October 16, 2026

Pirates of Doom

It's been awhile since our last Arcade game, yeah? This was intended to launch in September but some other issues got in the way and it was tabled for a bit. I didn't want to wait a whole year to release it so Pirates of Doom is now available at all ArcadeBots across Delta V!

• Gold Tier
  • DoomTech Pirate Arsenal P
  • DoomTech Pirate Arsenal E
  • DoomTech Pirate Moglin
  • Shadowscythe Pirate Moglin
• Silver Tier
  • DoomTech Pirate Cannon P
  • DoomTech Pirate Cannon E
  • Shadowscythe Pirate Cannon P
  • Shadowscythe Pirate Cannon E
• Bronze Tier
  • DoomTech Pirate Rapier P
  • DoomTech Pirate Rapier E
  • Shadowscythe Pirate Rapier P
  • Shadowscythe Pirate Rapier E
  • DoomTech Pirate Cutlass P
  • DoomTech Pirate Cutlass E
  • Shadowscythe Pirate Cutlass P
  • Shadowscythe Pirate Cutlass E
  • DoomTech Pirate Blunderbuss P
  • DoomTech Pirate Blunderbuss E
  • Shadowscythe Pirate Blunderbuss P
  • Shadowscythe Pirate Blunderbuss E

New Home Items

• DoomTech Pirate Rune Rug
• Shadowscythe Pirate Rune Rug
• DoomTech Pirate Wall Runes
• Shadowscythe Pirate Wall Runes
• Sepulchure Statue Right
• Sepulchure Statue Left 

More Alpha-Omega Valkyrie Items

We've just rolled out more long awaited rewards from the 2024 Gifting event! If you qualified, check your inventory for a pleasant surprise!

• 50,000 Gift Score
  • Alpha-Omega Valkyrie Slayer P
  • Alpha-Omega Valkyrie Slayer E
• 75,000 Gift Score
  • Alpha-Omega Valkyrie Bow P
  • Alpha-Omega Valkyrie Bow E
• 175,000 Gift Score
  • Alpha-Omega Valkyrie Scythe P
  • Alpha-Omega Valkyrie Scythe E
• 275,000 Gift Score
  • Alpha-Omega Valkyrie Spear P
  • Alpha-Omega Valkyie Spear E
• 450,000 Gift Score
  • Void Frostbane P
  • Void Frostbane E
• 700,000 Gift Score
  • Cosmic Frostbane P
  • Cosmic Frostbane E

Balance Changes

• Cores:
  • Ares’ Revenge: 90 energy → 0
  • Infernal Fortitude (Armor): 3 → 4 turns
  • Frost Shards: 100 energy → 80
  • Malware: 85% → 100 dmg
  • Overclock: + 100 HP heal on use
• Robots:
  
  • Anubis Incantation: Basic attack 100% → 85% dmg
  • Botanical Borg/Shadowlords Avatar: Special ignores 27% → 30% defense
  • Botanical Hazard: Basic attack ignores 15% defense
  • Minotaur: Initial special attack ignores defense + Special Duration 2 → 3 turns, 30 → 25% def ignore and reduction
  • Monkakazi: Basic attack 105% → 100% + 15% defense ignore; Special Uses 1 → 2 times; 3 turn cooldown
  • Ultra Corsair Bot: Normal attack: 25% crit chance → 10% crit chance + 10% defense ignore; Special attack: 70% → 80% dmg
• Skills:
  
  • (UA) Reroute: +30 → +50 sidearm dmg
  • (UA) Energy Parasite: 75 EP initial drain; at max level, drain 45 EP subsequently per 3 turns; 1.5x EP gain → 2x.

EXPERIMENTAL, NEW, FASTER LAUNCHER! 

We just unveiled a new official new version of Artix Entertainment's Launcher that allows you to play all of our Flash games FASTER than ever before on your Android mobile device, or Windows/Mac/Linux Computer. Updates are going to be fast and furious as we begin the journey that will take all of your favorite, original, Artix Entertainment games to Steam and the App Stores. We encourage users with older computers & devices to help us test. Check this page daily for the latest updates!

Tags: Nightwraith

October 09, 2026

EpicDuel is back online with new features, new balance changes, and more!

Boss Buddies

Bosses that you are forced to fight with an NPC ally after meeting mission requirements now allow you to challenge solo.

• Dravax the Harbinger
• Saeva Lionhart
• The Endless
• Alydriah
• Edgar Boothe
• Kartherax
• Chairman Platinum

This update also shifted hundreds of lines of reduntant boss code into server-driven functions. This is a good thing because previously, if we wanted to add a new boss, it had to be added to a number of places in the server and client code, bloating the code needlessly.

