Almost time for the next update. This should go live on Thursday 12th February.

TITLES
February's titles are now available to buy from Sedy in Terminus or directly from nsDB.



Symbol of Rage (Baby Blue Feathers)
Symbol of Rage (Baby Pink Feathers)
Symbol of Devoted (Baby Blue Feathers)
Symbol of Devoted (Baby Pink Feathers)
Symbol of Agile (Baby Blue Feathers)
Symbol of Agile (Baby Pink Feathers)


ITEMS
New Pets
These come in both Unique and Epic rarity and are rare drops from some level 75+ final dungeon bosses and world bosses. Check the nsDB links above to see which ones drop them.



Angel
Scarlet Whelpling
Azure Whelpling
Nether Whelpling

Unique: 5% Movement Speed, 5% All Attack, 5% Boss Damage, 5% All Stats, 10% Weight. 2 AB Slots.
Epic: 10% Movement Speed, 5% All Attack, 10% Boss Damage, 5% All Stats, 10% Weight. 2 AB Slots.


New Ivory Cloak Color
A few players requested a white version of the cloaks, so here you go.



Warmaster's Ivory Cloak (Battlefield Points vendor)
Restorer's Ivory Cloak (Shining Trophies vendor)
Battlemaster's Ivory Cloak (Shining Trophies vendor)
Restorer's Ivory Cloak (Moolah vendor)
Battlemaster's Ivory Cloak (Moolah vendor)

Vanishing Powder
Magical Powder that explodes and conceals your location. Used by the Wind Walker Vanish skill.
Sold by Abel Monkey Tail in Terminus.

Seed of Sight
Allows you to see hidden players and objects.
2m cooldown, 10s duration.
Can be gathered from any herbs/plants.

Item Changes
Wood Tribe Archer Transformation from Wood Garden and Hungry Owl Transformation from Temple of Atlantis can now see hidden players and objects.

Fixed the models of the following items to stop display glitching of some armors:
Blue Weaponry and Orange Weaponry titles
Red Demon
Green Demon
Blue Demon
Big Purple Demon
Big Green Demon
Big Blue Demon
Parrot
Flying Saucer
Hydra
Skull Sweeper
Mini Mage
Single Yellow and Blue Flag
Single Golden Flag of the Hare
Single Green Holy Star Flag
Single Pink Flag
Single Purple Flag
Single Black and Red Flag
Single Gold Trimmed Red Flag
Single Red and Black Flag
Single Yellow and Brown Flag
Double Gold and Blue Flags
Double Silver and Blue Flags
Crystalisk's Blue Crystal Flags
Crystalisk's Purple Crystal Flags
Double Cyan Purple Flags
Double Red Horned Flags
Double Red and Gold Flags
Double Red Gem Encrusted Flags
Blue Rabbit Balloon
Black and White Cat Balloon
Hatchling Balloon
Chipmunk Balloon
Flying Pig Balloon
Green Icecream Balloon
Heart Balloon
Lion Balloon
White Llama Balloon
Lucky Clover Balloon
Piggy Balloon
Pink Butterfly Balloon
Pink Flower Balloon
Pink and Smiley
Pink Orchid Balloon
Pumpkin Balloon
Snowflake Balloon
White Blob Balloon
Yellow Blob Balloon
Yellow Orchid Balloon

Reduced prices of the low level weapons now sold by Raul Schulz in Terminus.

Repositioned the 2H Weapon Schematic models for Garden Rake, Pick Axe and Fairground Hammer.


QUESTS
Valentines Day
Alfredo is in Terminus with his Valentines Day daily quest, rewarding event foods, and is selling costumes and accessories.

New Level 85 Quests
[Daily Challenge] Dwarf Buster
Defeat the final boss of Snow Mountain Hard Mode within 15 minutes. Rewards a Speed Demon's Box and a choice of Dungeon Reset Card, Shining Trophies or another Speed Demon Box.

[Battlefield] Battle of Atlantis
Participate in the Battle of Atlantis battlefield 40 times. Rewards a large amount of gold and opens up the next quest.

[Battlefield] Battle of Atlantis Winner
Win the Battle of Atlantis battlefield 30 times. Rewards 1 skill point and opens up the next quest.

[Battlefield] Aeterna
Participate in Aeterna - Capture the Flag battlefield 40 times. Rewards a large amount of gold and opens up the next quest.

[Battlefield] Aeterna Winner
Win Aeterna - Capture the Flag battlefield 30 times. Rewards 1 skill point.

Quest changes
[Challenge] Grave Robber and [Challenge] Reclaiming the Temple now have an additional Speed Demon's Box as one of the optional rewards.


