Hello, Taernians!

Very soon, still in November, we will implement an update that will bring you many long-awaited changes and new features. This time we took a good look at the loot mechanisms to make acquiring rare items more satisfying and fair. We’re also rebalancing one of the classes – yes, this is the moment when archers get their own defensive ability and more.

And that’s not even all! New orbs and drifs are also coming, as are changes to the number of daimonites acquired from instances, and other, minor fixes. Want to learn more? Read on!

Changes to the loot system

Let’s start with the obvious – loot is an important element of the game. There are many opinions on how it should look and each side has some valid arguments. While improving the system, we wanted to address its biggest issues: long, unlucky streaks with no loot or with someone else getting the loot, and no upsides of doing instances in a party. The new mechanics should solve these and also some other, minor problems to make loot assignment more fair.

Before going over the mechanics, it’s worth noting that they work only when a character is able to acquire something after combat, meaning they are alive and have space in the backpack.

Luck factor

We’ll introduce a tool called “luck factor”. It’ll be completely invisible, counted individually for each character, and essential for attributing loot in a party. It increases when you don’t loot a particular item type and decreases when you drop one. Each type of precious item will have its own factor – there’ll be separate factors for drifs, synergetics, sets, rares, and epics.

Players with a higher factor will have a higher chance of being assigned the item if one drops from a boss. However, there are no guarantees. The chance can never reach 100% so as not to discourage those who have just looted something from doing more instances. The factor will affect rares and epics the most while having a smaller effect when looting synergetics and drifs. In this way, we can limit unlucky streaks without completely eliminating the random factor.

Acquiring rare gear

The luck factor will have an extra use with rare gear – it will not only affect the assignment of loot between party members but will also increase the droprate of gear. This means that with every “empty” boss, the chance for a rare will increase. It’s worth noting that each player contributes their own factor that is summed up with the factors of the other party members – the higher the total factor, the higher the chance for loot.

To support party play, we’ll also introduce one more mechanic. It’ll be permanent and independent of the luck factor – party bonus. The way it works is simple: every player beyond the first increases the droprate of rare gear if their level isn’t lower than 80% of the highest level in the party. The maximum bonus is +30% when the party is full and composed of characters with the same level. The current value of the bonus will be displayed in the UI, in the same place where the level bonus is shown. Moreover, the pack will no longer reduce droprate, so pets won’t have any effect on your loot.

Well, will it be possible to boost your factor by killing weaker bosses? No. With rare gear, there’ll be five separate luck factors – four connected to the gear rank ranges you know so well, e.g. from the flask system. The last one will be counting loot from the hardest bosses at any given time – at the moment, it’s Sidraga but with future updates she will be replaced by new opponents.

Guaranteed loot

What if all those mechanics fail and players don’t get anything despite killing dozens of bosses? We also have a mechanic for this in the form of guaranteed rare gear drop. This means that, after killing a certain, invisible number of bosses that will be calculated based mostly on the level of the character and the boss group, with some randomness added, players are guaranteed to loot a rare. This loot will be assigned first and then removed from the loot pool that will be assigned via the usual random method. As you can see, this won’t affect the droprate of gear by other members of the party in any way.

Same as the luck factor, this counter will be divided into five categories so that, e.g. guaranteed loot from the Mantis doesn’t affect guaranteed loot from Vough. Moreover, it won’t work if a boss is much lower or much higher level than the player. You can find more details in the table below.

Stats and data

Fans of writing down every drop will be happy – you won’t have to do it anymore! We’ll add a window with stats where you can track your loot. It’s worth noting that the data won’t include any drops from before the patch. Up until now, some of it was collected in a way that makes it impossible to present it truthfully. You can see the window in the screen below.

In addition to that, there’ll be a ranking where you can see who drops the most and kills the most dropping enemies, both in general and for the current week. It’ll be divided into level ranges and there’ll also be a competition attached – every week, the ranking will be reset and being in the top will grant players an achievement.

Why this system and not something else?

We read your opinions and know that some of you might have expected a different solution, e.g. individual drop chance, completely independent from the drop chance of other players. Although it has its advantages, we could also see many flaws that discouraged us from following this path.

First of all, the game is designed for party play – that’s why drop chances are adjusted with it in mind. The introduction of individual drop chance would entail decreasing the overall loot chances so that the market isn’t flooded by gear, which would adversely affect the game economy. Such a system would make solo players or players in small parties loot even fewer items. In addition, an individual drop chance still might not appear fair – although with hundreds of bosses killed, it’d look fine, in the short term situations where players don’t see any loot or see it in other people’s backpacks would still be common.

Second of all, having an individual loot chance would greatly discourage teamwork. Currently, players join guilds, tighten bonds, and create parties to let every member acquire the rare items they need, e.g. by sharing their loot. The introduction of an individual drop chance could completely destroy this aspect of the game. 

