Good release day, Kingdom!
The whole team is beyond excited to introduce you to one of our most anticipated and legendary features to date! Patrols is a brand new PVE experience that introduces 3 new stages with fantastic art and music from our design teams, 51 possible enemy encounters, 12 new monsters with unique abilities, stats, and FX, 8 new rare equipment drops, a new consumable combat item, and a whole lot of fun! Let's jump into the deets before I explode from the excitement.
Patrols
As the city of Submersia continues to grow as a bustling hub for travelers, it has started gathering a more... criminal undercurrent across its many districts. Luckily, the ranks of Bannermen has increased daily and should provide the perfect solution for the growing unrest and dark undercurrents plaguing the city. Deputy Gillford Finnigan is on the case, ready to send out the city's militia of Bannermen to crack down on the ruffians, monsters, and deep-sea terrors congregating at night to terrorize the populace. And that's where you come in!
First, sign your Heroes up as Bannermen for the city! Not only can you earn XP rewards, influence and other benefits from staking your Heroes, you will also receive XP, gold, shells, and rare rewards from completing Patrols on a daily basis.
Choose from one of three Patrol tiers to start your nightly watch:
Night Raid, optimal for level 1 - 3 Heroes, will pit you against a group of ruffians hanging outside bars and in alleyways in the Merchant District of Submersia. They're not the most organized group of baddies around but they still pack a (sucker) punch or two. Straighten them out before they hurt an innocent bystander.
-Dark Waters, optimal for level 4 - 6 Heroes, drops you in the Mariner's District where a slimy selection of deep-sea monstrosities have chased off the dock workers and threaten to bring Submersian shipping to a halt. Do what it takes to send them back to the depths where they belong!
Blood Moon, optimal for level 7 - 9 Heroes, sends you to the Military District to investigate reports of violent apparitions and other-worldly entities disrupting normal military operations. The Void may have called them here but you'll need to knock them back to sender.
After defeating one stage, you will have the option to continue into the next stage, either continuing with the current difficulty level or moving up to the next tier. Your group of Heroes will recover 20% of their health and mana between stages and unconscious Heroes will be resurrected for the next fight. Their positions and consumables will persist between stages. Each group can fight through a total of three stages per Patrol. If your Bannermen are too beaten and bloodied to continue, you can opt to end your Patrol between each stage and earn all the XP and rewards up to that point. If you choose to continue and lose, you only earn half the XP and gold for any defeated enemies and lose out on loot drops. So choose wisely!
Each Hero is limited to three separate Patrols per night, following the same daily turnover time as Hunts, so you'll want to maximize your difficulty and ability to earn the highest rewards per Hero per day!
Phew, that's a lot of exciting new information! Hopefully you can see how many opportunities this opens up for expanding this system into something bigger and better, as we add new enemies, paths, and unique encounters to expand the game loop. But for now, Deputy Gillford Finnigan is ready to put Bannermen to work on protecting the city of Submersia from the forces of evil. So get out there and do your part!
