[X] My Assistant

Shank,after seeing the updates, I'm too scared to touch PFUDOR difficulty.
I mean, a thousand people have a thousand Hamlets.
Players are different—at least give them room for diversity.
When a playstyle becomes too advantageous, everyone rushes to copy it.
Is that really fun?

It continues to confuse me that people are honestly requesting to play slower.

We are not talking about gameplay diversity: we are talking about manually deprecating every normal monster so that we can endure a longer, slower, more tedious arena. There is no gameplay diversity involved. It's the same build, played slower. Is it really fun to play slower?

The reason is not gameplay diversity, but wanting to be ahead of the rest of the players. It's hard to consider that factor a valuable input in the design of the update.

Wanting gameplay diversity would require "requesting the new old equipments to be better, closing the gap between possible builds and the current best ones". But that would make "our current builds/equipments in persistent not be the best build", so that is also not the request.

Just so it is painfully clear.

I agree with this approach. Using potions in a single battle can be completely disadvantageous against monsters, which is not favorable for players who like raising monsters. I fully agree with limiting potions or even prohibiting their use. This way, players can have enough time to enjoy the gaming experience. Experiencing a full game should take a few hours of fun!

What I am saying is game play should be changed so that doesn't occur... How you got the impression I am in favor of making the game play take longer and be even more tedious I do not understand.

Thanks everyone—I’ve found it

and
The kind of difficulty we used to describe as “just hang in there and you’ll make it” was built on the assumption that an equipment upgrade system was in place.
Given the current upgrade curve and the challenges we’re facing, even with improved equipment quality and drop rates, the actual benefit might still be limited.
Right now, everyone’s essentially fighting monsters in unupgraded gear, and with the addition of mechanics that can actively weaken us, the problem has only gotten worse.


10B may still need to explore other ways to compensate or rebalance things.
That’ll take time, and ISK’s overall slowdown seems to be a way to buy time while gathering actual combat data for balancing—since players vary widely in gear and playstyle.
And honestly, the HV player base is... really small. In this kind of environment, balancing often ends up relying on intuition, which can easily lead to problems.
Forcing 10B to act too aggressively would probably make things worse.
He’s still human—presumably, haha.


I’ve been thinking: maybe giving players access to some Seeds early on, or making them easier to obtain, could be a viable direction.
Also, lowering the upgrade material requirements for early-stage gear (like levels 1–5) might help address the issue of players struggling to gain survivability.
Even low-quality gear currently requires 100 materials, which feels quite steep.
As for whether the upgrade strength or cap should be adjusted alongside that—that’s something 10B would need to consider.

Personally, I prefer approaches that expand player potential or upper limits.
Balancing by nerfing things tends to cause more trouble than it solves

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Based on the points above, I think Tenboro could review the current state of player equipment upgrades. Comparing it to previous seasons should reveal a significant gap.
In my view, the issue of survivability can’t be resolved simply by nerfing monsters or adjusting overall stats.
Players in the past heavily relied on equipment upgrades to “accelerate” progress—for example, obtaining Force and then focusing upgrades on Block, followed by using debuffs to take on X20 challenges.
I imagine many people have done something similar.


This post has been edited by ericeric91: Nov 3 2025, 14:20

What I am saying is game play should be changed so that doesn't occur... How you got the impression I am in favor of making the game play take longer and be even more tedious I do not understand.

It seems you don't understand why everyone is so dissatisfied with the experience adjustments.
The reason is that the Arena unlocks "A Dance with Dragons" at level 300. "A Dance with Dragons" has a pity system, meaning that reaching level 300 even one day earlier gives you an extra chance to obtain better equipment. The levels before 300 are essentially just preparation for what comes after.
This is the main motivation for most players playing ISK. Compared to the main world, the time spent on ISK each day represents additional daily rewards.

I really like the idea of scaling difficulty restrictions with player level, but the current thresholds — 150 for IWBTH and 250 for PFUDOR — feel a bit arbitrary.

In my opinion, it would make more sense to tie them to major spell milestones instead: level 100 for IWBTH (Spark of Life) and 200 for PFUDOR (Spirit Shield).

