We are almost through week one of preseason! Competition has been fierce, and the fight to open the league in Megalixir is already poised to be a heroic struggle over the next few weeks. Don’t be surprised if a matter of seconds ends up being the difference between tiers.
I’m also thrilled (and honestly a bit shocked) to announce that we appear to have reached the 50 entrant threshold! Interest in Ultros League has blown past expectations, and I’m hopeful that it will continue to grow as we move into regular season play.
One thing that won’t survive the league’s growth? The original league structure. While originally it looked like adding a fifth Dried Meat division would be enough to sustain the league size, we’ve continued to grow since then and that short-term solution is no longer going to work. Fortunately, outgrowing the original league plan is a great problem to have, and one that already has a solution.
I’m excited to announce that once preseason has ended, Ultros League will be launched with a four tier structure comprised once again of the Megalixir, Elixir, Potion, and Tonic tiers (RIP Dried Meat, we hardly knew ye). However, the tiers below Megalixir will now feature multiple divisions within each tier. This means that once preseason is over, players in Elixir, Potion, and Tonic tiers will be randomly assigned to one of several divisions in that tier. Note that Megalixir tier will always be comprised of one single division.
Divisions within the same tier are considered equal – Elixir A is no higher or lower than Elixir B. Each season, all players in each tier are randomly shuffled into one of the divisions in that tier; you might be in Tonic A this season and then Tonic C the next, or if you earned promotion from Tonic last season, you could end up starting the next season in either Potion A or Potion B.
Every week, each division will be racing their own unique seed, so if you’re in Potion A and haven’t done your race for the week yet, you can still freely watch races from Potion B (or any other division in the league).
Promotion and demotion still work the same way. At the end of each season, the top 2 players in each division get promoted to one of the divisions in the next highest tier for the following season, and the bottom 2 or more players in each division are vulnerable to be demoted to the next lowest tier. This has an even bigger impact for Megalixir, where the bottom half of the division are always in jeopardy of demotion. Megalixir racers will have to be at the top of their game to maintain their place at the top of the league!
With this structure, the climb to the top is still attainable. Adding more lower tiers would have made the climb from the bottom to Megalixir seem impossible (and time-consuming), while continuing to increase the size of the existing divisions would make progression similarly frustrating. Another benefit of the multiple divisions format is that even if you don’t get promoted or demoted and stay in the same division, you’ll see some new faces each season, so you’ll always have new competition and new opportunities to rise above the pack.
The Info and Rules page has been updated with the current structure details, as well as some new FAQ answers at the bottom, so please read through that page if you’d like to learn more. While number and size of divisions will change as the league size evolves, this growth has been fully planned out and charted, and the 4 tier system is expected to be sustainable well into the 100+ participant future, so no further changes to the league structure are planned at this time.
As always, please reach out directly or on the #ultros-league Discord channel if you have any questions. Thanks for reading, keep spreading the word about the league, and good luck to everyone throughout the rest of the preseason!