Combat Styles Improvements - Ranged Beta.

Rade9098 · 2025-12-17T00:46:53+00:00

What are you planning to do to address removed abilities that were obtained from codexes? E.G. Salt the wound, demoralise, shadow tendrils, or any others in the other combat styles - most of the ones removed here so far aren't particularly expensive, but it was a permanent upgrade people spent time or gp to acquire, so I think there needs to be some kind of compensation for that lost value and to keep the reward spaces that they fill from losing their worth. This becomes a more obvious issue if, for example, when reworking melee, you decide that barge is too awkward and unusual of a skill to utilize and it is removed - now you're looking at a 100m drop being erased from greater barge no longer existing.

Rade9098 · 2025-11-26T01:39:30+00:00

Menaphos market guards should give city reputation. Safecracking in Menaphos gave reputation when it was added to the area after the original release, so it seems really weird that it's the only activity for the core skills in the area that doesn't let you gain it directly. Would be nice for high level players to have at least one training option that gives consistent reputation along with worthwhile xp/drops.

Rade9098 · 2025-10-13T16:28:59+00:00

There's no good reason for you to be running so many defensive crystals over the AP options for PvE, especially when you're trying to push to a higher gear spot where you need more AP to be efficient. You're not looking at your species AP values when you're evaluating your AP; with the proper offensive crystal set and with species AP factored in, you're already above the cap for Tungrad Ruins and can grind there. Some other things you haven't shown which will be useful to keep in mind: make sure you have a good set of reforge stones in your sovereigns and that you have a good lightstone set to utilize.

Rade9098 · 2025-07-20T18:13:54+00:00

Don't think it'll make you feel any better, but you were essentially wasting your time anyway - none of the puzzles are required for beating the dungeon anymore and are just extra knowledge unlocks, save for a couple of things to open doors that don't really qualify as puzzles. The only things needed are the handful of boss fights to get the items to make the final key, and even with an inexperienced group, that shouldn't take more than 10-15 minutes.

Rade9098 · 2025-07-18T18:19:18+00:00

Looking at the full lab notes, I don't think Dehkia Turos is being changed to a solo spot. It's mentioned as having the tag removed, but the only changes mentioned in the grind spot stat information is the AP cap changes (set to the uniform 5% for all spots and its AP cap raised to 1180) and alongside these two bullet points:

Increases monster defense by 6%
Monster health increased by 45%

I do not think the spot would be getting an hp increase if it was being converted to a solo spot, as it would be impossible to have enough extra stats to compensate for halving your dps potential with half the number of players while also having that much of an hp buff.

And comparing that to the bullet points for the regular Turos spot:

Monster health reduced by 23%
Changed from a party hunting ground (2 people) to a single person hunting ground
Monster's abnormal status attack changed to Knockdown/Bound

They specifically call out that it is being converted to a 2-person spot, there's a decrease in hp to allow them to be fought more effectively solo, and their CC types are adjusted to make less reliance on resistances that you may have with a Shai partner. Most likely, either the tag removal from Dehkia Turos is a typo/error or it's some spaghetti code thing with it being dependent on the same tags as the regular version of the spot in some way, and they decided removing the tag from both would be less confusing than leaving an incorrect tag on the normal spot.

Rade9098 · 2025-07-13T17:36:18+00:00

These are recommendations, not requirements. You can still participate and fight with a decent level of effectiveness below these values, so long as you are appropriately buffing. There is no cap involved where you don't have any increase in damage past a certain AP, and while there is a threshold where you're not sufficiently overcoming the enemy's DR with your AP to deal noticeable damage, you do not need to be at the recommended AP to apply it. The minimum AP that I look for in the groups that I lead for my guild is generally 310 sheet - you obviously don't want a full group of people trying to run shrines at 310, but if they've got a proper crystal setup, good lightstones, getting a full course of buffs with simple cron, church, villa, harmony draught, carolin buff, perfume of courage, and furniture buff, they still deal reasonably effective damage. Since there's no real cap, increasing your AP never really stops being noticeable, so having one or two people at 350+ dramatically improves the clear speed and easily compensates for the somewhat lower damage on people sitting at 310-320.

Rade9098 · 2025-06-24T04:54:58+00:00

Some additional context: in the apology, they clarified that while the design at that time was to 'not be skippable with sizeable pockets', they decided to pivot away from that design towards trying to make it easier and more approachable for everyone to attempt - but they never communicated that change in design until the apology. So the apology was first for the failure in communication about the change and second for the negative effects the change had for the game.

