We are very excited on the way the client has turned out, and thus the future of Archlight. We have made dozens of improvements on not only the ArchClient but also the ArchBot and ArchLauncher over the past 2 weeks, and plan to make many more. One asset our team has always had is we work hard, and efficient, and improve what needs improving. We have no plans of slowing down.
We wont get too deep into this, but essentially we have decided that we will not continue the Seasonal Concept for Archlight. This is due to a large mixture of reasons, all stacking up prompting us to not continue the Season concept. We wont get into every reason, but the main one's we will explain.
The first is that the Seasonal concept seems to be too complex for many OT players. Not for all, but for the vast majority. This could be due to them simply not taking the time to read news posts, or watch videos explaining it, but we've noticed many who did still didn't understand it. We cant tell you how many times a day we received the exact same questions that we're answered 3-4 different times in videos, posts, etc. It caused many players to be very confused and leave due to confusion.
The second is that the amount of content we can make for a Season will never be equivalent to Archlight itself. What we made for this pirate season was hundreds of hours of work between all the staff. We made some pretty cool stuff, some fun quests, cool spawn locations, a good amount of diversity, cities, etc. But we simply cant continue to do that for every season, we hoped we would, but resource wise we cant. However, this has been a great trial and practice for many of us in our team. We really enjoyed making the content that we did and am very excited to do a similar style of content on Archlight, primarily the quests we created like Sharptooth Isle.
Now we have some exciting or disapointing news depending on the person. I know the vast majority finds this exciting, but i know some players find this disapointing. We will be wiping Archlight on August 27th, and Dawn of Archlight will begin on September 1st. This is for a collective of reasons, the primary being the amount of changes that have occured to Archlight. Obviously, as many of you have experienced by now, the new client has brought on many, many changes to Archlight, primarily being the lack of a fully-afk-capable bot like Xenobot was. This is a very positive change for the future of Archlight, however, it also has made certain content require a revamp. Not only that but it has made some things that were much easier able to be achieved before, much less achievable, and will require a further huge revamp for Dawn of Archlight. We know this will disapoint some of you, but i can assure you the way Archlight will be with the new client, limited bot, and the change in content will be nothing but a majorly positive experience gameplay wise.
Previously we had stated that seasonal characters would roll over to Archlight, as we planned on Archlight not wiping, however between what was mentioned above, and from the playerbase, we feel a wipe of main Archlight is neccesary, thus seasonal characters will not roll over into it. So what does this mean. What this means is that Seasonal Badges will be more useful than ever for you seasonal players. Seasonal rewards will include a outfit, a pet, and several "boosters" which will be very valuable on a fresh launch. We encourage players to earn and stock as many seasonal badges as possible for the launch boosters.
All points on any seasonal account will remain on that account, all seasonal accounts will be moved over to Archlight (minus the characters). All points will be refunded to the account, and seasonal badges will be added to the account as well. This will go the same for all legacy rewards on the seasonal account!
So let's chat about some of the stuff we have done, added and changed for Dawn of Archlight!
Our Mission
Our mission going into Dawn of Archlight is "To provide constant, non-repetitive content to ensure a half a year+ era". All our changes, and reworks, are to make as many features on Archlight less reptitive, more unique, and more exciting. All our additions are to end the "cap" on high levels, we dont want any limit on challenging content for top tier players, and lower the limits of repetitiveness to progress as a top player. Ironically, xenobot was what caused alot of our content to be reptitive, the reason being we knew that many would use full script and afk bots for many features on Archlight, thus we had to extend the amount of all that content to compensate for the fact that many were botting the content, now with the ArchBot the afk-scripting has been drastically limited, allowing us to make content less repetitive, more manual, and longer lasting/entertaining.
Cosmetic Tokens
We have decided instead of selling future outfits for points, we will be giving out Cosmetic Tokens for all future donations for free to purchase these Outfits. Like promotion tokens, these will all be given back on future expansions if any. These tokens will not only be able to purchase our Unique Custom Sprited outfits, but also mounts and pets. This is something we wanted to give as an extra added bonus to all supporters, some dank new outfits, mounts and pets.
