Roughly one dungeon in forty now has something else in it. One ordinary spawn is replaced by a named rare — Gravekeeper Ilmoth in the shallows, The Hollow Choir from level 300, Vessel of the First Dark from 700, The Sunken Magistrate from 1,000, Maw of the Deep Vault from 1,400 and The Unmade King from 2,500. They carry two and a half times the stats of their floor-mates and pay four times the EXP and gold.
An Old Evil burns gold on the dungeon map with its own ☠ glyph, is named in the legend beneath it, and wears the same gold on its card and in the fight, so you will know one before you step on it. Every kill is counted in a Hunt log on the Mastercraft tab.
A new dungeon modifier that rolls in every dungeon at every level, and does one thing: it guarantees a rare. It is deliberately uncommon. See the dungeon section below for why walking out on it no longer works.
Every Mastercraft must now be studied from a Schematic before it can be assembled. Schematics are inventory items — they stack, they trade, and they vendor for a fifth of the recipe’s gold if you would rather have the coin. Until you have studied one the recipe still shows in full, so you know what you are hunting for.
Where they come from: a slain Old Evil holds one 12% of the time, a dungeon boss of level 700 or higher 3%, a world rare 8%. A source only ever drops schematics of its own tier, so hunting at your level pays your level.
Every Old Evil also always drops one or two precursors — Relic, Heart, Eye, Crown or Soul of Old Evil by tier — and every Mastercraft bill now requires them. These are materials, not gear: they stack in your resources like ore.
Anyone who ever assembled a Masterwork before this patch already knows that recipe.
Not just bigger numbers. Graveiron Edge ignores 15% of enemy defence. Mirrorfang strikes with your Intelligence; the Warstaff of the Colossus with your Strength. Juggernaut Carapace carries enormous stats and makes you take 15% more damage for the privilege. Phoenix Mail leaves you at 1 HP instead of dead, once every ten minutes. Pathfinder Striders pay +10% gold and +3% drop chance, the Loop of the Scholar +10% EXP, the Chain of the Gilded Hand +15% gold. The Signet of the Twin Hand lets any class dual-wield while worn, and the Evergrowth Band mints at your level and keeps growing with you.
Weapon Masterworks take your class’s signature form on assembly — a Magician’s Caldera-Forged Edge comes out a Focus. Mirrorfang and the Warstaff keep their own shape on purpose.
Each recipe now shows the finished item’s level, damage or armour, all six stats, crit and its four essence slots, plus its special effect, the precursor line in gold, any schematics you are holding with a Study button, and the Hunt log.
The tab also used to unlock at skill 48 while the cheapest recipe needed 80 — a dead panel for thirty-odd skill points. It now opens when you can actually use it.
Dungeons whose level band tops 500 now roll six more modifiers, each written from the monsters’ side like the rest of the family:
On an Unstable run every tile you step off turns to lava. It stays walkable, but crossing it costs 5% of your max HP each time, so plan the route out before you go in. A plain run drops from 40% to about 29% of rolls in the deeps.
Blessed is now called Weakened. Same numbers — monsters take +25% damage and give 15% less EXP — but it now reads like its siblings.
Your modifier is meant to stick to you per dungeon until you kill its boss, and abandoning a run is meant to downgrade it to nothing. The penalty had existed since August and never once fired on the normal path, because every exit deleted the record it needed before it could look. With Old Evil on the table that was an infinite farm: roll it, kill the rare, walk out, walk back in, rare respawned. Closed the same day, and the locks that were banked under it have been cleared.
The rules now, plainly: clear the boss and your next run rolls fresh. Walk out (or teleport out) and you get plain runs of that dungeon for one hour. Die and the lock is simply released — death already costs 20% EXP and your carried gold, it should not also hand you a preserved modifier, and it should not punish you twice either.
That one-hour figure was twelve at first. Within hours 89 players were sitting on a plain lock and exactly one held a real modifier, which is the whole system switched off. An hour blocks walking straight back in just as completely and costs an honest player one dull run instead of an evening.
