We're making great progress on co-op and hope to begin Founder Co-op Playtest sometime next week.
Co-op is not the only thing we're working on. With many of the game's foundations now in place, we're also reviewing existing mechanics, currencies, skills, and progression systems to ensure they continue to work well together as Lost Relics evolves.
As part of that ongoing refinement, we've recently made several changes.
Since the introduction of two daily tokens, Valdrath Highlands gradually shifted away from its original purpose as an exciting bonus activity and began to feel more like a daily obligation.
To address this, Valdrath Highlands now grants either one or two keys per week, depending on player achievements. The achievement requirements themselves remain unchanged, but the rewards have been adjusted appropriately.
Our goal is to make each run feel more rewarding and meaningful while preserving the excitement of entering the Highlands.
Since the launch of the progression system, we've received a lot of feedback regarding the Breach skill and the requirement to unlock monsters before encountering them.
While we still view this as comparable to unlocking higher tier gathering nodes, we also recognize the importance of maintaining a satisfying combat experience.
As a result, every floor of Descending Nightmare and Descending Hellfire now contains a preset number of Custodians regardless of your Breach level. Increasing your Breach level simply unlocks additional Custodians on each floor, allowing your XP gains and loot progression to accelerate.
This means players pushing deeper into the depths will continue making Breach progress, while those farming floors that align with their Breach level will still enjoy the fastest progression rates.
The only exception remains Paragons. Due to their unique rewards and drop tables, unlocking access to these powerful enemies will continue to require dedication and progression.
Our current multiplayer infrastructure operates across Europe, US East, US West, and Singapore.
For some players this means connecting to a region that isn't ideal, potentially resulting in latency of up to 150ms. Fortunately, the network prediction systems we've implemented perform exceptionally well under these conditions. Most of our testing has been conducted at approximately 120ms latency, and gameplay remained smooth and responsive throughout.
Players will automatically connect to the most suitable region available, and the adventurers you encounter around town will generally be those connected to the same region.
At the same time, we're investigating alternative infrastructure providers that support up to sixteen global regions. While this would distribute players across more locations, it would significantly reduce average latency and improve the experience for players worldwide. Since we're not pursuing a traditional MMO style town populated by hundreds of players, prioritizing lower latency makes far more sense for Lost Relics.
One of the key findings from our first town multiplayer tests was that large town populations become increasingly expensive as more players must be synchronized with one another. Because of this, we're moving away from our original goal of supporting large amounts of players in a shared town instance.
Instead, ungrouped players will typically encounter up to six adventurers around town. When you form a group, you'll be placed into your own shared instance where only your group members are visible.
The upcoming Founder playtest will allow players to create groups and invite friends to join them. The first test will focus on two player co-op, allowing us to carefully evaluate balance, AI behaviour, and overall gameplay dynamics.
While we're starting with two players, our long term goal is to support up to four player groups and see just how much chaos adventurers can unleash together. We'll continue testing and gathering feedback to determine whether two, three, or four players provides the best overall experience.
Players from different regions will still be able to play together. The player who creates the group determines the region used for the session, so playing with nearby friends will generally provide the best experience. In the future, we may explore automatically selecting a region that provides balanced latency for all group members, although this may not be necessary.
We've also implemented matchmaking, allowing players to quickly find others looking for a group.
For the Founder Co-op Playtest, only Founder Token holders will be able to create groups and access matchmaking. However, Founders can invite any player to join their party. In the future, group creation and matchmaking will become a membership benefit. Free players can still join groups through invitations, provided the group contains at least one member. Groups without a member will automatically disband.
The playtest will initially support Standard Adventures, Descending Nightmare, and Descending Hellfire. Other game modes will remain solo experiences while we continue evaluating co-op compatibility.
All loot remains private. Other players won't see what you've found unless you choose to share your discoveries.
We'll have more details to share when the playtest goes live.