Devblog 2.63 – Bosking in Evil 2022-03-08 17:30
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For the first update in 2022, you'll get to rediscover a zone that you're already very familiar with (unless you always get lost there): the Evil Forest. It'll feature plenty of new content: monsters, quests, a dungeon, and new geography. When the forest is involved, so is Terrakourial, the dragon of the forest. And when Terrakourial is involved, so is the Ochre Dofus. You had the chance to check out an early version of the changes [link to the devblog] we wanted to make to the quest "An Eternal Harvest". We've also added a new low-level dungeon to make it easier for characters in this level bracket to progress in the game. But there's more to come yet!
As we announced with the update in December, we are continuing to make improvements to the social components of the game, with a revamped guild rights system, additional chests, a logbook, and guild notes. You can find all these new features for guilds in the devblog on this topic HERE. To finish, we've done some balancing and made improvements to movement and treasure hunts.
The Not-so-evil Forest
A warm welcome to a forest that's lush…
Forget (nearly) everything you've ever assumed about the Evil Forest. With this update, the zone has become much more inviting, including the friendliest fauna and flora. Now it's the perfect spot for a woodsy stroll. The perils have been removed, and new entry points have been added so you can easily access the zone and make the most of your walk. Lanseuft of Troille will nevertheless have a few tips for you before you disembark there. The zone's geography has been updated; the Evil Forest has been reduced in size to expand the zone of Koalaks, Dreggons, and Amakna. A small zone has been created specially for Al Howin. Did you learn the path to Dark Vlad Hell Mina by heart? Sadly, you'll have to do it over again. But we promise it'll be less tedious this time.
… and full of gentle Malters.
During your jaunt in the woods, you may run into a new family of friendly creatures that mean you no harm (most of the time): Malters. We'll let you discover more about this zone and its wildlife on your own.
We would even recommend that you venture deep into the forest. As you probably know, Hell Mina has been watching over the territory ever since Dark Vlad entrusted her with this mission. He departed a few years ago to recover his memories, leaving Hell Mina as sole guardian of the land. She took up residence in the heart of the forest and was instructed to be cruel, bloodthirsty, and merciless gracious, jovial, and friendly. You ought to pay her a visit and see what she could be hiding at the center of the maze. Be sure and tell us what you think – assuming you make it back!
New dungeon and new equipment
The revamped Evil Forest also comes with a new level 150 dungeon centered on Hell Mina. There are two new sets as well:
- A level 148 Hell Mina Set featuring 3 equipment items and geared toward fire/pushback damage
- A level 146 Malter Set featuring 3 equipment items and geared toward healing/hindering
The Ochre Dofus
On January 21, we shared our feelings about the quest "An Eternal Harvest", the changes we'd like to make to it, and the rationale behind those changes. You can find the link HERE. We looked at your feedback to come up with the most ideal solution while preserving the heart of this historic quest:
- Archmonsters' respawn time is now based on server population. In other words, the more players there are on a server, the more quickly archmonsters will respawn after being captured. This change has been in effect on all servers since late 2021, and rates may continue to change depending on the demand for and cost of archmonster soul stones on individual servers.
- The soul capture spell has been changed: It can only be used by characters with a soul stone equipped, and it has a global cooldown.
- A new resource, the d'vine tingy, will have a 100% drop rate for all players in combat with an archmonster, excluding the player who captures the archmonster and only if the archmonster is captured. If the archmonster isn't captured, it still instantly reappears in a different place.
- You can trade in d'vine tingies to get klonebawkses by talking to the NPC Jykel, who is located in Otomai's house (this NPC and the ability to buy klonebawkses will be conditional on a preliminary quest). There is one klonebawks in each step of the quest "An Eternal Harvest" to defeat archmonsters (15 in total). When you consume this klonebawks, you can battle an archklone, a random archmonster in the corresponding quest step. This fight is started by talking to an NPC outside Otomai's house and will let you capture the archmonster's soul to then complete the steps in the quest "An Eternal Harvest".