Balance Changes

• Cores:
  
  • Deep Plague: Triggered by clicking on core slot after application instead of basic strike. Max dmg → 140% 
  • Botanical Wrath: Costs 100 → 80 Energy
  • Radiation Burn: 15% chance → 35% chance to reduce melee attacker's def/res by 15%
  • Darkeater's Overcharge: Spend 110 HP to mini rage & destroy target's armor for 1 → 2 turns
  • Botanical Infestation: Costs 90 → 0 Energy; Reset target's Rage and restores 40% -> 50% HP from damage
  • Astral Projection: 50% → 60% dmg stolen to Energy
  • Frost Aura: Buff Aura to -40 energy reduction ?????????
  • Wolf's Fury: Uses: 1 → 2; 3 turn cooldown
  • Frozen Fist: Deal 105% primary damage increasing by 5% per round, 140% max
  • Phase Shift (Primary/Gun/Aux): Inflict 100% → 105% damage of the opposite type; Uses: Unlimited + 2 turns cooldown(Gun and Primary), 3 turns(Auxiliary)
  • Screaming Soul Spears: 2 → 3 turns; 80 → 100 energy cost
  • Hatchling Rush: Attack same as primary damage type for 100% lowering all healing effects by 20% → 30%. Hatching Rush P/E and Minor Hatchling Rush P/E consolidated.
• Robots:
  
  • Botanical Borg: Special's Defense ignore 25% → 27%
  • Lionhart's Avatar: Special grants 60% → 100% Rage to all allies
  • Technomancer Hexabot: Special increases effectiveness of poison by 25% → 50% for 3 turns 
• Skills:
  
  • UA Energy Shield(Tactial Mercenary): Removed Energy Drain, increases Deflection Chance by 15%

Bug Fixes/Changes

• Cyber Yeti P/E: Skills were not properly set into cooldown.
• Nightmare CactusChan: Charon's Obol could deflect High Noon damage for a quick skill. This has been fixed. Best Times from players who took advantage of this will be reset. Also, Delirium would not be blocked be Charon's Obol as it wasn't setup as a debuff. This would cause the affected player to timeout if they tried to use a skill. It is now labeled as a debuff.
• Charon's Obol: Max reflected damage capped at 1000.
• All damage-reflecting skills capped at 1000 to pre-empt possible future interactions like this.
• Azrael's Will: Set as debuff (blocked by Charon's Obol).
• Text in PMs and Faction Chat can be highlighted and copied/pasted.
• Your character's language preference in Settings is now saved, even after you clear your cache.

Epic Downtime

Last night EpicDuel was down for about 9 hours, starting after the midnight restart. In some ways, this takes me back to the bad old times. EpicDuel used to crash at least once daily, even before the AE-fueled player influx. Titan and I would wake up every day (when we remembered to sleep) not knowing if the servers would still be alive or not. It was a bad time then, but it's even worse now that my ancient, decaying body is not as resilient to sleep deprivation as it used to be. 

In this case, the problem was a pesky daily job that was stuck. EpicDuel has a list of jobs it runs every day like awarding daily achievements, resetting the daily leaderboards, choosing a new NPC bounty, etc... If any part of the job gets stuck, the process locks up and the game can't sustain regular play. I identified the problem, but couldn't do anything about it (I'm a game lead, but the council does not grant me the rank of network admin). As of this writing, the problem seems to be resolved, and I've added new failsafes that should prevent something like this from happening in the future. For the sake of my sanity, I certainly hope so!

Tags: Nightwraith

October 05, 2026

Waiting for Battle Fix

After careful investigation into complaints of long and/or inconsistent queue times, we believe we found a solution: Every time someone new joined the queue, it would shift the queue counter for those already in it. This means that under higher server traffic, queue times would be higher for seemingly no reason. This bug was difficult to recreate in a dev environment with much less traffic, meaning it took quite a while to isolate and diagnose the cause. This update is designed to fix the maximum the queue times for 1v1, 2v2, and Juggernaut battles so it should never take longer than a minute to find a battle at most.

Balance Changes

• (DA) Smokescreen: Scaling 3.3 -> 4.0 (at 140 tech with this change Smoke value goes from 57 -> 50)
• (UA) Smokescreen: Scaling 7.5 -> 9.3 (at 140 tech with this change Smoke value goes from 23 -> 20); +1 dex/def for every skill point allocated
• Plasma Rain: Additional dmg 7% of max HP-> 5% of max HP
• Artillery Strike: Additional dmg 7% of max HP-> 5% of max HP
• Double Strike / (PA) Double Strike: Reintroduced Dex scaling; 1% damage per 6 Dexterity.
• (EA) Double Strike: 1% damage per 9 Dexterity.
• UA Bunker Buster: Lifesteal 20% -> 25%
• Char's Revenge: Adds +100 damage to regular Primary attacks against the Dragonoid Brain. This skill was actually no working at all, but functionality was restored for this update.

Another One (in a Million)

Our battle log highlighted another winning of the One-in-a-Million achievement. This time it's a 1v1 match of Photo vs Fairy Bread with Fairy Bread emerging victorious! All participants in a one-in-a-million battle are highlighted, not just the winners!

Tags: Nightwraith

October 02, 2026

Added to Thalyssa

• SteamTech Arsenal P
• SteamTech Arsenal E
• SteamTech Bazooka P
• SteamTech Bazooka E
• SteamTech Artillery P
  • SteamTech Cannon P: Rain down physical attacks from a hovering airship; 20% defense ignore.
  • SteamTech Blast P: Deal more damage based on how much EP you have left, up to 120% for 0 EP.
• SteamTech Artillery E
  • SteamTech Cannon E: Rain down energy attacks from a hovering airship; 20% defense ignore.
  • SteamTech Blast E: Deal more damage based on how much EP you have left, up to 120% for 0 EP.

Added to Alonzo Harris

New!

• Ghoul Cannon 2018 CC 2026
• Ghoul Cannon 2018 2026
• Spectral Blaster 2018 CC 2026
• Spectral Blaster 2018 2026

Returning!

