UPDATE: This patch will unfortunately be delayed a day due to last minute technical issues. Apologies for the inconvenience.
The holiday spirit is coming to Citadel!
While the true highlight with this week’s upcoming patch is a series of network improvements on the game’s backend – which should improve server performance and reduce connectivity errors for some players – we’re also adding a nice sprinkling of holiday cheer into the game for the good wizards and witches of Ignus! Let’s take a quick peek at what you can expect to see in the game come tomorrow’s patch.
Connectivity Improvements
Tomorrow's update will include refactors of a number of key back end systems that manage the communication of world and player data between the server and the client. With these changes, many players should see improvements in load times and a reduction in lag. Additionally, players with slower connections who once experienced difficulties connecting to servers should experience fewer instances of clicking “Join” and being kicked back to the main menu.
AI Improvements
We’ve made a few tweaks to our AI behavior and responsiveness that should hopefully make some enemies pose a bit more of a threat in combat. Previous to this update, some enemies would not elicit a response as you sniped them with spells from afar. We’ve made adjustments to correct this. Additionally, tames should have less trouble navigating the world’s geometry and foliage.
Festive Cheer
The season of giving is upon us, and we have a couple fun time-limited goodies to share as our gift to you! Because we’ve been so busy with netcode development and the preparation of our endgame dungeon content the scope of our winter content is a little smaller than that of our Halloween event.
Santa Hats
There’s no way we could have a holiday event without making a Santa hat! This fetching crimson cap will keep your head nice and warm as you trek through the frigid Tundra while hunting for rare resources and Boss Shards. We’ve applied some physics this thing, which gives the end of the hat a charming bob as you gleefully hop and skip through the winter wonderland!
From now until the end of the event all world chests will drop Santa hats with a 100% drop rate. Think of it as our little gift to you. Simply raid a camp or clear a cave and you’ll be good to spread the holiday joy!
Milk & Cookies
Chests will also contain Milk and Cookies consumables which can be eaten to buff your health regeneration and movement speed. These tasty confections are also consistently found in chests, so if you’re ever out adventuring and need a pick-me-up, hit up the nearest enemy camp for a sweet holiday treat!
Reindeers
Tame and ride festive reindeer! From now until the end of our event, all deer will spawn with bright, red noses. Do these holiday deer have different stats, or behave any different? No! Is it still awesome? Heck yes!
Much More!
As always, we’ll have more minor bug fixes and improvements included in the full update, so stay tuned for the complete patch notes tomorrow!