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There will be some in-depth raiding that has multiple stages that will be extremely difficult and... It would definitely be in the single digits of population that will be capable of defeating certain content... It doesn't mean that there won't be content available for the larger percentages as well... There should be a tiered level of content that players can constantly strive to accomplish. If there is no ladder of progression and everything is flat and all content can be experienced, then there is no drive to excel.[4]Steven Sharif

List of raid bosses

 This section contains information from Alpha-1 testing. It will be updated when new information is made available.

Raids

Raids will either be based on triggered events or more traditional systems. Traditional world bosses will change based on node development.[7]

We want things to be more fluid and one of the ways that we make them more fluid is through our triggered event system. That is one of the methods by which we make these more spontaneous. We make them more accessible to a wider audience. You can be just in the city and not normally be a part of a raid team, but now get to participate in this organic event that's popped up around the city and if you are not participating then buildings are gonna get destroyed and NPCs are going to die... It's not just how fast can we do it, how will we get it done in its schedule, but oh my god this thing popped up if we don't kill it we're not going to access to our stables this week and we can't get our animal husbandry certificates... It's that risk versus reward that gives you a sense of adrenaline.[8]Steven Sharif

Raid tiers

Tiers of raid difficulty are in accordance with the world's node structure.[9][10]

The more developed a zone the more challenging the content; and we feel that's a good progression when it comes to actual adventuring class, because it will match both world development and it will also continue to allow for participation for new players, if they may go into a zone that's recently been reset by either a siege or some other event.[10]Steven Sharif

Raid strategies

Raids will have elements that can be pre-planned.[11]

Raids will also have dynamic elements that can change from session to session.[11]

One of the design elements that we're implementing into our raids is that the raid will not be exactly the same every single time. You're going to have variables that can't necessarily be pre-planned out for. You can pre-plan out for a lot of the raid like how many DPS do you need and healers and support; where the key position and all that stuff; but I think the compelling aspect of Ashes raiding will be the difficulty in achieving this content and having that content change from session to session as well. We want there to be variables that get manifested by what type of node got developed elsewhere. Is he going to have acolytes or cultists? What will the acolytes have skills [available] to them? What kit is the boss gonna have? What available skill repertoire will the boss be able to [wield]? ... A lot of those systems are influenced obviously by world development. So the raid takes into account at what stage has the world developed: Are there two metropolises now available in the world? Okay well let's activate this skill in this skill. Now you have five metropolises, well now all these skills have been activated. Are there are they all economic nodes? Are they all military nodes? That we can change things based on that stuff. And it really is a threat assessment from the environment against the players.[11]{{ndash|Steven Sharif}

Raid mechanics

Boss fights will have fairly intricate mechanics.[13]

Combat itself will be pretty intricate mechanics-wise. We're going to have different phases of the bosses, there's going to be a lot of adds stuff, there's going to be random oriented skill usage. We're not going to have telegraphed templates on the ground, but we will have telegraphed animations, so it's going to be location, mobility, strategic. It will be something that can not be repeatable in the exact same way from raid to raid, but has a variance between the combat, so raiders are going to have to be fluid in thinking on their feet.[13]Steven Sharif
Anytime the boss is telegraphing an ability, that is an opportunity for you to direct the location of that effect; and so in that sense, yes you could use a boss's mechanics in an interesting way to affect an enemy raid.[15]Steven Sharif

Telegraphs

In specific circumstances there will be telegraphs (tells) to communicate something that's happening.[16]

  • Animation tells.
  • Templates.

Bosses

 
A Lieutenant of The Ancients 3D render.[18]

These particular two models, with alpha one, they will be animated and present as adversaries in some of the dungeon locations within Ashes of Creation.[19]Steven Sharif

Bosses fall into the following types, with increasing levels of difficulty and loot tables, requiring greater numbers of players to kill.[3]

  • Boss respawns will be randomized within certain windows and over variable locations.[21][22]
    • Bosses may also spawn based on predicates that can be met at any time, such as when a story arc or an event begins somewhere in the world.[22]
Generally in my experiences, when you have a fixed respawn time, you run into the potential situations where the powerhouses of the server can keep a particular boss on lockdown; and you don't want to create that type of a situation; and so one of the ways that we can help to alleviate that is by having windows of respawn times- and we've all experienced this in the MMOs that we've played. It's not necessarily known when exactly to coordinate with your large guild who needs to be online when; and this can give a little bit of a leg up on the competitive advantage front for other guilds that might be more smaller knit, or more niche to organize quickly in response to the time window of a respawn.[22]Steven Sharif

