Earlier this year, we introduced and polled Wrathmaw, a Wilderness World Boss. If you haven't been living in a barren and hostile wasteland yourself, then you'll know that Wrathmaw's polling results and follow-up discussion told us that he wouldn't be worming his way into the game anytime soon.
Following our September Q&A and Wrathmaw Rework Blog, you may be wondering what’s been happening behind the scenes.
For now, we’ve decided not to move ahead with Wrathmaw (or Sandmaw, his Desert cousin). We’d still like to capture the excitement of Deadman’s Breaches in the main game, but for now, we’d like to focus on improving our existing PvP activities.
We have a few ideas in mind already, but before we get onto those, we’d like to hear your thoughts…
2024 PvP Survey
We'd like to get a clearer sense of where you stand on the PvP and Wilderness ecosystem, so we've put together a survey similar to the one we released all the way back in 2021. The aim of this survey is to hear directly from you on the kind of PvP content you engage with, your understanding of PvP mechanics, and your reasons for engaging or not engaging with PvP content. In short: the works!
In the last few years we’ve seen a number of PvP-focused updates, but the emotional nature of feedback for this content can make it difficult for us to get a clear picture of what we can do to support and grow the PvP community.
While it’s seen livelier days, we still see significant numbers of players engaging with PvP every single day. Throw in PvP’s storied history and the popularity of content like Deadman, Deadman: All-Stars, and other PvP tournaments, it’s clear that PvP is a core part of the game.
We want to get a clearer sense of how we should invest in PvP. We want to know what new activities PvPers might enjoy, while bringing the fast-paced world of rapid clicks, tight movement, and maddening mind games to more players!
So, if you've got around 15 minutes to spare (there are a lot of questions!) then we'd be extremely appreciative of you taking the time to fill in the survey embedded below – or you can click here for a direct link.
We'll use the results of this survey to sit down as a team and carve out a plan for PvP updates in 2025 and beyond. We’ll report back with our findings once we feel we're able to share what we've learned.
In the meantime, we do have a handful of smaller PvP updates, which we expect to go live by the end of the year. Let’s take a look!
Upcoming PvP QoL Changes
We’ve already made a start on this list with the recent improvements to matchmaking in the PvP Arena, so if you haven’t already, be sure to queue up and get some games in!
In terms of more general QoL changes, here’s what’s coming in the next few weeks:
Allow players to use Blighted Items in the Ferox Enclave and Mage Bank.
Allow players to delete a loot key if it's worth more than 30,000 GP. This limit has been increased to 1,000,000 GP.
Make loot from Larrans' Big and Small Chests and the Muddy Chest go straight into your Looting Bag, if the Looting Bag is open.
In the Bounty Hunter Worlds where the PJ timer is shorter, remove the 'anti-boxing' mechanic that allows players to PJ you after hitting multiple 0s in combat against an NPC.
Fix an unusual interaction across single- and multi-combat borders:
Assume Player A and Player B are in multi-combat and Player C is in single-combat. If Player A and Player B are fighting in multi-combat, then Player C can happily attack Player A from the single-combat zone. If Player A tries to attack Player C, they'll be able to, but will receive a message reading "I'm already under attack", meaning Player A will have to repeatedly click Player C to attack them.
We plan to remove the "I'm already under attack message" and allow Player A to hit Player C without interruption, rather than needing to spam-click.
We also have
in our backlog as something we’d love to explore – but we don’t plan to surface it formally unless it aligns with the results of the survey. This would be a significant project for the team to undertake, so we want to be certain that we’re spending our resources wisely before we dive in.
Upcoming Bounty Hunter Changes
Let's try and recapture some of this excitement ahead of the new year!
Bounty Hunter made its return in 2023 and has had more than enough time to settle. We've got an exciting set of changes that will address common issues around build variety and balance, imbalance between the rewards on offer, supporting different PvP styles, and much more.
Since Bounty Hunter is effectively its own little world, it gives us a chance to tweak things more easily and iterate on what works and what doesn't. We've gathered a lot of feedback over the last year and believe it's high-time to shake things up, so let's kick off with changes to Bounty Hunter-exclusive gear!
Weapon and Armour Adjustments
These changes pertain to items that can only be obtained from and used within the Bounty Hunter minigame. Nothing in this list has any impact on the wider game, so don’t start asking if you should bring your Dragon Mace on Slayer Tasks – the answer’s still no!
