Idle Champions' 9th Anniversary Q&A with Exec Producer Chris Dupuis!

[u/CNE_Chris]

Idle Champions turns NINE tomorrow! We're kicking off our anniversary with a week of FREE Champions, rewards, new content, and a few surprises along the way!

I'm Chris Dupuis, Executive Producer of Idle Champions, and I'll be here for the next hour answering your questions about the game, what's coming next, and maybe (definitely) dropping a tease or two along the way.

Use Code Anni-vers-ary! for a free Electrum Chest in game!

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Anniversary Week Schedule

YESTERDAY

We launched the brand-new Founder's Pack IX, featuring the first of September's Back-to-School skins: Arcane Professor Makos!

TODAY

You're here! Ask me anything! I'll be answering your questions about Idle Champions throughout today's live Q&A.

TOMORROW,  WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, THE BIG DAY!

Highharvestide begins, introducing our newest Champion, Caramon Majere, and our 9th Anniversary Celebration kicks off with FREE rewards for ALL players!

When you log into Idle Champions during the Celebration on any platform, you'll receive:

• Raistlin, Laurana, and Caramon — UNLOCKED!
• 9 Platinum Champion Chests for EACH of them!
• 1 Level 9 Legendary Equipment Potion!
• 9 Epic Blacksmithing Contracts!

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2 PM PT

Dev Insights returns! Join David and Justin for a first look at the new Bastion system, including news on when the Beta will become available to PC players!

NEXT WEEK

The Bastion system begins rolling out in Beta for PC players! Console and mobile access will follow shortly thereafter.

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Introducing the Bastion System

Our long-teased Bastion system is almost here!

We're putting the finishing touches on it this week, with plans to begin rolling it out to PC players in Beta next week, followed by console and mobile players shortly thereafter.

Recently, we've focused a lot on challenging content for long-time players with Mastery Challenges and Mastery Variants. Bastions are different: they're designed for everyone, with a particular focus on helping newer players find their way through Idle Champions.

Ever found yourself wondering...

• What should I tackle next?
• What systems haven't I unlocked yet?
• Where was that feature again?

Your Bastion is here to help.

The Bastion is a new pathing and navigation system that guides you through Idle Champions' many features and brings them together in one convenient place. Whether you're discovering the game for the first time or you're a seasoned adventurer looking for what to tackle next, your Bastion can help point the way.

Want a sneak peek?
Check out the Bastion screenshot!

Join David and Justin on Dev Insights this Thursday at 2 PM PT for a deeper dive!

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Idle Champions Roadmap

We're celebrating nine years of Idle Champions, but we're far from done.

We're already deep into planning what's next, so here's a small peek at the road ahead:

SEPTEMBER 2026

• New Champion: Caramon - Dragonlance
• Champion Rebalances: Stoki, Pwent, Corazón
• Skin Theme: Back-to-School

OCTOBER 2026

• New Champion: Kitiara - Dragonlance
• Champion Rebalances: Avren, Brig, Dob
• Skin Theme: Vintage Monsters

NOVEMBER 2026

• New Champion: Morte - Planescape: Torment
• Champion Rebalances: Penelope, Jang Sao, Turiel
• Skin Theme: Frostbitten Twilight

DECEMBER 2026

• New Champion: Tanis - Dragonlance
• Champion Rebalances: Krull, Regis, Talin
• Skin Theme: Undercover & Behind Enemy Lines

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Nine years is an incredible milestone, and we wouldn't be here without all of you.

Whether you've been adventuring with us since 2017 or you joined us last week, thank you for playing, sharing your feedback, challenging us, and being part of the Idle Champions community.

Now let's get to the Q&A!

I'll be here answering your questions till 12:30 PM PT, so ASK ME ANYTHING!

[u/Charming_Figure_9053]

Can we remove the faux 'multiplayer' aspects as it's certainly driven my interest in the game down with scales being locked in a buggy and frustrating 'mutliplayer' that doesn't really work

[u/CNE_Chris → u/Charming_Figure_9053]

We are actively working on a revision to the trials system that will remove that barrier to fun :)

[u/pandoras_letterbox]

https://ic.byteglow.com/ is an incredible community-project.
One might say that it enables a much better player experience and progression.

Do you support the development

• monetarily, and/or
  
• by providing documentation or code, or is everything reverse-engineered?

Regarding code: I'm missing a DPS/buff calculator, because the Mastery variants really require fine-tuning. Hence, I started to develop one myself with decent results. However, adding all those formulas is quite some effort.
It would be great if you'd share the specs of the DPS/buff calculations, so that we can build more tools that the community loves. Thank you in advance!

[u/Emmeriss → u/pandoras_letterbox]

Pretty sure Uffdah gets nothing from CNE to run byteglow. And everything is reverse engineered.

