Eternal Frost Update
Winter is coming!
After only a very short delay, Season 4 is on track to release this evening, 13th December, at midnight Delos server time or 9pm for those of us in the West. Downtime is expected to be 2 hours, so realistically, we’ll be playing the update on the 14th.
One of the big things to look forward to is the new expedition, Glacial Tarn, which will be mutated along with Empyrean Forge first up. We’ll also get a new Season quest line and be able to earn Season Pass rewards again. There are 8 new Artifacts to collect, and a number of quality of life changes, including an increased Azoth cap and the ability to use some of our redundant schematics, recipes, and special ingredients in Research Projects. And you’ll be able to redeem 20 gypsum orbs a week for 1500 gold and 250 dark matter.
The Season kicks off with the Winter Convergence event, including a World boss and piles of presents to gather. Later on, we should see the much-anticipated new and improved Cross-server Group Finder. So there’s lots to get excited about. personally, I’ll be aiming to get some Winter Tokens right away for the cooldown rewards, then starting on the new Season Questline.
From the source:
You can visit a direct link here, or read a copy of the news below:
Eternal Frost
DECEMBER 11, 2023
SPOTLIGHT
The Glacial Tarn Expedition, seasonal narrative, and new Artifacts will all require Rise of the Angry Earth to experience.
NEW SEASON STORY
A Knight of the Round Table has unearthed forbidden knowledge of the Ancients, seeking to subjugate humanity with the power of an eternal winter. Rally your team of Silver Crows, and convince a surly fire mage named Daichi to help track down and vanquish the Knight before he lays waste to Aeternum.
NEW SEASON PASS
Eternal Frost introduces a new Season Journey, new Activity Card, new Challenges, and new rewards including cosmetics and consumables.
NEW EXPEDITION: THE GLACIAL TARN
The Glacial Tarn is a new Level 65 Expedition set in the Great Cleave. Explore a cavernous frozen complex hidden beyond the Empyrean Forge in pursuit of the Varangian Knight Ser Loth. Locate and harness the primordial magic of the Empyrean Flame to overcome enemies and obstacles imbued with Ice Magic, and destroy Ser Loth before his power consumes all of Aeternum.
NEW ARTIFACTS
Find and equip 8 new Artifacts to redefine your playstyle. These powerful weapons and armor feature their own quests. Boost your speed and reduce cooldowns with the Winged Shoes, freeze and finish your enemies with The Frozen Gauntlet, and more.
WINTER CONVERGENCE FESTIVAL
Icy winds and glimmering Gleamites fill the air once again as Winter Convergence returns to Aeternum. Visit Winter Villages to meet the Winter Wanderer and carry out his holiday quests. Players can also collect Winter Tokens to earn new limited-time rewards including festive skins, emotes, housing items and more.
The Winter Warrior and his legion of Frigid Folk are on a relentless mission to spread a Forever Winter across the land. Rally a party of 20+ players to defeat this open-world boss wreaking havoc throughout Great Cleave, Brightwood, Edengrove, Ebonscale Reach, and Brimstone Sands for new seasonal rewards.
FUTURE UPDATES
The following feature will release later in the season:
CROSS WORLD EXPEDITIONS WITH IMPROVED GROUP FINDER
Team up with players from any world within a region to overcome challenges within the depths of Aeternum. The new, one-click Group Finder will automatically assemble a role-balanced, cross-world group—no more lobby management required!
WORLD EXPERIENCE
GENERAL
Fixed an issue that allowed players to fall out of bounds at the final bridge in Empyrean Forge.
Player can no longer get under the mountain around Eternal Pool POI.
Lava will now kill players at a slightly higher level than previously in order to stop players from exploiting new mechanics.
NOTABLE FIXES
Fixed a graphical glitch where players sometimes experienced a sudden flash on the screen.
Fixed an issue that caused the following Brimstone Glyphs to not appear in the correct locations and block progression:
AMBA
J’IJ
TSADZUI
EYBUE
CRUUJ’II
JICH
QUESTS
Fixed an issue that caused the Secret of the Spores crafted flask to not display properly as a Quest Item in the player inventory.
Fixed an issue that caused players to be unable to interact with Murmuring Roots when their inventory was full.
