The server will come down for approx. 1 hour for maintenance and an update at 04:00 server time.

It's almost Christmas in Arcana and Terminus Center has been decorated for the festivities. Santa's granddaughter Marie is back in town with quests and the hunt for the Christmas Shushus is back on!



Christmas Quests and Store
Santa's Granddaughter, Marie, is in Terminus for the festive period. Can you help her save Christmas?

Marie has quests to hunt Christmas Shushus, rewarding a Christmas title, and quests to recover stolen gifts that reward a selection of delicious Christmas foods.

Marie's store sells Christmas themed costumes, mounts and accessories as well as items that can be purchased with Santa's Reward, obtained by completing some of her quests.



Christmas Pets
Marie has six winter themed pets that she will exchange for Pet Summoning Pieces and Santa's Rewards. Speak to Marie and click on Item Exchange to see what's available.



There is a pet of every type, Physical Melee, Magical Melee, Physical Ranged, Magical Ranged, Assist and Tank.

Snowy Shushu
Type: Physical Melee 
Chance Effect: Reduce Physical Defense

Snowflake
Type: Assist 
Chance Effect: Reduce All Attack

Rudolph
Type: Magical Melee 
Chance Effect: Reduce All Hit

Snowy Bear
Type: Physical Ranged 
Chance Effect: Immobilize

Ice Soldier
Type: Panzer 
Chance Effect: Immobilize

Ice Lich
Type: Magical Ranged 
Chance Effect: Reduce Movement Speed

All Pet Summoning Pieces can be obtained by defeating the Christmas Shushu, Christmas Shushu Boss and Christmas Dungeon Shushu and Rudolph Summoning Pieces can also be obtained by defeating Rudolph the Lost.

The Christmas Shushu
The Christmas Shushu is a rather tough little fellow that drops Christmas Fireworks to replenish your HP, MP, or both, and also usually has some Christmas event foods and pet summoning pieces too!

But beware, the much stronger Christmas Shushu Boss might also appear somewhere in Arcana at any time, laden with Christmas gifts stolen from Santa Claus! You will need to gather your friends if you hope to defeat this one!


He drops pet summoning pieces, Santa and Rudolph the Reindeer costumes, Christmas Sleigh and Thousand Year Old Reindeer mounts, Festive Squidink vanity pet and plenty of Christmas food and fireworks. This guy is so full of himself, he will probably challenge you to defeat him in 5 minutes for a better chance of lovely Christmas loots!

Start your Shushu hunt in the snowy areas of Shebuz Snowfield, Shrouded Valley, Altus Gorge, Hidden Cavern, Conflict Valley and Frozen Nest.

Dungeon Christmas Shushu
Adventurers might also discover the Dungeon Christmas Shushu at the end of their level 85+ dungeon runs. This guy has similar strength and abilities to the Christmas Shushu Boss and drops similar items including pet summoning pieces.

Defeating the Christmas Shushu or Shushu Boss will also buff the entire server with a random Seasonal Buff including bonuses to EXP, Money, Drops, Battlefield Points, Stats, Defense, Speed and more! These bonuses stack so you could have up to 15 buffs active at any one time.

Christmas Bonus Game Buffs
23rd Dec - 24th Dec: 200% Experience and Skill Experience
25th Dec - 1st Jan: 300% Experience and Skill Experience
25th Dec - 26th Dec: 100% Reputation, 100% Item Luck, 100% Battlefield Points
31st Dec - 1st Jan: 100% Reputation, 100% Item Luck, 100% Battlefield Points

25% Moolah Bonus
You can get 25% OFF Moolah from now until Midnight on 31st December when you Topup using the coupon code CHRISTMAS2017 - simply head on over to the donate page and enter CHRISTMAS2017 into the coupon code box to see your new discounted price.


LOOT SYSTEM
Need & Greed
The Need & Greed (or more correctly Need Before Greed) loot distribution mode has been updated and has a new look.



The boxes no longer take up most of your screen and block your view whilst fighting - they are now small bars, just big enough to fit the item name, the icon and the 3 buttons.
The bar timer gauge is coloured depending on the rarity of the item.
The icon now shows how many of the item if it's more than 1.

When selecting Need & Greed from the loot distribution settings of the Party Menu, you can now select the item quality you want it to affect from Uncommon, Common, Rare, Unique and Epic. Selecting Rare will cause all Rare quality items and above (Unique, Epic etc.) to be automatcally rolled and the Uncommon and Common items to remain in the chest where they can be looted by anyone in the party (Free for All).



Items of Scrub's Tear and Moolah quality are always rolled.


DROPS
Item Luck
The drop tables of all monsters have been updated to make the Item Luck bonus (from potions, Lovers title, server buff etc.) more effective. Previously the Item Luck bonus could actually be counter productive, as it could in some cases increase the chance of for example, the Unique armors dropping as well as the Epics, and since the Uniques were sometimes getting the bonus applied before the Epic, you would just as likely end up with a Unique dropping still.

The loot drop system works in two parts. Monsters have a number of item groups, or lets for simplicity call them "boxes", containing items. They might have a box of Unique armors and a box of Epics, or in some cases a box containing Unique AND Epic items. These boxes have a % chance to drop that was not affected by Item Luck at all. The Item Luck bonus was applied to the items inside the box. If there were 10 items inside and each had a 5% chance (totalling 50%), the Item Luck would give an additional chance to get something from that box. However, some of these boxes had items that already totaled 100%, so if the box dropped you would already get something from it and the Item Luck bonus was actually useless in those cases.

