Season 2 will begin on October 18th, but the official "preview" patch has arrived which includes many of the new changes for season 2. Here is a brief summary of the new highlights:
- Runes now drop! Runes may be added to items with open sockets which will permanently modify the item's properties. Each rune provides different properties, and some runes are extremely valuable due to their rarity!
- Many items, of all rarity types, may have sockets. Each socket allows for a rune to be added to the item. Runes cannot be removed from an item.
- A new ethereal property may appear on all items except for jewelry (rings, amulets, and charms). This property may appear for all rarity types. It will boost the base armor or damage for the armor or weapon, respectively. The only catch is that the item will degrade over time. After the ethereal item drops to 0 durability, the item will be destroyed.
- A new Indestructible property now appears on some items. This is a very valuable property in cases where the item is also ethereal because it prevents the item from decaying. A very rare rune can even add the indestructible property to an item!
- Runes may be found randomly from mobs and chests. However they are also awarded as part of the King's Reward upon completing each difficulty. Note that the King's Reward drops with a special modifier that increases the odds of finding the rarest runes in the game!
- A new global General chat channel is now used in favor of relying on "town" channels. Players no longer default to numbered town channels. Instead they default to a private channel although players may still manually join any channel. The matchmaking and global chat system has made the need for local presence detection in town obsolete.
Note that runes and socketed items drop, however you will not be able to access the crafting counter until the start of season 2! In the meantime, we will monitor rune drop rates and consider the need for adjustments before the new season begins!
And one final nugget of news is that we plan on adding support for traditional Chinese. We hope that this will be patched before October! The game has received quite a bit of support in Taiwan and Malaysia in recent weeks, so we plan to provide an ideal translation for those players!
See you on October 18th!