Beta playtest & balance gates before the 4.0 economy locks

[minoneer]

Summary: The 4.0 repeat-economy (Vault currency rewards + unlimited-repeat challenges) is fully modeled in the design but has never actually been played. Before we lock the economy for release, we need a structured beta playtest that validates the specific mob/farm/material throughput gates the design depends on, plus two testplay checkpoints at the mid-game and endgame monument entries. No automated test substitutes for this.

Why this blocks 4.0

The challenge catalog drives a live economy: rewards grant Vault currency (RewardApplier.grantCurrency), challenges repeat without bound by default (repeatLimit: 0), and many carry per-repeat rewards. Every required-vs-reward ratio and every "is this even farmable" assumption is currently theoretical. Shipping an untuned economy risks either trivial inflation or unattainable mandatory challenges, both of which are hard to walk back once players have progress. The design draft itself flags drop-rate/throughput assumptions (e.g. wither-skull farming rates, prismarine "scale from guardian farming") that have no in-game confirmation.

Current state

• The economy is wired end to end: grantCurrency is gated on enableEconomyRewards() and deposits via the Vault economy hook (uSkyBlock-Core/src/main/java/us/talabrek/ultimateskyblock/challenge/RewardApplier.java); the default config enables economy rewards and unlimited repeats (repeatLimit: 0).
• The balance itself is unvalidated: the gating challenges (the prismarine monument, the wither-skull beacon chain, the guardian/raid content) carry large hand-in budgets sourced from farms whose real throughput has never been measured on a live island.

Scope

Validate each of the design's named economy gates against the shipped build:

• Guardian / elder-guardian drop throughput supplies the mandatory prismarine monument (several thousand prismarine shards) on a real island over a realistic session.
• Raid-patrol spawning works on a real island (ominous bottles from patrol captains, totems from raids).
• The guardian-habitat / monument mechanic functions in the Paper per-player world setup.
• Nether-fortress spawning defaults sustain the wither-skull kill budget — measure skulls/hour vs. the requirement and reconcile the rewards with the design.
• Audit every reward item and every hand-in against the actually-released build — confirm each item key resolves and each required item is obtainable at that point in progression.
• Testplay checkpoint 1: play to and through the mid-game tier entry, confirming the economy and unlock gates hold up to that point.
• Testplay checkpoint 2: play to and through the endgame monument/beacon capstone, confirming the material economy holds at endgame scale.
• Capture measured throughput numbers and proposed balance adjustments, and feed them back into challenges.yml before the economy is locked for release.

References

• Depends on the challenges.yml authoring work and the schematics/monument-material work being in place first (see 4.0 gameplay changes: level progression, scoring, and challenges #128 "4.0 gameplay changes: level progression, scoring, and challenges").
• Island-scoped biome unlocking as a first-class challenge reward (4.0) #145 — island-scoped biome unlocking as a challenge reward (several gated challenges grant biome unlocks).
• Challenge SQLite storage: accepted follow-ups for the 4.0 challenge rework #147 — accepted SQLite follow-ups for the 4.0 challenge rework (progress storage underpinning repeats).
• Design draft: docs/challenge-redesign/uskyblock-v2-challenge-redesign.md (currently untracked / do-not-commit) — the economy/throughput sections.
• Key files: uSkyBlock-Core/src/main/resources/challenges.yml, uSkyBlock-Core/src/main/java/us/talabrek/ultimateskyblock/challenge/RewardApplier.java.

Category: test-release · Effort: large · Source: 4.0 readiness survey.