New Covenant Companions Buffs

Adventures are the latest version of the missions system used to spice up your gaming experience and provide an alternative means of gaining resources and gear. After completing the initial Shadowlands storyline and joining a Covenant, you can upgrade its Sanctum to include a Command Table using stored Anima and Freed Souls. Doing so will enable you to send out your allies – hero-level Companions and regular Troops – on deadly yet rewarding errands throughout the afterlife domains. Going into February, the Adventures participants received an extensive reworking to place everyone on more equal footing.

Mission planning

Unlike in earlier versions of this concept, success depends less on luck and more on picking the right forces for the job based on their stats and unique abilities. You can position your units however you want in order to play to their strengths during the automated resolution. While this approach makes planning missions much more interesting, it also places a higher premium on gameplay balance. For a while now, players have complained that members of some Covenants have it much easier than do the others when it comes to Adventures. Certain abilities have proven to be especially effective, while many Companions, including unlocked Soulbinds, have consistently underperformed, sometimes making higher-level Adventures impossible to complete without heavy grinding.

Unique tasks

The stakes are high, as the missions can be used to earn Gold, acquire powerful Anima gear, and raise Renown to progress through Covenant content. Moreover, finishing a couple of early Adventures tied to your Covenant Campaign allows you to launch special missions that serve as the only way to farm Soul Ash outside of Torghast, Tower of the Damned. Each Covenant has its own distinctively flavored Adventures, so anything that prevents players from fully participating in the system prevents them from interacting as fully with the story. Finally, undertaking the tasks and selecting Companions requires spending Anima, so having subpar options naturally gives rise to frustration.

Kyrians changes

Most of the balanced changes focused on the two Covenants that often failed to live up to their impressive reputations in Adventures, starting with the Kyrians. Along with Pelagos, who got a 20% health boost, several non-Soulbind Companions became much tougher, addressing a concern about them dying before their abilities see much use. Spell effectiveness and attack stats for many Companions received major bonuses as well. Telethakas, a Steward physician unlocked by completing his quest received in the higher Layers of Torghast, was given a particularly dramatic buff, getting twice as much health and a 167% spell bonus. The Sanctum Adventurer Apolon doubled his spell power on top of his health boost, while Bron, Kythekios, and Hala received 50% damage buffs. The last one grew a little in all stats.

Venthyr changes

The Venthyr received even more extensive bonuses meant to help their Companions perform in their respective roles – and live long enough for their powers to have an effect. All three Soulbinds and nearly all other Venthyr characters got health enhancements ranging from 14 to 40%, depending on their specializations. Bogdan was a notable exception, but the sinister butler instead received a 150% increase in spell effectiveness. Many other characters got lesser spell boosts. Rahel, the Keeper of Renown, came out ahead of many, with 40% more health and 100% more effective spells. However, the giant Stonehead might be the biggest winner in this round of updates, as his spell power was multiplied by 4 on top of a respectable 25% health raise. This improvement was partly checked by increased spell cooldowns.

Necrolords and Night Fae changes

Unlike those two factions, Necrolords have been performing wholly satisfactorily in this part of the game. They needed and received no tweaks. However, the Bramble Trap ability used by Night Fae trapper troops has been reworked to remove an unintended effect that let it permanently weaken opponents. From now on, it could only reduce the damage done by the target’s next attack. The ability’s cooldown has been drastically reduced (from 6 to 1), and it has retained its damage; still, the change was widely regarded as a nerf, and it appears that the Night Fae can no longer pull so far ahead of others in high-level missions.

Overall, those changes should improve the endgame’s balance, as the resources acquired through missions can make a major difference to the rest of the game. That includes Soulbind power-ups like Conduits and Legendary Powers obtained with Soul Ash. The hotfix should also make the activities required to unlock Adventures and Companions much more worthwhile for Venthyr and Kyrian players while reducing the earlier advantage given to the Night Fae. Time will tell if it will modify the Covenant balance in PvP!