New Dev Blog: Shard Dungeons Preview

Even as someone who probably won’t be farming for them, that’s the sort of thing I like to hear!

EK is ready to plow to level 10!! :cowboy_hat_face:

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Sane-itizing the questions and answers:
Does the guaranteed drop for shard dungeons reset at the same time as the TM daily drops?
It resets at the same time, yeah.

Will there be a visible timer for the 30 minute countdown in shard dungeons or will it only be the remaining mobs?
Yes, visible timer.

Is it possible for no one to get any gear from a chest at the end of a shard dungeon?
The drop chance on the chest at the end is equivalent to 2 regular boss drop chances. So yes if no one uses their guaranteed drop, it’s possible no one gets a drop

Is there any limit to the number of shard dungeons players can run in a day?
No limit, no.

If you defeat a dungeon but not within the time limit, can you still apply your guaranteed bonus drop the chest at the end?
Yes, even if you don’t complete it under the timer, you can still use your guaranteed drop.

Are there any new dyes or other non-gear based rewards available from the shard dungeons?
There will be some non-equipment rewards.

In shard dungeons, will hard CC (polymorph/ranger trap) work on all trash mobs, only non-TM trash mobs or no trash mobs?

Will the equipment drops all be legendary, akin to how all standard TM drops are epic, or will it be mostly purple-epic with a small chance for legendary? If the latter, do the odds of legendary go up with shard level?
The drops are all epic as a standard. There is a small chance to get a Legendary weapon drop. The chance increases as the shard level itself increases.

Will the legendary weapons always and only have the new class affix or will the new class affix be an additional possible affix out of the existing list?
Similarly, will legendary weapons still have multiple affixes on them as previously discussed?
It’s an additional affix. it’s one regular affix, and then the one affix specific to that weapon.

In the event of a server or zone reset, what happens to shard dungeon status/progress/timers?
if the server crashes it would be reset. That doesn’t happen super often anymore and I nearly always give 30 minutes notice now before restarting, but obviously if we’re talking Day One there may be issues, so keep that in mind.

Will the stat range on shard gear (strength/int/vitality/defenses) have a range that mirrors current epics or will the floor/ceiling be significantly higher?

Will legendaries always have perfect stats for their level, and if not, will they have a chance to drop in perfect like epics?

Will there be in-game or steam achievements associated with shard dungeons?

Will there be a leaderboard associated with shard dungeons?

Will there be quests associated with shard dungeons?

Will completing the shard dungeon versions of TM dungeon wings count towards the Trial of the Ancients explorers league quests?
It doesn’t use up your TM daily, no. It’s a separate system

Will completing the shard dungeon version of TM dungeon wings count towards the TM dailies in terms of level 20.25 guaranteed epic reward bestowals and journal tracking?

Are there any expected issues we should be aware of going into the shard dungeons?

Do you have any specific requests of the initial community undertaking these shard dungeons in terms of behavior, information sharing, bug reporting?
Obviously I just expect if there’s something that’s obviously not working as intended (e.g. you activate a Level 5 shard but it’s not anymore difficult than Level 1, you figure out some way to clear half the dungeon and then activate the shard to keep from having to do the content, etc.) that you tell us about it.

Do you have any tips for the initial community undertaking shard dungeons?

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So I had a question as well (want to keep it separate from my last post):

Will the bosses get new abilities / mechanics? Or is it just the same boss fight but with the mutations? Are you guys open to suggestions to mechanics that could make the fights harder?

For example, potion keeper when teleporting around could shoot out random circular aoe explosion attacks at players while you are trying to dodge the left/center/right attacks to keep you on your toes. Or even projectiles that shoot in straight lines. Potion Keeper’s dance is a fun mechanic, but it is simple once learned. Just using him as a prime example of a fun boss mechanic. Other challenges could be smaller boxes, or even a limit to how many boxes he can spawn(sort of a wipe-timer to challenge the DPS). Perhaps the box “breaks” after enough hits. He also can be kited since his aoe triggers off of # attacks(it appears), so stuff like that would need to be fixed as well. Perhaps he can repeat left/right/center(but never the same one back to back). Perhaps it’s not the same AoE regions every time for left/right/center as to not be completely predicted by randomly picking a rotation about the room for the left/right/center.

What happens when we clear the level 10 shard? Do we keep the shard at level 10 and be able to farm it as a reward until we fail?

What Riley doesn’t want you to know is that lvl 10 is impossible

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At Level 10 the shard just gets used up and that’s the end of the journey, currently.

Nah, there’s an extra boss at level 10: The entire dev team with Legendary weapons

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I’m not sure the Devs Team is ready for PvP vs @Kamina

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You will probably need to be a musket if you’re taking on the devs.

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Not really digging the fact that currently, you need to slog your way through 9 shards just to reach shard 10 every time if shard 10 can be consistently done. Why not just copy the WoW mystic dungeon mechanic where you need to complete that shard level to reactivate it for a drop with a new roll or something rather than forcing people to regrind from 1->whatever every time they fail (or succeed at the max shard)? Seems counterintuitive and only there as a filler stopgap to force people to grind just as much TM or more.

Also if you add quests to Shards, please do it at the beginning or retroactively count kills if its a progression kill quest.

The behavior at Level 10 is definitely not set in stone at this point, quite frankly we will probably change it before anyone reaches that level. We’re building a highway and I’m basically assuming (maybe incorrectly) that the “Level 10 bridge” being out at this point isn’t an issue since no one will be trying to cross it tomorrow.

Speaking pretty highly of the difficulty, hope it lives up to expectations :grin::+1:t2:

It’s really hard for us to always predict what difficulty to scale things to, as sometimes I think things are going to be difficult mechanics-wise and they’re not. So who knows.

We did some testing last night and assuming a full decked-out-in-Epics group, I imagine Levels 1-2 should be pretty easy, 3-4 should be difficult, and 5+ should be very hard. But we’ll see what happens.

But they won’t stay on epic but get legendary on the way too…

Really excited to run shard dungeons tomorrow and all weekend. Woot!

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The Major Mutations for this week will be:

Level 3+: Vindictive - Enemies that die give a buff to nearby allies which increases their damage done and decreases their damage taken by 10%. Can stack up to 5 times.

Level 6+ Last Stand - Enemies below 30% become enraged, dealing 100% increased damage.

Good luck!

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I’m pretty sure we’re going for T10 tomorrow :rofl:

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Oh yay, an Enrage on the first shard week.