The Easter Bunny has lost his Easter Eggs! The monsters from Caldean have ambushed him and ran off with them! Will you help the twee little bunny to get the eggs back? Start missions to find them!

We’ll have an easter event for you from 5th of April until 10th of April. During the special easter missions you can find various eggs which will boost your mission income. It doesn’t matter if you win the mission or not, and you can sell those eggs for silver; you don’t have to save them. You can also find golden eggs containing gems for you!

You’ll unlock an achievement if you find 5 different eggs. Take a look at your loot chest then – ahhhhw, isn’t it cute? Join the great egg hunt!

Your Battleknight-Team

We’ll start the event weeks soon! Increase your highscore through cheaper items, more silver during missions or lower skill costs! Several themed events will be taking place:

• Week of the adventurer (-30% ruby costs for items, +15% silver for missions)
• Week of the treasure seeker (+30% clue silver reward, +3% ruby drop during travels)
• Week of the duelers (-10% costs for skills, -30% hit zone change costs)
• Week of the user (event chosen by users election – realized via poll; you can choose your two “best of” events out of the previous ones and we’ll activate them again – but this time in combination!)

The event weeks will take place from 11^th of June until 6^th of July 2012, each time from Monday at midnight to Friday at 11:59pm (local time!). Next week we’ll provide you with more information about the first event – stay tuned!

Your Battleknight-Team

Welcome to our first event week, the week of the adventurer! This special will take place from Monday 11th of June until Friday 15th of June. The adventurer week includes two different events:

• Less ruby costs for items: -30% for all items!
• Get more silver: +15% for missions!

Are you a real adventurer? Check it out – see you ingame!
Hint: “Week of the user” voting will be open once the event has started. On Monday we will give you the URL to the poll and than you can vote for it!

Your Battleknight-Team

Dear lords and ladies,

since the first event week has started today the poll is now open for you. Click here to vote for your favourite event! In the “Week of the user” we will activate the two most voted events again. Don’t miss it!

Your Battleknight Team

Ladies and Gentlemen, we hope you enjoy the adventurers week! Now it’s time to announce the next two events. From Monday 18^th of June until Friday 22^nd of June the motto of the week is:  the treasurer seeker! Let’s see what you can get this time:

• +30% clue silver reward
• +3% ruby drop during travels

Good luck to all of you and have a good journey!

Hint: Don’t forget to vote for the poll! Click here to vote!

Enjoy the week

Your Battleknight-Team

We hope all treasurer seekers have found their way through the world of Battleknight. Now let’s have a look on the week of the duelers from 25th of June until 29th of June! This time you can keep your duel costs quite small:

• -10% costs for skills
• -30% hit zone change costs

Don’t miss this chance! Send your character in duels now – good luck!
Hint: Don’t forget to vote for the poll! Click here to vote!

We wish you a lot of fun
Your Battleknight-Team

Finally the voting is finished and we want to thank you for the huge participation. It was amazing to see how many players have voted! More or less all nations have voted for the same events. As we now have the result of the poll, here is the announcement! The last event week will start on Monday 2^nd of July and will last until Friday 6^th of July.

All nations, except Taiwan, will get this two events:

• +15% silver on missions
• -10% costs for skills

 Taiwan will get:

• +15% silver on missions
• +3% Ruby drop on journeys

We hope you’ll also enjoy this week, have a lot of fun!!

Your Battleknight Team

Dear community,

the 2012 Summer Olympic Games will start today. The emperor of the Greek empire sends his most loyal mounts to the great Olympics! These winged guardians safely get every knight to their destination.
“Pegasus” is as fast as lightning, can perform air fights and loot silver. He fights in flight and his battle report is the air fight.

Don’t miss this amazing winged guardian! Pegasus will be available in the shop for half the price only for a short time, from Monday 30th of July onwards.

We wish you a lot of fun!

Your Battleknight Team

Hey lords & ladies!

we’ve been really busy with preparing the next server merges for you recently. It doesn’t mean that we didn’t do anything else though Check the screenshots below if you want to catch a glimpse of the features I’ve been working on lately. There is more to come!

Soon…. very soon the time arrives and the five siblings of the dragons will fly over Caldean. Something has disturbed their deep sleep…. they came flying over from Talfour… and they are hungry.

