Devblog - An Eternal Harvest 2022-01-21 16:00

A competitive quest

A unique aspect of archmonsters is that they take a longer time to reappear than ordinary monsters. Since the quest requires you to bring back one of each archmonster, your ability to complete it depends heavily on the number of available archmonsters. In terms of the mechanics, then, there's a limit to the number of Ochre Dofus that are generated. The faster the archmonsters reappear, the more players are able to acquire an Ochre Dofus.

A prerequisite to the new narrative arc

The quest An Eternal Harvest is a prerequisite to completing the quests for the next narrative arc, the Reunification of the Six Dofus. The limitations on completing this quest haven't been a problem so far, but now we want this new arc to be more accessible. That's why we now feel it's necessary to adjust An Eternal Harvest accordingly, while still maintaining its mechanics and its level of difficulty. And speaking of narrative arcs, many of you have also pointed out that unlike the other Primordial Dofus, the Ochre Dofus isn't associated with its own series of narrative quests, although it is linked to other stories set in the World of Twelve like the Elemental Dofus and Vulbis Dofus quests.

We want to keep the mechanics used in An Eternal Harvest, because the way that this quest works is unique within the game. This quest is designed to:

• be carried out all throughout your character's journey,
• give you an incentive to explore the World of Twelve and fight a variety of enemies, and
• encourage social aspects through transactions and trades of duplicates.

Capturing archmonsters

You're probably aware that in the course of a battle, the full soul stone is awarded to just one character who casts the Soul Capture spell, regardless of how many other characters have also cast it. This makes it preferable to go it alone when fighting groups containing an archmonster (of which there are a limited number) to ensure that you can actually capture it. Archmonster soul stones are precious, and can often fetch a fair amount of kamas. As a result, it's not uncommon that players who have already completed the quest, or who don't wish to complete it, decide to capture archmonsters and then sell their soul stones. We believe that this concept of exchanges and trade adds value to the quest, but in a game like DOFUS, we prefer to prioritize group play. So we want to keep the exchanges while also encouraging people to fight in groups.

We hope that this introduction will help you to understand the various aspects we've worked on and the adjustments to the quest described below, which take the form of three distinct changes.

Change #1: A competitive quest that adapts to local conditions

This is a change that has already been applied to the game servers. Historically, the time needed for archmonsters to reappear was the same on all servers, but since the end of 2021, we've gradually adjusted it to make it shorter or longer depending on each server's active population. In concrete terms, this means that the time for archmonsters to reappear is:

• Much shorter on extremely high-population servers like Ilyzaelle
• Shorter on high-population servers like Mériana and Ush
• A bit shorter on low-population servers like Crocabulia

The goal of this change is to adapt the number of archmonsters to the amount of competition on each server. The faster the archmonsters reappear, the more soul stones will be in circulation, which will in turn translate to a drop in the sales price for these soul stones as supply and demand become more balanced. And indeed, we regularly see the effects of this change on server after server when we look at the following four indicators:

• number of archmonsters fought
• number of archmonster soul stones sold
• average price of soul stones
• completion of quest steps linked to archmonsters

By watching these indicators, we can adjust the reappearance time week by week until we reach a set of values that seem appropriate to us. But this is just the first action we've taken to adjust the competitive aspects of the quest. Now let's turn to the new measures we'll be taking, which should bring some variation to these indicators.

Change #2: Allow generation of additional archmonsters

Background: the case of Temporis V and VI

As you know, the Temporis servers give us a way to experiment with certain gameplay mechanics and measure their effects, so that we can potentially reuse them (after any necessary adaptations) on the official servers. For example, the two previous Temporis servers offered a new way to fight archmonsters. By handing over a monster's soul and in exchange for an archoken, an NPC will let you fight their archmonster along with three monsters from the same family. As a player, this gave you the flexibility to choose which archmonster you wanted to summon.

Adapting this concept for the official game servers

A new token (name to be determined) will be added to the loot dropped by archmonsters. It has the following properties:

• Cannot be exchanged
• No conditions to obtain: each character taking part in the fight has a chance to obtain one
• Cannot be obtained in arenas
• Drop rate that is relatively low, but variable depending on the archmonster, and not influenced by modifiers (prospecting, challenges, idols etc.)

Why does the token's drop rate vary depending on the archmonster?

The rate is identical for all archmonsters at the same quest step, and increases with each additional step. For example, the chances of obtaining a token from Bakazicle the Icicle (archmonster for step 34) will be greater than getting one from Famouse the Little-Known (archmonster for step 20). We consider the archmonsters in the earlier steps to be weaker than those in the later steps, so fights against the earlier ones will be faster than the later fights. This means that in any given period of time, you can fight more of the weak archmonsters, giving you a greater chance of obtaining a token. We're also taking account of the fact that any archmonster that you fight but don't capture will immediately reappear in its sub-area, thereby allowing players to keep trying indefinitely to obtain tokens.

