We are exceptionally excited to announce Dracona will relaunch in just under 7 days time on July 9th, at 9am PT 12pm EST!
Character creation is open now!
We are very pleased to announce a long list of changes overall server balance as well as prizes!
The layering timeline was longer than anticipated, it has been an exceptionally complicated system to create, one even some AAA studios have a hard time creating. The final result however is nothing but fantastic. We are so excited about the doors that this system has opened for Archlight as a project. We had to create this system out of a necessity of the amount of players wanting to play Archlight, one of the best problems we could have... but a problem none the less. Having this new layering system now allows us to essentially meet any population no matter how large moving forward!
Changes for this Re-Launch
Solo Quests time after completing regular quest reduced from 7 days to 3 days for this launch.
Sieges will be enabled for the first weekend after launch, to allow for guilds to recruit members and have proper bidding time.
Guild Halls will be enabled and handed out the first weekend after launch weekend not on launch weekend.
Compensation
As mentioned before, the cosmetics from the previous era have been turned into T5, and all donations made during the era until now will be reapplied on your account available on launch day. Your Wheel of Archlight spins will be credit back to your account online. However if you obtained a Charizard mount of Butterfree companion you will keep those on your account instead. This is very large thank you to compensate everyone for the support given during the development of the Layering System and technical issues from last launch.
Layering System
The Layering System has been officially introduced and live on Dracona! It was a tough system to develop but now that it is finished it's time to enjoy the benefits of it. As you may know, it has been tested on the live server already and it's working quite well! If you want to read more about the Layering System, please don't miss a chance to check our FAQ page at the wiki by clicking
Here
We encourage feedback and opinions on polishing the system even further for you all. You can submit these in game with Ctrl+Shift+Z or in the Idea submission channel in our discord.
Exciting new things!
The Peddler NPC has been added.
This NPC will sell a random pool of exclusive heirlooms from past eras and his stock will rotate from time to time. It doesn't have a fixed location and can be found throughout the game world! But have no fear he doesn't like to much excitement so he's nowhere very dangerous!
Past items obtained at the Peddler that were previously cross exclusive are not when introduced from his market. You will be able to view your exclusives page on the website and see things purchased from the Peddler marked with a P next to the name.
Raid Boss inspired Dungeons
New Kraken, Sarandiel, and Forgemaster themed dungeons. They will yield a soulbound shard and be able to be spent at the respective NPC's on Myrefall in the Forgotten Islands. These shards can be combined with non-soulbound shards from the raids as well. Additionally each of the 3 raids bosses and each of the dungeon bosses will now drop special mounts to collect.
These dungeons will require you to have tasks and missions completed on respective islands to unlock the ability to challenge them. We have some new puzzling challenges awaiting you inside.
Kraken will be tied to Blackridge
Sarandiel will be tied to Rumrunner Bay
The Forgemaster will be tied to Azmar Sands
All 3 will require the islands kill tasks, npc missions and Moles from Myrefall to be on cooldown and completed in order to enter. This means you can have up to a 7 day window to gain entry and try them out. So even the busiest of people can challenge the mighty bosses lair's. You will be able to enter the dungeon as many times as you need to within the cooldown period. Your charge is consumed on the slaying of the boss' minion inside. Because of this and the value of the reward the monsters inside do not drop loot or experience. You will be required to solve the puzzles, kill the boss, and 80% of the creatures inside to complete it. More information on why these dungeons are of mass importance will come in the near future hehe.
Important new things
Added cosmetic boxes to the Cooking up a Storm quest. Killing the mini-bosses will give you 1 cosmetic box each, and killing Lloyd will give you 2 cosmetic boxes. The cosmetic boxes cooldown resets with quests.
Points , Heirloom points, and even cosmetic, drops are now automated, and will happen at a scheduled time. You can use the command !points or !heirloom to see when your next drop will occur! The days schedule has not changed from the coins resurrection page on our website under the community tab.
New enchantment added: It will be called Lifeleech. Whenever you deal damage it will now heal you on hit. Melee weapons will be 50% chance and Ranged weapons will be a 33% chance. The healing values will be 3, 5, and 8% for each of the 3 tiers.
The previous "Lifeleech" Enchantment sprite visual has not changed but the name will be changed to be called "Life Bloom". It will continue to be a regen over time buff as it was before.
Equipments scaling changes and stat imbuements can be found below with vocation balance changes so you can fully plan your adventure. These changes will open us up to being able to not only make your time spent feel better rewarded, but allow us to restructure how equipment feels over all. Additionally it opens us up to further cool end game style equipment in the future. We heard a rumor of possibly obtaining a Gorgon head shield that could have a chance to affect your attacker. But those birds do like to gossip.
Miscellaneous changes
In Addition to the list posted on our
website here when our Layering system went live on June 16th available below are some additional changes.
