Patch Notes

The Arcanist's talent tree gains four talents, three of them in its fifth row, so every tier holds seven to nine points.

Gameplay

Death

• A dead player falls and lies where they died, with their name over the body, until they respawn or are revived. Before, they disappeared, and nobody could tell where to stand to cast Resurrection, Blood Rebirth or a Rune of Rebirth.

Levelling

• Levelling is slower from level 6: levels 6 to 8 take about 15% more experience than before, 9 and 10 nearly three times as much, 11 twice, 12 to 15 three times, and 16 to 20 four and a half times.
• Birchvale Reach ends at about level 9, the Whisperwood at about 10, and the Barrowmoor at about 14.
• Characters keep their level and the experience they have made towards the next one.
• A death takes 5% of the experience made towards the next level, down from 20%.

Quests

• A new kind of quest asks you to hold a spot for a number of seconds while waves of monsters come at you. Step into the marked area to begin, and stay in it until the time is up and the last of them is down.
• Party members on the same quest who are nearby join the hold.

Secondary stats

• Each point of Versatility grants 4% less damage dealt and damage reduction: 0.096% instead of 0.1%.
• Each point of Attunement is worth 4% more for every spec except the Mercenary and the Arcanist.

Classes

Arcanist

• New talent, Weaver's Insight (tier 2, 1 rank): while Arcane Insight is on you, your critical strike chance is increased by 2%.
• New talent, Reclamation (tier 5, 2 ranks): each point of Manaweave Arcane Infusion spends takes 0.5/1 seconds off the remaining cooldowns of Arcane Orb and Arcane Barrage.
• New talent, Deep Well (tier 5, 1 rank): each tick of Evocation builds 1 Manaweave, so a full channel fills your Manaweave.
• New talent, Critical Acceleration (tier 5, 1 rank): when a spell you paid Mana for critically strikes, Arcane Acceleration counts that Mana twice. The most one spell's Mana can pull your cooldowns forward rises from 2.5 to 4 seconds.

Mercenary

• Bloodspill opens its wound on your target only. It used to also open on up to 3 nearby enemies.
• Open Veins moves to tier 2 and makes Bloodspill's wound also open on 1/2 nearby enemies.
• Blood Debt moves to tier 4, where Open Veins was. Builds that no longer fit the tiers are reset, with the points refunded.
• Overflow no longer raises your maximum Momentum. Momentum you gain while your bar is full is banked as Overflow instead, up to 1/2 points, shown as a buff. Finishers spend it along with your Momentum and still deal 5% more damage for each point of it.
• Pent-Up Fury now triggers on the points Overflow banks, so it starts paying at your 6th Momentum rather than past your 7th.
• Adrenaline fills your Momentum to 5 and banks nothing.
• Adaptability grants 25 Versatility, up from 24, so it still gives +2.4%.

Corruptor

• Creeping Blight spreads Wither to up to 2 enemies, up from 1, and reaches enemies without your Wither before refreshing ones that have it.
• Epidemic has two ranks, adding 1/2 more targets (it was three ranks at 1/2/3), so a fully talented Creeping Blight still reaches 4. A third rank already spent is refunded.
• Unstable Consumption deals 20% of the damage your curses have left to deal, and no longer shortens them. It used to consume 30% of their remaining duration.
• Ravenous Consumption adds 5/10/15% of the remaining damage to the burst, instead of consuming 5/10/15% more duration.

Stalwart

• New choice, Improved Counterstrike or Cleaving Counter (tier 1, 1 rank): Counterstrike deals 20% more damage, or also hits 1 additional enemy within its reach.
• New talent, Rallying Strike (tier 2, 2 ranks): each enemy Bastion Strike hits, up to 3, takes 0.5/1 seconds off Shield Slam's remaining cooldown.
• New talent, Unyielding Aegis (tier 5, 2 ranks): Aegis absorbs an additional 2.5/5% of your maximum HP. This also applies to the Aegis that Final Bastion casts.
• New talent, Relentless Rush (tier 5, 2 ranks): reduces the cooldown of Bulwark Rush by 3/6 seconds.
• New talent, Resounding Echo (tier 5, 2 ranks): Echo Guard explodes for 175/200% of the stored damage instead of 150%.

Berserker

• Savage Strikes grants 12.5 Versatility a rank, up from 12, so it still gives +1.2%.

World

Birchvale Reach

• Old Greymaw, an elite wolf the size of a pony, walks the foot of the Greyspine between the worm cave's notch and the way to the Antler Lodge. Bring a friend.
• He is not always there. He turns up somewhere new along his road each time, and if nobody kills him he slips away, to turn up again later.
• His road keeps well clear of every quest's ground, so nobody doing a quest has him walk into them.

Riverwatch

• Captain Osric, Sister Ilse and Quartermaster Hesk, who sells gear and repairs it, are in Riverwatch's courtyard.
• Riverwatch has a waypoint stone.

The Barrowmoor

• Keeper Ansel in Oakenhold sends you to Riverwatch once you have found Corwin's shade in the Dead Wood.
• Fifteen quests from Riverwatch: the open barrows, the lost patrol and the scout who survived it, the werewolves' trail to the old mausoleum, the great wolf Gravefang, and the shade of the woman who built the crypt.
• Blood in the Crypt is offered again, by Captain Osric, once the trail to the mausoleum is followed to its end.
• Ashcairn, a camp of the moor folk in the middle of the moor, has a waypoint stone, a tinker who sells gear and repairs it, and sixteen more quests.
• Moor-wife Edda's quests lead south through the Black Fen to a circle of standing stones and the Barrow-King under the drowned barrows.
• Gravedigger Wyn's quests lead east to the grave robbers, their cove on the coast, and their chief, Mag Rook.
• New monsters: Barrow Wights, Moor Wraiths, Bloodsworn Werewolves, Grave Rats, Bog Oozes, Fen Basilisks, the Drowned Dead, Grave Robbers and Robber Archers, and the elites Gravefang, the Bonebeast, Mag Rook and the Barrow-King.
• The moor has two daily quests, The Bridge Watch and The Fen Hunt.

The Whisperwood

• The Old Widow is level 11, down from 12.
• Venom spiders are level 9, giant spiders 10, and the lizardfolk of the Saltmire 11, with their temple guards at 12.

Items and professions

Runemaking

• Drag a weapon, piece of armour or jewellery out of your backpack and drop it on the world. The Destroy box now has an Unmake button, and it tells you what the piece will give.
• Common gear gives Rune Dust, uncommon gives Lattice Crystal, rare gives Astral Pearl, and epic or legendary gives Ember Core. A ring or necklace of uncommon or better also gives a Glimmerdust.
• Unmaking needs 1 Runemaking for common gear, 30 for uncommon, 80 for rare and 120 for epic. It teaches Runemaking the way a recipe does.
• A crafted piece is unmade into materials of its own star count. Unmaking takes three seconds, can't be started in combat, and moving breaks it.
• New: a Greater Rune of each family (Vigor, Warding, Swiftness, Precision, Mastery, Balance and Attunement), taught by the runemaking trainer from 125 to 140 skill. Each is cut from two Ember Core, an Astral Pearl, the family's stone and Quicksilver Solvent, and grants more than the full rune.

Monster drops

• Over thirty pieces of levelling gear, levels 1 to 15, that no monster, vendor or quest gave out now drop from monsters near their level. Among them are the Copper Axe, Tribal Shield, Heavy Crossbow, Jade Cutlass, Pagan Staff, Iron Helmet and Earth Codex.
• New valuables to sell drop too: teeth, honeycomb, blue feathers, chunks of iron and gold, gem shards and, from bosses, emeralds, sapphires, rubies and a golden chalice.

Playing together

Party

• A kill counts toward the kill objectives of every party member alive and within 20 tiles of it, whether or not they hit the enemy.
• Every party member online in the same world or dungeon is asked to roll Need or Pass for a party's gear, however far from the kill they stand.

Interface

Loot rolls

• The Need or Pass window is larger, with a bigger item icon, name and buttons.

Map

• Walking into a new area no longer causes a brief stutter while the map draws the new ground.
• The map uses less memory.

Graphics and sound

Shadows

• Sun shadows take far less of the graphics card's time, so frames are smoother everywhere outdoors, most of all on laptops.
• Shadow edges are a little softer than before.

Game client

Logging in

• Ten wrong passwords no longer lock an account for fifteen minutes. You can keep trying until password recovery arrives.
• Logging in more than ten times a minute from one address is still refused for a minute.

Known issues

• The new monsters, NPCs and quest items use existing art until they have their own.

Each point of Vitality is worth more health again, so every character has a quarter more health.

Gameplay

Health and attributes

• Each point of Vitality grants 5 health, up from 4.

Fireball now flies all the way to its target before it bursts, and spell bolts look like their school: a flame, a comet, an ice shard, a rune, a wisp, a glob of venom.

Gameplay

• Monsters' health and damage are set from their level by one formula, so many are tougher or weaker than before.
• The Blood Skeletons of the Vampire's Crypt are far tougher and give much more experience.
• A new achievement, Bloodbath, for killing 100 enemies.

Movement

• Walking straight at a one-tile gap from up to half a tile off to one side now slides you into it instead of stopping you on its corner.
• Walking into a lone tree trunk or post now steers you around it. Anything two tiles wide or more still stops you, as a wall does.

Classes

Stalwart

• New talent, Challenging Shout: Taunt also forces every enemy within 5 tiles of you to attack you.
• New talent, Vengeance: your next Shield Slam deals extra damage equal to 5% of the damage you took in the last 5 seconds.
• New talent, Final Bastion: Last Stand also casts Aegis on you, at no cost and without touching its cooldown.
• New capstone, Deathless: a blow that would kill you leaves you at 1 HP instead and triggers Last Stand, ignoring its cooldown. Once every 3 minutes.
• Bulwark has been removed. Iron Skin is now 2 ranks of 3% Armor, and Endurance 2 ranks of 3.5% maximum health. Your talent points are refunded if your build used them.

Protector

• New talent, Righteous Echo: Judgement has a 25% chance to reset the cooldown of Holy Shield.
• New talent, Searing Retribution: Retribution Aura's holy damage can critically strike, and each critical strike grants 1 Valor.
• New talent, Wrath of the Ground: an enemy that dies inside your Consecrated Ground explodes, dealing 80% weapon damage as holy damage to every enemy within 2 tiles.
• New talent, Sacrifice: while Grace Aura is active, 20% of the damage your allies under it take is dealt to you instead. It cannot take you below 1 HP.
• Sanctified Guard is now 2 ranks of 3% block chance, still doubled while your mastery shield is active.
• Zealot's Fury now needs Crusader's Cleave first.

All classes

• A caster's spell damage no longer depends on the rarity of the weapon in their hand. It grows with the Intellect on all of their gear instead.
• The weapon tooltip no longer shows the "Spell damage over an empty hand" line.
• Every talent tree is laid out anew: talents have moved between tiers and columns, so some open at a different level than before.
• A character whose talents no longer fit the new tree has its points refunded at its next login, and is told so.

Arcanist

• Conduit now needs Overclock first.

Berserker

• Unbridled Fury now needs Improved Raging Blow first.

Holy

• Overflowing Light now needs Efficient Light first.

Marksman

• Multishot is learned at level 4 and Kill Shot at level 8, the other way round from before.
• Unerring Vision now needs Long Watch first.

World

• The goblin quest for Tanner asks for 10 goblins instead of 14, and the goblin conjurer's quest is a party quest.
• Cold Camp no longer needs the Windgap burrows done first.
• The quest for the Old Widow asks only for the Widow, not four giant spiders as well.
• The Saltmire quest counts any 12 lizardfolk on the isle. Spears on the Sandbar is gone, folded into it.
• Each boss you clear in a dungeon is a checkpoint: if you fall afterwards, you rise where that boss stood instead of at the dungeon's entrance.
• A boss your party cleared on an earlier try counts too, so a new try starts its checkpoints past it.
• Once the last boss of a dungeon is down, a waystone rises where it stood. Right-click it to go back out to the dungeon's door.
• The Orc Fortress is now the Goblin Fort, and every orc in the world is now a goblin.
• The Orc Shaman in the fort's great hall is replaced by the Goblin Conjurer, which still calls giant rats to its side.
• The quest Orc Fortress is now Goblin Fort, and asks for fourteen goblins instead of six orcs and eight goblins.
• The quest The Shaman of the Fort is now The Conjurer of the Fort, and asks for the Goblin Conjurer. Progress on both quests is kept: orcs and goblins already killed for the fort count as goblins.
• Wolves, spiders, goblins, orcs, bandits and bandit archers have more health, up to a quarter more.
• In the Vampire's Crypt, Blood Skeletons, Blood Skeleton Warriors and Blood Skeleton Mages have two and a half to three times their health, hit much harder, bleed you for more, and give more experience.
• A Blood Skeleton Mage's Blood Bolt hits harder, and the swipe of its staff is no longer feeble.
• The Gargoyle Bloodspout's Blood Lance hits more than twice as hard.
• The Old Widow has a little over half her health and gives less experience, and Call the Brood brings one spider at a time instead of two.

The Vampire's Crypt

• The Vampire and each of the three gargoyles of the Gargoyle Council have twice the health they had, so each fight lasts much longer.

Collector Tobin

• Once you have completed Fangs for the Physic, Collector Tobin walks the road through the Whisperwood between Oakenhold and Riverwatch, resting two minutes at each end. Until then he stays in Oakenhold.
• You can trade with him anywhere along the way: talking to him stops him where he stands, and he waits while you browse.
• Ask him where he is headed and he will tell you his next stop.

Birchvale

• Two town guards now walk a beat around Birchvale's square instead of standing still.

Items and professions

• Every piece of gear puts more of its power into its secondary stats and less into its main stat. Pieces you already own are re-rolled to the new figures.
• Gear that grants Intellect grants more of it than the same piece grants Strength or Agility. An Intellect enchant rolls 4–8.
• Weapon damage grows less steeply with rarity: rare weapons are unchanged, epic and legendary weapons hit less hard, and common and uncommon weapons hit a little harder.

Graphics and sound

• A boss's health bar is larger than an elite's and framed in crimson and gold, with a red gem at each end.
• The Vampire and the Gargoyle Council wear the new boss mark. The Old Widow is marked as an elite, though she is still fought in her lair.
• The Vampire and its shades are drawn anew.

Spell bolts

• Bolts no longer share one glowing ball. Cinder flies as a flickering flame, Fireball as a comet, Frostbolt as an ice shard, Chain Lightning as a jagged spark, Arcane Bolt as a rune, Holy Bolt as a lance of light, shadow bolts as wisps trailing tendrils, Creeping Blight as a dripping glob of venom, and Curse of Anguish as a hex ring.

Bug fixes

• Fireball burst about three tiles short of its target, drawn as a ball five tiles across. It now flies as a comet and bursts on the target. Its damage, splash and burn are unchanged.

Known issues

• The Goblin Conjurer is drawn with a stand-in picture until it has art of its own.

The crafting window can list a trade's recipes by what they make, under the same categories as the auction house, and its list now scrolls instead of stretching the window off the screen.

Gameplay

• No monster can see you while a loading screen is up, after logging in or going into a dungeon. It sees you once the screen comes down, or as soon as you move or cast.
• Enemies cast no spells in the first 2 seconds of a fight. Bosses are not held back. Swings and instant attacks are unchanged.
• Enemies start a spell only while they can see their target. One that cannot walks in until it can.
• Riding still opens at level 10, but no horse comes with it. Buy one before you can mount.
• Starting to gather a herb, an ore or a body now dismounts you, as casting a spell does.
• A targeted spell or shot is refused when a wall stands between you and your target, with no cooldown or cost spent.
• A spell with a cast time is cancelled when its target steps out of sight before it finishes, with no cooldown or cost spent.
• Once fired, a shot at your target always reaches it, and no longer disappears on a wall corner on the way.
• Thrown fans and novas, which are fired at no one in particular, still stop on the first wall they meet.

World

• Doors are taken by stepping on them; E does nothing now. A dungeon's entrance still asks before you go in. After a door, step away from where you arrive before the door there will take you back.
• Every lever is pulled with a right-click.
• The Vampire's Crypt has a second boss, the first on the way down: the Gargoyle Council, three statues in the chamber before the Blood Hall that wake together when one is struck.
• The Warden grinds the floor as it walks, hurting the whole party for every step it takes, so hold it still. The Shrieker marks everyone with an Echo that bursts on all who stand near the bearer, so spread out. The Bloodspout stands its ground, blinks between plinths, hurls Blood Lances at random players, and channels a healing pool under whichever gargoyle is most hurt, which grows until it is interrupted and stays for the fight, up to five at a time. Left the last one standing, it leaves its plinths and comes after you.
• When a gargoyle falls, the others are restored to full health, take on its power, and strike a third harder. The order you break them in is yours to choose.
• The Council is one encounter: its loot and its lockout come when the last gargoyle falls.
• The chamber the Council stands in has been enlarged, with room to spread out.
• The Vampire no longer swings Forceful Smash. Instead it sometimes leaps onto a random player, roots them, and feeds on them for 3 seconds, leaving them slowed by half for a moment after. The Feast cannot be interrupted, so heal through it and take the Vampire back.
• The Vampire's shades rise close to it now, inside its chamber and clear of the pillars.

