Update 14.3 Overview

Your guide to the gameplay changes in 14.3

ST Disclaimer: As part of the Kabam Creator Program we were given the chance to access a preview build of the update before it went live which is where the below images and information was obtained.

STC Disclaimer: With this being the first new classes in 4 years there’s going to be a lot of parts that need updating. The Best-in-Slot page is already updated and there’s Neri’s new gear filter tool to help you, we’ll be working on the rest as time allows.

Introduction

This article covers the features and changes that 14.3 has brought to the game. We’ve got 3 new hero classes (the first new classes since 2019), a new difficulty for the Tower of Titans as well as rewards for placing in events, a longer DI reward track and more. Let’s get started!

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New Hero Classes

The big headline feature for 14.3 is the introduction of 3 new hero classes which fill in the elemental gaps that each type had (so a Dark fighter, a Light rogue and an Air spellcaster.) These heroes are unlocked at merchant level 58 and cost 25,000,000 gold or 1,000 gems (750 gems for the Chronomancer) to hire.

Dark Knight

The Dark Knight has a fair amount of flexibility with their gear in regards to making themselves either more offensive or defensive, depending how you want to build them.

Below are the 4 ranks of their innate, after which we’ll explain how they work:

When in battle if the Dark Knight’s attack drops the enemy to below 10% of their health (or they hit the enemy when the enemy is below 10% health) they will instantly slay them which is pretty cool.

If they survive a quest they will gain the effect of a random seed on one of their stats. This counts towards the normal seed cap (i.e. it doesn’t trigger more than 40 times on a stat) and you need to use blossoms to go above 40 like you do with other heroes.

Use Cases

• The harder the content the better the value you’ll get from the execute. Against Ascension Crab Extreme for example it’ll save you having to do 700k damage.
• If you want a red-type that woke up and chose violence.
• Reliving an edgy phase.

Velite

The Velite is an alternative take on the evasion tank role. You’ll notice they have no weapon slot – that’s because their innate grants them attack equal to the defence value of their equipped shield.

Below are the 4 ranks of their innate:

To clarify the innate wording they boost not only the defence value of shields but also the health and attack values (if the shield has one.)

Velites also have a higher than normal threat level for a Rogue (60 threat) making them a reasonable tank option if you wanted something more crit/evasion based¹.

Use Cases

• You want a Light-type but don’t feel like a Lord or Bishop (and Velites are cooler anyway.)
• Want a Rogue tank can put out pretty nice numbers whilst still surviving.
• Like to see heroes in awesome poses:

Chronomancer

Cher famously sung about her wish to turn back time and the Chronomancer is here to deliver, giving you another try if luck wasn’t quite on your side the first time in a quest.

Below are the 4 ranks of their innate:

Should your party get wiped out you get an immediate second attempt if a Chronomancer is in there. This second try can potentially change a defeat into a victory, as shown in this video:

Note: If you fail the first quest with a Chronomancer it’s possible the enemy becomes a miniboss in the rematch. Also works the other way round – it’s possible for a miniboss to become a normal enemy instead.

Use Cases

• You don’t have complete faith in the full green smiley face prediction.
• Smiley faces are all leaning towards yellow/orange.
• Insurance policy for a flash quest.

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Event Trophies

Alongside the temporary title and portrait badges players get when their guild places in the top 10 for Lost City of Gold/King’s Caprice/Dragon Invasion they will also get a permanent trophy to show off their mighty deeds.

The trophies come in 3 colours (bronze, silver, gold) and start at level 1. Although you can only own one copy of a trophy every time you would qualify for a duplicate your current trophy will level up, granting more prestige. It also gets a shinier effect at levels 6, 11 and 16.

Here is a picture showing what each stage of the new trophies looks like:

Note: Tower of Titans will also grant a trophy (as you can see in the top left in the picture) but that trophy is not based on placing in the top 10. Instead, it requires you to clear the Tower of Terror.

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Tower of Terror

When Epsilon Tower was released the original plan was for elemental barriers to be implemented there after the first month, though this was scrapped as it turned out the tower was proving more punishing than intended (and you didn’t have a choice in what difficulty you faced.)

