Patch 21.2: The Wiki is here!

Good day Levlans, hope you've had a wonderful and productive week!

It's time for another minor follow-up patch on last week's redesign. There won't be that many changes in today's patch, but there are a few things that have caught my attention and been fixed in today's update that I want to mention.

Be prepared though, I have a lot to explain and say here, so it gets quite yappy!

Update on the app stores

As usual with patch notes, this requires you to update the app on the respective app store, so open up the Play Store or App Store and download the latest version!

Don't forget to give us a review there if you're enjoying Levla and get some value out of it, reviews help us rank higher on the app stores and is a huge help to our growth! Thank you <3

Small pre-note

After talking with a lot of my friends in the app-space, I've come to realize that Levla is very different with how most apps are built nowdays.

Here at Levla, we do many updates per month, some changes are small and barely noticable, and some changes are big and changes something fundamental about the app.

It's important to know that, that's the way we will be doing it for a long time, until Levla is very polished.

I am still figuring things out, how to present this app the best way and to make it easy to understand and a bless to use.

Thank you for being patient with me throughout this process!

The Wiki has launched!

First off, I want to announce the official launch of our Wiki!

The wiki has articles on pretty much every game aspect of Levla: items, quests, NPCs, dungeons, crafting recipes and much more. Right now it's mostly a place to look up details on things, so it's pretty basic, but that's about to change.

Starting tomorrow, anyone in the community will be able to write their own articles and guides for Levla.

Here's how it works:

• Your name will be shown on any article or guide you write
• You'll be rewarded with cosmetics and other rewards for helping others get more out of Levla
• Other users can vote on articles they found helpful, similar to rallying in guilds
• All articles need to be approved by me before they go live

If you want to check it out, head over to levla.app and press Wiki, or find "Levla Wiki" linked at the top of the settings screen in the app (after updating!)

If you're interested in this, please let me know in the discord what you're interesting in writing for us!

More to come on this soon!

Upcoming roadmap

I'd also briefly would like to explain the upcoming roadmap for Levla, as there is a lot of new faces around port kelda recently!

Patch 22 + 22.1 - Social

First up is our social update, this will bring some new social features for Levla to bring the community closer together but also friend and family using Levla.

And no, it will not be chat functionality or any obnoxious features like that.

As this is quite of a big patch, and I also have some other things I want to squeeze into this batch of updates, it will be split up into two.

There will at least be one update next week, and one following that week.

Some other things beyond social stuff for these updates are a continuation on bringing back the soul of Levla!

Patch 23 - Productivity & Widgets

The patch following patch 22 will be our Productivity & Widgets update, this patch will soley be focused around improving the productivity side of Levla.

Right now I'm not 100% sure what this includes, but some ideas are Habit subtasks, better timers, step counters, many updates to our web-app but also lots of changes around our widgets.

Patch 24 - Content

And then finally, we end this batch with a huge content update, bringing new unique armor sets and weapons, capes and a brand new combat style, Magic.

Hope you're all as excited as I am for the future of Levla!

Now let's get into the patch!

The Redesign & Fixes

Earlier this week I went live with the big redesign, which took me 3 intensive weeks of pretty much 24/7 work. It got some backlash from the community at first, which I completely understand, since it was such a huge change in our design language.

Because of that, about 3 days into the patch, I ran a fully anonymous poll in our Discord (sorry redditors and non-Discorders, the next poll will 100% be in-app, the system just wasn't ready for it this time).

The poll results are in, and so is the usage data from the app. So I'd like to share how I see it, where I went wrong, what I'm doing about it, and also how I actually measure engagement, since some responses in the poll seemed to have misunderstood that part.

The Good

Before we get into it, I want to clarify that there were hundreds of responses in this poll, so none of this is based on a measly 20 votes.

First off, I just have to say WOW. No matter how the poll went, one amazing thing I realized is how many of you are so dedicated, vocal and invested in Levla. As the developer, I could not ask for more. So many of you had so many great things to say, even the things I don't agree with, and that is honestly so cool. I feel so grateful to have you all as my community, so thank you.

Second, over 72% of you were positive about the patch, which tells me we're heading in the right direction. Of course I can't make everyone happy, but in a fully anonymous poll where you could bash me as much as you wanted (and trust me, there was a fair bit of that too), I'm pretty happy with that number.

Of the remaining 28%, 22% had mixed feelings and 6% downright hated it. All completely fair and I understand it, but the good part is that this is completely salvageable.

Outside of the poll, I also look at engagement in the app, specifically around new users who just downloaded Levla, and it has skyrocketed. And no, I don't count "browsing around" as engagement. To me, engagement is how many habits and todos get created and completed, how long people stay in the app, and whether they come back at all. All of those metrics point up, so it's a major win overall.

