TOPIC: Safehold I and Mythic Token Ideas

Hello Jeff,
I will do my best to respond point by point to your ideas. Thank you in advance for taking the time to share them with us. I'll try to approach this from a lens of game design principles which will undoubtedly be mixed in with my own idea of fun.

Jeff Martin wrote: 1) I want to create the "Mythic" level of Difficulty Rating that will take the place of the “Epic” DR. We will make it more difficult than even the current Epic DR, and we will produce “Mythic” Survivor buttons. We will phase out the old Nightmare level Survivor buttons. Thus, you can gain Survivor buttons for playing on either Normal or Mythic DR. So, we will have Non-Lethal, Normal, Nightmare and Mythic DR, but only Normal and Mythic give out Survivor buttons.

There a few points in here so I'll try to isolate them.
Epic being renamed to Mythic: A rename doesn't matter much, however a loss of tiers of difficulty removes the ability to fix the large gaps between the tiers. From my perspective as a player there was a huge gap between hardcore and nightmare. Where we were stuck stumping hardcore for a while before we could reliably get to room 7 on nightmare. From my perspective of a volunteer, many of our nightmare groups are actually geared towards epic and just stomp through nightmare cause they want their pins. There is an opportunity to have a more gradual difficulty ramp with a new difficulty to alleviate this problem

In short, no problem with this in a vacuum, but we do miss a chance to fix an existing problem.

No nightmare survivor buttons: This is gonna get to some game psychology. While still obtainable, this will be viewed as taking away a thing players previously had access to. You have raised the tier for an existing reward in a collectable game, which means this could be seen as a greedy grab to force more investment. (This is not saying this is mind you, I am just parroting player perceptions I've seen in TCG circles). Additionally, its shifting the reward structure to not reward partial investment in the game, which is something I personally find dissatisfying.

I'd advise keeping the nightmare survivor pins as is, especially since its a mid tier reward for going partway up the collector's ladder.

Mythic Survivor Reward: This is a good idea, but I think it should be different than Nightmare's. It should be special, simple, and most of all, feel mythic! I suggest two things:
One, the mythic survivor reward should be given to all players of a successful run (final room puzzle solved or final boss defeated). This will reward team play and heroic sacrifices. Plus Mythic play has to be a planned group, and getting a second shot would be very hard in an event.
Two, the mythic survivor reward should be a unique marble backed token (or other unique color). This token should NO stat effects, it should be a reward like the "thank you" token. Each year should end with a special transmutes that use the Mythic Survivor Tokens. My idea right now there is 3 transmutes.

These give no stat bonuses
1 Mythic Survivor: = Status token "Warrior of Cravenwood"
(Half Events)x Mythic Survivor Token = Status token "Guardian of Cravenwood"
(All events)x Mythic Survivor Token = Status token "Hero of Cravenwood"
This gives a new tier to chase, keeps the manufacturing simple and gives us something cool to put in the level 10 medallion.

Jeff Martin wrote: 2) The Mythic tokens (which can only be made with Mythic Transmuter tokens gained with a Safehold I token) should not be class-specific tokens as we already have some at the Neck-slot. Let’s make these more applicable to multiple classes.

No issues here, this is a good idea IMO.

Jeff Martin wrote: 3) The powers of the Mythic tokens should roughly double those powers of Legendary tokens, but they should cost about 50% more than a 2025 Legendary due to the big cost to make a Safehold I token. Let’s make the recipes the exact same for all Mythic tokens (except the Coin of Wealth).

Jeff Martin wrote: 4) The recipes for the Mythic tokens should be much like other Transmute tokens – using the standard Trade tokens. The only new thing I want to introduce to the whole Trade program is a 100,000 GP Bar that will be used in all Mythic token recipes.

Nothing big here, however 100K is 4x 2025 legendary cost. Consider 50k GP Bar to keep in line with your vision. Otherwise all the 50% increase will be absorbed in GP costs alone.

Jeff Martin wrote: 5) While it would be neat to create new characters and new powers/spells, we need to keep it simple. Maybe we can emphasize something new like “Damage Limiting” where a monster will only take 100 points of damage in a round no matter what – unless the attacker has a certain Charm to allow her damage to count beyond the 100-point limit? Whatever new we can add some be somewhat simple to implement.

I'll not mince words here. Damage limiting players is a bad idea and you will have a ton of backlash for it. I fully recommend reading this study on World of Warcrafts "Rested" mechanic.
www.psychologyofgames.com/2010/03/framing-and-world-of-warcrafts-rest-system/

In short though, if a mechanic reduces players effectiveness for not having something they will resent it. If I have the tokens to do 100 damage now, and tomorrow I can't I will feel ripped off. If you want damage levels at certain play styles, this would be better handled as "All focus bonuses are multiplied by 1.5x". This is effectively the same way to gate damage, but instead is phrased as a reward instead of a punishment.

