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Friday, February 2nd Design Notes: Arena at the Edge of Time: Covetous Fortune

 
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2/2/2024 22:41:41   
Laeon val Observis
Member
 

quote:


Friday, February 2, 2024
Arena at the Edge of Time: Covetous Fortune
Hey there, heroes!

This month's arena release is here! To celebrate the Year of the Dragon, the final challenge in the Dragon Challenges board has been revealed!


The legendary Golden Luck Dragon defends their Tree of Fortune... Will you be able to steal some of that luck for yourself? But beware, misfortune falls upon the greedy!

Fortune awaits those who are brave enough to face this month's challenge: Covetous Fortune!

Head over to the Inn at the Edge of Time and try your luck!



Also this week, Virtuoso Epoch is now implemented!


The bonus for ordering the 2024 Calendar from HeroMart, equip the Adagio Solo artifact and conduct the symphony of time's end!

Note: Virtuoso Epoch's combat widget will be updated at a later date. Cosmetic accessories will be available for Dragon Coins at a later date.



Also, skill tooltip updates!

Skill tooltips have been updated once again to a new format that allows more dynamic sizes, as well as better readability.

DragonLord and its Artifact variations have also had their skill tooltips updated to the new format! Some Epoch tooltip errors have also been fixed.



Finally, February's Dragon Coin specials have arrived!


The Jadesoul Dragon Wings are now available, along with a bunch of returning seasonal items! Check them out in the Book of Lore!



And that's all for this week!

DF AQW  Post #: 1
2/3/2024 3:58:51   
Flabagast
Member

A neat concept to this one; you can nab a fortune before the Dragon does if you have a stun available, but get punished if you try to get two at a time.
spoiler:

I quite like how it becomes more golden as it absorbs more fortunes. Although that healing was a nasty surprise I should've seen coming...

Virtuoso Epoch looks great too!
AQ DF MQ  Post #: 2
2/3/2024 9:34:07   
Korriban Gaming
Banned


Missed opportunity for Wood element to make a small return
AQ DF AQW  Post #: 3
2/3/2024 15:55:40   
Laeon val Observis
Member
 

And thus my Techno dojoing is bearing fruit. Somewhat sloppy, but won me after 3 attempts (2 resets due to misplays more than Tree RNG, 1 win with a close call as I dragged it to reach 3 rotations. Gladly Tog+Vent crit blew through the last HP before the heal on the 3rd rotation). And all only relying on Endgame data. Res/Def stacking not too necessary (only gets dicey if the dragon does get a +Bonus fortune other apart from New Beginnings or any combination of the latter and its aggressive rotation), but could've been costly due to the class I used.

As for the rewards, I see the eastern luck references with all the eights. Reasonable sub for DA DM Belt on the defense side, if you're willing to lose some accustomed mainstat efficacies (the DM belt gives mainstats to where you want them to normally be, here you'll be squeezing as much shield you can get with a touch of Dragon CD reductions).

< Message edited by Laeon val Observis -- 2/3/2024 16:07:32 >
DF AQW  Post #: 4
2/3/2024 21:05:57   
Lee
Member
 

The fight is pretty interesting. I enjoyed how the Fortunes worked and the ability to "steal" them from the Dragon as well as the mechanic of stealing two or more (being greedy) would severely debuff you. The Dragon turning more golden as it obtained the Fortunes was a nice touch as well. Admittedly a bit concerned with the Dragon's heals should the player get unlucky, seeing as how the Dragon can heal up to 50% of it's HP in a single rotation.

15% Heal from the t7 coinflip (rolling BPD here will cause the Dragon to heal t11) which is understandable.
32% Heal a turn after the Dragon turns Golden (dispelling the Gold, this occurs after it "eats" three Fortunes). The Dragon Heals 8% of it's maximum HP every 2 hits in that attack, said attack has 8 hits.

Perhaps a way to help give some counterplay to such a large heal is to make said 32% Heal require hitcheck - akin to Safiria's mist form attack. For every second hit that lands, the Dragon heals. Should it miss, it does not. It would also play into the "luck" side of things as well. Some classes have the ability to shut down or at least reduce this issue (Technomancer's Vent is the largest contender).

