To our DKO community,

It’s with a heavy heart from all of us at Red Beard Games that we have to inform you that as part of Hi-Rez’s recent re-org, DKO will be sunset and the servers shut down on February 17, 2025 12:00 PM EDT. Following this date the game will be removed from digital storefronts and you will no longer be able to purchase it and any related content such as DLC.
We can’t thank you enough for brawling it out across the various arenas these last two years! Watching you all master combos and knock each other out of the arena over and over has been incredible.

A couple of months ago we made all skins and gods in DKO effectively free. You can continue to enjoy these until the servers sunset.

On behalf of everyone at Red Beard Games, thank you for enjoying DKO with us!

Our very first SMITE 2 Closed Alpha Weekend Test is kicking off on May 2!
Get ready to hop in with 14 playable gods and enter the next generation of SMITE!

⚡️ Servers available from May 2, 8pm ET - May 4, 10pm ET
⚡️ No NDA, so Streaming and Video Content is ALLOWED!
⚡️ Join us for a special Alpha Showcase Stream[www.twitch.tv] on May 1 at 3pm ET to get an early look.

https://testx-steam.c5game.com/steamstore/app/2437170/SMITE_2/

As a Founder, enjoy exclusive early access* to the Battleground, with all Gods unlocked and legendary content to boost your SMITE 2 experience. (see website for event details)

Play as Gods from across mythology and wield unique godly abilities. Hurl bolts of lightning as Zeus, master the arcane powers of death as Anubis, or back stab your foes as Loki – The choice is yours with the SMITE 2 Founder's Edition.

Plus, pre-order during the Closed Alpha to unlock the SMITE 2 Cacodemon Ymir Skin.

*SMITE 2 game access is granted only on the platform this pack is purchased on

Earn double God Pass XP from Friday, 7 pm CET (1 pm ET), until Monday, 7 pm CET (1 pm ET)!

Ymir - Magmir - Blazing Bifrost Event Pass

Wallpapers: 3840x2160[webcdn.hirezstudios.com] | 2560x1440[webcdn.hirezstudios.com] | 1920x1080[webcdn.hirezstudios.com] | 1080x1920[webcdn.hirezstudios.com]
It's time to heat things up, literally! 
Maneuver elevation changes and pitfalls, all the while avoiding the firebombs created by the furnaces, in this new distinct map Fiery Furnace!
The Blazing Bifrost Event Pass is here! 

To mark the start of our new Season, players can progress the Event Pass to unlock some red hot cosmetics and currencies.
Did we mention, as the very first Event Pass, we’ll give players the Premium upgrade for free? All rewards from all tiers are absolutely free to everyone!

Here's a list of highlights that you can unlock! Please note that there are additional XP Boosters, Stars, and Runes to unlock!
You can find an Event Pass FAQ here[www.divineknockout.com]!
We made major adjustments to the progression in DKO:

• We adjusted the god pass XP requirements so that players progress faster within the track, unlocking the gameplay progression earlier. We're lowering the total Experience requirements in the God Pass by roughly 30%.
• Divine Traits and Greater Blessings have been moved earlier in the god pass progression track
• Lesser Blessings have been removed from the game. It will allow us to create more and more interesting traits for characters in the future. More info on that very soon.

We have a full blog post written up that you can find >>here<<[www.divineknockout.com] with more information on this change!
Every few weeks there will be map rotations on the 3v3, 2v2 & 1v1 Queues. Please find the first map rotations listed below and keep in mind that we will share future map rotations on our social media channels! (Twitter / Instagram[www.instagram.com] / Discord[discord.com] / Facebook[www.facebook.com])

Amaterasu's Divine Trait Switching Strike was disabled since it was leading to a spike of power and unbalanced situations. We wanted to design a new talent to replace Switching Strike, returning to have 3 selectable Divine Traits on Amaterasu.

• Switching Strike has been replaced by a new talent called Blade Edge.
  • Blade Edge: The attack after Uppercut grants 10% Ultimate Charge if it is an Air Light (2nd hit) or reduces all cooldowns by 2s if it is Air Heavy.