Where I went wrong

With that out of the way, I still have to admit the redesign was not perfect. That would be impossible.

Keep in mind that Levla is a work in progress. It will forever evolve and improve. I'm truly trying to build the best app in the world here, and that takes time and practice.

The main thing I got wrong is that I pulled too much of the Levla soul out of the app. I'll be gradually bringing it back, but it won't look exactly like before. Serif fonts and colors will be used more selectively, with clear rules for where they belong and where they don't.

So please understand that I'm still working on the app daily, and things will keep changing until we land on something close to perfect.

21.2 Redesign Fixes

• Border radiuses have been toned down a bit
• The serif font is back on the big buttons
• Section labels now use the serif font, a slightly tan color and a bigger font size
• The streak icon is back to being "streak colored"
• The choose adventure button is now darker
• Removed some bloated explanatory text in places where things are obvious
• Fixed many regressions, things that got lost in the redesign unintentionally
• You can now see what consumables heals again at all times

More to come!

Trust me when I say the Levla soul will be making a comeback. It's just important to me that it doesn't hurt the usability of the app. In the end, I'm the only developer behind this, and for me to keep working on it, Levla needs to be able to grow and stay maintainable for a solo dev.

I'd also like to point out that it's not the UI that makes Levla "Levla". It's our art style, our attention to detail, and the fact that we are a productivity app first.

But of course, we want the aesthetic feel and the complete package too, which is why I'm bringing these things back slowly and safely.

And it goes beyond graphics. Soon you can expect sound effects and even soundtracks, which I've been working on with a producer for quite some time now.

Thank you for being patient with me!

Combat XP & Stamina Rebalancing

Also in today's patch, I've gone ahead and done some well-needed balancing when it comes to combat experience.

For a very long time now, I've felt that everyone is leveling combat way too quickly. A lot of Levlans have pointed this out too, even back during the playtest over 5 months ago.

Time and time again I've tried to nerf the XP rates without any real impact. It has been a pain to balance, but I have to do something about it, so let me explain.

Too fast combat leveling

As you know, we're a team of two building Levla. I work full-time on the app, and Mod Back works part-time on evenings and weekends.

This limits how fast we can create content. I can't just add NPCs without new drops, that doesn't make much sense to me, so content releases are quite slow, right now about one content update per month.

Fast combat leveling puts enormous stress on that, because by the time we're ready for a content patch, everyone is already way ahead of the requirements for the new region.

A perfect example is the top of our leaderboards, specifically Tacky, who is level 99 in a lot of skills while the content only goes up to level 40. That's not very fun for Tacky or for us (we love you Tacky).

So we need to slow it down. It was never intended to be this fast anyway, it's just really hard to balance.

This way everyone wins, except the unfortunate max level users haha, who will obviously be compensated some other way (maybe higher level caps, we'll see).

How we're rebalancing this time

Before this update, I've been attacking the XP curve directly, lowering combat XP multipliers and so on, but it hasn't helped. Not too many patches ago I lowered it by a flat 30%, and that did literally nothing.

So today we're tackling it from another angle: the stamina cost of combat activities, specifically monsters (dungeons are untouched).

Bigger monsters now cost more stamina to fight. Up to 25 HP is still 1 stamina, up to 50 is 2, up to 75 is 3, and the biggest ones are 4. Ore Golems and Ice Giants are 4, Burrowers 3, most mid-level monsters 2, and everything you fight in the early game is unchanged.

XP per kill is the same as before. You just get fewer kills out of a bar of stamina on the big stuff, which is the whole point.

Changes to Bounty

The changes above come with indirect nerfs to both drop rates and bounty rewards.

For drop rates, I think that's healthy either way, and if it turns out to be over-nerfed we'll obviously do something about it. Bounty is a whole other story though.

So to compensate, we've also changed how bounty XP and points scale. They now scale with what the target costs in stamina, so a contract is worth the same per stamina as before. Contracts on the newer monsters that already cost extra stamina pay more than they did.

Any old contracts have been updated to reflect the new rewards!

Bug Abusing, Cheating & Fixes

Now that I've been catching up on administrative work, it has become apparent that there's still quite a lot of cheating and bug abusing going on that goes unreported.

I'm going to be very transparent below about what has been found and how we act on it.

The purpose of Levla is to help you be more productive, motivated and healthy. The game we've built is fun to play, but it only works if it's played the intended way, and that means no bug abusing or cheating.

If you're cheating, then:

1. You've completely missed the point of the app
2. You're ruining it for everyone else
3. You're wasting your time

Every action in the game world is logged. If my anti-cheat hasn't caught up to you yet, someone using the app as intended will report you, and the logs will speak for themselves.

Stamina Dupe Fixed

With that said, I've fixed a stamina dupe that has been around for a while. Stamina pots could be crafted using 50 stamina, then return more than that on consumption thanks to restoration bonuses.

