Growth and Wither Plus Mega Minions: Empires & Puzzles Beta
Empires and Puzzles are currently testing in Beta and it’s a busy one. We’ve got a new Ascension Mats Summoning Portal, an update to the PvP League, new Heroes (the powerful Goblins), “Mega Minions”, and a new “Growth/Wither” mechanism.
In this post, I want to share how the mechanism works and talk a little about the new Mega Minions, too.
It’s been a crazy month for me, somehow-someway managing to pull Vivica (x2 Costumes), finally picking up Lord Loki from the Fated, and jammily enough, getting Amethyst this morning.
I couldn’t believe my luck.
-Everyone in the locker room was stunned to see her. It felt like Steph signed up to play in the local Sunday league. On my team!
Now I’ve got a backlog of levelling to do.
First, Vivica was assured that she was my one and only. Then Lord Loki arrived and we all agreed he should be top priority. But now Amethyst’s cut-in line, swaggering around the place and eye-balling the Raid Gate like someone spat at her and ran in there!
I got problems. Good problems.
Anyway, on to Growth and Wither.
This post may contain speculation, personal opinion, and adult comedy. It is not advice and is solely for entertainment and informational purposes.
Empires and Puzzles Beta News
Empires and Puzzles: Growth and Wither
Growth and Wither are probably the most significant new features coming out of this Beta.
Growth is a buff for your allies and Wither is an ailment for your enemies. Both are currently undispellable/uncleansable, although, they can affect each other.
For example, you could apply Growth to your allies, and the enemy could then apply Wither, thus undoing your good work.
Growth: Increases Defense and/or Attack for the remainder of the battle
Wither: Reduces Defense and/or Attack for the remainder of the battle
Of course, we already have mechanisms that affect Attack and Defense, but Growth/Wither are more overreaching and final (especially if no common counter is released).
It reminds me of the Lunar Minion Passive, in the entirety of its scope, and could be devastating depending on the value they assign to the Skill.
Smarttongue has Wither, where all enemies get -250 Attack.
She’s an Average speed Hero.
And Darkfeather has Growth, where all allies get 125 Attack and 125 Defense.
He’s also Average.
Growth & Wither Gameplay
As things stand, Growth and Wither will stack, although there are maximum limits set.
-Growth and Wither will directly add to or take away from the target Heroes’ stats.
For example. If a Hero goes into battle with 827 ATK and 904 DEF and your ally Darkfeather casts his Growth Special Skill, the Hero’s stats will increase to 952 ATK and 1029 DEF.
And if Darkfeather casts his Special Skill a second time, the stats will increase again to 1077 ATK and 1154 DEF. This is limited this to a maximum of 170% of the original stats.
Conversely, if the same Hero were to be hit with Smarttongue’s Wither, their stats would decrease to 577 ATK (from 827) after the first hit and 327 ATK after the second. This reduction is limited to a minimum of 30% of the original stats.
These effects will be displayed on your Heroes along with other Status/Ailments effects.
Activating Darkfeather once will display special Attack Up and Defence Up icons with the number 125 on them, and if he fires again it will increase to 250, and so on.
In my Beta tests with Darkfeather, I managed to increase the value of all allies by +900 attack* and 900 defense.
(*R&N maxed out attack at +766 as she must have hit the 170% maximum limit)
These additions and/or reductions remain on the stats for the remainder of the battle, even if you defeat the casting Hero.
Other Buffs and Debuffs are applied to the modified Stats after Growth or Wither are applied.
On to the Mega Minions!
The Mega Minion (Empires and Puzzles)
Mega Minions are the chunkiest Minions you ever did see.
-They look like they ate all the others.
And their HP is crazy.
E&P recently made it known that Minions have always had an upper HP limit of 1000, not that I can find the link for you.
This new Maga Minion, at least the one I tested with Boom & Fang, weighs in at a healthy 1376HP.
On the Hero Card it reads: “Summons a White Boar Mega Minion with 60% HP and 120% attack inherited from the caster”.
Oh, and it gives its owner 100% Counterattack (not all Mega Minions will do this!).
The deal with the new Mega Minion is that:
- A Hero can only have one at a time
- They replace all existing Minions and Fiends
- **They cannot be replaced by new Minions and Fiends, and
- They are not affected by effects that destroy or otherwise affect Minions … Lunar comes to mind.
Very cool things. Tanky.
