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Halloween Update
10/21/2026
Happy Halloween!
Zhia Lian, the goddess of whimsy, is looking for you! She has dire news... and also some pretty weird requests. Learn more by logging in!
The Zhia Lian event is our Halloween-style event. It will run through the first week of November. This event includes well over a hundred quests, along with unique holiday-themed rewards. We've improved the event since we last ran it (in beta) by adding new high-level content for Vidaria and Statehelm.
Fox Revamp
The Fox Revamp is finally here! If you last logged out as a fox, when you next log in your appearance will update to the new model automatically. All foxes will start out looking identical - but that will quickly change! There is now a method for foxes to customize their appearance, everything from their eye size to the their fur color. How to do so is up to you to uncover, but here's a hint: somewhere in Gazluk Plateau, a new cozy fox den has appeared!
The fox revamp serves as our prototype for all the other animal forms. They will receive similar visual upgrades in future updates.
Animal Cosmetics
Foxes aren't the only animal form getting some love this update - there are several new cosmetic items for ALL the forms! Yes, ducks, even you. A slew of hats and eyewear have been added, some of which are only wearable by Foxes, but most of which can be worn by any animal. Most of the cosmetics can be purchased from a new NPC in the Casino named Arnold for Live Event Credits, though a few are scattered throughout the rest of the world.
Barbran and the Weekly Buff Changes
We've revised how the weekly buffs work. Instead of each player receiving a different random buff, everyone now shares the same buff (once they're eligible for it). The buff runs from 00:00 Monday morning to 23:59 on Sunday evening. To access the buff, you must complete one of Barbran's quests.
In addition to giving you the current week's buff, completing Barbran's quest also gives you one Live Event Credit and a chance to pick an extra Bonus Buff. If you're lucky and receive the Bonus Buff, it will last for 6 days, regardless of when it was obtained. (If you win the bonus roll, you have one hour to select your Bonus Buff; don't dally!)
Non-Motherlode Survey Revisions
We're continuing to improve underperforming parts of the game, which naturally lead us to look at the survey system. The first legal "add ons" for the game were designed to make this system less painful to players. (A reminder that altering the game client is against the terms of service; these add-ons read log files and have a window that overlays the game client window; they don't change the running game in any way.)
We've revamped how the UI presents these surveys. The motivation is to fix an obviously-underperforming part of the game, not to "break" these third-party surveying tools (they will still work, although they may need revising due to changes in player logging).
Now when you click on a crystal/mining/treasure cartography map, your character turns to face the direction it's in. The usual red circle displays on the map, and at the center of the circle is a permanent icon (a gem, a metal bar, or a treasure chest, depending on the type of survey).
Clicking on this icon effectively uses the map item again: if you're too far away, you will again face the right way and tell you how far away it is. If you're close enough, you get the item/entity. This way you don't have to remember which item is associated with which spot on the map.
There is a limit of 10 active map spots at a time, which increases up to 60 with your Surveying skill. If you have more than the max active, the oldest icon disappears first.
These map spots don't time out, but they disappear if you logout, leave the area, or stop having the survey item in your inventory.
(There are no changes for motherlode-style maps in this update.)
"No-Resell" Items
We've heard from players that they don't want "middle men" buying their goods and reselling them at higher prices. To combat this we've added an experimental feature called the No-Resell flag.
When you place an item for sale at a player vendor, there is a new "no resell" checkbox. If this is checked and the item is sold, it becomes "no-resell". At that point it can't be sold at a player vendor ever again.
The No-Resell flag doesn't affect anything else. For instance, you can use No-Resell items to fill player work orders, you can trade them between players, or send them via pigeon. It only affects vendor stalls.
No-Resell items can't stack with regular items, so that's the down side of this system.
This is still in the "experimental" stage -- please report any issues you see with it right away!
Swimming Skill
More underwater adventures are coming in the future, and as preparation for them we've added the Swimming skill. All players know how to swim already, but this skill represents heroic levels of swimming while fighting. As such, you can only gain Swimming XP by killing monsters underwater! (As usual with auxiliary combat skills, you must start with weak monsters and then work up in level.)
