Rewards and XP Improvements – Varlamore: The Rising Darkness

Since last week’s release, we’ve been thrilled to see so many of you eagerly exploring all that Varlamore: The Rising Darkness has to offer. During this time, you’ve journeyed through the lush landscapes of Aldarin, indulged in the mesmerising tunes of a new realm, mastered lost arts of potion-making, confronted foes born of darkness and more!

Now that the first week of the release is behind us, it’s time to finetune the content and make improvements. Before we get into what we’re changing this week, we want to thank all of you for your enthusiasm and for sharing your valuable feedback! Following the points you’ve raised, this week we want to make a handful of feedback changes and fixes to enhance your gameplay experience across the vast lands of Varlamore. Without further ado, let’s see what’s changed!

Mastering Mixology Changes

We’ll start with an ‘in case you missed it’, because it’s an important one! On Friday afternoon, we released an additional hotfix to the potion hand-ins here so that you’re able to hand in multiple potions, but any potion hand-in will refresh all three offers. We think this captures the best of both worlds for improving the overall flow and feel of the activity, while still allowing you to single out orders offering Lye points if you’d like. We’ll be chatting more long-term about the Reward Points system, but we think this is the best option available in the short-term.

Now, on to this week’s changes!

First off, those of you who requested a more immersive name for the Pre-pot Device will be pleased to hear that we’ve renamed it to Chugging Barrel!

Secondly, we’ve seen many of you requesting a rebalance regarding the level requirements and XP given for potions, as well as points and costs for rewards. Some of you feel that the highest level potion requirement being 86 is a bit steep, and the balance of each reagent is also weighted in favour of higher levels. To address this, we’ve adjusted level requirements and rescaled potion unlocks every 3 levels instead of 4, with a better mix of the three reagents across the levels. With this in mind, we’ve also adjusted the points, XP and order rarities to ensure smooth progression. The overall result of these changes shouldn’t impact XP/hr. Points/hr will be impacted, but we’ve adjusted reward costs to counter this. Full details for all the changes for potions can be found below:

Here’s a breakdown of the Points cost rebalance for Mastering Mixology rewards:

Furthermore, for those of you who intend to do the activity for an extended period of time, we’ve also raised the cap of 300 for Mox, Aga and Lye paste up to 3,000.

Here’s a list of all the other improvements we’ve made to Mastering Mixology with this week’s game update:

• Adjusted Digweed spawn rates so they scale with your Herblore level.
• Reduced the wander range of Supervisor Lalo so that he stops getting in the way of the bank chest.
• Ensured that the Chugging Barrel functions at the Theatre of Blood, Nex and Mastering Mixology banks.
• Following Secondaries can now be used with the Reagent Pouch:
  • Jangerberries
  • Lilies of the sand
  • Ashes
  • Silver dust
  • Kebbit teeth dust
  • Nail beast nails
  • Poison ivy berries
  • Gorak claw powder
• Prevented UIMs from buying Potion Storage, since they can’t use it.
• Alchemist’s Outfit can now be stored in the POH Costume Room.
• Made an improvement and some fixes for Alchemist’s Amulet:
  • Increased the max amount of charges Alchemist’s Amulet holds from 250 to 5000.
  • Fix a bug where the number of charges doesn’t always match the number of amulets.
• Fixed a bug where Blighted Super Restores, Extended Anti-venom+ and unfinished ‘blood’ potions weren’t working correctly with Potion Storage.
• Fixed a bug where Extended Anti-venom+ potions weren’t working correctly with the Chugging Barrel.

In case you missed it or just want a recap, here are the rest of the highlights from the Mastering Mixology fixes we carried out late last week:

• Players now only receive orders that they have the Herblore requirement for, meaning you won’t need to force a refresh.
• Doubled the frequency of Digweed spawns and fixed a bug where Digweed isn’t spawning in the North-West corner.
• Increased the duration for Digweed once it’s spawned from 6 seconds to 20 seconds.
• Added an extra tick of leniency to the Agitator’s ‘reaction’ click when homogenising potions.
• Adjusted Reagent Pouch so that players can only withdraw from it in banks. We’ll look to whitelist other locations for this in the future, since it has neat applications for multi-skilling, but it shouldn’t be the case that players can significantly increase their supply of potions in certain PvM scenarios.
• Fixed a bug where the focused version of the Prescription Goggles weren’t working.
• Depositing worn items while the Potion Storage interface is open no longer drops your gear to the floor.
• Fixed a bug where depositing Grimy Huascas into the bank via a herb bag were changing them to Torstols.

