Realm of the Mad God Exalt News

Hello everyone,


In our last communication we shared a lot of information with you and wanted to keep you posted on a more regular basis, so here we are.


Let’s start with the most exciting news: we have completed the evaluation phase for client technologies and have settled on Unity being the future for Realm!


While first prototyping efforts are promising, it is a huge project with many unknowns. You all know that we are a small team and we prefer it that way. However, to keep support for the Flash game and build the Unity client in parallel, we need to scale the team up and get in some Unity specialists.


Since we don’t have the big corporate money to fuel this endeavor, we were thinking about running something like a campaign on Kickstarter, but that felt rather awkward seeing as we already have a running game. Instead, we are now planning on putting a Support Campaign in the game for those of you who want to see this project go forward with some solid momentum and help us out. We will be releasing details on this once we have them. Stay tuned!


In other news, summer is approaching and with it comes Month of the Mad God! We are hard at work to make sure we can upgrade the events, introduce new fights and items and release the New Class on time. Speaking of the new class, we went through several iterations and are now at the point where we can announce some more details in the roadmap!


While we will have to save our excitement for MotMG for a while longer, we will tell you about a bunch of things that are coming up in terms of development roadmap in the update below.






The feature has been released - let us know what you think! With it, we added additional functionalities like the “Last seen” tooltip (to both friends and guild lists) and the ability to promote and demote guild members directly from the panel. We imagined the feature with guild management in mind to allow Founders and Officers to better organize their guilds while also helping everyone socialize more.




The implementation phase is completed and we are now working on killing bugs and polishing things up. We are aiming at pushing this exciting new feature with our next release!


On top, we decided to spice it up by overhauling the Pet feeding and fusing UI to give you, for example, the ability to feed several items at once and directly from your inventory. As announced in the last Producer’s Letter, your pet stones will turn into pet skin unlockers with the update and you will be able to acquire just about any pet skin via hatching and fusing. You will be able to switch back and forth between skins of a family for a small fee in fame or gold and you will also be able to switch families for more resources.


We have also been experimenting with the scaling of pets in order to base the size of pets on their respective rarity regardless of skin. While we like the first results, we still need to optimize it and investigate a better way to implement such a change. This will likely be an additional update that will come out after the initial release of the feature. We are very excited for this release and cannot wait to see your feedback.





As discussed above, we have made awesome progress with the new Class and have locked down the core aspects of it: Katana and Heavy Armor with a damaging ability. We are also experimenting with a new status effect that will be exclusive to the new Class. A lot more iterating and balancing is required but we are confident that we are creating something fun and exciting to play. The Class Unlock will be embedded in the system you are already used to with the other classes and the star levels will be adjusted accordingly. Yes, this means you will all be bumped down to a yellow star and will have to fight to get back the honorary badge of recognition that is the White Star.





We have started working on XP with the goal of making the fame loop a bigger part of the core game experience. The first step will be to balance the XP formula, in essence guaranteeing you more XP when beating dungeons. This change is quite straightforward and will be implemented gradually, starting with our next release.


In a second step, we will be expanding on this system and will update the achievements and achievement bonuses as well as adding some new ones. Once we feel that the system above is working well, we also want to tackle the fame economy as a whole. The goal is to make more items available for fame and to make use of the currency in more features than just for pets and guilds.





The prototyping for this feature is still ongoing but we feel that it is coming along nicely and will definitely beat the arena in terms of accessibility, fun, and rewards. We are aiming to introduce it to public testing towards fall and implement it fully later this year and have it replace the Arena long-term. We can’t make any promises yet, as we want to get it right and do a lot of playtesting.


 
Finally, we also picked additional topics from the last Producer’s Letter or recent conversations we wanted to discuss:



Crashers and griefing are issues taken very seriously by our team. We have made changes to both the current systems and the dungeons design in order to prevent that type of behavior and we will continue to do so. We are investigating what fitting solutions can be implemented to offer a better experience while staying true to the goal of the game which is to be one of the most co-op games ever created.



We realize that bots continue to be an annoyance - in the past, we have managed to get rid of them but only for a limited amount of time. Based on what we are seeing in other games, it will be more than tough to get rid of all bots in a free2play game. Every change we make to combat bots and spammers has to take into account legitimate users and how they will be impacted as well. That doesn’t mean we aren’t thinking and trying new things on a regular basis. A majority of those changes are happening behind the scenes and released silently to guarantee their effects. You can also help making the game spam free: stop buying items or services on third-party websites and other places. Not only will it eventually get you banned, it also gives spammers a reason to continue.



