With patch 5.1 coming to Smite tomorrow, I thought I’d do a review of Season 4.
This Season we saw 9 gods released in game. Although this was a few less than the previous year, the quality and variation has been much better even though nearly half of these were Guardians! The Celtic Pantheon certainly expanded leaving just an assassin needed to complete the set.
Season 4 Gods:
Kuzenbo – Japanese Guardian (4.2)
Cernunnos – Celtic Hunter (4.4)
Ganesha – Hindu Guardian (4.7)
Da Ji – Chinese Assassin (4.9)
Cu Chulainn – Celtic Warrior (4.11)
Artio – Celtic Guardian (4.14)
Hachiman – Japanese Hunter (4.17)
Discordia – Roman Mage (4.21)
Cerberus – Greek Guardian (4.25)
Season 4 also brought the new Season Ticket mechanic to the game. This saw the Season Ticket divided into 3 splits, each bringing a new bundle with it containing a limited skin, fantasy points (earned thought quests) and the new team boosters. Season 5’s Season Ticket will also follow this new layout.
Obviously there was the return of re-occurring events such as Summer of Smite and the Odyssey where you could get a load of new skins and extra rewards. Frostfire Ullr was this Season’s Limited T5 skin which could be unlocked by earning 98,000 Odyssey points.
Although it feels like forever ago, the Clash map as we now know it was also introduced in patch 4.1 this time last year. The changes to Clash weren’t as drastic as the ones being made to Conquest this year, but I really enjoyed the fresh map and the new jungle boss feature. Saying that, it does annoy me now when there are quests for “defeat the fire giant/gold fury” as this can now only be done in Conquest.
Project Olympus was also a new project announced to help improve gameplay, matchmaking, rewards, etc. The main features being the release in DirectX 11, 64 bit and the new Texture pack. There will be more work happening for Project Olympus with a new HUD layout set to launch in Season 5. I really hope they include Pantheon filters!
Introduced only a few months ago was the new chest roll mechanic, starting with the Abyssal Chest (see my post here). This new mechanic offered the choice of 3 items from that chest when a roll was purchased. The mechanic has further been used so far for the Bubble-licious Chest and the Nature’s Wrath Chest.
On the topic of chests, the Triumphant chests were also introduced. These chests are available after every win to all players, 4 per week for free. More chests could also be purchased per win with gems or favor and contained a variety of items including skins, voice packs, wards, avatars, team boosters, global emotes, announcer packs etc. and even a few exclusive items.
Adventures were also a new feature to Season 4. Fafnir’s Wonderland was introduced at the end of Season 3 which began the alternative game mode ideas. As this was enjoyed more than anticipated, the developers decided to feature 5 new adventures within the timescale of Season 4. These adventures consisted of Nike’s Rally for Victory, Apollo’s Racer Rumble, Trials of King Hercules, Corrupted Arena and Shadows Over Hercopolis. There are new adventures set to be released throughout Season 5.
All in all, I believe this Season has been pretty good. Alongside the countless amount of skins released and new features such as jump stamps and loading skins, the addition of new and interesting game modes has really made the Season for me. I have mixed feelings about the split Season Ticket as it now costs 3 times the price, but you do get limited skins to go with them and also entitles you to double the fantasy points. I can see why a lot of people were angry when this was changed.
My Season 4 Top 5:
5. New Chest Mechanic – I’m really pleased that this new mechanic exists as at least now you can choose from a few things. When I rolled the Bubble-licious chest, I kept getting the choice between 2 voice packs and a 400 gem skin for 5 rolls until I finally got the choice for Sol skin. At least by having this choice, I ended up with skins rather than other chest items.
4. Triumphant Chests – I love that these are chests you can earn for free. Although most of the time they just seemed to give me fantasy point boosters, I actually got the Khepri announcer pack out of one a while back as well as a fair few 400 gem skins.
3. Discordia – Nox was always my go to mage for any game, and although Nox is probably still my favourite mage, Discordia is a very close 2nd. I have her rank 7 already and always pick her when a mage is needed. Her burst damage can be insane but I wouldn’t say she is overpowered. She is very good at handling groups of enemies in teamfights but there are definitely situations where she isn’t as strong. I find her really fun to play and I’m definitely interested in testing out new items with her in Season 5.
2. Trials of King Hercules – This was by far my favourite adventure. The new gameplay was really different and required you to explore, figure out the enemies and collect items for your build to progress through the dungeon. When it was first released and I spent the majority of my time solely on this adventure because I enjoyed it so much.
1. Da Ji – My favourite character in the entire game. She is my 2nd most played God with almost 2K worshipers. Her kit just fits my playstyle perfectly, and I never seem to get bored playing her. I’m interested to see if I can come up with an even better build for her in Season 5 than the one I’m already using…
Hope you all enjoy Season 5! Let me know your thoughts on Season 4 below!
gamergal.exe 