Quality Realmers!
We hope you haven’t been eating too much Halloween Candy because it’s time for another PT to get an early look at some things to come for Season 18!
For this holiday season, one of our core aims is to give ourselves the proper time to add a lot of well-needed Quality of Life to improve different areas of the game. Some of these things we would like you to test this weekend so that we can get your feedback and bug reports early!
General
- The maximum number of equipable emotes has been increased to 8.
- In the potion vault, a new button has been added to consume all pots of a given type until the character is maxed.
- Greater potions now only take up 1 inventory slot instead of two.
- The “Favorite” feature has been expanded to titles and entrance effects.
- When favoriting a title or an entrance effect, all newly created characters will automatically have these cosmetics equipped.
- New “Blank” prefix and suffix titles have been added for players who don’t want to use both kinds of titles when customizing their characters.
- In Davy Jones’s locker, locked doors that have been found will have an icon on the Mini Map until the door gets unlocked.
- Each Key in Davy Jones’ Locker has been given a unique shape that matches its associated lock icon to assist colorblind users.
- Davy Jones’ can now have Curse applied by Mystic orbs.
- You can now gift friends skins when purchasing in the shop.
- Portals of Cowardice will now spawn after the first or second boss of the Secluded Thicket is completed for cases where the player would like to leave early.
- Dazed Effect has been removed from El Dorado’s grenade attacks.
- All tiered armors have had their tiers reduced by one to make Weapon and Armor tiers consistent.
- For instance, previously the Tier 1 “Robe of the Neophyte” is now Tier 0.
- All items will continue to drop from where they previously dropped.
- All newly created characters will start with a T0 armor.
- Seasonal Spoils Chest sprite has been revamped.
- Seasonal Character Converter has been given a unique sprite.
- In High Tech Terror when there is only 1 switch left, F.E.R.A.L. will no longer move to that pool and prevent players from progressing.
- A.E.G.I.S. Shields are now prevented from targetting the southwest switch on initial spawn.
- M.E.R.V. now fires an indicator on his path before moving.
- Dwarf Miner Encounter now properly always shows a minimap icon.
- Crystal Cavern Crystals have had their projectile speeds reduced by 40 to match those of the ones in Fungal Caverns.
- Reduced the Stun Duration of Large Red Mushrooms.
- Reduced the Weak Duration of Large Purple Mushrooms.
- Fixed stacked shots when fighting against the Crystalized Fish.
- Increased the size of the Crystallized Scorpion while in his clone phase.
- When getting teleported to the Crystallized Entity, all players are Invulnerable.
- Reduced the length of Ocean Trench, Sulfurous Wetlands Third Dimension, and Abyss of Demons.
- Reduce enemy density and damage of Stinky tiles in Wetlands.
- Reduced invulnerability times of both bosses in Wetlands.
- Lowered the number of phases per fight of Heart of the Wetlands to 6 from 7.
- Increased the chance for a treasure room spawn in Abyss of Demons.
- Readded Shadow Cube Serpent bite animation.
- Stasising Anti-Spectors just before Oryx Dies should no longer cause them to stay alive longer.
- Key Fairies drop a random key instead of a Mystery Key item.
- Key Fairy key drops are now guaranteed, there is also an additional chance for 2 more players to receive a key.
- Key fairies now grant players dust, amount, and kind depending on tier.
- Completing Advance Nest or Advanced Steamworks grants players an additional Exaltation.
Changes to the Realm
When we released the Realm Rework to open beta in April of this year, we continued to keep the old realms open for the players who wanted to stick with the more polished and less buggy realms (at the time). From all the feedback the players have given us over the past 8 months, we were able to continually improve upon the Beta Realms to the point where we now feel comfortable with the Beta Realms being the definitive Realm of the Mad God experience. Starting in Season 18: The Eternal Frost, we will be sunsetting the Old Realms and have a minimum of 2 of the Reworked Realms.
While we are taking the Realm Rework out of beta, we are not done making improvements either! Here are a few of them that will be available to test this weekend:
- Reworked Encounter Spawning Mechanism
- Encounters will now have a 25% chance of spawning when reaching a certain amount of score within a biome.
- If players are looking to fight Cube Gods, for example, they should go to the Sprite Forest to guarantee that a Sprite Forest encounter will spawn.
- Only 1 Encounter of a given type can be active at once, see what strategies you can make!
- New Fame bonuses are added for killing enemies from a given biome.
- We are looking to add some unlockable titles for these as well (Rookie Destroyer for completing all Rookie Biome bonuses for example), so if you have any suggestions make sure to leave them in the Testing Feedback channel of the official Discord!
