Balance Progress and Azrael Battlepass Preview on Artix Entertainment

Balance Progress

Progress has been steady but slower than I'd like for the massive core and robot balance update. Nearly every core in-game received some changes. Many were small tweaks like Energy cost or damage adjustments, but many others received much larger overhauls. The goal of this update will be to combat the power creep that has been building for cores and robots as more have been added over the years. These changes should encourage more experimentation and build variety. It's likely that we will need additional balance updates for the balance updates as new overpowered or underpowered cores emerge from battle data, but this is a major step towards better balance for EpicDuel.

If all goes well, this update will be ready for next Thursday.

Battlepass Preview

While I've been occupied with updating nearly every core in the game, Acatriel and Bido have been building items for a new Battlepass that should release soon. Because we've been so occupied with updating existing cores, this Battlepass will not feature new cores. The slots formerly occupied by cores will be filled by additional rewards of currency.

Pre-Spring Cleanup

Next Thursday, we will be doing a bit of cleanup to update of all the seasonal rares to be set to stock at their appropriate time. We will also be removing some Rare items from Azrael that were added in June of 2023. Also, the Fourteen Year Alpha weapons and Achievement will go Rare and leave the shops.

As another part of the cleanup process, we're going to be purging orphaned factions. Since faction founder step down was introduced, whenever a faction was deleted after the founder changed down at any point, the faction would fail to delete properly and remain, despite having 0 characters in it. Currently, there are over 1,000 factions in this state so purging them should free up some coveted names for new factions. This will not affect any faction that currently has at least one member, but factions that are on the leaderboards will 0 members will fall off. The bug that caused this problem in the first place will also be fixed.

As one additional change, on Thursday we will also be updating the evolving Epic Supporter and Legendary Epic Supporter Achievements to 2024. Do to it's overwhelming popularity, the 50,000 Varium package will remain in-game for the foreseeable future.