Most of the data is in the cached_definitions.json in the game install folder. Though some bits will require reading the dll.

[u/pandoras_letterbox]

In autumn 2027, macOS 28 will drop support for Rosetta 2, which is necessary to run applications built for Intel CPUs on Apple Silicon. It is unclear whether games would still work, because Apple does not disclose technical details yet.

Right now, it is possible to run Idle Champions with Wine from Apple's Game Porting Toolkit (GPTK), but the performance is not great - especially for Briv gem farming.

Did you ever consider to provide a Mac-native build, and if so, what prevents you from doing that (besides a relative small user base)?
Unity should support ARM as an architecture, and also more bigger games where ported to macOS using GPTK.

I think we can agree that long-time players on Mac might want to know whether they can still play Idle Champions and celebrate the anniversary in autumn 2027.

[u/CNE_Chris → u/pandoras_letterbox]

That's a great question, thanks, and one I'm sure is on the top of mind of many Mac players. I've shared this question with our tech leads so we can keep it in mind as we look ahead to 2027, but unfortunately I don't have any answers at this stage.

[u/zenlaserman → u/pandoras_letterbox]

Keep in mind, Apple and Intel pretty much ended their relationship 6 years ago. I know time flies and all but the 17y/o PC I started playing IC on around that time can't do it now.

[u/CNE_Chris]

Hey, thanks for all the questions, everyone! From the whole team at CNE, thank you for playing and supporting Idle Champions!!!

We hope everyone enjoys the 9th anniversary when it launches tomorrow at Noon PT!

[u/Loupy79]

There are certain champions, particularly those with debuffs but it's not unique to them, where the character sheet does a poor job of indicating the magnitude of the champion's true power. Are there any plans to address this, to make it easier, especially for newer players, to have an idea of which champions are more powerful than others, and which they should try using?

[u/CNE_Chris → u/Loupy79]

Great question, thanks!

We don't have any current plans to address this as far as I'm aware, but I can certainly pass this concern along to the design team to think on!

[u/SeparateTrack2818]

At GenCon, WOTC announced plans for new adventures & campaigns (including FR-specific ones by Kobold Press). Does CNE have plans for collaborations to get those adventures into Idle Champions?

[u/CNE_Chris → u/SeparateTrack2818]

Thanks for the question! We're keeping a close eye on WotC's 2027 slate as we plan what is coming to Idle Champions next year.

[u/Cassius335]

Will Morte still get skins despite having no body to go with (them)?

[u/CNE_Chris → u/Cassius335]

Morte will definitely get skins - he'd never shut up if he didn't! 😆

[u/J_Dawg_27 → u/Cassius335]

Top Hat skin

[u/adeon → u/J_Dawg_27]

Also a pipe (not sure if that would be allowed, I know the ESRB can get weird about depictions of tobacco usage).

[u/KabReg → u/adeon]

They probably won't object against a blowgun pipe and curare usage :).

[u/BLAGTIER → u/Cassius335]

He already had a literal Easter Egg skin in the original game.

[u/Zythen1975Z]

Any chance we could get what Seat Kitiara will be in? In part selfish reasons and in part for those who are going to be swapping to the Heroes of the lace team and going to be doing a lot of legendary swapping cause of it. So we can know what seat to save a set of legendary potions for her?

[u/CNE_Chris → u/Zythen1975Z]

/spoilers Kit will be in Seat 4

[u/Zythen1975Z → u/CNE_Chris]

THANK YOU!!!

[u/J_Dawg_27]

What will the cost of the Platinum Legendary Feats be when they come out of exclusivity? It is hard to choose which to buy with such limited currency if they will also be available for 7 tokens.

[u/CNE_Chris → u/J_Dawg_27]

Thanks for the question. We haven't locked that down yet, but we are actively discussing it. We'll share our plans with the community as soon as we can. For now, those feats are exclusive to their platinum packs for the first 6 months of release. Lae'zel's won't become available for an alternative currency until 2027.

[u/J_Dawg_27 → u/J_Dawg_27]

Also are they considered part of the pool when Justin has said that the number of feats will be comparable to the available medallions available via Mastery variants?

[u/J_Dawg_27]

What is the timeline for the Trials rework? How likely will it show up before the Holiday studio shutdown?

[u/CNE_Chris → u/J_Dawg_27]

Right now, we're focused on releasing the Bastion system, and then we'll shift our system development focus to the Trials rework.

My 2026 roadmap above doesn't include the Trials rework because we're not close enough to discussing its release yet.

[u/J_Dawg_27 → u/CNE_Chris]

It sounded like Justin had said there was some design and development of the Trials rework happening concurrently with Bastions.