Ever since the SoL trigger limitation (once per 1000 time units) was removed, I’ve found IWBTH fairly doable in 1H. I even managed Fresh Meat on PFUDOR just to test it out — though it took me a lot of sweat (and many Cloaks of the Fallen). 😅

This post has been edited by Xeda: Nov 3 2025, 15:21

I really like the idea of scaling difficulty restrictions with player level, but the current thresholds — 150 for IWBTH and 250 for PFUDOR — feel a bit arbitrary.

In my opinion, it would make more sense to tie them to major skill unlocks instead: level 100 for IWBTH (Spark of Life) and 200 for PFUDOR (Spirit Shield).

Ever since the SoL trigger limitation (once per 1000 time units) was removed, I’ve found IWBTH fairly doable in 1H. I even managed Fresh Meat on PFUDOR just to test it out — though it took me a lot of sweat (and many Cloaks of the Fallen). 😅

200LV to unlock PFUDOR is actually pretty reasonable, though I'd prefer the freedom to choose at any level.

wouldn't level 167 be too early for IWBTH even on Update 90?

As others have said, the prior isekai playing experience has generally been to start PFUDOR naked at level 1~10 (at extreme low levels things are very weird due to the various damage and stat scaling formulas, etc). Should probably start wearing clothes by level 20? Can still play PFUDOR for a while but will need to drop down to IWBTH. After a few days or a week, as you drop better gear, you can go back to PFUDOR permanently. This is even without debuff usage. With debuffs you could maybe stay PFUDOR from birth (though chugging too many potions for my taste), or at least go back to PFUDOR earlier.

As others said, I think no need to go below IWBTH except possibly on very first day or two of doing bigger arenas, or if you have really bad self-dropped equipment. I had a goal each isekai season to never let the top of my arena list have anything other than PFUDOR highest clears. I always met that goal, every day.

In the new update, I'm also generally experiencing what others say. After the same naked PFUDOR birthday you'll need to drop down and will end up at Nintendo, then have to drop down to Hell, and maybe lower later. Instead of getting stronger as you level up, we are getting weaker and possibly spiraling down into a softlock if you don't have luck with gear.

(This is not a complaint. Just my personal observation, and it could also be wrong, as my experiences may not reflect that of others. I do have opinions about how difficult the game should be, but they are complex and I don't think it's right for us players to simply demand the game be easier, harder, like it was before, etc).

I don't think difficulties should ever be locked. Let us play PFUDOR whenever we want. Naked level 1 people can play PFUDOR and it is so fun. If possible, I would not mind to stay level 1 and Naked forever (if monsters are also at level 1). At the very most, print some kind of Warning for choosing too high difficulty.

Wait, PFUDOR really is gone for me. Nooo, bring it back!!!!!! You always want this option because you can try to struggle and clear like Arena 2-round for example, on PFUDOR. And hopefully get good equipment with those.

This post has been edited by BlueWaterSplash: Nov 3 2025, 15:40

It seems you don't understand why everyone is so dissatisfied with the experience adjustments.
The reason is that the Arena unlocks "A Dance with Dragons" at level 300. "A Dance with Dragons" has a pity system, meaning that reaching level 300 even one day earlier gives you an extra chance to obtain better equipment. The levels before 300 are essentially just preparation for what comes after.
This is the main motivation for most players playing ISK. Compared to the main world, the time spent on ISK each day represents additional daily rewards.

I am not in favor of restricting difficulty levels, what I was saying was that I personally would happily play on nintendo if it gave a reasonably upgrade path, ie to exq gear and when I feel ready increase the difficulty. Right now I am essentially forced to play on IWBTH just to get decent gear which means a lot of slow tedious game play and potion chugging and dying in the hopes of getting some half decent exq.

Also you overestimate the benefits of DWD, maybe you have had luck with the rewards but I got nothing decent from DWD last season, not from clear bonus or max upgrade schoolgirl tokens.

Right now as it stands the only difficulties worth playing on for gear upgrades is IWBTH and PFUDOR, nintendo cannot even reliably give exq gear, and I think that needs to change at the very least. Sacrificing exp for better loot on nintendo was a decent compromise, restricting difficulty levels was not.

