It's time for Alharth's holiday season! All the townsfolk that you've befriended (meaning you have Friends favor-level or higher) will have gifts for you when you speak to them. Make sure to have your favorite combat skills active, because if they give you equipment, it will likely be tailored to those skills.

The human celebration of Ri-Shin is also in full force, and townsfolk in every town and settlement [except Povus] need your help setting up their Ri-Shin trees! Look for townsfolk wearing a red festive Ri-Shin hat. There are trees to set up in Serbule, Serbule Hills, Eltibule, Kur, Gazluk, Ilmari, Rahu, the Fae Realm, Sun Vale, and Red Wing Casino.

We've actually been working on a different Christmas present for our long-term players, a new level 85 group dungeon, but it's not quite ready yet! We'll do another update next week to introduce the new dungeon. In the mean time, if you have a high-level character, you may want to make sure you are Friends with Mope in Povus.

(Oh, and Povus doesn't have a Ri-Shin tree yet, but will get one in next week's update!)

A Holiday Gift
As a small thanks for joining us this holiday season, there are new redemptions available - one for everyone (except demo players), and an extra one for our VIP members. You can access these through the button on the bottom right of the Persona window, or if you're old-school by typing /redeem in chat. Remember, these rewards are one per account, so make sure you choose which character gets it wisely!

UI
  • There is a new vendor filter: "Hide Known Recipes".
  • You now auto-select the number box when splitting a stack, to allow quicker precise splits.
  • Tooltips for the sidebar buttons (like the Inventory button) will now show the keyboard shortcut for that button (if any is assigned).
  • You can more easily clear out social statuses ("Who's Online" status and "Friends" quote).
  • Fixed bug where cancelling a confirmation window would accidentally confirm it instead. This could happen if, for instance, you quickly clicked "Erase This Loadout" twice in a row and then chose to cancel.
  • The first time you open the recipe window from a world object (like a fire) in a play session, it will now start recipes at the top of the window instead of in the middle.

Animations
  • Skeletons can now perform emotes and sit in chairs!
  • Accounted for latency when performing attacks, so they should now line up better with animations on clients.
  • Polished animations such as First Aid, Armor Patch, Dig Deep, & Push Onward.
  • Sped up a few animations used by buffing abilities and made them able to be used while moving.
  • Made pickup & eat corpse animations more responsive. (You can move more quickly after performing the animation.)
  • Sped up dig animation, and use it when burying a corpse.
  • Players are now placed into beds more appropriately.

Other
  • Bulwark Mode must now be kept on a hotbar in order to be sustained.
  • You can no longer earn combat XP for "fake" auxiliary skills (like performing a song right before murdering a monster to get Stringed Performance XP from the kill). This was considered an exploit and is not the normal way to earn XP for these skills.
  • Cheese casks & brewing barrels should no longer get stuck in walls.
  • We now properly change your active skill on your first polymorph. For example, the first time Ciervos turns you into a Deer you will reliably activate the deer skill.
  • Dead humanoids no longer have collisions (after being un-targeted).
  • Removed duplicate descriptions from food items.
  • Fixed description of cranberry sauces in their recipes. (Snacks -> Meals)
  • Fixed Spicy Fried Tofu Cubes recipe typo. (Feeds two -> Feeds three)
  • Made bed on Ivyn's farm (in Serbule) more easily usable.
  • Renamed Cat Anatomy Decoction to Feline Anatomy Decoction.
  • Ability "Spade Assault" now gains damage bonuses from gear that boosts Kick or Front Kick damage
  • Higher tiers of "Spade Assault" have a higher chance of the shovel breaking (going from 5% to 7%)
  • If you are Comfortable or better with Mope, you can stand at the base of the giant mushroom and say "Mope, Up!" in local chat. If you then stand still (and out of combat) for a few seconds, Mope will teleport you to him. (This is something he now tells you when you reach Comfortable favor-level, but if you've already reached Comfortable before today... well, it's a good thing you read the patch notes.)
  • Adjusted the buffs from the Ri-Shin pool in Kur so that they last 90 minutes instead of 60, but can only be received once per day. Hopefully this makes them more useful without being too overpowered.

We'll be back with another update soon!