Friday, 9th July 2021 is the official release date of our new MMO Swords of Legends Online! All players who pre-ordered the game or purchase it on release can take the world of Shenzhou by storm on our LIVE servers.
These patch notes cover all of the changes that we’ve made to the game since beta #2.
The biggest changes are:
- Added two additional skin tones.
- Reworked and added the player card feature.
- Arena times have been extended to 4 AM.
- Fixed rules for character names.
- Many bugs have been slain.
There are still a few issues in this version, which we are actively working on but that aren't removed just yet. We plan to add a full list of these at the bottom tomorrow, for transparency and awareness's sake.
Release Details
Time Frame
All players who have purchased the game will have access; previous beta codes do not provide access to the release version.
- Start: 9th July 2021 (2 PM CEST/8 AM EDT/5 AM PDT)
If you don’t own an edition of Swords of Legends Online yet, you can still pre-order the game now or purchase it on release. Both are possible via our website or Steam.
Goodies
Players who played in the betas will get the following items upon release, depending on their participation:
Mount: Masked Panda, Draco (Determined) Avatar & Frame
- Players who washed their hands in the basins on 3 different days in beta #1 and/or beta #2.
- The items will be sent to the gift pack centre and can be collected there. You’ll find the icon next to the shop below the minimap.
- If you don’t receive any items but believe that you should have, please contact our Support team.
- Please note that the items are region-specific, so you’ll receive the items where you washed your hands!
20% Crimson Coin Bonus
- All characters and game progress from the beta and Steam demo will be reset, including costumes and other purchases.
- All players who purchased Crimson Coins during one or both betas will get this currency back for new purchases on launch.
- As a thank-you, these players will receive a 20% bonus, credited on top of the Crimson Coins restored.
- You’ll find your Crimson Coins in the shop directly, no need to collect them.
- Please note that this is region-specific, i.e. you receive your Crimson Coins back where you purchased them.
Release Events
For our official release we have prepared the following two small events, which we will go over here shortly. For future bigger events we will prepare a separate announcement for you to elaborate more on the activities and rewards included!
7-Day Login Gifts
After you’ve reached Student 1, you’ll be able to claim a gift every day for the next 7 days. The items include a red fox ground mount, Mysterious Parchments for gearing progression, and even an item level 60 gear piece on day 7!
There’s no duration limit on this – event will end (or renewed) in the future with bigger expansions.
Quiz about Shenzhou
During the event duration, be sure to participate every Saturday and Sunday in the quiz event that’ll be querying you about everything around Swords of Legends Online! You’ll get rewards after answering all the questions per day correctly.
The event will be available between July 17th until August 1st (both dates included) – all you need to do is click on the event button to display the questions.
Character Creation
Skin Tones
We were really pleased to hear your feedback and worked with the developers to include two additional skin tones during character creation. The following options are now available for both male and female characters:
Character Names
We’ve already released details on character name reservation, but to make sure nothing stands in your way, here are the naming rules in a nutshell:
- Names must contain between 2 and 20 characters.
- Names may contain letters A to Z (lowercase and uppercase) and numbers 0 to 9.
- You can also use the following special characters: full stop, hyphen, underscore.
- The lowercase and uppercase vowels A, E, I, O and U can be combined with the following diacritical marks: acute (´), grave (`), circumflex (^) and umlaut (¨).
- C-cedilla (Ç/ç) is also allowed.
- Note that no distinction is made between uppercase and lowercase letters, i.e. the name NAME123 is considered to be identical to Name123.
Similar rules will also apply to naming your residence in the clouds, or Summoner pets. There are additional rules for pets and alliances:
- Alliance names can also include spaces.
- Pet names can only be 10 characters long.
Player Card
Player cards were not active in the two betas. Now you can use them to show off your feats to other players!
When customising your player card, you can change the avatar, swap out the background and pick a frame. The options available to you depend on unlockable contents (e.g. the golden wings are only available for purchasing the Collector’s Edition).
Sword Master Adventure
The Sword Master Adventure, which is the overview of the main story quests as well as the side tasks required to unlock additional rewards, has been updated and is now no longer available on the world map.
Instead, a new shortcut (CTRL + L) as well as main menu entry have been created, to better fit with our way of writing in the west. It is now in an own interface element, beautifully displaying assets for the various zones it’s related to.
Clicking on the various zones will display further details, such as the rewards and the requirements for each! Additionally, it’s now also possible to re-read / listen anew to the voices and texts for each quests you went through for these chapters!
PvP Changes
3v3 Arena
- Added a training mode for the 3v3 Arena which 6 players can join to play a match against one another. This mode is available around the clock (CTRL+K → Duel Battle).
