Cover image features mount artwork by Sparx and Winking, directed by Fiona Bruner
The Gift Giving
We have been spoilt this month, with extra houses to decorate, and free dyes,mounts and barbershop tokens in the store. While it is wonderful to have a freedom to express ourselves, there’s a dark end of days abandon underlying the joy. A live game would never give away its assets like this, so each gift is a reminder of the clock that’s ticking. That said, we’re here for a good time, not a long time, and I’m ready to embrace our gifts and build my sandcastles before the tide comes in.
Contents
April patch
After last month’s patch just scraping in before the deadline, this one felt a lot earlier. We were pleasantly surprised to see some extra items again, especially the increase to the house ownership limit. This was originally 10, but reduced to 5 after questions about trophies came up. I’ve always wanted to decorate some different styles of housing but didn’t want to give up the ones I already had. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to showcase some house decoration before the game is closed.
Double XP is permanent, allowing players to make the most of the remaining time. Umbral and Gold cap have increased, although the gold cap increase had already snuck in prior to the patch. I feel like the 100k umbral cap is going to remove any stress about being at cap and wasting potential umbrals, which will make upgrading smoother and easier.
More houses mean more trophies
There has been a bit of controversy about the extra houses, because of the power creep associated with the extra trophies. PVE speedrunners feel this will reduce their enjoyment of the game, since end-game raids were tuned to 3 trophies. We can see their point of view, however high damage builds like the close quarters BB/Inferno build are also contributing to this effect.
For regular players, adding more trophies means up to 10% increase in damage, which can make the difference between being able to complete raids or not. In Isle of Night, this makes skipping the add in Jester easier to achieve.
Trophy Stacking Rules
Trophies are not simply stacking as expected, however. Adding a fourth Ultimate Combat trophy when you already have three, will not add any extra damage. You can have up to 3 of each tier of trophy –
- 3x Ultimate = 5% each to all creature families
- 3x Major Combat – 5% each to specific creature families
- 3x Basic Combat – 4% each to specific creature families
- 3x Bloody or Minor Combat – 3% each to specific creature families
Major Crafting trophies are stacking differently and seem to be hitting a gear score increase cap when combined with all the other crafting bonuses. At this stage, just one extra Major trophy of each kind seems to be cap for effectiveness.
Luck and Gathering are difficult to test, but if you’d like to maximise your chances there, you would be best off sticking to not stacking more than 3 of the same tier.
All the free things
We already had free gearsets and boosters, now all the dyes, including mount dyes, are free in the shop. All the mounts are also free, and finally, Barbershop tokens are free. Along with all the transmogs being unlocked, this means we have all the tools to completely customise our look as often as we like.
While the transmogs were just available in the transmog menu, you will need to purchase dyes from the shop. They will then appear in the dye menu, along with a count of how many you have. This means rare dyes are now the ones from the PVP track, which seem to drop very rarely since all the new items added in Season 10, and the limited time dyes from events or prime/twitch drops.
Elysian Wilds unlocked
Great news for new characters, you no longer need to get through the main story questline to access the Elysian Wilds zone. Head down to one of the border shrines, like Eldergate, and just ride on in. You’ll still need to do the main story to Brimstone Sands, if you want to unlock the heartrune clot. But that’s less urgent than being able to access a whole zone, especially one with artifact drops and unlock quests.
Discord Feed
All this and more can be found in our dev discord feed. Not quite all of NW_Kay’s posts are included below, you can head to the official discord to see what I’ve missed out. Search from: NW_Kay or NW_Evolys to keep track of posts in real time, or check back here in a month for our next installment.
This is for sub 250 and doesn’t apply to aptitude levels.
Giddyup!
This may be caused by McAfee – check here for details if in-game chat isn’t working for you.
YAAAAASSSSS!! Looking forward to regular hair growth and cut.
In reponse to concerns about war times.
Interesting view into the new zone, possibly not what people were expecting. Sadness, once again, at not being able to experience it.
Patch created some invisible walls but they seem to be fixed now.
Woohooo!
This perk stacking exploits is apparently causing havoc in PVP, with players able to make themselves ridiculously strong. It’s disappointing that it will not be fixed but good to know it was looked at. Now it’s up to players to be responsible and choose not to cheat.
Potentially more houses incoming
Region transfer looks to be working smoothly now, no new reports of lost characters making any noise. I’ve transferred a couple of characters back and forth sucessfully.
Really nice to see the lost characters restored and compensated.
