Update 6.3 Overview

A guide to the gameplay changes in 6.3

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 features 6.3 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

New Champion

The main headline feature for this update is the new champion, Hemma:

To unlock her you can either get her coins through standard methods (treasure chests, grab bags, etc) or by purchasing the pack she comes with:

Hemma’s Leader Skill is an interesting one. Let’s take a look at Empowering Drain:

Each round, Hemma will drain health from all of your other heroes and then add that to her attack value after multiplying it. Below is a clip of it in action:

As you can see each round she’ll drain the health of your surviving heroes and keep adding it to her attack. This means as the battle progresses she will keep ramping up her damage but at the risk of possibly killing your other team members – because it always drains 10% of their max health, her team members will be dead after 10 rounds¹ if they don’t have a sustain mechanism. It should be noted that unlike other champion abilities, Hemma’s will disable should she die².

At higher ranks the conversion becomes more favourable – although she will still drain the same amount from your heroes, she will give them increased hp and gain more damage from the drain. Rank 7 and 11 effects were provided by Kabam Richard, the best hamster:

Initial Skill: Each turn, Drain 10% of all allies HP and add 15x that amount to Hemma’s Attack. +5% HP for the party

Rank 4: Each turn, Drain 10% of all allies HP and add 17x that amount to Hemma’s Attack. +10% HP for the party

Rank 7: Each turn, Drain 10% of all allies HP and add 20x that amount to Hemma’s Attack. +15% HP for the party.

Rank 11: Each turn, Drain 10% of all allies HP and add 25x that amount to Hemma’s Attack. +25% HP for the party.

To make the best use out of her ability you want to run her with some high health heroes – Archdruids for example will make excellent health batteries she can drain for power, as will other heroes with skills like Impervious or are using 6 lizards to heal off some of the damage Hemma deals to them.

Whilst it’s a pretty cool leader skill, do make sure you won’t be risking your heroes lives by taking her – do not pair her with low health heroes, more so if those heroes don’t have evasion to survive potential hits from the enemy.

Champion Changes

There were a couple of tweaks to the already existing champions. First up Donovan’s ability has been buffed – the modifiers he grants your party were increased. At max rank it’s an increase of 2% Attack, 3% health, 2% Crit/Evasion though there were also increases to it at his other ranks.

We’ve also got stat adjustments for some champions.

Note: because I’ve only got a limited set of data to work from on the beta server, these numbers are based on the differences my champions have. You may see slightly more/less gains but they should be around these amounts.

Argon
Health reduced by 39

Donovan
Health increased by 64
Defence increased by 720

Lilu
Health increased by 80
Defence increased by 400

Sia
Health increased by 75
Defence increased by 127

Yami
Health increased by 62
Defence increased by 335

Promoted Hero Changes

Another part of 6.3 is the adjustment of some hero innates after they have a titan soul used on them. Whereas before this was only a small group, this has now been expanded:

Chieftain

Was: +30% HP and +100 Threat
Now:

It became a lot more interesting – whilst they do not get as much threat as they used to, they can take advantage of what they do have to increase their damage output. The damage increase from this is reflected on their stat sheet so it’s not a mystery game of “how much am I actually gaining.”

This also means Mammoth enchants provide damage as well as defense for Chieftains.

Conquistador

Was: +20% Critical Hit Chance and +100% Critical Hit Damage
Now:

A reward for building your Conquistador around their innate. This potentially opens up some build flexibility as we can look at some crit chance options and not be super concerned if we lack crit damage skills.

The multiplier adds another .25 to your crit damage stat, so if you had a baseline critical damage stat of x3, at max stacks your critical damage stat would be x4. Below is a video showing it in action:

Daimyo

Was: First hit is a guaranteed crit. +200% Critcal Hit Damage.
Now:

I’ll hazard a guess and say Jeremie had his Daimyo die before it could get an attack off against a mini-boss and this is his way of making sure that never happens again. It’ll be helpful for solo Daimyo’s, just feels a bit out of place³.

