Coin and Combat

This is a bigger balance update than usual, and it changes some of your levels, so we want to explain what we found, how we found it, and what we did about it.

What progression should feel like

Every level in Whispered Scrolls should mean something. Reaching a new tier of gear or a new ability should feel earned, and as such be rewarding and a clear accomplishment.

The content we build should keep its value. A zone, a dungeon or a quest line should be worth doing when you reach it, instead of something you outlevel before you've seen it.

We also want progress to come from exploring. The best way forward shouldn't be standing in one spot. It should be heading out across the Aethermere to find the places, people and secrets it's hiding.

We measure every balance change against those goals, this one included.

How we look at progression

Before we set any experience rates, we decide how long each level should take, based on the goals above. Then we tune the rates in a simulator until they hit those targets. The simulator plays a character from level 1 upward through every skill and measures the hours each level takes. Once the game is live we compare it with what really happens, using the play data the servers collect: experience per hour of play for every skill at every level, which monsters get fought, and every coin that enters or leaves the game.

What the live data showed

• Below level 30 or so, fighting, gathering and crafting all moved at about the same pace, close to what the simulator expected.
• Above that, fighting pulled far ahead. At levels 40 to 70 it earned 2 to 3 times the experience per hour of mining or woodcutting, and at 70 and up it reached around 9 times. The simulator assumes one fight at a time. Real players at high level fight in groups, and we've added new tracking to measure that properly.
• Coins were running away too. Monsters made about 80% of all new coins, frost wolves alone made a quarter of them, and the amount of coin in the world grew by about 2.2 million in a single week. That can lead to market prices being pushed up for everyone, and newer players would feel it most.
• Bounty was overpaid in two ways. A contract paid for the monster's level rather than yours, so a new hunter could jump twenty levels on one hard contract. And dungeon contracts were priced for a 30-minute run when real runs were taking about 9 minutes.

What changed

Combat experience now grows steadily with a monster's level and is lower overall, which puts combat in step with mining and fishing.

Total hours of fighting to reach each combat level, before and now:

• Level 20: 0.6 hours before, 1.1 now
• Level 30: 1.5 hours before, 3 now
• Level 50: 4 hours before, 9 now
• Level 70: 11 hours before, 27 now

• Dungeons now pay more experience than fighting in the open world, so a delve is worth the trip.
• Only monsters that would carry money drop coins: bandits, goblins, cultists, hags, ogres, the undead who were once people, slimes, wyrms, treants and imps. Wolves, boars, bears, crabs, spiders, golems and spirits keep their hides, bones and other spoils but no longer drop coins. A monster's coins match its level, and monsters far below you drop far fewer.
• Bounty contracts are now the steady way to earn coin from hunting. Finishing one pays a purse worth 150% of what its targets would drop if they carried coin, and your streak grows the purse.
• Bounty trains at about the same pace as your weapon skill while you work a contract, and a contract pays its experience at your own Bounty level. Finishing it adds a flat 50% bonus. Dungeon contracts pay for every foe you defeat inside and name the dungeon's final boss as the goal.
• Bounty contracts that ask for a leader, such as a Greyhand Captain, now count that leader at any of their camps.

Your levels

To be fair to everyone, we recalculated combat experience earned above level 20 at the new rates, as if they had always been in place. Levels 1 to 20 are untouched, since early combat was never out of line and quests carried most of it. Bounty was rebuilt from the contracts you finished, at the new rates. If your levels changed, you'll see a note with the details the next time you log in. Gear you can no longer use has been moved to your satchel or bank. Nothing else was touched: your items, coins, quests, gathering and crafting skills are all as you left them.

Our approach during alpha

Whispered Scrolls is in open alpha, and part of an alpha is finding where the game is out of balance. Most of the time we fix that by changing rates going forward. When something is far enough off that it splits the community, as fighting at high level did here, we may also adjust progression that was earned on the broken rates. When we do, we'll show you the data behind it, apply the same rule to every character, leave early levels alone, keep your items and coins, and tell you exactly what changed on your character.