7.4 Update: Pillars of Light

[Jeto]

7.4 Update: Pillars of Light

7.4 Update: Pillars of Light Patch Notes

We have added the first expansion for the new PvP system, Monoliths. Monoliths are PvE battles that provide buffs to your team when fighting PvP Battles. Learn more about them below.

Monoliths

• All Regions have Monoliths, however the number of Monoliths will be related to which ring the Region belongs to:
  • Center Ring: 3 Monoliths
  • Inner Ring: 4 Monoliths
  • Outer Ring: 5 Monoliths
• Each Monolith gives a buff that applies to all Regions in PvP
• Winning a battle in a Monolith will unlock its Buff which applies for 1 hour.
• Winning further battles within a Monolith will increase the effect of the buff and give an additional 1 hour to the duration.
• If a Monolith’s duration reaches 0, then the Monolith will reset and players will need to win the first battle again to activate it.

Monolith Battles

• Players can fight up to 5 Battles in a single Monolith.
• This means there are 5 levels of power for the Monolith’s PvP buff.
• Monolith Battles require Monolith Sigils, which can be gained from purchasing the Monolith Sigil Bundle from the PvP Shop, or defeating Valhawks in PvP Battles (see below for more info about Valhawks).
• While there is a cap to the amount of Monolith Sigils that players can earn from Valhawks of 6 per day, there is no cap on the number of Monolith Sigil Bundles that can be purchased.
• If you have 10 Monolith Sigils, Valhawks won’t appear in your battles until you have less than 10 Monolith Sigils
• Each Monolith Battle has a “Boss Enemy” that will appear in the every battle
  • This Boss Troop will appear in the Monolith’s menu
• Enemy teams will be built of predefined team restrictions that fit the theme of the Boss or Monolith.
• Players will need to fight battles using the Region’s current team restrictions
• After winning battles 3 and 5, players will also receive some copies of a new Talisman – the Victory Talisman.

Valhawk

• Players can only encounter the Valhawk in PvP Battles (no matter the Region).
• Players have a 20% chance to encounter a Valhawk in a battle.
• Valhawk can be defeated up to 3 times per day.
  • It will not count to the daily limit if the Valhawk runs away or the player loses the battle.
  • Once the Valhawk has been successfully defeated 3 times, it will no longer appear in PvP Battles that day.
• Winning a battle against a Valhawk will give 2 Monolith Sigils.
  • Valhawks will only give Monolith Sigils if the player is victorious
• Monolith Sigils do not reset at the end of the week.
• The Valhawk will be available as a troop from the Vault on Tuesday March 12th daily reset (7am UTC).

Victory Talisman

• As mentioned, Players can earn Victory Talismans from Monolith Battles 3 and 5
• When used, Victory Talismans will double any Victory Points earned from that Battle (+100% Victory Points)
• If the Victory Talisman is used in a Blood Frenzy Region (more on Blood Frenzy Below), the bonus will be additive
  • (so it’s a x3 bonus not x4 as 100% Regular Amount + 100% Blood Frenzy + 100% Victory Talisman)

Monolith Buff Menu

• On the World Map the Buff button will display how many Monolith buffs are currently active.
• Players can use the Monolith Buff menu to see how many Valhawk Encounters they have left for that day.
• The Monolith Buff Menu will display Monolith Buffs in a set order in the list:
  • Active Buffs – These are all the Monolith Buffs currently active, and they will display their current progress, effect and how much time remaining for that Buff.
  • Available Buffs – Monoliths that are available to play battles to activate them.
  • Locked Buffs – These are Regions which the player doesn’t have access to yet.
• Players can select a Monolith Buff in the list to be taken to that Monolith’s menu to play a battle there if they wish.
  • If a player doesn’t have a Region unlocked the Region’s Monoliths cannot be selected to shortcut to them.

Blood Frenzy is a new feature of PvP which will apply to 2 Regions daily, making the battles harder but giving increased rewards.

