Dev Server Updates - January 2026

January 22 (v2)

• Fixed an issue with map initialization for Highland Basin.

• Reduced max wetness on vegetation.

• Rebaked Newhaven Valley/City/Northreach imposters to 80%.

• Adjusted rain and wind audio priority.

• Added "(SERVER)" to execution failures in the logs. This does not show in the client, only in the logs for troubleshooting.

• Adjusted spawn controller polling rate jitter on the server.

January 22

• Rain ripples now show on terrain.

• Rain ripples no longer move with the camera.

• Updated weather description in the TimeUI/Tooltip.

• Reduce max wetness for vegetation.

• Optimized textures for some Newhaven City walls.

• Updated Highlands map to reflects recent changes. There are some odd bugs we are investigating with the initial opening of the map + Ember Ring teleports.

• Adjusted spawns in Highland Hills near the Monolith + moving Ember Drift locs.

• Populated new area in Highland Basin

• Enabled precipitation response for overland terrains.

• Enabled precipitation response on a number of ruins and other misc props. More to come. This involves a new shader which requires a bit of profiling to make sure it isn't bloating the memory footprint of the game.

• Adjusted wetness strength curve on Rock shader.

January 21

Characters were migrated from Live to QA as of September 21, 2026 at 9am Central.

• Night Watch no longer prevents the player from dying (I thought the name was reverted to Overprovision, I was wrong!)

• Updated some older rocks to use our unified rock shader.

• Added snow support to our unified rock shader.

• TimeUI window now includes weather (WIP).

• Highland Hills has now been split into two zones and is open for testing:

  • Highland Basin: the southern portion of the zone. There have been some minor area expansions where the border has been pushed back. Mob spawn adjustments still a WIP to fill these areas. Ideally we would extend the level range of this zone by 1 or 2. The monolith has been moved to a midway point between the east lake and the tree fort.

  • AddedHighland Hillsthe northern portion of this zone. A few water features have been added to break up the monotony and add some "texture" to the visuals of the zone. Each lake has a series of boat teleporters (similar to Meadowlands & Highland Basin) that will help you get around more quickly. A new Monolith has been added just south of the main camp.

  • NOTE you characters have been migrated to account for the new zone.

    • Discoveries from the southern portion are now moved to the Basin in the database.

    • If your character was in Highlands it has been moved to the safe spot within Highland Basin.

    • If you had a corpse in Highland it has been returned to you.

    • The new Monolith in Highland Hills will need to be discovered before it can be used.

    • Map update to reflect the new water features is a WIP.

• Enabled precipitation in the weather sim. Each zone has a unique weather parameters with varying temperatures, humidities, and precipitation chances. This update enables:

  • Rain + Snow VFX.

  • Rain audio (this works similar to wind with varying intensities)

  • Rain & Snow accumulate based on the intensity and duration of precipitation events. This is a server-side variable synchronized across the network and will be reflected in rock and vegetation visuals. Terrain and props are up next - still a heavy WIP.

• In progress hoping to make it in time for the patch next week:

  • Footstep audio change based on ground wetness / snow cover.

  • Shrink grass more during the winter so it pokes up through the snow less.

  • Rebake all zone imposters at 80% to reduce performance impact.

  • Water audio adjustments in Highland Hills

  • Ley Compass path adjustments in Highland Hills & Basin.

January 20

• Adjusted rock LODs in Grizzled Peaks & Ibaxus.

• Increase vanity pet consumable execution time from 1s to 10s.

• Fixed spelling error in a Blightroot Grove lore doc.

• Fixed spelling error in Redshore Ridgeback task.

• Increased culling distance on Ravenrock skull torches.

• Fixed a stuck spot in Grizzled Peaks.

• Fixed border colliders in Grizzled Peaks colliding with the camera.

• Fixed offhand attack chance and positional bonuses no longer showing on the class tooltip.

• Fixed Hollow grinding audio to be under the Environment audio slider.

• Added a light directional proxy that smoothly transitions between day and night rotations for vegetation rendering. I'm hopeful this might ease rendering issues at the day/night transition. However, it may very well do nothing at all...

January 19

• Fixed name of Knight Relic Curved sword.

• Internal work on Highlands. We anticipate opening this zone back up for testing in coming days.

• Updated mixer group on Ember Rings, camp fires, Ember Drifts, and torch audio to be under the Environment slider.

• Slightly increased Ember Ring fire audio volume.

• Night Watch has been reverted to Overprovision. New tech has been implemented so the triggered effect happens on any health reduction (fall damage included). This has not yet gone through rigorous Adric test process so there may be issues. My code changes could also break everything...

January 17

• Target dummies in Newhaven City are now functional.

• Fixed a bug where the "can craft" value was incorrect after refreshing supplies

• Balance adjustments to Night Watch.

  • Note that it is currently planned for this skill to be reverted back to the trigger method, with the current iteration (AoE non-group heal) potentially returning as a new skill at a later date. We are in the midst of fixing the trigger inconsistencies.

• New fire audio clip for Ember Rings (may require further level balancing).

• If you try and take the bridge in NHV it will teleport you back to the starting spot. Will likely improve this with an emote and potentially a black out screen.

