Best of the Best :^)
The Sky Sanctuary, an Endgame Dungeon by Sturky
Best of the Best now!
Megayeah
#44
The idea is very, very good and it would be hype for Deca to consider adding it, but it needs a few touches to have a better execution with the current direction of the game if it’s ever added:
1 - The biggest issue by far is that while the Dragon God Draconis fight is an extremely good one, it’s also looking to be yet another discord-only fight (even more than Void Entity) with how insanely difficult you made to access it, the fact you have to do several LoDs each in a different order and also several Sky Sanctuaries for random Gem drops just to get one single attempt at the buffed LoD is frankly, nothing short of ridiculous without a discord, the Unified Gem should probably be made a permanent, not consumable item so it can be reasonably ran in realms and guilds, now, this could have the issue of often forcing buffed LoD on people who don’t want it, but you could just rework the Gem to spawn a fifth destructible statue at the start of LoD that triggers the buff if killed, making it optional even if used.
2 - This is much smaller but now that high endgame items are deliberately being made to be upgrades to similar items from previous tiers (Like Divinity compared to ASS), most of these items could be rebalanced, like the Katsuri and Monos which should be buffed to not be made redundant by Kusanagi. Or Solannos’ dagger being very similar to and completely outclassed by Avarice.
(Kusanagi has both better damage and better true range than Katsuri and Monos)
(This is extremely small but there’s already a waki called Amaterasu now lol)
3 - The Egg Prism is a very fun idea but it would probably fit the upcoming Summoner class better, Trickster’s already powerful and versatile enough as is.
4 - I think we already have enough group buffs as is in the current steamroll meta, Elixir of the Gods might have a very long cooldown but it’s still free and i can definitively see large groups becoming even more OP by using multiple at different intervals, a change that could combat this is that it could be made either a stronger but more common one use consumable (even stronger if made for yourself only), or an unlimited use consumable, for yourself only, but with a downside, making it an item for yourself only in general makes it more realistic to implement, as the whole idea of all classes being able to use a group buff for free is kinda awkward balance-wise to begin with so it probably shouldn’t exist.
5 - When the formula for exponential HP scaling is revealed you should probably add it here.
I have a question, has Deca ever mentioned or taken notice/interest of this idea? Seriously, it surpasses even Sanctuary imo, just needs a little bit of changes.
XBookwyrmX
#45
I’m pretty sure that they’re aware of this and several other dungeons (and… er… Realm?) that have floated around, even some of those ideas still not on (and may never achieve) Best of the Best. A few of our DECA employees were regular players like us once upon a time, and had more time to browse this place for fun!
It might be more that other company visions/too many things to change are an issue. I mean, if read the original LH document, it’s age shows. And look how much it got changed by the time it hit production.
XBookwyrmX
#47
Lol yeah, that made me raise my eyebrow. I wonder if Sturky’s been bursting with excitement or not 
Or they threw us off intentionally haha
Megayeah
#48
They were talking about Ancient Ruins i’m pretty sure, Sky Sanctuary is a gargantuan project and i don’t think they’re anywhere near being able to implement it yet without cutting alot of things unless they hid it very well for a very long time (longer than Oryx’s Sanctuary has been in development)
I said sturific
Sturky
#51
Honest question, why shouldn’t raid content be hard to access? Why shouldn’t you have to group up with people in order to attempt, and have a likelyhood of beating the content? This is an MMO, after all. Being able to run raid content nonstop feels counter intuitive to what it’s supposed to be.
While I’m keen to agree, I don’t think there’s a particular reason to keep going back to this year old document just for the sake of keeping the items up to date with what Prod’s doing. I kept it updated for a while, but I’m not gonna do that forever. Plus, there’s not much of a reason to adjust it, when a lot of endgame items are blatantly outclassed by Sanctuary UTs already, so that doesn’t make Sky Sanctuary very different.
I’m going to be honest, I quite frankly didn’t put much thought into balancing Overclocked, and by extension, the Elixir of the Gods. I more than admit that the thing would be absurd on prod, but this is just a document. And as I said before, I’m not too keen on updating it more.
That was specifically designed for Oryx’s Sanctuary, since it’s the pinnacle of endgame content. Sky Sanctuary sits at a Halls level, and thus would remain using standard scaling.