Regardless, my advice to anyone doing this is to avoid the Dragon taking the "Fortune - Good Health", which carries a significant -80 Health res.

~~~~
The reward itself is pretty interesting. I might use it over Grimoire with it's defensive stats - I have the DM Belt but I generally don't use them for one reason or another myself. The Jadesoul Wings look absolutely gorgeous as well as being CC for those wondering.
Post #: 5
2/3/2024 21:46:21   
quickgold123
Member
 

Had a lot of fun with the new fight; I really liked how you could essentially choose what buffs to give to yourself and the dragon. Cool that 8's the featured number here for luck (as well as -444 LUK being the punishment if you're too greedy).

I also like the new cosmetic a lot; I'll be taking it for a spin for a while.
Post #: 6
2/4/2024 1:22:27   
The ErosionSeeker
*insert cheesy pun here*


quote:

Perhaps a way to help give some counterplay to such a large heal is to make said 32% Heal require hitcheck - akin to Safiria's mist form attack. For every second hit that lands, the Dragon heals. Should it miss, it does not. It would also play into the "luck" side of things as well. Some classes have the ability to shut down or at least reduce this issue (Technomancer's Vent is the largest contender).

This only seems like a problem because several classes can just burst GLD down in a single offense rotation fork, meaning that if you hit hard enough you just ignore the mechanics. All of the snowballing effects don't matter if it's dead.
The current intended way to do the fight seems to be with Techno or Paladin, where the trick is to bait it so you can stack +health when it enters defense rotation + gold, to block as much of the healing as possible.
After doing the fight several times, I don't think the heal should be able to fail, I instead think the opposite should happen: GLD should turn gold at least once in the fight no matter what (with phase change damage negation at 25% hp), in order to prevent bursters from not having to engage with the fight. Having to interact with the fortunes adds a lot of counterplay to the fight, but the monster just isn't really bulky enough as a solo. The hypothetical 25% forced enrage would also be an interesting punish because you would have to deal with it while you might not be ready.

< Message edited by The ErosionSeeker -- 2/4/2024 1:23:13 >
DF AQW  Post #: 7
2/4/2024 1:59:39   
Laeon val Observis
Member
 

Which begs the question: do we really need to see every inch of a bossfight's mechanics, or is this an adrenaline junkie mentality for tougher and tougher fights impairing judgement? Just because we get a badge out of surviving a pair that includes an unavoidable HP to 1 maneuver doesn't mean we have to deal with that kind of nightmare every time, regardless of perceived biases to certain classes. Anti-heal mechanics? Oh please, give those a favor if something like Shrinking god dragons as a possible troll move does exist if I have to take a page out of those meme vids that I personally will say here and now should not really be posted no matter the urge to post content. Now that I remember my previous test runs on GLD, I managed to put ol'goldie down to slightly less than 12k HP with Ninja in a single Catalytic while they slot machined into a defense first sequence. You got that right, a dragon with means to dampen the pace on heavy debuffers getting edged enough by a heavy debuffer class. Had I had a full sense of the mechanics involved in the fight back then, I would've still conquered it without the anti-Heal burst venom by subbing it with Kunai throughout, so the anti-Heal gig here is an okay bonus, but not really also "necessary".

< Message edited by Laeon val Observis -- 2/4/2024 2:05:09 >
DF AQW  Post #: 8
2/4/2024 2:54:41   
Lee
Member
 

quote:

This only seems like a problem because several classes can just burst GLD down in a single offense rotation fork, meaning that if you hit hard enough you just ignore the mechanics. All of the snowballing effects don't matter if it's dead.

I've seen about three classes from memory doing this exact thing (Ranger, Wrath DragonLord, Ranger and Doomknight), so I assumed they were outliers. That and it's possible that such classes or at least such strategy was used during testing - Tomix from Retribution and Reclamination comes to mind with his Soul Barrier.

At the time of writing, I thought only Technomancer with it's Vent could really oppose Dragon's heals - Ninja's Basilisk I thought would be too small to make a large difference and Paladin, I'm still learning how it works. I'll give you that point, thanks.

The Dragon turning gold at 25% would actually be interesting to see. I hadn't considered that as an idea since I was admittedly focused on the large heals. The forced enrage would be an interesting punishment for sure, I wonder how the Fortunes from the tree would play. Of course, it's understandably past making any such changes as we all probably know. I just wanted to provide some feedback that could help with future fights as I particularly enjoyed how the Tree works. As someone put it, it's a better "Sciuridaehotep and The Witness".

~~~
quote:

Which begs the question: do we really need to see every inch of a bossfight's mechanics, or is this an adrenaline junkie mentality for tougher and tougher fights impairing judgement? Just because we get a badge out of surviving a pair that includes an unavoidable HP to 1 maneuver doesn't mean we have to deal with that kind of nightmare every time, regardless of perceived biases to certain classes. Anti-heal mechanics? Oh please, give those a favor if something like Shrinking god dragons as a possible troll move does exist if I have to take a page out of those meme vids that I personally will say here and now should not really be posted no matter the urge to post content. Now that I remember my previous test runs on GLD, I managed to put ol'goldie down to slightly less than 12k HP with Ninja in a single Catalytic while they slot machined into a defense first sequence. You got that right, a dragon with means to dampen the pace on heavy debuffers getting edged enough by a heavy debuffer class. Had I had a full sense of the mechanics involved in the fight back then, I would've still conquered it without the anti-Heal burst venom by subbing it with Kunai throughout, so the anti-Heal gig here is an okay bonus, but not really also "necessary".