• Stun Cannon CC 2026
• Stun Blaster CC 2026
• Stun Cannon 2026
• Stun Blaster 2026
• Ghoul Cannon 2019 CC 2026
• Spectral Blaster 2019 CC 2026
• Ghoul Cannon 2019 2026
• Spectral Blaster 2019 2026

Balance Changes

• Revenant's Wall (Armor): Increase Resistance by 65% for 3 -> 4 turns.
• Hardened Armor: Damage Reduction 35% -> 30%; Added 30% damage reflection.
• Anubis Incantation: Warmup 1 -> 0; Detonates for 67% of targets current energy
• Energy Harvest
  Deal 85% -> 100% damage, stealing 20% HP and 50% Energy, disabling melee attacks for 1 turn.
• Hunters' Eradication: Remove target's armor (1 turn), target's sidearm (2 turns) and auxiliary (3 turns).
• Saw Strike P/E: Rip through 25% -> 30% of your target's defense with a 20% crit chance.
• Underclock: Attack for 85% -> 100% damage and increase target's cooldowns by 1.
• Whiteout: Deals 100% -> 110% damage
• Titan's Shroud / Titan's Shroud (NPC) / Force's Shroud: Now only increases the chance you will block an incoming attack and no longer affects your opponent's chance to block your attack. Removed Damage Reflection.

Critical Change

Critical strike formula reverted to remove to the defense-ignore cap, but reverting entirely to the formula earlier in the year is not idea as it contained many blind spots that produced inaccurate results. People were mostly used to the old formula since it was in use for so long that nobody thought anything of it. I'll share some simulated scenarios below to clarify the differences between the old and new formulas.

Classic early 2026 formula: damagePostCrit = grossDamage − critAdjustedDefense, no clamp on ignorePercent.
Current new formula: damagePostCrit = damage + defenseIgnored, ignorePercent clamped to 0–100.

Simulated Scenarios: grossDamage = 1000, target Defense = 500, base ignorePercent = 30% (no crit-ignore gear unless noted), attacker level = 40 → critMinIncrease = 56.

Results:

1. Identical. In most cases, you will never notice the change (100% damage, nothing else going on).
2. This is the NPC Defense core bug that was fixed by the new formula. The core is worth 400 damage reduction on a normal hit (500→100), but Classic's crit comes out exactly the same as #1's (650), totally ignoring the core. Current correctly shows a 400-point difference (650→250), matching the core's actual value.
3. / 4. — Classic's crit damage is the same 650 in every scenario, regardless of the skill's own damage%. Classic's crit output never changes unless grossDamage or Defense change. It's blind to everything else in the pipeline. Current scales appropriately: a 130%-damage skill crits harder (950) than a 70%-damage skill (350), proportional to their actual power.
5. Combining the core and a 130% skill, Classic still lands on 650 (same constant as every other scenario) as it ignores both modifiers. Current shows 550, correctly reflecting both.
6. With enough crit-ignore gear stacked to push raw ignorePercent to 120%, Classic's critAdjustedDefense goes negative ((1-1.2)×500 = -100), which flips the subtraction into an addition, and the crit does more than full gross damage (1100, exceeding the 1000 raw hit entirely). Current's clamp caps ignorePercent at 100%, so the worst case is "crit ignores all Defense" (1000). It can never exceed the hit's own gross damage.

Net Result: Classic's crit number is structurally disconnected from key elements that comprise a hit's damage, and only reacts to grossDamage and Defense. The current formula's crit number tracks the actual hit including modifiers. Classic may have "felt" correct due to familiarity, but by ignoring key modifiers it was actually inaccurate.

Other Changes

• Battle engine now supports limits for core uses beyond 1. Skill button tooltips will also show remaining uses for skills with multiple uses in battle.
• Rage start bonus: 30% in 2v2 → 35%, 20% in all other modes → 25%,
• NPC Rage enabled only for 1v1 and 2v2 battles. To prevent change from overpowering NPCs, their Rage rates will be 50% less than human rates. This change was made because NPCs have extremely low win rates against humans in 1v1 and 2v2 (only 5% in 2v2) and even worse outcomes with a human partner in a 2v2 with 2 humans vs 1 human, 1 NPC. This change should help human players who pair with NPC partners as well as making battles less predictable.
• Formula information including base values, max values, and divisors added for Block, Deflection, Critical, and Stun tool tips.

Tags: Nightwraith

September 29, 2026

When one bug is fixed, more will take its place. When I fixed Lotus Petal, I added extra measures to make sure cooldowns were more strictly enforced. Because some robots like Gamma Bot and Mini Rex have variations that reuse data from other bots, an unforseen consequence of this fix was that cooldowns would fail to trigger for those bots. For example, when you click a skill for Infernal Android PxE, the game thinks a skill for Infernal Android P should be in cooldown. Since that button isn't in your inferface due to you not currently using that bot, the cooldown cannot trigger.

I've combed through the hundreds of robot skill entries and I believe I've fixed all the problematic bots. I'm sorry this happened, but this is simply and inevitability with such a broad change to an integral system like cooldowns, and there is simply no way to test all 200+ robots in the game at a pace quick enough to surface these bugs before an update.

Additional Fixes

• Tactical Reload / Tactical Reload (Auxiliary): Expected behavior restored. This was broken for the same reason the bots were broken. These skills are exceptions to normal cooldown rules so they had to be accounted for.
• Brace: Cooldown removed. This cooldown appeared as part of the broad cooldown change. Again, this was because Brace was always an exception to rules and standardization "broke" it's normal behavior.
• Retrain/Level Up UI: The + and - buttons have been realigned with the corresponding stats. When I rearranged the UI, I didn't account for the necessary scale change to the buttons. Generally, the game's UI just needs more breathing room, but that's a broader change for another time.