- Finally, a questline dealing with the Ochre Dofus has been created. This can even be completed by characters that already have the Ochre Dofus.
Goblins in Training
Ah, goblins! No other population is better represented in the World of Twelve than goblins. Wherever you go, you're sure to encounter at least one. Their camp is located north of Bwork Village, in Low Crackler Mountain. They aren't known for their intellect, and their stupidity is matched only by their wickedness. That said, some among them hope to impart a semblance of education on other goblins by way of… an Akademy. You can admire how dreadfully serious the goblins get when it comes to getting educated. Perhaps you'll even dare to take on the fearsome lessons taught by Director Grunob.
For this update, goblins will be (finally) getting a full monster family and their own level 40 dungeon: the Gob Akademy. With this dungeon, a new level 36 set has been created:
Class Balancing
For this update, we decided to showcase two iconic DOFUS classes: Iops and Enutrofs! Because of how long they've been around, both classes had several shortcomings – the Enutrof class in particular, which has undergone very few changes in recent years. These weaknesses included tedious leveling due to the order in which spells were unlocked, as well as complicated or unappealing variant options, inadequate strength and effectiveness in PvP, elemental paths that were unbalanced and lacking identity, and finally, occasionally dull gameplay, in both PvP and PvM. That said, this isn't a revamp, but rather a major rebalancing update that will renew each class's repertoire by modifying virtually all spells more or less extensively. Also note that class sets have, not surprisingly, been changed as a result.
Iop
For Iops, we focused on the Water and Fire paths – these have undergone a nice improvement, including access to erosion for the Fire path with Destructive Sword, plus the new Sword of Judgement mechanic for the Water path. In terms of utility spells, several variants have been moved to improve access to certain effects, such as tanking, erosion, and positioning, which this class tended to lack. The "pushback damage" path has also been enhanced, including changes to Violence and Fight Back. Additionally, a number of more subtle but equally useful changes have been made, such as standardizing identical damage bonuses for normal and critical hits on chargeable spells.
Enutrof
As for Enutrofs, the elemental spells have been modified the most, because as mentioned above, this was one of the biggest weaknesses in the design of the class. Thus, all elemental paths can now use the same amount of spells simultaneously, and each path will get a new "mainstay" spell. These spells will unify the other spells and give the class better damage potential. This balancing update will also restore reduction as a central gameplay element: The Air path is still built on AP reduction; the Water path on MP reduction; the Earth path is now focused on range reduction; and the Fire path on unbewitchment and healing. Summons have also been improved, in terms of summoning conditions, cooldown, and making their spells more effective and more flexible to use. As with Iops, several utility spells have been moved and/or changed to make them more viable and appealing. Finally, you'll see that a number of spells have been renamed, as we took this opportunity to remove names that were overly generic or didn't reflect the mechanics well enough. In short, we further built on the class's identity and imagination through naming.
Other classes
Ecaflips and Ouginaks will both see two of their spells updated (Meowch and Tails or Heads for Ecaflips; Amarok and Venison for Ouginaks). These spells were overpowered and needed to be nerfed. As we intended to make Iops better at erosion, it made sense to use this opportunity to update both of these classes so they could give Iops room to express themselves. Therefore, two of the Ecaflip's erosion spells, Meowch and Tails or Heads, will have a modified range. With regard to Ouginaks, their tanking capacity will be very slightly decreased with Amarok, as will their damage capacity with Venison.
The range of the Osamodas' Takeoff spell has been slightly decreased, in order to reduce the large amount of mobility provided by this spell.
