Illuvium Arena v0.2.0 Patch Notes

Intro

Hello everyone, it’s been quite a while since the last patch notes! We apologise for the wait, but Illuvium: Arena Public Beta 2 (AB-PB2) is almost here! It features significant changes to nearly all facets of the game, so this document is quite lengthy; I have included a quick overview for people just wanting the TL; DR. Where possible, I have included the reasoning behind changes, which I hope will help give context and insight into our thinking. Feedback from AB-PB1 has been exceptionally positive, and we hope to improve further with AB-PB2. You’ll notice a host of these changes result from the feedback the community provided during AB-PB1, so please keep the suggestions coming!

~ Ben

PB2 Access

All players who had AB-PB1 will automatically gain access to AB-PB2. Please note that you must log in to your Illuvium account and download an entirely new game version. After downloading AB-PB2, you should delete your old PB1 game file folder.If you cannot access Private Beta yet, apply through our website.So with that, on to the patch notes!

Overview

• 106 New units. 75 T0’s and 31 Lynxes.

• All Illuvials have had their Omega progression simplified. Stage 1s (on average) are more powerful, and stage 3s less.

• The Shoebill, Pistol Shrimp, Ant Eater, Taipan, and Star Nosed Mole lines have reworked Omegas.

• Leaderboard now ranks players correctly; Training mode no longer counts towards the Leaderboard.

• You now gain a 10% interest bonus for unused mastery points per round.

• Added Augments that players equip to Illuvials to provide additional power and effects.

• Balance tweaks to almost all Illuvials.

• Synergy tweaks, generally speaking, primary synergies have had their power increased, and composite synergies have had their power decreased.

• Checkpoints! Your progress is saved every five waves in Competitive mode and every Wave in Training mode, and you can replay from a checkpoint after you are defeated.

• The Hyper system has been simplified.

• All matches now end in a win or a loss.

New Core Features

Augments

Augments have arrived! Fifty augments are available in PB2. Use Augments to modify an Illuvial’s purpose and behaviour, strengthen their current role, or give them an entirely new role. Each Augment features an innate ability used to enhance the Illuvial further. Augments also feature Flex Stats, allowing players to select two stat bonuses. Add up to two Augments to each Illuvial.

Example 1 Add “Lights Chosen” to a Bulwark Illuvial to strengthen nearby allies and select Physical and Energy Resist to boost defences.

Example 2 Add “Jagged End” and “Final Abounding” to a weaker Illuvial, making them your primary carry.

Note - You must recall the Illuvial with the Augment attached to remove it. Recalling will refund the Illuvial and augment costs and allow the player to reuse them later.

Read the Augment Data Sheet here.

Dominant Synergies

Illuvials now have dominant synergies, used only for bonding right now. The UI needs to communicate this better, and we’ll address that soon. These dominant synergies are intrinsic to your specific Illuvial and will play a part in many Illuvium games. For example, a Steam Illuvial can be either Fire dominant or Water dominant, changing its behaviour.

Bonding

Your Ranger can bond with an Illuvial, gaining their dominant synergies, allowing for more complex team synergies. Combined with the Ranger’s weapon choice, it creates composite synergies for your Ranger.

Example A ranger bonds with Tatopee, the stage 1 Earth/Psion snail. The Ranger gains Earth & Psion synergies. The Ranger then equips an Earth Gauntlet, the Earth/Psion weapon. The Ranger gains Earth + Psion synergies and becomes a Granite Invoker.

Note - The bonded Illuvial must be recalled from the board (can be re-added) to remove a bond. - You cannot bond an Illuvial with no Affinity or Class, like the stage 1 Lynx. Plane Changes

Illuvials now consider whether their enemies and allies are grounded, airborne, or underground. Melee attacks can’t always reach airborne units, for example. Previously, we could only make an Illuvial Untargetable. Now we have more nuance.

Simplified Hyper

Class no longer impacts the growth of Hyper, and Affinity no longer affects combat. Instead, Affinity determines the growth of Hyper, and once Hyperactive, the Dominant Class determines the combat bonus. To counter your opponent, you only need to think about Affinity. To understand how that bonus will manifest as power on the board, you must understand Class.

Overload

We must disallow ties and cap the battle duration. To solve this, we’ve added Overload. It begins at the 40-second mark and continues for 20 seconds. Each second, the Battle Board pulses with Purest Damage™ equal to a percentage of the Max Health of each Combat Unit. These damage pulses increase by 5% each second.

Unfortunately, this does not guarantee a clear winner. Occasionally the last Enemy and Ally may faint during the same Time Step. In this case, the Combat Unit with the highest “damage overflow percentage” remains alive.

Example Character A has 20% Health remaining, and Character B has 10% Health remaining. Both receive 50% Max Health as Purest Damage™. Both faint, but Character A’s team wins.

Crit Changes

By default, only Attacks can Crit, but Augments and some Synergies allow Omegas to Crit. All Effect Types (including healing) have the option to Crit, but we have not yet implemented this for specific Illuvials.

Survival Mode Changes

The wave limit increased to 40

Without going too deep into the design, there are limits to wave generation variation. These limits increase as we add more Illuvials and augments. Expect this limit to increase as we introduce new Illuvials.

Added Mastery Point Interest

Gain 10% of unused Mastery Points as a bonus each round. Aimed at the top players, this allows greater scope for skill expression and makes the early waves more interesting. It changes your objective from “Can I beat this wave?” to “How do I beat this wave with the smallest expenditure?”

Changed the time allowance for the planning phase

It now starts at 40 seconds and increases by 5 seconds each round, making time limitations more meaningful. The previous fixed 60-second timer was providing too much time at the earlier waves and providing too little at the latter. The 5-second increment might be too generous, so feedback is appreciated!

Added Checkpoints

In Competitive, these unlock every fifth Wave cleared and have three uses across the Run. In Training, it is every Wave with unlimited uses.

Checkpoints are the most requested feature from AB-PB1, allowing runs to last longer and preventing small misplays from being quite so punishing. In Training mode, they make learning the game more straightforward and should help new players significantly.

Note - More changes are likely, and we expect Checkpoints to be an essential aspect of timed Competitive matches.

Removed Training mode from the Leaderboard.

While this was a bug, I’ve included it here due to its sheer impact on AB-PB1. We never intended Training to be a competition. It should be a safe, chill place where players can learn the game without feeling pressured. Now the only way to get onto the Leaderboard is via Competitive mode.

Training mode no longer uses the Competitive deck

Another bug rather than a feature, Training mode now uses the deck from the previous day’s Competitive mode allowing players to experiment and improve while having no impact on that day’s Competitive Leaderboard.

Improved Enemy Spawning

We’ve increased the variety of enemy spawn locations and improved the positioning.

Illuvial Changes

There are updates to all 45 Illuvials from PB1, including updates to Omegas, stats, animations, SFX, and VFX. Due to the sheer volume of changes, we’ll be linking some tables with specific information and reasoning for the changes.

Read the updated Illuvial data here. (Thanks to Garfoodle for the assist!)

Axolotl Line

The Axolotls struggled to fulfil their role as Bulwarks while simultaneously feeling Psiony. We’ve added Omega power scaling to their max health components and tweaked their numbers.

Pterodactyl Line

Pterodactyl was one of the earliest Illuvials to come into being. As our thinking on classes evolved, the Pterodactyl became increasingly disjointed with the Slayer archetype (an auto-attack-centric Rogue). With its Omega being the dominant aspect. We’ve moved it to Phantom to match its Omega-centric playstyle.

It no longer gains Untargetable and instead becomes Airborne during the Omega.

We’ve also tweaked its Omega VFX to improve clarity and to be more awesome generally!

Sea Scorpion Line

Sea Scorpion is our archetypal Fighter. We’ve reduced the energy cost of its Omega to push its damage to be more sustained rather than bursty.

Thylacine Line

Thylacine’s Omega took a significant time to activate and struggled with reliability. We’ve drastically reduced the Omega duration, added attack damage scaling, and normalised all stages to hit two targets. We also updated the class synergy to Slayer instead of Phantom. These updates improve the Omega’s overall functionality while providing a more balanced gameplay experience.

Turtle Line

Turtle was massively over-performing in clumped teams. We’ve toned its Omega down but increased the area of effect (AOE) slightly, reduced the length of the ability, and added damage and root effect across all the Stages. Archie and Archos should be significantly more reliable and easier to use effectively.

Anteater Line

Anteater was almost impossible to use well, and to balance, they had their numbers grossly inflated. It resulted in an Illuvial that didn’t fulfil its role. We reworked the Omega to provide conditional tankiness via dodge buffs and large AOE enemy Omega Power debuffs.

Beetle Line

Beetle has remained primarily unchanged but lost the stacking bonuses on its Omega. These bonuses were causing it to become regularly unkillable, and with the addition of augments, it was too simple to achieve.

Dodo Line

Dodo is the perfect Illuvial, so it remains unchanged but also nerfed.

