-Rumours and Portents-
The Rumour Boards
- Tavern rumour boards have been placed around the world. Stand within a few paces and double click one to read what the land is whispering about. o
- The board has two pages. The first is what is abroad right now, the second is a chronicle of everything that has ever been declared, kept forever.
- A notice begins life as a Rumour. It names nothing and points nowhere, only that something is out there.
- When the rumours take shape it becomes a Portent, and the boards will tell you what kind of thing is loose and roughly where to look for it.
- The moment somebody actually finds one, the notice is confirmed. From then on the board names the item outright and credits the player who found it.
Announcements
- Every new rumour, every time one sharpens into a portent, and every first find is announced to the whole shard.
- Being the first to find something is an event with your name on it. Only the very first find of each item announces, so there is a reason to hunt early.
Where They Are Found
- A portent's items are rolled separately from relics and rare loot. They are added on top of what a kill or a chest would normally give you, never in place of it.
- Depending on the notice, they can turn up in any of the following.
• On monster corpses
• In the locked and trapped dungeon chests
• In treasure map chests, at every level
• In paragon chests - A notice can be tied to a region, so where the boards say to hunt is genuinely where the thing can be found.
- A notice closes when its window runs out, or when every last copy of what it named has been released into the world. Closed notices move to the chronicle.
-Season Rewards Now Go to a Vault-
Nothing Expires Any More
- Season milestones used to be lost if you did not claim them before the grace window closed after a season ended. The grace period has been removed entirely.
- The moment a season ends, every milestone you reached and did not claim is moved into your personal Reward Vault, where it waits indefinitely. There is no clock on it at all.
- Open it with [vault, or from the button on the season window.
- This applies to seasons that have already finished. Anything you were owed from a past season has been recovered into your vault.
Using the Vault
- The vault has two tabs. Waiting is what you are owed, Already claimed is the record of what you have taken and when.
- Claim rewards one at a time, or use Claim everything to take the lot.
- If a reward needs something you do not have yet, such as township membership, alliance membership or a linked Discord account, it is not consumed. It stays in your vault until you can receive it.
- Rewards are stored exactly as they stood when the season closed. A season being edited, retired or removed later cannot change or destroy what you were owed.
- Account wide seasons put rewards on your account, so any character can collect them. Per character seasons keep them with the character that earned them.
On the Season Window
- A finished season no longer warns you about a deadline. It tells you your rewards were moved to your vault.
- Any tier you earned but never claimed now reads IN VAULT, and its button takes you straight there.
- The number of rewards waiting for you is shown on the season window, and stays visible between seasons when no season is running.
- The countdown on a running season now reads from the real closing date rather than a placeholder, so the time it shows you is the time you actually have.
-Sealed Relics in Prize Packs-
Open Your Packs Before the Season Ends
- Some prize packs hold a specific relic sealed inside, released in a strictly limited run across a season.
- Any copies that have not been handed out by the time the season closes are released into the world's loot pool instead, where anyone hunting can find them.
- Once that happens the pack can never give that relic again. If you are sitting on unopened packs when a season ends, the relic that was inside them is gone from those packs for good.
- No copies are created and none are destroyed. The number that will ever exist does not change. The only thing that changes is whether you unwrap it or go hunting for it.
- Items other then Relic remain as rewards for the pack. It is only Relics that leave the packs at the and of the season.
How You Will Be Warned
- The season window carries a panel listing every relic still sealed in that season's packs, and how many copies are still unopened.
- A pack that holds one says so on the item itself. Hover it and it tells you to open it before the season ends.
- The shard is warned as the season closes in, at seven days, three days, one day, six hours and one hour, naming the relics that are still sealed.
- If you open a pack after its relic has been released, the pack tells you plainly what happened.
-Prize Pack Relics-
Real Relics, Not Stand Ins
- A pack can now hand out a specific relic with its own art, colour, description and release ledge.
- A relic handed out by a pack still counts against that relic's total release limit. A one of ten relic is one of ten no matter where it came from.
- Relic runs can be paced across the season, so a promised run always finishes before the season closes rather than depending on the roll finally coming up.
- Once a relic run inside a pack is spent, that pack simply stops offering it.
-Relics-
Random Colour Relics
- Relics that roll a colour now decide it the moment you lift them, not when they drop. Two players looting the same kind of relic get genuinely different results.
- Single clicking one before it is picked up tells you it is going to roll a colour, so you know what you are looking at.
- The colour's name is folded into the relic's own name as you lift it.
Being the One Who Found It
- Lifting a relic the rumour boards have been whispering about announces it to the shard, names the relic, and credits you as the finder.
- Only the first find of each relic announces.
-Achievements-
Achievements Now Pay Rewards
- Completing an achievement can now hand out anything a quest can pay, delivered the moment you complete it.
• Gold, items, title deeds, prize packs, loot boxes, township and alliance credits and experience, buffs
Tier Ladders
- An achievement can carry a ladder of tiers. Each tier announces as you pass it and awards its points, and the achievement completes at the last one.
Seasonal Achievements
- Achievements can now be tied to a season. They only count and complete while that season is the running one.
- When the season ends they go dormant rather than disappearing, and your progress on them is kept.
Far More Is Tracked
- Achievements can now be built on a much wider range of deeds than the old fixed list allowed.
• Kills by creature, by faction, by region, by name, paragons, bosses, players, kills your pet landed, kills in an FFA zone
• Damage dealt, deaths suffered, gold earned, taming, exploration and more
-Quest Boards-
One Button Per Notice
- Each row had a small magnifier, a check and a pin, and which one you needed was never obvious. There is now a single Accept button on every row.
- Accept opens the notice so you can read it and take it, or turns the quest in on the spot when it is ready to hand back.
- Reroll has moved under the Resets column and still only appears on a notice you have not touched.
The Rewards Shown Are the Rewards Paid
- Boards that pay a standard reward for every quest at a given tier were showing you the quest's own rewards on the offer window instead of the board's.
- The offer now previews exactly what accepting will pay you.
Rewards That Were Never Listed
- Currencies, season points, experience, titles and blessings had no preview art, and so were silently left off the reward list entirely. You could accept a quest with no idea it paid them.
- Every reward type now appears by name and amount on quest offers, in your quest log, and on wanted posters.
- Township and alliance experience can now be paid as quest and bounty rewards.
-Quest Tracker-
A Wider, Clearer Tracker
- The tracker is wider, and objective names are cut short far less often than before.
- Objective progress now uses the shard's standard progress bar instead of a thin tiled strip, and party members' progress on a shared quest uses the same bar.
-Monster Abilities-
Eleven Abilities Rebuilt
- The following abilities have been rebuilt on one shared damage curve.
• Bone Shatter, Crippling Smash, Frostbite Strike, Infernal Brand, Leech Life
• Rending Claw, Shadowstep Lunge, Soul Siphon, Static Discharge, Venomous Counter, Volatile Blood - Damage now rolls within a range and steps up with the ability's quality, instead of always landing on one flat number. A Lesser ability and an Exceptional one are now clearly different creatures to fight.
- Trigger chances, cooldowns and effects were tidied at the same time, so what you see and hear matches what the ability actually does.
Two Worth Knowing About
- Rending Claw's rend stays a percentage of the creature's own weapon damage rather than a flat number, so it scales with whatever is carrying it. Its bleed lands over several ticks rather than all at once.
- Volatile Blood rolls its damage separately for every victim caught in the blast, so standing in a crowd is no longer one flat number applied to everybody.