Pathfinder

Was: +20% Evasion.

Now:

So this is pretty cool. It does feel unneeded in the sense that Pathfinders were already in a pretty good place, but hey more evasion is never going to hurt. Caltrops is now usable without causing awkward numbers and should Epic skills get a third tier, this extra 3% will be handy.

In terms of solo potential we can adjust their skill build to something like this to gain that extra evasion:

Which gets an extra 15% towards their winrate for keybearer 12, putting them in range of the 6th star (they could already solo stuff like the Delta Titan no problem.)

Sensei

Was: Not worth a look
Now:

Of the promoted changes Sensei is perhaps the most interesting one. How it works is like this:

-Enemy attacks and hits
-Sensei attacks (no passive)
-Enemy attacks again (doesn’t matter if it hits or you evade)
-Sensei attacks (no passive)
-Passive activates again now before the enemy attacks

This helps a lot towards fixing the main problem that Ninja/Sensei has – that is, being the only class in the game which has the potential to get weaker as a fight progresses. We can look at building some teams designed to take advantage of this reactivation chance by using someone like Yami for example to cover their evasion loss when their innate is down.

That being said, it’s still possible for a Sensei to have no innate for a fight. Following on from our example earlier:

-Enemy attacks and hits
-Sensei attacks (no passive)
-Enemy attacks again (doesn’t matter if it hits or you evade)
-Sensei attacks (no passive)
-Passive activates again now before the enemy attacks
-Enemy attacks and hits
-Passive is now disabled again for another 2 rounds.

We can try to limit the chance of this happening by going for high burst teams but something you should always keep in mind is that you are exposing yourself to extra risk by going Sensei over the other Green-types.

In short:
-Great change for Sensei, allows for some fun ideas
-Still at risk of being screwed by luck, just nowhere near as much as previously
-Loses out to other promoted Green-types for solo options, but has duo/group potential.

Ascension Changes

Stones

The Stone tab for Runestone/Moonstone crafting now has its own ascension track:

It’s a pretty short track and in terms of ascension shard requirements it’s one of the cheapest⁴. It’s also the only tree that currently has Hemma coins if you want to get started on ranking her up.

Elements and Spirits

The end milestone for the Spirit and Elemental ascension tracks has been fixed to now give +1% to the surcharge value of all items (so it matches the other ascension tree final milestones.)

When 5.1 came out we were told at the time that there was a technical issue as to why the milestone was different and that it would be changed in a future update (which happens to be this one.)

Miscellaneous Stuff

Champions can no longer request Lost City of Gold blueprints. An undocumented change back in 6.1 was an adjustment to the champion request system – they can request any blueprint you own that falls within their tier range, not just a small fixed pool. This change prevents them asking for Luxurious items, which is great.
The renown bug has been fixed – it was possible to earn more renown than you should be able to by continuing to do bounties above your highest cap.

That about wraps it up for 6.3⁵. Go forth and have fun with Hemma!

Update – Removal of ads

A change was that was missed from the original patch notes is the removal of the ad system. Before this update it was possible (depending on where you lived or used a vpn to access them) to access advertisements in the game.

The main reason to do this was for the furniture upgrades – you could reduce your furniture upgrade times by 30% by watching 3 adverts, though if you had Royal Merchant you didn’t even have to watch, it was just a free skip button you could push.

The reason for the removal has been said to be because the system was no longer compatible with the new engine upgrades and they do not have the resources to dedicate to fixing it right now – it’d come at the cost of progress in other parts. Needless to say this change has been proving a bit of debating on their social media areas.

well, sooner if/when they take damage from the enemy
I mean that’d suck hard if she was still draining whilst being a decorative rug.
for example, imagine if it had been your first 2 strikes are guaranteed crits
though seeming you need to own 2 premium workers to max it, it’s not the cheapest in money terms
does this mean we’re free of the curse of .3 patches?