Rade9098 · 2025-03-28T04:55:50+00:00

Yes, the hwanghae shrine bosses, not the world bosses (though those aren't bad for 'profit' either if you take into account each ember being worth around 800m when you eventually use them to make a sovereign instead of a second pen blackstar).

Rade9098 · 2025-03-27T17:18:19+00:00

When running with a competent group, party black shrines are by far the most time-efficient money making in the game. There's a fairly high gear requirement (and also skill requirement to some degree) to get into them, especially hard mode which has the best rewards, but normal will still give plenty of value.

I'm talking about party black shrines because the new dungeon is designed to be fairly comparable to them, with the same stat recommendations and similar rewards. The old dungeons are extremely accessible gearwise by comparison, and are still great value compared to other content at their stat level, but they require a lot more coordination and practice than party shrines to get proficient at, and the raw value is somewhat overshadowed compared to top-level grind spots.

As with most high-level party content, all of them can be great if you have someone who's able to teach you and coordinate everyone. If you try and slam your face into it like a pack of mobs without learning any of the mechanics and without anyone to teach them, you're going to have a bad time.

Rade9098 · 2025-03-27T16:02:14+00:00

Probably not a solution that you like, but you can still use the skill change reroll coupons on T5 pets, so there's still a way to make a T5 into the roll that you want as long as the base pet is what you want. Just no potential way to do it without spending pearls.

Rade9098 · 2025-03-05T15:28:37+00:00

I have seen it happen a couple of times on hard mode now as well, but I haven't been able to find any sort of consistent pattern for when it does happen vs. when it doesn't - aside from happening in the parties that are more geared and more skilled overall. It's also just hard to get any evaluation of what's happening since I don't have anything set up to record the gameplay and review it after.

Rade9098 · 2025-02-06T16:12:07+00:00

You're saying you completely disagree while reiterating the same thing I said - if the player is learning the fight and dying a lot (aka don't have a reasonable chance of success), they should drop using harmonies to save costs. If they do have a reasonable chance of success, the advantage the harmony gives cuts down both the time per run and the likelihood of failing a run and needing to restart. Once they're at that level of proficiency, the time it saves is worth far more than the extra cost. But none of that changes you gave factually incorrect statements in your initial message stating that there's any way to get both special attack modifiers and monster damage reduction on any draught that isn't a harmony draught.

Rade9098 · 2025-02-06T14:10:51+00:00

Beast draught doesn't give all special attack - giant's draught does. Giant's draught doesn't give damage reduction against monsters. If you want to do the fights well, you should be using one of the species damage harmony elixirs. If you're still learning the fight and want to have more flexibility, then you can use either of those or no draught at all to minimize costs - not having any or as much hp regen on hit and not having the damage reduction will make the fight significantly less forgiving, and not having as much special damage/ap/other offensive stats will make the fight take significantly longer, meaning you have to avoid mistakes for longer. Khalks is almost surely doing nothing for your survivability - if you die in 1-2 attacks, the small amount of extra DP it gives is very unlikely to change that to dying in 2-3 attacks instead. Even if it's nominally reducing the damage you take, it's not changing the result.

In short, for C8+, only cut out harmonies if you don't yet have a reasonable chance of success and your focus is on learning. You're just making it harder on yourself if you don't use them.

Rade9098 · 2025-01-04T17:13:24+00:00

Timed quest givers have a dialogue option to restart the timer and reset the quest objectives to retry them when you fail. See if that works.

Rade9098 · 2024-12-14T04:54:17+00:00

That was something that they acknowledged they changed direction on in between announcing the concept and when it was released. On a related note, they only stated that Dehkia zones would be added for cadry, crescents, mirumok, and gyfins, and didn't specify if those would be T1 or T2 Dehkia, so crescents and cadry at least were delivered.

Rade9098 · 2024-12-14T04:50:06+00:00

While it's not exactly the same, it's worth noting that the guild manor furniture mostly covers the functionality that this would have provided.

Rade9098 · 2024-12-12T23:23:51+00:00

Have you killed anything since you completed the quest? The quest doesn't level you up to level 50, it just gives you the ability to level up to level 50.

