MHWiki:Current events/Archive/2019/October

News

Upcoming Valour Rfit Balance Patch

23 October 2019

Various updates and fixes for Valour Rift

Upcoming Valour Rift Balance Patch

As previously mentioned in recent patch notes, the ability to retreat in the Rift Gauntlet Tower is temporarily disabled while we work on correcting an issue with the Valour Rift. Due to an oversight on our part, the ability to retreat in the Rift Gauntlet Tower greatly accelerated adventure completion and would lead to an extremely repetitive and tedious gameplay loop once reaching max upgrade levels.

We disabled the ability to retreat so early players in the area would not obtain rewards at a much quicker pace than players entering the area later. With retreat disabled, we could devote the needed attention to correcting the problem and focus on finding the best possible solution rather than a quick fix. Thanks for your patience while we worked on correcting this problem.

What We've Been Working On

We've taken an extensive look at the feedback and suggestions provided by players to work on how to best correct the issue. After summarizing various approaches and weighing the pros and cons, we playtested what we believe to be the best fix with a group of players. These changes are now ready to be applied. However, we'd like to detail the upcoming changes in advance to allow hunters to decide how they best want to approach the transition.

Summary of Upcoming October 28 Changes

Changes to Valour Rift will be applied on Monday, October 28 at approximately 3:00pm UTC.

• Will once again be able to retreat from the Rift Gauntlet Tower
• Gold cache values will be relative to steps taken, making them lower on floors 5-20 and higher on floors 21 and above
• Tower Secret cache values will be relative to steps taken, reducing Tower Secrets on lower floors (9-37) while increasing them on higher floors (38+)
• Tower Secrets will reach their maximum cache value of 300 on Floor 80
• Soldier of the Shade Mouse will drop up to three Tower Secrets

Prestigious Adventurer mice will have a chance of dropping an additional Tower Secret

• Possessed Armaments mice will have a chance of dropping an additional Tower Secret
• All champion mice will have a chance of dropping an additional Tower Secret
• Fragments/Cores dropped by the Shade/Total Eclipse will be increased on higher floors

• Fragments/Cores dropped will increase by 2 per catch until Floor 80
• Fragments/Cores dropped will increase by 3 per catch starting on Floor 88 and higher

• Drop quantities will be: 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 22, 25, 28, 31, 34, 37, 40, 43, 46, 49, 52, 55, 58, 61, 64

• Cost of Ultimate Umbra will be increased from 50 to 75 Fragments of the Eclipse to accommodate for the much higher drop rate of Fragments
• Level 4 Speed will cost 25 fewer Tower Secrets (75 instead of 100)
• Level 4 Sync will cost 25 fewer Tower Secrets (75 instead of 100)
• Level 3 Siphon will cost 25 fewer Tower Secrets (75 instead of 100)
• Level 6 Speed will cost 50 fewer Tower Secrets (250 instead of 300)
• Level 6 Sync will cost 50 fewer Tower Secrets (250 instead of 300)
• Note: The change in upgrade costs will be in order to keep roughly the same timeframe for unlocking upgrades. If you've already made these upgrades, you've done so while being able to collect a greater quantity of Tower Secrets on lower floors. Going forward, hunters new to the area will collect fewer Tower Secrets on lower floors which is why the cost is now lower and hunters that already upgraded did so in a way that is relative to the time it will take new hunters.
• Adding "Unstable Rift Core" to Valour General Store

• Requires a completed Codex of Valour
• Costs several Cores of the Eclipse
• When "poked", unstable cores will each reward Champion's Fire, various Rift Power Charms, various Essences (Aleth, Ber, or Magic Essence), and Gold

• The Codex of Valour description will be updated to mention its 5% Power Bonus while having a Rift trap equipped

Thanks once again for your patience and understanding while we worked on these fixes to help ensure the Valour Rift is as fun as it can be. We understand changes to content after its been released can be frustrating and confusing and we will strive to do our best to avoid these kinds of oversights going forward.

Real Talk in the Dev Corner (w/ Special Guest Dave Vanderburg) On a personal note, I want to apologize to both players as well as my teammates on the MouseHunt development team. Although the entire team is involved in gameplay design, final details and organizing playtests is my responsibility.