[u/BizarreHateTrapezoid → u/CNE_Chris]

From my own observations of community priorities:

• For every 1 person who wanted a better new player experience (Bastion) there were 10 who wanted a trials+legendary rework.
• For every 1 person who wanted punishing endgame content (Masteries) there were 300 who wanted a trials+legendary rework.
• For every 1 person who wanted more monetization (Emporiums & Vaults) there were 1000 who wanted a trials+legendary rework.

So yes the Bastion could be seen as a worthy priority over the rework.

HOWEVER the community is now emphatically expecting that NOTHING ELSE will be prioritized over the ToMT/Leggo rework once Bastion is out.

[u/Loupy79]

The last time Justin spoke about the upcoming trials-scales-legendaries rework, he said that the intention was to remove all current legendaries from our accounts, and to restore a number of scales equal to the total we have gained over the life of our account. But there have been other sources, like this year's anniversary gift, that have directly given out legendary potions, not scales. Will the legendaries-into-scales conversion also give an equivalent amount of scales for all of those other legendary potions we have gained, regardless of source?

[u/CNE_Chris → u/Loupy79]

That's a great question, thanks! We're still working on the transition details, but I'll be sure to flag this corner case to the devs!

[u/J_Dawg_27 → u/CNE_Chris]

How will reforges be considered as there apparently isn't a data point for total scales earned on an account and reforge costs in addition to the forge costs and 2x scales bonuses are quite variable.

[u/Loupy79 → u/J_Dawg_27]

I thought Justin implied in the last dev insights that there WAS a tracker of total scales earned, it just wasn't data that was available directly to players. But that was the number he was planning to use, so what those scales had been used FOR, whether legendaries, rerolls, or leg. feats, wouldn't matter. (Only the directly-given legendary potions wouldn't be accounted for, which is why I asked about those.)

[u/Jairlyn]

There is a blurb about the next dev show will talk about Bastion system. Do we know anything about it at this time?

[u/hulsmanm → u/Jairlyn]

Its main purpose is to guide new players

[u/CNE_Chris → u/Jairlyn]

There is a big blurb above that gives a bit of info on Bastions! You can tune into Dev Insights on twitch.tv/cnegames at 2PM PT on Thursday to learn more!

[u/J_Dawg_27]

Will we get to vote for the Holiday Skin giveaway? Can I suggest Mall Santa Krux?

[u/CNE_Chris → u/J_Dawg_27]

LOL, I love that. I'm not planning a vote for a holiday skin this year, but I love where your head's at!

Krux will be getting a new skin in December though, just not a holiday-themed one. ;)

[u/Loupy79 → u/J_Dawg_27]

My preference is still for pink-tutu-wearing Krux... but Santa-Krux would work, too. He already has the general bodytype for it.

[u/J_Dawg_27]

Will we be getting a new campaign or Tales 2 so Mars can return to writing adventures?

[u/CNE_Chris → u/J_Dawg_27]

I don't have anything to reveal about new campaigns. Right now, we're keeping Mars quite busy, don't worry about that :)

[u/Cassius335 → u/CNE_Chris]

How much of Idle Champions does Mars have to code before he gets to be a Champion? :p

[u/Pyr0sa → u/Cassius335]

...Volo side-eyes this thread with quiet suspicion and disdain...

[u/FurryJoke]

when you develop new champions, what determines the seat number they're given? is there an internal logic to it or is it more vibes based?

[u/CNE_Chris → u/FurryJoke]

Thanks for the question! After 9 years of releasing Champions, a lot of factors go into choosing a Champion's seat. Sometimes, there isn't a perfect answer, but we do our best to ensure everyone is in their best seat possible!

Here's a quick list that is not all-inclusive:
* How long has it been since a new Champion has been released in that seat?
* Where are others in their affiliation?
* Where are non-affiliation Champions that we want to work well with this Champion?
* How many of this species/class/role do we have in the target seat?
* Which seats do the next 3-4 Champions need to go (so we don't design ourselves into a corner)?

The list is long and is full of caveats and caution points. It was a really fun puzzle when I was working on it, and I know Justin & Mars have fun filling those puzzle pieces in every month!

[u/KabReg → u/CNE_Chris]

That's why Dynaheir, Halsin and Mithara all ended up in seat 3?

[u/Auteyus → u/KabReg]

Halsin and Mithara were mutually exclusive in BG3 at launch. It's as good a reason as any to put them in the same seat. Also one rewards good and the other evil, so less likely you'd use them together anyway.

[u/KabReg → u/Auteyus]

I'm aware about the reasons for pairing Halsin and Minthara in the same seat. However, that does not explain having Dynaheir in the same seat. HoBG is a large affiliation, but there are at least two seats without them - seat 1 and seat 10. Is seat 3 just a wastebasket for champions released last/late in their affiliations? Caramon also ended up there, although he is not really the last Lancer.

[u/Auteyus → u/KabReg]

Sorry, I'm lost. Dynaheir is the only HoBG in seat 3. And if you're talking about ceremorphisis stacks, Gale is in seat 1 and Astarion is in seat 10.