Archpass tasks "Kill a World Boss" has been changed to "Kill a World Boss or a Ritual Lord"
Participants will now be required to be in a party for the Team Boss Arena and players can't be pushed onto it.
Players will no longer draw the same monster on multiple bounty windows.
Flippers are now a consumable item. Once used, you are permanently able to walk on water and no longer need to swap boots.
Elixirs no longer remove slow from CTF event.
Sigil Dungeon ores will now drop a raw material, instead of 1 of each type. This won't affect the total amount of ores. You can clean this raw ore up into an of your choice at the Blacksmithing station. Requires 80 backsmithing + crafting costs. To further refine the special ore Aaron will craft your pieces as usual on Minerva's Isle.
Removed level requirements of weapons.
Wild bosses cooldown is now 10 minutes instead of 15.
Wild bosses kill count to enter the portal is now 20 instead of 30.
Wild bosses total kill count for portal spawn is now 200 instead of 150.
Navy Captains will now counts for the ship captain task from the NPC Arani the Infiltrator, while completing the mission.
All nomads now counts towards master taskmaster and Steve the Addonner, Kill count increased from 115 to 175.
Bonebeast task has been removed from the Monster Hunter NPC.
The following creatures have had their ranges reduced to 3: Forgotten Spearman, Forgotten Shaman, Cyclops Spellmaster, Helm Spellmaster, Forgotten Wizard, Treasure Coves Ranger, Angel Ranger, Angel Monarch, Demon Warlock, War Scouts.
Shirakan the Bloodprince has been removed, it was an old and unused NPC.
Celestial equipments now have a new sprite.
The stats window will properly show the correct value for the stats. These were reduced a couple era's ago with the addition of the spell revamp but the window wasn't changed back then.
Strength stat will now yield 0.33 instead of 0.22 per point.
Haste will be adjusted to grant a bonus for certain vocations. More info coming in balance note section.
Changed the Polishing, Repolishing, and Shining oil colors to make them look less similar to each other.
If you do not belong to the guild that owns the guild hall, you cannot go to that gathering area, even if invited inside the hall.
Blacksmithing stones breakdown now requires profession level, scaling depending on the power of the stone. Recipes are available at Blacksmithing under the city depot.
Map Changes
While working on the Layering System, we were revamping old maps to make them better in many ways including buffing profession nodes and spawn sizes or map shapes. Since the last Dracona era until now, the revamped or changed maps are:
Added a free duplicated Voids spawn.
Venomous widow
Metal Gargoyle
Deadstone / Otherworlds inner book seal areas
Duel arena
Enflamed lords
Cliff striders
Nomads
Hidden Asura Temple
Samurai Swamp
Wasteland
Corrupted Cave
Ninja Monastery
Dragonlings
Draptors
Exileds
Base of Olympus
Ogre Spawn
Rumrunner Bay
Blackridge
Treasure Cove
GnomeEvil
Leviathans
Death Reapers
Gargantoise
Voids
Lurking Cave spiders
Giant spiders
Guskos
Cave Behemoths
Forsaken dragon spawn expansion (This made one of the Nomad and one of the Hellflayer spawns need to have their position adjusted on our world map. So you may notice some mini-map over writing on your first exploration)
Wargates Changes
The damage over time on corridors will now hit every 15 seconds instead of 10.
EXP from wargates has been reworked and the numbers will change based on your level. However a full clear of monsters will give you around 10 levels if pre-awakened, and 2 levels if awakened no matter what without experience boosts.
The wargates drop rate chance has been changed, as we added a new mechanic that makes your drop chance increase every minute it is out of cooldown. This will not only let you drop them more often it will increase along with the already implemented global system that scales the drop chance when a challenger is needed. This should result largely in more gates over all for actively hunting players regardless of their power.
Wargates will stop searching for a challenger if more than 50% of the monsters have been killed already without 2 players.
Gustavo's Shop
Team Boss Arena cooldown token cost has increased from 300 WC to 1000 wargates currency, and it's cooldown is now 7 days.
Team Boss Arena gathering reduction token cost has increased from 50 to 150 wargates currency, and capped at 5 max.
Sigil equipment transfer cost increased from 250 to 500 wargates currency.
T3 Soul runes have been removed from the shop.
Ramparts cooldown reset token cost increased from 300 to 500 wargates currency.
Warcry spell token cost has been increased from 800 to 1000 wargates currency, you still require 3 to unlock all stages of the spell.
Added back the 6th spell unlock token for 1000 wargates currency
Other items may be added in the near future
Bug Fixes
We added quite a few in when Layering went live on June16th, however sometimes we need to wait until a new era for certain reasons.
Fixed a bug where Mimic Scrolls would not properly remove the soulbound from equipment in certain situations.