I've read all sorts of positive feedback on the amazing mice and HUD illustrations the art team put together, as well as the fun creative touches the interface team put into the heads-up display. I feel like I let players and my colleagues* down by not executing my part of the release as well as I know I'm capable of doing.

I'll use this mistake as inspiration to improve going forward and deliver the quality of releases that MouseHunters deserve.

Editor's Note: You didn't let me down, Dave. You're my hero and my fearless leader. --Giorgio Sintichakis

Look forward to these updates on Monday, October 28!

Happy Halloween!

22 October 2019

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? A giant ghostship?!

The Grand Ghostship Rises

The dreaded Grand Ghostship has arrived above Gnawnian skies! This year, Captain Cannonball and Admiral Arrrgh have joined forces to build the ultimate spooky ghostship to terrify Gnawnia in one grand ghostly assault! Fear not, however: The ship has yet to be fully completed. Begin your attack on the ship to knock loose their construction materials and use them to earn Spooky Rewards!

The Valour Rift Gets Spookier

The Valour Rift has become a Haunted Ghostship Location! Hunting there will allow you to collect Ghastly Galleon Cheese and Ethereal Cannonballs while at the Tower Entrance, and a new Rift Spooky Charm while hunting inside the Rift Gauntlet Tower!

Rift Spooky Charm A new Halloween charm that is too spooky for the mortal realm! This charm provides the Rift Set bonus when armed with other Rift traps and bases.

• 500 Power
• 5% Power Bonus
• 2 Luck
• Provides the Rift Set Bonus
• 20% Power Bonus to Halloween traps

Raiding the Cargo Hold

Collect Ghastly Galleon Cheese in Haunted Stockpile Locations and arm it to attract Halloween mice. Then collect cannonballs and unleash them upon the Grand Ghostship!

Every hunt taken while firing cannonballs will damage the ghostship and dislodge a Spooky Ship Part. Collecting ship parts will slow the construction of the Grand Ghostship and reward you with loot from the ghostship's cargo hold for every 200 parts you turn in!

Firing cannonballs will earn you Spooky Ship Parts with each and every hunt!

Firing an Ethereal Cannonball earns 5 ship parts Firing a Ghostfire Cannonball earns 6 ship parts Firing either cannonball with Boosted Cannonball Shots available will earn +1 bonus ship part

Boosted Cannonball Shots

Each new Gnawnian day during Halloween (every midnight UTC), you will be granted an additional 30 Boosted Cannonball shots. Boosted shots will knock loose +1 additional ship part each hunt.

Boosted shots are automatically used when available whenever cannonballs are being fired and they will accumulate during the entire event, so don't sweat it if you can't use them all up before the next day!

Remember: While cannonballs are actively firing, each and every hunt will earn ship parts regardless of hunting outcome!

Spooky Rewards

There are 10 spooky rewards available to be claimed from the Grand Ghostship's cargo hold. Whenever you have collected enough ship parts, you can cash them in to claim a reward from the ghostship's cargo hold!

Once all 10 have been claimed, you can then spend any additional ship parts in the various shoppes for Halloween-themed charms, Spooky Shuffle Tickets, and more!

• +1 Week Spooky Aura

200 Ship Parts

• Hallowed Ground Base

400 Ship Parts

• 10 Spooky Shuffle Tickets

600 Ship Parts

• Cemetery Gate Grappler Trap

800 Ship Parts

• +1 Week Spooky Aura

1000 Ship Parts

• Pearly Gate Grappler Skin

1200 Ship Parts

• New Halloween Theme

1400 Ship Parts

• Ultimate Spooky Charm

1600 Ship Parts

• Spooky Reward Box

1800 Ship Parts

• +2 Weeks Spooky Aura

2000 Ship Parts

Ship parts are consumed when a reward is claimed.

Spooky Aura

This special Trap Aura grants the following:

• 30% Power Bonus
• Chance to find Wealth Charms
• Chance to find Cursed Gold

Spooky Shuffle Update

The Spooky Shuffle has been updated this year with the ability to select your board based on title range. The range selected will affect the types of rewards you will find under the cards based on associated environments!