Secondly, despite my above suggestion I personally don't find just stat bonuses on Mythic items to be terribly exciting.
Instead, I suggest Mythic tokens be a capstone ability. They should offer a horizontal expansion of player. Each token should grant a new ability or power. It should be generic to be used by all classes. This makes them exciting to obtain. Rather than number go up, they give us something new to do.

Examples of powers:
Increase Crit Range of all Attacks by 1
?/Adventure: Restore 1 use of a X/Adventure Ability
?/Adventure: Increase degree of success of an attack by 1 (Failure -> Success, Success -> Critical)

Jeff Martin wrote: 6) The Coin of Wealth will likely be the only thing some Safehold I owners will make. That token should probably cost more than the other Mythics…maybe 2-3 times a 2025 Legendary.

Personal comment: The extreme planned costs would have me struggle to justify ever making this. I don't like it being a high cost because I may never get it. Thus, it being cheaper would make me happier. But not all things need to be

Alternative Cost Comment: I would be much more okay if the exclusivity of these came from the aforementioned Mythic crafting ingredient you got for doing mythic runs. I thought that was a neat enough idea at least in theory. Though I don't think most folks felt as keen towards it as I was.

Jeff Martin wrote: 7) The Mythic tokens should not be difficult to understand and implement. How to make them needs to be an easy and natural extension of the whole Transmute program.

No comment, makes sense if you no longer what to give out mythic materials for completing mythic adventures.

Jeff Martin wrote: 8) We should design ALL Mythic tokens this year, and promise not to make any new ones in the future. That way folks can make informed decisions about what to make, and they don’t have to worry about new cooler Mythic tokens showing up later. The recipes will be fixed, too. Let’s make 12 Mythic tokens – and none of which will be class-specific. They can be targeted toward Melee, Spells, Powers, Ranged, etc. – or grant powers like overcoming the “Damage Limiting” power mentioned above.

I think you should avoid ironclad phrasing of "There will never be any more" as that will just lead to a lot of quote texts if the nature of the game were to ever change in the future. Honestly, I just agree with Hayward's concerns overall. However if you feel this must be done (though I strongly advise against even this) consider using "No new Mythic tokens will be printed for X years"

Also if you're only designing 12 I truly do want to bring this back to "Capstone" ability tokens. Also I want to bring up the idea if we do "capstone" ability tokens we could even consider only allowing someone to equip 1 of them. The final piece of your build to truly bring it home. If you're not gonna hard limit the token creation to 12, then you can ignore this and I'll come up with token ideas

Andy Strassmann wrote: I strongly agree with David Zych's level recommendations and Ian Lee's comments upon them. They keep things simple, intuitive, and let everyone easily select the play level that gives them the most fun given their desired challenge and token level. In fact whatever Mythic's final form takes, I respectfully urge TD to standardize on David's suggestions for the Epic and lower levels.

+1, I strongly agree with the three of them. Less barriers is great for on-boarding players

Just like the upper tiers of the Safehold program the recipes for the Mythic's will be watered down because people are going to whine about them. They won't be that Mythic. Maybe I'm wrong and it will take a lot of time and spend on Tokens to acquire one but I doubt it. They will show up in the treasure boxes or maybe as a Discord side quest. I used to advocate for keeping something presented such as Mythics as hard to make and scarce. I don't worry about it anymore. Within a few years you'll be able to pick one up on the secondary market on the cheap if you want. I'm glad Hardcore is staying. What's next after Safehold? Only 2 years and 7 months from the start of the program to it's end (March 23 - October 25) and it's already time to come up with another program.

For reference, no Safehold items have ever shown up in treasure.

The only safehold-related items I can see distributed in any kind of Discord side quest have been hirelings and hireling stewards. No actual safeholds and no higher level stewards or persons.

Hi Jeff

As always, thanks for letting us participate in this portion of design and discussion.

I'll follow up with a more detailed post tomorrow later today, but I wanted to note - you have a lot going on with this thread, and some items will influence others.

To focus discussion, can I suggest you create several threads?

1) Discussion on difficulty. What the difficulties are, how many there are, what they actually mean in regards to monster stats, things like" damage limits", and expected party gear is a large topic. Answers to this will influence the next item, and I have many many thoughts about difficulties based on all the character builds I do.

2) Suggestions for mythic items, and the guiding design principals therein. For example, Are mythic items just intended to be extensions of legendaries, where players will naturally gravitate toward having a build with 10+ mythics in it? If not, what are you thinking? Perhaps mythics have slot contention? For example, perhaps you have Mjolnir, Carsomyr, Windforce all as different mythic weapons. It's 3 different items, but you're unlikely to make more than one.

