It's that time of year that Trex makes another thread titled 'Grinding Sucks'.
To preface this, I want to say that the numerous changes have roughly balanced each other out, edging more toward the negative. Repeatedly having things made more tedious and efficient setups gutted has been a constant toll upon me and many others. While I am thankful for what QoL we have received forcing players to spend more time in the grind loop does not make for engaging RP.
Some players enjoy this, and that's fine. The option should exist to not force everyone into dungeons to attain progress, so the monster farming enjoyers still have their fun and those who'd rather not their career be backed off how many Firespitters they killed can ascend via other methods.
I'll be breaking this up into the following sections:
1. Reflecting on the last thread (Grinding Sucks 3) and what if anything was addressed.
2. The remaining issues and how they could be handled.
3. Balance changes (primarily in relation to their impact on PvE).
How Far We've Come -
Lets look at the most recent thread I made in this series 5 months ago here. Pretty short compared to its prequel. It really only focused on the issue of how quickly dungeons were choked out of spawns, and that was actually addressed in some manner! We got faster monster respawns.
What wasn't addressed was the item pool. That problem was only made worse. We got way more items added into an already bloated drop table that everything in the game shares. No new Ancient Charges have been added since to make getting anything else easier albeit in a slightly nerfed form. Poultry and beef are still only found in chests. Lava Lake got made far more tedious to clear. I'm still competing with people farming Dark Shards to get any EXP in Sea of Clouds.
Now lets dial it back to the earlier thread dating back to around this time last year, Grinding Sucks 2. Did we fix anything since then?
Issues noted:
1. " high level players to be farming content far beneath them and depriving lower level players the means by which to progress" - Still a problem. We got a few more dungeons as a band-aid and faster spawns, but with Lava Lake far less newbie friendly an unskilled player is going to be seeing the vets swiping their more feasibly farmed content out from under their noses for the sake of grind speed to fuel their dark shard supply.
2. " The vast majority of items come from the global drop pool, with a very small number made craftable. Not a single non-puzzle item added post Korvara (2022 Q2) has been made craftable." - Still a problem. Sort of. I say 'sort of' because of Ancient Charges, they fix the issue but not really? You get worse versions of rarer items to make the normal version still feel good to get, though people will still feel compelled to hunt down the non-ancient version of items affected by the negative quality, and there isn't Ancient Charges for everything.
Three years and we haven't even gotten our hand-slot item crafting book from G6 back. Did you know Green Gloves are craftable? On G6. I think someone just has to remind Dev to add that book somewhere in Korvara, I think he legitimately forgot. Otherwise it's pretty bleak that we've got MORE items and still not a single Korvara item has been given a recipe while the global drop pool only gets worse.
Very similar to the most recent thread it seems. Global drop pool still sucks and newbies trying to crawl their way through content are going to suffer all the same if they aren't guided by a more experienced player.
The Problems and How to Fix Them -
We'll start with the two clearly highlighted from my prior threads that haven't had a satisfying solution yet.
1. High level players want to farm the same content that lower level players do, as it's required for them to do the higher level content (dark amplifier).
2. The global drop pool is only getting worse and we've only gotten band-aid solutions for a handful of the items in it.
Now how do we fix these? There's a lot of options and it entirely depends on the direction Dev wants to take the game in.
For 1, we've seen a few more sources of Dark Shards crop up such as the Duyuei Wall Raid Crescendo Phase fights, though for the amount of effort required to clear combined with the massive inconvenience that's yet to be addressed at all with the wild times the raid can start at, I can't really consider that a solution at all. What we need is places like Minotaur Labyrinth to yield Dark Shards at a higher rate, or bosses like Radigal, Medis, and Relei to drop them as well to encourage clearing those fights and rewarding higher level players for their effort. So they feel less compelled to wipe out the Sea of Clouds hourly if harder bosses yielded say, at least 6~ dark shards per kill per player. That's one T3 Dark Amp run per person.
How it's actually addressed is not in my hands, I can only point desperately in the direction I'd prefer. What we need is more incentive to run harder content that isn't solely the Dark Amplifier fights, since those require you to run other content to sustain, meaning those higher level players are having to wipe out dungeons lower level players would've otherwise used to progress.
