Chair Entertainment's first major Infinity Blade 2 update is due out next week. It introduces welcome interface tweaks, new enemy designs and fresh equipment to master, but the true star is unquestionably the game's brand-new ClashMobs feature.

ClashMobs are accessible at any time from Infinity Blade 2's main menu. These special battles give gamers an opportunity to work cooperatively with hundreds (or thousands) of other players in order to take down enemies with truly massive health pools. If everyone that bands together manages to get the job done, they're rewarded with cash, gems, or other exclusive loot. Fail, and players can just try again the next day, since new ClashMobs will be kicking off on a regular basis.



ClashMobs are intended to give players new short challenges to complete any time they open the app.

After selecting ClashMobs from the main menu, players are able to browse the currently-running challenges (Chair is aiming to have around three active at any given time), see expired challenges, and get a sneak peek at challenges starting soon. Although ClashMobs come in a few varieties, short combat challenges are the most common. In our hands-on demo we were given a chance to do as much damage to a Titan as possible in 30 seconds, for example. The damage we dealt was then added to the total cumulative damage all Infinity Blade 2 players have managed to inflict.

All the statistics in the ClashMob menus update in realtime. You can see the number of participants tick upward, and the beast's HP bar slowly tick downward. It's a small detail, but it does a lot to reinforce that these are social challenges, and helps gamers feel like they're a part of the Infinity Blade community.



ClashMobs also introduce a variety of new environments. Dat skybox...

Chair has built in more personal social hooks, as well. The more connected friends you have participating in ClashMobs, the better benefits you'll be eligible for. Bonuses like additional combat time, bonus victory cash and extra ClashMob attempts will be awarded to players with more MyMob members.

A few more whimsical varieties of ClashMobs have also been introduced in order to break up the relentless combat. My personal favorite is the treasure bag hunt. Gamers are given 30 seconds to collect as many gold bags as they can in a scripted on-rails sequence.

Chair stressed to GAmingarea51 that ClashMob rewards are intended to be powerful, so that gamers are sufficiently motivated to help out their fellow fighters. But to ensure low-level characters aren't given access to game breakingly strong gear, specific ClashMobs can be locked behind level requirements. Smart.



In addition to daily "globally social" ClashMobs, this upcoming game update also incudes some other new content tweaks and tidbits. Players can look forward to twenty four fresh pieces of equipment to master, a redesigned gem interface to allow for easier gem swapping, and a brand-new gem forge feature. Players can now reforge three unwanted gems into a single, more powerful jewel. The gem forge is more than a convenience – Chair teased that a secret few gem recipes will result in all-new gem varieties