I’m glad to see this thread getting some life again with its new Best of the Best status, though. Cheers. 
Megayeah
#52
They’ve said before they want to replace standard scaling with exponential scaling for all content
What you’re describing here is exactly what people hate about Lost Halls and the current rune system, i don’t wanna go into a super indepth discussion but designing your content specifically only to be “raided” is honestly the worst design choice you can possibly make in the current state of RotMG, and it’s something the developers themselves want to address:
This combined with exponential scaling to encourage more random and/or small groups makes the devs’ current stance clear, they absolutely do see the existence of “raid-only” content as a problem, that resulted from a genuine mistake in design.
While the Dragon God Draconis fight is absolutely an excellent idea, it also suffers from even more “raid exclusivity” syndrome than even Void Entity, there’s pretty much 0 chance public groups would ever do it the way you made the access method right now, you could atleast reconsider the way you access it to be more reliable without having to enter the same tedious, monotonous discord raid grind over and over again that many people are getting sick and tired of. And honestly trying to push endgame further and further in that direction will just make people quit.
Sturky
#55
If Deca wants to push the game away from raid styled content, then there’s quite frankly not much to say. In the purely hypothetical scenario that Draconis would go to prod, he’d have to be adjusted to be more casual friendly. that’s all there is to it.
Megayeah
#56
“Casual friendly” is honestly not a good way to word content that isn’t raid only, it might not be a popular opinion to say this but it actually takes far less skill to do endgame content in a discord than out of one because of the free access with keys, and all the buffs and healing you get, it’s not really the difficulty of a fight that is tla problem per-se but the way you access being grindy enough you only realistically get enough tries with a discord. It’s the same sort of deal with Void Entity, it’s very time consuming to get a vial and just the sheer length of the dungeon and the existence of more efficient discords, makes it near impossible to convince a public group to stay atm.
I do hope Draconis (along with this entire doc in general) make it to prod eventually, the bosses, mechanics, item ideas, almost all of it is genius, all i was pointing out is the details of how you get to Draconis specifically being problematic, but i guess they probably would change the ideas in the doc overall atleast a little if added. The whole Gem idea doesn’t mesh too well with the direction they seem to want.
Orsome
#57
I think the only issue with such content is a lack of party system or similar within the game itself.
Not that I think grouping up is bad. I just feel like there should be an actual feature within rotmg that lets you group up with others rather than having to wait in a discord call. Additionally unless you have a key it can become difficult to get everyone into the same dungeon, something that discord servers specialise in since halls runs pretty much always have a key.
Also there’s the obsession with pros soloing hard content (which should absolutely at least be possible but not easily achieved) I suppose.
Sturky
#58
So remember how I said I wouldn’t update this anymore cause it had been so long?
I lied. I lied straight to your face.
Behold the Vital Combat update of this document. Sporting everything it has to offer in the main game. Reduced dungeon enemy health, adaptive scaling formulas ( with example health values for 30 and 65 player groups. ), reduced status effect duration / corrected status effect duration for the 0.2s tick rate of the game, buffs to the Dreamer’s Poniard and Cosmic Perforator for their weapon buffs, the Solar Regalia being properly balanced for Vital Combat, and Exaltation bonuses added to Megunir, Solannos, and Draconis. Nothing for Shando, because three exaltations in one dungeon run would be stupid.
Note however that besides the Poniard, Perforator, and Regalia, I didn’t update any of the items. If I’m willing to adjust any of them in the future to account for the newly added content, then I will. But I won’t make any promises.
Anyway, I honestly, truly don’t know why I did this. But I did it. So uh, enjoy it, I guess?
XBookwyrmX
#59
Such dedication, such bravado! Hopefully doing these kinds of things are stress relieving rather than stress inducing. That would justify the project more.
AnxietyX
#61
Sorc and Necro will insanely benefit from the robe, lots of vit loss isn’t enough, sorc has 75 vit ( -20 with robe ) 55, necro mostly relies on its ability for heals and its got 40 vit ( -20 )
Lots of vit loss isn’t enough, could be like the parasite chambers were you gain lots of other stats except HP, and vit. So you can maybe add a drop in health? 50, 60?
( Sorry I didn’t really read any updates or something but I read the doc )