SPOILER A Review Of 1.19

So 1.19 is out. There are some good things, some bad things, some great things, and some extremely questionable design decisions. So let’s talk about it. I’m going to be splitting this into five parts; the great, good, meh, bad, and awful. As always for these things, there will be spoilers, so read at your own peril. It’s not like you need to read this to decide whether or not you’ll buy the update. Let’s start with

Spoiler: The great things

These are things that I think the CT did great on, obviously, and should be followed up on. First things first, The Eldritch Outlook. Now, I have some gripes about it that I’ll talk about later, but in my opinion this is far and away my favorite dungeon. Now, I know that there are a good amount of people who don’t like having to group up in wynn. That’s understandable, but I am not one of them. I love grouping up for this kind of thing. In addition, and this is something that I think may be overlooked, this is the first time where rewards are not based on the amount of damage you deal to the boss. For the first time… ever, tank and especially support builds are actually viable in an endgame activity.


The fight with the eye itself is pure and utter chaos of the best kind. You need to be on edge constantly, and for once the answer to “what shall we do” is not “ram the boss into a corner and beat it to death”. Movement based builds, support builds, and tankier builds are all answers to the boss mechanics. The intermission sections are a good break from the combat to reset potions and scrolls, and the mechanics themselves are unique. Also, I seriously hope that the community takes to calling the magma cube spell the train, because it seriously looks like a train.


The fact that a decent amount of mobs and bosses don’t take knockback is super good and makes multihit semi(semi)viable as a DPS option. Assassin as a whole is still in a bad spot now, though, which I’ve talked about before and will talk about later.


The shaman class is super fun. I haven’t yet levelled it up enough to know if it’s actually good, but even at lower levels it feels more complex than other classes at the same level. The shotgun melee is super satisfying to ding things with, and the totem is pretty fun to play around.


The Nesaak Ultimate discovery. Spoilers abound for the rest of this paragraph, so don’t read it until you complete the discovery. Trust me it’s worth it. Anyways (final warning), the whole cutscene was fucking amazing, and blew the Plains ultimate discovery out of the water. The part where Theorick rides his fucking icicle to freeze dwendle, or the fire traps, or Rickeo deflecting the icicle; it’s all fucking incredible. The dialogue is ok too, but MAN the fighting is incredible. It’s also probably the best showcase of magic and combat in the entire server, including the war at the end of DnD four.


The music. My god, has Corpe_ knocked it out of the park here. If you haven’t already, I recommend listening to his full composition of the Eye’s boss theme. It is amazing, especially the part at 4:00. The pieces for the toxic wastes, Nesaak Ultimate Discovery, and Eldritch outlook are all top tier as well. They feel apt for the places they’re in and do well to fit the tone of the region and cutscene, respectively. (As a side note though, I can’t be the only one that notices how similar this and this are, right?)


Point of No Return is tied for my all time favorite quest with Beyond the Grave. For possibly the first time ever, Wynn has managed to make a poignant moment. The whole quest is an example of a unique, great idea with great interpretation. The puzzles are unique and actually make you think, which is a step up from something like Deja Vu.


Mob designs were great this time around; especially the weird bug creatures in A Journey Beyond. Most look like Cronenberged monstrosities, and are actually kind of intimidating. Also, for the first time ever, the boss is actually bigger than the player character. (Antikythera doesn’t count as the actual boss you fight is still just a player skin)


The puzzles, when seperated from the quests, are incredibly good. The whole sound-based puzzle in A Journey Beyond is probably the most unique thing I’ve seen in a while, along with the swapping puzzles in Point of No Return.

Spoiler: The Good Things

A Journey Further, while short, was good. (Spoilers) Aledar’s Death, while not exactly emotional for me, actually felt earned, which is more than I can say for the dwarf dude I forgot the name of, as well as the other characters in part one of this questline. And I know that the death actually somewhat got to other people, as A. while sacrificing Aledar, a guy on a different server actually expressed his remorse about killing Aledar, and B. During a Corrupted UR party, I asked about it and there were actually people who said that it did, so good on the CT for that.


Recover the Past was pretty good, although I do have to ask just how strong that Summoner was considering that the only other person who we know could create spikes so quickly and easily was Bak’al himself. Beyond that, the whole being pulled into a memory thing felt kind of gimmicky? But besides that, it’s a pretty good quest.


