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The Quantum Incursions update and the 4th Championship

The 4th Quantum Incursions Championship starts on October 31st!

With this Championship, we're excited to introduce new Incursion maps, the new Neo Colossus level, as well as changes to the QI gameplay and rewards.

We've prepared this detailed post to explain the changes and our reasoning behind them. Dive in!

Reasoning and goals

To ensure the QI's seamless integration into the game and perfect the balancing, we continuously observe player behavior, analyze data, and read feedback . The following changes come as a result of this analysis. While the bulk of the changes happens during the BETA testing phase, we sometimes lack data needed to understand the full impact of the feature due to small player population, the lack of active Guilds, and lower activity rates on BETA.

As we see more players playing QI in different ways Championship after Championship on our LIVE servers, we understand QI's impact in a more profound and detailed way and can make informed decisions on how to further perfect the feature and its balancing for our players. We firmly believe that balancing changes allow us to support a healthy game economy and, therefore, ensure Forge of Empires continues to bring joy to our players for years to come.

To shape QI efficiently and yet in sync with its natural cycle, we adjust both the balancing and more structural aspects of the feature with every Championship. You've seen those changes before, and they will likely come again, as the game develops further and new data arrives.

In time for the 4th Championship, we prepared changes that aim to address the following tendencies we found after carefully analyzing the data from the LIVE servers:

  • Instead of promoting the collaborative playstyle as intended, QI has facilitated internal competition between Guild members, especially on lower difficulties.
  • The manual difficulty change made it possible for some difficulties to be farmed , while others to be largely neglected .
Continue reading for the full breakdown of the general changes and the specific content for the 4th Championship! We are also planning a Fragment conversion to ensure you can use your old QI building Fragments —  more details below.

General changes

I. Automatic difficulty change and farming nodes

At the moment, Guilds need to manually change the QI difficulty after defeating the Boss if they want to continue playing.

With the 4th Championship, we are introducing the automatic difficulty change. It means that the currently active difficulty will change to the next automatically every day at midnight server time, regardless of whether the previous difficulty Boss was defeated.

Consequently, we've added difficulties 11 and 12 to ensure there is a difficulty for every day of the season. Due to start and end times, the first and the last difficulties will be active for less than 24 hours. Use your starting Quantum Actions to boost your progress in the first difficulty, and prepare for fierce competition in the last! 

The list of active difficulties per day:

Day Time Difficulty
1, Thursday 16 hours 1
2, Friday 24 hours 2
3, Saturday 24 hours 3
4, Sunday 24 hours 4
5, Monday 24 hours 5
6, Tuesday 24 hours 6
7, Wednesday 24 hours 7
8, Thursday 24 hours 8
9, Friday 24 hours 9
10, Saturday 24 hours 10
11, Sunday 24 hours 11
12, Monday 8 hours 12

With this change, we aim to ensure that everybody has the chance to participate in lower difficulties and facilitate the collaborative work required from a Guild to conquer higher difficulties. We understand that it might make QI more challenging for some players at the beginning. Considering this, we've made a range of QI effects more broadly available in Events to enable everybody to get a sufficient amount of QI effects over time. Namely, you will find the QI effects in the following buildings:

  • Mythical Manor, the Fellowship Event 2024: 30% ac8f3f3f92123c8fc9c0e17d3230dae9 Attack for Defending Army in Quantum Incursions
  • Eerie Abandoned Asylum and Phantom Abandoned Asylum, the Halloween Event 2024: 20% and 30% 2da1bb4f5c33ec77733338bfeea4a22f Attack for Attacking Army in Quantum Incursions
If you happen to defeat the Boss, i.e. finish the difficulty before the timer runs out, you can continue gaining progress with the help of farming nodes. All difficulties will now have three: two fighting nodes (offense and defense) and a resource donation node. All farming nodes have a capacity of 1.000.000 progress points, similar to the previous farming nodes at the end of the last Incursions.

II. Quantum Actions purchase behavior

You can buy extra Quantum Actions needed to move between the nodes with Quantum Shards. There are three packages available. At the moment, the number of Quantum Shards you need to spend to buy a package increases once you buy one of them, but caps after four purchases. The cost resets daily at midnight.

With the new Championship, the Quantum Shards price will continue to increase with every purchased Quantum Actions package, meaning the price increase cap is removed. The cost will also no longer reset daily, but only once at the beginning of each season. 