Items and professions

• Fishing has a catch to play, drawn beside the shoal. The bobber runs up and down a track, and a band on the track follows your cursor's height; while the bobber is inside the band the bar climbs, and while it is not the bar waits. When the bar reaches the top, the fish is landed. A catch cannot be lost, only drawn out.
• Shoals stand out on the open water, a few tiles from the bank, instead of on the shore. A line is cast further to reach them.
• The Gargoyle Council is one boss with one loot: when the last gargoyle falls, it drops two pieces of level 12 to 15 gear, one for strength and agility builds and one for casters, and sometimes a ring, a necklace, a trinket or more besides.
• Stablemaster Hobb, in Oakenhold, now sells the Bay Horse for 100 gold, the cheapest horse on his shelf.

Playing together

• Winning a roll puts the piece straight into your backpack, wherever you stand. If your backpack is full, it waits for you in the loot bag, held for you for a minute, and you are told so.

Interface

• The crafting window has a Sort button above its recipes. Sort: Type groups them by what they make, under the auction house's categories (Head, Chest, Sword, Consumables and so on); Sort: Skill keeps the order by skill.
• The crafting window's recipe list scrolls with the mouse wheel, so a trade with many recipes no longer makes the window taller than the screen.
• Escape closes every open window in one press, the party, friends, guild and mounts windows included. With nothing open, it opens the game menu as before.
• The roll window shows the piece's icon in its rarity's colour and the seconds left, its bar turns red as time runs out, and it stands a little left of the middle of the screen.
• The level 10 banner now says that riding is open and who sells horses.
• A horse can be taken off the consumable bar by dragging it off, as a potion is.

Graphics and sound

• Players and monsters are drawn as their figures, without the grey disc and the green or red ring behind them. Townsfolk keep their blue-ringed tokens.
• Weapons are held in the figure's hands rather than beside the token.
• Shields are carried smaller and lower, strapped to the forearm.
• Bows are held the right way round, the curve facing out and the string towards the archer, leaning a little outward. Crossbows are held as before.
• Going into a dungeon shows a loading screen of its own.
• Crossing into a zone with other weather, the rain, fog and sky change over a few seconds instead of in a single frame.

Known issues

• A character that rode the free Bay Horse before this patch no longer owns it, and must buy one.

Characters can now earn standing with factions. The first is the Antler Lodge, Birchvale's hunters, and Tanner takes wolf pelts for them as often as you bring them.

Gameplay

• Reputation: work for a faction earns standing with it, through five ranks: Stranger, Known, Trusted, Esteemed and Revered.
• Some quests can now be done again as soon as they are handed in. They wear the blue mark and say Repeatable.
• Pressing Respawn after a death puts you on the nearest waypoint stone you have found. With none found you still wake in Birchvale, and a death in a dungeon still starts you at its entrance.
• Every death takes 10% off the durability of your weapon, off-hand and armour. Rings, necklaces and trinkets never wear.
• A piece worn to nothing is broken and gives no stats, armour or effect until it is repaired. A broken weapon still swings.
• Crit Rating buys 2% less critical strike chance: about 9.2 rating for 1%, from 9.

Mounts

• From level 10 you can ride. Your Bay Horse goes on the last slot of your consumable bar, bound to X. Press it to mount: a 2 second cast, broken if you move. While mounted you move 60% faster, on a saddled horse everyone can see, which turns and walks the way you ride. Press it again to get off.
• You cannot mount in combat. Entering combat or using a skill dismounts you.
• The Mounted buff shows on your buff bar while you ride.
• The Mounts window (H, or the horseshoe on the dock) lists your horses. Drag one onto your consumable bar to ride it with a key.

Classes

All classes

• Attunement is 3% stronger for every specialisation except the Assassin, whose Attunement is 3% weaker. The Arcanist, Berserker, Elementalist and Mercenary figures below include it.

Arcanist

• Attunement is 8% stronger: each point adds 0.123% to Arcane Blast and Arcane Orb damage and to the Mana Arcane Infusion restores, up from 0.113%.
• Mastery is 10% stronger on your Mana: each point raises your maximum Mana by 0.482%, up from 0.438%. The 5% it gives at no Mastery is unchanged.

Assassin

• Attunement is 3% weaker: each point adds 0.116% more Venom generated, down from 0.12%. It still stops at 100% more, now reached at about 859 rating instead of 833.

Berserker

• Attunement is 8% stronger: each point adds 0.216% more Rage generated, up from 0.2%. It still stops at 100% more, now reached at about 462 rating instead of 500.

Corruptor

• Mastery is 3% stronger: each point adds 0.099% damage over time, up from 0.096%. The 20% it gives at no Mastery is unchanged.

Elementalist

• Attunement is 7% stronger: each point adds 0.461% to Elemental Conflux damage, up from 0.43%.

Mercenary

• Attunement is 6% stronger: each point adds 0.106% to the chance a combo grants 1 more Momentum, up from 0.1%. It still stops at 100%, now reached at about 942 rating instead of 1,000.

Spiritbow

• Each landed bow shot generates 13 Spirit, up from 12.

World

• Tanner belongs to the Antler Lodge, the hunters and trappers of Birchvale Reach. His new quest, Pelts for the Lodge, takes ten Wolf Pelts for Lodge standing, as often as you like until you are Trusted, when he stops asking. Wolves and dire wolves drop the pelts while you hold the quest.
• New: escort quests. Come to where the walk begins and the person you are escorting sets off with you. They wait if you fall behind, and stop while you fight off an ambush, which only you and your party can see. Leave them alone too long and the escort fails, and you can try again from the start.
• New side quest from Guard Merrin at the Windgap picket, A Leg to Stand On: walk the Injured Commoner north to Old Petra's house in Birchvale. Party members on the quest join the escort when they come near.
• Perch shoals stand along the water of Birchvale Reach and the Whisperwood, trout shoals in the Whisperwood, and eel shoals in the black water of the Barrowmoor. A fished shoal goes down and another comes up elsewhere along the water of the same area.
• Angler Maren in Birchvale's trade hall and Angler Tobin beside Oakenhold's cook train fishing.
• Registrar Ysolde keeps the guild roll on Oakenhold's market row, between the collector and the auctioneer.

The Saltmire

• The Saltmire is an isle in a lake now, with land all round it, and it stands a little further south than it did. Its sandbar still runs out to it from the Whisperwood's shore.
• A river runs down from the Greyspine into the lake.

Riverwatch

• A small fort, Riverwatch, stands on the river's west bank at the end of Oakenhold's north-east road, which now runs on past the woodcutters' clearing to its gate.
• Its four corner towers are climbed by stairs or by ladder.
• A wooden drawbridge crosses the river from its east gate. It is up until a lever lowers it, and goes back up a minute later; there is a lever in the courtyard and one on the far bank.
• A wall runs along the river's far bank, from the mountains down to the lake.

The Barrowmoor

• East of the lake and the river lies the Barrowmoor, a moor of heath, bogs and dead white trees under the mountains. It is a zone of its own, with greyer skies than the Whisperwood's.
• Somewhere up the river there is said to be a way into the mountain.

Statistics

• The Statistics page shows how many players have died to each boss.

Oakenhold

• Stablemaster Hobb keeps the stable at the east end of the market row, and sells horses.

Dungeons

• A Small dungeon holds five players, and recommends one tank, one healer and three damage dealers.
• A Large dungeon holds ten players, and recommends two tanks, two healers and six damage dealers.

Items and professions

• Every character practises all ten trades from the start. Nothing is taken up or given up: trainers teach their trade's recipes and reset its points for gold.
• The trades are grouped into Crafting (weaponsmithing, armorsmithing, alchemy, runemaking, jewelcrafting), Gathering (mining, botany, woodcutting, skinning) and Cooking.
• A group's proficiency points come from its best trade's skill and are shared by all its trades. Levelling a second crafting trade adds its recipes, not more points.
• Points spent before this change that add up to more than a group has are given back once, free, when you log in.
• Setting a rune in a socket now needs 40 runemaking.

Vendors

• Each town's armourer repairs equipment: Armourer Hild in Birchvale, Quartermaster Osk at the Windgap picket and Armourer Bryn in Oakenhold. The Repair equipment button in the shop window shows the price of repairing everything you wear and carry; repairing a piece from broken costs what it is worth, and each death costs a tenth of the value of what you wear.

Fishing

• Fishing is a new gathering trade that every character practises from the start, levelled from 1 to 150 by fishing.
• Fish come from shoals: rings on the water with fish breaking the surface. Stand on the bank within reach and right-click one to cast; a catch takes three and a half to five seconds and lands one or two fish.
• Five fish climb the ladder: River Perch at skill 1, Speckled Trout at 30, Barrow Eel at 55, Glimmerfin at 80 and Moonscale at 150. A shoal is richer to a better fisher, like a vein or a patch.
• Fishing shares the Gathering group's proficiency points, and has a tree of its own: more fish, better fish and quicker casts.
• Cooking has five new meals made from fish: Grilled Perch, Smoked Trout, Barrow Eel Pie, Glimmerfin Broth and Moonscale Feast, taught by any cooking trainer from skill 1 to 105.

Mounts

• Horses are items: Chestnut, Grey, Black, Palomino, and the legendary White Horse. Right-click one to add it to your mounts for good. Until then it can be traded, mailed or sold on the auction house like anything else.

Playing together

• Founding a guild costs 10,000 gold, paid to Registrar Ysolde in Oakenhold. The gold is not returned if the guild disbands.
• A guild leader can set a tax of 1 to 10% on what members earn from vendor and auction sales. The tax goes to the guild bank, which the guild window shows.
• Guilds have three ranks: Guild Master, Officer and Member. The Guild Master can rename them, name and demote officers, remove members and hand the guild to another member.
• Only the Guild Master and officers can invite players into the guild. Before, any member could.
• The Guild Master can withdraw gold from the guild bank into their own purse, from the guild window. The guild is told how much was taken.

Parties

• A party is up to ten players.
• Past five members the party frames and the party window draw the party smaller, and the damage meter shows five rows.

Interface

• A Reputation window (U, and on the dock) shows each faction you have standing with, your rank and how far into it you are. The quest log and the quest giver show what a quest pays in standing.
• A worn piece's tooltip shows its durability, and a broken piece is edged in red on the character sheet.
• The death screen says how much your gear wore down, and names any piece that broke.
• The Trades and Proficiency windows have Crafting, Gathering and Cooking tabs. The Proficiency window has a button for each trade's tree in the group shown.
• The guild window no longer has a Found Guild button. Out of a guild, it says where to found one.
• The guild window has a Treasury box: the guild bank's gold and the tax, with Set Tax for the leader.
• The guild window shows each member's rank. The Guild Master gets a Ranks box for renaming ranks, and Promote, Demote, Lead and Remove buttons on each member's row.
• A small mark left of a player's guild name shows their rank: a gold crown for the Guild Master, a silver starred shield for an officer and a bronze shield for a member.

Action bars

• Clicking a slot on the action bar or the consumable bar now uses it, just like its key. Drag a slot to move it.

Bug fixes

• Shift+number keys on the consumable bar did nothing. They work now.

Known issues

• Nothing lives in the Barrowmoor or Riverwatch yet, and there are no quests or gathering there.
• A raised drawbridge looks like a barred gate.
• Glimmerfin and Moonscale shoals do not stand anywhere yet, so the two meals made from them cannot be cooked.
• Moonscale and the fishing trainers wear placeholder pictures.

Every character now has a bank, bigger than the backpack, kept by the bankers in Birchvale and Oakenhold.

Gameplay

Death

• A fallen character still lies where they fell until they press Respawn, and a party member within 6 tiles can now bring them back there instead.
• Only your own party can bring you back. You keep whatever experience the death cost you.

Enemy levels

• Every enemy has a level. Your target's level is shown before its name.
• A kill pays full XP until you are more than two levels above the enemy. After that it pays less for each further level, and nothing once you are far enough above it. Loot and quest progress are unaffected.
• In a party, a kill's XP is set by the highest-level member who gets a share.
• An enemy's name is coloured by its level next to yours: grey pays no XP, green pays reduced XP, white is a fair fight, orange is above you and red is well above you.
• Elite enemies wear a gold frame round their health bar and are tagged Elite when targeted. The Orc Shaman, the Dire Bear, the Demon Skeleton and the Vampire are elite.

Stats

• Each point of Haste rating now gives 0.0645% Haste, down from 0.08%: 100 rating is 6.45% Haste, from 8%.
• Haste from buffs and talents, written as a percentage, is unchanged.

Classes

Holy

• Learn Resurrection at level 2: a 6-second cast, out of combat only, that brings a fallen party member back with half their health, and a healer with half their Mana or Essence.

Lifedrainer

• Learn Blood Rebirth at level 2: a 6-second cast, out of combat only, that brings a fallen party member back with half their health, and a healer with half their Mana or Essence.

World

Bankers

• Banker Maren keeps the counter in Birchvale's market hall, beside the auctioneer, and Banker Corwin keeps Oakenhold's. Both open the same bank: it is yours, not the counter's.

Whisperwood

• Venom Spiders, level 10, now live in the spider hollow west of Oakenhold and in the Hollow Deep below it, in place of the small Birchvale spiders. Their bite is poisonous.
• Fangs for the Physic, Odo's quest in Oakenhold, now takes its whole fangs from Venom Spiders.
• The dire wolves that roamed near Birchvale with the bandits are gone; dire wolves now live only south of the Greyspine.

Items and professions

The bank

• The bank starts with 40 slots, more than the backpack, and has five bag slots of its own. A bag put in one adds its slots to the bank.
• A bag in the bank grants no stats: only the bags you wear on your backpack do.

Runemaking

• Runemakers can make the Rune of Rebirth at skill 60. Broken over a fallen party member, in a fight or out of one, it brings them back after a 5, 4 or 3-second cast at one, two or three stars, with 20%, 40% or 60% of their health, and a healer with the same share of Mana or Essence.
• Breaking a Rune of Rebirth puts every rune in your party on a 3-minute cooldown.
• Moving or casting a spell breaks the rune's cast, and the rune is kept.

Crafting

• Every crafting trainer teaches new recipes: weapons of every kind, armour for Strength, Agility and Intellect builds in every slot, rings, necklaces and trinkets, elixirs that raise a main stat for half an hour, a Greater Healing Draught, and meals.
• Gear for levels 5 to 15 can be crafted in every slot, each piece from the materials found around its level: copper, pine, linen and boar hide early on, then iron, oak, wolf hide and velvet.
• Every rune can now be cut by a runemaker, not only Vigor.
• Cooking has its first recipes, made from Game Meat and Bear Haunch, which skinners now take off wolves and bears beside their hides.

Vampire Fang Dagger

• The Vampire sometimes drops the Recipe: Vampire Fang Dagger, an epic Agility dagger for level 15 that is stronger than others of its level.
• It is forged with a Vampire's Fang. A fang has no stars, so it does not change how good the dagger comes out: the metal and hide do.

Playing together

Guilds

• Open the new Guild window with G, or from the bar at the bottom of the screen, and found a guild under a name nobody else has taken.
• Any member can invite: right-click a player and choose Invite, or invite by character name from the Guild window. An invite stays open for a minute.
• Every member's guild is shown as <Guild Name> under their name, for everyone around them to see.
• The guild leader can remove members or hand the lead to someone else. If the leader leaves, the member who joined first takes over, and the guild disbands when its last member leaves.

Party

• A party holds up to fourteen characters, up from six. There is no separate raid to form: invite, kick, promote and leave work as they always have.
• XP, gold, loot and party chat are shared across the whole party, whatever its size.

Party loot

• When a party's kill drops an uncommon or better piece, everyone there for the kill gets a small window to choose Need or Pass.
• Everyone who chose Need rolls 1 to 100, and the highest roll wins the piece. If everyone passes, it goes to a random member of the party.
• You can only choose Need on gear that has your specialisation's main stat, or no main stat at all, and on weapons your specialisation can wield. Otherwise the Need button is greyed out, and hovering it tells you why.
• The window closes after 20 seconds, and not answering counts as a pass. The chat tells everyone who won and what each person rolled.
• While the roll is open, nobody can take the piece. Once it is won, it is held in the bag for the winner.
• This replaces taking turns: gear is no longer handed to each member in turn.

Mail

• Post boxes stand in Birchvale, by the auction house and by the waypoint stone, and in Oakenhold. Right-click one to open your mailbox; every post box opens the same one.
• Write a letter to any character by name, with a subject, a few lines of text, gold, and up to six items.
• Take what a letter carries one letter at a time, or everything at once with Take All. A letter you have taken from keeps its words until you throw it away, and Delete Read throws away every letter with nothing left in it.
• Letters are thrown away four weeks after they arrive, with anything still in them.
• A mailbox holds up to 200 letters from players that still carry gold or items.
• You are told when a letter arrives, and when you log in with letters waiting.