For 2, it's really as simple as making more crafting recipes or Ancient Charges if Dev is committed to only giving players access to slightly worse weapons/armor rather than giving us the means to craft the normal item again. With how build defining some items are it's hard to have a comfortable in between when you envision your character around something like say, the new Shotgun Tonfa. People like to design their characters with a specific load out in mind, and make a basic grind setup for until they get there. Normally in this time period they aren't inclined to roleplay much if at all. This of course is not everyone but the mechanics as they stand are not very conductive to roleplay. Perhaps you wanted your character to have learned to fight from some sort of military school? Why would they start at Level 1 and only get stronger by watching you slaughter jammers? That's why people don't always want to have their grinding journey be an entirely IC affair, as the levelling system is not one that is IC. People do not look at you and go 'Ah, you are Level 60, just like me' ICly. At least I certainly hope they don't.
I think items could still be made plenty difficult/time consuming to acquire but in a way that encourages an actual economy and trade/interaction between players in having recipes that require certain rare but consistently sourced drops (like say Purging Flames for example). The drops as they are only encourage people to exclusively trade amongst their friends as it's increasingly unlikely they'll ever see certain rare drops more than once in their time playing the game.
Now this leads me into the last issue I'll directly address:
3. The game doesn't know what it wants to be. It tries to be an MMORPG and a roleplaying game. The mechanics are designed in a way so as to be very awkward to acknowledge without translation ICly. Are you really just casually slitting people's throats in spars? Is all poultry and beef exclusively sourced from chests? Is it really more efficient to let the Wall be destroyed so we can harvest it for its Boulders?
The 'Always IC' nature of Korvara has only made this more confusing. The line is blurred and the mechanics only get harder to work smoothly into most roleplay. There is not much for people who aren't fans of fighting monsters to dig their teeth into if they want a mechanical representation of their IC. We've yet to get anything like the Clinic or Water Sourcing of G6 to provide non-mechanical combat options for some form of progression for characters mechanically.
We've seen the start of such systems vaguely in the Wall Raid for Duyuei and I'd hope to see something given to each nation down the line to encourage activity and provide a means to represent growth/an alternative avenue to progressing one's character mechanically outside spamming dungeons/dummies.
The Balance -
We ate a veritable wall of nerfs with the advent of the second Diastrophism. I'll go through and comment on each change.
Solblader warranted this one. I haven't seen too much of it in action to note how badly this lowers its damage output but boy could Speed of Light Solbladers erase people. Hurts DH more than it does Solblader unfortunately.
Minor but still sad to see. Not sure what warranted hitting this.
Warranted change, Purity Edge was not designed with Curate having a promo that actually wanted to basic attack, though it is a tough pill to swallow combined with so many other nerfs. Could've at least been altered to be a lower SP investment.
Good change, now at least Dark Bards don't int themselves with their moshes.
Viper Wrap - yes, was too easy to apply for how much it hindered evade builds.
Wolf Howl - Feels bad but I understand why it was done, losing AoE potential really hurts for PvE where crit builds already suffer.
Grand Summoner found dead in Miami. It dared to hope and was shot in the head. Because of the new race Judgement Blade ate dirt and is now less effective overall. Making for even less reason to ever touch the class over superior alternatives.
I find it odd that we're only slowly removing sub 3m turning options and leaving a handful open. Was this really a problem?
Warranted. With the increase in flat damage percent amplifiers and Divine Eyes becoming free with the new trait that makes it impossible to fail due to latency, this became a 30%+ if not higher execute on most players. Still not really a fun change for anyone and I'd have preferred it only lose potency versus players but c'est la vie.
Omina is Saved. Seriously though this feels like a weird buff to give. It's so minor. I won't complain about them finally getting something but most of the time they're never even going to notice this.
Oracle is Dead. Percentages were and are a blight upon the balance especially in the realm of Hit and Evade and I think this was the last one? I'm surprised it lived as long as it did, though it was on the understanding that Oracles were only gods in melee range, and ate shit outside of that. Losing 15~ Hit/Evade coupled with all the other various nerfs hurts a lot.