September and October are the dragon months in Battleknight. This event will start together with the update of v1.3.0 and will last for three weeks. Small and big dragons are waiting for you! By doing special missions to kill the big dragons you can drop the parts of a special dragon slayer set. This set is also available in the shop and you can find the items with the level five clues! By killing the small, grey dragons you can drop new runes  – the dragon scales – that can also be bought at the marketplace later. To make this event even more exciting you can reach the two achievements “Lord of the Five” and “Dragon Slaughterer”!

Within the next days we’ll provide more information about this event and we’ll post the changelog for v.1.3.0. As several server merges are in process at the moment, we can’t put v1.3.0 & the event online in all nations at the same time.  As soon as possible we will announce the definite date for all nations!

The rise of the dragons is close… Are you prepared?

Your Battleknight Team

Ethriel, Alestix, Khoronax, Khimun and Sirux are on their way to Caldean….. they will arrive very soon. Read this message to find out what is coming along with them.

The Event

There will be a new mission added in every area. Instead of clicking on the normal ball you will click on a grey dragon that will be flying over the landscape.
The grey dragons are very easy to kill since they are the easiest opponents! They carry a high amount of silver, and there is a chance for them to drop a rune – the new dragon scale as well as others. Besides that one, one of the five chromatic dragon siblings will appear at a randomly chosen location. The location will be different from the traditional users location. The only exception is the first fight where the dragon will be found at the users location.

If the dragon is beaten, he will lose as many life points as you have spent mission points. If you win a battle you will get the same reward in silver as for the small grey dragons.

Every time the dragon is successfully beaten it will flee to a random location (the battle report will show how much HP the dragon lost and where he fled to), but the current location will be shown on the map as a small icon so you can find him at any time.

If the HP from the dragon is at zero (then he is beaten), it will drop a unique part of the dragon slayer set and a new chromatic dragon will appear (which will also drop a part of the dragon slayer set once he is beaten). You can do this until you beat all five siblings or the event is finished.

Rewards

What can you get? First, we would like to refer you to the dragon slayer set. Every chromatic dragon will drop a part of this set if you beat him, but you can also buy it in the shop. Set bonus: All elementary damage you do is increased by 10% due to you transforming into a dragon during the battle. Battle reports will show a white or a black dragon instead of your portrait, depending on your karma.

All dragon slayer set items can also be found via level five clues! The set is complete with the

• Dragon slayer helmet
• Dragon slayer armor
• Dragon slayer chausses
• Dragon slayer shield
• Dragon slayer blade

We will also implement new runes. These runes are called “dragon scales” and can be obtained by killing the small, grey dragons. After the event they will also be available at the marketplace.

• Whelp’s scale (from level 40): +2 defence, +2 hit chance
• Sickle Scale (from level 55): damage 6-8, armour 8
• Chromatic Scale (from level 75): 5 for all elementary damages
• If your level is not high enough for the scales a normal rune can be dropped

Achievements

As already mentioned you can earn two achievements. If you have beaten the five dragon siblings you will earn the achievement “Lord of the Five”.

The achievement “Dragon Slaughterer” is multilevel:

• Level 1:     3 grey dragons
• Level 2:   10 grey dragons
• Level 3:   50 grey dragons
• Level 4: 100 grey dragons
• Level 5: 500 grey dragons

In case we repeat the event, this achievement will continue to be credited from the point where it stopped during the last event.

We hope you will enjoy this amazing event! At the end of the week we’ll let you know the event start date

Your Battleknight Team

Noble knights!

Battleknight turns 6 and of course this asks for a celebration worthy of kings!
Next to the birthday event many of you surely remember from last year there will be a raffle. Of course you have to put some effort in it to deem yourselves worthy of one of our awesome rewards!

Birthday event
This year the mists around king Obolet’s exile, the mysterious island Fehan, will unveil once again. For two weeks you will be able to travel there from Asgal and Tarant, live through various adventures and continue the search for the ten unique birthday items. Furthermore players who have proven themselves as keepers of the legacy will be able to discover the secret of Obolet’s whereabouts.

Raffle
To participate in the raffle send us your birthday wishes for Battleknight to this mail address: birthday@battleknight.de.
Additional to your birthday wishes this mail should also contain the answer to the following question:

What is your future vision for Battleknight? What will it look like in one year’s time? Be brave and dream, describe your visions and ideas to us!