Added to Kraggor

When testing the robots, I noticed that the Pyro Fly and variants were not sold anywhere due to being seasonal. Since robots have direct impact on balance, they should not be so restricted. Therefore, I added non-rare versions of the Pyro Fly bots to Kraggor, following the same precedent set with the Yeti bots.

• Pyro Fly
• Plasma Fly
• Infernal Fly
• Magma Fly

Tags: Nightwraith

September 28, 2026

Balance Change

Tremor Blast/Techstalker Tremor/Telekinesis/Saevussax Evisceration/SteamTech Grenade:

• Descriptions updated for displayed duration to match actual duration.
• These skills will reduce the chances of the afflicted player to block incoming attacks to 0%, and the chance that they will be blocked by anyone they attack to 30%.

These skill were granting 100% chance the person debuffed by them would be blocked. This was found to be too powerful, but these skills have worked this way for quite some time. Often we'll change a skill as a bullet point in a balance update, but because the skill isn't in the current meta, it will be ignored until someone finally tries it out and learns it's actually the most OP thing ever. That seems to be the case here, but I didn't want to update without a better solution to a larger problem with similar skills.

We've always faced a challenge with probability-altering skills as the impact is hard to *feel* over the course of a duel unless they're incredibly strong. Probability being what it is, even a large boost might not yield the expected results due to repeated bad rolls. Also, multiplicative passives tend to be much less impactful for evenly-matched players. If your block chance is 2%, then a 50% multiplicative boost is only +1. Additive boosts can be more impactful across all matchups, but risk being overpowered.

To finally address this, after 17+ years, I've added Block/Deflection/Stun chances to the stats page.

Probability Display

I've added the ability to finally see probabilities in the stats page. Block/Deflection/Crit/Stun will display the offensive values (i.e. chance that your target will block you).

Stats page now display's the player's Block chance for each opponent.

Stats page now display's the player's Deflection chance for each opponent.

Stats page now display's the player's Critical chance for each opponent.

Stats page now display's the player's base Stun chance for each opponent.

To view your own chance to block an attack, deflect, etc... view the stats page of your opponent(s).

I'm not 100% happy with the current implementation, but I wanted to get this feature in to enable transparency as quickly as possible. The current presentation will likely change once I settle on a more intuitive solution.

Other Changes

Tired of tracking cooldowns of everyone in battle in your own head? Well, you can put that scrap paper away and relax a little bit because cooldowns and warmups are now visible on the stats page of all human characters in battle.

Finally, Azrael's Borg Heart Attack and other skills that diminish buffs now affects Lotus Petal.

Tags: Nightwraith

September 25, 2026

This week the seas were rougher than usual on Delta V as we battled and finally defeated the pesky Lotus Petal bug! It turns out, this bug didn't have much to do with the skill at all! In fact, the cooldown error was due to viewing an NPC's, or another player's stats page. That caused the game to mistakenly target one the NPC's skill buttons for cooldown instead of yours so the skill put into cooldown by Lotus Petal would never go into cooldown. The self-correction would also fail because the game was trying to correct a button you didn't have. With this bug fixed, we'll leave traces in for another week to make sure the bug is 100% fixed (sometimes fixing a bug creates another one...or 2...or 20).

Even with all that, we were still able to release some fresh content for ye land lubbers!

Thalyssa's Bounty

Visit Thalyssa in the West Naval Yard for the latest Talk Like a Pirate Day gear!

• SteamTech Tank
• SteamTech Tank CC
• SteamTech Airship
• SteamTech Airship CC
• SteamTech Sword P
• SteamTech Sword E
• SteamTech Blaster P
• SteamTech Blaster E
• SteamTech Grenade P x25: Grenade that confuses target, lowering Crit, Block, and Deflection chance for 4 turns.
• SteamTech Grenade E x25: Grenade that confuses target, lowering Crit, Block, and Deflection chance for 4 turns.

Next week will be the grand finale of our Talk Like a Pirate gear, and we saved the best for last!

Added to The Challenger

Missed the Battlepass? You're in luck, because The Challenger has added Anubis to his collection. You have another chance to get one of the best anti-NPC bots available! 

• Anubis Incarnation P
• Anubis Incarnation E

Bug Fixes/Changes

• Skills set into cooldown by Lotus Petal would sometimes not enter cooldown state.
• PMs no longer hidden behind the NPC boss leaderboard
• NPC skill buttons still showing in your Inventory after you die
• NPC skill tooltips no longer use your stats and buffs to reflect skill values.
• Not a bug, but we added a message whenever you equip a core to an item notifying you that equipping a core removes its sellback value. This should clear up confusion when people try to sell back a core after equipping it and notice it has no sellback value.

Tags: Nightwraith

September 21, 2026

Lotus Petal Debugging

This is a persistent one, isn't it? The interesting thing about this particular bug is that it may have been present for awhile in other skills that force a random skill into cooldown, but because they're not often used, the bug rarely has a change to occur.

We've added more tracking to get to the bottom of the rare but persistent Lotus Petal bug. Now, if you get the dreaded Cooldown Validation bug after using Lotus Petal, you should see a debug trace in your battle log. That should provide important information that can help us determine exactly what is going wrong in the code and where to look for it. There's also a change some of my changes have fixed the bug fully, but we'll keep the debug messages in for now until we're 100% confident in bug resolution.

Please use the Artix Bug Tracker to report issues so we can fully document and fix them. Social media and Discord or the "pass along to NW" method are decentralized and inefficient as critical information is often lost along the way.

Personal High Score Boards

We've completed the process of adding Personal High Scores to the Fame, Code Redeems, Rating, and Rank leaderboards. We've also added a bit more room to the rank fields that were being cutoff.

Report

One weakness of our in-game reporting system is that you must be in the same room as the person you're reporting. This means it's very difficult to report someone in a crowded room or if you miss your chance in battle. You can now report players using slash commands. Type "/report character name" to open the popup to file a report.

Tags: Nightwraith

September 18, 2026

Personal Best

The biggest change of this update is that most leaderboards will now display your own personal best score depending on category. Your name will show on the leaderboard highlighted in gold, even if you're not in the top 20. Places below 20 will show your actual rank relative to all other players. This change covers all Boss Breaker Boards, War Boards, and most of the all-time and daily boards. The rest will be completed next week.

One quirk to be aware of is because the all-time boards are on a delay and your personal high score is displayed live, the information may be desynchronized until the all-time boards update.

Ishmael Resupplied

The following items have been added to Ishmael! Since the Gamma Pirate gear is no longer available as a promo, the cores and robots have been added for purchase! We wouldn't want people to miss out on the awesome mimic special of the Gamma Pirate Parrot!

• Gamma Pirate Parrot Morph
• Gamma Pirate Parrot Morph CC
• Gamma Pirate Parrot 2026 P
• Gamma Pirate Parrot 2026 E
• Gamma Guts
• Gamma Brand
• Gamma Rage (Sidearm)
• Gamma Rage (Auxiliary)
• Gamma Rage (Primary)

Balance Changes

• Static Charge: Now usable even when you have full Energy
• Overload: Cooldown 2 → 1
• Frenzy: 0 Energy across augments
• Charon's Obol: When spared and you survive with 1 HP and reflect any excess damage from the attack that triggered the spare buff back to opponent. For example, if you have 100 HP, and your attacker hits you for 800 damage, you will be spared, but your attacker will take a reflected 700 damage! This damage is not fatal to the attacker (leaves them with 1 HP, consistent with other damage-reflecting abilities), but can really turn the tide of battle. 
• Shade Snare: Strike for 100% dmg; draining 25% energy for all attacks for 2 turns.(Every attack drains energy and not just melee attacks with the above change). Reduced snare energy cost from 80 → 50
• Infernal Binding: Reduced Energy cost from 100 → 60
• Bug Fixes:
  • Gamma Parrot's special copies Permafrost debuff
  • Permafrost and Tentacle Prison now labelled as Debuffs.
  • Charon's Obol no longer blocks Energy Parasite as Energy Parasite is not classified as a debuff.
  • We're still investigating a cooldown validation bug linked to Lotus Petal. While we gather more info, cooldown desynchs are now able to be corrected after 1 failed attempt.

Tags: Nightwraith

September 15, 2026

The Dead Speak

Over the weekend there were several reports of players with 0 HP who were still able to attack. "Zombie players" is not new to EpicDuel. Similar bugs have been popping up since the early days, but they've been extremely rare to nonexistent for awhile. It may be that alterations to the dead/alive checks made to accomodate skills that produce a killing poison or cheat death opened up some potential failure points. This patch adds additional safeguards to make sure that dead players stay dead.

If you notice something like this happen to yourself or someone else in battle, please report the bug, including as many specifics as you can recall (i.e. skills used, stuns, turn order, etc...). Even if you're not cheating by using 3rd party tools, abusing an exploit to gain an unfair advantage can still earn you a ban, especially if you do so repeatedly.

Critical Damage Adjustment

This bug was first uncovered through reports that Boss NPC Guard cores were not being factored in when the boss scored a crit against you. Further investigation led to discover a larger problem with critical damage calculations.

The Bug: When you land a critical hit, part of the damage math was being recalculated "from scratch" instead of building on top of the hit that was already happening. This meant that certain damage-reducing effects like the defensive Nightmare Boss Guard cores were getting wiped out the moment a crit landed. Those defensive bonuses worked fine on regular hits, but were ignored whenever the NPC enemy crit you. This was probably affecting other defense-boosting cores/skills but due to the relatively rare occurrence and complexity of calculation, no bug was ever reported. This bug was introduced when we made changes to the critical damage calculations months ago.

The Fix: Since the bug was introduced by the critical damage calculation changes, specifically separating the damage percent modifiers from critical damage, the best way to fix this was to revert most of the changes to the formula. Crits now correctly build on top of your normal (non-crit) damage calculation, adding only the extra damage a crit is supposed to add (from partially ignoring Defense/Resistance), instead of throwing away everything else that was already factored in. Any Defense bonuses, damage reductions, or skill-specific damage adjustments that applied to the hit will now still be there even if it crits.