**In my tests, they could replace themselves. -So, Mega Minions can be replaced by Mega Minions.
Smarttongue, Boom & Fang, Darkfeather, Kettle, Deadboot and Madhammer
Here’s a quick look at the new Goblin Heroes. You’ll note the Growth, Wither, and Mega Minions spread among their skills.
(Updated upon Hero release)
Smarttongue (Empires and Puzzles)
Key Facts: Nature (Green), Average, Ranger, Goblin Family
Special Skills (Goblin Serenade): 1. Wither: All enemies get -250 Attack. 2. Reduces max health of all enemies by 600. The effect is stronger against targets with Boosted health. 3. All enemies get -45% Defense against Special Skills for 4 turns.
Passive Skill: 30% chance to perform the following actions when this character casts their Special Skill: 1. Deals 70% damage to all enemies. 2. All enemies get -25% accuracy for 3 turns.
Darkfeather (Empires and Puzzles)
Key Facts: Dark (Purple), Average, Druid, Goblin Family
Special Skills (The Eagle’s Blessing): 1. Recovers 25% health for all allies. 2. Growth: All allies get 125 Attack and 125 Defense. 3. All allies have 50% chance to deal 270% damage to a random enemy after any subsequent allied Special Skill is cast for 3 turns.
Passive Skill: 30% chance to perform the following actions when this character casts their Special Skill: 1. Deals 70% damage to all enemies. 2. All enemies get -25% accuracy for 3 turns.
Deadboot (Empires and Puzzles)
Key Facts: Dark (Purple), Very Fast, Rogue, Goblin Family
Special Skills (Unhallowed Spirits): 1. Lifts all dispellable Status Effect Buffs from the target and randomly distributes them on allies. 2. Deals 375% damage to the target. 3. Deals additional 50% damage per transfered Status Effect Buff, up to 625% damage in total. 4. Wither: The target gets -160 Defense.
Passive Skill: 20% chance to perform the following actions when this character casts their Special Skill: 1. Deals 70% damage to all enemies. 2. All enemies get -25% accuracy for 3 turns.
Kettle (Empires and Puzzles)
Key Facts: Ice (Blue), Slow, Cleric, Goblin Family
Special Skills (Dubious Cuisine): Cooks random food for a Special Effect (casts one of the following): Exquisite Food (45% chance): 1. recovers 50% health for all allies. 2. Growth: All allies get 280 Defense. Rotten Food (45% chance): 1. Deals 350% damage to all enemies 2. All enemies receive 965 Poison damage over 5 turns. Catastrophic Kitchen Failure (10% chance): 1. Deals 100% damage to all allies and all enemies.
Passive Skill: 35% chance to perform the following actions when this character casts their Special Skill: 1. Deals 70% damage to all enemies. 2. All enemies get -25% accuracy for 3 turns.
Boom & Fang (Empires and Puzzles)
(Not yet released)
Key Facts: Nature (Green), Average, Fighter, Goblin Family
Special Skills (Boar Call): 1. The caster reduces all received damage by -50% for 4 turns. 2. Summons a White Boar Mega Minion with 60% HP and 120% Attack inherited from the caster. 3. When summoned, the White Boar Mega Minion gives its owner the ability to counterattack with 100% of the damage received for as long as the owner has the Minion (the effect can’t be dispelled).
Passive Skill: 30% chance to perform the following actions when this character casts their Special Skill: 1. Deals 70% damage to all enemies. 2. All enemies get -25% accuracy for 3 turns.
Madhammer (Empires and Puzzles)
(Not yet released)
Key Facts: Fire (Red), Average, Barbarian, Goblin Family
Special Skills (Heedless Hammer Flurry): 1. Deals 400% damage to the target. 2. Has 50% chance to deal 600% damage to a random different enemy. 3. Summons a Black Boar Mega Minion with 60% HP and 120% Attack inherited from the caster. 4. The target hit by the Black Boar Mega Minion can’t get their other Status Ailments cleansed from Special Skills for 3 turns.
Passive Skill: 30% chance to perform the following actions when this character casts their Special Skill: 1. Deals 70% damage to all enemies. 2. All enemies get -25% accuracy for 3 turns.
