Oct 9 2023 Changelog

Note: all changes will be applied sometime on Oct 9th... hopefully.

heRO 18th Birthday Celebration and Events

A lot of things are planned in store for heRO's 18th birthday! If you enjoy the series of updates, events and quests prepared for October, please consider writing us a review on RMS or updating your review at RMS here. RMS review is the best way to help the server grow and climb back to its old ranks!

Anniversary Quest and Rates

Cheers! Raise your glass to celebrate heRO's 18th birthday! From now until the rest of the month, heRO will enjoy a boosted rate of 8/8/5, and a new birthday quest is available, starting in Prontera/Payon Archer Village for characters level 85 and higher. Complete the quest to hear the Series of Firsts in heRO and review the Chronicle of Heroes throughout the ages! Can you recall the 18 years of history in heRO? Completion of the quest will reward you with a new Garment Costume, along with the ability to purchase Past Anniversary Gear Box at an expensive price to obtain previous anniversary gears. Hope you saved some zeny!

Donation Double

During this month, all donations will be worth double: for the amount you donate to the server this month, you will receive double the donation reward! For example, a $5 donation will reward you with 10 Old Purple Boxes, 6 Allegiance Token, 6 Delicious Cake, 6 Gold, 4 Rough Enriched Ore, 2 Old Red Box and 2 OCA instead! Note that the tally of your total amount donated to the server so far is not doubled. (If you have donated %50 dollar this month, it does not count as $100 to get the cumulative reward.)

Treasure Chest Spotted!

In addition, treasure chests can be found throughout heRO! Break them and claim your rewards! Treasure chests can be found across many maps in the server, and they will respawn in 3-4 hours on each map. If you see a treasure chest available, be sure to open it to receive your rewards!

Anniversary Events

Throughout this month, multiple events will be hosted. Below are some of the events that will take place. The exact time and rules will be posted as the date draws near. Apologies to our players for not announcing the exact time of the events due to real-life obligations.) Rough dates/times are announced, but please be aware that dates may change so check frequently for details.

Throughout October, the crazy merchant will be extra active with many rewards for those who can find its hiding place!
Mission BBS Item Search will be posted frequently by GMs to buy random etc item. Use this chance to earn some much needed event zeny!
Oct 12th evening: Monster Dice Invasion- bring your strongest characters and, depending on the participating player's dice rolls, summon monsters of your choice and defeat them!
Oct 13th evening: [event date tentative]
Oct 15th morning: Poring Smash with GM-Pandora, 11am server time
Oct 22nd morning: Novice challenge with- create a level 1 event novice and face a series of tasks and challenges to earn points and win rewards!
Oct 27th evening: A 2nd Dreamsprite Encounter: see front page of wiki to link of the event for details
Nov 4th morning: ROguelite Arena 2- bring your character, but no item enters and no item leaves. Open boxes to find usable equipment and adapt your strategy based on what you can find within!

Halloween Events

Halloween-related quest will be released on the weekend of Oct 28/29th. Please look forward to it! It's pure diabolic and it will rock your world!

New Patch Release

A new patch will be released before the 18th anniversary quest to ensure that all players can view the new costumes and other changes/items accordingly. Another new patch will be released closer to Halloween for the same reason.

Class Balance

A much anticipated major class overhaul was originally planned over the summer, but unfortunately, it has been delayed until now. We thank you for your patience as the release is finally ready. Here are the changes for each class. Be prepared that the changes are long and there are a lot. Unlike previous releases, we did not rebalance any items alongside the skill release. We will consider reworking some items to accompany these class rework to suit the intended usage or fun/meme potential of the new skills.

Note: GMs reserve the right to change these skills again, for better or as a nerf, if a skill turns out to be over-tuned or still underpowered. When this happens, we will provide free resets to the affected classes again, but be warned that further adjustments may be made as GMs see fit.

As there are lot of changes and the scope of the change is vast, please report any bugs or any oddities. We will release further updates/patches to address these issues as necessary. Furthermore, we will take our time to write the updated skill descriptions in the wiki to be in a more readable format. Until then, please refer to this list below for all changes from this release. New patch should also give a complete revamp of in-game skill description to reflect these new changes along with providing much more accurate information as well. We encourage you to refer to ingame skill description for deeper level of details for those who enjoy the math or game mechanics aspect of the skills

Overall, the direction of these changes are to boost previously weaker skills, increase the power of auto-attacks and to make the high risk style of 2-handed weapons to have higher rewards.

