Episode A 1 0 Old Glast Heim
Contents
Work In Progress
If you're reading this early, disregard this, these patch notes are in preparation for an upcoming patch.
Overview and Foreword
After nearly a year, we're back with a new content update that is larger than anything else we've done before. This is part of our new bi-annual major patch updates where we'll try to release something larger in scope that takes longer than normal.
Further, since we're finally past the vanilla pre-renewal content we only have custom renewal content or just entirely custom content to release moving forward. This means we won't be following any vanilla episodes and are "starting over" with A.1.0. (A standing for Alfheim since these patches will be unique to us).
This does mean that moving forward, all content updates will be considered their own episodes and any bug fix/adjustment patches inbetween will be minor patches (like A.1.1 or A.1.3). This is mostly so its easier for us to track when we released a new system or made a fix for tracking purposes.
Coming back to the fun stuff though, Old Glast Heim has been a long time coming and I'm very excited to share it with you. A lot of time and heart went into this and before we get into it I wanted to give a special shout out to all the people who have helped me with this as it goes well beyond just myself. Obviously a big shout out to Ken who has worked his wizardy once again, but also to the Playtest Team for helping me significantly. You've all done a wonderful job and this wouldn't have happened without you! Also shout out to ManlyCaveman for contributing some amazing custom sprites upon request as well as Chelmico for helping out with status icons. Additionally I want to say thank you to Ninja Medik and everyone in the Browedit3 community for helping me with any questions I had when designing these custom maps. In addition to the playtest team I want to thank the GM team for holding down the fort while I worked on this. You all have done a wonderful job. Also Tewi and Lapaco for being incredibly helpful in both moderation and feedback when it came to designing everything along the way.
Without all the friends and amazing contributors who mostly did this out of the kindness of their hearts, the dream wouldn't be realized! This was definitely a pet project of mine and one that I've wanted to do for over 2 years now ever since the idea came into my head. Seeing it all come to life has been nothing short of special for me and I can't wait to share it with you.
How to get to Old Glast Heim
As you can see above, you'll have to travel to the current Glast Heim map to travel to Old Glast Heim. At the entrance upon coming from gef_fild06, you will come across the Mysterious Wanderer. There's no hoops to jump through this time, no items to collect. Just talk to him and he'll ask if you want to witness the events that led to Glast Heim's undoing.
It is important to note you must be LEVEL 79 to travel to Old Glast Heim.
Old Glast Heim
Upon accepting the invitation to visit the past from the Mysterious Wanderer you will find yourself in glast_02 and free to traverse Old Glast Heim in any way you see fit. None of the dungeons here are restricted in terms of access and you'll be able to take on any monsters you can work your way to and fight!
Exploring Old Glast Heim
Old Glast Heim is no longer confined to an instance map with a story you repeat over and over like in renewal. It's now a full thriving (well...was) kingdom filled with people and locations to discover. There are many locations that are entirely new that have never existed before.
The red dots on your mini map will show all major dungeon entrances, but these new locations that are not considered dungeons will NOT be marked on your map. So make sure you explore the map and talk to the citizens of Glast Heim if you're interested in experiencing more of the lore and story. This is entirely optional of course, but it may be worth your while!
All Dungeon Maps in Old Glast Heim
Just like in regular Glast Heim, most of the same dungeon maps now exist in Old Glast Heim fully restored or altered to represent how they were in the past! Not every single map in Glast Heim is accessible obviously, but most are and you'll find the list just below. These are all the maps you will find monsters on so only enter these maps if you are prepared to fight!
-Castle 1
-Castle 2
-Prison 1
-Prison 2
-Chivalry 1
-Chivalry 2
-Abbey/Church
-Churchyard
-Staircase
-Sewers
Royal Sanctum and Chivalry 2
Himmelmez's curse has fully unleashed itself in one particular locale in Old Glast Heim, the second floor of Chivalry. Here you'll find the monsters damage will stick with you thanks to the curse they will apply to you.
This damage cannot be cleansed outside of specific locations within the second floor of chivalry or the Royal Sanctum. Within the chivalry locations will have individual cooldowns on how often they can cleanse you so be careful! If you wish to simply rid yourself of it and reset, you can visit the royal sanctum to cleanse your sins for free without cooldown!
Fear not, this is not the only location to learn about this unique mechanic, all you'll have to do is talk to the knight outside the chivalry and he'll explain the curse to you and to be careful!
Airship Assault
There's not only Old Glast Heim this episode, but a new airship has arrived in Hugel and Captain Ferlock needs your help! Airship Assault and its predecessors renewal instances have been pseudo converted into open world content.
All you have to do to enter is talk to Roderick at the entrance of the Airship and agree to help out onboard. All monsters are below deck so the entrance is safe don't worry!
This content is accessible to everyone, but is recommended more towards solo players who are somewhat higher level. Be weary of an unidentified creature roaming the depths of the airship however....
