Update 5.1 Overview

A guide to the gameplay changes in 5.1

Author note: As part of the Content Creator program I was given the chance to preview the update before it went live, which is where all the pictures and video footage you see were taken.

This article covers all the gameplay stuff 5.1 has added to the game. Use the table of contents to skip to whatever you’re most interested in or settle down for a read.

Table of Contents

Tier 10

The main headline feature of this update is of course the addition of tier 10 items. There are 32 new blueprints – 26 baseline and 6 from the new dungeon (no new elements/spirits, this was to be expected though.) No new resource bins/buildings are required either, they all require a material from the new dungeon and then either a material from a previous dungeon or a precraft (fortunately there are few precrafts for this tier.)

Let’s take a look at one of the items:

So the biggest change for this tier is that the blueprints now require 3 workers. Whilst this does mean you will need your city to be more well-rounded, it also means they craft pretty quickly – the above picture is taken without the craft reduction milestone for example. We are looking at some quite heavy rare resource requirements so upgrading your rare resource bins should become a priority.

Milestones are the usual affair – nothing special to report on. The tier 9 items have had their 3^rd milestone replaced with unlocking their tier 10 version and so the value increase milestone was moved to the 4^th spot. This does mean the tier 9 items are harder to craft – they will have lost one of their resource reductions.

It costs 45 shards per level of ascension for the new items. Again nothing particularly new to see.

Given the costs of the materials involved you would hope that the t10 items would be valuable. I can assure you Kabam definitely delivered on that front:

All of those are without their 1.25x milestone by the way.

Of course with great power comes great responsibility value there has to be a price paid somewhere. In the case of tier 10 it comes in 2 places:

They have incredibly high rush costs and surcharge costs – we’re way beyond the possibilities of 1 talking like you could with tier 9. It should be kept in mind that with their 1.25x milestone some tier 10 items will be worth more than their surcharged tier 9 counterpart without having to be surcharged themselves.

As for which tier 10’s are the best to craft – this is one of those awkward questions because it all comes to you, your ascensions, your resource regeneration rates etc. It has been mentioned before how to determine your BiS crafting options, you can find more on that here. Best generic advice I can give is the dagger cause it doesn’t use rare resources and any item which can be ascended to have no secondary component cost.

Tier 10 tl;dr

Requires level 55 to view on market
45 (or 60 in some cases) research scrolls to unlock an item, 45 ascension shards to ascend
Hero level 29 required to equip
Worth a fantastic amount of gold
Super high energy requirements to rush/surcharge

Sunken Temple

Sunken temple is the new place in town which all your heroes should check out:

Fantastic aquatic training
Has all the new crafting materials
Drops tier 9 and 10 items
Raises questions such as “how are they breathing down here?”

Breakpoints

Let’s just skip to the main reason people are here. Whilst I wasn’t able to gather much boss data due to A) its respawn timer and B) I’m one person, I was able to figure out the defence breakpoints for the main dungeon itself thanks to the trusty aid of a spreadsheet and way too much time on my hands

	Easy	Medium	Hard
Enemy HP	250,000	350,000	450,000
50% Def	5,900	6,300	6,600
70% Def	11,800	12,600	13,200
75% Def	35,400	37,800	39,600
Critical damage taken	150	180	218

I have the breakpoints for the boss on Hard, I do not currently have the data for Easy/Medium:

Hp: 900,000
50% Def: 7,200
70% Def: 14,400
75% Def: 43,200
Critical Damage Taken: 263

Travel/Rest Times

The rest timers in Sunken Temple can be pretty brutal. For Easy, you should just be running it with a full team of 4. Medium still also favours teams but you can duo/solo if you feel for inclined. For Hard, be damned certain your hero will clear if you go solo. In the build I tested it made more sense to do medium instead of hard, though that number could be tweaked.

Duo/Solo Potential

Can Sunken Temple Hard:
Be Duo’ed? Yes
Be Solo’ed? Yes
Can the boss be duo’ed? Yes. See the video.

Can the boss be solo’ed? Probably can with the right evasion hero, I just didn’t have one built for him.

Heavy consideration should be given to running Lizard on your heroes for solo/duo – due to the HP of the enemy we are starting to look at some prolonged fights which makes health regen important.

Drops

Drops T9 and T10 items on Medium/Hard, even without Polonia. I think it can drop T10 on Easy as well, wasn’t able to confirm that for sure though.

Sunken Chest has 6 new blueprints in it and costs 400 gems to gem unlock. These are some of the rewards I saw

Ascension Shard x 45
Champion Coins x 18
Chiseled Runestone x 3-5
Mega XP Booster x 1
Mega XP Drink x 1
Seeds x 6
Super Loot Bugle x 3
Super Power Booster x 3
Super XP Drink x 3

Seed Rework

For quite a long time now many players have requested changes for the seed system – a way to reseed their heroes if they had messed up what seeds they had used, or just an expansion to the system.

5.1 resolves this: rather than a hero/champion having a 40 seed total cap, they can now hold 120 seeds – 40 attack seeds, 40 vitality seeds and 40 defence seeds. Basically don’t need to worry about messing seeds up and it ends the eternal “what seeds should I use” question. You could argue this solution has removed a choice when making heroes, personally I would disagree seeming the previous “choice” was 40 vitality seeds.