NPC
Spike Schulz now sells Armor only and has added the CQ75 and CQ85 armor sets to his lineup. These are sold for Moolah just like on the website.

New npc Raul Schulz, brother of Spike, has arrived in Terminus to take over the sale of weapons. He has replenished his stock of the usual weapons that Spike used to sell with the addition of level 55/65 uniques for gold and CQ75 and CQ85 epic weapons for Moolah.

Lottie Amellie the Cloak Merchant has setup shop in Terminus Center, so Sedy no longer sells cloaks.

New npc Avery Savannah has set up shop in Terminus to take over vanity pet sales from Juba.

Super Dispel Potion and Shrink/Expand cards are now sold by Kristin Owens, not May and Nojacque.

Class trainers now sell a number of the gold/tear items like Skill Reset Potion, Experience Decrease Prevention Card, Experience Recovery Card, and a number of Exp/Sxp increasing potions.

Dungeon masters now sell Dungeon Reset Cards.

Warehouse NPCs now sell Bag and Warehouse Expansion scrolls.

A number of other items sold by Al Rotches the Gold Vendor are now also sold by other relevent NPCS around Terminus.

Fixed several vendor items that had no price.


SKILLS
All Classes
All skills that had additional percent chance to hit have been changed to fixed amounts.

Most class skills (not monster transformation skills) that reduce large amounts of defense now cause additional aggro.


Vanquisher
Frenzied Edge bonus damage reduced to 30/40/50%. Since the skill doesn't have any built in ITD, it can be used with Destruction and the other ITD over time skills that can stack up to 90% ITD. 90% ITD + a skill with 100% bonus damage was just too much allowing the Vanquisher to do extremely high damage with this skill.
Forceful Throw bonus damage reduced to 30/40/50%. Same reason as for Frenzied Edge, the skill could do ridiculous amounts of damage when used with Destruction etc.


Myrmidon
Rising Steam Strike in the Dragon tree now grants the Boss Hunter buff.
Spirit Burn in the Phoenix tree now grants the Boss Hunter buff.


Adventurer
Corrected the name and tooltip for the Barbed Wire skill. It was incorrectly called Camouflage still.
Beastial Instincts 2 visual effect corrected, it was using the visual for Damage Absorb skills.
Blue Wind Aegis visual effect changed to the visual for Damage Absorb skills.


Wind Walker
Beastial Instincts 3 visual effect corrected, it was using the visual for Damage Absorb skills.
Misdirection visual effect changed to the visual for Damage Absorb skills.
Lashing Tail knockback reduced from 8m to 4m.

New skill: Protection Aura 2
3/4 shield layers.
1m cooldown.
2 ranks available at level 83 and 85.
15s duration.
Prerequisite skills: Beastial Instincts 3 rank 1/2.

Danger Evasion 2 replaced with brand new skill:
Camouflage
Conceals you in the shadows, allowing you to stalk your prey unseen but at 50% reduced speed. Breaks on most actions and when receiving damage from AoE or DoTs.
Renders you completely invisible to monsters but players will get a visual cue that there is a stealthed player nearby (they will see a glittery effect at your position).
Can only be activated when at FULL health.
1m cooldown.
30s duration.
1 rank available at level 77.
Prerequisite skills: None.

Vanish replaced:
Vanish
Vanish into the shadows, rendering you invisible to enemies, causing them to lose you as a target and drop any aggro. You cannot use skills whilst under the effect of Vanish. Breaks on most actions and when receiving damage from AoE or DoTs.
Requires 1 x Vanishing Powder.
2m cooldown.
2 ranks available at level 78 and 85.
Duration 3s/6s.
Prerequisite skills: Camouflage.




Stealth/Hide
This is a brand new mechanic that I have just written letting me make skills for players and monsters that allow them to hide/stealth/vanish etc. When used, the player is completely hidden from enemy players and monsters. Party members will see them, but at reduced transparency, so they can still be targetted and buffed/healed whilst stealthed.

Depending on the skill itself, there may or may not be a visual cue that there is a stealthed player or monster near you. The Wind Walker Camouflage DOES have a visual cue, but Vanish does not.

Whilst an enemy player cannot actually target a stealthed player, they can still damage them with area of effect damage skills, which as well as damaging them as normal, will break their stealth, causing them to become visible again.

Stealth skills are automatically removed when using most skills, auto-attacking, mounting, talking to an NPC, moving map, gathering, opening chests, transforming into a monster etc.

Stealth skills are not removed by the portals inside dungeons and battlefields, but are removed by normal map portals.

