In this patch, you can max your perks BEYOND level 3, finally enjoy VSync, and take dozens of buffed cards and perks for a spin.

We've been super stoked to see all the positive feedback around the new perk system. But of course, there are also issues we want to address and with your help we'll make things just right. As we mentioned before, a revamp changes a lot of things. And we're now starting to tweak those that need to be tweaked. We also took the time to buff some ugly ducklings all over the game. Our ultimate goal is to make every king, card, decree, and perk equally relevant or die trying.

List of changes (0.7.94):

NEW FEATURES:

• NEW RAINBOW PERK: Nationalist (All adjacent king perks are applied +1 time)

• The game now supports VSync (toggle it on in the options menu)!

• Misclick prevention: if you click the wrong card and move your mouse away, while still holding the button, the selection won't compute (finally!)

BALANCING/FIXES:

• King I difficulty was attenuated (enemy stats will now scale a little bit slower)

• Base cards gained a small initial stat buff to improve early run balancing.

• Base cards now get a little attack speed boost when leveled up.

• Vampirism enchantment now properly works with all troops.

• Echoform and Slime now properly load very high stats when duplicated.

• Very high stats are now properly loaded after saving & quitting (please start a new run)

• Eyeglass decree now gives troops and towers 20% raw critical chance.

• Bunker decree is now working properly.

• Critical chance boosts now work with troops that had 0% critical chance.
  

• Treant base initial damage was doubled. ːsteamthisː

• Trapper troop was considerably buffed. ːsteamthisː

• Imp troop damage was buffed. ːsteamthisː

• Mangler tower attack speed & level up stats were buffed. ːsteamthisː

• Archer troop attack speed & level up stats were buffed. ːsteamthisː

• Hunter perk now gives Trappers +20% damage (was 10%) ːsteamthisː

• Bellicist perk now gives troops +10% critical chance (was 5%) ːsteamthisː

• Berserk perk now gives Nothing troops +10% attack speed (was 5%) ːsteamthisː

• Recruit perk now gives Soldier +10% to all stats (was 5%) ːsteamthisː

• Sorcerous perk now gives Warlock +20% attack area (was 10%) ːsteamthisː

• Butcher perk now gives Mangler +20% attack area (was 10%) ːsteamthisː

• Explosive perk now gives Bomber +20% attack area (was 10%) ːsteamthisː

• Goon perk now gives Thieves +20% critical damage (was 10%). ːsteamthisː

• Castellan perk is now working properly with Pagoda and Stronghold.

• Admiral perk is now working properly.

MISC:

• Critical chance now displays "%" properly in the tooltip.

• Added a small delay to the arrows from Sentinel perk, making the doubling visually perceptible

• Fixed a bug that caused a crash if you had Warden perk level up your castle beyond max level.

• Localization fixes in Ukrainian, Turkish, and Portuguese
  

*Reminder: you'll unlock the 4th Rainbow perk by getting a king to level 12. If you're already past level 12, the perk will already be unlocked after downloading this patch.

Dev's note

These tweaks are an important first step in this new journey of balancing. The new Rainbow perk (Nationalist) is intended to add even more build options and address feedback from players who missed the ability to further boost individual perks. With this perk, the max number of points you can have on your board more than doubles compared to the original system, allowing you to max out key perks BEYOND level 3 while also encouraging strategic thinking to make the most out of your board.

You'll notice how ONE single Rainbow perk can exponentially increase your options, and hopefully understand why we're not throwing everything at you at once! For now, we feel we're getting to a sweet-spot of max perk points in a single board. The next perk addition will pivot from the additive-support formula and bring some game twisting mechanics to the table.

It's also important to note that the more perks we add, the fewer "meta" strategies we want there to be in the game. Experimentation is the soul of 9 Kings and we want to make the perk system live up to that.

Anyway: we'll keep tweaking numbers and trying to improve any system that might be feeling underwhelming compared to others. We started off with the least used perks from the current patch, but know that we'll consider revamping some entirely, while, of course, adding more.

As always, after downloading the patch, please start a new run, as your previous run won’t have the updates stored and they may cause conflicts. If you experience any issues, please email us at report@sadsocket.com.

Your feedback REALLY matters

As we always say: the reason the game is EA is so we can build it together. We're listening and improving every day. So if you're REALLY angry at us because of something we tweaked, we hope you give us your feedback and some time to address it before sending us a death threat (!!!). Change will always make some people happy and some people angry, but we promise you we'll keep chasing that sweet spot for everyone if you give them a shot!

Coming next

Expect more balancing and QoL updates in the upcoming days. The 8th king is coming soon!

Please join us on Discord and Reddit. You can also find the 9 Kings wiki page here for information on the game! Love, Sad Socket team

Love,
Sad Socket team