Hello everyone!
This patch celebrates the spooky season with a new miniboss, enemies, items and a limited time only skin. The halloween event will be live for around 2 weeks!
This patch also contains some other major changes we've wanted to do for a while.
Unique keyword
We've decided to make all rare/heroic items (blue/purple rarity dot) into unique by default, meaning if you already own a copy of an item, you can not find a duplicate of that item. We've overtime had to make more and more rare/heroics into unique for balance, this change makes it easier to keep track of which items you can get duplicates of and which you can't. With all items above common being unique, no exceptions, we've also removed the tag visually. We've taken the chance to buff many of the underperforming rare/heroics that were previously not unqiue and we've reworded the few common items that were unique so that they can be upgraded into gold/diamond by the golem. However we're not doing this solely for balance, we think this will improve build diversity and make players consider to use items they've not used before. Previously, if you had an armor build with 40 base armor and the "Chainmail Armor" item that regains all your base armor as your best item, the next best in slot item you'd look for is of course another "Chainmail Armor", no other item can compete with that. This meant that the next best item for most builds would always be another copy of their current best item.
Of course it's fun to win, and the point of the game is to find synergies that make you feel powerful and stomp the competition, we don't want to get away from that or water down the experience, but we think the play pattern of looking for what other items can fit your build instead of rerolling merchants and hoping for good RNG for a duplicate will be more enjoyable in the long run.
"Trigger twice"
Items that said "Bomb items trigger trice" or "Ring items trigger twice" etc was not able to multiply together how players expected them to. We've changed that so that all such items say "Your bomb items trigger 1 additional time" etc to make them more easily understandable and now they all add their additional triggers independently, making them stack together.
Hall of Fame
When a champion collects 10 wins they will be retired and enter the "Hall of Fame".
Getting a champion into the hall of fame will grant you an additional reward, they will be saved under their own tab in your list of champions and they will also be show to other players in a global hall of fame list. The reason we're doing this, other than giving kingmaker players a goal to aim towards, is for balance purposes.
There was previously no cap to how many wins a build could get which meant that some builds got the perfect setup and got 50+ or even 100+ wins, greatly accelerating the speed of which meta on new patches got stale. The 100 people that lost against a supercharged version of build X would feel that the meta was full of build X even though it was in some cases just a few instances of that build that got a huge amounts of wins and overstayed their welcome in the pool. This change will self-regulate to take overperformers out of the pool and speed up the rotation of builds going in and out, which we hope increases diversity of opponents you'll face.
Without the cap players were also more incentivized to go for the same highroll build again and again, since uploading even one of those champions would yield many more crowns than trying to be flexible and get up more but weaker champions. That is fine if that's how some players find their fun, but it's not a playstyle we want to reward mechanically.
Patch #09 Changelog
Added halloween event
All rare/heroic items are now unique by default
Added the Hall of Fame
Moved the eggs to their own event (disabled in Kingmaker until next patch)
Changed Junksmith from copying an item to allow 2 edges on a weapon
Removed Beekeeper event from kingmaker
Choosing to fight a champion gives no crowns by default, you only earn crowns for wins your champion gathers
Added new biomes for rare events in kingmaker
Fixed swampland starting on last chosen difficulty instead of normal
Items changes:
Featherweight Greaves - Changed effect: Whenever you lose speed, restore that much health
Briar Greaves - Changed effect -> Whenever you lose armor, gain 1 thorn
Iron Shrapnel - Buffed -> Battle start: Deal 4 damage to the enemy, if they don't have armor, tripple the damage dealt
Vampire's Tooth - Changed effect -> If you have exactly 1 sanguine item, it triggers 1 additional time
Fungal Cloak - Heroic -> Rare
Mushroom Soup - Changed effect - > Turn Start: Gain 1 poison and restore 2 health
Melon Bomb - Changed effect -> Battle Start: Deal 1 damage to the enemy 2 times. Whenever you deal 1 damage, decrease a random status effect by 1
Liferoot Hammer - Changed effect -> Turn Start: If you have regeneration, gain 1 additional strike
