NARAKA: BLADEPOINT Kael Update: Bident Weapon and Trials Guide

NARAKA: BLADEPOINT's November 5, 2026 update is one of the heaviest content drops the free-to-play battle royale has had all year: a brand-new hero, the game's first underwater-only weapon, and a completely new PvE Showdown mode called Vanquisher's Trials. If you logged in after the maintenance window and felt lost in the new menus, this guide walks through exactly what changed and how to get the most out of it.

01What Changed in NARAKA's November 5 Update

Servers came down for maintenance from 23:00 UTC on November 4 to 04:00 UTC on November 5, 2026. When they came back, three pieces of brand-new content were live at once: the hero Kael, a new Wanchu weapon called the Bident, and the Vanquisher's Trials Showdown mode. NetEase also rolled in a handful of hero balance tweaks, a Marketplace change that raises the character level required to list items from 10 to 50 (with a longer 48-hour trade cooldown), and several limited-time events tied to the Devourer Season.

If you only have time to check out one new system today, make it Vanquisher's Trials — it's the deepest addition, and unlike the hero or weapon, it doesn't require owning anything to try.

02Kael: NARAKA's Newest (and Hungriest) Hero

Kael is the new hero added in this patch, introduced as a former disciple of the Herald whose soul has merged with Taotie, a beast tied to hunger and devouring. The official flavor text describes him as struggling to keep his own gluttony in check even as he throws himself into the fight to save the world — thematically, he's built around consuming and growing stronger off his enemies.

Here's the honest version: the November patch notes cover Kael's lore and his cosmetics (including an Extreme Outfit with a double-jump transformation between an "Entropy" and "Dreadshade" mode) in detail, but they don't publish his skill names, cooldowns, or exact numbers the way they do for returning heroes in the Hero Adjustments section. Don't take any specific ability breakdown you see elsewhere as official until it's confirmed in a patch note — treat early games with him as scouting. The best way to actually learn his kit right now is to watch his official cinematic and gameplay reveal below, then take him into a Custom Game before you queue Ranked or Trios with him.

Kael's official cinematic and gameplay reveal, published by NARAKA: BLADEPOINT on October 31, 2026.

03The Bident: NARAKA's First Water-Only Weapon

The other headline addition is the Bident, a new Wanchu-school weapon with a restriction NARAKA has never used before: it only works in water. According to the patch notes, legend holds that the Bident was forged by "merfolk" exiled to the Deep Ocean by the Herald, and it inherits the Herald's Prowess trait. Its spiral mechanism stirs up an undercurrent with every swing and thrust, conjuring swirling curtains of water that briefly trap and subdue enemies caught in them.

You can only obtain the Bident in Wanchu's Dark Pearl Abyss area, and it needs water flow to attack — step onto dry land and it stops functioning. That makes it a situational pick rather than a replacement for your main loadout: grab it when a fight is dragging through the Abyss's flooded rooms and you want a way to lock down an enemy mid-swim, then switch back once you're back on solid ground.

04Vanquisher's Trials: How the New Showdown Mode Works

Vanquisher's Trials is a new permanent-feeling Showdown PvE mode built around a "secret temple" hidden on The Morus Isle. The hook is that you can't bring your own weapons or souljades into it at all — every run uses preset heroes with a fixed Souljade and Potential loadout chosen for you, and each stage offers four heroes to pick from. It's less about your usual build and more about adapting to whatever the Trial hands you.

The mode has two difficulties, Nightscream and Legend, and each difficulty has the same three stages: Iron Sunder, Six Paths Trial, and Sandforge Tribulation. Legend difficulty doesn't unlock immediately — it opens one week after the event begins, and after that a new Legend-difficulty stage unlocks every seven days, so there's no way to rush straight to the hardest content on day one. NetEase hasn't published an explicit end date for the event itself in the patch notes, so treat it as ongoing until an official announcement says otherwise.

One mechanical quirk worth flagging before you queue: Trios mode does not automatically fill empty team slots in Vanquisher's Trials. If you queue solo for a Trios stage expecting the game to matchmake teammates for you, you'll likely be stuck short-handed — form a full team manually first.