We know that it can be disappointing to open a mystery box and not get the jackpot that you are hoping for, so we wanted to try something different with some of our mystery boxes in June. We added in a special shard to the most common prizes that you can win from certain mystery boxes that you can collect into stacks of 10x and exchange for mystery skin unlockers at the Tinkerer. Many of the player questions surrounding this item seemed to be about the shard’s generic name and design taken from previous monthly events, and we apologize for any confusion that this oversight caused. We do not currently intend to drop these shards from other in-game events, but we may consider rolling out a larger system that includes other ways to collect similar skin shards in the future so stay tuned!



This is it for today. We are really excited about what is coming up to Realm in the second half of 2018. There is more to come and we will continue posting regular updates to keep you in the loop!


Share with us your feedback, expectations and suggestions in the comments. As usual, we are looking forward to hearing what you guys think and how we can continue making Realm a great game together!

Hey everyone Krathan here!

Guild tab is going live as the first item on the Roadmap, we're excited about it and looking forward to your feedback on it. The Friends list and Guild List are now combined under the "Social" UI and bring a set of quality of life features targeted at social interactions in the game.

The long-awaited Lost Halls rework is also finally here!

Also, we would like to make it clear that we're taking stalking, harassing and griefing other players seriously and have made some behind the scenes changes in order to prevent such behaviors. We will continue to do so.

As always, there are a bunch of new fixes. Plus, Thessal and her Coral Gifts have received the HP scaling treatment!

Now, onto the patch notes.

• Guild Tab! The Friends UI is now the Social UI and comes with a few improvements, including a new tab for managing and interacting with your guild.
  
  
• Horrific Sorcerer ST Set now drops in-game, from both the Mad Lab and the Parasite Chambers monsters: Abomination's Wrath (Wand - Nightmare Colony), Grotesque Scepter (Scepter - Horrific Creation), Garment of the Beast (Robe - Nightmare Colony) & Horrific Claws (Ring - Crusher Abomination).
  

Horrific Sorcerer Stats

Set Bonus: +15 Defense, +3 Attack, +6 Speed

Abomination's Wrath

• Damage: 225-265
• Range: 9
• Rate of fire: 53%
• Fame Bonus: 4%

Grotesque Scepter

• Lightning: 3 targets - 935 dmg, reduced by 135 for each subsequent target
• Effect on self: Hexed for 1 sec, Stunned for 1 sec
• On Equip: +4 Speed
• MP Cost: 100
• Fame Bonus: 4%
• Usable by: Sorcerer

Garment of the Beast

• On Equip: +10 Defense, +50 Maximum MP, -5 Dexterity, +8 Attack, +4 Wisdom
• Fame Bonus: 4%

Horrific Claws

• On Equip: +40 Maximum HP, +5 Attack, +50 Maximum MP, +5 Speed, -3 Dexterity
• Fame Bonus: 4%

• Environment, enemies as well as items received various aesthetic updates.

Dungeon Changes

• Various adjustments to enemy behaviors and damage, as well as a few new additions.
• HP Scaling and base HP adjustments across the board.

Lost Halls

• Rooms: Bigger, more variety, fewer in total and fewer dead ends.
• Boss: New mini boss to gain access, survival phase is more interactive, new final phase.

Cultist Hideout

• Rooms: Fewer in total.
• Boss: New attacks.

The Void

• Boss: New rage phase.

Item Stats

Sword of the Colossus

• Amplitude: 1 -> 0.7 tile(s)

Marble Seal

• Effect: Armored within 3 -> 4 tiles
• Effect: Damaging within 3 -> 4 tiles

Magical Lodestone

• On Equip: +5 -> +6 DEF
• On Equip: +5 -> +6 DEX
• On Equip: +5 -> +6 ATT
• On Equip: +5 -> +6 SPD

Staff of Unholy Sacrifices

• Rate of Fire: 50 -> 55%

Skull of Corrupted Souls

• Damage per WIS (if bigger/equal 50): 4.2 -> 5

Ritual Robe

• On Equip: +12 -> +15 WIS

Bloodshed Ring

• On Equip: +80 -> 100 HP

Bow of the Void

• Damage: 135–205 -> 165-235
• Projectile Speed: 15 -> 16 tiles/seconds
• Range: 6.23 -> 5.6 tiles

Quiver of the Shadows

• Damage: 200-250 -> 400-500
• MP Cost: 90 -> 80

Armor of Nil

• On Equip: -2 DEX -> 0 DEX

Sourcestone

• On Equip: 80 HP -> 110 HP
• On Equip: 80 MP -> 110 MP
• On Equip: 4 -> 6 SPD

Brain of the Golem

• Explosion: Dazed for 2 seconds within 1.75 tiles
• On Equip: -2 -> 0 ATT
• On Equip: -2 -> 0 DEX