- Teleport Cooldown when switching servers has been reduced to 60 seconds.
Paladin and Samurai ST Sets
The Harbinger of Frost (paladin) and his not-so-trustyworthy Advisor (Samurai) are planning an invasion to return the realms to the Ice Age of old once again!
During the PT you will be able to try these two new sets featuring the two primary antagonists of the upcoming season, they will be available for free in the Testing shop for you to try out and give your feedback!
Weapons:
- Heartsteel Claymore – Paladin Weapon
- Main Shot: 325-375
- Sub Shots: 150-200
- Ice born Arsenal – Samurai Weapon
- Main Shots: 100-130
- Arrow Shot: 210-250
Abilities
- Symbol of the Lost – Paladin Seal
- 225 MP, 9.0sec duration (25 MP/S)
- Summon a Frostborn Crystal which creates a “blizzard” of parametric snowflake projectiles around it. In addition, it pulses an AOE every second that deals chip damage and inflicts Slow. Frostborn Crystal is stationary and provides Damaging buff to players within its radius. Does some extra stuff with set synergy.
- Sublimation Sidearm – Samurai Waki
- 100 MP x 3 (300 MP combo)
- Fires a fairly weak forward shot, the bulk of the effect is in the combo proc:
- Combo 1: Left -> Center forward thrust, wave of projectiles. Applies MP Debuff.
- Combo 2: (required MP Debuff) right -> Center forward thrust, wave of projectiles. Applies WIS Debuff.
- Combo 3: (required MP/Wis Debuff) center expanding wave. Applies silence.
- Each combo attack builds on the last one, so Combo 3 has all 3 attacks in one ability press.
- 1 second grace period between each proc, with a 2 second silence afterwards.
- Combo takes 4 seconds, silence ensures that proc debuffs wear off before a new combo is started.
Armors
- Hull of the Tundra – Paladin Heavy
- Upon taking 25+ damage, this creates a snowflake object that shoots a single retaliatory shot at an enemy after a brief delay.
- Snowflakes become more powerful when they spawn next to a Frostborn Crystal.
- HP/MP/DEF hybrid armor
- Retainer’s Battlesuit – Samurai Heavy
- Applies a noStack bonus for 5sec on ability press:
- No effect -> Gain +3 ATT and +3 DEX
- MP Debuff -> Gain +6 ATT
- WIS Debuff -> Gain +6 DEX
- DEF/DEX/-VIT trade-off armor
Rings
- Frozen Heart – Paladin Ring
- On ability, create a DEF boost aura while wearing Heartsteel Claymore.
- High HP/MP -SPD trade-off ring.
- Legacy’s Pendant – Samurai Ring
- Upon taking 25+ damage, gain Berserk for 3 seconds while wearing Iceborn Arsenal.
- HP/DEX/-VIT trade-off ring.
Class Changes
Along with the above-mentioned changes we will be doing a rework of the Huntress and a modernization of the samurai class. When it comes to the Huntress we wanted to make its AoE / Trapping capabilities feel more impactful in the current era. To do this we have made two major changes to the way her abilities work:
- Like all of our previous class reworks, we have added StatMod scaling the the Trap ability, allowing it to scale any part of its effects with a chosen stat
- Secondly, when an enemy activates a trap, it will cause an AoE explosion like it currently does on prod, additionally, a number of enemies closest to the epicenter of the explosion will have a “Sticky Bomb” attached to them. This sticky bomb will grow in size and then shortly deal damage in an AoE around the enemy.
- Additionally, we have returned the damage numbers on many UT/ST bows.
For the Samurai, while we did feel that this class left a little to be desired, we also did not feel that it needed a complete overhaul of the Wakizashi ability. For this reason, the Samurai has received what we will be now calling a Class Modernization. Class Modernization aims to improve classes that we feel need just a small bump in order to increase their enjoyability. In the case of the Samurai, we have added statMod scaling to its ability which will allow the player to increase the abilities strength, and number of projectiles that the Wakizashi will fire. Lastly, for all tiered Wakizashi’s we have changed the angle at which the projectiles fire in order to improve the game feel when using this ability (Especially near walls!)
For this PT all Huntress Traps, Bows, and all Tiered Wakizashis will be available to you in the shop, additionally, portals to the Keyper of the Arena, Davy Jones’ Locker, and Sulfurous Wetlands will be spawning every minute at the top of the nexus for you to try them out in!
If you would like to see the new stat values for each ability head over to this spreadsheet for better formatting: