The "Coming Soon" Thread

[GM-Ayu]

Time for an update for what's coming down the pipe from gameplay perspective. It's been awhile since our last release with Malangdo instance and its enchant system. After that, we took a break from items/dungeons with the Seer's Dilemma arc and its special finale. So, seems like now is a good time to go back to items, mobs and gameplay.



In no particular order, these items/dungeons are being worked on right now:


Biolab 3 Upgrade

The biolab 4 RNG stabilizer via the Blood Thirst item and Chill of Death item seems to be working well. We will introduce this to Biolab 3 in the same style: normal mobs will have "Warrior's Will" added, where 150 of those items will allow you to trade for their signature unique drops. "Tears of Regret" will be dropped by the MVP, where 12 of them will allow you to trade for their signature drop as well.

The signature drops are designated as:

Seyren Windsor: Roubel*
Howard Alt-Eisen: Vecer Axe*
Eremes Guile: Specialty Jur
Cecil Damon: Falken Blitz*
Margaretha Sorin: Croce Staff*
Kathryne Keyron: Lacrima Stick

Lord Knight Seyren: Brionac*
Assassin Cross Eremes: Ice Pick[0]
Whitesmith Howard: Sabbath*
Sniper Cecil: Combat Knife
High Wizard Kathryne: (new item) Manastorm (name tentative)

We are still finalizing High Priest Margaretha's signature drops, which will be another brand new item.

As some of these items are... less than desirable and inappropriately mediocre given the difficulty of the dungeon, the items with * next to them will be buffed accordingly. Current owners of these items will receive the buff retroactively.

A short description for each changes:

Roubel: will be less situational to be a valid 1 handed bowling bash option
Vecer Axe: complete revamp to be a new 1 handed Cart Termination option
Falken Blitz: greatly enhanced to be a Sharpshoot oriented weapon
Croce Staff: complete revamp to help high Int High Priest builds
Brionac: new weapon for Spiral Pierce, which did not receive any new weapon option for over 10 years
Sabbath: complete revamp that has a chance to bypass enemy defense completely
Manastorm: new weapon for support Professor, which did not receive any new weapon option for over 10 years


Other Gears Update/QoL Upgrade

Some gears are "fine" but can use some fine tuning. These are mostly targetted at the "Class Combo" gears in heRO, and other mid-tier oriented gears. Mostly, these will just be number tweaks so that they are a bit better than they are now.

Some examples are:

• Gray Potion: now lowers your HP by 76% of current HP instead of max HP
  
• Magma Fist, Icicle Fist, Seismic Fist, Electric Fist: will now give you their respective element instead of awaiting for endows to trigger, and then lose the endow after every weapon swap
  
• Idol's outfit gives flee + 5
  
• Idol's Heels gve agi +2.
  
• Full combo for Gypsy will have its heal and inc agi activation chance increased to 5%
  
• Sapha Combo: aspd increase with dual daggers increased from 10% to 20%
  
• Nab combo for Stalker: ATK + 20
  
• Counter combo at lv 99: crit + 10%
  
• Shadow combo: str + 5, additional perfect dodge + 5 at lv 99
  
• Freyja Boots:
  -On day of the sun, Max HP + 1000
  -On day of the moon, Max SP + 250
  -On day of the star, gain both effects
  

This is not an inclusive list to other items that may have minor adjustments like this.

Frozen Combo and Storm Combo are also being looked at, but their changes may be more involved, and won't be delivered until a later date. Their fundamentals will not be changed though.

We have no plans to make changes for Ur's, Peuz, Black Wing and Judgment set.


Combo Set Revamp for Bard and Gunslinger

These combos are riddled with bugs and other undesirable interactions that mere number fixes won't do. We will be completely remaking these sets, and provide card deslot for the equipment set once the remake changes are done.

Poet set should be released first with the new effects being oriented to giving bonus base stats to enhance a song, based on your mastery of another song instead. The combo will lower the SP cost of songs by 10%, and the effect is doubled for a clown at 20%.

For Gunslinger, we are looking at removing the Trick Coin to be its own standalone item so that coin-based builds can still use the item, while the rest of the set will be redone to better focus on exclusively grenade launchers skills better. New direction will be to use low ASPD, long skill cooldown abilities to deal high damage fitting of a grenade launcher.


