop.
Someone's been working out! Miss the old design? Don't worry, the original will still be around in a few remote places of Delta V. Tags: War Nightwraith Titan Birthday Rares Bike Mutating Weapons Turrets Objectives Cores |
| July 17, 2013 Dread DominationPrepare for Dread Domination!
Are you ready? After weeks of fighting in the Dread Plains, plans for a powerful new weapon have been captured by both sides of the War. Now, Legion and Exile forces are prepared to unleash their power upon Delta V in the form of the Dread Domination Varium Package! This package includes 4 unique weapons and is not available in game!
We've equipped the Dread Desolators (auxiliaries) with technology of unknown origin in the form of the Improbability Gate Core. This exclusive core uses technology derived from an undisclosed research facility in the Dread Plains to open holes in the fabric of the universe. These tears in reality have been weaponized to allow players to summon creatures and objects from other worlds to come to their aid and help vanquish their foes! Be warned, however, this technology is quite unstable: you never know what will come through!
War Objective Leaderboards
Can you rule them all? New leaderboards on each War Objective will display the top Influence contributors in addition to showing your own contribution. With 34 War Objectives to dominate, you have 34 chances to get your name and face out there, showing Legion and Exile forces that you’re a force to be reckoned with and that either alignment should feel honored to hold your favor. Can you dominate them all? We think it’s impossible, but we also know never to underestimate a dedicated EpicDuel player with unlimited access to energy drinks!
Alignment Switching
Where do your loyalties really lie? This week we are introducing the heavily requested feature of alignment switching. Our primary concern with this change is that it could irrevocably tip the balance of the alignments, as players with weak loyalties rush to whichever alignment has the upper hand.
Delicate negotiations. To ensure that alignment switching is treated with the gravity it deserves, we are limiting the feature to Varium only. Players will only be able to switch alignments once per month. Players currently in a Faction will need to first leave the Faction in order to switch. There is still no way for Factions to switch alignments with disbanding and recreating themselves.
Bug Squashin’ Inevitably, when new features are released, new bugs will pop up, sometimes in old features. We try to make each release as bug free and polished as possible within a week of development time, but often bugs slip by. This update will fix several issues that have arisen since the last update (for specifics check out Rabble’s patch notes leading up to the release). To track down and fix bugs as quickly as possible, we need your help. Posting bugs on Twitter, while appreciated, isn’t always helpful since reports quickly get lost in our feeds. The best way to help us fight bugs is to post them to the official EpicDuel Bugs Forum. Please be as descriptive as possible when reporting bugs, explaining exactly what you were doing when the bug occurred. Giving us those details helps us to reproduce bugs more easily. A reproducible bug is usually an easily fixable bug. Thank you in advance for your cooperation. Tags: Nightwraith Factions Dread War Alignment Legion Exiles Weapons Varium Leaderboards Bugs Reports Cores Forums |
| July 11, 2013 A New Level of WarfareAnother week has passed in the Dread War as both alignments continually clash across Delta V. Every day, War Objectives change hands and entire regions fall as the war rages on. This week, we are expanding upon the existing War features while introducing some new ones.
Collect them all!
New Regional Weapons This week, we will be introducing 6 new regional weapons. You can find them at the Dread Plains Control Array, Fortune City Battle Arena, and the Archive AI in the Biodome.
Dread Destroyers - Control Array
Fortune City Slayers - Battle Arena
Bio Busters - Archives AI Some may be confused about how to acquire these devastating new weapons. Allow me to clarify: in order to unlock these regional weapons, your alignment must control a key War Objective in a region. For example, to unlock the Barrens Busters, your alignment must control the Bazaar in the Barrens Outpost region. This unlocks a supply of 5 of each weapon, BUT they will restock periodically. Holding the key War Objectives longer allows as many of your fellow soldiers to have a chance at the weapons as possible.
Barrens Busters - Bazaar Command Hub
Trainyard Terrors - Train Command Hub
Overlord Overkills - Overlord AI
Wasteland Wardens - Minetower Suite Door
Nautical Nightmares - Naval Yard Shack
Core Confusion Last week we introduced limited-time influence buffs. By equipping these cores onto a weapon, the owner would be granted an influence buff for a certain number of victories. Currently, if a limited-charge core is exchanged/removed, it is destroyed, even if it has a remaining balance of charges left. In the future, we would like Cores to behave more like regular items that can be equipped and unequipped to items. However, this requires a greater discussion of intense interface and programming changes so it will need to wait for a later update.
