Jan 11 2026 Devblog

War of Emperium Updates

New War of Emperium Time

As voting has concluded, the GM team has discussed the results and our own thoughts. We have decided to move the current Wednesday War of Emperium timeslot to Saturday 10 am Server Time. This is the 2nd most popular vote result. As this is the former time slot where Rental WoE is typically used, we have reasonable data to predict that if the real War of Emperium were moved to this slot, attendance would increase. We recognize that Friday night 9 pm server time has slightly more votes, but as mentioned in the initial poll, we prioritize the votes for those who are currently participating in WoE. This time change will take place this week, such that the first Saturday WoE will be Jan 17. Please adjust for the time and prepare for this Saturday's WoE accordingly.

If the WoE scene cools and it reverts to a lack of interest, WoE time may revert to another time so that events can reclaim the potential Saturday morning slot. For now, events will make way to other time slot whenever possible, based on GMs' availability.

Maintenance will take place once again sometime on Friday to apply the WoE time change.

War of Emperium for Jan 14

This will be the last War of Emperium on the Wednesday slot. We want to make it clear to the future castle owner and winner of WoE on Jan 14th that your ownership of the castle will be cut short. Whoever owns the castle, will hold it up until Saturday only, so it will be a short period. Remember to pick up your WoE Chest rewards on Saturday past midnight, before WoE in the morning as well.

War of Emperium Upcoming Changes

We have the following changes planned to further support the server's renewed interest in WoE. As for when we can apply these changes, we will see if we can apply it by the Saturday WoE, but if it's not ready, then it'll be applied in the future "whenever it's ready."

• Special War Stat Food (+10 str, +10 dex, etc) will be available for pick up at no cost. Similar to other War Items, it will not work outside of the castles. WoE Food cannot overwrite bonuses provided by real food, and real food can overwrite bonuses provided by WoE food in case you intend to leave WoE early and want to use normal food for PvM purposes.
• Warper will be added to all castle entrances, in case you "misclick" into the wrong castle and are now stranded.
• Within the Castle-related warp options for WoE Castles, we will make a special option so that the first option is also the currently active castle (assuming there's only 1 castle open).

War of Emperium: Second Edition Testing

We are also considering public testing WoE:SE again. We tried this once, but WoE:SE didn't work (specifically, emp respawn with invincibility state for reasons unknown; we never figured it out). That was a few years ago. Rental WoE utilizes WoE:SE, and with the renewed interest, we will give WoE:SE a try again. We will schedule WoE:SE public testing to give it another try. While PvP action will take place, during the testing GMs will also call off certain fights to try specific aspects of WoE:SE, such as asking for no interruption to create barricades and/or guardian stones. For public testing, the castle will always return to GM ownership at the end. Public testing will continue for at least a couple of weeks to ensure there are no issues before we consider upgrading WoE:FE to WoE:SE on Saturdays. Minor rewards will be given for participation.

Back in PvM World

Swordsman Spear Builds

There's a small update for the direction of what spears do for the Swordsman class. Brandish Spear is in the shadow of Bowling Bash. Paladins have Spear Quicken to work with any spears, but it still doesn't do much. So what do spears do? For Lord Knight, we will direct spears to continue to be the "accuracy" option, where HIT and DEX are its bonuses. To distinguish Brandish Spear from Bowling Bash, Brandish Spear will shift to be 1h spear focused AoE option, so that while it is lower damage than Bowling Bash, a shield is typically usable with Brandish Spear, so that it is the consistent defensive option without relying on the chance-based Parry in 2h sword. Pierce remains as it is for single target damage with bonuses against larger foes. Spiral Pierce remains as the serious damage option as it ignores defence for very reliable damage if a spear build wants more damage output. For Paladins, the spear will be a way to get out of the typical neutral/holy elemental lock provided by Paladin skills, and be the weapon of choice for a potential Sacrifice build to take advantage of the faster attack speed from Spear Quicken. It will not necessarily be end-game viable, but at least it'll be an option if Paladins really need different elemental access.

Existing gears related to Brandish Spear will see a shift/upgrade from two-hand to one-hand to facilitate this change. This is now possible since the current client no longer has a fixed lock that certain weapon IDs must be a particular weapon type, so we can get away from being forced to have a fixed number of 2h spears vs 1h spears, and so on.

New PvM Content

As we said, if there's interest in WoE, then we will support it. But that is not without certain drawbacks, as GMs' time + availability are limited. We have to postpone some planned PvM releases, which are the next instance-endgame dungeons. Again, we recognize that, especially for veterans, there has been no new PvM content for almost a year, and that instance was lacklustre. We have learned from our mistakes not to copy/paste from the RO emulators, as they are quite likely to contain bugs and issues. Therefore, for the next instance, we have decided to rewrite it from the ground up, similar to how heRO's Ferre's Playground instance differs from the official Jitterbug's Nightmare instance, even though they use similar art assets. Don't worry, the next instance is not puzzle-based or alternate-play like Ferre's Playground. It will be a traditional PvM-heavy focus dungeon, intended for coordinated PvM gameplay at high-end difficulty.

The instance is still in production. Optimistically speaking, it may be ready sometime in late February (as we also need to reserve efforts for WoE:SE testing), but if it takes longer to get into a good state, so be it. It will be out whenever it's ready.

There may be a smaller release in between for some lower-difficulty content involving 2 potential MvPs to bridge the time needed for the instance, and also not to forsake players who may not be interested in the highest-end difficulty content only. These should be simple, easier MvPs suitable for small parties or even solo for really well-geared veterans.

Note that as always, all items in Test-Development are only in an early alpha stage and are subject to change (be it in number tweaks or a complete makeover)

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