Free Reset

Since the balance changes may change your character's build and you may want to do some experimentation with the new skills, heRO will provide 3 free resets for every character during the month. Talk to Pandelina in Prontera for these free resets. The resets will be available up to Oct 31st.

Forged Weapons Mechanic Change

This is a temporarily band-aid solution to make forged weapons more enticing and to catch up to power level of the game in 2023. We will revisit forging to be more profitable and worthy of your time in a future update, such as unique new forged weapons. Until then, here's a general change to close the giant gap between modern weapons and forged weapons.

Damage boosted from star crumbs in forged weapons increases from 5 dmg (not atk) to 30 dmg
3 star crumbs boosted from 40 flat damage (25 higher than normal 3 star crumbs) to 200 dmg, which is 140 higher than 3 star crumbs under the new change
Weapons from a ranked forger has 100 bonus damage instead of 10 bonus damage

This means that a very very strong elemental weapon from a ranking forger will deal 160 bonus damage per auto attack, before factoring in the yielder's stats at all. This is a significant boost for new players on any auto-attacks.

Swordsman Changes

Sword Mastery: scaling changed from 4*skill level to 10*skill level dmg when using daggers and 1h swords
Two-Handed Sword Mastery: scaling changed from 4*skill level to 15*skill level dmg when using 2h swords

Knight/Lord Knight Changes

Spear skills are modified to emphasize accuracy to set them apart from the traditional sword-oriented skills. We will like to revisit Brandish Spear specifically again in the future for additional changes so please stay tuned!

Spear Mastery: Original Scaling: (4 + 1 if mounted) * skill lvl dmg when using any spears to a new Scaling: (10 + 2 if mounted) \ *skill lvl dmg when using 1h spears. (15 + 3 if mounted) * skill lvl dmg when using 2h spears
Pierce: bonus HIT per skill level is doubled. Damage scaling per level is doubled (300% at max level)
Brandish Spear: added accuracy scaling of 5 bonus HIT per level, and no longer lowers defense during casting
Spear Stab: added accuracy scaling of 5 bonus HIT per level
Charge Attack: no longer has a damage scaling cap based on distance

Crusader/Paladin Changes

Increase the usability of Crusader's holy skills for an easier leveling time, and to boost the shield based skills to further emphasize the need for a well refined shield.

Spear Mastery: Original Scaling: (4 + 1 if mounted) * skill lvl dmg when using any spears to a new Scaling: (10 + 2 if mounted) \ *skill lvl dmg when using 1h spears. (15 + 3 if mounted) * skill lvl dmg when using 2h spears
Demon Bane: Original Scaling: (3 + 0.04*(base level + 1)) dmg on demons and undead per skill level to 15 * skill level dmg on demons and undead
Divine Protection: the damage reduction formula assumes that you are always at base level 99
Holy Cross: skill scaling is doubled if you are using a 2h spear
Grand Cross: scaling increased from 100+40 per level to 100+50 per level (max 600%). The self inflicted physical damage is lowered from 1/2 to 1/3. Grand Cross always hits 3 times, and no longer lowers defense during cast.
Spear Quicken: can be used by both 1h spear and 2h spear. Spear Quicken has a passive element where each level of this skill boosts the ASPD of 2h spears by 0.5%.
Sacrifice: scaling increased from 100% + (10 * (skill level -1)) of sacrificed HP as dmg to 100% + 10% per skill level of sacrificed HP as dmg. Sacrifice also lasts 10 attacks instead of 5 attacks.
Shield Chain: shield weight and shield refine contribution to damage are tripled. Crusader Link also affects Shield Chain to double damage and make Shield Chain unmissable.

Thief Changes

Changes to poison-related skill to be more usable to transition into assassin.

Steal: formula changed such that the difference of your dex vs the enemy's dex is doubled; dex is now more important to the success of Steal
Envenom: damage increased by 25%; poison chance changed from (10+4*SkillLV)% to SkillLV*SkillLV % (such that max level envenom is base 100% poison)

Assassin/Assassin Cross Changes

Major overhaul of many skills to update assassin to have more usable skills besides sonic blow and grimtooth. We want to make assassin's poison skills more usable, along side with providing skill options to dual dagger builds.

Dual wielding's ASPD penalty is lessened fro 0.7*(BTBA1+BTBA2) to 0.6*(BTBA1+BTBA2), where BTBA1 is the BTBA (Base Time Between Attacks) of your first weapon and BTBA2 is the BTBA (Base Time Between Attacks) of your 2nd weapon
Katar Mastery: scaling changed from 3*skill level to 15*skill level dmg when using katars
Left Hand Mastery: 75+5*SkillLv damage per level (100% damage at lv 5)
Right Hand Mastery: 75+5*SkillLv damage per level (100% damage at lv 5)
Enchant Poison: duration greatly increased to 90s per level; poison chance greatly increased to (2+SkillLV)%
Venom Dust: removed red gemstone requirement; applies Deadly Poison instead of regular poison
Sonic Blow: Sonic Blow always has the bonus of old Sonic Acceleration's effect built in
Sonic Acceleration: renamed to Critical Mastery with new effect: increase the damage of critical attacks by 10%
Soul Breaker: Physical damage portion: increased by 100% per level (so lv 10 is ATK \ *11 instead of ATK * 10). Misc (Int) damage portion: guarantee damage increased by 500, Int damage contribution is doubled (so base 100 int gives 10000 dmg instead of 5000)
Create Deadly Poison: 100% success rate regardless of stats/gears

Assassin Poison React

old number of counters: 1/1/2/2/3/3/4/4/5/6
new number of counters: 2/4/6/8/10/12/14/16/18/20
old duration: 20 / 25 / 30 / 35 / 40 / 45 / 50 / 55 / 60 / 65 sec
new duration: 30s per level (5 min at max level)
old counter chance: always 50%
new counter chance: 45 + 5% per level
damage scaling: 30% bonus dmg per level => 40% bonus dmg per level

Assassin Venom Splasher

Old damage formula: 400 + 50 \ *skill level + 20 * level of poison react
New damage formula: 400 + 70 \ *skill level + (30 * skill level if using dagger). With dagger equipped, max damage is 1500 instead of 1200
In other word: the poison react bonus is always present, with an additional damage bonus for using daggers
Affected by Enchant Deadly Poison's attack bonus (currently, it gets no benefit from EDP)
Explosion timer: always 3s
Re-arm cooldown: always 3s
No HP requirement on target: Venom Splasher can be used on any target

Assassin Cross Meteor Assault

Affected by Enchant Deadly Poison's attack bonus (currently, it gets no benefit from EDP)
Can be used during hiding
Has no cast time and no after-cast delay, similar to grimtooth
Has bonus damage of (10% + 10% per skill level) if using daggers (max of 550% if using daggers)
SP cost: changed to always be 14

Rogue/Stalker Changes

Rogue is at a powerful spot from its copy skill and strip skills in PvP, but its innate skill can use some boosts to be more attractive options.

Steal Coin: Dex and Luk’s influence on success rate are doubled
Back Stab: damage changed from 300 + 40 * skill level, halved for bows (max 700) to 300 + 70 * skill level, halved for bows (max 1000). There is a new stun chance of (5 + 2*SkillLV)%.
Raid: splash radius increased by 1, and status rate increased from 10+3*SkillLV to 10+5*SkillLV.

Merchant Changes

Pushcart: speed penalty is less severe at earlier levels

Blacksmith/Whitesmith Changes

Blacksmith already has a major update in heRO in the past so there's no major changes for now.

Ore Discovery: Iron Ore replaced by Iron; Iron's original chance is split to steel, rough elunium, rough oridecon, and the 4 lower tier elemental stones

Alchemist/Creator Changes

Alchemist already has a major update in heRO in the past so there's no major changes for now.

Axe Mastery: scaling improved from 3 * skill lvl dmg when using any axes to a new scaling of 10 * skill lvl dmg when using 1h axes and 15 * skill lvl dmg when using 2h axes

Acolyte Changes

Demon Bane: Original Scaling: (3 + 0.04*(base level + 1)) dmg on demons and undead per skill level to 15 * skill level dmg on demons and undead

Priest/High Priest Changes

Priest is already the most powerful support class in the game. Change will focus on power of Magnus Exorcismus and some quality of life change.

Mace Mastery: scaling changed from 3*skill level to 10*skill level dmg when using maces
Slow Poison: skill renamed to Safeguard with brand new effect: Allows natural regeneration during bleed/burning and protects hp loss during bleed/burning/toxic/deadly poison/blood sucking/cold
Gloria: Duration increased from 10/15/20/25/30 seconds to 30/60/90/120/150s seconds; After-cast delay decreased from 2s to 1s
Magnus Exorcismus Damage inbetween wave only takes 2s for ME to rearm and damage the enemy again, down from 3s

Monk/Champion Changes

Added critical potential to all combo skills so that Fury has a use at the sacrifice of SP regen for potential critical combos. SP cost of combo skills are also reduced.