War Chests Last week, we finally "opened" the War Chests to all those who already owned them to reveal 8 regional influence buffs. Unfortunately, those who purchased War Chests after the release found their locks still intact. This week we will be fixing that by unlocking all the remaining War Chests. However, the War Chests will no longer be available with the Legion or Exile promotional packages once we go live. All of the marketing materials will be updated to reflect this change.
Last Chance for War Chests!
Achieve Greater Have you collected all the regional War achievements yet? Really? Impressive. Now, can you level each achievement all the way to the max? It won't be easy, but each level earned represents a new tier of mastery and truly epic bragging rights.
New Achievements! Since we're adding so many new achievements, we thought it would be helpful to give you a way to easily track your progress through the war. Through the map screen, you will be able to easily see your battle contributions for each region and how close you are to reaching the next tier! (Sorry, but we had to cut this feature due to time. It will be coming next week though!)
Additionally, you can now determine at a glance which War Objectives are on the verge of switching alignments and need your immediate attention for defense or offense. Also, each War Objective will now show your personal Influence contribution! Can you dominate them all?
Claim the Battlefield With the update on Friday, the controlling alignment will be able to alter the appearance of many of the War Objective screens. Drape war banners over the Battle Arena, flood the Minetower with Legion guards, or move your troops to secure the Control Array. Now, when you capture a region, everyone will know it!
Under new Management. These changes will persist in the battle backgrounds, allowing you to duel while your Faction's banner flies high in the background!
Wow! That's quite a few additions for a regularly scheduled release. Stay tuned for more updates! Tags: Nightwraith exile Legion Weapons Alignments Achievements Control Objectives War |
| July 03, 2013 War Shops
War Hiccup Those of you who played over the weekend may have noticed some wonkiness on the Control bars for each War Objective. This bug tipped the balance overwhelmingly in favor of the Legion. Obviously, this was not intentional and Titan spent all day Sunday repairing this bug. Unfortunately, since the scores for irreparably skewed, they all had to be reset. We apologize for any inconvenience this caused.
Independence Day Rares Return This Friday, you can celebrate freedom with the returning Independence Day rares. You can find them equipped to Naomi in Central Station. Also, the Independence Day achievement will also be available at all the VendBot Achievement shops throughout Delta V.
Thanks to some help from Trizzzcentrino, we've managed 2 new seasonal rare bikes (to be found on Naomi)! Flavoured in Legion or Exile designs, you can show alignment pride while tearing up the battlefield. These are also the first bikes to attempt a new chrome color that's not color custom (the shiny, silvery bits on the bikes). I think it creates a neat effect that's lost on most color custom parts, but we'll see how you like it.
New War Objectives
To flesh out some of the less populous regions of Delta V, we have added 7 new War Objectives! You can find the in the West Naval Yard, the Barrens Outpost, and Central Station. Can you help capture them all and dominate Delta V?
Regional War Shops
By controlling key points in each region (i.e. the Battle Arena in Fortune City, the Overlord AI in the Overlord Facility, etc...), Alignments can unlock War Shops. Since supplies are scarce during wartime, these shops only supply limited quantities of items. To allow as many players to collect these items as possible, alignments are encouraged to hold regions for as long as possible since the War Shops will restock automatically over time. These War Shops will offer distinct advantages to those who control them in the form of War Cores. These Cores come either attached to a weapon or separately.
New Cores With this release, we will be introducing new core technology: consumable cores! By equipping them to a primary weapon, these cores will confer a regional Influence bonus that will last a certain amount of battles. After the core expires, a new one will need to be purchased. We have coded them to only count victories as a “use”.
War Chests Revealed
Now it can be revealed! Each Legion and Exile War chest contains regional War Cores! That means eight free cores (one for each active region)! Players with War Chests will start out with an automatic advantage in the War with the flexibility to gain a bonus in whichever region they choose. Since this bonus is alignment neutral, players who purchased the Legion pack, but decided to fight for the Exiles (and vice versa) will not be penalized.
Consumables Gone For those who have been following EpicDuel since before Omega, you are probably aware that Consumables like Health Packs and Boosters no longer serve a purpose in battle. Rather than try to wedge consumables back into the game, we have decided to move toward consumable cores and, as of this release, we will be removing all consumables from the game. All players with consumables in their inventories will receive the appropriate amount of resale currency for the items removed. Going forward, it will be possible for us to recreate Boosters, Grenades and Bombs as cores, which ultimately has more flexibility and does require the database to store excessive items entries for each player. Initially, we thought we could simply recode all the consumables back into the game, but the game has changed dramatically both code-wise and balance-wise since Omega launched so we determined that this would be the best decision for the overall health of the game. Tags: Titan War Factions Dread War Weapons Consumables Cores Legion Exiles |
 | 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 |