Lowered the amount of Ancients needed for the Mechanic Artifact quests to account for the decreased number at the bridge.
Fixed an issue that caused the Djinn Headwrap Artifact quest to count Ancient Archers as beasts.
NAVIGATION
You now move at the same speed in all directions when not sprinting.
Increased maximum non-sprint move speed to 4.0 m/s.
Updated animations for non-sprint navigation.
Improved player animation when entering sprints from backwards dodges.
EXPEDITION GLOBAL MUTATORS
Fixed an issue where Enflamed hit players on bleed and other Damage over time effects.
Based on the PTR:
Fixed an issue that caused Ser Loth and the caster to be pushed by Wind Chill.
Added a Fortify status effect to Ser Loth during Ice Elemental empower phase.
Re-structured the health thresholds for Ser Loth to increase the fight duration during Ice Elemental empowers phase.
Fixed an issue where Ser Loth’s ice wave attack would miss when scaled by the empower.
COMBAT CHANGES
GENERAL
Acid Damage has been changed to Elemental damage type so that it allows armor mitigation.
Attacks directly from Shah Neshen that were Acid-based (ex: Spit, Acid Ball, Acid Spew) have been adjusted to bring them back in line with damage pre-change, but with variance allowed for armor weight. Arena-wide Acid Damage, such as during the Sandstorm, does not allow armor mitigation.
Reduced the frequency of status effect flyouts to help highlight more important ones.
Fixed an issue that allowed players to ride Mounts while Heartrunes were active.
Removed unintended stagger that was present on the deactivation of Primal Fury.
BLOCKING & ATTACKING
You can now hold block / aim while a weapon is sheathed to trigger aim or block.
Updated heavy attack buffer windows to make triggering back to back heavy attacks more consistent.
Added functionality that will reduce block stamina damage taken for a short duration after blocking an attack to help scale stamina damage taken in group fights.
Reduced the player’s block break reaction duration from 30 frames to 15 frames.
Block stability and stamina damage value changes:
Weapons with lower base block stability had their base block stability slightly increased.
Weapons with higher base stamina damage and had their base stamina damage slightly reduced.
Attacks whose stamina damage coefficients were much higher than average have been reduced.
Unified the stamina damage coefficients across all melee weapon heavy attacks.
Fixed an issue where players were forced into standing when attempting to crouch after an attack.
Fixed an issue where weapons could not be sheathed when using the “Toggle Aim and Block” feature.
Fixed an issue where swapping weapons would not toggle off Aim/Block when using the “Toggle Aim and Block” setting.
CONSUMABLES
Removed the consumable heal mod PvP adjustment. Consumables now heal at normal amounts in PvP.
Added a 15s cooldown to the Focus Potions to be on par with Mana Potions.
ARTIFACTS
Fixed an issue that caused the Odo artifact to not properly increase damage to stunned players for either weapon.
Updated the Endless Thirst Artifact Perk tooltip for clarity.
Removed Strike damage conversion from the Inferno Fire Staff Artifact and Lifetaker Void Gauntlet (They will both deal their default damage type of Fire or Void respectively).
Updated the Abyss, Lifetaker, and Inferno tooltips for clarity on the conversion.
Updated the Ankh Artifact heal mod to also decrease lifesteal healing (gives bigger trade off and creates additional differences between it and the Blooddrinker ring).
Blooddrinker Artifact – Added a 5% bonus to all lifesteal healing while active.
Fixed an issue that caused the Void Gauntlet Artifact “Lifetaker” to not trigger properly for all ranged attacks.
Based on feedback from the PTR:
Fixed an issue that caused players with “The Unmoved” Artifact to still be pulled by players using Scorpion’s Sting.
Reduced the power of the “Koya’s Knee Guards” Artifact from 33% to 20% against all ranged damage.
GEMS
Made the following changes to all of the associated Runeglass Gems. Their values should match the value of the Tier 4 version of each:
Brash (Onyx)
Reduced health requirement from 100% to 70%, and reduced effects from a range of 15% to 30% to a range of 9% to 18% since it will have a higher up time.
Opportunist (Emerald)
Increased target health requirement from below 30% to below 50%.Reduced the effects from a range of 15% to 30% to a range of 7% to 16% since it will have a higher up time.
