New Feature: The Labyrinth - Started December 6th 2023 at live

[430i]

Huh, did the labyrinth reset again? I thought it was supposed to last 48h starting from yesterday?

[Der DinX]

As others already have mentioned, I think this should be also balanced much better.

In a Labyrinth I have to find my way and choose from the most profitable options, may it be shortest way or best rewards.

But putting the good stuff most of the players will go for (except for DvDivXXX 😁 ) all together at the End, so one could get only one or two instead of five, feels a bit silly.

[Horsting]

From now on every 48h.

[DvDivXXX]

1 hour ago, Horsting said:

From now on every 48h.

Okay. So, today we still get one, but tomorrow will be the first day off for the feature. Well, first day off from resetting, that is. I don't want to scare anybody into thinking they don't have two days to do this one (if they so choose).

[CuminJutsu6]

Oh its back to two days again, the daily currency from it were useful to me having to claw my mojo back up after a hiatus. I wonder if they'll buff the lab coin gains since its 2 days again.

[EpicBacon]

I just got an incredible stupid run.
The laby just kept offering me damage relics, along with some critical damage increases too.
The total damage increase for all girls are 37%, and with the domi only bonuses another 18%.
This means my entire midrow and 1/2 of my backrow had a damage increase of 55%
40% extra crit damage is also not bad, and housemaid picked up another 80% for herself.
I am using Sake for her healing, but this team had so much damage, she was not able to get the heal off in time;
the only time the battle lasted enough rounds was against the bosses.
Speaking of Critical; Housemaid oneshotted one of the midrows of the final boss with a 460.000 critical hit.
The game even threw in a Finish move, its only the epic one, at 6%, but It did go off atleast two times.

Dumb... just dumb.

[bolitho76]

Some official from Luna Kinkoid at Discord to the 24h/48h thing with Labyrinth:

[Rylarth]

whats next improvement to the Labyrinth going to be 1Coin each two days and Price increase of 1Gazillion Labyrinth coins for each Girl i think Kinkoid Should consider that most times when a gaming Developer gets to stingy on the rewards it will most times Lead to their Playerbase/ Customers being more stingy with their wallets which can sometimes Lead to bankruptcy for most business if a gaming developer cant understand the reason for why most gamers play Games that means they dont understand their Customers needs and wants and honestly if you dont understand your Customers you are just a failure as a company thats just basic Facts😒

[SamRei]

We at KK have seen you seem to enjoy the new Lab part of the game, that was not our intention, we didn't want to bring you joy, so we reduce the output of it....

[garadron]

One possible strat that came to my mind is to buy at least 10 out of every girl in the current SE market, then buy shards for her in Lab up to at least 40 and then complete her through SM 🤔

[mdnoria]

il y a 37 minutes, garadron a dit :

One possible strat that came to my mind is to buy at least 10 out of every girl in the current SE market

I'm thinking the same to open them up for the future, like I'm doing now for SM with LD for exemple.

Long term investment in a way.

[DvDivXXX]

@430i and I discussed this earlier today in this very thread. I've since had the opportunity to confirm this works (as of now at least, but again I don't think asking about this would be a good idea).

I bought 20 shards of Captain Piper using Sapphires, and now she appeared in my Lab Shop, and I've bought the next 20 shards with my Laby coins.

Spoiler

Now she's at 40% for me, so I'll be able to complete her eventually, using either SM Coins or Labby Coins.

Considering how limited all three of these currencies are, it will be a very slow process for each girl (and even more so the more girls I queue up this way; she just joined Fae Finalmecia who's already at 40% thanks to HA last month). But it's a whole lot better than these girls staying out of my reach forever.

Sapphires are currently the hardest to come by out of the three currencies, and they're also the only time-sensitive of the three. I can take my sweet sweet time completing these past paywall girls once I have at least started collecting shards for them. But my window of opportunity to open this option is only one month for each past girl I'm missing from any ME with a Sapphire Market. With this in mind, I'll focus on grabbing some Melodic Amelia shards next.

