Unfortunate since many of have been waiting now for a half hour. Usually the stream dates are posted ahead of time but wasn’t today so we assumed the usual 6:30 PDT.
Updates streaming schedule. I’ll be live 7 30 PDT today due to my mistake with time zones. The schedule wasn’t updated due to holidays, and then my error with daylight savings changing over. The stream is intended to stay at 6 30 PM PDT.
Also, heads up that there is a break on streams until the 26th.
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Also of potential interest to the forums, is that Salty is tentatively (subject to timing changes) hosting a dev Q&A on the 28th (US) / 29th (AUS) of April, during what would be the regularly scheduled PQ stream for the week.
Talking points for the stream should be announced around the time of the Hell Gate faction preview stream, assuming the dev Q&A stream is not pushed back.
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Our new streaming schedule is here!
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Quick update
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5.5 Preview Stream Summary
May 3, 2021
Heroic Gems
- New gameplay system being added to the game.
- Heroic gems are a new type of gem that can be coded with multiple special effects.
- Heroic gems can be coded and changed to match specific themes, such as Campaigns.
- Multiple heroic gem types can be in play at the same time.
- The only Heroic Gem that will be in play at 5.5 launch is Uber Doomskulls .
- Lycanthropy Heroic Gems will be featured in Campaign 5.
- When a Heroic Gem type is activated for an event/campaign, they will appear in all game modes (Yes, this includes Guild Wars; devs consider this to be fair as all guild equally experience Uber Doomskulls during Guild Wars).
- Heroic Gem natural spawn rates can (and will be) manually adjustable by the devs (the 1/20 previously announced rate is inaccurate).
Uber Doomskulls
- Is a Heroic Gem type.
- Will not always be active in every event. (can be toggled on/off by devs)
- +10 damage per doomskull.
- Explodes a 5 by 5 cross shape when matched.
- Salty teases potential future troops that create these.
Campaign Task Rerolls
*A Campaign Task can be rerolled once.
*There is NO COST for rerolling a task.
*Stars are NOT lost when rerolling a task.
*Rerolled task may be harder or easier (if harder, may be slightly longer to complete as a consequence of rerolling); tied to difficulty level of the Campaign week.
*Rerolled task may be of a type that are generally not in a given difficulty tier (such as color slayer tasks as Gold tasks).
General Bug Fixes
*Improved Elite+ Tier rewards past 1,000 stars in a Campaign (not shown on stream).
*Lycanthropy/Deathmark bug has been fixed.
As the Lycanthropy bug is fixed, Lycanthropy will be added back onto Essence of Evil when 5.5 launches.
Misc
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There was a long discussion and theorycrafting with Salty and Ozball about how ways a tribute timer could technically be added into the game, but ultimately settle on a long-term broad solution being not feasible (no matter the solution, there are significant issues with that solution and a significant portion of the player base would dislike the implementation). Mobile notifications are as good as it is going to get on this.
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Medals and linking to individual teams were brought up again and were discussed. The current implementation of medals in the game does not allow this. The entire medal system would need to be reworked to enable individual team linking. This would be a major undertaking, and therefore not going to happen until the medal system undergoes a major rework to warrant the significant amount of development time needed for this. Do not expect this rework (if it happens at all, ever) to happen for a very long time.
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No plans to upgrade Medals of Aranea in the near to mid-term future.
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There was a discussion about Guild Leaderboards, led by @NerdieBirdie . Please see their post below this one for a summary of the discussion. Salty is open to the idea.
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Also, Guild leaderboards for World Events was discussed - Salty didn’t recall that it was mentioned in the 4.8 patch notes at first, but after a reminder, noted that the system is apparently in place to run Guild leaderboards in WEs and she would mention to the team that Guild events were being asked for.
Let me know if I got something wrong here 
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I don’t believe so. If I remember right, from being part of the 4.8 public beta test team, that there were a whole bunch on features for World Events that were coded onto beta/staging and either did not make it off of beta (off the top of my head, Artifacts giving players special effects at certain tiers) or were disabled after Campaign 1 (bosses in World Events having bonus traits).
Ozball was right. The functionality is likely there, but is mostly disabled at the moment for any number of reasons.
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I believe the functionality is there - just wanted to touch on the Guild leaderboard since it was specifically mentioned in the patch notes for 4.8, as opposed to the boss traits and such.
I’ve been wondering whether they planned to use Guild leaderboards at any point for WEs - appears it was either forgotten or scrapped as a concept after the patch went live. I’m glad to hear that Salty is going to mention it to the team though, love me some Guild leaderboards!
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The concept probably needed more time in the oven. As 4.8 was the foundational patch for 5.0 to happen, I sometimes also wonder if the devs got a bit gunshy with their ambitions regarding World Events and Campaigns and we ended up a much simpler version of World Events than was originally designed.
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Better not be troops like in the elite pass.
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If they add troops to elite plus that are not in elite that would push me to not buy the pass at all. If they want to give elite plus more copies of Tarot card so they don’t have to use Vault keys to get the other 5 that would be fine for the additional $15 USD.
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It was available one time for about 20 minutes.
The Guild Leaderboard had Orbs as prizes, including the Orb of Power. I’m pretty sure AWRyan also made a topic as well.
Well, I doubt they wanted to give away 30 Orb of Powers so they hotfixed it to an individual competition. Here we are today.
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@devs, please do this for Lycanthropy as a whole, too.
During Halloween? Yay! All the time? Boo 
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To mix it up, change the Troop type that you get turned into, rather than just always being Beasts.
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Anyone remember if they fixed Haunted Guardian’s spell for speeds greater than or equal to 3x? Because this uber doomskull looks to be the same shape. I forget if this was a mobile-only problem though.
Too late, there’s already several troops pending that create Lycanthrophy gems at the start of their turn as their main gimmick. Lycanthrophy is around to stay, even if it causes half of the players to quit.
So, everyone aboard the book defense train. To do anything else will put you at a disadvantage.
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How will this lycanthropy gem work/function exactly? Matching them will transform a random troop into a beast or…?
Not confirmed yet, but currently looks like the plan is when those gems are matched, they will inflict lycantrophy on a random enemy. And from the dev Q&A, sounds like these gems will match with other purple gems, so similar to how skulls and doomskulls match with each other.
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