With that out of the way, here's what we're looking to do:
Dark Bow (bh): Increase Special Attack Energy from 45% to 55%.
Barrelchest anchor (bh): Reduce Attack requirement from 60 to 50. Reduce Attack delay after a successful Special Attack by 2 ticks, meaning your next attack would hit 4 ticks after a successful Special Attack.
Dragon mace (bh): Reduce Special Attack Energy from 25% to 15%.
Dragon longsword (bh): Reduce Special Attack Energy from 25% to 15%.
Morrigan's Throwing Axe (bh): Buff Special Attack to have 150% Accuracy. Increase Special Attack damage from 20% - 120% to 50% - 150% of your max hit.
Morrigan's Javelin (bh): Buff Special Attack to have 150% Accuracy. The bleed damage from the Special Attack will occur every tick instead of every three ticks. The bleed damage from the Special Attack will be 75% of the initial damage. The bleeding damage will be increased from 5 to 10.
Statius's Warhammer (bh): Successful Special Attack hit will reduce the opponents' Defence by 75%, up from 30%.
Vesta's Spear (bh): Reduce attack delay after a successful Special Attack by 1 tick, meaning your next attack would hit 4 ticks after a successful Special Attack. Minimum damage for the second hit deals 50% of the initial damage, up from 25%. The maximum damage for the second hit is unchanged.
Zuriel's Staff (bh): Reduce Attack requirement from 75 to 30.
Morrigan's Armour: Nerfs to defensive capability.
Morrigan's Leather Body (bh): Reduce defences from 61 to 35 Stab, 53 to 30 Slash, 66 to 40 Crush, 62 to 37 Ranged.
Morrigan's leather chaps (bh): Reduce defences from 35 to 18 Stab, 29 to 15 Slash, 37 to 20 Crush, 35 to 22 Ranged.
Corrupted Morrigan's Armour: Nerfs to defensive capability.
Corrupted Morrigan's Leather Body (bh): Reduce defences from 27 to 14 Stab, 20 to 10 Slash, 24 to 12 Crush, 28 to 15 Ranged.
Corrupted Morrigan's Leather Chaps (bh): Reduce defences from 18 to 9 Stab, 15 to 7 Slash, 16 to 8 Crush, 19 to 11 Ranged.
Vesta's Armour: Nerfs to defensive capability so that Statius stands out as the tankier choice.
Vesta's Chainbody (bh): Reduce defences from 74 to 55 Stab, 81 to 59 Slash, 89 to 62 Crush, 95 to 85 Ranged.
Vesta's Plateskirt (bh): Reduce defences from 55 to 39 Stab, 64 to 42 Slash, 67 to 45 Crush, 71 to 59 Ranged.
Corrupted Vesta's Armour: Nerfs to defensive capability so that Corrupted Statius stands out as the tankier choice.
Corrupted Vesta's Chainbody (bh): Reduce defences from 25 to 18 Stab, 32 to 21 Slash, 34 to 23 Crush, 30 to 21 Ranged.
Corrupted Vesta's Plateskirt (bh): Reduce defences from 22 to 14 Stab, 20 to 11 Slash, 18 to 16 Crush, 22 to 15 Ranged.
Corrupted Statius Armour: Nerfs to some defensive capabilities as it's a little too tanky for its level range.
Corrupted Statius's Platebody (bh): Reduce defences from 50 to 35 Stab, 46 to 31 Slash, 44 to 29 Crush, 45 to 33 Ranged.
Corrupted Statius's Full Helm (bh): Reduce defences from 17 to 10 Stab, 20 to 13 Slash, 14 to 8 Crush, 18 to 11 Ranged.
Zuriel's Armour and Corrupted Zuriel's Armour - Adjust 15% special magical attack accuracy when full set is worn to a flat 25% accuracy bonus for magical attacks (spells and special attacks).
Zuriel's Hood (bh): Increase Magic bonus from 8 to 18.
Corrupted Zuriel's Hood (bh): Increase Magic bonus from 5 to 12.
Zuriel's Robe Top (bh): Increase Magic bonus from 35 to 58.
Corrupted Zuriel's Robe Top (bh): Increase Magic bonus from 25 to 46.
Zuriel's Robe Bottom (bh): Increase Magic bonus from 25 to 46.
Corrupted Zuriel's Robe Bottom (bh): Increase Magic bonus from 18 to 32.
