Stream Recap:
Disclaimer: Shorthand and oversimplification used to keep up with stream. Missed the first few minutes of stream, but I think I got most of it?
Underworld
– Recapture feeling of dungeon delving
– First Factions: All-Seeing Eye + Hall of Guardians
– Smaller in scope than full kingdoms: 4 troops per faction
– The 4 troops from each faction are synergous with each other.
– New factions released monthly
– Completing Sin of Maraj unlocks access to Underworld
– Sin of Maraj unlocks the Underworld upon completion of the questline, but the Underworld will not be available until the 4.0 update. The kingdom is being released to allow players to be ready to go to the Underworld on Day 1 of the 4.0 update.
– Rough ETA for 4.0 update → end of August (subject to change, of course).
– Sin of Maraj is not Apocalypse.
– Factions are tied to Overworld kingdoms, add to Overworld’s kingdom’s power.
– Hall of Guardians → Whitehelm, All-Seeing Eye → Darkstone
– Factions will be the primary focus for awhile, Kingdoms are likely to be revisited in the future at some point (at least 12 months+ in the future)
– Factions do not increase power in the same way as Overworld kingdoms. Factions increase power by completing delves to gain Renown, and donating treasures to factions to increase their treasure hoard.
– Factions have their own banner.
– There is two faction renown totals; Individual faction renoun, and total Underworld renoun.
– Increasing faction renown unlocks various bonuses, weapons, “pit”???
– Factions do not give tribute.
– Increase a factions treasure hoard increases bonuses in delves, such as treasure drops and stat bonuses to teams when running delves.
– Treasures are intended to function as items, but are coded as troops (functionality does not yet exist for item cards?). As such, they can be ascended like troops. Do not do this, as there is no value gained in ascending treasures to higher rarities.
– There are additional rewards for using a faction’s team in its own delve.
– Factions will have pets.
– 5 new pets launching with update.
– There is a long-term pet goal for the Underworld. 2+ year goal.
Delves
– Delves are dailies, 3 per day (over all factions, not individually).
– Delves are between 3-10 battles per delve.
– Delves contain rooms with battles, analogous to a dungeon.
– Players are rewarded a delve chest with rewards at the end of each dungeon.
– Completing rooms increased the quality of delve chest, but add to the difficulty of the reset of the rooms in the dungeon (cumulative) for each room cleared (risk/reward).
– There are delve-specific traits for troops.
– Delves are color-restricted to 2 colors per delve. Any troop with one of the two colors can be used on the team.
– Rare treasure rooms are possible.
– If a troop is killed in a room, it remains “dead” for the rest of the delve.
– Players can Run Away after any room, if too many casualties occur.
– There is no penalty for a team wiping in a room, outside of ending the delve.
Guilds
– Guild system updates coming “soon” (next update?)
– Guild updates ideas: Inactivity notices, activity log, contribution log, guild announcements button → post in global chat, etc.
– Guild seal cap rebalance in 4.1 or beyond?
Misc
– No PvP rework in 4.0. Ideas being tossed around internally for future updates.
– No plans to change Legendary Tasks in 4.0.
– Legendary Tasks under review, because of extreme numbers of LTs (hundreds+) being completed per week. No decisions made yet on the matter. Looking into other ways for players to spend excess gold.
– Map updated to add present particle effects. Overworld map reworked to be in the style of the Underworld map.
– Hero menu now accessed by clicking on the hero picture in the upper left corner of the screen.
– Devs will be at PAX West.
– Free art book to first 8 people who find them there and ask for it.
– Unity bug causing lag → memory leak in Unity engine. Devs waiting for Unity to release a fix.
– Gems of War board/card game might be in the works?
– Some Gems of War merchandising (T-Shirts as a test) will be available soon.
– Hotkeys may be possible in 4.1 or later. Safeguards need to be designed to prevent botting.
– Defense behavior sliders for PvP not coming back.
– Major Orb of Growth is placed where it is in event rewards for new players; not meant for late-game players.
– Sirrian is working on Puzzle Quest 3 (yay!)
– No plans for Gems of War 2. Gems of War will be continued for the long-term.
– Devs looking for feedback on shorter questlines in the Underworld for future re-work of kingdom questines and challenges.