While you can still purchase Quantum Actions, this rebalancing aims to regulate extensive use of this option, thus narrowing the gap between different player groups and ensuring all players can enjoy the Quantum Incursions at a measured pace. We've also added the Quantum Actions regeneration effect to some Event rewards to allow you to gain more Quantum Actions naturally. Namely:

  • The Escutcheon Estate from the Fellowship Event 2024 that provides extra 50 3a746c807b1691d037d2ffc65d3f31b8 Quantum Actions per recharge cycle.
  • The Yaga's Roost from the Halloween Event 2024 that also provides extra 50 3a746c807b1691d037d2ffc65d3f31b8 Quantum Actions per recharge cycle.
III. Leaderboard reward schedule

As you complete the seasons, your overall progress is counted towards the Championship leaderboard. At the moment, you receive their final reward Chest after the end of every Championship.

Starting with the 4th Championship, we will credit those leaderboard rewards after every Incursion , in addition to the current End-of-Incursion reward Chests. This way, you will get rewarded regularly for your QI efforts and can use the rewards to subsequently boost your main City progress.

To account for the higher frequency, we have adjusted the content of those reward Chests accordingly. For example:

1st place 4th-10th places
  • 250 Neo Colossus Silver Upgrade Kit Fragments
  • 250 Neo Colossus Golden Upgrade Kit Fragments
  • 2 000 Neo Colossus Selection Kit Fragments
  • 500 Quantum Incursions Summer 2024 (Iron Age) Epic Selection Kit Fragments
  • 500 Neo King Selection Kit Fragments
  • 500 Neo Queen Selection Kit Fragments
  • 200 000 Quantum Medals
  • 2 000 Forge Points
  • 125 Neo Colossus Silver Upgrade Kit Fragments
  • 50 Neo Colossus Golden Upgrade Kit Fragments
  • 250 Neo Colossus Selection Kit Fragments
  • 125 Quantum Incursions Summer 2024 (Iron Age) Epic Selection Kit Fragments
  • 250 Neo King Selection Kit Fragments
  • 250 Neo Queen Selection Kit Fragments
  • 100 000 Quantum Medals
  • 750 Forge Points

Guilds that consistently hold their top ranking positions from one season to another, will find that the new approach can yield more rewards in some instances. Formerly, the leading Guild could receive 5.000 Forge Points per Championship. After the change, a Guild that holds the 1st place in the ranking during the entire Championship will get 2.000 Forge Points every season, so 12.000 Forge points for the whole 6-season Championship. Of all possible rewards, only the number of Quantum Medals has decreased overall.

IV. End-of-Incursion reward chests and "new" progress points

Currently, you need to clear the 1st QI difficulty in order to qualify for the first End-of-Incursion reward chest and can improve its contents by continuing to play actively, gaining more points, and clearing more difficulties.

With this change, we continue using the progress points to determine the content of those chests, however, now the overall Guild progress is taken into account.

This means that the combined number of progress points gained by the participants during an Incursion will determine the content of the End-of-Incursion reward chests.

Every interaction with a node in all Incursions and difficulties rewards 10 progress points. The total number of points needed to qualify for a chest is as follows:

Chest # Required progress
1 2 000
2 6 000
3 10 000
4 20 000
5 30 000
6 40 000
7 50 000
8 70 000
9 100 000
10 150 000

All chests contain the same reward types, but the number of resources and Fragments increases with every chest tier. For example:

Chest 5 Chest 10
  • 300 Neo Colossus Selection Kit Fragments
  • 150 Neo Colossus Silver Upgrade Kit Fragments
  • 80 Neo Colossus Golden Upgrade Kit Fragments
  • 300 Neo Winners' Plaza Selection Kit Fragments
  • 300 Neo Botanical Rotunda Selection Kit Fragments
  • 60 000 Quantum Medals OR  600 Forge Points
  • 1 000 Neo Colossus Selection Kit Fragments
  • 500 Neo Colossus Silver Upgrade Kit Fragments
  • 250 Neo Colossus Golden Upgrade Kit Fragments
  • 1 000 Neo Winners' Plaza Selection Kit Fragments
  • 1 000 Neo Botanical Rotunda Selection Kit Fragments
  • 200 000 Quantum Medals OR 2 000 Forge Points

This change aims to re-iterate the importance of collaboration between Guildmates and ensure you can benefit from the combined progress, rather than only from their personal input.

Balancing changes

  • All reward sources (QI Pass, Nodes, Leaderboard, End-Of-Incursion Chests) will now provide Fragments of building Selection Kits, rather than level 1 building Fragments. With this change, we aim to make our rewards more universally accessible between different QI Championships. The enemy Army strength is now scaled in accordance to the following values:
Difficulty Normal and Farming nodes army boost Advanced nodes (Lieutenant, Garrison, Fortress) army boost Boss nodes army boost
1 10% 20% 30%
2 20% 30% 40%
3 30% 40% 50%
4 40% 50% 60%
5 50% 60% 70%
6 60% 70% 80%
7 70% 80% 90%
8 90% 100% 110%
9 150% 175% 200%
10 200% 225% 250%
11 275% 325% 375%
12 275% 325% 375%

Quantum Pass milestones now require 250 progress points each. Please remember that, simultaneously, every successful interaction with a node in all Incursions and difficulties rewards 10 progress points. We also made sure you receive a steady supply of motivation for your QI efforts every step of the way with the accessibility of leaderboard rewards, improved node rewards, and End-of-Incursion chests. All difficulties offer the same type of rewards as node rewards, making collecting enough Fragments for any given reward easier. It remains that the node rewards are based on reward pools that offer a chance to receive one reward out of a pool.