I think the real issue is that the difficulty of player monsters is in no way uniform and it is just a few that are disproportionately strong. I would bet the ones doing all the damage all fit a particular template.

That's not really how people work, though. Remember when Diablo 3 had an Inferno difficulty that was actually difficult? People were furious.

"You can't make me play ninja dog difficulty unless you rename it to normal."
I'm not that kind of person, but gotta say this is a thing.
However, I still think difficulties should be freely chosen. I saw many newbies play 10x at persistent without complaint.

So, why does it matter in Isekai? Time matters. Isekai only persists for 6 months.
As long as the player can get what they want at the end of the season (it should be better be 2 months before the end), they could get use of it without complaint. A lot of people are doing 50 FL every season. But now I worry we can't. A long as the player can beat 100FL before the last two months (2x more time compared to the top player), I'd say the difficulty is not broken.
I know 10b you are adjusting the scaling and working toward this. But I think this is one of the causes making people complain about difficulty, not just difficulty itself. I guess that's why some players complained about the experience at low difficulty.

Second is that I also feel that monsters grow faster than I do before I reach a crucial level (200). Still scaling problem.
I see 10b is doing 1&2. Just want to make it clear that difficulties are not the point.

Third is resource. We can't IW a lot in the early game. A simple solution is that, lower IW level requires fewer seeds, and a higher level requires more seeds. But keep the same total. IW cost shouldn't be the same between across level and expensive at the same time for low IW levels. People might want to do basic IW and upgrade for transitional gears, not for perfect gear. BUT, if people fail IW and have to pay the seeds again, I'd suggest making an exemption for the first 5 IW levels (1 seed per IW until IW5).

Almost reached the character limit, so that it

Also you overestimate the benefits of DWD, maybe you have had luck with the rewards but I got nothing decent from DWD last season, not from clear bonus or max upgrade schoolgirl tokens.

You complain that DWD’s guaranteed drops don’t have good equipment, yet you place your hopes on the pitifully low drop rates from monsters — don’t you think that’s contradictory? Not everyone is lucky enough to get good equipment from monsters drops.
Besides, there’s also the Follower of Snowflake Perk, which offers a stable way to obtain peerless equipment — one of my main motivations for playing Isekai. That’s why the Trophies dropped by The Schoolgirls are also very important.
If you want more and better equipment, you should level up and enjoy high-level arenas’s guaranteed drops and the Trophies drops from The Schoolgirls, rather than endlessly gambling on low-level arenas.

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I don’t agree with lowering the experience multiplier, because the Isekai is a seasonal game — leveling too slowly would make me miss a lot of content. If some players don’t want to level up too fast, they can simply clear fewer Tower layers early on and keep the Stamina below 60 to reduce their experience gain.
Moreover, the experience curve grows exponentially, so players level will naturally stabilize within a certain range; there’s no need for extra experience restrictions. Maybe it should increase the drop rate while keeping the experience multiplier unchanged.
Also, I don’t agree with locking difficulty based on level, as that would kill the fun of low-level players challenging high-difficulty content, turning the Isekai into a mindless farming routine.

This post has been edited by GeorgeLZH: Nov 3 2025, 16:02

I'm fine with the recent changes, but I want to point out more serious problems:

The forging curve is unreasonable. EX-quality should be 50 -> 100 -> 150... not 100+5 -> 100+10.

Charm consumable demand is far greater than supply. For example, everyone needs the Voidseeker Charm, but the current supply only covers 20-30% of players. All mats will quickly skyrocket in price.

This season will likely have the lowest profit and worst experience for the average player.

Are there any changes on overcharge gaining? The lackage of overcharge always troubles me when I play Niten in Persistent, which seems to make NI almost the weakest style compared with DW (Frenzied Blows is very powerful) and 2H mace (needs no FRD to improve survival chance). In previous version, Domino Strike and Off-hand Strike do not give OC, and 1H has an overwhelming relative advantage.

Also, add counter-resist to Redwood and Katalox staff (maybe also Ebony) could makes them worth considering rather than junk. Improvement on balance of game and variety of choices contribute to the overall fun of the game, making the effort spent on designing these equips and machanics more worthwhile.

