Resistance

We've discussed this on the Discord server before. When you're trying to go for a defensive or tanky build, there aren't that many options. That's why we've introduced a new stat: Resistance!
Each point of Resistance will reduce your damage taken by 0.1%, multiplicatively. Get those new resistance runes, or use your prestige points to get real tanky!

New Afflictions

A new Affliction has been added, that will reduce the damage you deal as time goes on (only during the round, of course), so don't pick it if you don't pack the damage to finish things quickly!
On top of that, all Afflictions now have an extra tier, reaching up to Tier 4. You'll need some really strong late-game builds to handle these.

Cursed Runes

With the new Afflictions and extra tier, the maximum Affliction level has gone up from 27 to 40! Obviously, that means we needed an extra rune tier: Cursed Runes! Cursed Runes will be granted to players beating level 35+ Affliction.
Cursed runes will be the first type of rune to give 5 (five!) effects, rather than the current maximum of 4. You really want these.

Balance

Rewards

When you're just getting started, it's not easy to make gold, making it hard to buy any gadgets. Time to address that!

• Gold earned in the Normal gamemode increased by 20%.
• Gold earned in the Gauntlet gamemode increased by 20%.
• Bonus Gold/Experience earned per Affliction level: 8% -> 7%.

Bosses

Some bosses had autoattack that dealt an unfair amount of damage. Bosses should be challenging because of their mechanics, not because they oneshot-whack you.

• Vol'Kur Basic Attack Damage: -20%
• Eugene Sterling Basic Attack Damage: -40%

Prestige

After the data from the Prestige system has come in, it's time for some balance changes. Picking damage shouldn't be the best choice 100% of the time!

• Prestige base Armor (per point): 6 -> 8
• Prestige base Gold Earned (per point): 4 -> 7
• Prestige base Ability Strength (per point): 6 -> 5

Runes

The release gave us a good opportunity to spot unpopular runes, and runes that are a little too popular. Here's a list of balance changes to address that!

Buffs

• Frostbite: +15% effectiveness on new runes
• Movement Speed: +10% effectiveness on new runes
• Crowd Level Generation: +15% effectiveness on new runes
• Mercenary: +20% effectiveness on new runes
• Shield Battery: +20% effectiveness on new runes
• Basic Attack healing: +5% effectiveness on new runes
• Health regeneration: +10% effectiveness on new runes

Nerfs

• Basic Attack Speed: -10% effectiveness on new runes
• Ability Strength: -5% effectiveness on new runes

Bugfixes

• Sanguine Rod no longer applies a score penalty when it periodically deals damage to Victoria
• Fixed a bug where getting the ZycoDrunk evolution in Streamer mode would keep you drunk ... forever. Sorry!

[ 2022-12-10 21:08:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

New Evolutions

6 New Evolutions have been added to the Evolution gamemode, along with another 5 Streamer-only Evolutions. You'll see the new Kunai Evolutions pop up, and trust me, they're pretty strong!

New Afflictions

When trying to get Tormented Runes, Affliction really didn't give you much of a choice: you basically had to tick all boxes to get them. To solve that, 2 new Afflictions (each with 3 Tiers) have been added, allowing you to choose which ones you'll leave out and which ones you'll keep.

Balance

Rebecca

• Tactical Mine Base Arm time: 3s -> 2.5s
• Tactical Mine Base damage: 15 -> 20

Affliction

• Normal/Timeworn/Ancient Ghost base health: 160/400/800 -> 120/300/600

Other stuff

• Twitch vote time is now in configurable in the Twitch menu.
• The Achievements menu now also shows a nice progress bar to show you how far you currently are.
• Added 2 new achievements for reaching the top 1% in the leaderboards.
• Past evolution wave 30, the amount of units spawned no longer increases, because it just becomes too crowded. Instead, the health of the enemies is increased further.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where Reanimation's skeletons would be modified by Raven's particle customization.
• Enemies will no longer take damage while in between rounds
• The Gift will no longer continue conting in between rounds
• Krogar now properly benefits from runes that grant Attack Damage above a certain crowd level

[ 2022-11-06 21:47:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Affliction

A new gamemode for true endgame players ... Affliction! Before you start the round, you'll be able to choose between various Afflictions. The more afflictions you choose, the higher the rewards, should you win the challenge.
The challenges themselves will be the hardest you've seen so far in the game, but the rewards will be well worth it. Depending on the amount of selected Afflictions, you'll be able to receive 2 new tiers of runes. Both the Afflicted and Tormented runes are stronger than Gladiator runes!
On top of that, some new achievements have been added that will increase the rate at which you can earn runes. You'll even be able to earn runes from non-bossfights! Of course, the new gamemode also counts towards the leaderboards, so you'll have some new opportunities to improve your glory!

Balance

Ember

• Flare cooldown: 5 -> 4.5
• Dragon's Base damage: 30 -> 35
• Dragon's Breath damage per level: 2.3 -> 2.5

Rebecca

• Weapon - Photon blasters: also reduces attack damage by 20%.

