Dark and Darker’s Pre-Season 1 was a hell of a journey filled with both triumphs and trials. Despite facing challenges such as rollbacks and item duping, the season was ultimately a success. We witnessed the unveiling of new content, balance adjustments, and the maturation of the game’s ecosystem. The market place has been a welcome change, making building out gear sets much more versatile. We can really see the devs giving us options and pushing ways to create creative character builds.
The Normal Dungeon ladder emerged as an engaging event, allowing players to grind while awaiting substantial updates. It was has been fun to observe which classes ascended the ladder in normal gear, and how they fared compared to the high roller builds. The slower less bursty PvP in normal dungeons was a hit among players, leading to longer, more strategic engagements.
Anticipating New Changes and Systems
The upcoming season promises transformative and huge changes, and Starts on March 15th. This is the season of multi-classing and seeing a big experiment happen. The multi-classing is meant to allow us to be creative, which is greatly appreciated.
Set to be introduced in stages, many details of multi-classing will come to light over the next few weeks. The devs from Ironmace talked at length of The Darkest Hour podcast and Onepegs stream about the coming system. We have a good idea of the overall mechancis, but many details and pacing will be curious to see as we level through this season.
The multi-classing system begins with leveling a character to 100. This is a new change and definitely speaks to Ironmace pushing character progression more, and investing in your character which is great to see. The team has heavy inspiration from traditional western MMO’s and those as well had players invest heavily in their character. This makes sense with how sdf and Terrance spoke to wanting players to create their character and it really be theirs.
Once you have a character leveled to 100, its achieved a Master Class status and can share its abilities with others. Leveling will earn us some reward tokens along the way where we’ll be able to turn those in for gear and rewards. But the big bucks are the learning tokens that will be able to be spent to get other classes abilities. Using a learning will present us 3 random options from a pool of perks, skills, and spells from the selected class. The selected ability, spell, etc will then be removed from the pool of options so we’re not getting duplicates.
This system sounds really cool, and encourages the leveling and investing into a direction of you’re character. With no ability to reset yet it also forces the player to commit strategically to a direction for their characters build. Its awesome to see a game catering more to strategic and tough decisions. It’s also refreshing to see design mechanics pursued that aren’t traditional talent trees that we’ve seen for 10 years or more since World of Warcraft pursued them. Multi-classing speaks much more to the inspiration from Dungeons and Dragons, and I believe has more depth to offer than talent trees.
Check out the whole podcast episode here, its a great listen. Thanks to Soma for putting it together and everyone who gathered to talk about the game.
Navigating Map Rotations
The season will begin with stricter map rotations, a decision that is likely to stir debate within the community. I imagine this is partially due to map designs being ironed out, Ruins back to being reworked to reduced range advantage, and just more of the 3 layer system needing to be built out. Keeping some of this locked in helps with varied things, but hopefully will be iterated on. It is pretty nice to have the freedom to jump into different maps depending on team comp, but we work with what we have during early access. They did say as well that Frost Caverns wasn’t originally meant to be a duos map, so we’ll probably see some switch ups if and when we see the new ice abyss map release. Also, this speaks to why ice caverns is a bit more PvE oriented with mob density and the scale of it all. I hope they keep the it the same over time, the larger maps definitely allow more adventuring.
Season starting map line up will be:
- Solos: 3×3 Goblin Caves
- Duos: Frost Caverns
- Trios: Howling Crypts to Inferno
Embracing Quality and Patience
The anticipation for the Druid class—and the classes that will follow—is palpable. However, Ironmace’s commitment to quality over speed is commendable. Their approach, prioritizing thorough development despite the inevitable bugs and issues, demonstrates a dedication to delivering a polished and enjoyable gaming experience. We should applaud their consistency and constant dedication to balancing making early access fun, and also building their game and business at the same time. In the end we all want Ironmace to succeed as they are creating a new and original concept.
A Season of Adventure Awaits
As we stand on the brink of a new season, the dungeons of Dark and Darker beckon with promises of unseen challenges and treasures. The community’s excitement is a testament to the game, and can’t wait to see what this season holds.