Elk Line

Elk was overperforming massively as a tank. As a Mystic, a significant amount of the counterplay should revolve around bursting it down, but due to its skill kit, that wasn’t happening. The correct course of action was almost always to ignore it and deal with it last. We’ve removed the automatic self-targeting of its Omega, and it now will only heal itself when it is one of the lowest health allies. We’ll address this further at a later date with our base stat update patch.

We want to push our Illuvial healers in different directions. We’ve changed the Omega to do more healing depending on the recipients missing Health and reduced the cast time to make Elk a powerful emergency healer but less potent in general.

Pangolin Line

Pangolin wasn’t feeling like a Fighter, so we’ve added attack damage scaling to its Omega, changed the VFX to be clearer, and tweaked its stats to be more fighter-like.

Pistol Shrimp Line

Pistol Shrimp struggled at the earlier Stages, and its Omega didn’t feel powerful enough for an Omega-focused carry. But its design was challenging to address since it could hit any number of Illuvials depending on positioning. We couldn’t just increase the numbers. Instead, we’ve tweaked its Omega to be blockable and massively increased the numbers. It’ll shred targets one by one. We’ve also massively increased the duration of the Omega from .8 seconds to 4.2, allowing you to feel its impact but increasing the counterplay opportunity via disruption.

Shoebill Line

Shoebill has received a host of Omega changes, mainly aimed at making its Omega more interesting and nuanced, shifting it towards what we envisage for a Templar. The Omega now Stuns and debuffs Enemies whilst buffing Allies.

We’ve also significantly reduced the intensity of the Omega VFX as it dominated the visuals. The changes allowed us to reduce the Energy, resulting in more frequent Omegas.

StarNosed Mole Line

Star-Nosed Mole now burrows Underground during its Omega. It also had its Stun upgraded to a Charm, allowing a more reliable and disruptive Omega. It now acts as a fantastic disruptor and causes utter havoc on positionally dependent backline comps.

Taipan Line

Taipan’s Omega wasn’t particularly clear or very exciting. We’ve added some jazz and pushed it to better match the identity of an Arcanite. Its Omega now provides a massive Attack Speed buff and causes its Attacks to explode in an Area around the Target.

Snail Line

Snail’s biggest weakness was the unreliability of the Omega, which has now been addressed and resulted in the higher Stages being utter monsters. We’ve toned down the number of projectiles on Seeforus as a result. Tatopee has gained Damage reduction during its Omega to match it to the Earth identity better.

Synergy Changes

Synergies have had several changes, most stemming from the existence of bonding and a desire to encourage more mixed teams. Generally speaking, the lower Thresholds have gained some power, and the higher have lost some. We’ve adjusted the power balance for Composites, adding more power into the Thresholds and reducing some from the Innates.

Read the updated Synergy Values here.

Hyper Changes

Fighter Hyper Bonus

Upon becoming Hyperactive, Fighters gain 35% Attack Speed and pierce 25% of Physical and Energy Resistance.

Bulwark Hyper Bonus

Upon becoming Hyperactive, Bulwarks gain 50% Crit Reduction, 20% Physical and Energy Resistance, and (8% Max Health + 100) Max Health.

Rogue Hyper Bonus

Upon becoming Hyperactive, Rogues gain 30% Crit Amp, and their Crits burn 5 Energy from the target.

Psion Hyper Bonus

Upon becoming Hyperactive, Psions gain 50% Omega Power.

Empath Hyper Bonus

Upon becoming Hyperactive, Empaths heal Allies for 30 Health and replenish 3 Energy per second in a 20 hex Radius around themselves.

Armament Changes

Armaments haven’t changed much, and we’ll tweak them more later with an Armament overhaul patch. We want to add more depth to the Suits rather than have them be a stat block and introduce Weapon lines. But that’s still a ways away. For now, we’ve toned down the Staff Omega and added some extra Weapons into the pool. They’ll change daily as the deck updates.

Terminology Changes

We’ve updated some descriptions to improve clarity. We’ve got more coming in this space and will add advanced combat descriptions in a later patch. For now, it’s in a bit of a halfway house, but hopefully still much improved from AB-PB1. We’ve updated some gameplay-specific terms and added some new ones. I’ve also taken the opportunity to add official explanations to some key gameplay behaviours.

Combat Stats

A̵g̵i̵l̵i̵t̵y̵ → Dodge: The chance for a character to avoid an incoming Attack.

P̵r̵e̵c̵i̵s̵i̵o̵n̵ → Crit Chance: The chance for an Attack or Ability to Crit.

S̵a̵v̵a̵g̵e̵r̵y̵ → Crit Amp: The multiplier for Critical Damage. By default, it is 150%.

