Blight (game mechanic)

Blights are tower defense-like encounters that can spawn from Fungal Growths. There is around a 8% chance to find a Fungal Growth in any map area, which will always be accompanied by Sister Cassia. The chance can be buffed by atlas passive skills.

Blight encounters are also found in Blighted maps, which are a modified type of map with a large open layout (often Park Map, Pit Map or related), that have all the monsters removed saved for a Blight encounter. Blight encounters in Blighted maps are far larger, have many more monsters and have much greater rewards. Players can trade Blighted maps.

Mechanics
Once players interact with the Fungal Growth, Cassia will place a purification pump on the growth, causing it to spawn roots in random directions. At the end of each root is a portal that spawns enemies that slowly move towards the core, only stopping to attack units in its way. The Blight can spawn up to 8 roots, increasing with zone level. Players will be given a short preparation time before the Blight starts spawning monsters. Players can skip this by pressing the button on the bottom right.

Some roots will spawn after a delay, and sometimes a root will have multiplied monster density (indicated by a multiplier). An icon corresponding to a tower can appear over each root, indicating which tower it is resistant to. Along the paths of the roots, players can construct a tower in specified areas. Towers cost resources to build or upgrade, which is acquired at the start and from killing blighted enemies.

When an enemy reaches the core, it will lower the durability of the pump and despawn itself. The pump has 10 durability, and the amount of durability lowered is based on the monster's rarity (1 for normal, 2 for magic, 5 for rare, 10 for unique). When the pump's durability reaches 0, the Blight encounter fails and monsters will stop spawning.

Once all enemies from each portal are defeated, it will spawn chests at where the portal was. These chests persist even if the pump gets destroyed afterwards. Blights always reward at least one oil or one Blighted map.

Blights were introduced in the Blight league. Characters must complete least 1 blight encounter before Cassia will annoint items.

Spawn chance
Blights were the main focus of the temporary Blight leagues. After the leagues ended, Blight was added to the core game, but spawns much less often than in the Blight leagues. By default it is 10% chance.

Occasionally there is Zana crafted mod to force Blight to spawn. The Zana mod also has a hidden property that set the league flag of the map as Blight league, which some of the unique that released in version 3.8, are speculated that they need that league flag to be chanced.

In addition, by allocating Lira Arthain atlas passive Spores on the Wild, that atlas region can drops map that has an enchantment. it is not certain that the enchantment is the same as Zana mod or not.

Blighted Map that drops from Blight encounter from normal map, is always contain a very hard version of Blight.

Strategy

 * Rare and/or Unique Enemies are capable of moving faster and having more life. They are also capable of running past a characters minions instead of stopping and attacking them like normal and magic enemies do.(unconfirmed) These three factors make it easy for them to run past a player with low offense and/or nothing to slow them down. Using slow effects and/or knockback can help to give the player time before the enemy reaches the pump. With a lot of hits per second and knockback and slow, it is possible to not have to worry about the enemy reaching the pump no matter how much time it takes. This can be very useful for characters who have low damage.


 * Towers - In most situations empowering towers are the best tower per cost. They upgrade the power of multiple useful towers nearby. Some towers have multiple effects, that are both affected by empowering towers. This makes empowering towers improve those towers more than others. Each tower can only be upgraded by 1 empowering tower max. Choosing between damage and/or slowing towers will depend on your build. A build with pretty good damage and no slowing effects on enemies, will probably do best with towers that slow enemies. A build with plenty of slow and knockback effects, but not so great damage, will probably want offense towers. Enemies can resist some towers greatly and therefore varying damage types and/or slow types, depending on what you need, will increase the chances of enemies being affected significantly by your towers. Rings can be anointed with the same tower mod on both to stack. This can be useful for stronger mods like, which give 40% action speed with 2 rings. Action speed does not affect minions or other players

Rewards
Completing a blighted map or a blight encounter on a regular map will grant many of the following:

Version history

 * Spawn chance in map has changed to 8%


 * Arc Towers now cast 74% faster.
 * Shock Nova Towers now cast 50% faster.
 * Chilling Towers now have 50% more Chill effect, and have a cooldown of 4 seconds (from 7).
 * Seismic Towers now have 50% more skill effect duration and have a cooldown of 4 seconds (from 7).
 * Minion Towers now wait 3 seconds before resummoning their dead minions (from 8).
 * Freezebolt Towers now cast twice as fast and have half their previous cooldown. They now fire an additional projectile.
 * Stone Gaze Towers now reduce action speed by 20% (from 15%) and have slight reduced cooldown.
 * Scouts from Scout Towers now have 38% more Attack Speed and deal 50% more damage.


 * Introduced to the game.
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