Reverie Field Project

REVERIE FIELD — AFTER THE REWIRING 📻 Huge Patch Notes · RFV258–RFV284 Hey everyone :3 In the previous patch notes, The Field Rewired, I wrote that the machinery was finally in place and that I wanted to spend more time making recordings, writing music, expanding the world and actually enjoying the game rather than constantly rebuilding its technical foundation. I meant that. And then, naturally, I spent another series of updates fixing the machinery))) There is a difference :3 though. This is not another fundamental redesign of Reverie Field. The school specialization framework remains in place, the existing progression systems are still here, and your Relics haven't suddenly become part of an entirely new game. Instead, these updates address the things that became apparent once players started using those systems together. Some Crafting builds were generating rarities at a rate that could not remain sustainable. Extremely powerful Learn configurations had begun stretching the economy in unusual directions. Referral rewards needed attention. Crew Grandmaster Relics weren't contributing to school progression as expected. And a few players had accumulated enough Points to make ordinary JavaScript arithmetic look rather embarrassed. There has also been a considerable amount of work on the Radio, the music player, achievements, notifications, mobile layouts and the general presentation of the game. Some of these changes are significant. Others are small corrections that probably should have happened a long time ago. I want to explain what changed, why it changed, and - just as importantly - what has been left alone. 01 / CRAFT — KEEPING RARE THINGS RARE Let's begin with one of the more sensitive subjects: Rare → Epic crafting. In The Field Rewired, I explained the correction to the old Tier Roll calculation, where bonuses intended for Rare, Epic and Legendary had been incorrectly multiplying one another. That problem was fixed. However, further testing revealed another issue, this time involving highly specialised Crafting builds. Some accounts had accumulated enormous combinations of Craft-related Relic affixes, upgrades and other modifiers. The resulting Rare → Epic chances were becoming much higher than the intended progression curve. I spent some time comparing the behaviour of ordinary players with that of advanced Crafting configurations. The most important conclusion was that I didn't want to punish newer players for something happening at the extreme upper end of the system. The final Rare → Epic rules are: General maximum chance: 3% per eligible Rare crafting attempt. Dedicated Crafting setup with at least five qualifying Craft Relics: 3.5% maximum. Players with smaller chances retain their existing calculation until the relevant ceiling is reached. The higher ceiling requires an actual qualifying Craft setup, not simply a large collection of unrelated bonuses. Simple → Rare crafting is unaffected by this particular adjustment. The separate Grandmaster Legendary crafting route remains its own mechanic. The five-Relic requirement for the higher ceiling is based on qualifying Craft-school membership. You don't have to wait for the normal specialization stabilization timer simply to gain access to that probability ceiling. That distinction is deliberate. Crafting should still reward dedication. If somebody builds an entire character around collecting, upgrading and combining Craft Relics, that effort should be meaningful. But a strong build and an unlimited probability engine are not the same thing. Craft Result information has also been updated to communicate the relevant limits more clearly. Where a maximum is reached, the result can indicate that the chance has been capped rather than presenting an unrealistic theoretical value. I don't want a player spending valuable resources based on a number that isn't actually being used by the server. And I don't want the game to become a place where every second object is Epic simply because somebody found a sufficiently complicated multiplication chain. 02 / FARMS — A MORE SUSTAINABLE RELIC ECONOMY Farms received a related balance adjustment. The new Farm specializations introduced in the previous update are still here. Their storage improvements, production bonuses and progression benefits remain part of the system. What needed additional work was the interaction between very large relic-generation bonuses and the final rarity calculations. Farms can benefit from several different sources of improvements: their own upgrades, Talents, Relics, school effects and additional modifiers. Those combinations are intentional. However, at the highest levels, certain configurations were producing disproportionately strong Epic and Legendary recovery chances. I've refined the way those bonuses are applied, especially when their combined values become unusually large. The important distinction is that ordinary Farm builds retain their intended opportunities. A player who is still developing a Farm, collecting better equipment or assembling their first specialisation shouldn't suddenly find that the whole system has become less rewarding. The adjustments mainly affect extreme combinations of bonuses. I've also brought the calculations behind Farm rarity previews closer to the probabilities used for actual rewards. There are still separate mechanics for additional copies and special rewards, so not every possible Farm outcome is represented by one simple percentage. But the underlying rarity calculation should be much more consistent. I want Farms to remain useful for players who enjoy a slower form of progression. Set up your equipment, improve it, leave it running, return to collect what the Field has produced. That's a nice little ritual. I just don't want it to turn the Legendary classification into an everyday household item. 03 / LEARN — A SMOOTHER REWARD CURVE Learn has received important adjustment. Some players (GAP <3) have created remarkably powerful Learn configurations, especially through combinations of high-level Learn SONO Amount