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[Review] Winners and Losers: Analysis of Patch 2.8.5 in Infinity Kingdom

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Article Publish : 07/13/2025 16:38

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💠Introduction

What’s up, folks? Welcome to this month’s edition of Winners and Losers for Patch 2.8.5. Patch 2.8.5 was released on Thursday, July 10. The patch features a new Chaos immortal, KvK optimizations, and new additions to the Golden Path Merit Store. Let’s take a look at what the patch entails, the winners and losers of this patch as well as how the changes might affect new and seasoned players.

💠Table of Contents

Ares, God of Chaos
New Features
Miscellaneous Updates and Optimizations
Summary

💠Ares, God of Chaos

Ares is the ninth Chaos immortal to join the game. His skill, Battlefield Trample, passively increases his attack speed by 15%. It deals 500% physical damage on all enemies and has a 50% rate to Frighten them, which prevents them from gaining Control Immunity effects and weakens their barriers by 30%. His exclusive artifact, War Spear, increases his skill damage by 40%. Funnily enough, he’s an immortal who uses a spear, but he is classified as a Calvary unit. Ares is clearly a counter to Fu Fei who grants Control Immunity to her entire team. He also weakens the effects of Charles and Energy Shield. He alone should be enough to carry an entire team with his damage, but his energy regeneration is lower than Fu Fei’s. Fu Fei also gets the added benefit of running alongside another support immortal who can specialize in granting Fu Fei more energy at the start of the battle, which can allow her to cast her ultimate quicker than Ares. Frighten also isn’t a surefire hit so it remains to be seen whether he’s better than Wukong or Yi Sun-Shin. He is currently only available from the Fate of Chaos IV chests from Treasure Hunter. Apollo is removed from those chests and placed in Chaos Roulette.

Winners: N/A

Losers: Fu Fei, Charles, Energy Shield

💠New Features

Patch 2.8.5 introduced a new way to get Dragon Chest Keys. Players can now craft higher-tier keys by combining two of the immediate lower-tier keys. Two Uncommons form a Rare, two Rares form an Elite, two Elites create an Epic, and two Epic keys create a Legendary key, which we don’t have a use for yet. Unfortunately, you cannot get any Common Dragon Chest Keys this way. This is a great addition as I bet many players have keys they don’t want but none they need.

Winners: Everyone with an abundance of keys

Losers: Gnome Bosses

The Golden Path Merit Shop received an update as well. Immortal fragments, both specific and random, are limited to five purchases per event, down from ten. This means, to purchase all of the Random Immortal Fragments of an element will require 300 Merit Coins or 4,500 Gems and all sets of a specific immortal will cost 1,000 coins or 15,000 Gems in levels after level 50 of the Battle Pass. Additionally, exclusive artifacts for immortals like Yi Sun-Shin will be added to the shop for 600 Merit Coins or 9,000 Gems in levels. Unfortunately, there is a purchase limit of one per artifact every event so it will take 16 months to max an artifact from scratch.

Winners: Everyone who wants to supplement their EAs for cheap

Losers: Players who purchase more than five sets of immortal fragments per event

💠Miscellaneous Updates and Optimizations

In an effort to prevent players from making numerous farm accounts with level 15 castles to make them eligible to enter KvK with little effort, Patch 2.8.5 will be raising the level limit for every season. Season 1 will require players to be level 20 or higher, Season 2 will require players to be level 25 or higher, and Conquest Season will require players to be level 30 and higher. This is a good change to slightly shift the balance from older servers to younger servers. Since older servers have had more time to create farm accounts, this should stymie them a little.

Winners: Younger servers

Losers: Older servers

Rankers in the Treasure Hunter ladder in monthly events will be able to earn skin shards without earning the top spot. Rank 1 will get the permanent skin, rank 2 will get 36 shards, rank 3 will get 24 shards, and rank 4 through 10 will get 12 shards. This means more spenders will be able to develop their skin higher than previously possible without winning the rankings every day and get more bang for their buck.

Winners: High spenders

Losers: Everyone else who will experience the difference in power

Another change that was not in the patch notes is an update to the requirements of getting speedups and gold from the Contention of Relics resource mines after each event. Previously, only players in the faction of the winning alliance would get speedups and gold if they mined those tiles. Everyone else just got resources so it was only beneficial to a subset of players every event. Now, everyone will get gold and speedups, regardless of faction. This is a welcomed change as main alliances change so often now with how KvK faction selection works.

Winners: Everyone

Losers: N/A

💠Summary

Patch 2.8.5 has a little bit of everything, from a new immortal to quality-of-life updates. Ares should be the new menace in the upcoming KvK and there will be fewer farm accounts clogging up the KvK map. We’ll see more developed castle skins, more players will have access to certain exclusive artifacts for a fraction of the cost, and finally, all players will be able to take advantage of COR mines.

What do you think about the patch so far? Let me know in the comments below!