The last time I played was just after the From the Deep patch dropped. Before then, my interest was already winning but I stuck around to see what the new update had in store. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to keep my interest. Random events that require cooperation from 10 plus random people in Trove…no thanks.
Just yesterday I learned that a new update was coming. And by coming I mean launched on the day I heard about it. Looking a little farther back, I’m actually surprised it launched so quickly. I found patch notes from the PTS server dated March 30th and a trailer was dropped sometime last week saying the update was coming this spring. I guess it is spring now. So, I messaged the old Trove crew and let them know we should check it out sometime this week.
You can find the full patch notes here.
Delves
Delves are the biggest chunk of content/ change in this update. I’m sure that surprises no one. These are procedurally generated endless dungeons that can hold up to 8 players. These dungeons mix the Geode side of Trove and the combat side of Trove as the players race through the dungeon completing an objective under a time limit. At the end of each floor, there’s a boss that must be defeated in under 3 minutes to progress to the next level. This, of course, comes with its own currency to collect for mounts, wings, banners, and allies.
There are 3 types of Delves: Public, Private, and challenge. Public Delves can be queued for in the Hub and will pair you with players of your similar power rank. You can craft portals for Private Delves at the Delve crafting bench which allows you to for premade teams of up to 8 people. Challenge Delves are generated each week so that players are on an even playing field for leaderboard competition. Rewards will be based on depth level reached in the Challenge Delve and for clearing 3 consecutive tiers the fastest.
Delves can be done by anyone at any level but this looks like more of an end game activity. Delves are replacing the previous end game dungeons, Shadow Towers, and all of the rewards from Shadow Towers are now obtainable in the Delves. I like this change, I was getting bored of killing the same bosses every week. Now I can run these and mix it up a little. Shadow Towers still exist but with no rewards. Shadow Tower portals will take you straight to the boss room now.
Tomb Raiser
I used to love the Tomb Raiser pre-Mante of Power update in 2016. That update took him from a viable class to the bottom tier. I haven’t touched him in 4 years. This patch brings much-needed buffs to the class. It’ll be interesting to see if it’s a playable class now.
Minor Updates
There are a lot of little things that were updated in this patch. Things of note were Class Leaderboards are no longer based on the Power Rank of the class and now “require effort on the class”. I would argue, getting enough power rank on a class to get rewards on the leaderboard was effort enough but it looks like now you’ll have to play the class to get rewards. There’s a whole list of activities in the Patch notes that boil down to things you’d typically do in Trove on a Weekley basis anyways. This is a little disappointing as a majority of my empowered gem boxes came from the class leaderboards every week.
Bomber Royale no longer gives Tome Experience. That’s a shame, it was an effective and fun way of getting those tomes done every week when your sick of running dungeons.
Legendary Tomes now nag the player once every 30 seconds if they are still equipped after being fully charged
This is my favorite patch note. So many times I haven’t noticed this was filled up. I welcome a notification that will “nag” me to change my tome out.
Thoughts
This looks like a decent update with content I can sink some time into again. I haven’t had a chance to test out any of the new features yet but I’m sure we’ll be playing sometime this week. The Public Delves are either going to be great or it’s going to be a few people trying to do the objective while 5 guys sit AFK. It’s Trove after all.
Apparently, the Shadow Towers were one of the main sources of lag in the game due to how they spawn a zone for each person doing them. I’m interested to see if the lag has improved. I’m not holding my breath though. Trove just wouldn’t be Trove if you weren’t rubberbanding every 5 minutes.
Many Welps 