Formulas

Old:

crit rebuilt from Gross Damage, dropping any adjustment made to damage along the way:
Damage Post Crit = Gross Damage − Crit Adjusted Defense
Crit Bonus = Damage Post Crit − Damage
Final = (Crit Bonus < Crit Min Increase) ? Damage + Crit Min Increase : Damage Post Crit

New:

crit builds on the fully-resolved damage, adding only the extra defense the crit ignores:
Defense Ignored = Defense − Crit Adjusted Defense
Damage Post Crit = Damage + Defense Ignored
Final = (Defense Ignored < Crit Min Increase) ? Damage + Crit Min Increase : Damage Post Crit

Examples:

Gross Damage = 1000, Defense = 500, Crit Ignores 30% Defense (default, under the 50% cap) → Crit Adjusted Defense = (0.70 × 500) = 350,
Defense Ignored = 150. Crit Min Increase = 56 (level 40).

Scenario A: Damage Percent = 100

damage = 1000 − 500 = 500

Old Formula:

Damage Post Crit: 1000 − 350 = 650
Final Crit Damage: 650

New Formula:

Damage Post Crit: 500 + 150 = 650
Final Crit Damage: 650 

Result: Identical. With 100% Damage, both formulas have the same result.

Scenario B: Damage Percent = 130

Damage = (1.30 × 1000) − 500 = 800

Old Formula:

Damage Post Crit: 1000 − 350 = 650
vs. damage(800): 650 − 800 = −150 → below floor
Final Crit Damage: floor kicks in: 800 + 56 = 856

New Formula:

Damage Post Crit: 800 + 150 = 950
vs. damage(800): 950 ≥ floor
Final Crit Damage: 950

Under the new formula, the skill's 130% bonus now fully and consistently carries into its crit damage (950 vs. the old 856). A skill's own Damage Percent is active across normal and crit hits, and scaling risk is controlled separately via the CRIT_TOTAL_IGNORE_MAX cap rather than by selectively dropping modifiers on crit which create needless complexity. This change does making critical hits more powerful for skills with increased Damage Percent, which is why we changed the formula in the first place, but excluding those values had unintended consequences that needed to be resolved.

Tags: Nightwraith

September 12, 2026

EpicDuel rebooted today for a small balance tweak to the changes from yesterday's update. This sometimes happens when we try to rush too many changes at the last minute, but we promise to be more careful in the future, even if it means holding changes for a later update.

Balance Changes

Tags: Nightwraith

September 11, 2026

Ishmael's New Rides

In addition to the Talk Like a Pirate Day items from previous years, Ishmael has some brand new premium bikes, concepted by Charfade and rendered by Acatriel! Make a splash on the highways of Delta V with these hot new rides!

• Mantis Shrimp Bike
• Mantis Shrimp Bike CC
• Shark Bike
• Shark Bike CC
• Swordfish Bike
• Swordfish Bike CC
• Squid Bike
• Squid Bike CC

Boss Breaker Revamped

As mentioned in last week's Design Notes, we are revamping the Daily Boss Breaker and Boss Streak achievements to be based on a kill threshold rather than only awarding the #1. Each NPC will have its own kill count threshold that must be met to earn the new Daily Boss Breaker achievement.

The news thresholds are as follows:

• 2 kills — Nightmare Smoking Shadow, Nightmare Azrael's Guardian,
• 3 kills — Adjudicator, Azrael, Azrael’s Guardian, CactusChan, Leg Acatriel, Luthiel, Nightmare Acatriel, Nightmare Adjudicator, Nightmare Azrael, Nightmare CactusChan, Nightmare Luthiel, Nightmare Pumpkin Lord, Nightmare Dage the Evil
• 5 kills — Dage the Evil, Darkon, Legendary Delta Vault, Legendary Bido, Legendary Big Tuna, Legendary Caden, Legendary Captain Shoggoth, Legendary Charfade, Legendary Dage the Evil, Legendary Deuce, Legendary Endless M4tr1x, Legendary God of War, Legendary Merged Dragonoid, Legendary M4tr1x, Legendary Nightwraith, Legendary Slayer, Legendary Smoking Shadow, Legendary Titan, Legendary Void King, Nightmare Abyss Spider, Nightmare Shoggoth, Nightmare Charfade, Nightmare Charfade, Nightmare Husk, Nightmare Kartherax, Nightmare Nightwraith, Nightmare Titan, Pumpkin Lord, Legendary Dragonoid Brain, Mysterious Man
• 10 kills — Smoking Shadow, Zedmyr
• 15 kills — Admin 10, Admin 11, Armor Hazard, Delta Vault, Exile Leader, Iron Husk, King Alaric, Merged Dragonoid, Chairman Platinum
• 20 kills — Alexis, Alydriah, Dragonoid Brain, Edgar Boothe, Elite Yeti, God of War, Saeva Lionhart, Seth Juron, The Endless, Void King
• 30 kills — Dravax, George Lowe, Kartherax
• 50 kills — Abyss Spider, Captain Shoggoth, Noragh, Revontheus, Theon
• 100 kills — Davarril

The Daily Faction Boss Breaker threshold will work similarly to the individual daily Boss Breaker, but the boss kill threshold will be multiplied by 5.

Those who already received Boss Breaker achievements will see them converted into Legacy Boss Breaker/Legacy Boss Breaker Streak/Legacy Faction Boss Breaker achievements of the appropriate tier previously earned. Factions that already received Boss Breaker points will keep them.

These changes should encourage wider participation while discouraging cheating/excessive grinding.