Too high of a drop rate would therefore lead to potential overgeneration of tokens, and to overgeneration of additional archmonsters in turn. As we said at the beginning, our goal is to make the quest more accessible by providing an alternative way to generate archmonsters. But we don't want this solution to give players too much of an advantage. We're intentionally keeping quiet here about the specific drop rate we've assigned to these tokens so that, in light of the factors mentioned above, you can discuss these issues without being influenced.

What will the tokens be used for?

They will be used to buy boxes (name TBD) from a new NPC. In contrast to how tokens are obtained, these purchases will be subject to certain conditions (we will return to this point in Change #3 below). These boxes will have the following properties:

• Can be exchanged and sold at marketplaces
• 14 variants, each one corresponding to a specific step in the quest An Eternal Harvest
• Allow you to start a random fight against one of the archmonsters for the associated quest step:
  • The archmonster appears alone.
  • The fight does not yield any experience or loot (and therefore no token).
  • There are no prerequisites for starting the fight.
  • Players can fight the archmonster as a group (but only one capture is possible).
  • Once the fight has been started, the box is lost, even if you are defeated or if the archmonster is not captured.
  • No difference in the token costs of different boxes.

We have multiple goals with this change. First of all, we want to put the focus back on playing as a group. With the possibility of obtaining tokens in the course of the fight, there will be a greater incentive to fight archmonsters as a group, since each player has something to gain. The boxes provide a way to generate additional archmonsters, adding further flexibility to the competitive aspect of the quest. The random nature of the fights is an intentional choice aimed at maintaining the mechanics of trading archmonsters and exchanging duplicates. You can increase your chances of getting the archmonster you want through your choice of box, but we don't want to make things as deterministic as they are on the Temporis servers (which are up for a limited time) by allowing you to target a specific archmonster.

The NPC offers you the option to buy either a chest containing a random box, or a specific box. The chest costs fewer tokens than a specific box. Here again, we won't tell you what the prices are for now, so that we can get your impressions on this topic. We will monitor box purchases to identify the ones that are most in demand, allowing us to adjust the drop rate for tokens if necessary for the archmonsters of the corresponding quest steps.

Change #3: Learn more about Terrakourial

A new series of quests will be added to the game to let players learn more about the Primordial Dragon of the Forests. These quests can be completed in parallel to An Eternal Harvest.

We mentioned earlier that there will be prerequisites for buying boxes: you will have to complete the first quest in this series to unlock purchases from the NPC.

Like An Eternal Harvest, this series will be designed to be completed gradually as your character progresses. Therefore, the first quest will be a fairly low-level quest. The other quests will offer tokens as rewards, which you will be free to use however you like.

The goals of this change are to add what's missing in An Eternal Harvest, namely a story and a background context, while also providing a chance to explore some new gameplay possibilities.

Conclusion

We plan to apply these two additional changes in the next update, so your impressions and opinions are very important to us. They will enable us to react more quickly if any adjustments need to be made. We also need to address one last problematic issue with this quest. The problem lies in the structure of the quest itself, divided into three major parts: the monsters, the dungeon keepers, and the archmonsters. So far, we haven't planned for any changes on this front, for one simple reason: we don't want to risk having you lose your progress in the quest. It turns out that we don't currently have any technical tools that would allow us to safely separate the quest into sections without losing the objectives you've accomplished. So we'll continue to study this problem for the time being.

We hope that these measures will allow more of you to complete this quest, and we thank you in advance for your feedback.

Nealin
 

Changes Addressing Player Feedback (8 February 2022)

In response to your feedback, we've made changes to the original idea and to the Soul Capture spell.

Changes to the Original Idea

The token now has a 100% drop rate, but it only drops when the archmonster is captured and only on characters that haven't captured the archmonster. The token can no longer be earned by killing an archmonster without capturing it.

Everything else will remain the same: The respawn rate for archmonsters is based on the server population; tokens are used to purchase boxes that trigger a battle with an archmonster, which won't drop a token but will offer a quest line.

Changes to the Soul Capture Spell

Many of you noted flaws in this spell and suggested ways of changing it. So here are the improvements we'll be making to it:

• If no soul stone is equipped, the spell cannot be cast (grayed out).
• The spell now has a global cooldown.
• The cooldown has been reduced, from 6 to 3 turns. The soul capture state still lasts for 2 turns.