Now that players are free to pick the difficulty of their tower 14.3 introduces the latest difficulty: Terror². This tower packs some fun mechanics:

• All minibosses have an elemental barrier which will randomly change for each event (keeps it fresh.)
• All minibosses have 2 modifiers.
• It’s treated as an Extreme quest (so there’s a 20% evasion penalty in play.)
• All monsters in Terror only receive 5% damage from your attacks, though the health of the enemies is much lower than normal.

In return though should you be able to defeat the tower you get:

• A very fancy trophy that levels up each time you clear it.
• A title.
• A talent point for the very first time you clear it.
• The best loot table that currently exists in the entire game.

Rei Note: I recorded a video of my first trip to the tower (no prep work or anything, this was literally load into the preview build and off I went) which you can see below. You may wish to use the speed control if I’m talking too fast:

We realise of course claiming it’s the best loot area in the game is going to require some proof. Whilst the patch notes mentioned that T13 is the only tier that drops in Terror they didn’t mention some of the other stuff that can drop. Here’s some examples:

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Super Achievements

There are 5 new “super” achievements that you can now attempt. Each one you complete will give you an extra talent point to spend (these do not increase the cost of your next point they are entirely bonus/free ones.)

• Become a Royal Merchant
• Complete the Tower of Terror
• Master 750 blueprints³
• Reach a Collection Score of 50,000 ⁴
• Reach level 99 with all three pets.

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New Quest Tree Talent

The Questing tree got a new talent called Stones Left Unturned – this disables runestones and moonstones dropping from quests in return for increased odds for rewards such as equipment and keys to drop. It can be found next to the On The Edge talent and requires 2 points in connected nodes to access (On The Edge was also changed to only require 2 points in connected nodes now instead of 3.)

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Dragon Invasion Extension

Dragon Invasion has had 3 extra milestones added to the reward track, giving guilds a chance to earn even more rewards.

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Balance Changes

• The Legendary Craftsman talent has been nerfed from a 3x multiplier to a 2x one. If you’ve been hanging around on our discord you’ll have seen how many epics/legendries this was printing so this isn’t entirely unexpected.

• “Large” and “Absolute Unit” modifiers in Tower of Titans were nerfed as it was possible to have a boss that would AoE attack 100% of the time. This would potentially be unfun in Tower of Terror.
• The fusion recipe for blossoms was adjusted to use a tier 6+ superior item now (instead of a tier 5+ epic) and requires 20 seeds to fuse 2 of them. Basically they’re faster and cheaper to create now.

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Miscellaneous Stuff

• They fixed the pure white monster glitch that could occur in tower (which explains why we didn’t see any in the video.)
• You should be able to reliably see flawless crafts again now with Legendary Craftsmanship (they had nearly vanished before.)
• They got rid of the dark pig 🙁

And that about covers it. Go forth, recruit new heroes and have fun in the Tower of Terror! Or continue reading if you want to see some quest data, up to you :P.

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Appendix: Quest Data

Rei Note: I did a lot of questing on the preview build to test out the new Stones Left Unturned talent.

I did a set of 500 Void Dimension runs whilst testing out the new Stones Left Unturned talent when paired with the LoadsaLoot™ setup (i.e. I took all the loot boosting talents):

This is it compared against 500 runs without the new talent but with all the other loot boosting ones.

Removing stones from the drop table lead to a noticeable increase in the chest drop rate and a minor buff to the key drop chance. There was also a marked increase in the amount of equipment being dropped as well. Whilst I don’t think we’re quite on The Forbidden One™ levels this build should do pretty well in Lost City of Gold⁵/

Although the visual display for the barrier health wasn’t working correctly in the preview build (as in you couldn’t see the health of the barrier) I was able to get a list from Kabam which shows the barrier strength for each tower miniboss:

1. hoping that one day they get an epic skill similar to the one for Grandmaster but for shield boosting.
2. think we all guessed wrong there on the name.
3. RIP me (Rei)
4. RIP me again
5. enjoy the t9/t10 spam in your inventory