Relic/Arcana Charm Rework

[ElliotJD]

Charm Rework - Introduction
Hello Maestreans! As you may have noticed, our charm rework has been released to Maestrea this morning (not quite the release date we were aiming for but here we are). To give a brief summary of the changes:
- Negative potion effects now stack, so if you have two charms that give slowness 1, you'll now get slowness 2.
- Positive potion effects now give only the highest available, so if you have two charms that give speed 1 and speed 2 respectively, you'll be getting speed 2.
- Effects removed from non-charm Relics/Arcanas. This one is pretty self explanatory and we feel it helps charms be as relevant as possible. You want effects? You gotta use charms (this does include charms that have been added using sockets).

In this post I hope to explain our rationale as well as give as much information as possible to enable you to use this update to your advantage as much as possible. So, without further ado...

Charm Rework - Charm changes
We realise that charms as they are now simply would not work with this new system, they're simply too varied and disordered. To that end, we will be (or have if you're reading this in the future) releasing an update to all charms to more fairly balance their effects. The general idea is that each charm will have 1-2 positive effects and 0-2 negative effects depending on the power of the positive effect and whether or not the charm is in the active pool or not.

To explain that last part of the previous chapter.. when charms are in the live pool (able to be pulled from Relics/Arcanas) they get a slight buff. This can either be with a decrease of a negative effect, an increase of a positive effect or a whole new positive effect. This doesn't mean the charms will be useless when not in the live pool, it just means that when they are active, they get a little boost for you to enjoy. Whether or not you stock up on extractors to rotate charms around to enjoy the best possible combinations is entirely up to you.

To allow for the most customisation possible, something we know is a big draw for relics, we've set it up so you have a choice of negative effects you can take with your positives. So if you're looking to build a speed & haste set for tree-feller (for example) you can use charms that reduce your damage output or make you more susceptible to damage. Conversely if you're looking for a PvP set to maximise your damage you might want to sacrifice your speed and ability to jump. We've done a lot of work to allow you to pick and choose what sorts of up and downsides you'll experience so you can always create a set to match your needs.

With all these changes, how could you possibly hope to keep up? As cliché as rhetorical questions are, we have indeed though of this too. Every previous and all future charms will now include their effects in the lore of the item, this includes the active effects as mentioned earlier. This lore will update each time you connect to ensure you've always got the latest information for any changes we may need to make or for when they're cycled in and out of the pools. This also nicely resolves the long standing issue of you having to ask in global whether anyone has any idea what a particular charm may or may not do.

Charm Rework - Important notices
As I'm sure you've guessed, this rework couldn't be made without some power downs as well as power ups, I've mentioned some of these before but I'll repeat them here in case you've skipped over something or just falling asleep whilst reading this wall of text (sorry).
- Non-charm Relics & Arcanas will no longer give effects, this is the function of only charms now.
- Each charm will give 1-2 positive effects and 0-2 negative effects depending on whether they are live and their power.
- Charms will no longer have attributes, and all historic charms have had their attributes removed.
- Charm lore will now always accurately reflect the effects of the charm.

I hope this comprehensive post has answered all of your questions and concerns about the new update, but if not please feel free to either reply on this post or reach out to either myself or Klozer on Discord or in-game. We're sorry for the lack of forewarning, we weren't expecting to release this content for another week or so but here we are! Thank you for reading and we hope you enjoy our latest Items update.

* Foot Note *
The Following Relics are now Charms: Heart of Gaia, Euphoria, Star's Seamstress, and Guardian's Talisman​

 

[KingWither]

Negative effects stack but not positives. You had the chance to make this change good.

 

[Kl0zer]

Negative effects stack but not positives. You had the chance to make this change good.

We appreciate the feedback you have given us, let me elaborate on the changes as relevant to your feedback.

Negative effects do indeed stack! To accommodate charms giving one positive effect each, we in general, made the downsides not as strong per charm, but with them stacking, players using all slowness charms will be very slow, some people may be okay with this for things such as using grinders, while others may prefer to have a level or 2 in a multitude of effects, it allows for players to choose which effect they would prefer to deal with. Stacking positive effects would destroy the server, resistance 5 gives you 100% damage reduction, something we don't want at all. Extremely high jumpboost would let players escape dungeons, speed is already able to get very fast due to movement modifiers, strength would let players one shot each other, and the list goes on. Simply put, we could not make positive ones stack without causing a massive imbalance of all things related to potion effects.

 

[KingWither]

We appreciate the feedback you have given us, let me elaborate on the changes as relevant to your feedback.

