Friday, March 21st Design Notes: Book 1 Revisited: Oaklore to Hydra!


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Friday, March 21st Design Notes: Book 1 Revisited: Oaklore to Hydra!

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3/22/2025 0:46:33

Laeon val Observis
Member

quote:

Friday, March 21, 2025
Book 1 Revisited: Oaklore to Hydra!
Hey there, heroes!

This week, we've begun the Book 1 Revisited project! We've updated and cleaned up quests and towns and more from the start of the game up through the bridge Hydra!

We've gone all the way back to the start of Book 1 to do some clean up of Oaklore Keep! Perhaps the biggest change is that the major Oaklore Keep quest chains are better connected and more clearly accessible/directed!

What else have we cleaned up? Glad you asked!
We've fixed all the typos we could find! (And there were quite a few!)

Buttons, icons, and fonts have been updated.

Almost all parts of Oaklore (and quests!) have background music now.

Before being able to head to Falconreach, you'll now be required to help Sir Valence (Sneevil quests) and Sir Vey (Mollo Fruit).

Sir Valence and Sir Vey's quest chains have been cleaned up, and now tie into the main story's search for the Black Dragon Box. These changes will better set a minimum level for leaving Oaklore, since...

The Hydra boss has been updated with a proper attack rotation and may require some strategy to defeat! Thankfully (?) Sir Pent will provide some helpful Hydra Slaying Tips during the fight!

Rolith's UI has been updated, and he'll be a little more helpful now, directing you to who you need to talk to for each step of the Oaklore Keep story.

The Priestess' Message can now be replayed! Defeated Drakath and his bandits will earn you a new low level Stone weapon as well.

A couple of Sir Vey's quests have had some drops adjusted to better provide you with Sparkling Sand, and the Note from Sepulchure is now a guaranteed drop.

Sir Vey's shop items now only cost 1 Sparkling Sand per item.

The Darkwolf Bandit Ambush and Zorbak's Prank quests can now be replayed.

The Darkwolf Bandits are now a little more familiar with you... Drakath really wasn't pleased with you!

Some optional paths off of the path to Falconreach will now be blocked off until you defeat the Hydra.

Sir Baumbard has had some dialogue adjusted.

Some random/optional quests have been removed from Book 1 Oaklore to prevent bloat/distractions.

Guardian Smith in Bk1 Falconreach will now have a big ! over his head if you ahve the Forgotten Spear or Long Forgotten Spear in your invnetory.
There have been other small dialogue adjustments and fixes as well to provide a better flow for the story!

We learned a lot from this week. Including that ALL of Oaklore up through the Hydra might have been a bit more than we could healthily chew, especially once we start working through EVERYTHING that Falconreach has to offer. For example, this week, we wanted to work on reworking the Guest options from the Book of Lore (due to them being both spoilers AND overpowered for Book 1). We have plans for it, but we just didn't have time to implement them this week. We'll have to be careful going forward not to take on more than we can.

We hope you enjoy the updates, and if we missed anything, or if you have any feedback, please let us know!

Now for your regularly scheduled Dragon Coin cosmetic special!

The Valor's Claim cosmetic scythe is now available for 400 Dragon Coins! Color custom to Base and Dragon Eye colors, Valor's Claim will be a beautiful addition to any collection.

There have also been a number of bugfixes and balance changes and engine updates too!
Bk1 Warlic now has proper tracking, so he won't go on vacation early.

Twilly now leaves after the Gorillaphant battle. He does leave in the story, after all!

The Rolith guest has had his damage reduced significantly:
Attack: 2x70% -> 2x50%

Heavy Attack: 4x50% -> 4x30%

Crushing Attack: 8x40% -> 8x20%

Slam: 2x70% -> 2x25%
Character creation now displays fonts properly.

Female Rogue in character creation now has the correct back leg.

There is now a Volume toggle on the Login/Character Select/Character Creation screens (shares volume and preferences with the settings in Options)

Volume now changes by 5s rather than by 10s.

Base classes have been updated slightly.

Warrior, Mage, and Rogue defensive skills are now 150 Defenses, up from 140.

Mage's Meditate now does 1 hit of 100% damage, and provides +200 Crit for the next turn.

Rogue's Surprise Attack now has a 1-turn 50% weapon element DoT.

