Hi everyone! Happy new year! So ascension has seen quite a few balance updates and quality of life improvements since it was launched in November. In general I feel that that improved the gameplay quite a bit, but late game is still a bit slower than I'd like it to be. Just making the numbers grow faster with more upgrades did not seem like the proper approach for that anymore though, so it's time for something bigger! The upcoming update features two parts (and a ton of minor changes, but let's stick with the bigger changes for this post) # Armory 1.2 The Armory was a nice addition to the early game when it was originally launched, but it becomes trivial later in the game. To a degree that's ok, as I like how the core focus of progression slowly shifts from floors, to armory, to prestige, than ascension. But it becomes a bit too trivial as it is now. So six new items will be introduced to the armory! Four of these are class specific, two of these aren't. Here are their in-game descriptions: **(Warrior, Mithril Greaves) Charge speed**: Reduces the time it takes to proceed to the next floor by 10% per warrior (x0.9^warriors) **(Cleric, Wand of Revival) Revival speed**: Reduces the time it takes to respawn after death or prestige by 10% per cleric (x0.9^clerics) **(Ranger, Gloves of Swiftness) Combat speed**: Reduces the time between combat actions by 10% per ranger, for both allies and enemies (x0.9^rangers) **(Paladin, Tome of Unity) Unity**: Increases the effect of Charge, Revival and Combat speed by 1% per unique class in the party (additive) per paladin (also additive). This applies to the buffs other classes provide and does not directly give the bonus itself **(Group, Heirloom of Champions) Bundle prestige stats**: Have a single prestige "all-stats" upgrade instead of having experience, health, damage, armor and healing seperately. It costs the same as one stat normally would, but powers all five at once **(Group, Heirloom of Legends) Boss spawning only**: Causes enemies to no longer spawn in groups but instead as single enemies that yield ^1.01 as much experience This means that the team composition now affects time itself, allowing you to build a team focussed on the aspects that best suit your progression at your point in the game. The class specific items are unlocked for 1e15 gold so they are unlocked before ascension, but quite a bit after early game. The heirlooms are priced at 1e10 gold and 1e25 gold. The third tier of Armory items have been adjusted in price so that they are maxed a little before they become trivial. That also makes them a bit more powerful early game. # Ascension Trials Now this is what I like to announce the most. It offers a new feature to ascension in the form of trials. They are similar to what you've probably seen in other games, mostly under the name "challenges". There will be five trials, which offer unique rewards to further improve your progression. Each trial tests your skills to progress in a different way and comes with it's own reward. Now it wouldn't fit Incremental Adventures if they weren't layered as well! In this case that's called trial tiers. The general concept is that a new trial tier is completed about every ascension layer. The trial goal changes with every tier, and the reward upgrades when a higher tier is completed. Here are some details about the specific trials and their rewards: **Speed trial** **Goal**: Reach prestige layer 20 within 20 hours **Reward**: Enemy strength ^0.950 (Lowers enemy strength by a given amount, making them easier to defeat while still rewarding the same amount of experience) **Quickfire trial** **Goal**: Reach prestige layer 15 while autobuyers are forced to trigger on every floor change **Reward**: Floor skip range 80.0% - 100% (Floor skips normally trigger on an exact amount (1000, 2500 for example). With this unlock, it can now trigger for a range below those numbers if that's more optimal (800-1000, 2000-2500 in that example)) **Even or odd trial** **Goal**: Reach prestige layer 15 while auto-prestige only works for prestige layers that match the parity of the highest unlocked layer during the ascension **Reward**: Experience ^1.02 (Increases the amount of experience that enemies award) **Highroller trial** **Goal**: Reach prestige layer 15 while auto-prestige is disabled for the first 2 prestige layers **Reward**: Prestige discount ^0.139 (Having points on layer x increases the amount of points you'd get when prestiging that layer again. This increases that bonus further) **Scarcity trial** **Goal**: Reach prestige layer 15 while experience gain from enemies is reduced to ^0.9 **Reward**: Level effect on AP gain ^1.01 (Increases the amount of Ascension Points you gain on ascension further based on your highest level this ascension) Now with the way scaling works through ascension upgrades, it's fully up to you when you'd start these trials and aim for their rewards. They will be significantly harder at an early stage of an ascension layer, yet become quite a bit easier with more ascension upgrades. The goal of this feature is to give you more options to further improve the speed of your progression, while offering new depth in progression strategy as to when to aim for which goal. All of this is technically stable and mostly going through balance testing to make sure everything scales nicely. It is a little too soon to give a specific ETA on the release, but unless anything changes fundamentally, I feel safe to say that it's going to be within the first half of January! I look forward to hear what you guys think about the upcoming feature(s)! Cheers, Gniller Edit: The update is now live!

