[2021] Gnoma-a-Palooza Changes

Ahoy adventurers,

As some of you might have guessed, a few too many gnomes have been set loose in Krystara than intended. As such we are pushing a server fix that will make a few small changes.

• The chance to encounter one of the Mana Surge Gnomes during Gnome-a-Palooza has been lowered. Right now they are appearing too often during a Gnome-a-Palooza, leading to an unbalanced amount of Verses being obtained. You can still encounter one of the Mana Surge Gnomes during an active Gnome-a-Palooza, but it will be a rarer occurrence.

• We have adjusted some of the other Gnome chances to account for this. We wanted to make the chance to encounter our other Gnomes more even. (That being said, the chance to encounter a Pet Gnome in PVP remains unchanged.)

We don’t have any intention of rolling back the awards you have gotten thus far, so enjoy your stashes. Thank you for your understanding as we make these changes, and happy matching!

Just to answer some things mentioned above, you can still encounter the Mana Surge Gnomes in a Gnome-a-Palooza, but the chance is much lower than before.

They have the same encounter rate outside of the Gnome-a-Palooza as before, this has not been changed. You have a chance of encountering the Mana Surge Gnomes in every place you can find Gnomes. (Unlike Pet Gnomes they don’t only appear in PVP and Arena.)

Lastly, the Mana Surge members have the same encounter chance. If you are seeing more of one than another this is due to RNG.

Last thing from me for a bit…

• The changes to the encounter rate were easier to deploy, as they only required a server push This meant we could do them on our end without needing a more major update. Also, changing the numbers on a drop rate is very different to fixing a bug, which takes time with reproducing, finding a fix, and deploying that fix. (A fix which often requires a client update.)

• We have a fix for the double hit skull AI issue, but it requires a client fix. Unfortunately everytime a client fix is made we need to do a new build of the game, and each time we release a new build it must pass certification across all of our platforms. That is the reason we could change the encounter rates quickly, but can’t speed up the release of the fix for the double hit skull AI issue.

I wanted to be transparent about why one thing can be done quickly, while another may take more time.