Iron Hands: scaling changed from 3*skill level to 10*skill level dmg when using knuckle weapons
Spirits Recovery: scaling changed from 4 HP and 2 SP per SkillLV + scaling based on max hp/sp to 20 HP and 3 SP per SkillLV + scaling based on max hp/sp
Ki Translation: SP cost reduced from 40 to 1
Ki Explosion: removed the random 10 HP cost
Triple Attack: activation rate is always 25% instead of starting at 30% at level 1 but each level lowers activation rate by 1% (down to 20% at lv 10); skill can crit
Chain Combo: SP cost lowered to 10 at all levels; skill can crit, and has splash effect under the effect of Monk Link
Combo Finish: SP cost lowered to 10 at all levels; skill can crit
Tiger Knuckle Fist: SP cost lowered from (2+2*SkillLV) to 2+SkillLV; skill can crit, and has splash effect under the effect of Monk Link
Chain Crush Combo: SP cost lowered from (2+2*SkillLV) to 2+SkillLV; skill can crit, and has splash effect under the effect of Monk Link
Spirit Spheres: each spirit sphere boosts damage by 5 each, up from 3 each

Hunter/Sniper Changes

Boost the important of INT skill for some hunter skills so that hunters are more inclined to stray away from all agi/dex builds.

Beast Bane: scaling changed from "4 dmg * skill level on brute and insect; if hunter soul linked, then add your STR as dmg" to a new Scaling of "12 * skill level dmg on brute and insect; if hunter soul linked, then add double your STR as dmg; damage bonus capped by your base level"
Blitz Beat: damage formula changed from "([DEX/10] + [INT/2] + 3*Steel Crow SkillLV + 40)*2)" to "([DEX/10] + [INT] + 3*Steel Crow SkillLV + 40)*2) + [INT]"
Falcon Assault: Due to how FA damage is based on Blitz Beat, FA damage will inherit the changes and cascade to FA boosts too

Bard/Clown/Dancer/Gypsy Changes

Musical Lesson/Dance Lesson: scaling changed from 3*skill level to 10*skill level dmg when using instruments/whips
Musical Strike/Sling Arrow: SP cost reduced from 2 extra sp per level to 1 extra sp per level
Humming: boost changed from +2 HIT to +3 HIT
Wink of Charm: works on any non-boss monster instead of demihuman, angels and demons only

Mage Changes

Fireball: scaling changed from (70+10*SkillLV)% to 100 + 20 * skill level (max of 300%)
Thunderstorm: scaling changed from 80% of MATK per level to 100% of MATK per level

Wizard/High Wizard Changes

Wizard is already a very powerful class: but some skills can use some boosts so that spell choices seem more meaningful

Sightrasher: scaling changed from (100+20*SkillLV)% MATK (300% at lv 10) to (100+30*SkillLV)% MATK (400% at lv 10), radius increased by 1 cell, and after cast delay changed from 2s to 1s
Frost Nova: scaling changed from (100+skill_lv*10)* 2 / 3 - 100 to (100+skill_lv*10) - 100; Cast time lowers drastically as skill level increases (down from 4s at lv 10, to 1.5s at lv 10)
Napalm Vulcan: damage is no longer split between all targets
Gravitational Field: ASPD reduction from this skill is doubled

Sage/Professor Changes

Advanced Book: scaling changed from 3*skill level to 10*skill level dmg when using books
Free Cast: the penalty for moving while casting is decreased at starting level. At max level, the speed is very slightly increased compare to original speed.

Sage Autospell

This change is extensive, so here are the detailed breakdowns for Auto-Spell.
Automatically cast a magic spell while performing a normal attack. Spells cast through Autospell cost 1/2 of the spell's SP cost. The caster is required to learn the selected spell of Autospell and the max level of the casted spell is limited to to SkillLV of Hindsight (see below.) The spell can be cast at 2 levels lower (50% chance) and 1 level lower (35% chance) than the maximum castable level. Bolt spells in the description refer to Cold, Fire and Lightning Bolt. Below are the list of possible highest level spells casted for each level of Autospell

Level 1: lv 3 napalm beat
Level 2: lv 1 bolt
Level 3: lv 2 bolt
Level 4: lv 3 bolt
Level 5: lv 4 bolt
Level 6: lv 5 bolt, lv 1 soul strike
Level 7: lv 6 bolt, lv 2 soul strike
Level 8: lv 7 bolt, lv 3 soul strike, lv 1 fire ball
Level 9: lv 8 bolt, lv 4 soul strike, lv 2 fire ball
Level 10: lv 9 bolt, lv 5 soul strike, lv 3 fire ball, lv 1 frost diver

Sage Link continues to change autospell to 100% chance to cast the maximum level of spells casted.

