We’ve been working on new content for Nine Parchments ever since we first released the game, and now we’re excited to finally share what we’ve got for you!

The Astral Challenges free content update is making its way towards all our players on all our Nine Parchments platforms. The highlights of the Astral Challenges update include:

Six new Arena levels that will challenge even the most battle-hardened wizard veterans. The arenas are designed for characters who are at least level 40, so better get ready for a rough ride. Simply put… you will die.

A new unlockable character, Selius, waiting to be discovered in the new arena levels, and along with him you’ll discover new hats, staves and spells.

The new Quick Chat feature will make talking to your classmates as easy as pressing a button, so get ready to yell at your friends.

Check out the trailer!

The Astral Challenge Arenas

When you enter the Arena levels, you are able to select two additional spells to add to your spell wheel on top of your three starting ones. Using these five spells, you must fight to survive to the end!

You are tasked with defeating incoming waves of monsters until a certain number of waves has been defeated. Completing an Arena unlocks the next, more difficult one, until you get to the sixth and final one, where monsters will spawn infinitely and you’re trying to survive for as long as possible.

Fighting in the first five Arenas gives you a score based on your clearing time, and survival time on the final one, so get ready to claim your spot on the newly added Arena Leaderboards!

Here’s a few preview screenshots:


   

   

   

The Arenas are designed with leveled up characters in mind, as skill upgrades will make the difficulty more manageable. However, killing monsters in the Arenas also gives experience, making your escapades there an effective alternative way to level up your characters as well.

Unlike in the Adventure Mode levels, monsters in the Arenas don’t drop health or mana. Mana can spawn in between waves however, and there are also three new items spawns in the arenas: Immunity, Superchaged Mana and Supercharged Blink. These three items come with a short time duration between 5-10 seconds.

The Arenas will also have some new types of enemies not seen in the Adventure Mode.

A New Student Joins Class

To Professor Butternut’s delight, he has a new student joining his class of enthusiastic fireball experimenters.  Players can discover and unlock Prince Selius in one of the Arena levels. Like the other students, Selius has his own fashionable staff and hat accessories, and sports some unique spells of his own.

You’ll find out more about Selius by finding him in the game and playing the main game with him – or you can just wait for our upcoming blogpost about him!

Release Date: Today!

The Astral Challenges content update is out today on Nintendo Switch, PC and PS4, and the Xbox One version is coming as soon as the patch gets approved.

We hope you enjoy! Thanks for the continued support 🙂

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FULL CHANGELOG:
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NEW CONTENT:
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Spells:
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Ice Nova
• An Ice blastwave bursts around the caster, affecting anyone caught in its wake, slowing and freezing them
• Deals 50 Ice damage per cast
• 4 charges
• 4s charge regeneration time per charge


Hailstorm
• Throwable ice spell that conjures a Icefall in a large area
• Deals 50 Ice damage per falling projectile
• 1 charge
• 18 second charge regeneration time per charge


Piercing Shadow
• A stream of shadow magic which pierces all targets, freezing and inflicting moderate damage
• Uses new element type: Shadow
• Pierces all enemies dealing 20 damage 4 times per second
• After channeling for 1.7 seconds powers up and deals 70 damage for the remainder of the channeling
• 13.2s regeneration time to full mana

Quick Chat
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• Greet fellow students, ask for help, question their decisions and more, with fully voiced lines that change with your selected mood
• Spell order and character moods moved to options menu
• Using directional keys activates Quick Chat instead

Arena Gamemode:
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• Recommended for level 40+ students
• Six Arena levels in total
• Five time attacks with a set amount of waves
• One partially randomized endless survival
• Leaderboards for the Arenas to compete with other players on

Student:
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• Added a new playable character, Selius, who you can unlock in the new Arena levels
• Six new achievements to unlock new variations and skill trees for Selius

Staves:
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• Added two new staves that can be found in the new Arena levels

Staff of Shadows
• +8% Fire, Ice and Death power
• Blink deals 25 Death damage 2 times per second for 4 seconds

Staff of Nightmares
• +30% to all healing received
• +40% beam spell power for 7 seconds after Blinking

Hats:
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• Added 3 new hats that can be found in the new arena levels

OTHER CHANGES:
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Students:
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Rudolfus the Strange
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Dying Breath
• No longer provides damage resistance for each student in spirit state
• Instead adds +3% critical hit chance (max 15%) for each student in spirit state

Marvek the Torrid
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Ignite
• Deals 20 damage over 10 seconds (max 100 damage over 10 seconds)
• Stacks up to 5 times

Spell adjustments:
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Cursed Fireball Rain
• Increased damage from 25 to 50
• Reduced charge regeneration time from 40 to 20
• Reduced delay between projectiles 0.33 to 0.2
• Stomp speed from 10 to 12

Poison Flower
• Flight speed from 12 to 16
• Stomp speed from 10 to 12
• Reduced charge regeneration time from 20 to 17

Electric Totem
• Reduced charge regeneration time from 180 to 60

Bouncing Heal
• Reduced charge regeneration time from 60 to 25

Chain Death
• Reduced charge regeneration time from 45 to 35

Steal Heal
• Reduced charge regeneration time from 60 to 45

Electric Wave
• Reduced charge regeneration time from 15 to 10

Deadly Sacrificial Bomb
• Reduced charge regeneration time from 45 to 30

Staff adjustments:
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Gislan’s Staff of Verdure
• Increased damage from 30 to 40

The Staff of Serenity
• Increased Life spell power from 10% to 15%

The Searing Staff
• Melee now deals 40 fire damage instead of physical
• Increased chance to deal bonus damage from 20% to 25%
• Increased bonus damage from 20 to 100

The Eventide Icicle
• No longer gives +5% elemental resistance
• Instead has a 40% chance to freeze melee attacker for 5s

The Copper Rod
• Increased chance to stun target in melee from 10% to 20%

Owl’s Lightning Rod
• Increased Lightning spell charges from 15% to 25%

The Wolfram Rod
• Shorter stun duration from 25% to 50%

Nim’s Enchanted Broom
• Increased chance to deal additional damage from 20% to 50%
• Increased Steam damage from 15 to 30

Nim’s Boreal Broom
• Increased max stack amount from 3 to 30
• Reduced damage per stack from 2 to 1
• Reduced duration from 10 seconds to 3 seconds

The Staff of Quackening
• Chance that Blink regenerates itself increased from 15% to 20%

Good luck to your battles!

EDIT: The Xbox One version is now out as well 🙂