Scoring Adjustments | Patreon Weekly #305

Hey Patrons! Things have once again been a little disparate this week, but i do have some info to share on scoring adjustments, and further Warrior implementation.

There’s also a new Patreon Poll this week! This is a direct followup to the previous poll, offering some more specific options for level generation and rare enemies!

Scoring Adjustments

Just like the week before, I spent a decent amount of time last week on various disparate things. Some of which is fun personal bookkeeping like getting my income tax ready to file, some was various fixes, and some was concepting on smaller changes.

Probably the biggest ‘small’ change, which I’ve already implemented, is some adjustments to scoring calculations. These are meant to smooth out exploration score a bit, while also making quest score a bit harder to compensate. I have run some numbers and this should make 1m+ score a little bit easier on 7-chal (or 6+ascent) but I’m fine with that.

• Exploration Score is no longer all-or-nothing for each floor. It is now based on how many rooms were not fully explored. For each floor, score is reduced to 50%/20%/0% for 1/2/3+ missed rooms. The criteria for whether something is 'fully explored' is unchanged.

• Quest Score can now be reduced in a similar manner to boss score. Make sure to position well to avoid penalties! This reduction includes telegraphed attacks/effects (e.g. crystal spire, gnoll geomancer), and regular attacks that you should be able to always avoid (e.g. rot lashers, fetid rat's ooze). Cases where attacks are sometimes unavoidable (e.g. corpse dust wraiths, gnoll trickster) have some leeway before penalties apply.

As for the Warrior changes, I’ve actually finalized a first implementation of most of the details from last weekly, plus a few other adjustments to surrounding mechanics (talents mostly) so that they make sense with the new mechanic.

We’re actually pretty close to being able to have an early alpha! No idea when specifically, but I would like to let you guys play around with the Warrior changes to see how they feel. The Alpha will likely be around for a little while though as there are still other changes to make, such as side content from this week’s poll, or Cleric balance changes.