3) Mythic transmute costs. Outside of the coin, are they all expected to be equal cost? Or perhaps some are cheaper (they do require a SH1 to equip), and some are more expensive like the Mythic Coin? In this regard, I'd like to suggest that mythic transmuters have alternate in mythic construction like wish rings are in legendary transmutes.

Sample recipe to create Mjolnir:
Lots of TG
Thor’s +5
Mythic transmuter OR any legendary

4) Cap to number of mythics, and implications to ongoing design. If you want to make 12 and only 12 mythic items, I think you need to do some significant forward thinking on token powers. With the expected prices, there will be people that will be very unhappy to have a mythic become less powerful than a legendary or relic in the future. It also has some effect on TD's reputation if tokens of X very large cost were made, and once people spent the money, lower level, cheaper items supplanted the expensive ones. You can see this kind of thing happening right now where Rare Druid Trinkets have surpassed Iktomi's and the discussions generated by that.

Impy wrote: Mythic Survivor Reward: This is a good idea, but I think it should be different than Nightmare's. It should be special, simple, and most of all, feel mythic! I suggest two things:
One, the mythic survivor reward should be given to all players of a successful run (final room puzzle solved or final boss defeated). This will reward team play and heroic sacrifices. Plus Mythic play has to be a planned group, and getting a second shot would be very hard in an event.
Two, the mythic survivor reward should be a unique marble backed token (or other unique color). This token should NO stat effects, it should be a reward like the "thank you" token. Each year should end with a special transmutes that use the Mythic Survivor Tokens. My idea right now there is 3 transmutes.

In the long long ago, TD used award treasure based on whether or not the party successfully completed particular rooms.

This led to problems with people who ran multiple times spoiling those rooms in pick up groups because they didn't want to miss out on treasure.

For this reason I'd suggest avoiding substantial rewards for group success/failure as it will cause some people to be spoilsports to ensure they get the reward - this will be especially true if the reward is tied to the completion of a puzzle.

Impy wrote: Instead, I suggest Mythic tokens be a capstone ability. They should offer a horizontal expansion of player. Each token should grant a new ability or power. It should be generic to be used by all classes. This makes them exciting to obtain. Rather than number go up, they give us something new to do.

Examples of powers:
Increase Crit Range of all Attacks by 1
?/Adventure: Restore 1 use of a X/Adventure Ability
?/Adventure: Increase degree of success of an attack by 1 (Failure -> Success, Success -> Critical)

This is a really cool approach.

Mythic caster ring ideas:

Mythic Ring X: You may cast level 0 and 1 healing and damage spells as a free action.

Mythic Ring Y: +8 to one of spell healing, spell damage or polymorph damage, choose at start

Here is my AI assisted takeaway summarization of 4 pages of posts:

Concerns About Alienating Mid-Tier Players – Some players feel that shifting focus to "Mythic" difficulty and removing Nightmare survivor buttons could make the game feel less rewarding for those who enjoy a challenge but aren’t fully optimized for the highest difficulty. There’s a fear that this could create a wider gap between casual and hardcore players.

Desire for Meaningful Rewards – While many players are open to Mythic Survivor buttons and rewards, they want these to feel valuable and worthwhile. Suggestions include non-power-related collector’s items or unique transmutes that don’t disrupt game balance.

Balancing Challenge and Accessibility – Some comments suggest that while increasing difficulty options is great, True Dungeon should be careful not to make it seem like success is only achievable for those with deep token investments. A more inclusive approach to progression might help retain a broader player base.

Potential for Additional Adjustments – A few people speculate that the implementation of these changes might not be final. They express hope that player feedback will be considered in refining the Mythic system to ensure it complements rather than replaces the current structure.

Mixed Reactions on the Naming Change – Some players like the idea of renaming Epic to Mythic, while others find it unnecessary or potentially confusing, especially for players who are already familiar with the existing difficulty structure.

My thoughts on moving forward:

1. Keep Epic difficulty, add Mythic difficulty.
2. Keep Nightmare survivor buttons.
3. Add Mythic reward system. Could be unique transmute rewards or other non power boosting items.
4. Phase implementation of the Mythic difficulty. Testing it over virtual TD is the way to go. So don't roll it out to in-person events while players have had a year of virtual to test it and provide feedback.
5. Roll this program out with the Coin of Wealth and 2 other Mythic tokens. That's it, keep it simple for the first year.
6. The Coin of Wealth giving 20 treasure pulls is fine IMO. Keep this thing easier to make. This game is pay to play (at the higher levels), and I get that. But I really think TD will alienate a lot of players if this thing is harder to craft than other mythic tokens.
7. The 50k GP bar is the compromise. The 100k bar is too much. Way too much. Please don't do that. That's just cruel.
8. No Mythic in treasure boxes.
9. The coin of wealth needs multiple recipes. That way a newer player can skip the CoA if they want. Obviously, it requires a Mythic Transmuter token for any of the recipes. Recipe includes the CoA, 3 beads, and trade tokens plus $50k gp bar. Don't make it cost more than the other Mythic. Just please don't.

