A young elven wizard is on a pilgrimage to the Grandfather Tree, and she has hired the Champions to escort her.

The wizard has foreseen an acorn falling from the tree - an extraordinary and truly rare occurrence - and she hopes to collect the holy relic to take to Silverymoon.

Yet as the party ventures forth, the very forest itself resists them, while elves from the Feywild and the Underdark seek to claim the acorn for themselves...

The Running 4 introduces Shaka, Tiefling Celestial Warlock of Rivals of Waterdeep, and brings back Krydle, the charismatic half-elf rogue of the Heroes of Baldur's Gate, Spurt, the beloved shortlived Kobold. Players have until Monday, May 10th at 12PM Pacific to complete their The Running 4 unlocks and objectives.

For more information about Year 4 Events and how they work, please check out our Year 4 Events Dev Blog.

I. New Champion: Shaka

As a member of Rivals of Waterdeep, Shaka is always looking for the latest adventure and the latest puzzle. His party has encountered mysteries and foes throughout Waterdeep, Candlekeep, Icewind Dale, and Avernus. Their base of operations is located in the Trollskull Manor in Waterdeep where a brain in a jar named Brian stands watch.

Shaka is here to help, using his keen intellect to solve the Celestial Puzzle and bolstering his allies with Celestial Resistance. When you want to add him to your formation, you can swap him with Makos (Slot 9).

II. Shaka’s Stats

Race: Tiefling	Alignment: Neutral Good
Class: Warlock (Celestial)	Gender: Male
Age: 29	Affiliation: Rivals of Waterdeep

STR: 10	DEX: 16	CON: 15
INT: 16	WIS: 13	CHA: 16

Role: Support & Healing
Eligible for Patrons: Mirt the Moneylender, Vajra Safahr, Strahd von Zarovich, Zariel
Slot: 9 (Makos)

Shaka's Abilities

Shaka is a Support and Healing Champion. He can boost damage with A Celestial Puzzle, provide shielding with Celestial Resistance, and further amplify his abilities through specialization choices.

If more direct action is needed, Shaka can summon a Wall of Light as his Ultimate Ability and choose to Blind or Disintegrate enemies. The Blinding Wall of Light will push enemies away from the formation and cause their attacks to miss, while the Disintegrating Wall of Light will kill or damage those attempting to do his friends harm!

For more information on Shaka and his abilities, check out his Champion Spotlight!

Year Four Variants

• The Web Was On The Wall — Giant Spiders appear in each area. Whenever a Champion destroys a Giant Spider, they become webbed (stunned) for 3 seconds. Gold Find is reduced by 99%.
• Reach Area 75.

• Shaka's Puzzle — Shaka starts in the formation, he can be moved. Only Shaka and the Champions who match the tag for their slot from Shaka's A Celestial Puzzle ability can deal damage; Shaka's A Celestial Puzzle starts out unlocked.
  Getting to know Shaka: Shaka's main ability is A Celestial Puzzle. It will tag 4 random slots with a specific tag. When you solve the puzzle and place a Champion that matches the tag, A Celestial Puzzle buffs the damage of the entire party by 100%. Match all the tags to give your party the biggest boost.
• Reach Area 125.

• Lolth's Blessing — A Drow Wizard spawns in each area, with the Blessing of Lolth: 8 armored hit points that must be cleared before they can be killed. While the Drow Wizard is alive, all Drow enemies deal 300% additional damage and move 100% faster.
• Reach Area 175.

For information on previous years' variants, check out the The Running 3 blog.

A puzzle master arrives to help unravel all your mysteries!

Sharafka aka 'Shaka' is a tiefling celestial warlock from the Rivals of Waterdeep, who brings a love of mazes while protecting his friends from monsters. He joins the Champion ranks next week during The Running!

I. Shaka

As a member of Rivals of Waterdeep, Shaka is always looking for the latest adventure and the latest puzzle. His party has encountered mysteries and foes throughout Waterdeep, Candlekeep, Icewind Dale, and Avernus. Their base of operations is located in the Trollskull Manor in Waterdeep where a brain in a jar named Brian stands watch.

Shaka is here to help, using his keen intellect to solve the Celestial Puzzle and bolstering his allies with Celestial Resistance. When you want to add him to your formation, you can swap him with Makos (Slot 9).