Order of the Grook is a fun quest. I liked the feather that gave double jump. A lot of exposition, but that makes sense given the setting.


Misadventure on the Sea is pretty good, although I do wish they followed the CraftedMovie skit more. Besides that is was a fun quest with some pretty good moments in my opinion, although I do find it weird how quickly the pirates warm up to you.


Most of the Nesaak and Silent Expanse discoveries fall into this category, though the Forest has Eyes is probably in between great and good just because it’s so unsettling.


The Silent Expanse itself is amazing, and the only reasons that I’m not putting it into the great category are that the individual regions are kind of small in my opinion and that the Expanse, as a whole, is kind of linear. The only way to traverse between regions that I know of is from the ruined city to the eye forest to lutho to the toxic wastes to warp valley to the EO. it’s a shame, too, because there is a lot of verticality to the regions, and I don’t really get why you couldn’t have made tunnels or pathways in between, say, the ruined city and toxic wastes. But besides that, the regions are well made, and, as I’ve said before, there is a good amount of verticality to them, which I adore. Each region is creative and varies greatly from what we’ve seen before, with Warp valley being a personal favorite of mine.


A Hunter’s Calling was cool. I liked seeing timelines where the villains won. Riddles were hard, bosses were good and hard. Not much to say beyond that. Also, yay for robot-motivated race wars?


Player ghosts are fun. I like them. Not much else to say.

Spoiler: The Meh Things

Hoo, boy, I’m about to get a lot of flak for this but…


Major IDs are mediocre. Most of them feel too passive and don’t really give any audio/visual feedback to the players, meaning that you don’t really notice having them. They don’t feel like noticable changes to combat. The main offender here is Sorcery, in my opinion. I legitimately did not notice when it procced when playing with Rewind because there’s no cue for it. Give it some particle effects, maybe the warping sound effect when it activates so it actually feels good to use.

Also, having no less than SIX of them relegated to mythics feels awful as a player who does not and cannot get a mythic to save his life. And even beyond that, Major IDs as a whole are too rare to really build around. To give some perspective, there are 15 Major IDs introduced in this update, and they are on 21 Items total from levels 1-100. There are 248 Legendary items in the 80-100 range alone. And of the 21 items with major IDs, 2 have magnet, which is useless in a combat scenario without greed, and 3 have Lightweight, a perk that removes fall damage.

That perk, by the way, is largely useless considering that every class has a way to descend from high ledges without taking fall damage, and also that basically every cliff jump in the game has some form of fall damage negation built into it, from carpeted slime blocks to water to that weird grey water.

And even then, of the 15 major IDs, I can only think of 6 (Taunt, Heart of the Pack, Guardian, Greed, Plague,and Savior’s Sacrifice) that encourage building around them, and 3 (Greed, Taunt, and Plague) that actually encourage a specific playstyle that’s more effective than just mouse-smashing spell-spam. The rest just give bonuses to the playstyle you’re already using (spellspam), let you use that same playstyle on a horse, don’t actually give in-combat bonuses, or just give you random boosts without changing the gameplay loop (Madness). They don’t actually reward good or active play, besides maybe greed rewarding you for good movement and positioning with on-demand healing. The skill ceiling for a Sorcery build is the exact same as the skill ceiling for a Sorcery Build with Nirvana’s Transcendence, as well as literally every other spell build, not counting the probably-a-bug totem stacking.

That’s not to say that all of them are bad. Hawkeye, for example, is incredibly fun to play with because it changes the use of Arrow Storm from a sort-of mix of short-ranged crowd control and damage to a pure, raw damage spell. It’s fun watching mobs get deleted one at a time. The system as a whole has potential, which is why this isn’t ranked lower, but right now it’s just failing to meet it.