Ultimately these changes aim to reduce the more extreme imbalances between builds, while making the less appealing unlocks a bit more interesting. As always we’ll be keeping a close eye on these after launch to see if further adjustments are needed. For now though, we’re very excited to shake up the crater with these changes!
While we're talking unlocks, we've also got some charge cost changes that’s should more accurately reflect the strength and popularity of certain gear. This should open up new options for players who aren't quite ready to risk a whopping 50 million GP. While it's fine for the likes of Vesta's Longsword (bh) to be expensive to use, it's difficult to justify the same cost for some of the other weapon options, so we'll be making the following changes:
Vesta's Spear (bh): 5 million GP
Statius's Warhammer (bh): 10 million GP
Morrigan's Throwing Axe (bh): 5 million GP
Morrigan's Javelin (bh): 10 million GP
Zuriel's Staff (bh): 5 million GP
We'll be adding a message in-game to let you know that you're eligible for a refund on any weapons you've already charged, which you'll be able to do by chatting to the Emblem Trader inside the lobby.
Systems and Other Changes
While these meta shakeups are certainly interesting, they can only go so far if we don’t make improvements to the system as a whole.
The first of these changes will be to prevent players from bringing Phoenix Necklaces into the Crater. The trusty Phoenix Necklace is fantastic to help stave off death in multi-combat PvP but can lead to some anti-fun play patterns in the 1v1 Honour PvP that occurs inside Bounty Hunter. Used correctly, they're able to make players - in lower brackets especially - effectively immortal if your opponent doesn't have an extremely high-hitting weapon and a dash of bonkers RNG. We believe fights would be more enjoyable without these around, so we're throwing them out.
We’re also doubling the rate at which players gain EP when they have a target and a minimum risk of 50,000 GP. This might change if the number of people inside the Crater starts to pick up, but this change serves as a boost for players in brackets who don’t spend a whole lot of time fighting their targets and need to look for rogue combat if they want fairer matchups. As long as you have a target, you’ll gain 2% EP per minute, up from 1%. This won’t drastically increase your reward output, and we have high confidence in our anti-griefing systems. Remember, we have zero tolerance for boosting in Bounty Hunter, and rulebreakers could find themselves slapped with an account ban.
On the UI front, we're bringing back the iconic Bounty Hunter skulls to reflect players' risk inside the crater. As a result, we'll also be disabling trading inside the crater to prevent players swapping risk before starting a fight. Here's how it works:
If you're risking less than 200,000 GP, you'll have a bronze skull.
If you're risking between 200,000 and 800,000 GP, you'll have a silver skull.
If you're risking between 800,000 GP and 2 million GP, you'll have a green skull.
If you're risking between 2 million and 8 million GP, you'll have a blue skull.
If you're risking more than 8 million GP, you'll have a red skull.
We’ve saved the most radical change for last: Supply Crates!
Not to be confused with Bounty Crates, Supply Crates are something you'll be able to put together in the lobby by stuffing 8 Blighted Manta Rays or Anglerfish, 1 Blighted Super Restore, 2 Blighted Karambwan and 1,000 GP into a crate. You can use noted items to make a bunch of crates, but you'll only be able to bring two into the crater with you. You'll be able to open these helpful care packages while in combat inside the crater to extend fights.
The aim here is to give prospective Bounty Hunters a better shot at killing their opponent. The nature of Bounty Hunter's particular PvP flavour means you're looking for that perfect window of opportunity: a flawlessly timed Vengeance, an opponent caught drinking a potion, a lightning-fast combo... you get the picture. If you're fighting a build that has higher DPS (for example, a Pure vs. a Zerker) then you'll often find yourself eating the entire time and leaving before getting the chance to at least try and kill your opponent.
Supply Crates mean you’ll spend less time returning to the lobby, and more time actually fighting. Combined with the EP changes above, we reckon this will improve the Bounty Hunter experience and considerably reduce downtime.
We're excited to see you get hands-on with these changes and improvements later this year!
Wrapping Up
To summarize – Wrathmaw’s heading back underground for now, but you’ve got loads of PvP QoL and Bounty Hunter improvements coming your way! Most importantly, we’ve got a massive survey for you to fill out – and you can do so by clicking the button below.
Once again, we simply can’t express how valuable your survey responses are to us. 5 or 10 minutes of your time will help shape the direction of PvP into 2025 and beyond, so if you’ve got the time, please do tell us your thoughts!