Moreover, with individual drop chances any bonuses for extra party members would have to be much lower than the ones introduced in the new system due to the fact that the individual drop chance itself would be a huge bonus. It’d still be advantageous to have as few party members as possible and this is something we want to counteract - after all, Broken Ranks is an MMO with a strong social aspect.

Another matter is that it’d greatly incentivize players to take mules (players who are there just to increase the loot chance only by their presence) to kill bosses. We don’t think this is healthy for the game.

In our game, we want loot to be relatively rare but also a reason to celebrate every time you see it. Introducing individual drop chance could pose more problems than it solves and it could also negatively affect player experience. We know and understand the current system – the changes we’re introducing are meant to improve its downsides.

Archer balance

In the upcoming update, we’ll be making several changes to the archer to increase the class’s survivability, add some uniqueness to it, and improve synergies with other classes.

To get to the point, the first change is the long-awaited defensive skill. It will let the archer use an extra barrier that would absorb some of the damage while working as extra, unhealable HP. However, archers will be able to charge or refresh the barrier by hitting their opponents.

The barrier amount will depend on the amount of stamina and its maximum value will depend on the hit points – it won’t be able to exceed 60% of maximum HP. The barrier will absorb any damage, including DoTs and those taking away % HP. You can find more details in the table below.

Example: HP = 3000, stamina = 1500, skill level = Adept 7

Locked stamina = 40% * 1500 = 600 pts.

Base barrier gained = 600 pts. * 180% = 1080 pts.

Maximum barrier = 60% * 3000 = 1800 pts.

Barrier that can be charged by attacking = 1800 – 1080= 720 pts.*

*values subject to change

The second important change is a new, unique effect that archers can activate if they debuff their opponents with Short Circuit and Dazed, and then hit them with Precise Shot. It will reduce the opponent’s resistances by a number that depends on the skill level of Precise Shot. This effect can be further amplified by taking away APs – each AP taken will reduce resistances by further 2 points no matter who takes them away. This change aims to improve synergies with druids and barbarians.

To improve cooperation with melee characters, Sharp Senses will also be modified – from now on, it’ll work on both melee and ranged attacks.

Some of you must have already figured out that archers are getting a new defensive skill but… in exchange for what? Well, we’re saying goodbye to Strategic Shot and welcoming changes to other skills – some effects will be transferred or removed while others will see their values changed. Fire Arrow will receive a particularly vital change – it’ll become Ice Arrow but with different elemental damage. It will take away APs and fire resistance but will no longer set opponents on fire. Archers will now also be able to decrease the opponent’s defense even more but at the cost of having to attack from a different zone. You can see the changed parameters in the table below (parameters that stay the same are not shown).

In addition to that, to maintain balance between the defensive abilities of debuffers, we decided to make some changes to voodoo’s Shadow Shield. It will be nerfed not only by reducing the value of damage reduction but its mechanics will also change – after the update it will no longer block mental damage.

We will also lower the amount of ranged attack and defense taken away by Eye Puncture.

All values are subject to change. Further modifications are also possible.

Other changes

We are also planning to introduce some further changes. One of them is balancing the number of daimonites acquired from each instance on the Path of Challenge. It will no longer be the same no matter the boss – some numbers will be significantly lowered. We want to make the biggest changes to bosses dropping gear rank VII-IX so that the number of instances needed to upgrade a magniorb is closer to the values at other boss ranges.

We’ll also make some fixes to the rewards from Admiral on the Path of Challenge and Selena on both paths – we want to make both instances more profitable. We’re also introducing a new item, Time Sliver, that you can use to enter Tarul’s instance. It’ll make it easier to run it as many times as you want. You get Time Slivers by shattering Time Crystals. We’ve also taken a close look at this instance as regards its profitability and decided to lower it a bit. Tarul on both paths provides too large a return on investment, and generates a lot of gold and items – after the change, the return should be lower. To compensate, we improved the quality of the loot by removing the least valuable items from the pool, including low-scale synergetics, and changed the server-side value of normal items to make the attribution of loot more fair.

Moreover, we’re adding a couple of new drifs and orbs and making some changes to the existing ones to add more variety to your builds and gameplay:

• drif jorn – reduces damage from abilities that take away % HP (Admiral’s and V2’s Energy Jolt, Mahet’s Mortal Strikes)
• drif lun – provides resistance to freeze, stun, immobilization, and Face of Death (will replace adrim and heb)
• orb Q'zen – increases daimonites acquired

• orb Na'ed – increases defense after taking damage

• orbs Ky’at and Te’at – will be merged into one

More details will, as always, be available in the changelog. Adventure awaits!