Stealth skills are not removed by blink skills that move you from one location to another.

Stealth skills effectively remove you from any monsters hate list, allowing you to use them to completely drop aggro.

Stealth will be solely used for those few Wind Walker skills to begin with but once it's fully tested and no major issues are found on the live server, I will look at possibly adding a stealth skill to the Assassin and to new monsters/bosses, or maybe even some existing ones.

To counter stealth you can use a Seed of Sight, which is a tradable item that can be gathered from herbs and flowers at a low rate. This item has a 2m cooldown and lasts for 10s, allowing you to see hidden players or other hidden objects.

Several monster transformations are also able to see hidden players and they are Wood Tribe Archer Transformation from Wood Garden, and Hungry Owl Transformation from Temple of Atlantis.


FRIENDS & COUPLES
Relationship Points (RP) with friends above 1,000 now decay at the rate of 20 RP every 24 hours.

Couples that fall below 1,000 RP are automatically broken up. Couples have 6,000 RP or more when they start the couple so it would take just over 1 month of one of the couple being completely inactive and not earning any more RP with each other for this to actually happen.

Couples now receive 2 RP when they kill world and final dungeon bosses together in a party (the same bosses you get Fame points from give RP).

Fixed a bug with the Couples titles that could cause it to deactivate your normal title every time you relogged, leaving you with only the Couples title activated.

Fixed a bug with the Couples interface where your titles would not show until you closed and reopened the Couples window.

I have added the possibility to create Couple only quests but there are still some issues with it so I can't put the quests in just yet. It should be fixed by the time the next update arrives.


INTERFACE
Removed the additional tooltip information I added to the Hero Info window stats (Strength, Stamina, Agility, Intellect and Wisdom) because it's not as clear cut as I thought when I added them. The amounts of each stat you obtain from each of the 5 base stats depends on your class and type and it's too complicated to show the different information for every variation in the tooltips. I have reverted to how it was before so it just shows you the main stats you get from each of them without the actual figures.

Removed the hidden Twitter button that could sometimes hide the SlotZ button.


GUILD
Fixed a bug causing guild members last login date to be incorrect.


QUIZ EVENT
Fixed the daily quiz event icon never disapearing if you don't open the quiz window and participate. Some people reported that their quiz got stuck and they could answer questions but got no reward, this is because you opened the quiz window when it had already finished, but because of the bug with the quiz icon never disapearing, you could still open up the quiz window and start answering questions. Basically, if you don't see the ranking getting updated, it's not working, but I believe once this fix is in place you won't ever get to that stage anyway.

Fixed bug with quiz that carried your score over with you when you moved to a battlefield, effectively splitting the quiz into two quizes, giving an easy win and prize.


FAME
Increased the amount of Fame Points gained from killing Crystalisk Insane and Rhinestone to 24.


MAP
Repositioned some of the street lights in Terminus since they were hovering above the ground.

Fixed some of the walls around Master's Hall in Terminus so they don't suddenly disappear at certain angles.

Rescued the drowning Seagulls around Panadahama Island.


GATHERING
Herb/Flower gathering is no longer restricted to players with the Alchemy Assistant Skill. Any player of level 75+ can now purchase the Gardening Sheers and gather herbs and flowers.

Mining level restriction reduced to level 75.


DUNGEON MONSTERS
In a continuing effort to make dungeons more accessable to melee classes I have made a lot more changes to level 75+ dungeon monster and world boss skills. The biggest change is to skill accuracy and crit rating of skills. Monsters now have a slightly higher chance to hit and to crit with their auto-attacks but less on their other special skills. My reasoning for this is that unless you as a DPS player take aggro, the auto-attacks will be landing on the tank and if they are not, it's your own fault for pulling aggro. Other skills that are used on a random target, or the furthest away etc. have been adjusted so that they are more easily avoided with the proper stats or positioning and in a lot of cases, the damage has also been reduced. Providing you have some Evasion and Protection on your gear, you should be in a much better position to sustain your damage, and I'm not talking about massive amounts of these stats either since monsters really don't have that much hit and crit to begin with anyway. It's very very easy to get enough crit protection to hardly ever be critted by a monster unless the monster has some +crit buff (very rare), you don't really even need to try, but evasion is not as easy since you don't get as much of it from the base stats, but a couple of battlefield accessories mixed with your pve gear will really help.