How to Start Clearing Vanquisher's Trials

1. 1Log in after the November 5 maintenance window (23:00 UTC Nov 4 to 04:00 UTC Nov 5) and open the Showdown menu — Vanquisher's Trials appears as a new mode alongside the regular Showdown map.2 min
2. 2If you're attempting a Trios stage, invite two teammates before you queue. Vanquisher's Trials does not auto-fill empty squad slots the way normal matchmaking does.3 min
3. 3Queue the Nightscream difficulty before Legend — Legend doesn't unlock until one week after the event begins, so Nightscream is where every player starts.1 min
4. 4Each stage offers 4 preset heroes, each with a fixed Souljade and Potential loadout already assigned. Pick whichever hero's kit best matches how you like to fight — you can't bring your own weapons or Souljades in.2 min
5. 5Run the three Nightscream stages in order. Treat your first attempt at each as a scouting run to learn the arena hazards and enemy patterns before you push for a clean clear.20-40 min
6. 6Each stage has 4 Challenge quests worth 1 star each. Stars add up toward limited-time event rewards, so clear every Challenge quest you can on a run rather than just rushing the exit.varies
7. 7Once Legend difficulty opens, a new Legend stage unlocks every 7 days. Jump in during a stage's first week, when the completion-time leaderboard is freshest and least crowded.ongoing

05Best Souljades and Early Strategy for the Trials

Two brand-new Showdown Souljades launched alongside the mode, and both are worth understanding even though you won't get to choose your own loadout outside of specific preset stages:

• Defuse·Surge — increases Defuse (counterattack) damage, and boosts your Critical Rate for a set period after you land a successful Defuse. It rewards aggressive, well-timed counters over passive blocking.
• Critical Transmutation — reduces the effective Critical Rate cap you get from Souljade attributes, but converts the excess Critical Rate into Critical Damage instead. It's a build-around for setups that would otherwise overcap on crit chance and waste the extra percentage.

Since every Vanquisher's Trials stage locks you into a preset hero and Souljade, your actual "build" decision each run is which of the four offered heroes best matches your own playstyle — not which gear to buy. Treat your first clear of each stage on Nightscream as a scouting run: note which hero felt strongest, then requeue that stage specifically with that hero once you've seen the boss patterns and arena hazards once.

06Balance Changes and Ranking Overhaul You Shouldn't Skip

The new hero and mode are the headline, but the patch also reshuffles a few things that matter if you're jumping straight back into ranked play. Yueshan's Scorching Dash now lets him block all strike damage during the Rush and cuts enemy Attack by 20% for 6 seconds on a hit, but its damage multiplier drops from 1.0 to 0.7 — he trades raw damage for a much stronger engage tool. Kylin Zhang's Ultimate, Qilin Slash: Rend, got a survivability pass: the Health cost per slash drops from 300 to 250, Health Recovery on a single-target hit drops slightly from 150 to 125 (multi-target recovery falls from 350 to 300), and the Health threshold that triggers Qilin Guard rises from 300 to 450 — NetEase's own dev note frames this as keeping his slash count roughly the same while letting him stay healthier mid-Ultimate.

Underwater combat itself got a pass too, which lines up neatly with the Bident's arrival: Yoto Hime, Ye Xiu, Yueshan (in Almighty General form), and Inor Wan (in Thunder Lord form) all have improved hit-reaction effects on their underwater Horizontal and Vertical Strikes, and the Vajra, Bronze Mech, Xunhuan Li's Flying Knives Aim mode, and Cyra's Ultimate state can now jump repeatedly while submerged. There's also a new universal skill tag, Hard Control, which marks control effects (including Moonbane Control, Rising Tide, Enchant, Light's Mercy: Field, Fate Rewritten: Backtrack, and Maw of Ruin) as able to interrupt Ultimate Focus, the Bronze Mech, and the Vajra.

Outside of hero tuning, The Herald's Trial ranked ladder was restructured: the minimum rank score dropped from 1,000 to 0 points, with two new ranks below Bronze — Plain Stone (0–499) and Gray Lead (500–999) — to soften the climb for newer players. Quick Match and Ranked now share the same Rank Points pool, and Quick Match results can only add points (never deduct them) up to a 1,500-point cap, after which you'll need Ranked matches to keep climbing. If you've been avoiding Quick Match because it felt pointless for progression, it's now a genuinely safer way to bank the first chunk of a season's rank.

07Climbing the Legend Difficulty Leaderboard

Once Legend difficulty unlocks a week into the event, NARAKA tracks rankings by your best completion time on each stage, with separate leaderboards for solo and Trios play. After the event ends, the top 10, top 100, and top 500 players on each leaderboard receive limited-time title rewards — so if you're chasing a title, your fastest clean clear matters more than how many runs you grind out.

Because new Legend stages stagger in weekly, the smarter long-term approach is to lock in a strong time on each stage as soon as it unlocks rather than waiting — you're racing the clock against everyone else attempting that same stage in its first week, when crowds (and competition for a good leaderboard spot) are thinnest.