Update 26.5 Overview

Your guide to the gameplay changes in 26.5

Obligatory Legal Notice: As part of the Kabam Creator Program I was given access to a preview build of the update before it went live which is where the below images were taken.

Rei Note: The pictures shown were obtained from an early build, not indicative of the release version, and subject to change. Basically if they tweak the Stardust numbers don’t blame me, I’m just the messenger.

Introduction

Welcome to 26.5 – home of Tier 16, a brand new resource with a unique mechanic, extended ascension lines, another community event, a login calendar, and a content pass (basically Kabam went “how many things can we cram in one update?”) Let’s get started.

Tier 16

The main feature of this update is the introduction of Tier 16. We have a total of 43 new blueprints – 36 for the base crafting lines, 6 from the new dungeon chest and 1 new Mundra blueprint. Your heroes need to be level 40 to be able to equip the new tier¹.

At the moment there are no new enchants, however this is to be expected – if there are enchants being added with a tier they tend to come a couple of updates after the tier itself is launched.

Let’s take a look at a tier 16 item:

The primary worker level for Tier 16 is 39 and we’re still using a 3 worker setup for them. Advanced Research is also back again for Tier 16 (the above craft time is without advanced research) for helping cut down those times and surcharge costs.

We have a brand new resource as you can see there next to Ether – the new resource is called Stardust. I’ll cover that more in a moment as it has a unique way of being obtained. We also have new timewarped components as well² which can be made only in the new dungeon.

Of note is that none of the Tier 16 baseline blueprints require Essence. Perhaps Kabam felt that Stardust was enough of a limiter by itself so as to not also include the spooky ghost resource as well, or maybe it’ll come back for the new series of LCoG prints.

Let’s look at the milestones now:

It’s pretty much business as usual. Tier 16 does have starforged milestones as well, just not visible here on accounts of me not having fully unlocked the chest on the preview build. At only 30 crafts to master it shouldn’t take long to master which is cool.

Ascension costs have only had a minor increase like we saw with Tier 15, going to 140 per milestone instead of 130. Most of the blueprints have a reduce stardust cost node in their ascension track (and speaking of tracks, the ascension track for most lines was extended.)

That is a significant jump in terms of gold value. The Tier 15 Clothes for reference has a baseline value of 17.5m and this value is before any mastery or starforging milestones. Basically going to be drowning in gold with this tier if you weren’t already.

Every blueprint costs 300 research scrolls to unlock. Given that we also have a Mundra item as well it’ll cost you (presuming you own all paid workers, if not it’ll be less) 11,100 research scrolls to unlock the whole tier.

Rush and Surcharge Costs

And taking a quick look at the energy costs for an average Tier 16 item (these numbers are shown without advanced research applied to them):

Rei Note: If you’re thinking “that’s a funny looking Worldshaper Robe” it’s cause these shots were taken after I had my progress reset to test something and I unlocked different blueprints the second time round.

Mundra Blueprint

This tier’s Mundra blueprint is a Spear which has 5% critical hit chance. Try to hold back your excitement please:

Precrafts

There are no precrafts used for any of the Tier 16 baseline blueprints, same as it was with Tier 15. Let us hope this continues to be the case for all new tier launches.

Advanced Research

Because we just can’t get enough of it Kabam have brought back Advanced Research again. Much like with Tier 15 it’s just the one node again to update your current advanced research (well, presuming you already have it at Tier 15) to the new tier and as usual requires you to own a blueprint from the item line you want to upgrade:

As with Tier 15 the research scroll cost is incredibly low – this is to account for newer players pushing their way up who haven’t had chance to farm a load of scrolls between tiers.

To unlock the node for each line (presuming you own all workers and have already unlocked the Tier 15 node) you’ll be looking at:

2,700 Research Scrolls
180G Gold

To get all lines to benefit from advanced research. Adding on the scroll cost for unlocking the blueprints you’ll need 13,800 research scrolls if not gemming any of the advanced research nodes.

Rei Note: Significantly cheaper than I had expected. Still no sign of a new gold sink :-/

Stardust

Stardust is a brand new resource that is used by all Tier 16 blueprints and has a handful of features that makes it standout compared to other resources:

1. There is no worker or building for it (this update only adds new levels to the Emerald Inn and Tavern.)
2. You can only have 1 bin for it.
3. It does not regenerate the same way as other resources do.
4. The Dragon’s Hoard does not store Stardust.

To purchase the Stardust Bin you first must own a Tier 16 blueprint – it won’t appear in your bin menu until you do. Once you’ve done that it appears at the end initially and is fairly cheap to purchase:

Placing it will then trigger the tutorial for how Stardust works:

And if we tap on the Stardust bin we can view the fancy display it has:

Rei Note: As mentioned at the start of the guide but I’ll state it again just so we’re uber clear these numbers may not be final. They were already adjusted once on the beta.