- The regular 3v3 Arena is now open longer, from 11 AM to 4 AM the following day.
More Changes
- Adjusted the prices from PvP merchants, reducing the gold and reputation costs for purchasing gear.
- Added a missing faction achievement and removed superfluous Battle in the Sands achievements.
Other Changes
Leveling Progression
Further adjustments have been made to improve the leveling experience, specifically for the levels 34 and 36. When keeping up with the Biographies as well as tutorials requesting open world contents to be achieved (the various related easy daily/weekly quests), it should require but a little bit of open-world questing in the Baxian Plateau to reach the max level.
- Heroic Events in the Baxian Plateau (unlock after finishing the main quests here), will now grant 50% more EXP.
- EXP awarded from tutorials has been increased.
- Information messages have been added to guide players at 34 as well as at 36 towards potential sources of EXP that they’re missing (outside of re-running dungeons).
- Enemies within the Envoy of the Turquoise Lantern zones will now be targeted towards either solo play (1 Player), or group play (10+ players). Previous team play monsters (5 players) have become 1 player enemies accordingly, to increase accessibility of these for leveling experience.
- Some Biographies, due to an issue, didn’t provide experience points or reward items, which also lead to issues during progression.
Quests
- Some area quests now provide XP for companions. Companion XP from items has also been adjusted.
- Adjusted the weekly mentor leisure quest so it now requires Return to the Shadow Realm.
- Some books are now opened automatically when required/obtained through a quest.
- The quest now accepts the Heroic PvE Chest 60 even if it was crafted beforehand.
- Name overlays in cutscenes are now translated.
- Astral Essence XP added to some tutorials.
Leisureland
- Increased the XP required to reach higher Leisureland levels.
- Adjusted some Leisureland items and their required reputation levels.
Items
- Removed the Sea Dragon Leaping over Golden Waves firework from the Crimson Coin Shop. This will later be available for Crystal Dust.
- Login rewards now include Cloud Rider Commands and Writs of the Continents.
- Feeding items to your pet generates less pet energy.
- Companion items have been improved, XP points corrected and maximum level reduced.
- Minor adjustments to gold drops in dungeons and merchant costs.
- Possible soulstones are now always displayed and not hidden depending on menu selection (Beginner or Student).
- Various dialogues in which players have to search for items have been changed so that capitalisation is no longer important.
Music Box & Asset Viewer
With the Release Client (already with the character pre-creation), we’ve added the “GujianOL_MusicBox” and “GujianOL_Editor” folders to the game installation. They can be found in \tools\
The MusicBox has been translated to English and allows you to create own note sheets for melodies to be played within the Zither Melody interface ingame. We are looking forward to hearing your creations upon launch!
With the Editor, you can look through the various assets and create clips of and with the game. Please note that we will not be able to provide any support (functionality, questions or similar) for this tool, nor will it be translated on launch (we’re looking into this for the future). A guide by the developers (in Chinese) is available on their website: Link (http://gjol.wangyuan.com/guidance/index.html).
More Changes
- The alliance menu has been improved to make more space for achievements and events.
- Improved the sales menus so that items which have reached a cap are greyed out.
- You can change audio output even while the game is running without needing to restart (e.g. if you change Windows audio settings)
- Removed the water basins for washing hands.
- The ‚Zither Melody’ Interface has been improved in terms of UI and translation.
- You can now create folders in the Zither Melody Songs List.
- Only the team leader can reset the progress of an ongoing instance if players are in a team.
- Added additional control options for dialogue and VO sounds in the game settings.
- The shortcut “CTRL + L” for Biographies has been removed. It’s intended to add them onto the Sword Master Adventures Menu (which is now linked to CTRL + L) in the future.
- Increased amount of possible glyph slots from 6 to 7.
- Various tweaks and improvements to the appearance of glyphs, food tips, buff settings in group windows, mastery tips in the combination tool, workbench tips, books, biographies, group recruitment, tank role confirmation and many more locations.
Bug Fixes
PvP
- The bronze chest (from PvP bouts) now contains both the Amulet Coin (Heaven) and the Sealstone II (PvP) as rewards.
- PvP Astral Essences now only apply in PvP.
- The PvP Elite Warrior Celestine and Inscribed Celestine reward chests now contain gear of the correct level.
- Players who cross the barrier before the start of the round in battlegrounds will now be dragged back.
- If you play a 3v3 match with or against NPCs, they will no longer use player names but system names.
- The Battle in the Sands can no longer be entered via daily quests.
- Companions can no longer be summoned in PvP.
Berserker
- The Blowing in the Wind Berserker skill now works via the icon as expected.
- The Berserker drill Advanced Charging: More Strike is now only available once the associated Astral Blessing has been learned.
