5.0 Update

July 14, 2020

by Nimhain

Campaigns are seasonal content that last for 10 weeks, and will run alongside our weekly events.
Campaigns will be used to tell a story that players can follow as the Campaign progresses.
Campaigns have 3 systems (more on all of them below):

TASKS – Complete in-game activities each week and earn STARS.
CAMPAIGN PASS – The basic pass is free, and you unlock a reward for every 10 STARS you earn. Unlock extra rewards if you have purchased an Elite Pass.
ARTIFACT – Artifacts are a special magic item that players level-up to unlock temporary buffs. The buff only lasts for the duration of the campaign.

Campaign Tasks

Players will have 16 tasks to complete each week:

2 GOLD TASKS: These tasks take longer or are harder, and are worth 15 STARS.
4 SILVER TASKS: A little easier than Gold Tasks, these are worth 10 STARS.
10 BRONZE TASKS: These are short and easy to complete. They are worth 3 STARS.
This totals 100 Stars, and unlocks all rewards for the week, including a level on the Artifact.

Tasks are given 3 at a time – one for each rarity
If you don’t complete all the tasks in their week, you can still continue with them the following week.
All Task activities are based on existing gameplay, so players can work on completing them during the normal course of play.
Tasks can be skipped or completed by paying Gems (if a Players is finding one difficult to complete). They will still gain the Stars from the Tasks (so they don’t miss out). The Gem cost is dependent on the rarity of the Task.

GOLD TASKS: 150 Gems per Task
SILVER TASKS: 100 Gems per Task
BRONZE TASKS: 50 Gems per Task

Campaign Pass

Players earn rewards as they gain more Stars – 10 STARS for each reward!
There are 2 parts to this system:

FREE PASS: This is the reward track that is free and available to all players in the game. The Artifact level-up is unlocked on the final stage each week on this track (each 100 STARS).
ELITE PASS: These rewards require players to have purchased either an Elite Pass or Elite+ Pass. The rewards will contain some cosmetics and collectibles, as well as some rarer resources that players can use in the game.

Elite Pass & Elite+

Purchasing either Elite Pass or Elite+ Pass will give players access to the Elite Pass reward track for that Campaign only. (Players will need to purchase it again for any future Campaigns if they wish to earn rewards from Elite Pass again).
If a player has already earned some rewards on the free track, and purchases Elite Pass or Elite+ Pass, they will immediately receive (in the mail) all Elite Track rewards corresponding to the ones on the Free Track that they have already earned.
Elite+ Pass will also immediately give some extra in-game rewards and will also give a subscription to earn a bonus of 20 STARS every week.

There will be an extra 20 rewards for players who get the Elite+ subscription, so the extra Stars can continue to earn rewards even after the player has gotten all of the normal rewards.

Players who purchase Elite Pass can always choose later in the Campaign, to upgrade to Elite+ Pass. (The upgrade cost is the difference in costs between Elite Pass and Elite+).

Players who purchase an Elite+ Pass later in the Campaign or upgrade later in the Campaign will earn the bonus Stars from any previous weeks. (e.g. Purchasing the Elite Pass on Week 5 of the Campaign will immediately give you 100 Stars, and 20 stars at the start of each week for the 5 remaining Chapters).

Artifact

Artifacts are the temporary buffs that players can unlock and upgrade during the Campaign for every 100 Stars earned (to a max of 10 levels).

This buff provides bonus stat points to player’s teams in all game modes during the Campaign, including PvP & Guild Wars.

Artifacts also provide small stories from the game world, related to the Campaign setting, unlocking each 100 Stars, for players who enjoy the stories.

Players can continue to read this lore after the Campaign ends, as Artifacts will be viewable in the player’s inventory.

Each Campaign will have their own Artifact for players to collect and level up.

Campaign Reset

Once a Campaign ends, the following will happen:

Players are no longer able to complete Tasks or progress in the Campaign.
Any uncollected rewards will be sent out in the mail.
Artifacts will no longer apply any of their bonuses.
The Campaign button will display a pop up while no Campaign is active.
Any Elite Pass or Elite+ Pass subscriptions will end.

