The future of Illuvium looks brighter than ever
As we head into 2024 it can sometimes feel like not much has changed, lets see what you think after reading this newsletter
Even after all the delays it seems more obvious than ever that Illuvium will release its Open Beta and potentially much more in 2024, lets get into it.
Here is what I will be covering in this newsletter:
Huge upgrades coming to the Illuvium Overworld
Illuvium Zero is going to be bigger than I thought
The Arena may need a big overhaul
Some possible pitfalls for Illuvium in 2024
We will cover all of that here and more so please keep reading. I am excited to share this journey with you.
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The Illuvium Overworld is about to change
Everyone can see right now that the Illuvium Overworld is not the best game on the planet, but are big sweeping upgrades coming?
Lets talk about the elephant in the room. As we can see inside the leaks channel in the Illuvium discord here we can see a leak from Grant showing a new attack animation for the Ranger sword. As you can see in the corner this animation, it is meant for the Illuvium Overworld. Now I could come up with a thousand different reasons this could be, but only 1 fact remains consistent, the Overworld will become more engaging than it was in PB2 and PB3.
But what I want to uncover is if this will make the Illuvium Overworld get less flack for being ‘boring’ or even make it highly recognised in AAA gaming. Unfortunately its hard to expect the game will instantly become a masterpiece, however I expect it to add a sense of urgency to the Overworld that it desperately needs.
Its no secret that my guess for what this animation will be used for is actually to fight NPC rangers for one reason or another. Maybe you need to encounter them as a part of a mission, maybe they chase you around the map or maybe… its a PvE style Battle Royale game like Aaron has been hinting at in the discord like you can see down below.
ESPECIALLY THIS MESSAGE
What we do know is that Grant has said Illuvials probably can’t be added to the Overworld yet given the technical complexity, and we know that a Battle Royale would be built pretty fast. This sort of combat and engagement in the Overworld would absolutely make it a more engaging game especially as you throw in resource gathering, capturing Illuvials and everything else. This would quite genuinely be a new genre of game never before seen in the world.
The final thing that makes me very excited about the future of the Illuvium Overworld is the unlocking of future content. In my recent AMA with Kieran in the video below he talks about how regions will need to be uncovered by the players inside the game and more importantly that it will take a very long time. Right now players in the Overworld don’t necessarily have a concrete goal to work towards but I have no doubt this will change completely with the launch of the Open Beta.
Not only will players be running around trying to find Leviathans, collect rare resources, potentially defeat other players and capture a crazy Illuvial team for the Arena but they will be able to find extremely rare characters before anyone else. The motivation something like a holo Ophisto can give the ordinary player, especially after they’ve ‘collected’ everything can truly be beyond comprehension. Illuvium is here to stay and the Overworld we are beta testing right now is not the same game playable in 2025 and beyond.
Illuvium Zero is going to be bigger than I thought
I greatly underestimated the potential of Illuvium Zero and I am now reconsidering my Illuvium priorities
I am not going to drag on my thoughts here, Illuvium Zero Blueprints are on a bonding curve and I had no clue. For anyone who is unaware, the bonding curve for Illuvials found in the Overworld creates a system where they become harder to capture the more they are caught by other players, this system is what excites me the most about Illuvium. Now knowing that Illuvium Zero has it as well, I cannot contain my excitement.
This essentially means that not only are you competing in terms of gaining more fuel than other landowners, but you are competing with blueprints as well. A Rhamphyre blueprint is exciting but when 100 other people find it, it dulls your achievement. However, I now see that if you find it, its harder for everyone else, this gives the game even more urgency and really rewards your achievements as you become the greatest land mogul in all of Illuvium.
On this topic I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who tuned in to my latest 3 Illuvium Zero/Land videos. They were all top performers on my channel by a mile and it revealed to me just how engaged landowners are, significantly more than everyone else in Illuvium. With that being said, Ben has made it clear that he wants to create fun and engaging free to play land options for everyone else in web 3 and I can clearly see the market is willing and waiting. Free to play Illuvium land with earning potential will bring in millions of players, many of which will then give the Overworld and Arena more notice.
The Arena may need a big overhaul
The Illuvium Arena is addicting but doesn’t allow for as much skill expression as I had personally hoped for.
This conversation feels talked to death by now in the discord so I am not going to go overly deep.
Now don’t get me wrong, this isn’t some message to say all hope is lost, there are lots of ways the game can be improved to reward strategy and deep thinking. Ever since the Arena was put on the Epic Games store a majority of players have chosen to play teams with 8 Illuvials in their team, and in some cases rarely change up the positioning they play. Although this isn’t necessarily a bad thing it does make for stale gameplay and the game becomes much less fun to play, for myself at least.
Now you would ask, but Scoriox if they are doing that why don’t you play a group of Illuvials that can easily beat those teams. This is a nuanced problem at the moment, it is a combination of many things, most notably the strength of Augments and the size of teams. Currently Augments in the game are so incredibly strong at their Mastery point costs that any 8 Illuvial team can often pack Augments to counter things that would normally beat them. This means they don’t need to strategically add case by case characters or greatly adjust their positioning from game to game. Do they have lots of Berserkers, 3 Siphon Matrix.
I currently see 2 ways to deal with this problem:
Prevent them from guaranteeing their existing strategy. You can do this by either not handing them their full team at the start of the match, allowing their opponent to ban cards, or weakening synergy bonuses making individual Illuvials and strategies much stronger.
Change the way Augments play. This can be done by either making them more expensive, greatly weakening their effects, or adding significant restrictions to how you can use them. X Augment on X class, 5 Augments per team and so on.
Ultimately I think option 1 has so many risks and potential downsides that it may not be worth exploring, especially not in large sweeping changes and option 2 has much more merit. But you also risk overpowering Illuvials that are simpler better on paper since countering them becomes way more difficult.
Your third and most likely answer is to add even more variance to the gameplay. Whether it be drawing cards each turn, enhancing the Legendary Augment bidding or adding new Legendary Augments that can do things like remove synergies from your opponent or add board wide effects that players have to adapt to.
Some possible pitfalls for Illuvium in 2024
Illuvium has come a really long way in 2 years, but what could possibly go wrong from here?