Upcoming Changes to Atlas of Discovery

Hey everyone!

We’ve been blown away by the support from the community around Atlas of Discovery. It’s amazing to see so many players enjoying and participating in the content made available from the expansion. Seeing the discussions around the content on all our social platforms has been a delight to read.

This level of support allows us to continue to create massive expansions that extend the gameplay of Melvor Idle in new and exciting ways, and allows us to explore new mechanics for content.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been monitoring all channels of community feedback to see what and if anything needs to be addressed within the expansion that may not be sitting right with players.

What we’ve seen is that Atlas of Discovery requires quite a lot of adjustments to get it to the point where it becomes a viable choice of content throughout someone’s 1-99 journey, and it should also provide some use after you’re done with it.

This announcement aims to talk about the most prominent pain points we’ve seen, and what we’re doing to address the concerns raised by the community.

Preface

This announcement details upcoming changes to Atlas of Discovery. These changes are not yet released, and there is not an exact ETA on when this update will be released.

We’ll break down this announcement into Barrier, Archaeology and Cartography so you can see what has been changed/added.

It’s important to note that every pain point we’ve seen will not be addressed with this update. It may take a few updates to get right with the community’s help. However, we hope these initial adjustments to Atlas of Discovery are a step in the right direction.

Barrier

This mechanic is by far the largest topic of discussion, and requires the most attention in terms of changes and adjustments to bring it in line with the progression we want to see during someone’s playthrough.

Notable Feedback We are Addressing:

• Barrier Combat is Unrewarding: It's more beneficial to outlevel the rewards than to invest in upgrading barrier-specific items. This renders the whole barrier combat mechanic redundant as you can simply bypass it for better results.
• Barrier Mechanic Feels Bad: With summoning attacks fixed at 3-second intervals, you often deal no damage to the Barrier if accuracy is low. On top of this, Barrier regenerates which makes the fight last much longer.
• Overly Grindy Nature of Upgrading: The Barrier combat mechanic requires an excessive grind to upgrade gear effectively, especially when the main item to upgrade (Barrier Gems) only comes from a single source and has limited availability.
• Slow Kill Times: Attempting to approach AoD Combat without using TotH gear leads to incredibly slow kill times and very long grinds to obtain upgrades.

What’s Being Changed

Adjustments to Barrier Regeneration

This mechanic is important to retain, but the Monsters that have Barrier Regeneration should be reduced.

• Early-Mid game Monsters will no longer have Barrier Regeneration (Eye-conic Cave, Mucky Cave, Tree Overgrowth, Collapsed City, Golem Territory, Unholy Forest)
• Every time a Monster regenerates Barrier, they will receive a stacking debuff which applies a slow, and also reduces their Accuracy and Evasion. One stack is applied per regeneration, up to a maximum of 5 stacks.
  
• Monsters with Barrier Regeneration will now display it as a Passive.

Lessening the Grind of Barrier Items & Gear Upgrades

Note: There are changes to Archaeology below to also help with the grind.

• We’re increasing the drop rates of various high-level Barrier Items.
• Monsters with Barrier now drop Barrier Dust on death (like bones). The amount of Barrier Dust dropped scales with the Monster’s maximum Barrier value and can also be doubled.
• Granite Golem will now drop Imbued Bronze Bars.
• Ranged Golem will now drop Imbued Steel Bars
• Earth Golem will now drop Imbued Mithril Bars
• Magic Golem will now drop Imbued Mithril, Adamantite and Runite Bars.
• Golem Chest from Golem Territory will now drop Imbued Bars instead of generic Bars.
• Ritual Chest from Cult Grounds will now also drop Imbued Runite & Dragonite Bars

Introducing Summoning Attack Interval Reduction

There will be 3 new Items you can obtain via Atlas of Discovery content that will reduce Summoning Attack Interval (Ring, Off-hand & Consumable). With all 3 equipped, you can achieve -25% Summoning Attack Interval.

Increasing Late-Game Barrier Damage

We’re introducing Barrier and Crystal upgrades for all God Gear (except gloves).

• (B) Upgraded God gear will provide a massive increase in Barrier Damage
• Each God piece provides +40% Summoning Familiar damage added as extra damage to Barrier (Total of +160%)
• Cost to upgrade is the same as Ancient Gear using the base God Item.
• Obtainable if you can complete the God Dungeons + Cult Grounds dungeon

The addition of more gear to upgrade means more resources to grind for, but we’ve added these resources to other areas of the game to assist:

• As mentioned above, we have more Barrier Dust and Imbued Bar drops around the game. Note Imbued Dragonite Bars are more plentiful as well.
• Ritual Chest from Cult Grounds dungeon now also contains Barrier Exalted Shards & Siphoning Barrier Gems.

Making Barrier Content More Rewarding

There’s quite a few changes and new content we are adding in hopes to make Barrier content more appealing for general progression.

Summoning XP:

• Summoning XP received per damage to Barrier is increased from 0.45 -> 0.67 per damage dealt.

New Gems for the Gem Slot
Utilising the Gem Slot allows us to add more content to the game that provide a positive bonus to your character without needing to remove an existing item in a different slot.