Hellflayers have had their loot, experience and essence's nerfed by 50%. This was intended to happen this past launch like it did respectively on Ildar, and was left out on accident.
Cosmetic Race Rewards
Due to the anticipation of layering allowing us to host many more of you wonderful players and all your friends! We have slightly increased race rewards this time around to accommodate us starting with 2 worlds!
First 20 Players to 300 AP
Arcane Rambler - T4 HP/MP
First 30 Players to 200 AP
Tanned Swiftstrider - T3 Skills
First 225 Players to 150 AP
Guidon Bearer - T3 HP/MP
First 35 Players to Slay Hades
Bloodforged Warhorse - T4 HP/MP & Skills
First 60 Players to Awakening Level 1500
Choice of Dragonair or Shiny Dragonair Companion (+5 all Stats)
(They don't stack)
Obtain 500 AP by end of the season (Unlimited)
Pink Moth - T4 Skills
ArchPass Rewards
Level 50 ArchPass Mount Cosmetic
Temple Keeper - T3 HP/MP
Level 100 ArchPass Outfit Cosmetic
Temple Master T3 Skills
Vocations Changes, prize winners, New style of Equipment progression, and much more are posted live on our website here.
Due to the character length limit of posts we could not share everything we wanted to here!
Achievement System Changes
Revamped Equipment progression
To create an overall richer feel to progression throughout the era, and ensure equipment and effort put forth remains very relevant to your adventures in Archlight. We have put some immense effort into planning equipment progression, not only the last era with the addition of Sigil equipment from the Sigil Dungeons, but also with this restructure it will allow is overall a more smoothened scaling. This will lay the ground work for what we plan to bring you all in terms of new content as spoiled in previous patch notes and mentioned in several posts. We are very excited to start working even more so on the next big thing for you all!
The Basics
Equipment will now have a stone upgrade cap and their own tiers, which will be related to the amount of stat values that Polishing oils can be rolled for. The Tier of Equipment will be the lowest available stat value and the range will be +1. This means that a tier 4 can roll +4 or +5 in the respective stat. Equipment will display it's cap on inspection and you will not be able to exceed the bonuses granted by the cap. You will be able to mimic your bonuses off and if placing a higher upgraded mimic than the tier's cap, not lose your higher progression for later.
Sigil equipment line changes
Your Sigil equipment bonuses may enhance your Mastercrafted armor pieces. Applying their bonuses to the set. These can be removed once added and transferred with a mimic scroll to accommodate your builds or improvements. We have excluded certain Sigil set bonuses such as The Protector or Tank set from combining to the armor line. You must combine your pieces in a matching style, such as a Helmet can apply a bonus to a Helmet. This is so that players may not circumvent the system in an effort to rapidly upgrade with whatever they can get their hands on and must plan their build accordingly.
Sigil equipment stat bonuses have been changed from a cap of +15 to +10 maximum per piece on a perfect craft.
Sigil entry level requirement reduced from 300 to 200.
Sigil equipment level requirement reduced from 300 to 200.
Council of Marius equipment line changes
You can also apply your Vampire hunter equipment obtained in The Council of Marius quest line's stat bonuses to your Mastercrafted armor pieces or higher tiers, even if they have Sigil bonuses on them as well.
Kraken and Celestial equipment changes
You can apply your Sleeping Kraken pieces to the Mastercrafted armor pieces to enhance your armor set a step further. All while keeping your bonuses from the previous efforts!
Lastly you may create your Celestial Equipment obtained from your Celestial ore mined in the Team Boss Arena at the Black Smithing station under the Depot. This will offer a true later game feeling and this must be applied to your Kraken pieces with all previously mentioned bonuses combined into 1 set of the Gods.
Upgrade pathway summary
You must upgrade the base armor line in the order of Mastercrafted line with Kraken and then Kraken with Celestial. Sigil bonuses and Vampire hunter equipment can be applied to the armor line as any of those 3 stages stages.
The upgrading in a pathway is reserved for Middle to Late game equipment. You do not need to own the previous tier for example to go from Darksteel to Iceforged.
A more detailed list of the upgrade cap, skills given and oil tiers of each equipment can be found already live on our wiki page by clicking
here.
Community Engagement Prizes
As mentioned in the last part of the patch notes, we would like to reward the winners of the various community activities we did at the Relauch announcement in March, on Discord, voting or the soft launch.
We randomly picked 194 winners for our voting contest.
Apart from that day, when we invited everyone in our discord to our Soft Launch afternoon for the layering tests, we said we would pick 2 winners: one for the best bug hunter, and one for the best suggestion. Both of these winners are on the list and will get their prizes as well.
Please keep in mind it can take up to 24-48 business hours for codes to be sent to you once you have messaged CM Biga.
This means weekends do not count.