January 11 – Progressive Loot Bonus, Creature Spawn, Difficulty and Drops Overhaul and more

Creature Hit Points

• Creature hit points for non-tamed/summoned and non-Boss creatures has been increased by 25% across the board (to account for the large amount of power creep that has occured in the last 2 years of gameplay)

Creature Difficulty Values and Standard Gold Drops

• We have overhauled our algorithm that calculates individual Creature Difficulty (viewable in the Animal Lore menu for a creature) to better reflect the actual difficulty / effort involved to farm creatures (we have not adjusted this algorithm since server launch, and it was severely due for an update)
• Creature Difficulty is used to determine loot drops for creatures, Society Job target values, Barding Difficulties, and several other mechanics
• Additionally, we have overhauled the Loot Tiers that are used to determine how much loot gold, special, rare loot individual creatures drop based on what their Creature Difficulty value is
• Most creatures have had their gold amounts adjusted somewhat, with low-hit point spellcasters being adjusted significantly as well some high end creatures, such as Spectral Terrors, have had their gold amounts reduced drastically as a result of these changes (which was intentional and neccessary)

Tamed Damage Taken Scaling

• Removed the mechanic that was making Tamed Creatures take more damage from monsters based on the monster’s Creature Difficulty value (was previously causing tamed creatures to take upwards of +25% more damage)

Progressive Loot

• Dungeon and Wilderness creatures now gain a Progressive Loot bonus of +5% per hour for each hour they are alive up to a maximum of +250%
• Progressive Loot Bonuses increase gold drops as well as adjust the % chance to encounter Special and Rare Loot (and will stack with all other available loot bonus)
• Ocean Creatures and New Player Dungeon creatures are exempt from Progressive Loot bonuses

For example, a Creature that is normally worth 100 gold and has been alive for 10 hours will now be worth 150 gold

Spawn Rates

• We have updated Creatures Spawners in the game world and most now have a randomized spawn delay between 2.5 and 5.0 minutes (previously about 80% of spawners were at 3-6 minutes delay, and the remaining were at 5-10 minutes delay)
• Mini-Bosses spawners remain at 12-24 hours
• Boss spawners now spawn every 24-48 hours (previously was 72-120 hours)

Aspect Gear

• Aspect Weapon and Aspect Spellbook proc rates have been reduced by 25% (now is [0.4% + .04% per Tier])
• The base Arcane Essence burn rate of Aspect Gear has been lower to 50% of normal (now is 1 Arcane Essence burn expected for every [1500 – (25 x Tier Level) Damage])
• The Aspect proc bonuses from Aspect Weapon Oils/Bundles/Foci has been reduced from +50% to +25%
• The Damage bonus for Aspect Arrow/Bolt Bundles has been reduced to 10% to match the amounts for Weapon Oils and Spell Foci (since we have overhauled Archery as part of the Dexer Overhaul)

Aspect Hues

• Players now have the option to select “Maintain Dyed Hues” in the Aspect Mastery menu to have Dyed Armor items maintain their dyed hue when aspected
• Currently this includes All Armored Headgear + Masks (Head Layer), Scarves + Neckerchiefs (Neck Layer), and Evening Gloves + Fur Mittens (Gloves Layer)

• Normal and colored material armor items (i.e. undyed armor items) will still adopt the Aspect Hue as normal

Bear Mask was dyed Shimmer Equinox so it maintains its hue, however the Avarite Platemail items adopt the Aspect Hue

Archery Codex

• Archery Codex Longshot Ammunition now provides a Range bonus of (Rank / 2) rounded up and a Damage bonus of +3% per rank (regardless of range)

Guards

• Fixed an issue that was causing Guards to automatically be called on players (even with no NPCs around)

Item Display Names

• Fixed an issue that was causing some items (notably clothing items that were not rare-hue dyed) from displaying their name when single-clicked