Overview
Expeditions are a mini-game unlocked at Paragon 4 that can grant Trophies, Catalyst Shards, and Memetic Splinters. Expeditions take place separately from the main game, and your progress in the main game will not affect your abilities in Expeditions. However, your success in Expeditions can give you various rewards in the main game, which are very important in normal progression. The main game will continue normally while playing Expeditions. Expeditions are not affected by changing Realms; while they will initially be locked in the new Realm, no progress in Expeditions is lost - Idle Expeditions will continue even before re-unlocking!
The core gameplay consists of a real-time card game, where you must cast your Spell Cards to destroy a monster before they defeat you. A spell card can only be cast when fully charged (speed based on Charging). Up to 6 spell cards can be held at once; additional spell cards are drawn periodically, based on Drawing. After a drawing enough cards (40?), additional card draws are progressively slower (what formula?). Deck construction determines the probabilities and possibilities of which spell cards are drawn(see: Deck Building, #Deck).
An Expedition consists of 10 such fights, with increasing difficulty. After each victory, the Expedition can be paused ("Leave") to resume later, or abandoned entirely ("Give Up"). Enemies, rewards, and difficulty are determined by Location, with some requiring specific Keys to attempt.
Idle
Expeditions can be run in Idle Mode, simulating battles for reduced rewards. The rate at which battles progress is based on the difference between Expedition level and Location level. At the end of each battle, the game either determines Victory (which gives experience and item drops, and moves on to the next monster), or Defeat (which gives nothing but does not stop the expedition). Renown VI grants the ability to automatically start a new Idle Expedition after finishing one.
Idle Expeditions grant lower rewards and take longer than Active Expeditions. However, they require no active play after starting the Location. For Trophy farming, target Mausoleum or Darkwood (depending on which drops you want), regardless of expedition level - the increased drop rate and the upgrade progress is worth the lower success chance and slower battles.
Idle victory chance is not affected by your Deck or Attributes, but solely by the Expedition and Monster level:
where:
Note: The highest win chance without Ancient Tactics is 95%, when fighting monsters 4 or more levels below you.
The speed of the Idle Expedition is also affected by Expedition and Monster level:
where:
This speed is applied per monster, so each monster in an expedition will take (very) slightly more time. The base speed for an expedition is 10 minutes per monster.
Note: The fastest speed possible without Bold Followers is 10x, when fighting monsters 10% of your level or below.
Interface
Location
Location GUI with numbered sections
- Location selection. Name, backround, icon for required keys (if any)
- Location info (for currently selected location). Name, level range, monsters, bonus drop info (for Free Roam)
- location keys. Required to attempt certain Locations, consumed on attempt. Indicated by icon in 2. and 6.
- Key Exchange. Consumes Unstable Keys to grant specific Location Keys.
- Idle Mode toggle (see #Idle).
- Start Expedition. Indicates key cost if applicable
- Closes Expedition screen
Idle Mode and Main Interface
Idle Expedition in Progress, GUI with numbered sections
- Expedition Level and Level progress. Exp is gained from victorious encounters. Used to determine success change and progress speed, see #Idle
- Attributes. Free Points and current AP Distribution. Not used for Idle Mode, only for #Battle
- Deck. Opens Deck Menu, see #Deck below. Not used for Idle Mode.
- Stats. As determined by your attributes. Not used for Idle Mode
- Drop Penalty Stat. Decreases your catalyst rewards if you run too many Expeditions in quick succession. Not applicable to Idle mode.
- Current Location Name
- Progression Bar of Location. When full, Expedition ends.
- Current Encounter. Each completed encounter may reward experience and loot. Locations below your level will grant no experience and rarely loot.
- Win Chance of current Encounter, can decrease over the encounters of the location. For calculation, see #Idle
- Return to Main Game Interface to continue playing
- Cancel Expedition
- Log. Shows Exp and rewards recieved
- Consumables. Can be used in active battle mode. Consumables may be looted during Expeditions and each stacks up to 100. (Note that consumables obtained through Experiments can go above the limit of 100)
Deck
Deck GUI with numbered sections
(See also: Deck Building)
- Major spells. higher chance (?% per draw)
- Standard spells. chance (?% per draw)
- Minor spells. lower Chance (?% per draw)
- current spell slot. selecting a spell will assign it to this slot, replacing the existing spell.
- Unlocked spells. Click one to assign it to the current spell slot. Grouped by spell type, icon shows level restriction if not unlocked.
- Saves and closes screen
Battle
Battle GUI with numbered sections
The image at the right displays the Expeditions GUI, with its various sections numbered.
- Expedition Level and Experience. (This is separate from your main game Wizard Level or experience.) Defeating enemies in Expedition grants Experience. The maximum Expedition Level is 120; once you reach this, gaining experience for further levels will instead grant additional loot drops.
- Expedition Attributes. Every Expedition Level (after 1) gives +2 Attribute points.