At least unlike Purity Edge Void Assassin got some clemency. -15% though? Why? Were daggers really that much of a problem? Ever since the prime offenders got gutted they've been outperformed by other builds.
Not really sure what being Small confers but Bakaga deserved it. It was really just a 'win harder' tool, though it sucks for PvE in that now it's even harder to reliably evade. Why not just make it more effective versus monsters?
Spiked Axehead's nerf is iffy, combined with making crit even more miserable across the board.
Only really hurts the builds that were already struggling. Most axe builds will still punch through dodgies, and now daggers will cease to even hit people let alone damage them with their lowered damage ceiling.
I am sensing some disdain for crit builds in these changes. While potent in PvP at exploding people if RNG likes them, they're highly susceptible to being hard countered be it by crit evade, Tetraite, or evade in general if they're not built well enough for Hit for one reason or another. Now even less crit builds can function.
Very few builds really abused double dipping on dual weapon type BW reductions. Basically just Howling Handshot. Less free to slap on Boulder Wood I guess.
Not sure why Axes needed to get slapped on such a minor bonus. They already lost 5% from their weapon part.
I'll list out what all these adjustments actually are.
Firefoxes now have Elemental Augment and prefer to use their enchant on other allies.
Forgeries now have Sound Wave
Firespitters no longer use Self-Detonate at 100% HP.
Firebody (the old passive that gave them fire absorb/water weak) is now just 10% Fire Penetration for the mob in question.
All mobs have slightly higher stats in general.
(Stat Changes @ Level 80 -)
Lava Slime now has Fire Reflect.
All these changes are purely to make Lava Lake more tedious without any adjustment whatsoever to the rewards. I still use the same build there just fine, for now. It sucks for anyone who tried to do something else in Lava Lake. Since Forgeries found God and gained 100+ Crit Evade so good luck anyone trying to run a crit build through there on top of all the nerfs you already got.
I get wanting to make Lava Lake more in line with other 60-80 dungeons. It's just painful to time and time again have the ladder pulled up when it comes to the grinding experience. It should feel better as updates seek to improve the player experience, not actively punish us and make already existing content worse with nothing to compensate for it.
1. Cool, this is a nice QoL change I appreciate.
2. Good change so you aren't shit out of luck for not being a strength having character.
3. Best change in this entire update. I've been asking for this for ages and we finally got it. Thank you, Dev. Please do more things like this.
4. Good change, as stated by the man himself, this was a newbie killer and not really fun.
5. Contentious. I get why, and it's nice to not feel obligated to dart into the Wastes on every new make. It was a band-aid solution to how terrible the level 1-10~ grind is with how poorly the game is balanced in that level range. Some setups do fine whilst others will die every other encounter is not fail to even clear a single one at level. This problem may be addressed in the future with changes to the Tutorial/potentially letting characters start the game at at least level 5.
This isn't getting into any of the new items, materials and such that we got with this update. I am glad we got more catalysts as that helps alleviate some of the problems pertinent to the grind. Witchi can finally get her Solid Terrasque Shell.
In Conclusion -
This update was a step forward and several steps back. A long standing issue with monster spawn times was addressed at the cost of one of the most comfortable means by which to level characters, be it with an optimal setup or a sub-optimal solo experience. Now we have Forgeries reflecting Yeti Claps and Firespitters smart enough to not kill themselves because you dropped a bot in front of it.
Not to mention how many builds were completely destroyed by the combination of Critical and Flanking nerfs that occurred.
Old builds die and new builds sometimes manage to reclaim the glory once had. It's especially painful when you bare in mind these 'builds' are characters. It isn't always feasible to rebuild when you cannot change your race, in the case of the Oracle nerf, there's no getting back that 15 Hit/Evade. You are now objectively worse as the game around you only continues to grow in overall power. Falling behind is a death sentence, and often times this means characters being shelved as a result of particularly heavy nerfs if they cannot be salvaged by swapping around items/classes.
All the new toys are nice and I'm happy to have more options, and I am very much appreciative of all the work Dev has done on the game to make all of this function. I only hope that less setups need to be taken out back and shot. There should be more focus on introducing new avenues to build characters or uplifting under performing builds than stripping away existing ones. Only extreme outliers (like old Hayabusa) should be actively adjusted.