---

To those complaining about the move to 48-hour runs, I'll just quote myself from the Patch Notes thread:  

4 hours ago, DvDivXXX said:

The feature was always meant to have 48-hour runs, right from the announcement when it went to TS for the first time.

The double pace was basically a good will gesture (more fun for those of us who enjoy the feature itself, more freebies for everyone willing to play it) slash extended beta-testing and feedback collecting from the live player base. And it lasted a bit longer than initially planned.

As much as I love this adorable mini dungeon run lite within HH, I don't think having a run to make every single day would be a good thing for most players in the long run.

I'd still love the option to make free runs without any rewards just for training, testing out strategies and having fun when I feel like it, though. And they might consider increasing the coin drops a bit (or adjusting the price tags down in the coin shop), as others have pointed out.

But double rewards (and also double tasks) permanently would just be too much. It could lead to both player fatigue and a bit of imbalance in the game's economy in the long run.

[garadron]

Sorry, I missed that part of the thread 😅

I wonder how many shards are needed for girls to show up in Lab's market. Thanks to @DvDivXXXwe know 20 are enough. I wonder if having 10 shards would work as well? Although 20 is probably the best, because then you get another 20 from Lab and the girl can then show up in SM

[mdnoria]

The answer is in the previous page

[XXDongXX]

i must admit i am a bit lazy, so if there already is a list of currently bugged or not working as intended(or better said as described ingame) relics/mechanics in the laby just point me to it. But the thread is already 9 pages long and i did not find somethink like it here while skip reading.  
So if anyone could provide such a list and also maybe pin it on top of the thread, it would be very usefull, if the laby gets harder someday.
Right now for me its just auto selecting the girls, put 2 tanks in front 5 dds to the other spots. One heal in the backline but most of the time fights don't last long enough to trigger the heal.   
Relic wise i choose dps and healing relics over anything else and relics that work for the hole team over relics that only boost specific girls. For progressing though the Laby i try to choose red or yellow enemies because they give better rewards and collect as much coins as possible .

For girls choice i think it would be wise to make sure to have enough tanks, i rarely loose dps girls but always loose some tanks. And execpt for lvl3 Boss fights i don't loose backline girls, so if i ever have to take a relic, that only boost one girl(because the other two are even more crappy) i put that girl on a backline spot. 

[DvDivXXX]

2 hours ago, XXDongXX said:

So if anyone could provide such a list and also maybe pin it on top of the thread, it would be very usefull, if the laby gets harder someday.

Sorry, I can't point to a specific post or page right now, but if you search the thread for posts by @Horsting, you should find what you're looking for. He's definitely the Lab specialist over here, especially in terms of mechanics and bugs.

Off the top of my head though:

1. "Tanks" (HC) currently don't really tank due to some bug. "Mages" (CH) are actually tankier than them, on top of increasing Speed and/or Mana or something else. So basically, if you don't autoselect the 70 girls, don't pick any HC girl. There are just two classes to consider right now: KH ("Damage Dealers") as your DPS, and CH as your Tanks.
    
2. Some relics not only don't give the benefit they're supposed to, but actually give a negative effect instead. "Protective Bubble" especially, never pick that one.
    
3. If you autoselect your 70 girls, you end up with a ton of HC girls (and again, as of this writing, you need exactly none) and very few or even no CH girls (which you do need). On top of that, if you start selecting girls manually, you MUST go all the way: clicking on "Autoselect" when you're for instance at 50/70 will NOT complete your list by picking 20 more girls (as I would have expected): instead it will replace your selection with 70 autopicks. And you can't autoselect first and then remove and add individual girls: you can only click on autoselect again to go back to 0/70.
   
   TL;DR: I know it's not ideal but currently I recommend selecting your 70 girls manually (about 10-20 KH for your DPS, with a large margin as you rarely need a lot more than 5, and 50-60 CH for your disposable tanks).

That's all that comes to mind.

