Waves, loot and the first chest

A second portal opened in town, to the west: the Elemental Den. It has three waves of mobs, each mob with its own aura, and everything that dies leaves something for everyone in the room. The boss pays out now too, with an instant drop and a chest that opens with keys.

Why

The boss room is intense and short. We were missing a place to practice the swap rotation without a boss’s pressure, and to gather materials. And we were missing the first piece of the economy: what you take away from a fight.

How it works

Ember imps arrive already on fire, and frost spirits arrive covered in ice. Ice on an imp melts it, fire on a spirit does too, and lightning on a spirit superconducts. The Den is a reactions class disguised as farming. There are three waves, with three seconds of breathing room between them, and mob health grows with the number of players, like the boss.

Loot is personal: when a mob dies, the server rolls the drop table separately for each player in the room. Nobody competes for items and nobody has to split anything. Every mob gives gold and sometimes material or an experience tome. The boss gives more and leaves a chest.

The chest costs two keys. Keys come back at one per hour, up to ten, and whatever goes past that goes into a vault of up to fourteen, which refills your keys as you spend them. Someone who plays once a day loses nothing, and someone who plays all day gains no more for it. With no key on hand, the chest is kept in the Bag for 24 hours. The Bag shows gold, keys, how long until the next one, chests waiting and items.

We tested it three ways: the key and chest rules with a simulated clock, a full match with a local host killing a wave and the boss and opening the chest, and two bots over the network going through the Den before heading to the boss.

Next step

A hundred bots in town, over the network, to close phase 1.