Introduction
The Clockwork Tower is a location that's been in the game since launch and in 1.1 you'll be able to enter and climb it, fighting the machines within. In this Devblog we'll be previewing a couple of the bosses, as well a new system known as "Skill Tomes"
Skill Tomes
Firstly we have Skill Tomes. Tomes are available as drops from certain raid bosses and they're key in letting you learn new skills, expanding what your job is able to do. There are three tomes available in 1.1, one for Black Mage, one for White Mage, and one for Bard. You can read what each skill does before you get the tome, but you will need the tome to learn and equip the spell. Here is an example of what it looks like;
Manashell is a Black Mage skill that gives the Black Mage a shield to help make them a little sturdier in raid fights. All the skill tomes are in a similar vein where they look to sure up any weaknesses that the job has, or giving the job an additional tool for their kit.
The Clockwork Tower
The story of the Clockwork Tower is central to the entire patch, so I won't go into it here. However, I do have screenshot previews of inside the raid, and some details on a boss. The raid itself is 6 bosses split into 2 wings, the first wing being 4 bosses and the final wing being 2. The Raid does have a Challenge mode, but instead of it being a secret phase in the final boss its a speed run, starting from 2 and ending on boss 6. This raid drops item level 90 gear, and item level 80 weapons. There is also a way to upgrade weapons from item level 80 to item level 100. From this point on item increases will be in set increments of 50
Here is the inside of the raid;
After defeating the first boss and entering the tower proper you have a choice between two bosses, but both need to be cleared before moving onto the 4th boss and the end of the raid.
The Ancient Construct is either the 2nd or 3rd encounter
The Ancient Construct's encounter is themed around its massive drill. The fight is simple with the boss only having a tank buster and a raid wide, however as the fight progresses the drill begins to spin faster, as the RPM of the drill increases the attacks that the boss performs repeat. So instead of a raid wide or tank buster hitting once, they will end up hitting three or even four times. Its a fairly tight healer encounter and a fun thematic fight.
Release Date
Like it said in the subtitle of the post, Emperium 1.1 is being released June 15th around 11 am PDT the raid will be available on the same day, it will only be gated by story completion. With the release of this patch ALL content made prior to the release of the game will be out, I'm hoping to keep the same kind of patch cadence going forward. As always you can join the official discord here I'm usually around to answer questions or talk about the game