Blade & Soul’s Demonsbane Update Takes You To The Circus For An New Unending Dungeon

Today, NCSoft released the latest Blade & Soul update, Demonsbane, not only continuing the story, but introducing a new dungeon system – along with a new dungeon, of course. Recently, we were offered a bit of a tour of some of the content available in the new update with Blade & Soul Writer Brett Jaxel. Of course, him being a writer, we did address some of the story content – not a whole lot though. That would be spoiler-y, and no one wants that. What he did address about the story's end was that it allows players to catch back up with the main villain, Mushin, and returns to the Divine Realm. In this continuation of the Epic Story Ark, players will finally discover what turned Mushin into the villain he is today. To do that, they’ll need to travel through the Divine Realm and confront the former General…with the help of a few old friends.

One thing we did get a pretty decent look at was the new, circus-themed Aerodrome Dungeon and its accompanying Demonsbane System. The 4-player dungeon is a new type of content for end-game players and the game’s first Mythical Dungeon. In fitting with the circus theme, it’s located in a giant zeppelin currently anchored above Fishbelly Pub. Players are sent to investigate this ‘circus’ that apparently also doubles as a Martial Arts tournament from which the contestants never return.

As noted, this dungeon includes a new system, known as Demonsbane. As players make their way through the dungeon and complete it, they’ll accumulate Demonsbane XP. This XP is then used to unlock the next level of the Demonsbane system, adding new mechanics to the dungeon – changing boss mechanics, adding player debuffs, and so on. Players can continue to make their way through these, unlocking more and more Demonsbane levels, up to 61 stages. It seems like a pretty solid way of making the dungeon highly replayable without being irritatingly repetitive.

To make things even more interesting, the developers have added what is known as the “Breaker System”. This system allows certain player skills to add a “Breaker” status to bosses that will be represented as a gauge under the Mythic Dungeon health bars. Once this gauge is filled, the boss is stunned – temporarily, of course. This is an optional system and players are encouraged to decide if this is how they want to address fights rather than going about it the normal way.

Also of note are insignias. The Insignia system offers players a new way to customize how their character plays. The insignias are currently only available as Aerodrome drops and are available in different grades and types. The types determine what each insignia does and players can accumulate quite a number of them. That’s good, however, as each one takes up one of 30 slots in an Insignia page (9 per each primary type: Red, Blue, and Yellow and 3 Special). There are five pages, so yes, that’s a lot of slots. Note that only one page can be active at a time, however. Insignias can be upgraded as well, so players have a lot of room to work when it comes to customizing their characters' abilities in just the right way.

As noted above, the Demonsbane patch is live as of today. Of course, there are events accompanying it and you can read about those – as well as check out all the numerical data that comes with adding content that adjusts stats – in the patch notes on the Blade & Soul site.