A Journey Beyond is an okay quest that’s largely carried by good puzzles. The story (Spoiler) is pretty formulaic, I REALLY dislike the whole darkness mcguffin thing, and the characters introduced are either boring or hate-inducing (Fuck Lucio), largely because they’re basically introduced for the sole purpose of having them die. That’s it; that’s literally their only relevance to the story. While they at least have personalities, which is definitely a step up, they don’t develop meaningfully and they often don’t follow through with the personalities (Why does the third character who I forgot the name of run off first and not Lucio? It would fit his character more, and the whole helping the illusion girl thing would fit her character more). You don’t even spend enough time with them to even care when they die, because you’re busy spending time with Aledar so you care when he dies. And some parts (the whole “It stole my liver” part comes to mind) are just so ridiculous that they just feel out of place given the tone of the rest of the quest. Like, could it not have just stolen a weapon? Beyond that, the escort part was okay (besides the tonal whiplash of suddenly playing Mario Kart: Double Dash), largely because I was okay with the challenge, though I can see why people loathe it. The puzzles and the parts that actually fit with the unsettling tone (Lucio the Observer being weird for one, the weird bugs, exploring the abandoned city) were cool too.


Undergrowth Ruins would be lower on this list if transportation spells were not a thing. The pulley jumps were a cool gimmick but are just way to much combined with everything else. The sheer amount of ricochets and sudden, jerky movements you need to deal with is mildly nausea inducing, and this is coming from someone who rarely gets nausea playing video games or riding roller coasters.


This is a personal gripe, which is why it’s not in the bad column, but Earth-Water-Air really needs more options. Or like, options in general. I like having a fast, steal-effect based spell build, but right now there are like zero options for this elemental combo, and the ‘flex’ items that could work for a wider array of earth-air builds are becoming more specialized, and it’s usually in the way of tier-stacking. Also why does Nona have +tier attack speed there is like one item that it can actually use that speed with and it’s not Dondasch.

Spoiler: The Bad Things

Lag in the Eye boss room. This will probably become less bad with time, but man, right now it’s bad.


The parkour section of Eldritch outlook needs a catchup feature; IE if one person makes it they can open a shortcut for the players trailing behind, because having to wait for bad parkour players kind of sucks. I’m pretty sure I saw countburn take like 30 minutes on the last section of that parkour


Locking content behind the Eldritch Outlook is not that fun.


I’m going to be perfectly honest: I got bored and stopped playing the Olmic Rune quest because the grindy part just felt like an old-wynn fetch quest, or like a mini quest.

No boss altars makes me sad.

Spoiler: The Really Bad Things

This section is reserved for things that actively take away from the experience. How fun!

There’s no reason to run the Eldritch Outlook once you get the item you want. This problem runs tangentially to another, larger one:


The Trade Market and loot running still dominate over endgame progression, despite the addition of fabled items and an endgame dungeon. How great would it have been if the Eldritch Outlook had a 25% chance to drop a fabled and a 1% chance to drop a mythic? Or how about if there was a weekly objective involving clearing out the dungeon that had like a 10% or even 20% chance to drop a mythic? In one fell swoop, you’d have largely helped to solve the problems with endgame progression, and made it so the best items drop the most consistently from the hardest activity rather than the endgame just being “who can walk the fastest between chests with a loot quality/loot bonus set”. Hell, throw in some top-tier ingredients as well; make it worth my while to get a team together to grind this shit like we’re skateboarders. Sure, it’d be easier for most top tier players to get mythics, but on the other hand, most players aren’t top-tier. Most people still won’t be able to clear this place more than once. You’d be giving old players a reason to group up or help new players to play this dungeon, which is one of the biggest problems currently with the dungeon and the endgame in general; there’s no incentive to group up. Would it hurt mythic prices? Yes, absolutely. Should the game be balanced around the trade market? No, it should not.


The assassin nerf hurts. A lot. The new Vanish is annoying to travel with, the new spin attack hits like a wet paper rock, and multihit is still somehow worse for dps than spin. Basically everything I’ve talked about in my other thread still applies. It feels bad, it plays bad, it is bad, and it needs to be looked at.


Dungeon keys are shit. I’ve talked about this before, too, but the fact that the outlook is supposed to be cleared as a group exacerbates the problem tenfold. Like, look at this:

That is no less than eight people (including me) having to wait for a dungeon bomb because the chances of everyone having keys is basically zero. Four of them were on the same server. It’s discouraging, wanting to play the game but being unable to because the content is locked behind either RNG or a paywall. Either remove dungeon keys from the game or at the very least make a key open up the dungeon for everyone for like two minutes.