This will likely be the last time I make changes to existing dungeon monsters because it will just become too easy. If you still have problems you either don't have good enough gear to be in the dungeon in the first place, you don't have a healer, or you are doing something wrong. Going forward, I will try to be more thoughtful of melee when I create new content and have the bosses give some kind of warning or have a casting animation when they are about to knock you out, so of course there will still be occassions where you need to just gtfo out of the way of the boss instead of expecting to be able to just stand there and DPS. If that's what you want, then you are probably playing the wrong game. I will also look into adding the Physical Evasion stat to more PvE items but I have to be careful to make them class specific so that mail users can't stack even more evasion.

I do realise that some of my changes will benefit tanking classes in a big way but I have come to the conclusion that piling on more and more damage to try and make things difficult for them is not the way to go because it screws things up for other melee classes. Instead I will think of other ways to make their life more difficult in dungeons starting with aggro management. Their bonus aggro from skills has been reduced slightly and some player skills including those that reduce defense will cause additional aggro. As a result, tanks will find it more difficult to keep aggro if players are not mindful of their damage and how quickly they start bringing out the big guns in boss fights.

I'm not going to list every single change here because it would be a book's worth of it, but notably:

Reduced the damage of random target skills on several world bosses and many dungeon bosses.

Reduced additional skill accuracy of many dungeon boss skills, including their special and scripted skills. I think the only ones remaining with really high additional accuracy (unavoidable) are those with some kind of warning or casting time, or those that are set artificially high because you are absolutely not supposed to get hit by them, for example, Mumu's Pet, Tomb Sand Worm-Worm, some Tomb Hawk skills, Lisk's Death Spark, some of Arcturis' specials skills, etc. etc.

Increased the crit rating of dungeon boss and monster auto-attacks.

Adjusted the avoidance of nearly all level 75+ dungeon bosses and monsters - most were increased, but only to be in line with the amount of hit you should have around that level. I was quite conservative so it probably won't even be noticable unless you have absolutely terrible gear.

Time Lost Cavern
Since it's no longer a requirement to do the CQ75 quests and this dungeon was actually quite difficult for levelling players I have reduced the damage of all bosses and monsters substantially, and reduced boss HP substantially. Difficulty should be somewhere between Wood Garden Hard and Circus Hard now so most of it can probably be soloed/duo'd by geared players and much easier for small groups and new players.

Temple of Atlantis
Reduced damage of Temple of Atlantis Normal Mode bosses and monsters substantially but increased their hit and crit rating, mostly on auto-attacks.
Reduced boss HP of Temple of Atlantis Normal Mode bosses.

Laioha Insane and Decomus Insane
Massively reduced the crit rating of all skills.

Crystalisk (All Modes)
Reduced additional skill accuracy and crit rating on a few of Crystalisk's multi-target skills, notably Backlash (the one that hit's players behind him with his tail).
Reduced overall hit rating of Crystalisk Normal, Hard and Insane.

Golden Temple
Typhoonus Ancient Curse visual effect changed.
Typhoonus Twister now targets the player with the most aggro, not a random player.
Typhoonus Sand Storm now targets the player with the 2nd highest aggro instead of a random player.
Typhoonus has 3 push skills that all have the same visual effect as his other skills (the tornado) and that all targetted a random player, the targetting has been changed from random to target the player with the most aggro, the player with the 2nd highest aggro and a random player and the cooldown on all of them has been increased.
Reduced the amount of defense removed by Typhoonus' Ancient Curse.
Increased the spread of Typhoonus' Quicksand circles on all modes. Hopefully they won't be so bunched up around him now.
Reduced hit rating of all monsters.
Increased avoidance and crit rating of all monsters.

Namazu
Reduced HP.
Reduced Physical/Magic Defense.
Reduced the damage and Ignore Defense of some of his skills.
Increased the cooldown of some of his big hitting skills with high Ignore Defense.
Acidic Puddles now do damage every 2s instead of 1s.
Namazu now despawns if not killed within 48 hours.

Frigid Queen Glaceon
Reduced HP.
Reduced the damage of several multi-target skills.
Reduced the multi-target damage of Frigid's Shadows.
Increased avoidance and crit rating.
Frigid Queen Glaceon now despawns if not killed within 48 hours.


FIELD MONSTERS
Reduced the amount of monsters an aggroed monster can call on Pandahama Island.

Reckless monsters renamed to Veteran.

Changed the names of many miniboss monsters to correctly show if they are Veteran or Elite type and stop any confusion over them being real Boss type monsters and expecting Additional Boss damage being affective on them.

Fixed the damage of level 75-84 minibosses (now called Elite), it was set too high for their level.

Adjusted the hit and crit rating of level 75+ normal, Veteran and Elite field monsters - they now have more hit and avoidance.