• Novice to Journeyperson
• Master to Lord
• Baron to count
• Duke and up

Lockbox Limburger Cheese Update

Lockbox Limburger Cheese can no longer be obtained. If you have any left, it can still be used to attract Halloween boss mice from previous years, which drop Ghostfire Cannonballs instead of Ethereal Cannonballs. These mice can also be encountered with Ghastly Galleon Cheese at a slighty lower rate.

Halloween ends on November 6, 2019!

Explore The Valour Rift

8 October 2019

The first Archduke/Archduchess area

Valour Rift Entrance Stabilized

After much careful and diligent research from Gnawnia's finest scientists, a means of stabilizing an entrance into the Valour Rift has been discovered! Hunters ranked Archduke/Archduchess and above who have recovered 2,000 Rift Distortions and acquired a map of the Valour Rift can now enter this new area within the Rift Plane.

If you have not yet obtained a map of the Valour Rift, doing so requires the rank of Grand Duke/Grand Duchess and access to the Bristle Woods Rift. Visit the Cartographer at the Bristle Woods Rift to purchase a Rift Chronometer which will allow you to recover the 2,000 Rift Distortions the Cartographer needs to issue you a map. Accessing the Valour Rift is outlined as the first step in the new Archduke/Archduchess adventure "End the Total Eclipse".

Preliminary Rift Gauntlet Research

During the stabilization research, the King's scientists collected some preliminary information on what awaits hunters within the Valour Rift. The Rift Gauntlet is an expansive area with powerful mice and no doubt rewarding secrets to discover. Although there's still much to learn about this new area within the Rift Plane, one thing is for certain: It's going to take a while to explore everything there!

Endless Tower
The Valour Rift is an especially twisted version of our reality, mirroring the King's Gauntlet in a sinister way. The tower appears to endlessly stretch into a starry abyss with no end in sight. The interior of the tower presents an even more baffling paradox. Early attempts at navigation revealed 8 uniquely themed floors within the tower. However, upon exiting the eighth floor, these early navigators found themselves back where they started, yet further from their destination. A truly confusing experience!

Gauntlet Elixir and Champion's Fire
Early attempts at navigating the Valour Rift Gauntlet revealed a timid, yet critical character -- The Terrified Adventurer Mouse. Despite a clear lack of prowess, this battle-hardened adventurer is determined to conquer its fear by climbing to the top of the tower!

This mouse appears throughout the tower and carries knowledge of shortcuts which can be utilized by hunters to traverse the tower more quickly. Capturing the Terrified Adventurer Mouse will grant x2 progress within the tower, helping you reach greater heights! However, the Terrified Adventurer has a very specific cheese taste. You'll need Gauntlet String Cheese which can be purchased from the local Cheese Shoppe by exchanging Gauntlet Elixirs collected outside the tower.

Champion's Fire can be used to light your way both inside and outside the Rift Gauntlet. Burning this fire provides +1 to many loot drops both inside and outside the tower. Additionally, while ascending the Rift Gauntlet, lighting Champion's Fire will move you forward +1 step with each capture.

• 250 Gauntlet String Cheese
  

Attract the Terrified Adventurer within the Rift Gauntlet

• 250 Champion's Fire
  

Adds +1 to loot drops and +1 step with each catch

Syncronizing with the Tower
The Rift Chronometer has revealed some secrets on how the Gauntlet Tower within the Valour Rift keeps itself out of sync with our timeline. Although the Chronometer will allow you to enter the tower, you'll fall slightly out of sync with the tower after each hunt. Eventually, the stairs below your feet will cease to exist in your timeline, sending you back down to the tower entrance.

Floor Caches
The hordes of Rift Stalkers within the tower appear to be guarding items of great value! Each floor within the tower contains a cache of gold, magical sigils, and other artifacts attuned to the energy of the tower.

Ascend to greater heights to reveal greater quantities of treasure!

Tower Augmentations
The magical markings on the Tower Sigils revealed some of the secrets of how the mice have managed to distort reality.

