Honor of Kings drops an update so big a name change was required

You know an update is a behemoth when it changes a game's entire name, which is exactly what's happening with Honor of Kings. Not content to coast on its popularity, its latest update, released today, has rebranded the game as Honor of Kings Plus, with a massive injection of improvements. 

One of the most exciting additions is the Flowborn, a fully customisable hero you can control in battle. You can change their look and tailor them with versatile weapons and skills to suit your lane. They even come with selectable attribute buffs in each match. The Marksman variant is available now, with the Tank and Mage to follow in July.

There is nothing worse than playing the game of your life, but still losing because someone on your team won’t stop dying. Probably me. Luckily, a tweak will weight your individual performance points for Star rewards even if you lose. You can even get an instant SSS if you single-handedly destroy the highground tower, and then the opponent’s crystal. Obi-Wan would be proud.

To make matches less frustrating, there are also a few changes to the battlefield itself. Minions on the mid lane will be increased to four, and the Central River Sprite is gone entirely for a better flow. Similarly, the Top and Bottom lane River Sprites and Space Sprite have adjusted respawn frequency, abilities and rewards. 

The Red Falcon’s spawn timing, skills, and rewards are rebalanced, as are all lanes' Super minions to balance late-game pressure. Finally, the Teleport Summoner Skill is now permanently available. That's a lot of changes to track, but helpfully, Honor of Kings is giving us a new way to help communicate. Real-time voice-to-text transcription and translation have been implemented for Chinese, English, Indonesian, and Malay to help players strategise. More languages will follow.

If you were one of the many who disliked the Honor Pass, then you will be pleased to hear it's been reworked. A streamlined mission system has taken over to provide most of the experience. If you update your game in the next month, you will receive a free Elite Pass for the new KWC-themed rewards. Level 1 nets you the Nuwa-Syzygy Moonlight skin, and sticking with it until level 80 will reward you with the Alessio EWC skin.

Now, for the end-game of any title, cosmetics! If you head to the Event Center after updating to the latest version, you can redeem a free skin voucher worth 1688 Tokens. Between June 28th and 30th, any skin launched before June 24th, including limited and legendary, is free to try out. During this time, you can use the aforementioned voucher on designated skins for a big discount. So, try them all out, and buy what you like.

Honor of Kings is available to download from the App Store and Google Play.