Temporal Boots Crafting
filler text
New Monsters and Items
Feedback and Monitoring
Above you'll find our discord link for providing feedback on all the new content in this update. Important to note you should NOT report bugs and mistakes we've made here, those should be in support tickets! We still want to know about those, but this channel is specifically for feedback for balancing purposes.
This content update is massive and there is a ton of new mobs, dungeons, and its all relatively spread out over which classes can go where. As such, its going to be inevitable that some maps climb ahead and other classes shine more than others. This is where feedback will be incredibly helpful to us to help reign in any one map that may be too dominant compared to the others. It also will help us shore up underperforming classes as we do specifically want Old Glast Heim to be accessible to anyone who has reached end game regardless of what class they are playing. (unless you're a Ninja main, kidding! sorta...)
Card Art Contest Winners
We held a contest for filling out the custom mobs card art in discord and after a very close vote (seriously it was razor thin) the winners have been decided! Everyone's entries were wonderful and it was not easy to decide so I just wanted to let everyone know who entered and didn't win that your art was still great, but it was just a really close vote. For those of you who did not win, you should reach out to me on discord about obtaining our participation rewards!
Grand Prize Winners
The best card overall ended up being a tie between two artists!
Luna's Dark Chimera entry tied with...
Pasta's Corrupted Duke
While there was only ever meant to be one winner for this, that it ended up as a tie felt wrong to make one of them lose out so I decided to make both winners. All winners should reach out to me about getting their exclusive costume as as prize as well as other prizes they need to claim through discord.
Winners
As listed above, all winners should reach out to me on discord by adding me and sending me a message so we can go about getting your prizes to you!
Without further ado, however, here are the winners and their card arts respectively. The Corrupted Duke and Dark Chimera are listed above so I won't list those again here.
Spätzchen's Bloody Wraith
Pasta's Undead Noble
Feather's Standing Soul
1776's Corrupted Bishop
PtolemaiosLS's Royal Druid
1776's Mutating Prisoner
Honorable Mention and Secondary Winner
Also a special shout out to Buntcake for tying with PtolemaioLS for the Royal Druid card slot in the competition. This one was also a tie, but the tie breaker leads us to using PtolemaiosLS's card as the official card art in game, but Buntcake will still get the same and full prizes that PtolemaiosLS does for winning as well. I wanted to display their art here too so it doesn't get overlooked! Make sure you reach out to me as well!
New Timeline for Alfheim
Now that A.1.0 has finally released you can expect periodic (likely weekly or bi-weekly) updates that will bring A.1.1, A.1.2, and so on to fix bugs and rebalance things as we go along. Don't expect anything major or sweeping changes in this smaller updates. This will simply be to clean up issues and bugs the new content may have presented as well as existing ones we may not have had time for in the past due to creating content.
Moving forward each major episode should happen about every 2-3 months with my current goal being 2 month intervals for smaller content updates. This means you won't see stuff like Old Glast Heim or Episode 1.0 in terms of scope, but you can see a large enough addition to experience new content regularly again.
But first there are a few things we have to tackle first along the way.
Expanded Rework
Yes, we haven't forgotten about it. In fact, its about 2/5 done already with two of the classes already able to transcend and all their skills (mostly) reworked and properly functioning. This doesn't mean balancing is done yet, but we made good progress originally.
I'll be looking to primarily prioritize this over all else out of the below 3 as its been promised for what feels like 2 years now since I got the idea. I know many of you are super excited about it, so the goal is to finish this by the end of THIS year.
The plans have changed on expanded rework since the original document you all read and some of our new plans are even better and more exciting.
Its also important to note the Expanded Rework update will also bring a full overhaul to every class in the game, not just expanded classes. I've combed over every class in the game and laid out plans for rebalancing many of them based on current struggles I've seen. I'm hoping that the expanded rework update, when it finally comes will be our end all be all to balancing classes themselves. The goal will be to leave no useless skills and to make every class viable in its own unique way. This is obviously difficult, but I'm hopeful.
None the less, this is our largest scope and will take many months of both creation and balancing.
RWC and WOE
As a former guild leader who primarily ran a guild focused on War of Emperium, or played with good friends in a primarily PVP focused guild, its been frustrating to struggle to get the WOE scene really going at all. Even at our peak of over 3000 unique players, the WOE scene has never taken off. We put many hours and tons of effort into balancing and tweaking battlegrounds,but no interest emerged. Tangible rewards have helped WOE slightly, but not to the extent I believe RO PVP needs to be successful.
To be blunt, this game only really thrives in a PVP environment when there are enough people to create a healthy group of guilds that are all decent sized and able to fill the roles they need to play the game. My belief is that RO is mostly balanced in PVP around teamwork and that means guilds need consistent people and roles filled.
So how do we plan to attack this? There are two visions I've had. And given nothing else suggested to me by players has worked so far, I'm taking it into my own hands now and hoping my personal vision on the game will hopefully be able to garner interest.