Content like the Dark Amplifier fights are a step in the right direction to improving the grind experience though could still afford some polish, and potentially options down the line for characters to progress without being forced to run dungeons to better fit their IC.
To preface this, I want to say that the numerous changes have roughly balanced each other out, edging more toward the negative. Repeatedly having things made more tedious and efficient setups gutted has been a constant toll upon me and many others. While I am thankful for what QoL we have received forcing players to spend more time in the grind loop does not make for engaging RP.
Some players enjoy this, and that's fine. The option should exist to not force everyone into dungeons to attain progress, so the monster farming enjoyers still have their fun and those who'd rather not their career be backed off how many Firespitters they killed can ascend via other methods.
I'll be breaking this up into the following sections:
1. Reflecting on the last thread (Grinding Sucks 3) and what if anything was addressed.
2. The remaining issues and how they could be handled.
3. Balance changes (primarily in relation to their impact on PvE).
How Far We've Come -
Lets look at the most recent thread I made in this series 5 months ago here. Pretty short compared to its prequel. It really only focused on the issue of how quickly dungeons were choked out of spawns, and that was actually addressed in some manner! We got faster monster respawns.
What wasn't addressed was the item pool. That problem was only made worse. We got way more items added into an already bloated drop table that everything in the game shares. No new Ancient Charges have been added since to make getting anything else easier albeit in a slightly nerfed form. Poultry and beef are still only found in chests. Lava Lake got made far more tedious to clear. I'm still competing with people farming Dark Shards to get any EXP in Sea of Clouds.
Now lets dial it back to the earlier thread dating back to around this time last year, Grinding Sucks 2. Did we fix anything since then?
Issues noted:
1. " high level players to be farming content far beneath them and depriving lower level players the means by which to progress" - Still a problem. We got a few more dungeons as a band-aid and faster spawns, but with Lava Lake far less newbie friendly an unskilled player is going to be seeing the vets swiping their more feasibly farmed content out from under their noses for the sake of grind speed to fuel their dark shard supply.
2. " The vast majority of items come from the global drop pool, with a very small number made craftable. Not a single non-puzzle item added post Korvara (2022 Q2) has been made craftable." - Still a problem. Sort of. I say 'sort of' because of Ancient Charges, they fix the issue but not really? You get worse versions of rarer items to make the normal version still feel good to get, though people will still feel compelled to hunt down the non-ancient version of items affected by the negative quality, and there isn't Ancient Charges for everything.
Three years and we haven't even gotten our hand-slot item crafting book from G6 back. Did you know Green Gloves are craftable? On G6. I think someone just has to remind Dev to add that book somewhere in Korvara, I think he legitimately forgot. Otherwise it's pretty bleak that we've got MORE items and still not a single Korvara item has been given a recipe while the global drop pool only gets worse.
Very similar to the most recent thread it seems. Global drop pool still sucks and newbies trying to crawl their way through content are going to suffer all the same if they aren't guided by a more experienced player.
The Problems and How to Fix Them -
We'll start with the two clearly highlighted from my prior threads that haven't had a satisfying solution yet.
1. High level players want to farm the same content that lower level players do, as it's required for them to do the higher level content (dark amplifier).
2. The global drop pool is only getting worse and we've only gotten band-aid solutions for a handful of the items in it.
Now how do we fix these? There's a lot of options and it entirely depends on the direction Dev wants to take the game in.
For 1, we've seen a few more sources of Dark Shards crop up such as the Duyuei Wall Raid Crescendo Phase fights, though for the amount of effort required to clear combined with the massive inconvenience that's yet to be addressed at all with the wild times the raid can start at, I can't really consider that a solution at all. What we need is places like Minotaur Labyrinth to yield Dark Shards at a higher rate, or bosses like Radigal, Medis, and Relei to drop them as well to encourage clearing those fights and rewarding higher level players for their effort. So they feel less compelled to wipe out the Sea of Clouds hourly if harder bosses yielded say, at least 6~ dark shards per kill per player. That's one T3 Dark Amp run per person.
