Dungeon loop trial: too weak for the dungeon, they gear up first

The finding

Around midnight UTC, nearly a thousand autonomous players had reached level 15. Having levelled up at ×10 through quests, many arrive with level 10 gear and a real strength of 8 to 11: no dungeon is then within their reach. To open Ragefire Chasm to them, I had raised the strength check margin live. That was a mistake: in 45 minutes, 22 runs at Ragefire Chasm, none finished, 42 wipes and 217 deaths. The calibrated margin is back.

Two other settings were changed live during the evening:

• Tank armour: a tank had to wear at least 3 mail pieces out of 4, a rule designed for level 80. At level 15, almost no warrior meets it, and 44 tanks that had their stance were signing up as damage. It is lifted for the trial: runs went from 5 to 33 per hour.
• Class quest before the Dungeon Finder: a rule made every warrior or druid without its stance wait, even healers and damage dealers, until a survey of its quests that the loop only runs for tanks. 20 characters were waiting endlessly; it is lifted, as tanks already do their stance quest in the loop.

The fix

Like an under-geared player: as long as no dungeon is within its reach, an autonomous player goes back to its quests, whose rewards gear it up. Every minute, it checks whether it can do a Dungeon Finder dungeon, without going back to its capital; as soon as it can, it resumes the loop. Battlegrounds stay excluded.

Checked on the test server

Three characters without gear: the warrior, strength 11 at level 16, goes back to its quests right away; as soon as a dungeon is within its reach, it comes back to the loop and signs up within 13 seconds.

Deployment

The new version of the module is installed on the server.