Spellsword
- Players will now get notified correctly when learning the first level of Crane Talons.
Summoner
- Dancing minigame updated to contain localized assets.
Quests
- It is now possible to complete Chapters 2, 7 and 9, as the unavailable biographies listed as required have been removed from the list.
- Fixed an error in certain recipes which were required for tutorials.
- Text is no longer repeated when confirming a dialogue box.
- Adjusted the level description in the Envoy of the Turquoise Lantern tutorial.
- Fixed an error which prevented certain biographies from being unlocked correctly.
- Fixed an error which allowed the daily Instance Exploration quest to be completed without group matching.
- Fixed the map for Don’t Leave Anyone Out I to make the location more prominent.
- The fishing Tutorial will no longer require you to go to a region that’s not available yet.
- The quest series for ‘First Interpretation of the Book of Mysteries’ will no longer lead to you an unavailable region.
Items
- Missing event avatars and frames are available again.
- Removed books which don’t belong to the current version.
- The Combination Tool now supports selecting the talisman level.
- Jade without effects can no longer be socketed.
- Adjusted level required to use elixirs.
- The merchant who sells level-40 gear in the class areas has been removed.
- Adjusted the character creation costume preview to only include outfits actually available in the game.
- Fixed the duplicate visual of Writs of the Continents.
- All premium items can now be displayed in the shop.
- Dragon Accessory (fusion of talismans) can now be purchased from the Qin League Merchant.
- Embroideries can no longer be crafted.
- Some gems weren’t tuned correctly to be usable for our content.
System
- Fixed the problem which caused a long delay before receiving Crimson Coins purchased via Steam.
- New players no longer automatically start with the Novice buff.
- Switching to Chinese voiceovers now works as expected.
- The keybind used when fishing is now displayed correctly if changed (until now it always said Q).
- Skill macros no longer display the names of skills and targets in Chinese.
- Fixed a rare scaling issue with the group menu.
- Student 1 now works for fulfilling alliance achievements.
- The effect monitor in the group settings now accepts spaces.
- The recruitment menu autopilot now works for all instances.
- The FPS Counter is no longer stuck on the same number.
- The server list works again on computers running Windows 7.
- Navigation towards various crafting stores for Ancestral Records removed, as these stores are non-existent in our version.
NPCs
- Fixed an issue with guardians in the prison which made them invincible.
- The Gourmet Festival NPC dialogues no longer contain Chinese text.
- Fixed an issue which caused some bosses to have no Golden Shell.
Other
- Fixed some issues in the Game of Eternity card game.
- Fixed some issues in the Raging River Ruins instance.
- Various localisation changes in all languages.
- Battle companions no longer remain on the map if they are left before the active time expires.
- Automatic instance invitations no longer accept players who are below the required level.
- The production list in the Cultivation menu now shows the correct rewards.
Known Issues
About Known Issues
We are aware of the following important known issues and are of course continuously working on Swords of Legends Online to not only bring you new content and events but also to adjust issues and squash bugs.
Unfortunately, there are some issues that we’d hoped to address in time for our release, which have proven to be more persistent than expected. We’re truly sorry about this, and want to, in addition to sharing this before the release (so anyone who wishes can refund without any issue), also make sure you’re aware of the scope and next steps for these.
English Voice Overs
We’ve made a huge amount of voice over recordings and text polishing these last couple of months and were on track to get them all to you with the official release. As it stands, we’ve been met with a lot of small roadblocks these last weeks, which unfortunately resulted in large swaths of the VOs to not get played once added to the game.
This is especially egregious in the following zones, where a high percentage remains in Chinese:
- Weichuan Highlands
- Huaixiu Village
- Others also affected, but more sporadically
We want to assure you that we’re doing our hardest to both fix the encountered issues, as well as re-record various aspects where the quality was below our expectations.
Our current next steps for this look as follows:
- Working during and after the launch to get additional VOs added over the weekend.
- This will not impact our previously shared roadmap.
- Through the newly Sword Master Adventure menu (CTRL + L), you can always opt to listen to quest dialogue again, to re-experience it in English once added.
Further Known Issues
- Rare cases of text in subtitles and dialogues being in Chinese.
- Some cases of Voice Overs being cut off or with unideal volume settings (too silent for example).
- The animation displaying when reaching a new level is prone to flicker under certain conditions.
- The text within the very first cutscene is still too fast to be read fully.
- The game will only update hints for keyboard shortcuts after restarting the client (if you changed them to differ from the default ones).
Regarding Region Selection
- If your Region Selection on Steam or on the Epic Games Launcher only shows as a white page, you can fix it as follows:
- Open Internet Explorer -> Internet Options -> Open the Security Tab -> “Reset all zones to default level”