[Notice]Upcoming Rework of Lugh's Combat Mechanics and Our Apology

Greetings, Captains.
This is StarSavior Director Lee Sungwon.

We are reaching out with this short-notice announcement regarding some changes to combat in StarSavior.
First, we would like to address the key point of this notice.

With this week's update, we will be adjusting Lugh's combat mechanics and reworking part of her kit.
Because this change affects the combat mechanics of a Savior who is already available in the game, we felt it necessary to explain to you in detail what led to this decision and how it came about.

In this notice, we would like to explain the background behind this change and the measures we will be taking going forward.

We first became aware of this issue after the September update, when we identified a specific team composition that could reduce a boss's SPD to 0 during battle.

Lugh's synergy with certain Saviors in this composition could bring a boss's SPD down to 0, preventing the boss from acting as the party continued its attacks.

This composition did require a very demanding setup, making it difficult to put together in practice.

However, once these conditions were met, the boss could effectively be kept from acting for the remainder of the battle, ensuring victory.

We discussed several possible approaches internally to address this issue.

While multiple options were considered, they largely fell into two directions:
1. Directly adjusting the core combat mechanic enabling the SPD-to-0 composition
(Adjusting Lugh's Unique Passive, which allows her Basic Skill to inflict Freeze)

2. Designing future stages specifically to counter this composition

In the short term, the second option would have been the easier solution.

However, we judged that designing future stages around countering one specific composition would very likely create an excessively frustrating or unreasonable experience for other team compositions that do not use it.

We felt that constantly constraining future combat just to block a single composition could make it difficult to maintain both combat variety and service quality in the long run.

Accordingly, we concluded that the composition at the root of the issue needed to be addressed directly, and decided to adjust the combat mechanic (Unique Passive) of Lugh, the Savior at its core.

However, in making this decision, we also thought long and hard about the sense of loss our Captains may feel.

We are fully aware that downward balance adjustments, commonly referred to as "nerfs" in live-service games, are highly sensitive changes that must be approached with great care.

This is not simply a matter of changing a Savior's performance. It can directly affect the time and effort you have invested in obtaining and developing that Savior, as well as the trust between the development team and our Captains.

For that reason, we did not believe that simply lowering Lugh's performance and making her harder to use than before would be an appropriate solution.

Instead, we will adjust the problematic mechanic while reworking her overall combat structure so that she can maintain a clear role and remain useful in other ways.

Lugh's overall skill kit will be reworked with this week's October 29 update.

While her Unique Passive, the mechanic at the center of the issue, will be adjusted, Lugh's other core mechanics will be preserved. Her overall skill kit has been redesigned so that she can continue to perform effectively in the current combat environment, and we have also prepared new visuals for Lugh's exclusive enhancement effects to match her reworked mechanics.

Even with these changes intended to give Lugh a meaningful role in other areas, we understand that Captains who have been using her current kit may not welcome this change.

Accordingly, we will review all Transcendent Matter (Resonance Enhancement), Skill Cubes (Skill Enhancement), and Gifts (Affection) used on Lugh before the October 29 maintenance and refund the full amount used.

This refund will not reset Lugh's Resonance Enhancement, Skill Enhancement, or Affection progress. Her current progress will be preserved, and only the resources previously spent on her growth will be returned separately.

Because we need to conduct a full review to accurately verify each account's resource usage, the refunds will be distributed all at once during the November 5 update maintenance. We appreciate your patience and understanding, as this will take some time.

The schedule is as below.

For Captains who have grown attached to Lugh's current performance and playstyle, this decision asks you to accept a change you did not choose.

At the same time, Captains concerned about this composition have had to wait while we reviewed the issue and decided how to address it.

Ultimately, responsibility for this situation rests with me, as I did not examine the combat structure thoroughly enough.

We should have identified and prevented this issue during design and verification. Our failure to do so caused unnecessary confusion and inconvenience for our Captains.

I sincerely apologize.

As an apology to our Captains affected by this issue, we will provide the following compensation after the October 29 update:

- 2,000 Stellagems

This compensation will also be provided to Captains who create an account before the current event ends on November 5 at 19:00 UTC.

We are truly sorry to have caused you concern like this just ahead of our 1st Anniversary update, which should have been a joyful occasion for you.

We know that no compensation or follow-up measure we prepare can fully make up for the inconvenience you have already experienced or the damage to trust this has caused.

We are taking this matter very seriously, and going forward, the more an issue can directly affect game balance and your trust in us, the more carefully we will review it before making a decision.

Once again, I offer my deepest apologies to all of you.

StarSavior Director
Lee Sungwon