January 28th, 2022 — Patch Rundown (Patch Notes & Design Thoughts)

NOTE: THIS CURRENT PATCH RUNDOWN IS STILL TENTATIVE AND IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE UNTIL THE PATCH GOES LIVE. TREAT THIS AS AN EARLY PATCH PREVIEW FOR NOW.

EDIT: MEMORY WILL NOT MAKE IT IN THIS PATCH, IT WILL BE ADDED LIKELY NEXT WEEK. I’m not super happy with the current designed iteration of Memory feature and am pulling the plug and giving it a bit more design time to be more polished. Sorry everyone!!! For this week, you’ll have to track your own personal combos.

EDIT #2: NEW FEATURE: YOU WILL BE ABLE TO UPLOAD YOUR OWN PROFILE PICTURES TO YOUR ACCOUNT. NO MORE GRAY AVATARS!!!

EDIT #3: Overview Page had the Overview tab removed. It will now only have Active Baits and Catches.

This is the big one. The second of our major gameplay patches in the Alpha Season and there is ALOT to go over. As such, the Patch Notes will be delivered in a Patch Rundown style with accompanying Design Thoughts throughout this Patch Notes to help explain why certain decisions were made.

If you only want to read the Patch Notes, scroll directly to the bottom for just the list of changes.

Patch Rundown by Ardoyn:

Internally, I dubbed this the “anti-RNG patch” as we really want to begin shifting away from RNG creating difficulty in Legends of Venari. From the data and play patterns we observed since the January 7th Hotfix, more and more players are now realizing and utilizing the combo system in the minigame. This is indeed what we wanted and we really liked the community collaboration in discovering all of the combos and information. However, due to the simple fact that the game would become strictly RNG dependent once all the correct information was deduced (3x correct combo success = run away anyone?), this would ultimately create a lack of player skill expression and limit us on how generous we could be on the RNG.

We really didn’t like this RNG-centric approach so we’re shifting more heavily now towards the model where spawns are RNG dependent as always, but the new, updated combo system is really now all about accumulating experience and knowledge which should allow player skill to shine through more.

BAIT SPAWNING CHANGES:

• Minimum amount of spawns on Tier 2 bait has been increased from 2 -> 3
• Minimum amount of spawns on Tier 3 bait has been increased from 2 -> 4
• Tier 3 bait chances of triggering a Tier 3 has been slightly reduced
• Tier 3 bait timers have been reduced from 20 hours-> 12 hours

First, the adjustments to the spawning mechanisms. We’ve heard and seen your concerns for getting 2x Laticus on the long 20 hour baits so we’re increasing the amount of guaranteed spawns on Tier 2 and Tier 3 baits to help provide more chances for rarer Venari to spawn. To compensate for these additional guaranteed spawns, the January 7th increase to the chances to trigger a Tier 3 Venari off of a Tier 3 bait has been dialed back a small amount. This was done to keep the expected chance to spawn a Tier 3 closer to our live values while still being an overall buff.

Furthermore, Day/Night cycles were causing some inconvenience for players on certain time zones and overly complicated the timing on the placement of 20 hour baits. While we liked this high level artifical complexity, we found it too unclear and too complex for players to fully grasp and utilize. For now, until we find a better solution in the future, Tier 3 bait timers have been reduced to 12 hours to easily fit in each Day/Night cycle.

MINI-GAME CHANGES:

• NEW — Tier 2 Venari now have 5 actions in the expedition (previously 3)
• NEW — Tier 3 Venari now have 9 actions in the expedition(previously 3)
• Base capture chance of Tier 2 Venari has been increased by 25%
• Base capture chance of Tier 3 Venari has been increased by 33%

I have split up all of the mini-game changes into three sections so they’re easier to digest one at a time. Overall, the number of actions for Tier 2 and Tier 3 has been increased to 5 and 9 actions respectively. This “expanded” combo system gives us more design space to work with to increase the difficulty of capturing Tier 2's and Tier 3’s without utilizing RNG.

By shifting the difficulty away from a simple, fixed 3x combo, we can now justify giving players significantly increased base capture odds (which also increases the capture odds gained on each correct answer). Reaching “Excellent” odds will now be possible on Tier 3's.

Those who know me may now feel some shivers down their spines as that difficulty had to be moved SOMEWHERE right? Continue on, brave reader.

COMBO SYSTEM CHANGES:

• NEW — Combos for Tier 2 and Tier 3 Venari are now randomized per player, however the different action ratios for each Venari variant will remain the same.
• NEW — “Memory” — THIS HAS BEEN DELAYED TO A LATER PATCH. Once you have discovered the correct combo answer, it will always be highlighted in green to help you remember on the next encounter with that Venari. IMPLEMENTATION OF MEMORY MAY DIFFER FROM HOW IT’S POSTED HERE.

Yeah. This is a HUGE change. Let’s break it down.