King Arthur receives some love in this patch. We want to make the tracking, warping, and hitboxes of his attacks consistent with other God metrics since they were slightly shorter. In addition, we make the Ability 2 projectile harder to avoid for opponents, since it was easily avoidable compared to other projectiles in the game.

• Updated tracking, warping, and hitbox size of all the attacks.
• Increased projectile speed of Soaring Edge by 20% to increase skill check.

Loki has seen a great god release but we hear your voices and we want to adjust him in this patch. We want to provide more awareness to opponents about Loki's stealth activation in order to exactly know when he enters in stealth even not looking at him. Next to this addition, we want to balance the cooldown of Acrobatic Vault since it was obtained too fast leading to a lot of aerial combos. Empowered attacks led to power spikes thanks to huge tracking distance and damage, we wanted to balance them to bring those attacks in a more balanced state. Loki's damage potential was very high due to various combos. We nerfed his damage in several parts of his kit, to spread the nerf and keep abilities and talents interesting. This also includes reducing the damage potential and making the ultimate more avoidable for opponents, since it was more punishing than other ultimates.

• Integrate a specific SFX of a laugh (or other sound in line with stealth fantasy) that has to be very recognizable and unique. It has to be heard from close to medium/far distance from opponents to be aware of the stealth activation.
• Acrobatic Vault: Increased the cooldown from 17s to 20s.
• Obscuring Dagger: Reduced damage from 12 to 10.
• Explosive Me: 
  • Added 0.1 on the charging phase to force Loki to wait more time before the Ult is fully charged (providing also more time to refire)
  • Added 0.1 on the prefire of the explosion to give more reaction time to the opponents to dodge/avoid the explosion
  • Reduced the dmg bracket of the Ultimate from 20-30 to 17-25 to be more in line with other gods' ult damage
  • Reduced Ultimate Charge rate by 8% (same as Sun Wukong and King Arthur).
• Empowered Air Light:
  • Reduced warping distance from 9m to 8m
  • Reduced the velocity of the warping to reduce the "snappy" feeling of the attack and provide more time to react for opponents
  • Reduced damage from 16 to 12 
• Empowered Air Heavy Attack:
  • Reduced the velocity of the warping to reduce the "snappy" feeling of the attack and provide more time to react for opponents
  • Reduced damage from 16 to 14

Talents

• Effect Seeker Divine Trait (Attacks against Poisoned and Blinded enemies deal an additional 2 Damage) reduced damage buff provided from 2 to 1.

Sol receives small Quality of Life changes in this patch. We increase the potency of her healing potential and build after the changes applied in the last patch. Also, Disapparate's animation was not perfectly synced with the start of the movement.

• Increased the number of pools created by “The Floor is Lava” from 4 to 6.
• Reduced the length of the pre-fire animation by 2 frames.

We continue to hear your feedback about Sun Wukong and we want to provide a subtle way to recognize the clone (in combo with what we already did in the last patch: the clone dealing 30% less dmg) to allow high-skill players to recognize it. Next to this, the Precise Momentum blessing was the only blessing without the God name in the title; we wanted to avoid that kind of inconsistency. And lastly, we update the “Monkey See, Monkey Do” talent to reduce its overall power.

• Clone plays specific gameplay cues when is hit by the opponent and when he hits the opponent. The gameplay cues are just slightly different, requiring attention to be recognized.
• The talent name of “Precise Momentum” has been updated in “Sun Wukong’s Momentum” to avoid naming inconsistency.
• The “Monkey See, Monkey Do” talent has been updated in “Monkey See”, and the clone can now use just The Magic Cudgel (Dashing Strikes has been removed from the talent).

Our team has been hard at work designing a new talent to replace the Wind Runner minor trait since it is too strong and leads to unbalanced power spikes in aerial playstyle.

Talents

• Wind Runner replaced by a new Talent: Windstorm
  • Attacks against enemies trapped by Swirling Tempest deal additional 2 damage and 20% knockback (Up to 6 damage per Attack).

• Buff Pads have been added to the following maps for Knockout modes:
  • Spinning Spikes
  • Sinking Swamp
  • Rockslide Ridge
  • Spellbound Study
  • Spirit Shrine
     

• Merlin statue has less intrusive invisible collision around it.
• Big pillars structure now has even more form accurate collision. This should now also allow crater decals to sometimes not be visible.