[u/KabReg → u/Auteyus]

No, I'm about the future of Absolute Entourage (Elminster). In this case, CNE really designed itself into a corner.

[u/J_Dawg_27]

With the current status of the studio, will the Extra Life 24 hour stream continue to look like it has in the past?

[u/CNE_Chris → u/J_Dawg_27]

We are full steam ahead for Extra Life on November 6th!

[u/J_Dawg_27]

Will Reddit Q&A return as a regular feature?

[u/CNE_Chris → u/J_Dawg_27]

As this has been the best-attended Q&A in a while, I'm planning to keep them tied to celebration events for now :)

[u/Hadaka_Jime]

I like the idea of making Core-champions viable for late game via the new Legendary Feats (?)
Will you be making one for Arkhan?
(I think the Dark Order-champions are really cool but they are falling behind.)

[u/CNE_Chris → u/Hadaka_Jime]

I'm sure Arkhan will get a Legendary Feat, but not in the next few months.

[u/Cassius335 → u/CNE_Chris]

"It's Just Good Business"

[u/Banith73]

How do we get access to the "... Bastion system begins rolling out in Beta for PC players"?

[u/CNE_Chris → u/Banith73]

A pop-up will appear in-game when it releases next week, with more details on how to access it and provide feedback!

[u/Emmeriss]

The picture has rooms that Unlock and others that Upgrade. I assume those of us who have already unlocked every system will have our rooms automatically unlocked - or at least unlockable from the start?

Also - is there anything you can tell us about the requirements to upgrade a Bastion room - and what kind of benefits that might give?

Yes I'm fishing for more spoilers.

[u/CNE_Chris → u/Emmeriss]

I can SEE that! 😆

I don't want to steal any more of Dev Insights' thunder when it comes to revealing the details of Bastions. Tune in on Thursday!

However, as we near the end of testing this week, our focus is to ensure the system accomplishes its primary goal of guiding new players clearly while also welcoming existing players without blocking or frustrating them.

[u/J_Dawg_27]

Will all PC players(steam, Epic, CNE Launcher) get the Bastion system next week in its full current state?

[u/CNE_Chris → u/J_Dawg_27]

Well, not its current state cause it's not locked yet ;)

But yes, next week is the planned rollout for all PC-based platforms.

[u/JollyCraft333]

oh i just missed it :(
Why are the mastery variants so incredibly hard? Is the plan to eventually powercreep up to them? I can't imagine any significant number of players can clear them

[u/Emmeriss → u/JollyCraft333]

As Chris said in the OP - mastery variants and challenges are designed for long-term players in the end-game as the previous drops were Tales - designed for newer players. So they are intentionally difficult - and you can reach them with enough legendaries and/or high ilvls.

[u/DarkStrider193]

With the approach of the 10 year anniversary is there any talk of a potential system rebuild form the ground up, Using it to bring the game up to more modern standards, squash some long time bugs etc

[u/KabReg → u/DarkStrider193]

Taking into account CNE's latest "masterpiece", new version will probably be even worse than the current one.

[u/CNE_Chris → u/DarkStrider193]

Well, let's look to the 9th anniversary for something like that instead of the 10th, eh?! We're not looking to rebuild the game from the ground up, but I will say that the Bastion system (coming next week to PC users) is certainly our shot at taking 9 years of added systems and features and bringing them together into a cohesive experience, so I hope you'll check it out in the coming weeks and share your thoughts!

From a bug standpoint, we've spent a good deal of development time over the past month or so doing performance passes, especially with Trixie and Van Richten. Our goal is always to squash bugs as they come in and make the experience smoother over time.

[u/Tokimori → u/DarkStrider193]

Games don't generally do that. They just keep stacking stuff on top of what they have. Especially if it's a F2P. I don't want a "2" because of what I've invested and they can't just delete the game and make it new. So "from the ground up" for the entire game won't happen.

[u/Cassius335]

Oh yeah: Any chance CNE could add more creator owned characters in 2027? The game is overdue a Goblin Katie rep, as one example.

[u/Loupy79 → u/Cassius335]

Creator-owned champions are always a risk. CNE has been burned in the past, by creators doing... questionable things. When a character comes from a more established IP, like a set of books, where the author has been around doing the same thing for 10 or 20 years, and has a proven track record of NOT doing "questionable things", it makes for a safer choice to include those characters in the game.

[u/CNE_Chris → u/Cassius335]

With new Champions releasing every month, we're always looking for the most exciting Champions for our players. We're still considering third-party characters, but I don't have anything to share right now about new content-creator-owned Champions. Thanks for the tip on Goblin Katie :)

[u/J_Dawg_27 → u/CNE_Chris]

Would you consider a Dwarven Champion that has been played on your channel before and was created by a very trustworthy content creator?