Balance Changes

• Blood Instinct & Blood Shield: Removed Energy gain from all augments; HP cost down to 40 for all augments
• Azrael's Borg Heart Attack: Multi-use
• Lotus Petal: Heal for 150 hp; gain +10 stats immediately and gain an additional +10 stats for each attack; random skill placed on cooldown instead of disabled for the duration of battle
• Infernal Binding: Damage was incorrectly set to 50 rather than Primary damage.
• UA Parasite: Remove -100 EP drain

Alpha-Omega Valkyrie Prizes

You may remember from 2 Gifting cycles ago that we still owe a few Gifting tier prizes. We haven't forgotten, but we have been relentlessly busy. Since we were able to carve out a sliver of time to work on them, we sent out some of the remaining prizes.

• At least 10,000 gifts:
  Asgardian Champion Blade CC P
  Asgardian Champion Blade CC E
• At least 15,000 gifts:
  Alpha-Omega Valkyrie Greatsword CC P
  Alpha-Omega Valkyrie Greatsword CC E
• At least 25,000 gifts:
  Alpha-Omega Valkyrie Barrage P
  Alpha-Omega Valkyrie Barrage E
• At least 225,000 gifts:
  Alpha-Omega Valkyrie Morph
  Alpha-Omega Valkyrie Morph CC
• At least 250,000 gifts:
  Ascended Alpha-Omega Valkyrie Morph
  Ascended Alpha-Omega Valkyrie Morph CC
• At least 275,000 gifts:
  Ascended Alpha-Omega Valkyrie Bike
  Ascended Alpha-Omega Valkyrie Bike CC

Tags: Nightwraith

September 02, 2026

The Infernal Odyssey promotional package is NOW LIVE! Collect a beautiful trove of new armors and gear with a bountiful complement of powerful cores. This new promo is can be purchased with the 10,000 AP and 4,000 AP packages. The 4,000 AP packages comes with no Varium and no extra cores aside from those already equipped to the gear.

This new promo comes with the following new items:

• Hades' Armor
• Hades' Armor CC
• Hades' Warlord Armor
• Hades' Warlord Armor CC
• Hades' Royal Armor
• Hades' Royal Armor CC
• Hades' Infernal Sword
• Hades' Abyssal Sword
• Hades' Infernal Arsenal
• Hades' Abyssal Arsenal
• Hades' Infernal Gun
• Hades' Abyssal Gun
• Hades' Infernal Bow
• Hades' Abyssal Bow
• Hades' Infernal Bident
• Hades' Abyssal Bident

The new cores and their effects are listed below:

• Lotus Petal (Armor Active):  Set a random skill into cooldown for 40% less EP cost, +150 HP, +10 stats instantly and +10 stats added for each attack for 4 turns.
• Charon's Obol (Armor Active): Survive with 1 HP after a fatal attack, reflecting a portion of dmg. back at attacker. Prevents debuffs. Active up to 5 turns.
• Shade Snare (Primary Active): Strike for 100% dmg., draining 25% Energy for each attack for 2 turns.
• Infernal Binding (Primary Active): 85% dmg. against 2 targets, prevents Rage attacks for 3 turns.
• Legendary Shot (Sidearm Active): 110% dmg. Each use deals increasing dmg. by 10%, maxing out at 130%.
• Oblivion Blast (Auxiliary Active): 100% dmg., disables passive HP/EP regeneration for 3 turns. This does not apply to active regeneration skills like Field Medic, Frenzy, or any other skill that restores HP/EP with a single attack. This core was formerly listed as Legendary Bow, but changed to be more thematically consistent.

The Infernal Odyssey promo package also comes with a new rare Infernal Odyssey achievement with purchase!

Not included in the promo packages are 4 new Infernal Odyssey styles available at the character customizer for all!

Boss Breaker Revamp (In Progress)

The Boss Breaker leaderboards have been up long enough to collect and act on feedback. When we released the boards, we hoped to give players an insight into their PvE stats and provide and competitive outlet for those who needed a break from PvP. As is often the case, competition brings out the worst in people, discouraging daily participation. 

To combat this, we are developing an overhaul to the Boss Breaker boards and achievements to reward based on a boss kill threshold rather than a winner-take-all approach. These changes should make the achievements and board status attainable without devoting 20 hours a day to grinding or resorting to more nefarious tactics and catching a ban. These changes are in-progress and will launch as soon as they are finished. Those who currently hold Boss Breaker achievements will retain them, but they will be deprecated in favor of new achievements once the new system launches.

Enemy AI Reconfigured

Many hard NPCs of the Legendary and Nightmare variety have been reverted to the legacy AI routine. We made a change in the end of July to revert the AI of many extremely difficult NPCs, but we missed a few in that initial pass. Now, these boss-tier NPCs will use the old RNG AI patterns longtime PvE champions are used to.

Tags: Nightwraith

August 28, 2026

Infernal Odyssey Preview

Next week, you will be able to become king of the underworld with epic new Infernal Odyssey gear, themed after Hades, Lord of the Underworld. This package is planned to go LIVE next Wednesday September 2nd. and will come with a rare achievement and 6 new active cores with incredible, unique abilities:

• Lotus Petal (Armor Active): Sacrifice a random skill for 40% less EP cost, +10 stats for each attack for 4 turns.
• Charon's Obol (Armor Active): Spare your life with 1 HP after a fatal attack. Prevents debuffs. Active up to 5 turns. Buff expires early when your life is spared.
• Shade Snare (Primary Active): Strike for 25% Energy drain, draining 25% Energy for each melee attack for 2 turns.
• Infernal Binding (Primary Active): 100% dmg. AOE attack that prevents Rage attacks for 3 turns.
• Legendary Shot (Sidearm Active): 110% dmg. Each use deals increasing dmg. by 10%, maxing out at 130%.
• Legendary Blast (Auxiliary Active): 100% dmg., disables passive HP/EP regeneration for 3 turns.

