Nice! Looking forward to trying out new things!
I just want to say that Sidequest is going to be undergoing some serious balance tuning this week. There is a lot of data that we've been collecting about all the interactions everyone has been doing and how scaling has been working in the live environment instead of theoretical so if numbers start changing later in the week, just know that we will make sure it doesn't harm our chances of winning against bosses.
Sidequest is not a temporary thing. It is important that the end-game we are building up to is going to be as balanced as it can be. At no point though should anyone ever feel like they have lost progress. I just don't want to put us in a situation where 6 months in, everyone is doing 25,000 damage swings and new players don't have a chance to compete with that at all.
Venture: Fight Creatures All Over the Site
Every part of Out of Games is now a place you can venture, and each place has its own level range and its own creatures.
The news is the Acres of Poets, the Marketplace and shop are the Haggling Docks, the Sidequest hub is The Waystone, guides and help are The Scriveners' Stacks, the arcade and activities are Neon Hollow, and there are more: The Commons, Gossip Row, The Wishing Well, The Hall of Cartridges, The Grand Stage, The Seeker's Maze, and The Gate of Realms.
While Oozefest runs, the Pumpkin Patch is open from anywhere, and its creatures scale to your level.
How a fight works:
Scout first. It is free and shows you the creature, its level, how risky the fight looks, and your chance to win.
Then Fight or Retreat. Retreating is free. Fighting costs energy (more on that below).
Win and you get loot, Gold, and site XP.
Lose and you get knocked down to between 1% and 10% of your health. You never hit zero, but you need to rest or eat before you can fight again. A loss uses the energy and pays nothing.
Creatures use the same difficulty colours as recipes, plus red. Grey and green foes are easy but pay less XP, Gold, and loot. Yellow is an even fight. Orange and red pay more, and a red foe asks you to confirm before you fight it.
You can fight from the Venture page in the Sidequest realm, or from the action wheel (see below).
Zones, Bounty Realms, and the Map
Zone level ranges rotate every 3 days, so every part of the site takes its turn at every level. Whatever level you are, there are always several zones in your range.
Bounty realms: each week, 10 of the busiest game realms become bounty realms with their own level band. Fights there pay 25% more XP and Gold plus an extra loot roll. Two of them are hot spots that pay 50% more.
Pages of any other realm are The Gate of Realms, where that realm's own creatures can still show up.
The Seeker's Maze: search pages, and any page you reach through Random, put you in the Maze for a little while.
There is a map of the site that shows every zone with its current level range and when it rotates next, plus this week's bounty realms. Zones and realms are listed lowest level first, coloured for your level.
A small area box now sits at the foot of the sidebar on every page. It shows where the page puts you and its level range, coloured by how tough that is for you. Long names wrap onto two lines, and you can shrink it down to just the level range.
The Bestiary
There are 134 creatures to find: six in every zone, plus 56 creatures that only live in their own game's realm, like the Knife Juggler and Leery Jenkins (not a typo) in Hearthstone's Tavern Cellar.
The Bestiary page lists every creature by where it lives. Creatures you have never met show as ??? until you scout them.
Your record for each creature shows if you have seen it, fought it, or defeated it, with your wins and losses.
Progress counts show how many you have defeated overall and in each zone.
Each creature has its own page with its animations side by side, its stats at its lowest and highest level, its full loot table with odds, the Gold it carries, and your last few fights with it.
Your journal has a new Bestiary tab with every creature you have fought and the ones still waiting for you.
The Sidequest realm has a new Bestiary tab with All Creatures, Venture, and the Map.
Hover or tap any loot on the Bestiary and the fight results to see its item tooltip.
Creature Loot
Creatures drop materials that match what they are and get better as the creature's level goes up. Beasts drop hides, game meat, and beast bone. Constructs drop ore. Humanoids carry Gold and can drop recipe scrolls.
New items: Game Meat, Beast Bone, and the Well-Done Steak, a new dish you cook from game meat.
Energy
Sidequest now has an energy pool for your whole account. Gathering, fishing, and fights all spend it.
Gathering and fishing cost 5 energy each. Fights cost 10, 15, or 20 depending on the zone.
You start with 100 energy, and your max grows by 2 every level.
It refills on its own: empty to full takes 8 hours.
Food restores energy too, up to 100 energy from food each day. Every dish restores some, and a few are energy specialists: the Red Cap Shake, the Complete Enough Breakfast, and Bombs of Sugar.
Because energy now sets how much you can do in a day, the gathering timers are much shorter: 3 minutes per gathering skill (was 7) and 5 minutes between fishing casts (was 15).
Two new stats can roll on rings and necklaces: Max Energy (up to +50) and Energy Recovery (up to 25% faster).
Your energy bar shows under Health on your character sheet.
Energy will never be sold for real money, and no Premium or Pro perk restores it. We aren't a pay-to-win mobile game.
The Action Wheel
The action wheel has a new look and is split into two rings: Gather (Mine, Chop, Forage, Fish) and Venture (fight in the places around you). Tap the small coin next to the wheel to switch rings. It remembers the last one you used.
The wheel stays open after an action, so you can mine, chop, forage, and fish in a row.
Your energy is a ring around the wheel's button.
Results show as loot toasts with the item art and its rarity colour instead of the annoying modal that you had to close.
Stats and XP
XP now keeps the fractions. A +13% bonus on a 1 XP action used to round away to nothing. Now the extra bits add up, so 100 of those actions pay 113 XP.
Posting XP and Activity XP are now one stat: Experience. It boosts the site XP you earn from comments, threads, decks, votes, polls, activities, and more. Any gear that had either of the old stats now has Experience instead, and nobody loses the bonuses.
These stats now actually do something:
Gathering Fortune: a chance at a bonus rare or better find on top of your normal haul.
Angler's Luck: better odds of rare, epic, and legendary fish, a chance to land a second fish, and bigger catches.
Junk Avoidance: fewer junk catches when fishing.
Material Preservation: a chance that a craft uses no materials.
Haggling (cap 20): cuts the fee you pay when your Marketplace items sell, and cuts the price you pay at NPC vendors. Shop and Marketplace cards show the struck-through price and your haggled price.
This stat is likely to evolve in the future. Where I'd really like to go with this is actually introduce a true haggling mechanic to the game and have this stat influence its RNG. For now, you're just hella charismatic.
Hover any stat on your character sheet to see exactly what it does.
Bosses
Everyone who takes part in a boss kill now gets an Ooze Core, on top of the kill ring and materials.
Every swing at a boss also has a small chance to drop a bonus Ooze Core, rolled on top of the normal loot.
Members who were in earlier boss kills get their Ooze Cores too.
New recipe: Render an Ooze Core (Cooking 20). It takes 5 Vials of Living Ooze and 2 Salt Crystals, and everyone knows it by default, no scroll needed.
Vials of Living Ooze are sold in the new Sidequest Supplies shop for 15 Ooze or 90 Ectoplasm each. They stay on sale after Oozefest ends.
Mother Spindle, Sir Hollowmere, and the Oozelord now have a lot more health, so bring your friends and get them addicted too.
Random Finds
Gear you find just by browsing the site, event page rewards, and treasure hunt clues now pop up as a toast with the item art and its rarity colour, plus a link to your bag.
They also show in your notifications under a new Random finds category. It is on by default, and you can switch it off in your notification settings.
Oozefest Items
Candy can only be eaten while Oozefest is running. You can still keep it, trade it, sell it, list it, and donate it all year.
Items that need a seasonal event now say so at the bottom of their tooltip, like "Requires Oozefest".
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