The first 24 hours of the 1st week of Midnight S2 have passed, and Nightstalker314 is taking a look at the early data provided by Raider.IO. From season to season, we have the usual pattern: a noticeable decline in activity. The decline is slightly higher than in the previous two expansions, but not nearly as bad as during the worst days of M+. Dungeon tuning is looking almost as good as last season. The returning dungeons got a good makeover, but the new ones have an expected outlier. So, let’s look at the details.
The First-to-Second Season Drop-off
Regarding the general drop-offs from the first to the second season, Midnight is trailing a bit behind DF and TWW, but doing much better than BFA and SL. In the latter two, activity in the first weeks dropped by 51.11% (BFA) and 65.20% (SL). Anyone who can remember the grind overkill (BFA) and content drought (SL) shouldn’t be surprised. In DF, the drop-off was just 22.09%, though this was warped by a massive switchover from Chinese players to Taiwanese servers after the temporary shutdown of Blizzard services in China. In TWW, the drop-off was even lower at 18.33%. Here, we are excluding Chinese data, which was not equally available for both seasons.
MN S1 was a big outlier and showed that, early on, players just kept running more and more dungeons due to much easier tuning. The big difference in MN S2 might tip the scales a lot, though. Raiding has become quite relevant for vault rewards. So, after this first week has finished, we might have to look at the raid data too.
The First 24 Hours of Previous Seasons
Just like last season, we will be taking a look at snapshot data from the first 24 hours of previous seasons. The Asian servers have not had their reset yet, and missing Chinese data from older TWW seasons does not impact this comparison. Values for total runs and active characters are rather close in the early hours. A higher ratio of runs per character can be attributed to pushing further before swapping to another character or taking a break due to harsh tuning. But later in an expansion, players also tend to focus on a chosen character for that season.
The drop-off in terms of runs is slightly larger than in the previous expansion, 30.40% compared to 25.72%. This could be due to vault reward changes. But a really easy start to a first season was a novelty in this expansion. And many players went all in from the first moment. MN S2 is doing much better than TWW S2 overall. In addition, the drop-off in runs over the entire week turned out to be smaller (25.72% down to 18.33%) in TWW. This might also happen for MN S2. And the drop-off in terms of active characters is a lot smaller this time around. Just 26.47% compared to a whopping 38.14%. MN S1 also stood out a lot with its massive activity drop-off from week 1 to week 2. This could be a lot smaller this time around.
Total Runs Across All Dungeons
The spread across all dungeons is rather tight this season. In MN S1, the difference between the most and least popular dungeons was 3.05 percentage points. In MN S2, this value sits at just 1.90 points. And the reasons for their order might be a mix of lucrative loot and short travel times, for now. The least popular dungeon, Den of Nalorakk, is quite a few miles away from Silvermoon, while the portal for Murder Row is reached within seconds. And the top dungeons offer a variety of trinkets and jewelry with sought-after stats and effects.
In terms of success rate, we are looking at a slightly lower value than in season 1, 89.22% compared to 92.96%. The returning dungeons are doing quite well in S2. Ruby Life Pools (92.86%) is well ahead of King’s Rest (92.37%). Murder Row (92.13%) is the easiest Midnight dungeon, followed by Temple of Sethraliss (91.49%), the third legacy dungeon. The Blinding Vale (90.75%), Voidscar Arena (88.54%), and Den of Nalorakk (87.65%) are still within a reasonable distance.
The Worst Dungeon for Now
While the easiest dungeons in S1 were 1 to 3 percentage points higher, the worst dungeon back then did not fall quite as far behind. After 24 hours, Algath’ar Academy sat at 85.52%, and now Altar of Fangs is trailing badly at 78.38%. This should be addressed within the next few days with a few band-aid fixes. When looking at the encounter attempts (beta feature) from logged Raider.IO profiles, we can see the wipe rates for each dungeon boss. And the first and second bosses of Altar of Fangs stand out compared to all other bosses this season. With wipe rates of 21.15% (Ra’vi) and 14.81% (Zul’jan), respectively, they are way beyond the rest. Most bosses show values in the single digits and rarely exceed 10%.
The trash also seems to have its issues. When comparing the in-time percentages across key levels for all dungeons with those for Altar of Fangs, the difference becomes quite clear once the affixes kick in. At level 7, Fortified becomes active in week 1, and the gap widens into the double digits. Once Tyrannical joins in, things don’t really improve. And levels 12 and above show the biggest contrast overall.
Split Across All Key Levels
32.61% of all keys in the first 24 hours were completed at key level 10 or higher. In MN S1, this value was just 26.76%. This could be another indicator of a greater focus on sticking to your chosen main for S2 and filling the vault. The 22.78% share for +10 alone is also higher than the value for MN S1 (20.58%). But the total number of 90,077 +10 runs in S1 still surpasses the 69,302 in S2. For key level 12, farmed for the myth crests, the numbers come quite close (3,970 vs. 4,082 in S1), and only +11 is seeing more runs than in S1 (25,726 vs. 22,554). The top key level of +16 is ahead of S1 (+15) at this point, but S2 will probably reach a similar ceiling over time.
The success rate across all key levels is clearly tanking once we enter the double digits. And for S1, it did not dip below 55%, while +12 and +13 are rough terrain in S2 for now. In the past, seasonal tuning was a lot harder early in the expansion and got significantly easier towards the end. Maybe this time around the devs deliberately made it super easy at the start of the expansion. In recent interviews, they mentioned that they did not intend for it to be “that easy”, and maybe S2 will be a small course correction. It’s not a complete nosedive, but it offers a bit more of a challenge.
Conclusion and Forecast
For now, Season 2 of Midnight is still easy, just not as simple as Season 1. Fill your vaults as much as you can! Altar of Fangs needs some clear nerfs, preferably before the weekend. And hopefully those come in full force and don’t leave it with a gap to the rest of the field.
If M+ activity remains within a comparable range (-30%) for the rest of the week, we might see somewhere around 3,700,000 runs. But that would also rely on a similar pattern on the Asian servers, which still have not had their reset yet. If we get some major nerfs for M+ within the next few days, we’ll take another look at the numbers over the weekend. Regardless, expect a full breakdown of week 1 metrics the following weekend.
