Crafting is coming to Crusaders of the Lost Idols... but what exactly is it? Keep reading to find out.

Crafting will be a way to get specific gear for your Crusaders without having to get lucky while opening a chest. With the proper recipe and materials, you will be able to craft even the most epic gear. It's easier said than done, though, as gathering the materials and unlocking the recipe for the piece of gear you want isn't a walk in the park.

Gathering Material

Crafting material is obtained by disenchanting duplicate gear. Currently, disenchanted gear turns into Enchantment Points for your Crusaders, which passively increase their DPS. After the Crafting update, you will no longer get EP for duplicate gear. Instead, you'll gain a random amount of crafting material based on the rarity of the disenchanted item.

So how do you get EP for your Crusaders? Missions! Missions that award EP will be buffed considerably in terms of award and frequency so that you can still boost the EP of your favorite Crusaders to the same degree -- possibly even more so.

Crafting material drops will not be retroactive, so regardless of how much duplicate equipment you've found in the past, you'll keep the EP you earned from it and will still start your crafting stockpile from scratch just like everybody else.

Crafting Recipes

All players will start with the recipes for the Common and Uncommon gear for the initial 20 Crusaders. Crafting gear outside of that limited set will require you unlock additional recipes. How do you do that? Missions! New missions will appear en-masse to help you learn new recipes. Each successful mission will unlock one or more rare or epic recipes. Event crusader recipe missions will unlock all the common and uncommon recipes for specific crusaders once that crusader is unlocked, giving players a way to deck out their newly recruited event crusaders in basic gear, even outside of the event itself.

As with crafting material, recipes will not be awarded retroactively. Everyone will start on even footing when it comes to finding the rarest of recipes.

Legendary Gear

Crafting epic gear is certainly fine, but for those of you already drowning in purple gear, there will be something in this update for you as well. Tune in next week for more information about how players will obtain and upgrade Legendary Gear!

So... release date?

We anticipate Crafting and Legendary Gear being released sometime in the next month or so, but as always we want to note that things could change unexpectedly, even the design itself. We'll keep you updated as we get closer to the launch!

Love is in the air again and to celebrate the most romantic date in the calendar, we're relaunching the Merci's Mix-up event. This time with two new Tier 2 romantic leads and three new Tier 2 objectives.

It's time to get romantic. The Merci's Mix-up event runs from today through to February 21st at Noon PST. For those players who haven't unlocked them already, this is your chance to add both Rocky and Sally to your roster.

Of course, as this is a 2017 update of the original event you can also collect two new Crusaders: Warwick the Warlock and Katie the Cupid.

New Tier Two Crusader: Warwick the Warlock.

The first of the two new Tier 2 Crusaders is Warwick the Warlock. This mischievous leprechaun replaces The Bush Whacker as the main clicker. At level 100, his ability Soul Harvest spreads the click damage to all enemies in a small radius around your click.

At level 400, Warwick unlocks Curse of Weakness where enemies damaged by your clicks take 100% more damage from your DPS for 5 seconds.

New Tier Two Crusader: Katie the Cupid.

When it comes to the business of love, opposites do attract. Katie the Cupid is all sweetness and light compared to Warwick. At level 150, she unlocks Cupid's Arrow and shoots a random enemy with a love arrow every 5 seconds for 200% Global DPS. At level 400 her Snugglin' ability gives +15% Gold Find for each adjacent male crusader, up to a maximum of 2 (Max 2x30% w/ Epic)

After you've completed the first new Tier Two objectives for Warwick and Katie, there are three more objectives to keep you busy.

New Tier Two Objective: The Bachelorette.

In The Bachelorette a bachelorette takes up a spot in your formation. Every 25 levels, she sends one bench seat packing (in a fixed order), making it unavailable in subsequent levels all the way to area 400.

New Tier Two Objective: It's Raining Men.

In the objective, It's Raining Men only male crusaders are allowed. That's it. Do your best Weather Girls impression and fend off all your new admirers to reach area 450.

New Tier Two Objective: The Cost of Love.

The final new Tier Two objective is The Cost of Love. Now Crusaders cost much more than normal and enemies drop less gold until you beat area 500.

Equipment for both Tier 1 and 2 Crusaders can be found in Valentines Silver and Jeweled Chests. However, gear for the Tier 2 Crusaders will only appear once you've unlocked the respective Crusader.

You'll have until February 21st at Noon PST to complete the event. Let Love Rule!