Recover Tower Sigils and other powerful artifacts from within the Rift Gauntlet to distort the tower to your own advantage. As you learn more about the tower, you'll be able to utilize this power in the form of augmentations that will transform the tower before entering it. However, these augmentations will only persist until you exit the tower.

Ultimate Umbra
Perhaps the most powerful tower augmentation is Ultimate Umbra. This augmentation will wrap the tower in utter darkness and summon more powerful mice which are sure to lead to greater rewards! Take warning: The pitch dark of an Ultimate Umbra will embolden the mice within the tower, giving them the ability to push you backwards on the stairwell.

Valour Rift Trapsmith and General Store

The intrepid Trapsmith and General Store owner at the Valour Rift have used the preliminary research to acquire a stock of powerful hunting equipment utilizing resources found within the Valour Rift.

Celestial Dissonance Trap
3,500 Rift Power, +10 Luck

A powerful upgrade for the Timesplit Dissonance utilizing Eclipse Cores. This formidable trap is the most effective Rift Weapon yet discovered!

Prestige Base
??? Power, ??? Luck

The Prestige Base is a truly unique (and potentially powerful) piece of hunting equipment. Although its stats appear meager at first, its special attunement to the hunter which owns it and the Rift Gauntlet itself will provide permanent stat bonuses based on how high you've climbed the Rift Gauntlet during Ultimate Umbra.

The Prestige Base stats increase based on the highest floor you've reached during Ultimate Umbra. The base will permanently maintain these stats throughout the entire Kingdom!

+10 Power per floor reached and +1 Luck for every 8 floors reached during Ultimate Umbra

Two Celestial Dissonance Skins
The Trapsmith has two unique trap skins for the Celestial Dissonance Trap. However, the exact schematics have been lost in the Rift Gauntlet. Search the tower for 1,000 Tattered Celestial Skin Patterns and exchange them at the Trapsmith for either of the unique skins. Both trap skins can be traded on the Marketplace and shared with friends.

Codex of Valour
Completing the End the Total Eclipse adventure will reward you with the Codex of Valour. This book binding is initially empty, however, the General Store owner sells 8 unique pages to add powerful power type bonuses that work throughout the entire Kingdom. Fully stock your codex to unlock different sets of 5% Power Bonuses and +1 Luck bonuses depending on the power type of your armed trap.

Gift Baskets and Supply Kits

• 500 Gauntlet String Cheese
  

Jump start your tower exploration

• Valour Rift Gift Basket
  

30 Gauntlet String and 20 Champion

• Valour Rift Supply Kit
  

250 Gauntlet String and 250 Champion

• Valour Rift Large Supply Kit
  

1,000 Gauntlet String, 1,000 Champion

This research is only the beginning! The endless Rift Gauntlet is full of secrets to discover and rewards to unlock for hunters with the persistence to ascend to the greatest heights!

Partial Scoreboard Recovery

3 October 2019

Some scoreboards recovered from backup

Some Scoreboards Recovered

Greetings once again hunters. We have another update on our efforts to restore scoreboard data that was lost during last week's infrastructure problems with the game.

Yesterday afternoon, after some more research, we were able to recover some scoreboards in their entirety. Although the scoreboard data backups were corrupted, we discovered that each scoreboard in the backup was either entirely lost or entirely present. This means we are able to restore a few of the scoreboards as they were on September 21.

Scoreboards we were able to recover

• Relic Hunter: Treasure Maps Completed
• Relic Hunter: Season 3 Treasure Maps Completed
• Relic Hunter: Season 4 Treasure Maps Completed
• Relic Hunter: Season 5 Treasure Maps Completed
• Iceberg: Best Run
• Living Garden: Ultimate Charm Catch Streak
• Sunken City: Farthest Distance Traveled
• Fort Rox: Highest Monster of the Meteor Catch Streak
• Queso Canyon: Nachore Mined

These scoreboards should now appear as they were on September 21 and will actively update as hunters contribute to them.

Rebuilding Mouse Scoreboards

Scoreboards that track the number of times hunters have caught a specific type of mouse can technically be rebuilt by using hunters' catch statistics. This data was effectively being stored in two places, meaning we can use that redundancy to repopulate scoreboards for specific mouse catches.