[Horsting]

37 minutes ago, DvDivXXX said:

On top of that, if you start selecting girls manually, you MUST go all the way: clicking on "Autoselect" when you're for instance at 50/70 will NOT complete your list by picking 20 more girls (as I would have expected): instead it will replace your selection with 70 autopicks. And you can't autoselect first and then remove and add individual girls: you can only click on autoselect again to go back to 0/70.

This can be solved by installing Rena's battle simulator, which also adds ego to the girls' toolips in Laby, as well as class batches and numbers which show in which order girls will attack. All very useful!

Just to add to the list of Div:

• Of course e.g. a L5 HC girl can be still a better tank than a C5 or L3 CH girl, so if your Harem is not too large, auto-select could still be the way to go. But indeed, since 1 defence saves 2 ego on each attack, the higher defence of an otherwise equal (rarity/level/stars) CH girl weights much more than the higher ego of a HC girl.
• The "Defeat Medication" relic is currently required only once, since it is still (positively) bugged that girls are healed by 100%. So a second such relic does not give any benefit.
• No one saw the curse/buff relics, which curse/buff a single girl at the start of the battle, having any effect yet. There is no indication that they are effective, and at least no one verified that there is indeed one girl affected, which is also a little difficult. Since they are quite weak also on the paper (IMO), I would not choose them either if you have any alternative.

However, all this is not too relevant with the current low difficulty. And we can only hope that these bugs are fixed before any new difficulty is opened. I want to push this a little via discord, but I am still stuck in an endless CAPTCHA loop, unable to create a new account, while at the same time, I can login with an existing account (I cannot use for HH) without problems 😒.

Edited December 15, 2023 by Horsting

[bolitho76]

From the Discord feedback channel:

[DvDivXXX]

8 hours ago, Horsting said:

This can be solved by installing Rena's battle simulator

Thanks for letting me know! I am using Rena's script already, and I've noticed and cherish the added tool tips, and especially the numbers on the girls for the order in which they will attack. I wasn't aware his recent update(s) for Labyrinth also fixed the autoselect stuff, though. My bad experience with the autoselect must have been a few days before he added thjat, and I hadn't dared using it again since.

1 hour ago, bolitho76 said:

From the Discord feedback channel:

Sounds good. I'm all for entirely optional and cosmetic leaderboards (as we already have for a lot of things in the game: Season, PoV, PoG etc.). It's the best of both worlds: those who just love to see their name high on the list and monitor their performances and achievements can do so at will (as is also the case in most rogue-lite games, so it makes even more sense for Labyrinth). Meanwhile, those who don't care for a leaderboard in and of itself can simply ignore it (as I've been doing so far, except when I want to get a clue about the feature itself from it, usually for Pantheon).

We still don't know if it will be a choice of difficulty for the one run per cycle or if we'll have the option to play one run per difficulty per cycle (or at least cancel a hard run and do an easy one instead if we're stuck). Other than that, this is promising and this feature remains the most fun addition to the game mechanically in ages as far as I'm concerned. I'm glad a majority of players seem to enjoy it too! <3

[EpicBacon]

29 minutes ago, DvDivXXX said:

We still don't know if it will be a choice of difficulty for the one run per cycle or if we'll have the option to play one run per difficulty per cycle (or at least cancel a hard run and do an easy one instead if we're stuck). Other than that, this is promising and this feature remains the most fun addition to the game mechanically in ages as far as I'm concerned. I'm glad a majority of players seem to enjoy it too! ❤️

The easiest way to solve this if its only one run per cycle, is to lock in the rewards for each node you complete.
So lets say you start at hard mode, but can only make it to the first node on floor2, then you start again on medium mode. Any of the nodes you did previously on the harder difficulty does not give you any rewards, and only only get stuff once you make it past the node you failed on the previous run.

If they do it this way, you'll make sure that people cannot simply get to the boss at 3rd floor in hard, give up, and do a run in medium, get all the rewards, and again on the boss, just stop the run and make another run on easy with even more rewards.

