Director’s Letter Vol.5

To all players of HUNTER×HUNTER NEN×SURVIVOR,
I’m Natsume, the game’s director.

Thank you, as always, for playing HUNTER×HUNTER NEN×SURVIVOR.

We’ve mentioned “Trick Tower” and “Memory Evolve” several times in previous Director’s Letters and announcements, and we’re finally at a point where we can share more details about both features.

In addition to these two new features, I’d also like to introduce a new ranking event centered around World Hunt.

And although it may be a little early, I’d also like to share a small preview of what we currently have planned for new character additions toward the end of the year.

This will be a fairly lengthy update, but I hope you’ll stay with me until the end.

First, I’d like to talk about our new content, “Trick Tower.”

Trick Tower is a high-difficulty challenge consisting of 30 floors.

Much like World Hunt, each stage features a variety of buffs and debuffs. Rather than relying on raw combat power alone, you’ll need to think carefully about your character and Memory Scene setups as you work your way through the tower.

The tower is not designed with the expectation that everyone will clear all 30 floors immediately.
We hope you’ll gradually work your way upward as you continue strengthening your characters and Memory Scenes.

Clearing stages will reward you with “Memory Drops,” and fulfilling certain conditions will also grant a variety of items used for the “Memory Evolve” system introduced below.

Next is our new progression system, “Memory Evolve.”

Memory Evolve will allow you to add new bonus effects to each of your Memory Scenes.

There will be up to 24 different bonus effects available, and a single Memory Scene can receive up to five of them.

Each bonus effect also has a “Quality” level.
Quality ranges from 1 to 6, with higher Quality providing a stronger effect.

For example, an ATK Up effect could look like this:

The strength of the effect will vary depending on its Quality.

We’ll also be introducing special Memory Evolve items that guarantee at least a certain Quality level.

There will be opportunities to obtain a certain number of these items each month, with additional methods of obtaining them also planned.

You can, of course, further strengthen your favorite Memory Scenes, but you’ll also be able to build them in different directions—for example, adding offensive effects to a defensive Memory Scene for greater versatility, or pushing an offensive Memory Scene even further toward pure damage.

By considering your characters, party composition, and Memory Scene combinations together, we want this system to give you more opportunities to think about how you personally want to build your team.

We’ve also prepared a “Cumulative Bonus” system so that repeated attempts at adding bonus effects never feel entirely wasted.

The benefits from Cumulative Bonuses are intended to be relatively modest, but they will ensure that the effort you’ve put into Memory Evolve continues to contribute to your overall progression.

Together with Trick Tower, we hope Memory Evolve will give you another way to take the characters and Memory Scenes you’ve already raised and push them one step further.

There’s still a little while to go before release, but we hope you’ll look forward to trying it for yourself.

We’re also introducing a new battle parameter called “Heavy Strike.”

Compared with the existing “Critical Hit” mechanic, Heavy Strike is capable of dealing significantly greater damage when it activates.
However, even after investing in Heavy Strike, its activation rate is intended to remain lower than that of Critical Hit.

Heavy Strike is calculated separately from Critical Hit, meaning both can activate on the same attack and potentially result in an exceptionally powerful hit.

One of the main reasons we’ve added Heavy Strike is that, as we introduce more progression systems such as Memory Evolve, we want each player’s individual approach to character development to stand out more clearly.

Even when using the same characters and Memory Scenes, different approaches to progression can result in very different parties.

Heavy Strike is being introduced as a new avenue for growth designed to give you even more freedom in how you develop and build your team.

We hope you’ll experiment with different combinations and find a style of progression and party building that feels uniquely your own.

Another new character will be joining the roster this month.

That means it’s finally time for the last character from our silhouette quiz.

This is a very popular character that many of you have been asking us to add since shortly after launch.

We think we’ve created a character that many players will enjoy, so please stay tuned for more details.

It looks like their weapon may be a pretty distinctive one.

Stay tuned for the full reveal!

And now, looking a little further ahead…

Beginning in December, characters in special outfits will also start appearing alongside our existing character release schedule.

You may even get the chance to personally control one of the characters already available in NEN×SURVIVOR wearing “that” particular outfit…!

We can’t share the full details just yet, but we hope you’ll look forward to what’s coming to NEN×SURVIVOR toward the end of the year and beyond.

The Trick Tower and Memory Evolve features introduced in this letter are among the major updates we’ve been preparing since the early days of the service.

Beyond the enjoyment of collecting characters, we want NEN×SURVIVOR to become a game where you can get even more enjoyment out of thinking about how to use and develop the characters and Memory Scenes you’ve raised.

And beyond what we’ve shared here today, we’re already preparing additional updates for the end of the year and our first anniversary.

The entire development and operations team will continue working on improvements and updates so that you can enjoy NEN×SURVIVOR for a long time to come.

Thank you for your continued support of HUNTER×HUNTER NEN×SURVIVOR.