Clearly not intended. With 2 stamina pots you could pretty much play the game without touching the productivity side at all.

This has now been patched.

Gold Dupe

I've been closely monitoring the economy of Levla, and it has been healthy and flourishing for a long time. There's only ~134M GP in the whole economy right now, which is super healthy, and everything is really balanced on that side.

Except for one user who found a coin dupe and has been very active on the trading post. Without this user, the economy would only be at ~100M.

This user has been banned, and the bug has been fixed.

I also want you to know that I can follow every coin from where it came into existence to whose pocket it's in right now.

I won't be taking action against the users holding that gold now, since those were legitimate trades and the amount was fairly small. Just know that if something like this happens again with a much bigger impact, I will of course be rolling back trades to protect the economy!

Alt Account Abusing

Alt accounts are not allowed, full stop. And no, 1 GP buy offers on the trading post aren't as sneaky as you think.

Over 5 accounts have been blacklisted today for this.

What is blacklisting?

A blacklisted user can keep using the app, but can't interact with any of the social parts, such as the leaderboards or trading.

A ban only happens when a serious, game-breaking bug is being abused, like the coin dupe. At that point you're just using the app for malicious purposes.

Minor Game Updates

• CHANGERebalanced boots, Tattered Boots are now the worst boots in the game
• CHANGEScratch's Dagger drop rate lowered to 1/60
• CHANGECaravan Key return rate lowered from 0.59 to 0.37
• NEWBlack Kiteshield & Black Full Helm added to Armored Zombies and Tunnel Wraiths
• NEWSteel Boots added to the Caravan drop table
• NEWBlack Boots added to Simon's Lair drop table
• NEWYew Logs & Maple Logs added to Simon's drop table

Drop table

Armored Zombies

Base drop chance, before bonuses.

Item	Quantity	Chance
Mythril Scimitar	1	1 in 1,024
Black Platebody	1	1 in 1,024
Mythril Dagger	1	1 in 768

View all drops

Drop table

Tunnel Wraith

Base drop chance, before bonuses.

Item	Quantity	Chance
Mythril Platebody	1	1 in 768
Mythril Helm	1	1 in 600
Mythril Scimitar	1	1 in 512

View all drops

Drop table

Simon

Base drop chance, before bonuses.

Item	Quantity	Chance
Ring Imbue Scroll	1	1 in 1,000
Levlium Platebody	1	1 in 300
Levlium Platelegs	1	1 in 250

View all drops

Drop table

Peyh

Base drop chance, before bonuses.

Item	Quantity	Chance
The Toll	1	1 in 200
Steel Boots	1	1 in 40

View all drops

QOL

• NEWView the consistency % of all your habits on the stats screen
• NEWRe-order the stats cards by long pressing them on the stats screen
• NEWRe-order your subtasks when viewing a todo with subtasks
• NEWChoose which day the week starts on (Monday or Sunday) in your settings, new installs use the device default
• NEWSet the center tab bar button to always go to the home screen in your app settings
• NEW"Max" button on gathering adventures to use the maximum time possible
• NEWBank edit mode now supports dragging over items to select multiple, plus a new select all button and toolbar UI
• CHANGEDungeons on the adventure hub now properly show how many clears you've made, and are slightly more compact to highlight the art
• CHANGEXP Lamp sheet updated to be clearer
• CHANGEEasier to enchant multiple jewelry one after the other
• CHANGEMissing stamina in the crafting menu is now much clearer instead of just showing the lock
• CHANGEPressing any recipe in the crafting screen now opens the crafting view
• CHANGEEnchanted rings are no longer listed under "cosmetic" in loadout and equipment sheets
• CHANGEThe intermediate farming step has been removed completely
• CHANGEDragging items to a tab is now less harsh on the scroll (intended for moving items to another slot)
• Many many other QOL and cleanups

Bug Fixes

• NEWYou can now complete a timer task instantly from the task detail sheet
• FIX Pet drops are now announced properly in Discord
• FIX Frost Rangers and Goblin Officers no longer respawn instantly, they now take 30 seconds like everything else
• FIX Many issues with the daily check-in / start of day popup
• FIX Scroll issues in the equipment sheet
• FIX Price number input on the Trading Post
• FIX Typing in the Trading Post coins input
• FIX Minor styling issue on the guilds screen
• FIX Time of day and amount are back on battle habits
• FIX Seed picker not showing seeds
• FIX Gear comparison
• FIX Bronze Scimitar showing as a Bronze Sword
• FIX Focus adventure timer not popping up when resuming the app
• FIX Flickering with stacked sheets
• FIX Numbers clipping in inputs and not showing the full number
• FIX Inventory and crafting not updating properly in some cases
• FIX Various crashes
• Many many other minor weird bugs fixed