Game updates/2015-03-03

March 3rd Update

- Fixed Raven flight in Eltibule

- Oritania now responds to the quest from Larsan

- Fixed character display during login/character creation

- The Flower Child did not actually have Elite health stats (but did have elite treasure). The stats have been corrected

- Corrected the loot drops on Crazed Cultist Idiots in the Gulagra key dungeon

- Larsan now also buys gems and crystals (in addition to jewelry)

- Particles on monsters will now die out when the monster dies

- Reduced the density of the "on fire" effect by about half. Removed the light source, which could cause lag

- Revised monster density a bit in Dark Chapel dungeon based on feedback

Boss/Elite Treasure Rarity Revision

Previously, every boss/elite monster had a custom-configured chance to drop different rarity-levels of loot. For instance, one boss might have a 60% chance to drop at least Rare items and a 10% chance to drop Epic items, while some other boss might have a 20% chance to drop Rare and a 40% chance to drop Epic, etc. Because this was done by hand for each monster, there were some data-entry errors, and a few bosses with very weird probabilities. I've switched them to use a uniform system for each boss/elite.

Most bosses have noticeably better chances of Rare+ loot. A few have dramatically better chances (like Crazy Terry) and a few have noticeably worse chances (like Timothy Elerimon, who had an erroneously high chance for Legendary loot).

You can get all the details in the News section of the forums, where I'll break down all the new percentages. (This is useful info so you can give better feedback about how it's working, but it's not stuff the average player should need to care about.)

The Forum post in question

This will be a bunch mind-numbing implementation details about the monster loot rarity changes. I obviously don't want the "average player" to care about this level of detail, but during alpha I want to give as much info as possible so that you can help give better feedback.

As a baseline, every elite monster will have the following stats

a 5% chance to drop Epic items

a 30% chance to drop Rare items

a 100% chance to drop Uncommon items

Some elites (the tougher ones) have higher stats

a 5% chance to drop Legendary items

a 10% chance to drop Epic items

a 40% chance to drop Rare items

a 100% chance to drop Uncommon items

Typical bosses have these stats

a 10% chance to drop Legendary

a 20% chance to drop Epic

a 60% chance to drop Rare

a 100% chance to drop Uncommon

"Final Bosses" have these stats

a 10% chance to drop Legendary

a 25% chance to drop Epic

a 70% chance to drop Rare

a 100% chance to drop Uncommon

Note that each rarity is rolled separately. It rolls dice for Legendary, then dice for Epic, then Rare, then Uncommon, until it successfully picks one. (That's why the percentages add up to more than 100%.) The "100% chance to drop Uncommon" just means they will always drop at least Uncommon equipment -- never non-magical equipment.

Also note that these chances are bonuses on top of the "normal" rarity chances. Non-elite/boss monsters use a different system (with only one die-roll), but it boils down to about a 25% chance for Uncommon, a 9% chance for Rare, a 2% chance for Epic, and a 0.6% chance for Legendary. Crafted items have slightly better chances across the board, and 100% chance of at least Uncommon rarity. (All of these numbers are unchanged from before.)

Certain equipped items can also raise the chances of Uncommon or Rare loot.

The basic reasoning behind making these all the same is that it doesn't really add anything for them to each have custom values. It's not the sort of complexity that adds fun to the game -- it's too subtle, too fiddly.

Of course, monster loot is still far from uniform overall! Each monster still has their own custom loot tables (sometimes sharing parts with other monsters) and many have unique drops. That's "fun complexity", complexity that players can learn and use to their advantage!