How it's actually addressed is not in my hands, I can only point desperately in the direction I'd prefer. What we need is more incentive to run harder content that isn't solely the Dark Amplifier fights, since those require you to run other content to sustain, meaning those higher level players are having to wipe out dungeons lower level players would've otherwise used to progress.
For 2, it's really as simple as making more crafting recipes or Ancient Charges if Dev is committed to only giving players access to slightly worse weapons/armor rather than giving us the means to craft the normal item again. With how build defining some items are it's hard to have a comfortable in between when you envision your character around something like say, the new Shotgun Tonfa. People like to design their characters with a specific load out in mind, and make a basic grind setup for until they get there. Normally in this time period they aren't inclined to roleplay much if at all. This of course is not everyone but the mechanics as they stand are not very conductive to roleplay. Perhaps you wanted your character to have learned to fight from some sort of military school? Why would they start at Level 1 and only get stronger by watching you slaughter jammers? That's why people don't always want to have their grinding journey be an entirely IC affair, as the levelling system is not one that is IC. People do not look at you and go 'Ah, you are Level 60, just like me' ICly. At least I certainly hope they don't.
I think items could still be made plenty difficult/time consuming to acquire but in a way that encourages an actual economy and trade/interaction between players in having recipes that require certain rare but consistently sourced drops (like say Purging Flames for example). The drops as they are only encourage people to exclusively trade amongst their friends as it's increasingly unlikely they'll ever see certain rare drops more than once in their time playing the game.
Now this leads me into the last issue I'll directly address:
3. The game doesn't know what it wants to be. It tries to be an MMORPG and a roleplaying game. The mechanics are designed in a way so as to be very awkward to acknowledge without translation ICly. Are you really just casually slitting people's throats in spars? Is all poultry and beef exclusively sourced from chests? Is it really more efficient to let the Wall be destroyed so we can harvest it for its Boulders?
The 'Always IC' nature of Korvara has only made this more confusing. The line is blurred and the mechanics only get harder to work smoothly into most roleplay. There is not much for people who aren't fans of fighting monsters to dig their teeth into if they want a mechanical representation of their IC. We've yet to get anything like the Clinic or Water Sourcing of G6 to provide non-mechanical combat options for some form of progression for characters mechanically.
We've seen the start of such systems vaguely in the Wall Raid for Duyuei and I'd hope to see something given to each nation down the line to encourage activity and provide a means to represent growth/an alternative avenue to progressing one's character mechanically outside spamming dungeons/dummies.
The Balance -
We ate a veritable wall of nerfs with the advent of the second Diastrophism. I'll go through and comment on each change.
Quote:Multiple Classes
- Combination Fighter's damage scaling reduction now applies near the end of the damage calculation (instead of being an amplification multiplier). This means that it will more effectively reduce damage dealt.
Solblader warranted this one. I haven't seen too much of it in action to note how badly this lowers its damage output but boy could Speed of Light Solbladers erase people. Hurts DH more than it does Solblader unfortunately.
Quote:Boxer
- Asura Fist; Dark Scaling reduced to 100% + 10% per Rank (from 120% + 10% per Rank). Travel Range increased by 1.
Minor but still sad to see. Not sure what warranted hitting this.
Quote:Curate
- Purity Edge now gives +1 Power/Hit/Crit per Rank (from +1/+3/+3).
Warranted change, Purity Edge was not designed with Curate having a promo that actually wanted to basic attack, though it is a tough pill to swallow combined with so many other nerfs. Could've at least been altered to be a lower SP investment.
Quote:Dark Bard
- Shadow Mosh no longer give bonus momentum if an enemy was also targeted by the attack that destroyed it.
Good change, now at least Dark Bards don't int themselves with their moshes.
Quote:Druid
- Viper Wrap; Evade reduction changed to LV x 3 (from LV x 5).
- Wolf Howl; Can no longer critically hit, fixed a bug where the Call version could get higher pattern size if Druid was Invigorated.
Viper Wrap - yes, was too easy to apply for how much it hindered evade builds.
Wolf Howl - Feels bad but I understand why it was done, losing AoE potential really hurts for PvE where crit builds already suffer.
