Prophetic Card Preview!

[Condulus]

Hi Everyone! I'm Condulus, one of the GMs here on Allods Online.





One of the new features that we had to delay a little bit following the release of patch 3.0.0, Overture of the Damned, was the Prophetic Card system. We are getting very close to running this event so look for it to arrive in mid April.

Since we are getting close, we wanted to give you a preview of the system and how it works.



While the event is running, enemies throughout the world will be dropping, in this case, the Prophetic Card of the Merchant. The cards will also be available during the event from special merchants. Each of these cards has the potential to earn you at least 4 prizes. They can be used, sold, traded, or deposited.



In order to "decipher" the card and access the prizes, you will need to have some Ancient Compasses. These compasses are obtained through the item shop or through other players/the auction house since they can also be used, sold, traded, or deposited.

When you use a Prophetic Card by right clicking on it in your inventory, the interface will pop up.



8 prizes will be shown to you, some being found easier than others. You can mouse-over each prize and it will give you some details about the item. When you're ready, click "Search" and the prize cards will flip over.



You can now select up to 4 prizes. Each prize will cost additional Ancient Compasses in order to flip the card and receive the prize. The first prize will cost 1 compass, the 2nd will cost 2 compasses, the 3rd will cost 4 compasses, and the 4th prize will cost 8 compasses. The items will be delivered directly to your inventory once you have flipped the card.



If you have multiple prophetic cards you can click "Next Card" to move to the next card and start the process over again.



There are some extra bonuses built into the system as well. Each time you use 50 Ancient Compasses, the next card you use will be an automatic "Lucky Mode" for you. You will get to choose from 8 of some of the best prizes from the Prophetic Cards. You will get one choice though and but it will only cost you 1 compass.

In addition, there are some guaranteed prizes for using certain numbers of compasses. There is a progress bar on the bottom of the Prophetic Card interface that shows your progress towards these guarantees.

We'll have some more information for you soon about the event, including the dates and some other good news about this first event for every player, so keep a lookout for more info.

[the_mexican_guy]

In order to "decipher" the card and access the prizes, you will need to have some Ancient Compasses. These compasses are obtained through the item shop or through other players/the auction house

How many gpots are they going to cost, btw.

[nuk3zord7]

Ill have to see this in action.

So, just to clarify. When you have these Prophetic Cards and Compasses, and you flip cards? Is it random?

Is this ANOTHER random lottery system?

Is this game going to be 1 big slot machine?

EDIT: Sounds interesting though. Im guessing you'll stop running strongbox sales for a bit when this is released. Or you're gonna have the NPC Shard Exchanger ratio rise again.

[Condulus]

How many gpots are they going to cost, btw.

40 gpotatoes with discounts for bulk purchases.

[Condulus]

Ill have to see this in action.

So, just to clarify. When you have these Prophetic Cards and Compasses, and you flip cards? Is it random?

Is this ANOTHER random lottery system?

Is this game going to be 1 big slot machine?

EDIT: Sounds interesting though. Im guessing you'll stop running strongbox sales for a bit when this is released. Or you're gonna have the NPC Shard Exchanger ratio rise again.

The cards flip, mix up, and you get to choose up to four of them. Each card will have a different set of 8 prizes but once you view the prizes that is what will be on that card. You can even pause and go back to the card later and it will still have those prizes.

Currency exchange ratio is automatically set and adjusted based on supply and demand. We don't manually adjust the ratio.

[nuk3zord7]

Ill have to see this in action.

So, just to clarify. When you have these Prophetic Cards and Compasses, and you flip cards? Is it random?

Is this ANOTHER random lottery system?

Is this game going to be 1 big slot machine?

EDIT: Sounds interesting though. Im guessing you'll stop running strongbox sales for a bit when this is released. Or you're gonna have the NPC Shard Exchanger ratio rise again.

The cards flip, mix up, and you get to choose up to four of them. Each card will have a different set of 8 prizes but once you view the prizes that is what will be on that card. You can even pause and go back to the card later and it will still have those prizes.

Currency exchange ratio is automatically set and adjusted based on supply and demand. We don't manually adjust the ratio.

But they can easily deliberatly or accidently manipulate demand of shards by running anything that costs real money (Item Shop, Strongboxes). They run a strongbox and this at same time, demand is going increase. The supply, on a short period of time so far, has so far decreased or only held steady. Which of course will lead to increase in the ratio. Im sure you understood this when I typed that last comment, but didnt want to go into that detail.

Let me also explain a little more about the NPC exchanger here. How can you intentionally or unintentionally lower demand? Nerf gold drops (Astral Hub, decrease in LMs, TI Boss, etc) and increase gold sinks (Gear upgrades, Emblems of Greatness Quest, etc). Less gold available to use on NPC exchanger will cause either less demand or require people to play more to make up for nerfed gold.

This can be expanded even further into. With less gold drops, the devs company hopes people will buy more gpotatoes, and will be more willing to use exchanger to sell shards for their needs on gold (also helping reduce the ratio, unless at the same time they run 100 sales or Item shop thingies).

Just some thoughts to ponder.

[ahkhala]

After the cards go "face down", is the chance to get each item from the set equal (i.e. 1/8) no matter whether it will be mount or the nut?
Or does it count the chance each time when you decipher, with most chances for the least valuable items from the rest of the set (like in strongboxes)?

[Condulus]

But they can easily deliberatly or accidently manipulate demand of shards by running anything that costs real money (Item Shop, Strongboxes). They run a strongbox and this at same time, demand is going increase. The supply, on a short period of time so far, has so far decreased or only held steady. Which of course will lead to increase in the ratio. Im sure you understood this when I typed that last comment, but didnt want to go into that detail.

We are not going to run a strongbox at the same time.

[Condulus]

We'll have more information from you as it gets closer to the event. We're still working on confirming a few things with it but rest assured that even if you select the prizes and end up with the lowest level ones you're still going to be able to vendor them for a good deal of gold.

[deaderaco]

There's some dragon peeking over his back in the first screenshot