wow Blizzard Talks About Delves in the War Within

[Staff 1,489]

In the latest blue post, Blizzard talks about delves, specifically seasonal progression, death counter, and a mysterious secret 13th delve that won't be available for testing on the Beta!

(Source)

Hello everyone, welcome to the start of Delves end game testing on the realm, “These Go To Eleven”!

We’re very excited to have people come in and see what we have in store for our endgame difficulty.

We wanted to start things off with a layout of what we currently have, what we’re planning next, and our goals behind these decisions.

Before Season 1 begins in The War Within players will have access to Tiers 1, 2, and 3 difficulty in delves. We expect players who have been keeping up with the current season will prefer tiers 2 and 3, while newer players will begin in tier 1 before graduating up to 2 and eventually 3 when they gear up.

When Season 1 begins we will open up tiers 4 through 11 along with introducing a few mechanics in tiers 4 and above: seasonal progression, death counters, and Zekvir’s Influence.

Seasonal Progression

Seasonal progress can be obtained from any delve when the season begins. Playing at higher tiers will reward more progress, but players will still be able to complete the season at lower tiers.

We want players to be able to find the difficulty that they enjoy and focus on that without feeling that they need to push higher to complete the seasonal track.

Tiers 9-11 are planned to have a higher difficulty curve as we do not plan on giving out increased power rewards there. They will give out gear at the equivalent of a Tier 8 delve. We’re doing this so we can tune these delves to be particularly difficult without creating the assumption that all players should strive to hit tier 11.

Death Counter

In Tiers 4 and above players will start with a pool of lives. When you release after dying the counter will lower. Players who reach zero lives can still finish delves, but they will miss out on bonus rewards like cosmetics and unlocking the next tier of difficulty. Every death that happens after you reach zero lives while fighting a boss will grant players a small buff to help them with the final boss fight.

Our goal with the death counter is to give players a barometer to measure their success in a delve without being overly penalizing.

Zekvir’s Influence

We have our mysterious 13th delve that we will not be releasing to test during the beta. This includes its inhabitant, Zekvir, the Hand of the Harbinger. However, Zekvir will prove to be a threat throughout delves even if he isn’t physically there.

Random groups of enemies will receive various boons from Zekvir. As you go higher in tiers, more groups will be chosen and the boons will increase in their difficulty. Players who are able to defeat these empowered groups will earn increased seasonal progress at the end of the delve.

Our design behind Zekvir’s Influence is to add more challenges in higher tiers beyond, “number go up”. We want to differentiate this from the affix system in Mythic +, which is why this only impacts some groups in a delve as opposed to all of them.

What’s Next?

On the realm, “These Go To Eleven”, you’ll find a helpful Zandelvari in Stormwind and Orgrimmar who will port you to specific delves. You can also unlock all of Brann Bronzebeard’s curios at rank 1 and set his level to be 10.

Our immediate plans for the beta update after this will be improving the messaging of Zekvir’s Influence, both from who is being impacted by it and how much I am being rewarded for this. We are actively working on this, so expect some more fun things in next week’s update for this.

There will be ongoing balance tuning for the classes and Brann’s abilities as well. Are some tiers too hard for a class? Is tier 11 too easy? Let’s find out!

We’re looking forward to everyone’s feedback. Welcome to the endgame of Delves!