Q4 2025 Patch : Hail to the King, Baby!

QoL

* autosort : this will cause the game to autosort your inventory when you pick up items and when you put items into containers that you are carrying
* followdesc: This config disables the descriptions when you are following other players, to help reduce screen spam. It is on by default but you can turn it off.

Accolades

Brand new to our game is the accolades system. Similar to the trophy system of steam, your deeds are chronicled in the form of accolades which are stored at account (not character) level. Some of these unlock rewards which you can delve into in-game further.

Chapter 1: Challenges

- Mystics 0/5 (0.0%)

- Warlords 0/11 (0.0%)

- Consortium 0/4 (0.0%)

- Feats 0/15 (0.0%)

- Religion 0/3 (0.0%)



Chapter 2: Dungeons

- Purifier 0/8 (0.0%)

- Dragon Slayer 0/11 (0.0%)

- Winter 0/10 (0.0%)

- World Tour 1/9 (11.1%)



Chapter 3: Exploration

- Quests 0/10 (0.0%)

- Items 0/7 (0.0%)

- Areas 0/2 (0.0%)

- Tasks 0/14 (0.0%)



Chapter 4: Companions

- Pets 0/6 (0.0%)

- Mounts 0/1 (0.0%)

- Charmies 0/1 (0.0%)



Chapter 5: Glory

- Open Combat 0/4 (0.0%)

- Arena 0/1 (0.0%)

- Cabal 0/2 (0.0%)



Chapter 6: Crafting

- Gambling 2/6 (33.3%)

- Enhancements 0/13 (0.0%)

- Manufacturing 0/8 (0.0%)



You have completed 3 of 151 accolades (2.0%).

We are keen to add more of these (and more rewards) from your suggestions as long as they add fun to the game and are not overly extravagant.

Areas / Items

*mystic forest (formely haon dor) is now known as the whispering woods (formely haon dor) with a new quest available from the adventurer
*certain alignment themed sets now apply anti-align flags when engraved, e.g. if you engrave torments of hell on titanium, you end up with evil-only titanium.
*duration of affect after reclaiming banner has been reduced
*flasks now show a percentage remaining
*augment changes a bit:
-chance to fade or otherwise destroy your gear is removed, there is instead a remote change of it adding a -dex or -str
-now requires a "thread of time" instead of shards. This is a rare drop from the difficult monsters in the "dungeon" section of accolades
- augment is now the decisive factor that prevents gear being modified anymore. instead of that being on engrave/unique. So once you augment, you can no longer modify that item.

Races

This patch introduces our newest race, the ayr. An ayr is a hybrid of a wisp and a sentinel. Lawful good only. There is a set number of these that may be rolled, ever, and they are automatically 1 life only. See their helpfile for more info. For the TLDR, it is a mechanical anatomy with a soul (a wisp) inside the machine, and they are intended to have a Jules Verne (i.e. Steampunk) kind of appearance. Think steam-powered, except that in place of steam, its the wisp that heats up, and instead of molecules of water, its motes.

misc.

* Quasit psionicist now available
*Jagar gains a vulnerability to cold
*All racial legacies that check levels now have a fallback of also checking for a significant rating difference, with exception of underdog grit
*New Racial Legacies

avian thief
-arial evade: easier to dodge a flying opponent while themselves airborne. They perform a tumble maneuvre in mid-air.
-hawkeye : Arrow deflection is ignored saving the avian thief the need of packing extra hitroll for their bow.

drow warrior
-nightblade : If the drow warrior is wielding a blade in their main-hand and in a defensive style, they'll perform a backstab on the next successful dodge or riposte. When this happens, they then gain a temporary affect that keeps their defensive style in an even or better state for the next 2 ticks. This affect does not stack and the backstab cannot occur again while it is still in effect.
-shadowed strikes : The affect produced by nightblade also adds hitroll to their attacks for its duration, adding larger effects for each level disadvantage. This also occurs at night.