II. Shaka’s Stats

Race: Tiefling	Alignment: Neutral Good
Class: Warlock (Celestial)	Gender: Male
Age: 29	Affiliation: Rivals of Waterdeep

STR: 10	DEX: 16	CON: 15
INT: 16	WIS: 13	CHA: 16

Role: Support & Healing
Eligible for Patrons: Mirt the Moneylender, Vajra Safahr, Strahd von Zarovich, Zariel
Slot: 9 (Makos)

III. Shaka's Design

It’s been truly wonderful to work with Shareef Jackson, a passionate STEM diversity advocate and founder of Math Looks Good LLC, which provides math and physics tutoring services. He’s been featured in the New York Times, the Smithsonian, the Guardian, NPR, Scientific American, and MacLean's talking about science and technology. Shareef has been on Rivals of Waterdeep not just as the tiefling warlock Shaka, but stepping into the Dungeon Master role for two of their seasons!

While helping his adopted family through Avernus, Shaka made a pact with the Celestial Kagoya and now uses those powers to focus on healing and support. He can boost damage with A Celestial Puzzle, provide shielding with Celestial Resistance, and further amplify his abilities through specialization choices.

If more direct action is needed, Shaka can summon a Wall of Light and choose to Blind or Disintegrate enemies. The Blinding Wall of Light will push enemies away from the formation and cause their attacks to miss, while the Disintegrating Wall of Light will kill or damage those attempting to do his friends harm!

IV. Shaka's Abilities

Basic Attack

• Eldritch Blast — A beam of crackling green shoots towards an enemy, dealing damage.

Formation Abilities

• A Celestial Puzzle — Shaka attempts to solve a celestial puzzle with the potential for great rewards. Four random slots in the formation are assigned a random tag. For each Champion in those slots that match the slot's tag, Shaka buffs the party by 100%, stacking multiplicatively. Tags pull from a fixed set of odds, with two being "easy", one "medium", and one "hard";
  • Easy: male, female (non-binary Champions count in either)
  • Medium: support, dps, gold
  • Hard: human, kobold, elf, dwarf, tiefling

• Celestial Resistance — Shaka adds 10 temporary hit-points to the entire party when changing areas. This is increased by 25% for each A Celestial Puzzle slot that is filled properly, stacking additively (ie. +100% with 4 slots filled properly). This ability can be buffed by upgrades, equipment, and feats.

• Feats or Famine — Shaka increases the effect of A Celestial Puzzle by 20% for each puzzle slot he's adjacent to, stacking multiplicatively. This ability can be buffed by equipment and feats. Buffs apply to the post-stack value.

First Specializations

The first set of specializations deal with the ability A Tough Puzzle:

• Sunday Edition — A fifth slot in the formation is assigned a random tag and can be matched to further increase A Celestial Puzzle.

• Better Luck Next Time — The slots chosen for A Celestial Puzzle are rerolled. Note that the rerolled slots and tags are consistent for the adventure, so you can't use Potions of Specialization to repeatedly reroll for different slots (if you do respec and pick the other spec will swap back to the original slots/tags).

Second Specializations

Another set of specializations determine how Shaka’s Ultimate works:

• Blinding Wall of Light — Unlocks the Blinding Wall of Light ultimate, which pushes enemies back and then appears near the formation and causes enemies that pass through it to miss with most of their attacks.

• Disintegrating Wall of Light — Unlocks the Disintegrating Wall of Light ultimate, which appears close to where enemies spawn and can cause enemies that pass through it to instantly be killed; enemies not killed take additional damage for the next little while.

V. Shaka's Equipment

Slot 1: Global DPS	Slot 2: Global DPS	Slot 3: A Celestial Puzzle
Slot 4: Celestial Resistance	Slot 5: Feast or Famine	Slot 6: Ultimate Cooldown

VI. Conclusion

We’re very excited to have Shaka joining Idle Champions, and excited to see him lending his skills to the rest of the Champions! What do you think about Shaka? If you have feedback, let us know in a Community Q&A or Champion feedback post on the Idle Champions Subreddit, on the Steam forums, or on the Official Idle Champions Discord!