• More internal work on Highlands.

January 14

• Internal updates to Highland Hills. The zone is currently under construction and unavailable on QA. Apologies!

• Eye of the Storm changes below have been reverted.

• Reduced stamina cost on Roar.

January 12

• Increased "click to accept task" font size on bulletin board tasks.

• Slowed the max camera recenter time to be less jarring.

• Updated tooltips on new camera recenter options.

• Adjusted low wind audio levels.

• Adjusted cloud calculations.

• Updated vanity pet max speed so that they are less likely to be left behind when buffed and/or on a path.

• Fixed a bug where you would die while using a teleporter (i.e. shaper room) while in the air (i.e. jumping).

• Slight damage increase on Ibaxian Quarterstaves to compare better to recently upgraded 1-handers.

• Fixed missing Advantage on Alchemy Parry.

• Fixed stacking type on Alchemy Eye of the Storm.

• Fixed Alchemy Duel to always Enrage and not be chance based.

• Brigand Premeditate execution time reduced to 1 second.

• Sentinel Night Watch now prevents movement during execution.

• Berserker Eye of the Storm haste/damage values reduced. Alchemy versions now all regenerate stamina instead of granting +Avoid.

• VFX and audio updates for Premeditate and Night Watch.

January 7 p2

• Fixed Night Watch only healing group.

• Fixed weak cloud response to wind.

• Included threat increase on Order of Tribune Alchemy 2 enrage.

• Reduced max volume on low and medium wind audio tracks.

• Add recenter target and recenter speed sliders to control options tab.

January 7

Happy New Year! Character have been copied from Live as of January 7th at 10am Central. We are currently looking into splitting Highland Hills into a North & South zone so that we can expand and improve each.

Fixes:

• Fixed death animations replaying when you enter a scene.

• Fixed an issue where auto run would not disable when looting or interacting via keybind.

• Fixed discovered pets not being linkable in chat.

• Fixed animation culling line of sight checks to be to the overhead position of the mob.

• Fixed an issue with the /inspect chat command.

• Fixed typo on Raven calls for help.

• Fixed typo in Banton's quest text.

• Fixed issue where multiple levels of Rejuvenating Hymn could stack.

• Fixed an issue where some quest items were not included in loot rolls. This impacts Notes/Pages which previously were not rolled as well as the Unsettling Staff.

Updates:

• Mobs that have intro animations (Emberflies, Ants, etc) should no longer get stuck (i.e. in the sky) if they played those intro animations when you weren't looking at them.

• Renamed options tab "Input" to "Controls".

• Moved all camera options to the Controls tab.

• Reduced mail & auction house costs for stacked items by a factor of 10.

• Expanded Type dropdown menu size on the Auction House.

• Added "(click to accept task)" text to bulletin board envelopes.

• Added a tooltip to components in the crafting window.

• Added level 40 Elk Tea.

• Added level 40 Mandrake Tea.

• Added Dense Skinning nodes to Northern Highland Hills.

• Added Dense Skinning nodes to Southern Highland Hills.

• Added the remaining pieces of the Timeworn Set to loot tables.

• Added a Woodsman spawn in Northreach where quests say one should be.

• Returned the more menacing icons for some bears.

• Clarify in tooltips that Lingering Strikes deals Chemical damage.

• Increased damage of non-mace Ibaxian Supporter/Defender Hatchets, Swords and Curved Swords.

• Reduced amount and difficulty of the random spawning Basilisks in Basilisks Run. These frequently would get interpreted as rooms respawning too quickly, but now should be more of a nuisance as intended rather than halting groups in their tracks.

• Reduced amount, difficulty and respawn rate of roaming Redmanes in Grimstone Canyon. These mobs were often unavoidable in the narrow canyons and made leveling in the area harder than desired.

New Stuff:

• Added new camera recenter options for the horizontal and vertical axis as dropdowns in the Controls tab. These settings dictate how the camera responds to being rotated away from center with left mouse drag. The three available modes are:

  • None: no recentering occurs. up until now this has been the default behavior.

  • When Moving: when your character begins to move, the camera starts to recenter. This is now the default behavior to more closely align with player expectations from other MMOs.

  • Always: As soon as you release your left mouse camera drag the camera will begin recentering.

• Most UI window open states are restored upon zoning. This means that if you have your inventory open when you zone, it should remain open after the zone. If we missed a window that you would expect to remain open let us know!

• Weather V1: This patch includes the core components of the new weather sim. Precipitation (snow + rain) is not quite ready and has been disabled. However, you should begin to notice varying cloud densities and wind speeds. Higher wind speeds should correspond to increased motion in vegetation, clouds, and spiderwebs, along with increased wind audio.

  • Each zone should have a different variant of wind audio clips. It is currently tied to the Environment audio slider, let me know if the levels are off. Volume should increase as wind intensity increases, but the mixing may not be quite there yet.

Balance Changes:

Based on recent feedback we've made changes to at least one ability for each class to improve its usability and improve game balance. All of these are subject to change before hitting live!