Ascension Milestones Extended

One of the other big features of 5.1 is the expansion to the ascension trees. Whereas before the trees would end at around 27 stars for a quality modifier, they are now nearly doubled in length. Let’s take a look:

As you can see they got a lot bigger. With the exception of the elements and spirits trees, the rest all follow the same pattern:

30 Stars: 10m Gold, 10m Gold (RM)
33 stars: Common Resources Cost -10%
36 Stars: 75 Champion Coins. 75 Champion Coins (RM) (you can get 300 coins for each champion if you were to ascend every tree this far.)
39 Stars: Uncommon Resources Cost -10%
42 Stars: 150 Gems. 150 Gems (RM)
45 Stars: Surcharge value for (item type) +5%
48 Stars: 100m Gold. 100m Gold (RM)
51 Stars: Surcharge Value of All Items +1%

Elements and Spirits have a slight deviation due to +5% surcharge not making sense for them

45 Stars: Exotic Resources Cost -10%

These additions now give you a much bigger incentive to specialise – the reduction in resource cost is fantastic for tier 10 crafting along with the value modifier. In an ideal world you should aim to get all trees to the 45 star marker for the +5% and then 51 for the global +1%, but this is going to cost a lot of ascension shards – think of it as more of a long-term goal to work on (it is also currently impossible to fully ascend some lines, they’ve planned for future content.)

I would also still put priority on ascending each line to 15 stars first if you have not already as the 10% energy reduction is really noticeable now (I mean it was before, but now it’s uber noticeable.)

Guild Perks Extended

As Jeremie previously teased before 5.1 brings some new perks for guilds (I do not currently have the exact numbers in terms of their cost scaling but they should be added to the official sheet shortly after launch.)

The resource boosts are incredibly helpful for King’s Caprice and just pretty cool in general, from what has been tested I would consider the rare resource boost a priority pick of the new ones. The market ones are great but not an urgent purchase unless your entire guild really wants to save a little time when offering/requesting. Resource package stack has some super high costs/level requirements involved – great if your members are all sharing bounties/getting coins, not so great if bounties tend to be just done by 1 or 2 players as it’ll only really benefit them.

Lost City of Gold+

Didn’t actually get to test this so it’s as much of a surprise to you as it is to me. 😛 It sounds promising from the description and should liven the place up a lot – between this and the extension of the ascension trees we’re starting to see more content aimed towards the mid/late game players.

Starter Pack Blueprints

The 3 King offers outside of his initial one now all have a blueprint included in their packs as well. If you bought the packs previously you’ll be given the blueprints for free. If you chose not to purchase the packs (or weren’t offered them due to how the game works with dynamic packages) you can acquire the blueprints from the Antique Shop during King’s Caprice

The King’s Carriage

It’s a massive carriage you can stick in your front garden – awarded from being a Royal Merchant for 11 months.

King’s Caprice Changes

Apart from a fair few bug fixes for Caprice (such as the favour counter being a filthy liar), the timers for his requests were significantly lengthened

Positives: with his mind changing less frequently players will feel less pressured, you can queue and earn points for a lot longer on the nicer crafts.

Negatives: It’s still possible (at least in the beta) for him to request 3 lines that all use the same material pairing. This will suck more now when it happens as there’s a bigger delay before he swaps. On the other hand, those new guild perks will help a lot in alleviating this.

The adjustment to resource recycling rates will also have an impact here now they factor in milestones and ascensions – still going to be able to generate resources by buying items from market and scrapping, just not quite on the same scale as previously possible.

Note: With the new ascensions it is possible to get a tier 1 item that requires no resources. To compensate for this, Kabam have reduced the value of items which can be like that to 1 favor.

I will be running another survey after the next Caprice event finishes – I will post a link on discord and mention it in a blog post when it is ready, I appreciate all feedback.

Pet Food

Pet Food has been improved in 5.1

Basic: Now has no cost so you can maintain your pet energy levels for free

Superior: Now gives as much experience as Premium used to for a much lower price.

Premium: now gives 50% more experience at the cost of being gems only. Useful if you want to accelerate your pet progress as you’re competing in prestige or something.

Enchanted Gear on Market

Kabam did an explanation here about why they changed the market. It’s not really in the scope of what I cover on this site but I’ll give my brief thoughts on it (feel free to disagree/ignore)

I’m aware of players who have in the past bought gems from third-party sources and have been caught. Kabam will subtract the amount of gems you owe them from your current amount and you’ll have to pay them to be able to use the market/gems again – in one case a player owed Kabam over $1000 (or “lots”.) This change might seem extreme but market fraud really is costing them a hell of a lot.

Miscellaneous Stuff to Know

Polonia can no longer steal over your inventory cap – the items will be sold and you will not keep them.
You can skip through the victory screens even when you have max on an item instead of having to wait for it to appear.
Antique Shop now sells more things such as gems.
Refilling racks directly from the market is less clunky.

That about covers it.

(Yes it’s a short conclusion but if I don’t include one Snype complains.)