Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=109693&page=1#10 Author: Hebs Time Posted: 1/7/2025 at 7:42 PM New winter event is really awesome, its just sad that droprate on gifts are so low and spawn rate of the special pets are so low too since normal themed are gone while event is on. I been using 3 perfumes during a couple of events i joined each time, i think its kind of expensive when you dont run into any rare. So in my opinion either droprate of gifts should be increased or spawn rate of the pets be increased. I do know others struggle with it too so its not just me. I farm my gifts from named ones 2 times daily + the few gifts nutcrackers drops i managed today get up on 25% which is highest i been on so far. I dont have the time to sit and farm whole day i do have a family also i guess others have too, im sry if this sounds like a complain, it isnt supposed to be that but i really want to do the events but just cant sit whole day and farm so if chances on gifts/spawn was higher that would be nice. Hope you understand what i mean Hebs

Regarding the 'spawning events' part, keep in mind that you can save your Stolen Gifts until whenever you want to turn them in. They do carry over from event to event. So I would suggest that you just hold onto them and keep a stockpile until it's a time you're able to participate in the event and then dump all of your Stolen Gifts to push the progress along. You can even find a few other players who are in a similar situation and work together so that, together, you guys have enough to trigger an event whenever you want that's convenient for you. That was actually the intention of the Stolen Gifts system - to give players more control over when events spawn.

Regarding the spawn rate, it's just a very tough thing to balance unless I'm going to put in arbitrary limits on a per-player basis. I've tried that before in previous events years ago - players did not seem to like that and it seemed to discourage the high-playtime players from playing, which I definitely don't want to do.

The Attraction Bonus is meant to help be a pity system for all players to increase their odds after working that up. A player with maxed Attraction Bonus, battling on Tier 5, and with the Themed Pet Boost at 100% has a significantly higher chance of encountering a Tyrielle's Minion Themed pet than they do a regular Themed Pet outside of the event. However, it obviously takes a bit of effort to reach that point. But keep that in mind for when using Perfumes.

I wish the whole encounter system was a better system and more flexible - I actually do not really like how it all works out at this point, but sadly there's just not really anything I can do about it for the foreseeable future. It is definitely a system that I plan on vastly improving whenever I am able to restructure how exploration works.

All in all, so far, I'm pretty happy with the amount of Tyrielle's Minion Themed Pets that players have been finding. Since Saturday night, there's already been just shy of 100 caught (plus however many were not caught). It's been a little over 72 hours that the event has been active, so we're at 13 event iterations and 100 Themed - so that's about 4 events per day and 30 Themed per day. I think those are very fair numbers so far. But, as always, I am always looking to adjust things as needed and I'm sure I will continue tweaking as time goes on.

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=109693&page=2#11 Author: Krinadon Time Posted: 1/8/2025 at 1:47 AM [quote=2761443] Regarding the 'spawning events' part, keep in mind that you can save your Stolen Gifts until whenever you want to turn them in. They do carry over from event to event. So I would suggest that you just hold onto them and keep a stockpile until it's a time you're able to participate in the event and then dump all of your Stolen Gifts to push the progress along. You can even find a few other players who are in a similar situation and work together so that, together, you guys have enough to trigger an event whenever you want that's convenient for you. That was actually the intention of the Stolen Gifts system - to give players more control over when events spawn. Regarding the spawn rate, it's just a very tough thing to balance unless I'm going to put in arbitrary limits on a per-player basis. I've tried that before in previous events years ago - players did not seem to like that and it seemed to discourage the high-playtime players from playing, which I definitely don't want to do. The Attraction Bonus is meant to help be a pity system for all players to increase their odds after working that up. A player with maxed Attraction Bonus, battling on Tier 5, and with the Themed Pet Boost at 100% has a significantly higher chance of encountering a Tyrielle's Minion Themed pet than they do a regular Themed Pet outside of the event. However, it obviously takes a bit of effort to reach that point. But keep that in mind for when using Perfumes. I wish the whole encounter system was a better system and more flexible - I actually do not really like how it all works out at this point, but sadly there's just not really anything I can do about it for the foreseeable future. It is definitely a system that I plan on vastly improving whenever I am able to restructure how exploration works. All in all, so far, I'm pretty happy with the amount of Tyrielle's Minion Themed Pets that players have been finding. Since Saturday night, there's already been just shy of 100 caught (plus however many were not caught). It's been a little over 72 hours that the event has been active, so we're at 13 event iterations and 100 Themed - so that's about 4 events per day and 30 Themed per day. I think those are very fair numbers so far. But, as always, I am always looking to adjust things as needed and I'm sure I will continue tweaking as time goes on.