Added 1% to 5% bonus healing on targets below 50% health.
Exhilarate (Moonstone)
Reworked to be bonus damage while all abilities are on cooldown and updated values to be 11%-20%
Retaliate (Jasper)
Updated functionality to be after blocking or taking a hit.
Increased duration to 5s. Allowed it to stack up to 3 times, and reduced individual stack values from a range of 6% to 20% to a range of 3% to 8% (24% max).
Gambit (Opal)
By far the most used Gem. Reduced damage values from a range of 6% to 15% to a range of 4% to 12% while stamina is not full.
Calming (Carnelian)
Added new functionality that increases damage by 0.5% to 2% to taunted foes per Gem slotted.
Empowered (Sapphire)
Updated from scaling off INT to scaling off FOC.
Conversion Gem Balance – Updated functionality and values of all of the conversion Gems.
Conversion Gems will now consistently convert 50% of the weapon damage to the element associated with the Gem, regardless of the tier. But will now scale ALL of the weapon’s damage to INT/FOC if those attributes are higher than the base weapon’s attributes.
Conversion Gems values (For reference, Single attribute scaling is 100%, Primary Scaling is 90%, Secondary Scaling is 65%, and Dual Scaling is 80%):
Tier 2 (I) = 50% Conversion to Element at 45% scaling off of INT / 35% scaling off of FOC
Tier 3 (II) = 50% Conversion to Element at 55% scaling off of INT / 45% scaling off of FOC
Tier 4 (III) = 50% Conversion to Element at 65% scaling off of INT / 55% scaling off of FOC
Tier 5 (IV) = 50% Conversion to Element at 75% scaling off of INT / 65% scaling off of FOC
Runeglass variants scale at the same value as the Tier 4 Gems (III Variants).
NOTE: These will not dual scale. If the replacement attribute is higher, it will override the base weapon’s scaling.
Removed “Incompatible elemental Perk” restrictions from Gems. They can now be slotted into items with Perks that have different elemental types.
FLAIL
Fixed an issue where the Arcane Smite area of effect could spawn offset when rapidly rotating camera while hitting.
Fixed an issue where the Arcane Smite ability did not show a damage type when using the final Deflecting Frailty upgrade.
Fixed an issue where the Cured Flailment passive wasn’t properly removing a debuff stack.
Fixed an issue where Arcane Vortex’s upgrade Accelerated Advantage was not applying a stack of Haste to self for each target hit.
Fixed an issue that caused the Flail to appear extended if sheathed during an attack. This issue also caused the player animation to appear broken.
HATCHET
Fixed an issue that caused the Hatchet’s final charge up before the last attack in the chain to incorrectly time the transitions to the light, uncharged heavy, and charged heavy attacks.
ICE GAUNTLET
Updated Ultimate Chill’s description to state Ice Pylon does not chill targets.
Fixed an issue that caused the health values for Ice Pylon and Entomb to appear as 0 in the mastery tooltips.
MUSKET
Fixed an issue that caused the Musket to reload after swapping from the Blunderbuss during rapid firing.
Fixed an issue that caused Power Shot and Powder Burn to become disabled after entering or exiting instances.
LIFE STAFF
Updated the Life Staff Sacred ground upgrade “Anointed” heal mod to not affect consumables or lifesteal healing.
Updated the Life staff Sacred Protection passive to not affect consumables or lifesteal healing and buffed its value from 5% to 10%.
Fixed an issue where disabling, then re-enabling Targeted Healing in the options menu did not actually re-enable it.
Pressing targeted healing hotkeys when not mapped to a valid member of your group will now not enter targeted healing.
Targeted healing option “Freeform camera” has been renamed to “Camera follows locked target”.
VOID GAUNTLET
Fixed an issue that caused the lifesteal from Essence Rupture to not trigger on every hit.
BLUNDERBUSS
Fixed an issue that caused Claw Shot to not connect to a target.
GREAT AXE
Fixed an issue that caused Surrounded to not consistently function as expected U
Updated the ability from a 30% damage increase when 3 or more targets are nearby, to – if 3 or more targets are around the player, gain a 15% damage increase per target (maximum 5 targets).