Grit: Flat reduction of Physical Damage.

Resolve: Flat reduction of Energy damage.

Thorns: Reflects a flat amount of Pure Damage to the Attacker, per Attack Ability.

Healing Efficiency: Acts as the multiplier when receiving healing. By default, it is 100%.

Energy Efficiency: Acts as the multiplier when receiving Energy. By default, it is 100%.

Area of Effect

Small Area: A radius between 1 & 15 Hexes.

Medium Area: A radius between 16 & 25 Hexes.

Large Area: A radius between 26 & 35 Hexes.

Massive Area: A radius larger than 35 Hexes.

Parties

Allies: Combat Units on the same side, including Self.

Teammates: Combat Units on the same side, excluding Self.

Enemies: Combat Unit on the opponent’s side.

Focus: The Combat Unit an Illuvial walks toward and attempts to hit with their melee or projectile Attack Abilities.

States

Clumsy: Stops a combat unit’s ability to Dodge.

Effect Modifiers

Exploit Weakness: Any damaging Effect with the Exploit Weakness modifier increases based on the % missing Health of the recipient. A Combat Unit with full Health receives no additional damage, but a Combat Unit at 10% Health receives 90% more damage.

Plane Changes

Airborne: Combat Units that are Airborne can only be affected by Abilities that can target Airborne Combat Units. (Projectiles and Beams mostly)

Underground: Combat Units that are Underground can only be affected by Abilities that can target Underground Combat Units. (Pretty much nothing atm!)

Grounded: The default state. All Abilities can target Grounded Combat Units.

Forced Actions

Taunt: forces a Combat Unit to stop all Abilities except Attack Abilities and focus on the Taunter.

Charm: forces a Combat Unit to stop all Abilities and move towards the Charmer.

Flee: forces a Combat Unit to stop all Abilities and move away from the Combat unit that scared them.

Conditions

There are four conditions — Poison, Frost, Burn, and Wound. Each applies a stacking Effect, and at max stacks applies an additional Effect.

Poison: Deals 1% of Max Health as Pure Damage per second. It lasts 5 seconds and stacks up to 5 times. At full stacks, it removes the ability to heal for 3 seconds.

Frost: Reduces Attack Speed by 3% per stack. It lasts 10 seconds and can stack up to 9 times. At full stacks, the Combat Unit freezes.

Burn: Deals 2% of Missing Health as Energy Damage per second. It lasts 8 seconds and can stack up to 5 times. At full stacks, the Combat Unit ignites, dealing Pure damage in an area.

Wound: Deals 1.25% of the Physical Damage of the Applying Attack/Omega as Physical Damage per second. It lasts for 8 seconds and can stack up to 5 times. At full stacks, it reduces Crit Amp.

Bug Fixes

Total bugs resolved: 821.

Resolved PB1 bugs

• Groom has been disabled in PB2 to address an Unreal Engine crash that accounted for most of the crashes in PB1.

• Enemy Illuvials no longer turn away from their opponents.

• Enemy Illuvials do not hide at the top of the arena. Guerilla warfare banned.

• Training mode no longer counts towards the competitive Leaderboard.

• Omegas now fire for full length unless interrupted.

• Fixed several pathing issues.

• Most leaderboard issues are resolved.

• We have implemented underground Plane changes, but Airborne is not fully complete.

• Overlapping effects are now correctly accounted for by the simulation.

• Logging in the first time no longer causes the occasional error.

Major Bugs and Quality of Life Improvements

• Connection retries with server stability/connectivity.

• Many UI improvements, optimisations, enhancements and additions.

• Added many VFX and optimisations.

• Fixed a bug where Illuvials got stuck.

• Illuvial abilities no longer allow out-of-bounds instances.

• Going AFK for 15 minutes or more will now correctly end the session.

• Fixed a bug where the Ranger would disappear.

• Earth daggers don’t give the Ranger invisibility anymore.

• Bonding, Weapons, & Armour now load synergies correctly.

• Better error messaging overall. - Better messaging when we take the server down for updating. - Better messaging when we change the daily challenge.

• Improved readability of all aspects of the UI. - Synergy highlighting and descriptions.

• Improved bug reporter.

• New animations and many animation improvements.

• Many Omega improvements and balance changes.

• Improved descriptions across the board.

• Empaths no longer get stuck after going hyper.

• Health bar readability improvements.

• Player nicknames added.

• New Skills, Abilities, and States added.

• Mute sounds on loading screens are now available.

• Many new UI cards for Illuvials.

Website: Illuvium

Twitter: illuviumio

Discord: Join the Illuvium Discord Server!

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