Three new gathering professions. Farming works land, river, shore, jungle and snow; Hunting forest, woodland, land, snow, jungle and wasteland; Foraging forest, woodland, marsh, jungle, land, snow and blight. Open country that fed no profession now feeds three.
Each has five achievements at 1, 50, 200, 500 and 1,000 gathers on the same rungs and points as Mining and Logging, and its own artisan accessories — Furrowborn and Harvestward, Trailsworn and Keeneye, Greenhand and Wildwarden — at Apprentice, Journeyman and Master.
The Underworld, which had no gathering nodes at all across ten thousand tiles, now has about 250.
The Woodworker takes bows, staves, wands and harps off the Blacksmith and inherits the timber ladder, so Logging has a bench of its own. The Tailor takes cloth.
The armour benches are now split by weight, not slot: Armorsmith forges Heavy, Leatherworker Light, Tailor Cloth, and each makes all five worn pieces. Nine disciplines, six equipment benches. Nobody starts from zero — every blacksmith was seeded into Woodworker at their blacksmith skill, and Tailor opens at the higher of your Armorsmith and Leatherworker.
A Peerless-crafted chest delivered about 16% of one dungeon set piece. The whole craft-and-drop armour line ran at a fraction of the set line per level. It has been rebased to 78% of the measured set line for every slot, distribution preserved, and gear you already own has been scaled with it — quality, ascension, sockets and rare scaling intact, vendor values deliberately not touched.
Every craftable armour tier is now also a set: four crafted pieces of one tier earn the same 3-piece +10% and 4-piece +20% as any boss set, and an HQ or Peerless finish no longer stops the set from registering. A Peerless craft now lands around 87% of a set piece. Sets keep the crown; crafting stops being a hobby.
Dungeon and raid pieces more than 15% off their slot’s line were pulled onto it. Trophy uniques — world-rare drops, Ultimates, Masterworks — are untouched. Below level 1,000, where every weight was locked to its stereotype, stat-variant lines now exist: Intelligence-led plate and Dexterity-led cloth, cloned power-neutrally from real pieces.
Commons now come up three per gather; anything rarer still comes singly. Two +1 rolls sit on top — artisan accessories and the skill’s Bountiful Hands milestone — so a maxed gatherer in full artisan gear brings back five of a Common and three of anything rarer. Nodes hold three charges, rising to six with skill.
Sky nodes had been minting junk twins — 4,249 “Cloud Silk Resource” against 1,313 real Cloud Silk, and worse for Sun-Metal and Star Shard. Those units have been merged into the real material, not deleted. The island’s Copper Seam was doing the same with “Mine Resource”, stranding castaways at the forge; it now gives Copper Ore.
A level-1 item paid the same skill regardless of your skill or its finish. Now a recipe pays full value only while its requirement is near your skill, falling to a floor as it drops behind, and the old all-or-nothing HQ doubling is a graded multiplier from 0% to 100% quality. Crafting your best recipe at a high finish reaches skill 100 in about 90 crafts; spamming the cheapest takes closer to a thousand.
Rarity changes the bill. Common, Uncommon, Rare and Epic recipes now cost different quantities and teach at different rates — Common cheapest per material, Epic fastest per craft. The old quantity table quoted the Common bill only; an Epic budgeted from it came up about 2.5× short.
Five thousand meals had been cooked and the cook could not eat one of them — the bench made pet food only. It now makes player food: every meal runs 30 minutes and is deliberately weaker than the potion of its band.
Meals and potions stack. They were one lane, and since food is always the weaker of the two, any running potion refused a meal outright. They are separate lanes now and their values add. Within a lane a stronger buff replaces a weaker one and a weaker one is refused unspent.
Every stat potion now grants 40% of its former strength: the top of the ladder goes from +80% to +32%, the bottom from +20% to +8%, applied uniformly so no line gains on another. Cleanses and imbue oils are not scaled.