Marbled Stonefish - Changed effect -> Exposed: Give the enemy 2 riptide and gain 3 armor for each riptide the enemy has
Honey Mead - Buffed -> Wounded: Restore health to full
Mineral Water - Changed effect -> Battle Start: Decrease all your status effects by 1 and gain 3 armor for each removed status effect
Boiled Ham - Changed effect -> Battle Start, Exposed & Wounded: Decrease a random status effect by 2
Frostbite Greaves - Changed effect -> Battle Start: Give the enemy freeze equal to your speed
Frostbite Greaves - Rare -> Heroic
Frostbite Claw - Buffed -> If the enemy has freeze, temporarily gain 3 attack
Iceblock Shield - Common -> Rare
Swiftstrike Cloak - Buffed -> Battle Start: Gain 1 additional strike
Chainmail Armor - Buffed -> Removed -1 base attack
Royal Helmet - Buffed -> Exposed: If you have more than 20 gold, gain 20 armor
Royal Helmet - Nerfed -> Removed 1 base armor
Frostbite Armor - Buffed -> The enemy's first strike deals double damage, afterwards give the enemy 5 freeze
Frostbite Armor - Nerfed -> Removed 2 base armor
Bramble Vest - Changed effect -> The first time each turn you gain thorns, restore that much health
Cracked Bouldershield - Buffed -> Exposed: Gain 10 armor
Explosive Surprise - Buffed -> Exposed: Deal 8 damage
Firecracker Belt - Buffed -> Exposed: Deal 1 damage 5 times
Double Explosion - Changed effect -> The first time the enemy takes damage from a bomb, double it
Basilisk Scale - Buffed -> Battle Start: Gain 6 armor and 6 poison
Royal Horn - Changed effect -> Battle Start: Gain 1 gold. Symphony
Royal Horn - Common -> Rare
Serpent Lyre - Nerfed -> Exposed: Give the enemy 2 poison. Symphony
Serpent lyre - Removed unique
Arcane bell - Removed unique
Explosive Arrow - Nerfed - > Turn Start: If the enemy doesn't have any armor, deal 2 damage
Explosive Arrow - Heroic -> Rare
Marshlight Lantern - Buffed -> Exposed: Lose 5 health and gain 15 armor
Purelake Armor - Buffed -> Exposed: Remove 1 purity to gain 8 armor
Forge Gauntlet - Buffed - > 2 base attack
Forge Gauntlet - Nerfed -> Battle Start: Give the enemy 6 armor
Arcane Shield - Nerfed -> Whenever a countdown effect triggers, gain 2 armor
Purelake Tome - Buffed -> Countdown 2: If you have purity, remove 1 purity. Otherwise, gain 1 purity. Reset countdown
Silverscale Greaves - Buffed -> Battle Start: If you have more speed than the enemy, give them 3 riptide
Silverscale Greaves - Nerfed -> Removed 1 base speed
Friendship Bracelet - Buffed -> Battle Start: The enemy loses 2 attack
Friendship Bracelet - Nerfed -> -2 base attack
Featherweight Armor - Changed effect -> Turn Start: If you have more speed than the enemy, spend 1 speed to temporarily gain 3 attack until the end of the turn
Acid Mutation - Nerfed -> While you have acid, temporarily gain attack equal to acid
Echo Rune - Rewording: Wounded: Trigger a random battle start item
Blacksmith Bond - Rewording: You can activate Exposed 1 additional time per battle
Kindling Bomb - Rewording: Battle Start: Deal 1 damage to the enemy and increase the damage of your next bomb that triggers by 3
Twinfuse Knot - Rewording: Your bomb items trigger 1 additional time
Chainlink Medallion - Rewording: Your On Hit effects trigger 1 additional time
Hero's Crossguard - Rewording: First Turn: Your On Hit effects trigger 1 additional time
Stillwater Pearl - Rewording: Riptide can activate 1 additional time per turn
Iron Rune - Rewording: If you have exactly 1 item with exposed, it triggers 1 additional time
Arcane Lens - Rewording: If you have exactly 1 tome equipped, it triggers 1 additional time
Powder Keg - Rewording: If you have exactly 1 bomb item, it triggers 1 additional time
Grand Tome - Rewording: Countdown 10: Trigger all your other tomes
Highborn - Rewording: Your Ring items trigger 1 additional time
Twin Blade - Rewording: Turn Start: Gain 1 additional strike
Citrine Ring - Rewording: Battle Start: Spend 5 speed to gain 1 additional strike at turn start for the rest of the battle
Swiftstrike Stag - Rewording: Turn Start: Swiftstrike Stag gains 2 additional strikes
Bloodlord's Axe - Rewording: Battle Start: Steal 5 health from the enemy
Lightspeed Potion - Rewording: Battle Start: Restore 1 health for each speed you have
Lightspeed Potion - Removed unique
Lightspeed Elixir - Rewording: Battle Start: Gain 1 max health for each speed that you have then restore that much health
Lightspeed Elixir - Removed unique
Lifeblood Helmet - Rewording: First Turn: Restore 1 health for each damage dealt by your strikes
Lifeblood Helmet - Removed unique
Silver Anchor - Name change: Silverscale Anchor
Frostbite Claw - Name change -> Frostbite Shard
Lifeblood Burst - Name change - > Lifeblood Bomb
Hydra's Eyeball - New item
Leshen's Shovel - New item
Bomb Bag - Removed item
Ironstone Bracelet - Removed item
Plated Greaves - Removed item
Druids Cloak - Removed item
Flameburst tome - Added bomb tag