Goldie (Empires and Puzzles)
Key Facts: Holy (Yellow), Average, Paladin, Goblin Family
Special Skills (Magic Mirror of Power): 1. Recovers 38% health for all allies. 2. Growth: All allies get 100 Attack. 3. All allies reflect (cleansable) Status Ailments to a random character on the opposing team for 3 turns.
Passive Skill: 30% chance to perform the following actions when this character casts their Special Skill: 1. Deals 70% damage to all enemies. 2. All enemies get -25% accuracy for 3 turns.
Boots (Empires and Puzzles)
Key Facts: Fire (Red), Average, Barbarian, Goblin Family
Special Skills (Hammer Thump): 1. Deals 200% damage to the target and nearby enemies. 2. Wither: The target and nearby enemies get -40 Attack and -40 Defense. 3. The target and nearby enemies get -35% Defense for 3 turns. If the effect is removed before the duration ends, the target with the effect suffers 116 damage.
Passive Skill: 30% chance to perform the following actions when this character casts their Special Skill: 1. Deals 70% damage to all enemies. 2. All enemies get -25% accuracy for 3 turns.
Ascension Summons (Empires and Puzzles)
There are also a couple of interesting Portals currently running in Beta.
The first is a new Ascension Materials Summoning Portal.
As the name suggests, you can pull for Ascension Mats.
It costs 10 blue shards (“Ascension Crystals“) for 1 pull or 90 for a 10 pull.
There’s also a new Goblin Portal, where if you pull one Legendary Goblin, you’ll get a second different 5-Star Goblin for free.
Sounds like E&P are getting business tips from the corner store, but I like it!
These guys have a great Family Bonus that will control Boosted healing, so that would be a great catch:
Goblin Family Bonus for 1/2/3 Heroes: Each time this Hero takes damage from an enemy Special Skill they remove 30%/60%/100% Boosted health from all enemies.
Beta News | Old Cynic
Alright, that brings us to the end of this presentation.
Please remember, it’s all Beta so who knows. But Beta is pretty reliable most of the time in my experience. Could be a change here or there, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see all this stuff in-game soon.
Hope you enjoyed the post. Peace!
[Please always check in-game Hero Cards to confirm details and never chase Heroes]
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Images used by way of review/tutorial – Copyright owned by Empires & Puzzles: Small Giant Games/Zynga Games
Love Amethyst ! She’s amazing! I look forward to the ascension summoning portals.
Thank you!
I’m torn on the value of amethyst to be honest. I’ve had her at level 70 third ascension for a while now and I can’t see her upsetting my top 6 darks, unless I’m missing something. Very curious about the ascension portal because this game loves to give me purple and red mats and starving for others. Thanks again for an amazing review!
Amethyst won’t have much competition on my roster (Ludwig, Freya, Morax, Rigard!). Thanks for reading!
Congrats on your new additions OC! I recently got lucky and pulled Sun Quan from the kingdoms portal. Not a spectacular hero, but after Alucard and Tetisheri, my Fite heroes are terrible! These new goblins sound like a huge problem. So much for keeping new specials in check and focusing on boosting power stats in new heroes…
New mechanism always scare me because they can cause a huge unbalancing. And the Mega Minions are cool but there’s a lot of flesh to get through.
Thanks Gabrielle!
The Goblin heroes with their new mechanics feel like a really big problem to me. The Growth/Wither has the obvious issue of only being able to be countered effectively by its opposite (with a few possible exceptions like Ghost form perhaps), which means there is no real way to deal with these effects other than to have Goblin heroes of your own. The Mega Minions feel like they are a way to get boosted health without having actual boosted health, which seems strange since SGG has clearly identified boosted health as something that needed a bit of reining in. Add that to the fact that these minions have no real counter, and effectively make the caster immune to fiends as well (at least that is my understanding), this looks like it is going to generate a lot of problems.
“and effectively make the caster immune to fiends as well (at least that is my understanding),”…
Yes, I tested it to confirm.
Thanks for sharing Maraj!
