A guide to the gameplay changes in 6.4
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 you see were taken.
All craft and fusion timers are from a character with max level workers and a max guild craft speed boost.
This article covers all the gameplay features 6.4 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.
Tier 11
The main headline feature for 6.4 is the introduction of Tier 11. We have a total of 32 new blueprints – 26 for the base crafting lines, and 6 that are locked behind the new chest. As with Tier 10, there are no new elemental or spirit enchantments at this moment in time. There are no new buildings/resource bins involved, however there is a new component which we’ll get to in a moment. Let’s start by taking a look at an item:
At first glance you can see we’ve kept the 3 worker pattern that was used in Tier 10. The craft times are a fair bit longer this time compared to 10. The Rare resource cost for these prints is also higher than we have previously seen, though I did not see any prints that required more than 31.
Component-wise they use 2 different ones. The first one that you can see is called a Sigil (more on those in a little bit), the second is a component from the new dungeon. Let’s take a look at the milestones:
Nothing out of the ordinary here. As anticipated all baseline Tier 10 blueprints have had their 3rd milestone converted into unlocking the Tier 11 for that line, meaning the 1.25x value milestone is now the 4th one and they have lost their uncommon resource reduction.
Ascensions are also the usual affair. As you can see it costs 60 ascension shards per star, so you’ll need 180 to fully max an item. Tier 11 blueprints also cost 85 Research Scrolls to unlock, so to fully unlock/ascend them you will require:
2,210 Research Scrolls
5,760 Ascension shards
Now with all this factored in you may be hoping for some high gold values and well yeah, they definitely have that:
Of course with this kind of money on the table there has to be a catch right? Let’s go over those now.
Energy Costs
The cost to rush, suggest and surcharge these items is pretty high:
A pretty steep cost for rushing it – a few hundred more than what a t10 would cost.
The cost to suggest it to a customer is pretty high as well if it’s not the type they’re asking for1.
And as you can see, a nice 2,366 energy to surcharge2.
The most expensive T11 base item in terms of surcharging is the new crossbow:
2,785 and that’s with the reduction from ascensions.
Update 6.4A
On the 7th April 2021 (so one day after the patch was released) the costs for surcharging T11 items was reduced by approximately 3-400 energy per item. The Leviathan Crossbow for example was reduced by 369, so now costs 2,416 to surcharge with the ascension reduction.
Sigils
The new system with Tier 11 blueprints is Sigils. Each Tier 11 item requires a Sigil as a component cost to craft them. Let’s look at them now:
As you can see, there are 3 Sigils and they are all created via fusion. Each fuse requires a Flawless (or higher) Tier 6 (or higher) item, as well as 5 components from the new dungeon and 3 greater moonstones and will create 2 sigils.
Each sigil requires the same amount of time to fuse – basically the only difference is the colour and the dungeon material used 😛 Make sure to fuse the ones you need for the blueprints you’re trying to craft. They can be traded on the market like a normal component (base price 200k so they cap at a potential 2m per one.)
Known sources of Sigils
- Fusing (pretty obvious ^^;)
- Antique Store (if you own everything.)
- Events (sometimes)
- Fortune Zone (rarely)
- Grab Bags (good luck with that3)
- Piggy (see Grab Bags entry)
So to craft a tier 11 item: gather components from dungeon > fuse the relevant sigil > craft the item. Think of it as every Tier 11 item having a precraft4.
Bleakspire Peak
As teased by Argon in his rank 8 story, Bleakspire Peak is the hot new place in town.
- It has harpies (they look really disturbing.)
- The new components required for Tier 11
- Drops tier 9 and 10
- Provides some great athletic training for your heroes
In terms of drops I did not observe much difference between here and Sunken Temple. The moonstone/runestone drops were slightly increased in quantity. Breakpoints will be added to the combat sim later today.
Note: Tier 11 drops very rarely in here – the only times I noticed it dropping was when fighting a mini-boss. When they said T11 was going to be very limited outside of crafting, they weren’t joking.
Promoted Hero Changes
As was the case in 6.3, a couple of classes have had their promoted forms enhanced. This time around we have 2 Rogue-types being buffed.