Eighteen new brews from rare and legendary reagents — eleven of the 34 Rare and seven of the 19 Legendary gathered materials fed no recipe anywhere. The Miner, Logger, Forager, Hunter and Farmer lines each gained the rungs they lacked.
A duel used to belong entirely to whoever started it. The attacker pressed Attack and the whole exchange resolved in that one moment — their swing, and a reply calculated on the defender's behalf. The defender was never asked anything. They found out they had been in a fight by watching their health fall.
Both duellists now take turns, the way a party does in a dungeon. Raise a hand against someone and they are pulled into the fight wherever they are standing, with the duel panel and a turn of their own. Every blow is now struck in its owner's request — so a defender answers with their real gear, buffs, runes and last resorts, not an estimate of them.
Turn order runs on agility, as it does in the deeps: a quicker duellist acts more often, and striking first buys you exactly one action — not a permanent lead. You have 15 seconds to choose. Let the window lapse and you brace instead, taking 10% less from the next blow; stay away through five of them and you drop out of the fight.
The duel panel is a monster fight now, down to the furniture: the arena, the log, your vitals and your full hotbar — and nothing else. The old Attack / Cast / Flee row is gone, and the players standing on your tile are drawn the way monsters are, as cards with their class portrait, level and health.
A duel is fought to a finish. There is no Flee, and while one is running neither of you can move, travel or teleport — walking away used to end the fight, which made a step in any direction a retreat button that could not be taken away. If your opponent vanishes entirely their turns lapse, and after five of them they drop out and you are released.
Answering is not aggression. Everything the realm holds against someone who starts a fight — the Mark, the level bands, spending your own ward of respite — is for the one who raised their hand. Striking back in a duel already under way costs you none of it, at any level gap, with Peaceful Mode on or off.
Two conditions: both duellists must be online, and neither may already be in a battle. Challenge someone who has stepped away and the duel resolves the old way in a single exchange — dragging an empty chair into a hundred-turn fight is not a duel. Challenge someone already fighting in a dungeon and you are told to wait your turn.
All thirty-six stances were the same stance. Every one of them raised damage dealt and damage taken by the identical amount, or lowered both — eighteen aggressive, eighteen careful, and the only thing separating a Fighter from an Astromancer was a small stat bonus stapled to the side. Six carried nothing at all beyond the dial.
Each class’s pair is now built on the mechanic that belongs to that class, and the two are no longer the same choice with the numbers reversed. A Hexblade chooses how deep the hex gathers — Hexweave carries two extra Hex Stacks and lets the blade go blunt, Blade Trance gives two of them up for Arte damage. A Tamer decides whether the beast fights or they do. A Minstrel chooses whether the song lasts or lands all at once. A Runesmith picks between a rune cut deep and one scratched in a hurry. A Magician now trades in MP: Focused Casting is a fifth cheaper to cast, Wild Channelling a fifth dearer. Fighter has no damage dial at all — only arte tempo, the gauge filling constantly against one form that ends things.
Fifteen different mechanics are now in play across the eighteen classes, and no two classes build on the same combination.
Two stances were also lying. Rogue’s Shadow Work advertised +6% crit chance and +25 crit damage, and Archer’s Steady Aim +5% crit — the stance screen printed all of it, and combat had never once read those values. They are real now.
Every weapon rank used to end at Master, and a weapon at its skill cap was simply finished. Five ranks now sit above it — Highmaster, Archmaster, Exemplar, Luminary and Apotheon. There is a Weapon Trainer at every quest board who will raise your ceiling, on one condition: you start the climb again.
Bring the weapon, pass a trial — a number of foes worth fighting, at least 60% of your own level, felled with that weapon in hand — and the trainer lifts your rank a step while your skill returns to zero. Each promotion asks for more than the last, and each rank's ceiling is a quarter again higher than the one below it: 500 at Master, 1,526 at Apotheon.