Golem Garments

• On Equip: +4 -> +8 ATT

Rusty Cuffs

• On Equip: +40 -> +70 HP

Lost Golem Set Bonus

• On Equip: +6 -> +10 ATT

Cloak of Bloody Surprises

• Effect on Self for 3.5 seconds: Damaging -> +25 ATT

Gravel

• Effect on use: Stasis for 3 seconds within 3.25 -> 6 tiles

Omnipotence Ring

• On Equip: 60 HP -> 80 HP
• On Equip: 60 MP -> 80 MP
• On Equip: 3 ATT -> 4 ATT
• On Equip: 3 DEF -> 4 DEF
• On Equip: 5 VIT -> 4 VIT
• On Equip: 5 WIS -> 4 WIS

• Added a tooltip with "Last seen" information for Friends and Guild Members.
• Redesigned Friends tab in the Social UI.
• A new option under Graphics has been added which displays tiers on items directly (enabled by default).

• The Epic Quest Chest loot table has been updated (now drops the Orb of Aether instead of Kageboshi in addition to the new Sorcerer ST pieces from the Nightmare Colony).
• Tomb of the Ancients: the Mark drop and future Chest Event triggers now happen when all bosses are dead.
• Orb of Aether (and other future abilities that work this way): now requires the targeted tile to be walkable.
• Disable Ally Projectiles no longer disables character firing animations.
• Greater Nature Sprites are now immune to stasis.
• Fixed a bug that made it possible to immediately kill Skuld in the Haunted Cemetery without her dropping any loot.
• Fixed and unified damage thresholds in Ocean Trench, Oryx Castle, Janus and various low level dungeons (Pirate Cave, Forest Maze, Forbidden Jungle, The Hive and Spider Den).
• Fixed behavior aggro issue in Guild Halls (Guill not throwing the Potion Gift sometimes, etc.).
• Fixed the Mountain Temple encounter sometimes preventing the realm from closing.
• Fixed a bug with the Friends list hotkey after startup.
• Fixed overflowing text in the Security Questions pop-up.
• Disable Ally Shoot now disables animations as well, setting renamed from "On" to "All", added "Proj" setting to keep animations. The hotkey will still toggle between Off and All.
• Fixed inventory slots remaining red after a trade or moving an item to the backpack.
• Fixed guild tab not functioning at all under Social in certain cases.
• Pausing is now disabled in realms for the time being.
• Reduced the amount of Basaran shots during the final fight with Malus.
• Fixed HP Scaling in the Void.
• Adjusted Spectral Sentry EXP.
• Introducing the Axolotl, a new addition to common aquatic pets! It has Heal as its first ability.
• The common humanoid pet Muddy Tidechaser now has Magic Heal as its first ability.
• The common woodland pet Rat now has Heal as its first ability.
• Fixed an issue where trying to hatch a pet would instead result in an error.

• Thessal the Mermaid Goddess and Coral Gifts now have HP scaling.
• Thessal base HP: 96000 -> 69000
• Coral Gift base HP: 1200 -> 23000
• Ice Cave: Esben briefly stays invulnerable after spooky minions are cleared and said minions now have multi hit attacks in the final phase as well.

Hey everyone, Krathan here!

Today we finally bring you the Ice Cave rework, Mountain Temple changes and more fixes!

We're happy to announce that another legacy issue has been taken care of - you can now use your abilities when hovering the walls or void outside of dungeons, if they are not targeting tiles (the exceptions being Spells, Skulls, Poisons, Traps, Orbs and of course Prisms).

We also finally started rolling out some changes to address the long standing issue with damage thresholds. There are more to come and hopefully soon we will have unified and more co-op friendly loot distribution!

For more information on what's coming to Realm of the Mad God in the future, make sure to read our Producer's Letter!