elf healer
-tree of life : the elf healer can bond with the colossal tree to increase the efficacy of their healing spells. their max hp is lowered by the same percentage amount, so for example 10% hp loss for 10% better heals. this amount can be increased if the elf healer wants to, but the tree will never agree to weaken the bond. the bond is broken if the healer dies somehow.
-locate mastery: elf healers are known for their love and intense practice at locating objects. An elf healer with the mastery of the locate object spell is able to administer the spell on their patients while healing to locate shards of metal, glass, swallowed rings or gem fragments and other small items that maybe ail the patient, extract them carefully, thus aiding them in their immediate recovery time following the healing session.

gnome thief
-trap mastery : +1 tripwires allowed
-super shrimp : allows the gnome to further improve their panic flee. they curl up in a ball and flee through their opponents legs, tripping them over. this abilitiy cannot be repeated constantly.

jagar ranger
-call panther : Due to some first age lore reasons, the jagar ranger can manually call a panther.
-king of beasts: the jagar rangers warcry adds (level) hp and applies to their pet companions.

pixie berserker
-overcharged : pixie is able to charge nearby targets while raged and in combat, teleporting from room to room
-shock and awe: attacking a raged pixie has a chance to shock the attacker and potentially also stun them for a round. this ability kicks in with level disadvantage

storm warrior
-titanic grip: storm giant warriors with overbear gain 20% damage instead of 15%, and one-handed reduction is now only 10%
- calm before storm: martial instinct against higher level opponents kicks in after 2 successful strikes instead of 3. adds an extra water-based attack when attacking without aggressive adrenaline

Classes

Warrior

*combat stance:
-allows a warrior to choose their combat posture. this overrides their present weapon configuration, so even if theyre dual wielding, they could be doing that defensively
-onslaught - aggressive - damage dealt increased by 10%. needed for barrage
-bulwark defensive - damage dealt decreased by 10% , damage taken decreased by 25%.
-skirmisher (balanced) - neutral .
*using a combat style skill will cause the stance to switch, e.g. barrage = aggressive
*a stance change causes a minor momentum loss

*martial instinct - as we discussed here, https://abandonedrealms.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15051

'MARTIAL INSTINCT'

Syntax: automatic



Warriors practice their weapons with careful focus on execution of

precise, well-finessed and tightly controlled strikes.  Once a warrior

has attained complete mastery of a weapon (e.g. 100% proficiency in

sword) their dedication is repaid with the ability to fall into "the

zone" - a deadly melee combat dance. 



After three successful strikes with the same weapon (meaning, no misses,

parries or blocks) the warrior enters a flow state with that weapon that

lasts for the remainder of the current tick. During that window, subsequent

waves of attacks ignore a percentage of their opponent's armor class, and

each successful hit gains a small amount of movement points.  They can

also recover from using combat skills more quickly, provided they were

properly executed.  If the warrior decides to switch weapon or is

disarmed, the flow state is ended.

Ranger / Thief

*moved ambush from thief to ranger

Illusionist

*dupe forgetting is now on logout instead of on random timers. stored duplicates must be different.
* ablurry duplicate now means attacks miss it, instead of it just being a rubbish dupe.
* new spell "quick change" - lets you costume change your duplicate to turn it into your other stored dupe

Paladin / Dark-knight

* holy armor requires anti-evil on the armor for full effect (see up above for a related engrave change). same for unholy armor.
* dark-knight cure light does not work on groupmates.
- chaos specced DK's have a new spell "chaos bolt" which replaces their lightning bolt. this has a chance to curse the target, which then interacts with their fireball spell to summon a chaos demon

Thief

* they can use shortsword instead of only dagger for backstabs and sidesteps
* tripwire :
-reduced amount of active tripwires down from 3 to 1. gnome thief get 2 with their new racial legacy "Trap mastery"
-can now be dropped immediately if fighting npc
*new skill "street justice" : this increase damage against dirt kicked NPC and against entangled (by tripwire) npc. these bonuses stack. To get it to work on a player you have to do it in a town zone
*open/close/exam sack no longer unstealth if sneak is active

Perception update

There are now perception checks on the visibility of thieves using open, close, examine, get, put, and drop commands on their sacks and to the ground, meaning that even if the thief is sneaking, your character might still notice them performing these actions. Its a pretty easy thing to succeed so this can be expected to be rarely noticeable. Being noticed will not break hide. Make sure to read the helpfile "perception" to fully understand what makes these actions easier or harder to see.

