WELCOME TO UPDATE 21.0!

Dragon Rift: New Horizons!

An extract from a conversation between the research scientists and the Rhandum Isle Council.

- Honorable members of the Council, we swear this was an accident! 
- Condemned to work in the mines for a month... No, 2 months! No more dragons, and for the sake of all that is holy, somebody please feed that irritating reptile!

A report on the results of the last expedition:

• A unique epic hero, only available in the Dragon Rift mode
• New enemies: Flamecaster and Lifestealer - and rewards for defeating them!
• Two new worlds. Lowered difficulty for Worlds 1 and 2!
• Three new artifacts: Mantle of Protection, Mechanical Squire and Set of Traps
• An automatic difficulty-based matchmaking system for advanced players
• Dragon attacks will now regenerate at the same time as the Magic Wings every day, instead of 24 hours after the attack
• Additional possibility of receiving Magic Wings for less patient players
• Interface updates to make it easier to explore the strange Rift

Announcement posted on pillars: Research scientists are opening up recruitment to their ranks. Wanted:

- knights (dragonproof armor is a must)

- mages with skills in the art of closing portals to the worlds (fast response appreciated!)

- cooks (for the ravenous reptiles)

- miners (we seem to have found some... Stones? Runes? SKELETONS?!) 
 

New Hero

Little Flicker

The Dragon Rift has not only let huge monsters through into our reality, but also a curious baby dragon. Flicker is an epic hero who is driven by a thirst for adventure and by a constant hunger, because this little one is just growing up!

In his search for food, he can switch places with neighboring units and spit flames to destroy any monsters that try to stop him from reaching its prey. And if there’s no food nearby, he can devour any of your units and, after a short nap, wake up again with a little bit more strength.

When the ability is activated, Flicker starts to attack monsters with fireballs that leave burning areas in their wake. Flicker also continually buffs units around him, and each unit he devours will increase this bonus and his own damage, earning extra mana. If there are no free units and the little dragon is still hungry, take him to a tile marked with a food sign to give him a buff!

Level 5 
The burning areas start to scorch through the monsters’ armor, adding to the damage inflicted on them. When little Flicker is eating, he will spit flame at the first enemy, forming a burning area.

Level 10 
When eating, he will start to additionally buff units around him temporarily.

Level 15 
Units around Flicker will receive a permanently increased critical chance, and the monsters in the burning area will receive increased critical damage.

The Aviator Goggles item will enhance the hero’s abilities and increase the number of fireballs, and each time he hits an enemy he will inflict additional damage, depending on the current health of the target.

Will he grow into an enormous world-eater or remain a cute little creature? That’s up to you!

This hero can only be obtained as part of the Dragon Rift event rewards. 
Does not affect the distribution of rewards in hero chests.

New Talents

Crystalmancer 
After the Dragon Rift opened, the surviving scientists’ experiments took on a new form. Having been banned temporarily from searching for other worlds, they turned their attention to look deep inside the earth, and this led to the discovery of some mysterious crystals. These unusual formations enhanced the abilities of the Crystalmancers and the ancient Knight Statues, in surprising ways, allowing them to acquire new abilities.

Talents: 
Level 9: Unlocks access to the summoning of the Arcanists, inflicting severe damage to an area or a chain of enemies while reducing their armor 
Level 11: Gives access to an increase in the damage inflicted by Crystalmancers, or to summoning of crystals that will attack monsters on the battlefield. 
Level 13: Gives the Arcanists powers of electricity or flame

With the latter of these talents, the Arcanists and the Crystalmancers will start to absorb energy from bosses, increasing their merge rank.

Knight Statue 
For once, the scientists’ experiments performed on stones mined in the island interior didn’t have devastating consequences. After studying the runes on these stones, they reached the conclusion that the similarity with the patterns in stone on the Knight Statues was no coincidence at all. They performed a series of experiments to amplify the effect that the statues had on the units on the battlefield. This was a simple experiment, until...

- What if we put this rune here? 
- Help, I’m being attacked by a living statue! 

Talents: 
Level 9: Increases the distance at which statues are affected, and changes the activation condition or improves the bonuses for neighboring units 
Level 11: The stone statues gain the ability to provide protection against negative effects or an additional unit enhancement 
Level 13: Enhancement of the statue will also increase the critical damage inflicted by units. The bonus will depend on the neighboring units, or on the number of statues. The choice is up to you. 
Level 15: The Knight Statues will come to life and become able to attack. Their slow but powerful blows can additionally destroy the armor of enemies. This will then increase the damage inflicted by the other units.