Hueycoatl Changes

Again, we’ll start with a ‘to keep you updated’ for a standout hotfix we implemented last Friday. One of the key pieces of feedback regarding Hueycoatl was that its drop table felt a bit underwhelming. Based on your feedback, we improved Hueycoatl’s loot, and here’s a breakdown of the changes:

• Roughly doubled the quantity of all non-unique loot.
• Soiled pages were removed from the unique table and added to regular rolls. The chances of receiving pages are drastically increased, while the chance of a unique has also slightly increased.
• Removed some of the low-tier loot: Guam seeds, irit seeds, feathers, watermelon seeds, pineapple seeds and lobsters.
• Swapped Unfinished Runite Bolts for Adamant since they are more useful.
• Added some new drops such as Limpwurt roots and a variety of some but not all herb seeds.

Ok, back to this week!

• Many of you pointed out that tailing your enemy was a bit too literal during the Hueycoatl fight, due to a bug allowing players to attack its tail from the arena entrance. Oops! To remedy this, we’ve adjusted blocking to prevent ranged attacks on Hueycoatl’s tail from the East side.
• The penalty for players who skip Phase 1 during the Hueycoatl fight, resulting in a significant reduction to their contribution value, has been increased further.

Here are some other feedback changes and fixes we’ve done for Hueycoatl last week:

• We tweaked Prayer Pillar mechanic to remain active during the tail phase, giving you a little more to interact with and also not overly punishing you if this phase starts before you’ve triggered the pillars’ damage buff.
• Group Iron Men won’t lose their prestige for kills with players outside of their group.
• We’ve added messaging to let you know when your contribution is too low to obtain loot.

We hope all these adjustments improve your gameplay experience with Hueycoatl. We’ll be monitoring your feedback closely and are open to making further changes in the coming weeks, including tweaks to uniques. So make sure to let us know what you think!

Colossal Wyrm Agility Course Changes

It was great to see so many of you eager to take part in the Colossal Wyrm Agility Course, as well as enjoying the Varlamorean Graceful Transmog and Bone Squirrel Transmog! However, we heard some of you expected a more generous Amylase gain from the course, and we totally get that. In response to your input, we’ve halved the cost of Amylase packs, reducing it from 200 Termites to 100 Termites. This significantly increases the Amylase per hour obtained and puts it above similar courses in the level range. Plus, we’ve increased the ‘value’ of Termites so they’re less likely to be accidentally dropped.

The rest of this week’s fixes for the Colossal Wyrm Agility Course are as follows:

• Colossal Wyrm Agility section now turns green upon completion in the Collection Log.
• Varlamorean Graceful Outfit can now be stored in the POH Costume Room.
• Using the Varlamorean Graceful Cape on Osten now allows the player to revert it to standard Graceful.

Aside from these, here’s a refresher for last week’s changes:

• Varlamorean Graceful Cape no longer reverts to default colours after unequipping.
• The Colossal Wyrm Teleport now gets unlocked again in the Collection Log after being bought.
• The Colossal Wyrm Teleport Scrolls requirement works as expected again: They can only be used if the player had visited Varlamore before.

Other Varlamore Changes

• Added S.T.A.S.H. units that were missing from three new Treasure Trail steps at the Twilight Temple, and where the River Ortus meets the Proudspire.
• Costume Needle now correctly works with Xerician Fabric and also provides thread for crafting with Bark as expected.
• Adjusted the Frost Crabs loot table to make it a little more thematically fitting.
• Butler’s Tray is now two-handed.
• Fixed a bug where Dizana’s Quiver could be used to smuggle items in or out of the restricted areas that use the item holding system.

Here are some other fixes we rolled out last week:

• Items with a value of 100,000 or more are no longer allowed in the Aldarin nest unless they are one of the whitelisted items.
• Fixed a bug where the River Ortus medium Emote Clue and Twilight Temple Hard Emote Clue were not being completed.
• Frost Nagua that spawn during the door puzzle will no longer respawn after being killed.
• Aldarin Fairy Ring requirement works as expected again: It can only be used if the player had visited Varlamore before.
• Fixed a bug where you could be kicked out of Villa Lucens when stood in some areas.
• Using watering cans on the Farming Guild fountains now works again as expected.

We’ll keep on keep an eye on your feedback and make further improvements if need be, especially paying close attention to the Hueycoatl fight itself. Please continue to share your thoughts with us so that we can keep shaping the experience together!