First off, we absolutely loved the engagement of the community coming together to share information and create community spreadsheets and guides. However, we felt it appropriate to make Tier 2 and Tier 3’s a bit more difficult to capture than simply opening a community “cheatsheet” and getting the perfect answer. By changing Tier 2 and Tier 3 combos to be unique per player, we hope that this pushes each player to track their own progress and knowledge. The new memory combo answer tracking feature will help players remember their combos without requiring the need of an out of game spreadsheet as well. However, the community collaboration is still valuable as the ratio of actions will stay fixed regardless of the randomization in the order. IMPLEMENTATION OF MEMORY MAY DIFFER FROM HOW IT’S POSTED HERE.

EXAMPLE:

A Tier 2 Venari could have the combo ratio of 2 Feed, 1 Play, and 2 Fight. With randomized combos, these could be the combos for two different players.

Player 1: Feed/Play/Feed/Fight/Fight

Player 2: Fight/Play/Feed/Fight/Feed

It will now be up to each player to figure out their own strategy to solving their own unique combos rather than relying on a simple answer provided by the community. We look forward to all of the strategies and guides that the community will create to guide players through this new system.

Furthermore, community guides will still be very valuable for newer players as all of the Tier 1 Venari will be kept as a fixed combo system to ensure consistent capture rates across the Tier 1’s for all levels of players.

COMBO SYSTEM CHANGES (continued):

• NEW — The action bar counter has been repurposed to track your combo progress rather than your overall action.
• NEW — Selecting the correct combo answer will always give a green bar, regardless of the choice’s success/failure roll.
• NEW — Selecting an incorrect combo answer will always give a red bar, regardless of the choice’s success/failure roll.

In this example, the player has 2 incorrect answers and 2 correct answers.

• Correctly answering the entire combo (regardless of success/failure rolls) will reward a Combo Completion Bonus to the overall capture odds.

These action bar changes are fairly straightforward and serve to clarify the selection of correct combo answers as well as provide a seperate bonus (the combo bonus) that is independent of the RNG involved in each action roll check. Now having the knowledge of the correct combo directly translates to increased capture odds each time you encounter a Venari!

COMBO SYSTEM CHANGES (continued):

• NEW — A 3-Strike rule has been implemented. Selecting 3 incorrect answers will automatically fail the expedition immediately and the Venari will run away.

The 3-Strike rule may seem a bit daunting at first but really serves to help slow down the initial accumulation of information otherwise the optimal combo could be solved within 2–3 encounters with the same Venari. For most players, we expect you to attempt to capture after expending the 2nd strike as the 3rd strike will immediately automatically fail the expedition and thus give you no chance to capture.

In our playtests and models, we greatly preferred seeing rare Venari more and having more opportunities to learn more each time to become incredibly consistent at capturing rather than catching purely based off spawn and roll RNG. This “mastery” felt much more rewarding as a player and we hope that you will feel the same when progressing through the new combo system.

FEED OPTION CHANGES:

• NEW — Feed now requires the correct Preferred Bait to be saved as the memorized answer.
• Feed now has slightly higher penalties for bringing a lower tier bait to a higher tier Venari. Conversely, it now also has higher benefits for bringing a higher tier bait to a lower tier Venari.

We were noticing alot of players choosing to bring in lower tier baits to higher tier Venari so this will slightly nerf those odds while significantly rewarding those who learn and utilize the preferred baits properly. This means that by utilizing multiple bonuses correctly, a Feed roll can now hit a 100% success rate.

ECONOMY BALANCE CHANGES:

• Rewards (Gold/XP) have been increased for capturing Tier 1 & Tier 2 Venari in Tier 2 (10 energy) locations.
• Rewards (Gold/XP) have been increased for capturing Tier 1 & Tier 2 Venari in Tier 3 (25 energy) locations.
• Tier 3 Bait Price will be increased to 16,000 gold.
• NEW — There will be a new rotating sale added for the Tier 3 baits.
• NEW — Tier 2 bait shops now have a limit of 20x of each bait.
• NEW — Tier 3 bait shops now have a limit of 3x of each bait.
• NOTE: All event baits will ignore these limitations and have unlimited supply for purchase.
• NEW — Tier 2 and Tier 3 bait shops will have their inventories refreshed daily.

I can hear the HardRockNick video already… but these changes were necessary to balance the time duration reduction from 20 hours -> 12 hours for Tier 3 baits as well as to help mitigate some of the hoarding that’s occuring with many of these baits (I know that as I say this, many of you are logging in to spend every gold you have on baits before the patch). Rewards for Tier 2 and Tier 3 locations have been increased for Tier 1 and Tier 2 Venari to offer an easier/faster way of consuming energy albeit for a slightly less gold return than grinding it out at Tier 1 locations as well as incentivizing players to capture more Venari at higher Tier locations.

OTHER BALANCE CHANGES:

• Tier 1 Earth Antello combo updated, now spawns in additional locations and uses a new preferred bait as well.
• Eurici internal ranking for rewards has been increased.

