Hello!

The changes related to the Crimson Isle are now back on the Alpha network for testing. I’d like to take this opportunity to firstly apologize for the delay and to also address some questions, concerns, and design issues. These changes are not final and are open to change upon feedback.

The changes relating to Crimson Isle on the previous alpha thread are accurate unless superseded by information on this thread.

We’ve updated the abilities of the Kuudra Armor sets since the last alpha session, as follows:

Issues

Crimson Armor has a significant issue where the swipe damage hits for far too high.

With this rework, your expected swipe damage will be much less than before.

By making this change, we hope that exploits that allow you to 1-tap enemies will cease to exist due to swipe damage being much more controlled.

From a balancing perspective, it doesn’t make sense for an armor set to buff your damage by that much either. It means any other armor set would have to inflate it’s damage to compete with Crimson Armor as an alternative.

Changes

The new damage calculation is as follows:

Your Input Damage is the damage you dealt to a mob. If I smack a mob for 10,000 damage, that is my input damage.

Swipe Strength is a multiplier that affects the damage of swipe. It scales from being 1x at Basic tier to 2x at Infernal, incrementing by 0.25x between tiers.

The Input Multiplier is your additive damage bonuses (from Combat Skill’s Warrior perk, damage-boosting enchantments, Golden Dragon etc.) as a multiplier.

If my additive damage bonus is 530%, my multiplier is 5.3x.

The new damage calculation essentially soft-caps the amount of damage Crimson Swipe can deal. The more additive damage bonuses you have, the less damage swipe is dealing in proportion to your initial hit’s damage.

That does not mean higher additive damage means less swipe damage, as your additive damage would have increased the raw input damage in the first place - the damage is only proportionally less.

Expected Damage

At Infernal Tier, we’re expecting swipe to deal 15 - 25% of your melee damage dealt, though results will vary depending on how many additive damage modifiers you have.

This damage ratio is mostly the same at the lower tiers. While their swipe multiplier is lower, it’s also likely you have less additive modifiers when using lower tiers of armor, resulting in your swipe damage to still be around the 15 - 25% range of your melee damage hit.

Impact of Change

There are two direct impacts of this change:

Instead of being to 1-shot them with swipe, most players will need to grapple blazes at the Smoldering Tomb to one-shot them.

We have decreased the HP of Blazes in the Smoldering Tomb to make one-shotting the blazes easier:

Smoldering Blaze: 5.5m HP → 4m HP

Millennia-Aged Blaze: 30m HP → 20m HP

Players who relied on swipe’s damage bonus to get them over the hump of one-shotting ghosts may no longer be able to do so.

This is somewhat intended, the way Crimson Armor used to be allowed players to one-shot ghosts with little investment.

So, what’s the point of Crimson Armor’s swipe now if the bonus is way less substantial? The armor is still useful as a small damage bonus on single-target enemies. It also provides melee enjoyers with minor AoE capabilities.

I think it’s true that there aren’t many existing uses of Crimson Armor due to lack of non-instanced, applicable combat content in the game, but that will definitely change in the future.

Design Thoughts: Can Melee keep up with Bow/Magic Damage?

Melee certainly does not deal as much damage as Magic Damage in its current state and it’s not likely to keep up with Terminator’s DPS either.

However, I think that the lack of power of melee shouldn’t be compensated by one armor set’s ability alone. When the time comes for a combat revamp, either melee damage will be buffed, mage damage will be tuned down, or mage abilities will come with caveats like having stronger initial DPS but you can actually run out of mana, making them not continuously spammable. All of the above may happen!

Issues

There are two main issues with Terror Armor that we tried to address:

Terror Armor offered a substantial DPS boost at base tier due to two bonus arrows.

The stack gain is so comically fast it might as well not exist.

As such, we released a change last alpha where the number of bonus arrows scaled depending on your Terror Armor tier, and there’s now a cooldown to gaining stacks.

The end result was Burning and Fiery armor were now shooting weirdly with only one bonus arrow on Alpha, so we’re implementing some adjustments on how the tiered upgrades work.

