[h3]Devoted Rejects,[/h3]
In this dev blog we are going to dive into three topics and upcoming changes that we will be making to them. The three topics are the Mission Board, Crafting, and Currencies/Resources within Darktide.
All the changes that we will be discussing in this dev blog have been in development, and are being prepared to launch in Patch #12 (1.1.20). These changes mark the next step in our support to the game, we will keep on monitoring feedback and evaluate future changes.
For clarity, these changes are not the only changes currently in development and being worked on by the team. We’re also still hard at work on Darktide for Xbox!
Mission Board
We’re making some key changes to how the mission board generates its missions, while also expanding upon the available content. We are going to cover the details further into the dev blog, but for those of you who want a high level summary here are the changes that will be made:
[h2]Maelstrom Missions[/h2]
We will be introducing Maelstrom missions, which are a set of new Conditions with a mixture of new modifiers and existing ones in many different variations. Most of them will be explained through a string of modifiers. For example: waves of Specialists, hunting grounds, waves of mutants and players have 20% reduced ability cooldown.
These Maelstrom missions should be approached with caution as some of them can be quite challenging! As a reward for completing these challenges, both XP and Ordo Dockets will have a higher payout than usual. They will be accessible through a unique slot on the mission board, which is available at all times so that they are easy to find and try out.
[h2]Auric-level Operations[/h2]
We are introducing an additional mission board for players that will consist of a set of high difficulty missions that will always have a condition applied to them. You must be level 30 to play these missions (sidenote: the numbers of missions available for Auric-level operations in the above screenshot could be subject to change). This board will also sport Maelstrom missions, a few of them will have unique conditions variations that are inherent to the Auric-level board.
With the changes we made to the dynamic system we have made the Auric-level operations favour High Intensity conditions, there will be no Low Intensity conditions active in these missions.
[h2]Quickplay Bonuses[/h2]
We are adding bonuses through use of Quickplay as we want to ensure that you are rewarded, should you choose to lend a helping hand by filling an empty spot in a strike team.
Experience, Ordo Dockets, Diamantine, and Plasteel will be bonuses upon receiving these rewards when a mission concludes (sidenote: quickplay bonuses numbers displayed in the screenshot could be subject to change by the time we deploy this patch).
[h2]Matchmaking & Server Selection[/h2]
For further flexibility with the matchmaking system we have added the ability to set the servers used to matchmake with. Darktide has always used the best latency servers you can connect to for matchmaking, however we realise that some players in the world may need to connect to different servers in order to find a larger pool of players. In addition, we regularly review and update matchmaking rules to provide an improved matchmaking experience.
Changing the servers can have an effect on the gameplay experience through the added latency, and we’ll present the latency values in the server selection so that you can be aware of them.
[h2]Changes to the dynamic system of the Mission Board[/h2]
The mission board on the Mourningstar shows the emergent threats throughout Tertium Hive. Functionally these threats are uncovered by the board through use of two systems, a dynamic system and an event driven system. The dynamic system generates content based upon a set of rules, meanwhile the event system acts as an overriding system that will then substitute its ruleset over the dynamic one.
We have made several changes and added functionality to the dynamic system to give much more refined controls over the content generation. The dynamic system refreshes far more frequently (approximately every 10 minutes) and we can now set an individual weighting to each condition per difficulty level.
For you the players, this will mean a more varied amount of conditions available across the mission board. There is also now control for us to weigh certain conditions for certain difficulties differently. As an example, you will see much less frequent occurrences of Low Intensity conditions on Damnation, while lower difficulties like Uprising will have less frequent occurrences of High Intensity conditions. The intent is for new players to have a smoother experience at the start while also providing a challenge to advanced players with harder conditions.
Our aim in these changes is to refine the emergence aspect of the mission board with further variety and the ability to adjust the board as needed.
Crafting
Let’s now talk about crafting, and some of the upcoming changes you can expect. Item Refinement, or previously known as Perk re-rolling is the main focus of our changes.
[h2]Ability to select the exact Perk when refining an item[/h2]
You can now select the exact perk at any tier that you wish for an item (weapon or curio). There is one direct cost to be made for each refine action. This cost will remain flat throughout refining and will be reduced for lower level characters
As with the other actions at the Shrine, the amount of required resources will scale both depending on the base item rating of the weapon and on the tier of perk being selected to refine into.
[h2]Two Modifications for items[/h2]
You can now modify two different aspects of your weapon (be it perks and/or blessings) locking out the other options, that being said, you’ll be able to change the two aspects you have selected as many times as you want. This means that you can choose to modify a perk and a blessing, or two perks, or two blessings. This increases the potential permutations of the item that you want to modify. The perks or blessings that you have chosen to modify will be indicated now in the item card.
[h2]Change to Curios[/h2]
We have extended the ability to make two modifications to Curios, specifically you will be able to modify two Perks.
We are aware that the changes mentioned above do not give unrestricted freedom to all aspects of an item. To do so would have a big impact on item acquisition in Darktide, and we want to explore different paths further down the line.
Currencies & Wallets
And for the final chapter in this dev blog, we’d like to discuss the changes we will be making to the currencies & resources in Darktide.
In short, all character bound currencies are moving towards an account bound wallet where access is shared across all characters.
[h2]Migration of currencies[/h2]
After careful consideration and review of how these systems are working and what value that you the players receive out of them, we decided to opt for moving everything to a single unified account wallet. Now you can choose any character you have created and with the currencies you get as rewards, you can now choose how to spend those freely.
With the next patch, after you login to Darktide you will go through an automatic migration process where the character wallets of Ordo Dockets, Ordo Ingots, Plasteel, and Diamantine will merge into one unified account wallet. These currencies will no longer have any character based wallet anymore.
An explanation of this process will be presented at the Main Menu / Character Selection screen, as well as a “Receipt” detailing the balance of the wallets for your characters and the total merged result for the account.
Additionally, the Account Wallet will now be displayed on this menu and show all the aforementioned currencies & resources as they are now shared.
The next Patch #12 - Into the Maelstrom (1.1.20)
All of the above changes are being prepared for our next patch to Darktide, which will release around mid-August. As part of this patch there will be a maintenance period in which you will be unable to log in into the game, we expect it to last 3 hours.
We will continue to iterate on these features and more, in part through community driven discussions and topics that are presented to us by sharing your thoughts and comments on both our Official Discord or Forums.
Thank you for reading, and watch each other's backs down there on Tertium.
