Clearing a dungeon is not the bar. A party that reaches the last boss after dying thirty times on the way is not something you would want to join, and it is not something a real group would put up with either. So the residents' dungeon work now has one target, for every dungeon in the world:
three deaths or fewer per run, for the whole party.
How the dungeons are tested
Every dungeon has its own test parties: six AI residents at the level a player would normally go there, with a tank, a healer and four damage dealers. Their gear is what a player of that level really owns: quest and crafted pieces, refined a few levels, not shiny endgame sets.
They run the same dungeon again and again, through the night. Every death is written down with what caused it: a second pack woke up, the healer was too far away, a boss mechanic, a mine on the floor. In the morning that turns into a scoreboard: for each dungeon, how many deaths a typical run had, and how many runs stayed at three or fewer.
The most useful trick is the simplest one: two parties, same dungeon, same gear, one thing different. Whatever the scoreboard shows between them is that one thing, not luck.
What side-by-side runs taught us
In the Twilight Temple, skip what is not in your way. The first act has no rule that you must kill everything, and experienced players walk past most of the packs. Our parties used to clear every pack they could see. With the same gear, the party that only fought what blocked the way to the bosses died 3 times in a run instead of 11 in the first part of Act I, and 5 times instead of 33 in the second.
Area attacks only when the tank holds the pack. Area skills are how a party clears big groups fast, and they are also how a damage dealer wakes up three packs at once. Before the change, parties using area skills freely died more than the ones without them: 13 deaths against 8 in the Cave of the Vicious. Now area skills wait until the tank has the pack, and they pay off: about 2 deaths a run with them against 3 without in the Cave of the Vicious, and 0.5 against 2 at the Gate of Delirium. The Hall of Deception is the exception so far (4 against 2), and it is next on the list.
Two bottles of wine. The guides players wrote for Wraithgate say it plainly: give the old swordsman by the entrance two bottles of wine and most of the patrols are gone. We gave half the parties the wine and kept the other half without it. With the wine, three runs out of three reached the end with zero or one death. Without it, a run stopped at twenty-five. Every party now takes the wine there, and the same trick is being tried in the other dungeons that have it.
Pull the pack to the party, not the party to the pack. When a second group stands close by, the tank now hits the target once and walks back to the healer, so the fight happens away from the next group. That one is still being compared side by side.
The scoreboard (test parties, 28–29 October)
| Dungeon | Typical deaths per run | Runs at three or fewer |
|---|---|---|
| Firecrag Grotto, Den of Rabid Wolves, Cave of the Vicious (19) | 1–2 | about 8 in 10 |
| Hall of Deception (29) | 2 | about 7 in 10 |
| Gate of Delirium (39) | 1 | 7 in 10 |
| Secret Frostcover Grounds (51) | 8 | 3 in 10 |
| Valley of Disaster (59) | 0 | 9 in 10 |
| Wraithgate (69), with the wine | 0–1 | 3 of 3 |
| Eden and Brimstone Pit (89) | 13 | 2 in 10 |
| Seat of Torment and Abaddon (99) | not enough runs yet | |
| Twilight Temple, Act I | 11–15 | about 1 in 10 |
| Gui Mu | about 50 | almost none |
These are AI test parties, not players. Each row counts the night's runs once the parties could get in; most of them came after the fixes above. The 89 and 99 dungeons only started working tonight (until then the parties could not even get in), so their rows are first runs. The Valley of Disaster is where we want every dungeon to be. Gui Mu is honestly far away: its waves arrive faster than our parties can hold them.
Gear and levels the parties use
| Dungeon | Party level |
|---|---|
| 19 dungeons | 24–29 |
| Hall of Deception (29) | 35–37 |
| Gate of Delirium (39) | 41–44 |
| Secret Frostcover Grounds (51) | 52–56 |
| Valley of Disaster (59) | 60–63 |
| Wraithgate (69) | 70–73 |
| Eden and Brimstone Pit (89) | 89–92 |
| Seat of Torment and Abaddon (99) | 99–102 |
| Twilight Temple 1-1 / 1-2 / 1-3 | 60 / 70 / 78 |
| Gui Mu, tiers 1–4 | 50 / 63 / 78 / 90 |
From the 39 dungeon on, the parties carry the refines and gems a careful player would have by then; below that, ordinary quest and crafted gear. Consumables like potions and the dungeon wines are what a player buys from the shops. No party gets anything from the cash shop, or any gear a player of that level could not have.
Also tonight
- The Cube of Fate: an AI resident walked the dice all the way to room 50 and claimed the reward on its own.
- Frostcovered City: the parties now start the city and beat the first Glacial Shade at the gate. The halls behind it need a stronger party, which is being put together now.
The target stays the same until every row says three or fewer. I will post the scoreboard again when it moves.