So.. are these new armory items one time buys? The group ones defintly sound like it.. which is fine though.. I could see the champion heirloom opening doors if it had to be leveled to one be as effiecnt as buying all 4 singlely, and then adeventually superior to buying 1 at a time. My main problem with it being singular is if thats the case how are you fixing the issue you are claiming armory has? it will just be trivial.. Oh also will the new 4 buy option also be adding an auto buyer for itself? or is this an idea for active playing..? Anyways not saying they are bad ideas just want some more info ^_^ I can't comment on ascension as last time i played armory had just come out so i'm restarting from scratch.

Yes, all new Armory upgrades are on-time purchases. Now for the stats part this does indeed not change too much late game. However, the new class items provide the mechanic to influence game animations themselves. With a proper setup you can expect to see about +30-40% speed of progression. While this does not directly impact stats, it has quite a big effect on progression. The heirlooms (group items) are mostly tuned to give a nice bonus when they are acquired. For late game these will not have such a big impact. And there will indeed be an ascension perk to automate Armory purchases. For those that have not reached Ascension yet, perks provide some extra automation when unlocked and enabled, this suited that nicely.

1. I think that the trials should scale in a way that scales all parameters of the trial, not just the goal. For example, the Speed trial time limit would increase every completion, the Highroller trial would disable auto-prestige for more prestige layers on higher completions, and the Scarcity trial experience exponent would be reduced slightly every completion. Of course the goal would increase every completion as well. 2. I think that there should be an ascension trial that changes the scaling of enemies to double-exponential and severely nerfs the floor skipper to compensate. This would be a throwback to the old days of Incremental Adventures, when the enemy scaling was at least double-exponential instead of single-exponential. Suggested reward: Exponent to floorskipper power.

1. Its how it is already 2. We are considering an earlygame-like trial, with an element of puzzle (team composition matters). It is in plans

I am very happy with how the ascension trials are looking so far! With that being said, I feel the new armoury upgrades are not going to add a great deal of *fun* for lategame players. Given these one time unlocks (which assuming we are all able to afford them), it seems that once again the state of the armoury will result in a specific composition of heroes being objectively the best. Having **no room/ options** for different comps depending on your personal preferences and testing is the one major complaint I've had as a player of this game. * Spending minutes or even hours trying to experiment and find the best comp * The satisfaction of clicking on one of those upgrades These things have been lost in the late game and I don't think these changes will bring them back. I would love it if **hero stats** could once again be made relevant so that armoury upgrades would not **feel redundant**. The effort of **clicking** on the stat upgrade right now is a **waste of time** considering it will make no difference to progress whatsoever. I would also enjoy it if heroes could be balanced in such a way that *multiple different team compositions* could offer a *similar overall benefit* (maybe one comp results in much higher damage but slower progression through floors, another comp lets you get through floors faster but then due to lack of damage the run will end slightly earlier etc.). These kinds of changes would make the armoury upgrades feel relevant again! Overall I am still happy with how this update looks! Anything which gives a sense of progression and challenge is a welcome sight and I feel I am being brought both those things.