New Event

Challenge of Seven  
The Rhandum Isle Council has announced a new competition – the Challenge of Seven!

The most skilled warriors will be invited to demonstrate their strength and agility. Each one who achieves at least 1 victory will receive a reward!

The Challenge of Seven is a new regular PvP event, with the main goal being to achieve 7 victories in 7 battles as quickly as possible! For every victory, there’s a reward, and the greater the number of victories, the more valuable it will be!

p.s. This is a great way to earn extra faction cores!

Other changes

Saving Talents  
Trying different ways to achieve victories without changing all of your decks? No problem. Unit talents are now saved separately for every deck. You can create Knight of Light and Knight of Darkness decks at the same time! Talents are also saved separately for event decks, including the Dragon Rift. Select a suitable combination, which will no longer result in an unexpected situation in combat!

Co-Op: new ally matchmaking 
We’ve tweaked the process of finding allies in Co-Op mode, so it now takes account of your critical damage. What does it mean?

First of all, we will try to pick up an ally with suitable critical damage for you, and if there are support units in your deck (you can see them by clicking on the “i” in the new Co-Op interface), we’ll consider critical damage “higher” than the current level, as such units are important in defeating the enemy.

Might I encounter a player with lower critical damage on floor 9-10? Yes, but it will be less likely.

This is how it will work:

- Two players who have assembled decks with units for damage will be matched by their critical damage or by the critical damage appropriate to that floor

- A player with a support unit deck will have a wider search range

- It’ll be easier to see your deck type

- It’ll be less likely that a player with low critical damage with a damage deck will be found in random battles, but it will still be possible

- For game modes with friends or clanmates, no changes have been made

First Victory Bonus

Number of bonus trophies is now lower: 30 → 5

Heroes

Necromancer

Level 1

The Grave Silence ability has been changed.

The Necromancer creates a cursed path on the player's side and summons a Lich on the opponent's side. The cursed path gives attacks by the player’s units a chance of an instant kill. In PvP, the Lich has an aura that ignores defenses against negative effects and casts a daze on enemy units, temporarily blocking any use of the hero’s ability. Dazed units cannot attack and cannot merge for a few seconds. In Co-Op and solo modes, the Lich is summoned in front of the first monster and will block the path.

Level 5

The Cursed Earth ability has been improved and combined with the Fear of Death ability.

Creates two buffed tiles on the player’s field, where units will have a chance of instant kill. The instant kill effects from Necromancer’s abilities also give you a chance of receiving additional mana and summoning ghosts to your opponent’s side. In Co-Op and solo modes, the ghosts will not appear.

Level 10

A new Phantom ability has been added.

When attacking bosses and mini bosses, the units on the buffed tiles will have a chance of summoning a Phantom, which will attack monsters. The Phantoms inflict damage, depending on the number of instant kills generated by the Necromancer’s abilities, and also destroy the target’s armor. In addition, the cursed path will now give you a chance of Phantoms being summoned with every unit attack on bosses and mini bosses.

Level 15

A new Necrotic Incantation ability has been added.

The ghosts summoned by the Cursed Earth ability will restore the health of nearby monsters, when they die. In addition, when the Grave Silence ability is used, there is a chance of an evil spirit flying out from one of the buffed tiles, to reduce the merge rank of a random enemy unit in PvP. In Co-Op and solo modes, the evil spirit will increase the rank of a random player unit.

The hero item has been changed to match the new abilities:

• Increases the chance of an instant kill from the Grave Silence ability and the chance of an evil spirit appearing from the Necrotic Incantation ability
• Increases the number of buffed tiles from the Cursed Earth ability to three
• Buffs the Phantom’s ability by increasing the reduction in armor caused by the Phantom’s attacks
   

Trickster

Level 10

The Mutual Benefit ability has been improved.

The chance of regaining the mana spent on summoning a unit has been increased: 3.5% → 4% and the amount that it goes up for each level has also changed: 0.35% → 0.4%

Level 15

The Secret Technique ability has been changed.

When the ability is activated, it gives mana, and also temporarily increases unit damage for every few units of mana spent.

Units 

Enchanted Sword

• The number of targets for bonuses and debuffs is now smaller: 3 → 2
• Damage bonus for the buff at Level 7 is now smaller: 20% → 13.5%
• Crit bonus for 10 buffs is now smaller: 5% → 3%

WHY?