• Blood Frenzy applies in 2 Regions each day
  • While it should mostly be different Regions each day but sometimes a Region may experience 2 days in a row
• Blood Frenzy will never apply in Central Spire
• Blood Frenzy changes Regions with Daily reset
• The Regions chosen will be the same for all players
• Blood Frenzy will increase the skill points of opponent teams by 50%
• Winning battles in a Blood Frenzy Region will give double Victory Points (+100% bonus), and double Silver Marks if the Blood Frenzy Region has the Region Bonus active in it.
• Blood Frenzy Regions will be easy to identify on the PvP World Map by the Red Crystals that will appear beside the Region’s name when it is affected.

We have made a few improvements to PvP

• Players can now view the Region Bonus tracker from the Quick Battle menu. So they no longer need to return to the Region Menu to see their current progress for the Region Bonus.
• When players earn the Silver Marks from a Region Bonus they will see an animation popup celebrating this as they return to the Quick Battle menu (in case they missed seeing the Silver Marks in the Victory menu).
• PvP Pets in the PvP Shop will now sort Silver Marks Pets before Gold Mark Pets in the list.

We have 2 new Achievements for this update:

• A Monumental Achievement: Win a Monolith Battle.
• Put me on a Pedestal: Complete all Battles in a Monolith.

Note: The new achievements will become available for Xbox players later on

• We have added a new Heroic Gem for a future Campaign
• We have added a help button to the Event Headstart offer menu so players can view the Shiny Troop’s card before the troop releases.
• We have made some improvements to the navigation of the World Map.
• We have updated the Kingdom Slayer Weapon offer to match the new visual style of the game.
• In shop menus players can now tap on the resource in the top right corner to view the resources popup help.
• We have added some darkness behind the locks on the Path Menu, to help make it easier to see what rewards are locked and cannot be collected.
• We have adjusted all the Buttons in the Top Left corners in menus so they should be consistent in size
• We have adjusted the Headings of each menu so they should be consistent in size.
• We have updated all the feature lock banners to match the Underworld locked message.
• We have set up the XP, Gold, and Soul boosters so they appear the same size and in the same location on the World Map.

• We have made additional improvements to PvP to reduce the lag that some players are experiencing.
  • This is in addition to the server improvements we have made after the release of the 7.3 Update.
• We fixed an issue where some players on Xbox and PlayStation were not receiving their purchases correctly.
• We have fixed an issue where Ironhawk and Queen of Sin would cause the game to lock at the end of battle.
• We have fixed an assortment of visual issues in the UI
  • This includes a fix to the Epic Trials button in the Games menu so that it correctly takes you to the current Kingdom Epic Trials screen.
• We have fixed an assortment of smaller issues.

• On the world map if you select Games > Epic Trials and then play a Trial battle, collect your rewards and then select to close the Trials menu, it causes the game to soft lock

[Stratelier]

@Jeto

On the world map if you select Games > Epic Trials and then play a Trial battle, collect your rewards and then select to close the Trials menu, it causes the game to soft lock

Oof. How was this not a release blocker?

[TheIdleOne]

@Jeto

The Valhawk will be available as a troop from the Vault after weekly reset.

Good to know, thanks.

@Jeto

Valhawk can be defeated up to 3 times per day.

• It will not count to the daily limit if the Valhawk runs away or the player loses the battle.

Wasn’t expecting that. That’s nice

@Jeto

We have fixed an issue where Ironhawk and Queen of Sin would cause the game to lock at the end of battle.

That’s actually good.

Looks fine for an update, just gotta wait for 7.5 for things in 7.4 to make more of a difference.

[sylverscale]

Meh.

Fix PvP scoring.

We don’t need additions to a broken mode.

[Vold]

I’ll play PvP long enough to get the 2 new achievements, then go back to ignoring the game mode entirely.

[Vorlon]

Monolith battles should count for the 5 battles needed to get silver marks.