We're a bit stretched for developer resources while working on infrastructure stability and wrapping up work on the upcoming Valour Rift release. However, once the Valour Rift is released and the infrastructure upgrade work is completed, we'll be looking into repopulating these mouse scoreboards.

Restarting Other Scoreboards

The final decision to make is what to do about all other scoreboards. We can either restart these scoreboards from scratch or retire them from the game. This is a decision we're looking for feedback on, so please let us know your thoughts in the comments section. If we were to restart these scoreboards, we would most likely place an asterisk next to those boards and note the date at which the scoreboards started on.

Some hunters may also view a subtle difference between scoreboards which may be worth feedback and discussion. Some lost scoreboards tracked one off "feats" while others tracked an accumulating stat over time.

Example: Sunken City: Highest Dive Catches tracked a "best record" of sorts from a single dive, while Oxygen Canisters Depleted tracked an accumulating stat across all dives. Due to their nature, re-obtaining the best record is feasible while accumulating stats will technically always be inaccurate.

If restarting some scoreboards is something you're in favour of, let us know if you think both feats and accumulating stats should be restarted, or if only feats should be.

Once again, we want to thank everyone for their patience and understanding while we work through this unfortunate loss of scoreboard data. We've taken the positive comments and constructive feedback to heart and going forward will endeavour to build a better scoreboard system for this amazing community of players.

Stability Issue Update

2 October 2019

Scoreboard and team changes

Update on Recent Stability Issues

Greetings, MouseHunters. We've been working through problems caused by the infrastructure issues we faced last week and would like to share our progress and results.

• Lost Scoreboard Data

The infrastructure issue last week primarily affected the server we use for tracking scoreboards. The data became corrupted and upon attempting to restore from a backup we noticed the backups were also corrupted. Our technical research into restoring from a corrupt backup had mixed results. We were able to restore some of the data, however, due to the nature of scoreboards only having a partial set of data is not useful.

For the time being, we've taken down these affected scoreboards, which are unfortunately the majority of scoreboards in the game. The scoreboards which remain are: Points, Gold, Catches, Library Points, Map Clues Collected, and Scavenger Hunt Hints Collected. These scoreboards will automatically update the next time you contribute to them. For example: If you're currently unranked for Map Clues Collected, finding a Treasure Map Clue will place you back on the scoreboard with your total number of clues found.

We'll be continuing work to reinstate other scoreboards in a way which will minimize the chances of similar instability occurring in the future. Unfortunately, any other scoreboards we bring back aside from the ones mentioned above will come back in a reset state, meaning hunters will have to compete again from scratch. The scoreboard system needs an extensive overhaul to make it easier to maintain and scale better with a large number of active scoreboards.

• Lost Team Trophy Data

The collection of Tournament Trophies and Badges earned by a specific team was unfortunately lost. We've replaced the section on team profiles to instead show the total collection of Trophies and Badges held by current team members. This means the trophy and badge count will change when players join or leave a team.

We've also removed any restrictions on unlocking new team slots based on trophies and badges collected. Instead, all teams will now be able to add the maximum number of hunters without first earning trophies or badges.

We've restored as much team tournament history as we could from the corrupted backup and new tournament scheduling will resume soon.

• Difficulties Remaining Logged In

The same infrastructure used to host scoreboards is also used to keep hunters logged in. Before the instability we were already in the process of refactoring this system to not use scoreboard infrastructure. The infrastructure issues certainly boosted the priority of this project. We've completed refactoring, however, with the scoreboard infrastructure now stabilized we'll be allowing ourselves more time to do testing to ensure a smooth transition.

Understandably the loss of scoreboard data is upsetting and further more, our inability to restore from a backup is disappointing.

We've made the difficult decision to leave several scoreboards removed to make sure that when we rebuild the system we create one we can maintain with the limited resources our small team has and provide the type of scoreboard system hunters deserve.

iOS 13 Issues

After some more technical research, we have identified the issue causing some buttons in the mobile app to be unresponsive or register as a double tap on devices running iOS 13. The update was recently approved by Apple. Keep an eye out for version 1.84.0 (or higher) in the App Store.