We can see here the maximum capacity of the bin, how much stardust is waiting to be processed and at what speed it will be processed. Tapping on Fill Bin will bring up the menu for throwing in components for conversion. Keep in mind any component is valid, including sigils:

A component’s stardust value is (without anything else modifying it) the same as its tier – so Ectoplasm for example from Haunted Castle is worth 9 stardust, Iron Pine Cones from Howling Woods are worth 1 stardust and so on so forth.

Once you tap on a component you’ll be asked how many you wish to sacrifice to Ra grind down into stardust and how much you’ll gain in return:

You can have multiple component types being ground into stardust at the same time it’s all just 1 big bar you fill however you see fit.

It’ll also pop up a little “refill” sign above it when it has finished grinding the components you put in

The stardust bin can be upgraded to improve capacity and its conversion stats, albeit these are kinda slow upgrades. For example if we look at going from level 1 to level 2:

You can see it’s a 15 hour, 45 minute upgrade timer which is quite the wait compared to other resource bins, you may wish to consider parting with a few gems to rush it after getting your 5 guild helps. Here are some examples of its conversion stats at higher levels (lvl 6, 11, 21, 25) just again remember these may have changed for live:

Rei Note: Personally I intend to power it with components from the new quest zone instead of just having them overflow like jungle ones. They give the most points (tied with a T16 timewarped component) and I won’t exactly be short of them with quest tree talents.

Stardust Perks

There a couple of other things that can help you with managing stardust. The first is the addition of 2 new guild perks:

Which max out at these levels:

To max out the new perks you will need a level 200 guild and 24,000 renown.

There is also a new node on the crafting talent tree as well which can help with stardust:

Meteor Zone

Rei Note: alternative title – how can we recycle ideas that never made it for Void Dimension.

Meteor Zone is the new questing area that comes with Tier 16 and requires you to be merchant level 68 to unlock:

Double the gold cost of jungle, though only a small increase in gem cost. I had expected 20-25G so 30G was above expectations. Look forward to Tier 17 requiring 60G. :D

The barriers for Meteor Zone are Dark, Light, and Earth³ and Dark for the boss itself:

In terms of loot drops we’re looking at:

• Easy – T15
• Medium – T15
• Hard – T15 to T16 (primarily T15)
• Extreme – T15 to T16 (equal split)

Remember that Polonia can buff these drop odds. She will for example allow T16 to drop even on Easy, and on Extreme she should in theory (not had a huge amount of test data but from what I saw) prevent T15 from dropping at all.

On a Polonia-related sidenote: her stealing ability was not upgraded this tier because Kabam hates her⁴.

Timewarped Components

Timewarped components are back once more for Tier 16 (if you’re new to the mechanic you can read about it in our Tier 15 guide.) Aside from the 6 from last tier we also have 3 new ones:

You can timewarp your jungle components inside Meteor Zone as well so you don’t need to worry about backtracking if you’re crafting Tier 15 stuff still etc etc.

Emerald Inn & Tavern

The Emerald Inn and the Tavern have had some extra levels added to them to support Meteor Zone:

Ascension Track Extension

The ascension track for most item lines (stones & enchants were not extended, presumably due to being no new blueprints for them. Familiars wasn’t either which was a bit weird, that may be fixed for live if it was a bug though) has been extended by a little bit.

Kabam like to future-proof when extending the tracks so they don’t have to touch them again for a while. Let’s take a look at the one for sword (cause it’s basically copy/paste across the lines, slightly shorter for premium ones):

The missing string for Stardust should hopefully be working on live, if not I imagine a patch shortly after will correct it.

Rei Note: I’m hoping that x1.02 is a typo (I did raise it during the beta) cause otherwise that’s a pretty ick reward for 280 stars

Merchants vs Makers

Merchants vs Makers is the next community event, running from the 29th May to the 4th June:

Much like the Pirate vs Ninja event there are 2 blueprints on offer – whichever team wins decides which blueprint will be awarded.

If the Makers win the blueprint that’ll be awarded is the Maker’s Hammer:

Whereas if the Merchants win the blueprint that’ll be awarded is the Audit Protector:

Earning points for either team is pretty straightforward:

It’ll be fun to see who wins at least.

Rei Note: I feel like they may have ran out of ideas after designing the Makers goals given how few Merchants got :P. They could have added points for say surcharging, gold value of items, etc etc. Either way both reward prints are ick – very surprised they are not dual-stat.

Tiers of Progression

This update also comes with a new login calendar which starts on the 21st May and runs until the 4th June. Whilst I didn’t have a chance to see all of the days (as it wasn’t started on the beta server until near the end) we can at least look at the general overview for it:

Tierful Journey Content Pass

What would an update be if it was lacking a content pass⁵? :D

The Tierful Journey Content Pass runs from 28th May until the 11th June. This one is an antique pass – that means it contains no new blueprints and is priced slightly cheaper at 1,000 gems instead of the standard 1,500.