So looking at the beta info for the new Goblin Heroes it breaks down like this: Boon & Fang and Madhammer spawn Mega Minions, both at Average speed. Darkfeather has Growth at Very Slow speed along with 4* Goldie at Average Speed and Deadboot, Smarttongue and 3* Boots all have Wither at Very Fast, Average and Average speeds. Kettle is a 5* Danzaburo who does not have any of the new attributes for whatever reason. Even among the Growth and Wither specials there are variations with Darkfeather Growth being 180 att/def and Goldie only 100 att. Deadboot Wither is -160 def while Smarttongue is -250 att and Boots is -40 att/def. So, it seems to me, that while both of these new features could be overpowering, the initial rollout is pretty cautious with no one hero having a devastating combo. And at a .04%/.05% pull rate combined with all that is needed to level, max, emblem and limit break 1/2, probably only the top spenders will have any of these in play right away. The real kicker will be whether any of this gets nerfed/buffed and how many new heroes after the Goblins will be created using this new feature.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts Dave. I hope they get the balance right first time!
Well they have already issued balance updates to almost every Goblin hero. The Mega Minion has been changed from 60% HP/120% Attack to 36% HP/160% Attack. Kettle now has Growth at 280 Defense instead of 40% for all allies, Darkfeather has had mana speed changed from Very Slow to Average and all other special stats reduced and there are various other hero adjustments. So these heroes are definitely in a state of flux and who knows where they will all end up by the time they are released. I’m guessing in September since I don’t recall so many new event heroes being rebalanced so quickly and so massively.
Great reading your analysis again. Did I understand correct that the megaminions are not dieing with Grimble or Ogima skills? How about Bera?
Yes, although I didn’t personally test them all. Mega Minions shouldn’t be seen as “minions” because none of the old methods control them…
One commenter in the forum said the Mega Minions are almost like having a 4 star hero as a buffer as their stats can be equal to a 4 star. Pretty beefy!
Where’s the parity when it comes to summoning all these new heroes… I can’t afford a premium account nor can I pay for crystal bundles… If I grind out even a thousand crystals and summon a hero all I usually get are the 3 star and an occasional 4 star… So where’s the fairness in the draw…. I am fully aware that You created this game for profit for your time and efforts but don’t promise something that can’t be delivered… This might sound like sour grapes to you but its the prospective that we take when it comes to pay for playing at The highest levels… I still think that this is a great game but in my opinion when it comes to pay for play games the playing field is never level…
Hi Lone Ranger, this was held up in my Spam folder, sorry!
The goblins have arrived. Glad they trimmed down the abilities a chunk. I stll wonder how well it serves to make the wither and growth stackable. I say this because we just finished the Masked Gods event, and their EXTREMELY beefy minions were exceedingly laborious to deal with. I eventually completed the event, but it made several of the end battles take what seemed forever because they spawned uber minions that simply dragged on and on to kill. Had to align all my specials to fire at once, Kill the minion, half kill the god, then hope OI could recharge 2 more specials to finish off the go before he created another minion with a S on its chest And this was with a minion manager that could at least sometimes take them out.. THESE official mega minions cant be controlled by Ogima or the like. Can you choop down what amounts to a 6th hero when you bring 5? sure. IF you have the time.
I hope it doesnt get too tedious. Because the 3 and 4 star levels of masked gods, where the hittig power was lower on my attack teams…were very tedious at the high levels. And those minions were designed to be easier than these.
BTW, will a caster who removes all effects and skills including normally un-dispellable be able to knock down the stacks for growth and wither? I cant even remember who that was, but they had one or 2 who could remove undispellables way back that I never pulled didnt they?and will Malosi block the activation of growth and Wither?
Hey TLK914, you catch me on a busy day after posting the latest Fated so I may have to circle back to this if I find more info.
Re. the Malosi question, I would think so but can’t remember if I tested it… Malosi’s card reads, “cannot cast any new status effects… This includes Stacks”, so I expect/hope so!
Hopefully I’ll get a chance to review the changes made and their impact over the next couple of days, maybe actually find one in the wild to test.
Thanks for stopping by TLK914!
Now that its live, I used all my saved gems to do a 20 pull and got…. 3 Boots and no other goblins. Well, maybe this time next year, I will have enough for 20 more pulls. Thanks for the great articles OC.
Unlucky BCF, it’s always hard getting these new heroes. Thanks for the support!
Yeah, almost the same here. But I did get Goldie! I’m quite keen to see what she does to titans. She was quite effective in war.
Hi OC,
Thanks for your thoughts and analizes.
I was wondering about what effect Wither has on Titans. For example Deadboot gives -def and it worked well together with Tweedles/Tibsy or another def- hero.
But how much impact is it exactly? What i see is a def-sign with ??.
Fact is, since i use Deadboot, the damage has significant increased.
Maybe you know more about this mechanism with Titans?