Official statement to r103 – Gamedesign Team

Fellow Heroes and Heroines of Duria

Right after release 103 our team received a lot of feedback and questions from the community that have been applied to the game on stats of items and the loot. The following text is an official statement from the game designers to answer your questions and explain the adjustments in depth.


Question: Why was a change needed for the maximum values of enchantments of items? What is the logic behind this move?

Answer[GD]: The aim is to reward you more often with valuable items. Before r103 the most valuable items in the game were exclusively the unique items, which were certainly powerful but also very rare. We do not want you to be rewarded only after having spent a hundred hours in game.

Let’s take the sword of the Dragonknight class “Cloaked Wrath” as an example. Cloaked Wrath is by far more powerful than any other weapon in the game and that is exactly the main issue; the community expressed several times that it is frustrating to run and defeat Khalys or Mortis for the hundredth time without being rewarded. The only true reward that the community is yearning for is the sword itself. All the other countless legendary items that one can find before actually finding the Cloaked Wrath are obsolete.
This has changed with the increase of the maximum values. Let’s assume that the cloaked wrath equals 100% power, then, in theory, every other legendary item you can find now bears the chance to reach 110% power.

The ultimate aim with this change is to increase the diversity among items. Let’s be honest here, at some point every player would run around with the same set of items and the exact kind of stats. With the new enchantments and increased maximum values you are given the opportunity to be much more individual and diverse than before.

Question: Are you aware that some players have invested a lot of time (up to 2 years) and money into their current equipment? Their items have literally become useless.

Answer[GD]: At first, let’s stress the fact that the strength of the monsters in the entire game has not been changed, which means that your existing equipment is equally effective as before r103. This also means: in future you can become even more powerful than you are right now, even if the strength of the monsters and bosses has not changed.

We are aware that a lot of players took effort in optimizing their equipment and that we have raised the bar with this adjustment. Especially because of all the effort you put in optimizing your equipment you ought to be able to still keep it and use it.

Instead of throwing your current equipment away, you advise to keep it in your inventory as with the upcoming “Item Upgrade” feature in July; your current optimized equipment will be of use. Therefore, be excited on what is yet to come!

Thanks to the adjustment of r103 and the upcoming “Item Upgrade” you will be prepared enough to enter the realms of Myrdosch and face the enemies of higher level (also the 45 Level boss) with the very same equipment you have now.

Question: What are you trying to achieve with the smaller stacks of gold? No one ever criticized the droprate of gold, therefore, why did you change it?

Answer[GD]: First we should look at the adjustments once more: the frequency of gold drops has been increased by 171%, whereas the quantity has been reduced by 50%. That means, a total of 35, 5% gold is dropping more.
Furthermore, we have adjusted the range of gold drops; where one was used to find stacks of 19, 20 to 21 copper, now one can find stack ranging from 9 up to 31 copper. Again, this adjustment was done to boost the variety of the game and in order to avoid that every third drops looks the same.
We want to improve the game experience by giving you more often the feeling of being rewarded. From our perspective the game had too little loot; therefore we edited the drop behavior. Normal monsters drop much more frequent gold and double as much enchanted items (green, blue, purple, orange), however, in total they drop less of normal items (white).
And a small note: those who collect a lot of gold now will be happy to have done so in future

Further remarks on the loot:
The droprates for andermant, gems, crystals of truth, essences and potions have not been changed.
In total the drop quality in the parallel worlds, its bosses and hardcore bosses has been slightly improved, at the same time the drops range, the variety of drops, has been extended.
The quality of drops at normal bosses has been slightly reduced; however, the quality of drops at special monsters has been improved significantly.
The quality of drops at normal bosses (especially Gorga) and the required effort to defeat him, compared to other bosses required effort and quality of drops, was by too unbalanced. Therefore, In order to restore the balance we slightly lowered the quality of drops at normal bosses but increased the quality of drops at special bosses.

Disambiguation: special monsters:

Special monsters with small labels
Those kind of monsters are marked with a small round red label and are stronger than normal monsters
Encounter: on all maps, very often
Example: “Lynette” in the Trollcanyon

Special monsters with big labels
Those kind of monsters are marked with a big round red label and are significantly stronger than normal monsters
Encounter: only in dungeons, rare
Example: “Head Council Witch Ragana” in the Hagastove Grotto

Kind regards
Your Drakensang Online Game Design Team