To put on the best Thanksgiving dinner ever, Kaine's brilliant scientist mother decided to apply her vast scientific knowledge to her culinary skills but didn't stop to think if she should!

Now the Kaine mansion is awash with various foodstuffs intent on making the Crusaders choke on them. Or more to the point, choke the Crusaders to death.

The limited time Thanksgiving event features four exclusive objectives, a new formation and two new Crusaders to unlock.

RoboTurkey



Carrying on with tradition, there are two new Crusaders that can join your crusade, once your adventurers survive the objectives. The first of the two, RoboTurkey, won't make it easy though as he debuffs the Crusaders around him in the new pie formation, decreasing their max health by 50%.

Momma Kaine



Momma Kaine is the second of the two new Crusaders. However, separating her from her culinary experimentation and getting her clear of the mansion is going to be tough. As the Crusaders abduct her mid-experiment, she inadvertently freezes adjacent Crusaders every 10 seconds. The affected heroes will have their DPS reduced to 0 for 15 seconds, but thankfully their formation abilities are unharmed.

RoboTurkey shares a formation seat with Princess. His unique ability enables him to increase a random Crusader's DPS by 10% for 30 seconds by zapping them, while absorbing 25% of the DPS for himself.

Momma Kaine, who shares a formation seat with Khouri, is a nurturing sort as well as being a brilliant scientist. She has a number of unique abilities. First, she heals the Crusaders furthest away from her by 20% per second. She also has a ranged power where she can slow the furthest monster from the Crusaders by 25%, perfect for taking down bosses. Finally, she synergizes with RoboTurkey by increasing the DPS of zapped Crusaders by a further 50%.

New for this Event:

Once you've grabbed both RoboTurkey and Momma Kaine, you'll be able to start the Thanksgiving Free Play for 2,500 Pumpkin Pies.

Gravy Train



The remaining two objectives will require having had at least 250 and 500 Idols respectively as well as the event currency of Pumpkin Pie to start. In Gravy Train, a giant train of gravy will block slots in your formation. And the Plaid Friday Deals are too good to be true! Crusaders cost less...but they do much less DPS over the entire 200 areas.

Can you stop the killer food before it's too late? Or will the enhanced tryptophan slow you down?

You have until Monday December 7th at Noon PST to control the madness!

It's time for dark and brooding tales of old crones, malevolent giant wolves, man-sized living straw effigies, blood and guts. Hang on a minute! That can't be correct, can it?

Oh, but it is. With the latest Crusaders of the Lost Idols campaign we are revisiting your favorite fairy tales but darkly rooted in the best traditions of the Brothers Grimm tales with a dash of other worlds.

The settings for the six new objectives will seem eerily familiar to you. Along with the objectives to get to area 200 and 300, are four objectives that will test your formation planning skills and attentiveness as you wander down memory lane.

Not In Kansas Anymore

There's a story of an omnipotent wizard in a big, green city and a rag-tag bunch of misfits requiring an escort to said city in 'Not in Kansas Anymore'. The girl, the scarecrow, the lion, and the tin man will join your party over time as you progress, taking up precious formation slots and debuffing your DPS, gold generation and your health.

What Big Teeth You Have

'What Big Teeth You Have' is an objective that has something to do with wolves; we're sure of it. What else would be able to climb into clothes (albeit the matronly garments your grandmother wears) with the sole purpose of devouring your charge, a small red-caped girl? What's more, the beast will appear randomly without warning throughout the 250 areas you must complete and with a monstrous amount of HP making him a brutal monster if ever we saw one.

Sleeping Beauty

Just so you don't think that narcolepsy is a joke, in 'Sleeping Beauty' half of your Crusaders will randomly fall asleep on the job! Every 25 areas, random Crusaders will nod off and no longer do any damage and be unable to use their buff abilities, forcing you to shuffle your formation.

Down the Rabbit Hole

Finally, you may have noticed we like rabbits here at Codename Entertainment. As if by magic (probably by way of a hat) the objective 'Down the Rabbit Hole' puts your Crusaders in charge of a certain fidgety white rabbit. This bouncing furball will hop between random formation slots every 25 levels buffing adjacent Crusaders by 200% to hurry them along.

All of the objectives will require a mastery of a brand new formation too just to keep you on your toes.

As our more veteran players all know, we've been planning to add a way to spend Idols to increase your power since the game first launched. Unfortunately that update is taking more time than we'd like, so we've decided to roll out a few of the more commonly requested features from it prior to the whole system being completed. Without further adieu, we present to you the Crusaders Talent Tree!

Talent Tree Menu



Accessed via a button where the Idol Shop button used to be on the inventory tab, the Talent Tree will eventually contain dozens and dozens of skills and abilities to unlock for increasing numbers of Idols. For now, however, it contains two very valuable and sought after features:

Buy All Button



The Buy All Talent unlocks a new button on the Crusaders UI. With a single click it will immediate spend as much gold as possible to maximize your total Crusader Levels. This button is extremely useful just before you reset, as it will maximize your Idols gained on that run. To unlock the ability to purchase the Buy All talent you must have beaten Area 150 in any campaign. Purchasing this talent will cost you 25 Idols as well. Idols you spend in the Talent Tree will no longer grant their DPS or Gold Find bonuses.

Mass Chest Button



The Mass Chest Talent adds three new buttons to the Chest Opening screen. These new buttons allow you to open 5, 25, or 100 chests all at once, displaying the cumulative contents for your to peruse. This tier 2 Talent requires you to have beaten Area 300 in any campaign, so if you haven't done so yet you may want to start planning to do a deep run into Emo's New Moon or the World's Wake campaign on Free Play! You'll also need to spend 100 of your hard earned Idols to purchase this talent.

Mass Chest Screen



We'll be adding more and more Talents over time, so stay tuned to this blog and the in-game change log for more information about those.

In addition to these two talents we're also updating the functionality of Enchantment Points with today's update. We've received a lot of feedback regarding Holiday Crusaders not feeling as powerful as the classic Crusaders due to an EP differential. Based on this feedback, we've changed it so that 30% of EP is now shared between Crusaders in the same bench slot. This means that Jack O'Lantern now benefits from 30% of Natalie Dragon's EP, and Wendy the Witch benefits from 30% of Prince Sal's EP. This also applies to Crusaders from the Carnival Event and will apply to any new Crusaders we add in the future. We're also planning to add a Talent to the Talent Tree in the future that will increase the percentage of shared EP. This should make Holiday Crusaders much more competitive with the classic Crusaders, especially if you've earned a lot of Enchantment Points!

We hope you enjoy these new features. We'll be releasing more information about new Talents and features in the future, based not only upon our own ideas, but your invaluable feedback! Thank you for your patience and support!