[MattDB87]

Will the achievements automatically unlock if I’ve already done the 5 monolith battles? When the achievements become available. @Kafka

[Schaafy]

While i like this update from the standpoint of individuals can complete their needed battles each week a little faster, this update completely throws out the notion of PvP being competitive. It literally reads as “instead of fixing the issues with scoring, we are going to make it impossible to compare just how worse off higher level players are.” The leaderboards may as well not exist, since they do basically nothing for comparing progress.

This update would be great if it wasn’t for the fact that many rewards depend on placements, and those that were at a disadvantage due to being higher leveled, are STILL at a disadvantage. PvP would be a much better game mode if all rewards were based on an individuals progress, rather than comparing it to others.

Also, ive done a good few battles at this point, and the Valhawk sure seems to be closer to 10% than the stated 20%. Ive done 19 battles and have seen 2, when the expected rate would be 3-4. Just one data point, so i could just be unlucky, but if others can keep an eye out to determine if there was possibly a typo in the update post or if the wrong rate was implemented. Found the 3rd on battle 22, so my ~14% encounter rate is well within a reasonable amount of the stated 20%. Still good to keep tabs on it though.

[Kafka]

Hey folks!

I’m making a correction to the patch notes:

Valhawk will be available from The Vault at Tuesday daily reset - not Monday.
We have a public holiday here on Monday so we want to make sure we are releasing the new Troop into collections on the day the team is available.

Queen of Wands will also be released to Cedric’s reward table in the Vault on Tuesday daily reset.

PVP Info

We are currently testing and balancing changes to the following 2 parts of PVP:

• Improving base Victory Points when players who are level 1,500+ select an opponent
• Improving accuracy of PVP defense teams - currently, the defense teams you’re fighting against are often not really what the opponent had set.

We are currently testing these changes and are aiming to release them sometime next week.
We’ll provide details when they’re finalised and ready for release.

[Ilmarien]

@Schaafy

Also, ive done a good few battles at this point, and the Valhawk sure seems to be closer to 10% than the stated 20%. Ive done 19 battles and have seen 2, when the expected rate would be 3-4. Just one data point, so i could just be unlucky, but if others can keep an eye out to determine if there was possibly a typo in the update post or if the wrong rate was implemented.

Did 8 battles just before this post and got the 3 valhawks. Seems the usual GoW RNG they love to use.

Regarding the update:
I will continue to battle on Central Spire;
I will ignore Blood Frenzy;
I will ignore monolith battles;
I will ignore the buffs;
I will ignore the new achievements;
I will keep fighting just to get the last reward just for the book.

Sorry. Creating and releasing new contents without fixing old problems seems like masking the issue with the image of a carrot, while trying to hide the stick.

[Schaafy]

doing battles in blood frenzy area doubles VP gain, so especially if its a color restriction, its worth it to do fights there to halve the time to get to 6500

[Lucien]

the buff auto activates…

is this intentional?

[gow]

@Kafka Since you appear to be on, any update on GWs?

[Kafka]

No news sorry

[Ilmarien]

I completely understand that and agree that it shortens the time. But since the team is not saved one week to other, there are lots of issues not handled properly and some sense of anarchism, I prefer stand against it.

[redmist]

Do you think they want you to log out? It’s just a hook.
How likely are you to need the buff, though?

[Redcap]

We can’t choose our defenders or use quick slots to quickly change attack teams. Is this something that will get fixed?

[Kafka]

@Lucien

the buff auto activates…

…

is this intentional?

Yes, only play those battles when you want to activate the buff!

@Redcap

We can’t choose our defenders or use quick slots to quickly change attack teams. Is this something that will get fixed?

Your defense team is your attack team for the region.
We plan to add a way to more easily test your defense teams in future.
We also have a request logged for making selecting your attack team each week a better experience, but I don’t have any confirmation/details yet.

[Lucien]

thank you for the quick reply

[AMT]

@Kafka

No news sorry

Then how about removing this so players stop being confused/wondering?