Sentinel:

• Feedback around the triggered heal mechanic of Night Watch is that it is too inconsistent to reliably be used as a group heal. The trigger system has various restrictions that makes accounting for all incoming damage types problematic. As such the ability has been reworked to better suit the Sentinel's ability to heal in groups (and raids) while maintaining the role of being a multi-target heal that is distinct from the ones available to the other Supporters. Feedback on QA is requested and further adjustments and balance to the ability may be made before these changes go live.

• Night Watch is now a longer execution-time targeted aoe heal. It heals your defensive target and all targets nearby that target. One of the unique qualities of this ability is that it is not limited to your own group for its effectiveness and heals all friendly targets.

• Alchemy 1 version of Night Watch now includes a Heal over Time portion to the effect and makes it unable to be interrupted.

• Alchemy 2 version of Night Watch allows the effect to persist through unconsciousness (the heal over time will revive unconscious players on the next tick of the heal)

Duelist:

• Triage was overperforming as a topping off heal, and has been adjusted to be more effective on targets with lower health, but less effective on targets with higher health. Ideally the usage does not change much, but adds a bit more nuance to the usage of the ability to favor low health recovery than topping targets off.

• Alchemy 2 version of Triage previously had this scaling health effect component and now the effect is greatly increased (x5) compared to the base execution.

• Serration, Combined Strike and Alchemy Hemorrhaging Strike

  • These damage over time effects now scale with the Duelist's Physical +DMG stat. The highest type of physical +dmg that the duelist has will be the value used for determining the % increase to damage. The +dmg value at the application time of the dot is used for the calculation of the entirety of the effect.

Warlord:

• Open Wound no longer has a trigger count and the effect will trigger an unlimited amount of times for its duration. Triggered damage has been increased to match higher values at higher levels. Alchemy versions have been updated to increase the duration rather than increasing the trigger count. We hope these changes work to keep the identity of Open Wound while making its usage worthwhile into higher levels and raid situations. Open Wound still only allows a single application to be present on a mob at one time.

Brigand:

• With various abilities that didn't scale well with weapon damage Mark would often quickly fall out of favor with Brigands. The general idea of Mark should remain the same that its a preparation of damage that can be done while targets are stunned or while targets in incoming.

• Mark is now "Premeditate" and instead of it being applied to a target to deal instances of extra damage it is now a buff on the Brigand themselves. Ability attacks from the Brigand will trigger additional weapon damage plus a static bonus for a set count of attacks.

• Alchemy 1 version of Premeditate deals extra damage.

• Alchemy 2 version of Premeditate removes the trigger count and allows the additional damage on Ability Attacks to continue for the full duration.

Berserker:

• Eye of the Storm's original intent was to provide an alternative to Wind Up in terms of usability. However, Wind Up still remained universally better due to the haste reductions on Eye of the Storm. The approach here is changing to be an alternative to Fury rather than Wind Up offering a different sacrifice to obtain the damage and haste from the buff.

• Eye of the Storm has been refactored to fully reduce the players movement, but offer the same benefits of Fury without the daze effect. Fury and Eye of the Storm effects will no longer stack (but Windup and Eye of the Storm will now stack).

Warden:

• Removed the trigger count from the Quillback Spines, it will always last its full duration. Additionally increased the damage values at higher levels.

Knight:

• Enrage as a mechanic is a bit unique in the MMO space and is something we think might be a bit too confusing as new players are learning the game. Enrage forces a mob to attack the player who applies the effect, however it does not change threat values at all. We think this has caused some confusing usage of the ability and the demotion of Knights to being nothing more than off-tanks as their primary ability can only temporarily maintain threat, making it looks like they always "lose threat" because Enrage was only ever a temporary target change. We are hoping to change the way these abilities work to be more consistent with player expectations of what a forced change of target means.

• Enrage and Duel now move the Knight to the top of threat list along with the temporary forced duration of Enrage.

• Defensive Cooldowns

  • Recent feedback has been provided related to the imbalance between the Defender classes and their defensive cooldowns. We want to maintain a healthy split between the classes and make sure each feels unique but also generally balanced in their own way.

  • Bulwark now gives 100% block chance and additionally increases Physical Damage Resists and Physical Status Resists by 35%

  • Alchemy 1 Version of Bulwark adds resist to all damage types

  • Alchemy 2 Version of Bulwark still shares the effect with your group.

Marshal

• Similar to the Knight Section, Draw Fire now sets the Marshal to the top of the threat list immediately as well as forcing mob targeting for its duration.

• Similar to the Knight Section, Parry now it balanced against other defensive cooldowns:

• Parry now gives 100% parry chance, 35% damage resists and additionally grants the Marshal Advantage for its duration

• Alchemy 1 Version of Parry adds resist to all damage types and regenerates stamina.

• Alchemy 2 Version of Parry adds 100% Riposte and faster stamina regeneration.

Juggernaut:

• Similar to the Duelist, Perforate and Rip now scale their over time damage components with the juggernaut's +DMG. The highest +dmg value of the Juggernaut will be used to determine the extra over time damage of the effect at the time the effect is applied. Note that Alchemy versions of Perforate will not increase the amount healed with +dmg, only the damage dealt will be increased.