• More enemy variety, with more threats and fewer bullet sponges
• Changed dungeon generation to make clearing come more naturally (group is split across two paths)
• Watch out for the new slippery damaging tiles in the main dungeon
• Boss fight is now HP based rather than time based, certain phases are also more engaging (watch out for the summons!)
• The chest has been removed, loot table and distribution has been fixed

Staff of Esben

• Projectile Speed: 10 t/s -> 16 t/s (same range)
• Rate of Fire: 70% -> 80%
• Damage: 60-95 -> 70-90 (+10 min, -5 max,+2.5 average)
• Fame Bonus: 4% -> 6%
• Attack Bonus: 1 -> 0
• Feed Power: 700 -> 800

• Added a treasure room (activate all lanterns in the outdoor zone to access Daichi's private study after you defeat him!)
• Daichi drops the new UT Orb of Aether: this Orb create a static energy zone that lasts 5 seconds and paralyzes enemies close to its center while slowing the one that are farther
• Jade and Garnet Statues now drop Kageboshi
• Increased the delay before the statues charge players: 1 -> 2.5
• The statues now flash in light blue before charging players
• The Encounter now always drops a portal to the Mountain Temple
• Loot table and distribution has been fixed

Wand of the Fallen

• Projectile Speed: 12 t/s -> 14.4 t/s (same range)
• Damage: +5 min (+2.5 average)

Kageboshi

• Projectile Speed: 14 t/s -> 16.1 t/s (same range)
• Damage: 360-440 -> 414-506 (+54 min, +66 max,+60 average)

• The default camera angle is now 0 degrees
• The chat text box size has been decreased
• The default chat star requirement now set to 2 stars

• Fixed crash issue related to the Deadwater Docks
• Fixed error when using abilities that do not target tiles while hovering walls or the black background
• Fixed flash indication on objects not showing when arriving after it started for portals, bags, damage evaluation phases for Liches, Ent Ancients and Ghost Kings, Jade and Garnet statue telegraphs
• Fixed and unified damage thresholds in Davy Jones's Locker, Oryx's Chambers, Wine Cellar, Sprite World, Undead Lair and Abyss of Demons

Hello everyone,

It’s been a while since we last gave you a rundown of what is going on, what is coming in the near-term and what might be in the cards down the road. Recently we took some time as a team to reflect on the past year and tried to figure out which things we want to prioritize for this year.

As you have hopefully already noticed, we strive to bring you quality of life improvements, balancing and small feature updates with every patch. We enjoy taking the temperature of the community and working on things that players want, and we absolutely love the effort that all contributors and the community as a whole put in to make this game great.

Speaking of making the game great, we have had a couple of hiccups in the past and a lot of feedback from you guys on several topics. While we can’t react to everything all the time, we at least wanted to touch on a few things that stood out to us.

First, we had an issue where we adapted the key prices to better reflect the rarity, risk & reward of dungeons. While our numbers made sense on paper, we completely failed to pay attention to how it would affect players, especially ones that had been with the game forever. We have listened to your feedback and reverted the change while keeping some key prices lower than before. We will make sure to find a better way of evaluating, communicating and rolling out any such changes in the future.

Next, there was a lot of back and forth on the monthly quests and chest events. This one is a tough cookie because it is not as straightforward as one might think.

If we look at the numbers of total players logging in and playing the game while there are chest events vs days where there are none, we can clearly see that many people seem to be craving additional chances for loot. On the other hand, we have people complaining that it feels pushy or boring and forces them to log in every day.

We also hear feedback that some UTs are devalued because they are supposedly easier to get via chest events. We definitely do not want to force people into an activity, nor do we want to devalue UTs - although there have been other voices too, saying that it is too hard to get UTs for a permadeath game. We guess it will be impossible to have a solution that serves everybody, but we are committed to trying to make it better. That’s why in May, we will be removing a lot of the chest events and instead have only two weekend ones while also trying out a couple of less loot-focused events and adding the monthly skin to Oryx instead of a quest.

Putting aside the live status of the game currently, there is a bunch of stuff we are working on that will not make it into the game for a while, but we hope you can get as excited about as us.






These features are currently being implemented and should be released to the game soon - which still does not mean tomorrow or guaranteed with the next update. A lot of things can change on short notice, but we are going to put ourselves out there anyway. Without further ado:


Pet Wardrobe

Back when we introduced pet stones, we wanted to give you tons of options for customizing your pets. We got criticism due to the fact that they were one-time use items and that it was not really possible to switch back and forth between your different skins unless you had a lot of them. Taking your feedback, we are developing a Pet Wardrobe that will serve you in a similar fashion as your character skin wardrobe. The system will allow you to acquire permanent pet skins, collect them and apply them to your pets. There are still a lot of implementation details to hammer out, especially on how to acquire the skins and how to use them, but we are working hard to shape it into a good and fair feature. What we can definitely tell you already though, is that all of your pet stones will turn into permanent pet skin unlockers.

Guild List

When we updated the friends list in release X24, we decided to also kickstart the creation of a similar list for Guilds. It is currently being implemented by our team and should be up for testing very soon! This feature, even if smaller, is definitely one of our favorites. From the same UI, you will be able to see who is Online/Offline, when they connected last to the game and interact with guildies (teleport to server, whisper). Guild officers will also be able to manage their guilds directly from the list as we are also adding guild management functionalities to it (promotion, demotion, guild kick). Long overdue.