Updated Charge upgrade tooltips on damage increases based on time in charge for clarity.
PERKS
NOTABLE FIXES
Fixed an issue that caused the Omnidirectional Evade Perk to not apply the empower status effect.
Fixed an issue that caused various perk status effects could stack their duration on re-application.
Adjusted tooltips for Perks that increase/decrease the duration of status effects to indicate that they affect the base duration to help their functionality.
Fixed an issue that caused the Leeching Flurry’s Perk tooltip to not show the correct value.
ECONOMY, PROGRESSION, & GEAR
GENERAL
Based on player feedback, players can now craft a new cache at a Gypsum Kiln. The cache will cost 20 Gypsum Orbs and grant the player 1500 Gold and 250 Dark Matter upon opening. One cache can be crafted per week and caches are Bind on Pickup.
Raised the Azoth cap from 1,000 to 2,500.
Flint is now in the Stone family.
Territory Booster Tokens now correctly give 2x Territory Standing when in Edengrove.
Rank 6 Mentor Chests now give Tier 5 research items instead of Tier 4, which significantly increases their amount of generated XP. These chests have also had their prices reduced from 5000 Gold to 2000 Gold.
Adjusted the odds of rewards in Reward Track, including making Artifacts more likely to appear at Rank 200 or higher.
Fixed an issue that caused certain items to not be upgradeable at the Kiln. Added all Elysian Wild named item upgrade recipes at the Gypsum Kiln.
Fixed an issue that prevented Flail ability perks from rolling on Flails granted from the PvP Reward Track.
Added loot spawns for some of the rare Perks that were introduced in Rise of the Angry Earth to make them slightly easier to obtain. We will continue to monitor these items and may change them in the future if needed.
Adamant (Health Perk) can now be found in Elysian Wilds, Everfall, Great Cleave, Reekwater and Brimstone.
Harden Crystal (Enchanted Ward) can now be found in Cutlass Keys, Weaver’s Fen, Shattered Mountain and Restless Shore.
Fixed Timeless Shards so that they can drop from one boss per Expedition:
Removed Timeless Shard drops from Alluvium Marl (Edengrove) & Cilla (Lazarus)
Anubian Goliaths (The Ennead) can now drop Timeless Shards
Mahantaram (Savage Divide) can now drop Timeless Shards
GEAR CHANGES
The new expansion foods now have a proper recovery buff with a matching duration.
Removed the vernacular referring to raising the “minimum” gear score of items because items no longer roll in a range when crafted.
Fixed an issue that caused the Named Void Gauntlet, Nathan’s Hammer, to roll with a War Hammer Ability Perk. Old versions of this item are unchanged. Newly rolled versions will now have Shirking Lightning instead.
Fixed an issue where if you crafted multiple items, and one became a Named Item, you would not receive the other items.
Fixed an issue that caused the Fisherman Light armor to display without proper icons for male player characters.
Fixed an issue that caused some lower tier items to roll perks incorrectly, preventing them from rolling at the appropriate rarity.
We have added the Artifact Endless Thirst to the loot table for the final boss in mutated versions of Savage Divide. We have also added the Tumbler Feetwraps to OPR Caches. You can only loot each of these items once. If you acquired them from the Season 3 pass, you will not be able to loot them again.
Reinforced Orichalcum Bow Charm now has the correct ability name of “Empowering Explosive Arrow” instead of “Empowering Splinter Shot”.
Fixed an issue where tooltips would sometimes show scientific notation for values.
Changed the name generation for PvP Reward Track accessories without unique names to include the attribute suffix.
Fixed an issue that prevented the Covenant faction seal upgrade crafting recipe from appearing for Rank 3 (Excubitor) equipment.
GAME MODE REWARDS
We’re improving Outpost Rush rewards by guaranteeing that items given as a result of participation are loot biased. Items from Level 65 Outpost Rush reward caches also now roll on a slightly improved Gear Score range for players.
We originally wanted 3v3 Arenas to be a more challenging space with additional value for the winning players, so we greatly improved the PvP XP and Salts given by the mode in the expansion update. It was a successful change in that sense, but now our other PvP game modes are suffering. We’re reducing 3v3 Arenas so they don’t overshadow other modes as much. As a result, Outpost Rush and War will grant greater rewards.