Thx for explaining i will try stockpile then to see how it goes :)

I'm just making sure I understand this.. despite the fact that my team is level 30.. I am supposed to be getting level 75 minions in the fest zone? If this is the case which tier is now best suited for level 30 and will there be more drops/rewards for tier 5 since the minions won't scale to your level?
**Edit**
Ok so I think I understand it now after talking to some people. The initial forum post in the change log wasn't very specific so I was extremely confused about the encounter due to not realizing it meant *all* enemies and not just the bosses. Long day at work.. my brain exploded. But the pieces are picked up and mostly put back together again lol.

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=109693&page=2#13 Author: Shadowized Time Posted: 1/8/2025 at 6:06 PM I'm just making sure I understand this.. despite the fact that my team is level 30.. I am supposed to be getting level 75 minions in the fest zone? If this is the case which tier is now best suited for level 30 and will there be more drops/rewards for tier 5 since the minions won't scale to your level? **Edit** Ok so I think I understand it now after talking to some people. The initial forum post in the change log wasn't very specific so I was extremely confused about the encounter due to not realizing it meant *all* enemies and not just the bosses. Long day at work.. my brain exploded. But the pieces are picked up and mostly put back together again lol.

The original intention of the Challenge Tiers was so that...

Tier 1 = Levels 0 - 59 (New Players)
Tier 2 = Levels 60 - 65 (Early Lost Grove Players)
Tier 3 = Levels 66 - 70 (Forbidden Caverns Lost Grove Players)
Tier 4 = Levels 71 - 75 (Ancient Temple Lost Grove Players)
Tier 5 = Levels 75+ (Maxed End Game Players)

So if you're looking for content for Level 30 pets, then the intended Tier would be Tier 1.

Now, I understand that I guess a lot of you were using Level 30 pets to cruise through on Tier 5, then switching to Lvl 75 pets to fight Named / Event Boss. This wasn't really ever the intention of this system, but I understand why players are doing this.

The problem though - and I did not realize this until after my changes today - was that you guys have been farming Event enemies on Tier 5 with Lvl 30 parties making it super easy for you guys to get the increased Tier 5 rewards w/o having to meet the intended difficulty. This is definitely something that was not intended and it shouldn't be working this way.

After my changes today, this has been fixed and all tiers are spawning enemies at the difficulty level they are intended to. I have also massively improved the system on the backend for myself. For the Fall Festival, I just haphazardly threw it all together to make it work - it was a mess and disaster and impossible to keep track of. Now, there's a nice uniform system in place so that I can actually have some control over the difficulty of the Tiers and all that.

So now the question is, where can we meet in the middle where I can still have things set up in a convenient way for players but you guys still have to play under the intended difficulty for the higher tier rewards. It is not intended for players to be farming Tier 5 without Tier 5 caliber parties - or at least without understand it will be very challenging. =P

One thing that I can try is to allow for players to change the Zone Difficulty from anywhere in the zone. I'm not 100% sure I can do this because of how things are coded, but I will look into it. This will at least allow players to zoom through the zone on Tier 1 if they so wish and then switch it to their desired tier before engaging Named. I'm not really fond of this idea on the dev side of things, but I think this would be an acceptable compromise.

Another thing though is that for players wanting to battle on Tier 5, it's not that bad to spam through the zone trash with a Tier 5 caliber team. I just run a basic Earth/Light/Air team and yes, they are maxed, but I can just spam "1" abilities without paying any attention and quickly clear any zone trash battles in seconds. Is it longer than one-shotting Lvl 30 enemies? Yes. But it's not that bad. I am able to go from one end of the zone to the other in 1-2 minutes. And this is Tier 5. It would be way easier if on Tier 3 or 4.

At the end of the day, I do want to incentivize players to push through content and to ultimately create a Tier 5 caliber party. Tier 5's drop rates are better/higher than what the global drop rates were prior to the Orb of Challenge being added into the game. I think the old drop rates fall somewhere between Tier 3 and Tier 4. So keep that in mind for players not enjoying Tier 5 - it's okay to drop it down to Tier 3 and then, over time, work on improving your party pets to push to Tier 4, etc.

If anyone has any other perspectives or feedback, please let me know and I'd be happy to further discuss things so we can all be on the same page. This is still a very new feature and I'm still working on 100% ironing it out. You guys know that I am a very understanding dev. So we will get it sorted out. =)