So, yeah. Those are my thoughts on 1.19. It was pretty good, and honestly probably the best since The Gameplay Update. Overall, the parts of the game that the CT is good at, the CT did well this time around. The parts they aren’t good at, they did less well on, with the exception of boss fights, which they’ve definitely done great on this time around, and quests, which have improved. I liked the update overall, but there are still systemic endgame issues that need to be addressed. Anyways, I need to get back to studying for finals, so.

 

this update is the best so far in my opinion, but there's still a lot of bad things about it too. I didn't really like how anti climatic all the SE quests were (I haven't done hunters calling yet so I still have my hopes up) but the stories all felt rushed through. I do agree with there not being enough good major IDs, when I heard about the feature I expected it to be an actual feature and not just some blue text in the backround of a very small selection of items. I really didn't like recover the past or order of the grook though; recover the past was way too fetchy and the payoffs for the story parts were just boring. Order of the grook I initially thought was cool because I was able to freely explore the castle for some chests, but once I realized it was just choosing some classes for different minigames it got boring quickly.

 

I agree with pretty much everything here. Except for the Eldritch Outlook boss. Deserves more praise. It feels like an actual, true raid boss. You can delegate roles to people depending on their builds. Ultra tanky builds can just constantly melee the eye, fast DPS builds can do damage from afar without having to deal with the laser or run up to it, cast a spell, and run back out. Mages can hang out in the back providing heals. I imagine shamans would be incredible for ad clear and dealing with the wretches. The boss is the most exhilarating and well-designed fight in the entire game, period. There's something super awesome about charging into the boss, casting a few spells, and charging back out right before the laser hits you.

Something I do disagree with is on the mythics... partly. I do think mythics should be more common. Crafted items were supposed to replace mythics but the amount of work required to get that high of level is absurd, so there are very few people putting out mythic-level crafted items, so they give them crazy price tags. Percentages like that though (10%, even 1%) completely ruin mythics as a concept. They are mythical. You inspire to get them. Getting one is a feeling like no other. If you had those kind of percentages, mythics would flood the market and everybody would be able to get a mythic. While I think it's good for more people to have access to mythics, I think only the most dedicated players should have them.

But yeah I do like the idea of (rarely) getting a mythic from the dungeon. Could possibly extend that to the corrupted dungeons, but make it the most common in EO.

Overall, this update is great. Adds a lot of good content and some of the best content in the game. Though I don't think there will ever be an update better than Gavel - maybe for the better. Gavel was too big for its own good lol

also i really wish i could finish hunter's calling, i got to the 4th riddle and died in the area due to lag and i cant get back very upset >:(

 

I disagree with this. A 10% chance to get a mythic once a week still equates a mythic once every ten weeks, from what is the hardest dungeon in the game. A 1% chance equates to roughly one mythic every 100 runs of what is, again, the hardest dungeon in the game. Assuming each run takes 15 minutes, that’s 25 hours of play time for a mythic, not even counting the fact that you’ll need either enough keys or dungeon bombs to run the dungeon 100 times, or the likelyhood that you die at least once. Hell, even at those numbers loot running might be better overall for monetary gain considering that you’d get hundreds more legendaries in that time. And even if you do get a mythic, it may not be a good one, or a good roll. If someone is willing to put in the effort to do the hardest dungeon in the game ten times over two months, or 100 times, they should be rewarded.

So is a difficult level in something like Geometry dash, and that doesn’t require RNG.

Alternatively, so is winning the lottery, but it’s still an awful idea to invest your time into it.

In fact, I’d argue that clearing a difficult challenge to get a mythic is far better than locking it behind RNG, because not only do you get access to a rare item, you get it entirely by your own volition. It’s not just luck handing it to you; YOU’VE earned the mythic. Not your lucky rabbits foot or the 1000th chest you’ve opened, but you specifically. Your own skill. Not to mention the bragging rights, which is a hell of a lot better than “I got lucky”.

it’s also heavily discouraging to have entire builds locked behind a wall of RNG that forces people to play a loot run simulator exclusively rather than actually playing the game, not to mention the wide power gap between mythics and legendaries, and the six mythic exclusive major IDs that serves to widen that gap further.

It also feels awful, speaking from experience, to loot 4000 chests in a row without ever getting a mythic. That’s not fun gameplay, nor is it good game design.
Luck just shouldn’t be this much of a factor, especially in an MMO where the endgame is based around build crafting.