Runes

• Ability Strength runes: -10% strength (only for new runes)
• Hits from the wisp rune no longer generate crowd level

Other stuff

• Added some Tier 6 achievements!
• Added a new particle customization effect for 1,000 glory.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where Rebecca would not properly benefit from autoattack healing

[ 2022-11-01 22:53:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

As we look forward to the release, and look back at this year's Halloween, a new competition starts! The November Championship will focus on the spooky theme: Castle Sanguine and Victoria! The end score will be determined by the sum of the scores on the Castle Sanguine and Victoria leaderboards.

• The Top 3 at the end of the championship will receive a place in the Valor Hall of Fame
• Top Top 5 at the end of the championship will receive the Gladiator role in our Official Discord Server

The November Championship ends November 31st at 23:59.

[ 2022-11-01 22:38:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

The time has (almost) come. Valor will go out of Early Access on November 3rd 2022! To celebrate, a new gamemode will be added, sparking a new competition, the Valor November Championship! Does that mean no updates will come after that? No! I still have lots of ideas to add to the game. The game will simply move to Full Release state.

[ 2022-10-15 12:54:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Prestige Levels

You've asked for this, and it's now here: Prestige Levels! Once you reach max level (20), your character will now keep on gaining experience. This experience will count towards Prestige Levels. Every time you gain a Prestige Level, you'll be able to spend a point in the Prestige menu:

Zone Gadgets

A new Gadget category has been added: Zone Gadgets! These gadgets will provide zone-specific bonuses that are only active when playing that zone. Tired of Neonwave City's lasers or Taikaan Jungle's plants? These gadgets are for you!

Hall of Fame

With the conclusion of the first Valor Championship, comes the Hall of Fame! You can access this list of significant players through the leaderboards menu.
Want to become a part of the Hall of Fame? Keep an eye out for future championships!

Balance

Runes

• Wisp: +100% strength on new runes
• Dark Energy: +100% strength on new runes

Other stuff

• The tooltips for difficulties / gamemodes now display their respective reward multipliers.
• The Tinker District now has a few more powerups!

Bugfixes

• Soul Transfer can no longer to The Seeker. No more blocking other units, Seeker!

[ 2022-10-12 20:03:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

Results

The results for the first Valor Championship are in!
Winners will be contacted personally by me in the next few days.

[ 2022-09-28 10:34:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

Rebecca

A new gladiator has joined the team. Rebecca features high speed shoot em up gameplay, bringing her skills from Sector 92 and Neonwave City to the game. *Pew pew!*
Rebecca was born and raised in Neonwave City. Her parents were part of The Revaton 7, an organization that ruled most of the city. Eventually, Jake Castillo took over and the family had to flee, seeking refuge in Spark. Spark's citizens aren't known for being very welcoming towards citizens from "lesser" origins, so their Order Keepers stormed Rebecca's safehouse. While her parents managed to escape, Rebecca was caught. She was transferred to Revaton's largest prison, Sector 92. Inside, she learned both combat and technical skills from her fellow prisoners, eventually escaping Sector 92, and starting a new life as a Gladiator.

Balance

Rewards

The Training Grounds are a great way of getting more experience. While that's not a bad thing, it removes some incentive from playing higher level zones (if you are a high enough level). To combat that, the experience and gold rewards have been adjusted as follows:

• The Training Grounds: -20%
• Taikaan Jungle: no change
• Neonwave City: +20%
• Castle Sanguine: +40%
• The Tinker District: +60%

In addition, exp rewards on defeat have been slightly increased.

Krogar

• Competence score reduction multiplier: 50% -> 35%

To clarify, this means Krogar will lose fewer points when getting hit in the Competence gamemode.

Affixes

• Blizzard: effectiveness reduced by +- 15%
• Blizzard: now also increases maximum movement speed by 15% per stack, which should improve the feeling of slowness
• The Gift pickup time: 10 seconds, decreased by Affix Amount -> always 10 seconds
• The Gift cooldown: 12 / Affix Amount -> 13 - Affix Amount, minimum 5

Evolution

• Aperitive: damage against bosses reduced from 255% to 10%

Taikaan Jungle

• Spitleaf grow time: 8 seconds -> 10 seconds
• Vol'kur Shield on Novice Difficulty: 50% damage blocked -> 40% damage blocked

Castle Sanguine

• Catherine Sanguine Possession damage per potion consumed on Novice Difficulty: 3 -> 2

Competence

Score reduction upon taking damage is now capped at a percentage of the total score:

• Novice: 10%
• Brawler: 15%
• Warrior: 20%
• Vanquisher: 25%
• Gladiator: 35%

Other stuff

• Killing bosses now always removes the Nerve Agent debuff
• Reanimated skeletons from bosses now have reduced stats
• Victory/defeat text
• Ember's Dragon breath now casts light on the environment (only on high quality settings)
• Slightly changed how glory is calculated. Glory is now the sum of all your records, instead of the sum of the highest level-value for any gladiator. After this change, you might have a little more glory if you play different gladiators at a high level, but never less glory than before.
• Your glory per level is also displayed under the button for every level.
• You can now disable ability tooltips ingame so you don't accidentally hover over them, under Settings > Gameplay > Ingame Ability Tooltips
• Performance improvements on all aimed abilities
• Rendering performance improvements
• Performance improvements on enemy unit logic
• Performance improvements in the menu
• Two more orb evolutions
• You can now choose to show your own healthbar above you character's head, under Settings > Gameplay > Player Healthbar
• Weapon effects are now also listed along their respective gadgets
• New achievement for 5 Gladiators at level X, achievements now have pages!
• Ranks refresh much faster than before, so there will be less confusion about your current rank
• In addition, you'll be able to see how your rank improved after each run!
• Improved ingame UI scaling on high-resolution devices
• Ability strength is now properly reflected in ability tooltips. Actual damage remains unchanged.
• Reduced visibility of plants in the jungle to improve visibility of enemies

Bugfixes

• Evolution "Hope" now gives the correct effect instead of the Stone Orb effect
• The Competence score can no longer go below 0
• Selecting a skin now plays a voiceline
• Krogar's Tenacity ability now no longer prematurely removes the damage reduction when shields overlap due to high cooldown reduction
• Fixed some connectivity issues with the Twitch connector
• Fixed a bug where ability heal would heal based on damage before ability strength was taken into account. This effectively means ability heal will now heal more when you have more than 100% ability strength.

[ 2022-09-17 10:54:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone, and welcome to the September Championship! For this championship, we'll be looking at the global leaderboard. At 23:59 CEST, on September 26th, we'll be taking a snapshot of the current global leaderboard to find out who won the September Championship. So, what can you win? Let's take a look:

• TOP 10: You will be personally contacted by me (Ne Vogel), and given the chance to name a new upgrade after you. You'll be a part of the game ...for eternity!
• TOP 5: Additionally, you'll be granted the prestigious Gladiator role on our Discord server.
• TOP 3: Additionally, you'll be added to Valor's Hall of Fame forever, mentioning your final position (1st, 2nd or 3rd). Your name will be forever written on the walls of this new and upcoming ingame menu.

This will be Valor's first championship, so we'll try out some new things, keep what's fun and throw away what isn't. If you have feedback, please let me know on our Discord!

[ 2022-08-27 21:42:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

(R)evolution

Let's start with the main attraction. The fan favourite evolution gamemode has received some epic changes and updates! Let's go over them one by one.

Difficulty

The players who actually got far enough into the game to play Evolution, really enjoyed it. However, most players don't get to Gladiator difficulty. That's why the starting difficulty for Evolution has been lowered by quite a bit. You'll now be able to play Evolution once you've beaten the level on Novice.
On top of that, the difficulty in the earlier waves has also been reduced to account for lower-level players joining in:

• Enemy strength: Gladiator level -> Brawler level
• Affixes: 3 -> 1 (+1 every 4th wave)
• Exp and gold rewards: 100% + 10% per wave -> 70% + 6% per wave
• Enemies now get stronger more quickly as the waves progress. The break even point compared to previously is around wave 25, but keep in mind there will be more affixes at that point as well.

Evolutions

Lots of new evolutions have been added! In total, 20 new evolutions have been added, along with another 11 that will only appear in the streamer mode, as they are ...not exactly "upgrades"!
In total, this means the total amount of evolutions has almost tripled.

Runes

Runes are a great way to add additional stats to your character, customizing the way you want to play them. However, up until now, they have always been "just stats". That's why a total of eight new rune effects have been added, all of which actually enhance your character in cool ways, more that just stats.
You'll be able to receive these new rune stats just like before, so I won't spoil all of them here in this post.

Affixes

Two new Affixes have been added to the pool:

• Hellspawn: Whenever an enemy dies, a 1-health hellbat spawns and moves towards you, dying on impact if you don't kill it.
• Reanimation: When an enemy dies, it reanimates a skeleton that lives on with a portion of that enemy's stats.

As always, a few gadgets have been added to help with these new Affxes.

Balance

Novice Difficulty

Some playtests and feedback rounds have pointed out that the game starts off with a learning curve that's too steep. That's why the Novice difficulty will now serve more as an entry-level difficulty.

• Competence Score Drain Speed: 75% -> 70%
• Enemy Damage Multiplier: 60% -> 50%
• Enemy Health Multiplier: 80% -> 70%
• Enemy Movement Speed Multiplier: 85% -> 80%
• You are now required to beat this difficulty before attempting any other difficulties

The Training Grounds

Along with the changes mentioned above, The Training Grounds also becomes more of a ...training ground, rather than a pit for new players to die in.