While we’re still looking at the efficiency/simplicity of the Lurken Egg farm, we’re trying out soft buffs to other potential farms first to entice users to chase other options rather than immediately jumping to nerf Lurken Egg farming.

NEW QOL FEATURES:

• NEW — Ayena’s Expedition will now have it’s own unique background.
• Tecta’s Expedition background has been revamped and redone to match the quality of Ayena’s new background.
• NEW — Players can now filter active baits by region.
• NEW — Players can now filter their Venari inventory by species and constellations.
• NEW — Scholars can now remove borrowed passes from their settings screen.
• NEW — A small delay has been added between selecting choices during the expedition to help prevent issues due to spam clicking through the expedition.
• NEW — Players can now upload their own profile pictures for their accounts.
• Overview Page had the Overview tab removed. It will now only have Active Baits and Catches.

That wraps up my Patch Rundown, I know it was ALOT to go over and read but I hope it gave alot of information and cleared up alot of the reasoning behind these changes. As always, we’ll be looking very carefully at player data after the patch as well as gathering all of your feedback so make sure to come by the official Legends of Venari Discord (discord.gg/legendsofvenari) to communicate any opinions/feedback/suggestions you may have!

FULL PATCH NOTES (January 28th, 2022):

BAIT SPAWNING CHANGES:

• Minimum amount of spawns on Tier 2 bait has been increased from 2 -> 3
• Minimum amount of spawns on Tier 3 bait has been increased from 2 -> 4
• Tier 3 bait chances of triggering a Tier 3 has been slightly reduced
• Tier 3 bait timers have been reduced from 20 hours-> 12 hours

MINI-GAME CHANGES:

• NEW — Tier 2 Venari now have 5 actions in the expedition (previously 3)
• NEW — Tier 3 Venari now have 9 actions in the expedition(previously 3)
• Base capture chance of Tier 2 Venari has been increased by 25%
• Base capture chance of Tier 3 Venari has been increased by 33%

COMBO SYSTEM CHANGES:

• NEW — Combos for Tier 2 and Tier 3 Venari are now randomized per player, however the different action ratios for each Venari variant will remain the same.
• NEW — “Memory” — Once you have discovered the correct combo answer, it will always be highlighted in green to help you remember on the next encounter with that Venari. IMPLEMENTATION OF “MEMORY” MAY DIFFER FROM HOW IT’S POSTED HERE.
• NEW — The action bar counter has been repurposed to track your combo progress rather than your overall action.
• NEW — Selecting the correct combo answer will always give a green bar, regardless of the choice’s success/failure roll.
• NEW — Selecting an incorrect combo answer will always give a red bar, regardless of the choice’s success/failure roll.
• Correctly answering the entire combo (regardless of success/failure rolls) will reward a Combo Completion Bonus to the overall capture odds.
• NEW — A 3-Strike rule has been implemented. Selecting 3 incorrect answers will automatically fail the expedition immediately and the Venari will run away.

FEED OPTION CHANGES:

• NEW — Feed now requires the correct Preferred Bait to be saved as the memorized answer.
• Feed now has slightly higher penalties for bringing a lower tier bait to a higher tier Venari. Conversely, it now also has higher benefits for bringing a higher tier bait to a lower tier Venari.

ECONOMY BALANCE CHANGES:

• Rewards (Gold/XP) have been increased for capturing Tier 1 & Tier 2 Venari in Tier 2 (10 energy) locations.
• Rewards (Gold/XP) have been increased for capturing Tier 1 & Tier 2 Venari in Tier 3 (25 energy) locations.
• Tier 3 Bait Price will be increased to 16,000 gold.
• NEW — There will be a new rotating sale added for the Tier 3 baits.
• NEW — Tier 2 bait shops now have a limit of 20x of each bait.
• NEW — Tier 3 bait shops now have a limit of 3x of each bait.
• NOTE: All event baits will ignore these limitations and have unlimited supply for purchase.
• NEW — Tier 2 and Tier 3 bait shops will have their inventories refreshed daily.

OTHER BALANCE CHANGES:

• Tier 1 Earth Antello combo updated, now spawns in additional locations and uses a new preferred bait as well.
• Eurici internal ranking for rewards has been increased.

NEW QOL FEATURES:

• NEW — Ayena’s Expedition will now have it’s own unique background.
• Tecta’s Expedition background has been revamped and redone to match the quality of Ayena’s new background.
• NEW — Players can now filter active baits by region.
• NEW — Players can now filter their Venari inventory by species and constellations.
• NEW — Scholars can now remove borrowed passes from their settings screen.
• NEW — A small delay has been added between selecting choices during the expedition to help prevent issues due to spam clicking through the expedition.
• NEW — Players can now upload their own profile pictures for their accounts.
• Overview Page had the Overview tab removed. It will now only have Active Baits and Catches.

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January 28th, 2022 — Patch Rundown (Patch Notes & Design Thoughts) was originally published in Legends of Venari on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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