[2023] 10th Dev Journal

A lil somethin somethin: You can find the details for this event on the announcement page here.

Hello Lumia Island survivors!
Welcome to the 2nd Update to Characters for our official launch.

As a reminder, here are the 5 main areas we are focusing on when making the changes for character updates:
① Kits that are not interactive from the enemy's perspective
② Excessive utility
③ Skills that are too simple or underutilized
④ Low accessibility due to high difficulty
⑤ The desire for the addition of more exciting gimmicks
(Note: All of the images included in this Dev Journal are still in development and are subject to change with official launch.)

Some of the original skill will either be weakened or removed, and some skills will have new features instead. These changes to the skills are not equivalent to making characters more or less powerful. In most cases, when adjusting the utility of a skill, the base stats and power are enhanced. While, in the other hand, some skills' power and base stats may be toned down, but get a new feature instead. Therefore, we'd like you to see these changes as adjustments to the battle structure instead of changes to character power.

Today’s first character is Li Dailin.
When Li Dailin avoids Basic Attacks with Drink Up (W), she will also reduce incoming damage. Drink Up disallows Dailin from attacking, which is already a fairly big restrain. We hope the damage reduction helps the skill become a more distinctive defensive tool.


When using Bottom Shelf (E), the skill will no longer Silence and instead reduce enemies' movement speed, even when empowered.



Striking Tiger (R) will now strike for the same time, even when not empowered. This is to supplement the miniscule duration of the skill when used without any BAC. However, its unenhanced damage is much weaker, so if you want to deal large damage, make sure to pay attention to your BAC.



Before, Li Dailin's combat was based on silencing her enemies to disallow enemies to react. With the new changes, we are adjusting Li Dailin to rely on correctly timed Drink Up to defend herself against enemy hits. From the enemy's perspective, fighting Li Dailin will now be more interactive as well as enhance the mind game associated with Drink Up.

On the other hand, we found that Strong Stomach (P)'s Attack Speed increase from consuming alcohol based drinks was too strong. The passive was first designed to match Li Dailin’s character story settings, but using the passive bonus became a must. We'll be adjusting some of these Passive traits to be weaker, so they become more of an Easter Egg, or delete them later on.

Piolo's skills all have two casts to them, so there are plenty of times when it feels like the battle is never-ending if you come across him on the battlefield.

We’ll be changing Piolo’s skill cooldown so that it now starts from the cast of the second skill rather than from the start of the first skill. This is a relatively simple change, but this will help players keep track of Piolo's cooldowns.



For Unmatched Discipline (P), we’re deleting the conversion from Cooldown Reduction to Attack Speed, and changing the Critical Strike to enhanced Skill Damage. To make up for the changes to his cooldown mechanisms, gaining Stacks of Well-Trained will become a bit easier. We'll also be making various skill adjustments, such as changes to delays, projectile speed, size, and crowd control. Piolo's combat will look more along the line of a Skill Combo, rather than mashing skills off cooldown.

One of the most loved characters by our beginners, Luke, is becoming a tad bit more demanding to pilot. His Evolution aspects are becoming more distinctive as well.

Elbow Grease (W) will now deal Area of Effect damage instead of enhancing his Basic Attacks. If he hits an enemy, he’ll still receive Basic Attack Enhancement just like his current iteration. Players will have to be a bit more cautious with skill usage, while getting a new Area of Effect skill for fights against multiple enemies. However, we will be getting rid of the Crowd Control Reduction attached to the skill.



We’re also switching up the Evolved effects for his skills. If Clean Sweep (Q) is Evolved, damage is greatly increased. Elbow Grease (W)'s previous Evolution bonus of HP recovery will also change. If you start with Clean Sweep (Q), then hit your target with Elbow Grease (W), HP recovery will become even greater.



Additionally, if Dirty Work (E) is Evolved, the cooldown is reset upon slaying an enemy test subject. This will help Luke’s scrimage against multiple enemies on the battlefield.


