Weather’s officially landed in IdleMMO.
We've added weather to make the world feel a bit more alive, with things shifting based on both the current weather and the season. Sometimes that works in your favour, sometimes it doesn’t, depending on how rough the conditions are.
For example, clear weather gives you a nice +10% hunting efficiency boost. On the flip side, something like a storm will hit you with -15% efficiency. But since it’s tougher, you’ll get a +35% experience bonus while hunting in those conditions. Efficiency is additive too, so you can offset some of the negatives with things like potions.
Weather isn’t global either. It changes depending on where you are, based on the area’s geography and the current season. So places like Skyreach Peak will be heavy on snow in winter, but ease up a bit in summer. Seasons follow real-world northern hemisphere dates, so winter runs from December through to the end of February, and so on.
It also affects which enemies you run into. Some creatures show up more often in certain weather, while others become harder to find. You can check exactly how each enemy reacts by looking them up in-game.
We have 9 weather types:
This is just the start as well. The weather system is going to tie into more parts of the game over time, and it lays the groundwork for farming, which is on the way.
When hunting, you now have a small chance to find loot dropped by enemies. The rates are a bit on the lower side for now, but we’ll keep an eye on it and adjust things if it feels too stingy.
We’ve reworked power hunting to feel a lot more engaging in short bursts, rather than something you have to grind through for ages. Before, it could feel a bit of a chore, especially since it was available often enough that skipping it felt like you were missing out.
Now it’s spaced out much more, and when you do jump in, it’s quicker, more interactive, and done in a few minutes.
Heres a quick breakdown:
Enemies show up roughly every second, so there’s a steady flow while you’re in it. Power hunting lasts up to 5 minutes, depending on your hunting mastery, so it’s short and focused. The experience from hunting mastery has been increased, now ranging from 4 to 25 instead of 1 to 15. On top of that, you can only do power hunting once every 10 to 12 hours, depending on your membership.
Because enemies appear faster and the experience has been bumped up, the overall rewards are significantly higher. It’s now something you can dip into, grab a solid chunk of experience, and move on without it taking over your play session.
We’ll keep monitoring how this feels and make further adjustments if needed. If it still feels like a grind despite it being shorter or just isn’t engaging, we’ll take a step back and rethink it.
We’ve made a big update to the referral system.
Now, when you refer someone and they get membership for the first time, both of you will receive 2,500 shards each. This includes membership obtained entirely through in-game gold.
We’re putting a bit more focus on guild weapons, as the uptake has been a little lower than expected.
To help with that, we’ve removed the guild mark cost entirely when building weapons. It should make them much more accessible and easier to get into.
We’ll keep an eye on how this plays out and make further adjustments if needed.
We're aware the wiki has fell behind in the last few updates and, as it stands, it remains outdated. We will take some time in the near future to make sure everything is up to date, including adding more detailed information about weather.
World bosses now take significantly longer to respawn after being defeated. For example, Isadora now respawns every 8 hours instead of every 2 hours.
To match that, loot rates have been increased so each successful battle feels more rewarding. As a general rule, longer respawn times now come with better rewards, though not every drop has been adjusted in a strict one-to-one way. For example, the Wrex Egg has increased from 3% to 8.7%.
The main goal of this change is to make world bosses feel much less demanding, especially for more casual players. The shorter timers made it easy to feel like you had to keep checking in or risk missing out. With longer gaps between spawns and stronger rewards per boss, it should feel much easier to join in without needing to track every spawn throughout the day.
These changes only apply to the core world bosses. Seasonal bosses haven’t been adjusted yet, though we may revisit them before the next seasonal campaign.
We’ve also increased the time it takes to defeat a world boss. The original pacing was set much earlier in the game’s lifecycle, and it no longer lines up with the slower direction the game has moved towards over the past year.
Please Note Because of the above changes, if you've built a world boss timer that relies purely on calculating spawn times, you'll need to switch over to the public API. It's no longer possible to accurately predict exact world boss timings through calculation alone.
We've reduced the battle time cap to 3 seconds and adjusted the battle formula.
This is something we’ve been meaning to tackle for a while, and we’ve taken the opportunity to do it alongside some of the recent quality-of-life work. We’ve reworked battle pacing so stronger characters can actually feel stronger again, without hitting that old hard 8-second cap. Before, once you got fast enough, everything just flattened out at 8 seconds and stopped feeling meaningful. Now, battle times scale down more naturally. You’ll still need strong stats to see the biggest gains, but progression at the high end should feel a lot smoother and more rewarding. At the same time, the fastest battles are still kept in check so the overall combat system stays stable.
Alongside that, we’ve slightly reduced hunting rates for both characters and pets. Pets have taken a bit more of a hit here, mainly because they can stack and gather enemies at the same time. This is to control the increased battle efficiency which affects areas like loot generation, conquest progress, and overall combat progression.
It’s also worth noting that there will be a small window where, under very specific circumstances, battles may be slightly slower than before the update. For most players who were previously hitting the 8-second cap though, battles should now feel noticeably faster.
We’re treating this as a trial until the end of the current guild season on 7th May. At that point, we’ll review it properly and decide whether to revert and go back to the drawing board, or keep it in place. So for now, it’s best to treat this as a limited-time test while we assess how it performs and decide on the right long-term direction.
We’ll be keeping a close eye on how things settle over the next few weeks, and we may make further adjustments if needed. This may include changes to the battle formula, loot, and hunting rates. Our ultimate goal is to move away from the 8-second cap and give stats and items more meaning, while making sure we don’t accidentally flood the game with too much new loot and causing wider issues.
If you haven't noticed yet, we're holding a huge giveaway in the tavern. 40 winners!
That’s a total of 40 individual winners. Each user can only win once (regardless of character).
Simply make a post or reply anywhere in the tavern. That's it.
Every post or reply increases your chances of winning. Posts flagged as spam will not be counted. Posts in the game category also will not count. We use an internal spam scoring system, and any post below a certain threshold will be excluded. So don't be clever and try to game the system. Any attempts to do so will result in your entry being disqualified and a mute from the tavern.
See the tavern post in General for more information.
With some character names becoming available soon due to the recent cleanup of older accounts, we want to clarify our stance on character name squatting. Creating or claiming character names in bad faith won't be tolerated. This includes taking names of well-known characters with the sole intention of selling them on for gold or items.
* For clarity, when we refer to profitability, we are specifically talking about the amount of gold generated by selling items to the vendor. This does not include the value or profit of items when they are sold or traded between players.
More
For more detail on the rationale behind these changes and our overall approach, please refer to our full blog post: https://www.galahadcreative.com/blog/idlemmo-economic-changes/
Tavern Improvements
More
To prevent issues or edge cases in the market, we have cleared the market and returned the adjusted items to the sellers inventory.
Coming Soon This is not the only balancing change planned. We still have further adjustments coming for dungeons and tools, and may also review and adjust other areas of the game, such as alchemy items, further down the line. Additional planned changes will be rolled out shortly after this update.
We’re introducing an account cleanup to remove inactive and low-progress accounts from the game.
Registered accounts will be notified by email and will have 21 days from the notice to log in and reactivate their account. We expect this process to remove a large number of old accounts. As a result, many previously used usernames will become available again.
More
Seasonal battles have been scheduled. Throw eggs at members of the opposing teams to obtain points for your team.
Quick Recap:
View the wiki page here for a more detailed breakdown: https://wiki.idle-mmo.com/campaigns/seasonal-contest