Important: Your mail will only participate in the raffle if this question is answered and you provided your account name, country and server. To be able to process all entries and ensure that all entries have a fair chance of winning a reward this information is required. The raffle is held globally meaning this takes place in all Battleknight communities at the same time. While the raffle is held globally please keep in mind to keep your future visions in English.

Duration
The birthday event  will take place from 6th November until 13th November. Entries for the raffle will be accepted until 13th November 15:00 CET.

The rewards
Of course your efforts shall be rewarded. The nicest, funniest or most creative birthday wishes and future visions will receive valuable rewards. All entries have the chance to win one of the following rewards:

1.-3. Place – “Muse Companion”, 30 days Premium account, 30 days brother in arms
3.-5. Place – “Muse Companion”, 30 days Premium account
6.-10. Place – “Muse Companion”, 30 days brother in arms
11.-15. Place – Black Lightning, 30 days Training dummy
16.-20. Place – Black Lightning, 1 daily salary
21.-30. Place – Black Lightning
31.-40. Place – 3 daily salaries
41.-50. Place – 1 daily salary

The whole team of Battleknight wishes you good luck for the raffle!
Your Battleknight Team

Terms of participation

Noble knights and ladies!

The amount of players in the scandinavian communities decreased strongly in the last years and the costs are just too high to justify maintaining all the rounds in an economically reasonable way.

As we want to avoid shutting down the affected communities we decided to merge the following countries: NO, SE, FI, DK.

The new round will be English and contain all servers and players of the countries mentioned above, you will be able to reach your game at the same URL you are used to, also your known login data will still work.

To inform you about all interesting aspects of a server merge we prepared the following posts for you:

http://blog.battleknight.de/2012/01/11/battleknight-servermerge/
http://blog.battleknight.de/2012/01/13/servermerge-some-information/
http://blog.battleknight.de/2012/01/20/preparative-versions-for-the-servermerge/
http://blog.battleknight.de/2012/01/27/what-will-happen-with-orders-castles-after-the-servermerge/
http://blog.battleknight.de/2012/02/03/question-answer/
http://blog.battleknight.de/2012/02/17/servermerge-question-answer-part-two/
http://blog.battleknight.de/2012/02/28/server-merge-the-viking-event/
http://blog.battleknight.de/2012/03/06/server-merge-merging-process/
http://blog.battleknight.de/2012/03/08/server-merge-post-merging-care/

The merge will take place on 05.12.2012.

We wish you an enjoyable time with Battleknight!
Your Battleknight Team

Noble knights and ladies!

We all know that the order wars currently are not necessarily a source of neverending joy for players, teamlers and for us here at Gameforge alike.

There are various reasons for that:

1. Bugs in the system
The system that is responsible for handling the order wars is not free of bugs and is a cause for constant frustration and anger, for us and for the players alike.

2. Too difficult
The system is much too difficult to grasp. Often players do not understand every single part of the whole system and therefore misinterpret the results. This leads to situations being perceived as bugs where there actually was no bug involved.

3. I am taking part in an order war now…and now?
The player himself has no active part in order wars. He can not actively influence the war and apart from being taken into account for the calculation at the end of the war there is nothing the player himself has to do. This can not be called fun for the player.

4. My order is active…and yet we lost!
An order can be as active and coordinated as they like, there is no clear advantage over less active and less coordinated orders. Due to the order wars taking all the inactive or less active players of an order into account just as well orders with a higher member account will always have an advantage even if they’re less coordinated.

5. The attacking order always has an advantage!
As the attacking order starts the war they have an advantage when it comes to coordination just as well as the simple fact that they can recruit the mercenaries first.

6. Unbalanced mercenary system
The mercenary system is quite unbalanced. There are thousands of players that are less active or even inactive and never removed their mercenary signup. Due to the issue mentioned in number 3 of this list this of course leads to thousands of players being available for the attacking order whether they still actively play or not. This makes order wars end up as a simple clicking game for the order leaders where in the end it is just a question of which order leader clicks first.

7. Unbalanced cooldown system
The intelligent usage of the current cooldown system enables orders to make themselves impossible to attack. This can lead to castles that can never be attacked by any order, those castles are permanently safe.

We know all this and we discussed these matters internally for a long time, especially trying to find a good way to solve these issues. At the end all participants agreed that it is impossible to “fix” the order wars as they are now. It would require too much time and effort and it includes a much higher risk of implementing new bugs than simply recreating the order wars. The logical consequence was: we’re going to rebuild the order wars and replace the current system with a new one. From the points listed above you can already guess which parts will be changed and what we’re going to work on.