Changes

Prestige	Previous	New
Base	+4% Damage per stack, +1.0% Arrow speed per stack.	+4% Damage per stack, +1.0% Arrow speed per stack. Shoot 2 extra arrows at 10 stacks that deal 20% arrow damage.
Hot	+6% Damage per stack, +1.4% Arrow speed per stack.	+5.5% Damage per stack, +1.4% Arrow speed per stack. Shoot 2 extra arrows at 10 stacks that deal 25% arrow damage.
Burning	+6% Damage per stack, +2.0% Arrow speed per stack. Shoot +1 arrow at 10 stacks.	+7% Damage per stack, +2.0% Arrow speed per stack. Shoot 2 extra arrows at 10 stacks that deal 30% arrow damage.
Fiery	+8% Damage per stack, +2.4% Arrow speed per stack. Shoot +1 arrow at 10 stacks.	+8.5% Damage per stack, +2.4% Arrow speed per stack. Shoot 2 extra arrows at 10 stacks that deal 35% arrow damage.
Infernal	+10% Damage per stack, +3% Arrow speed per stack. Shoot +2 arrows at 10 stacks.	+10% Damage per stack, +3% Arrow speed per stack. Shoot 2 extra arrows at 10 stacks that deal 40% arrow damage.

Expected Damage

At Infernal Tier, you can expect your DPS to be increased by ~27% while using Terminator, putting it somewhat in line with Crimson Swipe.

Impact of Change

We’re aware that the stack gain change has a significant impact in Kuudra and are open to slightly reducing that stack gain cooldown if necessary, but, perhaps the following changes are better for the purpose of preserving the same run efficiency:

Decrease the amount of hits required for Kuudra’s hit phase by 20%.

Decrease the amount of damage required to kill Kuudra final phase by 25%.

Please test this on the Alpha Network and let us know if these changes are sufficient!

Aurora Armor is now equipped with launch-able missiles that target enemies.

We are aware that the missiles were underwhelming both due to them not properly scaling with any damage bonuses and having a low base damage overall.

We have fixed the stack gain to scale, as follows:

Pieces Equipped	Stack Gain Cooldown
2/4	1s
3/4	0.7s
4/4	0.5s

• The missiles have been adjusted to have a base damage of 4,000 for all set tiers.

• The ability damage scaling is 0.3.

This change intends for Aurora Armor to be useful at an earlier stage but a lot less impactful for overall DPS when you have strong weapons with Wither Impact.

Higher tiers of Aurora Armor still fire more missiles than lower tiers, thus dealing more damage than their lower tier counterparts.

Please let us know how this change feels and whether adjustments are required.

We introduced a slight change to mob spawns as an attempt to reduce lag in the Crimson Isle. It is not our intention to impact gameplay with this change.

We have adjusted the settings to make the system less intrusive. Please let us know how this adjustment feels now.

• Fixed Hollow Wand’s “Ichor Pool” increasing damage by 20% additive.

• It is now 1.2x multiplicative.

• Fixed Hollow Wand’s “Raging Wind” increasing damage by literally +30 damage to your hit.

• It is now +30% additive damage.

• The Aurora Armor and Fervor Armor abilities now activate on sneak.

• The activation patterns for Hollow Wand abilities have been shortened to two inputs instead of three.

• The Diamond Magmafish reward for Diamond Trophy Hunter is now retroactively claimable.

• Tentacle Meat has been added to the Hellwisp loot pool.

• Buffed the amount of Red Sand and Mycelium in Lava Fishing loot pool due to those materials being much easier to obtain.

Will Attribute Shards be put on the Bazaar?

We do intend to add attribute shards to the Bazaar, but this is not a quick change to make as implementing Bazaar functionality requires an extensive amount of testing to make sure no issues arise.

It’s on the shortlist of things we want to do but will likely take quite a bit to implement.

Where is Kuudra Croesus?

Kuudra Croesus is another planned feature we intend to implement, but again it’s one that requires extensive development time/resources and testing to ensure that no issues arise.

What will happen to Aurora Staff?

Due to an oversight, we missed that the Aurora Armor change renders Aurora Staff’s rune functionality moot.

The planned implementation is that you can do the exact functionality as before the update just by holding the Aurora Staff itself. This change may not make this update, but will be implemented in the near future.

Why is the Blazetekk Ham Radio now area restricted?

While the stat gain from the Blazetekk Ham Radio isn’t particularly substantial, we believe the item is much more balanced to be meant as an item within Crimson Isle’s progression rather than one that buffed your stats in all islands.

The Blazetekk Ham Radio is definitely useful when it comes to doing Blaze Slayer fairly, but perhaps it’s crafting cost no longer reflects it’s power post-nerf. We are open to nerfing it’s crafting cost if deemed necessary.

The design of having the Blazetekk Ham Radio as an individual item that granted stats without occupying an armor/equipment slot was a mistake.

Changing this item into an accessory leads to museum complications (as it’s currently donate-able to the Museum), would give way too much stats as an accessory, and the designers think it simply shouldn’t be an accessory anyway - it’s current niche is more than fine.

What other Crimson Isle changes are planned?

Aside from some changes mentioned above, we do have a few more things we'd like to revisit in the future for the Crimson Isles:

• Boss Fight “revamps” for Crimson Isle Minibosses.