Trickster
Was: +60 Health and +100% Attack with Dagger, Bow and Crossbow
Now:
It’s a pretty neat change for Tricksters. I can confirm the passive does stack – if you run 3 Tricksters in a group with Polonia you can steal 26 items when she hits rank 7 or higher. Of course that does mean you need to have the souls and patience to create such a team but it does spice things up a bit.
Here it is in action!
Grandmaster
Was: +100% Attack with Rings. +200% Critical Hit Damage
Now:
They now have a chance to learn an exclusive skill (similar to how Sorcerer works.)
An interesting skill focused on buffing Grandmaster’s main claim to fame. However, because it is only available to Grandmaster you will only be able to obtain it after promoting a monk, which means you’ll be promoting and hoping you roll it (unlike other classes where you can prepare the hero perfectly before promotion.)
Emerald Inn and Tavern
The Inn and Tavern ticks were rebalanced slightly to accomodate for Bleakspire. Each of the two buildings requires 21,000 ticks to be maxed out (so in a team of 20, each member needs 1,050 ticks for it to be equally shared, which is just under 4.9G5.)
Guild Boosts
Guild boosts no longer degrade over time – you can just refresh them approx once a week and not have to worry about them dropping down in power whilst your officers are offline and unable to renew them. It’s a nice quality of life change.
Moonstone Cost Adjustments
A lot of Full Moon Fusions had their moonstone costs raised (maybe they felt we weren’t getting through them fast enough.)
- All component fusions (with the exception of Opulent Jewels) require 2 more moonstones. For example, if it required 2 greater moonstones before, it uses 4 now.
- Opulent Jewels require 1 extra moonstone.
- Chest fusions require 1 extra moonstone.
Miscellaneous Stuff
- The three sigil types are fairly evenly distributed across the blueprints. If you’re looking to master all the base T11 items and chest blueprints, you will need (presuming no multicrafts):
900 Sigils of Grace
1100 Sigils of Spark
1200 Sigils of Might - Bleak Chest costs 500 gems to unlock if you don’t use a key
- Unlocking a T11 blueprint will unlock T11 bounties so be sure you’re ready to embrace the fusing life if you’re a bounty seeker
That about covers everything. Go forth, fuse Sigils, craft some cool looking items!
- avoid this by suggesting a T1 item from that line then the T11 you want to sell
- this is with the energy reduction milestone in the ascension tree. Very important to get 15 in every line if you want to be surcharging Tier 11. See here for more details.
- for those lacking the ability to understand joking and sarcasm, that means they have a low drop chance.
- a very expensive precraft potentially
- 4,882,386,000
5 replies on “Update 6.4 Overview”
Thank you for the overview. Curious if the Gear suggestions for heroes will have a T11 option AND lower level option?
I’ve kept the old solo page up with the t10 recommendations – planning to have a page which suggests budget bis items
You sure covered this unemotionally. I’m not sure if you deserve a Pulitzer prize for maintaining your objectivity, or do you not understand the extent of the damage this “Sigil” system just did to what (up until today) could easily been called the best shop game out.
I try to keep the posts that are about updates to just stating factual things. I’m debating writing a post explaining my personal thoughts on T11 and the sigil system.
Thanks for your work as always!
I’m really disappointed in t11. To the point where even after spending over a thousand dollars, I’m considering quitting. Not just because of the changes to crafting per se, but because it kinda indicates to me that the developers are going in a direction I don’t personally like. They hang out in the discord enough that I think they can probably guess what the reaction of a lot of the playerbase would be, but chose to do what they wanted anyway.
In terms of the gold, surcharge energy, crafting cost and opportunity cost of using the crafting slots for other things, the numbers don’t seem to make sense to me. It seems to be something that one would only do if trying to craft BIS stuff to equip on heroes. But at that point, why even bother with the default, non-pack blueprints? Those would never be BIS pretty much. And even with BIS blueprints, trying for a higher quality item is such a crapshoot that it may only be worth doing outside of top-quality event only if one has both the line ascended to the place where one has more chance of HQ items AND ascensions on the item.
I’ve seen people saying to look at this as a special thing like Opulent items. I never minded those, since yeah they are a special event item. But I can’t look at T11 that way. I mean it’s a whole tier of default blueprints and to me that’s just standard gameplay.