If they plan on giving us 3 runs each day, Easy/Med/Hard, then the rewards for Laby will need to be changed up.
3 full runs with all the rewards we have now would just warp the economy, and make sure that people who don't play too seriously and not planning on playing the harder modes be left even more behind.

I hate to say it, but maybe adding some other laby currency, tickets to use on a laby only roulette wheel or something.

[EpicBacon]

I see your thinking emote, and I understand, I hate gimmicky event resources.
But if we're going to have 3 difficulties of the laby to be run each cycle, then it might be the best option as the current reward structure would not work.

Hence why I think it will be an option to choose the difficulty and then you get 1 run of your chosen difficulty that cycle.

Edited December 15, 2023 by EpicBacon
Formatting

[Horsting]

3 hours ago, DvDivXXX said:

I wasn't aware his recent update(s) for Labyrinth also fixed the autoselect stuff, though. My bad experience with the autoselect must have been a few days before he added thjat, and I hadn't dared using it again since.

That is fixed by Rena's script, not by the game (unless I missed something). Rosso seems to have extreme selective perception regarding the good feedback and high voted extended Labyrinth. I see it coming, no bugs fixed, but new features added, along more bugs. Can ALL the players on Discord please make them pretty clear that they shall NOT work on any other difficulty or the large number of ideas they have to extend the Labyrinth before not ALL the bugs that have been reported all over the place have been fixed? I am still not able to create a Discord account, otherwise I would make noise there. If anyone knows how to avoid the CAPTCHA loop, please tell me.

[DvDivXXX]

21 minutes ago, EpicBacon said:

I see your thinking emote, and I understand, I hate gimmicky event resources.
But if we're going to have 3 difficulties of the laby to be run each cycle, then it might be the best option as the current reward structure would not work.

Hence why I think it will be an option to choose the difficulty and then you get 1 run of that that cycle.

Well, it would be two separate things, in my mind at least (otherwise it would be broken indeed).

1. If we can make one run of each difficulty per 48-hour* cycle, then it would be ONLY one of each.
    
2. If we get the ability to cancel a run we've started, it would also be only ONCE (or once for each difficulty). This would allow someone to try say Hard, find out they can't do it, and cancel so they don't stay stuck. The Hard difficulty would then be grayed out for the rest of that particular 48-hour cycle. And so on.

These two conditions should prevent any abuse one way or the other.

About warping the economy, even if we're allowed to make up to 3 runs per 48-hour cycle (one of each difficulty), I don't think this would likely be the case. The higher difficulties are expected to be much harder to tackle than the Easy one we currently have (and let's not forget even the Easy mode we currently have is intended to be harder than it is right now, as it's been dumbed down temporarily due to bugs, and until these bugs get fixed). It would in essence be similar to Leagues in that most players should be able to make one successful run in Easy mode each cycle, but only dedicated players in the mid to late game would also be able to defeat it in Medium, and only the toughest and most resilient of the hardcore veterans would be able to more or less consistently beat it in Hard as well. At least, that's how I envision it.

As for adding even more in-game currencies to balance something that can easily be fine-tuned without the need to add one, I would really rather not go that route. If the difficulty of the higher modes isn't enough to prevent everyone and their cousin from beating them routinely, then I'd rather go with just one full run per cycle, at the difficulty of our choice.

The option to cancel a run I'm suggesting solely to prevent people from getting stuck and missing out on a run, or even being too scared to try higher difficulties knowing they might get stuck that way. But again, to prevent abuse, it should be a one-time thing.

I see your point about locking individual nodes even with this in mind, though, to avoid someone basically cheating out almost 2 full extra runs they'd then cancel on top of the 1 run they'd actually complete. I just don't think it would be all that simple for devs to implement and maintain.

