A Balancing Act...

Hello everyone!

It’s the end of the summer holidays! I hope you’ve been able to take some time for yourself!

On our part, since the Crescent March update, we have been quite busy! Between moving to a new country for Kobal and Gamescom, we decided to take it a bit slower to enjoy the beautiful weather. However, that doesn’t mean we haven’t been working hard behind the scenes.

Taking a look at all your feedback, which has been incredibly helpful both for keeping us motivated and for helping us make Hive Blight the best it can be, we noticed a recurring complaint around the game’s balance and the efficiency of certain builds and clans compared to others. So please keep it coming!

With that in mind, while preparing our next big update, we decided to take a much closer look at our data and started working on something essential for a game like Hive Blight:

The Balancing!

Now that we have released all the clans and that our player base is getting larger, we have access to much more data to fine-tune the units, the clans, the trinkets, the items, as well as the interactions between each clan.

This in-depth look at the various elements of the game has led to the following discoveries, which have been addressed in the following patch notes:

• Amber Forge and Crescent March are overall a bit weaker than the other clans and will receive significant buffs.

• For the Silent Cabbale, due to a miscalculation, the poison builds seemed stronger than they actually were and will receive a slight buff, while general-purpose trinkets and units have proven extremely strong and will be tuned down.

• The Vespada are extremely dominant in the early game and keep a high efficiency overall and will therefore be tweaked.

• And finally, the Sweet Symphoney scales really well in the late game and will be tuned down slightly to not be as dominant as they are at the moment.

Anyway, that’s all for today. You can read the whole patch note below.

Enjoy!

Balance patch:

General balance direction

• Improved weaker Amber Forge and Crescent March starts.

• Buffed poison-focused tools while nerfing some of Silent Cabbale’s strongest general-purpose options.

• Reduced the early safety of Vespada units.

• Reduced the global scale of Sweet Symphoney units

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Amber Forge

Starter Trinket Buffs

• Aerodynarmor: max attack speed gain increased 0.5 -> 0.6. (also fixed an issue where it triggered every 30 chitin instead of 20)

• Golden Anvil: now forges 1 fragile equipment AND 1 upgraded fragile equipment after each fight.

Equipment Buffs

• Magneto Helmet: chitin gain increased 6 -> 7.

• Slingshot: attack power gain increased 5 -> 6.

Unit Buffs

• Phaistos: attack power increased 6/12/18 -> 8/14/20.

• Sisyphus: attack speed increased 0.6 -> 0.7.

• Hodor: starting chitin increased 60/80/100 -> 80/120/160.

• David: damage increased 20/30/40 -> 25/35/45.

• Diogenes: chitin gain per equipment increased 12/14/16 -> 16/18/20.

• Diogenes: health increased 30/40/50 -> 70/80/90.

• Ivo: attack speed increased 0.6/0.7/0.8 -> 0.8/0.9/1.

• Ichigo: burn increased 15/20/25 -> 20/30/40.

• Ichigo: attack speed adjusted 1.2/1.4/1.6 -> 1/1/1.

• Lucina: chitin gain increased 5/10/15 -> 6/12/18.

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Crescent March

Starter Trinket Buffs

• Mirror Pool: mayfly limit increased 4 -> 6.

• Expiation: Penance triggers every 7 -> 6 hits.

Equipment Buffs

• Fabergé's Chrysalis: Mayflies invoked 3 -> 4. (also fixed an issue where it spawned 2 instead of intended 3)

• Husk Maiden: chitin gain increased 6 -> 8.

Unit Buffs

• Arilus: attack speed increased 1/1.4/1.8 -> 1.2/1.6/2.

• Mira: health increased 60/90/120 -> 80/120/160.

• Orion: attack power increased 2/10/18 -> 4/12/20.

• Borea: attack power increased 2/2/2 -> 5/5/5

• Tycho: now kills all T1 units when he dies (Poison is now rounded up)

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Silent Cabbale

Equipment Buffs

• Coated Dart: poison increased 2 -> 3.

• Nettle Blade: poison increased 2 -> 3.

Trinket Nerfs

• Bloodlust: heal reduced 6 -> 5.

• Bloodlust: now only gives tempo to melee units.

Unit Buffs

• Bakhan: poison increased 4/5/6 -> 5/6/7.

• Herkel: poison increased 1/2/3 -> 2/3/4.

• Morgana: attack speed increased 0.6 -> 0.7.

Unit Nerfs

• Vladimir: attack power reduced 12/18/24 -> 10/16/22.

• Vladimir: health reduced 60/100/140 -> 60/80/100.

• Astaroth: health reduced 120/240/360 -> 100/200/300.

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Sweet Symphoney

Equipment Nerfs

• Castanuts: heal reduced 4 -> 3.

Unit Buffs

• Nina: health increased 40/50/60 -> 60/80/100.

Unit Nerfs

• Edith: attack speed reduced 0.7 -> 0.6.

• Edith: charmed enemies reduced 5/7/9 -> 4/5/6.

• Gustav: attack speed given is always 0.2 but he now gains +0.3 attack speed per evolution.

• Amadeus: attack speed reduced 1.2 -> 1.

• Bob: healing reduced 6/11/16 -> 5/10/15.

• Ludwig: attack speed sync reduced 1/1.2/1.4 -> 0.9/1.1/1.3.

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**Vespada

**

Starter Trinket Buffs

• Bountiful Harvest: nectar gain increased 3 -> 4.

Trinket Nerfs

• Healthy Rose: health gain per spike reduced 5 -> 4.

• Sharpened Shells: held limit changed from unlimited to 2.

• Aluminium Foil: spike gain reduced 5 -> 4.

Unit Nerfs

• Perceval: health reduced 80/110/140 -> 60/80/100.

• Perceval: attack power adjusted 5/5/5 -> 3/6/9.

• Mordred: attack power reduced 15/20/25 -> 10/15/20.

• Hector: attack power reduced 12/18/25 -> 10/18/25.

• Ulysse: attack speed reduced 0.8 -> 0.7.

• Hercules: attack speed reduced 0.7 -> 0.6.

• Hercules: health reduced 70/110/150 -> 70/100/130.

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**

Fights**

Regular fights

• Fight with Doom Horns are now easier

• Some fight with structures (Shattered and Poison) are now easier

Elite fights

• Rubarrass (Chapter 2 stealing attack power) fights are now easier

• Pale Apostle (Chapter 1 gain attack power on attack) fights are now a bit easier

• Chubristle (Chapter 2 elite with spike) fights are now a bit harder

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**

Bugfixes & Quality of Life**

• Tooltips from unlocks at the end of run do not overlap anymore

• Visibility on the map preview improved

• Mayflies are now discovered in the encyclopedia once you unlock Crescent March

• Improved performance when a lot of units are spawned at the same time

• Improved consistency in texts for French, Japanese and Chinese language

• Damage was attributed 2 times when it came from poison, it now get tracked properly

• Fixed Fabergé's Chrysalis only spawning 2 units instead of the number in the equipment description

• Fixed Aerodynarmor triggering every 30 chitin despite its description showing it trigger every 20 chitin

• Fixed an issue where mayflies spawn on battle start would not change the targeting of their enemies.

• Changed color of "Damage avoided" during the fight and in fight results to avoid confusion with Chitin on Units

• Raised the speed of Elixir and Nectar particles

• Fixed an issue where you could drop units on obstacles

• Poison is now rounded up so 5 poison will do 5 -> 3 -> 2 -> 1 instead of 5 -> 2 -> 1