Negative effects do indeed stack! To accommodate charms giving one positive effect each, we in general, made the downsides not as strong per charm, but with them stacking, players using all slowness charms will be very slow, some people may be okay with this for things such as using grinders, while others may prefer to have a level or 2 in a multitude of effects, it allows for players to choose which effect they would prefer to deal with. Stacking positive effects would destroy the server, resistance 5 gives you 100% damage reduction, something we don't want at all. Extremely high jumpboost would let players escape dungeons, speed is already able to get very fast due to movement modifiers, strength would let players one shot each other, and the list goes on. Simply put, we could not make positive ones stack without causing a massive imbalance of all things related to potion effects.

Can’t one shot someone who has resistance capped out or with your strength capped out. Could have a plus and negative 3-4 cap on everything. Pretty easy to do and would be an actually good change.

 

[Kl0zer]

Can’t one shot someone who has resistance capped out or with your strength capped out. Could have a plus and negative 3-4 cap on everything. Pretty easy to do and would be an actually good change.

Keep in mind we also have dungeons! Resistance 4 is 80% damage reduction, that on top of armor and armor toughness would make you near unkillable. As well as having high strength would make you breeze through dungeons with ease. We purposely do not go above certain levels on items such as Relics and Arcanas as it would cause these same balance issues.

 

[MahNameIsKris]

Question about relics like Euphoria which are not technically charms but have no stats/inherit uses other than effects will those be removed or

 

[ElliotJD]

Question about relics like Euphoria which are not technically charms but have no stats/inherit uses other than effects will those be removed or

Those were a judgement call made on each individual item. If they relied heavily on the effects and filled a gap, they would have been converted to charms and had their attributes and enchantments removed.
If the effects were more supplementary and they were strong without them, they would have had the effects removed and possibly the attributes or enchantments buffed a little to compensate.

 

[KingWither]

Keep in mind we also have dungeons! Resistance 4 is 80% damage reduction, that on top of armor and armor toughness would make you near unkillable. As well as having high strength would make you breeze through dungeons with ease. We purposely do not go above certain levels on items such as Relics and Arcanas as it would cause these same balance issues.

Ok, so cap at 3?... Or cap specific buffs...? Better than not stacking positives and only stacking negatives. Either don’t stack negatives or add the stackable positives even with caps. It just makes sense.

 

[Tex]

Resistance 5, does block 100% of damage, but keep in mind it doesn't block true damage..

 

[MahNameIsKris]

Those were a judgement call made on each individual item. If they relied heavily on the effects and filled a gap, they would have been converted to charms and had their attributes and enchantments removed.
If the effects were more supplementary and they were strong without them, they would have had the effects removed and possibly the attributes or enchantments buffed a little to compensate.

gotcha elliot ty

 

[ElliotJD]

Ok, so cap at 3?... Or cap specific buffs...? Better than not stacking positives and only stacking negatives. Either don’t stack negatives or add the stackable positives even with caps. It just makes sense.

We do cap different effects at different levels, we've just done this on the charms themselves rather than worrying about setting a soft limit for every single potion effect that everyone would have to remember. I would say it's much better that we handle the positive effects and make it clear on the charm what you'll get rather than you going out to get another speed charm only to find out you've already reached the cap and it on'y gives you negative and you've wasted your money.

So if you want a high resistance charm, you can just go out and get one and choose whichever negative effect you'd want to go with that depending on what you want to use the charm for, whether grinding, PvP, PvE, utility, etc.

 

[KingWither]

We do cap different effects at different levels, we've just done this on the charms themselves rather than worrying about setting a soft limit for every single potion effect that everyone would have to remember. I would say it's much better that we handle the positive effects and make it clear on the charm what you'll get rather than you going out to get another speed charm only to find out you've already reached the cap and it on'y gives you negative and you've wasted your money.

So if you want a high resistance charm, you can just go out and get one and choose whichever negative effect you'd want to go with that depending on what you want to use the charm for, whether grinding, PvP, PvE, utility, etc.

Getting kinda tired of all the negative effects that “have” to be on things for “balance”. And this change just made it worse with stacking negatives with next to nothing “balancing” it in the other direction. Like, ok, thanks for all the new debuffs I guess...?

 

[HydrofluoricAcid]

Ok, so I thought "lets be positive".....well i tried!

What the hell is the point in having a speed build for fun that give you NO advantage in a fight as it already weakens you badly.
I tried to gain advantage with excessive speed and just died more, so it did not need to be nerfed, sorry 'balanced'.

Customisation of stuff has already been hit badly and it is all much less interesting than it was. For me this is just variable and random 'bad'

so i get speed 4 and slowness 2! Really lol. What is the point. Dont falling server numbers tell you guys anything? Wait you're sure of your own actions so why am I bothering to say anything? Hope i suppose.

Having to log on and totally rework all your fun stuff because you have at will taken things 'out of the pool' is not fun at all and just yet another time consuming pain in the neck. oh and without warning have to do it again?

