Kiel Hugel Odins

With March nearing a close, we reach our next content update which is Episode 10.4: Hugel! A few of our major updates are still works in progress so this update is lighter on the custom stuff and more vanilla than previous updates. For now lets just get into what is exactly different and what this episode brings to the game as well as other changes we've done with this update.

Kiel Hyre Quest

The Kiel Hyre Quest is mostly as you remember it. Partake in the lengthy the quest to gain access to Kiel Dungeon and take on Aliots, Alicels, Alizas, and Kiel himself. However we changed the quest to allow you to skip the entire thing altogether for a zeny fee. For 5,000,000 zeny you can choose to skip the entire quest. You do this by talking to the NPC that would begin the quest normally and choosing the option to skip the quest. IF you do this you will NOT receive an Old Card Album, Taming Gift Sets, or any other reward (including experience). You will only receive the quest flag to your character that marks the quest as done and the Luxurious Keycard that gives you access to Kiel Dungeon. If you choose to NOT skip the quest this cannot be undone and you cannot change your mind later so choose wisely at the start!

Also important to note that the 5,000,000 zeny is per CHARACTER, not per account. So you must pay this fee for every character you want to skip the quest on.

Otherwise, Kiel Quest is vanilla with no changes.

Hugel and Odin's Temple

Hugel and Odin's Temple are mostly vanilla and have no real changes behind them. The Hugel mini games are there now and all the appropriate fields between einbroch/yuno/hugel are now updated to be fully connected now. The one change we have made to Odin's Temple is with the MVP: Valkyrie Randgris. She drops a Valkryie Shield at 50% chance in addition to all her normal drops. Additionally she teleports away if you try to pull her near a portal so no portal fisting shenanigans this time. You actually have to deal with her.

Skill Changes/Fixes

We've updated a few more skills with this update so let's go over what we did:

Priest/High Priest

Impositio Manus has been updated to be an area of effect buff that lasts 4 minutes long (to match agi/blessing buffs). In addition it gives 25 MATK to all party members on top of the 25 ATK it already gave. It has no ACD now and the SP cost remains the same. This will hopefully result in smooth party buffing for big parties with canto candidus/clementia. This effectively makes it function similarly to how it does in renewal/ro:zero.

Rogue/Stalker

Backstab updated/fixed to remove its ACD. This makes the skill ASPD based like it was always intended to be. Additionally we removed the jank position check that would prevent you from casting this if you were directly on top of the monster. It still can't be cast if there is no cell to snap back to behind the monster, however. This should hopefully make the skill feel a lot more smoother to play overall.

Star Gladiator

Star Gladiator skills were hard to keep track of which days you could use them on since they were based on the calendar year, not month. We changed this to month so now skills that can be used on "even" or "odd" days or "every 5th day" now make sense. If its March 2nd, thats an even day. If its March 3rd, odd. and 5th, 10th, 15th, etc. for every 5th day.

Additionally, we have removed the regen requirement for Star Gladiator's dori dori reset mechanic. With our sitting regen getting this to work was a pain and nearly impossible. So Star Gladiator should now be able to reset in the official way at least. (NOTE: there are no intentions to add an NPC that allows for reset)

Blacksmith/Whitesmith

Blacksmith and Whitesmith have weird buff timers that don't really line up or match with each other which can be quite annoying for the Blacksmith player. As such we've normalized all of them to be 5 minutes at max rank so its easier to buff yourself up. This also extends some love by effectively lowering the zeny cost for Whitesmith on Maximum OverThrust since it lasts longer. Regular Over Thrust wasn't changed because we don't want to encourage dual client shenanigans with it.

Adrenaline Rush(not full ADR), Maximum Overthrust, and Weapon Perfection > durations normalized to 5 minutes to match crazy uproar.

Alchemist/Creator

The Acid Terror changes have turned out really well and hit the mark for the power level we intended. However, the class is struggling with SP consumption with its new build, so we're lowering the SP cost of Acid Terror from 15 > 10 to help the STR build Alchemists spam a bit more often. We still think you'll want 20-30 INT on the build, but this should make the class feel more playable. Unlike Archer classes which have auto attack options when out of SP, alchemist can't really do much but rely on homun once they lose their SP pool.

Additionally, Greed is having its SP cost and ACD removed altogether. Since this is purely compensation for losing auto loot on homunc, we felt making it have no cost makes sense. No other class has an SP cost associated with looting, so it makes sense to use to just make Greed free.

Lastly, we have added what is likely our final Mass Brewing skill for Glistening Coats. This is in preparation for War of Emperium (which is coming soon) and should help brewing all the necessary supplies for WoE easy now. It works the same as all the other Twilight Alchemy's and attempts to brew 200 Glistening Coats at once/requires the mats to do so.

Mechanics Changes/Bug Fixes

1.) Double Death Packets return. When a monster dies it is very likely to Ghost out and remain after death on Alfheim. To fix this we delayed the death packet being sent by 0.7. This creates scenarios though where it technically is still clickable during this brief time which is annoying while mobbing or in parties/targeting. This can affect FAS snipers, Knights, and basically anyone trying to target the mob with a skill. As such we're reverting back to the previous behavior. This means the monster will die immediately, but a second death packet will be sent to make sure the mob doesn't ghost out. This doesn't completely fix the problem, but it does help prevent the annoying clicking on mobs that aren't really there due to the delay. This will create some pretty meme death animations where mobs die twice, but we've decided to just embrace the meme for the sake of smoother gameplay.

2.) Items drop already identified. Identifyall was a nice command, but its easier to just remove the need for the feature altogether by making items drop already identified.

3.) MVP Cards autoloot to the person with loot priority (not necessarily the MVP) regardless of how far they are from the MVP. We recently changed auto loot to not work if you aren't nearby when a monster dies. This will remain the way it works, with the only exception being MVP cards so as to prevent a tragedy.

4.) @killcount was not properly updating itself to accurately roll over after 7 days in some cases. This has been fixed.

5.) Mystical Amplifications icon now properly removes itself on single target spell casts. It still remains after AOE casts for some reasons, but we can't fix this just yet. Its important to note this is only a visual bug.

Costume Boxes(March)

Below you will find the costume boxes for march along with this month's patreon rewards.

Coming Soon(TM)

There was a lot we wanted to get in with this update, but its just straight up not ready yet. The things we're currently working on are our MVP instance system and implementing Battlegrounds, and of course War of Emperium. Expect these to be the next focus first.

Beyond that, our next big project will be the rework of Expanded Classes. This is going to be a massive update/skill rebalance so expect more information in discord in the coming weeks/months.