Rogue's Poison now has a 5-turn 25% DoT, up from 20% + stat damage.

Rogue and Mage stuns now do 50% damage when used.

Anything else I may have forgotten! (And I probably did, there was a lot this week!)

And that's all for this week! If all goes well, the Rising Fire war in Book 2 will be Reimagined next week!

AQW

Post #: 1

3/22/2025 23:00:52

Deni3000
Member

The update looks awesome, and I'm absolutely loving the new music. I'm also really glad the quests themselves weren't changed - it's nice to have the old art preserved, brought back good memories.

Just a few notes, some things did get broken - Sir Vey's quests are seemingly in limbo and inaccessible after completing them (unless there's something I'm missing), the Young Tuskmongers in Sir Loin's quest are gigantic when in battle (it's just the young ones, the tuskmongers in other quests are normal sized), Sneevil Boxopolis has the fifth to last room background missing, and the mage Power skill no longer shows the proper floaty animation.

I'd put these in a bug report, but I figure they're tiny enough to where pointing it out here would be best.

All in all, great release.

Post #: 2

3/24/2025 9:47:58

Dratomos
Helpful!

Finally played the release and I would say, overall it's nice! Adding music and maybe more requirements for story to move forward was pretty nice.

I do have some overall thoughts towards other things. Like quests being removed. I get why, they add nothing, but this level of micromanaging is pretty inconsistent and overall, I don't see any reason why do this. There are already other quests, that many players would not see that important, so I think just leaving them all there is good enough. I don't think vast majority of new players would suddenly stop playing DF and never touch it again, if they spent 30 seconds on Catapult quest. Is it pointless? Yeah. Does removing it fix things in bigger scope? Not really.

Second thing are the rewards. I don't mind that we now have more stuff required to do in Oaklore before moving forward, especially with Hydra now being a bit more challenging and having actually mechanics and a tutorial. That was great! And those added quests, while being padding, also give some sense of worldbuilding, which I do like. A lot of RPGs, old and new usually have new players doing some stuff that isn't as interesting as the endgame stuff, so it's fine.

But those also require new rewards. Since it's pretty odd how between lvl 5 and lvl 10 you don't get any usable weapons, unless you get lucky while farming some sneevil quests, which are pain as lvl 6-9 character, which I doubt is the purpose here. So having a new shop there, or old ones giving new gear between lvls 5-10 would be appreciated! And changing first tier of Sir Jing's weapons to like lvl 5+ instead of 2 would also be nice.

Falconreach also has the same problem, which I hope will we changed in the future.

But as a starting point, I do think a lot of stuff was done right. I do have some thoughts on weapon types, which I want to express in a separate post.

< Message edited by Dratomos -- 3/24/2025 9:48:52 >

AQW

Post #: 3

3/24/2025 14:48:17

TFS
Helpful!

Really cool release!

I think the most important change here is the inclusion of music - that's obviously the biggest element missing from these old quests and its addition substantially increases both the presentation and the willingness of players to pay attention to the game. I also like how there was an effort to stick to older style tracks (for the most part), and keep the music of these quests consistent with the rest of Book 1.

I'm less than thrilled about the Sneevil and Vurrmen quests becoming mandatory for progression now, though. While this is clearly an attempt to make sure players are properly leveled to fight the hydra, forcing a glut of eight (!!!) very dull filler quests back to back feels bad for pacing. Forced chores don't feel respectful of the player - especially a new player who isn't yet invested in the game. It feels similar to how the pinwheel quests in Sulen'Eska used to be mandatory. Maybe Rolith should be suggesting that novice adventurers help out around the Keep before traveling to Falconreach, rather than forcing them to?
Forcing a bunch of filler quests just to prepare for a mandatory tutorial also just feels like a bad use of game resources, as well as the player's time. If these quests in the tutorial zone have to be mandatory... shouldn't they be tutorializing something? Maybe the Vurrmen have a DoT effect or something? Maybe there's a 100% drop with -5 Health that says 'This item will make you heal 5% more!'? Maybe the monsters are weak to one element and resistant to another (possibly two elements Mages can cast? Or those of the guaranteed Spear and Bandit Blade drops?)
Finally, a lot of the Oaklore drops have just been rendered completely worthless by the new exp curve. Like you get a Lv 3 weapon for beating Drakath... in order to unlock eight mandatory quests that give you Lv 2 weapons - this feels like it wastes both the player's time AND the game's resources all at once.