• New unit on the Training Grounds: Recruit, a weaker version of the swordsman
• As a result, experience gained on these first levels has also been reduced by 10%
• Archer damage: 6 -> 5
• Archer health: 30 -> 20
• Swordsman/Warrior damage: 10 -> 8
• Cannon damage: 20 -> 15
• Cannon projectile speed: 7 -> 6
• The Training Master Auto attack damage: 30 -> 25
• The Training Master Movement Speed: 1.2 -> 1.1
• The Training Master Health: 1200 -> 1000

The Tinker District

• Eugene Sterling's Focus Fire Projectile speed has been reduced at higher difficulties.

Gamemode: Endurance

• Maximum idle time before coward penalty: 12 seconds -> 15 seconds

Gold rewards

• Increased gold rewards when victorious by ~50%. This was actually already intended to be the case, but didn't happen due to a bug, which is now fixed.

Nerve Agent

• Now requires 4 kills without getting hit again to cleanse, instead of standing still

Other stuff

• An indicator now appears, pointing towards the boss, if it is not currently on-screen.
• Evolution now displays the picked choice, right after picking it.
• The Evolution display now fades in to avoid missclicks when it pops up during a fight.
• The Evolution streaming mode voting time has been increased from 30 to 50 seconds
• The Evolution screen now shows a counter to see how far you've progressed.
• New gadgets for Nerve Agent and Soul Transfer. They now have 2 gadgets just like the rest of the Affixes.
• Changed the way enemy levels are calculated to more closely match the relevant player level.
• Changed some early game spawns to have fewer archers at once.
• Added recommended gladiator levels to the map, to guide players in where to train or progress their characters..
• When you gain an upgrade, you will now automatically be navigated to the upgrades screen.

[ 2022-08-19 10:46:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

New Weapons

Every gladiator now has a new weapon to unlock. These weapons are buyable gadgets, unlocked once you reach The Tinker District.

• Raven Echo: Raven's basic attacks now shoot homing bats that deal 30% increased damage. These basic attacks can no longer pierce.

• Ember Lightning Glyph: Ember's cooldowns are reduced by 40%. Her movement speed is increased by 25%, but her maximum health is reduced by 50%.

• Krogar Sanguine Scimitar: Reduces Krogar's attack damage by 25%, but all auto attacks heal for 20% of the damage dealt.

• Victoria Mooncaller: Sanguine shape is permanently active, but it is 50% less effective.

Leaderboards

The leaderboards have been expanded with few new features. First of all, you now get assigned a rank based on your position in every leaderboard.
Earning these ranks will also grant you some extra bragging rights in the form of new achievements!
Finally, It is now also possible to compare yourself directly to the people on your friends list!

Balance

Hold on tight, there's quite a lot to go over here!

Krogar

• Health per level: 4.5 -> 5.5
• Armor per level: 2 -> 2.5

Ember

• Base health: 70 -> 80
• Health per level: 3 -> 3.5

BOSS: The Training Master

• Training Dummy health reduced by 25%
• No longer gets disappointment stacks over time (without making mistakes)

BOSS: Vol'Kur

• Come Kitties spawn time: +2s on all difficulties

ZONE: Taikaan Jungle

• Panther movement speed: 33 -> 30

AFFIX: Soul Transfer

• Soul transfer Max Health increase: 30% -> 25%
• Soul transfer Health regen: 1% -> 0.5%
• Soul transfer stacks are now capped at a maximum of 10 per unit.

DIFFICULTY: Novice

• Damage multiplier: 70% -> 60%
• Missile speed multiplier: 80% -> 75%
• Movement speed multiplier: 90% -> 85%

Crowd level

• Decrease when taking damage: 2% -> 5%
• Decrease over time (depending on current level): 3%-12% -> 6%-15%

Other stuff

• Lots of UI improvements and polish!
• Tutorial messages have been added to guide you through the first few steps of the game. Active players will already know these things, so don't worry, they'll only show up once.
• More filters have been added to the Runes screen.
• You now receive a notification when you have empty rune slots and runes to fill them with.
• Hovering over a skin in the skins tab will now preview that skin.
• The Gadgets screen now has all the gadgets split up into different categories.
• The map bounds in The Tinker District have been made more accurate

Bugfixes

• Soul Transfer can no longer transfer to bosses and make them (practically) unkillable.
• Victoria's weapon Sanguine Rod now actually works. Whoops.

[ 2022-08-02 16:30:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, Valor is nearing full release, and as mentioned in our Early Access documentation, that means the price will be increasing slightly. On August 12th, 2022, the price will be increasing from $4.99 to $7.99 (or your regional equivalent). This will be the final, full release price. Before August 12th, you will still be able to purchase the game for the discounted Early Access price. Obviously, people who already own the game, will not be affected by this.