Sifting through your ramblings and passive aggressive comments every week gets incredibly exhausting and really doesn't help or encourage other players to provide their thoughts and opinions. As well as the aggressive direct messages that you send to folks in order to continue the argument or if you will, "have the last word".

Personal bias aside.

My feedback that I provided was less of an "adrenaline junkie mentality" and moreso trying to keep in mind how other more defensive or slower classes would interact with this. I don't really want to have Retribution and Reclamination repeated - namely how the fight becomes incredibly more difficult for the player once Tomix uses Soul Barrier (assuming you survive that long to begin with) and how ignoring his mechanics and removing him from the play as soon as possible is literally the best route to go. It wasn't fun for anyone, and it somewhat still isn't despite Tomix having lost his 20 innate All res in Phase 2 after Ice Scythe was (deservedly) nerfed.

The "shrinking of god dragons as a possible troll move" was less of a meme video and more of using an ancient mechanic. Shrink reduces an enemies HP by 10% which in turn affects their heal should it depend on their maximum HP. The actual shrinking to my understanding is just a Book 1 thing. Most bosses nowadays have Shrink resistance to my understanding, not because of the mechanic itself being used but because Shrinking bosses can and will break their animations.

Seeing as I can't really sift through the rest of your reply due to your snarky remarks ("if I have to take a page out of those meme vids that I personally will say here and now should not really be posted no matter the urge to post content") and toxicity, I'm just going to leave it there. Ninja understandably struggles with this fight and for me, that's fine seeing as how it handled the last few fights (Accursed Hunt in particular) incredibly well.
Post #: 9
2/4/2024 3:18:04   
TFS
Helpful!


I'm often a big fan of these gimmicky bosses based around some mechanic extraneous to DragonFable's usual combat - it's really fun to puzzle out how they work, and see how they interact with other gimmicky player skills. These bosses, however, also tend to be super undertuned - once you figure out how the mechanic works, you can just steamroll it and there's not really much more to the fight. The Luck Dragon is no exception - picking fortunes is a super neat mechanic, but once you realize that taking extra fortunes can delay his burst/heal past the point where you'll already have killed him, the mechanics become basically irrelevant. The optimal pathing for this fight is using a DPT class like WDL or Ranger and bursting him down before the heal - this means you'll ideally only see two fortune cookies and won't see the gold phase at all, rendering the fight's mechanical uniqueness moot. I agree with extant sentiment that this fight would be improved by having better defenses - maybe taking a second fortune cookie could come with an offensive debuff, or maybe increasing the damageres scaling could lifty up its survivability against resistance debuffs.
(The relatively inconsequential nature of the second fortune cookie debuff is a really clever way to give the player a buffer versus bad RNG, though - we certainly wouldn't want the Luck Dragon to be overly RNG reliant.)

Not a fan of the Indecent Proposal nerf that accompanied this release though - not playing the hurt animation / bypassing stun recovery allowed the trinket to see use as cooldown reduction in niche strategies against older content (such as goosex, the best boss in the game). It was a fun, niche tech that wasn't overpowered, but is now just worthless.

quote:

do we really need to see every inch of a bossfight's mechanic

someone spent a week developing and implementing them specifically so that players could see them, so yes
DF  Post #: 10
2/4/2024 6:32:38   
DragonKeeper
Member

quote:


Laeon val Observis wrote: Which begs the question: do we really need to see every inch of a bossfight's mechanics


I appreciate all the information about the bosses that I can get, so yes...
DF  Post #: 11
2/4/2024 6:45:51   
Laeon val Observis
Member
 

*Sighs* Such misconstruance and daredevil nerves that I have overestimated the existence of. Perhaps one word should sum something that is only reserved for the quest of knowledge here: PANDEMONIUM.
DF AQW  Post #: 12
2/4/2024 21:27:58   
Korriban Gaming
Banned


Personally I found the fight fun and interesting. Not all fights have to counter all classes/mechanics. I think it's alright to have a mix of easier fights once in a while. If every new fight release has to be harder than the last then it'd only make for a more frustrating experience as time passes. I think some classes having certain mechanics or be it in the nature of how the class is played, being able to clear some fights more easily than others is fine. Some fights can be burst and some fights can't, why is this an issue? Not every fight needs to encourage the player to draw out the battle
AQ DF AQW  Post #: 13
2/6/2024 10:27:53   
Bluu
Member