It will be a bit easier to level the skill in the future when there's more underwater content, but feel free to level the skill now if you want to. A tip: to qualify for Swimming XP, you must be underwater at the moment the monster dies. So you can start a fight on land and then take it underwater, but not the other way around.
Angling Changes
The Angling skill has seen some modest improvements. First, we lowered the number of angling-event successes needed for mid-tier angling. (High-level angling still caps out at around 8 events needed; it just builds up to 8 more slowly.)
Second, we've added the notion of "perfect catches". This is when you catch a fish without making any mistakes at the angling events. The higher-tier angling abilities give you a chance to receive a bonus item on perfect catches:
- "Angling (Advanced)" (Level 60): adds +25% chance to get a bonus item when making a Perfect catch\
- "Catch and Release (Advanced)" (Level 45): adds +25% chance to get a bonus item when making a Perfect catch\
- "Catch and Release (Expert)" (Level 60): adds +50% chance to get a bonus item when making a Perfect catch\
In addition, there are 3 new alchemy potions that boost your chance of getting bonus loot when making a Perfect angling catch. The recipe for the weakest one can be learned from Squidlips. The other recipes can be fished up as loot from Perfect Catches.
There are also a bunch of new cosmetic pets that can be fished up this way, and some other interesting things to find.
Other changes:
- Justin Smoot now takes "Spirit Pet Chunks" as gifts; he no longer cares for "Prepared Food"!\
- A new tier of the Angling ability can be learned from Justin Smoot.\
- when catching a fish, the delay between catch-events is reduced from 1 second (on average) to 0.5 seconds (on average) to speed things up a bit\
- There are new high-level work orders for mass loads of high level angling fish\
- Older angling mass work orders improved in payout\
- Removed the "Prototype Shell" pet and its pieces -- this was only available due to an exploitable bug\
Favorite Special Abilities
You can now favorite Special Abilities! When you hover over a Special Ability, a star icon will appear at the top right. Click on the star to favorite the ability, putting it at the top of the Special Abilities list for easy access.
VIP: Improved Character Reports
There is now a checkbox in the VIP settings to automatically save the current character whenever you log out or switch areas. This report also has more info in it: for each NPC you've met, it now includes: raw favor value, councils spent at vendor, vendor reset time (if a reset time is active), and player notes for that NPC (as entered through the GUI).
Environmental Artwork Changes
We continue to beautify older parts of the game, this time including Serbule Hills and Rahu. Rahu in particular is still "under construction"; there's a new mostly-empty outdoor area that will have new stuff in it soon, and the docks have been moved and increased in size in anticipation of additional content there.
Known Issue: some trees do not have correct transparency, meaning they have opaque blackness between their leaves, and look a little weird. This will be addressed soon.
Monster Changes
- Skeletal triceratops gain the Resilient trait (resistance to indirect damage)\
- Creatures with innate Accuracy (which until now only referred to Fungus Men and certain "techie" Gazluk orcs) previously had a flat +25% accuracy regardless of level. They now have scaling accuracy based on their level.
- The affected Gazluk orcs are in the level 75 range, and the new advancement table gives level 75 monsters +25% accuracy, so the Gazluk orcs are largely unchanged. Existing Fungus Men are approximately level 85, so they gained a few points of Accuracy.
- More types of creatures have innate Accuracy: ballistae, elves, some demons, cerberuses, scray, deinonychuses, mantises, donkeys, mushroom turrets (including pets), cockatrices, and non-player lycanthropes in wolf form
- Most of these monster types are pretty rare, but deinonychuses, mantises, and scray are more common; be careful!