These skill descriptions are tentative and may change before the package goes online.

Gamma Pirate Leaving Soon!

When the Infernal Odyssey promotional package goes LIVE next week, the Gamma Pirate promotion will leave the shop for good! The robots and cores will return, but the gear itself and the included achievement will be rare!

Faction Coup Countermeasures

To help protect Factions from the risk of a compromised founder account, we've implemented the following changes:

• A founder cannot delete their own Faction without first removing all members.
• Kicking 3 members in one day now trips a circuit breaker that blocks additional kicks for 5 days. This is meant to limit damage if a malicious party gains access to the founder's account. This cooldown also offers founders a small period of reflection to reconsider a drastic permanent action like Faction deletion.
• Members leaving the Faction of their own volition with not increment the daily removal count.

However, for all the countermeasures we add to protect Factions from malicious activity, we cannot protect accounts from poor security practices like weak passwords or account sharing. If you haven't updated your password in awhile, now would be a great time to update to a complex password. Account sharing, in addition to being against the Terms of Service, is a huge security vulnerability regardless of how much you trust the other party.

If you think you will be taking an extended break from the game, an existing option is founder step-down in which the current founder passes the title to another *trusted* member of the Faction. We emphasize the "trust" here because if you hand the Faction over to someone who then passes the founder title to another random person you don't trust or know at all, what happens next is totally out of your control.

Balance

Skills:

• Tactical Grenade : +20 Energy gain/drain to all augments
• Blood Shield: Increase HP sacrifice from 40 → 60
• Blood Instinct: Increase HP sacrifice from 40 → 60
• EA1 Concentration: +55HP → +70HP.

Cores:

• Consecrated Fire: Buff removal: 100% → 80%
• Techstalker Tremor P/E,Telekinesis: Duration increased to 4 turns from 2.

Tags: Nightwraith

August 19, 2026

The Technomancer Showcase Battlepass is NOW LIVE! Login now to earn the latest collection of weapons, armors, morphs, bots, and more based on stylish cyberpunk gear that Delta V has been lacking lately.

We broke one of the standardization rules we set awhile back for Battlepasses by offering cores in as rewards, but the concepts fit so well with the theme of the showcase, we couldn't resist. So you all know what you're getting into with the new bots and cores available in this season, the skill descriptions are listed below:

Overclock: Decrease target's cooldowns by 1.
Underclock: Attack for 85% dmg. and increase target's cooldowns by 1.
Malware: 85% dmg., gain any Energy your target spends on skills and cores for 3 turns.

Technomancer Hexabot P

• Hexabot Cannon P: 100% Physical damage from Hexabot's cannon, gain 25% dmg. reduction for 1 turn.
• Hexabot Gas Grenade P: 100% Physical dmg., boosts effectiveness of HP poisons by 25% for 3 turns.

Technomancer Hexabot E

• Hexabot Cannon E: 100% Energy damage from Hexabot's cannon, gain 25% dmg. reduction for 1 turn.
• Hexabot Gas Grenade E: 100% Energy dmg., boosts effectiveness of HP poisons by 25% for 3 turns.

These epic new skills are sure to shake up the game's current balance!

Infernal Odyssey Preview

It's been a long, long time since we rolled out a new promotional package and this next one is spicy indeed! Become the king (or queen) of the Underworld with this new Infernal Odyssey set coming soon! This new package will come with new cores, gear, and an achievement!

In the meantime, get the Gamma Pirate gear while you can before it vanishes into the irradiated abyss!

Balance Changes

• Robots
  • Anubis Incantation P/E: 1 turn warm-up
  •  Infernal Overload: Damage: 125% → 120%
  • Heart Attack (all variants): Damage: 110% → 100%, removes 100% of buffs → removes 65% of buffs, multi-use
• Cores
  • Laser Sights: +80% damage when attack is deflected → +70% damage when attack is deflected
  • Azrael's Torment (all variants): Damage: 85% → 100%, removes 100% of buffs → removes 80% of buffs
  • Color Blast/Egg Rain type attacks that are triggered by a strike can now be triggered by Azrael's Will.
• Bounty Hunter
  • Blood Lust (UA 1): 15% Damage to HP/EP → 13% Damage to HP/EP
• Cyber Hunter
  • Plasma Grenade: 105 Energy → 125 Energy
• Tech Mage
  • Technician (UA): Scaling: 4.80 → 9.50
• Mercenary
  • Blood Commander (UA): Base Value: 21 → 18, Scaling: 5.40 → 9.25

Bug Fixes / Changes

• Faction Founders/Officers can view each member's daily all total Influence for the current war region.
• Hexabot Gas Grenade P/E no longer mini-Rages on use.

EpicDuel Down Time

The BattleOn Portal, EpicDuel, and the forums will undergo scheduled maintenance on Tuesday 8/25. The downtime will begin anytime between 12:00 PM and 4:00 PM EST. Once the servers go offline, maintenance is expected to last for approximately 2 hours before everything is back up and running. Hopefully sooner, but you know how this sometimes goes!

Interested in playing EpicDuel?

Check out the Artix Games Launcher!

Tags: Nightwraith