Balance Changes

Early Access Archive Early Access Official News
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Hello Adventurers!

There has been an issue in game where the Enemy Gear Score was not reflecting the actual difficulty in the UI.

We have analysed data from thousands of battles by players at all levels on their first Hero, and found that the difficulty wasn’t being reflected correctly in the actual battle.

For example, if a battle was displayed as “very hard” and the enemy had a gear score of 500, then it turns out it wasn’t “very hard” for a player with a gear score of 500 (in fact 500 probably had a 98% win rate). It was in fact “normal” for players with a gear score of about 350 (80% win rate), and “very hard” for players down around 200-250.

To correct this, the UI will continue displaying the correct Enemy/Gear Score, however, the stats of the Enemy will be altered to reflect this higher Gear Score.

This change will affect players between Hero levels 10-45.

A global compensation mail will be sent out with Shards for players above level 20 to assist with upgrading their Gear in light of this change.

If you are not level 20 yet, don’t despair! You have until daily reset 11:59pm Friday 5th November UTC to get to level 20 and login to receive your mail.

We will be continuining to monitor feedback and game data about the difficulty levels of the game and this is just one of the balance changes we will be making.

In order to assist the team with qualitative feedback from our player base the CX Team will be asking for more details in any feedback we receive about the difficulty of the game in future so we can really hone in on the game balance feedback and data in this stage of development.

When giving feedback it will be helpful if you let us know the following:

  • When your account was created
  • The level of your highest level Hero
  • The level of your actively played Hero for the feedback you’re giving
  • The Gear Score of your active Hero
  • The Class of your active Hero
  • The Enemy/Gear Score of specific battles you’re giving feedback on
  • The Difficulty level you’ve selected for the battle you’re giving feedback on (if applicable)
  • The game mode you’re giving feedback for (ie. Story – which chapter, Quick Dungeon, Challenge Dungeon, Event Dungeon, Tourney (which one) etc.
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When your account was created - early August 2021

The level of your highest level Hero - 50, citadel level 45 (nearly 46)

The level of your actively played Hero for the feedback you’re giving - 50, 4770 health, 5612 armor, 3062 resist.

The Gear Score of your active Hero - 1635 (after upgrades from balance shards, 1616 prior)

The Class of your active Hero - Necromancer, using Frostburn lvl 35, Vampiric Touch lvl 20 (only got it fairly recently), Acid Arrow lvl 23, and Channel Poison lvl 30. All epic gear, 3 pieces at max lvl.

The Enemy/Gear Score of specific battles you’re giving feedback on - 1682 (green, both at 1616 and 1635)

The Difficulty level you’ve selected for the battle you’re giving feedback on (if applicable) - Medium, level 40

The game mode you’re giving feedback for - Quick Dungeon, Ruins of Lunarion

  • The very first mob in the battle (a wolf) has health of 6650, armor of 4431 and resist of 2216. I was able to defeat it having lost ~3000 armor.
  • 2nd mob, a scorpion, casts eye blight on the 2nd turn, halving my damage output, but dies after 4 turns. I take a bonus of 500+ to armor and resist (note my resist had not taken any damage thus far), moving my armor from 1500 back up over 2000.
  • 3rd mob is another wolf, who takes my armor below zero, and damages health down to 4K. Use of Vampiric Embrace restores my health to its max (4700), now facing the miniboss.
  • Having experienced 2-shot deaths from the mini before, I use my ultimate to flood about half the board with skulls, saving some death lance clicks, and use 2 nukes. This takes him down, but my ultimate is now at 0.
  • Next trash mob is a scorpion who crits for 2200, taking me down to 2500. I am eye blighted on the next turn. Followup match allows for a stun on the next turn, and 14x skull matches are enough to kill him on the subsequent turn, but only after a hit that takes me to 1K health. Vampiric Embrace restores my health to 1900. I get the 50 mana altar, which (spoiler alert) is what gives me a chance to beat the boss.
  • Finally, the boss, Iceheart. I am still eye blighted. My nukes are Frostfire (ineffective against ice) and Acid Arrow. These reduce his resist to 506, not touching his 10,470 health. Use of my ultimate (only possible thanks to the 50 mana altar) results in a 28x skull hit and a most important stun, zero’ing out his armor, leaving 9,444 health. All of my nukes are at zero mana, but I have enough skulls to do some more damage and get my Channel Poison to castable. Skull and green matches from Channel Poison brings his health to 2K. I will die if he swings. Thankfully, he casts Frost Fist, leaving me enough mana to cast Acid Arrow and win the fight.