I'm sorry but it's a no from me. Get the fun back in. Actually put some temporary excessive attributes back in so there is a carrot for people to look for, as it is now it's just a case of finding all of the bad.

I'm not going to comment again on this as I don't have time really. Not for this anyway.

 

[ElliotJD]

What the hell is the point in having a speed build for fun that give you NO advantage in a fight as it already weakens you badly.
I tried to gain advantage with excessive speed and just died more, so it did not need to be nerfed, sorry 'balanced'.

You may choose speed with weakness if you're just going for something to help you explore faster or clear a tree-farm as fast as possible to hit limit. However, if that doesn't work for you, you can look for other negatives to balance it out like a small amount of mining fatigue or a damaging effect you could counter with regeneration. I can tell you there's a speed charm that exists with 0 negative effects at all which sounds like it would be perfect for the set you're trying to build.

so i get speed 4 and slowness 2! Really lol. What is the point. Dont falling server numbers tell you guys anything? Wait you're sure of your own actions so why am I bothering to say anything? Hope i suppose.

If you really want to you could probably build a set that give these conflicting effects, though we wouldn't recommend it. As mentioned in my first post, you can choose what sort of negative potion effects you would like, we're not going to force you to go with slowness just to get speed, that would be completely ridiculous.

Having to log on and totally rework all your fun stuff because you have at will taken things 'out of the pool' is not fun at all and just yet another time consuming pain in the neck. oh and without warning have to do it again?

As I said, charms won't necessarily become bad just because they're not in the pool, they just lose the bonus they get whilst they are in the live pool. Whether or not you extract the charms from your set is completely up to you, but we made it so charms don't have to be in the pool to be viable as that would be "another time consuming pain in the neck".

I'm sorry but it's a no from me. Get the fun back in. Actually put some temporary excessive attributes back in so there is a carrot for people to look for, as it is now it's just a case of finding all of the bad.

Just because charms no longer have attributes, doesn't mean that the normal relic items won't. If you're looking for items with attributes they're still out there, just not charms anymore.

Hopefully I've addressed your concerns, we're not forcing you down any particular avenue with this change, and it actually increases the amount of customisation you can do as you get to decide exactly what you want from your charms without it being game-breakingly strong.

 

[KingWither]

After reading more responses, I think this could have all bean done in such a better way. Yes, charms losing “bonuses” DOES force you down a path to remove charms just to stay viable. It honestly looks like “hey we made a charm removal item *poke* use it *poke* oh ok, I guess we’ll find a way to make the charms you wanted not worth a damn whenever we feel like it by boosting other ones and changing the ones that already exist”. The old system was much better because of debuffs not stacking and no random boosts to charms, and this change brings nothing new to the table for “customization”. You can’t customize randomness and this is forcing charm removal item usage to keep up with whatever is boosted to be the strongest you can be. We don’t like the change and I gave a simple solution that it seems at least some people liked. The community might not want YOUR style of “balance”. And in the end, this is everyone’s server, not just some staff member who has their own vision and did some “testing” that somehow revealed that this is what the server wants or needs. This was just a bad change and staff trying to explain their reasoning instead of actually taking community suggestions isn’t helping. And “just ignore charms because relics still have their effects” doesn’t help either. This isn’t how you make a community happy or increase dwindling player counts. Please please PLEASE do what the community wants and implement suggestions (Plenty of the forums) instead of make random/unwanted changes to existing content. We want this server to be the best it can be. We can’t help but be upset when this is what we’ve seen since archaics and adding like the explorer job in terms of actual new content.

 

[ElliotJD]

After reading more responses, I think this could have all bean done in such a better way. Yes, charms losing “bonuses” DOES force you down a path to remove charms just to stay viable. It honestly looks like “hey we made a charm removal item *poke* use it *poke* oh ok, I guess we’ll find a way to make the charms you wanted not worth a damn whenever we feel like it by boosting other ones and changing the ones that already exist”.

Well the rework has been out for a total of one day so far, so maybe consider giving it a try first? And it's no coincidence we released the extractor when we did, it was to give people the option of removing charms if they wanted to else that would have been a genuine and real complaint we would have to scramble to try and fix.

The old system was much better because of debuffs not stacking and no random boosts to charms, and this change brings nothing new to the table for “customization”.

The old system was strong, there's no doubt about it. The issue was that it was too strong, you could empower yourself with a huge variety of positive effects whilst only having to deal with something like slowness 1, we didn't just do this rework because it seemed fun, we did it because we had to resolve a serious issue with the balance of the old system.

You can’t customize randomness and this is forcing charm removal item usage to keep up with whatever is boosted to be the strongest you can be.

There's nothing random about this new system, all the potion effects are listed on the charms so you know exactly what you'll be getting so you can build your set to your exact specifications. The old system was the more random as you had no idea what you were going to get and the effects never applied as they were supposed to. Some negative effects would never be applied and some lower positive effects would overwrite each other, we've fixed both of these issues with this rework as you'll come to find out when you play.