Auction house

• What the auction house owes you now comes by mail: the gold from a sale, a lot that did not sell or that you pulled back, and anything you buy. Take it at any post box.
• A full backpack no longer stops you buying a lot, since it arrives by mail.

Chat

• The chat box has two new tabs beside Say and Party. Zone reaches everyone in the zone you are standing in; Trade reaches everyone online.
• Zone and Trade take a few lines a minute from each player, so neither can be flooded.
• Whatever you say on Say now appears in a speech bubble over your character for a few seconds, and everyone near you sees it.

Interface

Bank window

• The bank opens beside your backpack. Drag items between the two, or right-click an item to move it across. It has its own Sort button, and closes when you walk away from the banker.

Party frames

• Past six members the party frames become compact health bars in two columns, yours first. Each shows the member's name, role, resource, and the newest three debuffs. Hovering one aims mouseover spells at that member, as a frame does.
• Options → Interface → Use the large-party frames for a small party draws a party of six or fewer as the same bars, larger, instead of as rows.
• Past six members the party window lists each member on one line, so a full party fits on screen.
• The damage and healing meter still shows six rows. In a larger party it shows the top five and your own row, if you are not among them.

Known issues

• Resurrection and Blood Rebirth wear placeholder icons until they are painted.
• Most of the new recipes ask for materials that cannot be gathered yet. Only copper, bitterroot and pine have nodes in the world so far.
• Guilds have no chat channel, ranks or bank yet.
• Spells centred on the caster, such as Holy Nova and the Protector's auras, reach every party member in range, so in a large party they reach more people than they were tuned for.

The world now turns from dawn to night and back every hour and forty minutes, each region has its own weather, and the towns and the bandit camp are lit after dark.

Gameplay

The Vampire

• While it withdraws into mist, the Vampire drifts through its chamber as a cloud of blood that hurts anyone it passes through. It goes after whoever still carries Vampiric Blood, slower than you can walk.
• After each withdrawal it walks until it can see the nearest chalice, then drains it with a red beam for 5 seconds. A drained chalice is shattered for the rest of the fight, so each withdrawal has one chalice fewer.
• It does nothing else while it drains a chalice, and the drain cannot be interrupted. A wipe or a kill puts every chalice back.

Classes

Berserker

• You can hold a one-handed sword, axe or mace in each hand, or a two-handed weapon as before.
• The off-hand weapon swings on its own timer for 50% of its damage, and brings no Rage of its own.
• Whirlwind and Bladestorm strike with both weapons, adding 50% of the off-hand weapon's damage. Brutal Strike, Rend, Execute and Counter Attack strike with the main hand alone.
• New talent, Rampage (tier 4): each weapon swing that lands, with either hand, generates 1/2 Rage. While your Rage is full, Brutal Strike is off the global cooldown.
• Taking damage no longer generates Rage.
• Pain Fuels Rage is removed. A Berserker with points in it gets those points back at the next login, to spend again.

World

• Every town is lit at night: torches stand by the doors, lanterns by the merchants and trainers, and lamp posts along the paths.
• The bandit camp keeps braziers burning around its fires.
• Each region has its own weather. The Whisperwood is foggier and wetter than Birchvale Reach.

Birchvale Reach

• The rock above Birchvale and the caves under it are the Bonepits. Their name shows on entering them and on the world map.

Interface

• A one-handed weapon dropped on the off-hand slot while the main hand is empty goes to the main hand.

Graphics and sound

• A full day and night passes every 100 minutes, with dawn, dusk and a dark blue night between them.
• Rain, thunderstorms with lightning, fog and overcast skies come and go, and clouds cast moving shadows on clear days.
• Campfires, lit windows and waypoint stones glow at night. A waypoint stone you have not found yet glows only faintly.
• Undercrofts and dungeons are as dim as dusk at every hour, and have no weather.
• Enemies, their arrows and spells, swing arcs and the warnings on the ground are never darkened by night, so a fight reads as well at midnight as at noon.

The Vampire

• Its ground attack is a rain of blood over the marked circles, for as long as they burn.
• Blood Bolt and its ring of blood splash where they land, Vampiric Blood draws blood up off whoever it lands on, and Forceful Smash cuts a red slash across everyone it hits.

Game client

• Other players, enemies and arrows are drawn between two updates from the server, so they move smoothly rather than in steps, and a stutter in the connection no longer shows as a stutter on screen.
• What you see of everyone else is a tenth of a second behind the server. Your own character is not: it moves the moment you press a key, as before.
• The server sends the world twenty times a second instead of sixty, and sends about another player only what the game draws them from, so it keeps its pace with more players fighting at once.

Bug fixes

• An Assassin who becomes a Mercenary has a knife taken out of the main hand, where a Mercenary cannot hold one.

Known issues

• The names of non-player characters dim at night along with the world around them.

Copper veins, Bitterroot patches and pine trees are spread over the whole of Birchvale Reach rather than kept to three fields beside the town, and many more of them stand at once.

Gameplay

• The edge of a rock wall or a shore stops you where it is drawn, half a tile at a time, rather than a whole tile out from it, so you can walk round a rock's corner as close as it looks.
• The global cooldown is 1.5 seconds, down from 1.75. Haste still shortens it.
• Spells on the global cooldown no longer have a cooldown of their own of three seconds or less: Brutal Strike, Whirlwind, Spirit Arrow, Shadow Bolt, Drain Life and the party buffs such as Battle Shout can be pressed again as soon as the global cooldown allows.
• Spells that are not on the global cooldown keep their cooldowns, among them Shank and Carve. Counterstrike keeps its 3 seconds, so it is still once per block.

Classes

Berserker

• Unrelenting: for every 10 Rage you spend, your next Bladestorm deals 1% more damage, stacking up to 100%. Every spin of that Bladestorm deals the extra damage, and the stacks start again from nothing after it.
• Your Unrelenting stacks show on your buff bar under the Bladestorm icon, with the count in its corner. The talent wears the Bladestorm icon in the talent window too.
• Unending Fury is now Pain Fuels Rage: you gain 7/14/21% more Rage from taking damage. Points you had in Unending Fury stay in Pain Fuels Rage, and Rage now drains away fully after a fight.
• New talent, Unbridled Fury: each critical auto-attack takes 1/2 seconds off Raging Blow's cooldown.
• New talent, Massacre: Execute can be used on enemies below 30/35% health, instead of 25%.
• New talent, Cyclone: Whirlwind refunds 1/2 Rage for each enemy it strikes beyond the first, for up to 3 more enemies.
• New talent, Blood Fury: while Bloodrage is up, every 10 Rage you spend extends it by 0.5 seconds, up to 5 seconds.
• Whirlwind deals 50% weapon damage to each enemy it strikes, down from 80%.

Assassin

• Toxin deals about 12% more damage with each tick, and the poison Envenom leaves about 5% more.

World

Birchvale Reach

• A cave in Birchvale Reach climbs in four chambers, each higher than the last: stairs lead from one to the next, the rock stands taller over a chamber below it, and the lower a chamber lies the darker it is.

Quests

• An objective marked (Optional) is tracked like the rest, but the quest can be handed in without it, and nothing is taken from your bag for it.
• A quest can ask you to travel by waypoint stone to a place, and the objective is met when the trip arrives there.
• News from the Windpeak Pass suggests travelling back to Birchvale by the waypoint stone at the pass.

Levers

• A lever is a wooden lever in a wooden block, thrown to the left until it is pulled and to the right after, its grip painted red and then green.
• A lever you right-click takes the click anywhere on its tile, not only on the middle of its base.

Items and professions

Gathering

• Copper veins stand at the feet of the mountains, beside boulders and along the walls of the caves, and as many again out in open country, so mining is no longer a walk round a mountain.
• Bitterroot grows in open meadow, and pine trees stand at the edges of the woods, all across Birchvale Reach.
• Many more nodes stand at once, spread out with no more than a few in any one place, so gathering is a walk from one to the next. A node you take comes back somewhere else in the Reach.

Interface

Quest marks

• An exclamation mark is a quest to take, a solid question mark a quest to hand in, and a hollow grey question mark a quest you are still working on.
• The colour is the kind of quest: gold for the story, ivory for a side quest, crimson for a party quest and blue for a daily. Party and daily marks also carry a small badge.
• A question mark ready to hand in is now in its quest's colour rather than green.
• The same marks appear on both maps, beside each quest in the quest log, and beside each quest in a quest giver's window, where a party, side or daily quest is also named in brackets.

Graphics and sound

• Walls cast a shadow and stand in a strip of trodden earth where they meet the ground.
• A stub of wall standing off a keep's wall is drawn as a buttress, its top sloping back into the wall it props.
• Paved squares and floors outdoors wear into the ground round them: earth creeps in under their edge, and broken slabs and gravel lie beside them.
• Rock meets the walkways and stairs cut through it, with no floor showing between.

Bug fixes

• Thin rock walls in caves and on mountains no longer show gaps that look like a way through but are not.
• The corner map and the world map show the terrain again on graphics cards that limit a texture to 8192 or 4096 pixels. They had drawn the ground black, with only the markers and place names over it.
• Copper veins east of Birchvale, Bitterroot patches to the south and pine trees to the west appear again. Since 0.5.3 none of them stood anywhere, so mining, botany and woodcutting had nothing to gather.

Improved low level gameplay.

World

• Enemies are stronger now, items that drop are more likely to be usable.

Where three kinds of ground met, one tile used to be drawn with an edge that did not match its neighbours. Most of those are gone.

Graphics and sound

• Where dark grass, a path and grass, or a bank, the water and grass, all met at one spot, the ground there now meets cleanly instead of showing a tile whose edge does not line up.
• Some patches of dark grass beside roads and banks are a little smaller, with a strip of grass between them and the road, which is what lets the ground meet cleanly there.

Known issues

• A few spots still show a tile whose edge does not line up, mostly where a cliff runs into the sea beside a beach.

Birchvale Reach is smaller, the Vampire's Crypt is one dungeon with one door, and Guard Merrin wants the worms under the Windgap dealt with.

World

Birchvale Reach

• The reach is about a third smaller: the sea has taken its far east shore, the orcs' old headland and a strip of the north coast, so nothing is as far from Birchvale as it was.
• The orc fortress stands much nearer Birchvale, north-east of the town, with a road from its south gate to the town road. Its outer wall and towers are stone you cannot walk along, and the south gate is the only way in.
• The bandit camp has moved from the east fields to the bandit cave north-west of Birchvale, with a path from its gate up to the cave.
• The meadows have groves and woods of firs, junipers, broad trees and blossom, with tall grass, bushes and darker grass between them.
• The Forgotten Temple is gone, and its waypoint stone with it.

The Windgap

• The troll's den is halfway down the Windgap, across the road south. The way on past it opens once you have killed the troll and told Guard Merrin.
• The troll is there only for players who have The Pass is closed in progress. Before you take the quest, and after you hand it in, its den is empty. Its loot is seen only by the players who killed it and others on the quest.

Vampire's Crypt

• The Crypt is one dungeon with one door, in the dark wood south of Birchvale. The undercroft and its tombs are now the first part of the dungeon, and the corridor at their end leads to the Vampire.
• The door in the meadow that led straight to the Vampire is gone.
• Old Petra asks you to put eight of the Crypt's skeletons back in the ground and bring her a Vampire's Fang. The Vampire drops six fangs, one for each of a full party.
• The Crypt is drawn on a map of its own, so the map inside it shows the Crypt alone.

The Burrows

• A small worm cave lies under the notch in the rock east of Windpeak Pass, full of flesh-eating worms, with huge worms in a nest at the bottom.
• The nest is behind a gate. Pull the levers in both side tunnels to open it, and there is a lever inside the nest to open it again from within. It shuts again after five minutes.
• Guard Merrin asks you to kill six flesh-eating worms and two huge worms down there, once you have found the Windgap picket.

Waypoint stones

• Right-click a waypoint stone to travel from it. E no longer uses a stone, so E beside one opens the door or pulls the lever next to it.
• Right-clicking a stone from too far away tells you so.
• The list of places to travel to opens where you clicked.
• Pointing at a stone shows its name, and whether you have found it yet.

Interface

• Tab targets the nearest enemy you can see. Press it again to target the next one out, and after the farthest it goes back to the nearest. Enemies under a roof you cannot see beneath, and pets, are passed over.
• It can be moved to another key under Targeting, in the Keybinds tab of Options.

Graphics and sound

• A waypoint stone is drawn as a standing stone with carved runes. The runes glow blue, with light at the stone's foot, once you have found it, and are dark until then.

Bug fixes

• Tab no longer opens the chat. Enter opens it, as before.

Known issues

• A character who logged out inside the Vampire's Crypt before this update logs back in at Birchvale rather than at the Crypt's door.

Every specialisation can now hold enemies, with a stun, an incapacitate, a root or a slow, and has twelve spells on its action bar by level 10. The Corruptor and Spiritbow are reworked.

Gameplay

• Every speed takes its percentage off the time: 40% faster is 60% of the time, where it was the time divided by 1.4. This covers Haste, attack speed on players and monsters, and talents that make something faster, such as Wither Storm, Severed Souls and Threadbare.
• Haste from gear and from buffs no longer adds up. Each source takes its share of what the others leave, so 20% from gear and a 40% buff make 52%.
• Haste rating is worth less: 100 rating takes 8% off casts, swings, the global cooldown and damage-over-time ticks, where it took about 18% off. Haste from buffs and talents is unchanged.
• 10 Critical Strike rating is 1% crit chance, where 12 was.
• A critical hit, heal or damage-over-time tick deals 1.85 times as much, where it dealt 1.5 times.
• Every damage specialisation gets about the same from its five secondary stats together, though each leans on one or two of them. Mastery changed for most of them, listed below.
• Attunement is worth having for every damage specialisation, about what Critical Strike and Versatility are worth. Several work differently now, listed below.
• Logging out takes five seconds. A prompt counts them down with a Cancel button, and getting into a fight before it reaches zero calls the logout off.
• You cannot log out while you are in combat.
• An enemy that cannot move, such as the Training Dummy or a turret, keeps you in combat only while you are within its sight, or for five seconds after you last hit or taunted it.

Crowd control

• Every specialisation now has a way to hold enemies: a stun, an incapacitate, a root or a slow. The new ones are listed under their classes below.
• Bosses cannot be stunned, rooted or incapacitated. A skill that only stuns or incapacitates, such as Cheap Shot, is refused at a boss before its cooldown is spent, and says so. A blow that also stuns, such as Charge, Shield Slam or Holy Shield with Censure, lands on a boss without the stun.
• A slow still lands on a boss and shows on it, and Chill still turns to Brittle on one, but a boss moves at full speed under any slow.
• Slows on an enemy no longer add up: it moves at the speed of its strongest slow.
• Enemies can now be rooted. A rooted enemy cannot walk or charge, but it still turns to face its target, swings, casts and shoots, and a root does not stop a spell it is winding up.
• However many stuns land on an enemy, it is stunned at most 4 seconds in a row. When that run of stuns ends, it cannot be stunned again for as long as it was held, and a skill that only stuns is refused, saying how many seconds are left.
• A stun that lands on an enemy already stunned never shortens the stun it is in.
• Prismatic Prison (Arcanist), Evensong (Holy), Wicked Hex (Corruptor) and Enthrall (Lifedrainer) incapacitate an enemy for 20 seconds, on a 30-second cooldown. An incapacitated enemy cannot move or act, and any damage, from anyone, ends the hold.
• Incapacitating an enemy washes every damage over time off it, whoever laid it, so a wound already ticking cannot end the hold.
• You can keep one enemy incapacitated at a time: holding a second releases the first. Each player's hold is their own, and another player's is left alone.
• Your auto-attacks never end an incapacitate. An auto-attack at an incapacitated target waits, and swings the moment the hold ends or you pick another target. It also waits while you are casting a hold on that target.
• Damage nobody aimed passes an incapacitated enemy over: splashes, spreads, bounces, chains, the bursts talents set off and the sweep of an auto-attack go to the enemies around it instead. A skill you aim at it, or a ground zone it stands in, still ends the hold.
• A skill that strikes every enemy around you, such as Whirlwind, Bastion Strike or Holy Nova, is aimed at all of them, so it ends the hold on an incapacitated enemy in its reach.
• Crowd control never starts a fight: you can incapacitate one enemy of a group before you pull the rest.
• Crowd control does not land on an enemy walking back to where it started, and a skill that only holds is refused at one with "Your target is walking home."
• A skill that only holds is refused before its cooldown is spent when it would hold nobody, and says why, such as "Nothing there can be stunned."
• A crowd-control spell with a cast is checked again as it lands, and is cancelled with nothing spent, saying why, if it would hold nobody by then.
• A hold that covers an area passes over the bosses in it and the enemies already stunned, already incapacitated or not yet able to be stunned again, and holds the rest.

