Development Manifesto: Prophecy Changes

We're just over two weeks into the Prophecy Challenge leagues so far. Numerically, player retention is tracking very similarly to the Perandus/Ascendancy launch, which helps validate the creation of high-budget challenge leagues.

We've received plenty of feedback about Prophecy and have taken as much of it on board as possible for the changes we're making in the 2.3.1 update this week.

This document is not the full patch notes for 2.3.1. It only covers the Prophecy-specific changes coming in that update.

Reduction of Backtracking in the End-game
The need to backtrack was a common concern among the community. While we initially designed the Prophecy level restrictions to eliminate as much backtracking as possible during the core game, we agree that the experience in Maps was sub-optimal.

The Prophecies that require hunting down a rare monster to get a Unique item or require killing a boss while wielding an item now make up a substantially smaller amount of the overall Prophecy pool. These Prophecies often required backtracking (or luck) and would clog people's Prophecy screens for too long. After this reduction, the great majority of Prophecies you encounter in the end-game are ones you can actively pursue without having to leave Maps.

In 2.3.1, the "Vaal Hidden Pathways" prophecy now triggers in any area you enter that can support a side area, rather than with a low random chance. While it does involve stepping out of a Map, it's now very straightforward.

Many players believe that the Prophecy "The Corrupt" requires backtracking out of maps, but the trick is to put a Vaal Fragment into the map device. Likewise "A Regal Death" can be completed with some map bosses or Atziri. In addition, it's pretty easy to just kill Daresso from the waypoint for the free Regal Orb. "The God of Misfortune" is a backtracking Prophecy that people have begged us to keep available in Maps because it's very easy to complete and has a generous reward of many Orbs of Fusing. Many Prophecies like "The Stockkeeper" were already disabled for players of level 70 and up.

The occurrence chances of various other prophecies have been reduced with the goal of less backtracking in the end-game.

Slightly Higher Rewards
As a consequence of the reduction of occurrence of the Prophecies described above, the rate that more valuable Prophecies occur at is now around 20% higher.

Reduction in some Sealing Costs
The seal costs of Unique and Fated Unique prophecies have been reduced. These Prophecies often required going out of your way to complete them, and are now cheaper to match the design philosophy of sealing costs being a "laziness tax" rather than actual assessment of the value of the item.

We are mindful to not reduce the average Sealing Cost to the point where the best behaviour is to mindlessly dump thousands of coins into Navali to try to get the chance-a-Skyforth Prophecy.

New Prophecies
We've added two new Prophecies and a new Prophecy chain. One of these new Prophecies is map-only.

Other Prophecy Changes and Bug Fixes

• Some prophecies have been disabled from triggering in problematic unique maps.
• Silver Coins will no longer be allocated to monsters that have no drops or use suicide attacks.
• Beyond portals for the Mysterious Invaders prophecy will now close when the pack has been killed.
• Prophecy monsters using Chaos Bombs now have a description showing this.
• The Nemesis of Greed prophecy is no longer available in Normal Difficulty.
• Fixed several mild exploit cases with Prophecies that we're not going to describe in these notes for obvious reasons.
• Fixed a bug with Unbearable Whispers V, where it would sometimes be consumed and not spawn the boss.
• Fixed a bug where The Mysterious Gift prophecy could be fulfilled without granting the player a unique item. This stemmed from changing items in the vendor window after the criteria for the prophecy had been met.
• Fixed a bug where prophecies could be consumed in Izaro's area, but would fail to trigger due to restrictions that prevent additional monsters in the area.
• Fixed a bug with the Echo of the Vaal from the Vaal Invasion prophecy, where if it used Freezing Pulse it could sometimes not use any other skills.
• Fixed a bug with The Aesthete's Spirit prophecy that could cause it to become impossible to complete.

Remember, this post was not the full patch notes for 2.3.1, just the Prophecy stuff.

This league is super easy to tweak and add content to, so we're going to continue to solicit and respond to feedback over the next couple of months. It's also a good candidate for being rolled back into the core game in some form afterwards, so we're keen to hit a balance that everyone likes.