There will be a 1 week break between Campaigns.
When the next Campaign starts players will start at the beginning again with zero stars (stars do not carry over between campaigns).

With the introduction of the Campaign, we will be running more World Events, but don’t worry, none of your other favourite Weekly Events are going away.

Raid Boss Events will be joining Invasions as a weekend event in the future, as all Kingdoms have now had a Raid Boss Event.
Tower of Doom will be run in between Campaigns (every 10 weeks), and may also make an appearance as a weekend event. We are also planning changes so you can still earn the Forge Scrolls that you need.
Guild Wars will continue to be every 4 weeks, however it will now run at the same time as other events.

Kingdom Weapon Packs are new purchasable Packs that give newer players a weapon and some resources to help them out in quests.
The Packs contain the following Rewards:

A new Weapon
200 Gems (this will be 23 Gem Keys on PS4)
36 Epic Ingots
20,000 Gold
5,000 Souls

All Kingdoms, except for Broken Spire will have their own weapon available in the pack, so there are 33 new Weapons.

Broken Spire already had Axe of the Spire in the starter pack which fills a similar role to these weapons.

These weapons have been designed to help players deal more damage to Enemies from that Kingdom.
Kingdom Weapon Packs will only be available to players who haven’t completed the questline in a Kingdom.
The offer will replace the Explore button on the Kingdom popup menu.
Once a player has completed the questline, the offer will no longer be available and the Explore button will return.
Players who do not purchase a weapon, or have already completed all the quests, will be able to get the weapons 1 of 2 ways:

Craft the weapon during the Kingdom’s next weekly event
Purchase the weapon from a Weapon Flash Offer

We have removed the “Submit a Ticket” button from the Help Tab in the Settings Menu, leaving the “Help Center” button as the primary means of contacting support from in-game.

Why are we removing ‘Submit a Ticket’?
One of our goals is to be more responsive to players with critical issues who need help urgently. After the “Submit a Ticket” button was added 12 months ago, we noticed an increase in types of tickets that would have been quicker for players to fix using the self-help in our Help Center (things such as checking that rewards were received, which can be looked up in the received-mail tab).

While we love to help you all out, we noticed that our support response time increased because of all these new tickets. As the “Help Center” button sends you through the self-help, we believe that this change should improve the quality of support for ALL players – players with issues that can be solved by themselves will no longer have to wait for a Support Team response – and players with critical issues should be responded to faster.

How do I use the Help Center now?
Players will still be able to access the Gems of War Help Center from in the game, and we will be making improvements so more players will be able to solve common issues without needing to wait for a reply from Support.

Players will still be able to submit tickets through the Help Center for issues where self-help doesn’t give a solution.

Does this change mean that we’ll get less support?
No, we are making this change so players will have the ability to help themselves on common issues, while players who have more difficult issues can get responses sooner.

Will you bring the ability to submit tickets in-game back in the future?
While it’s unlikely to return in the same way, we plan to investigate and discuss new ideas for how players might get the right help when needed.

Are other changes going to happen to the Help Center?
We have spent time in the lead up to the 5.0 Update reviewing and improving our existing articles, while also adding new articles for common issues that are not documented yet.We will continue to work on this too.

We will also be creating an area on the forums for players to post suggestions for new Help Center articles.

Other Changes

UI Update to reflect removal of the Submit a Ticket Button
Links to all our social pages are now available in a pop up menu by tapping the Social Button on the menu.

For our 5.0 Update, we have 5 new Achievements to collect (PC, PS4, Xbox One and Android Only).

You Just Have To Task – Complete your first task in any Campaign
This Journey Begins… – Get your first Artifact to Level 1
Quarter Pounder – Complete 25 Tasks in any Campaign
Hard Taskmaster – Complete 100 Campaign Tasks in a single Campaign
…This Journey Ends – Get your first Artifact to Level 10

We have changed Troops with the Boss troop type to now have a Red Border to separate them from regular Troops.
We have changed the Artifact Weapon Type to be renamed to Relics, to avoid confusion with Campaign Artifacts.

We have also fixed an assortment of smaller issues.