Another addition is a new Crowd Control effect called “Disrupt” that will apply to Dirty Work (E). While brief, Disrupt will, well, disrupt enemy casts, similar to Silence.

Luke’s current play structure can become a bit monotonous. Through these changes, Luke's skill floor will be raised a bit, but also gain a higher skill ceiling. When played with attention to details, Luke should be able to shine.

Echion is another test subject whose skills can be enhanced. We wanted to strengthen the characteristics of each weapon and make each of his 3 weapons even more distinctive.

Death Adder Echion, who is based around Basic Attacks, suffers from the fact that using abilities can actually do more harm than good. Now, hitting a skill will slightly increase his Attack Speed, and using Envenomization (R) with Death Adder will no longer have pre-delay, allowing Echion to animation cancel.



Black Mamba will now recover a small amount of HP with each skill, instead of just with VF Overflow (R). This feature will offer much more sustainability. On the other hand, other iterations of Echion will not recover HP with Crescent Viper (Q).



Sidewinder, centered around casting skills, will now deal additional damge with his abilities compared to the other iterations.

Hart is another character that also has an unique evolution system. Now each of her skills will only be able to be evolved once. You can evolve 3 out of her 5 skills but you’ll also be able to visually see and experience all of her changes depending on which skill you have enhanced.

Delay (Q) can fire one more time when enhanced. You’ll be able to unleash powerful, fully charged Delay hits with a short cast time.



Overdrive (W) gives buffs to allies (and not just Hart) when enhanced. This will help Hart support her teammates during team battles.



Hart’s signature mobility skill, Flanger (E), is being adjusted to only have two casts. When evolved, the skill will become a three-hit dash skill like it currently is. The third dash is the longest and can go over walls, so players should evolve Flanger if they want more mobility and safety.

If Evolved, Peacemaker (R) will now recover ally HP while they dance. This change is meant to increase stability and help her team out.


Feedback (P) will release two sound waves when enhanced.

Hart’s play style will differ depending on the skills you choose to evolve. We also hope this makes selecting Evolution Points easier and more fun.

Zahir’s main attack, Gandiva (W), will now go through enemies.



Now that all of his skills have become wide-range skills, Zahir will be able to quickly land subsequent hits using Bhargavastra (R). In the right conditions, Zahir will become the best mage for Area of Effect Damage.

However, Eye of Azrael effects stopped Zahir from being intuitive. We will be removing the ability to check where dead bodies are after slaying an enemy. Even with the Eye of Azrael effect, Gandiva will no longer slow the enemy, which makes Zahir's positioning even more important.

Celine had one of the lowest pick rates along with Silvia due to her play difficulty. In Silvia's case, as mentioned in the previous character update, her skills have been revamped already. However, for Celine, a bigger reconstruction was needed.

The biggest change for her is that her Blast Wave (E) will no longer push bombs away. If Celine is allowed to keep her ability to pre-set bombs on the floor to stop initiations from any angle, there was no way for Celine to escape the problem of "being too difficult to pilot while being too difficult to fight".



Explosives Engineer (P) will no longer have Cooldown Reduction when hitting with a skill or Basic Attack. The mechanism of her combo will be moved into Detonate (W) instead, reducing the cooldown for Plasma Bomb for each time an enemy is hit with a bomb.



We're making the continuous use of Plasma Bomb (Q) a little smoother. Magnetic Compulsion (R) will have a short cooldown that increases per fused bomb. The cooldown increase will cap at 4 bombs.

The changes in Celine as a whole are aimed to keep the fun of her continuous combos and her strong presence in area occupation while limiting her active ability to respond. Even with changes to her Cooldown Reduction, players can still make continuous combos if they connect their skills right.

However, the conditions for the Cooldown Reduction are a little more demanding and no longer affected by Cooldown Reduction stats. While pre-setting bombs are still important for Celine, players can no longer change the bombs' positions, which allows her enemies to play around the bombs easier.

