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Good day, Dragon Lords! The much anticipated 4.0 Update arrives today with Tower Balance Changes, a new Ice Flak Tower, and more! We've got lots to talk about for upcoming changes to the game, so let's get started!

Tower Balance Changes

This past December, we identified and fixed a bug that was artificially capping tower damage.  Without this cap it became clear that certain elemental towers and turrets had been scaled to be massively overpowered and were heavily imbalancing the game. In order to minimize changes to gameplay we intentionally (and temporarily) capped flak tower and turret power and began discussions with players on the best ways to improve the balance of these towers. Below is an outline of our updates to long-term balance improvements.

[February 2nd Update: After many observations of community feedback and extensive internal meetings, we have decided to update the tower balance changes today as seen by the updated graphs below. Take a look at our Forums for the most up-to-date information!]

Note: The changes detailed in the graphs below are to demonstrate relative power changes by tower level. The exact numbers that players see in game may differ based on research, buffs, runes, etc. We are also adding the attack damage of a standard Archer Tower building for reference in these graphs. The Archer Tower building is not changing in this update.

Dark Flak

Changes:

• Added appropriate attack scaling past pre-release level caps.

• Slightly reduced supershot damage.

Design Intent:

• The intended role of this tower is a heavy short range damage dealer with the ability to stun dragons.

• However, the Dark Flak tower is dramatically outperforming other towers and the current optimal defense strategy is overly dependent on the performance of Dark Flak supershots.

• The primary reason is that supershot and normal attack damage was scaling too much per level, which is what prompted the December damage cap on the regular attack damage.

• NEW CHANGES: still needed to be scaled beyond the previous 1M damage cap. Along with adding the second version of the new scaling, we're slightly decreasing the supershots of Dark Flak towers in order to maintain similar balance to pre-4.00.

Fire Flak

Changes:

• Added appropriate attack scaling past pre-release level caps.

• Slightly reduced supershot damage.

Design Intent:

• The Fire Flak tower is intended to be a heavy damage dealer, similar to Dark Flak, but with longer range and more utility from the powerful supershot debuff and death explosion damage.

• Like Dark Flak, the Fire Flak tower’s damage was also scaling incorrectly, resulting in the December damage cap when this bug was discovered.

• After the change, the Fire Flak tower will still have the third highest tower damage per second, behind the Dark Flak tower and Fire Turret. The burst damage from the supershot will also be in line with other damage-dealing towers.

• NEW CHANGES: still needed to be scaled beyond the previous 1M damage cap. Along with adding the second version of the new scaling, we're slightly decreasing the supershots of Fire Flak towers in order to maintain similar balance to pre-4.00.

Fire Turret

Changes:

• Added appropriate attack scaling past pre-release level caps.

Design Intent:

• Like both the Dark and Fire Flak, the Fire Turret is intended to be a heavy damage dealer.

• However, as with the other two towers, the scaling issue resulted in an overpowered regular attack. Consequently, we have reduced the tower’s damage curve to more accurately meet the intended damage level for the tower.

Ice Turret

Changes:

• Adjusted normal attack damage curve.

• Removed Damage Reduction debuff

• Removed Attack Speed debuff

• Increased Ammo Regen debuff

• Supershot Shield now scales correctly to level 60.

Design Intent:

• Ice Turret shielding value had previously capped at level 35 and will now scale all the way to level 60.

• Regular attack damage curve adjusted relative to overall tower balance.

• Debuff adjustments to improve playability.

Food and Lumber Production Buildings

Changes:

• Adjusted standard HP curve.

Design Intent:

• Upon initially extending the max level for Production Buildings from level 50 to 60, our scaling calculations were incorrect. We have now adjusted these buildings’ HP curves to more reasonably match the HP curves of defensive buildings at each builder hut level.

4.0 Patch Notes

A full list of the 4.0 Patch Notes are available on our latest Forums thread. Here's some of the highlights from this list:

• Fixed an issue where dragon remains cloaked even when explosive shield explodes in battle
• Revamped the referrals feature making it easier to refer and play with your friends.
• Revamped the attack invite banner based on the feedback mentioned in this thread.
• Made some improvements to our notification system.
• Added Settings menu to Atlas UI.

Read the full list of Patch Notes and join the conversation on our Forums!

Ice Flak Tower

The Ice Flak Tower is our newly introduced tower to the game, and will be available alongside the 4.0 Update. More information on the Ice Flak Tower, including its stats and other useful numbers, will be available shortly on our blog. Stay tuned!

Want to talk about these upcoming changes to War Dragons? Join the conversation on our Forums!