I really enjoyed this fight thematically. To me, it felt as though the player was "the bad guy", attempting to steal from the Tree of Fortune and keep its blessings for themselves, while the Golden Luck Dragon prevented you from invading its territory. During your fight with the dragon, you would run up to the tree and take some fortunes from it to fight its protector more effectively - but doing it too much causes you to incur great misfortune, resulting in a nigh guaranteed loss, meaning, as the tree says, you shouldn't be greedy and take more than two in a row without allowing the dragon to take any. However, the dragon, being the protector of the tree, never incurs misfortune as it's using its fortunes to protect the tree - instead, taking fortunes from the tree causes it to grow stronger with each fortune for the rest of the fight, as well as change phases until it finally reaches its fully golden form. The storytelling in this release is beautiful and feels like a full side-story to me, and I've always wanted to see how the big ol' Luck Dragon looked after his corpse's debut in the Maleurous. The cosmetic reward is beautiful, and the belt reward is great as well, having the highest MPM, BPD, and CHA of all the 10 All belts and finally giving us a defensive equivalent to Grimoire of the Lich and Ourobouros Root Belt. Safe to say I will be using this frequently. All in all, I do think it was a very good release, although I do have the same gripe with it that some others mentioned:

quote:

Which begs the question: do we really need to see every inch of a bossfight's mechanics, or is this an adrenaline junkie mentality for tougher and tougher fights impairing judgement?
I think this is a rather negative way to view the statement. The way I interpret it is that Verlyrus puts a lot of thought and effort into creating well-designed bossfights and it's a shame when this design cannot be properly appreciated because the boss has no counterplay to the insane burst some classes have. Imo, the discrepancy between classes that do it well and that do it decently is rather high - with Rangers and Wrath Dragonlords remarking that the fight was too easy and they didn't really need to do much outside of using their standard rotations to beat it, whereas Technomancers, Pirates, and Ninjas found the fight rather difficult because of how drawn-out it was for those classes (Ninja has burst but it relies too much on inflicting effects onto the target). It really does seem like a case of the boss just not being designed with burst in mind, causing burst classes to sweep the floor without ever having to see the Golden Luck Dragon's Fully Golden form (insane) - which, as much as damage races are sometimes nice fights, it does admittedly pose the question of whether these bosses' harder mechanics are largely present to punish the (usually large number of) classes that can't just burst them out before the threatening mechanics kick in, such as King Alteon or Tomix, which are recommended to be bursted down before the former hits phase 2 or shortly after, and before the latter sets up his Soul Barrier effect. Note that I don't disagree that it's fine for players to never encounter a mechanic that is intended to punish them for dragging out a fight too long or failing to meet a condition, such as Greater Misfortune from this fight or Sepulchure's enrage - that's clearly not meant to happen during a successful run or at least severely hinder your chances of succeeding from that point.

quote:

At the time of writing, I thought only Technomancer with it's Vent could really oppose Dragon's heals - Ninja's Basilisk I thought would be too small to make a large difference and Paladin, I'm still learning how it works. I'll give you that point, thanks.
Ninja's Basilisk is rather small, yeah. You could pair it up with the Amalgam Blaster and Tickles to inflict +90 Health Resist, but you already have to inflict three DoT effects to get to use it, meaning that doing this gives the dragon 60% damage resistance from all these effects, and that you probably still end up losing a lot of damage even if you successfully block the heal. You're probably better off not optimizing to block the heal, as it's not like Ninja's direct damage is insignificant.
Post #: 14
2/6/2024 15:53:32   
Laeon val Observis
Member
 

*Applauds just like the fake Ra's al Ghul* Impressive, two answers that restore faith that went beyond the stinger nature of the inquiry I imposed. One even including, even though it might be on the lighter side of describing it, a greater view of the Inn/Arena itself rather than just getting tunnel visioned by a singular challenge release. As far as I'm concerned with the "timer of doom" nature of certain fights both cited here and not, while they might have elements of discriminating against classes with low DPT with varying degrees (the apparent nightmare that is Inn Tomix pretty much implicitly requests that you seriously consider resetting the run should you live past his unleashing of Soul Barrier, GLD's can just be a demoralizing experience yet leaves some room to redeem the ongoing fight instead of outright reset), their existence is necessary to encourage reduction on complacencies during combat. After all, if trying to blitz a fight can be seen as an "insult" to combat design, there should be room to describe as so if a class is being too liberal and forgiving to misplays.

In terms of TFS's concerns that RNG involved mechanics here being "undertuned", get them overtuned and you'll get responses that sound similar to AstralCodex's during the initial release of The Balance We Make:

quote:

...feels like my wins weren't my own ...The combination of high difficulty and RNG mechanics with little counterplay makes for a frustrating experience.

Overall, I can say this Inn release is still in a decent place. In fact, due to its specs and by virtue of being a free reset instead of being a waste of 1000 Gold, it is also a decent testbed for players who are planning to tackle the IE and DR boards.

< Message edited by Laeon val Observis -- 2/6/2024 16:10:34 >
DF AQW  Post #: 15
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