Earlier this week players of Nexon's new looter-shooter The First Descendant made a wonderful discovery: The game has its own Destiny-style loot cave. Soon christened "the Valby Run", this area features mobs that respawn infinitely and at a high rate, which can be farmed endlessly for oodles of the game's currencies and gear. And the big surprise was that the developers didn't seem all that bothered, and indeed said they were going to lean-in and basically make other areas more like the Valby Run.
This all sounded very exciting, and certainly got the attention of the playerbase. But sadly Nexon has now walked back this statement, apologising and saying that the announcement from the game's director had been "mistranslated". See, when he said they were going to make all farming spots as good as the Valby Run, what he meant was they were going to make the Valby Run less good. Got it?
"We apologize for the confusion caused by the misinterpretation during the translation process of the original Korean text," says a statement posted to the game's X account. "There have been no reversals of decisions, and our initial statement remains that we do not intend to restrict the Valby-run playstyle. However, as we mentioned, we aim to adjust the rewards efficiency at the Fortress Outpost to balance it with other regions."
It goes on to quote its original statement saying the opposite, which it rather brazenly labels as "misinterpreted", before saying that it "should" be read as:
"We would like to inform you that we’re preparing a patch without completely blocking The Fortress Outpost issue and to keep allowing the players to enjoy playing like before. However, at the same time, we will update the Vulgus Strategic Outpost to match the efficiency of other farming locations."
So: It's nerfed the Valby Run, with a recent patch increasing the outpost spawn timer (the infinite spawns do not happen in other game locations, which is why the farm worked). The drop rates don't seem to have been reduced, but you'll just get less of them in the same amount of time.
However, this does come alongside outpost timers generally being reduced to one minute, down from five at launch: meaning other locations will now have much more action going on, and there'll be less need to focus on oddities like the Valby Run.
"To ensure that 'Valby run' remains a popular hunting ground like Ambush Point and Refined Run, we have set the reward efficiency significantly higher than originally intended," says director Joo Min-Seok. "We hope to provide numerous farming spots in The First Descendant, each with unique characteristics and usefulness to different Descendants. Instead of reverting Valby run to its original design intent, we have adjusted it to offer similar efficiency to other high-reward hunting grounds."
The notes go on to list various buffs to cooldowns and specific drops, and ends on a rather amusing note about how much players like grinding:
"Through issues like the Fortress Outskirts and Valby run, we are learning what kind of play style our players enjoy. The experience of sweeping through and farming monsters is of significant value in our game."
No more loot caves for First Descendant players, but it turns out that lot just like farming the baddies anyway. This may have been a slightly faltering start to this live service wannabe's community management, but a mistranslation's hardly the end of the world, and more interesting is the approach the developer has taken to the issue.
The idea of making everywhere in The First Descendant a loot cave might have been a lovely pipe dream, but what the developer has done is acknowledged what was attracting players to the Valby run in the first place—the constant combat and drops—and dialled up other parts of the game to move closer to that experience. It may not have been what players were first led to expect, but it's an interesting approach to dealing with the inevitable exploits that are found in any live service title.