These Gems are designed to assist in various non-AoD content.

• Reduced Hitpoints Gem: Enemy has -3% Maximum Hitpoints. Obtained from Cult Grounds chest.
• Combat Doubling Gem: +3% chance to double items in Combat. Obtained from Unholy Forest chest.
• Maximum Hitpoints Gem: +20 Maximum Hipoints. Obtained from Cult Monster.
• Slayer Gem: +3% Slayer Coins, +5% Damage dealt to Slayer Task monsters. Obtained from Magic Golem Monster
• Dungeon Gem: +5% Damage to Dungeon Monsters. Obtained from Trickery Temple Chest
• Combat Gem: +5% Damage to Combat Area Monsters - Obtained from Raging Maple Monster

We’ve also added the Combination Gem, which is an upgrade to all of the above. This new Gem combines all the above bonuses into a single Gem. It is designed for very late-game with the requirements that are set.

Other

Existing Barrier gear will most likely get a damage buff, especially through the early game.

We’re also adding your Barrier Damage value to the Combat UI so you can see how your Barrier modifiers are affecting your damage output.

Archaeology

There’s a few key pain points we want to address with Archaeology with this update.

Notable Feedback We are Addressing

• There’s Too Much Junk: Archaeology has too many items that provide zero use other than to sell. This feels bad and clogs up Bank Space.
• Archaeology is Too Slow: The high base interval and lack of interval reduction makes the Skill feel like a slog.

What’s Being Changed

Faster Progression

• Base Archaeology Interval is being reduced to 4 seconds, down from 5 seconds.
• We’ve also added a new consumable that further reduces Archaeology interval by -10%.

Providing a Use for Junk

We’re adding a brand new mechanic to the Grand Museum of Melvor where you can donate all of your Junk with a single click in exchange for Museum Tokens.

Any item from Archaeology that has no use outside of selling will be classed as a “Generic Artefact” which will be donated with a single click (Locked items don’t get donated).

These Museum Tokens can then be taken to the Shop to exchange for the below Items/Packs. These items also have an Archaeology Level & Artefact Donation count requirement.

List is not final and is subject to change

• Enhanced Spyglass Lens: Allows you to upgrade the Old Spyglass to the Enhanced Spyglass, significantly increasing the Survey & Sight Range.
• Travel Tokens: -10% Travel Costs in Cartography
• Archaeologist’s Consumable: -10% Archaeology Interval
• Dig Site Tokens: +6% Archaeology Skill XP.
• Summoners Pack I: Provides 2 Red & 2 Green Summoning Shards using Museum Tokens + GP (50% cheaper than buying Shards directly)
• Summoners Pack II: Provides 4 Red, 4 Green, 2 Blue & 2 Silver Summoning Shards using Museum Tokens + GP (50% cheaper than buying Shards directly)
• Summoners Pack III: Provides 6 Red, 6 Green, 4 Blue, 4 Silver, 2 Gold & 2 Black Summoning Shards using Museum Tokens + GP (50% cheaper than buying Shards directly)
• Combat Supply I: +200 Adamant Javelins, +200 Chaos Runes and +200 Big Bones using Museum Tokens + GP.
• Combat Supply II: +200 Rune Javelins, +200 Death Runes and +200 Magic Bones using Museum Tokens + GP.
• Combat Supply III: +200 Dragon Javelins, +200 Blood Runes, +200 Ancient Runes and +200 Magic Bones using Museum Tokens + GP.
• Topaz Bolts (Enchanted): Can now be purchased directly from the Shop using Museum Tokens + GP (GP Costs is 4x the sale value of the Bolt)
• Sapphire Bolts (Enchanted): Can now be purchased directly from the Shop using Museum Tokens + GP (GP Costs is 4x the sale value of the Bolt)
• Diamond Bolts (Enchanted): Can now be purchased directly from the Shop using Museum Tokens + GP (GP Costs is 4x the sale value of the Bolt)

We’ll continue to monitor the selection of Items available for exchanging Museum Tokens.

Cartography

The changes to this Skill will seem minimal compared to the rest, but the idea is that the changes listed above will make Cartography more appealing to progress in.

Notable Feedback We are Addressing

• It's too expensive: The Skill is too expensive for meaningful progression to actually be made in AoD alongside the rest of the game.
  

What’s Being Changed

Cheaper Travelling

We’re significantly reducing the base travel costs across the board:

• Reduced base travel cost by 75% for hexes up to Level 59 cartography requirement.
• Reduced base travel cost by 50% for hexes up to Level 60 - 99 Cartography requirement.
• Reduced base travel cost by 25% for hexes up to Level 100+ Cartography requirement.
  

We also understand that there is feedback regarding the Auto Survey mechanic and just wanted to let you know that we see it. This update doesn’t address the feedback, but we hope to address it in a future update.

Conclusion

Thank you again for doing what you do best and providing feedback so we can better the content made available to you.

We hope this first update is a step in the right direction in improving the mechanics around Atlas of Discovery. We’ll continue to monitor feedback and provide updates where needed.

I’ll have an update soon on when to expect this update to drop.

Speak soon!

- Malcs