Quote:Grand Summoner
- Judgment Blade; Effect adjusted. Damage is now +Rank x 5% if the target is treated as a youkai, and additionally +Rank x 5% if the target is a summoned unit. (Independent conditions, stacks additively.)
Grand Summoner found dead in Miami. It dared to hope and was shot in the head. Because of the new race Judgement Blade ate dirt and is now less effective overall. Making for even less reason to ever touch the class over superior alternatives.
Quote:Heron
- Ancient Song can no longer be turned if Momentum used is less than 3.
I find it odd that we're only slowly removing sub 3m turning options and leaving a handful open. Was this really a problem?
Quote:Human
- Divine Eyes; Damage is now equal to level x 4 (from level x 5).
Warranted. With the increase in flat damage percent amplifiers and Divine Eyes becoming free with the new trait that makes it impossible to fail due to latency, this became a 30%+ if not higher execute on most players. Still not really a fun change for anyone and I'd have preferred it only lose potency versus players but c'est la vie.
Quote:Omina
- Racial skill now also reduces attackers' Hit, Evade, and Infliction by 3 when attacking the Omina.
Omina is Saved. Seriously though this feels like a weird buff to give. It's so minor. I won't complain about them finally getting something but most of the time they're never even going to notice this.
Quote:Oracle
- Modifications to Evade and Hit are no longer percentages but a flat +10/-10 (-1 per 10 Scaled SAN). Range at which Hit penalty starts increased to 2 (from 1).
Oracle is Dead. Percentages were and are a blight upon the balance especially in the realm of Hit and Evade and I think this was the last one? I'm surprised it lived as long as it did, though it was on the understanding that Oracles were only gods in melee range, and ate shit outside of that. Losing 15~ Hit/Evade coupled with all the other various nerfs hurts a lot.
Quote:Void Assassin
- Deadly Arms lowered to 1 Rank and gives +10% Critical Damage (from 5 Ranks and +5% per Rank).
At least unlike Purity Edge Void Assassin got some clemency. -15% though? Why? Were daggers really that much of a problem? Ever since the prime offenders got gutted they've been outperformed by other builds.
Quote:Items
- Daggers are now Small weapons.
- Bakaga Shuriken's Smokescreen LV reduced to 10 (from 30).
- Spiked Axehead Crit Damage lowered to 5% from 10%.
Not really sure what being Small confers but Bakaga deserved it. It was really just a 'win harder' tool, though it sucks for PvE in that now it's even harder to reliably evade. Why not just make it more effective versus monsters?
Spiked Axehead's nerf is iffy, combined with making crit even more miserable across the board.
Quote:Battle Mechanics
- Flanking base changed to 5 (from 10), and Flanking per GUI reduced to 0.5 (from 1).
- Hit chance after all calculations is now capped at 5% minimum.
Only really hurts the builds that were already struggling. Most axe builds will still punch through dodgies, and now daggers will cease to even hit people let alone damage them with their lowered damage ceiling.
Quote:Talents
- Effects from Weaponry talents that reduce Battle Weight now only apply to the highest applicable value (IE, they do not stack for weapons with multiple types).
- Axe Mastery's Deadliness Critical Damage reduced to SR x 0.5% (from 1%).
I am sensing some disdain for crit builds in these changes. While potent in PvP at exploding people if RNG likes them, they're highly susceptible to being hard countered be it by crit evade, Tetraite, or evade in general if they're not built well enough for Hit for one reason or another. Now even less crit builds can function.
Very few builds really abused double dipping on dual weapon type BW reductions. Basically just Howling Handshot. Less free to slap on Boulder Wood I guess.
Not sure why Axes needed to get slapped on such a minor bonus. They already lost 5% from their weapon part.
Quote:Monsters
- Wounded monsters can now find you even while you're Sneaking. The distance they can do so increases the lower their HP is.
- Lava Lake enemies have received some adjustments.
I'll list out what all these adjustments actually are.
Firefoxes now have Elemental Augment and prefer to use their enchant on other allies.
Forgeries now have Sound Wave
Firespitters no longer use Self-Detonate at 100% HP.