This is the reward track – though keep in mind some of these rewards will be replaced with blueprints if you’re missing them, I just happen to own all the ones that are on this track:

And here’s the tasks:

Miscellaneous Changes

• Kaipo got a signficant permanent decrease to his price, cementing his place as the least useful paid worker⁶.
• They fixed the ascension track bug where instead of saying increased resource regen it was using the item line instead (this was purely cosmetic, it still functioned as intended and boosted resource regen.)

And that about covers it. Either stick around for the quest data in the appendix or go forth and explore the meteor zone for tier 16!

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Appendix: Quest & Hero Stuff

Rei Note: This section is going to cover the breakpoints for Meteor Zone and Coralcog, some of the blueprints from the new chest, the new aura and familiar, and thoughts on the area. If you don’t care much about heroes/nerd stuff there’s nothing else for you to see, go get prepping for launch :D.

Meteor Zone Breakpoints

So let’s talk Meteor Zone. Let’s start with the breakpoints and we’ll go from there:

Whilst we can see the jump in stats has not factored in starforge prints (as in, this stuff can be cleared without them) the defence cap increase for extreme is a bit on the lower side – we saw a much bigger jump when going from Elysium to Jungle than we do here going from Jungle to Meteor.

Given that there’s also the prospect of new enchants I would have expected the defence cap to be increased by at least the same amount as last time, rather than a smaller jump just after we got a power spike and potentially have another on the horizon.

Still, with that being said, the increase to attack and aoe should hopefully cause some fun. Huge minibosses especially will be real monsters this tier and could easily tear through a team that decided defence was optional.

Taking a look now at the boss:

The boss is a lot more promising there with those stats, that’s what I like to see. However I will note that I did beat it first try on the beta on Extreme with Ashley + 3 Praetorian so didn’t have to disable the barrier or use boosters etc, and that’s without starforged shields/equipment that I have on live.

If and that’s a big if we do get new enchants this tier we know the barrier strengths should be adjusted like they were during Elysium which would give them an opportunity to retune these quests but I accept that’s a lot of wishful thinking.

Chest Blueprints

The dungeon chest is very exciting if you’re a fan of spellknights⁷ this tier. Of the 6 blueprints in the chest spellknights are able to use 4 of them and of those 4, these are the 2 to watch out for:

The Fragment of Apocal will be their highest damage weapon for pretty much the entire tier and possibly the next one as well depending on stat creep. I still have Gravity Controllers on a few of mine so this’ll be a nice jump.

We will never say no to a dungeon chest spell on Spellknights when we’re looking to output maximum pew pew and the Ouroboros affinity is just icing on the cake for making it awesome. Never did get round to replacing most of my Sealed Hurricanes either so really looking forward to the precursor.

Of course if you do use either (or both) of these do make sure you compensate elsewhere for the lack of a secondary stat – either making sure you have a good defensive skill⁸ or running a full set of defensive-based enchants.

Familiar & Aurasong

Moving onto the tier 16 baseline familiar and aura now, starting with the familiar:

Going by those stats the best familiar is still going to be the Avatar from Tier 14. Whilst Xzyurnip has 30 more base hp which is pretty cool that 10% evasion won’t really do anything for most champions compared to the defence that Avatar gives, more so when we factor in Extreme’s 20% penalty. Now of course if you don’t run Extreme then go for it, put it on the evasion champs if you want a change up.

As for the aura:

Yeah the Aura Reactor ain’t exactly winning many prizes either, as even in a full dedicated evasion team that would mean losing the damage and defence buffs from Inspiration so you’d have to be damned certain that extra +5 per turn would make the difference (spoiler: it probably won’t.)

Aurasong’s issue is that Aura of Inspiration is just too damned good, like the only thing that’ll probably beat it is a higher tier version offering the same kind of statline boosts. For Aura Reactor to be viable we’d need to see like triple? or so of those stats that it has at minimum.

Coralcog Breakpoints

This update also adds a new difficulty to LCoG (well, now known as Coralcog) which is the source for the new component used by Pearlescent blueprints.

Whilst I did not have a chance to test out the drops there I do have the stats and breakpoints for the new difficulty:

This shouldn’t feel too much harder than the currently existing difficulty 12 – 5 heroes always makes things a nicer time. Still no barriers or anything, and yes the Artifact Takers talent was updated so you can get Precious Pearls as drops from the quests (basically a mandatory talent for Coralcog in my opinion, at least for the first few times the event is run.)

And I think that’s everything covered. Any further questions please feel free to join our discord and ask me there.

1. watch as Tier 17 requires seeds of merit to use
2. hey at least it’s not sigils
3. *sad geomancer noises*
4. for legal reasons that part is a joke. It’s because she demanded a payrise
5. a welcome bloody relief is what it’d be
6. sad Yuki noises detected
7. like all cool people are
8. I mean you should have a defensive skill anyway to be honest even if you used neither of these