[ 2022-07-26 13:44:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Tinker District

First things first: The Tinker District!
The Tinker District has always been one of the poorest cities in Revaton. While many of the region's products, especially tech, are made here, it is often looken down on. In particular, the wealthy citizens of Revaton's capital, Spark, have been mocking this district for years. Spark has been reducing funding and support for the region continuously, resulting in strikes across the district.
However, what the Tinkerers lack in wealth and riches, they make up for in ingenuity. The Tinker District is most famous for turning scrap into mechs, tools and other technological gizmos. Because there seems to be no end to the technological discoveries made here, many believe that Spark will lose their status to the Thinker District in the future. However, Spark will probably make sure that never happens.
Eugene Sterling will guide you through this new Zone, and is ready to provide you with a real challenge at the end!

New Achievements

Along with the (obviously) new Achievements for The Tinker District, some new achievements have been added as well! Furthermore, a new Achievement Tier has been added, with achievements now having a total of 5 tiers each!
In total, 23 new Achievements have been added.

Golden Cosmetics

For those who have way too much gold lying around (looking at you Redleaf and Grasspelt!), we bring...
...The long awaited golden skins! This one was obviously coming, and now it's here!

Zone completion

For the completionists, the map UI has been updated to reflect zone completion. A zone is counted as "completed" if every level has been beaten on Gladiator Difficulty, with every Gladiator.
Additionally, you can now see an overview of which Level/Gladiator combinations you still need to complete for zone completion by hovering over the zone-completion widget in the top right of any Zone screen. This should also be very useful for those wondering why they haven't unlocked a certain skin or particle effect yet!

Other stuff

• New Gadgets have been added along with our new zone.
• Enemies now have damaged-VFX, indicating that you did, well, damage.
• Some of the UI has gotten an overhaul, creating a more polished feel.
• Non-projectile damaging abilities and auto-attacks now also destroy destructibles such as crates and barrels.

[ 2022-07-20 19:39:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Balance

General Stats

• All cooldown reduction stats are now capped at 70%.

Runes

The bonus values of runes you receive have been altered slightly. Note that these values only apply to new runes. Runes you already have remain unchanged!

• Ability strength runes: -15%
• Base health regen runes: +10%
• Basic attack heal runes: +15%
• Cooldown reduction runes: -10%

Raven

• Volley diminished damage for multiple hits on the same target: 70% -> 50%

Evolution

• Enemy Damage Multiplier per wave: 6% -> 7%
• Enemy Movement Speed Increase per wave: 0% -> 1%
• Bat Hatchery Damage: 100% of Attack Damage -> 70% of Attack Damage
• Butterfly Effect Normal Damage: 40% -> 30%
• Butterfly Effect Boss Damage: 2% -> 1%

[ 2022-05-22 09:19:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

Weapons

Ever wondered why Krogar keeps talking about his axe, while he has a hammer? Well, now he can wield an axe too!

With this patch, you'll be able to unlock unique weapons for every gladiator through the Gadgets menu. Once unlocked, you'll have the option to swap your gladiators' weapons for the new ones. Each new weapon has unique effects that can really alter the way you play!

Come check out the new update to see the other weapons!

New Affixes

Two new affixes have been added: Nerve Agent and Soul Transfer.

Streamer Mode

For those interested in streaming, you can now play the Evolution gamemode in Streamer Mode! You'll be able to link your twitch stream ingame through the options menu, Once set up, you can play Evolution with a twist!
Instead of you picking your upgrades between every round, the upgrades will be picked by the people in your Twitch chat. They will be able to vote for upgrades, simply by typing in the chat. The game will then automatically pick the upgrade with the most votes. Happy streaming!

Other

• A third rune slot will now be unlocked once you reach level 20.
• Lots of new coloured particle effects have been added that will unlock once you reach a certain Glory level.
• It is no longer possible to buy Gladiators. They are always unlocked and free!

Balance

Victoria

Victoria has been overperforming slightly, so we're making her slightly less invincible.

• Health per level reduced by 25%
• Vampirism Cost: 15% -> 17%
• Vampirism Heal Duration: 4s -> 5s
• Fixed a bug where Vampirism would damage Victoria below 20% HP, even if Vampiric Guard was unlocked.

[ 2022-05-17 17:35:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Evolution

The major addition in today's patch is the new gamemode, Evolution. In some ways, Evolution works like the Gauntlet. Every time you beat a round, a new, harder round starts. However, what happens in between rounds is what differs. First of all, instead of an extra affix, enemies will just get stronger over time, and they will spawn in greater numbers as well. So, how do you stop that?
Between every round, you'll be presented with a choice of 3 buffs that will last throughout the whole run. All buffs are stackable, and we're very curious to see what kind of builds you come up with. Unlike the gauntlet, your score is recorded when you lose. Your Evolution score is simply the highest round you've ever survived.
Obviously, a new gamemode brings with it a new way to gain Glory and rise through the leaderboards. As such, your evolution score will be automatically added to your Glory. You'll also be able to unluck new achievements, which will in turn unlock more stats for all your gladiators!

