Update 9.4 Overview

Your guide to the gameplay changes in 9.4

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 images and video you see were taken. 

All craft and fusion timers are from a character with max level workers and a max guild craft speed boost.

Introduction

This article covers the features and changes 9.4 has brought to the game. Use the table of contents to skip to whatever you’re most interested in or settle down for a read.

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Tier 12

The main headline feature of this update (and has been long awaited) is the introduction of Tier 12. We have a total of 35 new blueprints – 28 for the base crafting lines, 6 from the new dungeon chest and 1 extra potion as Mundra’s new print. As with Tier 10 and 11 we have no new elements/spirits at the moment. Let’s take a look:

Still keeping with the 3 worker setup used in Tier 10 and 11 though with a noticeable increase in crafting time. The rare resource costs are getting quite high now, though 46 appears to be the cap at the minute.

You can see in the components required that we’re using sigils again, albeit a different version of them this time (more details on that later in the article.) The Raw Obsidian comes from the new dungeon added in the update. Let’s look at the milestones:

The interesting thing to note for Tier 12 is the very low amount required to actually master the blueprint – consider that before the adjustment in this patch Tier 11 required 100 crafts this is a pretty steep drop in amount required (I support this change.) As expected Tier 11 lost their secondary resource milestones to fit in the unlock ones for Tier 12.

The standard setup is used for ascensions. You can see we’ve jumped up to 80 shards per star now from 60, meaning 240 shards is required to fully ascend a Tier 12 item. They also require 125 Research Scrolls to unlock, so for fully unlocking/ascending Tier 12 you’re looking at:

3,625 Research Scrolls
8,400 Ascension Shards

Their gold values scale from around 2.4m to 3.5m pre-1.25x milestone meaning there’s a lot of money to be made here.

Energy Costs

As you may suspect there’s a bit of a cost involved here:

Just a bit of a jump from Tier 11.

NOTE: It is not possible to suggest Tier 12 to every customer who walks into your shop. Some of them will be too low a level to purchase it, even if you have max shop expansions.

And a cool 3k energy to surcharge them (if you don’t have the milestone to reduce it):

Really brings home the importance of picking up the surcharge energy cost reduction from each ascension tree.

Sigils and True Sigils

You know, cause sigils weren’t fun enough. Introducing True Sigils:

I mean they work the same way sigils currently work, it’s just a fresh coat of paint and a slight name adjustment.

I was tempted to just copy/paste part of my 6.4 article here. It’s sigils round 2 but with all the nice adjustments made to them in the past year (you can see for example it gives 4 per fuse and they have alternative acquisition methods.)

Known sources of True Sigils

• Fusing (pretty obvious ^^;)
• Antique Store (if you own everything.)
• Events (sometimes)
• Fortune Zone (rarely)
• Grab Bags (if you’re lucky)
• Piggy (really lucky)
• Quests – they drop in Cinderlake Volcano and Epsilon Tower (possibly the new LCoG difficulty as well, was not able to test that.)

As for the sigils required for Tier 11 (Lesser sigils? False sigils?) their fusion requirements were lowered (Tier 6 superior instead of flawless) and uses less moonstones in return for a reduced output.

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Extended Ascension Milestones

As teased by the devs in the latest Q&A Tier 12 also brings an extension to the Ascension Track milestones. There’s 10 new milestones for each line (except stones and spirits/elements cause they didn’t get anything new.)

Update:

Stones and enchantments will be getting extended tracks after all, but the reward on them will be changing in future.

The sigil refund only applies to the Lesser/False sigils. You don’t get more than one back on a multicraft and you won’t get one if the blueprint didn’t cost one.

The extra reduction in surcharge costs is very welcome, more so given how much energy Tier 12 calls for. However at the time of this post it’s not actually possible to hit that milestone in any line – Kabam have very much added milestones that’ll act as a long-term goal that’s not finished on patch release day.

The resource thing does change based on the line, there are some which speed up Ether/Jewel production. Honestly I’d just pick a couple of favourite lines and focus on them.

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Elemental Barriers

Before covering the new quest area and tower let’s take a look at the new Elemental Barrier mechanic.

Every monster in Cinderlake Volcano (as well as Extreme difficulty enemies) has an elemental barrier protecting them. Whilst this barrier exists all damage dealt to the enemy is reduced by 80% (i.e. lots) To destroy it, you need to attack the enemy with a hero whose element-type matches that of the barrier.