We also fixed a bunch of bugs again! Here's a list of highlights:

• Character Select now by default highlights the favorite God (or last played God if there is no favorite) instead of Amaterasu.
• Added a gamepad key binding option for resetting the camera (default is right stick click).
• 3vAI switched to Knockout instead of Arcade
• Fixed where Loki was playing his Enemy Knockout voice lines when an ally is knocked out
• Fixed an issue where Amaterasu's uppercut was sometimes putting her to be behind the target
• Changed the name of the Arcade custom tab to 3v3 custom
• Fixed an issue where players did not receive daily login rewards if they were loaded into the tutorial.
• Fixed where AI Thor's Ability 1 wasn’t displaying the warning
• Fixed a controller issue where changing god in practice rooms changes god for the AI
• Fixed where Bots were unable to navigate onto the central tower when playing oddball on crumbling keep when nobody was holding the crown
• Fixed where Oddball cooldown HUD failed to countdown in a custom arcade game
• Fixed an issue if Ymir was standing right next to his wall then he could be hit by abilities thrown at the other side of it

Originally posted by Design Team:

Loki is a trickster, his agility and precision in using daggers make him unpredictable and lethal on the battleground. His acrobatic playstyle is even more powerful while in the air, thanks to empowered attacks. He is also a master of illusions and effects, employing invisibility, poison, magical daggers that obscure the vision of his opponents, and the most powerful trick of all, the creation of a clone that explodes at his command.

Wallpapers: 3840x2160[webcdn.hirezstudios.com] | 2560x1440[webcdn.hirezstudios.com] | 1920x1080[webcdn.hirezstudios.com] | 1080x1920[webcdn.hirezstudios.com]
Acrobatic Vault

• Loki leaps into the air with momentum. His next aerial attack is Empowered, dealing more damage and heavy knockback.

Obscuring Dagger

• Loki throws a magical spinning dagger forward that dazes enemies and obscures their vision, as well as dealing damage and knockback.

Hidden in Shadows

• Loki enters Stealth, becoming invisible for a short time. The first attack out of stealth applies poison to enemies, dealing additional damage over time.

Explosive Me

• Loki spawns a clone that explodes after charging up, dealing massive damage and knockback to enemies in the area of the explosion. However, Loki can refire the ability early to trick his opponents at the cost of dealing less damage and knockback.

Loki - Nordic Nomad - Shop

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• The main 3v3 Arcade queue will be moved to include only 3v3 Knockout.
• We are going to bring back King of the Hill, Oddball, and Coin Blitz as limited-time modes in the future.

• Want to flex a bit more on your enemies? Banners are now available!
• A new cosmetic that is shown to players after you knock them out, Banners are a great way to add some style to your skills!

• Queue popped before you could pick up that new Amaterasu skin? Missed using a god token on the newly released Loki before jumping into a 2v2? No worries - Skin and God Purchasing is now available in the Character Select!

• We’ve given a bit of spice to the Title cosmetic in DKO - and now show it in a bunch of new places
• Titles are now displayed in the Lobby, Character Select, In-Game Scoreboard, and End of Match Scoreboard

• Players can now see their Damage Done on the Scoreboard
  • Knockouts and Assists aren’t the only important part of combat in DKO - dishing out damage is vital to success!

• We are working on the Character Select phase a bit - we moved the Loadout selection into the phase after selecting the Character into the phase where Skin selection is made

Originally posted by Design Team:

We have found players using the cancellation of ground-targeted movement abilities to refresh and continue attack chains in the air to impressive effect. While we don’t want to remove this tactic from the playbook at this stage, we are increasing the “cost” of this playstyle by setting the movement ability on a full cooldown (rather than the half cooldown it has been).

• Canceling ground-targeted movement abilities (e.g., Thor, Susano) now consumes the full cooldown.

Originally posted by Design Team:

We’re looking to address the difficulty in facing off against Amaterasu is her high combo potential that can make an opponent feel quite powerless in some instances. Critically, we’re removing the easy options for her to trigger her Ultimate ability from other attacks, giving an opponent a window for escape and allowing for more counter-play in these situations.