Balance

Raven

Auto attack damage per level: 0.5 -> 0.4

Ember

Dragon's Breath damage per level: 2.0 -> 2.3

[ 2022-03-19 13:59:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

Map

The level selection screen has been revamped to show Valor's world map. You can choose your locations and pick the relevant levels in the next menu. Oh, you can also see where the next environments could be ;).

Customization

You can now purchase two new (expensive) items from the Gadgets store. One will unlock the Silver Skins, while the other will unlock Silver Particles! Particles are a new way to customize you gladiators. Along with skins, you'll be able to change the looks of all effects (arrows, spells, ...) of your champion. Check it out in the Skins tab! You'll also be able to unlock Sanguine Particles by beating all Castle Sanguine levels on Gladiator Difficulty.

Balance

Raven

• Volley damage for arrows beyond the first: 80% -> 70%
• Recall damage for arrows beyond the first: 80% -> 70%

Victoria

• Sanguine Shape Radius: 5 -> 4
• Sanguine Shape Drain per level: 0.2 -> 0.15

Gauntlet

• Reward multiplier: 17% -> 16%

Other

• You can now sell runes for gold!

[ 2022-02-19 15:04:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

Castle Sanguine

The Midlands have been ruled by House Sanguine for centuries. Time to show them that's about to end. This patch brings us to Castle Sanguine, bringing you 5 new challenges, including a new bossfight. Are you going to come out on top?

Backstory

Alexander of House Sanguine has ruled the Midlands for centuries. He and his two daughers, Victoria and Catherine, both suffer from the hereditary disease, Vampirism. While the affliction grants the host extreme life longevity, and magical powers, it can completely take over the mind if not properly controlled. Being the eldest sister, Victoria was trained to be her father's successor, while Catherine was neglected and never learned how to properly control her Vampirism. As Victoria aged, she learned that House Sanguine suppresses their Vampirism by imprisoning the poor and harvesting their blood. Knowing this, she abandoned her family, and started revolution amongst the common folk. Without a well trained heir, House Sanguine granted the throne to Catherine, who could barely control her own sickness, let alone the Midlands.

Victoria

Along with their Castle, comes House Sanguine's oldest daughter, Victoria, as a new Gladiator!

Abilities

Passive: Vampirism

Victorias abilities cost 15% of her maximum health to cast. If the ability hits an enemy, she is healed for the same percentage over 4 seconds. Vampirism's health cost is not reduced by forms of damage reduction or invincibility, and Victoria's health cannot be reduced under 1 by Vampirism.

Auto Attack

Victoria conjures a ball of vampiric blood and hurls it towards her enemies.

Ability 1: Blood Bolt

Victoria launches a blood projectile forward, dealing damage to the first enemy it hits. Afterwards, the projectile continues, dealing reduced damage to all subsequent enemies.

Ability 2: Bat Swarm

Victoria releases a swarm of bats that fly towards nearby enemies. If a bat hits an enemy, they take damage and are slowed. Enemies take reduced damage for every bat beyond the first.

Ability 3: Sanguine Shape

Victoria gains increased movement speed and damage reduction for a duration. During this time, she drains health from all nearby enemies.

New Level Cap: 20

The Level Cap has been raised from 15 to 20. As always, you'll get extra stats as you progress through the next 5 levels, and 5 new upgrades have been added to all Gladiators.

Gadgets

For those who have been saving up gold since the game came out, the time is finally here! You'll now be able to spend your gold on Gadgets, from the Gadgets menu (duh). These gadgets will allow you to reduce the strength of affixes.
For those that are swimming in gold, no worries, we have something in store for you in the near future ;).

Balance

Gladiators

• Raven AutoAttack Knockback reduced by 30%
• Krogar Armor per level: 2.5 -> 2
• Krogar Health per level: 5 -> 4.5

Affixes

• Blizzard now decreases your grip by 20% less than it used to. In other words, we nerfed Blizzard.

Runes

• We've increased the difference in rune strength between environments, meaning your runes should get stronger more quickly as you progress through the game.
• We've decreased the randomness in rune drops, making it less likely to get a disappointing drop.

Other

• The Rune selection screen now has a filter, so you can find that one armor rune you lost weeks ago
• You can now see a gladiator's individual gauntlet record for each level in the gladiator selection screen for that level
• Fixed an issue where tooltips from the menu would hang around on your screen after starting a new challenge
• Decreased randomness for gladiator-level runes, by removing some of the more unlucky draws. This means that, on average, gladiator runes will now be better.
• Made the menu background a bit darker to make all the text more readable
• The level selection screen now shows the current top player for every environment
• Fixed an issue where crowd level attack speed bonuses would display incorrectly in the tooltip
• Fixed an issue where Krogar would not always get proper bonuses from runes.
• Fixed a bug where The Training Master's Training Dummies would keep spitting out Kamikaze Stars

[ 2022-01-21 19:30:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Leaderboards

The game now features leaderboards, which can be accessed from the main menu. These leaderboards rank you among the other players, based on your Glory. You can earn glory by completing levels on harder difficulties, or improving your Gauntlet level. You'll see that there are separate leaderboards for every gladiator, environment and a global leaderboard:
When you open a leaderboard, you'll be able to see the top 10, as well as the players ranked near you:
Happy climbing!

