Conqueror's Blade
Server downtime - March 23
Please be aware that from 07:00 CET on March 23 (23:00 PDT on March 22), the Conqueror’s Blade servers will be inaccessible. The downtime is expected to last for 4 hours.
Please refer to the Patch Notes for documented changes. Meanwhile, stay tuned to our Discord channel in case of any immediate server updates.
Behind The Scenes: Wuxing Pikemen
Conqueror’s Blade: Eternal brought with it three new Units to add to your Warband, inspired by the legends of Ancient China, and each bringing unique talents to the battlefield.
We spoke to the developers at Booming Tech about all things Eternal Units, from historical and mythological inspiration to tactical uses in battle, starting with the Wuxing Pikemen (3-Star).
Q: The Wuxing Pikemen use a fire pike weapon, based on the weapons written about in the military treatise ‘Huolongjing’ (specifically the fire lance). What spurred you to use that as inspiration?
A: The fire lance was a weapon that existed in Ancient China, marking the increasing use of gunpowder weapons on the battlefield and holding great significance in the history of ancient warfare. The unique combination of cold and hot weapon elements in the design of the fire lance is very intriguing, and we believe it has the potential to offer more diverse and engaging gameplay to Conqueror’s Blade.
Q: Would you consider using other parts of Huolongjing as inspiration for future Unit’s kits, such as land mines or watermelon bombs?
A: We have actually been making attempts to implement something similar to this into Conqueror's Blade. We hope soon you will be able to see some of the results in upcoming updates.
Q: Philosophy plays a massive part in China’s history, and Wuxing refers to the ‘five elements’ (wood, metal, fire, earth, water) and obviously the Unit’s weapons are fire-themed. Would you ever consider adding a water-based weapon for future Units?
A: This is an interesting idea. Unlike water, fire is enormously powerful and easier to control. In ancient warfare, there were quite a few specific applications of fire in different civilisations, and some of them do become the inspirations for units in Conqueror’s Blade, such as Incendiary Archers and the Siphonarioi.
Q: What is the best way to utilise the Wuxing Pikemen in battle? Should they be used for frontline fights, flanking manoeuvres, or holding the backline?
A: The Wuxing Pikemen are relatively fragile, but their firearms are capable of dealing damage to a large number of densely packed enemies, making them ideal for combating front-line troops to break through enemy formations.
Q: Which specific Units are the Wuxing Pikemen strong and weak against?
A: The Wuxing Pikemen can maximise their fire lance advantage against tightly formed enemy units, but they have difficulty being effective against troops with loose formations or at longer ranges. Therefore, when encountering the Wuxing Pikemen, a loose formation may be a better choice.
Stay tuned for upcoming Behind The Scenes looks at the Crescent Monks and Yanyuedao Cavalry!
New In-Game Community Event: Join The Hunt!
The CM Hunt is about to begin! Seek out Conqueror’s Blade Community Managers on their individual servers, and receive a special reward for finding them. This seemingly simple game of hide-and-seek isn’t so simple—you won’t find them under their usual usernames!
Never fear, the Moderators will help you out with clues! But… where are the moderators? Check the hints posted on Twitter and Discord!
EU1 (March 23 16:30-18:00 CET)
Spring has sprung in Conqueror’s Blade, so check for Community Managers hiding in Springtime-inspired areas!
EU2 (March 28 16:00-18:00 CEST)
Check for suspicious characters with very foolish nicknames, just in time for April Fool’s Day!
NA2 (March 29 22:00-23:00 CEST)
Look out for your CMs hiding in places that were inspired by the legends of Ancient China!
Once you find a CM, remember to whisper to them and challenge them to a duel to win! You can only take part in the CM Hunt once, so make it count.
Contest: Create Divine Art of the New Artillery!
The Divine Crow has arrived in Conqueror’s Blade: Eternal, and in celebration of this fiery new Artillery, you can win prizes for your artistic tributes!
Here’s what you need to do:
- Create artwork inspired by the Divine Crow! This can range from fan art, to unique shells you think would suit the machine, to a collage. Whether hand-drawn, painted, or created digitally, the world is your creative oyster (or crow).
- Enter before March 26 (23:59 CEST) via the Contest Discord channel.
No third-party material is allowed.
If your artwork is chosen as one of the top three entries, it will be featured on our social media channels, and you’ll nab the following rewards:
- First Place: 2,300 Sovereigns
- Second Place: 30-Day Premium Account Time
- Third Place: 550 Sovereigns
Unlock the Divine Crow in a New PVE Event!
The Divine Crow Artillery has arrived in Conqueror's Blade: Eternal and this devastatingly damaging tool can be yours to claim through Special Events!
Available in Epic rarity, the Divine Crow fires three gunpowder-filled rockets for an explosive attack to divide and demolish enemy ranks.
New PVE World Events: Raider Camps
A well-armed, mysterious force has made itself known. Raider Camps are springing up seemingly out of nowhere near regional Capitals, and have conscripted forces from all known Rebel Camps to fight with increased ferocity. Factions across the land require your help to quell this uprising and protect their cities.