The content for the 4th Championship

Finally, let's look at what our game designers prepared for the new Championship!

Of course, three new Incursion paths to venture on:

  • Obsidian Peaks
  • Tempest Spires
  • Onyx Crater
And the brand-new level for the Neo Colossus!

Important! The Neo Colossus level 11 will be added to the game with the update to version 1.295 on the 4th of November for the International (EN) server and on the 6th of November for all the rest. Once in, you will be able to get Fragments for the updated, exclusive Upgrade Kit for your Guild's performance in the Quantum Incursions leaderboard. We apologize for the delay!

Name:
Neo Colossus - Lv. 11 (4x4)
Image: bb18b8cd503ad5521bb6492860c61c33
Permanent Effects:
  • 45- 63%1f66c81bd8cd2abd2604d05604ced1ea Attack and Defense for Attacking Army
  • 42 - 59% 82da24896e8095f2765da4b7e3271841 Attack and Defense for Attacking Army in Guild Battlegrounds
  • 56 - 73% 7c1aa2db4e1146e300cc995cb42c7908 Attack and Defense for Attacking Army in Guild Expeditions
  • 45 - 63% af7a79ecde903401df6cf25cef82fac0 Attack and Defense for Defending Army
  • 42 - 59% 9ee79e10bacea44aaf602510c0e40e77 Attack and Defense for Defending Army in Guild Battlegrounds
  • 56 - 73% 2f34633bdbc3878667eb6c3300f069b5 Attack and Defense for Defending Army in Guild Expeditions
1d Production:
  •  28 - 36 b3b5d33af3453431928b17a8f4104deb Forge Points
1d eed51dec5def558f5d2dd4592893e209 Production:
  •  192 - 221 778fa6fa9790de4d5a87e7a82681f210 Goods
  • 380 d5bd0227dfe981385b83d8f122e4fc69 Guild Goods
  • 30 Fragments of Neo Marble Gate Way Selection Kit a1bf0a4a94300e44f4d13874db67df9e
Road Connection:
  • no9766d882a505851a4d286ee63b007b66 Road required

Fragments conversion

As a consequence of the balancing for the 4th Championship, certain types of Fragments will no longer be accessible. To ensure you don't hoard unusable Fragments for QI buildings, we will be manually converting them into Selection Kit Fragments for all players!

Important! The conversion of the Fragments will happen automatically with the update to version 1.295 on the 4th of November for the International (EN) server and on the 6th of November for all the rest. After the update is concluded, you will find the converted Fragments in your Inventory.

The conversion rate is as follows:

Existing Fragments Exchanged into 
Neo Colossus - Lv. 1 Fragments Neo Colossus Selection Kit Fragments
Neo Winners' Plaza - Lv. 1 Fragments Neo Winners' Plaza Selection Kit Fragments
Neo Botanical Rotunda - Lv. 1 Fragments Neo Botanical Rotunda Selection Kit Fragments
Neo Winners' Plaza Upgrade Kit Fragments Neo Winners' Plaza Selection Kit Fragments
Neo Botanical Rotunda Upgrade Kit Fragments Neo Botanical Rotunda Selection Kit Fragments
Neo Tactician's Tower - Lv. 1 Fragments Neo Tactician's Tower Selection Kit Fragments
Neo Sentinel Outpost - Lv. 1 Fragments Neo Sentinel Outpost Selection Kit Fragments
Neo Tactician's Tower Upgrade Kit Fragments Neo Tactician's Tower Selection Kit Fragments
Neo Sentinel Outpost Upgrade Kit Fragments Neo Sentinel Outpost Selection Kit Fragments
Neo King - Lv. 1 Fragments Neo King Selection Kit Fragments
Neo Queen - Lv. 1 Fragments Neo Queen Selection Kit Fragments
Neo King Upgrade Kit Fragments Neo King Selection Kit Fragments
Neo Queen Upgrade Kit Fragments Neo Queen Selection Kit Fragments

This concludes the update. As always, join the discussion with your fellow players on our official Discord channel, and let us know what you think about the 4th Quantum Incursions Championship!

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