Bard

* victory be ours now adds hitroll on initial sing, and a larger hitroll bonus by defeating higher level enemies

Psionicist

* new spell impulse - gives the psi the ability to haste/slow their group.
- whether it hastes or slows depends on the polarity of the pyramid of force, so cast some spells to charge it up. the bigger the charge, the better the haste
- note that unlike illusionists, the psi does not have a fine control of who they are hasting or an ability to just spam that due to needing to charge the pyramid

Druid

* might of the oaks and protection creature have been combined into one spell, so druids will have a long reliable prot shield to balance out the more complicated spellcasting
* all the trees for druidic staff are now just locations in haon dor instead of requiring dangerous treks to high level areas like the battlezone. As a lowbie you will still need to be careful about the wargs.
* wild shape is now automatic, just cast the spell with the element you want and itll transform you for a while. As with all tranformations, certain conditions prevent transform
* the negative wild shape effects are now in curse of acadia instead, which incase you dont remember, requires the circle of blood spec

Full helpfiles available in-game. Remember you can use help changed to check for recently udpated helpfiles.

Woohoo!!! Thanks Davairus! Can't wait to try this out

So... Can somebody explain to me why giving jagars a cold vulnerability is necessary/makes sense/is thematic with the race as a whole?

Jagar are jaguar-like creatures with FUR, which to me implies the opposite of a vulnerability to cold. Heat (and by extension, fire) I could understand, but I want to know the logic behind this change and why it was deemed necessary.

Keep in mind I don't play jagar characters because I can never get a good description for one, so I'm not working for my own self-interests here.

Very cool! Thank you for all the hard work!

As a newb that's slowly gaining some experience and skills, the idea of a single life sounds terrifying, but also REALLY intriguing. When you say there are a limited number, does that mean total characters made ever? Or if one dies, does another get added back to the queue? I'd hate to rob an experienced player an opportunity when I'm more likely to die just from exploring before I even get to the pinnacle PK levels. And I'm still learning how to run, there, too.

Ventana, I wouldn't worry about making a prestige race character with one life and dying. It shows that you're actively participating and in my opinion that means you deserve to have that opportunity. I personally worry more about people making such characters and then going inactive (or keeping such characters on life support after making them) while taking up the number of limited slots that are available.

BW it is because they come from a desert environment.

BW, fair enough. Thank you for the encouragement!

Also, I realized that my question was answered front and center in the description of the race... very clearly, in fact. Normally, I regret speaking before I think, now I can regret posting before I think.

Sigh. Oh well.

If you ask something stupid, people chuckle and move on, if you do something stupid, people rarely forget. Ask questions instead of making mistakes. Don't feel bad about something being obvious when it's pointed out to you, we all do it.

Any chance we can get accolades to show up on the player dashboard on the website?

Do the warrior new stances really apply the different damage dealt and received modifiers as mentioned in your patch notes? There was no mention or indication of these modifiers within the ingame helpfiles. From my testing, modifiers such as the defensive stance damage reduction does not seem to apply either.

With the removal of shards for augmenting(which were fairly easy to farm prismatic ones), and the addition of threads which are rare drops and can not be efficiently farmed...did the stats bonus for successful augmenting get better? Slaying the darkenbeast or whatever big mob over and over to hopefully get 1 thread so you augment an item(with the risk of failing and gaining a negative stat) and get something like +3 movement to your piece of equipment would be lack luster and an overall deterrent from augmenting at all.

Shortsword for thief backstab/sidestep is cool. You can do your blade nuke skills but with a better parry than a dagger.

+1 tripwire reduction.