Bosses that cannot be harmed

• A boss that cannot be harmed, such as the Vampire while it is withdrawn into mist, takes no crowd control, not even a slow. Kneecap is refused at it with "Your target is immune.", and the slow of an aura or a shout passes it over.
• A blow on a boss that cannot be harmed does not count as landing: it lays nothing on the boss, nothing splashes, spreads or arcs off it, and it earns no resource, combo or proc. What a skill gives you simply for being used, such as the resource a builder makes, is still paid.
• Splashes, spreads, bounces and other effects that pick their own targets pass over a boss that cannot be harmed, and go to an enemy that can take them.
• Creeping Blight, Corrupt and Bloodspill, whose whole effect is what their target carries, are refused at a boss that cannot be harmed with "Your target is immune.", before anything is spent.

Dungeons

• A dungeon is a private copy for your party: you never meet another group inside it.
• Pressing E at a dungeon's door opens a window showing the party it is made for, with its tanks, healers and damage, beside your own party and the bosses you have already defeated.
• Dungeons come in two sizes: small, for a party of 6 (1 tank, 1 healer, 4 damage), and large, for a party of 14 (2 tanks, 3 healers, 9 damage). Anyone may go in alone.
• Defeating a boss locks you to it until the next reset, daily at 04:00 UTC for a small dungeon and on Mondays at 04:00 UTC for a large one. A dungeon's bosses can be defeated on separate visits.
• Dying in a dungeon puts you back at its start inside, and your party keeps its progress.
• Logging out in a dungeon brings you back at its door outside.
• An empty dungeon waits 15 minutes for your party to come back before it starts over.
• An account can open at most 5 new dungeons an hour. Going back into your party's does not count.

Classes

Berserker

• Cleave is gone. In its place at level 3 you learn Whirlwind, which strikes every enemy within 3 tiles of you, all the way round, for 80% weapon damage. Cleave struck only the enemies in a wide arc in front of you, within melee reach.
• Whirlwind costs 30 Rage, as Cleave did, and has a 2-second cooldown, the same as Brutal Strike's. Cleave's was 8 seconds.
• Whirlwind needs no target. With no enemy within reach it is refused with "No enemy within reach.", before its Rage or its cooldown is spent.
• New skill, Raging Blow, at level 5: your next auto-attack deals 10% more damage and generates 10 more Rage. It costs nothing, is off the global cooldown and has a 5-second cooldown.
• Raging Blow waits up to a minute for an auto-attack that lands. While it waits, pressing it again is refused with "Your next swing is already a Raging Blow.", and its cooldown is not spent.
• New skill, Bloodrage, at level 9: for 15 seconds you gain 30% attack speed and your bleeds deal 50% more damage. It costs nothing, is off the global cooldown and has a 90-second cooldown.
• Rupture, pressed while Bloodrage lasts, deals 50% more damage, since what it tears out of your bleeds is bleed damage too.
• War Cry also slows every enemy within 6 tiles of you by 50% for 6 seconds.
• Improved War Cry gives War Cry's critical strike bonus to the nearest party member within 10 tiles at rank 1, and to every party member within 10 tiles at rank 2. Rank 1 used to reach the nearest player however far away they stood.
• Frenzy grants attack speed instead of Haste: each stack is 1.25/2.5/3.75% attack speed. It hurries your swings, and no longer your bleeds or the global cooldown.
• Seething, your Attunement, gives 0.2% more Rage a point, up from 0.125%, to at most 100%.

Stalwart

• New skill, Bastion Strike, at level 3: strike every enemy within 3 tiles of you for 80% weapon damage, and gain 5 Reinforcement for the first enemy struck and 1 more for each beyond it. It is instant, costs nothing and has an 8-second cooldown, and with no enemy in reach it is refused before the cooldown starts.
• New skill, Bulwark Rush, at level 10: rush at an enemy 4 to 12 tiles away, strike it for 50% weapon damage as you arrive, and gain 20 Reinforcement. It is instant, costs nothing and has a 20-second cooldown. The Reinforcement comes only if the rush reaches its target.
• Immovable Stance lasts 8 seconds, up from 5, and no longer roots you: you move 60% slower while it holds.
• Immovable Stance raises your block chance by 30%, down from 80%. Block chance still stops at 85%.
• Immovable Stance costs 25 Reinforcement, down from 40, and its cooldown is 20 seconds, down from 30.
• In Immovable Stance, Stockpile follows the usual rule: it cannot be started while you hold a direction, and moving cancels it.
• Echo Guard's explosion passes over enemies that are incapacitated or cannot be harmed, and splits what it stored among the others.
• Shield Slam, Counterstrike and Earthquake deal 50% more damage.
• Juggernaut sets your dodge chance to 0% and raises your armour and maximum health by the percentage you gave up. You can land critical hits again, and crit chance no longer turns into health, armour and block.

Marksman

• Crippling Arrow is gone. In its place at level 2 you learn Concussive Arrow, a blunted arrow at your target that stuns every enemy within 3 tiles of where it lands for 2 seconds.
• Concussive Arrow deals no damage and costs no Focus. It reaches 15 tiles and has a 30-second cooldown. Crippling Arrow struck for 80% weapon damage, cost 15 Focus, had a 12-second cooldown and slowed its target by 40% for 4 seconds.
• Concussive Arrow cannot be aimed at a boss, even one with enemies beside it.
• Multishot costs 15 Focus, down from 30.
• Trick Shots sends your next Aimed Shot on to as many enemies beside its target as Multishot strikes: 2, or 3 and 4 with the two ranks of Improved Multishot. It used to reach 2 however many ranks of Improved Multishot you had.
• Precision gives 0.333% more Aimed Shot damage and 0.0333% Marked Shot chance a point of Mastery, and nothing without Mastery. It gave 0.0833% and 0.0167% a point, on top of 15% and 2%.
• Steady Hands, your Attunement, raises the damage of every ability that costs Focus by 0.135% a point. It raised the Focus you generate, which stopped paying once you had enough.

Spiritbow

• Spirit Cycle calls a spirit at random, in rounds: each of the four rides once, in a random order, before any comes back, and a press never calls the spirit already riding. It used to step through Wolf, Phoenix, Serpent and Hawk in that order.
• Spirit Cycle is also a passive you have from level 1, whose tooltip explains the specialisation: what each spirit gives you while it rides, the form Spirit Strike takes under it, and how the Spirit Flow ramp builds and is lost. The Spirit Cycle skill's tooltip now covers only the press: it calls a spirit, adds a stack of Spirit Flow and costs 20/40/80/120 Spirit.
• While the Wolf rides, your bow shots, Spirit Arrow and each arrow of Spirit Volley also deal 90% of their damage to the 2 enemies nearest their target, within 3 tiles. The Wolf still adds 20% physical damage to your bow shots.
• While Commune lasts, your bow shots splash like the Wolf's, but Spirit Arrow and Spirit Volley splash only while the Wolf itself rides.
• The Wolf's splash and Serpent's Fang each have their own row on the damage meter, Wolf Splash and Serpent's Fang.
• Pack Lunge still widens only Wolf Strike's splash, to 3.5 or 4.5 tiles around its target, and its tooltip now says so. The splash your arrows throw while the Wolf rides keeps its 3-tile reach.
• Spirit Strike in the Serpent's form leaves Serpent's Fang on its target, a poison of 30% weapon damage a second for 8 seconds. It also copies your poisons on the target, the Fang and every stack of Serpent's poison, onto every enemy within 3 tiles. It used to put all 5 stacks of Serpent's poison on the target alone.
• Spirit Strike costs 35 Spirit, down from 50. Its cooldown is still 8 seconds.
• New talent, Eager Spirits, in tier 4: Spirit Cycle resets Spirit Strike's cooldown, so each spirit you call can strike at once. The strike still costs its Spirit.
• Ancestor's Call strikes for 125% weapon damage for each stack of Spirit Flow you hold, 500% at 4 stacks, and no longer uses up the stacks. Before, it spent the whole ramp for 200% a stack, 800% at 4.
• Ancestor's Call has a 25-second cooldown, where it had none.
• Ancestral Echo makes Ancestor's Call echo: a second arrow falls a moment after the first for 50% of its damage and rolls its own critical strike. It used to leave one stack of Spirit Flow behind when a Call spent two or more.
• Spirit Flow gives 0.05% more arrow damage per stack for each point of Mastery, down from 0.125%, now that Ancestor's Call no longer spends the stacks and you hold them for as long as you keep cycling. With 100 Mastery and 4 stacks that is 20%, where it was 50%.
• Root Surge roots every enemy standing in it for 3 seconds when you cast it. An enemy that walks in afterwards is slowed but not rooted.
• Root Surge slows enemies standing in it by 40%, up from 20%.
• New skill, Spirit Ward, at level 5: the ancestors shield you, absorbing damage equal to 20% of your maximum health for 8 seconds. It costs no Spirit, is off the global cooldown and has a 1-minute cooldown.
• Spirit Flow gives 0.125% more arrow damage a stack for each point of Mastery, up from 0.0833%.

Elementalist

• New skill, Frostbind, at level 9: instantly bind in ice every enemy within 3 tiles of a point up to 12 tiles away, stunning them for 2 seconds. It costs nothing and has a 30-second cooldown. It deals no damage, lays no Chill, builds no Flux and does not count for Elemental Resonance.
• Frostbind lands at your cursor, or 12 tiles along your aim when the cursor is further away or out of your line of sight.
• Elemental Resonance gives 0.21% more damage a point of Mastery, and nothing without Mastery. It gave 0.0833% a point on top of 10%.
• Overcharge, your Attunement, raises Elemental Conflux's damage by 0.43% a point. It returned spent Flux.

Arcanist

• New skill, Arcane Shatter, at level 4: a 1.2-second cast for 4 Mana that strikes your target and every enemy within 3 tiles of it for 75% spell damage each, from up to 18 tiles away. It builds 1 Manaweave however many enemies it strikes, and neither spends Manaweave nor grows with it.
• New skill, Prismatic Prison, at level 7: a 1.5-second cast that seals an enemy up to 15 tiles away in a prism, incapacitating it for 20 seconds. It costs no Mana and has a 30-second cooldown.
• Twinned Bolt's second bolt is a whole Arcane Bolt, still free and instant: it builds Manaweave and can roll Quickweave, rolls its own damage and critical strike, and gives Arcane Feedback its chance to restore Mana. It used to copy the first bolt's hit and build nothing.
• Twinned Bolt gives Arcane Shatter the same 15/30% chance to shatter twice: a second burst, free and instant, strikes every enemy the first one struck, builds Manaweave again and gives Arcane Feedback another chance.
• Quickweave also works on Arcane Shatter: each burst has a 10/20/30% chance to build twice the Manaweave, as Arcane Bolt does.
• With Splinter, each burst of Arcane Shatter leaves a fracture on every enemy it strikes, as Arcane Blast leaves one on its target. Both add to the same stacks, up to 5, and Detonate spends them all.
• A Splinter fracture belongs to the Arcanist who laid it: it raises only your own arcane damage, and your Detonate spends only the stacks you laid. Two Arcanists on one enemy no longer raise each other's damage or spend each other's stacks.
• Chain Reaction can arc off every enemy Arcane Shatter strikes, each hit rolling for itself.
• Conduit's damage bonus lasts 12 seconds after you finish channelling Evocation, up from 6.
• Overclock makes every cooldown you have running recover 50/100% faster for 30 seconds after you channel Evocation, so at two ranks they run at double speed. Potion cooldowns are not hurried. It used to raise Arcane Acceleration by 50/100% for 5 seconds, and Arcane Acceleration is now the same whether Overclock is up or not.
• Prismatic Mind, the tier-4 talent that returned Mana out of the damage Prismatic Barrier absorbed, has left the talent tree. Prismatic Barrier itself is unchanged.
• An Arcanist who had points in Prismatic Mind has every talent point refunded at their next login, to spend again on the tree as it is now.
• Arcane Bolt deals 60% more damage.
• Arcane Blast costs 15 Mana, down from 25, and 24 with a full Manaweave ramp, down from 40.
• Threadbare makes your next 1/2 Arcane Bolts after an Infusion cast 40% faster. They used to cast 40% slower.
• Amplification is your Attunement in place of Manaspring: it raises Arcane Blast's damage by 0.12% a point, where Manaspring returned Mana for each Manaweave you built.

Holy

• New skill, Holy Nova, at level 5: a burst of holy light heals you and every party member within 8 tiles for 20 plus half your Spell Power, and strikes every enemy in the same reach for 80% spell damage, what a Holy Bolt deals without Searing Conviction. It is instant, costs 16 Mana and has a 15-second cooldown.
• Holy Nova generates 1 Holy Power when it strikes an enemy, however many it strikes.
• New skill, Evensong, at level 10: a 1.5-second cast that sings an enemy within 10 tiles to sleep, incapacitating it for 20 seconds. It costs no Mana and has a 30-second cooldown.
• Radiant Renewal heals you and every party member within 30 tiles, and nobody else. It healed every living player in the world, and drew threat for you from every enemy any of them was fighting.
• Beacon of Dawn heals and shields you and every party member within 12 tiles. It reached every player within 12 tiles, in your party or not.
• Light's Grace heals you for 40% of what Flash of Light heals for before your target's bonuses to healing taken, and your own bonuses to healing taken apply to it. It was 40% of what the target took, so healing a player who takes extra healing healed you for more, and your own bonuses never counted.

Protector

• New skill, Hallowed Hammer, at level 9: hurl a hammer of light at an enemy within 10 tiles, stunning it for 2 seconds. It is instant, deals no damage, costs no Valor and has a 30-second cooldown.
• New skill, Hammer of the Righteous, at level 10: strike your target in melee and every enemy within 3 tiles of it for 60% weapon damage each, half of what Judgement deals before Zealot's Fury, and gain 3 Valor for the first enemy struck and 1 more for each beyond it. It is instant, costs nothing and has a 6-second cooldown.
• Radiant Ward shields you for 1.5/3% of your maximum health, down from 3/6%.

Mercenary

• New skill, Riposte, at level 5: for 4 seconds you parry every enemy melee attack, strike back once at each attacker for 100% weapon damage, and take 20% less damage. It costs nothing and has a 45-second cooldown.
• Riposte turns aside only melee blows. Arrows, spells and ground zones still land on you, 20% lighter while it lasts.
• New skill, Quickstep, at level 6: you move 30% faster for 10 seconds. It costs nothing, is off the global cooldown and has a 45-second cooldown.
• New skill, Blade Flurry, at level 7: for 15 seconds your auto-attacks, and the Blade Dance off-hand strikes that answer them, also strike every other enemy within melee reach in a 160° arc in front of you for the same damage. It costs nothing, is off the global cooldown and has a 40-second cooldown.
• Blade Flurry's extra off-hand strikes lay Lacerate on every enemy they hit, but give no Momentum and complete no combo.
• New skill, No Quarter, at level 9: for 18 seconds you deal 25% more damage and every Momentum you gain is doubled, though your bar still holds no more than 5. It costs nothing, is off the global cooldown and has a 2-minute cooldown.
• With Overflow, a combo completed under No Quarter banks an Overflow charge when its doubled Momentum would go past a full bar, rather than losing the extra point.
• Kneecap takes Blind's place at level 10: it slows the target's movement by 50% for 8 seconds and deals no damage. It is off the global cooldown and has a 15-second cooldown. Blind stopped the target acting for 10 seconds or until it took damage, on a 30-second cooldown and the global cooldown.
• A kneecapped enemy counts as slowed for Opportunist, a boss included, though a boss keeps its speed.
• Blade Dance's off-hand strike chance is 24.4% plus 0.0538% a point of Mastery, and the strike deals 138.2% plus 0.1077% a point. It was 20% plus 0.0833% and 130% plus 0.1667%: about the same with level-30 gear, and more with less Mastery.
• Thrift, your Attunement, gives a 0.2% chance a point, up from 0.0417%.

Assassin

• Envenom's poison deals about 80% more damage. Corrupt's burst, which is priced off it, deals what it did.
• Stealth makes you move 40% faster for as long as it lasts.
• New skill, Vanish, at level 5: slip into Stealth, and every enemy forgets the threat you built. While you are stealthed, and for 4 seconds after your Stealth ends, you take 15% less damage. It costs nothing, is off the global cooldown and has a 2-minute cooldown.
• Vanish sheds the threat, not the fight. You stay in combat until the enemies you fought let you go, so beside a party still fighting you cannot log out, travel by waypoint or eat. Alone, the enemy lets you go as soon as it loses sight of you.
• Vanish drops your target, so your auto-attack does not pull you straight back out of Stealth. Pick a target again, and your next swing at it brings you out of Stealth.
• Your poisons still ticking on an enemy break the Stealth Vanish gives you at their next tick, as they break any Stealth, but that enemy then holds only the threat of that tick.
• Death Bloom's tooltip names only the damage over time every Assassin has: Toxin, Blight, Plague and Envenom's poison. It still doubles Creeping Death's pool for those with the talent.
• Toxicology's poison chance is 19% plus 0.0375% a point of Mastery, from 15% plus 0.125%, and it adds 1% plus 0.075% a point to poison damage, from 0.2917% a point. Coated Blades says 19%.
• Frenzy grants 40% attack speed instead of 40% Haste: both knives swing faster, and your poisons and the global cooldown no longer hurry.
• Your poisons tick at their own pace whatever your Haste. To make up for it, Toxin, Blight, Plague and Envenom's poison tick about a fifth harder and pay about a fifth more Venom.
• Brewing Venom, your Attunement, gives 0.19% more Venom a point, up from 0.0833%, to at most 100%.

