Adventurers,

Services are coming back online. Tickets pending on logs are starting to be processed again. When everything is fully operational, we will look towards the event extension and processing issues on hold.

Taking a moment to give a reminder about a few issues that have been showing up recently. If you are in or on a wall to avoid damage from players or monsters it will result in a temporary ban of the account that can escalate to a permanent ban. Additionally safe areas should not be abused to freely attack monsters. The actual places this can occur are limited but Dread Zoic is where this has been reported. You are free to kill the boss near the gate but anyone attacking the boss within the safe zone will be actioned.

To the News

While you might see me in game more often please prepare for not being able to actively talk. With the disruption I will be on hand to work in support and catch up on work to get us back on track with new updates. 

Balancing

In the previous Etana News, I looked into the concerns for high damage which continued after the post. After looking further - it was found that damage exceeded what was being shared with the community. Balancing has taken priority after finding the issue. Lets break down some changes coming below!

Horus

Current: % chance to ignore 50% AC
Change: % chance to ignore 30% AC

Reason: Critical with Horus is too strong in the current state of player gear. Even though existing builds can counter this in game we will reduce this effect for the time being.

Accuracy System 

This is the big one! After investigating reports on accuracy from Frontlines and reading chat logs I was able to test fully and request a detailed look at the problems. It was found that accuracy has been wrong in its implementation, perhaps since it was ever implemented, and with us pushing players to giving more thought from this system we uncovered this issue. 

To recap the Accuracy system:

• Normal Attack: Compare Attack Success Rate against Evasion. If accuracy is lower the game will assign a number and roll. If the roll is equal or higher than the assigned number it will deal damage. If it is lower it will prompt the MISS.
• Skill Attack: Compare Attack Success Rate against Evasion. If accuracy is lower then the damage is reduced by percentage difference between Attack Success Rate against Evasion.
• Physical Damage
  • Attack Success Rate value uses Level, Agility, Item Attack Success Rate, and Prefix Attack Success Rate
  • Evasion / Dodge Rate value uses Level, Dexterity, Item Evasion, and Prefix Dodge Rate
• Magical Damage
  • Attack Success Rate value uses Level, Concentration, Item Attack Success Rate, and Prefix Attack Success Rate or Concentration
  • Evasion / Dodge Rate value uses Level, Wisdom, Item Wisdom, and Prefix Wisdom

Example: 

The issue: Only normal attacks are supposed to roll for damage or miss. Skill attacks are only supposed to reduce damage, but the roll was included which inverted your damage output. Meaning whenever players have seen reduced damage that was the game working properly. All the skill hits have been the game ignoring the accuracy system. This means that players who tested accuracy thought that more evasion meant a higher chance for dodged hits and damage reduction. Its supposed to be a permanent reduction.

Quick example:

• Current Game Damage (Bugged): 500, 480, 500, 250, 500, 240, 480
  • Note 1: 480 to 500 would be the difference between Minimum PAT and Maximum PAT
  • Note 2: 240 to 250 would be the proper damage

• Upcoming Fix Damage: 250, 240, 250, 250, 250, 240, 240
  • Note: The accuracy is a permanent reduction and not a chance to dodge like above

Balance Changes

All balancing has been made with the above information and unfortunately has been to the detriment of some areas of the game. Now that these issues have been resolved, a new tool was created to quickly test all of the information and ensure it is accurate. During this process more requests were made as I noticed inconsistencies with some numbers. Notably about the Mage class - All mage characters have a hidden variable that increases damage taken by 10%. This caused unintended results when mage AC was reduced during Gardion Balance patch.  

On the whole the rebalance is designed to encourage different paths taken for player builds and power.  It will also tie into player levels being more meaningful and not as reliant on item prefixes. More details will come as we get closer to this patch.

Nation Warfare

There are still issues with the warfare. Unfortunately, we are delayed in processing this due the service disruption.  Players participating will need to be isolated and all rewards will be equalized to the losing nation when all services are restored.

Upcoming Content

Extra work will be put in to get us back on track for intended content coming. More daily dungeons will be arriving to help players in their experience grind with a few extra goodies coming. I will spend some time to talk about the next titles coming to the game!

Title expansion will be quest driven hunts similar to Elite Scorpion, Rhinoceros, Kirk Crab, and the previous Hunter quests. The Hunts will only require one monster to be defeated. Each primary zone will have its own set of titles to achieve. Primary Zones include Hollna, Hershal, and Kharon for now.  From weakest to strongest titles: Hollna, Hershal, and Kharon. You are free to chose whichever area to start your quest hunts. Each area has 10 quest hunts for new monsters and must be completed in order to get to the next quest hunt for the zone you are in. 

Be warned that these will be difficult encounters. The first 7 quests of each region will be found somewhere in the primary zone and players are allowed to team up to defeat the monsters. The final 3 will be single player instances where you will put to the test to conquer the monster.  Beating these monsters will award you with the finest titles for stats and bragging rights.

Also, your Title will act as an entry pass for new areas to hunt!

Please remember that higher zones do offer better titles but higher level titles from lower zones will be strong in their own right. You may not be able to defeat a monster in the higher zone and that is okay. 

New Titles: