Monday, December 20, 2021

2021 KDnF Winter Festival Summary

  • Winter Festival is a yearly event in Korea where the developer showcase what're coming. This year, a schedule for the next 9 months has been released, and there are a crap ton of information.
  • For the sake of easy digestion, this post is be organized base on the roadmap. Also the primary information are based on the amazing translation of "halfmango". All credits goes to the user.
Table of Contents
Dec 23rd, 2021
3rd Awakening Art Rework

Jan 13th, 2022
Game Client Optimization
  • Aiming to release in mid January, Multithreading will be implemented to in order to improve dungeon's loading speed. I'm not sure how it will work with Global version, so we'll have to wait to see.

5th Male Gunner
  • This new subclass is called Assault. Definitely looks like a cyborg with tons of technology. Damage type and weapon type are unknown. You can watch the trailer below.
Synergy Class Removal
  • The director stated that all synergy will receive 8.5% buffs. Along with buffs on Aeterna gear and have mobsb HP reduced.
Feb 10th, 2022
Male Spitfire & Male Nen Revamp
  • February will patch Male Nen, with the emphasis on Spiral Gauge: damage for consumption, new skill for absorption.
  • Along with it is Male Spit, with emphasis on X-String & Bullet skill, Neil the Sniper old skill will make a return. There will be some other balance patches in the between as well.
Revisit from Otherverse Dungeons.
  • If you didn't know OV dungeons were deleted a while ago along with Chronical gears. And now they will make a come back. In the Festival, they didn't showcase any of it. But in the Chinese Festival, they did release some gameplay. I'm not sure what gear they will give.
March 17th, 2022: New Level 110 Cap
New Dungeons
  • 8 Normal Dungeons and 2 Advanced Dungeons (like Oculus) will be added. Below are some promotion videos.
  • The director stated that leveling / base gear farming is too easy and boring, and the gear spectrum is too wide between players (aka newbies vs veterans). Also setting standards on the new and gearless players makes the story boring and meaningless for the rest. So he wants to focus on making the leveling phase part of the content & interesting.
  • Therefore, story dungeons will have regular difficulties (normal ~ king). Higher difficulty will give more rewards and EXP to level up. Gears will also drop during the story / leveling phase. Normal will be doable very easily, but king will require powerful gear such as Ozma's graduate.
  • Hero difficulty will make a return as the challenging content for the geared players, including new patterns for mobs. This Hero mode will drop account-bound rewards. 
  • Advanced dungeons will haven no weekly entry limits. Raids weekly entry limit will remains the same. In addition, tickets & play point system will be added. This is where you spend FP for the points, use the points to buy the tickets for the advanced dungeons (tradable tickets can also drop). These tickets do not expire on weekly reset. The point is that you don't have to get your weekly homework done on that week. If you're busy, you can still use the tickets the following week. Achievements and dungeon missions will be added to motivate playing and make grinding a bit less stressing. 
  • One of the Advanced dungeon, Noblesse Code, will has a system similar to Squad Mode where you can pick and choose which reward you want to give to which alts.
  • Can be entered with up to 4 characters, solo is fine if you’re strong enough but each char can only get a fixed number of epics so more chars = more pieces. Will have a very high epic drop rate.
New Gears
  • New gears are added. It's level 110 cap, but gear will be level 105. Gear’s level does not match characters’ max level because they wanted to try something new. 
  • He wanted to simplify damage mods. So for DPS, all 6 damage mods (e.g. Smash, Crit Smash, PMI, Str/Int, All, Bonus) will be merged into "Damage Increase" and will be a base option on all gears. For Buffers, all buff options will be merged into a new option called "Buff Power" and will be a base option on all gears. 
  • He wanted freedom of setups, so the new epic will have no set effects, only single pieces so you can use whatever pieces you want. 
  • These new epics will be new other options (e.g. increased CDR rate when enemy is in groggy, etc). Some pieces will have fixed effects, others will have modifiable options. These modifiable options can be changed with mats you get from dungeons. 
  • Option growth: New legendaries and epics will have a variety of options that gain EXP and level up.
  • Moreover, you can merge duplicates to gain massive gear EXP. 
  • Ozma pieces and max Black Purgatory rolled Sirocco pieces (including weapons) are also usable for feeding EXP. The required EXP per level will increase exponentially while stat increase per level will decrease, so ‘maxing out’ won’t be necessary. 
  • Option transfer: For the pieces with customizable options 1 of the 4 options will be transferable to another piece to replace an option you don’t like. Unsure whether you can just do this for all 4 options at once and finish a piece, but they seem to be implying that you can only do this for 1 option. 
  • Weapons: There will be 2 different weapons for each kind: 1 focused on damage and 1 focused on skills improvement (similar to Chronicle / Talisman shoes). Drop rate for your own weapon will be much higher compared to others. 
  • Level 105 Rare/Unique/Legendary Equipment: 
    • Rare: Will take over Ghent unique. Fully farmable in 2~3 days. 
    • Unique: 2 different kinds, a damage set similar to 100 legendaries and a set that will be an improved abyssal swap. Will drop very rarely in tradable form. 
    • Legendary: Similar power as the customizable epics but tradable. Designed to be a jackpot tradable gear to feed / transfer options to your epics. 
    • Mythic and PoW: Those that are strong in single piece will be usable in place of the same slot 105 pieces for a while. Due to the remaining discrepancies and changes in systems some Mythics will be rebalanced.
  • Others:
    • Inheriting and engraving will stay.
    • Gear rebalancing can happen more often than before to prevent 'crazy setups' 
    • CDR will cap at 70% for all skills.
    • In dungeon, gear swapping (e.g. armors, acc and sub) will be restricted.
    • Dungeon selling: too cheap for too great of a return. Fame will limit dungeon entry (similar to exorcism) but the threshold won’t be too high (still under consideration) 
    • No more hell / GoW: farm epics regular dungeons
More System Updates
  • Game’s systems will be drastically changed to reduce reliance on raw damage and improve the ARPG aspect. Will happen across several patches to prevent too many changes happening at once. 
  • Warlord and mind stimulant removed/nerfed (will no longer be necessary in dungeons).
  • Improved TP effect for lower skills (skills below lvl 30): master/max level readjusted, tp redistribution .
  • Readjusted defensive capabilities: Defensive abilities, max HP and armor / defense values will be rescaled, mobs will have much less I-frames. Will try to make defensive values and options on gears actually meaningful.
  • Incapacitation gauge: A new gauge will be added below mobs’ HP bar to indicate their status effect immunity. Use appropriate attacks & deal with patterns to deplete the gauge and enter groggy or make the boss vulnerable to status effects.
  • Revamped status effects: Status effects like freezing and petrification will be changed, they'll stop the enemies on their track but not actually interrupt their pattern. Other changes are also in plan.
  • 3rd Awakening Skill Change: Too slow, they'll be reduced to about 3 seconds. Still thinking about what to do for a lotta stuff like animated cut-ins etc., plans might change in the future.