Corruptor

• Empower no longer costs 40 Corruption to upgrade your next spell. Pressing it starts feeding your Corruption to your curses, and while it runs every tick of your Wither, Curse of Anguish and Miasma deals 40% more damage.
• While Empower runs, your Corruption drains: 2 a second when it starts, and 0.5 a second more for every second it has run. It drains out of combat as well as in a fight.
• Empower cannot be turned off. It ends only when your Corruption runs out or you die, and pressing it while it runs tells you it is already running.
• Once Empower ends, it cannot be started again for 10 seconds. It had a 1-second cooldown. It needs at least 1 Corruption to start.
• Pressing Empower does not trigger the global cooldown.
• Your spells no longer have empowered versions. Shadow Bolt no longer generates 15 extra Corruption, Wither no longer lasts 16 seconds and ticks faster, Curse of Anguish no longer ticks 50% harder and slows by 30%, and Creeping Blight no longer spreads both curses.
• New skill, Undying Rot, at level 10: for 10 seconds, Empower drains no Corruption and its drain stops speeding up, and your curses' ticks stay empowered even on an empty bar. If Empower is not running, Undying Rot starts it, even during Empower's 10-second wait. It has a 2.5-minute cooldown and does not trigger the global cooldown.
• Wither deals 25% less damage. Each tick is 22.5% of your spell damage, down from 30%.
• Curse of Anguish deals 15% less damage. Each tick is 21.25% of your spell damage, down from 25%.
• The Unraveling has been removed, and Miasma takes its level-9 slot. The Unraveling cost 50 Corruption and spread both your curses to the 3 nearest enemies, on a 90-second cooldown.
• New skill, Miasma, at level 9: a cloud of rot seeps into the ground where you aim it, up to 15 tiles away, for 8 seconds. It reaches 3 tiles from its centre. Every enemy inside is cursed for 8% of your spell damage a second while it stays, and for up to 4 seconds after it leaves. Miasma costs nothing and has a 20-second cooldown.
• Miasma's curse is one of your curses, so Empower, Accelerated Decay, Unstable Consumption, Blight Eruption and Cursed Shroud all count it. Festering Wounds does not.
• New skill, Wicked Hex, at level 8: a 1.5-second cast that hexes an enemy within 15 tiles, incapacitating it for 20 seconds, on a 30-second cooldown. The hex ends every damage over time on it, your own curses included.
• New skill, Soul Shield, at level 5: wrap your soul in a shield that absorbs damage equal to 25% of your maximum health for 8 seconds. It costs no Corruption, is off the global cooldown and has a 1-minute cooldown.
• Creeping Blight spreads only Wither, to an enemy within 6 tiles of your target. It used to spread whichever of your curses had longer left.
• Creeping Blight needs a Wither of yours on your target. With only Curse of Anguish there, it is refused with "Your target carries no Wither of yours.", before its cooldown starts. Any of your curses used to be enough.
• A Wither spread by Creeping Blight, including each extra one from Epidemic, ticks for 50% of a cast Wither. Casting Wither on that enemy brings it back to full strength.
• Cascading Rot's Wither ticks for 50% of a cast Wither. It used to copy the dying enemy's Wither at full strength.
• A spread never weakens a Wither you cast on that enemy yourself. Reaching one, it starts that Wither over at full strength, still ticking at the faster pace Wither Storm gave it.
• Mark of Ruin has 2 ranks, and makes your curses' ticks deal 4/8% more damage while Empower runs. It was 1 rank of 10% more damage from Empowered spells.
• Empowered Momentum gives 2/4/6% more Haste for as long as Empower runs. It gave 1.25/2.5/3.75% Haste for 4 seconds when you spent Corruption on Empower.
• Empower Efficiency makes Empower drain 15% less Corruption. It made Empower cost 15% less.
• Wither Storm makes a Wither cast while Empower is running tick 15/30% faster, every 1.275/1.05 seconds instead of 1.5, for as long as it lasts. It used to quicken only an empowered Wither, which already ticked every 1.2 seconds.
• A Wither that Creeping Blight spreads while Empower is running ticks at Wither Storm's faster pace too, as a cast one does.
• New talent, Vessel of Rot, in tier 4: your maximum Corruption is 125 instead of 100.
• Plague Sovereign makes Miasma's cloud reach 0.5/1 tile further. It made The Unraveling spread to 1/2 more enemies.
• Unending Suffering makes Miasma's cloud last 20/40% longer. It made the curses The Unraveling spread last 20/40% longer.
• Feeding Rot, your Attunement, raises the damage of your curses' ticks while Empower runs by 0.12% a point. It raised the damage of your Empowered spells.
• Your curses on an enemy that cannot be harmed count for nothing: Unstable Consumption leaves their time alone, and is refused, saying so, when they are all it would reach. Blight Eruption does not burst when they run out, and neither Shadow Hunger nor Cursed Shroud's heal counts them.
• Rot Potency raises damage over time by 125% plus 0.2% a point of Mastery, down from 0.4% a point.
• Feeding Rot, your Attunement, raises the damage of your Empowered spells by 0.12% a point. It raised the Corruption you generate, which stopped paying once you could afford every Empower you wanted.

Lifedrainer

• New skill, Enthrall, at level 8: a 1.5-second cast that holds an enemy within 12 tiles, incapacitating it for 20 seconds, on a 30-second cooldown. Enthralling it ends every damage over time on it, your own drains included.
• New skill, Crimson Tide, at level 9: instantly heal yourself and every party member within 20 tiles for 20 plus half your Spell Power. It costs 30 Essence and has a 15-second cooldown.
• Leeching Bolt's leech heals you over 15 seconds, up from 5, for the same total, so each stack heals a third as much a second.
• The leech still stacks up to 3 times, and each Leeching Bolt starts every stack over at 15 seconds. Pressed more often than every 5 seconds, it heals you more slowly than before while you press, and goes on healing you for 15 seconds after the last one.
• Soul Sever lasts 25 seconds, up from 12, and still ticks every 2 seconds for the same damage, so it deals and heals about twice as much over its whole length.
• Harvest Soul, which deals half of what your drains on the target still had to deal, deals more when Soul Sever has longer left to run.
• New talent, Widening Drain, in tier 4: Vital Siphon also afflicts 1/2 more enemies near its target.
• Life Tap has a 1.5-second cast, up from 1 second, and no longer starts the global cooldown.

World

The Whisperwood

• Once you have handed in The Pass is closed, Guard Merrin's quest to kill the troll in the Windgap, the tunnel south of Windpeak Pass lets you through, and Merrin sends you on to the town on the far side.
• The Whisperwood is a forest south of the mountains, home to dire wolves, bears, spiders, whisps and, in its dead corner past the lake, werewolves.
• Oakenhold is a walled town in the middle of the Whisperwood, with a trader, an auctioneer, an enchanter and a sanctuary keeper who changes your specialisation.
• Armourer Bryn sells gear for levels 13 to 15 by the road into Oakenhold's square: a weapon of every kind, and armour for every slot and school, that there is gear for at those levels, with necklaces, a ring and a trinket.
• A waypoint stone stands in Oakenhold's square, so once you have walked there you can travel back from any other stone.
• A new quest, Beyond the Greyspine, takes you from Guard Merrin to Warden Hale at the north gate of Oakenhold.
• Enchantress Maud asks you to thin the werewolves in the dead wood past the lake.

The Saltmire

• A sandbar off the Whisperwood's east shore leads to the Saltmire, a marsh isle held by lizardfolk, with a sunken shrine at its heart.
• Warden Hale asks you to break the lizardfolk warband and kill the guardian of their shrine.

The Hollow Deep

• A cave mouth in the spider hollow leads down to the Hollow Deep, a web of caves full of spiders and worms, with a basilisk in the deepest chamber.
• Keeper Ansel asks you to clear the webs and kill the basilisk.

Birchvale

• Armourer Hild keeps a bench on the open ground between the Tanner's and Old Petra's, with gear for levels 2 to 6: a cheap and a better weapon of every kind, a piece for every armour slot and school, and a necklace, a ring and a trinket.

Windpeak Pass

• Quartermaster Osk stands outside Merrin's post at the picket with the same kind of bench for levels 7 to 12, the step up the road south asks for.

Vampire's Crypt

• The Vampire's Crypt is a small dungeon, entered by a door in Birchvale Reach.
• The door to the Vampire's chamber shuts a few seconds into the fight and opens again when it ends.
• Every 45 seconds the Vampire withdraws into mist for 15 seconds, and cannot be harmed and does not attack while it does.
• While the Vampire is withdrawn, the chalices at the corners of its chamber fill. Step into a chalice's circle to wash out all of your Vampiric Blood. Each chalice serves one player.

Items and professions

• A caster's damage spells, and the healing a Lifedrainer's drains give, follow its main-hand weapon's rarity, as a weapon user's blows follow its weapon. A rare weapon deals what it did, an epic one a quarter more and a legendary one 56% more; an uncommon one a fifth less and a common one about a third less.
• Below level 10 the rarity a caster's weapon is measured against climbs from common to rare, so a new caster's starting staff costs it nothing.
• A caster's weapon tooltip shows how much its rarity adds to spell damage over an empty hand.

Crafting

• Materials come in three qualities, one star to three, and a craft comes out at the stars its materials and your skill reach.
• Skill is worth one star: at the skill a recipe stops teaching, every craft of it comes out a star better than its materials alone would.
• Every recipe spends a supply beside its materials, a vial, a flux, rivets, an ink or a wire, bought from the trade's trainer.
• Crafting is a three-second cast, out of combat, broken by a step, a blow or death.
• A crafted piece of gear is rolled from its budget at the power its stars give: 85% at one star, the whole budget at two, 115% at three.
• A crafted piece rolls one to five secondaries from any of the five, shared evenly, unless its crafter narrows that at the bench.
• A rune of a secondary, spent with the craft, guarantees that stat on the piece. Every secondary has a rune, Attunement included.

Proficiency

• Every trade earns a proficiency point every ten skill, to a cap of 150, and every trade has a tree to spend them in.
• A smith, an armourer or a jeweller specialises by what it makes: a weapon family, an armour slot, rings or chains. Its ranks narrow how many stats a piece rolls, let stats be left out of the roll, and open the choice of split.
• An alchemist, a cook or a runemaker climbs through quality, extra copies and thrift. A gatherer's ranks give a chance of more from every node, a star higher, and a shorter channel.
• Points come back only at the trade's trainer, every point of the trade at once, for gold.

Shops

• A shelf of gear sells each piece for what it is worth, which is also what the counter pays half of when you sell one back.
• While a shop is open, an item's tooltip says what the shop pays for it.
• Selling a rare or better piece, or one carrying an enchant or a socket, asks first and names the price.
• Right-click in the backpack with a shop open sells the item. A potion is still drunk, a scroll read and a bag worn; those are sold by dragging them onto the shop.
• A worn piece is sold by dragging it from your sheet onto the shop, and asks first.

Loot

• A bag of loot lies on the floor as long as the rarest thing in it: 1 minute for common drops, 1½ minutes for uncommon, 3 for rare, 5 for epic and 10 for legendary.
• The party's claim on a bag holds until its last 20 seconds, however long it lies there, so a rarer bag is a longer claim rather than a longer free-for-all.

Playing together

Parties

• Gear a party's kill drops is dealt round the members who were there for it, a piece at a time, passing over anyone whose class cannot wear it.
• A dealt piece is held for that member for 30 seconds, then anyone in the party may take it. The loot window names whom a piece is for, dims one held for somebody else, and Take All leaves it out.
• Gold a party member picks up is shared equally with the members within 20 tiles of the bag, the remainder going to whoever picked it up.
• Right-click a player and choose Inspect to see their gear and figures on a sheet beside your own, within speaking range. Hovering a piece compares it with yours.

Chat

• Shift-click an item in your backpack or on your sheet while typing in chat to link it. A link shows the item under the pointer, with its own roll and enchants.
• A message may carry up to 3 links.

Interface

• A spell bar you have never rearranged lays out your spells in a set order, mostly the order you learn them in. A new spell that comes before ones you already have takes its key, and each spell after it moves one key along. Only the Marksman's and the Protector's spells all keep their keys, so look yours over before your first fight.
• A spell bar you have rearranged keeps your order. A spell that has left the game, such as Cleave or Crippling Arrow, leaves its slot empty, and new spells fill the empty slots in the order you learn them.
• Where a held enemy's cast bar would be, a bar named Stunned, Incapacitated or Rooted drains as the hold runs out, on its plate and in the target frame. A stun used to take the cast bar away and leave nothing there.
• On a boss, the tooltip of a slow's icon says "A boss moves at full speed under any slow."
• When your talents have been reset while you were away, because a talent you had taken left its tree or is now given by level, a box says "Your talents have been reset." once you are in the world. The points are back to spend, and the box appears only once.
• A tooltip in the talent window's Abilities list that would be too tall for the screen is drawn wider instead, so its last lines are no longer cut off.
• Second Wind's and Improved Shield Slam's healing are named for their talents on the buff bar, where both used to read Regeneration. Improved Shield Slam's wears Shield Slam's picture.
• A spell you cast on yourself no longer shows "Range: 0 tiles" in its tooltip, and a skill that reaches only as far as a melee swing, such as Kick or Pummel, shows "Range: Melee" rather than "Range: 1.5 tiles".
• The Trades window's Tree button opens the proficiency window: spend points by clicking, take a pending one back with a right-click, and Apply to keep them.
• The crafting window shows the count, the stats and the split a piece will roll, and a Catalyst row for a rune in your bag.
• A trainer's window offers a reset of the trade's points, with its price, while any are spent.
• Blows on a boss that cannot be harmed show "Immune".
• The damage meter keeps counting through a boss's withdrawal rather than starting a new fight after it.

Spiritbow

• The spirit wheel highlights the spirits your next Spirit Cycle can call. On a round's last press that is the one spirit coming next. It used to highlight the next spirit in the fixed order.

Corruptor

• Empower is greyed out on your bar only when you have no Corruption.
• While Empower and Undying Rot run, their icons sit beside your health bar.

Item tooltips

• An item's tooltip compares it with the piece it would replace: each stat shows the change equipping it would make, and its item power and damage do too.
• A ring or a trinket is shown beside both of the pieces you wear, and the one it would replace is the one the changes are read against.
• A piece's sockets are listed, filled and empty, and a level or class you do not meet is shown in red.

Backpack

• Shift-click a stack to split it, choosing how many to take off.
• Dropping a stack on another of the same item merges them, up to the stack's limit.
• Sort tidies the backpack: stacks merge, and items are ordered by kind, rarity, level and name.
• Dragging an item out of the backpack onto the world asks before destroying it.

Character creation

• Character creation is one screen, laid out like the character select.
• Each class shows the roles its specialisations play, so you can see which classes can tank or heal before you choose one.
• Each specialisation card shows its role, its resource, its main attribute and whether it fights in melee or at range.
• The middle of the screen shows the specialisation's main attribute and what it gives you, the weapons it can use, and what its Mastery and Attunement do.
• The Skills tab lists every skill and passive a specialisation learns, with the level each one arrives at, and the Talents tab shows its talent tree.
• Changing class keeps the role you had chosen when the new class has one specialisation for it.
• Your name is checked as you type, and the die beside it suggests a name in your class's style.

Graphics and sound

• An enemy something holds shows it: three stars circle its head while it is stunned, a Zzz rises off it while it is incapacitated, and roots curl up round its feet while it is rooted.
• The river that runs from the north coast to the temple is drawn at its full width the whole way, instead of thinning to a trickle and breaking into separate pools.
• Mountains rise in tiers from their foot, and their tops break into little stepped hills crowned with pale, frosted summits, so a mountain looks as tall as it is and no range is one flat field of stone.
• Cave roofs in the mountains are one piece of rock, with no pale slivers of cave floor round their edges, no pale strip at their feet and no black tongue above their mouths.
• The troll's cave in the Windgap has a mouth you can see, where its roof used to look like solid rock.
• The meadow and the road west of the bandits' caves are no longer covered by a band of rock.
• Hild and Osk have tokens of their own, in the style of the player figures: Hild at her forge with a hammer, Osk in the picket's steel blue.

Protector

• Hallowed Hammer flies from the paladin as a pale hammer of light and bursts in a flash where it lands.