Players hitting the maximum contribution in War and Outpost will now receive 5500 PvP Reward Track XP and 4000 Azoth Salts.
Outpost Rush also now gives 20 Dark Matter for maximum contribution players, and the lower contribution tiers have also been increased.
The maximum reward given by 3v3 Arenas has been reduced to 1200 XP and 500 Salts. The other contribution tiers have also been updated in a similar fashion.
Influence Race Reward Caches now roll items in a significantly improved Gear Score range that is in line with other PvP Content for max level players. Influence race caches now also grant 10 dark matter for max level players.
Improved the Gear Score of Invasion Cache items.
Refactored the way certain loot is provided to improve loot results for Expedition bosses.
This prevents issues where Expedition bosses (including in Mutators) would not grant valuable loot, or would sometimes grant no equipment and a very high number of things like craft mods.
Fixed an issue that caused many items in the game to be unable to roll new Perks, such as Health or Enchanted Ward. This will be most noticeable in PvP Game Mode Rewards like Outpost Rush.
APTITUDE CHESTS
Jewelcrafting Aptitude Chests can now roll Timeless Shards.
Expansion Aptitude Chests should now contain expansion materials instead of a mix of expansion materials and older, rare Tier 5 materials.
Expansion Aptitude Chests should no longer drop depreciated Perks or older Tier 5 rare materials. The contents should be more consistent and unified and should match expectations as to what should drop.
CRAFTING
We have added the ability to craft Research Projects. These projects are designed to consume some of those extra recipes, patterns and music sheets you have lying around and will grant bonus XP to their corresponding Trade Skill.
The Taxidermied Blue-Blooded Barb and Daemonaja items are no longer bind on pickup.
The Heartrune upgrade path has been simplified and their associated crafting recipes are now less complex.
Heartrunes will no longer require items like feathers, salt peter, etc. and will instead focus on the other resources in their recipes.
Gear Score 700 Heartrune upgrade recipes have been simplified, Tier 5 refined resource requirements have been removed and a pass has been made to lower overall resource requirement.
Descriptions have also been updated for various items to indicate source so the player knows where to find them when looking at the recipe.
Prismatic Scarab Tools now have their own category for mining, skinning, harvesting and logging tools.
Golden and Prismatic Scarab recipes for the expansion items have had their Azoth costs reduced so a player can do 2 full crafts with a bank of 1000 Azoth on a Tier 5 crafting station.
Increased the Azoth cost for perks on Procedural expansion crafts from 15 to 150.
Fixed an issue that prevented Named item re-roll recipes from being searchable by name in the Gypsum Kiln.
Fixed an issue where Finisher had the wrong name at the Kiln.
The Arcana Trade Skill used to make a Jewelry Matrix now makes an Armor Matrix.
The amount of XP the Pile of Bananas gave was…bananas. It has been adjusted to be more in line with our intentions.
Removed an outdated achievement requirement for Runeglass. Newer players should now be able to craft Runeglass items without issue.
Fixed an issue that required a Golden Scarab in the player’s inventory to see Prismatic Scarab Jewelry recipes.
Hidden recipes will now show as long as the player has at least one of the specified ingredients in their inventory instead of requiring all the specified ones.
GATHERING
Gathering items that can be processed at Refining Stations (Strange Ore, for example) are no longer limited to 3 items per day.
Reverted an unintentional change between resource spawn amounts for Mythril Ore.
Adjusted the spawn rates for all Tier 52 nodes to their original intended values now that the post expansion resource rush has calmed down. Node spawn times will be similar to other Tier 5 resource nodes.
REFINING
Players can now Prospect Silver, Gold and Platinum Ore to create a cache of Gems. The better the Ore, the higher the Tier of Gems they can get.
Territory Standing gains have been adjusted for expansion Refining and Crafting Trade Skills. Amounts have been lowered. Weaving will now generate Standing (didn’t prior).
NOTABLE FIXES
Removed the mention of Tier in the name of PVP Rewards Track Potion Packs as it looked like it was debug text. Potion Packs of the same type now share a similar name, but the player can reference the Tier on the item itself.
Fixed an issue that prevented taxidermized legendary fish from being salvageable.