Relic affixes. I like this. Learn is one of the systems that reflects the original idea behind Reverie Field: sound is something worth paying attention to, understanding and exploring. It shouldn't exist merely to fill the space between Crafting attempts. At the same time, the highest SONO Amount configurations were starting to produce rewards that grew much faster than the underlying economy. Rather than introducing another blunt maximum reward, I've implemented a smoother diminishing-returns calculation for exceptionally large combinations of Learn SONO Amount bonuses. In practical terms: Ordinary and moderately developed Learn builds retain their intended progression. High-level SONO Amount bonuses still improve rewards. At very large combined values, each additional bonus contributes progressively less. There is no new fixed maximum SONO reward per Learn attempt. That last point is important. The intention isn't to make upgrading Learn Relics pointless. It's to prevent the strongest configurations from accelerating at a rate that makes further progression impossible to balance. I've also corrected some behaviour involving high-level Learn SONO affixes and the values retained after upgrades. A valuable Relic shouldn't become unexpectedly worse because its upgrade calculation handled a particular bonus incorrectly. These changes allow strong Learn builds to remain strong without letting one combination of modifiers determine the entire economy. And hopefully they give people another reason to open Learn for the actual subject matter. There really is more to sound than Points. Although apparently there can be quite a lot of Points. 04 / REVERIE CREWS — GRANDMASTER RELICS AND SCHOOL SPECIALIZATIONS One of the most important consistency fixes concerns the Crew Grandmaster Relic. This Relic occupies a special position in Active Resonance. Unlike ordinary equipped Relics, it belongs to the player's Crew-related progression and has its own rules for effective strength, quality and other characteristics. Until recently, however, something was missing. A Crew Grandmaster Relic could belong to a particular school without properly contributing to the 5/8/11 school-specialization counts. That behaviour has been corrected. An active Crew Grandmaster Relic can now contribute one matching school member toward the normal 5, 8 and 11 specialization thresholds. For example, a Farm-school Crew Grandmaster can help complete a Farm specialization. The same principle applies to the corresponding schools. These contributions also respond to relevant changes in Crew state, Grandmaster Relic acquisition and school adjustments, rather than relying on the player to rebuild their entire setup. The existing specialization stabilization rules still apply to the bonuses themselves. This does not mean that a Crew Grandmaster has become an ordinary equipped Relic in every respect. It retains its separate slot and mechanics. Contributing to the specialization count does not automatically give it every other possible school-set, Memory Word or Secret Phrase interaction. I've also corrected aspects of Crew Grandmaster voucher handling and adjustments. Changing a Grandmaster Relic's school does not automatically increase the percentages of its existing affixes. Quality and other applicable progression characteristics are separate matters. There have also been improvements to voucher accounting, including the handling of eligible Crew Grandmaster adjustments when a Crew is disbanded. One more change: Grandmaster Reset players can now access Active Resonance from Level 1 under the relevant GM progression rules. Previously, the usual level requirement could become an unnecessary obstacle for somebody who had already completed an entire progression cycle. That didn't make much sense. A Grandmaster should be able to begin again without forgetting how their equipment works. 05 / REFERRALS — REWARDS THAT ACTUALLY FEEL LIKE REWARDS Referral activations have received a considerable reward increase. As the game economy developed, the original Relic Fragment rewards for activating a referral link became increasingly insignificant. This was especially noticeable for players who had invested heavily in Referral Talents, Relics and specialization bonuses. I've changed that. Successful referral activations now receive a ×100 increase to the existing Relic Fragment reward component. This applies to both sides of the activation: The player activating somebody else's referral code. The owner of the referral code. Each player's reward is still calculated independently, using their own eligible modifiers and progression. For players with Grandmaster Reset, the activation's Points reward has also received an additional ×10 multiplier. These changes build on the existing reward system rather than replacing all its previous bonuses. A successful activation should now be much more meaningful, especially for players who have deliberately invested in Referral progression. I've also corrected the requirements for Referral Relic generation. There are two different mechanics here, and I want to clarify them because their Talent requirements are easy to confuse. Referral Crate Claim requires: Referral Resonator Lv10+ Daily Amplifier Lv10+ Your accumulated Crate rewards are preserved while the requirements are not met. Referral Relic generation during activation, on the other hand, requires: Referral Resonator Lv10+ Level Booster Lv10+ These are independent conditions. The system now handles that distinction more consistently. I've also improved Referral Relic notifications. Generated Relics can carry their actual identity and source information through the notification process, including the relevant details of new or duplicated objects. A player should be able to see what they discovered, both in the game and through the appropriate notification channels. The activation result window has also been improved. Relic information and awarded resources are presented more clearly, and compact reward numbers can be expanded to reveal the full amount. There was even a rather ridiculous interface problem where the exact-number popup appeared behind the activation result window. A popup that nobody can see is technically still a popup. But not a particularly useful one. That has been addressed. 