The trade market should not dictate endgame progression. Players should be forced to interact with the trade market to gain access to content. and again; it’s the hardest dungeon in the game. It’s an avenue for the most dedicated players to circumvent bad luck. It’s incredibly unlikely that an average player would be able to complete the Outlook in the first place, much less 100 times or for 10 straight weeks. People who frequent the forums might, sure, but we aren’t indicative of the playerbase at large in any way.

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Honestly in terms of content quality I feel like this beats Gavel. Gavel had a lot of content but it was largely forgettable, and was incredibly unfinished with like five separate dungeons left undone. While the Silent expanse has less content, it’s all a lot better content.

 

I think this update is great because I finally have the feeling of an actual endgame landscape in the silent expanse. With the sky islands, I never really thought of it as an endgame place, it felt so empty.

 

Really I don't understand what's peoples main beef about EO's parkour, sure it can be annoying (especially when you accidentally fall off just because you ran too much), however considering they've thrown Many parkour sections, you should be expected to at the very least be competent at minecraft parkour.

 

Sorry, but this "mythics = luck" thing is completely idiotic. I always find it odd that people have looted thousands of chests yet can't get enough le to just buy mythics on their own. Legendaries do sell for a significant amount if you know what you're looking for. From experience, selling less expensive shit that you find to build up to a mythic is significantly more satisfying than finding one.

Making mythics accessible from dungeons means that essentially everyone has access. Wynncraft is NOT a hard game. Running any dungeon 10 times is relatively simple, and I would argue that this is worse than having to lootrun (oh joy, I have to do more dungeons, not just for xp but now for items).

Additionally, mythics were never meant to be accessible to everyone. Doing this kills the "hardcore" playerbase, which is currently a large portion of the population (20% is still significant for a game of this size). Mythics are also entirely optional for builds. There are plenty of legend only builds that can do enough damage to clear all of wynn's content. I cannot think of any MMO where endgame content is accessible to all players without significant grinding (100 hours is pretty much nothing). I've spent the past 4 years building a significant amount of emeralds, and that is what I, and many others, find to be good "gameplay". If it matters, I owned around 100 mythics before finding my first one. Making mythics accessible to everyone will kill the trade market, not fix it. You DO NOT need mythics to play wynncraft and have a good experience.

 

Yes yes yes yes. Excluding undergrowth ruins section (cause I haven’t done it), no one has ever so accurately put my thoughts, opinions and desires for an update into words so perfectly and accurately.

I 100% agree with this, your insight on the game design and mechanics of Wynn is stunning and I really hope the admins and staff (Salted please I’m begging you) will pay very close attention to the criticisms and suggestions in this thread. Even those regarding mythics and endgame gameplay...

You’ve earned yourself a follow.

 

I really agree! I also think that ingredients definitely need to be a drop from dungeons and EO should have a 50% chance of a tier 3 ingredient instead of a bigger chance for mythics though

 

I think parkour in wynn is bad design. Sure parkour spices things up but, it doesn’t test the players mmorpg skill. Someone could be a master with pve mechanics but be shitty at parkour. Parkour does not measure the mmorpg combat skills. This is why many ask for a skip, its stupid how something not mmorpg related hampers their progress. Thus, wanting skips and mechanics so the parkour doesn’t ruin their experience.

 

Until they add a section that mixes parkour and combat I agree 100%. And I actually like doing parkour; I just don’t think that everyone should need to be a master at it

 

Like if they found a way to make you be masters at the classes movement skills instead of parkour, I think that would be a better substitute.

 

Nobody Needs to master parkour, but if you really think about it there have been many more parkour sections before EO, some I actually find harder than eo's parkour. So you should be expected to at the very least competent and considering EO's parkour isn't even that bad in the first place, many people shouldn't be struggling with it.

 

Also if so many people are struggling with one particular section, then one should also look at if the very design is flawed.

 

Good: fixed sp
Bad: ornate shadow
Great: pandemonium major id
Terrible: High IDs that let items be abused (overdrive, the nothing)

To be fair, ornate shadow nerf is inevitable
And an overdrive nerf too

 

Just because many people struggle with one section, doesn't mean the design is flawed as there are many times where easy sections are flawed.