Firebody (the old passive that gave them fire absorb/water weak) is now just 10% Fire Penetration for the mob in question.
All mobs have slightly higher stats in general.
(Stat Changes @ Level 80 -)
Lava Slime now has Fire Reflect.
All these changes are purely to make Lava Lake more tedious without any adjustment whatsoever to the rewards. I still use the same build there just fine, for now. It sucks for anyone who tried to do something else in Lava Lake. Since Forgeries found God and gained 100+ Crit Evade so good luck anyone trying to run a crit build through there on top of all the nerfs you already got.
I get wanting to make Lava Lake more in line with other 60-80 dungeons. It's just painful to time and time again have the ladder pulled up when it comes to the grinding experience. It should feel better as updates seek to improve the player experience, not actively punish us and make already existing content worse with nothing to compensate for it.
Quote:ETC
- You can now change classes while inside of a dungeon.
- Struggle now reduces affected status effects by half of your level + your total STR (this is the skill given when Frozen).
- Respawn rate for monsters in all Korvara dungeons is increased (similar to Deep Abyss Cavern).
- Untreated Fracture wounds now decrease CEL instead of Move.
- Deep Wastes One-Time-Chest can no longer spawn for characters below level 55.
1. Cool, this is a nice QoL change I appreciate.
2. Good change so you aren't shit out of luck for not being a strength having character.
3. Best change in this entire update. I've been asking for this for ages and we finally got it. Thank you, Dev. Please do more things like this.
4. Good change, as stated by the man himself, this was a newbie killer and not really fun.
5. Contentious. I get why, and it's nice to not feel obligated to dart into the Wastes on every new make. It was a band-aid solution to how terrible the level 1-10~ grind is with how poorly the game is balanced in that level range. Some setups do fine whilst others will die every other encounter is not fail to even clear a single one at level. This problem may be addressed in the future with changes to the Tutorial/potentially letting characters start the game at at least level 5.
This isn't getting into any of the new items, materials and such that we got with this update. I am glad we got more catalysts as that helps alleviate some of the problems pertinent to the grind. Witchi can finally get her Solid Terrasque Shell.
In Conclusion -
This update was a step forward and several steps back. A long standing issue with monster spawn times was addressed at the cost of one of the most comfortable means by which to level characters, be it with an optimal setup or a sub-optimal solo experience. Now we have Forgeries reflecting Yeti Claps and Firespitters smart enough to not kill themselves because you dropped a bot in front of it.
Not to mention how many builds were completely destroyed by the combination of Critical and Flanking nerfs that occurred.
Old builds die and new builds sometimes manage to reclaim the glory once had. It's especially painful when you bare in mind these 'builds' are characters. It isn't always feasible to rebuild when you cannot change your race, in the case of the Oracle nerf, there's no getting back that 15 Hit/Evade. You are now objectively worse as the game around you only continues to grow in overall power. Falling behind is a death sentence, and often times this means characters being shelved as a result of particularly heavy nerfs if they cannot be salvaged by swapping around items/classes.
All the new toys are nice and I'm happy to have more options, and I am very much appreciative of all the work Dev has done on the game to make all of this function. I only hope that less setups need to be taken out back and shot. There should be more focus on introducing new avenues to build characters or uplifting under performing builds than stripping away existing ones. Only extreme outliers (like old Hayabusa) should be actively adjusted.
Content like the Dark Amplifier fights are a step in the right direction to improving the grind experience though could still afford some polish, and potentially options down the line for characters to progress without being forced to run dungeons to better fit their IC.
![[-]](https://neus-projects.net/forums/images/collapse.png)
, this one doesn't actually affect me much, as I've started to prefer spears due to their utility, but it feels a bit heavy handed. I feel like outside of a select few axes, most were not outperforming to warrant a nerf.. And a double whammy on top. Makes me less excited for the new Kanabo, which was already a gimmicky weapon. I also think this will just keep the problem axes still on top, while the struggling ones suffer more.. Also, this is kind of the selling point of axes, while they might lack moves, and hit they excel at just wacking someone with big damage. They're also going to suffer from the GUI changes too. I thought at first this wasn't so bad, but honestly the more I think about it the less I like it.
