Dungeon Runners Patch Notes
Here are the patch notes for Build 95:
PVP 1.5!
Let’s face it; our first PvP implementation was less than ideal. Yeah, we know that… and we’re not afraid to say it! We’ve taken a bunch of your feedback and our own expert play testing experiences and whipped up what we feel will be a much better time for everyone! Good times!
“Magical” Rebalancing
During PvP battles, everyone is “magically” rebalanced to make the battles much fairer. Each player will have their health and damage boosted to what it would be for a level 101 player of their build. There are a few things you should keep in mind when thinking about this system:
Hey, now that everyone is “magically” rebalanced to level 101, you don’t have to wait for someone of your level to be on the PvP server to get a match. This means that you will immediately find a match if there’s anyone else waiting for one. Talk about lowering wait times…
Our “magical” rebalancing system automatically adjusts your damage potential based on how many people are on each team. It’s a pretty simple system that keeps “unbalanced” fights fair. This damage adjustment is clearly explained during the PvP session and changes automatically if folks join or leave a battle. In the most basic terms, the side with more players gets a damage nerf appropriate for how many more players they have and the "underdog" team gets a damage boost.
We automatically adjust your damage and health based on how your character compares to an “average” character at the same level. So, having terrible equipment and skills that aren’t ranked appropriately for your level will make your level 101 adjustment less powerful. For example, a level 50 mage with rank 1 fire bolt will find that their fire bolt does terrible damage in PvP sessions. The lesson of all this is… keep your skills and equipment upgraded!
Oh, we didn’t stop adjusting things just because we “magically” rebalanced your character in PvP. No… we also fixed some other annoying and broken things in PvP:
- Slow Stacking Limited: We’ve limited the affect of slowing effects. So, you can no longer get slowed so much that you can’t move. Hey, it sounded like a good idea at the time! The most a player can be slowed is 50%!
- Resistances Improved: The basis for all magical resistances has been increased in PvP. This means that your resistances will be more effective against opponent attacks during PvP battles. This includes stun resistance as well.
- Scoring: Each kill in PvP is now worth 100 points.
We feel pretty confident in this pass of PvP… so confident, in fact, that we are now giving a King’s Coin to winners of scored PvP matches. Here’s how it works:
- Losers don’t get a King’s Coin.
- Winners may get a King’s Coin, depending on how long the match lasts.
- If the match lasts the full 7 minutes, winners have a 75% chance to get a King’s Coin.
- If the match is cut short by cowards then the chance for a King’s Coin is lowered proportionally to the amount of time spent in the match. For example, if the match lasts 3.5 minutes, the chance to get a King’s Coin is 35.5%.
- The chance to get a King’s Coin is shown once the match is over.
New Skills
We’ve added two new skills this build…
This is an active skill that is quite useful for fighters. When activated, it allows you to move at 100% normal movement speed regardless of any speed de-buffs that are affecting you. This includes “monster molasses” as well as armor speed penalties. This is a great closing skill for fighters in PvP as well as a useful travel and escape skill for anyone that’s being slowed.
This passive skill significantly increases melee attack rating at the expense of 20% health. There are several ranks of this skill… each one increasing the attack rating multiplier.
Skill Adjustments
Several balance changes were made to skills this build…
The chance to lose the speed increase granted by Spirit of the Hare has been reduced to 25% (down from 50%).
Fear of Gosh now required a successful melee attack roll to be effective. When an enemy is affected by Fear of Gosh, their movement rate will be reduced by 50%.
Holy Roller now requires a successful melee attack roll to be effective. Sorry mages, but this was just too powerful for you in PvP! It has also been changed to a weapon-based cool down skill, making folks with faster attack speeds able to use this skill more often. The movement speed modifier has been more than doubled and the base cool down has been increased.
Acidic Blight has a new visual effect and icon… as well as being considered a “poison” attack for resistance purposes.
Unnerving Shout has a new visual and sound effect… as well as being considered a “divine” attack for resistance purposes.
The attack speed de-buff granted by Ice Bolt has been reduced to 20% (down from 40%).
Critical Hits
We’ve added the ability for skill damage to get critical hits! Yes, this means monsters too… Each skill has the potential to get a critical hit based on the whims (and careful thought) of our designers. In general, damage over time skills and area-of-effect skills have a lesser chance to “crit” than single target skills. Having negative resistances to a particular damage type will increase the chance that skills of that damage type will get a critical hit.
More Resistance Changes!
When a skill is resisted now, all of the effects that come from the skill are also resisted. The most notable example of this is ice bolt. If you resist an ice bolt, you will not be slowed by it. This applies to all skills.
Monster Tweaks
We’ve been hard at work making the monsters more effective at killing you. Yeah, we know that’s a mean thing to do… but we’re mean like that!
Fear Effects Added
Some monsters have been given the ability to cause your character to run in fear for a time. Once feared, your character will receive the “Bravery” modifier… making you immune to further fear effects for six times the duration that you were feared. Which monsters do this? We’re not telling…
Resistance Tweaks
With this handy new critical hit system for skill damage, we’ve adjusted the resistances of all monsters in the game. Most monsters are weak to some damage type as well as more resistant to others. It’s not too severe, but you will have to change tactics depending on your opponents in some cases. We’ve also made certain monsters resistant to specific physical damage types, giving melee and ranged players some of the same fun that the magic users get!
Boss Fights Tweaked
We’ve been adjusting some of the boss fights to address some difficulty and coolness issues…
Rotgut has an awesome new bit of theme music!
The resurrection skill that was used against you in previous versions of this fight has been put back in!
The Shadow Queen fight has been totally reworked. It’s freaking awesome!
A terrible exploit was fixed in the Ratsputin boss fight. :)
New Items
As always, we’ve added a boatload of new items to the game…
Four totally new armor sets have been added to this build: mythic crystal, bone splint, military splint and another ghost armor variant.
A whole slew of two-handed picks and axes have been added to the game… dozens of them.
A crazy number of new amulet graphics have been added to the game!
Oh my, the number of mythic items has been increased by a good amount. We’ve started adjusting how we make mythic items to help increase variety and power. We’ll continue to do this over the next few builds, but you’ll notice the increase that this change makes right away.
Quests
We’ve added a bunch of new quests to Ratsputin’s Gulag. How many? A bunch!
UI Changes
We’ve been adjusting and fixing issues with the UI…
We’ve changed how the list of modifiers works to let you see many more modifiers on your character at one time. For the uninitiated, a modifier is a buff or de-buff. Through the magic of code, this list can now display dozens of modifiers at one time.
Because of the increased capacity of the modifier list, we’ve moved the health bar / name display for your current target to just under the zone name display on the mini map. This will take some getting used to, but it’s a good thing!
We’ve changed the quest log to ensure that quest text is more readable and that unsightly text clipping no longer occurs.
We’ve swapped out the nasty-looking scroll buttons with scroll bars on each UI screen that could scroll (excluding the chat window).
Bug Fixes
We’ve fixed a tremendous number of little bugs and annoyances with this build. Sure, we didn’t get to them all… but we did fix a bunch!
Memory Leak
A minor, but potentially annoying, memory leak on the client has been fixed this build.
FPS Improvements
We found and fixed a terrible flaw in our graphics engine that allowed particle effects that are not visible to be drawn. This caused up to a 50% frame-rate drop depending on your camera angle in some dungeons (Embercore, anyone?). This change vastly improves the FPS of the game in those areas.
Source.