PvE difficulty

 
Tumok the Wretched Alpha-2 world boss.[25]

Raid bosses are aware of the number of combatants within an area in proximity to them and that awareness is part of an indicator to which behaviors they're going to utilize as part of their behavior tree. So as it's assessing the types of combatants that are facing it, the number of those combatants, the position of those combatants, the abilities and totals of those combatants, it weighs certain actions in its behavior tree and then it acts on those actions; and in the scenario where you're bringing overwhelming odds to a particular fight, that might weigh heavier the AoE options that the boss has access to, where they're utilizing a lot more AoE abilities during an engagement due to that overage of of players. So in that sense it's a bit adaptive. It's a bit dynamic based on the encounter scenario.[26]Steven Sharif

The difficulty of PvE content, such as raids and dungeons will adapt based on the performance of the raid or group against previous bosses in that encounter.[27]

  • Higher performance in earlier phases will increase the difficulty of subsequent phases of the encounter.[27]
  • There will be mobs who's level is above the player level cap.[30]
Both in Alpha-2 and when the game launches, there will be monsters whose technical level is above that of the cap; and the intent there is obviously again to provide some level of challenge that exceeds a comparable level challenge rating.{livestream|2023-11-30|1h53m50|V9F_AJl9ozY}}Steven Sharif
Q: How challenging will raid boss mechanics be given the given that players may need to simultaneously fight other players while also fighting the boss?
A: It depends. The great thing about our encounter system is that it has a wide scalability from encounters that some might consider easy given their composition to encounters that some might consider impossible until they get their gear level to a certain stage. The level of interaction with other players is really predicated on the encounter itself. We may have some encounters that are in instances although the predominant portion of those will be in the open world, in which case they do have the potential being contested; and these encounters, especially the big ones that might land in contention, are giving some of the best-in-slot gear you can get in the game. So it's important that they are contested because it is a significant victory point; and one of our core pillars is risk versus reward: and the higher that risk the higher that reward should be. So those two things seem fitting and then in addition we do have the concept of winners and losers. Not everybody in Ashes of Creation is going to be a winner; and that sucks if you're not I guess, but there is opportunity for you to continue to excel and become one. But it gives much more meaning to an achievement when not everybody gets the achievement. That's our philosophy.[31]Steven Sharif
Q: So it's the sort of thing where it might be, we're going do a dungeon that's oops, all fire golems, so if everybody straps up with plate armor and fire resistance, you don't have to worry about the magic fire: you've got the fire resistance for. And when you start getting punched around, that's why everyone's come in with plate?
A: The encounters design team presents a particular type of challenge rating- for those you're familiar with playing DnD or whatever, challenge rating gets informed by a few different vertical power levels, but then there's also the horizontal perspective: That is, what tools does your party have to address the challenge rating of the situation and some of the horizontal progression exists within how you kit your equipment slots. Some of those can be enhancements or stones, as you're discussing with fire resistance. Some of those are base stats that exist on a particular item, such as physical damage mitigation versus magical damage mitigation and what subtype of damage is incoming based on that. These are the ways that we emphasize that more rock-paper-scissors type of interaction with balance to where it's okay to have asymmetric imbalance if there are horizontal methods by which you achieve the challenge rating.[32]Steven Sharif

Looting

Alpha-2 looting UI preview.[33]

In the group loot obviously there's a lot of functionality here that parties have the ability to customize. There can be loot master, there can be round-robin, there can be need/greed/pass that's applied on a per rarity basis depending on the party's choices.[33]Steven Sharif

 
Alpha-2 vote to change loot allocation method UI.[34]

Ashes of Creation intends to use traditional loot rules, selected by the party or raid leader.[35][36][37]

