This patch marks a major milestone for the game, bringing some of our biggest changes yet. We’ve overhauled the new player experience by eliminating base roles, introducing Alchemy earlier, and weaving in more class fantasy so every character feels unique from the start. We’re also celebrating our third anniversary of being live with a host of improvements, fixes, and quality-of-life updates to make the game better than ever.

3 Year Anniversary

Next month we will be celebrating our third anniversary of being live! That means we are spinning up our usual seasonals:

• Ichabod has returned to Newhaven City with new goodies!

• Enabled seasonal scenes.

• Turnip heads can now drop from humanoid enemies.

• Humanoid enemies may now occasionally equip turnip heads.

New Player Experience

Ember Stones & Alchemy

We want to bring the excitement of Alchemy, the bizarre nature of Ember, and the Ember Veins closer to the start of the game, giving players an early taste of our unique fantasy elements.

• Alchemy quest can now be obtained and completed starting at level 1.

  • Added a new tutorial popup upon unlocking Alchemy.

• Ember Stones are now obtained during the Alchemy unlock quest.

  • Added a new tutorial popup upon the acquisition of an Ember Stone.

  • Previous quest elements in Meadowlands (including Archie) have been disabled.

Base Role & Specialization -> Class

We want each class’s flavor to come through immediately, reducing reliance on generic role abilities so that every character feels and looks unique from the start. To work towards that goal a number of generic role abilities have been replaced with more thematic class abilities:

• Bleeding Strike for Strikers has been replaced by:

  • Berserkers gain a new ability "Impact" which is a slow but inexpensive 2x weapon damage attack.

  • Brigands gain a new ability "Shifting Strike" which in addition to dealing damage, gives the Brigand a strong +Positional buff for a period of time or after 2 ability uses.

  • Wardens gain a new ability "Snare" which in addition to dealing damage slows their target's movement.

• Assailing Strike for Supporters (except Duelist) has been replaced by:

  • Duelists keep Assailing Strike making armor damage core to their offensive style.

  • Warlords gain a new ability "Dread Tone" which deals damage, armor damage and reduces the target's outgoing damage.

  • Sentinels again a new ability "Guarding Strike" which deals damage, armor damage, and reduces damage to themselves

• Threatening Strike for Defenders (except Marshal) has been replaced by...

  • Marshals keep Threatening Strike

  • Knights gain two new abilities: "Order of Iron" that deals additional damage on each autoattack and "Order of the Tribune" that generates additional threat on each autoattack.

  • Juggernauts gain a new ability "Momentum" which deals damage and gives a stacking +dmg buff, this buff stacks up to 5 times.

In addition to the skill replacements above, many skills have been brought down to lower levels changing which abilities classes start with. Everyone gets "Strike" and the following:

• Berserker starts with:

  • Impact

  • Assault

• Brigand starts with:

  • Shifting Strike

  • Stun

• Warden starts with:

  • Venom Strike

  • Quillback Spines

• Duelist starts with:

  • Combined Strike

  • Assailing Strike

• Warlord starts with:

  • Dread Tone

  • Rejuvenating Hymn

• Sentinel starts with:

  • Blinding Strike (previously named Distracting Strike)

  • Restoration (previously named Replenish)

• Juggernaut starts with:

  • Momentum

  • Breach

• Knight starts with:

  • Enraging Strike

  • Order of Iron

• Marshal starts with:

  • Threatening Strike

  • Halt

Other miscellaneous changes worth noting:

• You can no longer forget an adventuring role, spec, or class. To play a different class you must use a different character.

• New characters now start with different equipped weapons and armor based on selected class.

• Various theming elements of each class have been adjusted, such as icons and descriptions.

• Players must select a portrait at character creation.

• Disabled Ally the trainer in Newhaven City. She has finally earned enough to retire.

• Juggernaut's Breach Alchemy descriptions no longer mention "Momentum" to avoid confusion with their new skill.

• Sentinels have had three of their abilities renamed to focus on a stronger theme and class identity:

  • Replenish -> Restoration

  • Distracting Strike -> Blinding Strike

  • Overprovision -> Night Watch

• Additional Balance changes:

  • Increased damage on Halt, Halt by default no longer disables auto attack, Halt now also has additional hit triggers before being removed by default.

  • Juggernaut Roar base ability no longer gives a +dmg increase (this has moved into Momentum).

  • Warden Assist has moved up to level 30 in order to bring Quillback Spines down to a lower level.

    • Assist now grants the entire group Advantage for a duration instead of just your defensive target.

  • Sentinel now gets an additional 5 Armor Weight starting at level 1

Current Characters

• Characters without a base role or specialization will be required to select a class before they can enter the game. A new button "Select Class" will show on the character nameplate, which will show a new dialog with your selection options (this choice is FINAL and cannot be reverted).

