New Content, Features & Improvements
A new quest: Brave Spelunker of the Dwarfless Mines! Barbado the dwarf needs your help exploring the abandoned tunnels beneath Old Rautala. Gear up and venture deep underground into an impressive ancient mine!
We've added an experimental CRT TV filter to the game. It's there just because Lartu really wanted to have it, and it's disabled by default. You can enable it in the Graphics Settings menu. 'Give your adventures a retro twist with a brand-new (old?) CRT visual filter!'
We implemented and improved several anticheat measures to keep Aetera fair and fun for everyone (read more below!)
We've made several changes to reduce crashes, cut down on disconnects, and make gameplay smoother. We've updated the rendering backend, added new logging to help us understand what might be causing crashes and connection issues, and addressed a few problems that may have been causing bugs ever since we updated Unity back in October to fix a nasty engine vulnerability.
Anticheat Measures
We've spent a lot of time this release strengthening the game's protections against cheating. We can safely say that 90% of the exploits that affected the game, especially the most severe ones (including, but not limited to, instantly respawning monsters, selling anywhere, withdrawing / depositing anywhere, etc.), can no longer be abused, and we will continue addressing the remaining issues in upcoming updates. Players using modded clients or taking advantage of these exploits have been consistently banned, and going forward, they will be removed even more swiftly. We want you to know that we are taking this matter seriously. Our response may have seemed slow, but we were diligently investigating what exploits existed and how cheaters used them. We are now launching our counterattack to put an end to cheating once and for all!
Eterspire Store
We've added two high-value Crystal bundles, perfect for players who want more for less. A $99.99 pack that gives you 7,500 Crystals for the price of 4,200, and a $199.99 pack that gives you 20,000 Crystals for the price of 8,400. These packs offer +80% and +140% extra value, ugh those greedy devs!
Beginning in January, we will start phasing out regional pricing for some of the regions that had it. We introduced regional prices as an experiment, but unfortunately they performed poorly for us on multiple fronts, especially affecting how store algorithms choose to feature us. We are deeply sorry about this, take advantage of them while they're still here!
While the Adventurers' Guild prepares their costumes for the holiday season, we have begun celebrating by reducing the price of all Cosmetic Boxes to 50 Crystals for the month of December. Rejoice!
Bugfixes
Fixed a graphical issue that caused some trees to levitate.
Fixed a bug that caused the Wardrobe to turn into a useless bank in certain situations.
Fixed a bug that prevented your stats from updating when you learned a new skill or changed your loadout.
Fixed a bug that stopped footstep sounds from playing.
Fixed a (rather big) bug that prevented some players from logging in with certain characters.
Behind the Scenes
We are working to improve the game's balance. We want progression to feel more rewarding as you grow stronger, and we want the experience to feel less grindy and repetitive, so we are currently testing several improvements.
We are preparing the next two seasonal events: Christmas (in December) and the Three Kings Day (in January, which I've just learned is also called 'Epiphany'!)
We are also working on this year's retrospective as we prepare for the final update of 2025 on December 15th!
In Other News...
142 accounts have been banned for using modded clients, which is against the Eterspire Rules. Burn!
Community
A new Christmas-themed community event begins today (not to be confused with the in-game event that will launch on December 15th)! This one comes with some of our biggest crystal rewards ever, so keep an eye on our Discord for more details!
Our latest meme contest has ended, and wow, you delivered. The entries were absolutely hilarious! Thank you to everyone who participated!
All contest winners and participants have received their rewards. Enjoy!
A couple of weeks back, we held a new edition of our 'Ask a Dev' Q&A event. You can catch up on every question and answer on our Discord!
We hope you enjoy this update very much! We'll be back on December 15th, the last update of the year, with more!
You can read the full patch notes here on our official website.