Q1 2026 PATCH : The riftward arrives

# Drumroll, please

NEW CLASS: Riftward
* Cleric of the Plains
* Support/healing class
* Neutral only
* Available Races:
:* Human
:* Gnome
:* Half-Elf
:* Void-Elf
:* Halfling
:* Avian
:* Pixie

At the dawn of the Third Age, the planes themselves shifted. As the cosmic dust settled, new links had been created between Serin and the four other Prime Planes. One of these planes, the Nether, held secrets from eons past, an amalgamation of lost Immortal creations and forgotten knowledge. Among this primeval lore were the teachings of the Riftward, a clerical order born in the depths of the furthest planes and previously unknown to the inhabitants of Serin.

The Riftward acts as a steadfast anchor between Serin and the entropy of the other Prime Planes, serving as a protective specialist who manipulates the very fabric of these planes to sustain their allies. Unlike traditional clerics who rely on holy or unholy powers, the Riftward masters knowledge of the liminal spaces, weaving together ethereal wards that reinforce the soul against trauma.

While they possess potent restorative gifts, their true mastery lies in their defensive versatility, shifting between planar wards to nullify attacks and blast their enemies with the focused madness of the endless beyond. They embrace only the neutral alignment and view balance as something that should exist not just between living entities but between the planes themselves. A Riftward embodies the cryptic nature of the far planes, often adhering to ancient and forgotten rituals while revering the endless cosmic expanse that grants them their powers.

Items / Areas

* The numbers of rare items that populate across the realms has been multiplied by 5 per rare item. This does not apply to unique items.
* The four non-rare weapons from the underworld barons (e.g. rod of black river) are reduced to ave 20.
* The venomous whisper dagger of Silent Citadel and whispering battle axe of tainted valley now perform a mental-based attack.
* AC bonuses garnered from high dex will now be lowered by wearing heavier armors. There is a moderate reduction for heavy armor and a lesser one for medium armors. The floor for this penalty is 20 dex, so no concern if the character is at or below that already. To clarify, wearing one heavy armor is enough to cut the bonus, but after that it doesn't stack further after wearing more - it's like an encumberance.

Artifacts

Various artifacts of Mystics are scattered through the realms, already well-known to budding archaelogists. These items may now be re-discovered to unlock access to unique artifact powers at the Seringale Archives. Only three of these powers may be active at a given time, so choose strategically. Artifacts can be upgraded to further improve the effects.

Here is a teaser for artifacts:

  

 [ 1] a stone mushroom                 (undiscovered)  

 [ 2] a fortune of seeing              (undiscovered)  

 [ 3] a horned relic                   (undiscovered)  

 [ 4] a white relic                    (undiscovered)  

 [ 5] a blurry stone                   (undiscovered)  

 [ 6] a hyaline stone (III)            [301/3000]      increases mana regeneration by 6%.  

 [ 7] a shady tri-stone                (undiscovered)  

 [ 8] a floating relic                 (undiscovered)  

 [ 9] a strong smelling incense stick  (undiscovered)  

 [10] an ankh of fury                  (undiscovered)  

 [11] a blood stone pendant            (undiscovered)  

 [12] a passive looking stone (I)      [1/30]          increases chance to parry by 1%.  

 [13] a translucent skull              (undiscovered)  

 [14] a traveling trinket              (undiscovered)  

 [15] a daemon eye (I)                 [1/30]          increases resistance to mental spells by 2%.  

 [16] a stone of goodness              (undiscovered)  

 [17] a lightning rod                  (undiscovered)  

 [18] a waterfall rod                  (undiscovered)  

 [19] a curious relic                  (undiscovered)  

 [20] a fiery crystal                  (undiscovered)  

Echo Dungeon

A new echo dungeon has been added to the game. It is called the "nether strand." This area is pseudo-randomized, which is unique to this area. Completing the nether strand at or above +10 echo level awards the player with 3 nether bindings which can be used to either buy items from the nether trader (met at the end of the dungeon) or spent on artifact upgrades. To attempt the echo dungeon, buy the 'echo of Losla' from Mitazer in Seringale.

N.B. Note that accessing the echo dungeons requires undertaking a challenging quest that will test your knowledge of AR; however, you do not have to be pinnacle to try it!

Sanctified Items

Dedication to one's religion (or in other words, getting a ton of reputation with your deity) allows one to sanctify rare item at the religion altar. This will make the item become hallowed in the eyes of the Immortals, which causes it to stick with you over a death.

* the number of items that may be sanctified increases with more rep, starting with 1 and finally reaching 3
* the ritual to sanctify an item requires a tribute of three rare items of similar type and level and a bunch of gold
* The "hallowed" effect is removed from the item on deaths, so this would have to be done again

Please be aware there are some limits to this - we are not allowing uniques, weapons and wild items to be hallowed, for some noteable examples.
TLDR: Loot insurance with limitations.