This post has been edited by 良い鯉: Nov 3 2025, 17:32

You complain that DWD’s guaranteed drops don’t have good equipment, yet you place your hopes on the pitifully low drop rates from monsters — don’t you think that’s contradictory? Not everyone is lucky enough to get good equipment from monsters drops.
Besides, there’s also the Follower of Snowflake Perk, which offers a stable way to obtain peerless equipment — one of my main motivations for playing Isekai. That’s why the Trophies dropped by The Schoolgirls are also very important.
If you want more and better equipment, you should level up and enjoy high-level arenas’s guaranteed drops and the Trophies drops from The Schoolgirls, rather than endlessly gambling on low-level arenas.

I think you are missing what I have been talking about, I am talking about a more reasonable progressions curve, one where we can expect to go from sup > exq > mag > leg and the way in which we get there. Missing a day or 2 from DWD is not going to dramatically affect the gear I get unless I am insanely lucky. I also never said I would endlessly gamble on low level arenas, people keep putting words into my mouth.

Right now with the way equips drop anything below IWBTH is pointless, which also means if you are unable to fight in IWBTH you are unable to get decent gear until you endlessly grind your way to the higher arenas on nintendo. What I would like is for it to be possible to gear up to exq on nintendo "IF" I have not managed to get decent gear doing my usual IWBTH and PFUDOR runs before the difficulty spikes too hard.

Essentially I want a backup plan if I fail to get decent gear before the difficulty spike so that I don't have to level up with crap gear that can't do above nintendo and forces a long slow grind to the schoolgirls, and further even slower grinding doing schoolgirls to try to shrine decent gear.

This post has been edited by teddy.bear: Nov 3 2025, 16:37

Where is the Imperil and Silence?
I reach the level to unlock them, but I can't find them in the skillbook.
Are they removed?

Should work similar to how it used to.

Pre-patch Shortsword had an ADB of 47.92, Post-patch 46.8. Difference of 1.12, which when scaled to roll is 13.1, which is high for a quality boost, but if you divide by 1.25 it goes down to 10.9 which is close to what I was seeing with PXP0 of in the 370s for peerless (10.9*25+100=372.5). This is why I was asking if the bonus is no longer applied because otherwise the roll has to be even worse now for the base ranges.

Equipment get various bonuses with quality tier, but no straight-up boosts to all stats. Looking through the old code is like poking through an avalanche, but I can't find any modifiers like this, so I wonder if they were rolled into the roll ranges at some point?

I was asking about this because of seeing something weird when looking at the "Base" values of gear.

PABs
Shortswords
Fair: PAB 2.82 Base 58
Avg: PAB 2.87 Base 61
Avg: PAB 2.89 Base 63
Peer: PAB 6.03 Base 200 (also pre-patch PAB was 6.33, around 10 points much like ADB)

Between the two avg the difference is 0.02, will use 0.03 since that was the step scalar between rolls for PAB unless that was touched.

Rough numbers ~0.02 Base = 0.03 PAB, a 200 Base would adding up from 63: 137/2*.03+2.89=4.945
4.945*1.25=6.18, bit higher than expected but if there is a mult on Avg gear then this could be the cause of error.

Would look at more but its a lot of sifting and things like Weapon damage only showing two digits causes weirdness like two weapons with different bases showing the same value.

I don't think it's reasonable to limit the difficulty.

last season I play PFUDOR since the first day, even with that playstyle I die a lot and I got minus profit for several days, but that's the choice, I know how far I can stand with and where I may die, it's OK for me.

for this season, there is no such choice for me before you remove the cd of sparks, even without your limits of difficulty, as I may random die in any round with two special attack, even when on lower difficulty and their normal attack barely hurt me.

with the remove of spark cd I think it reduce that random of die so I can choose higher difficulty , but now there is a manual limit

personally I may totally disagree with the limit, but if you have to limit, then the level should lower to 100, 200 as Xeda said. especially for PFUDOR @ lv.300, it's may take you one month to reach there with IWBTH, and the lv.225/lv.250 school girl arena are actually easier than normal arena, that if I can play normal arena in IWBTH then I can play SG arena with PFUDOR, waiting one month to reach lv.300 is not seems a good choice, as the tower floor 50 only take 34 days to reach, I don't think there is motivation to go lv.300 at that case, unless you force ppl to reach there otherwise you cannot pass tower, then I think there is no motivation to try tower too

This post has been edited by what_is_name: Nov 3 2025, 17:35

Where is the Imperil and Silence?
I reach the level to unlock them, but I can't find them in the skillbook.
Are they removed?