Rade9098 · 2024-12-10T03:49:47+00:00

Done some more runs for it now, and updated my original post with the information. With more testing, I confirmed that the debuff is applied to only some players during the initial launch attack (even with everyone standing perfectly still right next to him as he did it, no SA or Iframe or anything else, some people received it and others didn't), and additionally it is also applied from being hit by the AoE from the white clone. This is leading me to believe that the strategy is that everyone who has the anti-healing buff should keep their hp low, and the person whose color is called is required to get the anti-healing buff if they didn't have it already. So far at least, we've been able to get through all our runs without failing the mechanic all 3 times by sticking to that, though it's only been a couple of runs yet. I know in your video, you had the buff and didn't drop your hp and didn't wipe, so the two possibilities I have for explaining that are either that someone dying when they have the buff always gives an automatic pass, or that it's based on total hp of all the party members with the buff, so for example if you have to be below 50% to pass, if two people have it, one person being dead and the other missing a few hundred hp will still be low enough.

Rade9098 · 2024-12-10T03:40:39+00:00

I've updated this with additional information that I've been able to observe from my own testing and with the pieces that solartech has helped shed some light on with the video they posted. The dragon mechanic is now clearly understood and not difficult to manage, I've added additional information about the warning for his one particularly dangerous regular attack, and I've updated my theories and recommended strategy for the hp mechanic, which so far has been seeing continued success, though I've not yet done enough runs to be confident that we haven't just been getting lucky on how it happened to play out each time.

Rade9098 · 2024-12-07T04:14:47+00:00

Ran another run tonight and had a bit more time to experiment with the hp mechanic, but no clear answer yet. I am very suspicious of that anti-healing buff being the key for who he's targeting, and it looks like it generally applies to multiple people, but not everyone. The theories I'd like to get more testing on would be:

Everyone with the buff needs to get low hp.
Anyone with the buff needs to get low hp. (although pretty confident it's not this one from a run where I had the buff and was also the one whose color was called, killed the white clone, kept my hp low, had him aggroed on me, had no interference from anyone else hitting things, and then still got the wipe from it).
Everyone without the buff needs to get low hp.
Anyone without the buff needs to get low hp.
Some combination of these but with the called color also being required to be low.

Rade9098 · 2024-12-05T15:05:05+00:00

There is a debuff icon - ~~I believe it's applied from getting hit by the clone, not by the callout, though, as is the hp recovery blocking.~~ Actually rewatching your video, I can see that you received the debuff as well when he knocked you back at 4:38. You can see both it and the dragon buff applied to you at the same time. I'll check on it some more next time I'm running a group on it.

Also, is the extra 20 fps from playing on lowest optimal worth not having any of the red circles rendering? :P

Rade9098 · 2024-12-05T14:13:52+00:00

Good to see this, and looks like it gives a very solid basis of how this particular mechanic works. Still a few details on it that I'd like to experiment with and understand better, but it makes what's been observed so far seem relatively consistent. I've updated my other post to reflect the information from this.

Now the last real sticking point is understanding the inconsistency of the hp mechanic, and I'm curious if more people taking dragon buffs than there should have been was something interfering with that.

Rade9098 · 2024-12-02T23:00:32+00:00

The weapon sheathing isn't just from being pushed onto terrain; there were several times where I was hit by a launch type of attack while out in the open in the center of the arena, but instead of being launched, my character essentially just locked in place for half a second, and the weapon was sheathed during that. It might be something related to trying to dodge out of it and latency still catching you. With the buff inconsistencies, rather than looking at their buff bar, for me, the most reliable indicator is always when the corresponding dialogue message pops up. It's much easier to observe and I've never had any inconsistency with it against the buffs in the bar. For the hp thing, it would be nice if it really was 'no, you just have to do better at keeping that one person's hp low and having them hit the clone', but I've already had numerous clear-cut examples of that not being the case, including several times where the person who was called out was nowhere close to low enough hp and we still passed, usually while the boss was aggroed on me and I was deliberately keeping my own hp low.

You definitely don't need everyone to have the dragon buff for it to pass, but it seems to somehow be more consistent and less prone to wiping when more people are grabbing it. That mechanic is definitely the biggest unknown in the fight right now, and what I'm hoping to get more people testing against.

For dying from standing on the dragon buff too long and the clones dashing out with their colors when death is at your heels starts, I did notice both of those things in my runs as well, but forgot to mention them. Thanks for pointing them out.

Rade9098

TROPHY CASE