Game client

• This release changes how the client and server talk to each other. A client older than this one cannot log in, and is offered the update instead.

Bug fixes

• When a slow or a speed bonus on you runs out, your character is pulled forward or back about half as far as before while the server catches up: the game reads when the effect ends instead of waiting to be told.
• A target you pick while a cast is winding up stays picked when the cast lands. The selection used to jump back to the enemy the cast was aimed at, so your auto-attacks and your next spell went there.
• A few cells of water on the shores and at the edge of a pond near Birchvale no longer block you while being drawn as dry ground.
• Equipping a piece you cannot wear now says why, rather than doing nothing.
• Selling a piece you are wearing updates your figures at once.
• A shop's refusals are shown on the shop window rather than lost.
• Moving a piece between the two ring or trinket slots is refused out loud when it does not fit, rather than silently.
• Walking past the Training Dummy, or hitting it once, no longer keeps you in combat anywhere in Birchvale until you leave town.
• Going through a door an enemy cannot follow no longer leaves you in combat until you die or log out.
• A turret's shot or an arrow that lands after the enemy has stopped fighting you, or has died, no longer leaves you in combat for good.
• A press on anything drawn over the game, such as the gold box in a trade, an invitation, the player menu, the Escape menu, Options or the chat, no longer also presses the window, player, enemy or loot bag behind it.

Crowd control

• Any damage ends an incapacitate, as its description says. Arrows and other spells that fly, ground zones, thorns and reflected damage used to leave the enemy held, so a ranged party could shoot an enemy held by Blind for the whole of the hold.
• A monster stunned in the middle of a charge stops where it stands and lands nothing. It used to carry on through the stun and land its blow. An incapacitate or a root stops a charge the same way.

Berserker

• Charge no longer carries you through walls. With a wall between you and your target it is refused before its cooldown starts, saying "There is no clear path to your target.", and if your target steps behind a wall mid-charge, you stop at the wall and land nothing.
• Charge can no longer move you while you are rooted or stunned: it is refused before its cooldown starts.
• Improved War Cry no longer gives War Cry's bonus to players outside your party.
• Bleeds you leave on enemies no longer heal you through Crimson Feast, fill your Rage through Bloodsurge or reset your swing through Relentless Assault after you have died.
• A tick of your own bleed landing just after another blow took you to 0 health no longer heals you through Crimson Feast and keeps you alive.

Stalwart

• Second Wind and Improved Shield Slam's healing no longer cut each other short. Falling below 40% health while Shield Slam was healing you threw away the rest of that heal; now both heal you side by side.
• Each Fortified Mind shield lasts 8 seconds from the Reinforcement spend that raised it. Every spend used to restart the timer on the shields before it, so they could pile up without limit.
• Fortified Mind's shield is an effect of its own, named Fortified Mind, and no longer keeps Aegis's shield up past its 8 seconds. The two used to show together as Aegis.
• Warden's Presence no longer overwrites a stronger slow another player has put on an enemy with its own weaker, shorter one. Its slow is now an effect of its own, named Warden's Presence.
• With two Stalwarts near one enemy, the stronger Warden's Presence is the one that slows it. A rank-1 Stalwart could overwrite a rank-2 one's slow.
• Retaliation's description says what it deals: after 5/4/3 blocks, your next auto-attack is followed by a bonus strike for 50% of that auto-attack's damage. It promised 50% weapon damage.
• Retaliation's bonus strike builds threat, like any other blow.
• Retaliation's bonus strike shows as a critical hit only when the auto-attack it follows was one. It always showed as a critical hit.
• An auto-attack that kills its target no longer uses up Retaliation's bonus strike; the strike waits for your next auto-attack.

Marksman

• Exit Wound hits the enemies around Kill Shot's target for 25% of the Kill Shot as you fired it. Before, the 25% was taken after the target's own damage-taken bonuses, such as Brittle, so every enemy nearby took that bonus on top of its own.

Spiritbow

• Spirit Volley hits each enemy at most once, as its tooltip says. Fired at an enemy standing next to you, all five arrows used to hit it.
• The Hawk Spirit's tooltip says its 10% critical strike chance applies to everything you do, as it always has. It said only your bow shots.
• Spirit Arrow's tooltip no longer says that armour does not reduce it. Enemies reduce magic and physical damage by the same amount, so that was never true.

Elementalist

• Brittle's description no longer says the enemy is frozen. Brittle never held an enemy in place: it moves and acts as before, and takes more damage from follow-up attacks.

Holy

• Radiant Renewal's and Lasting Dawn's heals over time count the healed player's bonus to healing taken once. They counted it twice, so a player who takes 9% more healing got about 19% more from each tick.

Protector

• Holy Shield's tooltip says what it does: it is thrown at your target, or at the enemy nearest your cursor when you have none, and bounces on to up to 2 more enemies within 6 tiles of it for 75% of its damage each. It said it went to the nearest enemy and struck up to 3 for full damage.
• Judgement's tooltip no longer says it is turned by magic resistance rather than armour. Enemies reduce magic and physical damage alike.

Mercenary

• Bloodspill works from level 3, the level it is learned: Serrated Edges, which it needs, is now granted at level 3 rather than 4. At level 3 every press was refused with "Requires Serrated Edges."
• Shank with no knife in your off hand is refused with "You need a knife in your off hand." It went on cooldown and did nothing.
• Whirling Death with no enemy in reach is refused with "No enemy within reach." It spent all your Momentum and went on cooldown for nothing.
• Onslaught and Whirling Death stop striking an enemy once one of their strikes has killed it. The rest of the strikes landed on the body, with damage numbers over it and on the damage meter.

Corruptor

• When no other enemy within 6 tiles of your target can take its Wither, Creeping Blight is refused and tells you why. It used to go on cooldown and spread nothing.
• Creeping Blight no longer spreads Wither onto an enemy that is walking home after giving up the chase.
• Cascading Rot's Wither lasts as long as a cast Wither, including the extra ticks from Wither's Reach. It used to last 12 seconds whatever your talents.
• Cursed Shroud's healing now draws threat, as every other heal you cast does.

Lifedrainer

• Vital Siphon's tooltip no longer says it can affect many enemies at once, which read as if one press reached several (only Widening Drain does that). It now says that pressing it on another enemy keeps it running on the first.
• Lifebond's tooltip no longer speaks of replacing your oldest bond, since you hold only one bond without Twin Bond. It now says that moving the bond takes it off the ally you had before.
• The Leech effect Leeching Bolt leaves on you says what it is: Leeching Bolt's leech, healing you every second until it runs out. It said it healed you while the channel held, though no channel holds it.

Auction house

• Pressing OK when putting an item up for sale lists the item you priced. The press used to reach the item behind the box as well, which opened an empty price box for that item instead, and nothing was listed.
• Pressing OK in a Browse filter box, such as the level range or the name search, no longer buys the lot behind the box.

Known issues

• The icons of 26 new skills are stand-ins, borrowed and mostly recoloured from other art, until each is painted: Whirlwind, Raging Blow, Bloodrage, Bastion Strike, Bulwark Rush, Concussive Arrow, Spirit Ward, Frostbind, Arcane Shatter, Prismatic Prison, Holy Nova, Evensong, Hallowed Hammer, Hammer of the Righteous, Riposte, Quickstep, Blade Flurry, No Quarter, Kneecap, Vanish, Soul Shield, Wicked Hex, Miasma, Undying Rot, Enthrall and Crimson Tide. The effects they lay wear the same stand-ins.
• Serpent's Fang wears a stand-in icon copied from Serpent's poison, so the two look almost alike on an enemy until the Fang is painted.
• The Assassin's Poisoned Blades, Envenom and Overload, and the Lifedrainer's Vital Siphon and Soul Sever, still lay their effects on a boss that cannot be harmed. They deal nothing until it can be harmed again, and then tick on.
• The people of Oakenhold borrow the faces of people north of the Greyspine until they have portraits of their own.
• Only the Vigor runes have recipes, so no rune that guarantees a secondary can be made in play yet.
• A piece dealt to you cannot be handed to another member before its 30 seconds are up.
• Large dungeons cannot be filled yet, as a party holds at most 6 players.
• Bodies left in a dungeon cannot be skinned.
• Attunement does little yet for the Lifedrainer, the Stalwart and the Protector. Theirs is being reworked.

A class on the wiki has a tab for each specialisation. Each one shows what the specialisation is, then its talent tree and its spells side by side.

Interface

Wiki

• A class on the wiki has a tab for each specialisation instead of Summary, Talents and Spells tabs.
• A specialisation's tab starts with what it is, then shows its talent tree with its spells and passives beside it, or under it on a narrow screen.
• Each spell lists its cost, cooldown, cast time, range and the rest as labels under its name, leaving out any it has not got.
• Each talent tree has its own level, points and Reset, so both specialisations can be planned at once.

Ten trainers stand on Birchvale's square, one for each trade. A trade is taken up at its trainer, and a crafting trade's recipes are learned there as your skill reaches them.

Gameplay

• The level cap is 30. Experience stops counting there, and the experience bar reads Max level.
• A character has 29 talent points to spend at the cap, one a level from level 2.
• A character above level 30 is brought down to 30. It keeps its talents, less the points level 30 does not pay for, which come off its deepest tier first.
• A point of Haste, Mastery, Versatility or Attunement is worth a sixth less than it was, because a full set of gear carries a fifth more of each since legs, gloves and belts. A full set gives what it gave before.
• Critical Strike is worth less again: 12 rating is 1% crit chance, where 5 was. A damage dealer at level 30 in the best level-25 gear has at most about half crit chance, even choosing Critical Strike first, where it had close to 100%.
• Crit chance from talents and buffs is unchanged, being a percentage rather than a rating.
• Heals can be critical. A heal, or a tick of a healer's heal over time, crits on the healer's crit chance for half as much again, and its number shows as a critical one. Auras, regeneration from talents, food and potions do not crit.

Classes

Blademaster

• Savage Strikes grants 12 Versatility a rank, and still gives 1.2% Versatility a rank.
• Mastery increases bleed damage by 0.4% a point, down from 1.67%. A Blademaster at level 30 deals about a third less.

Corruptor

• Rot Potency increases damage over time by 125%, and 0.4% more a point of Mastery, where it gave 1.67% a point and nothing without Mastery. A Corruptor deals about what it did at level 25 and above, and more below it: about twice as much at level 10.

Holy

• Inner Light grants 18/36/54 Attunement, so it is worth what it was.

Lifedrainer

• Life Tap can heal critically, for half as much again as the health it costs. The health it costs does not change.

Mercenary

• Adaptability grants 24 Versatility, and still gives 2.4% more damage dealt and 2.4% less taken.

World

Birchvale

• Ten profession trainers stand on the square just south of where a new character arrives, the six crafters in one row and the four gatherers in the next. Each has something to say about their trade and where its materials come from.

Items and professions

• A trade is taken up by talking to its trainer and pressing Train. The Trades window no longer offers Take Up; each trade it lists names the trainer to find instead.
• A crafting trade's standard recipes are learned from its trainer once your skill reaches them, rather than appearing on their own. The trainer's window lists every recipe they teach, ticked when known, ready to learn, or waiting on a skill.
• A recipe found on a scroll is still learned by reading the scroll, and a trainer never teaches one.
• A character that practised a trade before this change learns the recipes its skill has reached from the trade's trainer, on one visit and at no cost.
• Armour, shields and books regenerate about three and a half times the health they did. A damage dealer in gear of their level regenerates about 7% of their health every 5 seconds out of combat, and a quarter of that in combat.
• Legs, gloves and a belt can be worn, each in its own slot on the character sheet. Each slot has pieces for every build from level 1 to level 25, in every rarity, each with its own picture.
• Every armour set has its legs, gloves and belt: the Guard, Forest Priest, Crimson Rogue, Iron Hunter, Illusionist, Marauder, Renegade, Sharpshooter, Cultist and Gatekeeper sets.
• Goblins, goblin archers, skeletons, skeleton warriors, orcs, bandits and bandit archers can drop the new pieces for their level.
• A full set of gear of any one level and rarity carries at most a fifth more than before, before enchants. Weapons, off-hands and jewellery carry about 4% fewer stats and 13% less Vitality to make room.
• Armour now comes in two sizes. A helmet, a chest and a pair of legs carry the same stats, Vitality and armour as each other, and gloves, a belt and a pair of boots two-thirds as much. So a helmet carries more stats than it did and a chest fewer.
• Armour, magic defence and health regeneration are shared across six armour pieces rather than three, and a full outfit carries a fifth more armour and magic defence. A chest carries about half the armour it did, and a helmet or a pair of boots a fifth less. Shields and books keep theirs.
• A full outfit blocks as much as it did without a shield, shared across all six pieces.
• Gloves can be enchanted with offensive or defensive stats, and legs and belts with defensive ones.
• New characters start in a pair of linen trousers, and no longer with a helmet.
• The Acolyte Hood, a cloth helmet for casters, requires level 2 and drops from goblins.

Interface

• The trainer's window opens from Train in their dialog, closes when you walk away from them, and remembers where you dragged it.
• The crafting window says which recipes the trainer teaches, and at what skill, under the ones you know.
• A trainer's name in the world says which trade they teach under it, the way a merchant's says Merchant.
• Master Adon's dialog calls him a Master. Trainer now means someone who teaches a trade.
• The stone frame round the world is gone, and everything on screen stands closer to the edges.
• Your health, your resource, your spells and your utility bar sit together at the foot of the screen, with your class's banner and your level beside your health.
• The banner shows crossed swords while you are in a fight.
• Holy Power and Manaweave are pips over your health bar, and Mana has the whole bar under it.
• A spell on cooldown has a sweep going round its slot and the seconds left on it. The global cooldown is the sweep alone.
• A spell you cannot pay for is greyed, with its cost in the corner, and the spell you are casting is edged in gold.
• The utility bar is three slots wide and two tall, beside your spells.
• Experience is a thin line under your spells with your progress beside it. Point at it for the exact figures.
• A dock in the bottom-right corner has a button for every window, with the key that opens it printed underneath: Character, Backpack, Talents, Quest Log, World Map, Party, Friends, Trades, Crafting and the menu.
• Your gold and how full your backpack is are shown over the dock.
• The chat box is narrower, and on a small screen it keeps clear of your spells.
• Your spell being cast shows as a bar over your health, with its name and the seconds left, instead of over your head. So do a channel, gathering and eating.
• Names over the world stand on their own with a thin health bar under them: slate for a creature, the class colour for a player. There is no plate over your own character any more.
• Another player's cast and a creature's wind-up hang under their health bar, with the spell's name under it.
• A townsperson's name is gold, with what they are for under it: Merchant, Master, Enchanter or Auctioneer.
• Your target is marked with four gold corners instead of a red square, and your critical hits are gold.
• The party frames stand in the top-left corner as dark rows with each member's crest, name and level, a health bar in their class colour, and a line for their resource.
• A party member's frame shows the spell they are casting and its progress, calls out Low health with a red edge, and marks the leader with a gold star.
• The buffs and debuffs beside a party frame are both to its right now, debuffs on top.
• Your target has a frame at the top of the screen: its name, its health, what it is casting and the key that interrupts it, its buffs over the frame and its debuffs under it. Right-click the frame to clear your target.
• The corner map has a thin gold frame, the name of the place you are in over it, and along its foot your coordinates, buttons to zoom it in and out, and a button for the world map.
• The quest list under the map is redrawn to match: each objective's count in a column, a gold progress line, and a finished quest in green with who to hand it in to.
• The chat box matches the rest of the screen: Say and Party tabs with a gold dot for unread lines, and a label by the text field saying which channel you are typing in.
• When the game refuses something, it says so just above your spells, in red, instead of across the top of the screen.
• Reaching a new level is announced, with the talent point it brings.
• Small notes above the chat tell you when a quest moves on, when something goes into your bag, and when you get gold.
• Party invites and trade requests appear under your target's frame, with Accept and Decline.
• The menu (Esc) is a page with your character at the top, the actions down the left, and every window's key listed on the right.
• The world map is framed like the other windows, says where you are and how many places you have found, and lists them.
• The world map is drawn over the chat box now, instead of the chat box covering its corner.
• When you die the world turns grey behind "You have fallen", with your party's health and the Respawn button.
• The loading screen names where you are arriving and shows a tip.

Game client

• The client must be updated to play: an older one cannot show the new slots.

Bug fixes

• Versatility increases Burning damage, as it does every other damage. It raised an Elementalist's damage by less than half what it raised anyone else's.

Known issues

• Every trainer wears the placeholder token until each has a portrait of their own.
• Only a few early monsters drop the new pieces so far.

The party, friends, trades, crafting, quest, shop, auction, trade, loot and enchant windows wear the character sheet's gilt frame and colours, and a stray right-click no longer rolls an enchant, kicks a party member or abandons a quest.

Items and professions

• Two-handed swords, axes and maces carry a sixth less Vitality: 52 rather than 62 on a level-25 Strength weapon. Staffs keep theirs.
• Level-25 two-handed swords hit harder.
• The Reinforced Hammer is a two-handed mace for level 14.

