January Duels Recap

Tyrael -

It has been a great start to the year for Duels, and we are only getting started. Beyond daily tournaments, we introduced a new monthly structure, a stat rework, and have some other big news on the way!

  • January Invitational
  • February Duels
  • January Leaderboard
  • Meta Shift
  • The Future of Duels

January Invitational

The first month of Crypto Raiders Daily Duels has come to an end. To wrap up the month, we hosted an invitational for the top 64 players in the January standings, with $10,000 USD in $AURUM prizes.

January Invitational Prize Structure

1st) 100,000 aurum

2nd) 55,000 aurum

3rd) 35,000 aurum

4th) 20,000 aurum

5-8) 12,500 aurum

9-16) 5000 aurum

In addition to their $AURUM prize, the top 8 players are also receiving a special invite to a special February tournament–details on that are coming later this week.

February Duels

The monthly leaderboard has reset, and all players have started with 0 points. Daily Tournaments will continue, and the month will end with another invitational with a large $AURUM prize pool.

Make sure to keep grinding those points; who knows what opportunities they might lead to…

Daily Tournament Point Distribution

1st - 10

2nd- 7

3rd- 5        

4th- 5  

5th - 8th  - 3

9th + - 1

January Leaderboard

1st)    Sunforger

2nd)   Flitser

3rd)    BingoBango

4th)   Kennabearrrr

Top Player Comments

BingoBango - The daily duel tournaments have been a lot of fun and a great way to get to know the community of duelists. I'm excited for the big end of January tournament and for all the things to come.  Shout out to HelV, my arch nemesis. I'll beat you one day!

Flitser - People are starting to figure out how to adjust to the meta. The spread in points in top 15 is getting thin. Time to grind some more dungeons

Sunforger - Level-capped tournament was a lot of fun. It also pushed the thinking about most effective way to raid dungeons to the next level. It turned out that it is possible to beat Olgo at level 5 and get very good gear. Ice Barrier proved to be OP, allowing to beat much higher level bosses, glad that it got nerfed. I'm looking forward to other limited tournaments, like the idea SaS described of using exactly 200 keys to level up and then fight among these characters.

Meta Shift

The restricted level tournaments were dominated by Raider ID 25336–Sunforger won every level 5 tournament. You might be surprised looking at this player’s item realizing this raider is only level 5. A couple of lucky drops at the start and running away a couple of times when he was about to lose gave him everything he needed to dominate this format.

Raider: 25336

Owner: Sunforger

Weapon: Skull Slicer

Armor: Dark Sorcerers Cowl

Rune: Ice Barrier

That being said, this wasn’t the real intention for these tournaments. These tournaments were created to allow players a step up to joining the tournament format. We learned from this experience and will be looking to add more restrictions in the future, giving newer players a chance to win.

Classic Meta

In January, the original meta was still active: Agility builds with Krok Jaw/Vile Gambeson being the best, with Red Nose/Vile Gambeson being a second-place pick. January brought a new dungeon and stat changes, which shifted the meta quite a bit. Agility disappeared for the most part. Book of the Dead, an epic drop, started appearing often in the tournaments and decided the first “meta build” of the month.

Raider: 12066

Owner: Kennabearrrr

Weapon: Book of the Dead

Armor: Krok Scale Mail

Rune: Ice Barrier

Stat Allocation: 49 Intelligence

Ice Barrier was still at its peak at this time, so the combined INT from the Book of the Dead + Krok Scale Mail provided an insane Ice Barrier. This, combined with the damage reduction from all the STR, made the build a tank while providing a lot of damage with the crit chance/damage from INT. Shortly after, Ice Barrier did get updated, shifting the upcoming meta more towards STR.

Raider: 2167

Owner: BingoBango

Weapon: Skull Masher

Armor: Krok Scale Mail

Rune: Stone Skin

Stat Allocation: 49 Strength

We all remember the #buffstr chants from last season. Well, it’s finally here. This extremely tanky build is tough to kill, and the INT as a secondary stat also provides for enough damage and hit chance to deal enough damage while tanking any and all damage. People were amazed at first by how good this uncommon weapon actually is. It’s not about the amount of stats; it’s about having the perfect combination of stats.

An interesting variation of this build popped up as well:

Raider: 18691

Owner: Zulvke

Weapon: Skull Divider

Armor: Krok Scale Mail

Rune: Stone Skin

Stat Allocation: 40 Strength – 9 Intelligence

The Skull Divider in this build gives more STR, but it also offers AGI instead of INT. The AGI provided a unique opportunity with the meta shift. Since STR v. STR is often decided by who attacks first, the AGI gave this Raider the edge it needed to win with a slightly increased chance to dodge. Zulvke made up for the lack of INT on his weapon by investing some points into it, making him the first player to win tournaments when not investing all of the stat points into one attribute.

This got confirmed by the following raider that placed 4th in the monthly final:

Raider: 7717

Owner: DanK

Weapon: Skull Divider

Armor: Poncho of the Dead

Rune: Enflame

Stat Allocation: 49 Strength

This build is focused on agility as the secondary stat but performed surprisingly well.

Raider: 519

Owner: LobsterKing

Weapon: Lightbringer

Armor: Krok Scale Mail

Rune: Stone Skin

Stat Allocation: 49 Strength

With the introduction of Olgo, we also got the first legendary in the game–the Lightbringer. Since its primary stat is STR, the current meta, it was only a matter of time for these to pop up and dominate the tournament scene. This build won the tournament and dominated the top 8 overall.

The Future of Duels

In addition to running our traditional duels format, we also want to include new and different formats for Raiders to play in. We hosted a small series in January where only Raiders level 5 and under can play. Moving forward, we will continue to find ways to spice up the rules for duels for both competitive and casual players.

As mentioned before, we will also have a special Duel event coming up–the top 8 of the monthly finals already won an invite to this event. More info about this will follow later!

To receive information on tournaments and future events, make sure you're in our Discord and have the Duelist role to be notified!