Other

• Fixed a bug where giving up would give way too much exp
• Fixed a bug where the game would lock up after unpausing

[ 2021-12-17 18:32:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Happy Holidays! This smaller patch brings a few new things, while we work on the big 1.3 patch. Expect an 1.2.2 as well!

New Affixes

The Gift

Here for the holiday season, The Gift! This little package appears on the map, waiting for you to pick it up. You really should though, because failing to open your present in time will result in a huge explosion!

Blizzard

Like ice skating? Blizzard is the one for you! This affix will fill the arena with ice, decreasing your grip.

Balance

Affix: Rejuvenation

While Rejuvenation is pretty non-threatening on its own, it gets pretty hard to kill enemies when it is stacked. We're lowering the base amount to make sure there's some more breathing room here. Rejuvenation health regeneration: 10% -> 8%

Ember

Empowering Ember's fire-mage fantasy! Afterburner bonus damage per level: 0.75 -> 1

Other changes

• Tweaked some post-processing settings for spicier graphics.
• Post processing is now also enabled in the main menu, so it fits with the rest of the game.

[ 2021-12-11 10:38:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! We'd like to start this year's celebrations with a giveaway for you. We're doing tis on both our instagram and discord page, and you can enter the giveaway in both locations to double your chances! Click here to go to the Instagram post! Click here to go to the Discord post!

[ 2021-12-09 12:25:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

Gauntlet Mode

The Gauntlet is a new game mode that unlocks for every challenge once you have beaten it on Gladiator difficulty.
You'll start every level as you know it, with only a single affix. Once you beat the level, you'll be presented with a choice between two options:

• Continue: You will replay the level, with an extra affix, and increased enemy stats. Doing this will increase your gold and experience multiplier.
• Stop: Take your winnings and end the challenge.

There's a catch, though! Should you choose to continue, and die in the next round, you'll gain no rewards at all. This means you'll have to get to know your own limits, and stop before you lose it all. The level selection menu will always show you the highest round you've reached for each Gauntlet:
On top of that, you can earn new achievements, along with new game-wide rewards by playing Gauntlet:
Of course, these achievements were also added to the Steam Achievements.

Balance

Experience gains

Experience and gold rewards no longer depend on how much damage you took during the game, because this negatively impacts tank playstyles, like Krogar and Ember's Ability Heal build. Instead, experience gained is now set per level, but still with a modifier for each difficulty level. Rewards are still reduced when you lose, and experience multipliers from achievements still apply. The average experience gained in early levels is still the same, but the change above allows us to tweak experience gains per level. We have slightly increased experience gains in later levels (Taikaan Jungle and Neonwave City) as a result.

Gladiator difficulty

Gladiator difficulty should be hard, but not unfair. We're reducing missile and movements speed multipliers to make things feel a little more fair.

• Gladiator difficulty missile speed multiplier: 1.3x -> 1.25x
• Gladiator difficulty movement speed multiplier: 1.2x -> 1.15x

Supremacy

Losing points when you're getting hit is fine and interactive, but taking a breather shouldn't penalize you so much. We've reduced t he score drain speed in Supremacy in higher difficulty levels.

• Warrior Supremacy score drain speed multiplier: 1.2x -> 1.1x
• Vanquisher Supremacy score drain speed multiplier: 1.4x -> 1.2x
• Gladiator Supremacy score drain speed multiplier: 1.6x -> 1.4x

Gladiator stats

Gladiators base stats increase more quickly in later levels. Previously, base stats would increase linearly as a gladiator's level increased. Now, all levels gained above level 5 increase stats by an additional 40%, and all levels gained above 10 increase stats by an additional 100%. In practice, this means that gladiators with a higher level will now be stronger than they used to be, with the difference in strength increasing as the level goes up. This will make the later levels feel more useful than they currently do.

Taikaan Jungle

Panthers are annoying, and especially punishing if you don't instantly kill them. We're toning down their stats to make them a little more forgiving.

• Panther base health: 35 -> 32
• Panther movement speed: 35 -> 33
• Panther base damage: 20 -> 18

Raven

For how easy it is to stack damage using Recall, it did a lot of damage. We're cutting back a little bit here.

• Recall bonus damage per level: 0.3 -> 0.25

Ember

Ember needed some more identity, so we decided to focus some more on her strengths and fiery fantasy!

