Balance Crashers on Artix Entertainment

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!