The new Realm Royale patch is live today and it introduces the game’s new Battle Pass. Named The Next Frontier, the pass features a slew of new cosmetics including skins, mounts, loading screens and, of course, chickens.
True to form, Hi-Rez has injected their offerings with lots of silliness and pop culture references. Some notable items include the five-tier Six-Shot Cyborg Assassin skin, and the Wanted spray which gets surprisingly dark.
The studio has included a few improvements to their progression system with the new Pass. Players earn additional experience for surviving longer in matches. Each player’s first kill of the game also rewards more experience, so those short games don’t feel like a waste as long as you cook at least one chicken.
When reaching certain levels of the Battle Pass players earn Crowns (Realm’s in-game currency). Players can get a total of 800 Crowns this way. That’s almost enough to cover the 900 Crowns it costs to buy the Pass.
Balance changes
Alongside The Next Frontier is also Realm’s OB17 update, which features a new weapon and many balance tweaks.
The Gatekeeper is the battle royale’s newest heavy weapon. It functions as a minigun, even though from most angles it looks a lot like the cannon used by Paladins front-liner Ash. The weapon’s name was decided by a community competition and is most likely a reference to the toxic practice of gatekeeping in gaming.
The gun takes a moment to spin into action, and then dishes out a preposterous amount of damage. It’s currently the highest DPS weapon in the game. It makes up for it with dangerously slow handling: one second to spin up, five seconds to reload.
All four of the game’s classes have received some balance changes, as well as many of Realm Royale’s weapons. Warriors are unsurprisingly mostly getting nerfs, with Throwing Axe damage being reduced by 8 percent. The Edgemaster talent movement speed bonus is also lowered, down from 25 to 10 percent.
Hunters are getting some love in the form of a big cooldown reduction to the Proximity Trap ability. Skilled Hunters can use the throwable mine as a Blast Arrow in a pinch, and the reduced cooldown should make the ability much more competitive. This change also indirectly targets meta-dominant Warriors who will often try to fight ranged players inside buildings.
Assassins are also getting buffs, with Sniper Rifles getting 40% faster handling time and a cooldown reduction on Sensor Drones. The Ephemeral Protection talent is also stronger now: the shield it grants lasts four seconds rather than two. There’s also some bad news for Shredder-happy Assassins: the Toxicology talent damage bonus is down from 30 to 25 percent.
There are various other small changes, including damage and clip size buffs to many generic weapons. Overall this patch should help balance Realm Royale‘s current meta which gives Assassins very few options to win with. You can see the full list of balance changes in The Next Frontier’s patch notes.
Published: Mar 27, 2019 06:09 pm