Well, it’s been a while hasn’t it.
This week I am taking a break from working on the PTR as I wanted to make something and see people actually use it, so a bunch of server side hotfixes have gone live but now we have our first client release in a long time.
EXP Loss
- Players now lose a minimum of 2.5% exp (for the current level) on death. Yes, even from monsters!
- The exception is if you are killed by a party member, then you lose nothing
- Arik in emberton has started selling Charms, necklaces that break on death but prevent the loss of exp
- Charm of Fate costs 10 gold and prevents 2.5% of exp loss (perfect if you don’t attack other players)
- Charm of Loss costs 50 gold and prevents 7.5% of exp loss (perfect if you do attack other players)
- Charm of War costs 100 gold and prevents 15% of exp loss (perfect if you really attack other players)
- TLDR; buy Charm of Fate for 10 gold and lose no EXP on death to monsters or if you are killed unjustly
Equipment
- All equipment (apart from rings and necklaces) now drops with a fixed amount of Stamina for it’s level in addition to primary and secondary stats.
- Stamina has been removed from the “random stat” pool for all items apart from rings and necklaces
- Defence is now doubled when it rolls on a drop
- Spirit is now doubled when it rolls on a drop
- Accuracy now always rolls with a fixed value of 5
- Empowered equipment no longer adds stats, but guarantees a max stat drop instead
- All equipment now drops with two bonus effects (crit, empowered, leech, etc)
- You cannot get the same effect twice on a single piece of gear
Potions
- Mana potions mana restoration has been massively increased
- The cost of mana potions has been brought in line with health potions
- Two new higher value health potions have been added
- One new higher value mana potion has been added
Gameplay
- You can now push players regardless of you or their combat status in PVE and PVP areas
- The high damage traps leading to the chaos gates have been changed to be low damage traps instead
- PVP damage has been increased by 10% for all players over level 50 (given and received)
- PVP damage has been decreased by 15% for all players under level 50 (given and received)
- You will now block magical attacks and spells from monsters, making block % now a very strong PVE stat
- You will not lose any exp and your charms will not break should you die during a server shutdown
- You will not lose any exp and your charms will not break should you die during the first 5 minutes of a server restart
- Monsters no longer respawn in combat range of players
Fixes
- You no longer miss with 100% accuracy
- Various UIs have been altered so the item details scroll if there are too many stats on the item for the size of your screen
- Pushing mechanics should now work reliably
So…
I set out to see if I could check out the version of the server code that was currently live and apply some minimum impact hotfixes to ease the issues people were having with blocking each other and trap abuse, and things sort of spiralled from there. It is going to take a while for everyone to adapt to the EXP loss, but I am confident that with the potion costs reduced the 2.5% charm is cheap enough that people who just want to PVE without losing exp will be able to afford to do so. In a way I think this is actually even better, as now if you get killed unjustly wearing a charm you still don’t lose any exp!
I also think the 50 gold charm is going to allow players in wars to engage each other in combat more readily, as the second tier of charm for 7.5% at 50 gold will result in you losing no experience on death even with a white or yellow skull. The third tier of charm at 15% will even let red skulls fight risk free, however that is a steep cost at 100 gold. Perhaps players will use this if they still want to exp with red skulls, we will see I suppose 🙂
I did not intend to make so many changes this week, but I needed a distraction from the never ending PTR work and it has been far too long since adjustments on live. I would like to add a large arena island with no death penalties next week, and look at bringing elite monster spawns back to add a bit of random spice to the PVE experience.
All the best,
Fhox