Hello everyone!
I hope you've all had a nice September. It's hard to believe the month is over and it's time to write my second update letter.
Over the past couple of weeks, progress has been made on the new Inferno Missions, which I'll be introducing here. I'll also be listing out some of the upcoming changes to arrive with the Inferno Mission patch.
New Inferno Missions:
Near Ergo in Inferno, a new cave will open. You'll be directed inside to investigate what fate has befallen this previously sealed Xan temple.
These missions will involve protecting NPCs from waves of assaulting creatures. The difficulty of the mission (easy/medium/hard) will determine how many waves will appear, level of the assaulting monsters, as well as the mission reward. The assaults will end early if all the targets that need to be protected are killed.
These missions can be taken by anyone above level 170. Rewards for these missions are defined by an item, similar to daily missions, so there is no longer as much of a necessity to find a level 220 character to roll a mission. These missions will all take place at the same location, and given the layout of the encounter, it won't be as much of a time-consuming task to leave once completed.
The waves of monsters are all themed, ending with a mini-boss, each which may provide an additional reward. Initial waves will place a single-use Shadow Rift, similar to the ones seen within the Rubi-Ka missions. Some waves of monsters will be less commonly seen than others, while others will be unique to the Hard difficulty.
With these missions, the intention was to create an encounter that learned from the feedback from the existing Shadowlands missions, while adding new mechanics and incentives. I hope to have these on Testlive in the next couple of weeks.
Additional 18.6.15 changes:
We are still going through various lists of suggestions/feedback, but two of the additional changes for this patch will be:
Reimplementing the 3x Battlestation daily missions, and giving them XP rewards back. These missions will be done in a slightly different style to remedy some of the previous problems, and will be more true to their original design.
Adding mission exits. To cut down on the downtime between missions, upon killing a mission boss, an exit item that'll send you to the start of the mission, will spawn. This initial pass will be for Shadowlands, Alien Invasion, and Lost Eden missions.
There will also be several more QoL improvements/bug fixes, which will be listed out when the patch reaches Testlive.
That's what I have for this month. Thank you everyone and have a great October!