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I wanted to clarify since some people in-game expressed concerns, none of this subscriber equipment is stronger than any non-subscriber equipment, it might just look a little cooler. It's actually on par with non-subscriber loot of the same tier. I have no plans to ever make subscriber-only items more powerful than non-subscriber items, the main benefit of using them over other weapons will usually be a cosmetic one. The Rift Mages and Spawn Changers can be made free by non-subscribers using in-game means if they find the right items.
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The most noticeable change (that higher leveled people will see) is the dramatic weakening of the dragon enemies in the game, initially they were made so strong to encourage groups to fight them but as time went on it became more and more obvious that even groups were struggling with them, so I've reduced their stats across the board but gave them an area-of-effect spell to compensate a bit.
Another big change to how monsters work will apparent to everyone, the reduction of their regeneration rate from 30% to 5%, higher leveled enemies with a ton of health were simply regenerating faster than they could be handled. This change applies across the board to all enemies though, so even weaker enemies who didn't regenerate too quickly will slow down as well. This change also increases the inactivity timer for monsters to regenerate to their full health instantly to over five minutes.
It was also pointed out to me that most of the gear set bonuses for gear obtained from loot and not from the shops were pretty terrible, so most set bonuses have been improved to fall more in line with similarly tiered sets from the shops.
There's also been about a dozen new pieces of equipment added as loot, both subscriber and non-subscriber.
Subscribers also no longer have to pay to utilize the Rift Mages (fast travel), and Spawn Changer NPCs.
I also finally got around to fixing the Siren race up, as the RP version's method of handling them simply didn't work, the sub-race aspect was basically impossible to utilize on Battlegrounds without dramatically complicating the process the RP version used for it. So instead I've removed the choice of a passive from Sirens made Attunement provide a bonus to all three elements (fire, lightning, darkness, light) at a reduced rate. They've also been given a -1 cost to all spells in the water tree to make up for the loss of their resistance passives. I'll also be working on improving their benefits with time, this was simply the least involved means of getting them back into action.
The game has seen some pretty decent activity lately and it's made a lot of the aspects of the game people couldn't enjoy with a low population much more fun and involved.
The game's standalone is also available to play the game without having BYOND installed, or having to view an ad each time you join.
Now, moving from updates that are already done to updates that are upcoming, the PVP Arena's core code is mostly finished, I'm just struggling to get the map side of things done for it (due to having to piece it together using some really hacky methods since this computer crashes loading BYOND's map editor and FastDMM). It'll go live as soon as I'm able to get the map stuff done for it, with or without a proper UI in place.
The Player Marketplace is also fairly far along core-code wise and is mostly waiting on me to finish up the UI and add the metric tracking stuff.
On the combat side of things I have two new dungeon areas nearly ready to go live, and the boss of Grub Cave is finally ready to go live once I finish mapping out the boss room. The much anticipated Elemental Cave, which contains both elemental Yokai and elemental Dragons is about half done, and the Church of Man dungeon in Whispering Willows is about 80% ready to go live.
Neither of the new dungeons will include a boss fight right away, but they'll both have one added when they've been completed (dungeon bosses will all be unique in programming and patterns, so I want to make sure they get some good attention when I do them). Both dungeons will go live with a few new gear sets, some new weapons, and various other items as rewards and loot.
I'll also be adding more loot to existing enemies in an upcoming update, as well as improving the existing loot tables on some of the stronger monsters to make it less depressing when they do finally do a loot drop.
