March 27, 2023

Monday, March 27th Updates

News, News, News! Come hear all about it!

Haii Everyone! With so many players on so many different platforms, the team and I found that our information had become really scattered over the last few years. Last month, we began these "round-up" Design Notes posts to make sure everyone has access to all of the same info, no matter which platform you use! Read on to see what changed recently.

Recent Bug Fixes

The following issues should have been addressed with today's restart:

• Quests requiring Tendurrr The Assistant as a turn in requirement has been adjusted to just require owning him instead.
  • Assisting Oblivion Blade, Assisting Crag and Bamboozle, Assisting Drudgen, The Game of Gemstones, Nulgath's Messenger, Kiss the Void
• Hollowborn Reaper's Scythe - Now requires Death's Scythe instead of Incarnation of Glitches Scythe.
• Hollowborn Reaper's Daggers - No longer requires Incarnation of Glitches Scythe to merge.
• Hollowborn Reaper's Karma  - No longer requires Incarnation of Glitches Scythe to merge.
• Hollowborn Reaper's Karmas - No longer requires Incarnation of Glitches Scythe to merge.

The First Speaker Updates

The First Speaker is hard. Like, really hard. We’re listening and have heard your praises, complaints, strategizing, and victories. This level of difficulty will remain a one-off, and future bosses won’t be at this level for a very long time. A multi-year saga ending boss that shows that you’ve really conquered the game. 

We spend a lot of time with these bosses in development. Testing different solutions, approaches, and thinking about how different types of players would approach them. Here’s a quick glimpse into some of the questions we try to answer when putting together these fights:

These questions must be positive before a boss can release. We work with many limitations, like system performance and lag, and we do think about them- such as making all bosses have static rotations and allowing at least two seconds to respond to most important mechanics.

• Can you beat it in a party of f2p friendly classes?
• Is the boss unengaging, uninteractive, or unfun?

These questions have strong determinants on difficulty and are generally answered positively before release.

• Can you beat it in a party of 3?
• Are there at least 4 unique class combinations that can beat it?
• Is the difficulty due to execution, gearing, or both?
• Is it possible to beat in a public party? (only ingame chat, people you haven’t played with before)
• Can you beat it without potions or boost weapons?

But sometimes, things still go unseen. Over the weekend, several new tactics and solutions were discovered using unintended interactions that made the fight easier than intended. Because many of you really enjoyed the level of difficulty and accomplishment that came with this, we’ve decided to address those by keeping the boss difficult (but speeding it up a bit), without affecting how most strategies work. As well, we’ve made the rewards faster to obtain and stronger.

The First Speaker boss updated:

• The First Speaker will return to position upon Power Split
• Healing reduced by 25%
• Scintillation defense buff reduced (100% -> 75%)
• Magia Burn magic vulnerability per stack increase (100 -> 300%), duration increased (16 -> 18)
• Sanctity duration reduced, and Equalizer will kill you if you have it and are hit

These changes make the fight faster, and prevent a few unintended interactions. It won’t affect most strategies outside of speeding up the fight.

Vohu's reward shop prices changed:

• Goddess of War damage bonuses increased (40% -> 50%)*
• Goddess of War no longer requires Insignia (5 -> 0), but now requires additional components
• War Blade of Power, Speed, Strength, Wisdom, and Courage Insignia price reduced (10 -> 7), but now requires additional components
• Malgor ShadowFlame Blade Insignia cost reduced (25 -> 20)

*Further update: Based on feedback, the merged armor will remain 40% to races, and instead, a quest will become available later this week to upgrade it to 50% and more rep and class rep boost.

These changes make the rewards stronger and require less boss kills to obtain, while increasing farming time spent outside the boss in return for the power.

Bugs Note from Cemaros

While optimizing inventory flow, there was an error resulting in the buyback shop in the Account manager not showing some items. This issue has now been resolved.