Professions

• Four gathering professions: Mining works ore veins, Botany herb patches, Woodcutting trees, and Skinning the bodies of beasts. Each is levelled by gathering, on the same curve crafting is.
• A character practises up to two professions, of any kind, each with its own skill and points. Giving one up loses only that trade.
• A gathering node is worked by right-clicking it from within reach. A bar shows the gather, and stepping away breaks it.
• A slain wolf, dire wolf or bear leaves a body for a while. Whoever earned the kill may skin it first, for as long as their loot is theirs; after that anyone with the skill may.
• A vein, a patch and a tree each yield their material at one to four stars, the best rarely.
• A crafter no longer gathers: a smith buys ore from a miner, or takes up mining in its second slot.

Interface

• The party, friends, trades, crafting, quest log, shop, auction house, trade, loot and enchant windows, and the window an NPC opens when you talk to them, are drawn in the character sheet's gilt frame and colours, with your class's pennant at the top.
• Buttons are coloured by what they do: gold for the one thing a window is for, green for taking or agreeing, and red for throwing away or refusing. A button you cannot use yet is greyed out and takes no click.
• Button labels read Leave Party, Take All or Buy Back rather than spaced-out capitals.
• An item looks the same in every window as it does in your backpack, with its rarity's edge and gem, its stars and its count on its slot.
• The close button on each of these windows, and on the backpack, lights up under the pointer.
• A long name in the party or friends list is cut short before the buttons on its row.
• The login screen, the character screens, the HUD, chat, nameplates, damage numbers, every window and every tooltip are set in one typeface, where they used to mix four.
• Ordinary text is a little heavier than before, so small labels read clearly against the dark windows, and headings and figures are in true bold.

Quest log

• The quest log lists your quests down the left, each with a progress bar, and shows the one you pick on the right: its objectives, its rewards and where to hand it in.
• A quest's rewards are shown as item slots, with the gold and experience beside them.
• The line under the quest log's title counts the quests tracked on your screen.

Talking to NPCs

• An NPC's window is headed by their name, with what they do and their most pressing quest news under it, and their quests are grouped under Talk, Available, Ready to Turn In and In Progress.
• When a quest lets you choose a reward, the one you pick is marked with a check, and Turn In stays greyed out until you have chosen.

Trades and crafting

• The Trades window shows the trades you could take up as cards, two to a row, and a trade's description appears at the bottom of the window while the pointer is on its card.
• The crafting window puts each crafting trade you know on a tab of its own.

Shop

• The shop has Buy and Buy Back tabs, and on Buy a row of categories with pictures, where a category with nothing in it is dimmed.
• The Buy Back tab says how to buy something back: right-click for one, or Shift and right-click for the whole stack.
• The shop is a little wider, so the merchant's name has room beside your gold.

Auction house

• The auction house lists its categories in a box of their own down the left, with its filters in two rows across the top.
• A stack's count is shown on its slot rather than after its name.
• On the Sell tab, what an item is worth is marked "worth" and drawn more quietly than a price, so it is not mistaken for one.

Trade window

• A check appears beside the name of whoever has accepted, and the line under the title says who you are trading with and that you change your gold by clicking it.

Enchanting

• While three enchants are on offer, the enchant window reminds you that closing it keeps the first one.

Character select

• Your characters are listed down the left with their class, specialisation and level. Click one to see it in the middle of the screen, with Enter world under it.
• The chosen character's gear sits on the same ring as on the character sheet, with its weapons below. Point at a piece to read its tooltip.
• Its talent tree is on the right, laid out as in the talent window, with how many points it has spent and how many are left to spend. Point at a talent to read what it does.
• Use the Up and Down arrows to choose a character and Enter to play it, or double-click it.
• The character select remembers which character you chose last, and picks a character you have just made.

Interrupts

• Options has a new Gameplay tab.
• With Mouse-over interrupt ticked, your interrupt goes at the enemy under the cursor, or just beside it, instead of your target. Your target stays selected.
• Fall back to target, under it, decides what happens with no enemy under the cursor: tick it to interrupt your target instead, or leave it unticked and the interrupt is not used, and you are told so.

Cursor

• The mouse pointer has four looks to choose from under Options, Interface, Cursor: a gold arrow, a sword, a dark glass dart with a glowing edge, and a violet reticle whose click lands in its centre. System keeps your computer's own pointer.
• Over something you can right-click, the pointer lights up and wears a small seal saying what the click does: red swords on an enemy, a speech bubble on someone to talk to, a pouch on loot, a pickaxe on something to gather and a cog on a lever.
• Buttons and the other clickable parts of the windows light the pointer up too.

Trades window

• A Trades window (K) lists the professions you practise with their skill, and offers the rest to take up. Giving one up asks twice.
• A Crafting window (J, or CRAFT on a trade in the Trades window) lists a trade's recipes, coloured by whether making one still teaches, and what it cannot make yet. Pick which stack each material is spent from and it shows the stars the craft will come out at, and how far it is from the next, before you press CRAFT.
• Hovering a node says what it is and what trade and skill it needs.

Item tooltips

• Each stat on an item tooltip has an icon beside it: a fist for Strength, a crosshair for Crit Rating, a buckler for block, and so on.
• A stat that does nothing for you, such as a main stat for another specialisation or the block your armour gives while you hold a shield, has its icon greyed along with it.
• The stat headings, a weapon's damage and attack speed, the level a piece needs and the class it is made for have icons too.

Graphics and sound

• On a screen scaled to 125%, 150% or 175%, the game is drawn at the screen's own resolution rather than drawn larger and shrunk to fit, so text and edges are sharper and each frame costs your graphics card less.
• Trees, bushes, tall grass, fences, campfires, boulders, stumps and log piles are redrawn to match the ground they stand on.
• The trees that grow around the world look different from the ones a woodcutter can fell, and carry no fruit. The apple trees are in blossom instead.
• Cave walls and cliffs stand about a cell high where they face you.
• A building's roof reaches over the ground just behind it, as high as its walls stand, and walking along behind a building fades its roof as walking inside does.
• The corners of walls, palisades and pillars stand as tall as the walls beside them.

Bug fixes

• Right-clicking a button such as Roll, Kick, Leave Party, Accept, Turn In or Abandon no longer presses it, so a stray right-click cannot roll an enchant, kick a party member or abandon a quest. The close button still closes a window on either click, and buying from a shop still takes either click.
• Dragging a window by its top no longer drags a window beneath it along, or moves where that window opens next time.
• Tracking a quest when the tracker is full says why it cannot, where it used to ignore the click.
• Left-clicking an item on the shop's Buy Back tab reminds you that a right-click buys it back, where it used to do nothing.
• The way into a cave is drawn open, where a line of rock used to be drawn across it.
• A strip of paving in front of a building by the sea is no longer drawn as water.
• A monster's buff and debuff icons no longer stay hanging over a roof after it walks in under it, or after you walk out of the building it is in. They show again when it comes out.
• A monster winding up an attack from under a roof marks the ground the attack will hit wherever that is out in the open, and shows the arrow over whoever it has picked, as it does everywhere else.
• The arrow over a player a monster has picked is no longer hidden behind a roof, a tree or a spell effect.
• When two players cast at the same time, each cast bar shows its own spell name and time left. A party member casting beside you no longer takes the name off your bar.
• Another player's cast bar sits between their health bar and their head, as your own does, instead of across the top of their head.
• Casting while you gather or eat shows the spell's bar and name, instead of the gathering or eating bar drawn over it.
• The buff and debuff icons over another player no longer stay hanging in the air after they log out or disconnect.
• If you go back to the character screen while a monster winds up an attack, its name and countdown no longer stay frozen in the air when you return.
• Attacks aimed with the mouse go where the cursor points while you walk, rather than a little off it.
• The aiming dot beside a ranged character stays steady while you walk.
• Names over characters and monsters no longer jump ahead of them, or look blurred, while you walk.
• Weapons in characters' hands no longer shift a pixel against them while you walk.

Known issues

• The Escape menu, Options, the death screen, the invite and trade prompts, the chat box and the tooltips for skills and buffs keep their old look for now.
• No gathering node is placed in the world yet, and nothing else drops or sells a raw material. Nodes are placed in the map editor; the pictures they wear are placeholders.
• The gathering professions have no proficiency trees yet, so their points cannot be spent.

Item tooltips open over the chat and every window, in larger text, with what the item is worth in gold. Hold Alt to see what each rolled stat could have been.

Interface

Item tooltips

• Item tooltips are larger and easier to read, in a new frame, with what the item is worth in gold in the bottom corner.
• Hold Alt over a piece of gear to see the range each of its rolled stats could have landed in.
• A chest, helmet or pair of boots lists the block it gives you first among its defensive stats, greyed while you hold a shield.
• Item tooltips no longer list how many secondary stats a piece rolls. The wiki still does.

Bug fixes

• Item tooltips no longer open underneath the chat.

Gear rolls its secondary stats and its main stat each time it drops, so two copies of one piece can differ. How many secondaries a piece rolls depends on its rarity.

Items and professions

• Each piece of gear rolls its secondary stats when it drops: one on a common or uncommon piece, two on a rare, two or three on an epic and two to four on a legendary.
• Some pieces always roll one or two particular secondaries, and the rest are drawn at random. Some put most of their secondary stats into the first of them.
• A piece's main stat is between 45% and 60% of its strength, depending on the piece, and its secondaries share the rest.
• Each figure on a dropped piece, its main stat included, rolls up to 8% above or below the piece's usual figure, or a point either way on a small one.
• End-game pieces of one level and rarity differ in strength by up to 12% either way.
• Crafted gear does not roll its secondary stats: its recipe and materials decide them.
• Gear you already own has been rolled again under these rules. It keeps the secondary stats it rolled wherever the piece can still roll them, and each figure that still fits its new range. Everything else, its main stat included, has been rolled again.

Tooltips no longer open behind your bag, character sheet or other windows late in a long session, and windows no longer cover the quest dialog or the full map.

Gameplay

Interrupts

• Some enemy spells can be interrupted. An interrupted spell does nothing, and the enemy cannot cast another spell that can be interrupted for 4 seconds.
• The Orc Shaman's Summon Giant Rat and the Vampire's Blood Bolt and Vampiric Blood can be interrupted.
• Blows an enemy winds up for you to step out of, such as a whirlwind or the Vampire's Forceful Smash, cannot be interrupted, and an enemy can still use them while it cannot cast.

Magic defence

• Chests, helmets and boots carry magic defence for their level: cloth the most, leather 85% of that, plate 70%. Shields, weapons and jewellery carry none, and a book keeps its ward.
• Magic defence is no longer written on individual pieces. Pieces that carried it gained a little of their other stats in its place.
• Tanks have much less magic defence at high level than before, and damage dealers in plate have some for the first time.

Block

• Block chance and block value each stop at 85%, whatever adds to them.

Armour

• Damage dealers and healers no longer have armour or magic defence of their own on top of their gear. Both come from what they wear, as a tank's do.
• If you hold no shield, your chest, helmet and boots let you block. A full set blocks 5% of hits for 10% of their damage at level 1, and more as its level rises: plate the most, then leather, then cloth. It never blocks more than half as often, or half as much, as a shield of its level. With a shield, only the shield's block counts.

Health and attributes

• Each level grants 7 of your main stat and 5 Vitality, or 5 Strength and 7 Vitality to a Stalwart or Protector, plus 1 of each other attribute. Every character starts with 20 Vitality.
• Health comes from Vitality alone: 4 health a point, then your talents. The flat bonus health every non-tank had is gone, so at level 35 a damage dealer has about 1,500 health and a tank about 2,000.
• Each point of your main stat adds 0.75% damage, down from 1%, because you gain so many more of them. Damage is about where it was at high level.
• Regeneration is 2 plus 0.08 per point of Vitality every 5 seconds. You keep a quarter of it in combat, down from a third.
• Agility grants dodge on a longer curve, so an Agility character dodges about as often as before.

Classes

All classes

• Every damage and tank specialisation learns an interrupt at level 8. Blademaster has Pummel, Stalwart Shield Bash, Protector Rebuke, Mercenary Kick and Assassin Throat Jab, each at melee range.
• Marksman has Counter Shot, Spiritbow Hushing Arrow, Elementalist Disrupting Jolt, Arcanist Counterspell and Corruptor Spell Lock, each reaching 15 tiles.
• Every interrupt has a 20-second cooldown, costs nothing, does not trigger the global cooldown, and needs a target you can see.
• An interrupt that would stop nothing is refused and costs nothing: the target is not casting, the spell cannot be interrupted, or a wall is in the way.
• Pressing your interrupt while you are casting cancels your own cast and interrupts the target.
• Holy and Lifedrainer, the healers, have no interrupt.

Stalwart

• Mastery grants 5% block chance from the first point plus 0.1% a point, down from 0.15%, and 0.04% block value a point, down from 0.1%, with no limit but the 85% one on block. A Stalwart at high level blocks about three hits in four, for a little more than half of each.

Protector

• Mastery's damage reduction starts at 10% from the first point and grows by 0.1% a point, and no longer stops at 30%. It was 3% at level 10.

Wizard

• The Elementalist's and the Arcanist's basic attack is now a swing of the weapon, which lands only on a target within melee reach. It used to be a bolt that reached as far as a spell.
• Every spell is unchanged and cast from as far away as before. A weapon's damage now matters only to that swing, so a staff, mace or knife is chosen for its stats.

Warlock

• The Corruptor's and the Lifedrainer's basic attack is now a swing of the weapon, which lands only on a target within melee reach. It used to be a bolt that reached as far as a spell.
• Every spell is unchanged and cast from as far away as before. A weapon's damage now matters only to that swing, so a staff, sword or knife is chosen for its stats.

Items and professions

• The Guard set carries extra armour, two and a half times what plate of its level does, as the tank's armour for the early levels. It gave up a little of its other stats for it.
• Armour pieces and shields carry armour for their level: most on a chest, then a shield, a helmet and boots. Leather carries 85% of what plate does and cloth 70%, much closer to plate than before. Rarity does not change it.
• Weapons, books, quivers and jewellery carry no armour unless they carry bonus armour.
• A chest, helmet or pair of boots shows in its tooltip the block it gives you while you hold no shield.
• Shields up to level 17 block more of each hit: the Wooden Buckler 20%, up from 10%, and the rest by 2 to 10 points, so that a shield always blocks at least twice what armour does.
• The armour that used to be written on each piece is gone, replaced by that amount. Pieces that lost armour gained a little of their other stats in its place.
• A rolled piece whose item has changed since it dropped has been rolled again from the item as it is now.
• Every piece of gear has been re-stated for its level, rarity and slot. Each keeps its own mix of stats, and pieces of the same level and rarity differ by at most about a tenth.
• Gear that moved to a higher level when the catalogue was split now has that level's stats, not its old ones.
• A chest carries the most stats of any armour piece and boots the fewest, and a two-handed weapon as much as a one-handed weapon and an off-hand together.
• A staff carries a little more than a one-handed weapon and a book of its level and rarity.
• Shields' armour and block, and every piece's armour and magic defence, follow its level.
• Every piece's gold value follows its strength and rarity.
• Haste is worth more than it was, so pieces carry less of it for the same strength.
• Every piece of gear except trinkets carries Vitality for its level. Chest armour and two-handed weapons carry the most, and Strength gear more than Agility gear, and Agility gear more than Intellect gear.
• The Vitality that used to be written on individual pieces is gone, replaced by that amount.
• The Vitality enchant rolls 4 to 8, up from 3 to 6.
• A weapon's damage now follows its level and rarity. Weapons of the same kind, level and rarity differ by at most a tenth in strength.
• A faster weapon deals more damage per second in smaller hits, and a slower one hits harder for less damage per second. Neither is simply better.
• Two-handed swords, axes and maces deal the same damage per second as one-handed ones, and hit half as hard again.
• Bows and crossbows swing between 1.8 and 2.7 seconds. The ten that were faster or slower now sit at those limits.
• Knives swing a little slower than before, and hit harder at higher levels.
• Most gear has a new level requirement. On the way to level 25, each kind of weapon, armour and jewellery gains a new piece about every three levels, staggered so that every specialisation finds something new at every level.
• On the way up, common gear covers levels 1 to 4, uncommon gear levels 5 to 15, and rare gear levels 16 to 24.
• Every other piece of gear now requires level 25 and is rare, epic or legendary. From level 25 on, better gear means rarer gear.
• The ten armour sets sit at one level each, from level 8 to level 26: Guard, Forest Priest, Crimson Rogue, Iron Hunter, Illusionist, Marauder, Renegade, Sharpshooter, Cultist and Gatekeeper. Renegade, Sharpshooter, Cultist and Gatekeeper are epic.
• Starter gear is unchanged.