  • With no base class you can select from all 9 available classes and will start at level 1.

  • With a base role but no spec you will be able to choose from the 3 subclasses of your base role. If you are below level 6 then your class level will match your current level. If you are above level 6, then your class level will be set to level 6 and will need to play catch up.

• All other characters will undergo a "live migration" process on their first zone in which will add, remove, and replace skills depending on your specific class configuration.

Newhaven Valley Adjustments

• Most camps have been reduced to 1^ in difficulty. The Ancient Bear camp remains 3^.

• Regular named mobs have been reduced to 2^ difficulty (rewards are unchanged). This excludes Misha and Knave of Harts.

• Increased respawn rate of cave bears.

• Increased frequency of Frenzied mobs near the newbie area.

• Wayward Mangrove has been brought closer to the newbie area, while it is non-aggressive it does assist the Mandrakes if you are not mindful.

• The Crawling Burrows Ember Vein has been moved from Dryfoot to Newhaven Valley. The content and rewards within have been updated to reflect the lower level (~lvl 5).

  • Added a new tutorial popup describing Ember Veins upon entering the Crawling Burrows.

• Added well travelled roads to the main thoroughfare (just past the newbie camp).

• Beardin now accepts any type of diseased hide.

• Johan's intro kill quest has been removed.

Ibaxus Updates

• Fixed an issue preventing Ibaxian Recipe chests from spawning in Central Ibaxus.

• Fixed missing stats on Central Ibaxus Juggernaut Curved Sword Relic.

• Fixed issue where Movement Resists were being added twice for Ibixian Adornment outer armor.

• Fixed issue while shaping Central Ibaxian Relics that was causing the wrong Relic to be considered for setting Class Requirements to equip.

• Central Ibaxus Shaped Relics should more consistently inherit stats from the supplied Lower Ibaxus Shaped Relics.

• Crusader Arribac's allies no longer share a respawn timer.

• Disciples of Ruto in Ibaxus have had their Energy Leech ability reduced and the self-haste component removed.

• Updated Central Ibaxus weapons (Greater Ibaxian Relics) to have enhanced emissions.

• Reduced potency of abilities from Corduun Seekers and Excavators.

• Reduced Daze duration on Ibaxian Slagjacks.

• Ibaxian Adornment Outer Armor pieces now consider all resist runes to give their full effect

• Added new NPC reset tech that restricts mobs to a defined volume. Mobs will reset if they or their targets leave the volume, and they will ignore incoming damage from players outside of it (will show as avoid). This system was applied to Ibaxian encounters meant to be fought in specific areas, such as Arribac (+allies), Morte (+allies), and his Jailers (+allies).

Improvements

• Added VFX to player teleports (see gif below).

• Added VFX to Other's disappearances (see gif below).

• Added VFX for Ashen spawns & deaths.

• Added a context menu option to character select buttons to remove characters from the Ember Ring visually on selection.

• Added an option to disable visuals for adornment layers. This is available via context menu on the adornment layer tab within the equipment UI.

• Added toggle to the gameplay options to enable/disable world boss death announcements.

• World boss death announcements are now shown in the emotes channel.

• Marta is now selling items from her fall lineup.

• Damage over time should now show damage types in the combat log tooltips.

• Disabled the depth-of-field effect on character selection. Hopefully this gives your GPU a little break.

• Player Damage Resists now impact damage over time abilities per-tick damage calculations.

• Meadowlands Lake Brown Bears have been reduce to 1^ difficulty.

• Reduced respawn rate in Grimstone Canyon fishing village and Stonecoat camp.

• Crafting intro quest should now be a bit more resilient (back end improvements).

• GEL now uses the player's actual level for XP calculations against yellow and lower mobs (actual chevron color), while orange and red mobs use the GEL level (GEL icon color). This provides "the best of both worlds", combining the old method with the newer one.

Fixes

• Fixed stuck spots in Grizzled Peaks, Ibaxus, Grimstone Canyon, and Highland Hills.

• Fixed spelling errors in Watchful Other and Ageta dialogs.

• Fixed missing tooltip on the Login with Steam button when Steam fails to initialize.

• Fixed the macro bar not considering the bottom buttons as part of the window. In other words: they can no longer be pushed off screen.

• Fixed an incorrect death broadcast from Wolf Wildfire in Ibaxus.

• Fixed a bug that could prevent the finalization of a subscription purchase through Steam.

• Fixed a bug that could cause abilities to swap places in the skills UI when they were swapped on the action bar.

• Fixed a bug that could cause duplicate scenes to load from character selection.

• Fixed a bug with default chat settings not being present.

• Fixed Noble Elk recipes incorrectly requiring level 25.

• Fixed multiple player ability animations that could fail to play.

• Fixed typo on Hardtack.