Progression: earn your way down
A review of loot, gear and the depth curve, so the game climbs. You gear up over a few runs in the forest, then the Ruins, then the Crypt, before the Catacombs are survivable. Mythics are found deep, not in the first clearing. Full numbers are in the project doc "v0.63 progression and drop tables", and regenerates them.
- Each depth has a rarity ceiling:
- Forest: nothing past Rare. An Epic only from the Broodmother, the Matriarch or the guardian.
- Ruins: Epic at most. A Legendary only from the guardian or a vault.
- Crypt and Catacombs: up to Legendary.
- Mythics only from the Crypt down (
DEPTH_MYTHIC):- none in the forest or the Ruins;
- rare in the Crypt (about 1 full clear in 35);
- in the Catacombs, about 1 clear in 5, with the Bone Warden around 14% a kill and the Reliquary around 20%.
- Before: about 1 forest clear in 7 gave a Mythic.
- Grades of make:
- Grading: every gear base is graded 1–4 by value among bases of its kind, from the Tattered Gambeson (1) to Dread Plate (4).
- Where they drop: each depth drops its own grade or lower, and its guardians, lairs, vaults and boss one higher. The best grade allowed is the likeliest.
- Examples: Knight's Plate no longer turns up in the forest, and the elemental bows are first found in the Crypt.
- Beasts follow their depth. A drake, goblin or wendigo drops the loot of the depth it's met on.
- A steeper depth curve. Enemy health and damage are now ×1.35/×1.4 in the Ruins, ×1.8/×1.9 in the Crypt and ×2.3/×2.5 in the Catacombs (were ×1.15/×1.12, ×1.35/×1.25, ×1.6/×1.4).
- Fresh character: survives about one heavy hit in the Catacombs.
- Geared character: a kit of grade-4 gear takes over 11.
- A weapon's rarity adds damage: ×1.08 Uncommon up to ×1.5 Mythic, on top of its stats, so a better roll of the same blade hits harder. Unique Mythics keep their own numbers.
- Traders wait on depth. Their best rarity and grade follow the deepest depth you've reached:
- forest only: Rare and grade 2;
- the Ruins: Epic and grade 3;
- the Crypt and below: Legendary and grade 4.
- Trust still sets the mix, a Stranger no longer sells Legendaries, and Sworn traders hold a Mythic back only once you've seen the Catacombs.
- Gold grows with depth.
- Per full clear: about 450 in the forest, 530 in the Ruins, 880 in the Crypt and 1,700 in the Catacombs. Before, the Ruins paid less than the forest.
- Delivery contracts pay 100 / 220 / 520 / 1,100 (were 150 / 320 / 760 / 1,600).
- Multiplayer (protocol 28): clients harden their copies of enemies by the same new depth curve as the host.
- Mythic bows shimmer through the rainbow on the ground and in the inspector, like other Mythic gear.
VAEL is a co-op dark fantasy extraction dungeon crawler for PC, in active development. Get playtest news by email, or read the wiki.