Matthew Hayward wrote:

Impy wrote: Mythic Survivor Reward: This is a good idea, but I think it should be different than Nightmare's. It should be special, simple, and most of all, feel mythic! I suggest two things:
One, the mythic survivor reward should be given to all players of a successful run (final room puzzle solved or final boss defeated). This will reward team play and heroic sacrifices. Plus Mythic play has to be a planned group, and getting a second shot would be very hard in an event.
Two, the mythic survivor reward should be a unique marble backed token (or other unique color). This token should NO stat effects, it should be a reward like the "thank you" token. Each year should end with a special transmutes that use the Mythic Survivor Tokens. My idea right now there is 3 transmutes.

In the long long ago, TD used award treasure based on whether or not the party successfully completed particular rooms.

This led to problems with people who ran multiple times spoiling those rooms in pick up groups because they didn't want to miss out on treasure.

For this reason I'd suggest avoiding substantial rewards for group success/failure as it will cause some people to be spoilsports to ensure they get the reward - this will be especially true if the reward is tied to the completion of a puzzle.

I fully understand this, which is why one, they offer no mechanical benefit. And two are tied at mythic which is not something a pug could ever do.

Maybe I underestimate how much further people would be willing to go for a survivor pin in the form of a token, but to me this is just extending what we already. As we have this exact incentive for nightmare right now but more extreme as you need to live for it.

Endgame wrote: Hi Jeff

As always, thanks for letting us participate in this portion of design and discussion.

I'll follow up with a more detailed post tomorrow later today, but I wanted to note - you have a lot going on with this thread, and some items will influence others.

To focus discussion, can I suggest you create several threads?

1) Discussion on difficulty. What the difficulties are, how many there are, what they actually mean in regards to monster stats, things like" damage limits", and expected party gear is a large topic. Answers to this will influence the next item, and I have many many thoughts about difficulties based on all the character builds I do.

2) Suggestions for mythic items, and the guiding design principals therein. For example, Are mythic items just intended to be extensions of legendaries, where players will naturally gravitate toward having a build with 10+ mythics in it? If not, what are you thinking? Perhaps mythics have slot contention? For example, perhaps you have Mjolnir, Carsomyr, Windforce all as different mythic weapons. It's 3 different items, but you're unlikely to make more than one.

3) Mythic transmute costs. Outside of the coin, are they all expected to be equal cost? Or perhaps some are cheaper (they do require a SH1 to equip), and some are more expensive like the Mythic Coin? In this regard, I'd like to suggest that mythic transmuters have alternate in mythic construction like wish rings are in legendary transmutes.

Sample recipe to create Mjolnir:
Lots of TG
Thor’s +5
Mythic transmuter OR any legendary

4) Cap to number of mythics, and implications to ongoing design. If you want to make 12 and only 12 mythic items, I think you need to do some significant forward thinking on token powers. With the expected prices, there will be people that will be very unhappy to have a mythic become less powerful than a legendary or relic in the future. It also has some effect on TD's reputation if tokens of X very large cost were made, and once people spent the money, lower level, cheaper items supplanted the expensive ones. You can see this kind of thing happening right now where Rare Druid Trinkets have surpassed Iktomi's and the discussions generated by that.

+1 I agree separate threads may be nice for these topics

Matthew Hayward wrote: I think things posted by Jeff in the "Token Proclamations" section of the forums carry more weight than future looking token designs found in in frequently revised PDFs.

True Dungeon has an established way to finalize / "officially publish" token designs. It does this by placing those designs in the TokenDB. Safehold I's design, and its proposed Slotless Nugget ability, are not recorded in TokenDB.

Because of this, I think it's best to consider those designs provisional works in progress, which are subject to change. Indeed these designs have changed several times already, and it would be unsurprising if they change more before being finalized and placed in TokenDB.

For what it's worth, I know the Safehold I Slotless Nugget benefits wasn't in the Safehold document as of February of 2024, and that it was added on or before June of 2024.

By your logic, Safehold tokens do nothing. The TokenDB entry for Safehold V doesn't say anything about using Hirelings, it directs you to go here: truedungeon.com/safehold . Which directs you to truedungeon.com/files/Safehold_Program_Details.pdf .