Renewal 2026 is here!

‘The winds of change are blowing. Harken, Heroes, and raise your swords!’

Shake the dust from your boots and rally the troops as excitement, glory, and treasures await those brave enough to rise to the challenge! 

We embark on a new journey with the launch of our Renewal 2026 event. This mighty event will offer new ways to use many of your favorite Heroes and shake up the battlefield! To kick it off, we have a message from the Small Giant Games development team, explaining Renewal 2026 in detail.

TL;DR For the duration of the Renewal 2026 event, changes that were made to a wide range of passive skills, status effects, and other mechanics will apply in all game modes. The aim is to increase player agency and to open up more battle strategies. Earn milestone rewards by completing battles.

Greetings Commanders, 

For us at SGG, we truly believe that a great event is one that breaks you out of the norm. One where the gameplay feels fresh, tactics count as much as raw power, and you score nice rewards for your efforts! That is the essence of what this event is all about. So, let's get right into it.

To give you a better understanding of what Renewal 2026 is, let's first look at the event as a whole. R26 is a limited time event with rewards starting for players level 12, where we temporarily refresh core battle mechanics. This should result in some exciting opportunities to discover new synergies between Heroes! But, no event is complete without rewards, and that’s why we’ve added a series of milestone challenges that unlock Costume Keys, Epic Hero tokens, and even an event exclusive pin! We’re excited to see how these changes will play in the various PvP modes, so all your battles in Raids, Alliance Wars, and Raid Tournament will count toward earning your rewards.

Strategy has always been at the heart of what makes Empires & Puzzles fun. We spend a lot of time at the office debating the very best team configurations and how to use Heroes to get the most out of their abilities. One aim of this event is to provide players with a more active battle experience where the outcome of a fight isn't dependent on waiting for a passive to do all of the heavy lifting. With that in mind, Renewal 2026 will mix things up a bit and we’re confident that this new state of play will more than prove interesting. 

We’ve seen a lot of feedback in recent times that combat is starting to feel stale. Skill effects, Hero passives, and Family bonuses will be at the forefront of changes that this event brings in order to reinvigorate battles. There will be clear changes during this event, with some effects being boosted and others being reined in. A great example of this is with Cheat Death, which will now reflect damage back to the attacker instead of to a random enemy. We have various objectives for Renewal, so let’s dive into a couple of them now.

‘Adjusted multiple passive effects that reduced player agency to now encourage more active battles’

To meet this goal we’ve fine-tuned aspects such as Thief’s Opportunity to now activate on an ally's Special Skill cast, instead of automatically with each turn. On top of that, we’ve also tuned Vengeful Haunting to be less oppressive by having attacks in Ghost form deal less damage and dispel only one buff from the target. Whereas before it would dispel all of them. Our logic here is that strategy and skill should give you the edge in battle and changes should respect the integrity of the Hero, not make them useless. 

Over the past months, the Community team has gathered your thoughts for us on Discord through various polls and impromptu conversation starters. That’s also one reason why we’ve adjusted various effects that were too general in their functionality, so now they will have a more focused role. You’ll see this in action with the Veggies’ Seedling Summoner, Scoundrels’ Ambush, and even the Musketeers’ passive skill.

‘Several hard-to-avoid effects have been made easier to strategically counter’

We all know the frustration of having the perfect plan, only for some status effect to occur that you are completely at the mercy of because there’s hardly any way to counter it. That is why we have also changed all Ghost forms to being Stubborn instead of undispellable. Insanity is also getting some attention as it will now be affected by all healing instead of only some. On the flip side, a multitude of effects are now much more useful in battle like Wild effects and status effects that increase or decrease the damage dealt by Special Skills. En garde!

Lastly, let’s briefly talk about other changes that are coming with this event like realigning PvP rules for improved general balancing of attackers vs defenders. Renewal 2026 will push you to think outside the box. The standard boost for defense teams will be temporarily increased during this event. On top of that, we’ve also lowered critical chances to ensure a better balance during battles. Since we are on the subject, critical hits now also reduce max health in all game modes, not just PvP (this also works the same way for defense). To start wrapping this up, let's turn our attention to other changes that highlight the purpose of this special event…

‘Family’ 

You don’t need Dominic Toretto around to tell you how important family is in Empires & Puzzles. One example of progressive change that this event brings is that the Astral Demon family bonus will now function in the same way as the Beowulf family’s. It now cleanses a random ailment, instead of the most recent one received. Additionally, the cleanse part of the family bonus can now activate only once per turn, instead of indefinitely.

There’s much more to Renewal 2026, but we hope this has helped you to understand what we’re aiming for in this event. We will be monitoring your feedback and in game data very closely. It is our hope that you embrace the spirit of Renewal 2026, have fun with the new team combinations, and that battles keep you involved until the very last blow.

Join the conversation in our official Discord server and share your thoughts on Renewal 2026. You can find detailed notes on the event’s goals and the specific limited-time changes included here: Event Notes