Example:

As you can see in the above picture, we’ve got a slightly upset crab with a barrier around him. We can see the barrier’s health (350) and its element type (Water.) Let’s hit him with the Astramancer (Geo/Astramancer element is Water.)

You can see that along with doing damage to the enemy the health of the barrier has been reduced. Once we lower it to 0 all heroes will do their full damage.

The amount of damage you deal to the barrier is based on that hero’s element score (so if you have an element score of 90, you’ll do 90 damage to the barrier if you match the element.) A higher score means you do more damage which encourages the use of the affinity system even if you don’t have skills that call for the extra element points.

Due to them being able to wield any element, Spellblades will only deal 30% of their element total as damage to the barrier. Whilst that doesn’t sound like much, the flexibility of having an answer to any barrier means they’re worth considering for your roster.

You can see what element type you need on the quest setup screen (going to borrow a picture from the official patch notes here)

The barrier types are pre-determined and do not change. Anyone running Cinderlake Volcano for Crush Claws will be faced with a Water barrier on Easy/Medium/Hard (and presumably Extreme.) Note that only applies to that specific component – the other two components in Cinderlake have different elemental barriers.

Final note on barriers: Champions also have an element assigned to them now, allowing them to help cover any gaps you may have in your roster:

• Argon: Light
• Lilu: Water
• Sia: Air
• Yami: Dark
• Rudo: Fire
• Polonia: Water
• Donovan: Fire
• Hemma: Dark
• Ashley: Earth

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Cinderlake Volcano

Coming in at a cool 1G unlock cost, Cinderlake makes it mark as being the hottest place to be right now:

Yes that’s correct, it can drop Tier 11 without needing a mini-boss. I started to see it when I reached Medium difficulty, will need testing to check for drop chances on Easy. I’ve not seen Polonia steal above T10 yet but I can’t say with absolute certainty that’s her cap.

The catch for wanting to access this beautiful wealth is the Elemental Barrier system which we just covered above.

With a new dungeon comes a new chest of course, introducing the Molten Chest:

It costs 600 gems to unlock if you’re not using a key.

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Epsilon Tower

A long requested feature by some members of the player base, Tower of Titans now has a new level of difficulty for players who are level 67 and above. Each boss in here (so every third floor) has 3 modifiers, all the enemies have more health/damage than Delta and will have elemental barriers amongst them (note: the first Epsilon Tower will not have these barriers so players have chance to prepare their rosters for it.)

The loot drops inside Epsilon are pretty cool:

Delta -> Epsilon difficulty increase

Caution: rough math ahead (it was not feasible for me to get concrete data for each floor so primary focus was Epsilon Titan, however I did note down the health changes and the rough increase of damage.)

So in comparison to Delta the mobs in Epsilon have been given a significant increase in health. For example, Floor 21 in Delta the enemy has 350k health.

Floor 1 in Epsilon has that much health

The next few floors seemed to mirror the top end of Delta – floor 2 had 400k hp which is same as Delta 22, floor 3 had 450k hp which is same Delta 23 etc etc. After a couple more floors I did notice the HP was not scaling as high but the mobs were hitting much harder than their delta equivalents. By the time I got to floor 13 the mobs were hitting roughly as hard as the Delta Titan does.

Final few floors is where it tries to go all out on you

And as for the titan himself, well:

Now I should stress that this was an Epsilon Tower that didn’t have the elemental barriers activated yet. I think once the barriers are on it’ll pose a fair fight to players but nothing super tricky – if you’re already chill farming Delta then you should be fine. If you find yourself struggling with Delta and are about to be put into Epsilon, perhaps try and rework your heroes a bit.

I did have an interesting incident on my first ascent:

Rest assured that health amount has been fixed already. 😛

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Collection Book Table of Contents

Collection Book got a summary page to make it a lot easier for you to identify which sections you’re lacking in. There isn’t any new milestones from what I could tell (nor would I expect there to be, remember the book is a long-term project) but it’s a welcome addition anyway.

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Miscellaneous Stuff

• I didn’t get to test the new LCoG difficulty so your guesses are as good as mine on that.
• Same with the guest champion.
• Tavern and Emerald Inn now cap at 24,700 ticks (the same as a standard Tier 1 building.)
• LCoG blueprints have a cool background now:

And that about covers everything. Go forth! Craft Tier 12! Break elemental barriers!

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Appendix: Data Tables

Tier 12 Collection Book Value

There was no extension of the reward track for the Collection Book in this update (maybe in June for the anniversary? You never know.)