Timelines : Your endgame task tracker

Some of you have probably already noticed this one as we launched it a couple weeks early. You can use the timeline command to view the realms' progress on order, dragons, etc, view when important bosses are available to beat up, and pick from and carry out tasks of your choosing to earn relics and other rewards. However, performing these tasks causes timeline corruption, eventually culminating in a dangerous battle with the hungering bloody sphere (you are able to invite groupmates along for this experience, and everybody gets rewards from the sphere - if you can defeat the forces it spews out).

  

 The Worldline  

 =============  

   

 The Invasion:          gluttony,  envy,  lust,  wrath,  vanity,  sloth,  avarice  

 Chronicles of Winter:  scroll of chanting release,  heart of Drem'dharc,  rod of chaos  

 Chaos Reigns:          Farynril,  Rykaloth,  Ixphenyl,  Xalthessa,  Kyrinithax  

   

 Your timeline  

 ==============  

 [1c] gather a golden ore from Grimforge  

 [2 ] gather a purple potion  

 [3 ] Mordun in the Ford (requires 1 or 2)  

 [4 ] gamble a ring at the Unlucky smuggler (requires 1 and 2)  

 Use 'timeline select #' to begin a task.  

 Corruption: [10/100]  

Note that the kind of tasks this encourages you to take on are subject to change over the next weeks to months as we decide to more variety or different end-game tasks to include.

Classes

Thief / Rogue

This class has been renamed to "rogue." Most of you were probably aware we were calling it this already. The re-brand is the beginning of a longer-term effort to introduce subclasses, move away from a class that is griefing people, and instead make a class that uses cunning, specialization and agility over brute force. The changes you see in this patch reflect that intention, but they are just a stepping stone to the vision we have in mind for project rogue.

* new skill, weapon finesse: this halves the bonuses of combat advantages (concentrate, etc) if the thief has a weapon advantage.
* Stalk : the shadow's asssassinate companion ability has been formally added to rogue class. Blackjack requires a level 1 stalk (minor effort). Steal or pry from players requires a level 3 stalk, which is hard to achieve. Stalking is required for PLAYERS only.

necromancer

* entomb: entombs over quits now takes an additional (optional) decorate fee. This fee is refunded on later untomb; however, the amount regained will depend strictly on how many hours the necromancer was logged off for.

misc

* our dwarven and elvish language ciphers were improved to look a lot more like the tolkien dialects they are supposed to mimic. YMMV.

This all looks really exciting and I'm sure took a ton of work. Thank you! Can't wait to start exploring it all.

Rares multiplied by 5 each? Basic math is basic math...but I just want to be certain I'm not misunderstanding something. So if there was 2 black dragonscale rings, now there will be 10?

Math checks out.

My equipment was taken complaint will now be redirected to "now I have to put hours back into completing my Tenor set" or whataver....

I really hope this generates more fighting, but I wont get my hopes up.. But hey, false hope is still hope. Even if you guaranteed some players they'd get all their eq back if they died, they'd still insta-logout on the possibility a threat is gunning for them.

Cool that keepers have access to a neutral only cleric now.
Not too keen on practically unlimited rares, but it is what it is.
Thanks for the hard work guys.

I wouldn't expect this patch to be a magic wand waving update that just perfectly cures a logout culture in one shot. Logging out on people is somewhat of a vicious cycle where you lose confidence by logging off, making that worse and worse, and then at the same time the pk'er who forced you offline is now facing less opposition to make themselves stronger. However, what we did is obviously a relief to have a way to mitigate getting setback for a whole week trying to replace expensive (on time) forge shit. What the goal is really is to make changes that just move the needle towards pk'ing being more fun. I can only give my own impression but I found pk'ing the most fun on AR when me and my opponent were both level 50 full build.

Japan server, and I will fight everyone :)
Anyway, joke's aside, I do find myself not being able to keep up or compete with the top dogs with my delay, to the point that I do lose confidence and avoid fighting the top pkers altogether.

Ive fought you across plenty of characters, you do fine. You moved fast enough to keep up with my monks tumbling across ford and interrupting healing. The problem is the unwillingness of people to fight outside of having surprise/every advantage against someone of equal or close skill. I even have people way better than me log off because the initial/prepared surprise attack failed to get the kill and me being alerted is enough for them to not fight.

I think you just legalized weed, I've been trying to determine how I feel about the rares lol, that is the closest analogy I can come up with
some people that takes the fun out of it, but now everyone has access to it, but it also cant be used as a nefarious means as much either
I thought I was annoyed with the sanctified items but I dont really care about looting personally, I could actually probably go the rest of my ar career without taking anyones stuff. I really just like the threat of someone taking my shit
but I really like going and doing PVE by myself and you made it so that is always going to be possible

I put this on discord but I understand not everyone is there, so I figured I'd put it here too lol

Sweet changes! Looking forward to diving back in!