Defeat enemies, complete objectives, and claim Drops, including a chance to obtain the Divine Crow (Epic Artillery), and more! Check in-game for specific information on rewards.
Schedule (EU & NA)
- Wednesdays: 16:00–18:00 and 20:00–22:00 CET (EU1 and EU2) / 17:00–19:00 and 21:00–23:00 EDT (NA3)
- Fridays: 16:00–18:00 and 20:00–22:00 CET (EU1 and EU2) / 17:00–19:00 and 21:00–23:00 EDT (NA3)
- Sundays: 16:00–18:00 and 20:00–22:00 CET (EU1 and EU2) / 17:00–19:00 and 21:00–23:00 EDT (NA3)
Detailed information on how to obtain the Divine Crow and the PVE Event can be found in the patch notes.
Server downtime - March 16
Please be aware that from 07:00 CET on March 16 (23:00 PDT on March 15), the Conqueror’s Blade servers will be inaccessible. The downtime is expected to last for 5 hours.
Please refer to the Patch Notes for documented changes. Meanwhile, stay tuned to our Discord channel in case of any immediate server updates.
Localisation Spotlight: Will aka LordKruidvat
Join us as we shine a light on the entire team who work behind the scenes to bring all the aspects of Conqueror’s Blade to life. We’ve already spoken with the talented voice actors, director, and others who worked behind the scenes to bring localised voices to the game, as well as German Localisation Editor Christiane Müller, but now the spotlight lands on Will, the English Localisation Editor for Conqueror's Blade!
We caught up with Will and talked about everything from his day-to-day role, to writing immersive lore, his favourite part of the job, and more.
Q: Hi Will! Talk us through your role on Conqueror’s Blade.
A: I edit the English translation of the in-game texts for a native-speaker audience. I also write Unit voiceovers, and in partnership with BT have invented names and lore for just about everything in the game.
Q: You’re responsible for naming all sorts of things in Conqueror’s Blade, from items to Units to Maps. Where do you draw inspiration from?
A: As far as possible I draw on academic scholarship on the subject period or place, so there’s a lot of time spent reading papers on medieval and military history. Since Conqueror’s Blade has a fictional setting, my intention is that Unit names generally refer obliquely to their real-world inspirations while still working as in-universe names in their own right.
Q: What is the piece of lore you’re most proud of writing?
A: It’s a tie between the material culture of the Kingdom of Empyros and the Horse Seller’s equine puns. For better or worse, “It’s just not your day, is it?” is the closest I’ve come to creating a meme.
Q: What is a common misconception about your job?
A: That localisation and translation are the same thing. Localisation is more about approximate meanings than a 1:1 adherence to the original text. Ideally, a finished, localised text should feel to a native speaker like it was written in their language in the first place.
Q: How did you come to decide on this career path? What were your previous roles?
A: It was an ideal role for me as it matched my interests (gaming, medieval history) and skills (I was learning to be a scriptwriter). Before that, I worked in academic publishing and bookselling, so words, either my own or other people’s, have always been my business.
Q: What’s your favourite part of your role?
A: Writing Unit voiceover scripts – the Units of Conqueror’s Blade are a window into the setting so it is a chance to give them their own character. Also, I have a soft spot for writing awful puns and there are more than a few in there.
Q: What was the first game you ever played?
A: I should probably mention here a cool or culturally significant game that influenced me as a writer in later years, but in truth, I think the first game I ever played was Clowns & Balloons on the Atari 800XL.
Q: Outside of writing and gaming, what are some of your other hobbies?
A: To get away from the screens I also paint landscapes, read a lot of fiction, and back during lockdown I got into woodcarving – I still have a homemade chess set to finish.
Q: If you could enter the world of Conqueror's Blade, what would be the first thing you’d do?
A: I’d go to the Royal Falcon tavern in Turul Város and see if they have a pub quiz.
Stay tuned for future Localisation Spotlights!
Conqueror's Blade x Naraka: Bladepoint
Development Blog: Performance & Frame Rates
Our goal with Conqueror's Blade is to create a world in which you can fulfil your dreams of conquering lands and achieving victory in battle. To this end, we've created vast areas, walls that zigzag the land, and battles where thousands of soldiers charge, clash, fire arrows, and let loose with artillery fire.
The Difficulty of Massive Battles
Huge maps, plentiful characters, items, and special effects require an astonishing amount of calculation in the game’s backend. Over the three years since we launched, we've continued to implement new content, units, and bigger maps, as well as a series of graphical improvements. All of these put a strain on both software and hardware alike.
The interfaces for Units, Heroes, and maps are all connected to highly complex systems. All of this working at once during the heat of battle puts a heavy strain on the CPU. To improve FPS, we've done plenty of work to enable as many algorithms as possible to process in parallel and get as much as possible out of multi-core CPUs. This combined has led to the game utilising much of the CPU and straining the GPU's rendering capabilities. Add to that the sheer amount of high-quality textures that need to be processed, meaning that most players have little GPU memory to spare. On the other hand, as the game interface, combat, and scene effects are improved, GPUs face higher demands during rendering. Games that use a large number of high-resolution textures also increase the demand for video memory. These factors lead to games requiring more GPU computing resources and video memory during operation. Therefore, in future game development, we will pay more attention to optimising the GPU to ensure smooth gameplay experiences.