 

That is true. However it does help find possible problems/flaws through correlation. Like parkour in an mmorpg, or parkour in a dungeon.

 

OK, I see your point, but mythic items are supposed to be rare.
*Note: this statement is coming from someone who has never found a mythic, so*
You're literally removing the dopamine rush from finding a mythic or fabled with this. I can see how this would balance the trade market, but then again, after the first week, mythic and fabled trade will mostly slow down, economy will stagnate, rich stay rich and poor stay poor.

Maybe if they made the dungeon 10x harder this would be viable, so a group of say, 4 people, would only have all four make it through one out of ten times. Otherwise, mythic trade will probably just stop, with the exception of godly rolls, which would have the same problem that you just tried to cancel. And, with the removal of SP rolls, you don't even need a certain stat to be godly for your build to function.

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Yeah, but at least it puts a skill requirement on Dern. I agree that it's annoying if you can't find a group or build to run the dungeon with, but at least when Dern is released, the CT can put in more difficult features. I mean, so far, one needs group play for nothing except 3 optional quests, with the only super rewarding one being ??? (which I loved by the way) and a secret discovery
But if they make Dern super difficult, EITHER you get a super-op mythic build, but again, mythics are rare, as they should be, and thus, this is less likely.

OR the CT can encourage group play, and make more quests based around it, hopefully without the tedious parts of Bob's Lost Soul and the secret discovery, where you just need it for one part of the quest

Overall, group quests are 3x better if you need a group the whole quest, instead of just one stage.

uhhhh
all of this
dungeon keys are a cool concept, until the guardian is super rare
non corrupted and non lategame dungeon guardians aren't too hard to find, but the lategame dungeon guardians are just a pain in the ass to find

fix your key mechanic, Wynncraft

i'd love if there were non-combat major ID's that had a purpose
so far, all major ID's are combat focused (well, magnet is kinda just a supplement to greed, which is glorified support), OR they just suck in general, like lightweight

give us some major id's for grinding, speed, loot, or something. Something that instantly condenses emeralds into a higher tier, not OP, but super great QOL (64emeralds->1eb, etc, without having to go to a bank)
This would actually help balance the economy, as you could now actually take a shitload of emeralds from lootruns, without hoping for the feast or famine mythics

ok so i hated this, but only because i have bad ping, so the things never worked right

i really loved the jumping off walls though!

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ok so why is there literally nothing but one path for the whole silent expanse (except those off-paths to t4 chests)
i get it's just a gateway/road to dern, but still, give us anything that allows us to navigate through it differently.
there was supposed to be a ton of miners, right?
give us a tunnel system to rival the sewers of all the sewer quests ever
for real though, an underground area in the silent expanse doesn't take content opportunities from dern, as dern was not the mining area
if there's an underground parallel to silent expanse, you could have so many more quests

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yeah, linear parkour in wynn just detracts from the experience
variations on parkour that are either a puzzle or a test of reactions are better that just hop hop hop hop

like, the ice barrow invisible maze was nice, because you had to be able to realize the way its laid out
if you can't run in a straight line, that's on you chief

similarly, the parkour in UR and CUR is pretty nice, because you have to be able to use manipulate your FOV fast enough to hit the bouncy things
even though i have terrible ping, and this parkour takes me longer than others, it at least doesn't purely measure your ability to not get bored

 

Uh

Pretty sure if the content is difficult it doesn’t really need a difficulty gate to access

sure it’d feel bad getting instaganked by some level 130 trash ad the moment you step into Dern, but it’d still feel better than not being able to step into Dern at all

And since there’s basically no reason to run the dungeon more than like 7 times, for most players it becomes a luck gate based on finding a group willing to run the dungeon who all have keys more than a skill check of who’s actually ready for Dern

 

on the contrary, “harder challenges” are still relatively easy for top tier players once they understand and make a build for it; so this would actually just cause an even larger wealth inequality; with top tier players being able to farm the shit out of EO while poorer players who can’t afford to run EO/get a good build for it/beat EO quickly get left in the dust for a really good amount of time.

Besides, EO gets harder with the more players you have, so people doing it in groups in order to do EO more would be even LESS likely, especially if they’re trying to farm for mythics or fableds