This is the first level 40 fight I’ve won in 5 attempts, though the previous 4 were at gear level 1616. My weapon (an epic Guard Broadsword, with power+ for green matches) was at level 35 throughout. I cannot raise any gear above 35 yet, as in 3 months’ of playing, I have received a total of 3 glyphs.

I’ll try more at this level and see how it goes. I’m happy to provide more data, but note that at Green level, near even gear score, I was one swing away from death at the boss, needed to empty all skills at the miniboss to prevent from being killed in two shots, and had stuns at opportune times to prevent huge health reductions from trash mobs.

Update: tried 5 runs of Dragonguard Depths, now at citadel level 46. I won 4 out of 5 fights. The one I lost, I died prior to the miniboss with some bad crit luck. On 3 of the 4 wins though, I was down to 1 last hit from the boss each time, so with a boss crit in any of those, I would have lost. I’ll try 5 runs of RoL and report back later (time to for my actual job).

2nd Update: tried Daily Event runs, gear score now up to 1644, Tier X Daily Events with enemy score of 1784. Both times, I was able to defeat the miniboss, and then after hitting as hard as I could in 1-2 turns (2 if I get a stun off in the first turn or have barrier up), I get 1-shotted by the boss each time. This is enough to score some gold marks, which I’m using for greater shards to finish my necro’s spells to epic, and to level my alt’s gear towards epic, but it’s surely frustrating to get one-shotted repeatedly.

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I would love to get more detail about this “balance change”

The ability to accumulate mana across multiple spells sufficient to defeat the enemy wasn’t really impacted (other than a shift of more mana gained to the first slotted mono-suited spell and less so on later slotted spells) so the “ramp up” time to be able to start doing this huge increase to damage is still the same as before. But the damage done by enemies has been increased, effectively shutting the door on realizing this boon to spell/mana damage.

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Due to the balance changes, I did manage to make it to Chapter 12. However, the enemies once again outdamage me and they have higher health and damage than me despite being several levels lower than me. This is why when you think of balance, the solution is not to jack up enemy damage numbers more. That actually swings the battle in the ENEMIES’ favor more than it does the PLAYER’S. Their damage output is the one thing we can only mitigate with the blocking power of our shield, but shield block values are not high enough to swing the balance back. You can jack up health, resistance and armor as much as you want and as long as enemy damage stays reasonable the battle can go in either direction. However, when you crank up the enemy’s damage, that only serves to benefit the opposition. You even boosted the damage of their spells. Guess what you never did for us.

What we have here does not qualify as balance. what we have here is a textbook example of artificial difficulty.

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This is strictly observational as my current situation doesn’t make it a big enough deal to test it and count. But it really appears that accumulated mana also goes into spells that are already full… which is a rather large and glaring wtf if they are using a mana block system like this,

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you are correct, it does.

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Looks like the game is still not ready or playable. Disappointing…

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  • When your account was created: During 0.36, after the gifted loot
  • The level of your highest level Hero: 50
  • The level of your actively played Hero for the feedback you’re giving: 50
  • The Gear Score of your active Hero: 968
  • The Class of your active Hero: Necromancer
  • The Enemy/Gear Score of specific battles you’re giving feedback on: 30/1197
  • The Difficulty level you’ve selected for the battle you’re giving feedback on (if applicable): Easy
  • The game mode you’re giving feedback for: Quick dungeon

Often one-shot or two-shot by the first mob in easy dungeons, finally managed to get the perfect board/heal early enough in the first few turns, and make it to Scaleguard (after an incident with it scrambling the board even though I had Death Gems present). They fill their spell, I stun, they retain about half health + gain stun barrier.
Final move, there’s nothing I can do to keep them from hitting me. They have their spell filled, I already used all mine the previous turn, they have stun barrier, so they are going to hit me with Wyvren’s bite next turn. I cross my fingers that I can take it; with full HP from Soul Siphon and ~2500 armour from Ice Armour. I just make a few moves on the board since that’s all I can do. They keep 232 health from my move, I’m dead in one hit.

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Account Creation: Day 1
Highest Level Hero: Level 42 Shaman
Level of actively played Hero: 42
Gear Score: ~1200
Class: Shaman
Enemy Level and Gear Score: 34-35/1362
Difficulty Level: N/A
Game Mode: The Campain(missing G intentional)

Tend to get 2-3 shot by most mobs, even worse if I get a bad board where I can’t hurt the enemy with my green spell koadout. What’s worse is I have a type advantage against the enemies(the undead are weak to green) and I STILL can’t fight them for shit. Enemies 6-8 levels lower than me should never be destroying me this quickly. In what godsforsaken world does an enemy far lower level than you piledrive you into the dirt?

This is why enemy damage buffing is never an acceptable means of difficulty balancing.

1 Like