Furthermore, huge scenes and massive numbers of characters add significant pressure on memory usage. Often times we have to increase our memory consumption in favour of processing performance. However, we admit there are shortcomings in our current management strategy for algorithm optimisation with this being one of our key targets.
As we continue to create and add new content, we also receive more feedback regarding frame drops, lag, and performance issues. We know full well how important performance is. Even so, in the end, we must try to find the sweet spot where performance and graphics meet.
Let’s go into more detail on what we've done to improve performance and share our plans for the future.
What We've Done in Eternal
Every action of every Unit, be that moving, attacking or using skills, occupy system resources based on the quality of its special effects. When special effects are displayed, how much it strains the systems depends on how many particles it includes. Therefore, the number of particles is the most intuitive way to measure the performance impact of special effects. We will reduce the original overly high number of special effect particles to a reasonable range without compromising the overall game experience, thereby improving game performance.
Units & Combat
Many players are experiencing frame drops when the Zykalian Militia throw their explosive canisters which is a result of their skill's special effect using too many particles.
To improve performance across the board while still ensuring good visual effects, we have with the Eternal Season reduced the number of particles of many skills' effects, including explosions. This has directly improved performance. The following are before and after particle counts for some skills.
- Silahdars' Decapitate - now 410 particles (was 1,200)
- Silahdars' Deathstrike - now 890 particles (was 1,120)
- Grayhair Garrison's Last Stand - now 420 particles (was 1,120)
- Shenji Grenadiers' Throw Grenades - now 210 particles (was 580)
- Zykalian Militia - now 118 particles (was 310)
- Grapeshot Cannon (Rare) - now 2,700 particles (was 6,400)
- Berserkers' Frenzy state - now 370 particles (was 1,050)
- Special effect of units affected by the Glaive's God of Battles - now 240 (was 410)
Weather & Objects
The vast number of objects on each map adds to the immersion and affects strategic choices too. Every wall, obstacle, and piece of vegetation breathes life into the map. Naturally, plentiful objects and large concentrations of Units are demanding, which has resulted in low frame rates during many battles.
To remedy this, we've made improvements to the management of dynamic object performance for areas that are often home to large battles, greatly reducing rendering delay. This will lead to a much more stable FPS in these circumstances.
Future Performance Optimisations
We've already made performance improvements to many areas of the game which has led to a slight overall increase in FPS. Naturally, certain problematic areas still exist and many of these exist at key points, something that affects the gameplay experience adversely.
We are currently performing large tests in an effort to do more targeted optimisations, and we're planning on doing the following:
- Optimise the underlying interface algorithms to avoid complex ones reducing performance and worsening memory usage. Some of these include the mini-map, skill bars, and Unit info.
- Rendering fidelity affects how things appear in-game, and in most cases, the rendering of different layers does not have to be on the same fidelity level. For example, while battling on the walls of A at Wall Fort, you don't need to have the perfect view of the base flag as that would lower performance. The current rendering fidelity does not cover all situations, however, so we will be adding more rendering layers based on the distance to objects on the map. For example, we can give objects 100m away a rendering fidelity of 1, objects 50m away a fidelity of 2, objects 10m away a fidelity of 3, and objects 5m away a fidelity of 4. This will reduce rendering calculations and therefore GPU usage.
- Re-create the code of cloth and physics simulations to optimise the performance of many smaller modules such as hair, spear tassels, robe hems, capes, etc.
- Continue to reduce the number of special effect particles to better balance graphics and performance.
- Create a better distribution of texture quality to find a balance between that and performance to further reduce memory usage.
- Improve graphics settings by adding more options and configurations, while also better recognising hardware to improve the default settings.
Each one of the aforementioned improvements is complex and will take a long time to complete. As we continue to add more content, we also add more unknown variables to the equation. Even so, we're happy to share and discuss these issues with you all. We've been battling these issues and receiving these questions for a long time and we want to show our answer with actions and concrete results. We know that battling performance issues will take time, but even so, we will continue to improve one issue at a time. We're in this for the long haul!
We also want to invite you all to work on this with us. We're thinking of testing the results of our optimisations via open, alpha, and beta tests. We'll reveal more about how these will work soon! We’ll also be adding info on how things are going with our performance optimisations in future Development Blogs, too.
Unlock Mighty Rewards from Attire Chests until March 30!
Unleash the power of the Mighty Guardian Attire Chest packed with new and classic cosmetics!
Unlock this treasure trove with Golden Keys (‘G’ menu) before March 30 (08:00 Server Time), and you could claim the Shore’s Edge Pike. This Chest-exclusive weapon skin is bursting with Poseidon’s power in the form of unique visual effects that have to be seen to be believed.
You can view the full contents of the Mighty Guardian Attire Chest in-game.
Stock Up With A New Pack
Visit the in-game Store every Monday at 00:00 Server Time to grab the brand-new Silver & Sundries Pack! Stuffed to the brim with General Supplies and Large Chests of Silver, you can purchase this shining pack every single week at a 30% discount.