Mastercraft Changes and Additions
Mastercrafted Equipment has always been a massive gap in play for many on Archlight. You would get to tier 4, then grind for many days, or even weeks for some, to get just one piece of mastercrafted gear. Due to this gap, we have created three tiers of mastercraft equipment. Each with their own entire sprited set. Each tier will require the previous tier to craft. This will curve out the gameplay more naturally, and also allow people to start investing in their mastercrafted set earlier on. Additionally, due to the changed nature of Archlight (limiting the bot, and other gameplay functions to be more manual based), the recipes for mastercrafted gear will be significantly cheaper. Mastercrafted Tier Equipment will also now include several quest items as well to forge.
Balancing Improvements and Change
The Future of Archlight Balancing has been totally revamped. We have developed a new system where all weapons will now use Attack Power or Magic Power only. Magic Power on all wands will be equivallent to the Attack Power on respective weapons. Bows and Crossbows will now also behave the same as Guns do, in which they do not require ammo, and instead fire their respective ammo automatically like guns. All spells will now use the same formula, instead of the very messy tibia formula system (in which each class has their own type of formula, which makes perfect balance nearly impossible with how many different factors we have on Archlight). This new formula will make balancing extremely easy and significantly more accurate. We are very excited about this change and the future balance of all vocations on Archlight.
Crafting/Gathering System Overhaul
Crafting System Overhaul and Crafting Sets. The crafting system has been rather bland in the progression, for many it is simply crafting low tier things for 1-2 weeks until you can craft the only thing that's interesting from the crafting tree. We will be overhauling this to include more unique steps, and actual crafting tier sets that you can create and use (and not be completely worthless). We have added in 4 tiers of crafting armors.
Gathering System Overhaul. Mining will no longer be just in one big mining cave. Mining Nodes will now randomly occur in many different spawns in Archlight, rarer nodes being in more dificult areas. The harder the dificulty of the node that higher chance it will be a rarer node with rarer/stronger materials.
Revampped Content
Revamped Quests - Many of the older quests on Archlight have been majorly revamped such as the 500 quest, giving it completely new mechanics, puzzles and boss fights.
65 new and edited wildbosses added, all with their own unique mechanics like on Seasonal Archlight.
Awakening Level Scaling has been slightly lowered, in other words you hit less of a "brick wall" once around 15-20 awakening level. This will make it a smoother transition and scaling of experience required.
Over 36 spawns have increased in their spawn "diversity". Many spawns that only had a single creature - IE draptors, hellfleshed demons, etc - have had other creatures now join them to increase the diversity of the hunts.
Archlight Arena has been redone to have monsters with unique mechanics, requiring the player to move around the event and position better. Additionally, the arena will be more expensive, but yield a much higher reward, this is so that it doesn't require being re-done dozens of times a day for things like Mastercraft Equipment. Arena creatures will also have a much higher experience yield than normal creatures.
Endless Content
Greater Dungeons. These have been teased before in the general chat and in Q&A's. We will be introducing a new system in Dawn of Archlight which will be Greater Dungeons. Essentially what greater dungeons are are instanced dungeons in which the creatures, bosses and rewards are instanced in based on your character/groups average power. The stronger your groups power, the stronger the creatures you face will be, the more experience you will earn, and the better the loot you will get will be. We're very excited about this as it'll add Uncapped content for top tier players, and constantly provide new challenges.
In-game Sprites Reworked
We have redone every single monster/dungeon tier equipment sprite! This was due to a very popular vote to redo all of these, so we did it!
Enchantment runes we're always confusing, primarily due to limited sprites, we completely replaced all the runes with our own enchantment runes. We currently have 5 tiers sprited. This also means that base level enchantments (a weak version fo current enchantments) will be very easy to obtain for newer players, to learn and understand the enchantment mechanic. Having additional sprites means we will be able to make other in-game ways of obtaining enchantments using a tier system.
Combat Mechanics Reworked
Rework how paralyze works - Paralyze is essentially just a slow based on how quickly you, or your bot, can heal yourself to remove its affect. We will be changing paralyze to function much more similar to a slow in majority of MMOs. Paralyze will no longer be able to be cleansed by healing yourself, however, paralyze effects will be drastically reduced, not only in % of speed removed, but the duration of these paralyzes. Alot less creatures will have paralyze abilities as well. We think this will make pvp much more interesting and unique and add a new level of skill to timing slows and trapping enemies.
The Archlight Team is bigger and stronger than ever and we have way more announcements and teasers to come!