Fixed a visual issue with the Varangian Lieutenant Kite Shield.
Ancient Mining Pick now correctly displays stats data.
Fixed an issue that prevented players from making the Regeneration Serum if the ingredients were in their storage.
Fixed an issue that caused the Ice of Life repeatable quest to display fewer rewards than it offered.
Fixed an issue that caused Sapphire Gypsum to not drop from Mahantaram in the Savage Divide.
MOUNTS GENERAL
Updated “Toggle Run/Walk” key binding to toggle mount run/walk speeds.
Unowned mounts purchased through the store that are not obtainable will no longer be displayed in the change mount menu.
Players can now mount with their mount key in the mount selection screen.
Players can no longer freely move around while mounted and trading.
Improved Mount Camera for better visibility when viewing the world from high or low angles.
Mount attachments can now properly be locked and salvaged.
Instantly failing to summon a mount (due to being in a game mode, being encumbered, etc.) now has a 1 second cooldown before another summon can be attempted.
Feeding mounts for the first time each day will no longer show a message saying the daily feeding limit was reached.
A mount’s original name will now be the default name when renaming a mount.
Mount names will now appear when summoning a mount.
NOTABLE MOUNT FIXES
Fixed an issue that caused mount footsteps to not switch back from water to other surfaces after drowning.
Fixed an issue that caused the mount dye UI not show the correct icon.
Fixed an issue that caused multiple buttons to overlap on the Mounts screen.
Fixed an issue with the camera sometimes not transitioning after viewing the Gear Set screen while mounted.
Fixed an issue with being able to set non-mount key binds to the same inputs as mount ones.
Fixed an issue where the camera wouldn’t return to the correct state after exiting certain menus while mounted.
Fixed an issue where the mount dye screen would not properly update remaining dye counts.
Fixed an issue where sheathed Void Gauntlets, Ice Gauntlets, and Bow Quivers were still visible when mounted.
Fixed an issue in the Transmog menu where the camera wouldn’t focus properly on the player when mounted. The player now dismounts when entering the Transmog menu.
Fixed an issue that caused the mount stamina bar to appear choppy while actively draining or regenerating.
Fix an issue that caused mounts to clip through the ground when landing.
Fixed an issue that caused the player to not correctly mount.
Fixed an issue that prevented switching mount attachments by double clicking before the Riding Skill Level 250 slot was unlocked.
Fixed an issue that caused the player to jump higher than normal when their mount jumped into a restricted zone.
SEASONS
GENERAL
Increased the number of Gleamite Meteors falling from the sky compared to last Winter Convergence.
NOTABLE FIXES
Updated wild stamp messaging when a player is at max wild stamps and fails to receive their daily stamp.
Fixed an issue that caused players to lose Fast Travel Points to Silver Crows Nest. Fast Travel Points should be restored.
UI/UX/SOCIAL
NOTABLE FIXES
Fixed typos in the descriptions of the Mythril Hatchet and Greatsword.
Fixed an issue that caused common Electric Eel, Snail, Clam, and Oyster baits to appear in the wrong trading group.
Fixed an issue that caused minor grammatical errors for multiple Perk descriptions.
Fixed an issue that prevented the Influence “Race Results” Page from showing the correct Pushed/Defended percentages.
Fixed an issue that caused the incorrect camera state in the mount selection screen.
Fixed an issue that caused the camera to get stuck in Crafting mode when interacting with the Crafting Station and blocking at the same time.
Fixed an issue that caused the reward banner to not appear when earning Aptitude rewards while also gaining a Level.
GENERAL
The “Apply” button will now be enabled after purchasing a mount attachment skin.
Pressing the “Apply” button after purchasing a mount dye will now bring the player to the mount dying screen.
TERRITORY OWNERSHIP
The Influence Watch tooltips now display the correct amount of Influence and Influence Bonus percentages.
Influence races will now be rescheduled if they are active during server maintenance.
IN-GAME STORE
Fixed an issue that caused various buttons meant to take you directly to a particular tab in the store to not work properly.
QUALITY OF LIFE IMPROVEMENTS
Removed the warning that occurred as you approach the Faction Reputation cap.
Price is now displayed on emotes listed in the emotes menu.
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