Update Notes: September 10, 2020

New Dungeons
The main feature of this update doesn't need a lot of patch notes: there's two new dungeons to explore! One is a group dungeon that can be reached from the Fae Realm. The other is a solo experience inside Hogan's Keep (which will require you to be on good terms with Hogan to get in). There's also a new skill that can be learned in one of them.

We plan to do a little bit more with each dungeon (decorations, a few lore notes, side quests, etc.), but these are ready for you to test! We're particularly interested in feedback regarding problems with dungeon flow or monster difficulty (too easy/too hard).


Aurest Missions
The Autumn Resistance is looking for mighty heroes who are willing to work for Councils. Each day there's a different high-level group dungeon available from the local Aurest leader, who can be found in the casino (usually near the bar).

To speak with Lady Alethina, you'll need to be famous enough for her to have heard of you (Notoriety 25), and have two combat skills level 50+. And on some days, the daily mission has a higher level requirement than 50.

There are 7 different Aurest missions (so far). Each day a new mission is chosen randomly, leaving out the ones that ran the past four days. So you won't see the same quest too quickly in a row.

Goblin Dungeon Revamp
We've remade the "Goblin Dungeon" (under Castle Eltibule) with a new art set. The original dungeon was just too ugly: it was made during pre-alpha with placeholder art, and the textures were too low-res to be saved.

But we didn't want to make a NEW dungeon, we wanted to keep the old dungeon! So this is actually a replica of the old dungeon's layout. It uses approximately the same spawns, loot, monsters, etc. just with different dungeon art.

The old dungeon was unfurnished, so this replica is too. We'll definitely be fixing that, but first we want to make sure everything still works, more or less as it did before. If it doesn't, please let us know.

Combat Balance Changes

• Animal Handling pets have reduced health and armor (not very noticeable at low level, but reduced by 20-40% at level 80, depending on the specific pet)
• Significantly nerfed the damage of Elite and Boss monsters (by about 70-120 damage per attack, for level 80s).
  • (But note that their Rage attacks weren't nerfed! They deal approximately the same damage as before.)

Manticore Changes

• Manticores are involved in one of the new Aurest missions, and have been refactored for that purpose.
• Nerfed the hell out of manticores' stats
• Nerfed loot also
• Changed respawn rate to be more typical (to make it plausible for a group of level 55s, say, to farm them)
• Hegemonic Storage Keys drop much more often, although the amount of loot from the hegemonic chests is reduced a bit

Other Changes

• Fixed animation issue with golems that made them seem to blip around as they walked
• Fixed animation issue with trolls that made them keep running when they should have stopped
• Frost Hippogriffs, which were previously just blue versions of regular Hippogriffs, now have more distinctive attacks
• Solving the vault puzzle in a War Cache now also gives out 1-4 sacks of Councils, as well as a random piece of gear as before
• Emotes like /wave and /cry now have a different message when you have something selected, versus when you have nothing selected
• Added "/thank" and "/cheer" emotes (which just perform a waving animation for now)
• You can no longer butcher Striga for meat (because they are sentient)
• Fixed display issue that caused all Elite/Boss monsters to have the Thick Armor descriptor. (This wasn't technically a bug, because all Elites do get some thick armor automatically. But this made it impossible to differentiate typical elites from elites that have a LOT of thick armor. Now only the thickest elites are so labeled.)
• Recipe for Forensic Analysis Kit now requires a higher-quality first aid kit
• Tweaked Qatik's Casino Excursion quests to actually require you to pick up the items requested
• "Labyrinth" dungeon tweaks: entrance is easier, Asterion is nerfed a bit, final maze has a somewhat more reasonable monster distribution, added a map
• Laura Neth now accepts work orders from animals
• Fixed bug with treasure generation on Fairy Dirks
• The emergency-exit portal at the bottom of the Wolf Den dungeon could not be selected (except at a very odd angle)
• Fixed a bunch of ability buffs that could persist even after the caster switched combat skills. In some cases this could be exploited by rapidly switching loadouts to gain the benefits from more than two combat skills at once. We've fixed many of these type of bugs, although we're still rooting them out of nooks and crannies of the game and some probably still remain. Please report them! It is never intentional for you to keep the benefits from a combat skill that's no longer active.
• Fixed a few abilities and treasure effects that boosted Movement Speed when they were supposed to boost Sprint Speed. (The difference is that Movement Speed also boosts fly/swim speed, and prevents roots/slows from being as effective.)
• Moderately increased the cash value of higher-level magic items. (Only applies to newly-generated weapons.)
• Fox Outpost defense crystals no longer shoot foxes on sight (other fox tweaks to come, just didn't fit in this update!)