Warriors..."-allows a warrior to choose their combat posture. this overrides their present weapon configuration".
Will this "override" be reflected in both attacker and defenders prompt?
I'm curious how this addition plays out after it gets some time under its belt.
Say Ivendel attacks me and my prompt shows he's in offensive, so I go for an overhead crush with my big polearm, only for it to get easily blocked because he's actually wearing a two-hander as well. Or will that not be the case because he's in offensive stance and will get crushed/disarmed/raked by the overhead anyways? Will this mean I need to actually look at him before deciding what combat skill I should use, or just go by what my prompt is showing me?

25% damage reduction while in defensive seems like way too much. Akin to protection spell for warrior? Maybe do 25% for PvE, and 10% for PvP?

[quote="vertas"]Any chance we can get accolades to show up on the player dashboard on the website?[/quote]

Its a good suggestion but we do have a lot of bugs to catch up on that I've been neglecting, so we'll need to address that first and then circle back. I don't want to work on the wrong area of the game here with my limited time. So answer is probably a yes but in weeks/months not soon.

[quote="ivindel"]Do the warrior new stances really apply the different damage dealt and received modifiers as mentioned in your patch notes? There was no mention or indication of these modifiers within the ingame helpfiles. From my testing, modifiers such as the defensive stance damage reduction does not seem to apply either.[/quote]

I would need to see your testing. its not easy to see changes of 10% in a game where all you see is DISEMBOWELS DISMEMBERS etc and 10% of that doesn't even change the text into a lower or higher category of damage. But they are there.

[quote="Xenyar"]With the removal of shards for augmenting(which were fairly easy to farm prismatic ones), and the addition of threads which are rare drops and can not be efficiently farmed...did the stats bonus for successful augmenting get better? [/quote]

Failures were removed and there is a 10% chance of the augment being buffed when used.. it can potentially be a very good enhancement. You would have to have a ton of rares and time, like a two year old or longer character, to amass a full suit of this shit. Its literally the cap on end-game content.

[quote="Xenyar"]Warriors..."-allows a warrior to choose their combat posture. this overrides their present weapon configuration". Will this "override" be reflected in both attacker and defenders prompt?[/quote]
Yes

[quote="Xenyar"]Say Ivendel attacks me and my prompt shows he's in offensive, so I go for an overhead crush with my big polearm, only for it to get easily blocked because he's actually wearing a two-hander as well. Or will that not be the case because he's in offensive stance and will get crushed/disarmed/raked by the overhead anyways? Will this mean I need to actually look at him before deciding what combat skill I should use, or just go by what my prompt is showing me?[/quote]

This is where we get into what should change as we roll into next patch.. we should obviously just play the game first and figure out how it works and if that is worse or better. I didn't dig into overhead to change it up so I imagine its still a dual wield counter, so someone sitting on dual wield trying to spam stance changes would get trumped by overhead crush. I'm pretty sure off memory that those kinda skills don't make enemy combat style checks simply because it would have been redundant.

crazy stuff

Nothing to do with the updates (which are awesome btw), but I'm in love with M1co's avatar.

So the drow warrior has a backstab ability in combat with their new racial legacy, right?

Isn't that kind of bogus when backstab requires the target to be at 100% hp? Or does it function differently somehow?

I feel like I'm missing something because what initially looks/sounds cool is now almost completely worthless when examined more closely (unless it doesn't perform a literal backstab).

Well of course no, it doesn't require 100%. More importantly though, it doesn't do annihilates damage, if thats what you meant. We're applying a bit of common sense here. You would have a broken game if the character could just backstab 3 times in a round ala the thief backstab skill. Instead what happens is you get what I felt was respectable damage, then an effect that both serves as its cooldown and boosts your defense for a bit. From there it is just a matter of numbers and tuning.

Is combat stance for warlord warriors only or do all warriors get it?

All warriors get stance at level ten regardless of affiliation with cabals

A little tweak for the new stance here, if you attempt to stance while weapon arming you will just stumble. This came from player feedback.