As for Srams, the Evasion, Paralysing Trap and Mistake spells have been improved. On the other hand, Chakra Concentration has been nerfed. In both PvM and PvP, this spell's ability to inflict major damage and regenerate HP, all while the character is invisible, was simply too powerful. Therefore, the spell now removes the caster's invisibility. However, we've taken advantage of a new technical option to add a passive to the class; this passive increases a Sram's damage for 1 turn when they lose their invisibility, whether this is due to an effect wearing off, the Sram being revealed by an enemy, or the Sram revealing themselves on their own. This bonus will apply to poisons if the Sram does not inflict direct damage, or else only to their next direct attack. The goal here is to strengthen the assassin gameplay by making emergence from invisibility a tactical tool, rather than simply a penalty/handicap for Srams.
The Cra class, meanwhile, has received a number of small improvements that mainly relate to the conditions for casting elemental spells. For the most part, these spells are currently the least frequently played variants. These improvements should make them more attractive to players and diversify the tools and gameplay for this class. Beacons no longer count as summons, because you can't summon multiple instances of them. This theorycraft requirement has therefore been removed.
Finally, the Feca class has been nerfed in several ways, but has also received a number of improvements. In particular, the Fire path has been a problem for a long time due to its excessive damage capabilities, ability to steal characteristic points, and damage ratios. The Perception Glyph's damage has therefore been reduced, as has stacking on Intelligence stealing. To counterbalance these changes, the Fire path's debuff ability has been improved with the Natural Attraction and Lethargy spells. To achieve a better balance between the different elemental paths, the Earth, Water and Air paths have received a number of improvements in the conditions for casting their spells. As with the Cra's Beacons, the Aegis no longer consumes a summons slot. Last but not least is an eagerly-awaited change to Ataraxia. This spell has been problematic for a long time in PvM because its mechanic, combined with how the monsters' AI works, has led to various kinds of abuse. The reduction value has therefore been decreased to allow monsters to get a few hits in on players, and thus to avoid canceling out certain mechanics.
Finally, we've also taken the opportunity to do a debugging session while also clearing up descriptions, icons, and animations for the vast majority of Sadida, Sram, Ecaflip, Sacrier, and Feca spells, and to a lesser extent, Cra and Osamodas spells.
You can give us your feedback and your impressions on the class balancing via this forum post.
Equipment bonuses
To finish with balancing for Update 2.63, we went back over all equipment bonuses at levels 100-150 to level out any that were too weak or too strong. The goal is to bring these equipment items up to date and make them more consistent with newly created ones in this level bracket.
You can give us your feedback and your impressions on the equipment bonuses via this forum post.
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The list of all spell and equipment changes will be available in the beta changelog. We hope you'll like all of these changes, and we look forward to getting your feedback once the beta becomes available!
PvM Balancing
We took advantage of this update to balance monster battles that we found either too hard or too easy for players, along with ones that were being exploited. You will find a full list of these changes once the French changelog is published tomorrow. Here are a few of them:
- Added an unlimited lock debuff to the Catseye's starting spell.
- Limit applied to stacking for Kwakeres' power penalties.
- Removed healing from the Twentoo monster on players.
Improvements to In-game Movement
During Temporis 5 and 6, we tested the inclusion of a potion for teleporting to divine dimensions. Players loved this, so we decided to add an equivalent potion to the game, but in a less automated form. Four new potions have been created; these can be crafted by fishermen using a new resource earned while fishing.
Along the same lines, and to go with changes applied to the Ochre Dofus quest, we've added a potion that teleports you directly to Otomai.
We also improved how players get around in Frigost Village by placing zaapis in certain workshop locations. Finally, to make Sufokia more attractive, we added more workshops and a zaapi at [18,24] to stick with the approach of "no more than 4 maps away from a zaapi in any location".
You can give us your feedback and your impressions on the in-game movement improvements via this forum post.
Treasure Hunts
With this update, treasure hunts have been revamped. Featured changes:
- Hunts will return to Pandala, Bonta, and Brakmar.
- All clues will be replaced!
You can give us your feedback and your impressions on the updated hunts via this forum post.