Every arte you have already learned stays yours. The reset never takes back a technique you earned — and each rank past Master opens one new one, earned near the top of that rank’s own climb. Ninety-five new artes across the nineteen weapon families, each built on its own weapon’s stat, element and rhythm: Vowfire and Oathsunder for the sword, Nine Quiet Deaths for the dagger, Every Rune At Once for the rune hammer, The Final Word at the very top.
Promotion follows your ladder, not a shared one. A class that begins a weapon at Master reaches Highmaster in a single promotion; one that begins at Apprentice has further to walk. Your class decides where you start, not where you can finish.
The stat reward is deliberately small: the accuracy and damage bonuses flatten to a quarter of their old rate past skill 500, so all five ranks together add +5% accuracy and +10% damage rather than tripling them. Prestige is paid in artes and standing, not in a number. Nothing below 500 changed, so no weapon you already carry has moved.
The abilities retired at the end of August are back, taking the live count from 40 to 94 across seventeen classes — Archer’s Marksman, Eternal Aim and Rain of Barbs, Paladin’s Aegis of Light, Rogue’s The Long Con, Tamer’s Wild Call among them. Five were rebalanced on the way back: the four Astromancer Signs and Warlock’s Dark Pact now grant +5 to a stat for 300 seconds (Dark Pact 60). Minstrels get none on purpose — their Songs live in the spell list and would only be duplicated.
PvP duels were the last live combat with no hotbar — casters could only pure-cast while their readied spells, Artes, abilities and Fusions sat unused. The full bar now renders in duels, in the Echo Arena, and on the Guild Raid boss card, which had accepted hotbar presses since launch without ever drawing a bar.
Dual Cast overpowered the classes that had it and is gone. A caster now pays and fires once, like everyone else. In its place, Magician, Warlock and Necromancer damage spells strike 25% harder; heals and buffs are unchanged.
The MP economy tightened with it. A spell never costs less than 5% of your bar (about 3.25% after the caster discount, roughly thirty casts per bar), and walking regen was refunding one and a half casts per tile — it is now 1% per step for pure casters and 0.5% for aligned classes, with 0.5% per combat round. A full bar takes about a hundred steps rather than twenty.
The free random element roll on crafted weapons is gone — a weapon is physical unless you spend Elemental Shards to choose. The shard price was the problem: a level-1,000 Light weapon cost 100 shards against seven Light spawn types in the whole world, which is why the feature read as “shards don’t drop”. The cost now follows the square root of the level: 32 at 1,000, 58 at 3,365, 71 at 5,000. Shards fall from 35% of elemental kills, one to five at a time, with a coloured drop line so you can see them.
World rares have elements now. All twelve were elementless — no weakness, no resistance, never a shard. The three endgame rares take the scarce ones: the Aurora Sovereign is Light, the Glass Prophet Lightning, Skyfather Ranulf Wind.
Conductor now gives its promised +20% Detonate charge. Void-Plated converts damage taken into charge in proportion to your health bar. Overflow finally has a pool to raise: your maximum MP is now a real value that runes can increase, rather than your Intelligence hard-coded in fifteen places — the MP bar, inn rest, revive, level-up and step regen all read the raised number. Arcane Edge claimed to turn weapon damage into magic damage, which cannot work when enemies have no magic defence; it now gives Detonate +20% damage, the only rune that does.
Flat Dodge from traits, Support Class, Attunements, Apotheosis, Mastery and Ascendant was uncapped. It now holds full value to 35% and eases toward 50% without reaching it. Nobody live is near it today; nothing you have bought is wasted, and nothing makes you untouchable.
Vampiric and Manasteal widen: the ceiling rises from 15% to 25% and the curve with it, so a fourth and fifth leech essence pay for themselves — six Tier V essences now read about 23%. The recovery cap of 75% of your pool (90% for Death Knights and Necromancers) is unchanged, and every leech essence now carries a label saying it diminishes across all your gear, because socketing three read as 36% and delivered 13%.
The Crystagyn drew three risky over-cap slots when only one overmeld exists. It draws one.
