Hello, Taernians!
The next update is on the horizon. It will be implemented on June 28th at 9:30 AM CEST. Once the servers are live again, the game will automatically download the changes. If this does not happen, you can check the file integrity by clicking the button next to PLAY.
The update features:
- the next part of the gear overhaul (incrustation),
- new sidequest (The Invincible),
- boss difficulty levels (part 1),
- premium weapon skins,
- fixes and improvements (including those suggested by you).
The full list of changes will be available in our changelog around the time of the update.
The Invincible – a new sidequest
The Dmorther Garrison is awaiting its annual inspection. Lieutenant Talliard has put all hands to work, but there is still a lot to do. He asks you to help him – failure is not an option. After all, the inspection will be carried out by the most famous Haligardian knight known as the Invincible. Will you make sure everything is fine before his arrival? Are the legends about his accomplishments true? Or perhaps you will discover a blemish on his heroic image?
You can take the quest from Talliard in the Garrison if you are level 86 or higher.
Balance changes
In the previous article, we gave you some information about the upcoming changes to gear and the new boss difficulty levels. Now, you will get even more details about this update and future ones.
Gear enhancement
We are sure you are interested in how the new mechanics (shattering, incrustation, and reforging) will work. Here is an explanation plus some tables many of you asked us about in private messages.
Let’s start from the beginning. You need a special resource (shards) to enhance your gear. You can get it by shattering gear. You can shatter any legendary gear (player and pet), sets, and synergetics. For that, you need the right number of essences, Taralax’s Hammer (can be bought in a shop for 20,000 gold), and optionally an inhibitor. Of course, the better the gear, the more shards you can get from it. The exact values can be found in the table below:
Since you know about the shards now, we can move on to incrustation. The process is very simple – all you need is the right number of shards and the gear (player legendary, set, or epic). 
What is the right number? You can see it in the table below:
In addition to that, you can also see what each ornament level provides:
Let’s say the attribute distribution does not suit you. You can then pay some gold (the price is the same as for upgrading) to reforge the gear. As a result, the attributes provided by incrustation will be redistributed. You can also help your luck and use an inhibitor and an upgrade flask of the right size and type. Thanks to this, the share of the chosen attribute will be increased, so you will have an easier time getting a gear piece with the right distribution (the range of the enhanced attribute will change from 0%-60% to 20%-100% of the additional attributes gained by incrustation).
However, there are two conditions that have to be met in order to reforge gear: the gear piece must have more than one attribute and at least five attribute points gained through incrustation. In addition to that, physical and magical resistances cannot be reforged – their distribution, gained through incrustation, is permanent and cannot be changed.
And that is all… The gear can now be enhanced and customized even more. ;)
Additional difficulty levels of instances
Previously, we talked about the general rules and differences between instance difficulty levels. The thing that is left to explain is entry items. No matter the instance, the base entry cost (meaning the current one) will remain unchanged. However, you will have to pay extra to enter the hard instances. The entry items are called tracks and can be traded with other players.
Tracks are divided into four types, one for each boss group – the division is similar to that of upgrade flasks. For example, getting tracks from the Mantis will allow you to enter the hard Mantis and the hard Fyodor.
The number of tracks needed depends on party size – the more players, the cheaper it is to enter per person. If one player wants to enter a hard instance, they need to have 25 tracks, two players – 13 tracks each, three – 9 each, four – 7 each, five – 6 each. Tracks are taken automatically from the backpack of each expedition member.
Droprate changes
Droprate is something that connects both of the above topics. As we have already said – the harder the instance, the higher your chance of getting high quality gear or drifs (for both size and category). Below you can see what ornament levels drop where.
But wait, there's more. We decided to take a closer look at the mechanic that decreases droprate depending on character level. We decided that the instance’s dedicated level range does not provide enough incentives as compared to higher levels who can complete the instance in a much shorter time. That is why we are introducing a fix that will be implemented with the next update.
Some of the current mechanics will stay as they are: the droprate decreasing linearly (within a given range) and counting the highest level in the party. However, to make sure that the dynamics of the diminishing can be applied properly, we will introduce three thresholds: increased droprate, optimum droprate, and lowered droprate. The table below shows the thresholds for each boss:
Let’s take the Chieftain as an example:
- a party composed of players up to level 19 has the highest droprate – higher than the current one (the exact value of the increase depends on the instance),
- between level 20 and 25, the base chance decreases from 100% to 90% – a value that more or less resembles what is currently found in the game,
- between level 26 and 30, the base chance decreases from 90% to 70% – here the optimum droprate threshold ends,
- between level 31 and 50, the base droprate decreases from 70% to 40%,
- above level 50, the droprate is permanently decreased to 40% of the base value (meaning the value for levels up to 19).
In practice, this means that the droprate will be increased or similar for parties that choose instances for their dedicated or slightly lower levels, or hard instances. However, it will be lower in instances for much lower levels.
What’s next as far as balance goes?
We are working on the other elements of the gear overhaul that we announced previously. We will surely let you know when we have some details we can share. Of course, we are constantly monitoring the situation on the servers, so there may be corrections for the already implemented parts. One of the things we have been discussing a lot is the usefulness of archdrifs.
The current situation does not reflect what we were aiming for when we designed the system. Why? In the design phase, we assumed players would want the biggest drifs and their distribution will be similar to that previously found in gear, meaning that “better” modifiers will be mixed with the less desirable ones. In short, drifs were supposed to grow together with the player gear. However, currently a lot of players choose smaller drifs as the ultimate size. We decided to counteract this, because it makes drif trading less profitable and allows the most active players to reach the maximum gear levels too soon.
For this reason, in the near future we are going to implement some changes that would make it more beneficial to insert the biggest possible drifs into gear.
In addition to that, we are testing the extra difficulty levels for more instances. They will be implemented in the next updates: Tower bosses, Commander, Bear, Castle Specter, Tit, Ivravul, Draugul, Selena, and Admiral. They’re the ones you can expect soon.
At the same time, we want to rebalance two instances that do not really accomplish what they were supposed to. The first of them is Commander – although the increased gold made it more popular, it did so for levels that are not its dedicated ones. The other is the Tit instance with the mechanic preventing melee attacks – it makes this instance very difficult for some classes. We want to make these two instances more attractive for a wider audience.
Multilang update
By the way, it is worth noting that we are also working on the multilanguage update. The backend is practically ready, but we still need to do performance tests. An important and unfortunately time-consuming part of the update is chat redesign. We want them to fit nicely with the ability to change the language of the game but still remain intuitive and fulfill their roles. Everything apart from chats is actually ready, but we do not want to hand you just half of a feature, so we ask you for your patience - it will be rewarded for sure. ;) Once the update is live, you will be able to play in any language, no matter the server. You could say that the language barrier will be abolished. We would like to implement this update during the next quarter.
New premium weapon skins
For a long time now, you have been telling us that the game could use more gear skins that would transform your weapons into really eye-catching killing machines. No wonder… After all, who would not want their opponents to gape in awe or flee in fear when they see the instrument of destruction. Here are some of them just to give you a taste ;)
Thank you for being with us and we wish you many adventures!