We don’t like the change and I gave a simple solution that it seems at least some people liked. The community might not want YOUR style of “balance”. And in the end, this is everyone’s server, not just some staff member who has their own vision and did some “testing” that somehow revealed that this is what the server wants or needs. This was just a bad change and staff trying to explain their reasoning instead of actually taking community suggestions isn’t helping.

So far we've had 2 people stating here that they don't like the change, though we do plan on getting a wider range of feedback once the rework has been out for a little while and people have had a chance to play with it a little so we can get valuable play-testing feedback as I can readily admit that's something we can't get until it's been released. At that time if there are multiple people with the same complaints we can have a conversation with them about what they think some solutions could be. Right now though it's far too early for us to completely rework the rework, it needs time to be explore to see how it really works and how players can make it work for them.

And “just ignore charms because relics still have their effects” doesn’t help either.

That's the literal opposite of what we've done here. Charms are now the only way to get effects meaning they're significantly more powerful and useful than before. Charms are the only Relics/Arcanas with pot effects and non-charms are the only Relics/Arcanas with enchantments and attributes, how you mix and match these is totally up to you dependant on your needs.

Please please PLEASE do what the community wants and implement suggestions (Plenty of the forums) instead of make random/unwanted changes to existing content. We want this server to be the best it can be. We can’t help but be upset when this is what we’ve seen since archaics and adding like the explorer job in terms of actual new content.

As I said, we'll be discussing this with the community once people have got a chance to understand how it works and learn how to best benefit from it, right now it's too early. As for new content: dungeons is getting an update, we've released brand new custom enchantments with no nerfs to what already exists and the very next project I'll be working on introduces a whole heap of new content and an interesting new way to use what we already have. Who knows, it might even mean books of tomes stop being useless paperweights as they are now.

 

[Novalla]

Thank you for your continued efforts in the difficult task of keeping relics balanced and I especially appreciate the addition of effects to the lore of charms.

 

[MahNameIsKris]

Same novalla i feel this will be a net positive update wise after generally tweaking some things

 

[Pinkjemm]

My main concern is that this update was given out without a lot of knowledge to the public, however yes there was a stream that happened to explain about it , but this was only 1 stream that was missed by many leading to the eventual backlash that we see today. If there were more announcement and streams to get more people to view the charm change it would have given the items team more time and feedback to work with. Currently, my problem with this rework is that stacking negative pot effect reduces the player a lot, however before i do agree that charms were powerful before this update happen.

The problem occurs when you realize that charms in the new system has one 1 potion effect, while in the old system , charms had many pot effect leading to the eventual potted up individual to be nearly invincible. In this update, not only were those charms reduced to one pot effect but the addition to stack negative effect made the presumption that charms altogether was bad. This reason and the lack of information or giving players what charm has changed and how leads to the immense backlash. If we were to test out all the charms and combinations then people can see a different light, however with the lack of content that gives out relic and arcana, we as a community are forced to look at the current items we have and left straggling to scavenge for all charms and arcana that could be good.

The inclusion of an npc that can let players purchase fragment, charm chisel, and chisel extractor at a higher price than shady would give player the incentive to test out the new charm using their money to find new combination and reediting their gear. Now with the additional feature of having charms have an additional boost when active does screw the player over when they want to find a perfect set, because if new charms are released or when some charms are in the active pool , players would want to change their charms base on the activeness of that charm.

There is some concern with customization in this update because the versatility of items dropped for the exchange of variety. If this update was handle better, as in giving people information on which charm change and how they were changed then player would have the ease to come up with new set, of course the burden lesser rich players and doesn't compensate the player to the gear they already spent money on which should be require to reduce the volient criticism of this new rework. Currently, people are blinded by rage and lack of information, and it's only right so.

 

[ElliotJD]

My main concern is that this update was given out without a lot of knowledge to the public, however yes there was a stream that happened to explain about it , but this was only 1 stream that was missed by many leading to the eventual backlash that we see today. If there were more announcement and streams to get more people to view the charm change it would have given the items team more time and feedback to work with.

Yes, as mentioned, this wasn't quite the release we were planning on. The change came out a little earlier than expected otherwise we for sure would have had much more preparation and community interaction.

We are looking at adding more powerful extractors, perhaps craftable, but that's in discussion currently since it's still very early stages. Also, just to re-iterate, charms are still good outside of the pool, they just have a bit of a boost when live as you're probably seeing now they've all been changed.

As mentioned, we won't be posting specific information about which relics do what as it's too easy for it to be stolen. That was the reason for effects being added to the lore of charms, so people can easily see what they do and pick and choose what they would like without having to guess and buy a load of charms.