Update 2.2: Sparring at Druzhba

Hello, Others!

Meet update 2.2. The main news: now you can fight any time, even when the city is quiet. Here's everything, step by step.

🥊 Sparring at Druzhba

Sometimes you want a fight, but there are no opponents around. Or you've just picked up a new ability and want to see how it works in a real battle without risking your rating. Now there's sparring for that.

Drop by the Druzhba Sports Complex in Luzhniki and talk to the club administrator, Veronika. Next to the regular and rated matches, she now offers a fight against a bot. Veronika will call over someone who trains at the club, and you choose who:

• a weaker one, to get to grips with your abilities in peace;
• an equal, to test yourself against a fair opponent;
• a stronger one, if you want a real challenge.

This isn't a simplified drill, it's a full match with all the usual rules. Your opponent has an ordinary class and specialization, their own abilities and stats, a build like a real player's, and a comparable level and rank. No hidden bonuses: a stronger opponent differs not in numbers but in how they fight. They react faster, hit more accurately and pick smarter tactics.

Since the fight is real, so are its consequences: experience, health, energy, item wear. Lose, and your Other will need to recover. Your rating, however, doesn't change, and these fights don't count towards quests.

Experience depends on your opponent's strength: the stronger the opponent, the more experience you get for beating them.

For now, sparring is one on one. Group fights with bots will come later.

🌫️ The Twilight is fast now

For an Other, the Twilight is a kind of invulnerability and one of the main ways to protect yourself in battle. Moving between layers used to take a long time, and that was a necessary compromise: the move had no cooldown, and a quick entry would have turned the Twilight into an endless shelter. The result was a slow action that held the fight back more than it helped.

Now it's different:

• Moving between layers is 4 times faster. You can enter the Twilight at the right moment instead of in advance.
• Going deeper now has a cooldown. You can move to a deeper layer once a minute.
• No limits on the way out. Moving towards reality costs no energy and has no cooldown.
• Energy for going deeper. Moving to the second and third layers costs 50 and 100 energy respectively.

The layer bonuses have changed too. The first layers now give more, and each next one adds a little less:

• casting speed on the first, second and third layers: +40, +50 and +60 (was +20, +40 and +60);
• running speed: +30, +35 and +40 (was +20, +30 and +40).

We want fights to happen in the Twilight. There's no need to break humans' minds with battles right before their eyes, and the bonuses there are much higher: time flows slower, and you can see much further. So don't hold back: go into the Twilight and fight there.

And not only in battle: we want the Twilight to be used actively outside matches too. We've worked on stats, they now apply outside combat as well, and the boost to casting and movement speed in the Twilight will be noticeable right away.

🔄 Free ability swaps

Abilities within your specialization can now be swapped for free and as often as you like. Just open the specialization window and pick a different ability at a level you've already reached. The new ability takes the old one's place, on the same button.

Try different combinations, adapt to your opponent, find your own style. And if you want to change the specialization itself, coach Viktor Pavlovich at Druzhba will help you with that for emotions, as before.

📊 Detailed stats

We've worked on how stats are displayed, so it's clear where each number comes from. Hold Shift while hovering over a stat, and the game will show what the value is made of: base, specialization, rank, artifact and effects.

One more hint: color. Blue means an artifact or effect has raised the stat, red means an effect has lowered it. In battle, these colors are visible for other participants too, so you can tell right away who has been buffed and who has been weakened.

The way rank works has also changed: it now gives a bonus only to stats from talents. The rank bonus no longer applies to items.

💬 Chat and friends

• Names in chat are now colored the same way as characters on the map. Your side, Light or Dark, no longer affects the color, but in battle you can see right away who's an ally and who's an enemy.
• The friends list on your phone shows those who are online first.

⚔️ Clearer attacks

If you can't attack a character right now, the "Attack" button will tell you why straight away: for example, your health is too low or the target is under the Inquisition's protection. No more walking across half a district only to find out on the spot.

🎓 A calm start

Street fights are now forbidden in the Akademichesky district, where all new Others begin. Newcomers can go through training and settle in calmly before heading out into the city.

🛠️ Fixes

• Quest objectives from a neighboring district no longer show at the edge of the map until you've moved there.
• A finished street fight disappears from the map right away, and its participants are visible again without reloading the page. Anyone who joins a fight already in progress also disappears from the map, like the other fighters.
• You can no longer talk to quest humans while in the Twilight.

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Come to Druzhba for some sparring. See you in Blackout!