New Content, Features & Improvements
As we've been mentioning we'd do, we've given combat in Eterspire a new coat of paint. This is just the first pass, and we'll be iterating on it many more times, but it was becoming clear that combat had drifted a bit: most mobs felt too similar, too easy to deal with, and too spread out across the world. With active abilities in the game, everybody was a little too overpowered, and it became clear that mobs had never really been rebalanced around that change, so the sense of progression was starting to fade. This first iteration focuses on repositioning mobs, creating proper combat spots throughout the game, giving enemies more distinct behaviours and ways of attacking, and rebalancing most encounters so they're no longer trivial to defeat. All regular mobs have been rebalanced to provide a stronger challenge, with more mobs added and placed in grouped formations with different types of aggro. You'll notice your gear making a difference now. You'll feel stronger when you become stronger. We've gone over every single monster in the game, so it took some time, but overall, the game feels much, much better now. And this is only the beginning. In future updates, we want to push combat much further: more ranged enemies, abilities that you actually need to dodge, heavier use of status effects, and more interesting boss encounters across the board.
Ironman Mode (or something): you can now visit Seraph Steelperson in Oakridge Crossing to get an epithet to become an Ironman. While the epithet is equipped, Ironman players cannot trade or party with other players. This means you can become or stop being an Ironman whenever you want. It's not as strict as it is in other games, but this is a game, and how you have fun with it is up to you!
A much requested fix: after a trade, the chat will now stay in the channel you were previously chatting in, instead of defaulting to the Server chat.
Rogue Skill Buffs: The area of effect for several Rogue skills has been increased to improve group clearing: Blade Dance, Blade Dive, Shadow Strike, and Vicious Strike.
Eterspire Store
An incredible, limited edition Lunar New Year set is coming on February 18th! Stay tuned!
Bugfixes
Fixed a bug that prevented the scroll wheel from scrolling in the full screen chat under certain conditions.
Fixed a bug that broke the pathing of Trial monsters.
Fixed a bug that caused monsters to launch attacks from far above them.
Fixed the riding animation even more.
Fixed a bug that caused merchants to gift players capes.
Behind the Scenes
We are now working directly with Unity to substantially improve the performance of the game, especially on lower end devices. We hope to bring you noticeable performance improvements in the next patches.
In Other News...
Quests currently reward you a percentage of the experience required to level up, regardless of the level at which you complete them. Beginning with Eterspire version 68.0 (the next update), quests will start granting experience according to the level required to complete them. So if you've been saving your quests for last, be sure to complete them before the next patch is out!
In response to the Massively Overpowered Podcast, episode 550, minute 10:23: Hi Bree!
Community
Our group screenshot contest has officially wrapped up! We received over 400 entries, and there were so many great submissions that choosing the winners was no easy task.
All participants and winners have now received their rewards.
Our Event Suggestions Event has also come to an end, and rewards for the winners have been sent out as well.
New special community events will kick off next Monday, featuring some awesome rewards! Make sure to join our Discord and keep an eye out for the announcements!
We hope you enjoy this update very much, we'll be back on February 18th with more!
You can read the full patch notes here on our official website.