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=109693&page=2#14 Author: Krinadon Time Posted: 1/9/2025 at 12:51 AM [quote=2761528] The original intention of the Challenge Tiers was so that... Tier 1 = Levels 0 - 59 (New Players) Tier 2 = Levels 60 - 65 (Early Lost Grove Players) Tier 3 = Levels 66 - 70 (Forbidden Caverns Lost Grove Players) Tier 4 = Levels 71 - 75 (Ancient Temple Lost Grove Players) Tier 5 = Levels 75+ (Maxed End Game Players) So if you're looking for content for Level 30 pets, then the intended Tier would be Tier 1. Now, I understand that I guess a lot of you were using Level 30 pets to cruise through on Tier 5, then switching to Lvl 75 pets to fight Named / Event Boss. This wasn't really ever the intention of this system, but I understand why players are doing this. The problem though - and I did not realize this until after my changes today - was that you guys have been farming Event enemies on Tier 5 with Lvl 30 parties making it super easy for you guys to get the increased Tier 5 rewards w/o having to meet the intended difficulty. This is definitely something that was not intended and it shouldn't be working this way. After my changes today, this has been fixed and all tiers are spawning enemies at the difficulty level they are intended to. I have also massively improved the system on the backend for myself. For the Fall Festival, I just haphazardly threw it all together to make it work - it was a mess and disaster and impossible to keep track of. Now, there's a nice uniform system in place so that I can actually have some control over the difficulty of the Tiers and all that. So now the question is, where can we meet in the middle where I can still have things set up in a convenient way for players but you guys still have to play under the intended difficulty for the higher tier rewards. It is not intended for players to be farming Tier 5 without Tier 5 caliber parties - or at least without understand it will be very challenging. =P One thing that I can try is to allow for players to change the Zone Difficulty from anywhere in the zone. I'm not 100% sure I can do this because of how things are coded, but I will look into it. This will at least allow players to zoom through the zone on Tier 1 if they so wish and then switch it to their desired tier before engaging Named. I'm not really fond of this idea on the dev side of things, but I think this would be an acceptable compromise. Another thing though is that for players wanting to battle on Tier 5, it's not that bad to spam through the zone trash with a Tier 5 caliber team. I just run a basic Earth/Light/Air team and yes, they are maxed, but I can just spam "1" abilities without paying any attention and quickly clear any zone trash battles in seconds. Is it longer than one-shotting Lvl 30 enemies? Yes. But it's not that bad. I am able to go from one end of the zone to the other in 1-2 minutes. And this is Tier 5. It would be way easier if on Tier 3 or 4. At the end of the day, I do want to incentivize players to push through content and to ultimately create a Tier 5 caliber party. Tier 5's drop rates are better/higher than what the global drop rates were prior to the Orb of Challenge being added into the game. I think the old drop rates fall somewhere between Tier 3 and Tier 4. So keep that in mind for players not enjoying Tier 5 - it's okay to drop it down to Tier 3 and then, over time, work on improving your party pets to push to Tier 4, etc. If anyone has any other perspectives or feedback, please let me know and I'd be happy to further discuss things so we can all be on the same page. This is still a very new feature and I'm still working on 100% ironing it out. You guys know that I am a very understanding dev. So we will get it sorted out. =)

I like the new changes. I was surprised to hear people were using board teams at level 30 this whole time when I've been slowly building max stat level 75 teams for the past 4+ years.

One point was that its unfair for the competition boards when someone with a super stat, max rank, primordial armor team goes through the zone in tier I, abo******ely zooming through board rankings.
I can see that being an issue if its the only thing considered, but from my experience, I struggled to participate in boards until I reached level 75 anyway. Sure it is easier for people with higher level pets to get boards faster when they can fight through lower level enemies, I would argue it isnt much faster than those teams can fight level 75 enemies anyway with the right element combination.
Considering all the types of players, It actually seems more fair to me that a level 60 player for example, can also fight level 30 enemies in the zone- which would be more comparable to being a higher level.

So I think net change it is more fair for everyone than it was before with the enemy level matching the pet level. Now players without max or super stats can lower difficulty and fight faster, and stronger pets have diminished returns as far as speed goes.

Personally it's not too big of a deal to leave the zone and re-enter to reset the tiers for me, but I would still love to see the ability to adjust it from anywhere in the zone.

I do think it takes too long in general to max out teams though. Progressing past LG has been very slow and painful (and boring) for me. I really only level up to have access to certain fest activities ie. Maws of Madness, easter egg hunt etc. Would love to see any changes regarding that has it does affect how the fests run. Not the main point but worth mentioning.

I had not personally reaslised that the drop rates were significantly different (I have been playing on T4 up until this change happened) and personally enjoyed using my level 30 board team to zoom across the zone between bosses because it was a good bit faster (I have long been trying to figure out if this altered my drops from chests and the like or not) and I don't always have a lot of time to do a boss or chest run.

Additionally during regular fest days I could grind along on any of my board teams between bosses/event bits and enjoy my other pet species whereas my main level 75 team is all super max rikkis which is what I use in the LG and Temple. Which I was actually talking a bit with another player on here that it's disappointing that almost everyone is using SM rikkis bred by a handful of players as their main team -not because I dislike the species or the players I purchased from or even the design choices of these breeders by any means but it's fun to change up my avi and it's fun to not have the same Rikki(s) trailing behind me as I play the fests since most of the time I'm playing otherwise it's one of my LG SM rikki team. This game gives us so many awesome pets it kind of feels bad not having a use for more of them and making board teams of pets I really liked the design of has been one of my long term goals.

This leads into last comment which is that with the new system it is looking like using level 75s on tier 1 against the level 60 capped enemies is going to be a faster kph than the lvl 30 vs lvl 30 were which is going to skew the landscape towards the best stat pets people can get, ranking them, and vastly favoring people who have things like supermaxes and primordial gear for boards in all liklihood. I think there's a myriad of pluses and minuses to that - such as creating more demand for SM overall and it being harder to throw together a fest team for a species you don't really care about and snag a spot on the board last minute but also will give a natural advantage to people who can swap around a set of top gear etc.

Would it be easier to put orbs near the bosses or even just an orb or portal (back to the orb at the front) in each area than allow tier changes from anywhere? It's a bit of a haul from the entrance to some of the far bosses.

Did a test earlier my rank 5 with +5 pri gear in tier 1 zone. 3 enemies took 1 round so its definitely going to be faster doing boards with rank 5 lvl 75. I only have rank 5 lvl 75 rikkis though. Will test how fast unranked lvl 75 can take down enemies. If it works out faster than lvl 30s, Will be leveling as many teams to lvl 75 as I can over the next few nights. Hubs isn't home to bug me(dropping off to train station tomorrow) so can work on leveling xD

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=109693&page=2#17 Author: Katty Time Posted: 1/9/2025 at 4:56 AM Did a test earlier my rank 5 with +5 pri gear in tier 1 zone. 3 enemies took 1 round so its definitely going to be faster doing boards with rank 5 lvl 75. I only have rank 5 lvl 75 rikkis though. Will test how fast unranked lvl 75 can take down enemies. If it works out faster than lvl 30s, Will be leveling as many teams to lvl 75 as I can over the next few nights. Hubs isn't home to bug me(dropping off to train station tomorrow) so can work on leveling xD

Yes. It's definitely going to be a bit of a wonky Round 3 of the Leaderboard Contest. Since these changes are new and, subject to tweaks over the next week or so, and we've already gone through two rounds of contests this Festival, I am not going to make any changes regarding contests at this point.

However, there will most likely be changes to how the battling Leaderboard Contests work in the future, starting with the Spring Festival. I haven't decided on anything yet, but my best idea so far is to go back to the old 1-10 prize placements but have two separate battling Leaderboard Contests, one for Tier 1 with Lvl 0-59 pets and the other for Tier 2-5 with whatever pets. This way, players with well built low level pets can participate in the Tier 1 board and the Tier 1 board will be more newbie friendly - and everyone else with Lvl 60+ pets can participate in the other board. Again though, this is still just in the brainstorm phase and not decided on just yet.

Just keep in mind that, most likely, something will be changing with Leaderboard Contests starting with the Spring Festival in order to try and keep the contests fun and fair for everyone.

The problem with 2 separate boards is that people with ranked lvl 75s battling in tier 1 will have an advantage and there may even be some bullying going on when people (maybe me, ok likely me) lvl up teams of pets to be able to knock out battles faster. I would be utilising my time more efficiently and shouldn't be penalised for it right? It really does sound like my lvl 30 teams are redundant now. They can't battle in tier 2-5 and are less effective in tier 1. So I guess I should replace my teams instead buying potions to give them xp flowing again

(ALSO sorry I meant to quote you not ping you)

I like this idea and I'm gonna preface this with the fact that I'm going to be rambling off ideas/thoughts this post.

Idea?: A lock-in system like maws but for battle boards with the tiers you mentioned(I wasn't here back then so I don't know how they worked specifically). I don't know what the specific criteria for each would be(like zone tier requirement ontop of lvl?). And then, I dunno if it's possible, but if you for instance lock-in at 60lvl tier, if you're battling with a different level/tier of pets and on the zone lvl not congruent with the lock-in, they don't count towards your chosen board tier. Therefore people couldn't dominate every single tier for a specific pet. If for some reason everyone choses tier lvl 60 and there's like 15 people in the lower tiers, technically all the lower tier people would be barely scrambling and most of them will get reward payouts while the others are in a warzone. Could the amount of listed participants for each tier be visible and if there's barely any in one tier and someone wants to change to the lesser populated tier, could they and get removed from the previous board and allowed to start building up on the new one from 0?

If there's no lock-in but the tiers still exist and you gain points dependent on what lvl teams you have, will that just mean top players will try to dominate every tier on top of getting on each pet board? And if that's the case, if there's only 1-10, will it just be the same people on all and every board/tier?

Anyway, these are just my jumbled incomplete thoughts.