I'm also not quite sure why a couple of quests were removed. Like others said, they aren't much of a loss, but limiting what new players can interact with is micromanaging at best and limits worldbuilding at worst - it just seems like a strange choice I don't understand the reasoning for. Like the possibility of a new player going to Vurrmen Ruins if they wanted was some issue that required intervention... but the five other identical Vurrmen quests have to be made mandatory? The Bandit Catapult wasn't hurting anything (if anything, maybe it'd have let a couple new players know that there's a bandit problem before fighting Drakath).

The bandits mentioning Drakath is a small but very appreciated addition - he's an important character who feels a little underbaked at this stage of the game, and being reminded of his presence ensures a newer player will keep him in mind going forward.

Sir Pent and the hydra are a really good tutorial! While a forced tutorial like this would normally feel intrusive, Sir Pent comically sticking his head into the frame before the player rebukes him does feel very in-line with early Book 1's RPG 4th-wall humor and doesn't come off as forced. This was very well-handled.
My little nitpick, though, is that Sir Pent tells you to kill the smaller heads first because they're 'more aggressive' - while this was true for the old version of the fight, they no longer do more damage than the main Hydrahok head. A player should be looking at this fight and thinking 'okay, they're all equally dangerous, but the smaller heads will die quicker if I focus them, causing me to take less damage over the course of the fight,' which is a process that'll also help for the rest of the game. Just a little nitpick though!

Also yay Obsidian Tog is back

< Message edited by TFS -- 3/24/2025 15:13:13 >

Post #: 4

3/25/2025 17:05:35

Loreguardian
Member

Hi,

Posting it here as it related to this Release.

What Is the difference between a Revisited and a Re-imagined?

On the Topic of this Release I love how they have updated Oaklore. the music is very nice and it feel more connected as well which for me is a big positive. I will admit im slightly unsure about removing the root of all sneevil and the vurmen ruins but have noticed you can still access them from other locations so I guess it make sense. Finally the new layout when you speak to captain Rolith is very refreshing.

Looking forward to seeing the next Book 1 Revisited Updates

Post #: 5

3/26/2025 18:51:23

Verlyrus
DragonFable Boxcat

Thanks for all the feedback! First up, I want to say that we do have multiple people playing through both for the first time and repeat that we are gathering information from.

Regarding the removal of Vurr'men Ruins, Sneevil Forest, and Bandit Catapult:
I agree that it's good to let players explore and have options of content to interact with. Which is why we kept in all the other more unique quests. The placement of these quests, next to more "important" quests was bogging players down in mazes or minigames.

This also leads to forcing Sneevil and Sir Vey quests to be required. Besides it enforcing a soft level minimum for leaving the keep which in turn allows us to use the hydra to specifically teach some mechanics, these quests were also short and varied enough in terms of appearances with different backgrounds/monsters to where players did enjoy them- even if mechanically they are not that different. We also rewrote some dialogue with Rolith and Sir Valence/Sir Vey to link this to the main story a bit as well. Since a Sneevil took the Black Dragon Box, naturally you look into the Sneevils when you visit Oaklore keep. And when you don't find the box from the Sneevils, you find more information about what could be causing the Sneevils and other strange happenings around Oaklore to be happening, and help Sir Vey— which then also leads you to the Note from Sepulchure, and also gets you some guaranteed loot with the adjusted drop rates. You're also no longer directed to go to Falconreach until after Sir Vey's quests.

Adding new loot is tough. The low level quests that drop weapons are already quite bloated, and these levels go by relatively quick. We added guaranteed loot from one of Sir Vey's quests, and you're likely to get other stuff too if you explore or along the way still. Even if you don't the Forgotten Spear should be enough.
Also in testing, the Forgotten Spear was able to carry on up until the hydra, and the new Stone weapon lets you get an advantage when doing Sir Jing's quest, if you pay attention to the elemental weaknesses.

