Dura :: New Season New Theme :: Blessed Lands - Discussion

[Dura Aris]

Soon a Test Server will begin for our new Systems and Mechanics we've been working on. We need Feedback and, if possible, Testing from everyone here to dial in these novel features and make sure they feel right!



BLESSED LANDS

Every day, regions of the world are chosen randomly to become Blessed or Hallowed:
Two Blessed regions give +7.5% Experience and +7.5% Loot under normal Open-PvP settings.
One Hallowed region gives +15% Experience, +15% Loot, and becomes PvP Enforced.
The regions change every server save.

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• There are 8 regions in Dura: Thais, Carlin, Kazordoon, Ab'dendriel, Venore, Edron, Darashia, and Ankrahmun. Each region includes the city and the lands around, beneath, and above it. Every day, which lands are Blessed and which land is Hallowed will change, and players will have to adapt. That daily shift is the essence of Blessed Lands. The goal is not to replace Dura’s world, but to make the same world feel alive in a new way each day. Familiar places can suddenly become valuable. Forgotten routes can become important. Quiet regions can become dangerous. A city you planned to ignore may become the center of the day’s movement, conflict, profit, or escape. This should create a different kind of strategic rhythm. Some players may choose to chase the bonus. Some may avoid it. Some may hunt the Blessed regions quietly. Some may contest the Hallowed region directly. Some teams may use the daily rotation to set traps, control routes, block passages, or force fights. Solo players may look for safer edges of a Blessed region, while stronger groups may try to dominate the most valuable areas. The bonuses are simple, but their impact should be deep: new routes, new fights, new evasions, new economic choices, new hunting decisions, and new stories every day.
• These bonuses stack on top of other bonuses, meaning they multiply with the rest of your character’s progression.
• PvP Enforced means there is no normal skull system inside the Hallowed region. It does not mean players receive EXP for killing other players. Hallowed Lands are PvP without limits, but not PvP with bonus kill rewards.
• If you gain Red Skull from PvP outside a Hallowed Land, you keep that Red Skull inside Hallowed Land. Even though Hallowed Land is PvP Enforced, a Red Skull player will still lose all inventory if they die. However, killing someone inside a Hallowed Land does not count as an unjustified kill.

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We are especially interested in feedback on:

• whether the region borders feel intuitive;
• whether the bonuses are strong enough to matter while at the same time not becoming mandatory;
• whether Hallowed Lands create exciting PvP or too much pressure;
• whether certain regions feel too strong or too weak when Blessed/Hallowed;
• whether the system creates more movement and variety, as intended.

For clarity, it was at times difficult to decide the less obvious regional decisions:

• Fire Devil Quest belongs to Thais.
• Outlaw Camp belongs to Kazordoon.
• Orc Fortress belongs to Kazordoon.
• Femor Hills is shared by Carlin, Ab'dendriel, and Kazordoon.
• Dusalk's Cave is shared by Thais, Venore, and Kazordoon.
• Jakundaf Desert is shared by Thais, Venore, and Kazordoon.

SEASONAL TO ETERNAL

The server will be seasonal, but player progress will not be deleted. When the season has run its course, its characters will eventually continue into Aeterna, Dura's eternal world for seasonal characters. Your character, items, and progress will continue to exist, while future seasons will still begin as fresh starts. This matters because a seasonal server asks players to play hard. It asks them to race, compete, explore, take risks, build characters, join wars, hunt, trade, die, recover, and invest time. We do not believe that effort should simply disappear when the season ends. Aeterna exists to honor that time investment. The seasonal server gives players the fresh start, the race, the early economy, the launch energy, and the competitive pressure. Aeterna gives those characters a future after that period is over.

Aeterna is an eternal 1x world for seasonal characters. Future seasonal characters will also eventually migrate there, joining the characters from earlier seasons. The active season also does not need to close immediately after a fixed date. If the season is still active and healthy, it can continue running until the right time to merge.

This is new for Dura, but we believe it is worth trying. We are listening for what players want from future seasons, and we want feedback on whether this model makes seasonal play feel more worthwhile. Tell us if you prefer seasonals to be seasonal and that's it or if you like the idea of an Eternal World after.







PROGRESSION AND GAME SETTINGS

Last season used ascending rates: rates began lower and increased as characters progressed. This time, the game will use flat rates. Flat rates mean the same underlying rate structure applies from the beginning of the season to the end. The difference is important. Ascending rates reshape the distribution of playtime equally across the game. Flat rates create a more classic one-to-one feeling. The game is still faster than Dura’s 1x, but the experience is compressed more evenly. You are not playing a completely different rate structure at different points of the character’s life; you are playing a faster version of a more familiar progression curve.

Overall, effective progression for Season II should be roughly 2x-3x+ faster than Dura's 1x. The intention is not to make the server feel disposable or effortless. It should not feel too easy. But it also should not feel like a brutal, painful crawl forward. The goal is a pace where players can experience more of Dura, reach more meaningful content, and still feel that their progress matters.

We still believe ascending rates can be as good as flat rates, and possibly even superior in some designs. But Dura’s seasonal servers, also called arcade servers, are not about doing the same “best” thing every time. Each season is meant to have its own identity. A certain flavor of ice cream may be the best, but that does not mean you want to have it every night.