Taekwon Changes

Focus on complete revamp of the point system to make Taekwon a powerful class that does not rely on weapons or weapon cards to have almost matching damage with other well geared classes.

Unarmed BTBA (Base Time Between Attacks) lowered from 400 to 350 (aka, attacks faster than any other class on unarmed)
Base activation rate of using a kick within a stance increased from 15% to 25%
Taekwon Ranking changes: see [TaeKwon]
Whirlwind Kick: Damage increased from (160+20*SkillLV)% ATK to (160+35*SkillLV)% (total 405%). Bonus scaling if unarmed: 15 * skill level (so 510% for unarmed at max level)
Axe Kick: Damage increased from (160+20*SkillLV)% ATK to (160+35*SkillLV)% (total 405%). Bonus scaling if unarmed: 15 * skill level (so 510% for unarmed at max level)
Roundhouse Kick: Damage increased from (190+30*SkillLV)% ATK to (190+50*SkillLV)% (total 540%). Bonus scaling if unarmed: 20 * skill level (so 680% for unarmed at max level)
Counter Kick: Damage increased from (190+30*SkillLV)% ATK to (190+50*SkillLV)% (total 540%). Bonus scaling if unarmed: 20 * skill level (so 680% for unarmed at max level)

Soul Linker Changes

Dagger BTBA (Base Time Between Attacks) lowered from 575 to 500 (attacks as fast as thief using dagger)
Kaahi: Cooldown for Kaahi to activate its heal lowered from 500ms to 250ms
Kaite: works on monsters regardless of level
Eswoo: duration is doubled

Star Gladiator Changes

The focus is to remove part of the situational nature of the boosts related to the Sun, Moon and Stars. Star Gladiator's main skills still rely on which day of the month, but the other skills should be more attractive to use.

Fixed a bug for Miracle of the Sun, Moon and Stars may cause you to lose damage if you did not max out Hatred of the Stars
Comfort of the Sun: when activated on the proper day, it gives all effects of the original Comfort of the Moon and the original Comfort of the Stars as well
Comfort of the Moon: when activated on the proper day, it gives all effects of the original Comfort of the Sun and the original Comfort of the Stars as well
Comfort of the Stars: when activated on the proper day, it gives all effects of the original Comfort of the Sun and Comfort of the Moon as well. Furthermore, the effects of DEX and LUK are doubled.
Hatred of the Sun, Moon and Stars: there are no more HP limits, only size limits for mob targets to give players more options
Blessing of the Sun: this skill also provides 200 max HP per level as a passive effect, regardless of the day
Blessing of the Moon: this skill also provides 1% elemental resistance to all elements per level (except neutral).
Blessing of the Stars: this skill also provides 1% resistance to Neutral per level
Knowledge of the Sun, Moon and Stars: when you activate this skill, provide 4 atk per level (max 40 atk)
Demon of the Sun, Moon and Stars: you can use this skill regardless of job level, as long as you learned the skill
Union of the Sun, Moon and Stars: you lose 1% instead of 2% of your HP against monsters

Ninja Changes

Ninja already has a major update in heRO in the past so there's no major changes for now.

Throwing Mastery: scaling changed from 3*skill level to 15*skill level dmg when using Huuma Shurikens, and 10*skill level dmg when using Throw Kunai
Throw Huuma Shuriken: radius increased by 1 cell (to 5x5 area)

Gunslinger Changes

Gunslinger already has a major update in heRO in the past so there's no changes for now.

Coins: each coin boosts damage by 5 each, up from 3 each

NPC Skill Changes

Dark Cross: inherits all changes from Holy Cross
Grand Cross of Darkness: inherits all changes from Grand Cross
Assimilate Power (Sura skill): range extended from 5x5 area to 15x15

Item Rebalance

Converters now last 20 minutes, similar to the Endow skill. This should remove some of the need on "self-endow" via buy stalls or other janky methods. Pop a scroll and be on your way!
Taekwon's BG weapon has been retired: consume the item to get refunds into BG points. If you have a Taekwon BG weapon above safe refine, please get in touch with GM-Ayu to get additional BG points to compensate for potential breakage involved with your refined weapon.