Quality	Point Value
Normal	10
Superior	10
Flawless	20
Epic	30
Legendary	50

Which means in total there’s an extra 4,200 points available for your Collection Book.

Elemental Barrier Types and Health

As I mentioned in the elemental barrier section each Cinderlake Volcano and extreme quest area has a pre-determined barrier set for it.

Quest	Barrier Type	Barrier HP
Elven Wood	Air	150
Iron Pine Cone	Earth	150
Glow Shroom	Light	150
Troublin Chief	Air	250
Silver Dust	Water	200
Webbed Wing	Fire	200
Precious Gem	Dark	200
Yeti King	Fire	250
Living Root	Earth	200
Rustwyrm Scale	Fire	200
Deep Pearl	Light	200
Toadwitch	Earth	250
White Sand	Air	250
Bronze Fang	Fire	250
Moon Crystal	Dark	250
Mushgoon	Water	300
Evil Eye	Dark	250
Silk Scarab	Water	250
Star Metal	Air	250
Greater Anubis	Light	350
Ancient Marble	Air	300
Overgrown Vine	Fire	300
Chronos Crystal	Dark	300
Cyclops Lord	Air	400
Spooky Ectoplasm	Light	400
Thread of Fate	Earth	400
Ghastly Pennant	Water	400
Tyrant King	Light	500
Deep Coral	Fire	450
Crystal Lullaby	Dark	450
Precious Shell	Earth	450
Mermaid Queen	Fire	550
Grim Talon	Fire	500
Zirconia Eggshell	Air	500
Boreal Gale	Light	500
Harpy Matriarch	Earth	600
Crush Claw	Water	Easy: 200 Medium: 350 Hard: 400 Extreme: ?
Raw Obsidian	Earth	Easy: 200 Medium: 350 Hard: 400 Extreme: ?
Magma Core	Light	Easy: 200 Medium: 350 Hard: 400 Extreme: ?
Elder Crushtacean	Water	Easy: 200 Medium: 300 Hard: ? Extreme: ?

Epsilon Tower Reward Track

Whilst there’s no guarantee it’ll stay like this, these are the rewards I got from the Epsilon Tower track:

Floor	Reward
3	Free: 25 Sigil of Might Paid: 10 Sigil of Might
6	Free: 40 Ascension Shards Paid: 25 Ascension Shards
9	Free: 1 Perfect Skill Die Paid: 1 Perfect Skill Die
12	Free: 30 Hemma Coins Paid: 15 Hemma Coins
15	Free: 300 Gems Paid: 150 Gems
18	Free: 4 Perfect Skill Dice Paid: 2 Perfect Skill dice
21	Free: 40 Ashley Coins Paid: 20 Ashley Coins
24	Free: 60 Ascension Shards Paid: 30 Ascension Shards
27	Free: 25 Sigil of True Might Paid: 10 Sigil of True Might
30	1 Titan Soul

Affinity Gear

The affinities found on Tier 12 blueprints. Not a complete list as there were a couple of blueprints I could not craft but I’ll get the finalised data from the site when the update launches:

Name	Type	Affinity
Abyssal Artifact	Shield	Dark
Ambrosia	Potion	Fire
Blackbeard's Cannon	Gun	Water
Boots of Zeal	Heavy Footwear (from Molten Chest)	Light
Dawn Thief Cowl	Rogue Hat	Light
Dawn Thief Uniform	Light Armor	Light
Dawn Thief's Path	Light Footwear	Light
Dawn Thief's Touch	Gloves	Light
Exarch Mitre	Magician Hat	Light
Exarch Robes	Clothes	Light
Excalibur	Sword	Light
Garb of the Primordial	Clothes (from Molten Chest)	Earth
Godslayer Arbalest	Crossbow	Light
Herald of the End	Wand	Fire
Mjölnir	Mace	Air
Olympus	Bow	Light
Phoenix Crest	Magician Hat (from Molten Chest)	Fire
Quintessence Purity	Potion (from Molten Chest)	Water
Scepter of Xolimnul	Staff	Dark
Shroud of the Lost	Light Armor (from Molten Chest)	Dark
Sixth Sin	Dagger	Dark
Swindler's Fingers	Gloves (from Molten Chest)	Air
The Bound Beast	Spell	Dinosaur
Vermillion Guard Greaves	Heavy Footwear	Fire
Vermillion Guard Helm	Helmet	Fire
Vermillion Guard Might	Gauntlets	Fire
Vermillion Guard Plate	Heavy Armor	Fire