• Amaterasu will not be able to use her “Final Light” ability until the animations for her Air Light, Sunseeker Dash, or Sunlit Uppercut are finished.
• Removed the ability to jump-cancel Heavenly Strike on the successful first hit.

Originally posted by Design Team:

Arthur’s performance has been steadily improving over recent patches, but we’re making what I hope will be the last set of buffs for a while as he settles into a better competitive spot, focusing on increasing the damage and knockback of some of his abilities.

• Increased damage of Albion’s Rally from 5 to 8.
• Increased damage of Might of Excalibur from 23 to 26.
• Increased Heavy Air Attack damage from 5 to 6.

Talents

• Slice Through: Increased additional knockback by Air Heavy Attacks from 15% to 20%.

Originally posted by Design Team:

We’re making a couple of adjustments to reduce the power of Athena’s aerial playstyle to make it more balanced and reduce instances where players can exploit the spear’s placement.

• Reduce the lifetime of the spear from Spear Toss from 5s to 4s.
• Increased the cooldown of Parry from 13s to 14s.

Talents

• Incoming: Reduced the additional knockback from 20% to 15%.

Originally posted by Design Team:

The lovely goddess of death is in a good place, so we’re just making one change to bring her Ambush talent in line with others that also boost the ultimate charge percentage.

Talents

• Ambush: Reduced additional ultimate charge rate from 15% to 12%.

Originally posted by Design Team:

Sol has been underperforming across all queues, particularly in Duel and Brawl. Given the value that her ultimate brings to her kit, we’re reducing its prefire slightly to increase the skill check for her opponents to avoid getting hit.

• Reduced prefire of Supernova’s fireball by 0.05s.

Originally posted by Design Team:

Sun Wukong has been dominating Duel and Brawl in recent weeks, so we’re reducing the impact of two of his most impactful abilities.

• Increased cooldown of The Magic Cudgel from 14s to 16s.
• The clone now deals 30% less damage than Sun Wukong.

Originally posted by Design Team:

We’re pleased to see that the changes made to Susano in the last patch have had the intended result to bring him in line with the other gods. He’s still over-performing a little so we’ve got a few more targeted changes to smooth over some undesirable power spikes.

• Increased prefire of Air Light from 0.25s to 0.3s.
• Reduced the hitbox size of the Light Attack chain by 20%.

Talents

• Send Off: Additional damage by Air Heavy attacks reduced from 4 to 3.

Originally posted by Design Team:

In the current meta, Thanatos has had a slightly overstated presence in all queues, so we’re making two small changes to reduce his highest impact points.

• The number of healing orbs released by players from Soul Leech has been reduced from 5 to 4.

Talents

• Unyielding: The cap per attack has been reduced from 3 to 2.

Originally posted by Design Team:

Thor has been in a healthy competitive place for most skill brackets, so we’re making a few talent tweaks to improve his build diversity.

Talents

• Warrior's Madness: Reduced additional damage from 6 to 5.
• Face The Hammer: The additional damage of the final hits of Light Attack chains has been reduced from 6 to 5.
• Crashing Down: Additional damage by Anvil of Dawn reduced from 10 to 8.

Originally posted by Design Team:

The recent changes to Zeus' ultimate were quite impactful but our attempts to reduce its presence made for an unintended nerf. We’re balancing this out by increasing the usefulness of the initial part of the ability.

• Increased the number of bolts thrown at a time for the first part of Heaven’s Rage from 3 to 4.

• Sol’s Temper: Reduced additional damage done to the last enemy that knocked you out from 25% to 15% and the additional damage if you haven’t been knocked out from 12.5% to 10%.
• Sharpened Sickle: Reduced cap per Attack or Ability from 3 to 2.
• Upward Slash: Reduced additional damage done by Air Heavy attacks from 4 to 3.
• Air Supremacy: The cap for additional damage per attack has been reduced from 6 to 4.

• Moved Spawn Points for Team 1 further away from the Bank on Coin Blitz, so both teams are more at an equal distance away from it.
   

• Improved collision around the edges of the map to allow for more consistent clamber behaviour.
   

• Adjustment to the collision along the corner edges of the platforms no longer causes rare instances of players bouncing inwards towards the platform.
   