06 / REFERRAL CRATES AND CREW REWARD SAFETY Alongside the direct activation changes, I've refined some of the systems responsible for accumulated Referral rewards and Crew distributions. Referral Crate progression now uses more carefully defined limits and calculations for different player states, including Grandmaster progression. Large values are handled with greater numerical precision, and the accumulation process is designed to respect its intended ceilings. Crew reward distribution has received similar attention. The interaction between shared rewards, individual limits, cooldowns and very large modifier combinations can become surprisingly complicated. I've tightened these calculations to reduce the possibility of repeated or excessive awards and make the results more predictable. These aren't new activities or additional currencies. They're corrections to systems that already exist. I want a Crew to feel like a shared effort, not an opportunity to discover which accounting operation can be repeated the fastest. And I want players to know that rewards already earned will not simply disappear because another part of the system needed adjustment. 07 / THE ECONOMY HAS REACHED SOME ABSURD NUMBERS I have to admit that I underestimated how far some players would take the Points system. There are accounts in Reverie Field whose balances are large enough to expose problems that don't normally appear in the everyday use of JavaScript. At those sizes, a number is no longer something you can casually convert into an ordinary browser floating-point value and expect every digit to survive. This matters for much more than presentation. It affects calculations, reward settlement, conversions, displayed balances and anything that depends on an exact integer amount. I've made several corrections to the handling of very large values, particularly in Points-related operations, GAS conversions and WOS calculations. Where exact integer values are required, the system now preserves their precision rather than relying on ordinary floating-point arithmetic. The WOS printing progression has also been refined, including calculations at very small progression steps and consistency with relevant Season-entry conversions. The goal is straightforward: the game should not silently lose or invent value because a number has become inconveniently large. The interface has also become more readable. Large quantities can now appear in compact form using letter abbreviations, as they already do in several parts of the game. But the precise amount remains available. For supported values, clicking or hovering over the number reveals its full representation. This includes improvements to balances, rewards and Radio information such as: Current Session Points Estimated Reward for 1h Total Boost Other supported large resource values And because somebody inevitably had to reach an almost unbelievable amount of Points, I've introduced another milestone in the existing Point Signal achievement line. Point Signal VI — The Sextillion Veil It recognises reaching one sextillion Points. 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. I think at this point we can safely say the game has progressed beyond counting pebbles. 08 / ACHIEVEMENTS — SOME THINGS SHOULD BE DISCOVERED Achievements have also received some new additions and corrections. The new Point Signal milestone is one of them, but it isn't the only one. There are also two new cassette-related achievements connected to some rather nostalgic interactions in the music player. I'll explain more about the player in a moment, but I don't want to spoil these particular discoveries. Some of us grew up with cassette tapes, and there were certain very practical things we learned to do with them when the batteries were almost empty. You may remember. Completing the corresponding interaction records the event. The game does not immediately award the full achievement and its resources simply because the player has finished a local interaction. Instead, the achievement is recognized through Sync Achievements in the Profile. That is where the player can receive the corresponding achievement recognition and its one-time rewards. Each cassette achievement offers 2,500 SONO and 2,500 Relic Fragments. Both also have their own little stories and Discord-role support, where the corresponding Discord roles are configured. The new synchronization handling is designed to recognize the completed events without repeatedly awarding the same achievement. I rather like these achievements. Not everything in Reverie Field needs to be about an enormous multiplier or an exceptionally rare drop. Sometimes a small gesture can be worth remembering. 09 / THE RADIO — A MACHINE YOU CAN ALMOST TOUCH The Radio interface has undergone one of its most noticeable visual changes. Reverie Field began as a continuous field-recording radio, and I wanted the act of listening to feel more physical. Not just another Play button inside another browser window. I've been looking at old recording machines, cassette transports, reel-to-reel equipment and the remarkable contraptions people build around endless magnetic tape loops. If you've ever seen a reel-to-reel tape loop stretched across an entire desk, routed around improvised supports, you'll understand why. The tape leaves the recorder, travels around a pencil or another object, bends around guides, accumulates slack, and returns to the transport. The entire workspace becomes part of the instrument. I've tried to bring some of that feeling into the Radio. When a Listening Session is active, a stylised tape transport appears around the listening controls. The tape travels through a system of rollers and external guides, with an extended loop moving around an improvised pencil support. Instead of simply rotating two decorative wheels, the animation includes