The Enchanted Sword helps you to significantly improve many units and work out new winning strategies. As with all major changes it will take time to recognize the impact this will have on gameplay overall. From the moment when the Enchanted Sword was added, and changes were made to some of the support units in the game, combat duration has been tending to get longer. Since the combat duration has a direct effect on your account progress (as a result of the ranking rewards) we can’t let this situation go without comment.

All the recent updates have been aimed at resolving the issue of these long battles and we're still working on this now.

Currently, the support units are dragging games out too much. Along with the addition of talents for the Knight Statue, it became necessary to reduce the bonuses of the Enchanted Sword and the Trapper.

The Red Sword has been completely changed:

• The debuff applied by the Red Sword now will not reduce the amount of the Blue Sword’s enhancements
• Also, the debuff cannot be applied multiple times and it now has a regular and an enhanced state, which it transitions to when it is reapplied. In the regular state, the unit will receive a damage debuff, and in the enhanced state, the damage debuff is increased 2.5 times, but now is limited in time. When the empowered effect ends, the debuff will be removed from the enemy unit completely

WHY?

The mechanics of the previous version of the Enchanted Sword were polarized, which didn’t work against players with the Enchanted Sword and had a noticeable effect on players who didn’t have the Enchanted Sword in their deck, turning the game into stressful ping-pong, and making it essential to include this unit in the deck.

These changes also required changes to be made in the talents:

The Ancient Magic talent has been buffed

• Damage bonus per buff has been increased 65% → 200%

The Awakening talent has been changed completely

• There is a 20% chance of an Awakened Sword appearing. Merging the Awakened Sword will send orbs into 3 additional units

Double Depletion has been changed to Inevitable Exhaustion

• When the empowered debuff effect ends, there is a 30% chance that the unit will be left with a normal debuff

The Approving Glance talent has been weakened

• The talent will no longer increase attack speed
• The chance to remove a debuff is now lower: 50% → 35%

The Scornful Look ability has been changed to Eternal Gaze

- Once in each wave, when a boss appears, a random Blue Sword and a random Red Sword will apply the effects of their color.

WHY?

• The Ancient Magic talent isn’t popular enough, so we've decided to buff it, in particular, considering the sword being generally weakened.
• The Awakening talent has made playing with the Sword too simple, detracting from the interesting stacking mechanics. Where the player simply puts down a few Awakened Swords and doesn’t do anything more, the game loses too much in terms of dynamics, which doesn’t add any fun to the gameplay.
• The Approving Glance talent has been weakened in line with the plan to weaken the stronger support units described above.
• The Scornful Look talent has been changed, as it wasn’t at all popular, and we’re expecting the new talent to perform better than the other changes.

Demon Hunter

• Basic damage increase with level is now less substantial: 21.2% → 19.5% (Level 7 damage remains unchanged)

Twilight Hunting

• Mark damage bonus is now lower: 3.5% → 3%

Cloak of Shadows

• Cleansing chance is now smaller: 25% → 20%

WHY?

The Demon Hunter unit is currently the strongest at high upgrade levels, as well as being highly popular. By reducing the increase in basic damage and weakening the Twilight Hunting and Cloak of Shadows talents, we’re aiming to reduce its potential at those high upgrade levels, cutting down combat time and maintaining unit effectiveness at Level 7.

After the balance testing, the Absorption of Evil talent's buff has been canceled as part of the unit's balancing.

Summoner

Multiple Summoning

• The chance of the Oracle spawn is now smaller: 30% → 25%

Enhanced Summoning

• The chance of the Oracle spawn is now smaller: 30% → 25%

Curse of the Spirits

• Maximum increase in cost is now smaller: 40% → 20%

Blessing of the Spirits

• Maximum cost reduction is now smaller: 40% → 30%
• Summoning cost reduction is now bigger: 20% → 30%

Gift of the Ancestors

• Damage increase for each spirit is now smaller: 3% → 2%

One with the Nature

• Critical damage reduction is now smaller: 40% → 30%
• Critical damage increase is now more substantial: 25% → 30%

WHY?

Since the Summoner gained talents, he has become the strongest support unit. This unit feels great, both in aggressive decks and in developmental decks, showing a high percentage of victories (70+). To bring the stats back into line, we’re reducing the effectiveness of the majority of talents. We’ll also carry on monitoring the stats and we may review them in later updates.