  • Group loot rules are defined on a per-rarity basis.[33]
  • A majority of party members must vote to approve any changes to group loot allocation changes.[34]
  • The developers are considering using a double-tap interaction to loot all containers within a close proximity radius.[38]
  • There won't be auto-looting pets.[39]
  • It will be possible to kick a player from a party prior to them acquiring loot.[40]
Yes, technically it would be possible for you to kick a player prior to acquiring loot. However, again because we are a game that relies on social interactions, there are reputations to be had; and if you acquire a reputation as a raid leader, or as a party leader, of doing something dirty like that, then it's unlikely you'll be able to Garner the support of future party members and/or raids to lead efforts against these raid bosses.[40]Steven Sharif
Free-for-all.[37]
  • Whoever is first to loot gets the loot.[35]
Lootmaster.[33][37]
  • A master looter (or lootmaster) is a player designated by the party leader to decide how loot is distributed in a dungeon or raid party.[37]
Round-robin.[33][37]
Need or greed.[33][37]
 Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.
Bidding system.[37]
  • Intrepid are investigating a potential bidding system, which allows players to bid on items instead of rolling for them.[37]
    • The highest bidder wins the item.[37]
    • The gold then goes into a pool that is split among the rest of the party members.[37]

Loot tables

Loot tables (drop tables) of world bosses or dungeon bosses have a small RNG chance of dropping gear (completed items).[42][43]

Q: Can only one gathering artisan harvest resources from a single boss, or can multiple different artisans harvest different parts from a boss for different resources? For example, a lumberjack gets a special wood from Tumock's tree weapon, while a herbalist gathers the flowers from that same tree.
A: We don't have the concept of harvesting from bosses. NPCs follow a reward table format, where those reward tables are global. They're not unique to particular players. So, once the NPC is vanquished, you have access to the loot container that is its corpse; and it has a static value of either materials or items that get dropped; and whatever the party loot settings are that you might be a part of, or if you're a solo player you will be able to recover those things.[60]

Glint

Glint in a player's inventory in Alpha-2.[62]

You're hovering over an item we call Glint. [It] comes in a few different rarities. It was formerly known as the monster certificates but we have rebranded them.[62]Chris Justo

 
Glint rarities in Alpha-2.[62]

Glint (previously known as Hunting certificates and Monster certificates) is a bound currency that drops from mobs and players, and is offered as a reward for completing certain quests, events, and achievements. Glint is intended to be the primary method for generating gold in the Ashes of Creation economy.[63][64][47][65][44][45]

Glint serves a very integral role in the economy within Ashes of Creation. It is a material substance that is acquired through various means, but primarily hunting different antagonists within the world; and it is the physical form of Essence within the beasts of Verra. So when you acquire this it is bound to your character, and that is a very important component of the economic systems here because glint will be used to pay for certain services, such as taxation for buildings that you have, or citizenship dues that are necessary.[66]Steven Sharif
  • Glint may be traded with commodities vendors for player commodities. These commodities can then be transported to other nodes (via caravan or merchant ship) where they can be traded for gold.[47][67][44][68][45] The gold value is based on the demand for the commodity at the destination node (over the last seven days) as well as its distance from the originating node.[70][47]

Loot tagging

Looting rights (also known as Loot tagging) is based on a blended tag and damage done system.[72][36]

  • The first party to obtain a tag (on a mob or boss) will gain an approximately 5-10% edge over competing parties in terms of the total damage done when determining looting rights.[72][36]
    • These numbers will be balanced based on testing.[72]
  • At the end of the fight, the party with the highest damage done, including first tagging bonus, will be granted looting rights.[72][36]
We have a blended approach of damage done and a tag benefit. So if you tag the boss first, or you tag the loot- whatever the loot target is first- you're gonna get a benefit in the damage overall determination. So if you need to have 51% of damage done in order to qualify your raid, or the plurality of damage done if there's even three or four raids, then tagging first might give you a five or ten percent edge. We'll play with that number- balance it based on testing, but generally that's our approach in competing loot rights[72]Steven Sharif
Q: If looting rights are based on a blended tag and damage done system, will there be any mechanics in place to ensure roles like tanks and healers have an equal shot even when they haven't dealt as much damage?
A: That's the reason for the blended approach. The reason that we're doing a hybrid system between tag and damage done is for the purposes of those classes who may not be as DPS oriented as other classes. The tag system- all classes are going to have a sprinkling of immediate effects- of instantaneous casts and they can use that to tag a target, and that'll give them a modifier on the looting rights: So plus 10 or plus 15 will balance that, but it'll give them plus 10 to 15 on overall damage done if they tag the target and then their damage will make up the remainder of that percentage completion. So if I do 50 damage to a target but someone else has the tag I'm not going to be able to claim that looting right. They'll have done the other 50 plus 10 or 15.[73]Steven Sharif

Visuals

See also

References

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