• Movement speed: 34 -> 35
• Afterburner bonus damage per level: 0.5 -> 0.75

Krogar

Krogar takes a lot of unintended damage, due to his melee range. This change effectively means Krogar will have fewer penalties for taking damage, helping him out in Supremacy.

• Damage score reduction multiplier: 1 -> 0.7

Other

• Bossfights now also grant some experience and gold. Their main reward remains Runes, but we're now a little less stingy on the experience and gold.
• Added tooltips to the difficulty selection screen.
• All affixes now have icons. These icons are permanently displayed on the screen so you can always keep track of which ones are active.
  
• Fixed an issue where gladiator stat tooltips for attack damage, attack speed and health regen would not be correct if the player had crowd bonuses enabled for these stats.
• Projectile on-hit sounds now correctly trigger when hitting a wall.
• Ingame menu now correctly shows that gladiator level 15 is the current maximum.
• Enemies will no longer look at you at weird angles when you're really close to them.
• Fixed an issue where the you would not be able to equip new runes, if your other gladiators hadn't yet unlocked that rune slot.
• You are now invincible during the first second of every level. This allows you to reposition safely if there's a meteor that just happens to try and spawnkill you!
• A maximum of 20 dead enemies will now be visible at any time. Older bodies will fade away if new ones occur, to make sure you GPU doesn't melt trying to render all enemies that already died.
• You can now see a gladiator's level and beaten difficulties for each level, when selecting your gladiator for a specific level. Go hunt those skins!
  
• The continue button can no longer be clicked on level 15, because, well, there is no next level.

[ 2021-11-23 19:46:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! This smaller update addresses a few issues that were mentioned on our discord server.

Affixes

Sawmill

Amount of saws: 5 -> 4

Meteor Strike

Seconds between meteors: 1 -> 1.1

Seeker

Movement speed: 1.5 -> 1.6

Other

• You can now choose between a few cursors in the graphics settings menu, to aid with visibility
• Fixed an issue where the Palima lasers would stop moving
• You can no longer walk through the gap between the walls in Palima Bay

[ 2021-11-06 16:38:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! It's time for the first major Valor update! The main piece of feedback we got was that grinding for experience can often feel pretty tedious, because playing the same level over and over is ... well, the same level over and over. That's solved now!

Affixes

Whenever you play a non-bossfight, affixes will be randomly chosen, to spice things up. The amount of affixes depends on the difficulty:

• Novice: 0
• Brawler: 1
• Warrior: 1
• Vanquisher: 2
• Gladiator: 3

Now what are these affixes? Upon starting the game, you'll be greeted by a message telling you which affixes were applied. An example:
What affixes can you get? Here's a list of the first 6 affixes. Obviously, we'll be adding more with upcoming updates.

• Juggernaut: All enemies are larger and have more health.
• Rejuvenation: All enemies regenerate health over time.
• Kamikaze: Upon death, enemies will throw 4 shurikens in all major directions.
• Meteor Strike: Meteors fall from the sky! Getting hit by them is not a good idea.
• Seeker: An unkillable seeker follows you. Upon contact, you take loads of damage.
• Sawmill: Circular saws cut across the map. Dodge these!

Balance Changes

Krogar

Krogar had some difficulties so far. These changes aim to make him feels less clunky, hopefully increasing his strength as well.

• Basic attack range: 1 -> 1.3
• Basic attack cone width: 60 degrees -> 90 degrees

Experience

To account for the harder difficulty in Brawler and above, we've also increased the experience and gold multipliers.

• Novice: 90% -> 90%
• Brawler: 100% -> 100%
• Warrior: 110% -> 125%
• Vanquisher: 120% -> 150%
• Gladiator: 130% -> 175%

Bugfixes & Small Changes

• Fixed an issue where runes would not display correctly on Raven and Krogar.
• Made the menu background a little more colorful.
• Fixed an issue where you could right click menu buttons, resulting in some unintented soft-lock states.
• The crowd SFX volume is now correctly linked to the SFX volume slider in the audio options.
• The Training Master will no longer express his disappointment by saying "Disappointing" on repeat, even after his death.

[ 2021-11-01 10:59:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

Features

• Steam Achievements! This was by far the most requested feature in the polls, so here it is. The crowd has spoken!

Balance

It's still early and we need more data to assess balance, but Ember and Krogar do need a slight nudge in the positive direction. Ember

• Dragon's Breath (Ability 3) damage: 26 (+2 per level) -> 30 (+2 per level)

Krogar

• Maximum Health: 100 (+5 per level) -> 110 (+5 per level)

Bugfixes & Small things

• You can now hover over abilities while in-game to see their tooltips.
• Fixed an issue where the game would lag right after completing a level.

[ 2021-10-25 20:55:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Bugfixes:

• Fixed a bug where Raven would get way (way!) too much attack speed.
• Fixed a bug where the attack range runes would give more attack range than advertised.
• Fixed a bug where enemies would sometimes fail to target the player.

[ 2021-10-23 19:35:51 CET ] [ Original post ]