Ideally, I'd rather have all rewards earned throughout a given run being stored until you actually complete the run, rather than credited immediately as we win any individual fight as is currently the case. This way, you'd have to complete the run and then you'd get all of the rewards earned throughout that run all at once when you defeat the final boss. With this simple change, when you cancel a run, you'd get nothing, so no abuse would be possible. You'd only be able to get the rewards once, for the one run you actually complete (or for up to three, once for each difficulty, if they go with my idea of allowing us one run per difficulty for each 48-hour cycle). This would be clear and I think easier for devs to tweak. It would also give us more control in when we need our rewards (especially Fists and Kisses) whereas in the current system if we don't want to go over our storage limits, we need to monitor them during the run.

--------  

8 minutes ago, Horsting said:

That is fixed by Rena's script, not by the game

I think we simply misunderstood each other, there. I know it's from Rena's script, it's just that it's a recent addition to that script, and I had already been burned by the game with the Autoselect before the script was changed to prevent that. And before you pointed it out, I didn't know Rena had added that.

10 minutes ago, Horsting said:

Can ALL the players on Discord please make them pretty clear that they shall NOT work on any other difficulty or the large number of ideas they have to extend the Labyrinth before not ALL the bugs that have been reported all over the place have been fixed?

It's admirable and endearing that you have such dedication, but it also saddens me a bit, knowing that on this particular topic, it's wasted. I've seen enough chats between Sandman  and our more tech-savvy mods to know that it's more or less policy and also an economical and practical solution for Kinkoid to release stuff they know will need tweaking and probably still has bugs or other issues, and then fix it on the fly, rather than trying to make everything flawless before release. Because they get a lot more feedback and essentially a lot more case studies and (sometimes unwilling) testers this way, with the entire player base, than they do on the TS even with all the dedicated and tech-savvy folks such as yourself willing to help. They basically only refrain from releasing a new feature or remove one shortly after release if it literally breaks the game.

Edited December 15, 2023 by DvDivXXX
updated

[EpicBacon]

21 minutes ago, DvDivXXX said:

 Because they get a lot more feedback and essentially a lot more case studies and (sometimes unwilling) testers this way, with the entire player base, than they do on the TS even with all the dedicated and tech-savvy folks such as yourself willing to help. They basically only refrain from releasing a new feature or remove one shortly after release if it literally breaks the game.

And this is why its so strange that they lock the laby for 48 hours.
Give me the chance to do a couple runs each day; and collect the data from that.
This way you can look at the data, find the biggest bugs, and sort them out.
Its basically outsourcing testing to the playerbase, they get way more data this way, and it looks a lot better
if they fix a bug or two each cycle, as it creates the perception that they really want to get this to work
and make it feature complete.

18 hours ago, SamRei said:

We at KK have seen you seem to enjoy the new Lab part of the game, that was not our intention, we didn't want to bring you joy, so we reduce the output of it....

This sums up my thoughts completely. I am having fun with laby, don't restrict my fun.
And if you can use the data from my fun runs to balance and fix laby, even better.

Laby was a highly requested feature, and for many it was the thing they were holding out for.
I am willing to die on this hill, please make it a hill worth dying for

[Horsting]

1 hour ago, DvDivXXX said:

Because they get a lot more feedback and essentially a lot more case studies and (sometimes unwilling) testers this way, with the entire player base, than they do on the TS even with all the dedicated and tech-savvy folks such as yourself willing to help.

Sure, but what I am complaining about is that they even ignore the bugs which were found and reported by those who tested on test server before release, reported all over etc. I know you did not want to defend KK's practice, but I just want to make that point clear: Since there is a test server, a forum with test server bug report thread, a Discord channel for this (even that it is limited etc), it is damn standard to let the dedicated (and/or selected) players test it first, listen to their feedback and bug reports, fix those on test server, THEN merge it into live servers to get feedback and in case bug reports from the full player base, which should then be very limited. 90% of the bugs were all known and reported before release.

Furthermore, if KK would start to announce features on test server, invite for testing and actively react and fix bugs reported there, I am pretty sure this would be used more, covering a larger player/system base, making it even more valuable. The fact that it is completely ignored of course does not motivate anyone to invest time on test server at all. I am extremely pissed to have invested even a second on test server for nothing.