Trapper

• Armor reduction at Level 7: 50% → 40%
• Armor reduction at Level 15: 90% → 60%

WHY?

Having a Trapper in most decks is currently the best way of obtaining some control over the movements of the monsters and increasing the damage inflicted by all units on the battlefield. For units with no talents, he is currently too good at these tasks. In the context of the reduction in effectiveness of most of our support units, in order to make battles shorter, we have weakened the Trapper too.

Witch

Gift of the Raven

• Damage increase efficiency: 10% → 15%

Magic Circle

• Mana bonus increased: 100 + 20% of summoning → 100 + 40% of summoning

WHY?

The Witch is not very popular as a support unit. By buffing this unit, we’re hoping to provide an alternative to the Knight Statue and Enchanted Swords for decks with a high number of merges, such as the Robot and the Sea Dog, and we’ll be monitoring its effectiveness closely in future updates.

Tesla

Spare Batteries

• 50% chance of Tesla appearing with 1 charge → 35% chance of Tesla appearing charged

WHY?

Tesla is doing well right now, so we’re only trying to make this talent slightly more popular.

Meteor

The Falling Star talent has been reworked.

When the Meteor merges, it has a 35% chance of launching a meteorite shard at the first monster, setting fire to monsters within a certain radius and reducing their armor by 30%. The monsters that are set on fire will take 5% meteorite damage every second. The chance of critical attack by the meteorite against the burning monsters is increased by 20%.

WHY?

The old talent was extremely unreliable due to the fact that it targeted a random point, and it also didn’t combine well with the first Ascension’s talents. We’ve tried to make this more interesting and to buff decks that use Fiery Bolide.

Frost

Chains of Ice

• Stun duration is now longer: 2s → 3s
• Number of frostbite charges increased: 5 → 8

Dire Chill

• Increased activation chance: 5% → 10%

Icewalk

• Monster speed increase is now lower: 40% → 35%

Ice Shield

• Monster Armor is now increased more efficiently: 50% → 60%

WHY?

Frost is currently found mainly in aggressive decks only. We're hoping to make it a more attractive option for use in combat that lasts more than 3 or 4 waves.

Bruiser

On My Treat!

• Armor reduction: 15%-45% → 30%-60%
• Trap radius increased, trap duration is now longer: 7s → 10s

Brawl

• Damage per monster is now stronger: 5% with max. 75% → 10% with max. 80%

WHY?

We buff the talents that aren’t very popular and are less effective.

Banshee

• Damage increase with level is now more efficient: 14% → 18%
• Reduced active ability cooldown: 30s → 20s

Coven

• Bonus for Banshees in chain 10% → 15%

Growing Anger

• Now affects a random Banshee and the initial chance has been increased: 5% → 10%

Decay

• Increased health limit for instant boss kill: 15% → 20% 

WHY?

Banshee is a strong unit at low upgrade levels, but at the higher levels she lags behind others. We’re increasing the maximum potential for this unit significantly and we’re buffing talents that are rarely used.

Cultist

Great Ritual

• Increased chance of obtaining a soul: 25% → 40%

WHY?

We buff the rarely used talent, which should help players to receive souls more quickly for their dark deeds.

Monk

• Active ability cooldown is now shorter: 30s → 20s

Active ability now also gives the Monks at intersections area damage at 25% of their attack power

Equilibrium

• A balance sphere will also now be able to appear on a Monk at an intersection, where it will be absorbed automatically.
• Bonus per sphere – 3%
• Bonus after 30 spheres – 1%

Illumination

• Now increases the merge rank of a random Monk

Novice

• When the effect is used, the Monk that appears will additionally activate a sphere from the first level of Ascension.

WHY?

There are a few problems with the Monk at the lower levels, and with the reduction in combat time, there is even more of a downgrade at the higher upgrade levels too. A reduction in the recharging time for the active ability and the addition of area damage are our compensation for this. We're also buffing rarely used talents, especially the Equilibrium talent, which has been extremely awkward in use, which has motivated players to play at intersections.

Knight Statue

• Units' critical chance increase is now less substantial: 5% + 2.5% per rank → 3% + 1.5% per rank

WHY?

Support units have a very big impact on the battlefield. The talents of the Knight Statue allow literally for 2-3 statues to completely cover the entire field with a buff, which is much more efficient than the accumulated effects of the Enchanted Sword. Changing the crit chance bonus is necessary to create more varied strategies on the battlefield, otherwise the game would just swap out one super popular support unit for another instead of giving you a choice to play with.