Bestiary as a Core Game Mechanic

Bestiary is a complicated league with many elements: it has special monsters, the ability to capture instead of kill some monsters, and a very involved crafting system with powerful results.

While the Bestiary league took a lot of effort to make, and we spent a lot of time improving the league after its release, we have decided not to retain any element of the league in the core game for now.

A variety of reasons fuelled this decision:
  • We would have to support the interface and the Menagerie going forward. These are big additions in the game, and would require constant changes and attention to work with any new features added to the game.
  • Bestiary is very different to the core game, which means we need to keep all the tutorial elements. We looked at the new player experience where we have to explain the core game, past league elements, and whatever current league is running, and we did not want to add Bestiary permanently into that mix.
  • The crafting results and inputs would need constant balancing and iteration to remain relevant. The levelling item crafting is already handled by other simpler crafting methods. The more complex and high-value crafting was used by some players, but it uses design space we think we could serve better with other mechanics in the future.

As well as not retaining any elements of the league in the core game, you will likely not see Bestiary as a Zana option in the future. However, there may be some parts of Bestiary we will use in future content, and it is possible we would bring Bestiary back for short term events.

Bestiary Orbs and their imprints will still exist, but won't have any function. We won't be making any balance changes to the Bestiary unique items in the near future.

We learned a lot from the development of Bestiary and are really looking forward to showing off our next, entirely different, league later this week!

Last bumped on Aug 13, 2018, 7:39:50 AM
I liked Bestiary, but I’m glad to hear this. It was a very significant change and I’m not sure it fits an ARPG well enough to stick around. I’m very glad to see you trying new things, though - please don’t stop doing that. It’s why I love challenge leagues.
“Please understand that imposing strong negative views regarding our team on to other players when you are representing our most helpful forum posters is not appropriate.” — GGG 2022

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I'm not 'Sarno' on Discord. I don't know who that is.
I'm a bit disappointed. I was hoping that even if the Menagerie was too much work to maintain, nets were too clunky a mechanism, and high end beast crafting too OP; we'd at least see the basic Beast mods around as another variation of extra hard rare mods like Nemesis or Invasion were.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
Praise God!
I for one am happy.
This is my favourite game on earth.
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Annnnnd

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Good call.
Bestiary unique items will have a "legacy" status?
We will be able to get them in the next league?
[Removed by Support]
Last edited by TauOrigin on May 7, 2018, 7:57:32 PM
thank god
This is welcome news. There were a few elements I liked but for the most part it was a pain in the ass.

1. Throwing nets
2. Learning craft recipes
-Which beast was important again? I never could remember. Willing to bet that MANY people passed over so many good beasts because they didn't either. Oh, plus learnt craft recipe spam. Sure there are ways (portaling out/back in; or just turning it off in the UI), but WHY?? Why did it have to be so damn big. I was interested in knowing what recipe I learned, but not at the cost of that much real estate.
3. Going to the menagerie... Ok, maybe this is just me, but why not allow us to portal out of that area?

I did enjoy how much xp red beasts gave. I remember the first time I killed one while leveling and I gained around 40% of a level for that. When dps/survivability are high, the rare beasts are welcome for drops/xp, ---- (4). but in my less than fully geared HC builds I often times found myself running by them as FAST as I could and sometimes they were on my toes the entire time.

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