- Some types of monsters (notably several demon types, Sedgewick, the Scion of Discord, turret crystals, and many types of traps) did not have correct stats for out-of-combat regeneration, mental defense vs. mezz, critical-hits, or total XP values. These values have all been increased accordingly\
UI Fixes
- Fix blurry chat bubbles\
- Fix memory leak in the new loading screens\
- Fix the favor-up screen sometimes showing the wrong gifts\
- Lower ambient sound volumes in several zones\
- Hook up rain SFX to the volume slider in the Casino\
- Improve camera jumping in the Casino\
- Remove big red cancel button from Trade window\
- Add an extra check to item altars to ensure they don't swallow a certain valuable item\
- Fix favor-up unlocks reporting the wrong storage amounts\
- Fix for one instance of the UI locking up when you go AFK for a while\
- You can no longer sit in chairs while mounted\
- Decrease volume of one of the Demon Justiciar's attacks\
- Fix typo in Psi Adrenaline Waves 7, 8, & 9\
- Fix bug causing a strange UI overlay on the character select screen after being AFK for an extended time\
- Robustify client deletion of entities to prevent "ghost NPCs"\
- Remove excessive client logging to Player.log\
- Improve rendering performance of fae foliage\
New Special Setting, "OtherPlayerLightBrightness". Lets you control the brightness of other players' lights. Defaults to 100, with acceptable values from 0-100
New Special Setting, "FastLoadingExperimental". This is an experimental feature which changes how the loading screen works: instead of waiting for all nearby monsters and players to load, it just waits for your character to finish loading. Other characters continue to load in the background and will appear as a grayish mist until they finish loading. This is still in development and performance benefits are not guaranteed -- it really depends on your hardware and how busy the area is.
Gameplay Fixes/Changes
- Fix Mushroom Turret ability\
- Magical Roasting: fixed bug that gave you good roasted items even if you failed your skill-check\
- Keelflip fixes: Fresh dice no longer give double points, and ties now actually go in the player's favor\
- Bar of Xogrite in the Aktaari Caves now require a minimum combat level of 70 to pick up\
- Doubled the earn rate for Serbule Dynamic Safebox slots in Povus nightlies\
- Fix shimmer on some rakshasa tails under certain conditions\
- Cultist Necromancers are no longer all twins\
- Increase max level for Hexacoin results and tweak costs\
- Auxiliary combat skills (Sigil Scripting, First Aid, Armor Patching, etc.) now give a minimum of 1XP when XP is awarded from a monster\
- Survival Instincts Prodigy unlock now requires Best Friends instead of Like Family, to match the other similar Prodigy unlocks\
- Add text to the "Husbandry Boost" weekly buff to clarify how it works\
- Fix horse race track in Ilmari\
- Fix edges of Ilmari not counting as Ilmari for the purposes of surveying\
- Power Glyphs now last for 15 minutes if nobody uses them\
- The Captain Bloomstride optional encounter in the Statehelm Crypt has been made more a bit harder and has better loot rarity percentages, hopefully acting as a more interesting optional final battle\
- Increased max # of player-pins per area (the old, labelable kind) by +1 at Surveying 80, Surveying 90, and Surveying 100\
- Added quest to unlock the final level cap for the Hardcore skill. Quest can be found in a moldy lectern in an abandoned church outside of Statehelm\
- All animal forms now visibly wear masquerade masks\
- Eye of hate's spawned guardians are no longer worth XP\
- Paintings no longer snap to the ground when placed in a Guild Hall\
- Michael Irasce's favor for high-level (currently unachievable) mushroom farming textbooks has been replaced with a favor for Survival Instincts textbooks\
- Added support for tomato gardening seasons\
- Spark Infusion: previously, spending a spark to activate a buff cost 100 Combat Wisdom. The cost is now dependent on the item's level
- Level 100 items still cost 100 Combat Wisdom, while lower-level items cost less and higher-level items cost more
- Spark Transfer: previously, transferring sparks into a new item cost 1000 Combat Wisdom. The cost is now dependent on the source item's level
- Level 100 items cost 850 Combat Wisdom, while lower-level items cost less and higher-level items cost more
- JSON data: added new file `achievements.json`. This just has the text of the achievements. (These strings are also added to localization in strings_achievements.json)
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