The Item Luck bonus has been modified to also increase the chance of those "boxes" dropping. If a box has 60% chance to drop and you have 30% Item Luck, that box chance gets increased to 78%.

Other
The Excavator can now drop 2 weapons.

Drop chance of Cooking and Alchemy materials in Grand Wildwoods has been increased.

Some of the lower level world bosses had some of their drops adjusted so they don't drop so many armor pieces. They will now drop only 1 plate, 1 mail and 1 cloth, not one of each class.


ITEMS
Mantles
Added 3 new mantle schematics to the store. Confessor's Gold Mantle Schematic, Confessor's Blue Mantle Schematic and Frost Flame Mantle Schematic.

Confessors Gold


Confessors Blue


Frost Flame


Potions
Moolah Store potions have been adjusted to make them more flexible.

Monster EXP Booster x2 (3 hour) > Monster EXP Booster x4 (1 hour)
Monster EXP Booster x3 (3 hour) > Monster EXP Booster x4 (2 hour)
Monster EXP Booster x4 (3 hour) > Same
Monster SXP Booster x2 (1 hour) > Monster SXP Booster x4 (1 hour)
Monster SXP Booster x3 (2 hour) > Monster SXP Booster x4 (2 hour)
Monster SXP Booster x4 (3 hour) > Same
Monster EXP & SXP Booster x2 (1 hour) > Monster EXP & SXP Booster x4 (1 hour)
Monster EXP & SXP Booster x3 (2 hour) > Monster EXP & SXP Booster x4 (2 hour)
Monster EXP & SXP Booster x4 (3 hour) > Same
Lucky Loot Charm 10% (3 hour) > Lucky Loot Charm 30% (1 hour)
Lucky Loot Charm 20% (3 hour) > Lucky Loot Charm 30% (2 hour)
Lucky Loot Charm 30% (3 hour) > Same
Gold Enchantment 20% (3 hour) > Gold Enchantment 50% (1 hour)
Gold Enchantment 30% (3 hour) > Gold Enchantment 50% (2 hour)
Gold Enchantment 50% (3 hour) > Same
Battlefield Booster 10% (3 hour) > Battlefield Booster 30% (1 hour)
Battlefield Booster 20% (3 hour) > Battlefield Booster 30% (2 hour)
Battlefield Booster 30% (3 hour) > Same
Quest EXP/SXP Booster 10% (3 hour) > Quest EXP/SXP Booster 30% (1 hour)
Quest EXP/SXP Booster 20% (3 hour) > Quest EXP/SXP Booster 30% (2 hour)
Quest EXP/SXP Booster 30% (3 hour) > Same
Reputation Booster x2 (3 hour) > Reputation Booster x4 (1 hour)
Reputation Booster x3 (3 hour) > Reputation Booster x4 (2 hour)
Reputation Booster x4 (3 hour) > Same


TITLES
The Excavator title visual effect (bomb) has been reduced in size and raised above the head.

The Demon Destroyer title visual affect (skull) has been reduced in size and raised up slightly. If players still find it annoying I can make it disappear if preferred - let me know.


PETS
Fixed Leemur pets chance debuff of reducing All Stats. Be aware that reducing All Stats does not work on monsters as they do not have base stats (Agility, Strength, Wisdom, Intelligence and Stamina), so it's only effective on players and other pets.


SKILLS
The area of effect skill targeting circle can now be seen whilst mounted.

Reduced the MP cost of Sniper and Sharp Shooter skills. They were still incorrectly set too high compared to other classes - they have been reduced by approximately 20%.

Charge type skills of the Fighter/Warrior classes have been changed in an attempt to make them usable by players with lower latency and also to fix an issue with using them on targets with high movement speed. Using these skills will now jump directly to the target, minus the running animation. I'm not particularly happy about making this change as a charge should be just that, a running charge, but the way it's implemented just doesn't work so it had to be changed this way for now.

Skills changed:
Fighter: Charge.
Warrior: Charge, Crusader Strike.
Knight: Charge 2.
Guardian: Charge 2.
Gladiator: Charge 2.
Berzerker: Charge 2.
Vanquisher: Charge 3, Celestial Slaughter.
Mercenary: Charge 2.
Soul Blader: Iron Grip.
Barbarian: Charge 2, Crusader Strike 2.


STATS
The additional Weight stat gained from Strength has been moved to Stamina.
Strength base stat no longer grants 1.2 Weight per point of Strength.
Stamina base stat now grants 2 Weight per point of Stamina, up from 0.8.

There are other imbalances with the base stats that will be corrected in an update in the new year along with changes to Crit and Protection and a new system that scales stats based on your level, as well as a lot of item balancing.

PVP
The Worthless Target debuff that prevents players from gaining Chaos Points from recently killed players has been increased to 1 hour. If players continue to abuse it, it will be increased further.


DUNGEON
Attunement quests for Golden Temple Hard and Insane modes have been removed - you no longer need the Papyrus Scroll in your inventory to enter these dungeon modes.

Rhinestone's initial aggro range reduced slightly.

The Queen of Heart's Elite Guards will now port to their mistress when called instead of running through the maze.

Hell Mode
Based on a suggestion from Ray Darkwolf on the forum, I have been working on adding a new system to the game that will allow you to ramp up the difficulty of your Insane dungeons in return for a boost to Item Luck and Gold. It will basically use the same monsters, skills, scripting and drops as the Insane mode of the dungeon but the monsters will gain increased stats as well as random buffs to make your life more difficult.

I had hoped to finish in time for the Christmas update but I still have a bit more work to do on it and further testing before it's ready, but it should be very soon!


Merry Christmas everyone!