While these features are underway, they will take longer to implement than the features listed above and should be expected to make it into the game within 3+ months:


Fame System rework

The next big thing on the horizon is fame. It is our intent to bring back fame as a more meaningful part of the core game loop. As of this writing, we are evaluating different options to change both the way you gain fame, as well as the use you can make of it and the leaderboards.

The first phase of this project was completed when we released the Statistics Panel.

We are currently prototyping and testing both new XP formulas (fame gained from monsters) and Fame Bonuses (fame gained from bonuses or achievements on your character). The goal is to make it more coherent, exciting, and challenging to build the perfect Legend character.

Once the above is completed, we are going to implement (or re-implement) additional ways for players to spend fame and fix that loop where what you just gained by dying should help you rebuild your next character.

This whole project will require a lot of testing and balancing, stay tuned for more details.

New Class

Yes, we have decided that we would add a new class to the game. We feel like it is about time and we know most of you feel that way too since the last class was added in October 2012! We are gunning for a release around Month of the Mad God.

Our designers are working on several class concepts as we speak, helped by years of suggestions by the Community, and we hope that we can present you with something soon to gather more feedback. We are building it with you guys in mind, so obviously we want you to help us make it an awesome experience that really adds something fresh to the game.

Dungeon Rush

To us, the Arena always seemed like an unfinished feature idea that was kind of tacked on and not well integrated with the rest of the game. In this state, it was pretty much abandoned and we also only used it for some event tests and otherwise left it aside. Based on our data, most of you guys would agree that it is not particularly appealing. At the same time, we see something there that might be salvaged and that is providing something to those of you who look for things to do casually every now and then without the ever-looming risk of permanent death around the corner.

We are currently prototyping and writing specifications for a feature that is supposed to replace the Arena surrounding rushing dungeon bosses and also providing something like a limited but lower risk training grounds. At this point, we don’t have anything fleshed out enough to share in detail though.




The long-term projects that are currently being specified, prototyped and simply imagined. Some are already in development cycle but will require a massive amount of effort, others will simply never get implemented:

A new client technology

It is happening and we have started scoping and evaluating different technologies. We will likely go through a period of prototyping before we can fully commit.

This is by far the most demanding and challenging project that our team has in the pipes at the moment. Porting a project like RotMG is very expensive and quite frankly not easy to pull off, especially when the highest priority is to not lose the way the gameplay feels to the players! We will keep you posted as we go forward, and as mentioned in the beginning, we hope you are at least a fraction as excited as we are about this prospect. It is a really big step towards making Realm last for years to come.

Give a purpose to unused items overflowing chests and inventorie

Hundreds of items in the game are just rotting in players’ chests or inventories, either because they lost purpose over time, because they are too precious to throw away but essentially useless or because they’re not worth feeding. We are discussing solutions to that with the team and have a few ideas on paper that will eventually turn into prototypes for a system that gives all items a purpose.

More stuff for Guild

Guilds are important! Making friends and facing challenge together play a big role in online gaming. We want to develop new content and add more functionalities to find a guild, recruit new members and manage communities in the game.

New trading functionalitie

Trading and "merching" play an important part in RotMG. The current feature set works but is pretty basic and not secured enough. We want to investigate and eventually invest time into developing a better system for in-game trading.

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We hope we were able to give you a glimpse of what is cooking in Oryx’s Kitchen. We voluntarily focused on the features and major changes but of course, there are hundreds of other changes planned in our backlog: balancing and reworking content, introducing new dungeons and items, fixing legacy bugs, adding small but meaningful QoL changes, etc. Those, we will continue to implement with every patch along the way and we will continue updating our backlog based on your feedback.

The RotMG team at Deca is excited to work together towards implementing all of these changes in the future.

As usual, thank you for your continued support and love for the game. We are very grateful for the feedback you’ve been providing and look forward to more!

The Deca Team

Realm of the Mad God: Steam Booster Pack, all new content for Realm of the Mad God is Now Available on Steam!

This pack will get you everything you need to get started and a selection of 4 dungeons to kick start your adventure!

Realm of the Mad God is the first ever free to play Bullet Hell MMO. Team up with dozens of players and battle through the Realm of the Mad God, Oryx. With a retro 8-bit style, Realm is an evolution of traditional MMO gameplay. A dozen classes and hundreds of items to discover means Realm is easy to play but difficult to master.