Interface

• An enemy's cast bar is orange when the spell can be interrupted, and grey with a shield beside it when it cannot.
• Your interrupt's button lights up orange while your target is casting something it can stop, and is dimmed the rest of the time.
• After an interrupt, a red bar counts down the time until the enemy can cast again.

Quests

• Hovering a reward in the quest log, or a reward to choose at a quest giver, shows the item's tooltip, with the piece you wear in that slot beside it.
• Clicking a reward in the quest log brings the quest log to the front, as clicking anywhere else on it does.

Character sheet

• The HP5 figure shows what you regenerate in combat in its corner.

Game client

• This release changes how the client and server talk to each other. A client older than this one cannot log in, and is offered the update instead.

Bug fixes

• Every click on a window used to lift it a little further, and after a few hundred clicks windows covered item and skill tooltips, the quest dialog and the full map. Windows now stay beneath all of them however often you click.
• Buff tooltips opened behind any window above the buff bar. They now open in front of it.
• A skill dragged along the action bar is drawn in front of your windows instead of behind them.
• Hovering an item in your bag, your character sheet or another window shows its tooltip while the auction house is open.
• Where two windows overlap, hovering shows the tooltip of the item in the window on top, never one hidden underneath it.
• Right-clicking an empty part of a quest giver's window no longer targets an enemy behind it.
• A Spirit Volley that critically hit dealt critical damage but floated ordinary numbers, and showed nothing at all with "Only critical hits" ticked in the damage number options. Its arrows now show as the critical hits they are.

Known issues

• The ten interrupts have placeholder icons until they have art of their own.
• At high level a tank is three to five times as sturdy as a damage dealer, more than intended. The Protector's damage reduction is most of it.
• Damage has shifted between specialisations until they are rebalanced: archers and tanks deal more at high level, and the Assassin and the Corruptor about a quarter less.
• Tanks are sturdier than intended at high level, and have no gear of their own between levels 9 and 25.
• Healing, and the Elementalist's damage, are about a fifth stronger than before until they are rebalanced.
• Wizards and Warlocks fighting from range deal less damage than before, the Arcanist and the Lifedrainer most of all, until they are rebalanced.
• The Mercenary and the Assassin deal noticeably more damage at higher levels until they are rebalanced.
• Gear still has the stats of its old level, so many pieces are weaker or stronger than their new level suggests until stats are rebalanced.
• Some monsters, quests and vendors give pieces that require a higher level than their own.
• A piece you are wearing whose requirement rose above your level stays on, but cannot be put back on once you take it off.

The Marksman is rebuilt around Aimed Shot, with a new talent tree. Casts can no longer be started or held on the move, and channels are walked at half speed.

Gameplay

Casting

• A spell with a cast time can no longer be started while you are moving — "You can't cast while moving."
• Moving during a cast cancels it. A cancelled cast costs the time and nothing else: no resource, no cooldown.
• Channelled spells can be walked, at half speed.

Classes

Marksman

• Everything now builds toward Aimed Shot: a 2-second cast for 240% weapon damage on a 10-second cooldown. Precision, the Marksman's Mastery, makes every Aimed Shot hit harder and gives each arrow that lands a chance to trigger a Marked Shot, which fires the next Aimed Shot instantly, even on cooldown.
• New spells: Quick Shot, the cheap arrow between Aimed Shots; Rapid Fire, a channel whose arrows restore Focus and bring Aimed Shot back sooner; Survival Instincts, 30% less damage taken for 8 seconds; Deadeye, 12 seconds in which every Aimed Shot is a Marked Shot and Focus regenerates 50% faster; and Called Shot, which makes your next two Aimed Shots critical hits.
• Multishot now has a 1-second cast. Kill Shot hits for 360% weapon damage, more than an Aimed Shot.
• A new talent tree of thirteen talents, most of which turn Quick Shots into sooner or stronger Aimed Shots. Every Marksman's talent points have been returned to spend on it.

Holy

• Flash of Light, Holy Light, Divine Light, Dawnbreak, Lay on Hands and Beacon of Dawn float the health they restored. A heal on an ally at full health floats nothing, and one that only partly lands floats what landed — the way a heal-over-time tick already did.
• Illumination shields an ally for a share of what the heal restored rather than of the spell's own figure, so healing a party that is already at full health no longer shields it. Light's Grace and Lasting Dawn still pay their share of the spell's figure.

Interface

Tooltips

• Spell descriptions no longer repeat the cost, cooldown or cast time printed beneath them.

Bug fixes

• Divine Light and Dawnbreak show their Holy Power cost in the tooltip, the talent window and the wiki, where they used to read as free.
• Steadfast Veil, Lasting Bond and Blood Pact take off exactly the seconds they name, however much Haste you have, and the action bar's cooldown ring now counts them.
• Right-clicking anywhere in the game — a player, the chat box, the map — no longer opens the browser's menu. It used to appear now and then, most often when right-clicking another player.
• Text boxes such as the chat line and the login form still offer cut, copy and paste on right-click, and so does text you have selected, so a line of chat can still be copied.

Known issues

• Some Marksman icons are placeholders until their art is finished.

The screen shows what you are doing rather than what everyone in sight is doing, and a meter in the corner keeps the party's totals.

Interface

Damage numbers

• Numbers float for your own hits and for anything landing on you. Standing near another fight no longer fills your screen with somebody else's figures.
• Impacts, blocked hits and spell effects still show for everyone — you can see a fight happening beside you, you just do not read its numbers.

Damage meter

• A meter sits above the panel buttons in the bottom-right corner, one row per party member: their name, their total, and their damage per second in brackets. The row is the bar, in their class colour.
• It counts from the first blow of a fight to the last, so the numbers still read correctly once the fight is over.
• Reset is in its header, beside a tick for whether each new fight starts a fresh count. Drag the box by that header to move it; Options → Interface → Reset window positions puts it back.

A guard post at the pass through the southern mountains, with five quests and the first road out of Birchvale worth walking.

World

The Windgap

• Guard Merrin holds the picket where the grey rock runs down to the sea, south-west of Birchvale. He is the first person in the world outside the town, and he sells food and potions — the last counter before the mountains.
• Five new quests. Master Adon sends you to find Merrin; from there it is the picket's own troubles, ending with the thing at the deep end of the gap that nothing walks back past. Take a friend for that one.
• Someone is lying injured on the road in, and will tell you why if you ask.
• Master Adon has something new to say once you bring him word from the pass, and Merrin does too once the gap is clear.

Birchvale

• Tanner has a second job now — an orc hideout north of the town.
• His first one asks for a couple of bandit archers as well, and pays better for it.
• Old Petra's two quests give more experience than they did.

Your character now moves the moment you press a key, however far away the server is. Older clients cannot connect to this server and will be offered the update at the login screen.

Gameplay

Movement

• Movement no longer trails the keyboard on a remote server. Your character used to lag your key presses by roughly your ping — about a tenth of a second for most players — for as long as you held a key. It now steps the instant you press and keeps exactly the pace the server moves you at.
• A stun, a root or a channel now holds your character still on your own screen too, instead of letting you slide forward and snap back.

Game client

• This release changes how the client and server talk to each other. A client older than this one cannot log in, and is offered the update instead.

Party frames are now health bars in each member's class colour. Every buff says what it is and what it is doing, and the game asks before it downloads an update.

Classes

Arcanist

• Blink (level 5) moves you instantly a short distance in the direction you aim. 20 second cooldown, no Mana cost.
• Prismatic Barrier (level 8) shields you for 25% of your maximum health for 10 seconds. 30 second cooldown, no Mana cost.

Interface

Party frames

• Each party frame is now the health bar: the whole box fills with that member's class colour and darkens as they lose health, so you can see who is in trouble at a glance.
• Your own frame sits at the top of the list, with the same level, health figures and percentage as everyone else.
• The frames can be moved. Drag them by the strip above them and pin them with the lock in its corner; they remember where you put them, per character.
• Names fit whole, up to the full 20 characters.

Class colours

• Every class has one colour, used everywhere: party frames, names over players, the character screens, and chat, where a speaker's name now appears in their class colour.
• The colours were chosen to stay distinct for colourblind players.
• Enemy health bars are a single colour now. The old green-to-red bar was unreadable to many colourblind players, and the length of the bar already shows how much health is left.

Buffs

• Hovering a buff shows its real name and what it does, instead of the same generic line under every icon.
• It also shows what the buff is doing right now, such as +2% Strength. A shield counts down the damage it can still absorb.
• Spell tooltips on the action and utility bars show what the buff they apply will do.

Chat

• The chat box can be resized from its bottom-right corner while it is unlocked.

Game client

Login and updates

• The Login button waits until the game has reached the server, and says so when it cannot.
• Enter in the account name moves to the password, a warning appears when Caps Lock is on, and your account name is remembered on this computer. Your password is never saved.
• The login, character select and character creation screens have a new look.
• From now on the game asks before downloading an update. If your version is too old to log in, the update is offered without a Later button.

Bug fixes

• Blink and Prismatic Barrier now work. Both unlocked before, but did nothing when cast.

You can walk through monsters now, so a pack closing in around you is no longer a trap.

Gameplay

Movement

• Walls are the only thing that stops you. Walk straight through a monster, or out of a pack that has surrounded you. Getting pinned by a ring of melee enemies until something died is gone.
• No more snapping back a step when you walk into an enemy.
• Monsters no longer shove you around, and you no longer shove them.

Enemies

• A monster chasing you stops where its edge meets yours, instead of standing half inside you.

Classes

Archer

• Ghostwalk and Disengage keep their speed burst, and Disengage its leap. Walking through enemies was their trick; now everyone does it.

Bug fixes

• The Training Dummy can no longer become impossible to hit after someone pulls it and walks away.

The archer's second specialisation is no longer a pet class. Spiritbow takes its place: a bow that shoots borrowed spirit, paid for with ordinary arrows.

Classes

Spiritbow

• Beastmaster is gone. Every archer who was one is now a Spiritbow, with all talent points handed back to spend again — the kit is different enough that an old allocation would not have meant anything.
• Spiritbow builds Spirit by landing auto-attacks, and nothing else builds it. There is no passive trickle, so an opening burst is something you shoot for first.
• Seven skills and a party buff: Spirit Arrow, Wisp Mark, Soulpiercer, Windrush, Ancestral Ward, Ghostwalk, Spirit Volley, and Ancestor's Call, which spends the whole bar at once.
• Its Mastery, Spirit Surge, makes its spirit damage hit harder. Your ordinary arrows stay ordinary.

World

The river valley

• The river that used to run off the eastern edge of the map now empties into a lake, with a marsh and a wooded valley around it.
• A footbridge crosses the river near the western end. Both banks are worth walking — the way on is only on one of them.
• A stone causeway runs out across the water to the island, and the temple sits at the end of it behind a barred gate.
• Lizardfolk hold the valley — warriors and archers on the banks, priests among them, and something much larger inside the temple itself.
• They are a long step up from the bandits to the west. Going alone is a decision rather than an oversight.
• The marsh has its own vermin, which are not the problem.

The temple gate

• Two levers open it, one camped on each bank of the lake, and the gate stays shut until both are pulled.
• This is the first place in the world the levers are actually wired to anything.

Levers

• Stand at a lever and press E — the same key that takes a door. The handle swings over and stays where you put it, for everyone.
• Some levers are right-clicked instead, the way you would an NPC. Whichever one it wants, it tells you when you are close enough to use it.
• A gate can want more than one lever, and they can be rooms apart. Until the last one is pulled the wall stays shut, so some doors want the whole party rather than whoever got there first.
• Some levers only go one way. Once those are pulled the gate cannot be shut behind you.
• A lever standing beside a doorway is still reachable — E takes whichever of the two you are nearer.

Gates

• A gate is solid while it is shut: nothing walks through it, nothing shoots through it, and enemies path around it as they would any other wall.
• It will not close on top of you. Stand in the gateway and it waits until you are clear.
• Some gates shut again a while after they open, and put their levers back — those are worth going through rather than admiring.

Bug fixes

• A ward or a rain of arrows on the ground now counts a target's marks and Brittle, like every other kind of hit always did.
• Two archers can mark the same enemy without stealing each other's Spirit.

The action bar has a sixth column, and every key the game listens for can now be rebound.

Interface

Action bar

• Two more slots, on Shift+Q and Shift+E, stacked in a column beside the ten you had.
• Q E R F C sit on the top row and 1 to 5 on the bottom, with the health and resource bars widened to sit over the whole bar.
• A spell dragged into one of the new slots stays there, as it always has.

Keybinds

• Esc → Options opens a keybind list: movement, every panel, and all twelve action bar slots. Click a key and press the one you want it on.
• Movement keeps both a main key and an alternate, which is how WASD and the arrow keys both work — either can be changed.
• Binding a key takes it off whatever else held it, and tells you what it took it from. Backspace clears a binding; Reset defaults puts the lot back.
• Esc stays reserved for closing panels, so there is always a way out of a screen you are part-way through rebinding.

Display

• Damage numbers come in four sizes, and can be cut down to critical hits only. Damage landing on you always shows, and so do heals — the setting thins the stream you put out, not the half you need to read. A hit still flashes where it landed either way.
• Reset window positions puts equipment, backpack and talents back where they open by default. The way back from a window dragged off the edge of the screen.
• The corner map is a little larger, and shows a little more ground around you.
• The action bar and the corner map each come in four sizes. The health and resource bars follow the action bar, and a bigger map shows more ground rather than bigger ground.

Graphics and sound

Held weapons

• Your main-hand weapon hangs at the right of your character and your off-hand — shield, spellbook or second knife — at the left, drawn from the item art. Swap gear and the picture changes with it.
• Other players wear theirs too, so you can see what someone is carrying before you ask.
• Nearly every knife has art for this; Claws, the Crude Scythe and the Serrated Stylet have none yet, and nor do the Cultist's Staff and Tome. Quivers are worn on the back and do not show.

Oknoda leaves the "run it from a terminal" era. There is an installer now, it updates itself, and the world it connects to is the one everybody else is standing in.

Gameplay

Combat

• Enemies telegraph their heavy attacks. A ground zone shows where it lands and how long you have to not be standing there.
• Eight enemy attack types, enemies that summon, and enemies that apply debuffs rather than only damage.
• Aggro is a group affair — pulling one enemy can bring its neighbours.
• Dodge works, and enemies use it too.

Classes

All classes

• Six classes, each with two specialisations — twelve in total, every one with its own skills, resource and talent tree.

World

• One continuous world across 72 hand-authored areas — no loading screens between them, no teleports. You walk from one to the next and other players are already there.
• Doors link areas across world layers, so an interior connects back to the exact spot outside it.
• Your position is saved when you log out. You come back where you left.

Playing together

• Parties of up to six. Right-click a player in the world, or invite from your friend list.
• Party frames on the left edge show live health, even when a member is off in a dungeon.
• Casting a spell with the cursor over a party frame aims it at that member — no need to find them on screen.
• Kill XP is split between party members near the body, and loot bags open for the whole party that earned them.
• Friend lists, whispers by character name, and say/party chat.

Interface

Map

• A minimap in the corner and a full world map on M, with drag and zoom. Party members show on both.

Game client

• A Windows installer. Download it once — the game updates itself from then on, checked at startup and never mid-session.
• The download went from 323 MB to 37 MB. Every sprite and tileset is WebP now, and the desktop shell is Tauri rather than Electron: about 10 MB of runtime instead of 150.
• Updates are signed, and a client refuses one whose signature does not match. A failed check falls through to running the copy you already have rather than leaving you with nothing.

Bug fixes

• Every icon in the wiki was missing. The art moved to WebP and the wiki kept asking for PNGs, then quietly faded each broken image to 20% opacity instead of complaining. All 818 of them resolve now.
• A skill that would not fire used to fail silently. It now says why — out of range, on cooldown, no resource, wrong target.
• Holding a spell key against a cooldown sent one cast request per key repeat. It sends one per press.

Enemies fight with abilities of their own, and a party panel puts promoting, kicking and leaving on one key.

Gameplay

Enemies

• Enemies have abilities of their own: eight attack types, with cast times, telegraphs and debuffs, and a cooldown they share so they cannot use them all at once.

Casting

• Ally-targeted casting is capped at 20 tiles and checked before any cooldown or resource is spent, so a refused cast costs nothing.

Playing together

Party

• A party panel on O — promote, kick, leave. Leader-only actions are enforced by the server, not just hidden in the UI.

Aggro, group pulls and dodge are reworked, an enemy that gives up a chase resets properly, and doors lead to the world beneath the surface.

Gameplay

Combat

• Aggro range, group pulls and dodge reworked.

Enemies

• Enemies leash properly: returning home is a full reset — health, tag, status effects and any half-finished cast.

World

• Doors lead between the surface and the interiors and undercrofts beneath it.

The world is laid out by hand, area by area, and grows to 72 areas — with NPCs to talk to and the first quests.

World

• The world is laid out by hand in one map, so a new place arrives by being drawn rather than written into the game.
• The map grew to 72 areas on a 9×9 grid.
• NPCs can be talked to, and some of them have quests.