Pantheon PTR week four overhauls experience formula, resets characters

A May 27 patch for the Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen Public Test Realm changed how the game awards experience and forced a reset of test characters, Visionary Realms said in a highlights post published alongside the full patch notes.

The studio said the update brings in planned changes to experience progression that reward fighting the toughest NPCs a player can handle. Under the revised rules, solo players are generally steered toward blue con targets, with some classes able to handle white cons consistently, while grouped players are meant to seek out NPCs above their own level for the best returns.

According to the post, the change simplifies the formula used to grant experience for a kill, which in turn makes it easier for the team to tune progression separately for soloists, small groups and full groups. Visionary Realms framed the goal as a standard that is fair, logical and consistent with the idea that greater challenge should carry greater reward. The studio cautioned that experienced players are likely to find early progress feels somewhat fast, because they already know what they are doing.

The patch also revises the Consider System, which signals relative enemy difficulty through color. The studio said consider colors now map differently to enemy levels so that they better reflect actual difficulty: enemies slightly below a player's level stay white, the old light blue band has been removed entirely, and a new purple range sits just below the point at which enemies turn red.

Known issues

Visionary Realms published a list of problems it is already aware of on the test server:

• Global cooldowns have bugs that the studio said will be addressed in a later tech update
• Water in some areas is not swimmable
• Standing under the elevator in Wilds End pushes players beneath the world
• Hirode's Flame heals the druid's defensive target, and does nothing if no defensive target is set; the studio advised soloing druids to target themselves with F1
• The Warrior ability Shield Block reports a cooldown failure that the studio described as a false flag, with the ability otherwise working as intended
• Tome of Healing is applying double heal power

The studio thanked players logging into the test realm and said their bug reports and feedback are being used to refine the Combat and Progression update before it reaches the regular play servers. A separate, more detailed set of patch notes accompanies the update.