It will unlock after your Deprecating proficiency increase.

Essentially I want a backup plan if I fail to get decent gear before the difficulty spike so that I don't have to level up with crap gear that can't do above nintendo and forces a long slow grind to the schoolgirls, and further even slower grinding doing schoolgirls to try to shrine decent gear.

The newly modified early bird rewards below level 200 are possibly sufficient to meet equipment needs. Also, I don't think the importance of dropping low-quality equipment (under EX) is as high as you imagine. As ISK players progress in the game, these low-quality equipment will become abundant. Additionally, obtaining equipment is just the first step — there are many more steps to follow, such as the newly modified IW, upgrade, charm, and others. The differences between low-quality equipment that hasn't undergone various enhancements are not so significant.
I don't believe that increasing the equipment drop rate necessarily needs to be tied to reducing the difficulty experience multiplier. As I mentioned, there are many simple ways to reduce the experience multiplier, but increasing it is much harder. Considering the level suppression of Tower monsters, as well as the benefits from DWD and PGC arenas, I think leveling up quickly is important than staying at a lower level.

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By the way, could anyone explain when will I get the rewards for last ISK season?

This post has been edited by GeorgeLZH: Nov 3 2025, 18:01

I don't think this can happen, but post the battle log if you see it again.

I kept this log snippet from my previous run, the lines are back to back:

Tomb Of Varn crits you; you partially block the attack, and take 1705 points of Slashing damage.
Tomb Of Varn gains the effect Weakened.

Getting some mixed signals here[...]

Actually, the statements you quoted in that post are in agreement. As I mentioned, mine was relating my experience pre-SoL revert. I expect IWBTH to be very playable now.

As for level-gated difficulty, I can add my support to Xeda's numbers; they are pretty much the standards I had as well.

This post has been edited by Jake643: Nov 3 2025, 18:05

I reduced the IWBTH and PFUDOR requirement to 100 and 200 to match the level requirements for Spark of Life and Spirit Shield. But the "I like to play PFUDOR on the first two arenas" argument isn't really persuasive, so we'll leave it at that.

The forging curve is unreasonable. EX-quality should be 50 -> 100 -> 150... not 100+5 -> 100+10.

I disagree. You get half of the upgrades "for free" just by IWing it, and you get enough World Seeds for this just from the Tower, so you have the option to not spend any upgrade mats at all and still get half of the benefit. And the target material cost for the remaining 25 levels of upgrades is based on the average cost of fully upgrading an average equip in the old system - but in the old system, this depends on the number of upgradeable stats, so it will never match exactly.

By the way, could anyone explain when will I get the rewards for last ISK season?

When things stop being on fire and I have a minute to run the end-of-season scripts.

I kept this log snippet from my previous run, the lines are back to back:

Tomb Of Varn crits you; you partially block the attack, and take 1705 points of Slashing damage.
Tomb Of Varn gains the effect Weakened.

Hmm. Well, I can't reproduce, but again, let me know if you see it again in case something changed in the meantime.

CODE

Panicaboutnewjob accuracy=136 counter-avoidance: cevade=1 cblock=1 cparry=1 cresist=1
Player avoidance: evade=100 block=0 parry=0 resist=0 hitchance=836
Panicaboutnewjob has nevercrit, skipping crit rolls

I just switched my weapon to rapier and I noticed that the penetrated armor cannot be stacked to lv3. What is the performance for the new penetrated armor? Reduce 25% PMI or 75% PMI?

I did a quick math. The new penetrated armor looks like increasing 15%-30% damage.

Not seeing any issues with this.

CODE

Applying stat effects for wpn_ap
boosted effect of defense_mit by x3, new amount=-75%
applying percentage statmod to defense_mit amount=-75 old_value=7.8812691914023 new_value=1.9703172978506