The First Descendant players have discovered a Destiny-style loot cave but, rather than 'simply nerf

Update 24/07/24: Nexon has issued a new statement saying the director's comments were "mistranslated", and updated The First Descendant with changes to farming generally and the Valby Run specifically. Full story here.

Original story: In the early stages of Destiny, the original game and not the sequel, players made a wonderful discovery. There was a cave in the Old Russia area of the open world where some sort of glitch made enemies respawn constantly, with higher drop rates than usual. Destiny being Destiny, word soon spread, [[link]] and the cave would be constantly encamped by multiple player groups, annihilating anything that poked its head out, and watching the colourful little loot globs scatter everywhere. You'd sit there shooting for minutes on end, then gleefully go on a little rat-run through the firing zone, engrams endlessly flowing into your guardian.

If you ask me, Destiny never got better. The loot cave persisted for a short while before Bungie inevitably nerfed it, though it was so beloved that the developer also inserted an Easter egg where once it stood.

Nexon's new looter-shooter The First Descendant launched earlier this month and, you guessed it, has arrived complete with a loot cave. In this case it's more of a loot outpost, I suppose, with the exploit called the Valby Run and located within The Fortress area. Mobs at this location have been respawning infinitely and at high speed, whereas most other outposts will eventually run out of enemies, and slaughtering them en masse will drop a boatload of the game's resources: gold, kuiper and the all-important gear loot.

So all hail the Valby Run. The development team have now addressed this issue, and perhaps not in the manner expected.

It rather goes without saying, but the Valby Run exploit "was certainly not intended," said Minseok Joo, director of The First Descendant. "Due to our systematic mistake, Mobs at the Fortress Outpost have been respawning infinitely. And as a result, the amount [[link]] of item drop has increased 2-3 times higher than that of other popular locations."

Joo says that "to be adored by our players for a long time, we believe that it is wrong to just look on and leave the unbalanced content, which is providing biased rewards." However, he acknowledges that the Valby Run has become very popular, very quickly, and "we assume many players have researched Valby to enjoy the newly discovered content."

Thus, even though the Valby Run is "our own mistake" the developers "do not wish to suddenly remove it". The popularity means they're preparing a fix that will avoid "completely blocking" the issue and will "keep allowing the players to enjoy playing like before. However, at the same time, we will update other farming locations to match the efficiency, equivalent to The Fortress Outpost."

Reading between the lines here, what Joo seems to be saying is that the developers will make other outposts locations have this capacity for infinitely spawning enemies, with similar drop rates (though I could be wrong about that). There is some confusion over this, because the English translation of Joo's statement isn't great, and appeared to be contradicted by other statements on the game's Discord: [[link]] but I'm going with the official statement on the Nexon website, which does seem unambiguous in its language:

"As we continue our live service for TFD, we have no plan to respond by simply nerfing certain content, for any game play which collides with our intentions. We respect every content created by our players and will do our best to create a game that all players can enjoy together for a long time."

And with a note of thanks, Joo is off. The top post on the game's subreddit about this has the fairly simple title "W devs", with players generally reacting with extreme positivity to the news that they're soon going to be diving into pools of loot like Scrooge McDuck. "Bungie would have disabled that outpost so they could properly nerf it," said player KO in response to the statement. "Thanks for being fun."

Whether that is how this actually plays out remains to be seen. I loved Destiny's loot cave, and the few days I spent farming it remain a treasured gaming memory, but it feels like part of what made it special was that it was a moment in time: a mistake, an exploit, a chance to fill your boots before Big Bad Bungie cracked down. If The First Descendant is going to lean into its own exploits, and encourage players in this way, it's certainly a new approach to live service: and things are going to get very interesting.