[2021] Lycanthropy, the why and the moving forward

Ahoy, adventurers! It’s Salty here with some knowledge. (Or, you know, information, either way.)

As discussed the other day on stream, Heroic Gems are our latest feature to keep the game fresh and moving forward. Lycanthropy is part of that initiative - introducing new challenges and considerations for you to experience. Unfortunately, Lycanthropy had a few issues on release, and for that we apologize; we’re updating our test plans here to better catch future issues like this in new features.

Now, onto the effect itself. Lycanthropy is a “transform” and, as such, it will act like other transforms in the game (e.g. Possessed King and Night Hag) with regards to stats and traits. Lycanthropy is a little bit unique in that it’s NOT an entirely negative status effect in every case, and that’s by design - we believe it’s great to be presented with tools that require a little consideration in their use - for example, cast on a powerful troop it can be debilitating to an enemy team if it triggers, but cast on a weak troop it can backfire and slow you down on your path to victory.

In the case of Essence of Evil - which is something we know you’ve brought up - it’s actually helped provide some balance to the item without us having to adjust mana costs or other spell effects, which was why it wasn’t added to the “naughty list” in the last balance update.

I hope this has answered some of the questions you’ve been asking about what we intended with Lycanthropy.

@Grundulum we are aware of this issue and our team are looking into it.

Moving forward it is our intention to have Lycanthropy behave more like “transform” so a few changes will be coming to it with our next major update. Our post talking about Lycanthropy let that out of the bag a little early, and we apologise for any confusion.

This means that in the future Lycanthropy will behave like transform and when the troop lycanthropes (yes that’s what we are going with) they will be at the same level as a troop that was transformed, which is half of the original troop. Also, the issue where lycanthroped Valravens and Gnomes don’t give sigils or loot will be rectified at the same time.

Thank you for your patience and understanding, and before anyone asks no, I can’t tell you the date of the next update. This change will be some time coming, but it is coming.

Happy matching!

This change has to be done with a client fix, not a server fix, which is why it will take more time to release. (Just letting you know why it can’t be done immediately.)

We didn’t consider the original valraven and gnome issues as bugs, but QoL issues as lycanthropy is different to transform in practice. We are changing this to bring it in line with transform, but as mentioned earlier that won’t happen until we can bundle the fix into a bigger update.

Please continue this discussion, but don’t treat each other unkindly. If this thread devolves into attacks and caused harm I will close it in line with our community guidelines.

Thread locked due to inappropriate behaviour and breaking the community guidelines. It will re open after the weekend.

Please cool off.

Earlier in this thread I clarified that Lycanthropy will be brought in line with transform, @Tresk.