There will also be changes regarding skill range and delay. In reality, adjustments to Celine are close to that of a remake. The changes to the character are fairly large-scale. The detailed specs of the skills will be announced at a later date through Patch Notes.

In order to allow for more counterplay against Chloe, we have removed some of her gimmicks. First, when using Puppet Theatre (W) for the second time, she will no longer ground the enemy but instead slow them. Additionally, Soul Link (R) will no longer cleanse debuff effects. Like some of the examples mentioned in Part 1, while gimmicks are being toned down, we will be compensating for the changes as well.



In addition to Chloe, other characters' Ground effects to prevent movement skills have mostly been replaced with effects such as Root or Slow. For Bianca, instead of making enemies Grounded while in Hemostasis (P) during Reign of the Vampire Queen (R), the skill will now slow all enemies hit by the skill.



Eva's Amethyst Flow (E) will now grant a movement speed increase for a short time instead of a dash. Additionally, the existing enhanced Basic Attack has been removed. Now after using the skill, the VF Light effect (in which the Orb falls on top of the target when the skill hits) is triggered for a certain amount of time.



For Telekinesis (P), to compensate for the removal of VF Light, Eva's Basic Attack will periodically be enhanced to deal with Skill Damage with an increased range after a certain amount of time. However, Silence and Vision that are given by the existing enhanced Basic Attack will be removed. The ranges of Phase Vortex (W) and VF Eruption (R) have also been slightly increased.



Overall, we're exchanging the extra effects of her Passive and Amethyst Flow (E), and extending the range of her skills and Passive attacks in battle. Eva's identity will be focused around being a ranged Mage that excels in damage from far away when correctly positioned. However, with the removal of her dash, Eva will have a more difficult time against enemies that are too close to her.

We'll also be changing Nadine’s Wild & Clairvoyant (P). If Nadine attacks Wild Animals within Clairvoyant range, they will be temporarily marked as Wild. If allies defeat marked animals, Nadine will receive the same amount of Wild Stacks as would have if she defeated them herself. This means that if you team up with Nadine, you won't have to give up your precious Wild Animals to her. Now you can take them on together!



Squirrel Trap (W) damage upon individual installation will be removed, but damage from the connected trap will increase. Casting the second trap out of cast range will no longer cause the trap to fail. To fix the clunky control where players accidentally install traps beyond range will cast the second trap at a maximum range in the direction where the cursor is located.



Monkey Wire (E) will now greatly increase Attack Speed only while hanging from a wire. Now it will be much more obvious when Nadine is powered up!
Nadine's overall changes are aimed to polish her skills overall. We're not changing her skills drastically, but we're making various cosmetic improvements to enhance her visuals as well.
Arrows will now reload and be released when using a Basic Attack with the Bow, Bullseye (Q), or Rain of Arrows (D). (The same change has been added to Hyejin's Bow Basic Attack motion.)



For Bullseye (Q), we opted to intensify the sting of the shot by improving the charging and retrieving motion.


Here are a few more visual improvements we've been working on.

We'll be improving the quality of Jan’s effects. This is something we heard from player feedback—don't worry, we hear you loud and clear! We're making Knee Strike (Q)'s floor effects appear sooner than his pre-delay and we're adjusting his wave effect so it appears more accurately to its actual range.



The kicking motion of Tomahawk Roundhouse (W) will be adjusted to match the timing of the hit, as well as the timing of the effect output.



Aiden’s movement animation will also be changed. Previously, he was a bit wobbly when walking, but now he will walk much more smoothly.



Meanwhile, new AI bots will be added to AI Matches. They will also be a bit more stylish with skins as well! Look at the new AIden bot go!



Today, we looked at the second update of the changes that some characters will undergo for Official Launch. We still have 2 more parts regarding character changes so make sure to stay tuned!
The next Dev Journal will cover changes to the Ranked System. Hope to see you there!

Thank you!


You can get WP from the Dev Journals on our {LINK REMOVED}web event page. Web Points(WP) are event points that can be obtained and used throughout the Season 9 web events