- Expedition Ability Stats. Determined by your Attributes (and any Buffs or debuffs active on you), these multiply the power of your spell cards.
- Enemy name, level, and hitpoints.
- Enemy Summons Area. Any Summon spells your enemy plays will be displayed here, along with their Health.
- The next 3 attacks an enemy will use. The leftmost icon also display a countdown until the attack hits. Hover the mouse over these icons for tooltip descriptions of the enemy's attacks.
- If the enemy has any Buffs, these will appear here below the hitpoint bar.
- The next 3 spells an enemy will use. The leftmost icon also display a countdown until the attack hits. Hover the mouse over these icons for tooltip descriptions of the enemy's spells.
- Combat Log, displaying recent attacks made by you or the enemy. Also displays Rewards gained by defeating enemies.
- Buff Bar. Displays any active Buffs on you, and their durations. Buffs can come from either Consumables or certain Spell Cards.
- Spell "Hand". Holds up to 6 Spell cards, which can be played at will. Each Spell Card has a Charge Time before it can be cast, indicated by the spell being greyed out, with a blue progress bar and a countdown below it.
- Draw Progress. When this blue bar fills, you draw a new Spell Card. The number shows the remaining Cards in your deck.
- Your Health. If this reaches 0, you lose the fight and will need to restart the Expedition Zone.
- Summons Area. Any Summon spells you play will be displayed here, along with their Health.
- Consumables. Defeating enemies can award Consumable Items, which can be used in battle for either single-use bonuses or short-term buffs, to make combat easier or allow you to take down more powerful enemies. Each Consumable stacks up to 100. (Note that consumables obtained through Experiments can go above the limit of 100)
Spell Cards share names with Spells from the main game, however their effects are unique to Expeditions. Your deck is randomly generated from all spell cards currently available to you. Progressing through Expeditions will unlock additional cards to be included in your deck.
Locations
There are 17 different Locations, each with a different set of enemies and a different range of enemy levels (#Data). Completing a Location gives a large set of loot drops, and unlocks the next Location. Each enemy has a specific Trophy it can drop at level 50 or higher. An enemy's level determines its odds of dropping rewards, and the size of rewards it drops. Note that going on Expeditions in Location which are significantly below your Expedition Level will greatly reduce your reward chances.
Performing many expedition runs in quick succession will temporarily reduce the value of your catalyst drops. Non-Catalyst reward drops are unaffected, meaning that if the goal in Expeditions is progress or Trophies, this reduction will not interfere. This reduction in catalyst rewards primarily serves to narrow the late-game gap between idle expeditions and rapid active expeditions, as there have been issues in the past with active expeditions being overly spammed for excessive catalysts.
Loot
Defeating a Monster has a chance to grant various rewards. Additionally, each level gained after reaching the maximum Expedition level of (120) will grant:
- 3 Consumable drops
- 2 Red Catalyst shard drops
- 1 Green Catalyst shard drop
Experience
Each victory grants Expedition experience, equal to:
At the maximum level of 120, your exp needed to level up will change to 100,000.
Consumables
The distribution of which consumable drops is the same as from Experiments.
The base drop chances are:
1 Drop |
30%
|
2 Drops |
5%
|
3 Drops |
0.9%
|
Monsters at least 5 levels below you instead use:
where:
Catalyst Shards
Idle Expeditions have a chance to grant rewards after each succesful combat, based on monster level. Active Expeditions will accrue drops from each monster, and reward them all on completion of the Location. The drop chance is based on the final monster level (as if you had fought it 10 times, instead of the preceding monsters).
The base drop chances are:
Red |
40%
|
Green |
24%
|
Blue |
7%
|
The amount of Catalyst Shards per drop is equal to (minimum 1):
Free Roam instead grants:
Idle Expeditions instead grant:
where:
Note: Monsters at or above your level use . Monsters more than 10 levels below your Expedition Level drop the minimum amount.
Drop Penalty
To limit the farming of Expeditions, frequent active Expeditions will incur a penalty to drop amounts. After 240 fights, a multiplicative decrease of 3% per fight begins to stack, up to 100% (no rewards). This penalty degenerates by 1 fight per 6 minutes, including the buffer: From 100% penalty, it takes 10 hours to reach 0% penalty and another 24 hours (34 total) to restore the 240 unpenalized fights. I.e:
- You can do 24 full Active Expeditions per day without penalty.
- Once you incur a penalty, each battle will decrease reward amounts by 3% (multiplicatively)
- The penalty caps at 100% decrease (no rewards) after 100 fights (10 full Expeditions).
- Any penalty can be fully cleared within 10 hours.
Memetic Splinter Drop
If Memetics are unlocked (Paragon 33), monsters in Locations that require Keys (Shattered Reality, Eye of Chaos, Cathedral, Secret Altar) will also drop Memetic Splinters, equal to:
where:
Data