Ninja Hybrid Build Path

Huuma Shuriken weapon class: they are a complete joke.


We are going to take a shot at changing that.

Ninja has an unique skill tree where they have both basic magic attacks and some physical throwing abilities. Huuma Shuriken on paper does good damage with a 900% modifier, but it divides damage and has a very long cast time. Spells do better for Ninja, but most of the time they get turned into just stunlocking via their fast spells.

New Huuma Shurikens will become basis of hybrid Ninjas that will tempt Ninja players to put skill points into both side of the skill tree. Huumas will now come with 15% MATK like a staff weapon, and autocast your ninja spells at any targets hit by a Throw Huuma Shuriken so that they are hit by both a physical hit and a spell for magic damage at the same time.


For example, the main effect of the new Huuma Blazing Sun:

Cast Level 1 Crimson Fire Blossom on all targets damaged by Throw Huuma Shuriken. If the user has mastered Crimson Fire Blossom at a higher level, cast it at half of that level instead (rounded down).


We are also considering other hybrid based gears to accompany this update. This will also benefit other hybrid builds such as Soul Breaker and Grand Cross with new options as well.


<><><>

Some of these items are in work for awhile. An even bigger project is being worked on by the T&D team but I will let Ciar decide if he wants to talk about that one~

[The Legendary Joe]

Will the revamped brionac retain it's holy property? Will the endow fists still endow even though they are their respective element now? I've been using them with other customs that specifically require endows...

[GM-Ciar]

From what I understand, Brionac will still be holy property, but the fists won't cast any endow skills. You'd have to have someone endow you, or autotrade with buying shops to endow yourself.

[GM-Ayu]

[GM-Ayu]

For updates for our players to see what's in the pipelines. I'll be only speaking about balances and items here.

New Costumes

We hope to release a new source of getting some new costumes within this summer! Start hunting your runestones and prepare to make yourself some new hats!



Ninja Update

Ninja update was mentioned before, but it may be delayed because we may need some more technical work and do a more throughout set of changes to make everything workable because the class is too cursed besides their signature spam spell. We are still having it planned, but it will take longer than we'll like in order to do a good job of it.


Old Card Combo Update

Class card combo always had a dear place of "neat concept" but has aged extremely poorly, often where all 5 cards together is barely comparable with 1 or 2 cards alone in a regular build. We aim to update these combos to be more relevant in the 2020 game. Expect to start seeing some of these changes in the fall!


Custom Equipment Update

There's some custom equipment that were overly conservative. It's better to buff something that's too weak, than release something too strong only to draw the ire of everyone adjusting their builds to the newest best-in-slot equipment. We'll be looking to do minor adjustments to these gears. They are unlikely to be in the realm of Brionac or Sabbath in scope, but I am sure the minor boosts will be appreciated.


heRO 15

By November, heRO can drive in some countries as it will be heRO's 15th birthday! For those who are unfamiliar with how birthday month will work, generally there will be variety of events and quests. We strongly advise players to save up for zeny as generally, there will be some ways for you to get old anniversary gears, scooped up fairy auctions and more! Start planning to save up your zeny for the occasion!

[GM-Ayu]

We finally released the "secret" massive project to update the client! That wasn't mentioned in previous notes on purpose as it's a big update. On top of the posted stuff, the client update was vital in order to open the way for other new changes that we want to make.

So how does this impact "everything else"? Just what the heck is happening to the long mentioned Ninja updates?

Still quite a long way away, but stay tuned!

[GM-Ayu]

October is going to be occupied primarily by heRO birthday related news, but we'll still sneak in some minor tweaks and buffs to some custom equipment and 2 existing official items that the GM team has been too conservative in their effects, or make some new low tier items to further help new players along.

Some of the affected items...

[GM-Ayu]

So just what did the maintenance do today? We were testing these things in the test server~

Here is a sneak peek for some of the things we are trying out

Note: Exact numbers or scalings are still in testing




Marine Sphere (and Bio Cannibalize) scale stats based on the Alchemist. In this example, Marine Sphere's HP varies by the Alchemist's own HP.




Wind Blade damage is primarily influenced by int, but str will also increase the damage of your spells.

[GM-Ayu]

Meanwhile, some quality of life improvements as well in our next November update:

[The Roger]

yay! QoLs are always nice