Regarding the difference between Revisited and Reimagined, for Reimagined, we're doing more extensive rewrites and/or adding quests or remaking them entirely. For Revisited, we're just doing minor dialogue changes if needed (but doing our best not to), along with fixing typos and just modernizing the quests with music and such. We're also going to be streamlining things or improving the flow when necessary— the feedback from new players has been very valuable in determining where people are getting bogged down or lost (in a bad way- some getting lost is fun!).

< Message edited by Verlyrus -- 3/26/2025 18:53:08 >

Post #: 6

3/26/2025 20:04:14

Loreguardian
Member

Hi Verlyrus

So out of interest what is the release schedule now?

If I remember correctly it used to be

Week 1 - Inn Challenge
Week 2 - Main Story
Week 3 - Side Story
Week 4 - Reimagined

With the introduction of the Revisited Releases I’m now curious how they will fit into the Schedule

Post #: 7

3/26/2025 20:45:28

arcanum37
Member

This was posted by Verlyrus on one of the fan-made discord servers:

quote:

so months will likely look like
Inn
Clean Up/Project
Clean Up/Project
Reimagined

Unless we get the urge to start Northlands, or y'all get sick of things

Post #: 8

3/26/2025 21:49:39

TFS
Helpful!

quote:

This also leads to forcing Sneevil and Sir Vey quests to be required. Besides it enforcing a soft level minimum for leaving the keep which in turn allows us to use the hydra to specifically teach some mechanics, these quests were also short and varied enough in terms of appearances with different backgrounds/monsters to where players did enjoy them- even if mechanically they are not that different. We also rewrote some dialogue with Rolith and Sir Valence/Sir Vey to link this to the main story a bit as well. Since a Sneevil took the Black Dragon Box, naturally you look into the Sneevils when you visit Oaklore keep. And when you don't find the box from the Sneevils, you find more information about what could be causing the Sneevils and other strange happenings around Oaklore to be happening, and help Sir Vey— which then also leads you to the Note from Sepulchure, and also gets you some guaranteed loot with the adjusted drop rates. You're also no longer directed to go to Falconreach until after Sir Vey's quests.

Yeah, I understand why this choice was made, as stated above. I'm just not sure why it's mandatory when merely suggesting that a player explore Oaklore before moving on would accomplish the same thing, without the same degree of micromanaging. Losing to a boss, going back and exploring, and coming back when you're stronger is what's to be expected from an RPG, after all.
In the specific case of Hydrahok Tuah, a player who opted to explore and obtained Sir Jing's Weapons (which actually is just suggested rather than forced, and also serves as a tutorial for Element mechanics - definitely a much better use of both the player's time and game resources) would also be able to defeat the boss and progress at a much lower level than one who hasn't. For this player who actually does opt to explore, the Vurrmen quests really would just be a pointless waste of time.

I guess what I'm getting at is that the early-game rat grinding is quite dull and not necessarily essential for a player to be able to progress. These quests don't really contain any story elements or much gameplay while taking up a fair amount of time, and forcing a new player to do all of them before they can progress or are yet invested in the game might have a repulsive effect. I feel like most RPGs would make a segment like this optional, and just have NPCs nudge you towards it before you progress, rather than mandatory for any sort of progression.
As a counterexample, the way Sir Jing is handled - allows players to overcome the Hydra, tutorializes mechanics non-intrusively through gameplay, is fun to play through and doesn't take a lot of time, is optional, and is recommended by Sir Pent before taking on the Hydra - seems like much better implementation of what the Vurrmen quests are trying to accomplish.

< Message edited by TFS -- 3/26/2025 21:53:21 >

Post #: 9

3/27/2025 5:41:46

spirit of greed
Member

A nice early DF polishing, i guess it's a really important part for new players. You could even say this was a nice retro DF update.

What i really appreciated was coming back to the basics. I miss the old simpler times. Not that i hate DF now of course, i just feel a bit overwhelmed fighting all those Gods and Omnipotent beings these days. I liked it whenever we had some quick adventures or visited a friend or just helped out the towns and the people etc..., however rarely it did happen.

Thanks it was nice to hang around Oaklore again!

Also i feel a bit stupid but doing the bombing quests again i just realized slimes and undeads can talk and think! Is there a reason we never saw it happen again or i'm just too serious and this was an early joke? LOL

< Message edited by spirit of greed -- 3/27/2025 5:42:45 >

AQW

Post #: 10

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