• Disabled collision on a platform below the KO floor that you could previously stand on.
• Changed the collision along the central ramp to be one single ramp, to allow for more fluid movement.
• Made the collision around the giant bookcase more shape-accurate and moved the bookcase back by 1,5 meters.

Originally posted by Design Team:

We also fixed a bunch of bugs (it may or may not be more than 100 this time). We hear your feedback and would like to share more fixes here:

• Quests: Fixed progress tracking of Projectile damage & Hold Heavy KOs.
• Fixed crash when loading out of the Combat Room in the Practice Map.
• Fixed a crash sometimes caused by Izanami’s “Spectral Projection”.
• Izanami can jump while aiming “Seeking Sickle”.
• Attacking out of tiger form of Sun Wukong’s “72 Transformations” ability will no longer cause the player camera to stutter.
• Fixed a bug where Sun Wukong’s staff would be invisible when attacking from off-screen.
• Thor’s icons will longer be swapped for “Mjolnir’s Attunement” and “Tectonic Rift”.
• Ymir can no longer early jump cancel on Light Attack 2.
• Ymir’s turn speed while channeling “Frost Breath” will no longer be reduced at any FPS.
• Fixed animation bug where aimed abilities sometimes play a land animation when the ability ends.
• Team indicators will now show character locations even when high in the air.
• Updated the way craters are displayed.
• All characters will now play their intro animations at the same time at the start of the first round of a match.
• Fixed issue with player titles appearing in unintended menus.
• Titles in character selection will no longer appear as “No Title” if a player has none equipped.
• Added Esc menu (Settings & Quit) access to the character selection screen.
• In character selection, gods will now play a selection animation when equipping a skin.
• Fixed an issue where Settings menu dropdowns would conflict with pop-ups.
• The favorite God button hitbox has been adjusted to always be the same size as it looks.
• Fixed UI issue in Brawl where the announcements would show the incorrect score.
• Fixed audio bug in Brawl where the Announcer would play random announcements over the correct elimination line.
• Player HUD no longer disappears in-game after the first round in duel and brawl.
• All valid matches now correctly count progress toward achievements and profile stats (KOs, Minutes Played, etc.)
• Missing fanfare for some login rewards will no longer be missing.
• Added access to the scoreboard at most points in the game.
• Banned accounts will now see the appropriate error message.

Check out the Loki Cinematic NOW!

All gods are unlocked from now until Monday at 1 pm ET (7 pm CET)!

We want to share some updates and context around balance changes that we will implement as soon as possible. These mainly include changes to Sol and Susano. We’re adjusting Sol’s healing capabilities and Susano will receive a couple of nerfs that will adjust his potency for high-skilled players while still maintaining a high level of fun to play him.  
We want to stress that this is one step to improving balance around your feedback and that there is more to come. We will keep monitoring Susano and other gods and goddesses very closely! 
Thank you for your feedback on our social media channels and Discord!
In our effort of creating an exciting playstyle for Sol, we went overboard and created a balance problem. We will be adjusting further in the next patch but for now, we’re reverting our change to the “Healing Flame” talent.

Talents

• Healing Flame: Reduced healing from 2 to 1 after walking over a fire pool and consuming it.

Susano has balance issues at the highest level of play and game knowledge. These changes are only the first batch. We’re starting to address his ability to deal a high amount of damage and the speed at which he recovers from the different phases of Storm Kata's ability. Additionally, we’re removing his talent allowing him to triple jump. We will re-introduce a 3rd divine trait for Susano in one of the future updates.

• Reduced the damage of air light attacks from 2-2-3 to 1-1-2
• Storm Kata: Increase postfire time of hits to make them more punishable, still allowing the players to combo with light and heavy out of Storm Kata.
  • First hit: from 0.59s to 0.73s
  • Second hit: from 0.2s to 0.4s
  • Third hit: from 0.64s to 0.8s

Talents

• Rising Winds: Reduced the additional Damage to targets in the air from 2 to 1
• Wind Runner: Disabled while we’re working on a rework/replacement

• Fixed an issue where wrong rewards were highlighted on the daily login reward screen.
• Fixed crash occurrences for Izanami's ability “Spectral Projection”. However, we are still trying to polish it further for better performance.