WHAT'S DIFFERENT - WHAT'S NEW​

Season II is not Season I repeated. The differences are enormous. Some of the most important changes players will encounter are:

• Native Knight mechanics have been added. We listened to feedback from Season I and added native mechanics such as shield break, defense break, minimum damage floor, and critical strike support. Shield break gives attacks a chance to bypass shield. Defense break gives attacks a chance to bypass shield and armor. Minimum damage floor helps reduce the feeling of repeated zero-value hits. These systems give us better tools to tune knights without relying only on raw numbers.
• War Mode and guild PvP systems have been added. Guilds that want to fight should have cleaner tools to do so, with less friction from normal skull limitations. The goal is to support real wars and group fights while reducing awkward abuse cases and unnecessary griefing.
• A Market System has been created. Players will be able to buy and sell items with far more ease through a market in the depot. This should reduce friction, make trading more convenient, and make the economy more active.
• Character Bazaar support has been implemented. Players will have a more structured and official way to buy and sell characters.
• The major Heroism / Loot bug from Season I has been fixed. Last season, the intended loot values were not what players actually experienced. In practice, the bug could create far more loot than designed, in some cases more than double what should have existed. That distorted the economy, progression, and reward feeling of the season. This has been fixed.
• Loot Hoards and Gold Riches have been added. Loot Hoards allow certain drops to spill into multiple drops when the chance rises above 100%, meaning a corpse can contain more than one of the same item. Gold Riches make very large gold amounts convert upward into higher coin denominations so large loot moments are cleaner and less clumsy.
• Upgrade items, rune rewards, valuable quests, and monster loot have been reworked toward better parity. The goal is for rewards to feel more coherent across the game and for the economy to have better fluidity.
• Faster Skill Advancement while hunting has been added. You will still gain skills faster by dedicated training, but active hunting will now matter more for melee, distance, and shielding progression. The point is to reduce the gap between passive training and active play, especially for warrior classes.
• Level-difference protection has been added. This is meant to reduce extreme griefing both by and against very low-level characters while still allowing established characters to live in a dangerous world.
• Distance Efficiency has been added. Dura did not previously have this, but old Tibia did, and we believe it served an important balancing purpose. Early distance users should not begin with perfect native efficiency. Their efficiency improves as their distance skill rises, which helps make early-game vocation balance healthier.
• Rune supply safeguards now exist. The Rune Shop will not be enabled at launch, but through Server Gauges players can choose whether NPC rune buying for gold should be activated. This gives the server a safety valve if the player-made rune economy becomes too tight.
• Armor Buffs. Armor items in general have been buffed. It balances the game, so gear matters more at higher level play.
• Artifacts now have stats and abilities. Artifacts are unique items that often do things normal equipment does not do. They give us room for more unusual mechanics, identity, and build flavor.
• And many more...

~New Artifacts~






SERVER GAUGES

This technically is not part of the game world itself, but we think it is a valuable integration into how a seasonal game should run. Server Gauges are recurring Discord referendums through which players can vote on selected rates and settings of the game they are actually playing. They are not casual polls. They are meant to function more like a barometer and control panel for the season. Depending on the setting, players may be able to vote for something to increase, decrease, remain the same, be enabled, or be disabled. If the required threshold is reached, the Dev Team will act on the result quickly and implement the change. Then the gauge can reset and be voted on again. This creates an ongoing feedback loop. As strategies develop, as the economy changes, as wars happen, as vocations rise or fall, and as players discover the real shape of the season, the community will have a transparent and reliable way to say what is working and what is not.
Examples include:​

• vocation balance
• PvP settings
• raids
• rune supply
• mana fluids
• spell cooldowns
• frag limits
• events
• and other server-wide settings

The goal is not chaos, and it is not staff randomly changing the game every day. The goal is structured self-modulation: players regulating the season through visible, limited, threshold-based choices. We believe this is especially important for a seasonal server. A season is alive. It moves quickly. Its economy, wars, and balance can change rapidly. Server Gauges give the community a formal way to respond to that without everything becoming arbitrary or hidden. We are interested in feedback on which gauges players think matter most, which settings should require higher thresholds, and which things should not be gauge-controlled at all.








TEST SERVER & FEEDBACK

There will be a Test Server before launch. We do not have its exact date yet, but as soon as we do, we will update the Dura website and Discord and post the details here on OTLand in this thread. If you would like to help, we appreciate it. The biggest thing of all is feedback. We are specifically looking for feedback on Blessed Lands, Hallowed Lands, region boundaries, progression pace, rune supply, vocation balance, Server Gauges, PvP flow, War Mode, guild PvP mechanics, market behavior, and any bugs or strange interactions players find. Tell us what you think, what we are doing wrong, what feels unclear, what feels abusable, what feels exciting, and what you think should change. Until launch day, we are keeping an open mind to change anything. If you have feedback at all, please leave it here. We will read it.



HOW DOES THIS WORK WITH DURA

This post has focused on what is new, novel, and experimental about Season II, especially its theme, Blessed Lands. If you would like to know more about the game itself, with all its systems and mechanics, including pictures and videos, be warned -- it is endless.​

• Season I OTLand discussion
• Official Discord
• Unofficial Dura Wiki