• Changes to Reputation Quest rewards to make them more appealing.

• Dojo changes to make the experience smoother and make Test of Control slightly more lenient.

• … and many more minor adjustments and bug fixes.

We have a lot of amazing content planned for 2025, so we may not be able to get back to the Crimson Isle for some time.

Please note that these ideas are still very early in the design phase; they may or may not make it to the next update, and it will take some time before we can fully commit to them.

I hope this answers many questions that you may have about the Crimson Isle update, and looking forward to hearing your feedback regarding the changes.

These changes are to be rolled, but we might as well discuss them beforehand.

• Implemented the following Trophy Fishing changes:

• Pity now triggers at 600 catches for all fishes.

• The catch rates of the following fish have now changed:

• Vanille: 4 (alpha) → 8%

• Karate Fish: 1 → 2%

• Slugfish: 10 → 15%

• Blobfish: 15 → 35%

• Golden Fish Appearance Rate: 15 to 20 minutes → 8 to 12 minutes

Design Notes

• The Blobfish change is so that it rolls after all the other trophy fish has rolled.

• Though 35% may admittedly be too high, probably targetting ~25%.

• The Golden Fish adjustment should make it much more likely you catch it’s Diamond before you catch all the other fish.

• With the adjusted rates, Trophy Fishing should be less than 100 hours total for most players.

The kills required for the following mobs has been reduced from 1,000 → 500:

• Barbarian Duke X

• Mage Outlaw

• Bladesoul

• Ashfang

• Magma Boss

The kills required for the following mobs has been reduced from 250 → 100:

• Lord Jawbus

The kills required for the following mobs has been reduced from 4,000 → 1,000:

• Pyroclastic Worm

General Changes

• Increased the XP contribution cap to a slayer quest from a single mob from 50% to 75%.

• If you have enough Combat Wisdom, something e.g Burningsoul Demon can give you 75% XP progress.

• Requires testing, may revert.

Blaze Slayer

• Rolled the attempted fix of capping Burning Vengeance’s (ability) damage at 50m.

• Reduced the HP of Burningsoul Demon Minibosses:

• Tier 3: 12,000,000 → 9,000,000

• Tier 4: 25,000,000 → 17,500,000, 75,000,000 → 50,000,000

Enderman Slayer

• Increased the base weapon damage of Voidgloom Katanas by ~25%

• Also slightly increased their Crit Damage.

• Slightly increased the delay of Voidgloom Seraph going into his beams phase.

The intention here is to retain melee viability for Crimson Armor by allowing players to deal enough damage to reach hits phase during beams.

Fervor Armor

• Changed the damage scaling of Fervor Armor’s Ground Pound to scale off of your EHP (HP and Defense), and is no longer affected by your melee/weapon damage.

• The Ground Pound ability now activates an additional time from Burning Tier and above (changed from Infernal only).

• Reverted the Blazetekk Ham Radio location restriction.

• We’ll find a better way to solve the Blazetekk Ham Radio’s design “gripes”…

• Added crafting shortcuts to Blessed Bait and Whale Bait

• These changes are to compensate for Trophy Fish Chance now being an additive stat.

• Increased the Trophy Fish Chance of all Magma Rods by 5%.

• Increased the Trophy Fish Chance of the Trophy Hunter Armor, as follows:

• Silver: 5 → 10%

• old: 10 → 20%

• Diamond: 20 → 30%

• Adding Combat Wisdom to Slayer Weapons (means melee spawns bosses faster)
• Cap Endstone Sword’s damage buff at something.

Hi, quick changes (some were already live on alpha, some are to be rolled):

• Blobfish 35 -> 25%

• Increased Trophy Fish Chance of Trophy Hunter armor sets, as follows:

• Bronze: 0 -> 5%

• Silver: 5 -> 10%

• Gold: 10 -> 20%

• Diamond: 20 -> 30%

• Added conditional Combat Wisdom to various Slayer weapons.

• Added a recipe to craft Hellfire Rod with 4 Diamond Magmafish.

• Added upgrades to the Crimson Isle Fishing Equipment line, with the final few upgrades requiring Diamond Magmafish.

• Standardized the upgrade cost of Trophy Hunter armor, with the final two upgrades requiring Diamond Magmafish

The last roll actually came with a 20% reduction on Wolf Slayer spawning requirements, forgot to mention it.

Quick small and last patch for now:

• Burning Vengeance should now be properly capped at 50m.
• Fixed a minor wording issue regarding Combat XP from Slayer weapons.
• Slightly tinkered to the amount of XP rewarded by slayer bosses and minibosses.

• Will adjust again after Alpha.