@jamesnorton As eQueline already pointed out, but it makes sense for me to confirm it. Trial penalties, limits and goals are indeed adjusted per tier. @manowar999 You're making a valid point on the Armory. It has been on my radar for a while now but I have yet to find the perfect idea for Armory in lategame. Now the new upgrades make compositions a bit more flexible from before ascension, and keep value after that. But depending on your current state of progression, there is mostly a "best" composition to be found. I think it offers a nice addition but would like that to add something more for late game. The downside of building Armory too much towards progression styles is that it quickly becomes best to repeatedly switch compositions during your run, which I find too tedious of a task to fit what I'd like it to do. That's not to say that brainstorming has stopped, it just isn't finished yet :) But that can take some more time, so I intend to release this update before that. As for the clicking, a new ascension perk (cost: 1 perk point) is added to automate armory purchases. While fun early game, it indeed becomes tedious clicking when the value of armory purchases is far less relevant. Automating that should resolve that annoyance.

With this new update, auto prestige on respawn runs are now taking more than an hour. The enemy scaling at high floor seems to have been severely nerfed. That or floor skip was severely nerfed. I am at floor 1.59e7, and it seems to be progressing 1 floor at a time for a long time before finally respawning. Enemy stats don't seem to change. This is going to severely inflate the time it takes to reach ascension.

> Even or odd trial > Goal: Reach prestige layer 15 while auto-prestige only works for prestige layers that match the parity of the highest unlocked layer during the ascension > Reward: Experience ^1.02 (Increases the amount of experience that enemies award) The prestige points look funny whenever there's an auto-prestige here. It auto-buys as if you had the correct amount of prestige points, but doesn't actually award the prestige points themselves.

> *Originally posted by **[kmwill23](/forums/1058760/topics/1884755?page=1#13317789)**:* > With this new update, auto prestige on respawn runs are now taking more than an hour. The enemy scaling at high floor seems to have been severely nerfed. That or floor skip was severely nerfed. I am at floor 1.59e7, and it seems to be progressing 1 floor at a time for a long time before finally respawning. Enemy stats don't seem to change. > This is going to severely inflate the time it takes to reach ascension. Turn on "prestige on small floor change". What you're seeing isn't new.

(a few) small question(s) about unity how is it calculated lets say 1warrior 1cleric 1ranger 3paladin is the bonus to the 10% of the other classes additive or multiplicative is the bonus from the (per class) towards the (per paladin) additive or multiplicative best posibility in my eye would be 1additive 2multiplicative as that would result in this case as a 10+1x4x3=22% bonus in speed worst posibility in my eye would be 1multiplicative 2additive as that would result in this case as a 10+0.1x(4+3)=10.7%bonus in speed (the boost from unity being without the 10% used in the above calculations) a boost of 12% is nice (1additive 2multiplicative) a boost of 7% is good (both additive) a boost of 1.2% is bad (both multiplicative) a boost of 0.7% is almost nonexistent (1multiplicative 2additive) (or is there a different way/answer to calculate/get)

This is the math behind the tier 4 items / unity: speed for certain class = x((0.9-((Unique classes/100)*paladins))^class) Let's say you have 4 unique classes. That makes 0.04 for that part of the formula. Paladins multiply this. Say two paladins = 0.08. 0.9 - 0.08 = 0.82. That's the base value used for the specific class. Say you have two warriors. That means floor transition speed is x(0.82^2 = 0.6723) - or almost 33% speed increase! This can be applied to all three animation speed categories (warrior, ranger, cleric). I hope that clarifies it!

Hello Gniller, could you uncover the secter of Scarcity trial's multiplier? Asking because i am at Prestige Layer 24 but can ascend for 5 points, while previously it was around 2 or 3 Points.

thank you Gniller

AP gain is affected by both prestige layer and highest level reached in the current ascension in the following formula: (log10(log10(highestLevel))x(PL-10))/100. Both the scarsity bonus and the improved ascension point gain unlock up one of these numbers, having an effect on the total gain

Is the quickfire trial useful at all? I have trouble seeing how getting a floorskip for a *lower* number could be much of an improvement, even if it only happens when beneficial.

> *Originally posted by **[Brilliand](/forums/1058760/topics/1884755?page=1#13331234)**:* > Is the quickfire trial useful at all? I have trouble seeing how getting a floorskip for a *lower* number could be much of an improvement, even if it only happens when beneficial. It helps on longer runs, mostly. Instead of being kicked down to a prior layer's floorskip amount, you'll get a percentage of what the highest layer's floorskip is instead.