The only way to learn what a spell did was to cast it. Every card in the Magick menu and every hotbar tooltip now carries a one-line effect — computed by the same code the cast uses and personalised to you, so a non-buff-caster sees the halved percentage and duration they will actually get. The Attributes panel does the same for every stat, worked against an enemy of your own level.
A fully-mastered low-level spell showed 0 / 200 AP with an empty bar. A spell’s tier ceiling comes from its own level — Tier II at level 1, III at 30, V at 60, VII from 100 — and the menu now shows MAX in gold when you are there. Fusion refusals say so too: the seven starter spells stop at Tier II and can never be fused, and the alert now tells you to bring a higher spell of the same element instead of the impossible “keep casting”.
The level 75 alternate was a byte-identical copy of the other side, and the level 155 alternate was strictly worse. New B-sides: Starlit Veil (+8% SPI) at 75 and Astral Reservoir (+10% INT) at 155, so the fork reads efficiency against power. Crossroads respecs are free; the ten players holding the old picks can re-choose at no cost.
One clickable line in the navigation bar showing the last thing that happened to you — a gather, the EXP of the last kill, the last drop, a buff or debuff expiring — and the last ten of them when you click it.
The grid location and coordinates moved out of the navbar to sit directly above the map, tinted by your class theme. They also update as you walk, which the old readout never did. Mobile keeps its own readout in the header.
An open gathering panel now survives every kind of movement — Underworld, Sky, island and teleports — not only an overworld step.
Chat no longer yanks you to the newest line every few seconds. It anchors on the message you were reading; if you were already at the live end it stays pinned there. Equipped gear can be dragged into chat from the bag or the paper-doll to link it.
The Collection and Armory pop-outs show a stats tooltip for pieces you have actually found — and only those, because finding out yourself is the adventure. World-rare trophies, which live in neither catalogue, now show their stats too.
Your profile carries a full Achievement Codex, every earned achievement grouped by rarity. Previously only six Legendary and nine Recent were ever visible.
A Labyrinth death was a blocking alert that also wiped the log, so a one-shot could never be explained. It is now a proper fallen card with the fatal round written out. The World Boss and PvP death cards match it. Tournament results carry a collapsible blow-by-blow for your elimination bout and the champion’s final.
Your reports get a proper reply box (4,000 characters, up from 1,000; the old one-line prompt was a dead button on Steam), staff can reply without closing, and the thread renders as a conversation. Announcements no longer sit on the login, character and class screens; a rotating class tip does instead.
Ore mined before you speak to Nel now counts toward her quest. The notice board draws from island foes at levels 1–8 instead of offering a level 930 contract. Tutorial pop-ups are per account, so a second character in the same browser sees them. The Stranger explains magic to new Magicians and hands over a Tier I essence. Shore Crabs also live on mainland shores now. “New Adventurer” is no longer a competing class on the leaderboards.
Three Crystalwings stacked on a single tile. Each rare had twelve state rows behind it and each could spawn on its own. One row per rare now, surplus spawns removed, and the guard that should have stopped it is in place on live installs.
The online-players roster was stretched invisibly across the guest-resume and mobile screens and ate every click. It sizes and scrolls normally everywhere now.
An apostrophe in the Starfall Brand blurb took the whole crafting panel down. Fixed. While there: Starfall Brand carried 1.67× its tier’s budget (1,400 in three stats, now 923 / 674 / 923; its damage was always right — the one minted copy is rewritten, HQ kept), and Worldspine Bulwark ran twenty-four times its line’s budget (10,900 STR and SPI, now 460 / 340; nobody had assembled one).
The map renderer could lose sight of the active event when drawn from the quick-drink path. Harmless with no event running; it would have blanked the seasonal shop marker and tile art the day one went live.
A read-only, key-authorised feed of PvP activity: anonymous per-tile player counts, the live band rules, and the names of Marked and Rampaging outlaws only. Peaceful Mode players are never locatable, nor are staff, guests or anyone on the island. Ask on Discord for a key.