variations in tape movement, tension, drift and the shapes formed by the moving loop. It's an interpretation of the physical behaviour of magnetic tape, created to fit the illustrated world of Reverie Field. The transport and controls have also been reorganised. Listening Time and Current Session Points now belong more directly to the recorder-inspired interface, while the remaining session information is arranged beneath it. The Stop Listening control has received visual improvements and a more deliberate position within the transport. The Radio volume control has also been redesigned with a physical fader appearance inspired by old recording equipment (Marantz pmd740). There are separate layout considerations for smaller screens, where a literal copy of the desktop transport would simply consume too much space. I've also continued refining the relationship between this visual system and the real listening session. The animation belongs to the interface. It does not determine how Points are earned, and it doesn't require the server to simulate a magnetic tape machine. The underlying listening and heartbeat systems remain independent. Because however much I enjoy old recording equipment, I don't think the database needs to know the rotational speed of a pencil. 10 / THE MUSIC PLAYER — THE WAX FIELD TAPES 📼 The music player has also been completely redesigned. The previous interface was functional, but visually it didn't have much of a relationship with the recordings it was playing. I wanted something closer to the feeling of an old cassette deck or portable field recorder. The result is a new player inspired by vintage tape equipment, worn metallic surfaces, engraved markings, aged controls and the warm, dusty visual language associated with old recordings. There is now a little cassette in the player, complete with rotating reels. Its transport responds to playback, pausing and seeking. You can also interact with the cassette itself, including manually moving through a recording. I've tried to make these interactions feel like small physical actions rather than ordinary browser controls. The interface includes a custom pencil (yeh, Pencil :3) cursor for the appropriate tape interactions, with transport behaviour that responds to the direction and speed of manual movement. Playback transitions have also been refined. Starting, pausing, stopping and changing recordings now have softer audio transitions, and the player has support for additional tape transport sounds and variations. The aim is to avoid the unpleasant hard cuts that can happen when one recording is abruptly replaced with another. The design draws inspiration from equipment such as old Sony and Marantz recorders, alongside the dusty trip-hop atmosphere of my music itself. You'll also notice a little reference to The Wax Field Tapes. It's a tribute to that particular culture of worn cassettes, imperfect recordings, instrumental hip-hop, tape noise and music that feels as though it has been sitting in somebody's personal archive for twenty years. And a Dusted Wax Kingdom label. I grew up with this label's music. I've also improved the playlist. Rather than always beginning with the first track, the player can introduce a different available recording when a new listening experience begins. This includes eligible music unlocked through Secret Phrases. I don't want somebody to listen for months and never discover a track simply because it happens to be number 34. There is also a new Sound Banks system that allows players to save the available music to their device's local browser storage. Where the local copy is available and supported by the browser, playback can use it instead of unnecessarily downloading the same audio again. The system can also account for changes to the playlist as recordings are added or updated. Sound Banks are presented as a collapsible section, so they don't constantly occupy half the player when someone simply wants to listen. The soundtrack itself has undergone a much larger musical update, including remastering and new compositions. I'll give that its own separate announcement, because I think the recordings deserve more attention than a paragraph inside technical patch notes. For now, the important thing is that the player has become something much closer to the atmosphere I originally wanted. A small archive of imaginary tapes. And perhaps a slightly unreasonable amount of attention paid to the movement of two little plastic reels. 11 / MOBILE PLAYBACK AND DEVICE-SPECIFIC CONTROLS The Radio and music player have also received more device-specific interface work. This is particularly important on iPhones. Mobile browsers do not all behave like desktop browsers, and iOS has additional limitations concerning software-controlled audio volume. A slider that works normally on a desktop computer may not provide meaningful continuous volume adjustment on an iPhone. Rather than pretending that this limitation doesn't exist, the interface now provides a more appropriate control where necessary. On affected iOS devices, the unavailable software volume fader can be replaced with a styled mute control. The same principle applies to the Radio and music player, with their corresponding audio behaviour. There have also been improvements to how the interface handles playback transitions, background state changes, visibility changes and interruptions. These areas remain dependent on the restrictions imposed by the browser and operating system. For example, no web application can guarantee unrestricted background playback if the operating system decides to suspend it. But the game can handle supported transitions more carefully and avoid unnecessarily fighting with the device. The music and Radio systems have also continued moving toward better coexistence. Playing a piece of music, listening to the continuous Radio, or hearing another eligible sound inside the game shouldn't automatically destroy the state of everything else. That's especially important in a project where several different forms of audio are supposed to exist together.