However, in course of the following weeks we’d like to keep you updated on each step of this enterprise and introduce each single part of this new system to you in a weekly posting. In course of next week we will provide you a detailled overview to get a better idea of the new system as a whole, whereas the following weeks after that we will introduce each small step to you in further detail. The order wars are a huge thing to take on and require a lot of planning and much love for the details. Our plan is to keep you informed about each step of this journey so please bear with us there.

Your Battleknight Team

Noble knights and ladies,

our personal “lady luck”, aibreann herself, put on her luky gowns and drew the winners of this year’s birthday raffle!

In the table below you can see who won, which place they’re on and where they come from. All winners will be contacted personally in course of the next few days and handed over their prizes.

Congratulations to the winners and better luck next time to all those who weren’t so lucky.

Your Battleknight Team

Dear players,

today we’d like to give you a small overview of the things we want to change in the order wars and share with you where this journey should lead us. As we said last week we want to keep you posted about each step of the journey by introducing a new part of the whole concept to you each week.

The order wars need to become more transparent. At any given point in time it must be easy to see which order is currently better and the same goes for the results of the war: it must be clear to everyone which order has won the battle and why. If an order is strong and has good players this clearly must lead to an advantage. Also the attacking order will not necessarily be at an advantage just because they started the war. Order wars last for 72 hours, whereas one day (24 hours) resembles one round. Therefore an order war has a length of three rounds and in each of those rounds each member of the order can fight one opponent. The choice of opponents depends on various factors and takes the level as well as the basic attributes into account. The order war starts with a “warm-up” period of 24 hours in which the orders can hire mercenaries and coordinate their efforts.

Furthermore there will be two different variants of order wars, the siege and the conquest. In the siege the attacking order lays siege to the defender in order to get silver from them whereas the conquest of a castle leads to the attacking order getting the castle in case the defender doesn’t manage to defend themselves against the attacker.

The duels in an order war are separated from normal duels. There is a separate screen, no HP will be deducted and duel blocks of any kind are not taken into consideration. The screen for order wars constantly informs each order about the current status of the battle. A status bar shows clearly which order currently leads the fights. This bar starts in the middle and moves to the right or to the left in the course of the fights. Should the defender manage to keep the bar on the left side until the end of the war the attacker has failed and the war ends. The attacker has to pay silver to the defender. A deuce happens if both orders fail to defeat the enemy, the castle stays with the defender and the attacker does not have to pay. Should the attacker manage to bring the status bar to the right side and keep it there until the end of the war the defender loses. The castle now belongs to the attacker and the order war ends.

This concludes today’s post. Next week we will report to you about changes to the mercenaries as well as about a new feature: the peace treaties.

Your Battleknight Team

Dear players,

it’s time for our weekly information package concerning the new order wars system. This week we’d like to give you a preview on two more parts of this new system. After we told you something about the basics of the new order wars system and the increased transparency last week we’d like to tell you something about the planned changes for the mercenary system as well as a completely new feature: the peace treaties.

So far the attacking order always had a massive advantage due to being the one starting the war and thus being able to fill up their ranks with mercenaries. Quality should – in future – outweigh quantity so that it is not enough anymore to just hire the most mercenaries to have an advantage. Each order can only recruit a certain amount of mercenaries for each order war. Mercenaries will be paid for each fight they actively perform whereas inactive mercenaries do fill up a slot but do not receive any payment. This way it’ll become necessary for players to be active if they’re listed as mercenaries, otherwise they’ll not get anything. Once a player is listed as a mercenary he can perform one fight per day just as any other member of an order. After the end of the order war the player is automatically removed from the mercenary list, so if a player wants to be a mercenary again he has to actively enroll himself. The amount of payment for being a mercenary is variable and depends on several factors. The mercenary list is sorted by level and the mercenaries’ profiles are linked so you can directly check their stats before hiring them.

A mercenary can not take part in order wars of his own order as long as he’s enlisted.