The first will be a shift at the end of this split. War of Emperium will change to a new series mode similar to leagues you see in professional sports/e-sports. This will likely mean guilds will be restricted to much smaller teams. However, due to the series/league format, larger guilds are welcome to bring multiple guilds to participate so long as they are competing with different teams. The format will be a straight GVG mode with 1 v 1s assigned each week as guilds duke it out. I'll have more details on this as we create it and its gets closer. But I feel current War of Emperium just lends itself to pure chaos, rather than good skill based fun.
Secondly, and even more primarily than the former will be the introduction of the Ragnarok World Championship mode/format for the entire world of Rune-Midgard. RWC is a commonly known format with restricted rules for PVP that favor small scale GVG which means smaller guilds will get the opportunity to participate without being ran over simply for being small.
To make the RWC more than just a for fun meme mode, we'll be introducing the concept region ownership. Guilds will be able to own regions and other guilds will be able to challenge them for ownership of that region. There will be material cost with both maintaining ownership, challenging a guild, and accepting challenges so one guild owning all of the regions is unlikely due to sheer investment. There may or may not be restrictions here to prevent one guild from owning literally everything, but the idea right now is mostly free for all with the limiter being the cost associated with maintaining your regions.
But what do you get for owning a region? Well the current plans are to implement tangible drop bonuses in each region that affect the monsters/bosses in the region that you are in. This will mean increased random optioned gear drops for guilds who own the region and even things like increased card rates are on the table. Nothing is set in stone right now, and these are simply the baseline ideas/vision I have, but I wanted to share them with everyone so they know that I've thought about this at length.
Yes, PVP kids I haven't forgotten about you. I want to have a thriving PVP scene, but its difficult. Just know its not only on my radar but in my immediate plans. Unfortunately some things like BGs, and PVP room will remain on hold as there is simply too much I am behind on, but you can expect at least RWC and the new WOE series next split.
Card Captor Sakura
For awhile I've mentioned the Card Captor Sakura system but not a lot of people are aware of what it is or if its even still coming. I can answer that yes, it is still coming. It's just delayed because my original vision has expanded. Card Captor Sakura will go far beyond Cards (although she'll keep her name).
I've identified in RO, and Alfheim specifically that we have a depth issue. Alfheim may be a grindy server with lots to do, but once you get your gear that's kinda it. I think an open world game like RO is at its best if you feel like you always have small/little goals to work for a little bit at a time. New content can only offer you so much.
The reality is that RO has a ton of content, quests, and places to see overall but you never interact with most of it because it is irrelevant to you once you reach end game. Well that's all about to change with the Card Captor Sakura system as I'll be aiming to make the entire world relevant through a unique achievement system I can't dive into here.
But this system will reward you for playing RO to its fullest and should (hopefully) give you something to do every day even if its just small things here and there. The rewards will be both tangible increases to your gameplay and more cosmetic rewards that are simply for fun and completion.
Overall though, I feel there's a LOT of work to be done here and this will be essential if Alfheim (or any server) is to maintain any semblance of stability in playerbase.
Bug Fixes
1.) Boitata MVP Instance now properly requires Kardui Robe instead of Mage Coat for requirements.
Balance Changes
One major set of balance changes and a bunch of minor ones!
Whitesmith's Cart Efficiency
For a long while now, Whitesmith mains have been clamoring for zeny cost reduction in some capacity. Over time I've tried to alleviate this through gears cautiously. But after long time spent debating it, its clear that range is so dominant in the game that their skills could have no cost and while this is extremely impactful, it shouldn't make anything go off the rails. Many classes are substantially buffed here through random options, and while I do not believe smith suffers too much comparatively, its clear due to play rate and usage they have fallen out of favor even vs MVPs they were once a staple on.
As such, we're giving them some early love with part of the Whitesmith Rework coming early. There are other changes planned, but this one was the core change and its being implemented immediately.
With the new skill "Cart Efficiency" you'll be able consume 1 Tempered Steel to grant you a buff that removes zeny cost from ALL of your skills for 10 minutes. (just like alchemy efficiency with acid bottles/bottle grenades)
To learn the skill first head back to the Blacksmith guild as a Whitesmith (sorry blacksmiths) and talk to Blacksmith Prolly.
For 5 Iron and 5 Steel he will teach you the quest skill Cart Efficiency.
You'll soon realize you have no idea how to get Tempered Steel, but fear not. The efficient mechanic (tm) is here to help you! She will exchange 3 Iron and 3 Iron Ore for 1 Tempered Steel to any Whitesmith.
We've also added a warp unlocker in this location (and to the alchemist guild for alchemy efficiency purposes) to make stocking up on tempered steel convenient. You'll only be limited by how much you can carry.
Note that we will be monitoring Whitesmith's performance moving forward to make sure this didn't push them over the top. However, we're fairly confident everything will turn out just as we expected.
Other Balance Changes
1.) Hunter's Claymore Trap, Blast Mine, Land Mine, and Freezing Trap scaling divisible by 40 > 35. (this results in a net 20% power increase give or take)