  • Renewed Reinforcement / Amplification: This is a system unique to 100+ gears. They will have no failure penalty up to +12 reinforcement and +10 amp in exchange for slightly reduced chance and increased cost. Will also have a failsafe system to prevent being stuck at a certain level like +9 too many times. 
  • Base Element Boost: Element Boost on passives (such as Soul Bender and Female Nen) will be replaced with skill damage. 
  • Creatures: More dynamic participation in dungeons (creature skills) and artifacts renewal. Skills may be modifiable so that they can be more useful in dungeons. Artifacts will have new and meaningful effects. Details still in consideration. 
  • Dungeon & Life: A collection of minigames, fun stuff to do outside just running dungeons. Craft/buy items with what you get here including gears. Use mats that you can get from running dungeons to build new buildings & decorate your village. You can also visit other players’ villages. Won’t be a necessary content for progression.
May 2022
Meister's Lab
  • This is where the 7 Meisters make giant robots to fight Bakal. This looks like the other Advance Dungeon in addition to Noblesse Code.
July 2022
Stolen Land, Ispins
  • This is another type of dungeon called Legion, which will have difficulty in between Advance Dungeon and Raid.

September 2022
Bakal Raid

Other Changes
  • 50% Account-bound mats: Too good for people with a lotta alts/too much alt oriented farming. Trying to come up with a system that's fair for everyone. 
  • Abyss swap, rune, talisman: Considered completely removing rune/talisman and replacing it with a new system but they didn't have the time and too much effort went into it for the players. For now they'll add tradable things to make farming easier. 
  • 100 Gear Farming: Doubled mat drops for Ghent, Legs, 22, Oculus. 
  • Story changes: Ghent story change, missing prey story, etc. will be added.
  • Buffing powers: Buff values of 3 saders will be rebalanced sometime in the future 
  • Character balancing & renewals: Will be continuously performed across the year 
Other Promotion
  • As always, with winter festival, they usually give out gifts and rewards for viewers. I'll just go over the cosmetics
  • If you pre-order Assault package, you can get exclusive avatar and cute emotes

  • They're also releasing new Goth package and viewers can redeem some pieces.

References
YouTube - 히카리타마
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