A new feature that will come with the order wars rework are the peace treaties. For the first time it will be possible to actively engage in peace treaties with other orders and not only mention them on the order profile. If an order wants to have a peace treaty with another order this needs to be requested. If the other order accepts the request the peace treaty is valid imediately and both orders can not attack each other until the peace treaty is cancelled. Peace treaties can be cancelled by both sides at any given point in time, however, after cancelling a treaty it takes three days until both orders can attack each other again. Requests for peace treaties, declines and cancellations are sent to the order leaders via PM. Should a castle not be conquered in an order war a peace treaty is automatically enforced between those two orders.

And this concludes this week’s info package. Next week we’ll provide you some more information about further parts of the new order wars system.

Your Battleknight Team

Dear players,

this year we have a christmas event for 2 weeks which enables you to show everybody, friend or foe alike, your skills in the snowball war.

• Each day you will get 5 snowballs in your loot box you can equip in your artefact slot.
• The snowballs are usable once each will be used automatically in the next duel (only PVP) after you equipped them.
• The effect of a snowball is a frost damage once at the beginning of a duel  at about 50% of the total damage.
• Furthermore there’s a 50% chance that the snowball contains a rubin that the opponent player can pick up after he got hit by the snowball.

Who you’re going to throw the snowball at? That’s your decision
Just like last year you can purchase the husky for silver in the shop during the whole event. Additionally you can get another step of the snowball achievement – even if you didn’t take part in the event last year.

But there’s more! The Battleknight Team has prepared a surprise for you which you will also find in your loot box.

The event starts on Tuesday, 11.12.2012 at around 0:30 UTC+1 and ends on 24.12.2012 around 0:30 UTC+1.

Enjoy the snow ball fight!
Your Battleknight Team

Dear players,

this week we’ll end the basic overview of the order wars redesign. Next week we’ll start going over some of the details of all the parts we briefly introduced to you so far.

Of course there will be empty castles to be attacked. The battle for empty castles does work a little different from normal order wars though. The empty castle is protected by bandit knights who don’t do any damage but have high defense values. As with the normal castle fights there also is a status bar indicating the current status of the fight.The attacker has 3 days to conquer the castle. Empty castles can be conquered but naturally you can not lay siege to them.

Furthermore there’ll be new graphics as well as some achievements with multiple steps.

This concludes today’s info package. Next week we will start going into further details on specific parts of the overview given so far.

Your Battleknight Team

Dear players,

as we gave you a brief overview over what exactly we’re going to change in the order wars system we’d like to lead you through a simulated order war step by step over the next few weeks and thus explain all the details of an order war using an explicit example.

Before we do so we’d like to show you a few screens of the new order wars system. The first package of images shows you how an image actually is created from the very first mockup (raw scheme, the vision of a screen) up to the final image which can later be found in the game.

Here we see the first step. Several parts of images are thrown together to resemble an example of what the new screen is supposed to look like. The mockup shows the status bar mentioned a few times already very nicely as well as a symbolic standoff of the two orders at war.

The graphics department now creates a raw scheme that actually already looks very similar to what we’d like to see in the game later. We can clearly see a nice background in front of which the both opposing orders are preparing for the war. However, there’s still some color missing and also some details.

As you can see nicely in the third image color makes everything look a little nicer. It also shows how much can change from the basic idea up to the final image. What first looked like a puny little building now reminds us of a big, impressive castle and the two armies look a lot more like a force to be reckoned with than before. Yet the whole thing is still not much more than a scheme and far from being final.

Here we can see that we’re clearly on our way to the final image. Shadows, colors and light effects fill the image with structure and atmosphere. This already feels like a battlefield.

To make the final image fit to the layout a few typical elements are added like the border at the bottom or the shadow on the left. This image could now appear in the game as it is.

In conclusion we’d also like to show you three screenshots from our dev server. Our developer kindly provided us with screenshots that provide a good first impression of how order wars will look like. Note that these graphics in the screenshot are not yet final and may very well change before the system goes live.

The first screenshot nicely shows what the order war will look like for the members. You can clearly recognize the status bar which will, depending on who’s currently stronger in the fight, move to either the direction of the attacker or of the defender. To start an order wars fight the member has to click the button you can see in the screenshot.

Here we can see the battle result after an order war battle. Our developer was victorious!

The overview shows which member of the order already performed a fight in the current round and how much damage they’ve done. We’re starting to think our developer is cheating there!

This concludes today’s post and the first real view of the new system. In the following weeks we are going to lead you through each step of an order war and explain all the steps in more detail.

Your Battleknight Team